Shadow Spinner (11 page)

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 him, 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.

I
t 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.

It must, I reassured myself, be a tale told among men, and had not been told widely enough to reach women or books.

But even more worrisome: Was it the
right
tale? The one the Sultan wanted?

There was no way to know for certain until Shahrazad told it to him tonight.

And yet, it had seemed right. It connected with the Julnar story.

And the name: Badar Basim. I repeated it over and over in my mind, clutching it to me like a talisman.

*  *  *  

At last, we came to a halt. I was hot again. Sweating. I could hear voices, and then a clapping of hands. More voices. Eunuchs' voices. I heard the cart gate creaking open, and then I was moving; the chest grated against the cart floor and I was lifted into the air, borne silently aloft. This time, I didn't even try to imagine which stairway we were going up or which fountain I heard. Soon, I told
myself, I could tell Shahrazad that I had found the old storyteller. I could hardly wait to see her face when I said the name:
Badar Basim.

The chest clunked down on the floor. I heard footfalls receding, and then a faint, close, rattling sound. Now another set of footfalls, moving away.

“Who's there?” Shahrazad's voice, at a distance. Then, “Dunya! Come here! The chest!”

More footfalls now, soft and light, coming near. “Where's the key?” I heard Shahrazad say. “The key's not here.”

A shadow passed over the holes in the chest. “Marjan?” Shahrazad asked. “Are you there?”

“Yes,” I said. “I found the storyteller.”

“Oh! Allah be thanked, Marjan!” Shahrazad said. “But. . . where's the key?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I heard it being locked, in the cabinetmaker's shop. And then—”

I stopped, remembering the faint rattling I'd heard a moment ago. “I think,” I said, “one of the eunuchs took it.”

“One of the eunuchs?”

“One of the . . . bearers. I heard a rattling just before he left.”

The shadow moved away from the top of the chest. “Send for him!” I heard Dunyazad say. “You've got to get it back!”

“But why would he take it?” Shahrazad asked. “Unless . . .”

“The Khatun!” Dunyazad's voice. “He's taking it to
her.”

Footfalls, leaving the room. A shadow fell across the

holes in the chest again. “We'll get you out soon,”

Shahrazad said. “Don't worry.”

But
she
sounded worried. My breath was coming fast
and scared. I was hot now,
really
hot. The air in the chest felt suffocating.

“Did you get the name?” she asked.

“Yes. Julnar's son was . . . Badar Basim.”

“Badar Basim!” She whispered the name, as you would say the name of a loved one. “A name with two words, each beginning with the same letter, a
B
or a D. Badar Basim!”