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chair beside me.
    "Wow," I whispered.
    "It's amazing," he agreed, before frowning. "Sara?"
    "Huh?"
    "Do you feel all right?"
    "Yes. Why?"
    "You're pale. And your voice sounds funny."
    I shook myself. "Staring at those scenes hypnotized me somehow."
    "The artwork is amazing. The person who made this carpet had skill. Maybe a team of people worked on it." Amesh tried to keep his voice casual but failed. "So do you think it's a relic?"
    "Definitely. It almost looks as if it were made by..."
    "What?" he asked when I did not finish.
    "People who know a hell of a lot more about carpets than we do."
    "Please, Sara, don't swear around it. It might be a holy item."
    "Sorry."
    "What should we do next?" he asked.
    "The smart thing would be to photograph it, download the pictures onto my computer, and send them out to experts all over the world. We could contact a handful of universities and museums."
    Amesh shook his head. "Then everyone will know what we have."
    "True." I realized I was staring at it again. It was hard not to. "Do you feel its power?" I mumbled.
    "What do you mean?" he asked.
    Slowly, I got to my feet, walked toward my father's room.
    "I want to try an experiment," I said.
    "What?"
    "You'll see."
    In the room I found a lighter. My father liked a cigar after dinner, but was polite enough to smoke on the balcony. The lighter was low on fuel but was still able to produce a decent-size flame. When I returned to the living room and Amesh saw the lighter, he jumped up.
    "You're not going to burn it," he said.
    "I'll separate out a single thread from the bottom."
    "And do what?"
    "Burn it."
    "No! You might light the whole thing on fire!"
    I picked up the scissors. "I'll slice off one of the threads first," I said.
    Amesh was worried. "Be careful."
    To my surprise, I was unable to isolate a thread on the bottom of the carpet. I struggled for several minutes, and then moved the scissors to one of the tassels. I tried cutting off a piece of the gold material.
    The scissors didn't touch it.
    "Sara!" Amesh shouted. "Stop!"
    "I didn't hurt it. I don't think I can." I lifted up the lighter.
    "Put that away!" Amesh cried.
    I ignored him. There was a part of me that felt as if the carpet had thrown out a challenge and that I had to respond. I felt as if it were mocking me.
    I flipped open the lighter and pulled the carpet toward the flame. I'm not sure how close I brought it to the fire—half a foot, maybe—before it reacted.
    The carpet jerked out of my hands and flew across the room. It landed on the sofa, where it seemed to stretch out comfortably.
    Like a human being.

CHAPTER THREE
    F OR THE FIRST TIME in my life, I knew what it meant to "go into shock." I underwent a total brain wipe. I was sitting in the room, Amesh was standing across from me, and the carpet was lying on the couch. These three facts I knew—nothing else.
    The carpet should not have been on the couch, which was fifteen feet from where I was sitting. It had been in my hands seconds ago.
    "What just happened?" Amesh asked, looking pretty stunned for someone who was asking such an ordinary question. I didn't answer; I couldn't. I just stared. He tried again. "What's wrong?"
    I shook my head, realized I was shaking, tried to stop, failed.
    "Sara? What did you do to the carpet?" he asked.
    I cleared my throat. "Nothing," I said.
    "But you threw it..." He searched for the right words. "You acted like it bit you."
    "It didn't bite me."
    "Then why did you throw it on the couch?"
    "Did you see me throw it on the couch?"
    He hesitated. "Yeah. I mean, there it is."
    "There it is," I agreed. "But I didn't throw it anywhere."
    "What are you saying?"
    "You saw it with your own eyes. The carpet flew over to the couch."
    Amesh grinned, and it was a stupid grin because it was so obviously forced. "You're saying it's a flying carpet?"
    "Maybe," I replied.
    "Those are just stories. My Papi used to tell them to me when I was a kid, when I had trouble falling asleep at night. My