Bedtime Stories

by Johnson, Jean

  Hassim covered the grass cutter’s hand with one of his own for a moment, then dropped his forehead into his palm. Leaving the merchant inside, Wali Daad filled a bucket with water and led the mare to his hay shed, already three-quarters full with dusty, sweet-smelling bundles of grass. He found an old currying brush and stroked the mare’s hide, trying to think of what to do about the approaching wedding parties.

  I am a simple man . . . I know nothing of pleasure gardens, nor did I ever think I should want to, he thought as he groomed the tired animal. And yet that is what these people are expecting to find. Stars were beginning to glimmer in the darkening sky. Wali Daad looked up at the jewels they made, and prayed.

  Heaven . . . all of Heaven . . . if there is any way to give these people what they want, show me the path to it and I will walk it for them. But I am a simple man. I cannot craft miracles like a God! All I can ask is that You open the hearts of these women and men so that they see the beauty that I see whenever I wander through my home . . . and soften their hearts so that they do not take offense at being match-made and kingdom-wed by a lowly grass cutter.

  All I wanted was to do something nice, to give a gift to someone who deserved it, he thought wearily.

  He gave the mare one last pat and made sure she had the bucket of water close at hand, before leaving her tied up for the night. Having fetched her tack on the way back to the house, Wali Daad carried it inside. He would offer Hassim his own pallet for the night, since his friend had ridden off without a bedroll, and Wali Daad would sleep on the floor. It would make him stiff, since he was in his late sixties, but not much more so than these long days of cutting enough hay already made him feel.

  “MASTER Wali Daad . . . It is time for you to awaken, Master. Oh, Wali Daad . . .”

  Snuggling deeper into the cloudlike softness of his bed, Wali Daad grumbled and tried to ignore the quiet, lilting voice bothering him. The touch of a soft, cool palm against his cheek snapped his eyes open . . . and the sight of the arm and body attached to that hand did more to banish the urge to sleep than lighting a fire under his chin would have. That hand, and that arm, belonged to the body of a slender woman wrapped in a bright blue and purple sari studded with more than enough silver to match the ornate jewelry woven into her neatly braided hair.

  “Good morning, Master Wali Daad! You have awakened just in time,” the young woman—well, in her late twenties, which was quite young compared to him—told him as he sat up. “Your bath has been readied and your clothing laid out. Once you are dressed and have dined on your breakfast, you will be ready to receive Their Highnesses’s outriders.”

  Wali Daad was too busy staring at the opulent splendor of the chamber surrounding him to make much sense of her words. Carved marble had replaced the ordinary river stone of his cottage, and exotic woods now occupied the simple lumber beams which had once defined his home. Not to mention silk curtains, embroidered cushions, gilded paintings, and brightly colored bits of glass lining the five—five—windows to north. Five stained-glass windows showing a view of the crossroads from higher up than he had ever seen before, when he normally had just one, simple, wooden-shuttered opening down on a solitary, single floor.

  “I . . . I do not understand. Where am I?” he asked as the young woman coaxed him out of bed by the hand, revealing how someone had clad him in soft, white silk garments instead of his age-stained, familiar linens. “What has happened to my home?”

  The woman smiled, releasing his hand. Pressing her palms together, she bowed to him. “I am a deva, Wali Daad. Heaven has heard the prayer of your heart and granted you a home worthy of it.”

  An angel of the gods! Wali Daad stared at her. Am I . . . Am I dead?

  She straightened and grinned. “No, you are not dead, Wali Daad— Master Wali Daad, rather. And yes, I am an angel of the gods. You may call me Desna. This is the truth of what has just happened: You, Wali Daad, are honored by Heaven. Nothing more than that . . . and nothing less.” Sweeping her hands at the palatial chamber around them, she repeated herself. “Heaven has peered into your heart and remolded your home overnight to match it.”

  “But . . . why?” Wali Daad asked. Part of him was a little frightened that she could read his thoughts, though she wasn’t frightening in the least. He felt as if he should know her, though he knew he had never seen her before. Everything was confusion, and he didn’t know what to make of these sudden changes in his life.

