by Jean Johnson
Hassim shrugged. “Wali Daad decreed they were too fine for himself to wear, and selected Prince Kavi as the most suitable recipient. Just as he felt you should be adorned so that your outsides match your insides, he thought such fine cloth should adorn such a fine man.”
“And the horses?” she asked.
“They were a gift from Prince Kavi to Wali Daad as a thank-you for his generosity for sending such fine fabrics to him,” Hassim admitted.
“But were they a gift meant for Wali Daad or a gift meant for me?” Ananya quizzed him.
“They were a gift meant for Wali Daad,” Hassim confessed. “But in his wisdom—”
Ananya held up her palms, cutting him off mid-explanation. “Yes, yes; I am beginning to see his machinations. It is not His Highness who started this offer of negotiations between our two lands and this . . . this courtship between our two selves, but this Wali Daad who instigated it instead. This is his courtship decision and not His Highness’s idea.”
Hassim, very nervous inside, daringly offered her a smile. “Well, yes, Your Highness. But isn’t it a most wonderful idea? There have been no wars between the East and the West for three generations. Just a long span of peace intermixed with some prosperity. Yet there haven’t been many changes in the treaties of the two lands to make the peoples of both realms move closer toward friendship and understanding. And there Wali Daad sat, straddling the crossroads of the border, thinking nothing of himself and only of bringing delight and happiness to all others.
“He saw the possibility of bringing you delight and happiness, Your Highness, as a reward for all the good you have done, and he seized upon the opportunity it presented,” the merchant added coaxingly as she listened to him. “It is he who saw the possibility of passing along further delight and happiness to His Highness as a more worthy recipient of your generosity . . . only to find the admirations and delights blossoming further like a flower under the spring sun. Is it such a terrible thing he has done, in passing along these things between yourself and the Prince of the East? Or is it a good thing which even the gods in Heaven would praise and honor?”
“Not to mention, in the meantime, he has made himself a fortune off our generous replies,” Ananya muttered darkly.
“Oh, no! He has not kept a single penny of any of it,” Hassim quickly reassured her. “Not in all of these exchanges he has facilitated. In fact, he gave up his own pennies to have those bracelets made, a veritable fortune willingly traded away for nothing more and nothing less than the satisfaction of knowing he honored a person as worthy of it as yourself.”
“Well, what of yourself? Have you not kept any of it?” Princess Ananya asked, eyeing him warily.
Hassim flushed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Well . . . none of the fabrics, and none of the horses, and none of the spices and such . . . but I did keep the original camel you gifted to him, the one which bore the original shipment of cloth. At Wali Daad’s insistence.”
“The camel,” she repeated. She spotted the smile on the face of Lady Bhanuni, half-forgotten to the side. Ananya began to see not just the absurdity of this situation, but its humor as well.
“Yes. Because I am a merchant, and it is a camel,” Hassim said, shrugging. “And because Wali Daad insisted I should take it. But all else has gone into the making of your bracelets, and the transporting of the cloth, and the herding of the horses, and the . . . the rest of it. So on and so forth. Erm . . . if you are offended, Your Highness, I could give you the camel back, I suppose?”
Unable to help herself, Ananya sat back in her chair and chuckled. It became a laugh, which she half-muffled as she turned her head and rested it in her palm, elbow propped on the armrest of her makeshift throne. “A camel . . . And a wise man who saw the wisdom in leading His Highness and me by the flattered nose to an arranged marriage.”
Relieved by the way it looked like he wasn’t going to be beheaded, Hassim daringly said, “If I may be so bold, Your Highness, Wali Daad merely opened the path to the possibility of a marriage, just as I merely carried out his requests, as a good friend should. The two of you decided it was a path worth walking upon. You are both wise, benevolent rulers who wish only what is best for your people, as well as yourselves. You decided to do this much more on your own.”
Princess Ananya chuckled again, unable to refute his honest assessment. “That we did, good merchant . . . that we did. You may go. And you may still enjoy the delights of my palace. Sleep well, Hassim. You have earned it.”
