A Whole New World

by Liz Braswell

  “Nope!” Aladdin countered with a grin. “Only the genie can do that. If any of you were at any of the parades or feasts, you’ll have noticed that the genie was always there, waving his hands behind Jafar while Jafar took credit for it. And the big question is, where has the genie been the last few days?”

  “Tortured,” Jasmine answered bleakly. “Imprisoned. Locked up. Out of service. Because he was helping us. So except for Jafar’s last wish, I think we can count him out.”

  Aladdin saw the doubtful expressions on everyone in the crowd. “Look, I’ll give you this: in a direct fight, in person, Jafar is a powerful enemy. But that’s my worry. Outside of that, he is no more powerful than any other sultan.”

  “He’s also no smarter or wiser since obtaining his nefarious new powers,” Amur pointed out. “He still thinks like the old Jafar, and the old Jafar knew nothing about tactics or military maneuvers. Keep that in mind.”

  “And speaking of fighting…” Jasmine said. “Duban?”

  The stocky thief came forward. Any overwhelming worry he had for his kidnapped family seemed to be set aside while he explained logistics. “As far as we can make out, there are about five hundred Branded Ones and undead troops. Many of the merely ‘enlisted’ have deserted over the last few days. Those that remain are arranged in either Peacekeeping Patrol phalanxes of six or the usual cohort of ten. It can be assumed that at least a hundred of them will stay inside the palace walls for defense. So that leaves about forty to fifty individual groups to keep busy—and keep Jafar’s attention on—while Aladdin and I and Morgiana sneak in.”

  “And what about the ghouls?” someone else asked. “How are we to fight those already dead?”

  “You could start by remaining alive,” Sohrab said mildly. “Keep from adding your corpses to Jafar’s numbers.”

  This was greeted by a worried silence.

  “Remember, this is war—but it’s also a distraction,” Jasmine quickly pointed out. “To defeat the sorcerer we need to steal his book and lamp, not actually kill everyone in his command. Do not put yourself unnecessarily in harm’s way.”

  “As for dealing with the ghouls you encounter,” Khosrow said, a sad look in his ancient brown eyes, “the magic animating them is not as strong as you think. The body, as is natural, wants to remain dead. Sever the mind from the soul, the psyche from the heart, and they can rest. As God intended it.”

  “Cut their heads off,” Sohrab translated. “Or slice through the spinal cord at their necks. That should do them.”

  “I am dividing you all into smaller troops and assigning quadrants of the city and jobs as appropriate,” Duban continued. “After that, Sohrab will take over entirely while I help the others. Artemis here will be in charge of distributing weapons.”

  “How many of us are there at last count?” Jasmine asked.

  “About three hundred,” he admitted.

  “That will not be enough,” Sohrab said grimly. “We’re going to need more men.”

  “Why are we only talking about men?”

  The woman who said this was short and round and covered in robes. She pushed her way to the front. Aladdin was surprised to see the Widow Gulbahar shouldering the various faction leaders aside.

  “I have all the mothers, grannies, widows, and spinster aunts of Agrabah behind me. You want to take us on?”

  “What can women do?” a man next to her asked disparagingly.

  In answer, Gulbahar whipped out a wooden ladle and clocked him on the side of the head. He yelped in pain and fell backward.

  “You want more of that? I been laundering rugs for fifty years and got the arms to prove it.”

  “But what can you do against ghouls, Old Mother?” Amur asked—but not unkindly.

  “I’ll show you,” she answered, tightening her lips. “Bring him forward.”

  Several older women shuffled around in their voluminous robes, manipulating something unseen, and soon the widow had a little boy by the shoulders. He was no more than nine. At first he looked normal, if a little subdued and sickly. Then Aladdin noticed the red glow around his eyes and the green tinge to his white flesh.

  “My God,” Jasmine said, putting her hand to her mouth. “He is…a ghoul!”

  The crowd gasped when the widow turned the boy’s head to the side so the flickering lights caught his sad, monstrous face.

  “The poor lad,” Aladdin murmured.

