by Liz Braswell
He held out his arms and Ahmed and the monkey leapt into them happily.
Shirin didn’t seem like she was going to budge, however. One arm was locked firmly around Jasmine’s waist and she was making the dagger march behind one of the golden clips taken out of Jasmine’s braids.
“She doesn’t have any dolls,” Maruf explained in embarrassment. “I should…steal her a toy, or—”
“Where did all the people in the parade go?” Shirin suddenly asked. “All of those dancers and animals and soldiers…where did they go when the parade was done?”
“Um,” Jasmine said. She looked to Aladdin for help. He shrugged helplessly.
“Ahmed and I wanted to see the animals when it was over, but we couldn’t find their cages or pens like when the traveling shows come to the city. Are they like the Peacekeeping Patrols? Are they the same people? In different costumes?”
“I…think…the genie summons them. All of them,” Jasmine said.
“But where do they go after?” Shirin pressed.
“Those are really good questions,” Aladdin said quickly, squatting down and tweaking the little girl on the nose. “Maybe Jasmine can ask the genie the next time she sees him.”
“I hope I get to see him someday,” Ahmed murmured wistfully.
“Me too,” his sister said. “I want to wish for my own tiger. One I can ride. Also my own silver dagger.”
“Or a doll,” Maruf said hopefully. “Er, she can have a dagger? A tiny one?”
“I hope you get to meet him, too,” Jasmine said with feeling. “When this is all over.”
Aladdin smiled and finished the entire contents of his cup of coffee in one gulp. Then he leapt up.
“Think I’m gonna go see if I can round us up some more recruits. Back at one of those breadlines. I’ll bet there are some people there who aren’t down with the whole thing and will want to see an exiled princess reclaim her rightful throne.”
“Be careful,” Shirin warned in a very serious tone.
“I’m always careful,” Aladdin said sweetly, prompting a snorting laugh from Jasmine. It was delightful to hear. He resolved to try to make her laugh more often.
“My neck hairs all stood up on their own today,” Duban said doubtfully. “And Shirin said she saw a white cat earlier, in the alley by the Egyptian’s teahouse. Didn’t you, Shirin?”
“You’re as bad as an old mother,” Aladdin groaned. “You and your superstitions. Later, Princess.” He leaned over and gave Jasmine a quick kiss on the lips.
As Aladdin swung up and out the secret door behind the chimney upstairs, he heard Duban say to Jasmine, “Right in front of the kids? Really? What kind of place do you think we’re running here?”
“Well, aren’t you glad you don’t have Aladdin for competition with Morgiana?”
“Morgiana? He can have her. I’d rather marry a cantankerous she-goat with five horns. Be less hard to deal with.”
Aladdin smiled to himself as he slipped into the blue twilight of early dusk. From naive, lonely princess to winner of hearts and minds in less than a month, Jasmine managed to make people feel at ease with her while still maintaining her role as leader.
Abu caught up to him when he was less than a block away, and it almost seemed like old times: scurrying up trellises, bounding lightly across rooftops, sliding down conveniently placed poles.
But Agrabah was different. The giant red sun was half sunken into the horizon of the Western Desert and looked like it was swimming in a lake of blood. Those few people still out on the streets were rushing to get home—or inside—as quickly as possible. They were silent and glanced nervously over their shoulders in fear of something they hoped would never come.
From his high vantage point, Aladdin could see three separate Peacekeeping Patrols spreading out from the direction of the palace. They moved like strange bugs, click-clicking in perfect unison, shields behind them like the carapaces of beetles. He thought about Shirin’s questions. She, too, had picked up the weird similarity between the patrols and the people in the parade. Curious, he picked one patrol to follow.
By now, everyone in the city was so terrified of them that they had little to do but march down the apocalyptically empty streets. The tap-tapping of their metal boots was an effective warning that preceded them. They walked, black eyes straight forward, manic grins on their faces as if they really, really loved their jobs. If there was a strange noise or something moving in the shadows, they reacted in almost human fashion: raising their weapons, dropping into fighting positions, sending one or two of their number down an alley to check it out.