A flick of her pearl-and-gold-clad wrist banished him and his escort from her presence. Ananya sighed and stooped. Scooping up the casket, she rose and offered her hand to the kneeling mistress of the chambers. The bodyguard, a stoutly muscled woman handpicked and trained from early youth to be able to guard a member of the Western royal family, came to attention and followed them out as Her Highness led the way.
“Come, milady,” she said. “You and I shall retire to my private chambers, where you shall instruct me in all the touches His Highness likes best. And though I do not think my chief enchantress has the skill to replicate anything of an equivalent nature, I will send my master of the chambers back with you when it is time for you to return, so that he may reassure His Highness that I have had equal instruction in such matters myself.”
Lady Bhanuni chuckled. “Trust me, Your Highness. If I am to teach you all that I know, His Highness will know exactly how skillful you are. Remember, if I touch it, he will feel nothing at all. The same will not be true for you. He will feel everything you do . . . which is why I am here to help instruct you.”
Blushing, Princess Ananya carefully carried the casket to her rooms.
THE first touch came as he was enjoying a performance in the palace theater. The feel of warm, soft fingers encircling his shaft startled him. They shifted and squeezed a little, and it felt so real, he couldn’t help but glance down. No one had a hand in his lap, though he could still feel the sensation. The phantom touches paused for a few moments, then came back as the invisible hand held him once again, then finally stopped.
Blinking, Prince Kavi returned his attention to the words and actions of the actors on the platform. Thankfully, they were in the final act of the drama. Unfortunately, they were only partway into it. No sooner had the second of three scenes begun than he felt the phantom touch of a woman’s hand again. At first it was just a grasping sensation, almost like she was carrying him. Then he felt her circling his shaft with her fingertips, exploring his skin. She stroked his glans and trailed her fingers down to his sack, gently weighing each of the soft globes tucked within.
Her random explorations aroused him. He felt her sliding his foreskin back from the tip of his rod, and wondered if it really was being physically slid back. Another glance at his trousers showed his flesh beginning to strain against the brocaded fabric. Realization struck; he nudged his grand vizier, whispering for the older man to pass the word that he wanted to speak with his chief wizard.
Rising, the Northern-born man moved along the row of chairs in the royal viewing box and crouched in front of his liege, whispering, “You wished to see me, Your Highness?”
Leaning forward—grateful that he still could—Kavi whispered in his ear. “Your special spell is working very well. Too well. Now you will do something about it.”
“I beg your pardon?” the chief wizard whispered back. “Do you wish me to end the enchantment, Your Highness?”
“No.” The feel of the hand of Princess Ananya—given the instructions he had sent with his envoys, it could be no other—was too seductive to give up just yet. “I need you to cast an illusion upon my clothes so that I may stand up at the end of this play with my dignity still intact.”
“Ah.” Mouth curling up in amusement, the chief wizard bowed his head. “Of course, Your Highness. And tomorrow, I should have an amulet ready for you to wear which will keep the illusion going. Even if I have to work all night to enspell it.”
“Thank you.” Kee
ping his chin up, Kavi watched the play as the mage chanted quietly over his lap. A slight tingle was the only proof the magic had worked. The chief wizard bowed and returned quietly to his seat, leaving Prince Kavi to enjoy the rest of the play. Or at least the appearance he was enjoying the play.
It wasn’t the daring flash of swordplay between the hero and the villain in the historical drama that made him suck in a sharp breath. It happened because he felt a soft pair of lips press themselves to his skin, followed by the lapping of a warm, damp tongue. A glance down at his trousers showed them in their normal, slightly loose fit, but he knew his shaft was engorged enough to rise from his lap. He could even feel the fabric straining with the pressure of his arousal. But most of all, he could feel her lips and her tongue, and the slightest, lightest scrape of her teeth.
