Shadow Spinner

by Susan Fletcher

  I’d like to know my fortune, I thought. But I couldn’t use the dinars.

  And then I realized: If I had looked for the fortuneteller earlier, she wouldn’t have been here. People came at different times. I couldn’t remember what time of day it had been when I had seen the storyteller but . . . maybe he did still come to the bazaar, only later. How could I have been so stupid, not to have thought of this?

  With new hope, I made my way back to the fountain. I walked carefully, hiding my limp, and kept my head down in case the eunuchs were still about. The man with the monkey had gone and now there was just the crowd hurrying through streets in the harsh midmorning sun.

  I saw down on the edge of the fountain to wait.

  * * *

  He didn’t come.

  A band of musicians—two horn players and a drummer—set up and played for a while. Then a mule driver led his animals to drink in the fountain. A water seller passed by, ringing his bell and calling out that his water was cold and clear. I felt my gold dinars through the cloth of my sash. Too risky. So I cupped my hands and drank from the fountain—away from where the mules had been.

  A moazzen called for noon prayers. Most of the bazaar emptied out as people went to pray and then to sleep during the hottest part of the day. I found a cool, dark place in the underground part of the carvers’ bazaar, behind a heap of sawdust. There was no place private to make ablutions with water, so I made ablutions touching earth and said my prayers. I curled up to rest—but I couldn’t sleep. Worry gnawed at me more and more.

  Later, when the bazaar began to come back to life, I made another trek all through it, even down to the tanning vats. I saw no more harem eunuchs, to my relief. When I returned to the fountain, the fortuneteller had set up there.

  Still no storyteller.

  Shadows crept into the streets. The sun had moved overhead and to the west. Precious time was passing. Where was the blind storyteller?

  Dread seeped into my heart.

  I glanced around at the merchants and carpet weavers. From looking at them half the day, I had begun to know their faces. Maybe they would know the storyteller.

  I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to call attention to myself. But I had to do something.

  I approached one of the merchants, a stout one with a full, curly beard. “Uncle?” I said.

  He looked at me as you would look at a beetle before flicking it off your sleeve; but then his glance snagged upon the fine cloth of my veil. Now he smiled; a broad row of teeth opened up in the middle of the brush.

  “Do you know . . . Does a blind storyteller ever come here?” I asked. “To tell stories by the fountain?”

  The smile vanished. He turned away from me and began straightening a pile of small carpets. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “But surely you would—”

  “I don’t know,” he barked. “Now, unless you’ve come to buy, be on your way!”

  I asked many people in the stalls all around, and it was always the same. They did not say no, that they knew of no blind storyteller. But they averted their eyes, and said, “I don’t know.”

  “Sister?”

  I whirled round to see a boy before me. By his frayed robe, I guessed he was some poor man’s servant.

  “I know the man you speak of,” he said. “He’s not here today. He is not . . . feeling well. For seven copper fils, I will take you to him.”

  Chapter 10

  A Name with Two Words

  LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STORYTELLING

  My auntie Chava taught me never to pay anyone in advance. Don’t pay the porter until you’ve arrived at where you’re going. Don’t pay the oil merchant until the jar’s sitting inside your gates. If you’re having something made—a chest, or a stable for your mule—you may have to pay a few coins in advance. Even so, Auntie Chava said, until it’s done, you should always hold something back.

  Which was kind of what Shahrazad was doing. She was paying for her life with stories . . . but she always held something back.

  The boy grinned at me then, a crooked, impish grin. He was taller than me, but probably around my own age. His face was smudged with dirt, but his eyes were amazing—huge and dark, with thick, long lashes.

  I had seen his type before. A charmer.

  “How do I know that you know him?” I asked, suspicious.

  “He wears a peacock feather on his turban,” the boy said. And I could see it, then, that feather, bobbing this way and that as the blind storyteller told his tale. Excitement rose within me. “Very well. Take me to him,” I said.

  The boy held out his palm. “Payment in advance.”

