Shadow Spinner

by Susan Fletcher

  Chapter 21

  A Desperate Plan

  LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STORYTELLING

  You should always try to remember your dreams. Because you can learn from dreams, though you might not see how at first.

  That night, I had a dream about Badar Basim. He was an old man, and he was walking down a garden path with an old woman, and the old woman was Princess Jauharah, now his queen. Badir Basim was limping. He winced when he trod on his left foot, and his brow was furrowed with pain.

  They came to a bench and sat down together. Badir Basim took off his left boot and I saw that his foot—this one foot—had never turned all the way back from when Princess Jauharah had changed him into a bird. It was a bird’s foot—all orange and skinny and knobbly.

  And then, as I watched in my dream, Princess Jauharah knelt down on the ground before Badir Basim and began to massage his foot. She kneaded it—caressed it—and the pain eased from his face.

  * * *

  When I awoke the next morning, I sat up fast, startled because I didn’t recognize where I was. It was a small, dark room, like my room at Auntie Chavas. A jumble of household goods surrounded the straw mattress I slept on: chipped clay pots, a pair of woven saddlebags, a coil of rope, a rickety loom. This was a storage room. Then I remembered. Escaping from the harem. Zaynab. The storyteller-vizier-Abu Muslem. Farah.

  My mother.

  Who had loved me. Cherished me, Farah had said. And she had fought for me, too. Hard.

  It was she who had taught me to love stories, stories she had made up herself. How had I forgotten that? How had I forgotten those journeys I’d taken, riding on the waves of her voice?

  It would have been better, as things turned out, if she had obeyed Aga Jamsheed. But she couldn’t have known that Shahrazad was going to save all the girls in the city—which she still might not be able to do. Also, my mother probably wasn’t as clever as Shahrazad, nor as wise. But who was? Why should I have expected that of her?

  She was my madar, and she was brave, and she had protected me the only way she knew how.

  * * *

  Farah lived with her husband, who gathered thorn-brush in the forest outside the city and sold it as firewood in the bazaar. Her two squalling babies, once awake, would calm to neither stories nor singing nor rocking. Her husband had left by the time I arose, and Farah was hard at work lugging pails of water from the neighborhood well. When I offered to help with the hauling, she said no, that I mustn’t go outside the gate. She poured me a cup of water and handed me a small loaf of barley bread. Then she scooped up a potful of lentils and asked me to pick out the bugs and grit.

  I helped her all that day—tending the babies, spinning, sieving grain, scrubbing floors, patching the little ones’ tattered gowns. Farah seemed sad that I had grown so adept at doing menial chores, as she called them. “Your mother’s heart would break,” she said. Still, I could tell that she was grateful for the help.

  They were poor—much poorer than Auntie Chava. Farah’s face looked lined and bleak; she had no relations to help her. The babies, I soon discovered, squalled because they were hungry. When Farah nursed them, they would suck greedily for a short time, and then turn away from her breasts and cry. Not enough milk. And the family couldn’t afford a goat. The chickens were gaunt, the stores of lentils and grains woefully low.

  Farah’s husband returned late that night. She shooed me into the tiny storeroom as he entered the courtyard. Afterward, I heard them arguing. “She’s dangerous!” the husband shouted. “If we’re caught with her, they’ll kill us.” Farah’s voice rose in gentle protest, but I couldn’t make out her words. I crept to the door and opened it a crack to hear better.

  “. . . the pigeon keeper at the palace,” Farah’s husband was saying. “They found messages from Abu Muslem in her pavilion. They know who he is now. He’s the Sultan’s old vizier, the one he banished. I heard they tortured the pigeon keeper to get her to say where he is and who else is in on the plot.”

  “Did she tell?” Farah asked.

  “How would I know? If they find the girl here, they’ll torture us! She can’t stay!”

  “But I owe this to her mother. Just two more days, Abu Muslem said. What will become of her if we throw her into the street?”