With no words.
Not a single sound was uttered the entire time he followed them. They nodded to one another, but that was all. How were they communicating? It made Aladdin shiver just to think about it.
When the waning half-moon reached the peak of its ascent, the clock began to chime the hour.
The patrol paused.
Their identical faces began to appear a little unfocused. They didn’t look away but seemed somehow no longer to be paying attention to whatever was in front of them.
With horror, Aladdin realized their faces were really becoming unfocused. Their eyes, noses, and mouths were blurring, twisting, and smudging like dirty clothes being wrung out in a stream.
Soon their features were vague thumbprints of tan and black.
Then their bodies grew puffy. They seemed to suddenly hang at the tips of their toes and sway for a moment in the breeze.
And then they popped.
Silently, like everything the patrols did, except for the tap-tapping of their feet. Threads of hazy human colors spun out for a moment from the quiet explosion, one after another, six of them in all. These wavered and dried up in the air—disappearing with a final tiny curlicue of blue smoke.
Aladdin shivered. They weren’t even a little bit human. Not even as real as the genie. They were golems. Unthinking magical creatures with limited existences that did what they were told until their clocks ran out. He forced himself to think about his task: to find new recruits for the resistance. Anything but the blurry faces that he knew would haunt his nightmares from then on.
But as he turned to go, the sounds of angry conversation drifted on the wind from several streets away. Something Aladdin would have ignored in normal times but was unusual at this hour under the new curfew.
He leapt quietly to the next roof and then dove down to a convenient balcony. From there, he swung on a clothesline and landed silently on an awning across the way. There he hid behind a pair of dangling harem pants and watched.
It was the Square of the Sailor—so named for the ships carved into the corners of the civic buildings that surrounded the square. It was once a popular meeting place for the slightly less destitute of the ghetto; there was even a teahouse in one corner with rickety chairs and threadbare rugs and watered-down tea.
And now it had Jafar and six of his elite—human—palace guards, along with a small gathering crowd.
A silver tray of tea and wine and cakes obviously not from the teahouse was hovering in the air before the sorcerer. He wore a grin that would look false to the blindest, most foolish of observers.
Aladdin was neither. He leaned in close: he hadn’t gotten a good look at Jafar since the parade. The “sultan” rarely went into public anymore. The light of insanity glowed strongly in his eyes. What was worth risking his precious self and spending time out among the common people?
“All I am asking for,” Jafar was saying with the soothing patience of a mother, “is the location of Princess Jasmine. Just tell me where she is and you will never go hungry again. You will sup on meat and delicacies and wine…not this goat piss your friend here serves you every night.”
The crowd of skinny and shabbily dressed people shuffled uneasily. Some couldn’t take their eyes off the silver tray of treats. Some seemed uneasy, glancing back and forth from the guards to Jafar’s face. Some waited to see what others would do first. A f
ew quietly drew back into the shadows, trying to disappear from what looked like a very bad situation.
Aladdin made careful note of those faces. They would be useful to find later.
“Who cares about the sultan’s old filly?” one man called out. “You can have anyone you want. My daughter is twice as pretty as Jasmine—and she won’t hide from you, I swear.”
Perhaps he was trying to gain favor with the mad sorcerer. It was a bad idea. Anger burned in Jafar’s eyes, instant and complete.
“I don’t particularly care for your opinion of my business,” Jafar said with the careful enunciation of someone who really didn’t care—who could take as long as he wanted with a group of ants before he inevitably decided to grind them into the dust under his heel. “Nor have I any interest in your daughter. Now, I ask again. Do. Any. Of you. Know. The location. Of the princess?”
The tray of treats waggled suggestively in the air. Aladdin could smell the intoxicating aroma of dates and honey cake even up where he was. He wondered if it was more magic.
