

Shadows of Marrakech

by Tim Kindberg

Copyright © Tim Kindberg 2013

Smashwords Edition

For Gene

_Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen._

Robert Bresson
PART ONE

Seeing the Unseen

CHAPTER ONE

RIPPED FROM ITS mother, the baby cried and pushed blindly. Its father's arms were hard and without comfort. His pounding step jarred the baby's frame as he strode down dim corridors, across courtyards, and eventually out of the darkness to a lit room with cushions and a low dining table in the middle. Black boxes sat in disorder on the shelves to one side, a scattering of perfect closed cubes inlaid with mother of pearl. Holding the baby, now exhausted, in one arm, he pushed some of the boxes aside with his free hand. There was a faint clattering from them, then a clattering in response from the boxes he had not moved. He ignored the familiar sounds. A tattered book lay revealed. Flipping it open, he took a key from a square hole within it that had been made by cutting every page in the middle.

Outside, it was almost time for the pre-dawn call to prayer. All the good citizens of Marrakech were asleep, oblivious in their beds. The night's chill clung to the area within the old city walls known as the medina. And in the heart of the medina lay the souks, the markets whose jumble of narrow streets, alleys and stalls was silent and still before the chaos of buying and selling began.

A creature bound to the souks, he never slept. Neither did he ever pause to consider the lives around him. He moved swiftly outside, crossed the courtyard, and unlocked a heavy door with the key from the book. The stone slabs of the passageway inside were worn by centuries of feet. He unlocked another door at the end, with the same key.

The chamber lay in candlelight. Heavy furniture stood around without any particular order, as though someone had taken it there for storage but had been stopped from stacking it. And, spread out in a large gap in the middle, lay the reason he had come: a carpet of woven shadows. There was shadow on shadow of people and creatures, wafers of blackness with a pattern of cold beauty stitched around each of them, a tracery of golden threads that glinted in the candle's flickering.

None of the shadows' owners were to be found, not in this world.

He stood by the carpet's edge. The baby was kicking again. Its scream barely penetrated his consciousness. He laid his baby boy on his back on the carpet, and took several paces away. The baby struggled helplessly. The carpet seemed grateful to receive him. Black threads appeared, as he knew they would, and multiplied. They whipped up all around the baby and criss-crossed him, weaving over, binding him. Soon there was a baby-shaped lump, which gradually disappeared as the threads tightened. At last all that remained of his son in this world was a perfect shadow-shape of him: a little flat outline sewn in deepest black, distinguished from the crowd of gold-edged shadows beneath. This was the first stage. Soon the stitches would melt to pure flat blackness, and the glinting pattern of gold would shift and trace around his shadow like the others, as though sewn by an invisible hand.

For centuries, the carpet had subjected whoever stepped upon it to the same treatment. All, that is, except one.

He turned and strode back the way he had come, shutting but not locking the door behind him.

CHAPTER TWO

"IBTISSAM. IBTISSAM! COME here you monster! I'll tell you-know-who to cut you up for scraps if you don't come back. He'll raise his cleaver and chop you in two."

Chemchi knew it didn't make sense. If Ibtissam couldn't be found then she could hardly be subjected to the butcher's terrifying attentions. But, in her exasperation, it was all she could think of. She didn't know why the butcher had been so much in her mind lately, except that he might be able to help — and, preposterous though it was, that she might ask him.

The tabby cat had been missing for over two days; no appearance at breakfast the day before yesterday, or at any time since, when Chemchi wondered around the riad and beyond with a saucer of food for her. She hadn't known the cat meant so much to her. She had gone all around the souks but searching was hopeless in such a hectic maze. Now she was looking closer to home again.

She stopped in a long narrow alleyway, which was empty and silent. Suddenly something happened that was very unusual for her, but which seemed possible while no one else was around: a tear fell. It slipped from the corner of a wild eye, beneath the single black braid that hung from her headscarf and across her forehead. The tear ran down the side of her broad nose to the crest of her upper lip.

Ali had told her to be patient, in his infuriatingly patronising way. "Who knows," he said before she left the house, "what there is to distract a cat living so close to the souks. It's not the first time she has strayed, only to return eventually for her saucer as though nothing had happened. Perhaps a tourist has noticed her – maybe Ibtissam has been helping them find whatever they are looking for in the souks."

Ali had winked at her and taken a sip of his mint tea. "She is such a beautiful cat with her long body and tail. Maybe she has befriended one of the other souk cats. Perhaps they have gone together to find a mouse or sparrow for supper."

As always, he sounded like a children's book — one of the stories read to her by a woman he'd had brought in to teach her Arabic and to steer her away from her native Berber. He just didn't get it. Chemchi knew her Ibtissam, and sensed that something was different this time. Ali wouldn't understand. But she had to admit that he could be right about one thing: Ibtissam might well be in the souks. The cat accompanied her when she shopped there, darting by her feet and then sitting beside her with her tail curled when she stopped, examining the purchases to see if they might prove to be a meal.

She wiped the tear away. The old walls around her stood in complete silence. There was not a movement. Less than two hundred metres away, on the Rue Mouassine, the multitude shopped. Tourists ambled and stopped at the stalls, and the locals marched swiftly or buzzed on mopeds between them. You could hear none of that where Chemchi paused. The ancient places stopped the market sounds from reaching beyond them, as they had for centuries.

"Ibtissam," she whispered to herself, "I will never scold you again. If only you would come back from your hiding place."

Ibtissam's name in Arabic means "smile". Ali had insisted on it, and sure enough it had proved not to suit her. For Ibtissam was a serious cat who did not suffer fools gladly. And she was stubborn: the immovable object to Chemchi's irresistible force. Chemchi was descended from the tuareg, a tough Berber people of the Atlas mountains and the Sahara south of Marrakech. Yet she could shed a tear over a cat. Sometimes she didn't understand her own feelings.

She turned the corner, heading inevitably for the ferment of the souks. And there was Rime the beggar-woman, crouched with her knees to her chin, a tiny tattered figure by the wall with her hand outstretched for a coin. Her look was vacant until she saw Chemchi approaching out of the corner of her eye, when a smile lit her face.

"Rime, have you seen Ibtissam? You must have seen her. Were you here yesterday?" Rime was always there. But Rime's smile stayed fixed, for, as Chemchi knew, whatever Rime had seen would remain locked inside her muteness for the rest of her days.

Chemchi steeled herself. Sixteen years old and almost six feet tall, a stature that was not so rare among her people, she cut a proud figure in her white robe and trousers. A woven shopping basket, big enough to hold a stroppy cat, hung on her arm. At the thought of meeting the great public of Marrakech, a feistiness filled her like a magic liquid. Who, she thought, were they – and by 'they' she meant anyone who might now meet in her hunt for Ibtissam – who were they to mess with her? They had better co-operate. They had better answer her queries directly. She did not have time for any nonsense.

And so she left the quietness in which she lived and where she had given up hope of finding Ibtissam, and entered the Rue Mouassine by the great mosque. For a few seconds she stood amid the insect swarm of bicycles and mopeds, and the people all bumping through like daddy-long-legs. They carefully picked their way around her as she looked to right and left. To the left it would be. She couldn't face looking hopelessly around the souks again. She knew who could help her, even though she resisted the thought of turning to him with every bone in her body.

CHAPTER THREE

MORCHID WAS SHARPENING his cleavers. He must have known she was standing right in front of him, but he paid her no attention. His moustache, barely more than stubble, twitched and glistened with sweat as his arms worked like a machine on the blades, sliding them backwards and forwards on a stone. Muscular and wild-haired, he loomed above her inside his raised stall, surrounded by his meats.

"Morchid," she spoke clearly, her heart beating. But the schling-schling, schling-schling of the metal blades continued.

"Morchid," she raised her voice.

Schling-schling, schling-schling. Still he had not looked at her.

"I seek your help, Morchid."

"How is Ali?" he said.

"I'm not here about Ali. I've lost Ibtissam. She's gone."

At last he stopped, examining something on his hand.

"Ibti-who?" His mouth curdled after everything he said, a crooked shape accentuated by the stubble above his lip. Everyone knew, whenever anything unfortunate happened in the souks, that Morchid was the man to come to — if you dared. He had been here for longer than anyone could remember. But the souk-dwellers turned to him only as a last resort, when all other options had been used up. People who received his help seemed troubled afterwards, as though one burden had replaced another.

But Chemchi must have her Ibtissam back.

"Ibtissam, my cat." She kept her voice clear and closed her lips with resolution. Her green eyes could take on a fierce look, lined in black, the black of the braid across her forehead.

When he finally looked at her, there was a tiny ratcheting of a cog in Morchid's brain, appearing as a tic in one corner of his mouth. He went back to examining his hand as though nothing had happened.

"If I tell you where to look and you find her then you must agree to something."

"Very well," she replied. What had she got to lose, anyway?

"But I won't tell you what you must do in return, not until you have found your Ibti-whatever. Do you swear to comply?"

Her good sense rebelled. She turned to leave, to trawl the labyrinth one more time to find her Ibtissam. But her heart was heavy. Hundreds of alleys lay all around her; a thousand nooks; a million crannies. All she knew, however she knew it, was that Ibtissam was alive. She stopped herself and turned back to face Morchid. He was staring straight ahead from his stall as though transfixed. Whatever it was that he required in return, Chemchi told herself that Ali – Ali whom everyone loved because they saw him as cheerful and amiable and didn't know what she knew about him – Ali would have to deal with it.

The sweat trickled over Morchid's eyebrows, down his cheeks and into the stubbly moustache, where it hung. He would say no more. A queue was forming behind her.

"Next!" said Morchid.

"No, wait, I'll do it. Just tell me where I can find Ibtissam." Morchid stopped the next customer coming forward with a hand.

"If you're sure, little one," he said, as though she were not so tall in front of him.

"You are a wicked man."

"Next!" he said again.

"No, you must tell me!" This time Chemchi stopped the customer, a bewildered lady with her purse in her hand. By this time the queue was murmuring and cross.

Morchid leaned down and whispered. She could feel his warm, meaty breath on her ear.

"Every cat likes a carpet to sleep on. Go to the Criée Berbère, where a thousand carpets are spread for the tourists. But only one of them is woven with shadows. Take a torch, shine it in the light and you will see what is unseen."

"A torch? Any torch? And in the light? I don't understand. How will this help me find Ibtissam? I've never heard —"

"Searching is a serious business. What matters most is who it is that searches, who it is that seeks. You've given up or you wouldn't have come to me. And maybe you need a little prop to help you. But something tells me you are a serious searcher. True, not everything – or everyone – wants to be found. But all the lost places, all the lost people, and all the lost things are there for the finding. So tell me: what can never be found?"

"Only whatever lacks the right person to find it."

"I couldn't have put it better myself. Next!"

CHAPTER FOUR

THE PLUMBER SCRATCHED his old head. He couldn't understand what this girl, the girl from Ali's riad, was on about.

"You're not doing any plumbing are you?" he said.

"No, no, of course not," said Chemchi.

"Then it's for Ali."

"Not for Ali, for me. I have a project. A scientific project. It's become a little more complicated than I had first imagined and Ali said you could help."

He scratched his head again and turned the torch around as though looking at it for the first time.

"It's served me faithfully for many years. But I'm retired now, I've not used it for years."

"It looks a good one, with that big battery." It was old and battered. All those pipes that twisted under old Marrakech and all those cubby holes he must have shone it into — it bore the scuffs and scratches of countless bashes and falls onto tiles.

"Better for a youngster like you to make use of it, I suppose. But you'd better bring it back."

****

The Criée Berbère is a shaded part of the souks where, Ali had told her, until about one hundred years ago, slaves were sold openly, in defiance of the anti-slavery movement. Nowadays it was full of rugs and carpets for sale, covering the walls and floors of the stalls. The stallholders proudly unrolled their wares, each run through with a different geometric pattern, for the passing tourists.

The overall illumination was low relative to the searing sun outside; but each stall's interior was bright with electric lamps. Chemchi felt so foolish shining her torch into them.

To add to how silly she felt, the stallholders pointed at her and laughed, discussing her with their neighbours. Might Morchid be chuckling now at her expense? The torch beam was of course invisible everywhere she shone it in the stalls. But, as Morchid had said, cats like to sleep on carpets, and where else were carpets to be found in such numbers? Would Ibtissam appear if the torch beam fell on her? Is that what Morchid had said? None of it made sense. She doubted herself and she began to doubt Morchid. She could bear the humiliation no longer. She went home.

When Chemchi was agitated she would gesticulate passionately, raising her arms and then cupping her hands together. Ali leaned back in his chair and regarded her.

"Calm down," he said. "You're making me dizzy. I told you who to get a torch from. What more do you want from me?"

"Ibtissam is nowhere to be found. I am so worried about her. And what I am I doing? Wondering around with this ... thing." She picked up the clumsy torch and pointed at it. "Trying to believe, for her sake, what Morchid has told me. But it makes no sense, it's just an old torch, and I'm shining it in the light so everyone in the Criée Berbère is laughing at me."

Ali poured some mint tea for her and motioned for her to sit. When she ignored him he added a small turn of his head. She complied and put her head in her hands. He was all she had. The very man who had ripped her away from her mother.

"I told you already, I don't know how the torch will help," he said. "But if Morchid says to do it then you do it. I have heard many stories about his methods and workings, all of them strange and many of them, to be frank, unpleasant. But you went to see him. You knew what that meant. Now don't be an even more stupid girl and throw his advice away. You want to go back to searching without any idea where she could be?"

"I've already looked everywhere in the Criée Berbère, never mind the silly torch. I even asked those men while they laughed at me whether they had seen her. You know what they said? They said: are you kidding? Every cat in Marrakech visits us at one time or another, to come and sleep on our carpets, woven by the finest weavers in the Atlas Mountains. Cats even come in pairs, one trying to distract us while the other finds a nice snug corner. Do you know what we do? We take a broom and we make damn sure those cats never visit us again!"

"Whenever we search," said Ali, "we feel sure we know where to look and stick to it even though we're wrong. That's why we can't find it: because we're so sure. Open yourself up."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, don't start with all your 'wisdom'."

"No, no. Listen. We have to open ourselves to discovery; to leave open our doors so that one day an ordinary, unremarkable stranger will emerge from the throng, step up, and before we can ask what he is doing here, we will see that this stranger is exactly who we have been seeking."

"Do you even know what you are talking about? What about my mother? What about finding her, eh? Tell me where my mother is."

"You know I can't do that."

"Well then you have nothing of interest to say to me."

****

Chemchi returned with resignation to the Criée Berbère, once again carrying her basket and the heavy torch. She visited each stall in turn, starting in one corner and then all the way around.

If only she could have come back at night but that was unthinkable for a woman in Marrakech, let alone one of only sixteen years. Since she could not see the beam in the light, she swept the torch to and fro, from the back of each stall to the front, scanning with great concentration. She told herself she might see Ibtissam's eyes shining back, somehow trapped in an unnoticed corner.

Whenever someone blocked her way, she waited patiently for them to move. The snide comments from the stallholders began. "Sticks and stones," she told herself, "may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."

She wondered what a carpet woven with shadows could possibly be or look like, and who might have made it – one of the Berber people in a village in the mountains — perhaps Tuareg people from whom she was descended? Once she had met an old Tuareg woman, wrinkled and sunburnt, who had shown her a photograph of herself as a young woman, not much older than Chemchi was now. Chemchi had never seen anyone so beautiful, adorned in cascading earrings, and necklaces that could have been made on Mars or Jupiter. Perhaps people from the mountains were strange enough to have made things beyond even the wonders of Marrakech. Perhaps they had sciences as well as crafts not known outside the mountains.

She tried hard to ignore the looks and the calls and comments as she shone the beam around. But despite her best efforts, the carpet-sellers began to wear on her with their increasing hostility. However careful she was not to interfere with their trade, the tourists ambling by regarded her with curiosity, some speaking to her in languages she could not understand.

So she decided to take a break, finding a place out of sight between two stalls. In the dim light, she idly shone the torch on the ground. There was dust, litter, little pieces of broken glass, a little shoe that must have fallen from a pram and, although she could have sworn it was not there a second ago, the edge of a carpet.

CHAPTER FIVE

CHEMCHI BENT TO take a closer look and, in doing so, moved the torch's beam away. No! There was no carpet there, only dust. But when she shone the torch back to the same spot it was there again, black with an embroidery of lustrous golden threads running through it, glinting in the torchlight. And it seemed to emerge from the wall.

She quickly shone the light on and off the carpet, trying to catch her imagination out. But the carpet appeared and disappeared with the torchlight, there was no doubt about it, swopping places with the dust, the litter and the baby's shoe.

Only a narrow stretch of carpet was visible. The remainder lay behind thick curtains of black velvet that also appeared, in place of the stone wall wherever the torchlight touched it. The velvet stared back at her blankly as she lit it with the torch. If only by some other magic she could see through it as with an X-ray. Perhaps Ibtissam was asleep on the carpet beyond.

She called the cat's name as loudly as she dared, with her face close to the curtains, looking to see if anyone noticed. It was strange to feel the velvet close to her ear, when she could see it turn back into stone a little way away out of the torchlight. Gingerly she touched it. It felt like velvet and gave beneath her fingers. She played the torch around and found where the curtains parted.

She didn't much like the idea of going in. But she needed to decide quickly. The visitors to the souks buzzed and glided and bumped past her a few metres away, intent on their chores and purchases and quite unaware of her. But an interfering stallholder might poke his nose in any minute.

Pulling on the carpet seemed best to start with. If Ibtissam was asleep in there, it would disturb her. She would smell Chemchi and come out. She sat the big torch on the ground by her side. Pieces of scrunched-up litter served to prop up the back of it and slant the beam down onto the carpet.

Her right hand grasped the carpet in the torchlight just fine. But the carpet was invisible where her left hand reached for it and blocked the beam.

She felt the most extraordinary sensation, as though a million tiny weavers were busy, at enormous speed, crawling over her hand and pulling and webbing the threads around it. She tried to move her fingers. She could wriggle free of them but the threads were strong: when she pulled her hand back, they clung to her like elastic. She reached for the torch to see what was happening. In its light, she saw the threads extended but retreating as she aimed the torch at them, shrinking back into the weave.

Chemchi pressed her palm to her forehead in exasperation, feeling the reassurance of her black braid. This situation made absolutely no sense. It scarily made no sense. Invisible curtains, invisible carpet. But her torchlight, relatively feeble though it was in the daytime, made them visible. And in the case of this — girl-eating? — carpet, the torchlight prevented it from stitching itself her to it. Where was the logic? She didn't understand but thank heavens for that last bit. What would happen if a cat were to stumble upon it? The threads could grasp her completely.

She would have to pull the curtains aside. Scanning with her torch, she saw that their black velvet stood rich and deep, hanging from above the level of her head. She placed her feet just beyond the carpet's edge, leaned over and grabbed a handful of curtain. It was heavy, and inert. No threads. She pulled harder, trying to keep her balance. Applying all her strength, it reluctantly scraped along its rail.

She shone the torch through the parting. The carpet's pattern of golden threads glinted in the immediate darkness along a corridor, which led to a lit place where vague shapes stood some distance away. The whole scene stretched far beyond where it should have done, apparently on through the market stalls and the alleys. It was impossible.

A weak "Meeeeiouw" suddenly pierced the silence from up ahead. Chemchi drew in a sharp breath. "Ibtissam – it's you isn't it? Come, come, I'm here!" She shone the torch around and it flickered. To her horror she realised that the batteries were going flat. How could she have been so stupid as not to have bought new ones? Because, she answered herself, she didn't believe that the torch would be any use to her. "Meeeeeiow" it came again, even weaker. Chemchi imagined Ibtissam trying to get up from the carpet, the tiny tentacles woven around her paws and up her legs.

She shone the torch directly in front of her and took a few steps forward. Every time she put down her heel, she felt a little tickle from the threads, but the light kept them at bay for long enough. As long as she played the light by her feet and kept moving she could remain free. But the wiggling threads were constantly reaching for her in the dim fringes.

She was a few metres inside when the torchlight started to flicker and fade even more. She stopped. The threads wiggled ever closer. It was hard to know what was her imagination and what was reality in this world that had no logic to it anyway. "Meeeeeiow" It was no use if both she and Ibtissam became trapped. Turning to go back, she wanted to run but the threads were ready and the light's effect was getting slower. So she shuffled and shuffled, and inched the last few feet, reaching ahead of her for the gap in the curtains. But she felt only solid velvet. She must have veered to the side while she concentrated on keeping the threads away. Desperately she felt around. Ibtissam let out another cry as though she could see her mistress leaving. Chemchi moved to the side and lunged at the curtains. At last she felt her hand go through. But through the gap she could not see the little place outside where she had entered. Instead there was just a slow motion of coloured light patches, like you see behind your eyelids when you close your eyes. Terrified, she leapt through anyway, falling onto the gritty floor outside.

The Criée Berbère, and the buzz and the shuffle and the bump of all the people moving past could not have been more welcome. She raised herself off the ground but felt dizzy as she did so, and bent over with her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Ibtissam's cries were completely muffled but Chemchi could hear them clearly in her mind.

CHAPTER SIX

ALL SHE NEEDED were batteries. She picked up her basket, placed the torch inside it and walked out into the crowds, as though nothing was out of the ordinary. She wished, how she wished she could run. Sweat trickled down her forehead and soaked her armpits.

Within a short distance her composure had returned, along with her encyclopaedic knowledge of the souks, and she had worked out the closest stall to buy batteries from. It was in a small souk by the vast square of the Jamaa el Fna. It seemed to take an eternity to make the round trip to the stall, the owner maddeningly fumbling with her change; but eventually once more she stood before the stone wall. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with a handkerchief and checked that the crowds were all passing as before. A small child noticed Chemchi, pointed and tried to say something but her mother dragged her along, intent on her errands.

The new batteries made the torch shine far brighter. A greater width of carpet appeared along with the parted curtains. She wasted no time stepping inside.

Ibtissam was now silent but she headed back along to where her cries had come from. Now she could walk relatively freely, constantly playing the strong beam over the carpet and banishing the wriggling, reaching threads as she did so. When she reached the space ahead it proved to be an open chamber dimly lit by a single, tall candlestick on the floor. The carpet lay wide and square in the centre. The stretch she had walked on was joined to it like a tongue rolled down the corridor. A crowd of heavy bookcases and cabinets, which she had seen as vague shapes, stood around the carpet spookily, away from the walls that were somewhere off in the shadows. She stepped off the carpet altogether to join them and catch her breath.

Calmer now, she could see clearly what her mind had not been able to take in. The carpet's pattern of golden threads wasn't just the jumble she had taken it for. Wherever she played her torch, she could now distinguish in it the shapes of mice, rats, cats, and people: black shapes, like shadows that were part of the carpet itself, each with a sewn outline of golden threads that distinguished it from the others. And there were shadows on top of shadows on top of shadows. Morchid had said there would be a carpet of woven shadows.

When she switched the torch off and regarded the carpet solely in the candlelight, the embroidery in gold became a jumble again. The torch gave her a way of seeing what was in plain view but nonetheless hidden from her mind. Seeing is rather curious anyway, she thought. It comes from light entering the eye, at least that was what she remembered someone telling her. But we bring something of ourselves to it. People see things differently. It reminded her of puzzle-drawings from her childhood, of a duck that suddenly became a rabbit when someone pointed out a different way of looking at it, or of a rabbit that became a duck with a flip of the mind. But the carpet was stranger still than that. Switching the torch on again, she found that when she concentrated on a shadow she could begin to see something that wasn't there at all: she could see whose shadow it was. The image of a Persian cat gradually appeared, then a rat, and another rat.

But one shadow looked different: the shape of a cat in pure black with none of the golden threads edging it. As she kept the torch shining there, frightened eyes appeared and returned her look. Ibtissam. Chemchi held the beam and concentrated as hard as she could on her. The carpet began to withdraw in the reluctant crawl of a thousand tiny tentacles. Ibtissam gradually grew back out of it until she was held only by her paws. Chemchi carved a safe path for herself with torchlight, grabbed her, pulled her free from the last reaching strands and rushed back to the stone floor.

She almost crushed the cat in her embrace. Ibtissam purred with pleasure at first but soon gave Ibtissam a desperate look to stop her squeezing. Chemchi wished she could talk to her, to explain everything she had been through, to apologise for taking so long. The words jumbled inside her but finally she just laughed with relief. Her laughter echoed from the walls of the chamber.

Her first thought was to make her way back with Ibtissam in the basket, but, as she shone the torch again for a final look, something on the carpet caught her attention. It was a shadow-boy, appearing out of the clutter of shapes like a constellation out of the night sky. As Chemchi continued to hold her torch on him, two clear eyes with long lashes appeared. The boy's face was appearing out of the carpet. Tears streamed and he blinked furiously in the light that Chemchi cast over him. She moved the beam just to the side for a moment, so that he would not be blinded so.

"Close your eyes," she said, "tight as you can." But his ears were still a faint outline. Probably he couldn't hear her. She wondered about the wisdom of releasing him. The person who followed those eyes out of the carpet could be anyone. But the eyes were scared, and the shape was clearly that of a boy, not too big for her to handle if she had to.

Gradually his arms appeared, hands poking out and fingers stretching. His knees and toes were next, like little hills that grew and took shape. The boy's arm became free and he placed his hand over his eyes. "Try to keep calm. I'll get you out," she said. His ears had formed, and he looked to see who spoke.

The boy's struggling lessened. He yielded to the beam of the big plumber's torch, as though Chemchi were a worker who was fixing him. The last threads of the carpet finally sank back and released him. She pulled him to the edge before the carpet could grab him again.

The boy, who looked a little younger her, perhaps 14 or 15, stood before them blinking and stretching, as though he had just woken up rather than been through a bizarre de-shadowing. Who knew how many nights he had been woven into the shadow carpet. He stared past Chemchi.

"Light more candles," he pointed behind her. There were five more tall silver candlesticks on the floor around the carpet. Chemchi would not normally take instructions from a strange boy but nothing here was normal. She found a lighter beside the lit candle, a modern gas lighter that could have been bought just outside in the souks. The chamber filled with more flickering light.

She saw him clearly for the first time. He was indeed shorter and a little younger than her. On each cheek were three parallel scars in a row. His hair was a black bush of tight curls.

"Who are you?" she said.

"What have you done with them? Where is my father? My mother and my sister?"

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHE EXTENDED A hand, which the boy ignored, and looked him up and down. "I'm Chemchi. Pleased to meet you. I think."

The boy didn't appear to hear at first but eventually looked at her. "I am Akimbe, son of Shango. What have you done with my family? Have I been sick?"

"You're a mystery." And I hope I'm not going to regret saving you, she thought. "What happened to you?"

"Who are you to question me?"

"It's a simple question, isn't it? I've just saved you. I can leave you to your own devices if you prefer. Do you know where you are?"

He looked around. "You must tell me."

"I will if you stop talking to me like that."

"Like what?" He shrugged.

"Like I'm—" The maid, she thought. "Let's leave. This place isn't safe."

"I'm trying to remember what happened. We were all standing together, waiting in chains to be sorted. Slaves."

He stopped, transfixed. Chemchi waited, feeling a chill in the chamber, then a rush of fear when he took a step towards her as if in a dream. She was reminded again of what Ali had told her, that the Criée Berbère used to be a slave market a hundred or more years ago. Nowadays there were only carpets for sale. On the other hand, this chamber and its bizarre carpet made her unsure of what she knew or didn't know. She was trying to remember when Ali had told her about the slavery. Was it even true? History lessons weren't exactly Ali's speciality, except when it came to his own past.

Akimbe went on. "I must have been asleep — but for how long? That is all I can remember, and now here you are. Where are the enslavers?"

Chemchi didn't know what to say to him. Akimbe, with his dark skin, his curly hair and the tribal markings on his face was clearly from somewhere far south in Africa \- somewhere where people would once have been captured and forced on long journeys across the Sahara to be sold. She remembered now: Ali told her when he warned her that slavery wasn't only in the past. Well, he didn't want to lose his maid, did he, she thought. Nowadays there was trafficking, mostly in girls and women, he'd said. But boys too.

"I pulled you up," she said, looking at the carpet, "from this." Why on earth would he believe such a ridiculous notion? Tentatively she picked up a corner of the carpet, holding the torchlight on it to stay the threads. It was very heavy. The same worn stone tiles continued beneath, for the small extent she could manage to lift it.

"From that? Yes, I seem to remember it. Going through."

"Through the carpet. To where?"

"I don't remember. No, I do. There was a hot sun."

"A hot sun," she repeated, "down there."

"Yes." He looked at her. "Have you finished interrogating me now?"

"But I'm not!" A paw tapped at her leg. Ibtissam. "Come, Akimbe, back to the riad where I live."

"Who are you to tell me where to go? I must find my mother and father and sister. Anyway, who are you but a girl with a cat who looks like you. What makes you think you can help? I am the son of a king and warrior. I will find my father and we will punish the men who tried to enslave us. I escaped and surely my family did too."

"Akimbe, don't get so high and mighty. We have just rescued you, remember? Don't you think we deserve to be listened to, at least?" Chemchi fixed her eyes on this strange boy. He made her feel shy. Ibtissam walked over and stared at him too, sitting with her tail curled around her paws.

"Why is your cat looking at me like that?"

"She's waiting for us to go. We must leave."

"She looks like you," he repeated. "You have a cat-spirit within you."

He kicked out at Ibtissam, who leapt easily away. When he chased her into the surrounding dimness she sprang onto bookshelves out of reach, and became a pair of glowing eyes taunting him. Chemchi followed them despite her misgivings, her shadow dancing over the disused furniture as she wound her way through it. Akimbe made a stair out of dusty books from a lower shelf so that he could reach up. As he did so a metal bracelet inlaid with turquoise stones clattered to the floor. Chemchi picked it up. He snatched it from her.

"My mother's! She was here!"

"I think it fell from your pocket, although I'll admit I couldn't see clearly. Anyway, even if it was already here, it looks common to me; there are many such bracelets in the souks."

"Do you think I wouldn't know if I had my mother's bracelet in my pocket? And do all your 'common' bracelets have marks like these?" Akimbe pointed to a lion's head stamped inside the band.

"OK, maybe it was here," she was losing all her patience, "and you knocked it down. Listen, I'm going. Are you coming or not?"

"It's hers, I tell you." He turned it over several times, as though it wasn't just a bracelet but everything he had lost. Then he placed it tenderly in a pocket. "My mother and father will find me, you'll see. If I don't find them first. Let's begin."

"We'll begin where I live, Akimbe. Something tells me you may find it strange in Marrakech so be prepared. Come, Ibtissam."

The tabby's delight at being found had already worn off and she was back to her usual self. She gave a look that said she would come in her own good time. But Chemchi was not in the mood.

"I haven't gone to all this trouble to rescue you, only to leave you to more shenanigans." She scooped her up and placed her in the basket, fastening it over the indignant cat's head. "This is for your own good. And you?" She gestured to Akimbe, who followed reluctantly.

They walked down to where she had entered, Chemchi holding her torch to keep the threads back, with more confidence now. She felt an altogether new sensation, of being somebody who could do something others couldn't do. Instead of being a maid. Every riad had a maid.

Akimbe was reluctant to go near her but every time he fell back the threads gained a hold around his ankles.

"Keep close behind me or we'll lose you again, too," she said.

The crack she opened between the velvet curtains was filled with swirling under-eyelid lights, as before.

"Jump through."

"Through that? No, it's a trick. You first."

"Very well." Once she was on the other side, she held the curtains open for Akimbe to follow. She could see his face all twisted up as he looked at the under-eyelid lights, trying to decide what to do, wondering whether to trust her. But the threads gave him little option. He jumped through, after what seemed an interminable delay, blinking as he met the daylight. Almost at once, a moped with a malfunctioning engine went past, weaving through the tourists and locals, spitting smoke behind it. The sound was intense after the muffled quiet of the chamber. His jaw dropped.

She came and stood beside him, next to the stream of humanity that was too busy to notice them. "You don't know this place, do you? What do you think?"

"These are people, aren't they?"

"Yes, they are people, good ones and bad ones, most of them in between. Welcome to Marrakech, Akimbe. If you haven't been here before. Now follow me."

CHAPTER EIGHT

THEY SAT IN the courtyard of Ali's riad, a tall house in the traditional Marrakech style with its sun-streamed central atrium. Here Ali earned a modest income from the paying guests and Chemchi served as maid, living in one of the rooms on the floor above. She wanted to like this beautiful house, which was so much more refined than any home she remembered in the village Ali had taken her from. But it felt like a prison. Her videos and DVDs were all that prevented her from going mad.

Chemchi listened as Akimbe told his story to Ali, who they found drinking his mint tea. "Please, sit." Ali poured tea into a glass and pushed it towards Akimbe, who cautiously took a sip of the sweet green liquid and licked his lips. Ibtissam sat purring in Chemchi's lap.

"There was a bad-looking man," said Akimbe. He opened up to Ali, quite the opposite of how he had been with her. "All of them looked bad but he was the worst – walking along examining us in a row, all of us brought from the same place. Pinching us. Making us show him our tongues, pulling the skin under our eyeballs. He was checking whether we were healthy, whether he wanted us. Now him, now her. He was choosing quite a few, this man in his fine robes and his face without a soul. The spirits had deserted him long ago.

"And there we were at the end of the row. But I was behind my father and mother, beside a wall. My poor sister was in front. The men had forgotten me. They had put shackles that were too big round my feet, without really caring. I could tell I could free myself. My mother heard me moving. She spoke under her breath, told me to stop, that I'd get us killed. One of the men wasn't far away but someone was talking to him, they were looking at our women and girls, laughing. I took my chance and scraped my feet out altogether from the rough metal. My father whispered that I should go, back to the place where they had dumped us last night. He told me to save myself, to go without them. My mother didn't agree. She was rigid, I could see a tear running down her cheek. But how could she argue? Anyway, I could never disobey my father. So I crept behind my people, back through the doorway in the corner, where they had thrown us as soon as we arrived.

"It was dark. I was so desperate to escape, I lost count of how many times I stumbled. On the other side were two doors, one of them the door they had led us through the previous night. I pushed against it and turned the handle as quietly as I could but it was locked fast.

"The other door, to the left of it, opened easily, but it creaked and the sound filled the room. I squeezed myself through just a crack of it so they wouldn't hear. It was completely dark. I walked with my arms outstretched. After a few steps, I felt a tickling at my feet, then a tugging. It became harder and harder to walk. I wanted to run back – even all the bad men outside seemed preferable just then, and at least my family were there. I wanted to turn back. But my legs and arms were pulled down, until I was stretched out and bound so that I could barely wiggle. But there was nothing I could do." He paused. "I don't remember any more."

When Akimbe had finished, Ali knew no more than Chemchi what to say to him.

"So, Chemchi went to find Ibtissam but came back with someone quite unexpected as well."

Chemchi bit her tongue at Ali's simple-minded response. Hadn't he been listening?

"Young man," Ali continued. "I still don't exactly understand: who are you?"

"I am Akimbe, son of Shango. Do you know him, and my mother? Have you seen them?"

Ali smiled. "Haven't you seen the crowds? Perhaps everyone knows everyone where you come from. But this is Marrakech. Tell me again, who captured you?"

"We had never seen them before. They had guns and whips and clubs. They beat us. We fought hard but we had no guns. Many of my people were killed." He looked close to tears.

"And what was all that about tickling and being pulled down?"

Akimbe glanced at Chemchi, who narrowed her eyes as a signal not to tell him.

"Oh, that," Akimbe answered. "I don't know. I was confused. I must have been knocked out because I remember nothing since then until Chemchi found me."

"Why don't you get some rest," said Chemchi, rising from her chair. "It's late. I'll show you to your room." She was relieved that he hadn't mentioned the carpet or how she had rescued him.

Ali added, "You are most welcome in my home. I am honoured to have you here. Never let it be said that Marrakech failed to offer the fullest hospitality" Chemchi marvelled, as she led Akimbe away, at Ali's capacity to be so whimsically agreeable and not patronising with everyone except her.

When she returned, Ali was still at the table with his tea.

"You did well to rescue him. But I still don't know what you did, exactly."

"Praise? From you? I don't even know what it was that I did, and it doesn't matter. I'm going back there to investigate."

"And what did you see?" She didn't answer. " Oh, never mind," he continued. "I don't even want to know. Anyway, you mustn't look any further. I forbid it."

"Akimbe thinks his family are still alive. We owe it to him to look, however futile it may seem —"

"No."

"Ali, look at me. I cook and I clean this place. That is enough. You keep me here working for you most of the time but what I do in my own time is my business. You're not my father."

"Don't talk to me of 'enough'. I am good to you. Be grateful." The kindness had disappeared from Ali's eyes. "You must leave that place to its own devices. You may put yourself in even greater danger if you return. You know as well as I do, what I've told you: the Criée Berbère has a terrible history as a slave market. That boy must be confused about where he was. But if he has escaped, then someone will come after him. Traffickers. And then what?"

