Shadow Spinner (3 page)

Shahrazad moved toward me until her face was so close that I could have counted her eyelashes. The sweet musk of her perfume filled my nose. Her eyes never left mine; I was pinioned in her gaze. She grasped my wrist hard—until it hurt—but I dared not protest. “I've not heard this before,” she whispered. “I've not heard this.”

When at last I came to the end of the tale, Shahrazad let out a deep sigh. She unclasped my wrist, stared dazedly down at the white finger marks on my skin.

“What is your name?” she asked, looking up at last.

“Marjan,” I said.

“Marjan.” She spoke my name as if tasting it, as if it were some rare delicacy served for the very first time. She breathed deeply; some of the tautness drained from her face. “Well, Marjan,” she said. “You have told me a tale that I have never heard before. And that is quite a
feat, for I know many tales. And that is also
good,
for the Sultan does not fancy a tale twice-told. His memory is sharp. I lose track of them, there have been so many . . . He complains when the tales seem too much alike.”

“We should have written down which tales she's told, from the very start,” Dunyazad said. “We think she might know some she
hasn't
told, or she could find some in her books. But they're all starting to sound alike. It's hard to be certain. We
need
to be certain.”

“Couldn't you . . . make up some stories?” I asked.

Though I mostly told old tales, sometimes they veered off in strange new directions while I was telling them. I tried not to do this, because I wanted to be just like Shahrazad, and I had heard that she stayed faithful to the old tales. Other times, when I was daydreaming, I invented stories that were completely new. But I hardly ever
told
them—except when I ran out of old stories to tell.

“I have made up a few,” Shahrazad said, “though it's hard. I always like the old tales better than anything I can think up. And I can't seem to make up anything new right now. They all begin to sound familiar, and I'm afraid I'm just
remembering
—not inventing.”

“Being so tired doesn't help,” Dunyazad said. “She just gave birth five days ago.”

I nodded. Everybody knew. Criers had run through the streets announcing it, and everywhere people had celebrated.

“I never thought . . .” Shahrazad shook her head. “I knew it would take time for the stories to do their work, but . . . Nine hundred eighty-nine nights it's been!
Nine hundred eighty-nine nights!”

Slowly, she rose to her feet, began to pace back and forth in an uncluttered patch of carpet. She was tall, I saw. Long and slender of neck and arm and leg. Much taller than her younger sister. Her movements were not lively, like Dunyazad's, but graceful. Like a swan. And it seemed to me that some power was beginning to fill her—some power that had been drained before.

“This king,” she said. “What did you say his name was?”

“Shahriman,” I said.

“Shahriman.” Shahrazad stopped for a moment, closing her eyes. “Shahriman.” She opened her eyes and began once again to pace. “So King Shahriman owned a hundred concubines but none of them had given him a child. One day as he was lamenting this, one of his guards came to him and said, 'My lord, at the door is a merchant with a slave girl who is more beautiful than the moon.' Do I have it so far, Marjan?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And she was as beautiful as the merchant had said. But when the king asked her name, she did not say a word. Only her beauty protected her from his anger. And then he asked . . . Who was it he asked, Marjan? The merchant? Or his guard? Or his slave girls?”

“His slave girls.”

“Yes, now I remember. He asked his slave girls whether the girl had spoken, and they said, 'From the time of her coming until now she has not uttered one word.'”

Then Shahrazad told
us
Julnar's story, stopping, from time to time, to ask about this detail or that. She told how at last, when Julnar was with child, she spoke to Shahriman about herself, how she was the daughter of the King
of the High Seas, how her father had died and his kingdom had been seized. Julnar had quarreled with her brother and had thrown herself upon the mercy of a man from the land, who had sold her to the merchant, who had sold her to Shahriman. Then Shahrazad told how Julnar begged the king to let her summon her family for the birthing, because women of the land do not know how women of the sea give birth to children. “Let me know when I go astray, Marjan,” Shahrazad said. “I want to learn it exactly as you told it.”