No one stepped forward.
“Let me put it another way,” Jafar said calmly.
The silver tray clattered to the ground, treats rolling in the dust.
“You there.” He pointed at someone with his ebon cobra-headed staff. The man, short and bony, looked left to right quickly to see if anyone else was meant. Without a word, two of the black-and-red-clad palace guards approached him on either side and grabbed his arms, wrenching them behind his back. Unsure what was going to happen to him, the man began straining against them.
“Tell me,” Jafar said. His eyes glowed red—and so did the jeweled eyes of the cobra on his staff. The poor man seemed frozen like a mouse or small bird, hypnotized by the glow. His body still struggled some as if he had forgotten to tell it to stop, but his face and head were completely still. “Where is Princess Jasmine?”
“In the palace?” the man asked in a daze.
Jafar’s face broke from sorcerous concentration to crumble into annoyance.
“If she was in the palace, why would I be looking for her?”
“It’s a very big palace,” the man answered.
Aladdin tried not to laugh aloud. The poor guy was answering as honestly as he could under the spell. The problem was he wasn’t a very smart man. And he didn’t know anything.
With a sigh of frustration, Jafar jerked his staff. The red glow faded.
The man turned to look at his friends for help…but now it was like his body was frozen and only his neck and head could move.
The man’s face went white as panic began to set in.
His head continued to turn.
Muscles stood out on his neck, sinews and tendons straining against his flesh.
Jafar kept looking at the man dispassionately. Only the tip of his finger moved, making the tiniest of circles.
The man’s head kept slowly turning.
He screamed as his muscles began to tear and bones began to crunch, vertebrae grinding against each other in ways they weren’t supposed to.
People in the crowd watched in horror. Maybe they tried to look away—but couldn’t.
The man’s scream suddenly cut off in a wet gurgle. His head kept going as the skin ripped and blood gushed out.
With a final snap the head was all the way around, the man’s blank eyes looking at the crowd.
His body remained standing for several horrifying seconds before collapsing to the ground.
Aladdin turned away, feeling sick.
“Next,” Jafar said with an indulgent smile.
“A plague on you, you murderous scum!” one man in the crowd shouted, terrified and enraged at the same time.
Jafar just rolled his eyes.
“Mmm-hmmm. Next,” he repeated tiredly.
The sorcerer had gone from being an almost humorous villain to a madman of truly demonic proportions.
Aladdin had to take a moment to collect himself before heading back out into the night.
JASMINE WAS, OF COURSE, not in the palace. Ironically, however, she was just barely on the other side of its walls, in a fashionable ritzy district that was now silent with fear.
She had often dreamed of going to a teahouse to play chess or argue esoteric scholarly points with students and feisty old men and women. It was a dream forbidden to a royal princess, of course. And now that she was finally in one…she was alone. Giant urns, empty of tea, made strange and monstrous shapes in the half-light.
A telltale wisp of blue smoke curled up from behind the bar. Soon the rest of the genie appeared with a tray full of glasses and dishes on his arm, a tea towel over his wrist.
“Coffee? Tea? Who got the Egyptian wine? Little early in the evening for that, don’t you think? Have some Falernian instead.”
He glided over next to Jasmine. The tray and towel of his little joke disappeared but two cups remained; he offered one to her. It was a pretty glass thing with gold curlicues on its sides, hot tea within. She looked at it curiously, feeling the warmth in her hand.
“It’s not poisoned,” the genie said archly. “Jafar’s not that subtle. Trust me. If he knew we were meeting, you would already be strung up and saying I do against your will.”
“No, I was just wondering…” she frowned. “If you can make food and drink out of thin air, why hasn’t Jafar been doing just that? He was tossing bread to everyone at the parades, but that seems to have stopped. Now it’s being rationed…he’s only handing it out to people who stand in line and swear loyalty. And that whole thing with the inflation of gold has been making it hard for people to obtain food otherwise. Couldn’t he—or you—solve that with a wave of your hand?”