"But..."

"I won't hear of it. You don't know what I know about the souks. You're just a girl. Now, you have chores to do."

Chemchi stormed off to her bedroom and lay on her bed. How she hated him. Why would he be afraid of her getting into danger, except that he'd have to find someone else to mop his floors?

At moments like this, when he denied her, she felt like a nobody, a non-person. She cast her mind back. One day, Ali, a distant relative, or so he later said, had appeared at the door in the village in the Atlas mountains where she grew up. And without a word of explanation, he had taken her away in his tiny battered car, away from the mother who had brought her up alone. Just five years old at the time, she had cried through the days and nights after he brought her to what had been a terrifying, noisy city so different from where she had grown up. Then one day, after a few weeks, the phone rang when Ali wasn't there. It had never rung before. Gingerly, she answered. It was her mother. But she spoke strangely, as though someone held a gun to her head so that she would say only what she had been told to say. She refused to answer Chemchi's imploring questions and simply told her that everything was all right and that she must be a good girl and do everything that Ali told her. Then she had hung up. That single call was the only contact her mother had made.

Ali said he had taken her with his mother's consent. But that surely couldn't be so. Her mother loved her, didn't she? Chemchi had asked Ali nicely to explain everything so many times she had lost count, and asked him equally many times in anger when he brushed her off. He would shut his eyes and rock his head slightly, a sign that the matter was closed. Eventually, she had given up asking him at all.

Chemchi couldn't sleep that night. She flipped backwards and forwards from being pent up about Ali to wondering about the boy. Tossing in her bed, she stared at the walls and the ceiling, and at the silver moon shade of the bedroom lamp that she eventually switched back on. Up to now, everything in her life seemed to have been in a state of suspension. Or rather it went round in a loop, each day filled with cleaning, shopping, cooking. There was the occasional guest who chatted to her, made a funny remark, but she could barely remember how to smile. She had left school aged ten and had seen none of the other girls since. Probably, she thought, they hadn't wanted to see the strange girl anymore, even if they had been allowed to.

But this strange carpet and the strange boy - they had woken something in her. Did she have a special gift or was she just another maid in a Marrakech riad who had chanced upon some magic? She had to find out.

A battered old TV and piles of videos and DVDs stood on her dresser. Ali brought the films for her occasionally to keep her quiet, obtaining them from somewhere in the souks — probably as payment in return for favours. Many were in English and other languages she couldn't understand. Chemchi watched them all anyway. She slotted a DVD into the player and returned to her bed to watch, turning off the lamp. There were mountains, her Atlas mountains, a village, a young woman arguing with a man. Chemchi had watched this film a hundred times, sometimes replaying the scenes that particularly captivated her, involving this young woman who defied everyone around her. But she was exhausted. Eventually she fell asleep with the light of the TV still flickering.

CHAPTER NINE

IN THE MORNING, she packed the plumber's torch in her basket, withdrew some of the meagre savings from a jar beneath her bed, and headed to the souks to buy another torch. It was early, but not too early for the stalls to be open. The others were still asleep. Ali could look after Akimbe when they awoke, she wouldn't be long.

"Which one would you like?" the stallholder looked at her as though she were a little girl and not a young woman of sixteen, although she was the taller by a head. It irritated her.

"A yellow one." She made a point of not looking where he indicated on his shelves.

"But I don't have a yellow one."

"You call yourself a merchant of electrical paraphernalia, sir, and you don't have a yellow torch? "

"Why, I ..."

"A blue one, please."

"I don't have a blue one either."

"Then make it silver, and it had better be cheap since you don't have anything I actually want."

She took the brand new torch back to where the velvet curtains had been, and played its beam slowly around, sneaking looks back in case anyone was watching. The curtain appeared, and the edge of carpet peeking from beneath it, the blackness of the one and lustrous threads of the other contrasting like space and stars. And this was so wherever she shone this torch, the same as when she shone the plumber's.

She found a small boy in the crowds nearby.

"Please help me," she asked, with what she thought would be a big-sisterly look. He cast his eyes up and down as though she were a big sister, all right, one who could damn well do it herself, whatever it was. "For five dirhams?" She put the plumber's torch in his hand as soon as he doubtfully agreed and told him to shine it at the wall and the ground just beneath it.

"Tell me exactly what you see," she commanded. He looked up at her green eyes, and at the braid across her forehead, as though she were mad. "Even if it's obvious, tell me exactly what you see."

"Why, a wall and dust on the ground below it. Stones and dust and.. oh, a baby's shoe: is that what you're looking for?"

"You see nothing unusual — nothing soft, let us say, and nothing glinting?"

The boy gave the torch back to her at once, scared by her strange questions, and left rapidly without waiting for her to pay him.

Chemchi felt excited and special: the shadow carpet was clear as day wherever she shone it, but the torch had no power in the boy's hands. And it didn't seem to depend on which torch she used.

When the light rays come from me, she thought to herself, I can see what I couldn't see.

What she hadn't checked, though, was whether someone else could see what she saw when she shone it, when the invisible come to light. What on earth would the boy have thought if that were so? He'd surely have fetched someone else to see. No, she'd done the right thing: that experiment would have to wait. She could show Akimbe again, and find out what he saw exactly.

She pushed back through the crowds, taking in the smells of breakfast cooking and feeling the warming sun on her face and hands — the only parts of her not covered up. Around her, arabs and tall berbers in robes were mingled with one another and with tourists, mostly white, in their casual Western clothes, carrying cameras around their necks or in their hands. These were three worlds in one, of different languages and cultures. And that didn't account for all the variations within them. She had lived here for more than ten years. Yes, she was a berber and could speak the language but she rarely had the opportunity in Ali's world of arabs and tourists. The carpet and the boy were none of these. Yet for the first time she felt the beginnings of a belonging.

CHAPTER TEN

THE DOOR TO Akimbe's room was open. There was only a slept-in bed to be seen.

The fierce Marrakech sun was already heating the small roof garden, where she found him lost in thought. All around, the irregular rooftops stretched away, an airy realm so different from the bustle and noise of the sweaty alleys below.

She sat on a cushion across from him and they spent some minutes in silence. He doesn't seem to belong here, she thought, in more ways than distance. If he was from a hundred or so years ago then, in all probability, his family, as slaves, would have died not long after he went through the carpet, living in wretched conditions. Perhaps there were exceptions, though. Maybe it depended what talents their slave master saw in them. Perhaps she could give Akimbe a little consolation with that thought, that their slave masters — they would have been separated — had found them worthy of more than grinding labour — or worse, in the case of the mother and sister. But how could she say any of this? It was just nonsense, wasn't it — why was she even thinking such thoughts?

"You said you were the son of a warrior king, Akimbe."

"Yes, and I grant you an exception in bowing to me, since you saved me. And I allow you to come close to me on the same grounds."

She shook her head. "I won't defer to you on any grounds, whoever's son you are. Let that be clear. I'll respect you as I would respect anyone who deserves my respect, and that's all I can promise. We're not in your land now, wherever that is. Not that I get along with all the Marrakech rules but I have to live here. Do we understand one another?"

After a pause, Akimbe finally looked at her, as though it were beneath him. "We'll see. When I've found my father the king and my mother the queen then perhaps you won't be so presumptuous. Anyway, which of the Marrakech rules do you not 'get along with'?"

She thought to herself: the ones that say a female must stay at home and do the housework; that say a female must defer to a male.

"That will be for you to find out."

"Then it can stay hidden, for all I care. Where did you get that light? The one you shone on the carpet to free me? I don't know what it is but perhaps it can help me."

"You mean the torch. I don't know that it can help you. It may not be the light itself but a way of looking or searching that the carpet responds to."

"You think it responds to you?" he smirked.

"When I searched for Ibtissam with the torch the threads retracted, and when I shone it on her shadow and yours, you returned. At least, something like that."

"I don't know that I 'returned'. I found myself in your world. What is happening to me? This is a strange place, not exactly where the enslavers brought us. At least, I don't think so. For all my education, I see things I've never seen or heard of before. Perhaps I travelled, or returned somewhere else. Except that I remember the carpet."

"In a sense you were travelling but I don't think it was through space, Akimbe. If you went to sleep for a very long time and everything had changed when you awoke —"

"What do you mean by a 'very long time'?"

"Were you asleep?"

"How could I know? I feel as though I was awake but in a strange place. Not this place. There was a man who taught me each day ... I ... I don't know. It felt real but now it seems like a dream."

"I know it sounds strange to ask this but are you the same person as when you escaped: the same age — what are you, fourteen? — the same thoughts, memories? Did you look in the mirror?"

"At first I made myself jump but, no, it's me all right. I look the same as I remember."

"They might have changed you in ways you can no longer detect," said Chemchi. "The man who taught you, what was his name?"

"I don't know. I recall only that he spoke to me for hours about a kind of science. There were symbols on a board. He never spoke of himself, at least, not that I can remember."

"And what about your life before you were captured?"

Akimbe brightened a little for the first time, almost looking like a boy again instead of someone much older and careworn. "It's crystal clear in my mind but so different from here that I don't know where to begin. We lived in a compound. All around were wild animals, some of them dangerous, like lions and snakes. My father taught me everything about them, about how to kill them. When I wasn't studying I spent my time with my sister, Oyo. You remind me of her a little: you're both stubborn, with ideas above your station."

Chemchi coolly ignored him. He didn't look much like a warrior's son, changed from the rags she found him in into one of Ali's robes, which was too big. They would buy some proper clothes later. For all his stupid airs, he was a boy who had lost his whole family, at least that's what he said. She had had only a mother to lose: no sister and never a father in sight. But then that was her whole family, too, so in a sense it was the same. And Ali was to blame for that.

"Those enslavers, as you call them, had a lot to answer for," she said.

"'Had'?" Akimbe held up the bracelet. "You will help me find them: you and Ali."

Still, she ignored the pure arrogance of this boy, which she almost admired. "Don't count on Ali for anything, believe me. He's not what he seems. And don't forget Ibtissam. She helped me save you, in a way."

"So you will assist me, then?"

"We'll do what we can," she picked up Ibtissam, who was circling her feet. "At least we'll try to understand what happened to you. But no promises."

Meanwhile, there was Morchid to deal with. Morchid, to whom she owed something unknown — nothing good, for sure. One thing was certain: Morchid would know that her cat was found and that therefore the debt was due. Maybe he even knew that someone else had turned up, too. He had wanted her to find Ibtissam. In return for what? The next step was to find out more about the chamber. She looked at Akimbe. He was going to be a pain. But at least she would have someone to accompany her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AS THEY APPROACHED the recess in the Criée Berbère where the chamber's hidden entrance lay, a man drew close up to them. He had few teeth and his breath reminded Chemchi of camels.

"What are you doing here, lovelies?" he said. "Is there something in this corner of interest to a pair of fine young citizens such as yourselves? And you," he nodded at Akimbe, "you're a strange one, aren't you, in such clothes." Chemchi wished she had found Akimbe some clothes that fitted him. It was the pretext they had given Ali for going out, and he had given her some dhirams. But with all the mysteries to solve they had barely given thought actually going to buy some. She had even forgotten to eat breakfast; it was unlike her and her stomach felt empty.

"It's not really your concern, is it ... sir?" Chemchi gave him a look of disdain. She didn't know who or what he was except that he was trouble. "Leave us alone or I'll call one of the stallholders over."

Camel-breath drew even closer. "Don't think I don't know who you are," he looked menacingly at Chemchi, "or what you're up to."

"Are you going to make me repeat myself?" She wanted to withdraw from the smell but stood her ground. "Because if you're not gone from my sight at the count of ten, you're going to regret it." She caught the eye of a nearby stallholder and indicated Camel-breath, making a face of disgust.

Camel-breath withdrew. "You'll be seeing me again, lovelies. But next time when there's no one else around."

Entry to the chamber meant slipping into the little recess unnoticed in the crowd. At that moment they were under the stallholder's gaze, not to mention that Camel-breath may not have gone far. After thanking the stallholder with a sign, Chemchi took Akimbe to buy clothes through a corner opposite to where Camel-breath had left.

The market was full of shoppers at mid-day. Mercifully, the sun was dappled by the netting above the souks. The air was warm and full of scents. After pretending to examine some carpets, Chemchi and Akimbe walked as if to go past the passage to another stall, but quickly turned in at the last minute.

Chemchi took the torch from her basket.

"Is this the place? We came through but there's nothing here except a brick wall!" said Akimbe. In answer, Chemchi shone the torch to reveal the curtains, which yielded as she pushed against it. He gasped.

"So you see it?"

"I see your hand going through the wall!"

She took his hand and pressed it where she had pressed. It yielded for him, too.

Chemchi stood to hide Akimbe from the people passing by, intent on their shopping. They were so close, but no one thought to look to the side. Why would they? It was a non-space, a nowhere. She passed him the torch.

"Go on, try. Press that button."

Akimbe shone the torch but in vain. He touched the brick wall and shone the torch off and on, frustrated. Then he shrugged and passed it back to her.

"It's not working."

She shone it and the curtain reappeared. "You go first. I promise you, it will yield to you. This is what I did when I rescued you. Trust me. I'll follow immediately. Go on, I can't stand here all day!"

She watched him flinch as he took a step into the wall and felt the heavy velvet. He stepped back again.

"It's really there! I can push against it!"

Chemchi pushed him through, shining her torch down to the carpet as quickly as she could.

But the carpet was gone. They stepped onto stone. Inside there was complete silence. Her torch beam cut the darkness as they walked up the passage, towards the candlelight in the chamber ahead of them.

About half-way up, Chemchi felt a familiar tickling at the backs of her ankles.

"Ibtissam! Did you follow us through the curtains? Or is there another way in?"

Ibtissam ran ahead to the chamber but almost immediately stopped and hissed at something on the floor. As they approached they saw it was at the shadow carpet, lit by the six candles they had left glowing before but which had not noticeably burnt down. Now the carpet was a simple rectangle, like any normal carpet. Chemchi imagined it retracting itself from the passage after they had left, furling its tongue back into itself. Had it lost its appetite for whatever it needed from the souks or was its job there — whatever that was — done? Whatever had happened, she sensed that it had a mind of its own. It had an animal quality.

As before, the carpet was covered with the jumbled patterns made up of many people and creatures who had wandered onto it, who had become shadows with gold-threaded outlines.

Chemchi switched her torch back on and played its beam around the carpet. She could hardly see the beam in the light of the six candles. But where it fell, she could tell the shapes apart distinctly, brought out as they had been before they were shadows, only flattened. It was as though the beam painted them there with colour, back into themselves: rats on top of mice, who were on top of cats, and spiders beneath them. And the larger forms of people also loomed out. But they almost immediately disappeared into the jumble again unless she paid them enough attention. She found that the torchlight and her concentration had to act together. It was almost impossible to tell exactly where the near-invisible beam fell. But when she switched it off, however hard she stared, the effects stopped and the shapes once more were almost impossible to tell apart.

"What do you see?" Akimbe asked, evidently unable to see what she saw.

"I see what you see." It was half-true. She did not feel like trying to explain what she could not understand herself.

Chemchi picked up Ibtissam and gave her to a reluctant Akimbe to hold.

He reacted disdainfully, "I am not a holder of cats, I am the son of a warrior!"

"Just do it. Please. Son of a warrior. Or was it a king? I don't want to lose her again."

She kept the torch pointing in one place and she focussed on some of the creatures there. They began to grow out of the carpet.

"Now do you see anything?"

"Yes. They're coming out." Little black wafers were thickening and rippling, colouring.

"They must all be in the world where I was," said Akimbe.

"What's happening to them in that other world — are they disappearing in thin air?" She looked at Akimbe as if he should know.

"I simply don't remember."

"There might be hundreds here. Thousands. I can't release them all. It's tiring."

"How thin is a shadow?" Akimbe said. "A shadow has no thickness at all. There could be millions. Imagine how many creatures have passed unsuspecting through the chamber. For however many years it's been here"

"Creatures — and people, like you."

"Perhaps my family." His face lit up for a second. "But how unfair. The ones on top have been trapped for the shortest time. The ones below, who have been there for longer, should be freed first."

"I'm not sure I'm freeing them in that order, though; it may have more to do with whether a part of them catches my attention."

A few stunned rats and mice started to pull themselves from the shadow carpet. They scurried away into the dark corners of the chamber, past the legs of Chemchi and Akimbe. The first cat de-shadowed. But instead of chasing the smaller creatures, it ran away in a different direction, frightened for its life just like they were. The freed creatures all disappeared into the darkness and didn't come back. There must be cracks and gaps in the corners. Ibtissam strained in Akimbe's arms, trying to chase them.

"But no people." Akimbe was looking glum again. "How did you see me, amongst all these creatures?"

Chemchi pointed to a spot near a corner. "You were there, I think, although the carpet's shape has changed so it's difficult to say. Somehow you jumped out at me amongst all the others."

"Perhaps I'm special, like you, perhaps I have a power too. And the carpet knows it. It's quite beautiful, with those glinting threads running through it. How many hands must it have taken to weave it, and whose hands?"

"Doesn't it weave itself? Morchid seemed to know something about it."

"Morchid? Who is that?"

"Never mind about him for now. We should take a closer look at whatever else is here. Let's just leave this for now." Her head was spinning from the concentration.

"Are you all right?" Akimbe asked .

"Oh, now you care about someone like me of low station, do you? How gracious of you, my prince." Chemchi hadn't thought of herself before as a sarcastic person. But now she realised she was frequently sharp with Ali. It was his own fault, she told herself.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE CHAMBER GREW quickly dark away from the candlesticks. Chemchi had her torch to cast into the shadows, and Akimbe found a small candle which he held with his hand cupped around the flame.

All the furniture stood around eerily as it had before. They looked particularly at the sideboard where the bracelet had dropped to the ground. Akimbe let Ibtissam free to hunt in the corners and Chemchi gave him a leg-up so that he could climb again on the sideboard and examine the higher shelves while she looked in the cupboard below. Nothing.

Akimbe walked from one part of the chamber to another with his candle, opening a book here, lifting a cup there, apparently picking the next spot at random.

Chemchi watched him. "What is it about boys and men when it comes to looking for things?" She was thinking especially of Ali storming around the riad when he lost something. "You'll never get anywhere like that," she told Akimbe. "Searching is a science. Or do I mean an art? Anyway, you have to think about it." Where did she get these words from? From the films she watched, and the TV. And yet they were her words, too.

"I am thinking about it. I'm looking here and I'm looking there. Soon I'll have looked everywhere."

"And how will you know when you've looked everywhere? This place is big and full of ... stuff." The furniture stood around apparently randomly, casting shadows everywhere.

"Why, I'll remember everywhere I've been and stop when I've visited all the parts of the chamber."

"You'll forget exactly where you've been. You — we — need to have a system. We'll search around the walls first, then we'll divide the interior into sections and search each of those."

He looked down his nose at her. "You are so boring, Chemchi. My way is more fun."

"Fun?" Chemchi, to her surprise, was a little hurt. But she didn't let him see it. Saying things she thought out loud to someone else was rather strange. She had spent too long by herself, or rather in front of the screen, spending her free time with all the characters who lived there. "Boring or not, it's what I'm going to do. You do what you want. But you won't find anything that way, except by serendipity." Goodness, where did that word come from? One of the films. But which?

"What's wrong with seren... seren..."

"Dipity."

"Stop acting like my sister. What are we looking for, anyway?"

"I don't know. We'll know it when we see it."

"But what if I don't notice the thing I'd know if I saw it — because I didn't see it?"

Chemchi couldn't help smiling. They both seemed to be grasping at some relief after the weirdness of the carpet. "Good point, Akimbe." She thought of an American politician she had heard translated on television. "Unknown unknowns, unseen unseens. I don't have an answer, to be honest. We just have to open our minds." Ugh — wasn't that what Ali had said? "And hope something interesting grabs our attention when we look its way. Plus I have this torch."

"That light. It pulls things back from the other world. Plus it makes visible what was invisible before. But only for you."

"Yes they are two different things but they're both a kind of uncovering, I suppose. I can do it, but only with the torch — any torch. But it doesn't work for other people. AT least I don't think so. It's something about me."

"It's a talent. Something you were born with."

"Or a curse."

"If you say so. Anyway, you don't need to know what we're looking for, because you can see anything - everything?"

"I don't know what 'everything' means, Akimbe. I see only what I see. I can't know everything."

Chemchi proceeded around the walls of the chamber, searching each nook and cranny for clues.

After a while they sat together on a low bench and watched the carpet, as though it would somehow reveal whatever it was they needed to know. Ibtissam sat nearby and contented herself with the occasional hiss as the threads glinted in the shifting light.

"You're sitting next to me," she said.

"Believe me, I wouldn't if there was another seat."

She flashed the torch across the carpet.

"Are there many others you can see there?" asked Akimbe.

She didn't answer. She felt some guilt. Many other people were still trapped there, but the thought of releasing them all was exhausting. And she wasn't sure she liked the look of some of them: many were rough-looking characters. There was no reason to believe they were as harmless as Akimbe had turned out to be. The question of what to do with this power of hers would require some thought.

Then something changed in the chamber.

Chemchi and Akimbe looked at one another.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Chemchi said.

"That suddenly it feels different in here?"

"Yes, it's colder."

"I'm beginning to think those creatures had the right idea, not wanting to hang around, I mean."

"Those candles weren't flickering that much before, were they?"

"It's probably nothing." She became nonchalant again. "We still haven't done what we came here to do. What about over there, that cabinet in the corner? Did you look?"

"No, I don't remember seeing it. Let's look together."

Chemchi raised an eyebrow at Akimbe. "Very well, it is rather dark over there."

As they drew closer, they saw that the cabinet was of black wood covered with finely carved animals. They were lions, antelopes, giraffes and other species from the sub-Sahara.

Akimbe gasped. "My people could have made this!"

Chemchi withdrew a wooden pin that held the doors together. But before she could open them a familiar rasping voice came from behind them.

"Lovelies!"

Camel-breath. Chemchi kept her nerve and opened the cabinet's doors. Inside was a journal, which she quickly stuffed in her bag. She took Akimbe's hand — he was staring at Camel-breath with his mouth open — and almost dragged him back to the shadow carpet. Once they were the other side of it, she spoke to the grisly figure.

"Sir, why I didn't expect to see you again. Why sir, please come closer into the candlelight."

She held out her hand to him.

Camel-breath shuffled over and stood directly across the carpet from them.

"Sir, please shake hands."

Camel-breath scratched his blotchy beard then stretched his lips in a smile that revealed the craggy horror of his bite. Chemchi was glad the full extent of the carpet lay between them.

"But I can't cross lovelies, no I can't cross. For look." He pointed down with his eyes for a split second.

A shadow was rippling out of the crazy pattern. The shadow of a man. But she hadn't shone her torch there. The beginnings of his face had formed. Two little pools were his eyes, and his nose and knees were tiny mountains on the carpet.

"You'd better leave," she said. "You have no right to be here."

"And I suppose you have a right."

"We're carrying out an investigation. Certainly we do."

"And what are you investigating. Do tell."

Chemchi couldn't stop herself thinking of the foul vapours rushing through the holes between his few teeth.

"None of your business. However you managed to ... trespass here, sir, you'd better leave. Now. Or I'll talk to Morchid."

Camel-breath laughed and rubbed his eyes as though they were filled with tears of laughter then turned his expression just as quickly to one of concern.

"But there is someone I must wait for."

Once again he dipped his eyes at the de-shadowing figure, whose gaze seemed to have turned, although it was difficult to be sure, to Akimbe. Akimbe was dumbstruck with horror.

Then, without any warning, Ibtissam, whom Chemchi and Akimbe had tried not to look at as she crept around the chamber and onto a table, launched herself onto the head of Camel-breath. She dug in her claws and hissed and scratched like an animal possessed. He flailed at her but she jumped off and attacked his ankles.

Meanwhile, Chemchi ran around. She pushed Camel-breath onto the carpet as hard as she could. He resisted but when Akimbe joined in as well he couldn't stop himself from falling into the carpet's threads, which reached out to take him, an insistent tangle he couldn't withstand.

The two of them watched him disappear in a tight weave of blackness. A painfully slow sewing of gold began around him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MORCHID, THE BUTCHER of Marrakech, could never sleep. And yet waking dreams plagued him, this one particularly. Blood rose from the floor. It puddled and seeped at first, gradually coalescing until it covered the tiles, and swelled so that he had to wade through blood to the door, where it poured out to follow him.

Then his son came and led him to a place where the blood could not flow. It was his son who saved him.

But his son was lost to him.

Morchid retraced his steps to the chamber where he had furiously taken him that night, along the corridors in darkness in bare feet, feeling with his fingers on the cold stone walls.

He slid the door aside. Someone had lit all six candles around the carpet. He stepped up to the edge and examined it.

There was a fresh shadow there, the shadow of a man. It was that fool, the sickening creature he had had brought from the nether regions of the Eastern Sudan, the nincompoop who was supposed to be able to see what others could not see, to find even that which did not want to be found. Every so often he'd had the cleverest and most resourceful people he could find put down there. They never returned. And then this one had found a way back: the hunter.

Had he failed too many times now? Was it time to get rid of him? Or might this old goat still come up with the goods? He was down there looking for him now, sniffing around as Morchid had commanded him, looking for Morchid's son in the under-carpet world, the world that refused to take Morchid himself.

He lay on his back on the carpet, away from the fresh shadow. Nothing. The threads remained hunkered in their weave. It was soft. He could imagine sleeping there — if only he could sleep.

He must have his son back. To banish him, that had been his one mistake. A moment's thoughtless union with a slave-woman, a moment of weakness put out of his mind, then shame when the wriggling brat appeared from her womb, a potential threat when he grew. His ice-cold judgement had deserted him. Dispatching the woman to a box was one thing. But when in fury he placed the baby on the carpet, he had done what he himself could not undo. Never, never, do that again, he told himself. Because now, you need him back. To save yourself from these fools. He did not know how, but that blood would be after him in some form and threaten all the centuries for which he had held dominion in the souks. Centuries. Centuries alone. Then his son. It had been a terrible mistake.

He rose and paced around the carpet, looking at the jumbled gold from all angles. He'd left the chamber unlocked in his rage and there were other ways in: his son's tiny shadow was lost beneath the arms, legs and other body-parts of countless beings trapped by the carpet since he had lain him there.

Like the boxes, the carpet was a means of disposal without death, for to kill was something else withheld from him. No killing. No going beyond the souks. No going to the under-carpet world. All those were denied him. If he had boxed the baby, he could simply have released him. But he hadn't trusted himself against his own curiosity. He had been afraid of the threat, that his son would have brought about his destruction. Now the dreams told him otherwise. His son was to be his saviour, not his destroyer.

He smashed his fist through one of the cabinets.

Morchid knew the world down there, had gone through as soon as his men had told him about the carpet's discovery, to escape from these hellish souks, from his meat-ridden, blood-soaked nightmares and these worthless creatures with all their savagery. It was the most beautiful place he could imagine. It stood for pure simplification, where everything was made out of the expectations of those who existed there, a mirror that took an image of certain parts of what was in the mind and made it real. The mind and reality became one. No one needed to change, much less grow. It suckled on minds and was their own conception. Eternal tranquility.

Except that he had been rejected, from the place that absorbed everyone else. But only after it had taken something from him. He had searched his mind to see what it had taken — his mind like a house that had been burgled. But he couldn't tell what it was. Somewhere down there, the under-carpet world had made something from it, something unknown that continued to function beyond his reach, like the twitching corpse of his plans to leave these creatures behind.

And now the carpet refused him; it refused him alone, while gleefully transporting any manner of these creatures around him. And it had taken his son.

From the reports the hunter had given him, the other world had kept pace with Marrakech. It existed in the one moment — noon. But as it had pilfered the minds of those who went there, it had updated itself and was a semblance of modern Marrakech. But always at noon — the stitched-together noons from the minds of those it had absorbed since, without night, or mid-morning, or afternoon. Hence no one who went through the carpet could grow there: if they stayed for more than a few hours, they were bound to the moment at which they had been absorbed.

His son must be a baby still.

And that fool down there, whose shadow lay on the carpet before him, can come and go as he pleased, his one saving grace that he knew how to return before he was absorbed and report, even if it was always to cringe and say that his son was still nowhere to be found. That phrase, it maddened him. He was there to be found.

But the girl, the girl with the cat. He had sensed something in her, a talent for finding the lost, a talent for casting light and illuminating what was there but unseen. She had passed the test.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"IT'S MORCHID," SAID Ali. "The word in the souks is that he expects to see you, that you've made an arrangement with him."

"Oh? I don't believe I made any specific arrangement," said Chemchi. "If he wants to see me, he knows where I am." She sounded so confident, like another person, not the person who wanted only to put in a DVD and watch and re-watch, to be transported away to where she didn't need to think.

Ali was not to be put off. "Chemchi, think carefully. You cannot cross Morchid. What bond did he hold you to?"

Akimbe, who had been studying the journal they found in the chamber, popped his head up to listen.

"He didn't say what," she said. "Just that there was something he would ask for afterwards if he helped me."

"And he helped you."

"In a manner of speaking, yes I suppose he did. But I did all the work. It was I who rescued Ibtissam."

"In a place where he told you to look."

"If he knew she was there, why was it a big deal for him to tell me?"

Akimbe bent his head down to the journal again. She could see why he wouldn't want to get involved in her argument with Ali. She regarded his curly hair, his scars, the funny sandals he insisted on wearing, that he had worn in the other world. He was an enigma. Was this world strange to him or wasn't it? He was so detached, and said so little, she couldn't be sure.

She wanted to speak to him about his family, who may be long dead now, and he could never have them back. Any more than that she could find her mother, given that Ali, the only person who knew where she was, refused to tell her. Unless of course she was to run away and look, and look everywhere, throughout the mountains, in all the villages nestled there. She wanted to kick him.

"Chemchi, I need you here," Ali said. "You have duties in the riad, whether you like it or not. First, see Morchid. Get it over with. He'll have a task for you. Honour your agreement, then everything will be all right again and we can go back to where we were."

"You mean: where you were."

****

The next day, despite everything she had said to Ali, Chemchi found herself on her knees cleaning the tiled floor of the atrium. For there were guests arriving. The floor needed to be cleaned and who else was going to do it? She hadn't kept the riad spotless all that time only to have it become an embarrassment.

But she could never go back to where she was before the effects of the torch. She scrubbed extra hard at a spot on the floor that wasn't even dirty. No, Chemchi, don't give in, she told herself: he kept that secret from you, as though the whole world would shatter into tiny pieces if he told you about your own mother, making it sound like it was for your own good.

She put away the scrubbing brush and bucket, and climbed three flights to the top of the riad where Akimbe sat in the shade of the pergola, intent on the journal from the chamber. She watched him turning the pages.

"What language is it written in? Can you understand it? Why don't you let me have a look?"

"You didn't ask."

"Aren't we in this together? I thought you needed my help."

"But it's written in Yoruba, I didn't think you would know it. It's the diary of one of my people, who was captured by the slave traders and dragged here just as I was, across the Sahara. He was a mathematician, though, which his owner eventually recognised and took him to the court of the king. One of my people, who helped the government plan. And yet look how they treated us. We were nothing to them. And he was still owned, only by the king. He never had his freedom."

"How long ago was this?"

He didn't answer.

"You're from back in time, aren't you?" Chemchi's cheeked reddened as soon as she had asked.

Akimbe's face froze as he absorbed what she had said. Then he broke into a raucous laugh, slapping his thigh.

"Ha, Chemchi! I didn't know you had a sense of humour. You're so serious, you don't make jokes."

"I'm not joking. Can't you see, I'm just trying to understand things that .... that don't make sense."

Something about Akimbe felt more real — despite the peculiar circumstances she had found him in, and his haughty attitude — than anyone else she had talked to.

He spoke slowly. "My mother and my father and my sister are alive. They are definitely alive. I know this. And I am going to find them."

"We have no way of knowing how long you were down there, and the scene you describe sounds like the days in old Marrakech when slave markets were held openly the souks."

"But you said yourself there is trafficking now. And when you say 'openly': the difference between open and hidden isn't so clear, is it? Think of the chamber, and the carpet. Revealing the hidden: isn't that what you do? Your talent?"

"You called it a talent before," Chemchi said, "and I've already said, it might equally be a curse." She thought of all the films she had seen about curses and witchcraft, and the terrible consequences whether it was true or not. "But I have to admit, either way, it feels like a new part of me I'm just getting to know. And I suppose it's up to me what I do with it. Anyway, it's true that there are slaves in Marrakech still, and many more people trafficked from here and through here to Europe."

"Since you know this," Akimbe put the journal down. "then we must free them. Where are they? My family may be among them." He rose.

"It's not as simple as that, is it. Think of what kind of men — if you can call them that — trade in slaves and traffic in children. They're probably armed. You can't just take their 'goods' away from them. They'll kill you. And that's not counting Morchid. Nothing happens here without his fingers being in it."

"You keep saying that name, as though it's supposed to mean something to me. It doesn't. I'm not from here, remember. I'm not like you, am I."

"I suppose I don't know much about Morchid or the slavery either. I don't exactly get lots of free time out of here to explore, you know. He appears in his stall in the souks but then he's the butcher. It's the rest of the time, when he's not there ... no one exactly knows what he's up to but it's no good. And he must be bound up with the trafficking and the slaving. I told you, what you described is going on around us but it's more subtle, if you could call it that. You go to someone's house, and they come across as decent people but there is someone serving or nannying or working in the garden or whatever and you can tell by looking into their eyes, you can tell they have no hope. It makes you want to leave. Everyone knows about it but people are too scared or they feel helpless to change the way things are."

"So you do know something. You do get away, even though you complain to Ali about keeping you here."

"Oh, you were listening in, were you?"

"I couldn't help it. Your voice carries up to the floors above, you know."

"Well I leave only to run errands, and sometimes I stay out a little longer than Ali likes. But it's not as though I can stop for a chat or get to know anyone."

"I think I may have been a slave in the other world. Perhaps my family are slaves there too."

"You don't know what the other world did to your mind."

"My memory is poor, except about where I grew up — where I was taken from. Then it's as though a mist comes down"

"And where you come from: there were cars there, and mopeds and bikes?"

"No. Yes. Oh I don't know."

"Perhaps you'd been down there hardly any time at all."

"You said the scene I described was from a hundred years ago or more..."

Chemchi shrugged. "There is no slave market in the Criée Berbère, there hasn't been for all that time. It doesn't make sense. But then the chamber doesn't make sense, it doesn't even fit right in the souks. It's bigger than it should be."

"There might be other ways through, not that strange wall that's really a curtain."

"You're right, we should have another look. I want to understand the shadow carpet, too — and the world beneath it. There must be an explanation. I have a film about an object among the stars, that can affect the passage of time and hide what is happening from the world outside."

"I don't know what you're talking about. The education of a warrior's son is ... special. What they teach us is very particular to our people. If I don't know something, tell me. I will learn. And you can show me your films, whatever they are. Where I come from, we are busy trying to survive, to fight corruption, to stop ourselves becoming enslaved. Even our own people deal in slaves. You know of no such hardships, do you, here in Ali's house."

Chemchi looked at him, suddenly sharply with her green eyes. "You don't know anything about me, what I have to put up with."

"Ali?! You fight with him all the time, don't you. You don't know your station —"

"Stop, stop, I don't want to hear what you think about me and Ali. You don't know the half of it. And if you're going to go back to all that princely warrior's-son nonsense and tell me about my station then just forget it. You can find your own way out."

"If you'd let me finish, I was going to say that that's how Ali sees you. I'm sorry, Chemchi. I want us to start afresh, to solve these mysteries together."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"MY, YOU ARE dressing to impress today," said Ali.

Chemchi threw him a sour look. She wore a black velvet kaftan embroidered with gold silk thread, an echo of the carpet. Several wardrobes of beautiful clothes stood in one of the bedrooms on the top floor, which she had soon found after her arrival as a little girl. Although much fancier than any of her mother's clothes, they reminded Chemchi of her, and she would sometimes hide from Ali amongst them. Only in the last year or two had any of them fitted her. Was Ali married at one time, or did he keep a mistress? She knew from films that that was what men did. Also that wives died, often tragically, or ran off with other men. Ali must have known where the kaftan came from, but he didn't seem to mind her wearing it. Standing tall, and with an expression that meant business, she looked and felt like a grown woman.

Beside her feet, Ibtissam ignored a ball of crumpled paper that Akimbe had thrown for her. Chemchi was not in the mood for frivolity of any kind. She had been lost in herself, barely speaking since serving their breakfast yesterday morning, as she continued to scrub and clean while the males lounged around. It was as though nothing had changed. Ali had popped in and out as he always did. At least Akimbe had stayed in the house. He'd tried to talk to her while she worked, asking when they would start their investigations, but had soon given up. She didn't really want to cut him like that, but couldn't help herself. He wasn't brave enough to go out into Marrakech by himself, this warrior's son. She couldn't really blame him.