So intent was I upon teaching the tale that I did not see the three women standing outside the archway until Dunyazad motioned them impatiently to come in. They advanced upon us, arms laden with gowns and robes, jewelry and jars, brushes and vials. They surrounded Shahrazad. One woman whisked off the queen's robe and began dressing her in layer upon layer of silks. Another began combing her hair; the third daubed and brushed at her face, filling the air with a fog of fragrant powder.

And all the while Shahrazad practiced, telling the tale over and over, making some parts fast and others slow, making some parts loud and others soft—binding them all together in a pleasing cadence, like a song. When she spoke of the ocean, you could almost hear the boom and hiss of it in her voice. When she told about Julnar, she seemed to slip inside the skin of a sea creature and move in a watery way. Soon, she stopped asking me questions and posed them to herself. “Shall I stop here, tonight,” she wondered, “or later in the tale? Shall I word it thisly, or thusly?”

In time, the story came unbroken, as if she had known it all her life.

A slave girl entered, went round lighting the lamps; only then did I realize that it was growing dark. Long, flickering shadows stretched across the room. Shahrazad stood murmuring in a pool of golden lamplight while the women tended to her. A robe of midnight blue hung down over her shoulders. It was purfled with pearls, like stars. Her face looked rapt, serene. It was luminous as the moon.

“Then Julnar kindled a flame in a chafing dish, and she took lign aloes and tossed them into the fire. She spoke some magical words, and all at once a great smoke arose, and the sea began to froth and foam. Presently, Julnar's family arose from the waves: first her brother, Salih, then her mother, Farahshah. They walked across the face of the water until they drew near Julnar's window and recognized her.”

And a huge eunuch was standing at the door. He wore a headdress encrusted with jewels, and robes of gleaming cloth-of-gold. His face—black and smooth and hairless—looked distant. Cold. “It is time,” he said.

Dunyazad clasped her sister in her arms. When she moved away, I caught the gleam of unshed tears in her eyes. Shahrazad moved toward the eunuch, then paused, walked back to me. She leaned in close, grasped my wrist. “Thank you, Marjan,” she whispered. And I saw it then, in her eyes—a quicksilver spasm of fear. But in the next instant, it was gone.

Shahrazad turned, swept out of the room.

I stood beneath the arch and watched for as long as I could as she walked with the eunuch down the alabaster corridor toward the Sultans bedchamber. Her head was held high, her hips swayed gracefully; she was the picture
of serenity. And yet she looked so frail. The lives of all the young women in the harem—all the young women in the city!—rested upon those slender shoulders. Depended upon her ability to please a man who would slay her for a yawn. Hung by the thin thread of a tale I had heard from a beggar in the bazaar. And, now that I had seen the terror behind the mask of Shahrazad's serenity, I only revered her the more.

She was the bravest person I had ever seen in all my entire life.

W
e were late getting home.

No sooner had we unlocked the gate and stepped into the courtyard than Uncle Eli came hobbling toward us in the twilight, peppering us with questions, his tassels swinging, his yellow turban askew. Where had we been? Were we all right? Why had we taken so long? Had there been trouble? Had we been robbed? He had sent out Old
Mordecai to search for us—or for our dead bodies. They had not known
which
they would find.

“We are fine,” Auntie Chava assured him, “and there has been no trouble. Quite the contrary, in fact. We have had . . . a little adventure.” She glanced at me, and a smile quirked the corners of her mouth. “Hold out your hands, Eli.”

She reached into her sash and took out a handful of coins. A stream of gold dinars clanked into Uncle Eli's knobby, cupped hands. The last few coins slipped off the heap, rang on the tiles. Eli looked up in wonder. “This much?” he said. “But they were not
worth
so much.”

“No,” Auntie Chava said, “they weren't. It was Marjan who earned the rest of it—with her stories.”