  “You are too softhearted, my wife. Think of your own safety. Think of your sons. If anything were to happen to you . . .” It was silent then, for a moment, except for a rustling of fabric and a soft sigh. Then the husband’s voice came again. “I’ll give her tonight. Tomorrow she goes.

  Carefully, I shut the door. A cold hand was closing around my heart. I had hoped for too much from the storyteller. I had thought he could somehow put things right. But now . . . Zaynab tortured! Because of messages from Abu Muslem.

  Would they kill her if she didn’t tell where he was?

  Did she even know where he was?

  I wouldn’t stay until Farah’s husband put me out on the street. I had to leave tonight.

  * * *

  I waited until the household was still, until I could hear Farah’s husband snoring. I pushed aside the blanket and, kneeling on my pallet, untied the bundle I had made of my sash. I groped my way to where the food jars stood and buried the coins in the shallow cache of lentils.

  I couldn’t do anything for my mother. But I could do this—for her friend.

  For just a moment, I allowed myself to imagine Farah finding the coins—the surprise and wonder on her face. I imagined all the food jars overflowing, a plump wet nurse feeding the babies, and a servant helping Farah with her work. Whether there would be enough coins to pay for all of that, I didn’t know. But it made a good picture in my mind.

  I drew on my veil and picked up my sandals but didn’t put them on. Then I slipped out the courtyard gate.

  The moon hung low over the city as I made my way through the narrow streets, watching for the landmarks I had impressed upon my memory. I stopped to put on my sandals and, a little while later, found myself at the corner where Ayaz had blindfolded me twice. I stumbled eagerly down the dark alley, hope swelling suddenly within me. Maybe the storyteller had a plan to save Zaynab. He wouldn’t let her die.

  I tapped at the door.

  No answer.

  “It’s Marjan,” I said softly. “Let me in.”

  Still no answer.

  I pushed at the door. Silently, it swung open.

  Quiet. Not a listening quiet or a sleeping quiet. An empty quiet.

  In the moonlight that trickled in through the open doorway, I could see that the room was bare. No carpets, no lamp, no chest.

  They had gone.

  I slumped down on the hard tiled floor, feeling betrayed. They had had to leave, I told myself. It was too dangerous for them here now. They had arranged for me. Two days from now, someone would have come to take me to a safe place.

  But in two days, it might be too late for Zaynab. They had connected her to Abu Muslem—and me to her. And, since everyone knew that Shahrazad had summoned me to the harem, it would not take long to attach her to the string. To connect her to the traitor the Sultan had been trying for years to catch.

  Think, I told myself.

  The truth, which we had tried so hard to hide, wasn’t nearly as bad as what Shahrazad would stand accused of now. And yet the truth, with Shahrazad’s little deceptions, would probably enrage the Sultan.

  Still, I remembered something Shahrazad had told me, about framing dangerous truths inside of tales within tales. And I formed a desperate plan.

  It was all I could think to do.

  Chapter 22

  The Sultan

  LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STRORYTELLING

  In the old tales, there is power in words. Words are what you use to summon a jinn, or to open an enchanted door, or to cast a spell. You can do everything else perfectly, but if you don’t say the right words, it won’t work.

  If you know how to use words, you don’t have to be strong enough to wield a scimitar or have armies
at your command.

  Words are how the powerless can have power.

  It was some time after daybreak when I turned onto a wide avenue and saw the palace’s main entrance looming before me. The streets had begun to fill with people, so I was not as conspicuous as before. It had taken me a long time to get there. I had come by a roundabout route—keeping to alleys as much as possible, hiding in niches or ducking around corners when I heard footsteps.

  Since I was going back, it would be better to do it of my own free will than to be hauled in by the harem guards. Better to go straight to the Sultan than to be delivered into the hands of the Khatun.

  A strange calmness filled me as I broke off from the crowd in the streets and approached the palace guards. I half expected them to rush forward and seize me, but they only stood and watched.

  “I am Marjan, Shahrazad’s slave,” I said. “I escaped from the harem and have come back to surrender to the Sultan. And to tell him a story—one he’ll want to hear.”