  Tucking her arm in his, she guided him toward an archway hung with strands of precious pearls for its beaded curtain. “Because you are worthy. And because you gave a true gift, expecting and wanting nothing in return, and continued to give and give with no expectations. And because there are two mighty nations, both of whom honor Heaven, who are expecting to see what you have always seen. But . . . their eyes are busy thinking that wealth is equal to beauty.” Her smile slipped into a moment of sobriety. “It is sometimes easier for Heaven to transform a simple cottage into a magnificent palace than it is to open the eyes of the people to the natural wonders of the world.”

  “So . . . this will only be here for the length of the wedding?” he asked, gesturing vaguely at his unfamiliar, opulent surroundings.

  Smiling, she drew him into the next room, where several more youths, some of them men and some of them women, awaited with towels and anointing oils, with the promised bath and finely woven clothes to follow it. “It will be here for as long as you wish it, Wali Daad. For as long as your heart is true.”

  Bemused and wordless, Wali Daad allowed himself to be bathed and readied for the day.

  SHE was every bit as beautiful as her letters had proclaimed. Not in a listing of her features, which were indeed fine, but in the way she had written, full of wit, charm, humor, and intelligence. Her brown eyes gleamed with amusement, her mouth curved with kindness, and her cheeks blushed with awareness when Prince Kavi, Champion of the East, requested a moment alone with her in one of the palatial rooms in the home of the kind, quiet-spoken, slightly befuddled-looking Wali Daad. In a palace that his couriers and border guards, one and all, had sworn hadn’t been there just the day before. But the prince could not focus on that peculiar fact just yet.

  Dismissing even the last of his bodyguards, he waited until Princess Ananya, Flower of the West, had reassured and sent on her way the last of her own guardswomen. Closing the door carefully, Kavi turned back to her. She looked like a painting from Heaven in her beautiful sari and pearls. A living deva. His wife-to-be.

  “What did you wish to discuss in private, Your Highness?” she asked him politely.

  “No.” Leaving the door, he lifted his finger between them. “Right now, there is no ‘Highness’ between us. No prince, no princess, and no nations. We will not have this chance to be alone again until late tonight, long after we have become the joint rulers of our lands . . . but right here, right now,” Kavi coaxed her, taking her hands in his, “there is just a wonderful woman and a very grateful man.”

  Her smile widened and her blush deepened. “It is I who should be grateful. I had no plans for anything other than a marriage of state, but your letters . . .”

  He lifted her fingers to his lips, deeply grateful he could finally touch them. “And yours,” he agreed. Drawing her closer, he placed her palms against his chest. He smiled and closed his hands as she flattened and spread her fingers. “Yes . . . touch me. Touch all of me. Did you know you have been driving me insane with passion nearly every night?”

  Ananya smirked and stepped closer, brushing their bodies together. “Lady Bhanuni gave me some ideas to start out with, but most of it has been inspired all from my own imaginings. But this, touching the rest of you . . . this is better than mere imaginings.”

  Cupping her face in his hands, Kavi kissed her. He kissed her deeply, thrilled when she returned each nip and suckle with her own lips. Aware of the passing of time, aware that they could not stand there and kiss each other forever—however much he longed for it—he reluctantly broke
their kiss. Resting his forehead against hers, ignoring the slight scratch of her hair ornaments, Kavi spoke from his heart.

  “Marry me. Marry me and make me happy, and teach me to be wise, and help me to be a good father and a good ruler, and continue to share with me all your excellent advice. Rule with me, so that all of our people may prosper, both West and East. Please?”

  She grinned. “I was about to ask you something similar. I am honored to accept, Kavi. My Kavi . . .” Her fingers shifted a little, finding the hard beads of flesh beneath his ornately embroidered tunic. Deepening her smile, she rubbed them a little. “Do you think . . . ?”

  Kavi groaned. “With your hands finally on the rest of me, how can I think?”

  “I believe you can think about this,” she murmured, exploring further with increasingly bold fingertips which wandered southward down his chest. “Do you think . . . we have enough time . . . for a quick . . . ?”