Ali said, "And who is it that deserves the presence of such an imposing young woman this morning?"

She continued to ignore him while she checked herself further in the mirror. She was going to do what she needed to do.

Ali looked at Akimbe, who shrugged his shoulders.

"You're not going without me," Akimbe said. "Wherever it is."

"I am going without you. I need you to stay here and mind Ibtissam. Who knows what spite Morchid is capable of. He might take her away if I don't cooperate."

"So that's it," said Ali. "Finally, you're going to do what he says. But why are you dressed like that? Do you think he cares what you're wearing?"

"I'll only do what he says if I'm happy with what he asks."

Ali placed his hands flat on the table and let out a sigh. "You must go and you must do his bidding. You made a pact with him. But don't talk to him anywhere but in a public place where others can see you — don't let him disappear with you."

"Thanks for stating the obvious," she said.

"And come back here to tell me whatever it is, before you do it."

"Aren't you going with her?" said Akimbe. "You must. You're her ... her—"

"Yes, what is he, Akimbe? Not my father. A father would forbid me to go into danger, would protect me. But, when it comes to the crunch, Ali gives me only advice, advice any fool would have known. I have no father. And no mother. I look after myself."

"Are you taking the torch?" asked Ali. "He'll want to see it if he asked you to use it,"

"Yes, I have it with me but for my own reasons." She took the torch out of her bag, the one she had bought for her experiment. "I take it everywhere."

She had pointed it around the riad, at the walls and the floors and the furniture, but nothing unexpected had appeared. She felt hesitant with it, in truth. Did her ability to see the unseen work anywhere away from the carpet and the chamber?

"Why are you interested in me using the torch anyway, Ali? Do you know something about it? You and Morchid, both?" He did not reply.

She wrapped her scarf around her head. Akimbe stood up.

"No, I mean it. You must keep Ibtissam here. Watch the door. I'm relying on you."

"How can I? She can get away from me easily."

"Just try. I won't be long. Hold her until I've got away."

"I am the son of Shango. You want me to mind your cat." He sucked air through his teeth.

"Oh, I thought we were equals. If you're the son of Shango, then I'm the daughter of Lalla. Am I not, Ali?" She paused to give Ali a look then addressed herself back to Akimbe. "I ask you as my friend."

Reluctantly he picked up Ibtissam and sat her on his knee, where she stayed, to his surprise.

"And there's the mop and bucket if you're short of something to do, Ali." She couldn't believe she'd said what she had always wanted to say. Ali's mouth dropped.

After she had shut the heavy door, Ali and Akimbe each shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

"Are you going to follow her?" Ali said.

"But she ... why don't you follow her yourself? Shouldn't you be protecting her?"

"She can look after herself. She always has."

"I don't know much about this Morchid — what he's capable of. My people say that sometimes it's better not to find out how the lion is feeling today. Does she need our help?"

"You need to take hold of your own life, as Chemchi grasps hers. You can't skulk in here forever."

"Skulk? I am not skulking. I am readying myself."

Ali raised his eyebrows and looked as though he was stopping himself from laughing at the boy, but Akimbe girded himself and continued. "Thank you very much for your hospitality. I'm going to find my sister and my parents. My father will pay you for your hospitality, for letting me stay with you. And we will set up a court and decide what we must do."

"A court, eh? Well, good luck with that."

****

Chemchi looked behind occasionally as she strode across the Jamaa el Fna, the vast square at the heart of the medina. No boy and no cat. Good. Many eyes followed the tall girl who carried a basket as though she were going shopping but who wore a fine kaftan, as though on her way to a formal occasion. Fortune-tellers, snake-charmers, merchants had set themselves up on whatever patch they had managed to claim and were trying to attract the attention of tourists — when they weren't looking at her.

Chemchi disregarded them all and headed to the other side. The reedy sounds of music, the calls of the sellers and the chatter of the crowd in many languages all floated in the expanse. People bought food from stalls or dined in restaurants around. She hadn't eaten. Hunger gnawed at her. Thoughts of what Morchid was going to demand, and how she was going to respond, all looped around her mind.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EVERY DAY AT two o'clock in the afternoon, Morchid appeared in his stall for an hour, as the butcher of the souks. By common consent, all other dealers in meat shut up shop for that same hour. Morchid hadn't ordered them to close; he let them decide for themselves that it was pointless to compete.

No one saw where he came from when he entered the stall, but it was somewhere in the labyrinth behind it, a place as unknowable as he. Morchid raised the heavy wooden shutter from inside and there he was, a hulk with wild hair, the stubble of his moustache curdling and twitching in contrast to the steady burn of his stare. Sometimes he would just stand for the entire hour and gaze out like a living statue lost in thought. But, usually, he served his meats and, as he had done with Chemchi, responded to the desperate who queued there, reluctantly, for his help.

They said he had been a butcher once, an ordinary butcher. But something had happened to make him become the meat. Not the dead hunks he dealt in, but a living beast of meat, somewhere between a corpse and a living body, invested with a dark and deathly magic.

And now his appearance in this form in the souks, the form in which he had once lived and breathed as a man, was like a waking nightmare that repeated itself after a trauma, a terrifying experience that won't go away.

Never once had he hurt anyone. Not while he was in the stall, that is. It was as though this figure in the bloody stall was not really him but a spectral envoy he sent out into the souks. And people — at least, people who were either stupid or desperate — came and put their heads in his mouth.

As Chemchi drew close, she saw that this time Morchid was wielding rather than sharpening his cleaver. A long queue trailed from his stall like a chain of sausages.

She barged to the front and stood at the side of the woman being served. "Morchid, I must speak with you."

His eyes remained fixed on a point between two ribs of lamb for cleaving.

"You can see the queue as well as I can."

"It's about the matter we discussed." She couldn't believe how brazen she was being. But this way everyone could see and it felt safer.

"What matter is that?" He looked absently out at the people in the queue, whose eyes swung from Chemchi to Morchid and back again. They couldn't believe it. Ears strained from the back.

She raised her voice above a passing moped's smokey buzzing. The smell of oil joined that of blood, and further mingled with the aroma from nearby spice stalls.

"I want to make an appointment."

The customer's jaw dropped. A tutting worked its way down the queue. Morchid's cleaver was raised to chop but he held it there. Chemchi blushed.

"How is your cat, Ibti-thing? You said she was missing."

He finished serving the customer but she didn't want to leave, and made as if she was having trouble fitting her parcel of meat into her bag. Morchid paused and wiped his hot brow. A curtain of carcasses hung behind him.

"Ibtissam — our arrangement — is one thing I would like to speak to you about," said Chemchi. "The other is to ask what you know of slavery and trafficking."

Something flashed almost imperceptibly across Morchid's face but the mask of death rapidly returned.

"Now I'm to help you with your homework," he said.

"I want to discuss things with you, that is all. We can do it here if you prefer," said Chemchi, louder.

The next customer was looking daggers at her. Morchid wiped the sweaty stubble of his moustache. His apron was blotched and splattered with blood. He took his time to respond. The whole queue waited as though for his next command.

"Here. Seven o'clock in the morning. Why don't you bring Ibti-whatever?"

****

Chemchi slipped out of the riad. Even Ibtissam was asleep, curled on a chair. She had told none of the others about the arrangement, not even Akimbe, but only because she didn't want to add to his troubles.

The souks at seven o'clock would normally be alive with an army of stallholders preparing for the day. But when Chemchi turned the corner to where Morchid's stall stood, there was no one except the butcher himself, ensconced in it as though he had not moved since the day before.

She shrugged herself deeper into her kaftan against the morning chill, glad for once of her headscarf. It was completely quiet around her. She felt an odd kind of privilege to be received alone. Perhaps that was how all his victims felt just before it was too late. There was something he wanted from her, though —so he needed her alive.

"No cat?" he said. She stood a few metres short of where he loomed, his weight forward on the counter, with a symmetrical arrangement of goat carcasses suspended behind him, his cleavers and knives somewhere to hand beneath.

"What do you know of slavery and trafficking in the medina? And what do you know of a chamber in the Criée Berbère?"

He wiped his brow and looked into the distance. She continued.

"And why have you sent everyone else away?"

"Morchid doesn't send you people anywhere. Morchid advises. And makes deals."

He was sweating even in the cold of the morning, as though he had been working through the night. Doing what? Or did a fire burn inside him, she thought, some kind of hellish fire.

"Come closer."

"No."

"You've found your cat. But you didn't bring her as I asked."

"What do you know about slavery?"

"How is she? Is she safe? Right now, I mean?"

"And about a chamber in the Criée Berbère?"

"Perhaps she is with somebody."

"A chamber that contains a carpet."

"Someone at home."

"Not just any ordinary carpet."

"In Ali's riad."

"A chamber that held slaves once."

"Yes she's at home with Ali and, let me see..."

"A chamber that sometimes holds slaves still, perhaps."

"Yes and she's with a friend, isn't she. But I don't know him."

"Slaves from long ago."

"A young man. But I can't see him clearly. I see only a shadow. That is strange."

"And what about slaves now?"

A moped was approaching. Unlike those that typically buzzed like bumble bees around the souks, it whined menacingly.

"You've found Ibtissam and you made a promise," Morchid said.

"So now you remember her name? There are slaves all over Marrakech, aren't there, and people being trafficked through Marrakech."

"You agreed to comply with whatever I asked, in return."

"Am I to become your slave, Morchid?"

The moped engine died. A man — or a youth? — astride it was silhouetted against the morning light that poured through an arch. Whoever it was took something out of a bag which he put about his head, then started his engine back into life and entered slowly. The motor now spat and zinged. She looked back at Morchid, who showed no concern. When the rider drew closer, she saw that he had placed a black scarf over his face. He wore goggles like great insect eyes.

Chemchi took the torch from her bag and shone it at him. The scarf and goggles scintillated. But, even if the torch had enabled her to see what lay underneath, he was too far away. The rider accelerated, the pitch rose, and the moped sped off. She put back the torch, wanting to shine it at Morchid but not daring to.

"No," Morchid continued as though the rider had never interrupted them. "You are not to be my slave. But I am going to hold you to your word."

"And what kind of dismal task do you have in mind? Are you going to take me away from my home? There are people who depend on me." She thought of Akimbe, and what he would do without her. "Go on, snap your fingers and have one of your henchmen clap me in irons. Have done with it."

Morchid folded his great, meaty arms, their blue veins spreading beneath pale flesh. Suddenly someone grabbed her from behind and forced her up to Morchid. His eyes drilled into her as she struggled with the unseen owner of the rough hands that held her. She let go of her bag. The torch tumbled out onto the hard ground. She tried to pull away to reach for it, but her assailant was far stronger. Then he let go of her suddenly. She slipped. There was a blow to her head.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WHEN CHEMCHI DIDN'T return home, Akimbe started to pace up and down. Ibtissam and Ali both watched him.

"She'll be back," said Ali. "Why don't you find something to do around the riad?"

"Such as, sir?"

"Oh, I don't know. Something." Ali looked at the cupboard where Chemchi kept the mop and pail.

Akimbe scowled at him and went to his room. But it soon felt like a prison, lying on his back staring at the ceiling. He climbed to the roof garden, where he and Chemchi had their talks.

He hated himself for hiding from the world outside. To lose his family, and now to lose his one lifeline into this unfamiliar world of teeming people, this buzzing, bumbling Marrakech that frightened him. He kicked the wall as hard as he could and suffered the agony of his throbbing toe in silence, squeezing his eyes against the tears.

Who was he sorry for, himself or the people he cared about? Both, he decided. Both.

The sky arched above him like a huge vault of cloudless blue from rooftop to rooftop. The vastness cared neither for him nor the people around him.

****

The chill of 3am woke Akimbe on the rooftop. Downstairs, he found Ali awake, sitting where he always sat at the table, with a pot of mint tea. They looked at one another sheepishly. Ibtissam padded up to them in the courtyard and looked at them as if to say, "Well? What are you going to do now?"

Akimbe could start looking for her in two places: Morchid's butcher's stall, or the chamber. He didn't know much from the little Chemchi had said, but enough to know that confronting Morchid was best left until later. If he was honest with himself, he didn't feel able to muster Chemchi's determination. He was afraid. What if Morchid sent him straight back into the carpet's world?

But how to get into the Chamber without Chemchi and her torch?

Ibtissam leapt on to the corner of the table. As he was feeling her accusing stare, something occurred to Akimbe that should have been obvious before. Chemchi had rescued the cat as well as him, hadn't she? The fact was that Ibtissam had become stuck there. She knew a way in. But would it be a way that was too small for him? Never mind, maybe there were yet other ways in. And what about Camel-breath? How had he entered? He had a creepy magic about him; maybe he had abilities like Chemchi's. But not Ibtissam. No, there was — or might be — a proper way in; a way in for the likes of him.

Akimbe and the cat stared at one another for a while. Ali said, "Go back to bed. You're no good to anyone without sleep."

"And you, sir? What will you do — now that Chemchi needs your help?"

"She will be back tomorrow. Leave it to Ali. Ali knows everyone." He gave a little flourish with his tea cup, and took a sip of its cold contents. "Remember, I was born here. I mean right here, in this riad."

"And I don't belong here, is that what you want to say?"

"You are a guest in my house. When Ali has a guest then that guest is welcome. Full stop."

"With respect, you needn't mince your words. You wish I wasn't here. Don't worry, I told you I'll be gone just as soon as I find my family."

"Just go to bed," said Ali. "You are young, aren't you — what, fourteen? You need your rest."

Where Akimbe grew up, there was nothing but respect from the young for their elders. Perhaps too much respect, he sometimes thought. And here, he didn't know about anyone else but Chemchi was completely different to any young person he had encountered before — let alone a young female person. She really didn't respect Ali at all. Her hostility was clear. And yet she was beholden to him. She needed a roof over her head, after all. There didn't seem to be anyone around to marry her, which is what would have happened in Akimbe's experience. On meeting her, his assumptions about how people were supposed to behave gave way. Not that he was altogether comfortable with that — Akimbe couldn't behave as she did. But he had to admit it was liberating. She was herself. He had been — whatever happened in the interlude beneath the carpet — a warrior king's son, a role that came with constraints on what he should say and how he should behave. But he had never felt that that was really him. Who was he? He didn't belong in this city, and he had whiled some of the time away while waiting for Chemchi by thinking fondly of the animals, the fields, the rivers and the rugged hills where he grew up. But with Chemchi, perhaps he could find out. He wouldn't feel so alone.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AKIMBE PICKED UP Ibtissam and left the riad, fumbling for the handle in the dark as he tried to close the big door behind him. The sky high above in the narrow street was full of stars. From somewhere out of sight, a moon lit the upper reaches of the roofscape. Ibtissam let herself be carried as though she were the queen and Akimbe her servant. He headed for the Jamaa el Fna, the square Chemchi had commented on their way to the Criée Berbère. He wondered whether he would be able to find it — and find his way back.

There were groups of men huddled around braziers. Their looks, in the red glow, were not welcoming. He found a spot away from them in the middle of the square, unseen in the darkness. One or two cats came up to see what was going on. Ibtissam made a point of ignoring them until one cried and rubbed itself against Akimbe's leg, at which point she hissed it away.

It felt good to be alone in the darkness. He could smell the wood burning around him, its acrid smoke laced with a scent of something being cooked. He pictured Chemchi who, unlike him, might be really alone, tied up or locked away somewhere. Or dead in an alley. And the only person who could help him find out what had become of her, Ali, was just an obstinate pig as far as he was concerned; someone who didn't know breeding when he saw it. Let Ali ask around or whatever he was going to do. He, Akimbe, wasn't going to wait for something to happen.

A single ray of morning, streaking into the smokey dark, caught Ibtissam's eyes. She was looking at him again, but now with reproach at his tarrying. If he let her go, mightn't he lose her too? But he couldn't very well carry her around like this while he searched. Ibtissam loved Chemchi and he would have to trust her not to hunt for mice but to head for wherever Chemchi was.

Somewhere nearby men were sitting listening to a reedy instrument spilling notes into the vastness, the music echoing mournfully. They were a strange people, he thought, staying up all night huddled from the cold around braziers. Perhaps they were delighting in the space of the square after all day spent in the cramped streets.

As he let his arms drop, Ibtissam bounded to the ground like a spring. The two of them set off for the souks again, Ibtissam pausing now and then and rubbing against his legs to let him know she was there.

She led him to a closed-up stall. Unlike the cat, he didn't go right up but pulled back when he caught sight of it and peered from behind a corner as she approached it. Fear starting working on his heart. The whole market lay in silence. Ibtissam seemed not to sense any danger, however, and she came back to find out why he was waiting, her tail pointing straight up to the netting that hung across the ceiling. He closed his eyes for a second to wish safety upon himself from the spirits, and followed.

The stall loomed imposingly above the others around it. Ibtissam stopped to sniff in front of it. Morning light was starting to arrive rapidly but he could see no sign of whatever life she had sensed.

Then his spirits slumped. Of course she wants to go there, he thought: all that meat. The stupid cat! It's all she can think of while Chemchi is in heaven-knows how much danger. He approached, looking around all the time in case someone came — for surely the market traders would be here soon.

But when he drew near, he saw the object of her interest: Chemchi's torch, lying half-hidden under a flap, apparently kicked there. He picked it up. At least, it was probably hers.

Of Chemchi and Morchid nothing was to be seen. Now he had her cat and her torch, but no idea of her whereabouts. Ibtissam let out a cry to get his attention. She shot off and he found he had to run to keep up with her. Soon he was out of breath. He began to feel more alive than since ... since when?

Surely the traders would arrive any minute. There was a sound ... a moped, such as he had now seen and heard many times, somewhere off in the souks. He stopped. It came closer then faded, closer then further, as though someone was combing the souks, searching just as he was.

Ibtissam pulled him on. She took him to the Criée Berbère and sat in the middle surrounded by the shut-up carpet stalls, looking at him and waiting as though his was the next move.

"Well?" he said aloud, his voice sounding strange as it echoed around the empty spaces.

In the little recess he flashed the torch's beam all around looking for the velvet curtains that led into the chamber. He knew from before that only Chemchi and not he could make it appear. But his father had once told him: to try what we 'know' to be impossible is both a strength and a sign of futility in human beings, where foolishness and wisdom came together. No curtains appeared, and no curtains could be felt, only cold bricks.

Ibtissam watched him from the middle of the little square as he finally gave up and banged his fists against the solid wall in frustration.

"Is this supposed to be a test?" he said to her.

Since he knew the chamber to lie beyond this wall, it made sense to follow the wall around — or at least the shut-up stalls that stood in front of it.

As he walked along he patted and pulled and kicked everything that looked like it might open up. He cast his mind over what he remembered of the interior, trying to see the lines of the walls despite all the odd furniture scattered around and the darkness in every corner. He and Chemchi had searched all over — except that Camel-breath had interrupted them. Perhaps he had entered the same way as them. Just because Akimbe couldn't get through, it didn't mean that no one else apart from Chemchi could. Yes, Camel-breath had been standing around near the recess when they tried to go there the first time.

And what about all those creatures that left the shadow carpet, all stumbling and stunned? They had definitely left, otherwise the chamber would have been teeming with them. And now that he thought about it, it seemed the flow of them was more to one particular corner than anywhere else. But where was than corner in relation to this space outside? He kicked himself for not being able to work it out.

"Ibtissam, you know perfectly well how to get in. Why don't you just take me there?"

The sound of the moped was getting closer. Still it increased and receded as though someone was searching the souks. Mopeds were such puny types of machine, like insects compared to the other vehicles he had seen. And yet that spitting and whining seemed more sinister, echoing in the empty maze of market stalls.

He'd better hurry. Chemchi had given him a little notepad for recording facts about the new world he lived in. He kept it in his pouch along with his mother's bracelet. He'd never used it. He knew he'd feel sad if he touched that bracelet. He wanted to be strong, not sad. But now he thrust his hand in and took out the pad, on which he sketched the shape of the walls around the chamber. He counted his paces and wrote the counts next to the lines as he did so. He walked all the way around and sketched. The outline he ended up with didn't look right. His rough lines had gone out of scale from one another. But it would have to do. Imagining himself entering through the wall at one end, walking up to the carpet, feeling the tall furniture standing randomly around him, watching the cats and rats and mice running free — his tracings filled the sketch.

And here was the spot where the creatures had run to. Maybe. A locked-up stall, outside the Criée Berbère. Unlike the two on either side, its paint was peeling. And the others had decorations fastened to their tops. Lamps were fixed to one, fabric hung from the other. This stall had none.

Ibtissam, who had run close to his legs as he walked, started meeowing. When he ignored her, she scratched his ankle, giving it a serious clawing.

"Why you..."

Now that she had his full attention, she stared back at him while she calmly disappeared into a gap in the stall's skirting. The dusty hole was just big enough. Only blackness stared back when he shone the torch in. Nothing of Ibtissam's eyes.

The spit and whine of the moped. Close now. A flash of its headlight reflected off a stall.

The door rattled when he pushed on it, a heavy padlock hung clattered on a pair of hasps. Desperately he pulled at the boards beside the hole in the skirting. They did not yield.

There was a gap below the right-hand door, just enough to grip the bottom with his fingers and pull. One hand wouldn't do so he put down the torch and tried both. It was heavy and stuck fast. Pulling harder so that he screwed up his face with the effort, something gave.

The moped had entered one of the souks next to this, just out of sight.

He braced his feet against the stall's skirting, pushed with his legs and pulled with his arms at the same time, rocking as he did so. Something gave further. Then a hinge snapped. He fell over backwards. The moped was headed his way.

Yanking on the corner, he squeezed his thin frame through the gap. The heavy door pinched at him.

He was inside, almost. The door had closed itself on his left foot, which was stuck and protruded outside. The moped drew up, its headlight beam leaking into the dark interior. He stopped moving. If he held it still, his foot might just not be noticed. If he kept yanking it, he would surely be spotted. He waited in pain as the heavy door's edge sliced into him.

The moped moved away.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

INSIDE, IBTISAM'S EYES met his torch beam. "What kept you so long?" she seemed to be saying. She swished her tail in the air for him to follow her. He limped after her with darkness all around, concentrating on that tail. The smell of dust and disuse entered his nostrils. A flickering light lay ahead. Soon they reached an area he recognised: furniture standing around like people who didn't want to look at one another, and bric-a-brac. And the carpet somewhere amongst them. His footsteps sounded softly. He felt claustrophobic and wanted to cough. Choking silently, he barely managed to stop himself.

The chamber looked just as he and Chemchi had left it, as far as one could tell whether such a random arrangement had changed. The flickering light was from the same huge candles but the same amount of wax remained.. Had someone replaced them? Had they been lit for him? Or did they simply never burn down? He told himself not to be so scared and silly. To be the son of a warrior.

Then Ibtissam hissed.

Camel-breath was seated in a huge wooden chair, so still Akimbe hadn't noticed him and even Ibtissam hadn't at first.

"It's beautiful, isn't it." Camel-breath was looking at the shadow carpet. "Except there is a blotch just there."

The shadow of a tall young woman stretched diagonally from a corner, defined by weaving gold thread. Ibtissam had approached Chemchi's shadow and gingerly stretched her head forward to sniff. Akimbe played his beam on it. When Chemchi had done the same to his shadow, she liberated him from the under-carpet world. But the torch had no effect in his hands. It simply made the lustrous threads glint, in points of light like stars.

"You see how the carpet stretches all the way down the corridor to the curtain at the end? The curtain that she found from outside in the souks?" Akimbe saw that the carpet had indeed reconfigured itself, stretched itself back down to where Chemchi had found it. And Camel-breath knew Chemchi had found it. Had he been there, watching?

"It's where the slaves walked. In their thousands, to where they were finally dispatched to their new masters. Thousands of them treading the carpet over many years. Why a carpet, for heaven's sake, for such unworthy feet?" He chuckled. "Why not bare, rough stones? No one knows. One day a slave tripped on the carpet and wouldn't get up. The guards kicked him and swore at him but he lay there resolutely. He was a big man, strong as an ox. And as stupid, or so they thought. They called for more guards to carry him and bundle him on his new master's wagon. What they didn't realise was that he has been whispering as he lay there and took their blows, whispering to the carpet, which was made somewhere the man knew about, perhaps in his own land. How do I know this? Perhaps I know something of that land." He laughed, mirthlessly.

"Yes, he spoke to the carpet, which was like a person who has lain in a coma for many years and is finally woken. Its threads twirled and bound him before the guards' eyes. There was a gang of guards clustered around him now and the whole operation had been brought to a halt while they scratched their heads about what to do. It pulled him flat as a pancake before their astonished eyes until he was — like her — a shadow. Gone.

"They killed the slaves who had witnessed this. None of them dared touch the carpet after that. They realised they needed slaves to roll it up and had more slaves brought. But every time one of them touched it, the threads crept and twisted and gripped and pulled them until they disappeared into it, just their shadows left. So they closed the whole place off. Bricked up the end where the curtain is. Or rather had the slaves do that. What they didn't know was that the carpet had a way through that wall. It stretched and crept and peeked out. Bricks and mortar can be penetrated by threads, you see. Millions of them scratching and probing. Still looked like a wall, felt like a wall, from dirt to ceiling. And the carpet invisible outside, didn't want to give the game away. Except to her. It had pushed itself through for her to see. It wanted to be found by her."

He turned to Akimbe. Loose skin and stubble made his face bleary. He scratched himself frequently. But he sat in the chair as though it were a throne, as though he were king of this place, pronouncing upon its history in his voice of oil and grit.

"When was this?"

"About a century ago. More."

"You're lying. Where is my family?"

Camel-breath let out a hoarse chuckle.

"Oh dear, you haven't lost your family have you? How regrettable. When did you last see them? You're not one of ours, by any chance, are you? A slave, I mean. A 'victim' of trafficking who has escaped?"

Akimbe realised that Camel-breath didn't necessarily know that he had been in the under-carpet world, too. If only he could remember what had happened there. Chemchi was there now. Standing next to the carpet was like peering down over a high ledge and not being able to stop yourself from imagining the fall. But you couldn't know what it was really like. He could go in after her but then who would rescue them? It even crossed his mind to encourage Ibtissam to walk out onto the carpet so at least Chemchi could have some company while he thought of a way to get her out.

But was life so bad in there anyway? He had survived, hadn't he? Perhaps it was better than here, with this sickening man leering at him. Or at least no worse than this strange place, Marrakech, where the only person he trusted was now gone. Fear chilled him again. Was he really arguing himself into going in?

He felt for his mother's bracelet in his pouch. Still there. He conjured up their faces: his father first, looking sternly at him, his mother crying when they whispered goodbye just before he escaped. And his little sister before they were taken away from their homes, cross with him about something or other like she usually was. He wouldn't mind now. She could be as cross with him as she wanted.

"Three questions," he said. "What did you do to Chemchi? What have you done with my family? And why should I believe you about the carpet?"

"Little one! That's what I like about the young. So many questions!" Camel-breath scratched his side. Did this man, thought Akimbe, actually have fleas?

"First," Camel-breath's expression clouded, " I have not 'done' anything to her, as you put it. You should have seen her run here, the poor thing. She laid herself down, I can assure you. She wanted to go in."

"You're lying again. Why would she launch herself into the unknown?" Camel-breath ignored him.

"Second, as for your family, that would be Shango, Oba and Oyo wouldn't it?" He laughed raucously — more oil and grit, pumped up out of the bowels of the Earth.

"You should see the expression on your face, my lovely! Tell me. What is a shadow?"

"What do you mean — d'you think I'm just an ignorant boy from somewhere south of here, below the Sahara?"

"So tell me."

"A darkness cast by a body." Akimbe regretted opening his mouth. He had nothing to prove to this creature. Chemchi would have stopped herself.

"Oh, indeed," Camel-breath nodded, "a darkness. Cast by a body. And what is a darkness when it's at home?"

"Shut up! Where are my parents? My sister?"

"A shadow is an absence, isn't it, an absence of light? And yet it's a presence, too, isn't it? You're right to be afraid, by the way, of all the darkness around here. And there are more shadows to take into your consideration. Now, you asked me three questions and I've only answered one. Let me see, ah yes, Shango, Oba and Oyo."

He stood, gave himself another scratch. "Why, they are an absence, they are shadows." Akimbe looked back at the carpet. "Do you think they are down there? It's an interesting question. But there are other ways of becoming a shadow up here in old Marrakech and onwards in Europe, I can assure you."

"You mean slavery. Trafficking." That word Chemchi had used. Was it the same thing as slavery? Akimbe wanted to hit him; to beat his face to a bloody pulp. He started to walk around the carpet then stopped. "I'm not here to be taught a lesson about shadows by you. You're full of lies."

"Or are they simply dead, in unmarked graves? Now, you asked why you should believe me —"

"Save your stinking breath. I'm not interested."

"Oh, I see, I need to give you some hope, don't I — no one can live without hope, can they? You've lost your only friend," he pointed with a flourish towards Chemchi's shadow. "And now I'm telling you your parents have passed away. And your sister too I suppose. Too much bleakness to shovel at you, little one?"

Akimbe couldn't stand it any longer. Tears started to pump.

"Here," said Camel-breath. "Another place to look. In case I'm wrong, that is." He held out a piece of paper.

Akimbe walked around to take the note, at arms length and ready to make a dash. But Camel-breath just stood there and regarded him, with a cold look on his face. Taking a last look at Chemchi's shadow, Akimbe turned back into the darkness the way he had come.
PART TWO

A Bug in Reality

CHAPTER TWENTY

IT WAS BEFORE the dawn, and above the rooftops of Marrakech lay a spill of glinting stars. Inside the souks, the call to morning prayers was over and stillness hung before commerce began.

But at the fringe of the souks, as close as it could physically fit before all the passageways became too narrow for it, a large van, almost a lorry, reversed up to a gateway. Its four indicators flashed amber together. A shrill beeping warned those behind to stay clear.

Someone banged on the side when the van had reversed as far as it could. The engine died, leaving the stillness to fill the void, but only briefly. Soon there was a clattering as two men who had been waiting threw down their glowing cigarettes and raised the roller door at the back.

A light came on to reveal animal carcasses hung inside. More men appeared. They wrapped their arms around the carcasses in pairs, swung them down from the van to further arms, which placed them on carts to be carried over to Morchid's stores.

Once they had emptied the stinking, blood-spattered interior, one man cleared the hanging meat hooks to the side and then placed a few boxes around the floor. A group of the men went back into an unseen part of the souks. The driver lit another cigarette and dragged on it, his eyes expressionless as he listened to a tale from one of the men who leaned into his cab.

After a while the group came back with new cargo for the van: a string of about twenty people with their hands on their heads, a consignment to somewhere north of Marrakech, possibly even Europe. A few men, mostly women and children. The gang now carried guns and torches. The slaves-to-be looked nervously to right and left as they were marched along. The children tried not to cry in case they came to the men's attention.

One by one they were poked and pushed into the van. There were only a few boxes. Two of the male slaves dragged the boxes to the side and bade the children and some of the women to sit on them. The remainder found a place as best they could to stand or squat, so that they could place at least an outstretched hand on the van's side. As the van filled, this became impossible so they placed a hand on the shoulder of someone nearby and hoped that they would be able to stay upright when the van drove off. They had no idea where they were destined for.

None of the men spoke to the captives. And the captives silently obeyed their gestured commands. Eventually, when the last had climbed in, pulled up by his fellows to occupy the remaining bit of cramped space, the men brought down the roller door, banged on the side, and watched the van start and slowly drive away through the narrow passage.

Chemchi watched this scene from the second-storey room where she was held prisoner. The sight of these people herded like animals, their fates unknown but certainly bleak, caused her to forget, temporarily, the throbbing pain in her head from the blow that had knocked her unconscious, and to forget, too, the smell of something decomposing that filled her cell.

She had seen only flashes of this silent brutality in the electric lights. But it was clear what was going on, as clear as the stalls now crystallising in the light of the coming morning. And Morchid, the man by whose might she was now locked up, was behind it.

Akimbe would be worried that she hadn't returned, and know that Morchid was the cause. But what could he do against Morchid and his gang of enslavers? She cursed herself for thinking that a confrontation with Morchid could have led her anywhere but where she now found herself. She hoped Akimbe would not try to save her because he was certain to end up trapped – or enslaved – like her. But equally she knew that he would try. Well, she couldn't do anything about that. Her job was to escape. And then to do something about Morchid.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MORCHID ATE LIKE a great bear, dipping his paws in a plateful of stew from the terrines. Meat eating meat, Chemchi thought. She looked at her plate, decided she would rather die of hunger than dine alongside this man, then thought better of it: there was no point in allowing herself to feel weak. It was the second night since the morning of her capture, and she had had no food. In the traditional Moroccan style, she ate without knife, fork or spoon, but with fingers and chunks of bread.

They ate in silence except for Morchid's chomping. The man standing ready to serve them was a slave. She knew this from the cast of his eyes. On the other hand, the two men who took her from her cell belonged to Morchid's gang. They brought her here through the tangle of the souks, to a corner that even she did not know, via a metal workshop empty of the artisans who wrought intricate lamps by day, and then through alleyways behind, all in the close evening heat. They had their liberty. They walked and talked like men whose lives belonged to them, although she wondered to what extent that could really be said of anyone who worked for Morchid. They were not to be messed with. They did not shackle her in any way, but walked her like two uncles, through the ambling tourists and past the local men squatting on stools. The thought of fleeing terrified her. And screaming would have done no good: people would know Morchid's business when they saw it, and remain uninvolved.

And so she sat, Morchid's business, across a table filled with terrines, bread, fruit and a large pot of mint tea.

She wanted to ask him about the torch. He was the only person who might be able to explain why a torch in her hands became an instrument for seeing things that others could not see — not an X-ray but — what? It seemed from what he had said that he knew what she could do, although he hadn't encountered her before the matter of Ibtissam. What else did he know about her? She thought of her mother's last phone call, of all the mystery surrounding Ali's wrenching of her from her mountain home, from everything she had known. Akimbe said she had a talent, a talent for seeing. I see, she thought, but I don't know. I don't know what I need most of all to know. I can't see inside Ali's mind.

Was Morchid like her: could he also see what others couldn't see?

He put aside his plate and went over to the shelves, took one of many black boxes inlaid with mother of pearl, and handed it to Chemchi.

"Open it." She wiped her hands and took it from him. It was shut fast, and she could see no latch. In fact there seemed to be no lid at all.

"But there's no way to—"

"Very well. Tell me what is inside, anyway."

She shook it gently. Something rattled inside. But a sound continued after she stopped: a patter of hard feet tapping on the wooden shell. But it couldn't be. She move it again, more gently. The feet scampered. It seemed to her that they walked to wherever her hand gripped the box, that whatever was inside was interested in her fingers.

"It's a crab, or an insect."

"Inside a sealed box without water or food?"

Now aware that this small house was inhabited, she carefully raised it and looked underneath. But that too was a solid face of lacquer without joins.

"Here." He gave her a torch: a thin, pencil-like torch. She shone it over the glossy surface.

A human head gazed back at her, but on the body of a scorpion. It was a girl with long hair, about ten centimetres from head to tip of curved sting. She was hard-faced, and appeared to be chewing gum. Her face was splotchy, as though she had been crying but she was daring you to say so. She'd sting you if you so much as suggested it.

And the walls of the box were now glass. Swirling around within those walls were the blotches of light she recognised from when she had left the chamber with Akimbe: the slow swirling like you see behind closed eyelids, which had floated behind the velvet drape.

Chemchi played the beam on and off the box, and the girl-scorpion appeared and disappeared with it. She had begun to try to say something to Chemchi. Her face was screwed up and she looked as though she was screaming abuse but Chemchi could not hear her. Now the girl was crying. Her scorpion legs were rattling against the glass. Chemchi switched off the torch.

"Tell me what you saw." For a moment she had forgotten he existed, so strange was the vision. Morchid was either testing her or didn't know. She stared back at him, the tall girl at the brute across the table, the butcher and enslaver and ... maybe even worse, if such were possible. But every time she looked at him she felt there might have been something more, perhaps something even noble, even sensitive beneath that exterior. His mouth, now slightly greasy from the meal, seemed to struggle to play the part asked of it.

"I looked as you wanted me to but I couldn't see anything. If you think there's something in there, perhaps it didn't want to be found. I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for, anyway, so how could I find it?"

Morchid wasn't looking at her. Was he even listening? Couldn't he be tricked, like the men in the films she watched so often were? But he wasn't a man. Was he? Two servants crept in to clear the table but he waved them away as though he had eyes in the back of his head.

"Now look at the box again, without the torch this time." Chemchi picked it up, acutely aware of the girl-scorpion inside. She didn't want to hurt her so she handled it gingerly.

"Turn it upside down."

"No, I won't. What is this game you're playing?"

He looked at his great calloused hand. "So you saw something in there – or someone. Now look, I mean really look."

