13 - Rohan
R ohan should have been happy to shed the anxious dread that had piled on his shoulders. He was finally on his way to bringing Baba back from the dead. But when that guard had praised Jafar and Jafar had smiled, his eyes glowing red from the sun reflecting off the mosaicked glass, as if he’d never known praise before, Rohan had felt…odd.
He wondered what Jafar had written about him in his application. Could that have been one reason the House of Wisdom had even accepted him?
The shelves towered, daunting and dull. Every spine looked the same, a drab stack of papyrus shoved between two covers with a title stamped into the linen. How was he to find anything related to the golden scarab without falling asleep? How did Jafar find any of this exciting?
He could only hope his brother would find what they needed first, sparing Rohan the trouble. As he always does .
Iago’s annoying laugh cut through the library’s hushed silence. He hated that parrot.
Rohan recognized many of the names in the Lore section from Mama’s tales, from the Dendan to the Ebony Horse. He smiled when he spied an account of a magical carpet that was as trusty as a steed and capable of soaring through the skies. He flitted from memory to memory, back in that cocoon of magic Mama would weave around him, transporting him away for just a moment. Shielding him from the world.
As Jafar did now.
Contrite, Rohan traced the ornate rug with the toe of his sandal. He was witnessing Jafar’s dream come true and had decided to be bitter about it. Someone had praised his brother’s intellect, and he’d decided to grouse.
He was behaving like Baba just then, and he despised himself for it. What was the point of finding the golden scarab and tracking down the genie and making a wish to not only return Baba to life but change him, when Rohan was becoming just like him?
The golden scarab could wait. Rohan had a brother to celebrate. But when he crossed to the other side of the House of Wisdom, Jafar and Iago weren’t reading or browsing the shelves as he had been.
They were being escorted away.