  * * *

  They handed me over to two guards inside, who prodded me with their spears and marched me through the tiled courtyard I had crossed with Auntie Chava. We did not go through the harem doors, but veered right instead, through the doors to the royal assembly hall, where the Sultan governed. We passed through rooms of breathtaking beauty, and everywhere we went, men wearing richly colored silk gowns stopped to stare.

  At last, we came to a high golden door with two guards before it. The four guards spoke softly among themselves. They didn’t want to interrupt the Sultan, but, “They’re looking for her,” one of them said. Beyond, in the chamber, I could hear voices arguing.

  Now one of the guards opened the door and slipped inside. The voices swelled, and then a single voice—deep and rolling—broke in, stilled the others.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “We have the girl who escaped, my lord. She surrenders to you . . . and requests to tell you a story.”

  A rippling murmur inside the chamber.

  “Let her come in,” the deep voice said.

  The guard flung the door wide. The huge room lay before me, with windows of colored glass, cloth-of-gold hangings, carved ceilings taller than full-grown trees. At the far end, a man sat on a throne in the midst of a group of standing people. His black silk robes were edged in sable; he wore an enormous ruby in his turban and a diamond-studded dagger at his waist.

  The Sultan.

  All at once, my calmness vanished, and I wanted nothing so much as to turn and run from the room.

  I walked as gracefully as I could. The whole room blurred before me, except for the Sultans face. I knelt before him, kissed the carpet at his feet. I was trembling.

  “That one!” The Khatun’s voice. “Shahrazad’s cripple, the go-between for your queen”—her voice dripped with disdain—“and this traitor.”

  “Rise,” the Sultan said.

  I got slowly to my feet, glancing at the Sultan. His eyes were hard. Quickly, I looked over the group, picking out the Khatun and, beside her, Soraya. There were two men I did not recognize, an older one and a younger one. The younger one resembled the Sultan. His brother, I thought. His brother from the land of Samarkand, who had also been killing a wife every night. Then, in a shadowed far corner, surrounded by guards, I found the one I was looking for. This traitor. The storyteller—Abu Muslem. Had he come to help Zaynab? His hands were bound, I saw. But what surprised me was that beside him—also bound and guarded—stood the gold-clad eunuch.

  “So. You want to tell me a story,” the Sultan said.

  “Yes, my lord.” It came out as a scared whisper.

  “I’m glad someone is willing to talk,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “My pigeon keeper wont. Nor will these two”—he jerked his head toward the storyteller and the gold-clad eunuch—“confess to me what trouble they’ve been stirring up. So now I am curious. Is this a true tale you came to tell?”

  “There is truth in the tale, my lord.”

  “Indeed.” He narrowed his eyes; I looked down at the floor. “And what does it treat with?” he asked.

  “It treats, my lord, with a poor boy, the servant of a powerful magician.” My voice was still shaky and soft. I forced myself to speak louder. “Every day he would go to the sea with his master. The magician would cast his fishing net and call out a magical word. Then the fish would puff themselves up into balls and float up through the water, entangling themselves in the net, until the magician called out another magical word. Then—”

  “This is an outrage!” The Khatun lurched toward me. “My son, let me deal with this girl. She has the effrontery to burst in here and turn your mind from important affairs of state with a piece of fluff about enchanted fish. She’s a harem slave—my responsibility. I’ll wring a true story out of her.”

  The Sultan held up his hand. “Wait. We’ll come to that. This girl escaped my guards and was safely away, but returned because she wanted to tell me this tale. It amuses me. You know I like stories,” he said, his mouth twisting into a joyless smile, “and I have not heard this one before.”

  I knew he hadn’t heard it, because I had made it up. I couldn’t risk boring him with one he’d already heard. Anyway, my mother made up tales. It was in my blood.

  “But,” the Sultan warned me, “you won’t leave this room without telling what mischief you have been up to, and why you escaped.”

  “I will, my lord.”

  “Very well. Go on.”