  Groaning, Kavi kissed her again, plundering her for everything implicit in that invitation. Their courtiers would have to wait, the palace servants would have to wait, and the inestimable, kindhearted, brilliant Wali Daad, the wisest man in the world, would have to wait. Heaven itself would just have to wait, though Heaven itself would surely agree why.

  “YOU have a truly beautiful home, Wali Daad,” Queen Ananya said, praising her quiet, almost bashful host. She looked down the terraced slope of the gardens toward the river in the distance, lit more by colorful lanterns, made of dyed paper in the Eastern tradition, than by the last, glorious hues of the fading sunset. Nestled as she was in the curve of her new husband’s arms, she let loose a sigh that sounded somewhere between happy and wistful. “I wish we could stay here forever.”

  “As do I,” King Kavi agreed.

  Wali Daad looked at his transformed home. He looked at the gardens, at the walls, at the windows and the stables and the milling guests of two nations joined happily into one mighty land. All he wanted to see was his grassy fields and his little cottage, barely more than a hut with a wooden floor. But everyone was happy here, as they would not have been happy in his simple grass cutter’s home. He could not spoil their happiness at the expense of his own.

  A glance to his side showed the attentive deva still hovering near his elbow, as she had lingered for most of the day. The name she had given for herself was Desna, which he thought was very appropriate, for it meant offering. He had been offered this palace for as long as he wished it. For as long as my heart is true . . . and my heart is saying I must do this.

  Can you hear my thoughts, Desna? he wondered. The ones in my heart?

  She smiled and nodded, giving him a single, graceful bow of her head. A bow of permission.

  Pleased and relieved, Wali Daad turned to Their Majesties. “Then if you admire it so much . . . it is yours. I give you this palace and all of its delights to be your new home—it is well placed between the two arms of your new land, and the well has never gone dry, even in the deepest of droughts. But, as in all things in life, you must give generously of its water to all who come to visit, however long or brief, so that its generosity will never have cause to dry out.”

  “No, we couldn’t accept your home,” His Majesty demurred.

  “I insist. Heaven itself insists—and who are we to argue with Heaven?” Wali Daad added, lifting his hands in surrender, though he smiled as he did so.

  Her Majesty touched him with one of her gentle hands, her wrists still adorned with the bracelets he had ordered made. “Then you must stay with us and honor us with your presence.”

  Wali Daad glanced between her and the deva and smiled sadly, shaking his head. “I may come back for a visit, but my work here is done. This is your home now, and your life. Mine lies elsewhere.”

  Bowing as gracefully as he could, Wali Daad escorted Desna away.

  “That was a generous, true-hearted thing which you have done, Wali Daad,” the deva murmured in his ear.

  Wali Daad nodded to his friend Hassim, who had taken his sudden change in households with a blink and a smile, and a prayer of thanks for Heaven having saved both of them.

  “It was the right thing to do. But now . . . Now I must find a new home, and a new field or two, and new customers for whose horses I can cut grass. Would you know of any crossroads in need of an aging but very good grass cutter?” he asked her.

  Desna leaned back a little, her pose coquettish. “Why yes, actually. The gods just happen to need a good grass cutter at the borderlands between the mortal realms and Heaven. They send Their devas back and forth several times a day, and though we are devas, our horses still need to drink sweet water and dine on the finest hay. If you accept, we will have a cottage with a wooden floor and a big field of grass waiting for you within the hour. It is a simple life, with simple rewards and simple pleasures, but I think it would suit you. If that is what you want, Wali Daad.”

  “It would,” he agreed, relieved. “And it is. Thank you.”

  “No, Wali Daad,” the deva corrected softly, kissing him on his age-weathered cheek. “Thank you.”

  The Princess on the Glass Hill

  Author’s Note: This was one of my favorite stories as a young girl. Though I can’t really put my finger on why it was a favorite, I have decided to put my own twist on the story. Since my three favorite genres are fantasy, romance, and science fiction (in no particular order, though I do enjoy combining romance with the other two), this time I’m going to rewrite the tale with a sci-fi twist. My deepest thanks go to my friend Iulia for sharing her great knowledge of chemistry with me; she was the professional, thus any mistakes or oddities are entirely my own.