  Gulbahar did all but spit. “He was killed when some of the soldiers were tearing apart the Eastern Marketplace, looking for traitors.”

  “Any person who dies becomes a ghoul,” Khosrow said sadly.

  “You are the Princess Jasmine,” the boy said, his dead eyes widening. “I must take you to Jafar. I must kill the Street Rats.”

  He slowly lifted his arms to attack.

  “Cut it out, Jalil,” Gulbahar said promptly and sternly. She whacked his behind. The boy winced—a little—and drew his arms back. “How many times have I told you no fighting?”

  “Sorry,” the boy said tonelessly.

  “He…listened to you,” Jasmine said slowly. “He knows who you are. They remember?”

  The widow nodded. “They all remember. A little.”

  “But how does that help us?” asked the man whose head had been struck. There was a sizable lump forming on it.

  “Every one of them out there is some mother’s son,” Gulbahar hissed. “A mother can bring her boy home. And failing that, she will fight like a tiger against anyone who tries to stop her.”

  Aladdin had thought that losing his parents was the worst thing that could happen to a person. He never thought about the reverse—when parents outlive their children. And then to have their children come back, but not the same, never the same…

  “‘There is no more powerful force on earth than a mother frightened for her children,’” Khosrow murmured.

  “Great, that’s at least a couple hundred more,” Sohrab said, reducing the drama to numbers: he had more soldiers to work with now and did not care about their gender or motivation. He nodded to Duban. “I’ll talk to the women after to work out the details.”

  “We will need a…holding pen,” Gulbahar said delicately. “The…harmless undead need to be kept from returning to Jafar.”

  Sohrab looked doubtful but didn’t disagree. “We’ll see what we can do.”

  “All right, back to battle plans,” Duban said. “Rajah can take on a cohort or two of his own. We’re having Navid the goatherd gather those who are loyal to us and blockade the Western Market area.…”

  “What about the flying horrors?” someone asked.

  “We have archers, some of the best, thanks to Sanjar and his hunters, and some of the defected guards from the palace Sohrab has brought along. They will be positioned here, here, and here…and here.” He pointed out certain broad rooftops in the middle-class part of town.

  “And we have some things cooked up for them as well,” Kimiya said gleefully. “A couple of hits from our shrapnel-loaded firebombs should take them apart. This is in addition to the incendiaries and bombs that we will set off at different times in seemingly random places…as well as very close to the palace walls to increase confusion.”

  “And speaking of fire,” Jasmine said, pointing at the map again, “we will be lighting one at the top of Jafar’s own Moon Tower, here in the palace, to further distract from Aladdin’s heist. I suspect Jafar will be smart and use some of his aerial forces to contain it.”

  “And how will you know when to do this? When who should attack whom? When to let loose Rajah? Or the grannies?” a tall young woman demanded—the leader of one of the student groups.

  “Ah, that is also a good question, which we were getting to,” Morgiana answered, stepping forward with relish. “Besides shooting down the flying ghouls, the archers will act as our messengers. Once Duban and I have divided you up into your separate teams, we will teach you the appropriate signal: how many arrows of fire means what.”

 
“Any other questions?” Jasmine asked.

  There was the shuffling of feet and little else.

  “Any comments?” she asked, a little more gently. “Anything at all? If you have something to say, we want to hear it now.”

  Amur looked around and then cleared his throat.

  “Down with Jafar!” he said in a voice unaccustomed to shouting.

  “DOWN WITH JAFAR!” the crowd repeated, much more loudly.

  “This might actually work,” Aladdin said with a hopeful grin.

  Jasmine put a finger on his lips.

  “Don’t jinx it.”

  AFTER THE MEETING had broken up, and Sohrab and Duban and the others set about dividing their army up into logical groups, Aladdin finally had a moment to himself. He wandered outside and perched atop a crumbling wall, looking out at the dimmed lights of Agrabah. Even the palace seemed gloomier than usual, as if a strange extra helping of night had fallen over the city he loved.

  He rubbed his hands into his eyes. His body wasn’t tired, exactly, and he was certainly eager to do something. But first he had to say good-bye to Jasmine. The weeks had passed strangely, and the only thing he could ever be sure of was how much he wanted to be with her.