  “No. I don’t pay in advance,” I said.

  “Very well, then, half.”

  “I can’t give you half. I’ll pay you well when I see him.”

  The boy didn’t move. “How do I know you have money?”

  I tried to sound haughty. “Believe it. I do.”

  He said nothing—-just kept his palm out.

  I sighed. I would have to show him a gold coin. I reached into my sash and pulled one out. Eyes wide, he grabbed for it. I snatched the coin back and tucked it into my sash. “Let’s go.”

  The boy shook his head. “I don’t know you,” he said. “How do I know you’ll pay?”

  “I don’t know you, either!” My voice sounded shrill, even to me. I looked about quickly. A few people had turned to stare. More quietly, I asked, “How do I know you won’t just run off and leave me?”

  The boy grinned that grin of his. “You don’t,” he said. “You’ll have to trust me.”

  If I gave him the coin, he would disappear and I would never see him again. I stood firm, shook my head.

  The boy shrugged, but I saw the hunger in his eyes. Hunger for the gold dinar. “Well then, come along,” he said.

  I kept my eyes on the tattered, grimy back of him as he wove through the crowds in the street. It was hard to keep up because I was trying not to limp, in case the eunuchs were still about. People kept cutting between us, getting in the way. I bumped into one woman and stepped on another’s foot; they shouted at me, shaking their fists. Just when I thought I had lost the boy, I caught sight of him leaning against a pillar, waiting for me. “This way,” he said, and again he was off.

  I followed him all through the bazaar, and then into a part of the city I didn’t know. The courtyard walls turned from brick to mud; the streets narrowed and the crowd thinned out; the paving stones gave way to packed earth. Dust rose in puffs from our footsteps, filling my nose with grit.

  I gave up trying to hide my limp. It had been a long time since I’d seen the eunuchs, and my foot was hurting again. The boy drew farther and farther ahead, until once, when he looked back at me, I saw a startled look cross his face. After that, he slowed down. Though I didn’t want his pity, I was glad for the slower pace.

  I clung to hope. The storyteller had looked poor; he would live in this part of the city.

  We went so far and so long and by so twisted a route that I began to think the boy had led me in circles—like some porters who, paid by the distance they carry a foreigner’s goods, take the longest possible way.

  Well, this boy would be far overpaid!

  Then he was gone.

  I stopped, waiting for him to appear from around a corner. The courtyard gates, tightly spaced in the cracked mud walls that lined the narrow street, had only traces of paint and hung crooked on their hinges. These homes must be tiny. All was deserted, save for three dirty children and a skinny chicken pecking in the dust. I had no idea where I was.

  “Boy?” I called.

  Nothing.

  He had abandoned me.

  I couldn’t believe he had given up that dinar, and yet. . . “Boy!” I called again.

  One of the children pointed at my bad foot; the others giggled. I turned away, angry at the children, angry at the boy. He hadn’t known where the old storyteller lived; he had only wanted my money. When I didn’t give it to h
im, he punished me by leading me on a wild chase until I was utterly lost.

  How could I have allowed him to trick me? I, who knew my way about this city. I, who was carefully schooled by Auntie Chava in not letting people take advantage.

  Probably the old beggar had died long before, and his story with him.

  My bad foot was throbbing again. My knees felt weak; I let them fold. I sank down into the dirty street, put my head down on my knees. I felt numb. What I wanted to do more than anything was to make my way somehow back to Auntie Chavas house and enfold myself in her arms.

  But I couldn’t.

  “Sister?”

  I clambered to my feet. He was there again, the boy. “A thousand pardons, Sister. If you’ll just let me tie this about your eyes . . .” He held out a red kerchief, moved toward me.

  My relief turned to anger. A blindfold!

  “You don’t know who sent me,” I said. “If you did, you wouldn’t humiliate me like this.”

  “I don’t care who sent you. I’m not taking you to the storyteller unless you wear the kerchief.”