She lowered the box back to the table and stared at it. It was easier than looking at him and gave her time to think.

"It's just a black box," he said, "but now there is something in there that wants to be found. Think about the torch beam. Imagine shining it."

And as she did so, the girl-scorpion re-appeared, but only in her imagination, clattering on the box's glass walls while the eyelid lights swirled around her. Except that she was different. She looked calm and collected, almost like a different person. She gave Chemchi a sniggering look and then disappeared into the swirl.

Chemchi put the box down. What was it like to go mad? Wasn't this the kind of vision a crazy person would see? Had he put something in her food? They had eaten from different terrines, she now realised. She didn't feel crazy but she put her hands together, just to see what that was like, whether the sensation of one hand on the other felt normal, like the two hands of a person who was not dreaming, or drugged, or crazy; who was in the world as she had known it before she lost her cat in the souks, the world of Ali's riad, of mopping the floors, of making tea for him.

"You saw how long I tried, but it's just a black box."

"Give me the box," Morchid said, rising to replace it on the shelves, which Chemchi now realised were full of black boxes just like it. Was there someone inside each of them?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

MORCHID TOOK CHEMCHI back to the place where the captives were processed.

The citizens of Marrakech saw the trafficking vehicles moving around night after night, some of them windowless, some carrying captives openly, their gaunt faces visible. Escape was impossible because of the padlocks and chains on the doors — always supposing that the threat of extreme violence didn't dissuade them from the attempt. They were destined for households as domestic servants, for farms or building sites where they would labour, sweatshops where they would toil, or, in the case of most women and even children, brothels. Marrakech didn't see them unloaded and processed. Marrakech knew masters and mistresses and saw people slaving for them, but didn't ask any awkward questions.

The captives were quickly sent on to where they would slave. It wouldn't do to keep too many in one place: profits would be lost, and someone stupid enough to risk their life might finally ask an awkward question. Some were sent out in small vans in and around Marrakech, but larger groups were collected and dispatched to farther places in bigger vehicles like the one Chemchi had seen.

Chemchi watched a group of arrivals bundled into a chamber not unlike the one with the shadow carpet, and not far away from it in the souks. She stood with Morchid as the gang asked curt questions to find out what language the slaves could speak, and whether they had any skills. They sorted them by physical type: the strong, the attractive, the rest. Their teeth were examined. The men ordered them to jump as high as they could. Some clients were there to hand-pick and haggle.

Chemchi felt sick. She struggled to breathe the cooling night air. Another van was backing up and men were readying to unlock the back doors.

"It is human nature," said Morchid, "to slave or be enslaved. We even do it to ourselves. Life itself is slavery."

"That's ridiculous. Are you saying this cruelty is traditional, so we have to keep it going?"

"It's essential, deep in your history, yes."

"'Your history'. Are you saying you don't share one with the rest of us? That you're not human?"

"I am the butcher. In the stall in the souks. The rest you needn't know."

"You're not answering my question."

"If I were born fated to be a slave I would accept my destiny. We are but a succession of waves breaking on a shore. None of us matters. What persists is the sea. The depths."

"Spare me your philosophy. Do I look stupid, Morchid? All this trafficking must be making lots of money. Who benefits, then?"

"This," he swept a hand across the scene, his men handling captives like cattle, "this is really not the point. You will help me. You made a deal with me."

"And if I don't?"

"Then it's a box for you."

She had felt as though she had nothing to lose. Now she was reduced to silence.

"Do you know what you know?" he said.

"Of course I do. Look, I don't have any time for this. Get to your point."

"And know what you don't know? Are there things that you know but don't know that you know them? And matters of which you don't know that you don't know?"

"You're trying to trick me. You're confusing knowledge and awareness, anyway. I won't be part of this game."

"Seeing is like knowing, in a way. If someone doesn't see something, then there are no means or force or ability that will necessarily enable them to see it. It's in front of their eyes but it might as well be invisible. But you are different. You can see what's in front of your eyes. At least, when you use a torch, a torch that shines with your consciousness."

He paused. Chemchi didn't know what he meant. Or perhaps she did. Conscious light. When she shone a torch, she did focus — she was conscious — in a way that didn't feel like any other way of concentrating.

"You will find my son."

"You?! A son?! The poor creature. Find him yourself. Or get one of your lackeys to do it."

"He went through the carpet."

"So look for him there."

"He has been looked for there."

"But not by you?"

"He is in front of their eyes."

"So, you send people there. But you can't go yourself for some reason, because you would if you could. But they don't find him. And they come back — at least, some of them do — or you wouldn't know that. Interesting. What exactly have you told them to look for? "

"He is a baby."

"How exactly is that supposed to help?"

"There are no babies there."

"So you're asking me to find what doesn't exist." She shook her head. "If I hadn't seen an invisible carpet lately I would think you were a crackpot. So, this baby, he went there — was put there — recently."

"No."

"What? Now I really don't understand."

"Whoever goes there, stays as they are. But forgets."

"Where is my mother?" She tried to catch him off guard.

"She is not relevant."

"I'll help you on two conditions: that you release them. All of them." She nodded towards the captives. "And you tell me where my mother is."

"You're not in any position to dictate to me. You found your cat because of me. That was the deal. Your mother is your problem. Use your torch."

"I wish I knew how. And that applies to your son, too." And yet she had found Ibtissam, on an initial direction from Morchid. Was that really more than chance?

"You said the slavery is not the point. So when you have what you want, if I find your son, let them go."

One of his men was waiting to speak to Morchid, who bid him approach with a slight movement of his eye. The man whispered something in his ear.

"I have business to attend to. You will find my son." He walked away. Two men appeared from nowhere to lead Chemchi back to her cell.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

AS SHE WALKED between her guards, Chemchi looked them up and down. She thought about the scorpion girl in the box. Morchid knew she'd seen her, when he made his threat. It didn't matter how hard she had tried not to show it. Her face must have confirmed what he had wanted to know: that she could see what others cannot see. What is in front of our eyes, but nonetheless hidden.

She had kept hold of the pencil-torch he had given her. When she had seen the shadow carpet, it was because it had wanted to be found, according to Morchid. And yet it had also shrunk back from her beam, as though it was afraid of her power to see behind the shadows it was woven from.

"Let me have a look at you," she said to the men and shone the faint beam up and down them one by one. It was a puny beam out in the lamplit streets. You could hardly see where its light fell.

"What are you doing, put that away!" one of them said, his face contorted with hostility.

She switched it off.

"I needn't have bothered," she said. "You are what you seem to be. There's nothing more to you than meets the eye. You're brutes."

The men stopped and faced her. "What were you trying to do — are you some kind of witch?" said one of them. "If Morchid didn't want you safe from harm, why I'd —"

Chemchi kicked him where it really hurts, as hard as she could. She had chosen her moment carefully, as a white van passed nearby, probably carrying more slaves. She ran across its path. With a screech of brakes, it came to a sudden halt beside the men as she cleared the front of it. She ran down a narrow alley that she knew soon forked round a bend, and took the left path. She remembered a dangerous exploit as a young girl, when she had climbed onto the roof through a narrow gap in the netting. This she now repeated, although she was much bigger now. There was a tense moment as she squeezed through the gap she had easily cleared as a little girl, her legs kicking for a foothold. Eventually she felt a ledge and pushed. The starry night met her as she emerged above and quickly scrambled to where she could not be seen from below. Panting, she lay against some masonry to get her breath.

There was no reason to trust Morchid. But if she were to find his son, and could prove it without letting him know where he was, then she could bargain. He'd have to stop his slavery, she'd tell him, if he wanted to be reunited with his baby. And he'd have to give her a pointer to her mother. What if she were bound up with him in some way through her 'conscious light' — if it were his conscious light, too? The thought made her cringe. And why had he put the baby down there, and why did he want him back now? Supposing he meant the baby harm. Well, she wasn't necessarily going to hand the baby over. She was only going to find him.

She inched her way across the rooftops of the souks. The sky was moonless. The milky way stretched across it, a spill of stars.

From somewhere below, a sweet scent of cinnamon rose. This was where she had mostly grown up. It was familiar and yet what did she know of it, really — ensconced in the riad, watching her films? Suddenly it had become a place of great danger. Morchid and his men would know all the nooks and crannies she knew. But what about the magical places? The boxes in Morchid's cabinet? The chamber with the carpet?

The shadow carpet was intoxicating. The chamber beckoned to her, its candle-lit scene of disused furniture and the crowd of shadows on the carpet like a dream. What did she have to lose by going down there? Morchid wanted her to go through so she wouldn't be stopped, even though she had escaped. Obviously there was a way back, for she and Akimbe had witnessed someone de-shadowing, apparently unaided, as Camel-breath had watched. Morchid knew this, too, for otherwise there was no sense in asking her to look there.

And so she found herself pushing through the velvet drape in the dead of night. As far as she knew, she was the only one apart from Akimbe who knew of that entrance, and she could creep back out again in case anyone was waiting. Her heart thumped as she arrived at the chamber, pressed against a wall. The carpet lay in the light from the candles that never seemed to burn down. The hulks of furniture cast their shadows. She stopped and listened but there was complete silence.

She looked for Camel-breath's shadow but it was gone. Did that mean that he had emerged again? No trace was left, either, of the man they had witnessed de-shadowing.

She walked around the furniture, shining her pencil torch everywhere and opening and closing the cupboard doors as quietly as she could, but found nothing more. She was just wasting time, gathering courage.

At last she walked onto the carpet and switched off her torch. Glinting threads appeared and reached at her feet. Then more, and more. She stepped back off it.

Crouched on all fours beside it, she looked closer, and found herself staring at her own candle-shadows projected onto it. They were not blank like a normal shadow but filled with slowly swirling splotches of light, just the way the curtains appeared from this side.

A voice spoke from deep in the shadow lights. It was her voice, but beyond herself.

"Pass, and return. Pass, and return. Return from this place. From this place."

She laid a forearm on the carpet, which took it gently, and let her pull it back. It felt as she imagined it would feel to immerse her arm in the deepest, warmest ocean, and she wondered what lived beneath.

She moved onto the carpet, lay on the grateful threads, and sank below. It felt merciful, and she felt grateful in return. In the chamber, the shadow she left behind was perfect black. The network of glinting threads was cut off there where it lay, but almost at once the carpet began to sew itself around the new shadow like a vine of gold.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

WHEREVER CHEMCHI WAS, Akimbe had also been — and survived without harm, as far as he knew. But where exactly had he been in the under-carpet world? He remembered a desert. Was it like landing on Earth from another planet, visiting a single person in a tent in the middle of nowhere, and reporting back that people on Earth were friendly and there were no dangers to speak of?

His head was turning to mush with so many more questions than answers.

As he walked on the bustling Marrakech streets, packed with tourists and locals and all manner and means of transporting goods around — bicycles, donkeys, mopeds and bags — Akimbe saw Ali. He was perched on a stool near the barely noticeable alley that led to the riad, watching the world go by.

"What do you think you're doing?" Akimbe stood close and tried not to embarrass them both by letting his anger show. "I've found what has happened to Chemchi. But do you even care?"

Ali wouldn't look at him but continued to watch the passers-by, saluting those he knew. And he knew many.

"I've talked to Morchid's people," Ali said. "They say she's gone on an errand for him. That it was urgent and she couldn't let us know. They say not to worry."

"Not to worry?! I've seen her. She's a shadow, like I was."

"A shadow? I don't know what you're talking about. You two never really told me what happened in there, remember? Morchid's people wouldn't lie to me, Ali of the souks. You're mistaken."

"I've seen her with my own eyes."

"Her? You said a shadow. How many people can cast a given shadow."

An absence, and yet a presence. Somehow Akimbe knew it was her by the shape alone — and Camel-breath had confirmed it, hadn't he? He hated referring to the mouthings of such a vile creature.

He shook his head. "Very well, Ali, you just stay here on your stool and let the world walk past you. You must excuse me, I'm off to find Chemchi and my family."

"Wait a minute." But Akimbe turned away and walked off.

He showed the address Camel-breath had given him to a passer-by. The man pointed, gestured, span around, explained again, pointed again, until Akimbe could remember nothing more than the first two turnings, and set off.

He lost count of the false turns he made. The city confused him, to be sure. Equally, he wondered whether some of the people who 'helped' him were actually making him lost, although he couldn't understand why they would do that.

Eventually he came before double doors about twice his height, painted a shabby red. The house blended into those around it. Its roof high above was barely visible in the narrow street. No one else was around.

There was no answer to his knocks. He was about to leave when he heard the sound of a moped approaching. He waited while the spit and zing turned corners barely wide enough for one person, went faster to a whine on straight stretches, and twisted round a corner again.

Finally a figure approached, wearing goggles. A scarf covered his nose and mouth. He was too big, and dressed too thrillingly, for such a puny machine.

But that was of far less significance to Akimbe than what he noticed most of all about this rider: the frizz of tight curly black hair was much longer but could have been Akimbe's own, or at any rate one of his people's.

The moped stopped about five metres away. Was this the rider from the souks? Akimbe readied himself to dart to the side. He listened to the rise and fall of the engine pitch as the rider tweaked the throttle repeatedly as though in preparation to move towards him. The doorways were almost flush with the walls. There were no recesses to protect him.

Little of the face was visible to judge the rider's intentions. His posture gave no clue either. He sat about as straight as someone of his large frame could manage on the moped.

"Well, are you going to drive at me or aren't you?" Akimbe shouted, holding out his hands in invitation for the rider to do his worst. When he didn't respond, Akimbe took a few steps towards him. The rider pushed himself back with his feet. Encouraged, Akimbe strode forward, but to one side in so far as he could, to show that he meant no harm. The rider now seemed more scared of him than the other way around. He dragged his machine to the side as Akimbe passed.

"No, wait! Come!" The youth pulled down his scarf and called back to him. Then he drove the moped onwards and stopped at the double doors where Akimbe had knocked. The youth, in his late teens, dismounted and unlocked the doors.

"Come! Come inside. You were waiting for me, weren't you?" He beckoned. Akimbe felt he had nothing to lose.

Inside, the house was similar to Ali's riad, with a table in an atrium reaching up three storeys to the blue enamel sky. As always, something nearby was being cooked, something sweet. The sun swept down but there was plenty of welcome shade. The youth propped his moped in the hallway and continued through, raising his goggles onto his mass of hair and pulling the scarf below his chin. A pale blue robe hung off his thin frame. His nut-brown skin was lighter than Akimbe's, but black still. There were no ritual marks on his face, unlike Akimbe. He was from a different part of Africa. Or from somewhere else altogether.

"Please, sit," the youth said.

"Look," said Akimbe. He realised he didn't have a name for Camel-breath "... a man who ... a man gave me this address and said — well, I suppose he implied — that I could get help to find Chemchi and — you don't know who that is, do you? — and my parents and my sister. But I don't trust him so I don't know what I'm doing here or who you are. Just because you have a key to this address doesn't mean you're who I came to see. Can I speak to whoever's in charge here?" Akimbe had to draw a breath.

The young man had an air of grace and fragility, standing with his arms by his sides while he listened to Akimbe's stumblings. He had an unearthly air, which was increased by the sight of the great ridiculous goggles squashing his huge sphere of hair. Like someone from the air who had landed, out of kilter, into a strange world, Akimbe thought: landed into a strange world, just like me. Except when I emerged, upwards, from the carpet I felt squashed, very small, not myself. Whoever this is, he is lost in himself.

"Why, no one is in charge here. Unless I am in charge, by virtue of living here alone."

"Do you know the man who sent me here?"

"As far as I am aware, no one knows I live here."

"But evidently someone does." The young man shifted, almost invisibly, in reaction to Akimbe's logic.

"I am Deobia, by the way." He held out a hand on the end of a thin arm.

"Pleased to meet you. I am Akimbe, son of Shango. "

"I can help you," the youth said.

"How do you know you can help me? I've told you that I've lost some people, nothing more. You really know nothing about it."

"But I know all about the lost, the missing, the trapped in Marrakech," he said.

"You can't know all about the lost and missing, otherwise they wouldn't be either of those things, would they? But go on." Akimbe thought: now I sound like Chemchi. All logical.

"But I do. I work for the traffickers."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"YOU WHAT?" AKIMBE spat the words at him.

"I know where the slaves and the slaves-to-be are, where they've come from, where they're going to, who is bringing them, who is taking and using them."

"I can't believe you work for those pigs. Are you their slave?"

"Yes and no. I'm useful to them doing what I do, but it requires freedom for me to operate on their behalf."

"And what is your 'operation' exactly?"

"Intelligence, mainly. The enslavers want to know as much as they can about where the slaves come from, and get the most profit out of selling them on. I speak many languages. Ones I don't know I pick up fast. Also, unlike just about anyone else, I can read and write. I talk to buyers. I talk to traders — the traffickers, that is. I talk to the 'goods', the 'cargo', who become farm-hands, servants, cooks, cleaners. And some used for sex, even children, by dirty old men."

Akimbe couldn't believe his ears. The young man was using words as though they had no real meaning. "I'm still waiting to hear how you justify it." Akimbe said. "You're betraying all of us, me included. As if you cared."

"These people are powerful. If it wasn't me, it would be someone else like me. And in the meantime maybe I'll find what I'm looking for. I don't know where I come from, you see. It's just a blank. I meet so many of them, from all parts and tribes and peoples, every day. Bit by bit, I learn about them and what becomes of them. And the routes the traffickers take in and out of Marrakech. I listen on the grapevine. I become more and more trusted. One day, perhaps I'll find —"

"What were you doing searching around the souks? It was you, wasn't it?"

"Even in my spare time I look for the unusual."

"Why are you telling me all of this? You don't know me."

"You know the girl. I've seen you together. And I was there when she saw Morchid."

"Chemchi. What did you see?"

"She was with Morchid. I didn't see exactly what became of her but it was obviously a trap. These are dangerous people. Perhaps more than you realise. And clever, very clever. At least, Morchid can outwit anyone around him. I saw you looking for her. I know of the place, the hidden place in the Criée Berbère. I saw your feet disappear."

"And what do you know about a carpet — does your 'intelligence' include that?"

"What kind of carpet do you mean?"

"A shadow carpet."

Deobia paused. "I have seen such a carpet."

"And did you emerge from such a carpet?"

Deobia paled, his brown skin washing out. He put a hand on the table to steady himself, trying to make it look casual, then forced a smile.

Akimbe said: "Why should I trust you?" And yet he did, instinctively: he was telling this young man everything. He looked at the young man with his goggles and the hair escaping from his head and — he couldn't quite put his finger on it — something lost inside this crash-landed but cerebral youth. He's from another planet, Akimbe thought: a planet of brainy people who could melt into air whenever they wanted. Brainy, but with no sense. He knows but he doesn't see.

"She's gone in," Akimbe said. "I've seen her shadow."

"Her shadow..." Deobia's eyes rapidly searched the air in front of him, as though thinking through all the possible consequences of what he had just heard. "We can go through the carpet, after her."

"Do you even know what I'm talking about? We don't know how to get out again. If I knew that, I'd get Chemchi out. She knows how. She de-shadowed me. By shining a light. This one." Akimbe showed Deobia the battered torch he'd found near Morchid's stall.

"How could a light help?"

"It ... reveals things. I've seen her do it, with this ordinary torch. But I've tried and it doesn't work for me."

"And what do you remember about inside?"

"Fragments, pieces that don't make sense. Like a dream. Like I'd been in there a long time. A hundred years, Chemchi says." Longer than his family could have survived. No. She must be wrong. He must be just confused. Everything seems strange, that's all, after whatever happened in the under-carpet world.

Deobia seemed not to notice the strangeness of the things he said, seemed to accept them. Just as he apparently accepted his role with the traffickers, as though it was just another job. He said, "Tell me about the fragments. Was anyone else there?" His searching look was deepening.

"I remember a house alone in a desert, and a man living there; with a kind face."

"What did he look like?"

"Like no one else I've seen. He always carried a worried look — perhaps more than that, a little unbalanced. But he was my teacher. Or my master. Or something."

"What did he tell you?"

"I don't really remember but I think he was trying to prepare me for something. To protect me, maybe."

"Try to remember. We need to know what we are getting ourselves into."

"Why is this a 'we' all of a sudden? It's me who needs to go through — in — under — oh whatever it is. Then perhaps I'll be able to understand what has happened."

"Or you'll just forget again. We would be stronger together."

"What's in it for you?"

Deobia looked unsteady again.

"Are you all right?" Akimbe took a step towards him.

"Yes. It's nothing. I told you, I'm looking for something as well. Perhaps I'll find whatever it is there. What have we got to lose?"

****

The chamber gave Akimbe a peculiar feeling. No one was there, unless they were hiding. And yet he couldn't help feeling there was an awareness — he didn't know how else to put it — as though all the pieces of furniture lying randomly around were conscious of what took place there. The boy and the taller youth stood around the carpet like people waiting for something to happen that might never come.

"Well, what do we do?" said Deobia after waiting for Akimbe to make a move.

"We lie on the carpet, I think, like Chemchi's shadow. The carpet will pull us in, you'll see. You go there." Akimbe pointed to a spot next to Chemchi's shadow. "And I'll go the other side of her."

"Why?"

"That way, maybe we'll both arrive close to where she arrived."

"Why not go on top of her shadow, then?"

"I don't know why but the thought gives me the creeps. Supposing we get mixed up? But then again there is a jumble of shadows on top of shadows — of people and rats and mice and who knows what else. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson by now. Sent word around." It was a joke but neither of them laughed. "And speaking of creatures, where is Ibtissam?"

In answer to his question, the cat who had been following him around stared back at him, her eyes lit by the candles, when he spun round to look. She was sitting still on her haunches like a plaster figure atop a bookcase with no books. She knew by now to stay away from the carpet. She showed her fangs and let out a cry.

"Do you want to go first?" said Deobia.

"We'll go together. I'm just going to have to trust you, I suppose, to come in with me." He had Chemchi's torch and his mother's bracelet. "Come."

He knelt beside Chemchi's shadow and motioned to Deobia to do the same on the other side of her. The threads reached out for them at once.

"One, two, three ... lie down." The carpet weaved itself over, stitching its blackness until their forms died away, flattened to shadows. Ibtissam swished her tail, watching the gold tracery begin its slow sewing around them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

LIKE WHEN YOU'VE hit your funny bone, only all over his body, Akimbe felt the tiny tentacles of the carpet suck and grip at him. "What have I got to lose? What have I got to lose? What have I got to lose?" His own voice echoed back to him in a loop. It wasn't black, as he had imagined, far from it: a searing white light blinded him as much with his eyes closed as open. He felt stupid. Idiotic. He was putting himself at risk. For Chemchi, someone he had known for only a matter of days, launching himself into this sickening clinging and pulling of the threads. Entering who knew what world with Deobia, someone he had met only that day. "You must be mad. You must be mad. You must be mad." His voice looped on. He blundered into everything he did, following his nose. Why couldn't he think things through, be systematic like Chemchi? "Nothing to lose. Nothing to lose. Nothing to lose." His voice was sharp and clear but outside himself and not, as he first thought, inside his panicking mind. "Idiot. Stupid. Akimbe idiot. Stupid."

And Deobia's voice was also there, somewhere to his left. But it was muffled, strangled in the rushing of the threads. Tears streamed from Akimbe's eyes in the blinding whiteness. But something was changing. The carpet's threads were leaving the front of his body. His nose became freed although it was numb from their tugging and clawing. Then his cheeks became free. His eyes. His knees and shoulders. His feet. He was emerging. It should have been downwards, the way he faced when he lay on the carpet. But it was the other way up. He could feel his limbs beginning to kick and wiggle as though they had a life of their own. And he was on his back. Gravity was pulling at him. The white light was softening, yellowing, moving to the centre of his vision, becoming ... the sun. Yes, he was looking upwards. And two faces had appeared, looking down at him as he thrashed his limbs around like a new-born baby.

One of the two, a woman, spoke. "Look! Two of them!"

"Two more to induct," said the other, a man. He didn't look happy about the prospect.

"That's three in just a few days. We should give thanks." Said the woman. "There, there." Akimbe's legs and arms had a life of their own, swinging wildly as though he were an insect on his back. He was out in the open, in what appeared to be a desert, lying on the sand. He looked to his left and there was Deobia. Who was still.

"What's wrong with that one? He's not moving." They had turned their attention to Deobia, who was wearing his goggles over his eyes. "Search me," said the man.

"Deobia!" Akimbe had trouble knowing how loud his voice was. He thought he might be shouting. "Deobia! Are you all right?"

Deobia stirred, raised his goggles into their usual position on his hair, and propped himself up on his elbows to looked at the man and woman.

"Oh my!" said the woman. "He's not a new one!"

"He's not a new one either." Deobia spoke to her calmly as though nothing strange were happening at all. "He's been through before. Help me."

Deobia held Akimbe's right arm and leg, the man his other leg and the woman his other arm. His movements had little force, like a baby. His limbs gradually stopped. They released him finally, and he was able to move them.

The woman stroked his forehead. "There, there," she said. "It's all right now."

"You're too soft," said the man. "They're trouble, I can tell." He turned to the boy and the youth. "If you're not new ones, how come you've passed through our gates?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Akimbe. He raised himself in the shifting sand. His legs felt as though they belonged to someone else. He turned to Deobia. "What in the name of my family is going on? What was all that about 'new ones'? Your legs weren't kicking around. Does that mean you've had lots of practice at this?" Deobia just looked at the ground.

"Stop bickering," said the man. "We don't want you here if you're going to cause trouble. You've no business going through the gates, either of you. However you managed it."

"Which gates?" said Akimbe. "You know all this, don't you."

"Look behind you," said Deobia.

And there were gates, made of ironwork, huge and elaborate, standing by themselves in the middle of the hulking sand dunes all around them. They were like the relic of a building that had sunk without trace.

"I can see something through them." Akimbe walked up.

"Don't touch!" the man and the woman and Deobia all shouted in unison.

Peering through a gap he tried to focus his eyes. There was something beyond the iron bars. No desert sand. No sky. Just a random arrangement of bright patches swirling and floating slowly in a scratchy darkness, as he'd seen in the gap between the curtains when they left the chamber, Akimbe thought: like what he saw when he looked at a bright light and closed his eyes. Yes, that was it. He closed his eyes. Opened them again. It was exactly the same beyond the gates. Only it was real. He wanted to put his hand through to try and touch the lights but the tracery of ironwork was too dense. He walked around the side of the gate. Every step took much effort because of the sand giving beneath his feet. There he saw only desert. He went further to look back from the other side. He saw the man and the woman and Deobia, and the dunes behind them. When he walked back round to them and looked through the gates again, there were the splotchy lights. He closed his eyes again. Exactly the same lights, complete with the after-image of the sun above. But these were hanging beyond the gates, as if tempting him to reach through to them.

"Deobia, in the name of everything that's sacred, tell me what's going on."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

DEOBIA STOOD TALL in his long robe. His hair, even with the goggles pressed to it, added at least six inches to his frame. The look he returned was placid and alien. Knowing but not seeing. It frightened Akimbe. A hot dry wind blew steadily against his face. Dunes towered around them, with smaller dunes amongst them, formed by an absent wind. Deobia looked strangely as though he belonged here. They were in a silent wilderness. The hot sand burned at his sandalled feet.

"In my experience, Akimbe, the sacred counts for nothing. I can't really explain. I've tried to explain it to myself many times, believe me. It's like a combination of what people call heaven and hell. Everything is stuck in a narrow slice of time like a moment after death or before birth."

"You lied to me. You've been here before. But you could remember it from the other side, from Marrakech, couldn't you. Why should I listen to anything you say? I'm not dead. Look," He tore at his sleeve and shook his arm about. "So it's not hell. And we grow in wombs, from nothing. There's no before."

"No conception? We already existed. We were somewhere, if only an idea.."

"No, we become. After our parents. From nothing. We were nowhere."

Deobia's calm infuriated Akimbe. "All right, all right," Deobia said. "Whatever you choose to believe. This place is an anomaly. Everything's got mixed up. It's as though a circuit has broken, or there was a bug in software. Except that this is a bug in reality."

Akimbe looked blank. "I don't know what you're talking about. What is a circuit? Software? Of course there are bugs in the ground, in reality. Talk sense, will you."

"I don't know what you're talking about, either," said the man. "I just know that you're here and you have to be processed."

"We're not going to be processed," said Deobia. "We've been processed. We're not new ones, remember?"

"But you've come through the gates, haven't you?"

"Did we?" said Akimbe.

"Yes," the man said. "We watched you."

"You walked right on through, closed them behind you, lay on the ground on your backs. Just like they all do." Said the woman. "You looked like a nice pair of boys."

"So, as I was saying," the man was getting more and more irritated. "You've come through the gates but there's no paperwork for you. We need to do the paperwork. To say who you are." His tone was one he'd use to explain things to a simple child.

"We are new ones," said Deobia. "

"You've just agreed you're not new ones!"

"We are and we aren't. We've come through the gates haven't we? So, on that basis we're new ones, right?"

"Yes, but..."

"But we've been here before."

"Yes, you've been here before. But ..."

"So we're not new ones. Do you really have a form for our situation?"

"I don't care about forms for your situation, I care only about the form."

"And what will you say on the form?" asked Akimbe.

"Name. Date. Time. Place."

"'Place'? How many such places are there?" said Akimbe.

"Just the one, as far as we know." The man looked at the woman.

"As far as we know," she agreed.

"So what's the point of recording it?" said Akimbe.

"I just do as I'm told," said the man. "And I write down 'by the gates'".

"Very well," said Akimbe, "and what about the name. What will you write for us?"

"Why I'll give you names. Everyone has to have a name. Here," he opened a ledger and showed its handwritten contents to Akimbe. On the left were female names, on the right, male. A neat line was drawn through the first names on each side, to show they had been used. More male names had been used up than females.

"So, you'll be Arkenthal753, and him..." he nodded towards Deobia, "he's Orethon4976."

"No, I'm Akimbe and he's Deobia. We already have names. We are already people."

"You are now. You think you are. But you won't be. You won't be you, I mean."

"What do you mean? How could I not be I?"

"Don't ask me. But that's what happens here. You could wake up tomorrow couldn't you and everything would look familiar, nothing strange, and yet you were different. And how would you know?"

"The people around me would know."

"Only if they knew you. Here, nobody will know you."

"You talk of 'here' and 'people'. There's nothing here but sand and the gates. What people?"

The man was too concerned about his ledger of names to answer. "Anyway, look what you've done. I've crossed out your names now. I've wasted them."

"It doesn't matter, give them to someone else or use others, there are plenty more in your book."

"Plenty more!" he looked at the woman. "Did you hear that? Plenty more! And what does this boy think I'm gong to do when I run out of names, eh? I've got just six pages left, look." He counted out the pages for Akimbe.

"So make up some more names. In another book."

The man snorted in disbelief. "How could I? I can't just go and make up new names, what would they be?"

"May I look at the female names?" Deobia said. "What about this last one, 'Erewhon9', the last one through?"

"My goodness me, she was trouble too. Kept saying she already had a name. Chem ... Chem-something. Right bunch of trouble these new ones," he looked at the woman who supplied her agreement with a vigorous nodding, "These new ones. I'll tell you. They're not what they used to be. World's going to the dogs."

Akimbe said, "Where did she go?"

"We processed her. Like we always do. Come along with me," said the man.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THEY FOLLOWED THE man and woman, trudging with difficulty up the side of a dune that seemed to rise forever. And at the top an extraordinary sight met them. There was a place stuck in the desert nearby. It looked like an old city, but as though someone had taken a knife, cut away all but the heart, and dropped it in the dunes. It was a fragment, cleanly cut out, without any attempt to make sense of the buildings. They just began abruptly, in the middle of rooms and courtyards, and everything else beyond that was desert. Small dunes had shored up against it. And Akimbe saw that, dotted in the desert much further away, were other places — no, fragments of places — as though they had been planted in the same way. They were scattered around as far as he could see. And each had a sun above it — at least, a burning orange disc that could have been a sun. Except they came and went like broken fluorescent lamps. Only the sun directly above them, above the fragment nearby, was constant.

Akimbe spoke to Deobia under his breath. "What on earth is that?"

"You understand as much of this as I do." Deobia's voice was sounding further away every time he spoke.

"But you're not acting surprised by any of it. You pretended you hadn't been here before but it's obvious that you have. And unlike me you remember it, don't you."

"It didn't seem relevant to tell you."

"You're at home here. You didn't land on your back struggling like a baby, like somebody just born here the way I did. No, you lay there calmly like someone who belonged here. These people," he pointed at the man and the woman, "why, you were positively bored by their nonsense and you just stood there and let me make a fool of myself asking them questions and hearing their silly answers. How come you can remember all this but I can't?"

"Just because it's familiar, it doesn't mean I understand it. How could anyone understand how the buildings ahead of us just start in the middle, all chopped out of something bigger? And there are stranger things inside, believe me. Anyway, now that you're back, isn't any of it familiar to you, as well?"

"Not at all. It makes my skin crawl. Are we going to be safe here?"

"That depends."

"Depends on what?"

"You'll see."

The man and woman led them to a door right on the edge of the city fragment. They stepped from the sand onto the tiled floor of a large room that had been halved diagonally, the other half being the desert they had come from. At first sight, it looked as though someone had demolished everything beyond the fragment, and then very neatly cleaned the debris away. But the edges weren't broken and jagged, as you would expect if the remainder had been destroyed. They were smooth but blurry at the same time. Akimbe couldn't hold his eyes upon the edge. It was as though the edge was visually slippery. His eyes slid off it whenever he tried to see what was there.

Through the door was an entire room. It was mercifully cool inside. The man went to sit behind a desk at one end of it. The woman stood beside him, looking lovingly at Akimbe and Deobia. The room was otherwise completely empty. The man produced two sheets of paper.

"Now, let's see, Arkenthal753 and Orethon4976. What are you missing?"

Akimbe looked at Deobia. "Missing?"

"Yes, new ones are always missing something. Thinking of something that isn't already here. Ridiculous! Now, look, I don't want any more of your nonsense. You came through the gates. Are you going to deny that now? Your friend here," he nodded at Deobia, "your friend here ... there's something a bit funny about him but you were on your back, legs and arms waving in the air, just like you're supposed to be."

The woman, who seemed to have been waiting for this moment, suddenly opened her arms, strode round to Akimbe and hugged him with her head on his shoulder.

"There, there," she said, "we'll soon have you processed. Mummy's going to love her new one, she's going to love him to bits!"

Akimbe gently removed her arms from around his neck. "And what exactly does 'processed' mean?" said Akimbe.

"Well, you'll be assigned to Mishun793 here," said the man, "so that she'll be your parent and show you our ways and we'll learn about you until no-one knows the difference. The important thing is we'll learn what you are missing and arrange things so you won't miss it anymore. Even some of the people you think about we'll make appear for you! The rest you'll forget. Can't have you thinking about anything that doesn't exist here. Oh no! Soon we'll be exactly the same thing as your thoughts."

"What do you mean, you'll make the people I'm missing appear? Like my family?"

"Maybe them. Maybe. It depends," said the man.

"On what? In any case, they won't be my family. Will they?"

"How would you know the difference? They'll be exactly your thoughts."

Akimbe snorted with anger. "And what will I be doing in this world where everything is the same as my thoughts?"

"You'll shop, of course! My, how you'll shop!"

"Did you really mean to tell me all of this," said Akimbe. "Why would I go along with it? It sounds horrendous. Fake."

"Oh, silly, of course you'll go along with it!" said the woman. "You'll see. Whether you're with me or not."

Suddenly she didn't look so mothering anymore. What had been ridiculous took on a sinister note. Akimbe felt played with. "Look, I have a mother and a father. I just want them back, and my sister, The real ones. Thanks but I don't need you," he looked at Mishun793, "to be my parent. Don't you have any children here? Any babies to be parents of?"

"Any what?"

"Little ... you know ... tiny humans? Just been born?" Akimbe was now full of sarcasm.

"I haven't a clue what you're on about. Lots of different sizes but tiny? No. Never seen tiny."

"And were you ever a new one?"

"Me, don't be silly! Who would have done my paperwork!"

"We should go," said Deobia.

Akimbe said, " I know someone here. A man who lives in a house by himself and teaches. There's nothing but desert around his house. I stayed with him."

The man and woman looked blankly back at him.

"You're just like that girl, Erewhon9. She wouldn't do the paperwork, either. Had a lot to say for herself, she did. A lot of mouth." The man opened and closed his fingers for emphasis. "Asked if I'd heard of someone, she did. Mork.. Morch.."

"Morchid?" said Akimbe.

"Yes, that's the one. We told her: it doesn't sound like anyone on my list. Just like the funny names you say you have — no numbers on the end. She asked if there was a place here called the Criée Berbère. So I told her, yes of course there is, the place where they sell carpets. She didn't say a word, just marched off, out that door. Like she knew where she was going." He chuckled.

"We must go after her," said Deobia.