  As if summoned by his thoughts—like a wish granted by a genie—Jasmine came up behind him. She thought she was being silent; to a thief her footsteps were as loud as a horn flourish announcing her presence. She knocked on a piece of the wall.

  “Come in,” Aladdin said with a wry smile.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” she said, leaping up to sit near him and take in the view.

  “So, Royal Princess—excuse me, Sultana Jasmine—coming to admire your soon-to-be kingdom?” he asked with a smile.

  “Yes, I want to make some changes. I think it could use a few more lights,” she said, finger to her chin in contemplation. “Torches there, there, and there. And maybe a different shade of white this time. More ‘eggshell’ or ‘moon.’ Less ‘sand.’”

  “Definitely less sand,” Aladdin agreed. He put his arm around her and drew her close. She leaned her head on his shoulder. They were like two cats, he thought. Sitting on a fence together looking at the moon.

  Except that they were looking at the palace. And in that palace terrible things were happening. He could feel her heart betraying her calm, joking exterior: it beat as nervously as his. Or maybe that was his heart he was feeling. It was getting hard to tell.

  “We have to get Maruf and Ahmed and Shirin,” she murmured. “The rest of it…if we fail, we can try again later. But we cannot fail them.”

  “I know,” Aladdin said, his arm tightening around her.

  “I keep seeing his face…and Shirin’s and Ahmed’s in the sand…” Jasmine said. “But…”

  “But what?” Aladdin sat her up gently and turned her to face him.

  “You’re going to think what I have to say is stupid. And weird. And selfish,” she said, blushing.

  “Tell me,” Aladdin urged quietly.

  Jasmine sighed. “At least…at least they’re in there together. The children have Maruf trying to help them. And Maruf has us trying to rescue them. If it was me, I’d be in there by myself. Before I met you—before I joined Morgiana and Duban and the Street Rats—I was completely alone. Before I ran away, my closest friend was a tiger.”

  Aladdin laughed softly. “Before I met you, my closest friend was a monkey.” He kissed her on the forehead. “We’re quite a pair.”

  Jasmine took his hands in hers. His were larger but somehow they felt smaller inside her fingers: covered, warm, protected. She looked up at him with eyes large and shaky.

  “Aladdin,” she whispered. “I love you.”

  He started to open his mouth. A month ago—a few weeks ago, something glib and silly would have popped out to make the moment seem less serious.

  “And I love you, Jasmine,” he said instead.

  He turned his palms over and squeezed her hands. “Whatever happens next—whether we save the city or it falls into a pit in the earth and is lost forever—I would never, ever change a moment of our time together. You are the best—the only—good thing that has happened in my life.”

  A half-asleep chitter came, annoyed, out of a shadow in the rocks.

  “Except for you, Abu,” Aladdin said, smiling.

  Jasmine smiled, too. She leaned over and kissed him. Her lips made him warm all over, warmer than the hot desert night. He could no longer run his hands through her thick, long hair—it was now always up in the tight braid she wore. But her neck and back were soft and he stroked them with his fingertips while they embraced.

  When they pulled apart, Jasmine rested her head on his shoulder again. “And now all of your friends are my friends, too. Suddenly, I have friends.”

  Aladdin snorted. “They didn’t become my friends again until you came along. You kind of helped us…bury the hatchet. With, you know, all the unimportant stuff about saving the kingdom and feeding hungry people.”

  Jasmine smiled. “Yes, well, I wouldn’t have known about the hungry people if it wasn’t for you and them. I’ll bet there’s a lot more about Agrabah I don’t know. Once I am sultana, I’ll rely on the Street Rats to keep me grounded.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. I need to know the people of my city to rule it properly. And one of the best things to have come out of all of this is the support network that the Street Rats have grown into. Maybe I can somehow use that on a greater scale.”

  Aladdin laughed. “That sounds like a great idea. And I’m sure Morgiana and Duban would like a piece of the future action in Agrabah. Even if it’s not illegal.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait until this all gets started!” Jasmine said, standing up impatiently. “I want to know how it all turns out. I want to win. When we rescue Maruf and get the lamp and the book, everything begins.”

