Shadow Spinner (21 page)

“One night, your mother overheard him talking to his brother. He would divorce her, he said. And to spite your mother, he would sell you as a slave into the Sultans household.

“I don't know if he truly would have done that. I don't think so. But things were so bad between him and your mother, she was sure he would. That's why she did what she did. It was a terrible thing. But she was desperate. It was all she could think to do.”

“She should have run away with me!” I said. “She should have escaped from the harem and gone to Abu Muslem!”

“She couldn't,” Farah said. “Aga Jamsheed kept a guard at the gate, and none of the women were allowed out without his permission.”

“She should have thought of something else—like Shahrazad!
She
didn't just give up.”

“Marjan. Not everybody can be as clever as Shahrazad.”

“She shouldn't have killed herself! That was the easy way for
her!
She should have stayed with me. I
needed
her to protect me!”

“Listen. They would have killed her anyway for what she did to your foot. The Sultan had forbidden the practice of maiming girls to keep them from becoming his wives. The penalty was death. So she . . .” Farah pursed
her lips, gazed up at the sky. She breathed in deep. “Well,” she sighed, looking back at me. “You know what she did. And afterward . . . Aga Jamsheed was afraid
he
would be punished for permitting you to be maimed. So he hired you out to the Jew. Then he and his family left the city.

“That's what I wanted to tell you, Marjan. Blame your mother for provoking her husband, for mistaken judgment of his character. Don't blame her for leaving you to go on without her, or for not fighting hard enough. She was brave, Marjan. She
fought.
And everything she did was for you. She
cherished
you. She cherished you above everything.”

I had the strangest feeling, then, as if my heart were softening in my chest. I could feel the blood pumping warm and fast into my arms and face and legs. I was crying then, crying for my mother, crying that I had lost her, crying that I had nursed my rage against her for so long. I was crying for Zaynab, and for Shahrazad, and for the dead girl who had lived in my room. I was crying for
all
the women who had died, all the misery that had come over this whole city because the Sultans first wife had hurt
him.

It seemed that in this world we were piling up hurt upon hurt, and hate upon hate, and then hurt upon hurt again. Forgiveness. We couldn't forgive. We could only hate when we were hurt. And then the hurt and the hate would start up again—all in a terrible circle.

T
hat 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.

I
t 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.”