Akimbe led him a few paces away from the desk and whispered in his ear. "Where is this place? In the name of the spirits —".

"It's the souks of Marrakech. Except that it's not. Don't look at me like that. How was I supposed to explain?"

"It doesn't seem like where I was when I was in the under-carpet world, though. Not a big place like this. I was isolated. It may have been in one of those other fragments sitting out in the desert."

"Let's go."

"No, I need to find out what I can from these people. Perhaps they know something of my family. They said they could make them appear."

"They know nothing, believe me."

"I must try." He turned back to the man and woman. "Tell me, do you always take new ones here? What about all those other places in the desert?"

"Well I can't speak for where the others take their new ones," said the man.

"Others?"

"Yes, we're not the only ones who go and check the gates, you know."

Deobia shook his head. "This is folly. Let's go through that door and find your Chemchi. At least we can do that for now. And then she may help you find your family."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

AND THERE, ON opening the door, was the insect swarm and noise of an old city. The mopeds like bumblebees, the bicycle butterflies, the people ambling like daddy long-legs, swarming and bumping down the alleys. It was loud, too loud not to have penetrated into the office where those nincompoops had taken her after the gates in the desert. And yet it had been silent from the other side.

None of the details were exact but Chemchi began to feel as she watched this world go by that it was Marrakech, at least a semblance of it. "Pass and return," the voice in the carpet had said — her voice, but separated off from her — "return from this place." Is that what the voice had meant, that this was Marrakech too, in some sense? There were differences Chemchi couldn't put her finger on. Not to mention that the souks had been cut off cleanly, giving way to the desert. Here inside, people were carrying on as though nothing was bizarre about that — which was bizarre in itself.

She pulled her headscarf to cover not only her hair but as much of her face as possible, hating its constraint. In the riad she walked around with her black hair uncovered. Was there someone here who might recognise her? It was best to take precautions. Brushing her braid from her forehead and tucking it into the headscarf to hide it, she pushed into the crowd.

At a nearby stall, she bought a notebook and pen, to record what happened to her. Her handwriting was poor, thanks to Ali taking her out of school after just a few years. But she could draw a little. She knew she might forget everything, as Akimbe had. The purchase went perfectly normally. The stallholder understood her, accepted her money. There were no questions.

She visited several more stalls, feigning interest in the merchandise. And much continued to seem normal at first, the people behaving the same, going about their business.

"Where did you go on holiday this year? To the mountains?" she asked a stallholder.

"Why, yes we did, we stayed by the river." But she had seen the desert everywhere around, apart from other fragments of places off in the distance. There were no mountains.

"And how long have you lived here?" she continued.

"I've always lived here."

"When did the rest of Marrakech get chopped off?"

"Chopped off?"

"Yes, everything just disappears and there are dunes where there should be alleys, stalls, mosques."

"You are funny. You new ones! Honestly, you say the strangest things!"

"Were you a new one or were you born here?"

"Born? What is that?"

She took her leave of the stallholder and walked along through the crowds, taking a long draught of the scents around her in the heat. The familiar spices and fruits, meats and vegetables, even the cloths, it all smelled exactly as it was supposed to smell. The stallholder hadn't balked when she called it Marrakech. She looked at her watch. Back where she had come from, it was the dark of very early morning. Here the sun was high above.

Chemchi considered how she was supposed to look for a baby that might not exist, in a place where people acted as though the abnormal didn't exist. She had no idea. She decided to continue to walk around, flashing her torch wherever and whenever there was an opportunity without arousing suspicion, and hope for the best. It wasn't a system but it was something.

After a while, a man approached her. "Please, where is the Mouassine mosque?" he asked. "I need to go there to pray and the time is soon."

"Ah, you are a stranger too."

"No, I live here."

"You live in Marrakech but you don't know where the Mouassine mosque is," she said. "You must have arrived recently."

"I've always lived here. I just happen not to know where that particular mosque is." He was looking a little offended but he hadn't batted an eyelid when she referred to Marrakech.

"Allow me to accompany you. I'm going that way myself." Now they were headed for her usual haunts.

But when they passed through the Souk des Teintures, where the dyers workshops lay as they should have done, and where the fountain should be on the approach to the mosque, Marrakech just stopped. The walls ceased and Chemchi looked out over sand. Through a gap in the enormous dunes she could see another fragment of a city off in the distance, its sides chopped off abruptly. Apparently directly above it was a sun. Another sun, burning, which disappeared and re-appeared, flickering.

"Why have we stopped?" The man looked at his watch. "It's almost time for prayers."

"But it's not there!"

"What do you mean? You said you knew the way."

"I do. But the mosque is not there. Look, there is only sand where it should be. And that other place. And that other sun."

He looked where she looked. And back at her.

"If you've wasted my time, my girl... You're a new one, aren't you. Why didn't you say? Where are your parents? I've never seen a new one without parents before."

He walked off to ask a nearby stall owner. The owner left his stall, stood close to the man and put his hand on his shoulder, saying something in a low voice that Chemchi couldn't hear. The man seemed to understand and to accept whatever he was told. He went back the way they had come. The stall owner caught her stare.

"May I help you?" Everyone seemed placid here, even the man who wanted the mosque had looked peaceful again as he left. They were like clockwork toys, she thought, not real people. Suddenly she felt angry. Why should she respond to an automaton? She turned and walked away.

He called to her "Hello! Come back!"

Did he simply want to sell her something, or had he spotted something different about her? She also wondered what he had whispered in the other man's ear. Chemchi walked on into the crowds without answer. Everything seemed to be about shopping here, and all the trading and calling and bargaining going on started to oppress her in the heat. To her left was the eeriness of the periphery with the desert beyond, and she decided to trace a path near to it. Again and again as she walked and then stopped to watch, she saw people headed for places beyond the edge, but they always became confused as they drew near, asked someone, and turned back, apparently forgetting whatever they had been headed for.

After a while, she came across a stall selling kaftans, one she frequented in Marrakech, and where she knew the owner well. Only it was not he who was running this stall, and neither was it anyone she had seen helping out before.

"Do you know Morchid?" It was worth a try. Supposing he'd misled her?

"I don't know what you mean. Do I know what?"

"How about a butcher?"

"Ah, the butcher in the Rue el-Gza!"

"Does he have a son?"

"A what?"

In Marrakech, there was no butcher on the Rue el-Gza, which should lie beyond where she stood, but where only desert lay. She repeated her question at several more stalls, with similar results.

The sun still burned high in the sky, where it had stayed throughout the hours she had spent here. It wasn't moving. She hadn't been able to fully comprehend this before. The heat, she thought, has got to me. But now she couldn't deny it. She took a table at the back of a cool café to try to collect herself. She was here to find a baby, not to solve the mystery of this place. These clockwork people couldn't help her. They didn't know what a son was, let alone a baby. The mixture of strangeness and familiarity had confused her. She hadn't yet been to the obvious places: where the Criée Berbère should be, or the places where Morchid might have been, if only he existed here.

She set off. Nearest was the square where Morchid's gang operated in Marrakech, where she had stood with him before she escaped.

CHAPTER THIRTY

WHEN SHE ARRIVED, no one was around but a white van stood in the corner. Someone had written in the dust that clung to the van's doors: "Slaves asleep. Do not disturb."

She couldn't count on remaining alone for long. And the enslavers here might be clockwork but still turn out to be just as brutal as their counterparts back home.

The van rocked slightly on its springs. Her heart stopped. There was no one in the front cab and no windows in the rear compartment, which was separated off. Then a child's faint wail came from inside. Someone quickly shushed her. Chemchi took out her torch and shone it on the bodywork, concentrating as hard as she could. Thinking of Morchid's boxes, she prepared herself to see scorpion tails. But there was nothing, just the dirty white of the van's paintwork.

Voices appeared from a building just yards away, muffled behind closed doors and shutters, a gruff question and an equally gruff answer. The van stood in shade but the air was searingly hot and she saw only a vent in the roof for ventilation. The monster who had left them there was probably nearby.

If this was Marrakech, her horror at the plight of those inside would have been beyond question. For a moment, though, she wondered whether this whole place was an illusion to trick and confuse her. In this unreal counterpart, this unfathomable island of broken Marrakech in the desert, a doubt gnawed at her. Were these simply more clockwork souls who, for all she knew, felt nothing? Was this a trap? But she looked inside herself, at her own fear, and thought of what Akimbe must have felt when he arrived here. Of course she must help them. What was she thinking?

There was more slight rocking, as though someone was walking inside the van. For all her care, her footsteps sounded slightly as she walked round to the other side. The rocking stopped. The rear door was locked with a chain and padlock around its handles.

The driver's door was slightly ajar. She opened it. The keys were in the ignition. She climbed inside. Chemchi didn't know how to drive, not really, despite carefully watching Ali whenever he had hired a car to take them to the mountains for brief holidays. It wouldn't be long after she started the engine before the monsters came. There was a wrench on the floor by the passenger seat.

"Who are you?" The whispered voice came from a grille behind the driver's seat, a woman's face close up to it.

Another woman's face appeared at the grille for a look at her, then a man. They all looked exhausted. Chemchi put her face to the grille and let her eyes adjust to the darkness inside. She thought she could also see three young girls.

"I'm trying to help you but I can't drive," said Chemchi.

"If I pass you this," she held up the wrench for them to see. "Force the lock from inside, but quietly." Chemchi's heart was beating so fast, it thumped against her ribcage. There were murmerings inside.

"Pass it," the man said. His voice was high like a woman's. He was a eunuch, a man who wouldn't desire the females he accompanied. Chemchi didn't like the way he spoke to her — as though she were a stupid girl — but now was not the time to argue. She got out and pressed herself by the rear of the van, which was close to a wall and made a reasonable hiding place. There was a scraping sound of metal being forced, but not too loud. And again. Then someone pushed from inside and the doors opened an inch or two, only for the chain to hold them.

"Where are you?" the man hissed. She moved to the crack in the doors, where his eye appeared. She could smell sweat and fear and urine.

The chain was not so heavy. No one had thought someone would dare — or care — to try and free their captives. The lock and chain served only to prevent them from escaping from inside.

He shoved the wrench through the crack. "Twist the chain off." She passed one end through the chain, held the wrench with both hands, and twisted it as hard as she could. Laughter broke out, a dirty man's cackle, a few doors away.

There was a crack as a link gave. The laughter stopped. Chemchi stood aside as the captives poured out of the van, gasping for air and blinking in the sunlight. They ran, following her.

****

Filth- and sweat-covered, they all crouched, panting, in a hidden gap between stalls. It was the first chance for the women to embrace the girls, desperately clinging to one another for dear life. They seemed to have forgotten that Chemchi was there as they hugged and kissed. But not the man, who watched her. The girls were around twelve or thirteen. She felt so much older at sixteen.

"Where have you come from?" she put her hand on a mother's shoulder.

"Thank you, thank you oh thank you," she touched Chemchi's cheek.

"We have to move on," Chemchi said. "Where do you need to go?" The gang would be combing the area, probably enjoying the sport of it.

"Who are you, girl?" The man had a hard face that contrasted with the falsetto of his voice. His stare made her want to squirm.

"Never mind me. How will you get home — where is home?"

"We'll return over the mountains," said the woman who had touched her cheek. All of them were examining her by now.

Chemchi's heart sank. "What mountains?! For goodness' sake, what's wrong with you people! This isn't Marrakech. It's a little piece of somewhere like it but it's broken, cracked. Why can't you see?"

"Come with us." The woman reached to touch her cheek again but thought better of it. Chemchi had pulled her headscarf down. Her green eyes and black braid gave her a wild look.

Chemchi closed her eyes and shook her head. "I'll take you to the edge and we'll see. You'll see. Or maybe you won't. Let's go." They moved off towards the street.

The clockwork people barely seemed to notice this odd assortment, despite their filthy and desperate countenances. Chemchi led them through a twisting path, searching in front and behind in case they were being followed.

They reached the entrance to a square that was actually a triangle, for it stopped at a diagonal and the dunes lay beyond. It was empty but for an old beggar-woman, like Rime and so many others in Marrakech. She was perfectly still, crouched half-way along a wall, hunched so low, she looked as though she could never get up again. Where did all these people go to or come from, Chemchi wondered — in Marrakech, let alone this cracked version of it? The old woman hadn't appeared to notice them.

"Why have you stopped?" the mother was frantic. "We have to go. There is no time. They'll catch us." She was the only one to pause with Chemchi: the others continued on across the square in the brilliant sunshine, towards the dunes, their small shadows gliding with them from the high sun. No one came to whisper in their ear and turn them back.

Chemchi shook her head again. "It's just sand out there, and other bits of places like this. There are no mountains. Where do you think you are going?"

"Come with us." The mother shook her head as though Chemchi were simple, took Chemchi's hand in both of hers and looked deep into her eyes, her cat's eyes. But Chemchi froze. She didn't know what to say. "Very well," the woman said. "My children, I must go with them. Thank you. And goodbye." She turned and ran to catch up with the others, who were paused on the blurry, faintly zig-zagging edge where the desert began. They were looking back for the woman, but not for Chemchi.

And six people walked over the edge as though it did not exist; with mothers' arms around their children, they stepped beyond and walked in a valley between dunes, disappearing from view as Chemchi watched them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHEMCHI HAD NEVER felt so alone; even her loneliness when she cleaned the riad while Ali and the guests were all out was nothing like this. She wished Akimbe were with her. But most of all, she wished she could go to her mother.

A fly buzzed at her face and she swatted it away. Stop, she told herself, stop thinking of what makes you weak. Of what takes your power away. Morchid's baby son: she must find him and find her way back, before she began to forget like Akimbe. There was no one to fetch her back. "Return from this place." That must mean the chamber. The chamber, or rather its counterpart, here in the fragment, in cracked Marrakech.

The old woman along the wall had not moved. She was dressed in black and whatever shadow she made under this high sun was indistinguishable from the folds of her dress.

Chemchi stopped a few paces away and asked, "Where is the butcher?" The woman barely lifted her severely drooping head to answer:

"You can't ask me that."

"But I just did. What about a baby? Have you seen one?" She felt no qualms by now, about asking these abrupt questions.

"Nor that. It's my heart, my weak, weak heart; you're making it flutter; you'll break an old woman in two."

"It's a simple enough question, my dear. Look," Chemchi put on a mollifying voice and crouched beside her. "Look, I'm only asking. If you've heard of a butcher, or a baby, his son, just tell me what you know. Then I'll go."

The sunlight, reflected off the white walls and the pale stone of the square, was blinding. Chemchi squinted at the wrinkled, drooping head. It was eerily quiet around them, not far from the busy souks and yet they might as well have been miles away. What was this woman doing here? Not begging, surely, despite the outstretched claw.

The old woman finally inched her head up to look at Chemchi. It seemed to take the greatest of efforts, as though a crane were winching it slowly. She trembled. "It is you," she said, "I've been expecting you too. You're his eyes, aren't you. His finding eyes. Show me!"

Chemchi shone her torch at the old woman's face. She could see nothing of the beam in the intense sun. But as it passed over her face she saw a beautiful young woman with earrings hanging by an improbable length. They were made of elaborate hoops in cascades. She was just like the girl whose photograph the old Tuareg woman had shown her when she was little. Had it been her grandmother who showed it to her?

Chemchi suddenly wanted to throw her arms around her but didn't know how to grasp such a frail creature. She simply placed her hand on her cheek.

"There is a bug in reality," the old woman said. "The son will fix it when the time comes. I've been expecting him. And I am the bug talking to you."

"You're ... the bug talking to me," Chemchi repeated the words to see if they would begin to make sense. Of course she knew what a software bug was, when programs crashed. She took them in her stride herself but Ali would fly into a rage when the battered old laptop malfunctioned.

But how could there be a bug in reality? Reality just worked, didn't it? As if to answer, hot air billowed in from the desert lying just beyond the bricks of the square, and blew across her face. The dunes stopped so suddenly at the edge, it seemed they could not enter, even though that should be perfectly possible. It was as though they were caged out there, and not allowed any further, like animals. But she had walked across that sand from the gates. It was just sand, wasn't it?

It was true that this place was broken — a bit like a bug — compared to what Chemchi was used to. It wasn't in a loop exactly but stuck around the same moment of noon. And then the edge, that wasn't an edge. But it was reality, surely. Certainly not like a dream or a film. She didn't believe in magic. That was just a way of dealing with what we couldn't understand. True, late at night, ready to hide behind her bedclothes, she had watched films with black magic, sorcery and witchcraft, even necromancy, communication with the dead. But she knew the difference between those films and reality perfectly well, however much they affected her.

Was this all about death, perhaps? After all, surely death was a bug in reality if ever there was one. And this could be ... well not exactly paradise, despite the gates she entered by, the contentedness of the people, and the fact that it seemed as though it would go on and on with no birth or growing.

No, she told herself, no, the world behaved according to laws. She may not have studied science but she felt that instinctively. If the reality of this fragment seemed to be broken then it was because she didn't yet understand it. Or it was just a glitch. It needed to be mended.

With all this rapid thinking through the possibilities, her mind reeled.

"If you are a bug, part of the malfunction, then why should I believe anything you say?" she asked.

The woman did not answer but Chemchi did not notice. For a moment, she forgot who she was and what she was doing here. Then, just as quickly, she came back to her senses. Perhaps that was what had happened to Akimbe. The forgetting. She had to return before it was too late.

"You say the son will fix the bug. Where is he?"

"Where you come from."

"And how do you know this?"

"The bug knows itself. And he is part of it, too. Bug and reality are one."

"Is he Morchid's son? "

"Yes."

"And he's a baby."

"He was a baby."

Chemchi was tiring of these riddles. And she didn't know whether to believe the old woman. What better way to put her off the scent than to say it wasn't a baby she should look for, and that he wasn't here?

"And what will become of you, if the bug is fixed?"

"I cannot say. Death, perhaps. Finally." The old woman shifted by a fraction.

"Back in Marrakech, where I come from, there is death but there are no bugs in reality."

"You say that," a drop of saliva hung from the old woman's impossibly thin lip, "because you don't see an edge, Am I right?"

"The edge to what?"

"The edge to your world. To the known, the seen."

"No, of course not, there are only ordinary edges in my world."

"And you can prove that negative, can you: that there are no 'extraordinary' edges?"

"The carpet!"

"No. That's a portal, not an edge. An opening. I don't believe you understand me."

"Are you trying to tell me that in my Marrakech there are blatant edges like in this square, but that we don't see — that we're like these clockwork people here? That's ridiculous."

"Tell me something you notice about this place." The saliva had fallen onto the old woman's chin.

"Well, let me see. Not everyone is blind to the edge. The people just now. They saw it and crossed it."

"And are they from here?"

"I don't know. Perhaps they were like me. But then where were they headed?"

"Continue."

"And the people here, they are somehow like the people in Marrakech but not. And they weren't born here. They just appeared here. Like me, I suppose. Or..."

"Or they've been made real here, out of new ones' thoughts. All those things you say are true. Another part of the bug is that there is no 'was' or 'will be', there is only an approximate present. And no one notices that time ranges over only a very narrow extent. It doesn't repeat necessarily, but it endlessly plays with the same minute or so, a minute that nonetheless changes. There is no growth here, you see; only appearance and movement. And shopping." She chuckled.

"It reminds me a little of paradise. Paradise is supposed to be a perpetual blissful present. Only this is more like .... like blissful ignorance. And don't people grow in Paradise, otherwise what's the point of it?"

The old woman didn't respond. Her head had lowered an inch or two again.

"And what of Morchid's son? The baby who you say is no longer a baby? Morchid put him through but Morchid himself can't come through. That's part of the bug too, I suppose. Why him?"

"He caused disruption."

"What kind of disruption?"

"Everything here is an idea — it appears from nowhere but is. And, once it is, it always was. Thought and reality become one. But selectively. Morchid tried to tamper. His ideas became ... realised. And something was wrong with them. Anyway," she motioned tinily with her claw to the uncanny scene around them, the equivalent of another person's sweeping arm. "It's also real. I said it was like an idea and it is but it's also not. This is matter. All of it. But not necessarily as you know it. It is also thought."

"And what did Morchid think that was so disruptive? Something to do with slavery, I'll bet."

The old woman chuckled again. "Slavery and non-slavery are the same here. There are no masters but no free will, either."

"And you're the bug's mouthpiece. Why does it — whatever it is — need to explain itself to me?"

"The bug has several — shall we say — interfaces to tell itself. It's not a question of need. It's lonely. It wants someone to talk to."

Chemchi stood up and shone her tiny torch around the square that was a triangle. Beyond, where the desert lay, were the splotchy eyelid lights. Then she swung the beam back to the old woman.

"Are you my grandmother? Is that who gave me the picture of herself?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

"My mother's mother?"

The old woman nodded.

"And what of my mother?"

"There is someone else who can tell you about her."

"Ali. He won't tell."

"And is he the only one who can help?" The vanished lips assumed a knowing smile.

Chemchi recalled the battered little car, the silent journey to Marrakech from where he had taken her out of the mountains, with Chemchi pressed to the window and screaming for her mother. How dare he? The anger cleared her faltering mind.

"When is Morchid's son going to come and fix the bug?"

"Soon. He'll come here. I'll tell him where you are. But he won't know about fixing the bug. Perhaps you'll tell him he's going to do that. He won't listen to me."

"Oh, and where will I be?"

"You can't stay here, can you? You're becoming like them. Soon you won't be a new one anymore. You'll be in that moment, nothing will be missing anymore. You must go back. Meet him at the portal."

"That gate in the desert, where I arrived?"

"No, you must go back the way you came."

"The chamber — so it is here, too."

"In a manner of speaking."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

AKIMBE AND DEOBIA passed through the same door that Chemchi had opened, into the milling crowds. Unlike Chemchi, who was working everything out by herself, Akimbe had Deobia, who seemed to know a lot about the place.

And Akimbe had Ibtissam, for the cat had skipped through the door just before they closed it, announcing her presence by pawing at his ankles. She must have followed them through the carpet.

"Stop, stop, just stop will you? Let me try saying what you just said." Akimbe was getting frustrated at what he was being asked to believe. But Deobia's account made some sense given what he could see with his own eyes, he had to admit.

"So this is Marrakech," Akimbe went on, "— another Marrakech? Only chopped off somehow? But it can't be. I feel as though I'm dreaming. Yet all of this is real: if I walked out in front of all this human traffic it would part around me. Either that or trample me. And when I listen to it, smell it, those spices, the food being cooked nearby: it's just like Marrakech. At least, it could be. I suppose there might be other cities similar to Marrakech."

"So you still remember the Marrakech we've just left," said Deobia, "even though you couldn't remember this place when you went back the other way?"

"Yes, I remember Marrakech and I remember my family and the life I led before all of this befell me, including the journey to Marrakech. Life before I started visiting insane places that don't make any sense. As though what happened before was made any sense — being dragged from our beds and taken from our homes by low-lifes with guns."

"When I go backwards and forwards," said Deobia, "I remember everything. Both ways"

"Backwards and forwards — how many times have you done this?"

Deobia didn't answer his question, but said, "The point is that you are still you, just as I am still me. And that is still Ibtissam, one imagines. We're still the people who are looking for Chemchi. Like the man said: new ones are always missing something."

The cat hovered with them by the door. Akimbe bent down and put his hand next to Ibtissam's nose for her to smell, to reassure her. "I miss Chemchi. And father. And mother. And even Oyo. I miss..."

"You're doing a lot of missing."

"They might be here. I would — I might — forgive you for misleading me, if we could just find them here. You know this place."

"I didn't know whether I could trust you, that's why I said nothing about knowing this place. But when I knew you had been through the carpet, I felt — I don't know, that we had something in common. And your family might be here, I suppose. Yet how would they have found the carpet to go through?"

"But this," he held out his mother's bracelet, "this was there in the chamber."

Deobia put his hand on Akimbe's arm. His faraway look returned, as though he had come from the stars. It made Akimbe think of the desert, with fragments of places like this strewn around it. After a short while, Deobia's attention returned.

"Concentrate your mind," he said, "on what we must do now. One thing at a time. We can return. I will show you."

They followed Ibtissam through the souks, Akimbe walking beside Deobia whenever he could. If he got lost in this place again he would have let go of everything he had regained.

Ibtissam stopped and looked back to make sure they saw a turn she was about to take, expertly avoiding all the feet and wheels around her. But Akimbe stopped and said to a passer-by, "Excuse me. Where are we?"

Deobia whispered at him, "Come on. We must go." But Akimbe persisted, despite his fear. He wanted to know what these people thought they were doing here. "What city is this?"

"Oh, are you new ones?" Said the man. "Where are your parents?"

"They're not far," he lied. "But tell me, what city is this?"

The man laughed, "It's Marrakech! You're in the souks, in the medina!"

"And have you travelled to the other places, across the sand?"

"Other places? Sand?"

"The places dotted around the desert like this one."

"I don't know what you mean. I am always here, in the medina. I know of no sand in Marrakech."

"But when you were a new one, didn't you cross the desert from the gates and see the edge, as we did? Didn't you see that it was as though someone had taken a saw and cut the edges of the city off?"

"But I've always been! The very idea — me, a new one! Now, what is it or who is it you're missing? New ones are always missing something." He winked.

"Thank you for your help sir, now we will go back to our parents."

The stranger watched them turn the corner but didn't see the cat they were following. He scratched his head, remembering what it was he had come to buy.

They followed Ibtissam to what seemed to be a replica of the Rue Mouassine. And there, located exactly like its counterpart, was Morchid's stall. A queue snaked from it but the stall was in profile and they could not see inside. The queue wasn't moving.

"Deobia, isn't that Morchid's stall?"

"Go and look for yourself."

"Are you mad? He'll—"

"Trust me. Go and look. Or I'll go up and you can watch me."

"But you work for him. It's not the same."

"Let us go together."

"I don't know whether I trust you. Why should I?"

"Then let us go away from here." Deobia started to walk off.

"Wait!"

"Well? Are you going to look? Are you going to let me look?"

"You look."

Deobia walked calmly up to the queue. He pointed his arm to the stall and looked at Akimbe. The expression on his face did not change. The people in the queue seemed barely perturbed by his standing next to them.

Ibtissam was sitting by the queue too, licking herself clean. Akimbe gritted his teeth and walked to where Deobia was standing.

There was no one in the stall.

"Excuse me," said Deobia to one of the people queuing next to him. "How long have you waited?"

"I really can't remember."

"And when will the stall owner arrive?"

"I don't know."

"So all of you, you're all waiting here but you don't know when he'll turn up?" They nodded.

"And who is he?" They looked at one another.

"I can't seem to think of his name," said one. "But I'm sure I know it." She touched her companion's arm. "Oh, put me out of my misery. What's his name?"

The other screwed up her face in thought. "It's on the tip of my tongue. Anyway, he sells the finest meats, I know that for sure."

Two others left the queue and drifted off. The queue shuffled up. Another person joined the tail of it.

Deobia led Akimbe a little way from the queue. "This is Marrakech. But it is not Marrakech. These people are like you and me. But they are not."

"But this is Morchid's stall," said Akimbe. "Everyone is acting like it is, just like they do in Marrakech. He's probably just minding his trafficking operations. So they're waiting."

"No, believe me, he's never there. And yet they queue."

Akimbe picked up Ibtissam, and thought as he did so of how she had led to all of this. "These people have been drugged, or something. No, it's a spell he has cast. It's magic. I don't know how, but his fingers are in every part of the situation we're in. Chemchi's disappearance, the slave trade. Maybe he forced Chemchi through the carpet to do his bidding."

"You are jumping to a conclusion," said Deobia. "That he is the link between this world and Marrakech, the other side of the gates, the carpet. Or maybe you're thinking he's involved with the disappearance of your family. But I would know about them, wouldn't I? And I don't."

"You say you know everything. First you said you know all about the slaves that are captive in Marrakech and trafficked through it. Now you're implying you've been here so much that you know everything about it, too. But you can't. You don't know what you don't know. That's why searching is hard. It's not supposed to be easy. That's what my mother used to tell me. And she was right."

"Anyway, be that as it may. You think Morchid has powers, magical powers."

"Well, how do you explain all of this — this fragment, like a part of Marrakech where we've just come from, but full of people who may or may not be new ones and where people queue for nobody? And do you think carpets that suck people through to other worlds and leave a woven shadow are normal? Where did you say you came from? Oh, no, you didn't say, did you."

"I told you, it's a bug in reality."

"A bug? What's that?"

"I Just mean it's broken. Reality is broken."

And what makes you say that, exactly?"

"Someone told me."

"Did they, indeed. A wise person, I imagine, for you to accept what he says so readily. I wouldn't have thought you were the type. You have your own thoughts on everything else, don't you?"

Deobia didn't reply. Akimbe continued.

"So reality is broken. But that's not possible: reality is reality. Whatever happens in fact is part of it. Otherwise, it wouldn't be reality. It would be appearance."

"You're very logical about reality, Akimbe, but you believe in magic!"

"Magic is part of reality."

Deobia, who had been about to continue, closed his mouth and turned his head to one side. Akimbe looked at the goggles atop the frizzy hair, the long upper lip, the high cheekbones.

"Well, man from the stars, do you have nothing to say to that?"

"Akimbe, you and I, the ones who have lost something, or don't know or have lost touch with where they come from, are in the best position to find answers to these questions. We feel as though we don't belong. But that is our strength, too."

Ibtissam dug her claws in Akimbe's arm. He let her drop into the human traffic. "Let's go. We have people to find."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

ALL AROUND THEM, the call and babel of trade took place just as it did in Marrakech. People wended their way through the narrow streets, stopped and haggled. The price of any particular item fluctuated wildly.

Deobia said, "Some of Marrakech is missing, not just the bricks and mortar but many of the people, too. And yet the people walk and cycle around, the mopeds come and go, just as though the absences don't matter. These people live here as though they're not aware that the city gives way abruptly to sand. You heard it for yourself from that man."

"Yes, it's a kind of blindness. Did you ever manage to make sense of it?"

Once again, Deobia didn't answer. He became distracted so easily, and it was starting to irritate Akimbe. Now he was looking at something a little way off.

"There's something I need to check," Deobia said. "Wait here." He gestured to a nearby tea shop.

"But Ibtissam is running ahead!" said Akimbe.

Deobia ran, faster than Akimbe had ever seen anyone run before, darting expertly among the moving crowd. He scooped up Ibtissam and brought her back to Akimbe.

"Sit at that table at the back, please, and wait for me. I won't be long. I'm sorry. It's an enslaver. He might know something."

Akimbe watched Deobia, taller than everyone around him, disappear around a corner. He moved this time without running but somehow much faster than everyone else. He glided through the crowd, who seemed oblivious. It was impossible to think of them as complete human beings. How could someone queue for someone who wasn't there? Live in a fragment of a place and not realise it? Were they all like that, like automata? He didn't want to become one of them, not at any cost.

Ibtissam was looking up at Akimbe from his lap. Sitting there, he felt at everyone's mercy. First Chemchi, now Deobia both seemed to be stronger than him, in one way at least: they were more at home with their aloneness. The torch sat on the table, the torch that was no good to him. His mother's bracelet lay in his pouch. He possessed nothing else, anywhere, as far as he knew. How long had they been here? An eternity, it seemed, and yet the sun remained high in the sky. It was beating mercilessly on the netting above the souks, breaking through in dapples. One lozenge of it burned Akimbe's forearm. His mouth was dusty and dry. He was hungry but had no money. His real home, the grand house he had lived in with his family before the men dragged them all away from it — it all came back in a flood.

A man appeared from nowhere in the crowd and sat at the next table. "Little one!" It was Camel-breath.

Akimbe looked up in horror. "You've followed me through the carpet."

"Followed you? Just you? Isn't there someone else you want to tell me about? Someone whose address I gave you? Tell me, how are you two getting on? Like a house on fire, I'll bet!"

"Stay out of our lives. And tell Morchid the same."

"Ah, but if it wasn't for me you wouldn't have met Deobia. And would you have lain on the shadow carpet by yourself? Would you be here, where your precious Chemchi is?"

Camel-breath leaned towards him across the table, as though to speak in confidence. His brown teeth criss-crossed one another and his breath was like a vapour from a long-forgotten marsh. "You assume I have some influence with Morchid. And that Morchid knows you're here. You make assumptions, little one, and you should always be prepared for your assumptions to be wrong. Perhaps I am your friend. Perhaps the one who gave you Deobia's address is your friend."

"There you are." Deobia had walked out of the crowd and loomed behind Camel-breath. "I've just been looking for you."

Camel-breath kept his eyes fixed on Akimbe, like a snake. Clearly he was not surprised by the arrival of Deobia's voice behind him.

"Will someone please tell me what's going on?" said Akimbe, looking from one to the other.

'I've brought him here as you asked," said Deobia. "I've even brought the cat with him. Now what?"

"What?!" said Akimbe. "You bastard. I trusted you!"

Camel-breath just laughed, a sickening retch of a laugh. "He did tell you he worked in my trade, didn't he, little one? Are you so surprised? Now, welcome, welcome to our little world! You must come with us."

Akimbe stared up at Deobia. "Look at me. Look me in the eye." But Deobia, still standing, kept his eyes on the back of Camel-breath's head. For the first time, the youth was shifting his feet, looking decidedly earth-bound.

Ibtissam was still on his lap. Camel-breath, enjoying every second of his discomfort, was waiting for him to get up. He thought about running. But where? How would he ever get back again?

"Are you going to take me to find Chemchi?"

"Hah! Do I look stupid, little one?"

"Why are you even interested in me?"

"But we're not. You're just another stray to round up. You're really not important. Oh, I know, your worries seem to fill the entire universe. But to us you're nothing but another slave-in-waiting. I was about to say you are two a penny but you're not even that. No one needs to pay you, slave. And look at your young, fit, strong arms. They could be digging, sweeping, polishing for someone. Now, just tell me where the girl is and we can get on with our lives. I can get out of this ... what do you call it?" He bent his eyes towards Deobia behind him. "Bug in reality! Ha! We laughed so much when he first told us that one. One of his little theories. One of many, I'm sure. Try telling that to Morchid. If there's anyone who knows what it is, it's him."

"Even if I knew where she was, do you really think I would tell you? You can go to hell."

"As if we weren't already there." Camel-breath's smug smile closed like a door slammed shut. "Now listen to me and listen carefully. If you don't help us...there's your family." He sliced his finger across his throat, rolled his eyes back, stuck out his tongue and let his head slump lifelessly.

Akimbe looked at Deobia, who still wouldn't meet his eyes. He looked drained, this traveller from the stars with his great goggles.

"Where are the others?" said Deobia.

"They're off making enquiries about all the recent 'new ones'. They found out about you two, all right. We've been causing quite a commotion down at the gates of hell, yes we have. But no one seems to know about the girl apart from that idiot who wants to give us all silly names."

"And are they nearby?" said Deobia.

Camel-breath's face contorted into a mockery of concern. However he arranged his face, he didn't seem capable of keeping his tongue quite inside it. "Oh, why, are you worried about them? Or about you?"

"No, I just wondered, that's all. We should split up and look in a different part."

"Well they were headed for the Jamaa el Fna when I last saw. Or should I say where it ought to be. I —"

Without warning, Deobia threw Camel-breath onto the ground, bent over him and hit him hard on the head. Akimbe had never seen anyone punch anyone else so seriously, not in the worst fight among his friends. Deobia hit him again and again until he was out cold.

"Stop!" Akimbe said, "Stop! You'll kill him!"

"And you would care?" Deobia looked at his fist as though he didn't believe what he had just done. "Now come."

Akimbe closed his mouth and scrambled from his chair, the cat in his arms, the torch abandoned on the table.

They ran and ran through the souks, spilling people in the stalls. No one in the cafe had seemed much perturbed by what Deobia had done. The people they knocked over just picked themselves back up; the stallholders tidied up and everything continued as though nothing had happened as they tore through the souks.

Deobia collided with someone on a moped rounding the corner. They both tumbled to the ground but neither was seriously hurt. "Sorry," said Deobia through his panting breath before running on. It was all Akimbe could do to keep up with this long-legged youth who was well over a foot taller, and to stop Ibtissam flying out of his arms.

Deobia turned sharply from the street into an even narrower one and slowed to a walking pace, suppressing his gasps for breath and wiping the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

Akimbe was thankful for the slowing down, his heart hammering.

They walked and stopped and mingled with the crowd. No one paid them any attention. Deobia turned again into a narrow gap between two stalls.

Akimbe followed, doubtful that he should follow the increasingly alien youth but not knowing what else to do.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHEMCHI SAW ROUGH-looking men hanging around in tea shops and stalking the streets in twos and threes. They were clearly looking for someone or something. Her, no doubt. But were they from here or had they come through the carpet like her?

She did her best to look like a native, calml repeating her pretence at shopping every now and then, her headscarf pulled over her head and to the front so that only someone looking straight at her could see her features.

