by Megan Bannen
In his harem, she served him as quietly as his shadow. She admonished the old witch for her ugly words, and the king finally understood how it had transpired with all the other slaves. Fired by love, he called her his life, his pearl, his dew-petaled flower.
“This is the sappiest piece of rotting carrion I have ever heard,” Timur interjects.
“Shh!” I hiss into the old goat’s back. Khalaf’s voice up to this point has been hypnotic, helping me to forget that nothing but a leaky plank of wood stands between me and a watery death, and I’m not letting this arrogant mountain of a man ruin the effect for me, khan or not.
“It would appear that you have been overruled, my lord,” says Khalaf.
“Ugh,” says Timur.
When the beautiful slave refused his advances, the king sensed in her a terrible secret. He begged her for her honesty and, obliging slave that she was, she told him that her tribe suffered from a curse, that all the women in her family who gave their hearts to men died when giving birth. “Why give up life for the pleasure of a single moment?” she asked him. “Why taste honey when it has been poisoned?” Having laid her secret heart bare to him, she asked that he, in turn, always be as honest with her.
But the king did not repay this favor. So desperately in love was he that he asked the old witch to help him. The hag told him to take a new slave as a lover, to shower her with praise and gifts to incite the jealousy of the woman he truly loved. And, lovesick fool that he was, he did as she bade.
The angel-faced slave, upon seeing her king behaving as if he loved another, saw through his shameful ruse, but it did not lessen the pain she suffered as she watched him make love to another.
“You once gave me the joy of sunrise,” she admonished him, “and now you bring me night’s sorrow. Who sent you down this crooked path? What deception do you play at?”
Ashamed, the king admitted to his trick.
“You were as clear as the light of the candle’s flame with me, and yet I was like the smoke of the flame to you. With unpardonable deceit, I tried to soften you with the burning of my heart.”
He spoke to her of his love and with such gentle words touched the heart of the unblemished pearl until she accepted him at last. And when he removed her veil, he understood that he had unlocked a treasure more valuable than a thousand caskets of yellow gold.
There’s a pause. The oars shush their way through the water, and I wonder when this nightmare will end.
“What?” says Timur. “That’s it?”
“I’d say it follows a pretty consistent story arc, so yes, that’s it,” Khalaf replies.
“Is this what they teach you at that university of yours?”
“That and a few other things.”
“I want my money back,” says Timur.
“Is there a blue princess?” I ask into Timur’s back.
“Hmm?” Khalaf hums in my ear.
I pull my face away but keep my eyes shut tight, which may or may not help in quelling the way the bobbing of the boat makes me want to scream. “You told us blue is your favorite color. Is there a blue princess?” I press my forehead into Timur once more.
“Ow,” says the old goat. “You’re so scrawny, girl, even your forehead is sharp.”
“There’s a turquoise princess,” says Khalaf. “Will that work?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Please, dear God, let it be a better story than the last,” Timur gripes, but I suspect that he liked the first story better than he lets on or else he would have told his son to shut up by now.
Khalaf announces, “‘How Bahrâm Sat on a Wednesday in the Turquoise Dome: The Tale of the Princess of the Fifth Clime.’”
He tells the story of a naive prince who is led astray into a terrible desert by a demon, but is saved from peril many times over because he has a kind and trusting heart. It’s an allegory, reminding the listener that life’s garden has both roses and thorns, and yet the Muslim god is ever present, even to those without friends or hope. Timur only interrupts him twice, and, before my terror can devour me, Khalaf’s voice manages to carry me across the river.
Part Three
The Second Riddle
The City of Khanbalik, Khanate of the Yuan Dynasty
Autumn 1281
15
TURANDOKHT SAYS,
“She is the dragon with an iridescent wing
Stretched taut across the bleak and yawning void
To whom the hollow human heart must sing
When, with it, like a cat with prey has toyed.
“She only lives in shadow’s heavy hue
When, invoked by man, is night her reign.
So every dusk gives birth to her anew,
And every dawn destroys her once again.”
“Seven minutes,” Zhang announces.
Seven minutes.
Khalaf might only have seven minutes to live.
I think of the months upon months we traveled the world together on a hard road, and it wasn’t enough. It will never be enough.
Seven minutes.
Seven minutes is nothing.
“Rotting carrion,” Timur curses in my ear, and for once it seems completely appropriate.
The crowd is silent as Khalaf bows his head and digests the riddle. His eyes are closed, and his back and shoulders move ever so slightly with the even expansion and contraction of his lungs. I can hear a heartbeat thudding the seconds away in heartsick impotence. I’m not sure whether it’s Timur’s or my own.
“Six minutes remaining,” Zhang calls out.
I despise my powerlessness in this moment, my complete and utter inability to do anything to help him. I had months and months to change this outcome, but I did nothing to stop it. I let myself feel my culpability. I allow my self-berating to eat me up from within.
“It lives in darkness and dies in light,” Khalaf thinks aloud.
“Five minutes.”
“No,” I breathe. Timur holds me tighter.
“And yet it helps the human heart,” Khalaf continues, unsnarling the riddle bit by bit. “It saves a man from the bleak void.”