  “Yes,” Aladdin said cautiously. One of her words had jumped out at him. “But we’re burning the book, right?”

  Jasmine stopped her pacing and stared at him. “No, Aladdin. We talked about this. It’s a valuable resource. We can use it to defeat Jafar.”

  “I do not need an evil book to defeat an evil sorcerer. That even sounds like a bad idea.”

  “You sound like one of the suspicious, anti-magic old folk,” Jasmine pointed out. “Like everything that comes out of magic is bad.”

  “Can we talk about the genie for a moment?” Aladdin asked hotly. “He doesn’t seem evil at all. But the moment he appears in our world, his powers are used to do terrible things. He’s not bad and his magic isn’t bad—but other people are.”

  “I’m not Jafar!”

  “No, but you’re human, Jasmine. What if someone managed to convince you that the people really would be safer and healthier if we kept the Peacekeeping Patrols going? What if a grieving mother begged you to bring her dead child back, even as a ghoul? Wouldn’t you do it?”

  They were very close, looking into each other’s eyes. Jasmine had her hands on her hips. Aladdin had his hands clenched into knots.

  Morgiana appeared below them. Her footsteps were, of course, silent. She saw the two, heard the silence, and coughed nervously.

  “Uh, I hate to interrupt you two…lovebirds? But it’s time.”

  “We’ll be right down,” Jasmine said without taking her eyes off Aladdin. He didn’t turn, either.

  “Okay…but hurry. By the stars it looks like it’s already past the third watch.” Morgiana tiptoed back the way she came as quickly as she could.

  Aladdin shook his arms out and took a deep breath. “You know what? We can talk about this after we’ve rescued Maruf, Ahmed, and Shirin, and stolen the lamp, and grabbed the book, and defeated Jafar—and gotten back out alive.”

  “Excellent point,” Jasmine said. She put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him. “Let’s not leave arguing.”

  “I’d rather not leave at all,” he said, pulling her close one last time.

  O
NCE AGAIN Aladdin found himself sitting on a rooftop. This time it was a leather tannery to the north of the palace. He wondered vaguely if this would be his last time sitting on a rooftop.

  Around him was the usual detritus one found on the roofs of Agrabah: mats for drying fruit, lines for hanging clothes and rugs, a small chicken pen, the boards and ladders that had nowhere else to be stored. Also a goat, which stood there chewing and paying absolutely no attention to the strange humans who had invaded its penthouse.

  With Aladdin were Morgiana and Duban, the two “handpicked thieves,” and Pareesa, whose specialty turned out to be arson. Jasmine was directing the siege of Agrabah with Sohrab back at the bread warehouse. She would order the signal for when they should set out. So now the four were just sitting under still skies, above the fear-darkened city, waiting.

  Finally, after a quick look to make sure that Pareesa was trying to distract Duban with a pair of knucklebones and a game of nine squares, Morgiana broke the silence.

  “You guys fighting?”

  Aladdin took a deep breath. It was funny that he had come to this point with Morgiana; first they were close, and then he wrote her off…and now…and now? It was easy to talk to her. Almost like an old friend.

  “We have very different ideas on what to do with the book Al Azif when we grab it.”

  “Oh, that’s easy. I’d use it to wish for a giant mansion and hundreds of servants.” Morgiana sighed, swinging her legs like a young girl.

  Aladdin shot her a look.

  “Kidding! Sort of. My dreams of riches have been ruined by that lunatic Jafar. I don’t know what I’d do with it. Maybe bury it in the desert.”

  Once again Aladdin thought back to the Cave of Wonders, the buried treasure, the buried lamp. History repeating itself…

  “It’s not like the lamp or the genie, Morgiana. It doesn’t grant wishes. It’s an ancient, dark tome of evil knowledge that raises the dead and kills people and breaks all the known laws of magic. It needs to be burned.” He sighed, kicking his feet over the side of the building. “She thinks it could somehow be used for good.”