by Liz Braswell
Aladdin ducked into what looked like a crack in the city itself, where two buildings crumbled and tilted into each other, leaning on each other like old men. Aladdin ran under them and wound up in a badly kept courtyard. A dry and useless fountain stood in the center. Once, long ago, it had worked, maybe, when some sultan cared about things being nice for the poorer residents of Agrabah.
Rasoul appeared at the opposite side of the courtyard, scimitar raised.
“Do not think you can escape back to the maze of the Eastern Streets, Aladdin,” he said sternly. He almost smiled when he saw the surprised look on Aladdin’s face. “Oh yes, I know your plan. But you have broken the law. You must accept your punishment.”
“You’re really going to chop my hand off for stealing one…loaf…of…bread,” Aladdin said, trying to buy time as he bounced lightly on his toes, circling around, keeping the fountain between them.
“The law is the law.”
Aladdin feinted to the left and then tried to lunge to the right. Rasoul wasn’t fooled at all; his scimitar lashed out to the right. Aladdin ducked, sucking his stomach in. But he didn’t come away unscathed: a tiny ribbon of scarlet unfurled across his skin. Aladdin hissed at the pain.
Rasoul paused.
“Perhaps, if you explain to the judge, he will be lenient. He will…weigh your circumstances. But that is his job. Mine is to bring you in.”
“Really? I thought your job was to eat baklava. You’re slowing down, old man,” Aladdin taunted. With a howl of rage Rasoul brought his scimitar down as hard as he could.
Aladdin dropped into a ball and rolled out of the way. Sparks flew when the point of the scimitar hit the cobbled pavement.
He scrambled up rickety old scaffolding that barely held his weight. It certainly wouldn’t support Rasoul’s. The guard swore in frustration and Aladdin ran as fast as he could, leaping from rooftop to rooftop in a random pattern. Without a clear thought or plan, he concentrated on just putting as much distance between himself and the market as he could before descending into the quieter, darker Quarter of the Street Rats.
A chittering scream announced that Abu had finally caught up. He leapt onto Aladdin’s shoulder and clung there while the boy, still being cautious, kept to the shadows and ducked into empty houses: through their cracking windows, out their gaping doors.
Finally he felt they could stop when they came to a cul-de-sac so decrepit and useless that it acted as a makeshift garbage dump for the slums. No city workers came to take the refuse away, and it grew in piles that the poorest of the poor picked over, hoping for an overlooked scrap. It was smelly, but it was safe.
“Whew, the old man’s getting slower, but he’s getting smarter,” Aladdin admitted grudgingly, clapping the dust off his pants and vest. “And now, Esteemed Effendi, we feast.”
He settled down at the base of the wall and finally broke his bread, giving half to Abu, who grabbed it excitedly.
But just as Aladdin was about to take a big, welcoming bite, the clatter of something hitting the pavement stopped him.
He expected guards.
He expected to run again.
He didn’t expect to see two of the smallest, scrawniest children in Agrabah. They jumped, scared by the noise they had made themselves while picking through the garbage, looking for something to eat. When they spotted Aladdin, they didn’t quite cling to each other but moved closer for safety. Their eyes were huge. Their bellies were shrunken. Only on closer inspection could he tell one was a girl; their rags were shapeless and they were very, very skinny.
“I’m not gonna hurt you. You look familiar. Have we met before?”
The children said nothing and hid whatever they had—bones, melon rinds—behind their backs.
Street Rats take care of each other. The words of his mother traveled across the years to him.
“Here,” he said, getting up slowly without making any sudden movements. He knew what it was like being afraid that anyone bigger, healthier, or older than you would hurt you and steal whatever you had. He held his hands out: one empty, in peace, the other with the bread.
The two children couldn’t help staring at the bread.
“Take it,” he urged softly.
They didn’t need much compelling. The girl, bolder, reached out and took it, trying not to grab. She murmured, “Thank you,” before immediately tearing it almost in half. She gave the larger piece to her skinnier, tinier brother.
Abu watched this interestedly, chewing on his piece.
Aladdin felt a lump of anger form in his throat.
When was the last time those two kids had a full meal or a good, long, clean drink of water? This was the way he had been as a child. Nothing had changed. The sultan still sat in his beautiful golden-domed palace, playing with his toys while people starved on the streets. Nothing would ever change until the sultan—or someone—woke up and saw how his people were suffering.
Aladdin sighed and lifted Abu onto his shoulder. He walked home slowly, belly empty of bread but full of anger and despair.
EVENING CAME: the sun began its downward journey, the moon prepared to rise, and Aladdin woke from his afternoon nap eager for the promise of a fresh start. And this, perhaps more than his fleet-as-the-wind feet, his quick mind, and his quicker tongue, was what had kept him alive and healthy all those years growing up in the slums: endless optimism. If he just kept his eyes and mind open, anything was possible.
Even dinner.
He traveled out of the Quarter of the Street Rats to prey on merchants who were perhaps a little less familiar with him and his techniques. Monkeys weren’t that unusual in Agrabah; monkeys who hung out at the market a lot and continually stole things were.