Perhaps it was the forgetfulness creeping up on her, that caused her to take a wrong turn on her way to where, in the real Marrakech, the Criée Berbère would be. Or perhaps it was her unquenchable curiosity, which gained the upper hand over her more sensible instincts.

For she found herself wending her way to what would be Ali's riad. And once she turned a corner or two in that direction, she was impelled as by a magnet, despite her realisation that she might not have long before the forgetting took an irresistible hold.

The riad stood taller than its neighbours, reaching up to a little patch of blue sky just as it did in the real Marrakech. The front door was open. In Marrakech, that meant that either she or Ali would be in. Something cold gripped her heart. But she walked through the dark passageway that opened onto the bright tiled courtyard in the atrium.

And there at the table, drinking tea in silence, was a group of the rough men she had seen about in the medina, four of them.

Quick as a flash, she walked confidently up to the cupboard in the corner and withdrew a mop and pail with her back to them. She could feel the men watching her as she filled the bucket with soapy water, added her cloths, and began cleaning the other end of the courtyard on her hands and knees.

They seemed to accept that she was the cleaning girl. Soon they ignored her and turned their silent attention back to the cooling mint tea. Then one of them spoke.

"How many were there?"

"Seven," another answered.

"Good specimens?"

"Muscled, mostly."

"So we'd use them."

"Most definitely." This from a third voice.

"And the women?"

"Very fine, and young: sure to attract a good few buyers." A low guffaw spread round the table and quickly died.

"But they're here, in this hell-hole."

"Yes, not where we need 'em. And look what happens when we do try to get them back to sell 'em on."

"Well, lots of 'em anyway, and you never know which."

"Why, what does happen? I thought we were—"

"Turning into those creepy shadow creatures. Floating, then gone like a screen turning off. Don't wanna think what becomes of 'em. As long as they're not creeping around back home somewhere."

"And that look in their eyes before, like they know what's going to happen when you put them on the carpet. Only time you ever see them looking like... like they know something real's going to happen. I mean really real."

"Anyway, enough. They're not why we're here."

"In this bastard place."

"No. As if we knew what we were bloody well looking for."

"A baby."

"Hah. As if there were babies here."

"More tea, gentlemen?" Chemchi heard Ali's voice. Unmistakably. She couldn't help herself. She swept around as though reaching for a new dirty patch of the floor, and stole a glance. He stood framed by the kitchen with a clear view of her. But he didn't look at her. She knocked her bucket a little by accident. It clanked. He saw her but remained focussed on the enslavers.

"Or can I get you something else?" They were ignoring him.

If the riad was here and Ali was here, then there could be another version of her hereabouts. She might return any minute. She might be in the riad now.

While the men talked and Ali, proud owner, served them fresh tea as though they had asked for it, she finished up. Boldly, she replaced the mop and pail in the cupboard and went over to him.

"Why are you doing that now? You're disturbing us." Ali leaned against a counter with his arms folded. They stood behind the men, back in the kitchen out of earshot.

"I'm sorry. I've stopped now." She spoke with her head bent in case he spotted some difference from her counterpart. "I must do some shopping."

"But I thought that was what you'd just been out to do. Where is it?"

"I ... I forgot my list so I came back."

"And you started cleaning the floor."

"I know, it was silly of me. I'm not feeling myself."

"Then stay and rest for a while. These men ... they could do with some company."

"Who are they?"

"Strangers, foreigners. A bit rough if you ask me but they've behaved themselves. I only just found them in the Rue Mouassine. They asked some funny questions, though. They're looking for someone. Something, called a 'baby'. Except they don't seem to know much about what it is. A bit silly, if you ask me, coming heaven knows how far and not knowing what you're looking for."

"How far?" Chemchi pretended to busy herself by cleaning up the counter so that he couldn't get a good look at her.

"They didn't say. The mountains probably. They're like new ones only —"

"Only they aren't new."

"Well, yes. They use different words and say funny things but they seem to know this place, all right. They talk about the different places here but then ask questions about them as though they're clueless."

Chemchi had better leave. She felt faint, and weak with the thought of being confronted by her counterpart. It had been a mistake coming here, too dangerous, and for what? But at least she knew of this counterpart's existence.

"I feel a little better now. I'll do that shopping." She picked up her basket and walked out without saying goodbye to Ali, who watched her leave, open-mouthed. But he could hardly protest and look foolish in front of his guests.

She headed for what she hoped would be the Criée Berbère, through the quiet alleys that led back to the souks, all the time wondering whether her counterpart, the girl who cleaned for Ali's counterpart here, would appear round the corner on her way back from shopping.

But she never saw her. The Criée Berbère was where it would be in Marrakech. She drew up to the dusty gap where she had found the carpet, and shone the pencil torch that Morchid had given her, against the wall. The velvet drape appeared just as in Marrakech. And the carpet was poking into the souks like a tongue. But Chemchi's mind was clouded. She barely understood what she was doing. She dimly knew that she must go through; that there was a boy she had left behind.

She pushed through. But the association between the carpet and her destination had disappeared into a fog. She found herself playing the torch on the twisting threads lurching from its weave, thus preventing it from capturing her at once. The dank smell of the chamber filling her nostrils was vaguely familiar. Her fatigue caused her to stumble but she scrambled up again and played the torch to keep the threads at bay.

When all the way inside, she sat on a bench and switched off the torch. Her limbs seemed to belong to someone else. Thoughts of a place slunk into her mind. A place in the mountains. She had holidayed there, she thought, picnicking by a rushing river, the sun pressing down. And she thought of a life she must lead, getting up in the morning to make breakfast and shop in the souks, every day the same and every conversation about the same events and the same people: about the holidays they intended to take, the same as last year. Her mind began to switch backwards and forwards, repeating itself, like clockwork.

And there was Ali to serve; chores to perform every day in a strict routine. While he drank his tea in the courtyard or sat chatting on the Rue Mouassine, she must ensure the riad was spotless, cleaning the rooms and the walkways so that the sunlight spilling from the cloudless sky revealed no dust or dirt where it landed, to spoil the guests' tranquil stay.

Why was she here in this chamber, with its smell of must and disuse, and its empty furniture, its shadows waving gently in the candlelight? She must return, to those gentlemen staying in the riad. She must sleep and clean. She must live a proper life for a girl like her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

THE PASSAGEWAY SMELLED of dust and bananas. The source of the sweet aroma were stacked in cardboard boxes by the old brick walls, leaving little room for Deobia and Akimbe to walk past them. The netting above was thick. They walked on in the relative cool of dappled shadows for a while but soon the netting disappeared and the sun blasted them. It had not moved since they arrived.

Deobia turned another corner. The passage gave onto a square and beyond it the desert. It was quiet. One half of the square was sliced through diagonally, as if by a huge saw from the sky. Sand massed against the low edge but did not cross it. The desert continued as far as the eye could see along a valley between the dunes, dunes that raised themselves menacingly high. Blinding sunlight reflected off the crumbling white walls and the pale slabbed floor. Banks of hot air filled the space.

At first the square appeared to be empty but there was an old woman squatting, a dot against the wall. Her head hung down almost at right angles to her neck. They greeted her but remained at some distance.

"Why are we here?" said Akimbe.

"I hoped Chemchi would be here," whispered Deobia, "from what they said about where they'd spotted her."

"The enslavers? But Camel-breath didn't know where she was: he wanted me to tell him." Akimbe also kept his voice low, not knowing what to make of the old woman.

"Camel-breath? Is that what you call him? It was a game he was playing with you. He knew you couldn't know. It amused him."

"And now you've beaten him to a pulp. He'll tell the others. He'll tell Morchid."

"No. He knows I have something on him. That he's plotting. He can't risk that coming out."

"Maybe it's you he's been playing with, to lead you into a trap," said Akimbe. "Maybe you don't know as much as you say. Why would you listen to whatever he says, anyway? He's about as trustworthy as everyone else seems to be." He gave Deobia a meaningful look. "I don't know on whose side anyone's on."

They slumped against the wall, exhausted. Akimbe stroked Ibtissam, who lay on the hot paving beside him. The old woman remained motionless.

"Tell me, what is this place?" Akimbe asked her.

"Why don't you ask him? He knows," she said.

Deobia looked down and said nothing.

"What does she mean?" said Akimbe. "Tell us," he asked the old woman. "Please, have you seen a girl here, a tall girl?"

"Do you have some dirhams?" The woman put out a begging hand. But why beg here, with no one around? A bolt of hot desert air suddenly entered and she fanned what little could be seen of her wrinkled face with the other hand.

"I'm afraid not. No, I have nothing." He felt ashamed. Hunger was cramping his belly.

"But your friend does."

Deobia got up to give her some coins, reluctantly as though he didn't want to go near her. She didn't thank him but watched him as far as she was able with her slumped head. He turned away and walked up to the edge of the desert with his back to them, a lost figure against the enormity of the ochre dunes beyond.

"Now, please," he asked the woman again. "He's given you money so tell us. Have you seen a girl?"

"She left a message for you."

"Did she? And how do you know it was for us?"

"She didn't mention him, it's true." She tilted her hanging head a fraction towards Deobia. "But she told me about you, said you have something, a bracelet. Show me."

Akimbe walked up and held it low in front of her.

"Closer," she said. "I need to see it."

Her head lolled down so far that he found himself almost placing it in front of her nose until she was finally able to cast her eye upon it. It occurred to him that the begging hand could suddenly grab it so he held it tight.

"Is it your mother's?"

He suddenly felt unsure. "Yes," he said.

"Perhaps I have met her."

"Where? You must tell me."

"Not now, Akimbe," Deobia had returned. "They'll be here any minute. We can come back. The important thing now is to find your friend and leave. You will forget everything, as you did before."

"The enslavers are back in Marrakech and they are here too — does it really matter where we go? It's only a matter of time until they capture me again."

"Look at this place." Deobia looked out at the desert, at the suns blinking on and off in the sky. "Where would you rather be?"

"Listen to him." The woman gave a dry chuckle. "As though he doesn't belong here."

"Enough," said Deobia. "Where is she?"

"She looked for where she left the other place."

"You mean in the chamber, in the Criée Berbère?" said Akimbe.

She didn't answer.

"What do you know about him?" Akimbe said, nodding towards Deobia.

"Stop." Deobia said before she could open her mouth. Deobia towered between Akimbe and the old woman. "This isn't helping us find the girl," he said to Akimbe. "I'll explain. I'll tell you whatever you want to know when we're back. I promise."

Akimbe looked out at the dunes. "Tell me," he asked the old woman. "Over there. What do you see?"

"I see the edge," she said.

"And what is beyond the edge?"

"Nothing of any interest."

"Have you ever stepped beyond it?"

She gave no answer.

The pounding heat made his head ache. He would give anything for a glass of water.

"Thank you," he said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

THEY WALKED BACK into the barely cooler interior. Everything looked needle sharp but was tinged with unreality. That sun, directly overhead so that your shadow fell only inches away from your feet, that sun was where it had been when they arrived hours ago. Night should be falling.

Ibtissam continued to stay close and didn't disappear as Akimbe had feared. Looking around her and sniffing and wondering about the similarities and differences between here and where they had come from, she seemed to be as perplexed as he was.

They walked at a fair pace, stopping occasionally so that Akimbe could pretend to examine merchandise while Deobia swiftly and expertly looked to see if any enslavers were about.

Finally they reached the corner by the Criée Berbère where, in real Marrakech, Akimbe had slipped into an unused stall to reach the chamber. At first they passed it, pretending to show no interest in the doors but snatching glances at them and looking to see if anyone was paying them any attention.

But as soon as Ibtissam saw the doors she sprang into the gap. She squeezed herself through, her back legs scrambling, and disappeared inside.

"Excuse me," Deobia said to the nearby stallholder. "Our cat has just squeezed into that gap. Do you mind if we go in and find her?"

"You're new ones, aren't you? At least he is." He pointed to Akimbe. Why aren't you with your mummy and daddy?"

"We've lost them. There was an accident. We're trying to find our way back and now we've lost our cat as well. Please help us."

"Well, that stall has nothing to do with me. I don't know who it belongs to. If you can get in, help yourselves."

For a second, Akimbe found himself staring at the doors to the stall and not recognising this place, forgetting what he was doing standing there.

"What's the matter?" Deobia had noticed his blank stare. Akimbe stared back at him with the same vacant look. Deobia put his hand on his shoulder. "You're forgetting. It's started. Listen to me." He moved his hand to Akimbe's cheek. "You are Akimbe. We're looking for Chemchi." Deobia tried a gentle shake. "Look," he pulled the bracelet out of Akimbe's pouch and placed it in his hand. "Look. Look at this. It's important to you."

Akimbe blinked. When he felt the metal of the bracelet in his hand he knew himself again. The face peering into his was Deobia's. He remembered his mother and his father and his sister.

"I started to dream," he said. "About the man I stayed with here before."

"You go in first." Deobia looked back at the stallholder, who was seeing to his customers. Everyone was a customer or a seller or a browser. No one had any interest in them. Akimbe pulled on one of the doors the way he had back in Marrakech. It yielded off its broken hinge in the same way. Deobia held it while Akimbe slipped in, then Akimbe pushed on it from inside while Deobia entered.

They followed the musky passage in the close darkness. There was a faint light ahead. It was the light of the chamber, the same as in Marrakech, candlelight that wobbled when they walked up and then steadied again as they stood still.

And the carpet lay before them. On it, a group of three shadows: their shadows, just as in Marrakech. The golden filaments were being worked around them slowly as they watched. And on the other side of the carpet, in a tangled mass, the fresh shadows of what looked like a gang of men. Enslavers.

Akimbe felt his mind wince. This was the same place but a different place. And presumably the enslavers could be back any time.

"Chemchi?" he said in a low voice that nonetheless sounded loud in the chamber. No one answered.

"Chemchi? It's Akimbe. And a friend, Deobia. The enslavers are looking for us. Chemchi?"

"I've found a cat." A ghost spoke behind them. It was Chemchi, tall and beautiful in the candlelight, her braid low over her eyes. "Do you want a girl and a cat? We could come and stay with you and serve you." She walked up to Deobia, as though Akimbe were a stranger.

"Chemchi what are you talking about? It's me, Akimbe." Her eyes were glassy. She stroked the purring Ibtissam in her arms.

"I believe in nothing," she said. "Tell me, what do you believe in?" Her voice was a whisper. It was impossible not to open up to her.

"I used to believe only in knowledge. Now I believe in life. In good and bad. That I am free to choose between them," Deobia said.

"And you?" she turned to Akimbe.

"I believe in my mother, my father and my sister. I believe there is an explanation for this place. I believe you should return to where you belong."

"Please, come with us," Deobia approached her with his hand outstretched. She drew back.

"No, let me." Akimbe stroked the cat in her arms so that she could see that Ibtissam knew him. "I have missed you, Chem... Chem..."

"It's happening to you as well," said Deobia. "Soon you'll forget everything. You'll become blind to the oddity of where you are. You won't think it strange that the sun is always high in the sky. Always. You'll shop or you'll serve."

"The gates. Didn't we come from the gates?" Akimbe felt confused but the person he was talking to was becoming familiar again.

"This," Deobia pointed at the carpet, "is the way back."

"And how do you know?"

"Because it's how I arrived in Marrakech."

"And how are we supposed to get through? Chemchi had to shine her torch. She pulled me back."

"I don't know how she did it, but it must be that you were somewhere away from the carpet. If you lie down, just as in Marrakech, you'll go through."

"Through to where? Another gate?"

"No, through to the chamber you know. "

Akimbe looked at their three shadows, the gold stitching itself around them. "If we go back, they may be waiting for us."

"Just as this gang here," Deobia pointed to the shadows at the other end, "will come here soon, to return. It's better to try going back. We have a chance."

"And Camel-breath? He'll have us killed."

"The man you call Camel-breath, he operates beyond Morchid's bidding. He has his own fish to fry and we don't know what he's going to do. We are of some use to him."

"Yes, why did he bring the two of us together?"

"He knew we'd find Chemchi."

"So we've led ourselves into a trap and Chemchi too! Plus you've beaten him up. Even if they don't find us, he'll tell Morchid about that."

"No, I told you. Morchid is not supposed to know what Camel-breath is up to. And whatever happens here, Morchid can learn about only second-hand. The carpet won't take him."

"Morchid? Did you say Morchid?" Chemchi was cringing, her face was frozen in fear.

"Trust me," Akimbe said to her. "Lie on the carpet as I do, here. We'll all three of us lie down together. And Ibtissam too."

As they lay on their own shadows, it was as though they met themselves. The carpet's tiny tendrils grabbed at them and stretched and built a web over them until their eyes were covered and they could no longer see. Then there was an awful moment of stillness, like the peak of a roller-coaster ride, when the car is about to plummet.

The experience, of rushing but being held fast at the same time, ended. The web dissolved thread by thread, until pixels of light began to appear and coalesced. Shapes formed, recognisable shapes. A lit candle. The tops of empty bookshelves and cabinets standing like silent witnesses around the chamber. They began to struggle, to break out of the webbing like new born kittens pawing at their sacs.

One by one they sat up and pushed themselves to their legs. They stood beside the carpet, Akimbe and Chemchi both bleary and rubbing their eyes but Deobia standing tall as though he were used to emerging from a carpet of magic threads. Their shadows had disappeared. The carpet was as before. The whole chamber was just like the place they had left.

"Thank goodness!" Chemchi said to Akimbe."Are we really back?" Ibtissam sprang into her arms. She dropped her torch. Deobia picked it up.

"Give me that," she said. "Whoever you are."

PART THREE

Cracked

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAINED TOGETHER IN twos and threes, the captives were stretching as best they could after a long, god-forsaken journey in one of the white vans. They didn't look at one another for fear of a beating. They whispered without moving their mouths, like ventriloquists.

There was always a point at which their lives had gone horribly wrong. A point when men had come out of nowhere to grab them and hurl them in a van. Or when they realised they had been fooled: a promise of work from a friendly stranger had turned to betrayal: the first locked door, the first brutal look or word, and the first thump or slap for those brave enough to resist. It was usually a blow to the body, since it would show on the face. Their value to the customers in Marrakech or wherever else they were headed was the priority. Then there were the few who resisted too far, who thought they had some rights, that they were big enough. The gang made an example of those, beating them to within an inch of their live, sometimes even dispensing with that inch. Screw the price, it was better to let the others know not to try it.

One of Morchid's men talked to a customer. "This is a good batch, the best I've seen for a while. Go on, tell them to jump up and down. Look at their teeth. I promise you, they're the best. Or if they're not needed to work," the man winked, "I mean, if you just need some company, then of course just choose the ones who look like your type."

Morchid watched impassively, his muscular arms folded over his massive chest, as the brutality and suffering continued around him. What they did to the animals they did to one another in different ways, with the same selfishness and disregard. Why should he care about any of them? He thought about the world beneath the carpet, where he had visited only once. The peace of it. If only he had managed to turn it into what he needed, if it had made real the thoughts he wanted made real... Stop, he told himself. Forget. It had rejected him. Ejected him. It was done.

Perhaps his son had already returned, been brought back and grown here. But he'd had this place scoured. He'd scoured it himself many times — at least, in the souks to which he was bound.

The chances were his son was still down there. And those imbeciles — the hunter and the ones he sent with him — could not find him. None of them could. A baby where no other baby could be. They'd pretended to find him — seizing some screeching infant from here and then bringing him before him. But he had known immediately of the deception.

Now there was the girl, who had the eyes he needed. And who would not lie. But she was clever. If she found his son, would she use him against him?

He was surrounded by such fools. Now the girl was quite possibly lost for good, had forgotten everything in the other world and become a part of it. He'd have to send more men back to find her. And he didn't even know she was there for sure.

He'd have Ali brought to him. Ali knew where she came from: where she might return to.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

"YOU DARE TO question me?" Morchid did not look at Camel-breath, his hunter. He didn't see the bruises on the sickly face.

"I'm only saying," said Camel-breath, "that the place is more of a problem than an opportunity. What with the girl back there. Who knows what she's capable of."

"More than you. You've come up with nothing."

"I say we destroy the carpet. Can't you box it? I'm sick of searching down there; sick of seeing all those robots wheeling around as though it meant anything. I don't know what I'm looking for. It's folly. And in the meantime we already know you can't get an easy supply of slaves out of there. It seems to pick and choose who can be brought here and disposes of any it won't let go through, as though they shouldn't even have seen the carpet. It's got a mind of its own, I tell you. And our men are turning into those weird automata down there, forgetting what they're doing. It affects everyone differently. No one knows when he'll turn into one of them. And it's a pain to get them back — finding them, dragging them. You can't get something for nothing. It was always too good to be true."

"You will keep looking for my son."

"I've looked for a baby but there's no one. They don't know what a baby is."

"You're useless to me. I told you to do a simple thing and you've failed."

Camel-breath averted his eyes in case Morchid looked at him.

"I ... I've done everything I could."

"They told me you had the eyesight of an eagle. I had you brought here at great expense. You found your way back but you've found nothing useful."

Camel-breath knew the carpet refused to transport Morchid. But he'd sent all kinds of men through in the search, the raggle-taggle of men who were part of the trade, and it had happily clung to and transported all of them. Morchid was different as far as the carpet was concerned. He knew things, Camel-breath thought, about the place that he wasn't letting on. Well, then, it was his own stupid fault for losing his own son through the carpet. He could stuff himself and his boy. In the meantime, he had to deal with that youth, Deobia who had turned against him. And maybe the girl and the other little one could help him find the son. Then he could use him to take his rightful place. Better still, he could find him himself. He'd never failed like this before.

"Let me have one more go."

"Have Ali brought to me."

****

Three burly, sweating men walked into the riad and strode into the little courtyard. It didn't take three but sometimes it was easier, with simple and truculent men like these, to dispatch them together even on a straightforward job. They might just be less stupid than they would be individually.

They had hardened, thin-toothed faces poking out of hoods. One spoke in a high voice.

"We've come for Ali. That you?"

They all stared at Rashood, Ali's friend who had come to visit, and who was leaning back in his chair confidently, as if he owned the place, telling some story that frankly was boring Ali to tears. He wished he had never invited Rashood back.

They had stopped Rashood in mid-sentence.

"And who might you be, sir," he said. "I don't believe I've had the —"

"You Ali or not?"

"I —" Rashood looked at Ali.

"Not," said the leader. "So it's you."

"I am Ali, yes. Who sent you?" As if he didn't know.

The man let out a slight whistle, as if for a dog, and curled his index finger to signal Ali to follow them.

They marched him out, a triangle of them with Ali in the middle. He knew there was no point arguing and kept his mouth shut.

Rashood knew, too, that he could not protest without incurring a sharp blow at the very least. He has seen many frogmarched off like this, due to some transgression, or because they knew something. You went along and hoped nothing bad would happen. But often something did.

He waited five minutes. It was important no one would think he was following them, meddling. He left to find his wife and tell her what had happened.

As soon as they had all left, three figures, who had spied on the proceedings as soon as they had heard the man's demand for Ali, and who had been keeping out of the way even of Ali's friends, climbed down the stairs.

Chemchi bolted the riad door. She exchanged glances with Akimbe. Deobia seemed lost in his own world.

****

The market ended before the sun could gain the rooftops of Marrakech. Diesel engines started up in a final thrum, spitting fumes from their exhausts. Some of the white vans were leaving empty, to be filled again, others were taking human traffic onward to Europe for sale.

"Look at this one," one of the gang sneered. "No one wants him. Can't say I'm surprised."

Morchid examined the figure brought before him, the figure who returned his look without flinching. Ritual scars crossed his cheeks. The heft of his limbs spoke of a warrior. Morchid wondered which of his agents had captured this creature, and how. He must reward him. Or have him removed for stupidity. No wonder no one had bought him. It had taken four of his men to drag him before him.

"He's a right animal. What do you want us to do with him?"

"What are you?" Morchid asked.

"I demand to be returned to my people."

"Which people are they?"

"None of your business. Free me and I'll make my own way. Or face the consequences."

The men who held him could't believe their ears. They all looked with glee for Morchid's response.

"Where is my hunter?" Camel-breath was brought before him.

"Well, what is this?"

"Trouble," said camel-breath.

"I can see that. And?"

"The kind to eliminate. Or who might come in handy. You could send him through the carpet. Perhaps he can find what you want found."

Morchid walked up for a closer look. The man's legs were shackled with heavy chains so that even he was not capable of kicking. Each arm was anchored by two of the gang.

"Your problem. One of your problems," he spoke to Camel-breath but with his face just inches from the man before him, "is that you want me to use the other place as a dumping ground. You don't like the old-fashioned way. To kill. Isn't that what you people normally do?"

One of the gang now had the man by the head so that he couldn't head-butt Morchid — something he looked inclined to do.

"Yes, kill me," the man said. "Do it now."

When it rejected him, Morchid had at first tried burning the carpet, and every other way he could think of destroying it. It wouldn't even let itself be removed from the chamber, but spun out its threads and dug them into the walls. When that didn't work, he'd had it rolled up and bound. It had always transformed itself, its threads creeping out, finding anchors, re-weaving itself until it lay flat and rectangular again. The powers and resources of whatever — whoever — had made the carpet boggled his mind. But he didn't fear it.

Neither did he fear the powerful man, who looked almost capable of tearing himself from his captors any second. "Kill me" was a thought that had entered his own mind many times. But he was like the carpet. It wasn't an option.

"What are you waiting for?" the man was straining, glaring at him.

"No. There's something about you." He touched the man's forehead, which was curdled with rage, sensing for something within him. These fools took him to be a brute but Morchid could see beyond the physical power. The man knew something.

"Lock him up again."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

"WHAT DO THEY want with Ali?" said Akimbe.

"They must want him because of me. It stands to reason," said Chemchi. Now Ali knew, she thought, what it feels like to be grabbed and dragged who-knows where. As he had dragged her from the mountains, away from her mother. She'd tried to put that drive to Marrakech out of her mind, the drive she hated him for, which he refused to explain. She'd had to rely on him, the only grown-up around. He wouldn't tell her what she needed and desperately wanted to know. He gave her a room, fed her, didn't treat her badly, but that didn't make up for it. One night she didn't cry anymore. Other girls — she wouldn't exactly call them friends — felt she was withholding something from them. Well, she was. And from herself. Maybe she should have run away from him. She could have if she'd wanted. And what would she have become? Looking at these two — Akimbe who had lost everything, his family and his home far away, and Deobia who looked as though he would re-enter a craft any minute and fly back to the world he came from — looking at these two, she thought: I wouldn't have become a bad person, necessarily, but I might have become as lost as these two.

"Just look at us. We're clueless," she said, letting her frustration get the better of her. "We haven't even found a proper hiding place."

"But you said it's the last place they'll think of looking," said Akimbe.

"For a little while. We can't stay here long. I need a place to think, to work out what I should do."

"What you should do? What about what we should do?"

"All right, but Morchid is after me, not you. I'm going to need a plan, a plan that doesn't involve walking into his lair and being eaten for breakfast. And you," she looked at Deobia, "I'd like you to tell us everything you know."

"Me?" Deobia, who had been deep in thought, rubbed his eyes.

"You know more than you're letting on."

"He's one of them, the enslavers," said Akimbe. "At least, he was."

"What? You didn't tell me? Leave this minute!" Chemchi pointed at the door.

"No, hold on, you have to listen," said Akimbe.

"Why would I listen to someone involved in trafficking? And why are you on his side after what they did to your family?"

"Oh, what did they do to my family?"

"Well I —"

"You don't know so shut up about my family." Akimbe rose and scraped his chair back. "Shut up for a minute and listen to what Deobia has to say."

"Very well. I'm listening," she said. "But it had better be good."

"As I have told Akimbe, they use me to gather intelligence. I talk to the captives and the local customers and the traffickers who come in from afar. The captives trust me. They tell me things they wouldn't necessarily tell the enslavers, even under torture. But I don't pass it all on. I'm a courier, too."

"Of what?'

"Money, mostly. Sometimes guns."

"They trust you that much? They must have something on you. Who did you deal with: Morchid?"

"No, his lieutenant. The man you call Camel-breath. Only he never gave me his name. Morchid calls him the hunter."

"And Camel-breath put me onto Deobia," said Akimbe. " He gave me his address."

"Why on earth would he do that?"

"I don't know," said Deobia. "I was going to play it straight and ask him but I could tell they meant to do something bad to Akimbe so I got angry."

"He beat him up in the other place," said Akimbe, "look at his knuckles." The unearthly youth, with his afro hair and his goggles, had delicate hands. But his knuckles were thick and cut, streaked with dried blood.

Chemchi looked from one to the other. "Something very fishy is going on here. Where do you come from?"

"From there."

"From cracked Marrakech?"

"Yes. If that's what you want to call it."

"How can you be 'from' there? People exist there, people go there. No one's from there, are they. Although an old woman down there told me people become created from visitors' thoughts, however crazy that sounds. Were you born there, did you come from someone's womb there?"

"Well, no, not exactly."

"What then?" Chemchi got up and faced away from them to try to compose herself. Her nerves were ragged. She was right to be suspicious but, at the same time, she wasn't giving him a chance. "OK. I'm sorry. Tell me your story."

"I don't know where to begin. When you returned here, you knew you belonged here, didn't you. But when I arrived from what we're calling cracked Marrakech — it's strange to give it a name after all this time — this was the weird place. And when I go back there, I can perfectly understand why you would think it so strange. I don't belong there. I must belong somewhere else."

"What's your earliest memory?" asked Chemchi.

"Being in that cut-off square — suddenly, as though I'd been dropped there, right on the edge of the desert. But I remembered nothing of where I'd been."

"Dropped from where — the desert?" asked Akimbe.

"I think perhaps so, from the desert, or one of those places you can see, the other fragments. There was this in my pocket."

CHAPTER FORTY

DEOBIA SHOWED THEM a battered photograph of a man and a woman in a grey-looking city. They were white people. "There's a note on the back, saying they were sorry but they couldn't look after me any more." He showed them the scrawling handwriting, in blue ink. "So I found myself there but I was unlike anyone else. I didn't become an automaton like them, and I grew. No one seemed to notice I was different. I ate in the cafes. They served me but never wanted anything in return. They never seemed to recognise me when I came back. I found a riad with an empty room and lived there. I was the only person who ever slept in the whole broken city, as far as I could tell. No one else came to stay.

"I just about knew what everything was, although I could tell it was different from where I'd been, where those people had looked after me. But the people doing more or less the same things constantly, and the sun never changing its position in the sky — it got to me at first. I don't believe they could see they were living in more or less the same moment, any more than they knew they lived in a place with an edge. But I slept and woke and did different things and grew taller. I made notches in the doorpost to confirm it. And I was lonely, terribly lonely. I tried starting up conversations but people always had the same things to say.

"It was the library that stopped me going mad. I found that I could read in one of the languages in the books there, English. I used the dictionaries and textbooks to teach myself Arabic and French. Then all the other languages. It all came easily.

"The cut-off square drew me back again and again. I used to look at the dunes, and try to remember where I had been and what had happened to me. Then one day I decided to start up a conversation with the old woman. It was mainly so that I could hear the sound of my voice. I thought she'd just ask me for some dhirams and that would be that. But she was different. She was no friend but I could talk to her. She knew as well I did that people were doing more or less the same things constantly. I could tell she knew more than she was letting on but she was stubborn.

"So I would sit with her and read my books and both of us would watch people arrive, apparently oblivious of the fractured edge of the city right in front of their noses, and then turn about at the last minute, as though that was what they meant to do all along. One day she told me I'd been dropped there from the desert side, that she'd seen it happen. I asked her to describe who had dropped me, and it was the couple in the photograph but I'd never shown it to her. She obviously knew more but when I asked her, when I insisted on knowing, she would clutch at her heart as though I was making her terribly ill to talk about it."

Akimbe said, "Maybe she was making all of that up about you being dropped there. Why should you have believed her? Someone could have planted that photograph on you."

"Yes and why didn't you go over that edge yourself?" Chemchi couldn't keep the skepticism out of her voice. And yet she had to admit that Deobia's story rang a bell in her: Ali refusing point blank to tell her more. She didn't know why but the similarity made her want to hurt Deobia. "You must have been tempted to head out there. You should have gone looking."

"I was scared. I didn't know what of, but the thought of it made me panic. Then one day I woke up feeling different. I told myself I had nothing to lose. I went to the square and nodded to the old woman but I kept on walking and crossed over the edge to the sands beyond. My feet sank and my steps became so difficult across the dunes.

"I struggled but I kept going. And then the whole scene — the dunes and the fragments of other places dotted around — it all faded. You know the splotchy lights in the darkness when you go through the carpet, they descended over everything ahead of me. I could still feel my feet trudging through the sand but I couldn't see where I was headed. The splotches of light looked as though I could touch them but my hand passed through. And some of them had definite shapes, like clouds sometimes do, but then they shifted and the form was gone. It's like closing your eyes and looking at the after-lights, as though you were looking inside yourself, trying to find where you are."

Gazing into the distance with his frizzy afro hair, his chocolate skin and his lanky robed frame still topped with the goggles, he looked as though he was, right now, at that present moment, stepping on the shifting sands in his blindness.

He continued. "I looked back to where I'd come from — at least, to where I thought I'd come from — but the curtain of lights had come down over everything around me. I became very afraid. I hadn't even counted how many steps I'd taken, it hadn't occurred to me. There was nothing to get my bearings by, only the changing lights that seemed to jump slightly with my heartbeat."

Deobia stopped, completely lost in his re-telling. The other two may as well not have been there. The youth's face was cast like the moon atop the tall tree of his dangling body.

"Well for heaven's sake don't stop!" Akimbe let out a smacking tut of disapproval.

"I closed my eyes. And I realised I could feel a warm breeze on my skin. I listened to it and realised I had walked into that wind. So I held up my licked finger to tell its direction, and followed it back. As I walked, those splotchy lights started to disappear and I realised I could see everything in front of me. I could see cracked Marrakech and the square I'd left. It was like arriving at an island from a boat, with the dunes like waves. I climbed a higher dune and looked back. In the distance was one of the other fragments. Just one. If I'd kept my eyes closed, I think I could have walked to it. But I was so terrified. I lost my nerve. I shouldn't have. I should have turned and headed out to it. Why just the one place? It might have been where I'd been raised by these people," he pointed to the photograph, "but I kept on and walked over the edge of the square, which remained when I opened my eyes again. The old woman's head was still drooping so low you couldn't tell whether she'd seen me leave or return."

"So," Chemchi stood up, "that's quite a tale. But it doesn't match something I know."

"Really?"

"No, there was a captive family I freed there, who walked off from that same square. Who walked off into the same desert. I watched them disappear. They seemed to be headed for one of the fragments."

"But how long did you watch them for? You don't know whether they came back, do you?"

"No, I suppose that's true."

"You wanted to believe you had freed them."

"Yes," she admitted.

"But they might have been turned back, unable to see ahead as well, if only you'd waited to see."

"It makes me want to go back and try closing my eyes," said Akimbe, "in case there is somewhere out there I should visit. Where that man who schooled me was. Somewhere where my parents are."

"What about you?" Deobia looked at Chemchi. It was the first time he had emerged from his own story, the first time he'd shown interest in either of the other two since he'd begun his tale. "You and your torch. What is it you do with it, exactly? Is it like an eye, even though it's light?"

"First please tell us the rest of your story."

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

DEOBIA PUSHED THE goggles a little further so as to rest a little deeper in his hair. He was sweating, there was a sheen on his face which made him a little more human, a little less unearthly.

"So, you tried again, right?" said Akimbe.

"No, I was too afraid."

"Anyway," said Chemchi. "Let's not think about that now. How did you arrive here?"

"Yes, here. I found a book. A maths book, actually, about geometry. And there was a chapter about shapes that can't exist in our three dimensions — I mean, you couldn't physically make them because they would intersect with themselves or have a surface that nothing material could have. But they can exist in four or more dimensions. And there was something strange about one of the chapters, as though someone had hacked it — had stitched in extra pages. They'd done it so you couldn't tell that pages had been inserted, and the writing on each page made sense given the writing at the bottom of the previous page. But something wasn't right, the text didn't really fit. And there was a diagram, except it was more of a map than a diagram. And when I looked at it as a map I could tell where it was. So I went there and found the chamber. And I walked on the carpet.

"It felt good when the threads pulled at me. The prospect of spending my days feeling so alone among the others, even with the old woman — what was the point of that?"

"But I didn't go through, I tore myself off and left. Later I asked the old woman about it and showed her the book. She took it from me, found the same pages even though I'd not told her they were there, and handed it back to me without a word. Then she uncurled herself. It was like watching a plant unfurl in the sun. She uncurled herself and lay on her side, then curled back up and hunched by the wall again. All without a word. She was telling me something she wasn't allowed to say.

"So I went back to the carpet and lay down as she had. And the rest you know."

"Hold on," said Chemchi. "No, we don't know. You emerged, in the chamber, here. Then what?"

