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Back The Wild Ones
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

“Mama Magdaline always keeps her word and her appointments,” Eulalie says, a reprimand in her voice. She wheels in a breakfast cart almost tipping over with dishes full of food and gestures for Paheli to bring in the second cart that contains a teapot and matching cups. She glances at Taraana, who sits silently on a settee in the center of the parlor. “Do not fear, child. Mama Magdaline will do you no harm.”

“How can you be so sure?” Taraana asks Eulalie.

“Hmm, let me put it this way. She has more than enough magic of her own to require yours.”

“There is no such thing as enough magic for middle worlders,” Taraana bites out, more bitter than we have ever experienced him being.

Eulalie opens her mouth to reply, but at that moment, magic, as we have never felt it before, washes over us. We stiffen and, moving almost as one, gather beside Taraana. The doorbell rings.

Giving us a look that begs us to behave, Eulalie goes to open the door.

Our first inkling that Mama Magdaline is not your usual middle worlder is the fragrance that precedes her. A scent of roses fills the parlor long before Eulalie opens the door. Then we get our first look at the Keeper of the Green.

Middle worlders are generally long-lived. Not the century that humans call a long life, but a millennium, though we haven’t met any more than five centuries old. Or perhaps we have and didn’t realize it. We comprehend time in different ways from humans and middle worlders, after all.

Mama Magdaline is… for a lack of a more delicate way of putting it, really old. Her age is a skip in our hearts, a burning in our eyes. Or perhaps that is the effect of the power that rolls off her. She is not a tall woman, but with the magic she contains, she may as well be a mountain. Her face is delicate; she wears her age in fine lines around her full lips and eyes. Oh, her eyes… like Baarish’s eyes, Mama Magdaline’s eyes give away the position she occupies—her office, so to speak. Her eyes are deep pools of green that occasionally reflect trees—trees that are nowhere in sight in the real world. The effect is unsettling.