  I wanted to walk away. But I needed that story.

  The boy turned, started to leave. “Very well,” I said quickly. “Take me to him! And don’t dawdle about it!”

  As he tied the cloth over my eyes, I told myself that I was crazy to let him do this. Far crazier than Zaynab. Probably he belonged to a band of brigands. They would beat me and rob me and leave me to die on the floor of some wretched hovel.

  “Don’t try to rob me,” I said. “You don’t want to make enemies of my friends.”

  I heard something—it sounded like a snort. Was he laughing at me? I couldn’t tell. Still, even though I knew what I was doing was crazy, the hope wouldn’t go away. “Hope makes crazy fools of us all,” Auntie Chava sometimes said.

  I kept my free hand pressed against the coins. The boy took my elbow. He led me gently enough. We walked slowly, and he warned me when we were going to turn, or when there were steps to go up or down, or when there were animal droppings near my feet. At last, I heard a creaking of hinges—the boy led me forward a little way—then more creaking as the door closed behind us. Someone was fumbling with the kerchief; it fell from my eyes and there, sitting on a faded carpet at the far end of a small, bare, mud-walled room, was the storyteller.

  I knew his face at once. I had watched it intently for a long time that day—the high forehead; the shaggy brows that arched up to sharp points; the wild, frizzled beard, now grown more white than gray; the thin, papery skin that crinkled round his eyes. But there was something different about him, something that took me a moment to place. No peacock feather. But that wasn’t it.

  His eyes. When I had seen him before, they had been unfocused, roving. Blind, I had thought. But now they were sharp, piercing, intelligent.

  “I don’t know you,” he said. “Who are you?”

  We had rehearsed this part, Shahrazad, Dunyazad, and I. I was not to tell him anything, just ask for the story.

  “It doesn’t matter who I am,” I said. “I’m looking for a story. A certain story. I heard you tell the first part in the bazaar, about a mermaid called Julnar. Now I want to hear about her son.”

  “Julnar,” the man said, and a smile twitched his mouth. “When did you hear about Julnar?”

  I started to reply, then thought better of it. “It doesn’t matter when I heard it,” I said. “Γ11 answer no questions—but I will pay you well.”

  “I’ve no doubt of it,” the man said.

  “Here,” I said, pulling a dinar out of my sash. “This is for the story There’s another for you when you’re done.”

  I expected him to snatch it from me. But he made no move to take it—just left me there, holding it out, feeling foolish.

  “Do you remember the story?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I set the coin down on the carpet. Still the man did not pick it up. This was a hovel they lived in—I could tell by the carpet and the walls and the tiny packed-dirt yard outside the window. So much money would pay for the storyteller’s food for a year. More than a year. I remembered how, in the bazaar, he would stop with the telling until he heard the encouraging clank of a coin in his cup. But now he ignored it. He gazed just over my left shoulder, combing his beard with his fingers.

  And I felt a twinge of fear. I had thought him a poor, blind, harmless old storyteller. But I began to get the feeling now that he was much more than he seemed.

  “Sister?” The boy was staring at the coin as a starving man would stare at a leg of mutton. I almost felt like laughing. He turned and held out his hand. “Where’s mine?” he asked. “You promised.”

  I let out an exasperated breath, pulled out another coin. He snatched it, bit it to see if it was real, then tucked it away.

  “So,” the storyteller said at last. “You want to hear about Badar Basim.”

  A name with two words, both starting with a B!

  I nodded, trying to look calm. Badar Basim, I said to myself. Badar Basim. I moved forward, not wanting to miss a single word.

  Chapter 11

  İ Always Find Out

  LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STORYTELLING

  I always used to like stories that had justice in them. Stories where the right people got punished. In my favorite stories, if something bad happened to you in the end, it was because you clearly deserved it.

  My auntie Chava used to tell me that it’s not like that in real life, and I shouldn’t expect it to be.

  But I knew that already. Because I didn’t ask to have a crippled foot . . . and I didn’t do anything to deserve it.