“I feel like it’s a melon day,” Aladdin said, scoping out a potential mark from the shadows of a camel wagon. His stomach growled in agreement at the thought of a ripe, juicy piece of fruit. The events of the morning were still fresh in his mind, however, and they weighed in on his decision. The melon merchant in question was screaming at a woman and refusing to haggle.
“I would die of starvation myself if I lowered my prices for you. Everybody would demand it. And where is your headscarf, you insolent woman? Go back to the harem, where you belong!”
The woman sadly turned to leave. She had long black hair pulled back into a braid that was streaked with gray. Her robes hung on her loosely. Aladdin couldn’t help noticing how much she looked like his mother. A scrawny girl—child or grandchild—tagged behind her.
“Yeah. Definitely melon,” he muttered to himself. He picked up Abu and pointed him toward the stall. “You’re up, little buddy.”
It didn’t take much to encourage the monkey to go toward the giant piles of dark green fruit.
Aladdin leapt up to the balcony above and dropped lightly onto the beam that supported the melon tent. He leaned over and listened carefully. The moment he heard the merchant screaming and chasing Abu around, he stretched down like a sinuous snake and scooped up the closest ripe melon.
Once safely back out of sight, he whistled a short call that could have been mistaken for the song of a dove.
Instantly, the monkey’s chittering ceased.
“Yes, be off, you thief!” Aladdin heard the merchant snarl.
A moment later Abu popped up on the beam next to Aladdin. They both squatted in comically similar positions, while Aladdin broke the melon on a pointy piece of wood and served it up.
“This makes it all worthwhile. This is the life,” Aladdin said, relishing his first big, juicy bite.
He rested comfortably, eating his dinner, feeling the sun warm his skin and muscles. The morning’s bruises were already fading from his arms and legs. The crowds were just beginning to throng the marketplace as the last heat of the day began to wane. Colorful tents and awnings clung to every structure as far as the eye could see, like newly hatched butterflies sunning their wings. The late orange light made the white arches, towers, and balconies gleam like ancient gold.
Aladdin sighed in contentment. Could there truly be any more marvelous place in the world than the bustling, cosmopolitan Agrabah?
But in the shadows stood gaunt old men, mostly naked, waiting to be summoned to clean up the camel dung or other offal. Hoping for a tip. This is how they would spend the last years of their lives. After a lifetime of taking care of their families, wasn’t it their turn to be taken care of? To drink tea and play chess and smoke hookahs and enjoy their grandchildren?
“Come on, Abu, let’s—”
And then he stopped.
Aladdin felt a shift in the market crowd’s mood. People were turning their heads and watching a girl as she walked through. She wore a tan robe and headscarf, the clothes of a local…but didn’t feel like a market regular. She moved slowly and gazed at everything with a child’s wonder. Her eyes were large and clear, her hair as black as midnight. She had a warm smile on her pretty lips and was obviously murmuring hellos and excuse mes to people who really didn’t care or want to talk. She walked with the grace of a cloud in the wind, like her body weighed nothing at all, and held her head high with easy dignity. Easy.
Aladdin felt his heart contract. He had never seen her—or anyone like her—before.
When the girl adjusted her scarf, she revealed an intricate diadem in her hair that had a ridiculously sized emerald in it.
Ah, a rich girl, out for a day of shopping in the market without her servants. Living dangerously, playing hooky.
And then, of course, Aladdin saw the other people watching her.
Feral eyes and shifty grins. His stomach sank. He only stole food for himself and Abu. And for the occasional hungry child. Other Street Rats were not so discriminating. The way she was walking around, not paying attention, she would be relieved of all her jewelry and worldly goods before she reached the other end of the square. Why, if Duban and Morgiana were here, they would have pickpocketed or tricked her out of her things in less time than it took to eat a melon.
Unless they were distracted by her dazzling almond-shaped eyes…
A Street Rat “accidentally” got in her path. Aladdin knew this one: he was small for his age, slender and slight, with a large head and equally large eyes. He always passed for a child years younger than he was, and he was making himself look very, very young and very, very hungry right then. And somehow he wound up right in front of the girl.
Aladdin couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it was obvious from the pitying look on her face what the tone was. She was a perfect mark.
Abu chattered at him. If the human wasn’t going to finish his melon like a smart person, the monkey would very much like to eat it.
“Shhh!” Aladdin ordered.
What happened next was nothing he—or any Street Rat—could possibly have foreseen.
The beautiful girl took an apple from the closest stall and gave it to the boy.
And then walked away.
The Street Rat looked at the apple and her retreating backside, confused.
The fruit merchant grabbed her and demanded his money.
She shrugged and shook her head as if he was insane.
The Street Rat—and everyone else—watched her like she was insane. Which she must have been. She had just planned to take that apple? And give it away? Without paying for it?
The merchant also stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending. Then he grabbed her and threw her against the stall. A crowd gathered to watch. Some men mumbled and protested into their own scarves, but no one moved to help her. The merchant pulled out an extremely sharp khanjar and raised it above her wrist.
By the time she started shrieking, Aladdin was already in the air and halfway to the stall.
“Nobody steals from my cart!” the merchant bellowed. The point of his blade gleamed red in the afternoon light.