  VICTOR Amariei, captain of the Închiriat, knew his cousin had a dare for him when Ston swaggered onto the bridge. Sighing, the muscular captain sat back in his chair, temporarily abandoning his search for the next round of cargos to deliver. Most of the time he was good at lining up business, ferrying supplies and goods from space station to spaceport throughout the solar system and usually doing so in a profitable chain of connected locations. But in the last five runs, his luck had run out.

  He didn’t want to dip into their savings fund, since that money was earmarked for ship upgrades. So it was either take on disparate runs, which would send his ship bouncing around the system with no intermediary stops, wasting time and money, or sit in port until a good string came along. If necessary, he’d take a single, high-paying run that would get him into a better position to set up a new chain of runs. But that meant sitting here and staring at the trade channels, looking for work. He didn’t have time for more pleasurable things.

  Unlike Ston, who had vanished for five hours onto the local space station, Liberty VII, no doubt to drink and carouse. The last thing Victor wanted to do was go onto the space station in search of relaxation. Mining outposts like this one had a peculiar sense of what was acceptable behavior and what was not. What a “local boy” could get away with was not the same thing as what an outsider such as the two of them could . . . though it looked like Ston had come back unharmed.

  His cousin’s unabashed, smug grin did not bode well. Nor did the way he lounged insolently against the navigation console.

  “You look like the cat that swallowed a whole rabbit,” Victor muttered, folding his arms across his chest. The movement made the metallic fabric of his shirt gleam in several shades of red.

  “Maybe I did,” Ston agreed.

  “Spit it out, cousin,” he ordered. “What trouble are you trying to get me into this time?”

  “It’s a contract, not trouble. And it’s worth half a million credits . . . if you take on the additional, mmm . . . side-quest, shall we say?” Ston offered, rubbing at the short, neat beard darkening his chin.

  Even though they were sixty/forty partners and had been working together for years, Victor didn’t trust his cousin implicitly. “What is the regular contract worth, without the side-quest?”

  “Eighty thousand,” Ston admitted, shrugging carelessly. The amount w
asn’t bad, but the jump to half a million made the younger man’s words suspect.

  Like his cousin and captain, he wore a metallic shirt—currently the fashion of choice back home on their family’s portion of Earth—though Ston’s shirt was a dark metallic blue, making him look more enigmatic. Deliberately, no doubt. Victor narrowed his eyes, and Ston pressed his hand to his heart.

  “There you go again, making with the fox-eyes. You’re about to ask me what’s illegal about the rest of it, aren’t you? Well, there is nothing illegal about it. My word of honor as your cousin.”

  Victor sighed. “You may be a pain in the asteroid, but you are an honest pain in the asteroid. What is the cargo, what is the side-quest, and why is the side-quest worth so much more than the main contract?”

  “The cargo is a rare isotope of bismuth 209. Normally they mine it on Earth and Mars and the inner asteroid ring, but not in very large quantities. The miners here at Liberty VII have found a substantial deposit of it, and they’ve been working to refine it into a pure metal.

  “The side-quest involves a certain special lady whom the isotope needs to be delivered to. Hand-delivered, to be specific,” his cousin clarified. “Her name is Dr. Evanna Motska, chief researcher at LUCI, the Lunar Ceramics Institute. If you accept the contract for the cargo, you will have handcuffed to your wrist a case about the size of your head that can only be unlocked by a combination of a personal code, which you yourself will enter, and by Dr. Motska’s personal security thumbprint as well—I have been reassured the isotope is not dangerous, just very, very rare and very, very expensive, leading to these security precautions.”

  “And the side-quest?” Victor asked, still skeptical. Part of his mind was already leaping through the trade channel information he had been perusing, trying to line up at least one other cargo toward either Earth or its sole natural satellite, or to one of the stations orbiting Saturn, which was sort of on the way to Earth. “What about it and this lady make it worth nearly half a million?”