At the top and bottom of the carpet were gold tassels. There were nine on each end. They were woven from some kind of thread, but I hesitated to say what it was. I tugged on them to reassure myself they were real. Staring at the mysterious images had left me feeling spacey.
I sat back on my knees. Amesh sat on a chair beside me.
"Wow," I whispered.
"It's amazing," he agreed, before frowning. "Sara?"
"Huh?"
"Do you feel all right?"
"Yes. Why?"
"You're pale. And your voice sounds funny."
I shook myself. "Staring at those scenes hypnotized me somehow."
"The artwork is amazing. The person who made this carpet had skill. Maybe a team of people worked on it." Amesh tried to keep his voice casual but failed. "So do you think it's a relic?"
"Definitely. It almost looks as if it were made by..."
"What?" he asked when I did not finish.
"People who know a hell of a lot more about carpets than we do."
"Please, Sara, don't swear around it. It might be a holy item."
"Sorry."
"What should we do next?" he asked.
"The smart thing would be to photograph it, download the pictures onto my computer, and send them out to experts all over the world. We could contact a handful of universities and museums."
Amesh shook his head. "Then everyone will know what we have."
"True." I realized I was staring at it again. It was hard not to. "Do you feel its power?" I mumbled.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
Slowly, I got to my feet, walked toward my father's room.
"I want to try an experiment," I said.
"What?"
"You'll see."
In the room I found a lighter. My father liked a cigar after dinner, but was polite enough to smoke on the balcony. The lighter was low on fuel but was still able to produce a decent-size flame. When I returned to the living room and Amesh saw the lighter, he jumped up.
"You're not going to burn it," he said.
"I'll separate out a single thread from the bottom."
"And do what?"
"Burn it."
"No! You might light the whole thing on fire!"
I picked up the scissors. "I'll slice off one of the threads first," I said.
Amesh was worried. "Be careful."
To my surprise, I was unable to isolate a thread on the bottom of the carpet. I struggled for several minutes, and then moved the scissors to one of the tassels. I tried cutting off a piece of the gold material.
The scissors didn't touch it.
"Sara!" Amesh shouted. "Stop!"
"I didn't hurt it. I don't think I can." I lifted up the lighter.
"Put that away!" Amesh cried.
I ignored him. There was a part of me that felt as if the carpet had thrown out a challenge and that I had to respond. I felt as if it were mocking me.
I flipped open the lighter and pulled the carpet toward the flame. I'm not sure how close I brought it to the fire—half a foot, maybe—before it reacted.
The carpet jerked out of my hands and flew across the room. It landed on the sofa, where it seemed to stretch out comfortably.
Like a human being.
CHAPTER THREE
FOR THE FIRST TIME in my life, I knew what it meant to "go into shock." I underwent a total brain wipe. I was sitting in the room, Amesh was standing across from me, and the carpet was lying on the couch. These three facts I knew—nothing else.
The carpet should not have been on the couch, which was fifteen feet from where I was sitting. It had been in my hands seconds ago.
"What just happened?" Amesh asked, looking pretty stunned for someone who was asking such an ordinary question. I didn't answer; I couldn't. I just stared. He tried again. "What's wrong?"
I shook my head, realized I was shaking, tried to stop, failed.
"Sara? What did you do to the carpet?" he asked.
I cleared my throat. "Nothing," I said.
"But you threw it..." He searched for the right words. "You acted like it bit you."
"It didn't bite me."
"Then why did you throw it on the couch?"
"Did you see me throw it on the couch?"
He hesitated. "Yeah. I mean, there it is."
"There it is," I agreed. "But I didn't throw it anywhere."
"What are you saying?"
"You saw it with your own eyes. The carpet flew over to the couch."
Amesh grinned, and it was a stupid grin because it was so obviously forced. "You're saying it's a flying carpet?"
"Maybe," I replied.
"Those are just stories. My Papi used to tell them to me when I was a kid, when I had trouble falling asleep at night. My Papi reads all the time—he knows all the old tales. He'd be the first person to tell you there's no such thing as flying carpets."
"Okay." I nodded toward the carpet. "How did it get over there?"
"Maybe you bumped the flame and your arm jerked and you let go of the carpet and—"
"Did you see any of that happen?" I interrupted.
He hesitated. "It all happened so fast."
"Yeah. In the blink of an eye." I stood, lighter in my hand, and walked toward the carpet. Amesh stepped in front of me.
"You're not going to burn it again."
"I didn't burn it the first time. It didn't let me. It jumped out of my arms." I struggled to get past him. "Get out of my way!"
"This is silly, Sara."
"Then why are you so scared?"
"I'm not scared."
"You're sweating."
"It's a hot day."
I shouted at him. "This room is air-conditioned! You're sweating because you're scared."
"Scared of what?"
"Of this carpet!"
"It's just a carpet!" he yelled.
"Then get out of my way and let me prove if that's true or not."