The crowd is absolutely silent. Khalaf inhales, exhales.
“Four minutes,” Zhang announces. A wolfish smile spreads across this face. He smells blood.
“No,” I whisper again.
Khalaf raises his head and gazes up at Turandokht where she sits as lovely as an illuminated manuscript high above him on her carved throne.
“My khatun, it is hope,” he says, his voice as soft and calm as ever while my entire body feels like it’s screaming for him. “The dark night of the soul gives birth to hope, who stretches her helpful wing across the void of despair. And so this night, hope is reborn in me, that I may live to see the dawn.”
His reasoning makes sense, but logic has fled from me. I’m operating on raw emotion here, my fear for Khalaf’s life eclipsing all rationality. He answered too soon, I think in a panicked blur. He should have deliberated longer, waited until he was certain.
Turandokht goes stony and still.
“Did he get it?” Timur nudges me with his shoulder. “Dammit, girl, did he get it?”
“Shh! You can hear just as well as I can!” I hiss, slamming him back with my own narrow shoulder.
The three scholars up in the tower confer with Zhang. The chancellor steps forward wearing a frown that pulls his face downward as he announces, “It is hope. The contestant has successfully answered the first riddle.”
Timur groans with relief and lets his forehead fall against the top of my head. Even the crowd bursts into cheers and applause and catcalls. My own relief is so great that I feel like it might crush me.
“Lamb’s balls, my lord,” I commiserate with Timur.
“You’ve got that right, little bird. How does he look?”
I haven’t taken my eyes off Khalaf yet. To the untrained eye, he holds himself erect and his face remains calm and serene. But I know him. I can see the way he rubs his thumb
against his first finger, and I know he’s itching to burnish his lower lip in concentration. There’s a tautness in his shoulders, too, a readiness in his muscles as if he were about to fight to the death.
I tell Timur, “He’s bearing up well,” but to myself, I say, You did this to him, Jinghua.
“One down,” says the old goat.
“One down,” I agree.
Neither of us says anything about “two to go.” Apparently, there’s an unspoken agreement between us that we will only celebrate the small victories at this point.
“Silence, please, for the second riddle!” Zhang calls.
As the hubbub softens, Turandokht tells Khalaf, “Hope has a way of disappointing the foolish.”
“I have not found that to be the case, my khatun,” he replies.
She keeps her poise, but anyone can see that Khalaf has her rattled. I know the feeling.
“How many men have made it this far?” Timur asks the man next to us.
“None,” he answers with an incredulous laugh, and a hysterical giggle bubbles up from my lungs.
“Rotting fucking carrion,” says Timur. I nod in agreement and take his hand in mine.
When the crowd is silent again, Zhang declares, “The contestant has successfully answered the first riddle. The second riddle is about to begin. The contestant will have seven minutes to answer. Do you understand, sir?”
“I do,” Khalaf says with a curt nod.
I want to shove my way through this crowd and run to him and drag him out of Khanbalik, all the way to . . . where?
Where?
Nowhere in the world is safe for him. He wouldn’t be here if he had seen another way, and I can’t help but consider exactly how much of that is my fault.
Turandokht regards him with a cold-blooded gaze and says, “The second riddle is this:
“From the fountain in the palace courtyard flows
A liquid flame that is no flame at all.
At times pours out an icy stream of woes,
At times pours hot with passion’s burning call.
“When hot, it is delirium and ardor,
The heat of battle, the rusty hue of conquest.
When cold, it is a dull and aching torpor,
A longing, or your marble-encased rest.”
Khalaf bows his head again.
“Seven minutes,” says Zhang.
On her dais high above, Turandokht shines, lovely as the full moon, while I, the invisible new moon, watch helplessly from my dark corner.
Part Four
Blood
Chagatai Khanate
Summer 1281
16
KHALAF SKETCHES IBN AL-HAYTHAM’S explanation of the moon’s phases with the point of his saber—a gift from Abbas—in a bare patch of earth in the caravanserai’s courtyard. He expounds on the projection of light from the sun and the angle at which it strikes the moon through every phase. His voice sounds the way velvet feels to the fingertips.
The city of Bukhara is a jewel, and Khalaf glitters more brightly than ever against the Kalyan minaret from which he is called to prayer five times each day. Since the caravanserai is located inside the city, the structure lacks the heavy fortification of those along the trade routes. It feels more like someone’s home than a fortress, which makes it all the more comforting. Safe in the Chagatai Khanate, by the courtyard fires, our university of two carries on as if civilization didn’t matter, as if rank and circumstance could not separate equal minds.
I let myself enjoy it, all of it. Why not? Who knows how much longer we’ll have together, especially if Timur insists on heading north to the Kipchak Khanate once we reach Samarkand? Or if the old goat finds a way to sell me despite Khalaf’s promises? Or if we make it far enough east for me to strike out on my own?
Or if Khalaf goes to Khanbalik to die for Turandokht?
Or marry her?
It’s all so hopeless and depressing. Home is farther away now than it has ever been. All I can do is live in the moment. And the moment, despite the odds, is full of joy.