  It was growing late. Shadows stretched across the yard, but the storyteller never paused.

  Badar Basim had been shipwrecked trying to go home; now he was in the ocean, clinging to a plank.

  “A thousand pardons,” I said, interrupting the flow of the tale. “But I have to be back . . . home. By sunset. Are you nearly to the end?”

  The storyteller raised his shaggy brows. “There is much left to tell,” he said.

  I needed all of it, and yet. . . I had to get at least some of it back to Shahrazad in time for her to learn it and tell it tonight. “Then IΓll have to come back,” I said. “Can I find you by the fountain? Tomorrow? Or the next day?”

  The man combed his beard with his fingers, seeming to take thought. “Ayaz”—he nodded at the boy—“will go by there every morning and afternoon. Wait there, and he will find you.”

  Ayaz grinned crookedly and held up his accursed kerchief.

  He removed it in the same place he had put it on, in the street near the crumbling walls. The crowds thickened as we approached the bazaar, until they were as dense as they had been that morning. Ayaz walked more slowly than before. The sun was sliding down the sky, and shadows flooded the streets.

  He left me by the fountain where he had found me. I watched him slip through the crowd and disappear. Then I threaded my way—running!—through the narrow streets.

  I chanted to the rhythm of my footsteps: Badar Basim, Badar Basim. Then I was through the arch to the carvers’ bazaar and into the street.

  My foot began to ache again. I had a stitch in my side, and my breath came fast and hard.

  At last I saw them, the high metal grillwork first and then the green door. I cut through the crowds, nearly getting stepped on by a camel, then veered into the alley and hurried to the cabinetmaker’s gate.

  I knocked, but no one answered. I pushed; the gate yielded. It was open.

  The courtyard was deserted. Still.

  I crossed it, slipped through the open doorway to the shop. Even though the light was dim, I found it at once among the bulky shapes of chests and cabinets and shelves: my chest.

  It was open.

  I climbed in, adjusted the pillows and carpet, pulled the lid down over me. I lay in the dark, still breathing hard. Sandalwood. It smelled good.

  Hurry, I thought. Sunset will come fast.

  In
a moment, I heard footfalls from the direction of the door. I heard the rattling of the key in the chest’s lock, and then felt myself being lifted.

  A grunting breath. Thumpings of boots on tile. The gritty feel beneath my back of the chest sliding across a wood surface, then the shrill rasp and thunk of the cart gate closing. And I was moving again, jiggling, jolting.

  I could hear the creak of the wheels, the clop of a mule’s feet, voices in the street. But they were muted. There was a kind of quiet inside the chest. I thought about the storyteller’s tale, trying to engrave it in my memory: How Badar Basim had fallen in love with Princess Jauharah, but because of a family quarrel, she turned him by sorcery into a beautiful white bird with orange legs and a red bill. How the princess commanded her slave girl to take Badar Basim to a barren island to die; but the girl, Marsinah, feeling pity for him, took him to an island with many trees and fruits. How another enchantress returned him to his true form, and the king of that land fit him out with a ship and crew. Then the shipwreck, where the storyteller had left off. . .

  I would have to be careful to remember everything exactly as the storyteller had told it, and not let the tale veer off in a different direction. It was a rich, exciting tale. But something bothered me about it—how Princess Jauharah had betrayed poor Badar Basim, when he loved her so well. It echoed too nearly what had happened to the Sultan himself with his unfaithful wife.

  What if the story encouraged him in his belief that all women were betrayers? What if he became angry, thinking about it again? What if he took it out on Shahrazad?

  There was more, the storyteller had said. Much left to tell. The blind storyteller . . . who was not blind. Could I have remembered him wrong?

  Also strange was the fact that he had shown no interest in gold. A poor man like that.

  And another thing. Where had he gotten the tale? A tale that Shahrazad had not heard before and was not in any of her books. And yet one which the Sultan had known since he was a boy.