Chapter 35 #2
“Yes,” Erwin said. “But those customs were provided by the Illustrated Man in his scrolls. He was the first djinn to make a business out of the family, and those scrolls depicted his way of life. His rules and customs and everything else. And the missing scroll, or the thought-to-be missing scroll, is where the freedom shield is. That’s the rule that says, no matter what, a djinn can be free when he says it’s time.
Family and business do not have to mix. And he keeps his magic. ”
Malek’s heart thudded. This wasn’t true.
This was a fairy tale his grandmother had told him and his sisters to make them behave.
It was something she’d been fed as a young daughter of the Zamil family after being married into a new one she barely knew.
The Illustrated Man was something female djinns talked about, because they were always leaving and being shuffled around.
They created the figure because they wanted to be free from the business—not because being free was something that actually happened.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me. I’ve got sources. It’s part of being a scholar. I can’t make stuff up.”
Malek swallowed hard as Erwin climbed his ladder once again.
He pulled down several books and listed off information that blurred into white noise inside Malek’s head.
They were all things he’d heard before, but didn’t believe, because he’d watched Abe be killed.
Odafin had said he owned them. Malek tried to leave, Malek tried to start his own way, but he always came back to being owned.
Erwin looked up from his books. “Have I upset you? It can be quite distressing to learn about this.”
“Why?” Caspar asked. “Isn’t this good news?”
“But to realize you can be free means you must accept that you’ve been enslaved.”
“The opposite of freedom isn’t slavery,” Malek said, but the words were mumbled on his tongue. “It’s servitude.”
“That’s true, in a way. No one can be truly free, and we must live our lives in the service of something or someone.
” Erwin cast his eyes at Caspar and smiled knowingly.
“But you need to make that conscious choice to serve when you have seen all the options available to you. That’s what the Illustrated Man represents. ”
Malek nodded, still unsure what to say. He liked serving.
It gave him purpose and made him happy. It was why, beyond being scared of Odafin finding him, he’d begged Jocasta to give him work.
To make him take cases. But he didn’t know there was another option.
He could make the decision to work without the fear driving him to do so.
“That’s what the lost scroll was,” Erwin said again. “That’s all it meant.”
“But can it be real if it’s lost?” Malek asked.
Erwin chuckled. “I don’t think something being lost precludes it from having existed in the first place.
The patriarchs of your families have been pretending that document didn’t exist for years so they could have control over you—because people had control over them.
Gender politics in djinn culture have always interested me, because female djinns know so much, since people talk in the room as if they’re not there.
So even when Qasim and the other patriarchs tried to make people forget, the women always kept the Illustrated Man alive.
The women shuffled around to different families through marriage and spread his word wider and wider. ”
“So even if the information is lost, as long as someone knows it, then it’s real?” Caspar asked. Skepticism was high in his voice, but he softened when Erwin confirmed this again.
“But my friends died,” Malek said. “I thought that… I thought…”
“You thought what you were told,” Erwin said. “But freedom is a belief as much as it’s a truth that can’t be denied. Your friends never had to die. That’s why it was senseless. And now, you don’t have to either.”
Malek shook his head, but didn’t say anything.
He couldn’t believe this was real. He and Caspar, as soon as they got the crown, could start over and not have to give anything up.
Freedom could be real. A million doubts still swarmed in his mind.
Even if the Illustrated Man and his missing scroll was real, what if someone still violated the rule?
But there had to be a reason that Odafin had never come looking for him.
There had to be a reason he was still alive, and now, he was being given the last piece he needed before he got his crown and made everything right.
“Tell me,” Erwin added, “you’re looking for this lost crown, yes?”
They both nodded.
“And even if you don’t find it on your mission, that doesn’t take away from it being real, yes?”
“Yes,” they both said, stronger this time.
“Good. Object permanence is alive and well.”
“But if I can’t find it, then I can’t be free, can I? Not if something important to me is missing?”
“It’s important to you, this crown. So you should find it.”
“But freedom?”
“The Illustrated Man says you’re both free, regardless of what your family says.
If Odafin were to find your crown before you and conjure you back into the family, it would not work if you said no.
The women of the families have seen to it that no one violates the Illustrated Man’s codes anymore.
They were sick of their sons and cousins and husbands being twisted by patriarchs, and sick of being shifted around.
There’s now a process and a justice system in place that I don’t believe you’ve seen.
I only found out about it because I’ve been working with another woman who has left her family and has decided to help me out on an anonymous basis. ”
“I… I still don’t believe it. So we have nothing hunting us?”
“You still have scavengers. The most deadly monster of all is always a misguided and greedy human. I always say to my students that I will not argue with the stubborn, the faithful, or the dumb. Scavengers are all three.” Erwin shrugged just as his front pocket buzzed, and the small man pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose.
“Oh, excuse me. Something exciting has just come in.”
Malek nodded as Erwin left, and Caspar was right by his side. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I think I have.”
“You know,” Caspar said, unfolding his family tree and looking it over again, “I think I have, too.”
Erwin arrived minutes later and gave them a series of photocopied interviews from his study.
He also brought in some tea and biscuits his wife, Judy, had made for him to share.
Over the next hour, as Malek and Caspar caught up on all the lore surrounding the Illustrated Man and his scrolls—which now functioned as a kind of treaty in the djinn world—Malek tried to piece together who Interview Subject 261 was and what family she’d been from.
He quickly realized it wasn’t any of his sisters or cousins, but there was a familiar way in which she spoke that reminded him of his grandmother.
It could have been Malek’s nostalgia and longing making the connection, because as soon as they left Erwin, Caspar said that she reminded him of his mother.
“Which is impossible, I know,” Caspar said. “She was dead before this happened, and if what Erwin said is true, and he hasn’t heard from the El-Mohtar family in years, she can’t be anyone my mother may have known.”
“But the women move around,” Malek said. “Through marriages mostly, so it’s possible she could have been raised as an El-Mohtar but shifted.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
As they left the campus, the red-brick buildings of the school slowly transformed into the cool chrome of the city, and Malek wanted to think of something else.
As enlightening as this mission had been, Malek wasn’t sure what to do with the information.
Nothing about their plans for the heist had changed—but their future afterward hung over him like a pendulum ticking down the hours.
“Should we head back?” Caspar asked when they reached the same crosswalk as before, unsure where to go. “Or get suits?”
“No. Let’s go deeper into the city,” Malek said as he took Caspar’s hand. “I still have my other surprise for you.”
Malek led them to one of the only gardens in the city.
A large black stone surface acted as a memorial for service workers who had died in the past twenty years, and seemingly endless beds of roses were laid out.
Caspar’s gaze lifted from the sidewalk as soon as they stepped inside.
The sun came out from behind a thick cluster of clouds, bees buzzed, and with the hum of the city pulsing in the background, everything seemed to be alive.
“What is this place?” Caspar asked.
Malek quickly explained the memorial. “And years ago, before the rose gardens, there was a stage here. My band played.”
“Really?” Caspar assessed the space and drew the conclusion Malek wanted him to reach. “But it’s so small.”
“Right? It was an acoustic show. Intimate. And in the middle of the techno-witchcraft centre, the whole thing felt like magic.” Malek swallowed, holding back that it had been when he and Abe decided to get married.
They hadn’t exchanged rings, but they’d said the words aloud, and since language itself was a technology that could be learned, it’d felt like a magic spell between them.
Six weeks later, Abe was dead.