Shadow Spinner (5 page)

“Rise.” The voice was rough, hoarse, commanding.

The beak-nosed woman stood, moved to one side, and then I could see her clearly.

The Khatun.

She was hugely fat. She seemed to spill over the edges of the massive cushion she was sitting on. Her neck fell in folds over her pearls and I could see the shapes of billowing mounds of flesh beneath her robes. Though her face was bloated, misshapen, it held traces of lost beauty—an arch of brow, a curve of lip. Between pouches of soft, fleshy skin, her dark eyes gleamed.

As she reached with a swollen, beringed hand to motion me near, I heard a tinkling sound. Her gown, I
saw, was stitched over from bodice to hem with gems: rubies, pearls, emeralds, diamonds—a staggering display of wealth.

She looked me up and down for what seemed like a very long time. Then, “So,” she said in that hoarse voice. “So
this
is the one they told me about—Shahrazad's cripple.”

I recoiled as if I had been slapped. Behind her, I heard a stifled giggle. I peered into the darkness and saw a young woman standing there—a beautiful woman with pale skin and coppery hair.

“Precisely what are you to Shahrazad,” the Khatun asked, “that she would ask my son to buy you for her?”

That smell, borne on the breeze of the ostrich feather fans, filled my nose—the sweet smell of decay. Smoke rose from incense burners all around, but nothing could mask the stench. I closed off my nostrils from inside—breathed through my mouth—but the revulsion crawled down my throat.

“I. . . don't know, my lady,” I said.

I didn't want to tell her. I didn't know quite why; my mind was moving slowly, like wading through a pool of deep water. But I didn't want to tell.

The Khatun held my gaze. For a long time, no one spoke. I was tempted to say something—to babble—to fill the disturbing silence, but I remembered again what Auntie Chava had said:
Chew your words before you let them out.

“But you must have some ideas on the subject,” the Khatun said at last. “The first day you ever came here was yesterday and now—today—you are summoned here to live. Surely you must have
some
thoughts as to why.”

I swallowed. Hadn't Shahrazad told her about the mermaid story? Would it be . . .
dangerous
for her to know? I felt as if I were blindfolded, groping my way through a maze full of hidden traps.

“I . . . I was listening to her as she rehearsed her tale for the night,” I said carefully. “And one time, when she said that a thing had happened one way, and then later said it happened another, I pointed this out to her.”

That
was
true, I thought. And those other women, the ones dressing Shahrazad, had seen it.

The Khatun narrowed her eyes; they nearly disappeared in the folds of puffy flesh. “So, you think Shahrazad wants you for your . . . memory?”

I shrugged, tried to look perplexed. This was too close to the truth for comfort.

“You wouldn't . . . be a storyteller yourself?” the Khatun asked, as if it were an absurd suggestion.

She knew.

There were many in the courtyard who had seen me telling that tale to the children. Someone must have told her. And she could put it together herself that I had been summoned to tell stories to Shahrazad.

I had a sudden inward image of the Khatun sitting in the middle of a spiderweb, a vast web that spanned the whole harem. Any disturbance—anything unusual that happened—would jerk at the web. Make it twitch. And she would know it.

If I played down my skill as a storyteller, she would know I had something to hide. She would know to look beneath my denial for the truth.

So I would . . . exaggerate the truth. Make it outrageous. Laughable. Impossible to believe.

I drew myself up proudly. “I am the greatest storyteller in the city,” I said. “Far greater than Shahrazad. If I were queen, the Sultan would know the difference between a commonplace tale and a great one.”

The copper-haired girl snickered; she had fallen for my trick. But the Khatun had not. She stared at me, and the silence hung between us even longer than before. At last, she spoke.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that this
cripple
of Shahrazad's . . . is cleverer than she looks.”

T
he Khatun dismissed me with a wave of her hand, and the copper-haired girl showed me out. Without a word, she led me down a colonnaded hallway to a flight of wooden stairs. She had a showy walk, with a lot of hip in it. Her ankle bracelets jingled, and her long, unbound hair swished from side to side.

I followed her up the stairs and down a narrow hall, past a labyrinth of small rooms—some with curtained doorways, some without. She stopped abruptly, motioned to a faded blue-print curtain. “Your room,” she said. “Your clothes are in the chest.” She spun on her heel and was gone.

I stood there for a moment, listening to her footfalls as they padded down the wooden stairs and then faded away.

Quiet. It was so quiet. Probably most people had settled down to nap after noon prayers. I hadn't felt so completely alone since they took me away, after my mother. . .

No. I wouldn't think about
her
now.

Tucking the curtain into the bracket beside the doorway, I stepped inside. The room was narrow and dim. A thick blue-and-red carpet covered most of the floor, and an oil lamp stood on a low table near a small wooden chest. By one wall, a copper brazier squatted on the tiles. In the shadowed gloom of the far corner, I could make out a stack of damask cushions and a rolled bed mattress. High on the walls, I saw hooks embedded in the plaster near the ceiling, where tapestries must once have hung.

I knelt beside the chest and lifted the lid. It creaked, exhaled a breath of old, dry roses. There
were
clothes within—folded gowns and veils and trousers of fine silk and muslin and linen. I lifted them out, ran my fingers lightly across them; my rough skin snagged the cloth. Carefully, I held the garments up against my body.

Beautiful. They were beautiful things.

At the bottom of the chest, among a scatter of dry rose petals, lay a frayed prayer rug, a string of plain black prayer beads, and a small prayer stone.

Such
plain
things, compared to the clothes! Plainer than anything I had seen in the harem. A puzzle . . .