Then she told how Dunyazad had taken me to her sister, and how I had told the story, and how Dunyazad had rewarded us with a handful of dinars. Eli funneled the coins into a leather purse; I hunted down the ones on the floor. Then he bade me describe Shahrazad for him—in detail—and tell the mermaid story all over again.

When I had done, Eli tugged at his long white beard, looking pleased. “Don't we have the clever one here, Chava? Didn't I tell you?
Didn't
I?”

It had been Uncle Eli's idea to take me in more than five years before, when I was almost eight. After my mother died, her husband—second husband, not my father—hadn't wanted me in his household anymore, but he couldn't find anyone to take me. Uncle Eli hired me out of pity, I think. Auntie Chava said at the time that I was far too young to be of any use to her; but now, Uncle Eli was always crowing about how smart he had been to discover me.

It's against the law to sell a Muslim as a slave to a Jew,
but Muslims can work for Jews for wages. My mother's husband, Aga Jamsheed, collected several months' wages in advance, and then he and his whole family left the city. Uncle Eli was saving my back wages, just in case Aga Jamsheed ever returned.

Still, Auntie Chava and Uncle Eli didn't treat me as a servant. They treated me as a daughter. He was softer with me than she was. He sneaked me sweets, and he fussed at Auntie Chava not to work me so hard. Sometimes he told me stories from his Scriptures, which reminded me of some of the stories I knew from the Koran.

Now Auntie Chava harrumphed. “Stories won't get dinner cooked,” she said.

But they took out the good wine at dinner, and Auntie Chava made me a cup of sharbat. The coins would pay this year's taxes, with some left over for next. When Old Mordecai finally returned, Uncle Eli told him the whole story, exaggerating Dunyazad's praises of me.

“This is an omen,” Uncle Eli told Auntie Chava. “Our fortunes are turning—I know it. By this time next year you'll have more jewels and silks than you ever had before. You'll see—I'm right. Those ones you sold today—they're nothing to what you'll have soon.”

Auntie Chava smiled—a bit sadly, I thought. “I don't
need
jewels and silks, Eli. I never wear them anyway. This house . . . and you . . . and food enough to keep all of us.
That's
what I want.”

*  *  *  

It was hard to sleep that night. I kept worrying about Shahrazad. What if the tale I told wasn't good enough? What if it made the Sultan yawn? What if he
hated
it?

I turned it over and over in my mind, noticing how nothing very adventurous actually
happened
in the story,
and how the end didn't quite feel right. I fretted about where Shahrazad would break off to make the Sultan want to hear more. There just weren't very many exciting places in that tale. Or none exciting
enough.

It was a boring tale! I could see that now, though I had not before. It would never save her!

I slept fitfully and woke at dawn. After ablutions and prayers, I got right to work. Busy. I had to keep busy. I milked the goat in darkness, then hauled water from the courtyard well and scrubbed the chipped brown tiles of the floor as the morning sky grew pink. Auntie Chava, I thought, was sleeping
forever
this morning. When finally she awoke, I pestered her to send Old Mordecai to find out if Shahrazad had survived the night. I knew she would never let
me
go out alone.

Auntie Chava admonished me on the virtues of patience, but sent Mordecai for news so promptly that I knew she was worried, too. I hauled more water, started the fire in the brazier, put on a pot of lentils, filled the lamps with oil, mixed dough for a loaf of bread.

Where
was
that Mordecai?

At last, I heard the courtyard door creak open. I froze, afraid, now, to know. Auntie Chava appeared in the archway to her quarters; Uncle Eli came up beside her.

“Well?” Uncle Eli asked.

Old Mordecai smiled his toothless smile and raised his skinny arms high. “She lives.”

*  *  *  

After that, I danced.

I danced as I polished the lamps. I danced as I refilled the lentil jar. I danced as I sieved the grain, and even as I spun a skein of thread.