  I told how the magician’s boy decided to fish for himself, but he forgot the second magic word. When the fish puffed themselves into balls and rose up into the air, the boy snatched at the cords of the net, tried to pull it down. But the fish carried him aloft, and soon he was too high up in the air to let go. They floated through the sky, over the green hills, and into a far-off country. At last the fish wafted down and landed in the shallows of a pond in a beautiful garden.

  “Just then,” I said, “the owner of the garden spied the boy and summoned his guards. He was going to kill the boy for stealing into his garden. The boy pleaded for his life, and at last, the landlord said, ‘If you can tell me a story I have never heard before, I will let you live.’”

  The sound of a throat clearing. I looked up and caught the Khatun’s eye. She was glaring at me, arms folded before her. I peeked at the Sultan; I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. But he didn’t stop me, so I went on in a rush.

  “Now it happened that the fish had been talking as they floated through the sky, and the boy had understood them. He thought surely the landlord would not have heard of what the fish discussed, and so he told them that story, about a merman, a king of the sea—”

  “This king was not. . . Badar Basim?” the Sultan interrupted.

  “No,” I said. “This was another merman. Even more illustrious and powerful than Badar Basim. The ruler of all the creatures in the sea.”

  The Sultan made a tent of his fingers, tapped the tips of them together. “Go on,” he said.

  I took a deep breath to calm my trembling voice. This was the scary part. What would the Sultan do when I held up my story’s mirror and showed him his own reflection? I told how the merman king was married to a beautiful mermaid, but she betrayed him. “So he had her executed, and he vowed to marry a new mermaid every night and chop off her head the next morning, so that no wife of his would ever betray him again.”

  The Sultan leaped to his feet. “This tale cuts too close!” he roared. The guards shifted toward me.

  My heart stood still, but I stood my ground, trying to seem unafraid. I shrugged. “It’s only a tale,” I said, “that the fish told. The landlord was amused, and I thought you might be, too.”

  The Sultan slowly settled himself back against the cushions. “Go . . . on,” he said grimly.

  I continued. “It all happened as he had said, until one night the merman king married a beautiful mermaid who sang to him a wondrous song. It had many verses, though, and there wasn’t time f
or her to complete it before morning dawned and the king had to attend to his prayers and his duties to his subjects. So he gave her stay until the next night—”

  “Stop her!” The Khatun shoved forward and stood beside me; the sickly-sweet smell of her filled my nose. “My son! Can’t you see what she’s doing? She mocks you!”

  “Do you mock me?” the Sultan growled.

  “No. No, my lord. I only—”

  “Let me take her now! Don’t demean yourself to be mocked.”

  The Sultan snapped his fingers and two guards seized my arms.

  “One moment, noble king!” I felt the weight of all the eyes in the room staring at me for my audacity. “I thought you might like to know, my lord, in what way the singing mermaid . . . deceived . . . her husband.”

  “Wait,” the Sultan said to the guards. Even the Khatun was silent.

  “It was a small thing,” I said, “but one that brought her much grief.”

  The Sultan stared at me for what seemed a very long time. I kept my gaze down at the floor. I was hot, uncomfortably hot. My bloodbeat pounded in my ears. Finally, at the edges of my sight, I saw the Sultan nod at the guards; they loosed my arms but stood close at either side of me. “Go on,” the Sultan said. His voice was soft now. Ominous.

  I plunged in. “It was soon after she had borne him his third son, my lord. She was weak from childbearing and fuddled from lack of sleep.” I told of how the queen mermaid was at a loss for a song that night, and how her sister brought her a poor serving maid from the far reaches of the kingdom. “A mermaid with a broken fin,” I said. “She swam a little crooked. But she liked to sing songs.” Not very subtle, perhaps, but I didn’t have a thousand nights to make my meaning clear. Then I told how the broken-finned mermaid sang the queen a song, and how the queen sang it to the king, and how he liked it and asked for more verses of that same song. And then I told how the queen, eager to please, had promised it to him.