Then at once I understood. These were keepsakes brought from home. Some poor girl had been paid for, brought here to the harem, provided with beautiful clothing. The rug, beads, and prayer stone had been all she had to remind herself of home.

A lump rose in my throat. I had not had time to fetch my own prayer beads when the eunuch came to get me. All I had from home was Auntie Chavas comb. I took it out of my sash, turned it over in my hand until the garnets winked in the light from the doorway. Slowly, I set it down in the bottom of the chest with the other girls things.

The dead girl. For surely she had been killed.

All at once my heart was flooded with longing for my old life—my home and Auntie Chava and Uncle Eli. Why had Shahrazad brought me here? Why couldn't she find someone else to tell her stories?

These fine folk! They played with our lives as if we were tiles on a game board. As if our lives were only of value if we were serving
them.

I picked up my comb again, slipped it into my hair. There. At least something familiar. Something of my old life. I would wear it now—all the time.

“Marjan?”

Hastily, I shut the chest. I turned round to see Dunyazad in the doorway. My spirits lifted; I felt ashamed of my selfish thoughts.

She moved into the room, then stopped. “I was looking for you; I didn't know where she would put you. You've seen the Khatun?”

I nodded.

“Did she . . .” Dunyazad paused. “Well, never mind. Shahrazad's waiting. Quickly, now.

“She
needs
you!”

*  *  *  

Shahrazad's sons were with her: one nearly two years old, another just over a year, and the baby. The infant lay in her lap; the other two snuggled against her like cygnets enfolded in the wings of a mother swan.

She was telling them a story.

Shahrazad looked up and smiled when she saw us enter. But her voice, gentle and low, did not pause. Behind her stood three women—the children's nurses, no doubt.

Dunyazad stopped; I halted just behind her. We watched as Shahrazad finished her tale. Then Dunyazad, signaling me to wait, strode forward. There was much kissing and hugging and cooing and tickling and giggling among the two sisters and the three children, until Shahrazad handed her sons, one by one, to their nurses, and the year-old boy began to wail. The nurses swept past me out the door, and as the wailing thinned and grew faint, I moved forward and kissed the ground before Shahrazad.

“Here, that's enough, sit down,” she said. She motioned me to a cushion before her and pressed me to take a handful of honeyed almonds and dates. “The Sultan loved your story, Marjan,” she said. “Did you tell her, Sister? How much he loved it?” Shahrazad rocked back and forth on her cushion, her slender arms clasped about another pillow, hugging it to her chest. She was smiling at me, radiant.

“No, I haven't.” As Dunyazad settled herself on another
cushion, I was struck again by how different she looked from her graceful older sister. Dunyazad's face was wider, squarer; her body, as she sat, looked solid and compact.

“He had heard that tale when he was a boy,” Shahrazad told me, “and he loved it even then. It was one of his favorites!”

“I'm glad!” I said, “but I thought. . .”

“What, Marjan? What did you think?”

“I thought the Sultan didn't want to hear tales he'd heard before.”

“He doesn't want
me
to repeat myself,” Shahrazad said. “That would be tedious. But he doesn't mind if he's heard some of the tales long ago. In fact, he
likes
hearing his favorite old tales. So, after I finish with the part you told me, he wants me to tell the rest of it.”

The rest of it?

“About Julnar's son . . . what happened when he grew up. Shahryar couldn't remember his name. All he remembered was that it has two parts to it, and both parts start with the same sound. A
D
or maybe a
B
—he couldn't recall. He'll be delighted when I tell him.”

My heart stood still.
The rest of it.
I didn't know any
rest of it.
I groped back through my memory, trying to remember the name of Julnar's son—trying to remember
anything
about Julnar's son other than the things I had already told, about how he was taken down into the sea as an infant, about the magic that made him able to breathe there. I was
certain
I hadn't heard his name.

Shahrazad was still smiling at me. She looked eager, happy—so different from the day before. I didn't want to tell her that I didn't know what she needed to know. I didn't want to watch her face, how it was going to change.

“Marjan?” She looked puzzled.

I took a deep breath. “My lady,” I said. “I am so very sorry. Truly I am. But. . . I know nothing of Julnar's son other than what I've told you. Neither his name nor anything that happened to him after his uncle brought him back from the sea.”

A breeze rustled in the curtain that draped the lattice. In the distance, I heard a tinkling of chimes. Shahrazad's face did not change, but rather froze, as if time were no longer flowing, but stood in a quiet pool.

I glanced at Dunyazad, who also seemed stunned.

After a long, long moment, Shahrazad leaned forward, held my gaze. “Are you . . .
certain?”
she asked. “Maybe you've only forgotten, and it will come to you.”

I thought back to that day in the bazaar, when I had strayed from Auntie Chavas side and then lost her and wandered from stall to stall until I came upon the blind storyteller. I had listened for a longish while, and then Auntie Chava had found me, scolded me, dragged me away. It had
seemed
as though the tale had ended just when she came. But maybe it hadn't. Maybe he told more of it later—after I had gone.

“I would
know
it,” I said, “if I had heard it. I've sometimes wondered what happened to Julnar's son when he grew up. If he ever went back into the sea and breathed there. But—”

Dunyazad leaped to her feet. “The Khatun got to her,” she said to Shahrazad. “I
knew
she would.” She turned to me. “I think you know—you're just not telling. She threatened you, didn't she? What did she say?”

I was struck dumb. How could Dunyazad
think
that? I had thought that she
liked
me. “She . . . she didn't
threaten,” I faltered. “Not exactly. She wanted to know why Shahrazad wanted me.”

“And you told her, didn't you?”

“No! I didn't even know myself, for certain. But. . . It didn't do any good. To
not
tell her. She knew already.”