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Back The Wild Ones Save as PDF
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. PRAISE FOR The Wild Ones
  3. Title Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. The Beginning, or How Paheli Became the First Wild One; With a Cameo by Taraana, the Boy Made of Stars.
  7. An Introduction; Hold On to Your Hats.
  8. The Sweetness in the Sugarcane, or The Impractical Nature of Immortality
  9. Paheli: The Vagrant Experiences of a Mango Addict
  10. Cotton Candy Sugar Screams
  11. From the Book of MEMORIES
  12. “Will You Walk into My Parlor?” Said the Spider to the Fly.
  13. The Best Ice Cream in the World, Teddy Bears, and a Tree Creature.
  14. From the Book of MEMORIES
  15. I.
  16. The Reappearance of the Boy Made of Stars and the Plight of the Girl by the Oleander Lane.
  17. Paheli: An Interlude in Blue
  18. Besieged in the Between
  19. Tea, the City of Stairs, and the Story of a Boy
  20. From the Book of MEMORIES
  21. Heartbreak, Stone Buildings, and Tandoori
  22. Observations, Conversations, and Hot Parantha
  23. Paheli: The Spies Who Came In from the Between
  24. From the Book of MEMORIES
  25. The French Quarter, the Spanish Half, and Eulalie
  26. Paheli: The Eggplant Overture
  27. Sunny Jelly Beans, Po’Boys, and “Alouette”
  28. From the Book of MEMORIES
  29. The Keeper of the Green and the Mysteries of Magic
  30. Blood and the Between
  31. The Library of the Lost and the Stories of the Silenced
  32. Walking in Wicked Ways or The Importance of Balık Ekmek
  33. From the Book of MEMORIES
  34. Looking for the Needle in the Haystack
  35. Paheli: The Peculiar Crackle in the Electricity
  36. Ten Degrees Past Despair
  37. The Fault in the Stars
  38. The Blue City in the Mountains
  39. Paheli: Disharmony in the Attics
  40. From the Book of MEMORIES
  41. Paheli: Continued
  42. The Politics of a Body, the Politics of Pleasure
  43. The Medina, the Riad, and the Red City
  44. Paheli: The Atlas Mountains, the Cozy Rooftop, and the Confession, Possibly of Love
  45. From the Book of MEMORIES
  46. Souks, Spices, and Survival: A Guide into Chaos
  47. Jemaa el-Fna: The Mosque at the End of the World
  48. Paheli: A Moment in Chartreuse
  49. From the Book of MEMORIES
  50. Paheli: On the Frailties of the Heart
  51. Sonagi, or A Sudden Rain
  52. Paheli: The Cheese in the Trap
  53. Paheli: The Maze and the Minotaur
  54. A New Era, a New Dar; the River Sings
  55. The Burning Door, the Fallen City, and Taraana 2.0
  56. Paheli: The Beginning of Forever
  57. From the Book of MEMORIES
  58. Moving One Rock at a Time Will Eventually Move a Mountain, aka Goodbye
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. More from the Author
  61. About the Author

“I’m sorry. I’m just angry. Out of sorts. I won’t do that.” I inch closer to him until I can wrap my arms around this not-Taraana. At least he still smells the same.

“Wait,” he says, and separates from me. “If you take—” His voice breaks. He tries again. “If you want to leave, I will let you. Because it is your decision, and no matter how much I want you to stay with me, your life is your own. I want you to be happy, and if leaving gives you happiness—are you going to leave me, Paheli?” He is truly panicked now. I am such an ass.

“No, I love you. I won’t leave you unless you do something awful. Like eat my mangoes.” I reach for him again. He holds me tight, as if reassuring himself of my presence. “I’m sorry. I’m just upset. I feel guilty. And sad. I will be all right. I just need time.”

“But you love me?”

“Yeah. Entirely too much,” I grumble.

“I love you too. Way more than you love me.”

“Ugh. Stop. This is about as much mush as I can handle.”

“Okay.”

From the Book of MEMORIES

ETSUKO

CITY OF ORIGIN: KYOTO

I wish I could speak a language,

one in which you didn’t exist.

Then I wouldn’t feel like a metallic kitchen

on a winter morning:

a blue tabletop, an abandoned jar of cold milk,

the dew on the windows, and

white oblong tiles with a star in the middle.

Clean. And barren.

I wouldn’t feel like that.

And when I hear footsteps

I wouldn’t think it’s you

And when someone touches me on the back

I wouldn’t turn around, expecting it to be you

And perhaps when I wake up suddenly

it wouldn’t be with your name on my lips.

If you didn’t exist,

I wouldn’t be like that thick glass; do you remember it,

the one on the window above the front door?

Still intact but with cracks embroidering it.

I wouldn’t be like that.

I wish I lived a life

drawn in charcoal

Then how easily I could have reached out

and erased you from it.

Moving One Rock at a Time Will Eventually Move a Mountain, aka Goodbye

The unplanned Magic Council meeting is scheduled for noon in a boardroom in the Peninsula Hotel in Tokyo. We are, of course, fashionably late.

We sail through the hotel doors at twelve thirty, dressed in the brightest colors and the loudest lipsticks. Taraana chose to wear a black suit jacket over a red T-shirt and black dress pants. We put fresh flowers in our hair and some in his, too. He has an unawakened pendant around his neck, even though he no longer needs one.