The woman pinned her braids in place, then said, “I’m going to call down to the desk and have some food sent up, and an extra blanket. I’m sorry, Dima—I know you must be impatient to find him. But I won’t be any help at all until I’ve eaten something and had a good night’s sleep.”
“I understand,” the jinniyeh said. “Here—I’ll put that back for you.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Sophia handed her the silver case and wrapped the blanket more tightly around herself, then lifted a contraption from the desk and spoke into it: “Yes, this is Sophia Williams, in Room 812. Could you send a pot of tea to my room? And does the restaurant have a soup tonight? . . .”
The jinniyeh replaced the silver case in the valise, and pulled the thin piece of paper free of Sophia’s passport.
Arbeely & Ahmad
116 Washington St. (at Carlisle)
She read it carefully, then replaced it in the valise as Sophia finished her conversation. The woman had said nothing at all to her about how she intended to find the iron-bound jinni. Had she known where he was all along? Why would she hide such a thing? She went to the map, still spread upon the bed, found Waverly Place with its tiny arch. So many streets, each with a different name . . .
Sophia had noticed her renewed interest in the map. “Would you like me to show you a few places?” she said.
“Yes.”
The woman came to the bed and pointed at the long rectangle in the middle of the island. “This is Central Park. It was my favorite place in the city, when I was young. And I spent a good deal of time here, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, though that might not interest you. This is Broadway, it runs the length of the island, or near enough . . . Here’s Riverside Park, which is lovely in the spring. And, let’s see . . .” She searched the map, seemingly at a loss, and after a moment she laughed sadly. “Do you know, I’ve seen so little of this city. First I was too young to explore on my own, and then I simply wasn’t allowed.”
“Where did you live?” the jinniyeh asked.
“Here.” She pointed to a spot just east of Central Park, near its bottom edge. “The family mansion.” She said it with a faintly bitter tone.
A noise made the jinniyeh jump: a clatter in the wall nearby, like whirring wheels, or something being dragged upward. It stopped; a bell pealed. Sophia went to a small door in the wall that the jinniyeh hadn’t noticed, opened it, and withdrew a tray that held a covered bowl and a teapot. There was another blanket as well, and an envelope atop it. Sophia opened the envelope. “This is strange,” she murmured.
“What?”
“There’s no message inside. It’s only a blank.” She paused, thinking. “That messenger-boy—but he thought I was . . . Oh, I’m too tired to think properly.” She rubbed her forehead, then sat at the desk and began to eat. When she was finished, she seemed at last to notice the silence. “Is everything all right?”
Nothing is all right, the jinniyeh thought. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You seem . . . a little overwhelmed, I suppose.”
Of course I am. You are everywhere. You are overwhelming. She said only, “This place is like a tale. You have magic boxes in your walls that bring you things.”
Sophia chuckled. “Yes, they’re awfully convenient. There were many nights, in the desert, when I would’ve traded everything I owned for a magic box with a blanket in it.” She put the empty bowl back in the box, closed the door, pushed a button. The machinery whirred again.
“Yet you could’ve come back, if you’d wanted to,” the jinniyeh said.
Sophia had gone to her trunk for her bottle of laudanum. “But I didn’t want to,” she said. “I was searching for something.” She sat on the settee, measured out a spoonful, drank it down.
“No. You were hiding.”
Sophia looked up, startled. “What do you mean?”
“I saw it in your mind. You traveled from place to place, you kept yourself apart, you made few acquaintances and took no lovers. Your illness was your secret, you carried it as I once carried mine—except that I was banished only once. You banished yourself over and over again.”
Silence. Sophia took a shaking breath. “I didn’t have much of a choice,” she murmured.
“I know,” said the jinniyeh.
The woman’s eyes had begun to brim. She looked up at the jinniyeh. “Will you cure me?” she said. “Truly?”
“When it is time,” the jinniyeh told her.
Sophia nodded, looked away. She wiped at her eyes; tears leaked from the corners. She leaned her head back upon the settee. The jinniyeh watched as her eyes drifted closed and her breathing evened.
The jinniyeh returned to the map. It took many minutes, but eventually she found Washington Street, and then Carlisle: the thinnest of intersecting lines. She placed a finger upon Waverly Place, then drew it to her destination. The street that most closely followed her path was called West Broadway, and it was decorated along its length with a hatched line that, if she was reading the map correctly, signified a railway track. She could follow it from the air, if she was careful enough. She memorized the turnings and landmarks, then folded the map away.
Sophia was still asleep on the settee, trembling but not waking. The jinniyeh took the blanket from around her shoulders and laid it upon the bed, then spread the second blanket atop it and folded the bedclothes aside. She lifted the woman easily and carried her to the bed, tucking her in. Sophia turned over once beneath the blankets, then settled.
The jinniyeh turned out the lamps and waited until she was certain Sophia was deeply asleep. The woman’s hair shone in the light from the window, the braids a series of hills and valleys that curved about her head. Very like the tales of Mount Qaf, the jinniyeh thought, were it not