“No!” the girl screamed.
The knife descended quickly, whistling in the air.
The crowd gasped.
“Thank you, kind sir,” Aladdin said, suddenly between the merchant and the girl.
Before anyone had a chance to even register this newcomer’s presence, he gently pushed the man’s arm away with one hand and grabbed the girl with his other.
“A thousand blessings to you for finding my sister.”
“What?” the man asked, confused. “You know this girl?”
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Aladdin said, admonishing the girl and waggling a finger in her face.
The girl was more than a little confused herself.
“What are you…?” she began to ask.
“Sssht!” Aladdin mouthed. “Just play along!”
“Explain yourself! She was stealing from my cart!” the merchant yelled.
“My apologies, good sir. My sister…sometimes causes trouble. She wandered off from home again,” Aladdin said sorrowfully. He tapped the side of his head. “Sadly, she is a little crazy.”
The girl seemed furious at those words. Aladdin gave her a desperate look.
Finally she got it.
She nodded her head slightly.
“She said she knew the sultan,” the merchant spat. He made a big show of letting his eyes travel up and down Aladdin. With her large golden earrings, perfect health, and glowing skin, the girl seemed like someone who might know the sultan. And Aladdin, with his threadbare pants, was definitely not.
Aladdin’s mind raced.
Abu chattered inquisitively from the ground. The monkey obviously sensed the general trouble in the air.
That was it.
“She thinks the monkey is the sultan,” Aladdin whispered loudly into the merchant’s ear. Loudly enough for the crowd—and the girl—to hear.
“Oh, uh, wise, great Sultan,” the girl began uncertainly, taking his cue.
She looked at the muck-covered ground and then the sharp khanjar the merchant still had, which was aimed at Aladdin now.
She threw herself into the dirt, prostrating herself in front of Abu.
“How may I serve you?”
The men and women in the crowd made tching noises and sounds of general sympathy; they began to disperse from the embarrassing scene.
The merchant watched the pretty girl in the street dust and began to look convinced.
This was where Aladdin had to finish up quickly and get out, before anything went south. He palmed another apple off the cart.
“Tragic, isn’t it?” he sighed regretfully. He handed the merchant the apple. “Well, no harm done. Come on, Sis, we should get you back home to Aunt Idina now.”
The girl stood up and tried to make her eyes look all goofy and crazy. It was a bit much, Aladdin thought, but not half bad for a naive rich girl. He put his hands on her shoulders and steered her through the crowd. She let herself be guided, walking stiffly—more like a ghoul than a crazy person, but whatever. It was good enough.
She stopped in front of a camel.
“Hello, Auntie Idina!” she said with a wide, dumb smile.
“That’s not Auntie,” he said through gritted teeth, and pushed her to go faster. He called to Abu. “C’mon, Sultan.”
Unfortunately, that brought attention back to Abu. The tiny monkey was grabbing as many small apples as he could from the stall, even holding one in his teeth.
The merchant, who had finally lost interest in the proceedings and had just turned around to rearrange his fruit, saw this.
If he had been angry before, it was nothing like what he was experiencing now. His face turned purple and red with rage. For a moment, Aladdin almost worried the merchant would drop dead right there on the spo
t.
“Stop, thief!”
Aladdin grabbed the girl’s hand and ran.
Abu skittered after them, desperately trying to hold on to at least one apple.
FAR BENEATH THE DEEPEST rooms of the palace, a secret workshop glowed red and orange from liquid fire that flowed in pits around it. Despite the seething, bloody glow, the room was cool—almost cold. Jafar moved around carefully in his enveloping layers of robes, fingers tapping in impatience on the shiny ebon surface of his staff.
He was the sultan’s grand vizier and closest advisor—and only friend since the sultana had died. If the public gossiped openly about the royal princess, they confined their talk about Jafar to the nighttime hours. It was said that he meddled in dark magic. That his cobra-headed staff gave him power over others. That the sultan was so completely within his control that nothing was out of Jafar’s reach.
Gossip aside, there were also solid facts about the man: he was the second most powerful person in the kingdom, he seemed to know everything that happened everywhere in Agrabah, and he had—more than a few times—taken people and disappeared them into the dungeons or worse.
This workshop was part of that “worse.”
Strange, terrible equipment covered the table Jafar currently leaned over. Rust-colored wood was carved into cogs and painted all over with ugly runes that seemed to whisper when he leaned in close. Black metal that wasn’t iron twisted and spiked in unsettling shapes like a cage around the wood. Scraps of wispy things—torn cloth, spider silk, bloody feathers—caught on its thorns and waved in an unseen breeze like hair underwater.
The air in the middle of it all shuddered and ripped like the world itself was being torn apart. In the bleeding, black hole, a wavering shape appeared.
Jafar leaned closer, trying to make out the image. This was the most forbidden, most esoteric magic known to people of his ilk: Rizar Hadinok, the Seeing Beyond.
Just then a puffy, sweaty form bounded down the final set of stone steps that led to Jafar’s secret room. Rasoul was obviously trying not to appear nervous, and saluted as properly as he could muster.