The one thing that helped him keep his sanity was how sometimes his shaft would go numb to sensations, and other times it would be tapped and prodded and touched gently, without much in the way of pleasure . . . only to be followed shortly by more deliberately experimental touches. I do believe Lady Bhanuni is giving Her Highness . . . Ah! Exquisite instruction, he thought. Sweat seeped onto his brow, making him grateful there weren’t any oil lamps lit beyond the ones focused on the stage. If I didn’t have a public image to maintain, and didn’t want to disappoint or insult the performers, I would leave . . . Oh, Heaven! Oh, Heaven help me . . .
She was sucking on his sack. His own had a thick dusting of dark hairs, but his phallus did not, allowing the soft, mobile lips of the Flower of the West to draw upon first one, then the other of his royal jewels without impediment. Oh, Goddess . . . I finally see a reason to shave down there . . . OH!
A ripple of her fingers on his shaft, coupled with those lips, coaxed the milk of his loins up and out unexpectedly. Fingers clenching the armrests of his chair, throat locked tight against the need to shout, Kavi endured his climax in silence. He wanted to relax as the euphoria ebbed, but she was still touching him with her unseen hands, still keeping him aroused.
The play came to its end, but Prince Kavi didn’t hear or see it. Only the applause of his court woke him to the fact that something had happened. Sweating, aware that he had to stand up and walk away, he glanced quickly at his lap before putting his hands together. Everything seemed normal, thankfully.
That was good, because he felt more like he had been fitted with the bowsprit of a sailing ship. Rising, he managed to make a few comments about the play being good and being willing to see it again another time. Such as when he wasn’t hypersensitive to the fact that Her Highness was now rubbing the tip of his phallus between her soft, wet, crinkly-haired netherlips.
Somehow, he got to his feet. Somehow, he walked serenely—if stiffly—out of the performance hall. Somehow, he made it all the way back to his private chambers, where a curt order and a flick of his hand dismissed everyone from his presence. And somehow, he walked all the way to his bed, which he couldn’t really see, and dropped onto it. Faceup, of course, because there was no way in Heaven or Hell that he was going to break the spell-hidden shaft Her Highness was now enthusiastically sliding in and out of her slick, enchantment-distanced heat.
She was torturing him and didn’t even know it. Unable to control her touches, to guide her and advise her, Kavi was rendered helpless by her enthusiastic exploration of whatever pleased her. Because it pleased him too much, to the point where his body wanted release, but his brain longed too much for more of her unwitting torments.
Her thrusts became more rapid, more erratic. He felt her flesh constricting around his shaft, then felt the pulses of her pleasure as she shuddered. Only then did he, too, shudder, letting his body loose itself like an arrow from a bow. In the privacy of his quarters, Prince Kavi let himself tense and release without restraint, panting and groaning openly with satisfaction. As his own pleasure ebbed, he felt her tongue flicking along his shaft and draped an arm over his eyes.
Part of him wondered if he should call the creator of his enchanted phallus into his chambers to end the spell. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. After a moment, he realized that he was now being rubbed by her fingers and what felt like a warm, damp cloth. A few moments after that, blessed numbness came back as he felt her replace his phallus in its strongbox, leaving him with only the tangible, real sensation of his exhausted shaft nested on his belly, cocooned in a pool of its own juices and the silk of the trousers clinging because of it.
Arm still draped over his eyes, Kavi wondered if he was insane, because the larger part of him didn’t want to end the enchantment. Mouth quirking at his own perverseness, he set his mind to the task of merging their two kingdoms quickly, so that he could merge their two bodies all the sooner—the rest of their two bodies, to be specific.
NEVER had Wali Daad seen so many couriers riding back and forth between the road to the East and the road to the West. For three months, couriers and messengers and officials of all sorts rode back and forth, carrying with them all number of proposed laws, ordinances, and suggestions for comingling the customs, beliefs, and traditions of the East and the West. And the word from the caravans that passed back and forth said that the people of both nations were quite happy with the proposed merger.
