The Fractal Prince

who knows how to make jinni do her bidding can be in Sirr.’

Tawaddud shook her head and sent him away. But when she thought about it – her musings mingling with the Axolotl’s – she did miss the company of people, of beings who did not live in tombs, whose touch was not sand. Perhaps she should go, said the part of her that was Zaybak. I will never leave him, said the part that was Tawaddud. Or perhaps it was the other way around.

One morning she told Zaybak that she had dreamed of a train.

‘You will turn into me,’ Zaybak said. ‘I am too old and strong.’

‘Yes, you are my big jinn, my terrible Axolotl,’ Tawaddud teased.

‘Yes, I am. I am the Axolotl.’

Tawaddud was silent.

‘I thought he was only mocking you,’ she whispered.

‘I told you I stole the first body. I came to Sirr from the desert and almost made it mine.’

Tawadudd closed her eyes.

‘My grandfather was there the night the Axolotl came, the night of the ghuls,’ she says. ‘He said it was like a plague. All it took was a whisper from a stranger to be processed. The streets were filled with blank-eyed people who would stop to stare at things, to cut their own flesh, to eat endlessly, to make love.’

‘Yes.’

‘In the end they took the first ghuls up to the top of Soarez Shard. Husbands took the wives they no longer knew, mothers took their children who spoke with strange voices. Then they cast them down into the desert.’

‘Yes’

‘The Repentants started hunting stories then. It was death to tell a thing that was not true.’

‘Yes.’ Zaybak was silent for a while. ‘I would like to tell you I did not mean it. That I was swallowed by the flesh, that I lost myself in the wave of so many self-loops, that I did not know what I was doing. But I would be lying. I was hungry. And I am still hungry. Tawaddud, If you stay with me, your thoughts will be my thoughts and nothing else. Is that what you want?’

‘Yes!’

No, said a part of her, but she could not tell which one.

When she woke up, the tomb was cold and silent, and she could no longer remember what the steam rising from the tombs in the morning reminded her of. She sat there until the sun was high and tried to remember the secret of the flower prince, but it was gone, gone with Zaybak the Axolotl.

Then the girl who loved monsters but one above all gathered her things and went to live in the Palace of Stories. But that is another story.

When the story finishes, Tawaddud is Arcelia and Arcelia is Tawaddud. She is in something warm and solid and looks at her hands, more beautiful than the hands she remembers, scented and oiled and covered in intricate swirls of red and black, adorned with golden rings. Tawaddud lifts her hands, Arcelia’s hands to her face, like a blind woman, feeling her features. A dark-faced man is watching them but Tawaddud tells her there is nothing to worry about, that he is a friend and will not hurt them.

Tell me what happened, Tawaddud says, and for a moment she does not want to. But Tawaddud coaxes and she feels so safe now, a part of her in the bird jar, a part of her in a warm body.

I lived on an island once, by the sea. I was good with patterns. I could see them in the clouds. I wove them into socks for my grandchildren. Then my hands ached and shook. I did not want to get so old. I gave my mind away. They sent me an uploading kit. I said goodbye to Angus, at his grave. I sat there and swallowed the pill and put the cold crown on my head. I thought maybe I would see him, on the other side. But my hands still ached, afterwards, for ever.

Ssh. Don’t think about that. Think about Alile.

I miss Alile.

I know. What was it like to be Alile?

I helped her see patterns in the desert, in the wind, in the wildcode. We found treasures. There are ghosts beneath the earth, you can dig them up if you know where to look. We loved to fly. We climbed into the rukh ship’s tackle. They shouted us to come back down, but we don’t care. Look at them below, how frightened they look, Velasquez and Zuweyla, all of them. They can’t see the lights beneath the desert’s skin, but we can, and the boy can. Look at the lights!

She lifts her hands, presses them against her eyes. Lights flash more as she presses harder. Look at them!

No, no, no. Look at me. And there she is, looking at Arcelia, smiling. There are tears running down her cheeks, but she is smiling.

Think about Alile, not the lights.

Tired. Aching hands. Council. Meetings. Cassar wants to give the lights away, to the diamond men. Perhaps it is time to give them up. I am too tired to go to the desert. I was never tired before. I want to be tired again. I want to sleep. I want to dream. Can we dance until I get tired? I can hear music.

She tries to get up. Her feet want to dance.

Later. I know how it feels. Where did Alile go?

The Axolotl took her.

No. It can’t be.

The shock is like a tight wire cut in her mind, snapping and stinging. She clings to the entwinement desperately, lets Arcelia’s memory wash over hers – waves lapping at a hard rocky shore on a cold cold morning, wind and salt on my face, a hand in mine – and in a moment she is inside the bird’s mind again.

Are you sure? He was in my story, Arcelia. Are you telling stories as well?

No, I did not know his name before. But it was him, the jinn from your story. The Axolotl.

Where did he come from?

He was us and we were him and he said that it would be all right, that Alile would go to a better place, like I thought I would, at the grave. But I saw the wildcode take her. Insects made of black ink. They wrote over her. The Axolotl lied. The stories always lie.

What stories?

I saw it in the lights. There is a circle. It wants to jump over a square. It tries and fails, tries and fails. The square is in love with it and does not want it to go. The circle is looking for something that is lost.

Where did you hear it?

I don’t remember.

Where did . . . where did the Axolotl go?

I couldn’t see. She put me away. When he came, she put me into the forbidden place. There was a wall around it, in the athar. I miss Alile. I am her qarin. She is my muhtasib.

Yes, you are. You will always be.

She should have given me more. She could have lived inside me. She always took me out to watch the lights and then put me away. She should have given more. Now she is gone. She only left me one thing.

What is it?

I can’t tell you.

Show me and you can sleep. Show me and you can dance.

It echoes in her mind, a word that is like a labyrinth. A Secret Name whose syllables shine in her mind’s eye like a string of pearls. It is long, a melody almost: like all Names, it brings a feeling, a serenity: Father’s kitchen, just before the food is ready, his hands on her shoulders; waves on the shore of an island long gone. The smell of Angus’s hair in the morning.

It is time to go back to sleep, Tawaddud says. Arcelia feels her lips saying words that become music in the athar, and then she is back in her bird-shaped jar, dreaming that she is dancing, dreaming that she is Tawaddud.