"I thought I was still where I'd started, at first. But soon I noticed there were differences, especially that the sun had moved. It was amazing after the constant noon, the way shadows grew and then darkness fell. The souks emptied. I couldn't possibly sleep so I walked and walked beyond the souks that night, in the moonlight, and I never came to an edge. I kept thinking I would encounter it any minute but it never came, the city just kept going and I found myself in the countryside. Then I slept in a field for a while and walked back the way I had come. The fields and everything else beyond the edge didn't seem strange but at the same time I couldn't think where I'd seen it all before. Maybe it was like wherever I was before.

"I slept rough for the first few nights. But I didn't feel safe. Some people here looked at me with curiosity. I needed somewhere to be where I could feel safe and collect my thoughts. I went to the riad I had stayed in. No one was about, so I headed for what would have been my room. The concierge came out of nowhere and stopped me, dragged me by the scruff of my neck and was about to kick me out when someone came out of one of the rooms. It was Camel-breath. He questioned me, in Arabic, French, English and many African tongues. I could understand them all. He must have realised there was something not quite right about me. What did I know of those countries where the languages were spoken? Only what I'd read and remembered. He didn't seem to mind that. He said he needed help. I didn't like him. How could I like a creepy man like that? But it seemed better to go along and give him a chance than to be alone again.

"They let me have a bit of money, and my moped. I found a place to stay — the riad where you found me, Akimbe. And, a few days later, when I reported to them as I had been instructed, they gave me a bag, told me not to open it, and pressed an address in my palm.

"I ran simple errands at first and later they gave me the money and the guns to take. They also left me with the slaves and the captives in transit to find out more about where they came from and to learn more of their languages."

"And you just went along with all of that?! You saw how miserable and beaten those people are!" said Chemchi.

"I thought I was helping. They liked having someone take an interest in them. It was a kind of relief for them. Secretly I tracked down other slaves they knew and told them where one another were. And I didn't tell the gangs everything. They could see I was —"

"Not a really bad person like the enslavers?" she said. "Aren't you kidding yourself? You were part of it. Who did you report to, Camel-breath?"

"Yes, he was decent to me but the others treated me almost like a slave and laughed at me."

"And Morchid?" said Chemchi.

"I knew no more than what you seem to know about him. Few dealt with him directly."

"And you can find relatives," said Akimbe, "but you can't find mine?"

"I haven't had a chance to help you, have I? We were looking for Chemchi."

"We'll get to that, Akimbe, let's hear what he has to say," said Chemchi.

"Anyway, one day Camel-breath told me to go through the carpet and look for something. Of course he didn't know I came from there and I didn't tell him. He said I needed to find a baby. Well, I racked my brains to think of where this baby could be. I'd never seen one there but perhaps I'd missed something.

"I went through and was met by the same man and woman at the gates. And as I scoured the souks, I pretended to myself I'd never been there before, so that I would spot something unusual even though I'd been taking it all for granted for so long. I searched and searched and came up with nothing. After two days, I rendezvoused with Camel-breath's men at a cafe, as agreed. My mind was crystal clear and I could remember everything about both places. But I feigned a little loss of memory and returned with them, because Camel-breath had warned that would happen to me. He wasn't at all happy when I came back empty-handed. They sent me back several times but it was always the same."

"This baby you were looking for is Morchid's son," said Chemchi.

"How do you know that?" Deobia asked.

"Because Morchid told me. He sent him through the carpet and he wants him back. He can't go through. He's tried but it won't take him. He wants me to find him. And I think I must, because then I can bargain with him."

"You can find him," said Akimbe. "You found the carpet and Ibtissam with your torch."

"The thought of going back gives me the creeps," said Chemchi. "But Morchid believes I can find him there. So I am valuable to him. I must hide. It's crazy being here, exactly where they might look for me."

"No one thinks you'd be stupid enough to hide where you live," said Akimbe.

"I'm going to lay low for a while," said Chemchi, "until Ali comes back. I want to know what Morchid wants with him. But not here. And not with you two."

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

"DO YOU EXPECT me to believe you don't know where she is?" Morchid stood with his arms folded. People talk about smouldering eyes in a romantic setting usually, but his smoked with a suppressed rage, a power station of wrath.

"I wish I knew but I don't. You've got to believe me." Ali's only power was to charm and that was useless with Morchid.

"You know I'll have you tortured. So why don't you save yourself."

"I promise you, I've been fretting over her."

Morchid didn't look at the cringing man. It was probably true that he knew nothing. Two voices spoke within his head. One, that knew the son must be found, said to relent. It was wiser to keep him alive. There might be a way to use him to force the girl to reveal herself. The other said to put this useless wretch straight in a box. It mortified him to be dependent on these creatures.

"You will let it be known that her mother is coming back. You are the only one who knows the mother's whereabouts. And the girl doesn't. Correct?"

"I've never told her, I swear."

"Go and get the mother. Bring her to me. Let it be known that she is in Marrakech."

****

But Ali could not get Chemchi's mother. She was dead. Stupid fool — why hadn't he told Morchid? He'd panicked, said whatever would get himself away from there quickly. All he'd had to do was say her mother was dead. But then his usefulness might have ceased. You had to think quickly.

When he came to take Chemchi away, Ali had made her mother, Lalla, promise never to contact her. It was an old debt she owed him and Lalla had had to pay. It was true he genuinely needed a maid but he had to admit he'd enjoyed taking payment. And he'd never touched the girl. He'd given her a good life. So what was the problem? And how could he have known how sick Lalla was anyway, that she was going to die six months later? Chemchi was better off with him than being some orphan in the mountains. After a long while, Chemchi had stopped bothering him, stopped imploring him to drive her back.

Well, there was no mother to find. And no mother to produce for Morchid. Or was there?

****

"So, you and Morchid must have a plan," Chemchi said as soon as Ali walked up. She had let him know the meeting place, an obscure corner of the souks under darkness, through Akimbe. Deobia and Akimbe were also there. They all looked exhausted from the strain they were under. "He wouldn't have let you come away without a plan, and a task for you. What is it?"

"I'm to fetch your mother. To lure you out of hiding."

"You'll do no such thing. How could you agree to that? How could you?"

Ali's voice was muted. "You ask that, when we're talking about Morchid?"

"Why does he need you, anyway, why doesn't he just have her fetched?"

Ali shrugged. "I suppose because he thinks she wouldn't cooperate. Or that his men might not be able to find her. You know what those fools are like."

"And now you're going to do for him what you've always refused to do for me."

"No, I won't do it. I'll find someone to stand in for her. Then he'll see that I've been true to my word. But you won't appear, of course, it'll do no good. We'll say that you must have gone looking for her, must be lost in the mountains by now."

"Are you really that stupid? This is Morchid we're talking about. He'll know he's being tricked."

"I'll find someone," said Deobia. "A slave. A tuareg, like Chemchi. I can arrange it. We'll find someone to say she's your mother, then we'll release her when it hasn't worked and Morchid has moved on to his next plan. I'll make sure she's safe."

"What the hell are you doing?" said Chemchi. "You're solving Ali's problem — Ali who was stupid enough to get my mother involved in this, and now you want to risk someone else's life to boot. It's insane and it's wrong. You'll be finding some poor innocent to send to the slaughter. Morchid is looking for me, expecting me to find his son. Well, I'm going to do that. I'm going to find his son. And I'm going to kill Morchid."

"You don't know what you are saying," said Ali. "No one could do that. He has so many enemies but he's existed for — no one knows how long."

"But he ate with me — alone for some of the time. He allows me to get up close. I could do it then. I could poison him."

"Get a grip, Chemchi. What has happened to you? What happened to the girl who's lived with me so quietly and cooperatively for so many years, someone I took into my home and looked after?" said Ali.

"You really want an answer to that? You're not my father. I have no father. And you are nobody. So stop telling me what I should or shouldn't do."

Ali ignored her. No one else could make her feel so powerless.

"Yes, we'll find someone to be Chemchi's mother," he said. "I'll coach her and introduce her to Morchid. Everyone will get to know she is staying as my guest in the riad. Morchid's men can come and visit as many times as they like. When she doesn't show up, Morchid will conclude that she has run away, that's all. We'll all be frantically looking for her."

Chemchi couldn't believe how she had become a pawn all of a sudden. And some poor soul was to be put in danger as a stand-in for her mother, however Deobia thought he could keep her safe. This was to save Ali's skin from a mauling by Morchid. She ran out. Ali tried to grab her arm but she wrenched it free without stopping. Ibtissam followed her, zipping past Ali's feet. Then Akimbe came after her.

"What are you doing?" Ali called after her. "You'll be picked up in no time! We have to hide you."

She didn't answer. She knew a place that none of them knew.

"Please don't follow me. Try to understand and look out for yourself. I'll be in touch," she said to Akimbe as drew up beside her.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

DEOBIA PUTTERED ALONG on his moped through the souks and out beyond greater Marrakech, to a farm that lay in a shallow valley. He hadn't told the others but there was someone he had in mind all along to stand in for Chemchi's mother. Her name was Radia. Deobia didn't know how old Chemchi's mother would be, exactly, but Radia looked about right. And she was a tall and statuesque tuareg like Chemchi, nice and elegant. He had noticed her as soon as she had stepped from one of the trucks, captured somewhere in the Sahara. She had a dignified air as she climbed out of that stinking carriage into the melee, the dappled slave market filled with the smells of human sweat. She looked, he thought, a bit like the old woman might have looked many years ago. Normally he didn't notice anyone in particular, let alone someone old enough to be his mother. But she was different and he wondered at himself for thinking so.

The gap-toothed farmer could have no objections since Deobia was, as far as the man knew, on Morchid's business. But Deobia had to be careful. He told the farmer not to worry, that he needed to interrogate her in private, and led the woman away from the house beneath the shade of a tree. He didn't really feel like someone who could tell people what to do, but he found it easy when on such a definite mission. The man had looked him up and down but he had to admit that the boy knew what he was talking about.

The woman was having none of it. "You. You're just a boy. Look at you. Does it make you feel like a man, doing their dirty business for them?"

He looked at her hands even as she railed at him, hands which were calloused from scrubbing in the house and toiling in the fields. Her face was more leathery from the sun than he had remembered.

"Please, I've not come here to harm you or to argue. I'd like you to help me — not them — and in return I'll see to it that you can escape."

She laughed. "I have no reason whatsoever to trust you. Or to help you. Look at me. This is my life now, if you could call it a life, doing that pig's chores." She spat on the ground in the direction where they had left the farmer. "So go away and leave me alone."

Deobia stood there a moment lost for words, the goggles catching some of the searing light from beyond the tree's shade. A gentle breeze swept the landscape.

"Why would I lie to you? What reason could I have to do you harm? I don't even know you. And could I really make your life worse than it is now?"

"Don't worry about me. I don't need your help. Go on home. You do have a home, don't you? Is it good to enter your own door and sleep in your own bed and leave when you wish?"

"I can take you away from here, now."

"On that?!" She laughed contemptuously at his moped propped at the side of the house.

"Yes. To freedom. But in return for a favour."

"Oh, a favour. We've arrived at the nitty gritty, have we." She looked him up and down. "What kind of favour?"

Deobia tried to explain as though it could possibly make sense that anyone needed to pretend to be someone's mother. It felt familiar, explaining the inexplicable, giving an account of the impossible, as though simplicity were something beyond him. He asked himself again, while he spoke, why he had picked her out from all the Tuareg women of about her age he'd come across. It was just plausible that she could be Chemchi's mother, although she didn't have Chemchi's wild, cat-like look. Otherwise there was nothing particularly to recommend her. He was asking a desperate women to help because only a desperate woman would conceivably consider what he had to propose for more than a split second.

As he talked, his eyes roved around and his long afro curls zinged with the effort of explanation. The woman's face turned from contempt to puzzlement, twisting her head and rolling her eyes. Deobia's earnestness, his unearthly honesty, was compelling. Something changed in her. She started to sense that, if she said yes, he really would ride her out of here, away from the vile farmer spitting somewhere around the grounds. That image, of riding away, became stuck in her mind. She didn't pay attention to what she had to do in return. She thought that, if she only said yes, that she could deal with that later. He was just a boy. If she had to fight him, well he was tall but then so was she. And she was strong from her labours.

For a moment, the farmer appeared at the side of the house, curious at what they were up to.

"Let us go. I don't care anymore what becomes of me. I give myself to Allah."

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHEMCHI TURNED DOWN the narrow alleyways by the souks. And there was Rime, the old beggar woman, hunched hopelessly against a corner, just like the old woman in cracked Marrakech.

"Chemchi?"

But Rime was mute, wasn't she? No one had heard her speak before. Chemchi was taken aback.

"Yes, Rime — and Ibtissam." The cat pushed her nose forward and sniffed at Rime's leg.

"And you found your cat. I'm so happy for you." Her slack jaw could barely move. The words escaped slowly.

"How can I find my mother, Rime?"

Rime considered the question, as though it had been expected. Her eyes searched the ground and then strained upwards to see Chemchi, who had knelt, the better to hear Rime's answer.

"What do you know about her?"

"That she lives — lived — in the mountains, a long dusty ride away."

"That's not much to know about a person. Especially your mother. "

"She lives in a village. She has access to a phone."

Rime's silence spoke for itself.

"Oh, I know, it's hopeless!"

"Ali knows."

"Yes, but he's Ali."

Chemchi thought of the old woman in the fractured square in cracked Marrakech. They were like plants growing in the unlikeliest cracks in the city walls. How did they sustain themselves? Everyone passed them by without noticing: old beggar women, the same everywhere, dressed in black from covered head to battered shoes.

"Don't you know something, Rime? Didn't Ali ever say anything about where he goes in the mountains, I mean before ... before when you were —"

"Younger? When I wasn't a beggar? When the likes of Ali would talk to me?"

"I'm sorry."

"You must look in a different place."

Suddenly Chemchi thought of the riad in cracked Marrakech. It was the same but different, just as Rime and the old woman were the same but different. Perhaps there was a clue in that.

****

Morchid stood serving a queue of customers at his butcher's stall. He passed ribs, heads and pieces of rump over the high counter in his meaty hands, to people he would otherwise never encounter: ordinary, everyday denizens of Marrakech who feared him as one fears a caged bear but believes oneself to be safe from it. They exchanged their dhirams for their cuts of rabbit, cow, goat and lamb and were drawn because his were the finest and because they could say where they had purchased them. "Tasty isn't it?" they would say at the dinner table. "Guess who I bought it from."

"Two of your finest ribs, please."

Camel-breath, whom Morchid had ignored until he reached the head of the queue, turned his voice to a whisper.

"You'd better come. There's trouble with the brute you had locked up. Says he has something to say to you. He had a fine way of getting your attention: he killed the young lad who went to check on him — smashed his skull but didn't try to escape, just waited for the others to come and see what the noise was all about. They're all scared of him now. Perhaps we should be."

Morchid said nothing but handed Camel-breath his meat in a bag and closed up his stall.

****

The shaman was no brute. There was a fierce intelligence in those eyes and that long upper lip. He did not strain against his captors, even though he could have swatted them all aside. Neither did he look at Morchid as he approached.

Morchid stopped short and told his men to bring him forward. He did not resist.

"I know what you seek," the shaman said. "The finding will take place soon." The shaman had a sickly smile with teeth like white daggers.

"And how do you come to believe that?"

The shaman looked into Morchid's eyes steadily, more steadily than anyone had managed before. The parallel scars on his cheeks ran straight and spoke of an ability to withstand pain.

"Unshackle him."

The shaman stayed where he was as the men gingerly unlocked the clasps and stood back.

"I don't need to know whatever it is you have to say,." Said Morchid.

"I'll tell you anyway. He will be your undoing. Beware his embrace."

"Why would you warn me?"

"Not for your sake. You can be sure of that. But because of the ... ramifications." The sickly smile appeared again then slammed shut.

Morchid took a box from a pouch at his belt, a small black cube like the one Chemchi had seen the scorpion girl inside. He wrote with his finger across one side, a message with all the letters in one place. Everyone watched with silent and fearful attention.

The lid opened.

It was as though the shaman turned at once into a liquid of shrinking parts: of black curly hair, of scars, of dagger teeth and muscled limbs, a liquid that poured effortlessly in an arc, starting with his head, into the box, which Morchid neatly closed as soon as the shackle-chafed ankles and feet were in.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHEMCHI TOOK CARE that no one was waiting for her in the chamber.

Even though she had been to cracked Marrakech before and returned safely, it was creepy to go back through the carpet, past the pleading wardens and into the broken counterpart of her Marrakech. And as before, its clockwork denizens were going about their eerie simulation of life, through the bustling streets with the broken shadows made through the netting beneath the high, immobile sun.

In a quiet corner, she put on the veil from her basket and walked on through the streets and alleys to the riad. She could be looking for the baby too right now but all she could think of was her mother.

Despite their clockwork to-ing and fro-ing, she had to admit that the people looked serene compared to the often care-worn faces in Marrakech. She copied that serenity, despite the nerves jangling inside her, trying to float rather than walk. The enslavers down here were easy to spot, their roving eyes searching — for her, she presumed, and Morchid's son — and their rough voices contrasted with the peaceful utterances of the natives. Why didn't they post men to wait for her in the chamber or at the gates where she arrived? Perhaps there was some ill effect of long-term exposure there — radiation, maybe. For the carpet had to have some physical basis in science, surely. The thought made her pick up speed, anxious to get her visit over and done with..

She braced herself as she entered the riad. And there, tidying, was her counterpart. Chemchi stopped and observed her, taking her in. It was her. But how could she be in two places at once? The old woman in the fractured square had told her that some people were made real in this place, out of the thoughts of people who arrived there. Whose thoughts would she be from? What kind of thoughts were they?

She coughed. Her counterpart looked up at the veiled visitor.

"Yes, can I help you? A room?"

"No, actually, I'm sorry to disturb you but I met someone — I think his name was Ali — who told me you might be able to help." Chemchi lowered her voice as she spoke, so as not to sound so like her counterpart — who seemed to have noticed the similarity too and was looking at her with curiosity.

"Oh? I wonder what he was thinking of. Is it shopping?" She brightened.

"Not exactly. I'm looking for a type of earring made by people in the mountains and I understand you have relatives there."

"Please, sit." She motioned to the same table Chemchi sat at with Ali. Chemchi took a place, nervous that he might return at any moment. Her counterpart continued.

"Yes, my mother lives there. But where do you mean, exactly?"

"I'm not sure. Where is your mother?"

The question led to an awkward pause. Chemchi wondered if she was deciding whether to answer, or perhaps, like her, she didn't know. How could she know in any meaningful sense? There were no mountains. She wasn't Chemchi. Shouldn't meeting yourself like this be impossible?

The counterpart made up her mind. "She is in a village, where there are people who make earrings and bring them to the souks to sell. Let me show you." She disappeared into Chemchi's room and came back with extraordinary earrings of hooped cascades, the like of which Chemchi had never seen before. They would hang over six inches.

"That's exactly the type of earring I'm looking for! I've seen them in the souks but I would like to go to the source and find out how they are made."

"It's their livelihood. I can't tell you that!"

"No, no. Please, do not misunderstand me. I may have new markets for them. I want to help."

Her counterpart accepted this story eventually. It didn't make much sense and Chemchi was afraid she would see through it. This girl was identical to her to look at, but didn't share her scepticism. Was it just that she had led such a different life? Could it be said that she was living a life?

And so Chemchi listened as the girl told her where her mother's village lay, as though she visited there often and the route was fresh in her mind. Chemchi was touched.

"Won't you come with me?" she asked.

"Oh, thank you, thank you so much, but no — I have much to do here."

"Then I'll bid you good day." She could hardly bring herself to leave.

"Please, take the earrings with you."

"I couldn't..."

"I insist. I have plenty more. And I can see how much you like them, as if they were made for you."

A cat appeared from a corner and looked from one to the other and back again.

"Ibtissam!" exclaimed her counterpart. The cat came over and rubbed herself against Chemchi's ankle. Chemchi's Ibtissam was locked in her hiding place.

"Why, I've never seen her do that to anyone else!"

Chemchi picked up the purring cat and handed her over. "You've been most kind. Farewell."

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

AKIMBE AND ALI spent their time apart. They had nothing to say to one another. Akimbe would go for walks in the souks, lie in the roof garden, staring out over the rooftops, or on her bed, trying to concentrate on her films, which he often could not make head or tail of. Once again he had lost her. He told himself he had a habit of losing the people he cared about, and chided himself over it, as if it were his fault. He blamed himself, too, for having forgotten everything in cracked Marrakech, for not having found a way back to his family when they could not have been too far away from the Criée Berbère. It may have been his imagination but he felt that he could in fact dimly remember the first few days, before the forgetting set in, running through the streets and alleys of the souks, asking anyone who would listen where the chamber with the slave market could be, soon realising that no one understood, so that a terrible loneliness had gripped him under the immobile sun. Then the forgetting had taken hold. How could he have been so weak? If only he had had Chemchi with him. But reason told him that she would have forgotten too. And his instinct was that she was back there now. It had been more than two days. He could go back and look, and try to persuade her to return with him. His heart sank at the immensity of the prospect. Deobia might help. But he was busy with Ali's plan.

****

Ali didn't mind waiting. Most of his life consisted of an affable motionlessness, sipping teas at the table in the courtyard of his very own riad, remembering his life before he settled there. It suited him that it lay down so many twisting ways, that guests were rare. For he welcomed the gentle stream of new people to relate his stories to. He was not overwhelmed by their demands. It didn't matter much that he struggled sometimes on little income. He had Chemchi to help around the house. At least, he had had her. He doubted whether she would help him any longer. The ingrate.

****

Through the riad's open door, and climbing up to the top of the atrium where Akimbe lay in the shade, came the putt-putt of a moped struggling along the alley. The engine cut to sudden silence just within.

As Akimbe rushed downstairs, Deobia walked in, followed by Radia.

Akimbe looked from Deobia to Ali and back again, and shook his head at the prospects for this woman.

He had to admit to himself that Deobia had chosen well. She looked the part. He would have believed it if he hadn't known the truth. But he was not Morchid.

"This is Radia," Deobia said. "Now to be known as Lalla. She has agreed."

"And who might these two be?"

"Akimbe is a friend. Ali and I will take you to Morchid."

"Don't say his name. It makes me shudder."

Ali looked her up and down. "You'll pass. You must be calm and reveal nothing of what you know about Marrakech. You have come from the mountains and have never even heard Morchid's name. You are interested only in seeing your daughter after such a long time." He handed her a photograph of Chemchi from a drawer, his only shot of her, taken by a friend. "And you will do anything — agree to anything — for her sake. Except don't be a pushover. Resist respectfully at first but agree to persuade her of what he asks."

"And then?"

"When it's over we will take you where you want to go," said Deobia.

"Back to my homeland."

"Very well."

"I could go now. I don't need you anymore."

"I know," Deobia said.

Ali gave him a look that said how could you be so stupid — why haven't you committed her to the plan somehow? They all knew it was his neck if no mother appeared. He walked towards her but Deobia stepped in between them, taller than Ali but not much taller than she, even with his mass of hair.

"But they'll be looking for you if we say you escaped," said Deobia. "They make examples of the ones who escape, believe me. You must know that."

"All right but promise you will do right by me if I go along with what you ask?"

"Yes, believe me. I can tell the right people a tale about what I have done with you."

Akimbe listened carefully, full of questions he could not ask in her presence. Deobia may have been bluffing. Surely he wouldn't betray her, would he? To Akimbe, the unearthly youth seemed incapable of deceiving anyone — except perhaps himself.

Radia looked at Deobia to weigh the youth up for one last time before committing herself — as if she had a choice.

"Please, sit," said Deobia. "Ali is going to tell you all about Chemchi and her mother. Everything he knows."

"I am so tired."

"I'll make you up a room," said Ali, "and we'll talk later."

****

It was up to Ali to teach Radia what she needed to know. The others were like spare wheels. Chemchi's absence haunted them all. The atmosphere in the riad was strained. Everyone wanted to get the crazy plan over and done with. Especially Ali. But what was the plan? Akimbe didn't think there really was one. It had not been worked out. They were just hoping things would turn out OK.

He knew Chemchi would return — if she could. He cursed her for walking off like that, without telling him where.

He left the riad and walked down the quiet ways to the Rue Mouassine, where the daddy long-legs, the butterflies and bumble bees — he couldn't escape that image that Chemchi had given him, however childish — flowed and bumped past. The road broadened there so there was a little shady spot with space to stop a while, the place where Ali sat.

He needed to prove to himself that he was good for something. But how? He started to day-dream. Each afternoon, he crawled through the gap in the Criée Berbère, lay on the carpet and visited cracked Marrakech. First he left a note in his bedroom in the riad, so the others would know where he was in case he didn't come back. When he arrived, he talked himself past the gatekeepers, leaving them flummoxed in exactly the same way, the same scene re-enacted as though they had never seen him before. He wore a watch borrowed from Ali, and made sure he spent no more than a few hours there each day.

He grew bolder, not caring particularly what these clockwork people, these ghosts and automata, thought of him. And they were all so gentle. He stopped and asked as many people as he could whether they had seen his family, regardless of whether they were in the middle of buying something or talking to somebody. Each day he picked a different set of streets. He could cover all of cracked Marrakech in a few weeks. He could say that he had tried.

He was woken from his day-dream by a tap on the shoulder. A little girl stood beside him, snot dripping from her nose.

"You Akimbe?"

"Yes. Who's asking?"

"Dunno who she was but she said to give you this." She thrust a piece of paper into his hand and ran off into the crowds.

He looked around. No one.

****

Deobia had to act as though he were working for the enslavers, or he could do nothing about Radia's fate. On his rounds, he made enquiries about Akimbe's family. They led nowhere. None of the enslavers batted an eyelid when he asked about a man and his family amongst the cargo whose status had been overlooked: a king, who could be a source of valuable intelligence. But then the enslavers paid no attention to such things. They saw only bodies: muscles, teeth, bottoms and breasts. That was why Deobia was there, to pay attention, to talk to them, to learn their languages, to report up through the chain to Morchid. In this, he exercised his brain, the only thing that had kept him going through his stay in the cracked place. His means of survival. He'd not thought through the effects of working his brain for the enslavers: that he was making the trade more efficient by gathering intelligence, flying on the moped through the streets of the souks and the rest of the medina. The begoggled son of unknown people in a photograph. He knew the gang laughed at him.

Now he had become aware. Radia was how he could begin to make amends.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

THE BUS LET Chemchi off at a dusty, uninhabited spot on the winding road, surrounded by rocks and a few cedars. According to her counterpart in Cracked Marrakech, the village lay about a kilometre into the hills along a twisting pass. The air was dry and crickets chirped close and invisible, their sound emerging from the disappearing labour of the bus. The contours of the hills and the glugging of a stream somewhere nearby seemed familiar. But it was eleven years since Ali had taken her away, when she was a little girl; she didn't know whether to trust her memory.

She picked up her basket, which contained Ibtissam, a few clothes and the pencil torch. She didn't know what to expect or how long she would be away from home. 'Home', what a curious idea this had become – instead of Ali's riad, she was about to go 'home' to her mother. In truth, nowhere felt like home any more. What was she going to find here? A mother who had abandoned her. It was better to get it over with, to be disowned face to face; easier not to hope anymore.

She began the climb, grateful for the headscarf that shielded her from the worst of the beating sun. The pass was steep and she began to sweat, her pace slowing despite her nervous energy. At last she reached a village, which consisted of nothing more than a few houses and sheds. Did she come from here? No one was about. All the shutters were up against the heat. She walked past each house in turn, to see if it stirred any recollections. Stillness lay over everything like a cloak. If no one appeared, she thought, she could say that she had tried to find her mother, or that she had come to the wrong village, been given false information – and return.

It was the last house, around a bend, that prompted a dim sense of familiarity. She walked up a path to the front door. Ibtissam, who had been asleep in the basket, awoke, looked up at her and miaowed. The door was open and it was very dark inside. She stood at the threshold, reached inside and knocked, then took a few paces back. A dog barked somewhere in the hills. The gruff voice answering from inside said, "One minute, please."

A man appeared, about Ali's age, cleaning his hands with a blackened rag. He looked kinder than he had sounded, and her thumping heart slowed a little. She wondered whether she had disturbed him from making the earrings that had been the clue to lead her here, whether men could make such delicate cascades, or would want to.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for my mother, Lalla." Ibtissam had popped her head out of the basket again to point her nose at him. He looked at Chemchi kindly as he pondered.

"I don't know anyone by that name. Did she use to live here? That's very unfortunate, for a girl to have lost her mother."

"It's not my fault..." Chemchi couldn't help herself, the words spilled out. She suddenly felt accountable to this world and the people who lived here. It was a sign, perhaps, that she had arrived in the right place.

He smiled, "Don't worry, I think I know someone who can help you, someone who has always lived here and who knows everything there is to know around here."

****

Judging by her wrinkled face, the woman must have been as old as Rime in Marrakech or the old woman in the fractured square of Cracked Marrakech. But this woman didn't crouch. She stood, however hunched, before her. And although her frail head drooped she managed to lift it just enough to return her look.

"Chemchi!" Her eyes lit up and she stumbled forward to hug her. "Little Chemchi, it's you after all these years!"

When the woman's face brightened, Chemchi felt a flash of half-recognition. Was this Fatma, who used to call her over for a sweet fig or two? She recognised the old woman's smell, a metallic odour carried also by the man who led her here, which Chemchi now imagined to be the smell of making coils and hoops for earrings. But in Fatma's case it was mixed up with kitchen smells, of fruit and spices.

The woman reached up and stroked Chemchi's cheek. "My little darling you've been away so long, and Lalla..."

"Yes, I've come to see her. Where is she? She's not where we used to live."

Fatma touched her cheek. "My darling, my poor darling." She took a moment to take in what Chemchi was saying. "But she died my love, not long after you left."

"No, where is she? I've waited so long to see her."

Fatma took her arm and led her inside. The man followed. She bade Chemchi to sit but they all remained standing.

"Hasn't he told you anything? Ali, wasn't it, who took you to Marrakech? Oh I'm so sorry, my love. She was frantically worried about you, I could see that. It happened so soon — months — after you left. I don't think she knew how to tell you how ill she was. She would barely talk about her illness and never explained what had become of you, to me or anyone else for that matter."

Chemchi looked from the old woman to the man and watched their mouths move but make only noises, as though she'd come to somewhere so strange, where they spoke not another human language but a different speech altogether, the utterances of birds or stones. She opened her own mouth to a silent gape.

The woman put her arms around Chemchi, and the man touched her shoulder, casting his head down.

"She's here. You're lying. Why are you lying to me?"

****

Chemchi lay awake the whole night. The old woman had made up a cot for her and stayed as long as she could manage, telling stories about her mother. But Chemchi couldn't take them in and both of them quickly tired. It was a relief when Fatma finally announced she would retire for the night.

The moon cast its thin light across her bed, where Ibtissam lay curled against her legs. Ali's face appeared. She was furious with him and refused to let him explain, as if he ever would. Or could. She reproached herself, too, for doing nothing about her ignorance, all this time. And there was grief, that wanted her tears, tears for which she was not yet ready.

She could feel the night sucking everything out of her. But she resisted. Her mind tried to grasp at the events left behind in Marrakech and Cracked Marrakech; she forced herself to think of Morchid, Akimbe and Deobia, however far they were from this silent village in the hills. Akimbe. He needed her help. She was a fighter, wasn't she? What had Lalla wanted her to be? If only she knew: it would be so much easier to have a mother who wanted her to be something, and not to have to work everything out for herself. Oh to be five years old again, to undo the destruction of her life here in the mountains, for her mother to be tucking her in, for Ali never to have turned up in his battered car.

Reaching over the side of the bed, she took the torch from the basket and switched it on. Playing the beam around the room, she saw its light glinting in the eyes of the now-woken Ibtissam, who cried at her, showing her fangs. She shone it as though she were a little girl again, her sword against the darkness to vanquish whatever lay within it.

She was too weary to know exactly what she must do. But she couldn't stay here, not now; she couldn't bear her grief in this emptiness – if she could ever bear it at all – however kind Fatma would be. She needed to be with what she knew. Events were unfolding in Marrakech. Chemchi listened. She let her mother speak to her. Lalla was kind, the way a mother should be, and gave her permission to leave in the morning. She told her that she could always return to the village, and perhaps even find some peace here. They would be together again. Very well mother, Chemchi whispered, I will first bring this story to an end.

As she cast the beam about Fatma's room, everything lit up as it should be. No invisible carpet appeared. But she no more knew how the story would unravel than whether her torch might yet, on another pass, uncover something in the shadows.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

THEY LEFT THE riad in solemn silence. Ali thought Akimbe would just have to work out where they'd gone when he came back. If he came back.

At the Rue Mouassine, Deobia walked on ahead. Ali and Radia followed behind, watching the back of his head, his squashed round fuzz of hair. It was something to see him walk, as though he were not meant for putting one foot in front of the other but should always glide above the ground.

"He's just a boy. And that other one, who's gone missing, a child. They're children you've got mixed up in this," said Radia. "And all of us are saving your neck."

"What are you worried about?" said Ali. "You'll get your freedom. Just concentrate on what you have to do, and do it well."

"I hated the farm but at least I knew where I stood. Now I don't know what I've got myself into."

Ali took her arm. "We can take you back there if you like. There are plenty of others who would be glad to replace you." Deobia had turned and was watching them. He started to walk back.

"Don't worry. I won't upset your precious plans. I'm just a slave. What is that? A nothing. You don't need to worry about a nothing. Take my hand." She pressed Ali's hand around hers. She was strong and it hurt. He flinched and looked around to see if anyone had noticed what this woman was doing to a man in the souks.

"What do you feel?" she said. He wrested his hand from her grip.

"You feel nothing. Empty space. A ghost. But it hurts, doesn't it?"

Ali pressed her on through the crowd. They rejoined Deobia, who tilted his head trying to understand what he had witnessed. The three walked on close to one another, to their appointment with Morchid.

****

Morchid examined his huge hands, as though curious about what they would do next: chop, or strangle, or bring a morsel to his mouth.

"You've brought me two people and I asked for one. Explain."

"Morchid, this is Lalla, Chemchi's mother. And this one you know, surely, it's Deobia, he's one of yours. I asked him to help me find her."

"You told me you knew where she was."

"I believed so. I was wrong. She had moved away."

"And do you merely 'believe' she is the one?"

"No, no. It's her. Of course it is her."

"What help did you need?" Morchid continued not to look at them. Deobia opened his mouth to speak but Morchid shushed him with a hand.

"She'd moved, that's all. It's been a long time. No one seemed to know anything about her. I suppose because she hadn't wanted Chemchi to find her, after letting me take her away. I asked Deobia to make enquiries. I know he's one of yours but I thought you'd want me to use the best to find her. He is the best and he tracked her down. So here we are."

"He's not the best. He failed to find something of mine. Someone is better. But you helped Ali find this woman. How?"

Deobia answered looking at the ground. "I went to the village where she had lived. It was a matter of finding the right person, the one who would open up."

"And how did you find the right person?" As Morchid drew up close Deobia could see his pupils for the first time. Was that the eyelid lights he saw there? It was not possible to look for long.

"I talked to a slave who comes from there. I promised to bring back news if she could give me a lead."

"And the message you brought back?"

Deobia thought quickly. "A man had married at last, someone she had loved."

"You put her out of her misery?"

"No, I made her more miserable but I did as I was asked."

"Do you always do as you are asked?"

"I serve those who have been good to me. I repay favours."

"And Ali?"

"No, I served you in finding her. Didn't I?"

Morchid turned back to Ali. "You see? You've been factored out again. Oh, but look at you, so scared." The sweat was dripping from Ali's face. "Were you worried that your boy would say the wrong thing? Might he have betrayed you? It's good for you that you are associated with Chemchi. It means I have to keep you around a little while longer."

Morchid sat and indicated a place for Radia beside him. She walked past the little shelves of black boxes. Ali flinched when she stumbled slightly on the edge of a carpet.

"You're right to be nervous, all of you," Morchid said. "Much depends upon this. More than you know."

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

THE ADDRESS ON the note the little girl gave to Akimbe was of a disused restaurant. It was a place abandoned in a hurry by its bankrupt owners and left as it stood, ready for the diners the next day but with no staff to run it. There was a way in via the rooftops. If someone came in — and prospective purchasers would be looking over it — it was easy to leave that way before they could see you. That was why Chemchi had chosen it.

As she picked her way among the tables, she saw him sitting at one of them. Ibtissam quickly left her arms, off to find one of the scurrying mice that scratched around unseen.

"Are you shaking?" She put her basket on the dining table.

Akimbe sat slumped, his place set with knife, fork and spoon. He did not reply.

"When did you last eat? You must be starving," she said.

"I've been waiting for you. I didn't know where you were. I'm scared." He wouldn't look at her.

She sat next to him and pressed her hands to his cheeks, pulling his face towards her. He was crying.