A part of him was pleased he had started all of this, but the aging grass cutter was also kept very busy. The dry season was coming, and with so many more animals being sent back and forth by their riders and handlers, it was all he could do to keep up with the demands of each day and still store enough hay for the long wait for the rains of the next monsoon season.
Indeed, he had taken to leaving a sign, scratched on a scrap of wood with a nail, for people to help themselves to the hay he laid out in the troughs twice and three times a day, and to leave pennies in the jar under the sign. He had no choice; he needed to spend most of his time out in the fields, cutting and bundling the long stalks of grass, rather than trotting back and forth to tend to the various couriers. His visitors were generous, often leaving him more pennies than the hay was worth, but that was all right. Wali Daad had plenty of empty space beneath his trapdoor.
It was late when he returned one day to his little thatched cottage, with the sun beginning to set in the west. Wali Daad found an exhausted horse nibbling tiredly at the hay left in one of the wooden troughs, with the mare’s tack resting on the ground and no sign of her owner. Confused, the grass cutter pulled on the latch-string of his door, only to find his home already occupied by a very frazzled, shadowed, worried-looking Hassim.
Wali Daad immediately fetched his cups and the pitcher of well water waiting for him. “Please sit, my friend. It must be a very grave concern to have brought you all this way in such a great hurry. Is something wrong with your caravan?”
“No! No . . . Business is . . . business . . . Oh, Wali Daad, a terrible thing is about to happen! I ran away from Her Highness, and I suppose from His Highness, too—and they will be here in just a day or two!” Hassim babbled, wringing his hands together. “Oh, Wali Daad, what are we going to do?”
Blinking, Wali Daad took his pacing friend by the elbow and guided him into a chair. “Please, sit. If I am to understand what has happened, you must calm yourself. Sit and drink. Eat, my friend,” he added, fetching the loaf of bread waiting for his supper, along with some strips of dried fish and slices of dried fruit. “You must rest, then you will think more clearly.”
“Yes . . . yes . . .” Seated, the merchant nibbled on the offered food, his brown eyes still a bit wide and a little unfocused. Only after Wali Daad had refilled his cup did he focus them again. “They want,” he announced with a disturbing solemnity, “to hold the marriage . . . here.”
Wali Daad blinked again, unsure he had heard his friend correctly. “Here? At the crossroads?”
“In the home of the inestimable Wali Daad,” Hassim corrected gravely. “They are on their way here, right now. I let it slip that you lived at the crossroads here at the border, but they think you live a
little ways off, perhaps a little to the north.” He flung up the hand not holding on to his cup in a wordless gesture of disbelief. “I was to guide Her Highness there—here—with all of her entourage, and then go east and meet up with His Highness and all of his entourage, and bring them all to the home of the wisest man in the world, the great Wali Daad! They are expecting a man who lives in a mansion, and they wish to be married in your magnificent gardens!”
“And so you ran away?” Wali Daad asked, wanting clarification on that point. He could barely think about the rest of his friend’s news as it was.
“I escaped two nights ago on the road, just took my mare and left, riding as fast as I could to warn you. They want to meet you—they insist that they meet you,” Hassim corrected himself, “and they want your blessing upon the union of their two lands and the union of their two selves! Her Highness knows now that it was your idea, not His Highness’s idea, to send the bracelets one way and then the silks the other.
“I do not know if she told His Highness or not, but the one thing I have not revealed is that you are a grass cutter and that you live in a hut! Well, a cottage,” he amended, dazed and distractible in his distress. “It does have a floor . . . I do not know what we are going to do, my friend. I honestly do not know!”
Silence stretched between them. Outside, Wali Daad heard the mare nickering softly. He rose from his seat and patted his friend on the shoulder. “I will tend to your mare. You rest and continue to eat. Somehow, we will figure out what to do. If they truly want my blessing, then they will have it, if they still want it once we have met . . . though they may only have my fields of half-mown hay for their wedding garden.”
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.