“Does al-Haytham’s diagram account for the spherical nature of the moon, though?” I wonder aloud as I examine Khalaf’s series of circles and the pathways of light from the sun.
“What do you think?” he asks.
I’ve read Shen Kuo’s Dream Pool Essays, in which he explains his argument for the spherical nature of both the sun and the moon, and, without thinking, I hold forth on what I know. “The moon must be a ball, not a disc. When it first begins to wax, the sun’s light strikes it from the side, giving the illusion of a crescent shape, whereas when the moon is full, the sun’s light strikes it head-on, giving it the appearance of a circular disc.”
I’m still staring down at Khalaf’s drawing, and for one stupid moment, I’m as lit up as he is. And then I remember with a crushing dread who I am, or who I am supposed to be, at any rate. I raise my head to look at him.
He slides the saber back into the scabbard and crosses his arms in front of his chest.
“Jinghua?” he says, drawing out the second half of my name in one long syllable.
“Yes, my lord?”
His eyes narrow into the look that makes me feel skinned and flayed, as though he can see all the shadowy truths inside me.
“Who are you?” he asks.
I wipe all expression from my face. “What do you mean?”
“You just explained how the moon’s phases prove the spherical nature of celestial bodies. You’re very well spoken, even in a language that isn’t your native tongue. And, in general, you sing and translate poetry that is far beyond a basic folk song. ‘Deep in the silent inner room / Every fiber of my soft heart / Turns to a thousand strands of sorrow’? That’s not peasant music.”
“So?” My voice is cold, but inside I’m a churning mess. Even as I chastise myself for my carelessness, there’s a part of me that wants him to see me, to know me.
“I’m only saying that the way you speak, the words you use, the things you know—it’s unusual for a . . .”
He can’t say it, so I finish the sentence for him: “Slave?”
Khalaf doesn’t use the word, never calls me what I am. He casts his eyes down to his drawing and scrapes it out of the soil with the upturned toe of his worn leather boot. He takes a breath and brings his eyes back to mine.
“I wish that you didn’t feel a need to hide who you are. I wish that you would let me know you as you know me.”
I don’t know how to respond to the sentiment that, to him at least, I’m not a slave. To him, I’m an actual human being. My tongue ties itself into a harder knot when he adds, “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Yes, I think, but the boy who wants to know me is concealing just as much as I am. He’s hiding the fact that his father has every intention of going back to the Kipchak Khanate. He’s hiding the fact that he hopes to go to Khanbalik to face Turandokht and her riddles. Who knows what else he’s keeping from me? I’m not the only one holding back.
And if he knew who I was, what then? Would it change anything?
Who am I kidding? It would change everything.
“What do you want to know?” I ask him cautiously.
“You never speak of your family, your ancestors.”
“Neither do you.”
He opens his mouth to speak but thinks better of it. It’s terrible of me, but I love these moments when I catch him off guard, when I make him stumble or think twice. He crosses his arms more firmly in front of him and says, “My mother’s name was Bibi Hanem. She died when I was six.”
And now I feel like a horrible human being.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He shrugs, but the gesture doesn’t ring true, and I know I’ve just stumbled into one of his own dark, sad corners.
“Do you remember her?” I ask.
“A little. She used to sing me a lullaby. Like the white duck’s little chick, I call to my mother when she is far from me.”
His tone-de
af rendition makes the song all the more poignant. It’s like he just forked over a piece of his heart, the part that belonged to his mother, and I have no choice but to do the same.
“My mother’s name was Dongmei,” I tell him. “She died when I was fifteen.”
“How old are you now?” he asks.
“Seventeen.”
“Only two years ago?”
Now it’s my turn to shrug unconvincingly.
He leans in, his face closer to mine than it’s ever been, so close I can feel his breath on my cheek. His gaze drops to my nonexistent breasts for an instant, and my whole body goes up in flames.
“What is it that you wear around your neck?” he asks.
Oh. The pendant. Get a grip on yourself, Jinghua, I think.
I finger the lump over my breastbone through the fabric of my black kaftan. I had no idea he’d noticed it. Not that I’ve tried to hide it, but it’s like he’s uncovered a secret, like I’ve been caught out. Before I can second-guess myself, I pull out the pendant and set it out on the palm of my hand for him to inspect by firelight.
He bends over my hand so that all I can see is the top of his turbaned head. “What is it?”
“It’s a duck.” A sad, broken, woebegone duck.
“No, I mean . . .” He cups his hands beneath mine to hold it steady.
He’s touching me.
He’s touching me.
I can hardly breathe with his skin against my skin, the warmth of his fingers seeping into my flesh. My heart threatens to explode or leap out of my chest or perform some other terrifying act in response.
“I mean, what is it to you?” he asks.
My mother drowned. And then I drowned, too. With those words, I opened a door and let him take the first step inside, and each day he takes another step and another. He’s been rolling up the carpets and sweeping the floor and rearranging furniture, and now, all of a sudden, home doesn’t look like home anymore. I no longer know where I belong or what I’m doing. And the thought of leaving him to go back to Lin’an feels like losing home all over again.