He finally stepped aside. I approached the carpet with a vengeance. Picking it up from the couch, sitting down, I flipped open the lighter. The orange flame burned like a tiny sun. Outside, the sun must have gone behind a cloud. The flame cast flickering shadows in the gloom as I brought the lighter near the carpet. Of course, the shadows only shook because my hand was shaking.
The flame touched the tip of a gold tassel. The carpet did not react. It did not "fly" away. But it did not burn either, not even when I placed the entire tassel right over the flame.
"Allah save us," Amesh whispered, his eyes huge.
"That's blasphemy," I said. Amesh shook his head and pointed a shaky finger at the carpet.
"It's cursed! It belongs to a demon, a witch! We have to get rid of it!"
"Why do you automatically assume it's evil?" I put out the lighter and felt the tassel. It was room temperature.
"The carpet must be protected with a spell. We can't fool with it. It's too dangerous."
"I thought you didn't believe in magic."
"I didn't. I don't."
"Amesh, you can't have it both ways. It's either a magic carpet or it's something else."
"What else could it be?" he asked, a hopeful note in his voice.
"Have you ever read any books by Arthur C. Clarke?"
"No."
"He was a science-fiction writer. He's dead now, but he had this line where he said, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Amesh asked.
"It means this could be an advanced tool built by an advanced race."
"Who?"
"I don't know."
"A tool to do what?"
I shrugged. "To fly on, maybe."
"There you go again, saying it's a magic carpet. I told you, they don't exist."
"Sure. They don't exist. Not like demons and witches and curses."
"Sara, stop." Amesh put his left hand to his head. "You're doing it again. You're giving me a headache."
"
Would you like to lie on the carpet? Maybe it will heal you."
He paled. "I don't even like you holding it. Leave it there on the couch. Come over and sit beside me."
This time I obeyed. I needed to get perspective on our situation, but I couldn't while holding the carpet. However, as I spread it out on the couch, it seemed to arrange itself so it was more comfortable. All the while, Amesh talked.
"It's probably not old at all. Someone must have made it out of fireproof materials."
"It doesn't absorb heat," I muttered.
"Your Discovery Channel's popular in my country. I remember they did a special on insulators where they took a tile off a space shuttle and burned it with a torch. Then they put their hands on it right away, and it didn't even feel hot."
"That's what I said. Advanced science can appear magical."
Amesh began to relax, the idea of demons and curses fleeing from the room. Or hopefully leaving his brain alone at least for a few minutes.
"It might be a secret part of the hydroelectric plant that got accidentally lost and buried," he said, thoughtful.
"Ridiculous. No one would accidentally misplace something like this."
"I guess you're right."
I studied him. "Have they discovered something out in that desert that I don't know about?"
"No. I mean, if they have, they don't allow ... They don't tell grunts like me about it."
"What don't they allow you to do?" I asked.
"I don't know what you're asking."
"When I was out there, my father took me to this secret cave. It was like he wanted to show me something inside but then suddenly changed his mind. Or else he got ordered away."
"But your father is one of the bosses."
"I know. That's why I thought it was so strange."
Amesh was definitely uneasy. "I don't know anything about that cave. Anyway, we're talking about the carpet. What was the last thing you said?"
He was hiding something. He knew a lot about that cave.
"Nothing," I muttered.
"Sara?"
"What can I say? It's a complete mystery. That we're nowhere near solving."
"That's a big help," he said.
"When you don't know, it's better to admit you don't know."
We had reached an impasse. We fell into a tense silence. But at last I knew why he was so scared. He was a lot more superstitious than he wanted to admit.
"What time does your father get back?" he finally asked.
"Late. You don't have to worry about him." I noticed Amesh eyeing the menu on the table that stood beside the main balcony, where I usually had breakfast with my father. "Hungry?" I asked.
"No."
"Get off it, you told me you missed lunch. You must be starved. Let's order room service."
He hesitated. "Room service?"
It was nice, finally, to talk about something I was an expert on.
"That's where they bring the food to your room. Here, I can order for you." I picked up the menu and room phone. "What would you like?"
"What do they have?"
"Pretty much anything you can imagine. Do you like lamb? Chicken? Steak? Turkey? Fish?"
He licked his lips. "Is the steak expensive?"
"Amesh, it's all free! Or at least, Becktar's paying for it. Don't worry about the cost. How do you like your steak cooked?"
"They cook it special ways?"
"You can have it any way you want."
"How do you usually get it?"
"Well done; I don't like it bloody. And I love a baked potato with it."
"That sounds good. But ... would you eat some of it with me?"
I reached for the phone. "We'll split it. How about dessert?"
"They'll bring all that to one room?"
"You'll be amazed," I said.
Besides the steak and potato, I ordered french fries and chocolate cake and cheesecake, plus ice cream: vanilla, strawberry, and coffee. While waiting for the food to arrive, I convinced Amesh that a shower wasn't going to kill him. It was cute how careful he was to lock the bathroom door before turning on the water.
The truth was that I wanted some time alone. I had a brand-new PDA—a BlackBerry—my mother had bought for my birthday. I had gotten so used to texting friends and looking stuff up on the Internet, I kept it with me 24/7. It was addicting.
