Sohrab was hurting and there was nothing I could do. Nothing except sit there and be his friend.
But maybe that was enough. Because Sohrab knew it was okay to cry in front of me. He knew I wouldn’t tell him not to have feelings.
He felt safe with me.
Maybe that’s the thing I liked about Sohrab best of all.
After a minute, he cleared his throat, shook his head, and stood up.
“Come on, Darioush,” he said. “There is more I want you to see.”
MAKE IT SO
“Darioush. Look up. We’re here.”
“Wow.”
The roof of leaves ended abruptly. We stood at the end of a long fountain, and that fountain led to a huge eight-sided mansion, and out of that mansion rose a baad gir. A wind tower.
It was a true tower—not like the Towers of Silence, which were more mounds than anything.
The baad gir of Dowlatabad Garden was even taller than the spindly columns of Takhte Jamsheed. It soared a hundred feet above us, smooth along its bottom half, slotted along the upper half to catch the wind, with little spade-shaped ornaments at the top. Spines dotted the surface of the spire.
It reminded me of the Barad-Dûr, although it lacked the flaming Eye of Sauron atop it to complete the picture. And it was khaki colored, not black.
I sneezed.
“It’s huge!”
“Yes, huge.” Sohrab squinted at my astonishment. “Come on. It’s better inside.”
“We can go in?”
“Of course.”
It was the most colorful place I had seen in Yazd. Maybe the most colorful place in the entire world.
One entire wall was taken up with a huge stained glass window. Intricately wrought flowers in every color cast dancing rainbows into the mansion.
We were swimming in light.
We were accelerating to warp speed.
“Wow,” I breathed.
It felt like the kind of place where you were supposed to whisper.
“You say that a lot.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I like it. You don’t have these things back home?”
“Nothing like this,” I said. I stared up at the ceiling: gleaming white lines intersecting and weaving together into a twenty-four-sided star, which cascaded outward into interlocking diamonds as they followed the curvature of the inner dome.
I had stepped into a world of Elven magic. Into Rivendell, or Lothlórien.
The cool air from the baad gir above us rippled the hair on my arms.