“Aha, smart lady,” the genie said, a smile of genuine warmth taking the place of his usual sardonic look. “The laws of magic aren’t as simple as I may have made it seem. Even the most powerful sorcerers in the world cannot just summon infinite amounts of anything into existence forever—it has to come from somewhere. And gold is far more simple, in its own way, than bread and meat.”
“All right, but you could do it, couldn’t you? You did it before. That’s what separates a genie—uh, a djinn—from a sorcerer, right? You’re way more powerful?”
The genie pretended to look embarrassed by the praise, flushing. “Why, yes, I could. But Jafar’s two wishes were fairly explicit. One could assume making him sultan involves the occasional parade and accompanying handouts. It might also come with his own personal disposable army. It does not, however, mean standing next to him and summoning meal after meal for everyone like some cafeteria lady.”
“A what?”
“Nothing, never mind. The point is, if he were very clever and found a historic precedent, perhaps he could get me to do that. But he’s not and I’m not making it easy for him. And on top of that…Jafar doesn’t want to give out infinite amounts of free food.”
“But why?”
“It’s the bait.” The genie mimed releasing the line of a fishing pole. A pole appeared in his hands, of course—with a giant fish at the end of it that looked a little too much like an average citizen of Agrabah. “Everyone grabs the free food and gold and bam, he’s hooked them.” He jerked the line. The fish flopped onto the floor. “Now he just reels them in. Or tightens the noose.”
The genie frowned, contemplating metaphors. Suddenly, the fish-person looked like a rabbit-person, with a noose around its neck.
“This isn’t really working for me,” the genie decided with a sigh. All of his props, including the rabbit, vanished. “Switching topics to a slightly more evil form of magic…a caravan is arriving from Carcossa three nights from now, when the moon is at a perfect quarter. It’s got a load of books and other magical bric-a-brac in it. I think this may be the big one. The one with Al Azif.”
“Why weren’t you sent with the caravan this time, to defend it?”
“What Jafar is looking for may not be found in, how do I put this, human realms at all. Let’s just leave it at this: dji
nn don’t really travel to Carcossa very well. Matter of fact, no one does. Go easy on the guards when you take them down,” the genie said with a shudder.
“All right. Thank you,” Jasmine said, toasting him with her tea. She took a sip. It was hot and honeyed, perfectly comforting. “And thank you for returning Rajah, and telling us about Al Azif, and…everything else. We owe you so much.”
The genie shrugged. “This is a pretty nasty situation. Just get the bad guy. Maybe set me free? Anyway, it’s all good karma.”
Jasmine tilted her head, looking at him. “How are you holding up?” she asked gently.
“Oh, as well as can be expected,” he said, waving his hand. “Considering I’m, like, the last of my race, enslaved to an insane, power hungry, evil—did I say evil?—dictator with delusions of godhood…who won’t even make his final insane third wish and let me off the hook from all this. Maybe my next master will be someone nicer. Like the sadistic tyrant of a kingdom of vampires. Or something.”
“What would you do?” Jasmine asked curiously. “If you were free?”
“I’d travel,” the genie answered promptly. “I’d get as far away as possible from here—and from my memories here. It’s too much. Maybe I could come back someday, but there’s a lot out there to see first. Snow, for instance. I’d kind of like to see that.”
“I don’t know if I could ever leave Agrabah,” Jasmine said with a wistful sigh. “It’s so beautiful, and there’s so much to do.”
“Well, better here than Roanoke,” the genie said, clicking his tongue. “No one ever figures out what happened to them.”
Jasmine thought about the genie’s strange mood switches, humorous jokes, and bitter hints at horrible things. Here was a creature who knew more than she would ever know, trapped in a place and a time where he didn’t want to be.
“It must be really hard…being you,” she said, fumbling for the right thing to say.