"What a pair we are," she said.

"Where have you been?"

"To see my mother."

"You've found her!"

"No, I have lost her."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind."

"I haven't found mine, either." He pulled his mother's bracelet, his only possession, from his pouch and placed it on the table.

"There are things we must do. Will you do as I ask?"

"Of course." He was a pale shadow of the feisty son of a warrior she had released from cracked Marrakech. She was sick of seeing lives crushed. She couldn't bring herself to smile to reassure him.

"I won't stand for it anymore — none of it," she said. "And when I've dealt with Morchid we'll find a new life for you here while we look for them. I promise you."

"I want to believe you but you should see yourself. You look tired. You could do with some help yourself."

"Well, thanks for the vote of confidence." A half ssmile passed between them.

****

Akimbe was the only one of the three who was below Morchid's radar as far as they knew. He became a messenger between Chemchi in the abandoned restaurant and Ali in the riad. Even Deobia might have been watched so they didn't tell him about the restaurant.

The messages were all one-way. Chemchi couldn't bring herself to speak to Ali even via Akimbe. How could she ever forgive him?

Ali sent word that she should under no circumstances appear until he said it was the right time. She scoffed when Akimbe told her.

"I'm not interested in what he thinks," she said. "But what about her — what does Deobia say about her?"

"He says she is treated well. Morchid has her shut in a room but it is comfortable and she is fed properly. There is an open invitation for you to visit and see for yourself. Now the word is out, there is a stream of people visiting the riad now, claiming to have seen you in various parts of the souks. They think they can get out of whatever obligations Morchid's put them under. And what about you?"

"His son. I have to keep looking. There's nothing to be done until I've found him. I have to look everywhere. I've been returning to the cracked place. But I'm going to look everywhere I can, to the best of my imagination. Including the places where I think I don't need to look, the places I believe I know but perhaps don't."

She took out her torch and shone it around the dark restaurant, its tables and boarded up windows. Then suddenly she shone it into his face.

"What do you think you're doing? Stop!"

She paused, absorbing something.

"You don't trust me," he said. "You can't doubt everything."

"Oh, can't I?"

"You'll go mad."

"We'll see. Please tell Deobia I need to see him."

CHAPTER FIFTY

AKIMBE MET DEOBIA at the riad where they had first met.

"She says she wants to see you again. It's important. She's decided on a plan but she won't tell me about it. Why does she want to see you? It's a secret for you — she won't tell me."

"Perhaps it's something too dangerous for you to know."

"Pshaw! — I can handle any danger you can handle."

"But she doesn't want to put you in danger. The same dangerous game I'm already playing, going back to Morchid's lair to see Radia and pretending to work for the enslavers still. We all want an end to this. We don't want to mix you up in it too. It's better for you not to be involved."

"Surely you can fix this, you're so clever."

"Why do you sneer at me now?"

"Go and meet her. See if I care what you two get up to."

****

Akimbe followed Chemchi from her hideaway, the disused restaurant on the outskirts of the souks. She entered the shadow of one of the taller buildings, where tourists stopped to cool down on their way to the museum around the corner. Akimbe hung back as she took busy streets, hiding behind one set of ambling tourists after another. But Chemchi looked behind her every so often, pretending first to stop to examine a pair of shoes or a lamp in the stalls, while stealing fleeting glances to see if she were being followed. No one else could tell it was her beneath her headscarf but he saw the intent gaze of those green eyes, the slightly wild expression. He was as careful as he could be.

She saw him. He tried to look away but there was no question about it. She started back towards him, passed and ignored him, then turned down a quiet alley. He followed. She sprang and pulled him into a doorway.

"What do you think you're doing! They might be following you and now you'll have led them to me! Do you know what I wish? I wish I were completely alone, with no one to complicate matters."

Akimbe hung his head.

"Go back to Ali," she said. "Listen to me. Go back & tell him I'm going to meet Morchid. Soon. And we'll go through with it, with Radia. I want you and him to stay out of my way. I'm going to deal with him myself. Have you got that? Now go."

When he looked back, she was gone, down one of the many side-alleys. It was hopeless trying to follow her now.

****

Deobia puttered through Marrakech on his moped, crossing the expanse of the Jamaa el Fna with its snake charmers, the people squatting with a few trinkets for sale before them, and the tourists ambling while traders beckoned and called from all sides. The strange youth glided through it all like a pilot on his two small wheels.

He met Chemchi in a tourists' cafe by the vast square. She, veiled, pretended to look in the stalls selling over-priced lamps until she saw him approach. Each of them passed through the tables of tourists sipping cool drinks and watching the bright, clamourous scene outside, to a room at the back of the dark interior.

"Do you know she's safe?" she said.

"Yes. He leaves her alone. She's restless and growing more and more nervous, though."

"Wouldn't you be? And tell me, why her?"

Deobia looked down. "She reminds me of someone."

"Well, who?"

"My mother."

He took the dog-eared photo from the bag that hung from his shoulder, of the smiling white couple — who could not have been the parents of this brown youth.

"She looks like that? You've found a white woman to be my mother?!"

"No, no, of course not. It's not the way she looks. Allow me to try to explain, even though I can't really explain it even to myself. She is like her ... in the way she holds herself. The way she acts."

"Deobia, listen. It's a photograph. Of someone you say you only dimly remember. That woman, in Morchid's lair, is breathing and thinking as we speak. Her life hangs on a situation over which you have no control. Morchid wouldn't think twice about doing something unspeakable to her."

"I took her away from that farm. From slavery."

"And put her in danger."

"It's when you're hidden, that's when it's dangerous. When you are seen, you have options."

"Where did you get that idea from? You think there are rules where Morchid is concerned? Principles? I want that woman freed."

"I can't do that."

"You can help her to escape."

"How?"

"I don't know, think of something. You know his compound like the back of your hand by now, don't you? Who's watching where and when? You're scared."

"Why shouldn't I be scared?"

Chemchi bit her lip. "I'm going to give myself up."

"What?!"

"I'm not in danger as long as he sees me making an honest attempt at finding his son. I scrub Ali's floors. That's my life. What's wrong with a life of searching by comparison?"

"Suppose you can't find him."

"Maybe I have found him. I have special powers, remember? Chemchi and her special powers. I take the torch," she pulled it from her basket and switched it on, "and I shine it." She pointed it at Deobia.

"Stop, you're blinding me."

She kept it on him.

"Switch it off, you're drawing attention to us."

"It's nothing. I just have to look everywhere, you see. I can't help myself. That's going to be my job now."

"Did you see anything? Did you see where I come from?"

"I have to go. I came to tell you that the time is soon. Be careful."

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

IT WAS TWO a.m. on the night of the Perseids, the meteor shower that returns every year. Chemchi wended her way through the tables of the abandoned restaurant, through the door to the kitchen, and across to a staircase in the corner that led up to the roof. She held the door for Ibtissam, who had paused in the kitchen to smell for mice.

They emerged to the moonlit roofscape. Other figures were dotted around, all intent upon seeing the silver streaks, the burning rock particles hitting the upper atmosphere at tremendous speeds. No one was near enough to make her out but she wore her veil just in case. She would expose herself tomorrow, when she was ready. Ibtissam padded along the low roof-top walls. It was quiet.

She shone her torch at the night sky. Her mother was dead. At least she knew that fact, even though she didn't feel anything about it. Not yet. What was it that she, herself, wanted — needed — to look for now, at this precise moment? Something tugged at her. How could you look for something without knowing what it is? I'll know it when I see it, she sometimes told herself, about clothes for herself, or a gift for someone else.

Everything that was lost was somewhere, knowing itself in a corner of the universe.

Everything could be known. It was somewhere close but out of reach at present.

She needed to go back to cracked Marrakech. For the last time, she hoped. To see the old woman. To talk to the bug in reality.

****

When Chemchi returned from cracked Marrakech, she went straight to Morchid.

"They say you have my mother." Chemchi, tall though she was, had to look up to Morchid as he served in his bloody stall, the rows of carcasses behind him. He still held a cleaver from his last sale. "How is she?"

"What do you want?"

"I want my mother. What do you think I want?"

He seemed to be considering whether to slice her with the cleaver right there and then.

"And do you," he said. "have what you were to find?"

"Yes. I have found what you want."

"It's not what I 'want' but the exact thing I have required of you. I will need verification."

"I can prove it to you."

Morchid tired of the customers gawping a few feet behind. He waved them away and they scattered like flies

"Where is he?"

"In cracked Marrakech, where you put him."

"But where? And what proof do you have?"

"You will know your own son when you see him."

"Perhaps."

"Well something tells me that a DNA test won't help. You're not made with DNA, are you; you're something else altogether."

She shone her torch directly in his eyes, holding it close to her chest. He didn't blink.

"What do you see, little one?"

The under-eyelid lights appeared wherever the beam touched him. She saw through to the carcasses.

"What I expected to see."

"Did you really think that what I am — as opposed to this," he gestured down at his body, "could be found?" He made a sucking noise through his teeth. "Like your cat?"

"No, you're just a mouthpiece, aren't you Morchid, for cruelty and selfishness."

He emitted a hollow laugh and wiped his stubbly, sweaty moustache. "It doesn't matter what you think you see of me. You're straying. You say you know him. What is the token of your recognition?"

"The same as I see when I shine the torch on you."

"Bring him to me."

"I told you, he's in cracked Marrakech. I'll take you to him."

"And I told you that I cannot pass."

"You mean you really can't find a way, now that you know he's there? Are you afraid that your enslaving operation will fall apart without you — if you leave it to all those buffoons?"

He put aside his cleaver. The act of laying it away somehow made his potential to use it only more clear.

"I said bring him to me."

Chemchi thought she caught Morchid sniffing, sniffing a rat, perhaps. But she really did mean to give him what he wanted.

"I know you can bring people back from the carpet with a torch. Whether they want to or not."

"Who told you that? You only think you know that. You've seen nothing with your own eyes. Your agents are not all reliable, you know."

"Enough."

"Very well. Bring my mother to the chamber. We'll do a swap. And I'll reveal him in such a way that you will know you are his father. But it has to be there. I can't prove it otherwise and I'm not going to have you deny what I've done. I want witnesses. Ones who stay alive."

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

"WHY DID YOU go back there?" said Akimbe.

"Never mind," said Chemchi. "There are some things it's better for you not to know. Now, I need you to do something for me. Something very important."

Two candles burning steadily on the table made a pitiful impression in the high-ceilinged restaurant. But the sadness on Akimbe's face was clear to see. How this boy has been broken, Chemchi thought. He doesn't know what to do with himself. And I'm part of it.

"I need you to talk to the old woman in the square, but only when I tell you to. I've told her to expect you. I'm counting on you. I promise to help you when this is over, when I've dealt with Morchid. It will be over soon but you must do this for me."

"You keep saying it'll be over, that you're going to fix things. But you never actually have a plan, do you."

"Now I do. I really do. And your talking to the old woman is part of it. Stay with her but for heaven's sake don't lose track of time. Don't become one of them again. I think I can get you back as I did before with my torch but I don't know that and we don't know what might happen to me. Ask her where your family is. Tell me what she says. Exactly what she says. Write it down. We have no idea what she'll say. Suppose something in cracked Marrakech has tricked your memory? What if they are not missing at all but here somewhere in front of our eyes?"

"How could you say that?! Am I some kind of stupid idiot who —"

"Akimbe, I'm just saying: open your mind to whatever she says. We don't know how long you were down there. It's obvious that aspects of this world are strange to you, even though you won't talk about it. But we don't know why: whether it's because you were there for so long or because it altered your mind. Remember the man you spoke of, whose home you lived in. Supposing he was your father?"

"And this?" He pulled the bracelet from his pouch.

"Ask the woman, that's all I ask."

"Why her?"

"Because she is a mouthpiece for the place. She will know. You don't have to believe anything she tells you. It's up to you."

"What has this got to do with Morchid's son?"

"Trust me. Everything in this situation is interlinked. I am truly being your friend when I ask you to do this."

"And why do I have to talk to her at a certain time? Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"Of course not. It's just that I have a theory about when the old woman will talk, will say certain things," she lied.

****

"So she's found him," said Ali.

"I don't know. I know only what I've already told you: that she's arranged to meet Morchid in the chamber," said Akimbe

"She wouldn't do that if she didn't have his son, it'd be madness. We'll all be in boxes in no time. Where is he?"

"Must I repeat everything? I told you, I don't know much more." But he did. He sensed Chemchi wanted him to talk to the old woman in Cracked Marrakech at just the time when she faced Morchid in the chamber.

"But I do know that she has been back to cracked Marrakech. She was gone all night. And she returned the next morning, with Ibtissam and the torch in her basket. She could barely keep awake. But she refused to answer my questions. I'm worried about her."

"I'm worried about all of us," said Ali.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

THE WHITE VANS entered Marrakech and parked inside the hidden courtyards of Morchid's centre of operations. Everything happened here at night and the very early morning. Deobia, playing his part until Radia could be released, felt sick. His plane had landed, and everything he had viewed from thousands of metres above was now rammed in front of his face. He could smell the reek of what he was part of; the smell of hot suffering that he had grown accustomed to.

Never mind, he told himself, as long as it will end soon. And it would end soon. Morchid had called him in to see him personally, and there could be only one reason.

****

Radia watched the white vans come and go, from the window of her prison. It was night and the courtyard was alive with many lights: the moving headlights, the flares as the enslavers lit their cigarettes, and the torches and spotlights when the vans were unloaded.

She watched the fallen faces, the fearful faces, the defiant faces, everyone in different stages of reaction to their imprisonment, like the stages of grief at the loss of a loved one. But this was losing your own life, when it was taken away from you. She knew what they were going through. She had thought, eventually, that her life was lost forever, forever enchained to that foul farmer or whoever she would be sold on to next. Hope had deserted her. And when Deobia came that day, what he offered her was absurd. A chance to become embroiled in some stupid, ill-thought-out plot to help people she had never even met.

But wasn't it better to become alive again, even if she was to die soon? She had seen Morchid up close, heard his chilling voice, seen the fear in everyone he dealt with, even his own men. If it went wrong, she would die for sure. Let death come, then. It was better than endless grief, endless toil for a despicable, spitting, sweating, farting beast.

And down there from her window she saw the boy, Deobia, astride his moped. She had asked the guards about him and overheard several times when they mentioned him, but it was never clear what he was doing in the gang. There were no obvious duties he performed, unlike the men who guarded the captives, or pushed and prodded them to and from the vans, or sorted them by health and gender and strength and looks, or slopped gruel and water into tins for them if they were lucky.

He was just there, and everyone seemed to accept him as such. He might as well have been invisible. You could have taken him out of any scene and nothing essential would have changed. And yet, if you looked, he stood out like a sore thumb, on his silly put-putting moped, with his wild afro hair and the goggles on top of it, the robes hanging down vertically, like they dropped from a clothes hanger, not a body.

He was watching the cattling of these people but he seemed to be trying to think of something else. Then he looked up at her, barely released his hand from the moped's handlebars by way of a wave, and looked immediately away again in case anyone noticed. It was snickeringly told among the gang, however, that he seemed to care about her. Nods and winks were exchanged, and ribald remarks; they said he must fancy her and what was an old girl like her doing getting a young boy like that all excited...

****

Camel-breath slipped out of one of the many cubby-holes that surrounded the courtyards and stood behind Deobia. His oily voice made Deobia jump.

"I don't forgive, you know. Never. But I'll talk to you, even though no one else will. What do you know about the arrangements?"

"I thought he'd sent you away," Deobia whispered.

"No, no little one, I'm essential to him."

"But you failed and now the girl has found what he's looking for. Where does that leave you?"

"And you? You didn't find him, either. Where does that leave you?"

"But I found the mother, and that was the key."

"Have you seen him — the son?"

Deobia wanted to tell Camel-breath to clear off but he couldn't be sure where he stood with Morchid. He must indeed still be on Morchid's business of some kind, otherwise how could he remain here?

"I haven't seen him. But I know she has found him."

"You realise he'll put you all in boxes, don't you. You never come out, you know, you're in a box forever, like a beetle, waving about and unable to help yourself. If I were you, I'd get her out of here." They both looked up at the window. "There is still time to save her. All of you should leave, go to the mountains. Or better still the Sahara. Lose yourselves."

"You're lying. It's an exchange. He agreed to it."

"You think he's honourable?!" Camel-breath laughed his oil and gravel laugh, the skin wobbling under his chin.

"I'm here to speak to him. I'll make my own mind up what to do."

"Oh, little one, don't make me choke. He doesn't need you. You'll be the first for a boxing."

"You're lying. I'm going to speak with him now."

****

Deobia laid aside his moped, and walked towards Morchid's inner sanctum, towards the guards posted there, his mind racing to work out what he was going to say when Morchid asked awkward questions. The figure who was suddenly standing in front of him tore him from his preoccupations. It was Morchid, the creature of the souks himself, who seemed to grow like a genie from the ground, and tower in front of him.

Deobia thought about all the books he had read in the dusty library in cracked Marrakech, the centuries of learning. Nothing prepared you for life itself. If cracked Marrakech was brought about by a bug in reality, then this was unadulterated reality whose darkness scotched any doubt: Morchid breathing, looming, unknowable. Morchid was saying something, looking past him as he spoke, his eyes fixed on something unseen by anyone else.

As he listened to Morchid's instructions, made in the fewest words that would convey his commands, Deobia considered how he could fetch Radia, appear to walk her to the rendezvous with Chemchi, but at the last moment, get out of here. Take her into cracked Marrakech, and leave it this time. Walk across the dunes to one of the other cracked places. It didn't matter that the under-eyelid lights would descend. They could keep on walking, he could take her hand and lead her as though he knew his way. To one of the other cracked places, where they would find the carpet, or whatever form the portal took, and emerge into another place. Would that be an uncracked place, without bugs? How could you tell the difference — the absence of anomalies like the broken-off edges? Was it only ever a question of what one was used to, of how life was itself in its own particular way?

And what of the slavery and trafficking in this place, that was real surely, not a bug. Was it cracked or uncracked reality we should be afraid of? The people in cracked Marrakech might be like clockwork but no one had ever hurt him there. There was just a gentle, perpetually sunlit to-ing and fro-ing, looping like a see-saw hinged about one moment. Perhaps cracked Marrakech was what they called heaven here.

****

There were times when Ali could put anything out of his mind, and just watch the world wend its way past him. The smells of cooking meat and cinnamon, the dust, the sunlight searing as it slanted onto the streets, Ali loved this home, this Marrakech. He loved to tell his tales. It didn't matter who would listen. Sitting on his stool in the Rue Mouassine by the mosque, he watched the human traffic pass. As always, he greeted locals with a raised hand. When a tourist stopped to consult a map, he said, "May I help you, please — a lamp, a carpet, somewhere to stay?" This one, like most, viewed him with suspicion, at least at first. But he had nothing to sell to them. Those who responded would indeed be told of the best stalls, the restaurants with the finest tagines, interleaved with stories from Ali's life; stories to make them smile, stories to be re-told when they returned to their homes and praised the friendliness of the natives of Marrakech; stories of how open and straightforward the people of Marrakech were, how Marrakech was suffused with colour, with life, the people so sunny and helpful.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

IT WAS DEEPEST night, not long before the time of the tryst with Morchid the butcher.

Chemchi led Akimbe to the side-door of the abandoned restaurant.

"I don't need to tell you to take the bracelet. And follow the circuitous route to the chamber, like I told you."

"I gave it to Deobia."

"You did what?"

"For safe-keeping. In case I don't come back. It will survive."

"You will come back."

Moonlight fell through the glass above the door. It would be the everlasting day in cracked Marrakech, a total shock from cool to heat, from real to cracked when Akimbe went through.

She looked at his ritually scarred face, met his searching look. He is himself now, she thought. It never suited him to be the proud son of Shango. He has cast that off. Being at the world's mercy has brought that about. Yet how alone he looks, and that's my fault. She was too pent with grief about her mother still to hug him. Instead she placed a hand on his shoulder, He took it off and opened the door, letting more moonlight spill in for a second before he clicked it closed.

****

When she stepped out later, not long before the call to prayers, a stretched list of stars hung above the rooftops. The stalls stood shut and silent. The daddy long-legs and bumble bees were in bed. She kept moving, like a ghost through the souks, wishing she could return to the deserted restaurant, to go back and hide and never face the world again, to leave it to its own devices. Ibtissam moved ahead of her, her look-out.

When she entered the chamber, the carpet stretched all around, bigger than before like a tide that had come in, its tracery of golden threads caught in the candlelight. And there was Akimbe's shadow, a deeper dark on the carpet's palimpsest of souls, which the golden network had not yet embroidered itself around.

"Lovely!" Camel-breath ghouled out of a corner.

"I thought I'd see you here," she said.

"Oh, did you now, lovely." His lips glistened with spit.

"Yes, so I came prepared."

The sickly smile disappeared, amid the yellow bruises from his beating by Deobia.

She went on. "You want Morchid out of the way as much as I do, don't you? To take over the operations. But you're too weak to topple him by yourself. You're waiting for me to do it for you. You're pathetic, in fact."

"I don't know what he sees in you," he hissed. "You're just a girl. I'm here for the sport of it, my lovely. To see you sucked into a box when he realises your deception, when you fail to deliver the package you say you have for him."

All the time he spoke, Ibtissam spat at him, her fangs wide. The cabinets, chairs and bookshelves kept their silent witness around them.

"But I have what he wants," she said.

"I don't believe you but, be that as it may, you don't think he'll let you have your mother back, do you? It'll be both of you in boxes. Maybe the two of you sucked like pond-water into one box together if you're lucky, you can each hear the other clatter around it. Better to side with me, lovely. I'll let you go. I've no further use for you or grudge to bear. You and your friends." He spat the word 'friends' out like it was a shard of bone in his meat.

"That's good to hear. I've left something for you in cracked Marrakech," she said.

"What?"

"His son."

"Eh?" Camel-breath was like a lizard with a fly just centimetres from its tongue.

"The deal is that you fetch him, bring him back and get the credit. We can say that I knew only roughly where he was. But you: you dragged the information out of me and captured him. You'll be in his favour. But you have to promise me to persuade him to spare us. Is it a deal? There's very little time. You'd better be quick."

"I'll send someone."

"No, I told the one looking after him to expect you. You were easy to describe." She looked him up and down. "And no one else will do."

"It's a trick."

"But what could I do to trick someone like you? You know what's what in cracked Marrakech better that anyone, don't you? You've been many times, looking for him."

"But even I could not find him there." Camel-breath almost looked disappointed in himself for a second. Chemchi had to stop herself from laughing, despite the life-and-death situation.

"You're like everyone," she said. "You can't see what's in front of your nose. Or don't want to."

He was getting angry now, "Oh and why, lovely, would I avoid the very thing he wants and therefore I want too?"

"It's what you see in the mirror that I'm talking about."

"Mirror?"

"Yes. Why would a creature like you ever bother looking in a mirror? So, are you going or not? Do you promise to let us go, if I tell you? Meanwhile, I'll be telling Morchid all about your heroic help."

"I don't need your help. I'll follow him, your little friend."

He lay on the carpet next to Akimbe's still pure-black shadow. The threads gladly weaved and sucked and slewed at him until he disappeared, his hunched shape flattening to shadow.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

CHEMCHI LEANT AGAINST a chest of drawers while she composed herself, ridding the encounter with Camel-breath from her mind. She called to Ibtissam, who appeared from a corner, walking warily around the carpet's edge to spring up beside her.

Suddenly a bookcase moved with a loud scraping, swinging to the side to reveal a brute of a man. Het ignored her, and took a place beside the opening. She might have known Morchid would have his own way in.

No one else came through. The brute examined his fingernails. She went up to the revealed doorway. The brute shifted his eyes up to her in case she tried anything.

"Where is he?" she said.

He moved his eyes back to his fingernails.

It was about thirty minutes until they appeared. The wait drove her spare. Every conceivable reason for the delay went through her mind, all the terrible things that could have taken place. Radia could have run away. Ali could have said something in one of his boastful, effusive moments to give the game away; a word in the ear of someone who turned out not to be as trustworthy as he thought. And Morchid: she kicked herself for believing Morchid to be predictable in any respect.

A woman appeared, looking tense, as though someone unseen had pushed her through. Was this her 'mother'? Supposing Morchid had brought someone to test her. Why hadn't she thought to see or ask about her stand-in?

Chemchi searched the woman's eyes, just as the woman searched hers. She looked so sad. Chemchi didn't think she had ever seen anyone looking so crushed. There was no resemblance — how could there be? — didn't Morchid see that? Chemchi covered her mouth with her hand, ready equally to show emotion or hide the lack of it.

The woman took a few steps into the chamber. There was a pause. Another woman came through.

Then Morchid. He stood blocking the doorway with one of the women on either side.

Chemchi looked from woman to woman. Both of them said, "Chemchi!"

So it was clear. She had to identify her 'mother' when neither was she.

Morchid said nothing but watched her intently, searching for every nuance of her reaction as she looked from one to the other. She mustn't delay.

He said, "Well? Is there a problem?"

"It's just — it's been so long. And who is this other?"

And there it was, the tell: the woman on the right lifted her hand to her heart and as her sleeve fell away, Akimbe's mother's bracelet glinted in the candlelight.

"You've come back to me," Chemchi said to her, "at last."

Deobia emerged from the doorway as Chemchi and Radia were embracing. They clung together long and hard, each wishing this could be over and done with, each feeling a stranger's bones, without warmth.

After what felt like an appropriate time under the burning of Morchid's stare, they separated, faced one another and held both pairs of hands.

"Don't make me wait any longer," said Morchid. "I've shown you what you sought. Now do the same for me."

"Come," said Chemchi, releasing Radia's hands and walking over to where the carpet lay. Its network of gold sparkled within its blackness, disappearing down the corridor to where the invisible velvet drape led into the souks. Her heart was trying to leave her chest. The two fresh shadows of Akimbe and Camel-breath lay beside one another.

"What do you know about this carpet, Morchid?"

Morchid tilted his beastly head atop a thick, muscular neck. "I know all about it. I am weary of it."

"Oh, really?" she said. "Deobia?"

Deobia flinched when she said his name. The carpet's twinkling reflected off his goggles, like stardust. He had been looking at the carpet as though it were a runway, a strip to take off from, to soar and to keep on soaring.

"Yes, Deobia. Show Morchid about the carpet, please. Walk onto the middle of it." Deobia could have no idea what she was up to. She didn't know why he should trust her at such a moment of crisis but she hoped that he would feel he had no other option.

"But he knows, doesn't he?" He stepped past the two new shadows. The threads licked at him.

"Further, into the middle," she said.

He walked on and turned to face them, picking up his feet to stop the threads gaining too great a hold on his ankles, treading in place, confident of being able to stay there while the women's faces showed horror and disbelief at what they were seeing. He might as well have walked far, far away.

Morchid was impatient at this performance. "I didn't ask for games."

"I need to show you something." Chemchi took out her torch. She shone it on Akimbe's shadow and kept the torch on him. Akimbe started to appear, as he had when she first encountered him. A nose, two eyes, ears.

"Can you hear me, Akimbe? What does she say?" The boy was only just poking into this world, the rest of him in the other.

"She says to tell him: The boy was taken. The boy has grown."

"Thank you. That is all I wanted for now."

Chemchi took the beam off him, and the black stitches claimed him back as shadow.

"What is this?" said Morchid.

"The old woman. Don't you know her? But you must."

She turned the torch onto Morchid's legs. His body became the under-eyelid lights. The others gasped. Chemchi's powers had grown so that, for the first time, others could see what she could see. Morchid looked down at himself with what for him was interest. The swirling shapes blew in the emptiness like clouds.

She lifted the beam, revealing the lights all the way up to his arms and chest but stopped before his face, and said: "I don't think we want to see any more. It's to protect ourselves: we would go mad if we truly saw what lives in that countenance."

She shone the torch on Radia and the other women. Their blinking faces were like any other flesh and blood.

Then she shone the torch on Deobia.

There, on the one hand, was the ethereal, brainy youth in his drainpipe clothes, blinking and screwing up his eyes, and putting up his hand to shield them without complaint, as if he were used to thinking of himself as part of an experiment, as an object of curiosity.

And yet there was a faint fog over him of the under-eyelid lights. And much more than that, from the first moment when Chemchi's torch beam fell upon his face and illuminated him, they all saw what she saw. Deobia was Morchid's son.

And when they looked closer, nothing had changed. Not the lines of his face, the jib of his nose, the curl of his mouth or the craters of his eyes; not his electric afro hair or his goggles. Nothing had changed except that they could all see what was right in front of their eyes. Including Morchid.

Morchid let out an animal cry.

"You are grown!"

Deobia looked from one to the other, now terrified, and speechless. His eyes came to rest on Radia.

"Oh Deobia," she said. "Deobia. What are you?"

"Stay where you are," said Chemchi. "It's very important not to move. Don't worry."

"You see it," she turned to Morchid, "don't you." Morchid stood in the grip of something stronger than he had ever known, his arms fallen by his sides. It was shocking to see him reduced to this state, for another being to have this effect, for another's existence to amount to more than something to be swept aside.

"Touch him." Chemchi's mind was being hurtled forwards in an unknown direction.

Morchid's torment rearranged his face so that he was unrecognisable, almost human. He stepped onto the carpet. "No," he roared, pulling himself together. "You come here," he commanded Deobia.

"Don't move," said Chemchi.

"He can go back to where he came from, to where you put him, where you can't go," she said to Morchid. And back to Deobia: "Move further onto the carpet and lie down."

Haltingly, Deobia lowered himself, watching for Morchid's reaction.

Morchid stepped towards his son. As his feet touched the carpet no threads appeared. In fact they lunged away as Morchid moved towards Deobia, who was now kneeling, ready to lie down and be taken to cracked Marrakech, the threads whipping up at him.

"He's your son," Chemchi said. "The woman told you and I have shown you. Embrace him."

"I have dreamed of you," said Morchid. "Dreamed of your coming..." He stopped himself. Chemchi and the women had moved next to the carpet's edge. Morchid's henchman stood helpless.

"You?" Chemchi said. "You? Dream? You should have only nightmares, but about what you do to others. You should suffer for it."

"I have no liberty," Morchid said.

"What?" she said in disgust. "You're at liberty to deprive others of their freedom, to brutalise them and to hand them to other brutes."

"I must."

"Deobia, hug your father and let him lie down with you."

Morchid melted like a child as Deobia reached up to put his arms around him, and manoeuvred the hulk of him down to kneel beside him. Morchid surrendered to his son, until they were both lying down, searching one another's eyes. And the threads whipped up, encouraged, feeling, wrapping, extending from the youth to the man, growing bolder; and more threads, from the other side of Morchid, were rearing up and curling, arching to meet their fellows on Deobia's side, bonding over the two figures, taking them down, sucking them into the carpet until both were gone but only one shadow remained.

Deobia's shadow.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

THE TWO WOMEN stood in horror, watching Chemchi play her torch on Deobia's shadow to try to bring him back.

"Deobia! Come on!"

But it remained steadfastly, like an inerasable ink blot, the deepest black on the carpet. Then she tried the beam on Akimbe's shadow, which responded at once, peeling and stirring and turning into a boy-shaped mound, the eyes popping through, like an embryo speeded up in a womb, the threads yielding, retreating, the boy taking shape as Akimbe, just as Chemchi had first encountered him.

She offered him a hand up.

"What did you see? Did you see Deobia? And Morchid? They've both gone through. I can't get him back!"

"Why — no. You told me to see the old woman. I was speaking to her still —"

"We've lost Deobia. Deobia is his son." She tried the torchlight on his shadow again.

Radia was distraught. "It's my fault," she said. "If I hadn't gone along with this ... I don't know what would have happened, but surely not this."

The other woman and the henchman had disappeared.

"Go, save yourself," Chemchi said to her.

"No, I must wait for him, I don't understand any of this. In the name of god, tell me what is going on."

Chemchi was imagining what could have happened in cracked Marrakech, the two of them arriving, stumbling at the gates and — what? Have a father and son talk? Kill one another? Was Morchid looking for a box to put Deobia in? Was the son a threat or an asset to that monster?

It was as though she was in the hold of a force that had been manipulating her, that knew to send Deobia onto the carpet and have Morchid follow, that the combination of father and son would go through when Morchid by himself could not.

Should she follow?

"We must follow them," said Akimbe, "we must bring him back."

"Let me go," said Radia. "How do I go through? What do I need to do?"

"No, we can't lose someone else as well," said Chemchi.

Chemchi felt helpless, drained of her powers.

"Deobia doesn't stand a chance," said Akimbe.

Chemchi thought about the clockwork world, about the old woman in the fractured square, and above all about her own counterpart in the riad there. What would he do with them all, those people who sleep-walk, ambling and bumbling around in the eternal mid-day sun? Would he become one, forget like everyone — everyone except his son?

This was Morchid, of unknown powers, who wasn't meant to be there.

Akimbe walked onto the carpet.

"No," Chemchi cried, "no, I mustn't lose you too."

"But you don't care about me."

"Of course I do."

"You found Morchid's son — and look where that has got us. We'd be better off not knowing."

"I thought if everyone knew the truth, that Deobia is his son, that ... that the truth would put things right."

"Who knows why Morchid wanted him," said Akimbe. "He can't help who his father is."

"What do you mean?" said Radia. "What will Morchid do with him? Show me how to go through."

Radia walked onto the carpet and lay on it, as she had seen Deobia do.

But it wouldn't take her. The threads remained impassive. The black palimpsest of shadows hung inertly. Even the golden strands were dull and no longer glinting.

Chemchi walked onto it. But the threads stayed locked in their weave. Akimbe, too, lay on it. All three lay in a line on the beautiful carpet, which seemed to have changed completely in character, the shadows soft and seductive. They rubbed their hands across to feel its velvetiness.

"He's disturbed everything — even the carpet — by going through." Chemchi tried to keep her mind straight, tried to keep thinking, while the patterns in the carpet formed and reformed, like a mesmerising school of fish, flitting together in perfect synchronisation across the shadows.

The others did not respond.

"We've got to get off it," she said.

"I just want to lie here," said Akimbe.

"And I want to go through, to see my Deobia," said Radia.

They lay transfixed. Deobia's shadow began to ripple and bubble. It worked itself loose from the carpet, an infinitely thin film of perfect blackness in the exact shape of the youth, from his thin feet up through his drainpipe robes, to his thick buzz of hair and the corners of his goggles perched on top.

Nature was precise and perfect, each light ray scraping past a body to make an exact shadow edge. And Deobia's shadow had this perfection.

But unlike any normal shadow, it stood. And it walked, a black body with no mass. And from the feet of the shadow the youth appeared, along the ground in an exact reversal: his image was where the shadow should be, and the youth was where the shadow should be.

The youth as anti-shadow came from no discernible anti-light. Everything lay in the flickering rays from the candles. The anti-shadow, as though to reinforce the absence of the anti-light, swayed around the walking shadow, apparently randomly.

Chemchi, Akimbe and Radia saw none of this. They lay with mouths and eyes wide open as the carpet's pattern danced them into oblivion.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

ALI SIPPED HIS mint tea, satisfied with the light pouring down the atrium onto his precious riad, rehearsing all the tales he had to tell from his long life in old Marrakech. Although peace lay over everything, something was different. No one could quite put their finger on it but rumours flew and multiplied around the souks of course. Stories shifted in wild exaggerations as they were whispered. The butterflies and daddy long-legs and bumble bees all buzzed and bumped with chatter along the alleys.

"What would you like for supper?" a voice came from the kitchen.

Ali stirred from his reverie. Life was good. "A nice tagine. Lamb?"

The owner of the voice appeared. It was Chemchi. "Yes, Akimbe's favourite. I'll go and shop."

It was hot, hot, the sun standing at its highest point, pressing on the souks. Under the netting stretched between the roofs of the stalls, Chemchi took a detour, wanting to bask in the full force of it. She slipped out of the crowd, down an alley to the open square.

And there it was before her, blazing white in the searing sun. She started to walk across it.

Something stopped her going to the far edge, though. It turned her around. And the far edge was somehow never actually in her vision, although she had thought about it.

Whatever it was, it turned her around like a kindly helper with a hand on her shoulder, well-meaning and benign, it transferred her back, with a gentle pressure back into the souks.

An old woman watched, hunched and shrivelled against the wall.

Acknowledgements

I thank the early mornings, A4 spiral-bound exercise books and Stabilo pens for the creation of this book. I am greatly indebted to those who kindly read my drafts and gave me feedback: Chris Barnham, Robbie Cleary, Sue Davies, Constance Fleuriot, Jeremy Hodgen, Gene Kindberg-Hanlon, Jess Meyer, Clare Reddington, Laurie Smith, Ruth Stanton, and members of the Bristol Fiction Writers' Group. This is a work of fiction. While the plot and characters are entirely made up, two of the latter were inspired by people I met on a trip to Marrakech. In a fractured square...