My fingers danced over the tiny keyboard. In minutes I scanned a half dozen sites on magic carpets. I clicked on a few and was amazed to find the historical existence of magic carpets was treated as a genuine possibility by real scholars—men and women with PhDs, not just New Age freaks.
Certain documents described how the carpets seemed to appear and disappear over big blocks of time. It was as if the knowledge of how they were made was found and then somehow lost. Some records were Egyptian, over five thousand years old. Many were half that age; they dealt with the period of King Solomon. He was a central figure when it came to magic carpets. He was supposed to have had dozens under his command, plus a team of alchemists who knew the secrets of how to build them.
On another site, I read a document that dealt with the Library of Alexandria. It stated—the image was almost comical—that the library had been so big, the stacks of books so high, it was normal for patrons to use magic carpets to browse. And I thought the Internet had spoiled me! What a way to do research!
"Who built you?" I asked it as it lay on the couch. It was odd how we kept calling it a flying carpet. It had not really flown. So far, it had only bolted across the room and calmly withstood a withering flame. Before closing my files, I scanned for information on "how to fly a magic carpet."
It was then I found out about "ley lines."
I memorized as much as I could so I could tell Amesh about them.
The food came while he was still in the bathroom. From the sound of it, he was taking a bath, not a shower. Signing the bill, I scooted the waiter out the door, preferring to set up the dishes myself.
"Amesh, the food's here!" I called. "Hurry, the steak will get cold." Which was not exactly true. Like at many fine hotels, the hot meal came with its own miniature heater.
"Coming!" he called back.
"There are bathrobes in the closet. Grab one and let your clothes soak in the sink with a little soap. After dinner, we can rinse them out and spread them over the balcony."
Amesh sounded uneasy. "It would be an insult to your father to use his robes."
"They're not his robes. They belong to the hotel."
"Why do you want me to wear one?"
"They're super comfortable. They come in a variety of sizes. There are big ones, baggy ones."
I was trying to tell him—without saying so—that he could wear a robe and still cover his stump. He seemed to get the message.
"They're nice," he called through the door.
Minutes later he appeared. I was not surprised to see he had chosen a large robe. The end of his right arm was completely covered. He spread his shirt and trousers on the chairs on the balcony.
I had already put the carpet in my bedroom so its mystery would not haunt us while we ate. Amesh appeared to appreciate the gesture. His eyes were riveted by the amount of food. I let him have the bulk of our steak and gave him the baked potato. I was content with the fries. He laughed as I drowned them in ketchup.
"You won't be able to taste them," he said.
"Fries are just vehicles for ketchup and salt. Didn't you know?"
"We prefer to put vinegar on them."
"Ah. You take after the British."
"They take after us." He took a bite of steak. "Oh Allah," he blurted out before he could stop himself. We both laughed.
"You like it?" I asked.
He cut off another bite. He used his stump to keep his fork steady, then sliced the meat with his left hand. He was surprisingly smooth. If I hadn't known he was missing a hand, I would never have noticed his handicap from watching him eat.
"I've never eaten food that tastes t
his good," he said. "Do the hotels in America cook such delicious meals?"
I did not have the heart to tell him that the Hilton was an American hotel.
"Our food's almost as good," I said.
While we ate, the inevitable happened. Even though his bathrobe was large, the material was bulky, and it had probably not been easy for him to tie the end of the right arm. I don't think he had even tried, and at one point the sleeve slid up and his stump was exposed. Even though I averted my eyes, I was not quick enough. He saw that I saw, and he lowered his head in shame.
I didn't know what to say, but felt I should say something.
"I'm sorry," I said.
He was a long time responding. "Why are you sorry?"
"I'm sorry for ... prying."
A note of bitterness entered his voice. It was not aimed at me, I knew, but it made me sad nevertheless. "I'm not ashamed of it," he said.
"Why should you be?" I gushed.
"I was not born this way, you know. I lost the hand in an accident."
"I know," I said.
He looked up. "How do you know?"
"I mean, I assumed you did," I said. "It's hardly noticeable."
"It was the first thing you noticed about me."
"Not true. The first thing I noticed about you was that you liked knocking me to the floor."
"You were trying to steal my package."
"I was trying to get to know you."
He blinked, startled. "Why?"
"Because you looked interesting."
He shook his head. "You just wanted me to lead you to your father."
"That was just an excuse. The main reason I ran over to the counter was to ... to say hi."
"You have a strange way of saying hi, Sara."
"Thank you." I sat back on my knees. "Now tell me how you lost your hand."
"Why?"
"I want to know. I want to know you, Amesh. In case you didn't notice, we're in the middle of a strange adventure together. And I have a feeling it's going to get stranger before it's over."
"There was an accident at my job. I lost it. What else can I say?"
I put my right hand on his left knee. "That's fine; you don't have to say any more. But I wish you would. I wish you'd tell me exactly what you went through. Because I know it hurts, what happened, and if we're to be friends then I should know what happened."