Tales of Wonder (24 page)

“But do not say this dream is impossible,” said the caliph. “I will not have it.” Yet even as he spoke the words, he sank back onto the pillows.

Before the men could tell the caliph no once more, Lateef spoke. The horse on his shoulders lent him courage. “In the desert we say nothing is impossible, my caliph. What one man cannot do, another may.” He sank to his knees, ducked his head, and set the foal onto the floor. The little horse wobbled, and his tiny hooves clattered against the colorful tiles. “Perhaps, great Al-Mansur, this is the wonder of which you dreamed.”

The caliph sat up again and laughed, his eyes nearly hidden in the flaps of his shriveled cheeks. The laugh put false color in his face. “I dreamed of a mighty horse, and you bring me a starveling foal. I dreamed of a flying white-winged wonder, and you bring me a brown mite almost too weak to walk.”

But the oldest adviser looked more closely at the foal. He saw its tiny gray wings, frail as those of a dragonfly. And he saw a way to keep his caliph alive for a while longer. He spoke with great care. “Even a wonder may be weak in its youth,” he whispered to the caliph. “Look again, Al-Mansur.”

The caliph looked again, saw the wings, and clapped his hands. “Perhaps,” he said, “I shall put off dying until this foal has grown. You, boy, shall live with it in its stall. You shall eat with it and exercise it. And when the wonder is big enough, you shall bring it to me once again, and I shall have my ride.” He sat up and put his feet over the side of the pillows. “And now, bring me some food and tell my people to stop their grieving. Their caliph shall not die for this dream—but live.”

The Year

And so it came to pass that Lateef, the slave of slaves, became Lateef the keeper of the winged foal. Yet his life was not so different as one might suppose. He slept in the straw by the side of the horse, warming its body with his own. He was up before dawn drawing water from the well, filling a sack with grain, always feeding the horse before he dared to feed himself. And each day, besides, he brushed the horse's long black mane and tail, grooming its sleek, dark sides.

But he paid the most attention of all to the wondrous wings. He would take the fragile ribs in his hands and gently flex them, stretching the membranes until they were taut. In the cool, dark stable the membranes were a milky white, the color of old pearl. But outside, with the sun shining through, they were as iridescent as insect wings. So the caliph called the horse “Dragonfly.” But Lateef did not.

“Brother,” he named the foal. “Wind Brother.” And he sang the name into the horse's ears and blew a breath gently into the foal's nostrils as was the custom among the desert dwellers. And he made the horse a song:

Wind rider,

Sun strider,

The dreamer's dream,

Moon leaper,

Star keeper,

Are you what you seem?

It was not a great song, but Lateef whispered it over and over in an affectionate tone as he touched the horse, until it twitched its ears in reply. And the horse grew to love Lateef and would respond to his every command.

Often the caliph would stand by the stall, holding on to the door for support while Lateef cleaned the horse. Or he would sit in a chair nearby while the horse's wings were stretched and rubbed with oil. But whenever the caliph tried to come too close, both Lateef and the horse would tremble. Then the caliph would sigh, and a faint blush of color would stain his pale cheeks. “Ah, Dragonfly,” Al-Mansur would say, “do not forget that you are my dream. And I must ride my dream or die.”

One day, when Lateef and the horse had both trembled at the caliph's approach, and Al-Mansur had sighed and spoken, Lateef could control his tongue no longer. Bowing low, afraid to raise his head, he spoke. “O Caliph, if what you say is so, then you are no more free than I.”

The caliph was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was very soft. “No one is entirely free, child. Even I, Caliph Al-Mansur, have never been free to indulge my own dreams. To be good and wise, a ruler must make real the dreams of his people. But now, for once, I would have this dream, this wonder, for myself alone. For in some small way, the dreaming makes me feel I am free, though I know I am not.”

Lateef shook his head, for he did not understand the caliph. How could a man who had everything no farther away than a handclap not be free? He raised his head to ask the caliph, but the man was gone. He did not come again to the stable, and his absence troubled Lateef.

When a year had passed and Wind Brother's sides had filled out, his mane and tail grown long and silky, the caliph sent word around to the stables that he would come the very next day to ride the winged horse. Now in all this time Wind Brother had never been mounted, nor had a saddle ever been placed upon his back. And never had he opened and shut his wings on his own. Lateef had been content to walk around the ring with the horse, his hand on Wind Brother's neck. He had feared that if he were to sit on the horse's back, his heels might accidentally do injury to the iridescent wings or that a saddle might crush a fragile rib.

Lateef bowed low to the messenger. “Tell my caliph,” he said fearfully, “and with many respects, that the horse is not yet strong enough for a rider.”

The messenger looked even more afraid than Lateef. “I dare not deliver such a message myself. You must go.”

So Lateef entered the caliph's room for the second time. Al-Mansur lay on the silken pillows as if he were only dreaming of life.

“The horse, your … your Dragonfly,” stuttered Lateef, “he is not yet ready to be ridden.”

“Then make him so,” said the caliph, barely raising himself up to speak. He sank back quickly, exhausted from the effort.

Lateef started to protest, but the guards hurried him out of the room. As he walked down the long hall, the caliph's oldest adviser followed him.

“He
must
ride tomorrow,” said the old man, his thin beard weaving fantastic patterns in the air as he spoke. “It is his only wish. He is growing weak. Perhaps it will keep him alive. A man is alive as long as he can dream.”

“But
his
dream is of
my
horse.”

“The horse is not yours, but the caliph's. His grain has kept the horse alive. You are but a slave,” said the old man, shaking his finger at Lateef. “A slave cannot own a horse.”

“A slave can still be brother to the wind,” Lateef whispered, aghast at his tongue's boldness, “as long as the wind wills it so.” But even as he spoke, he feared he had failed—failed the horse and failed the caliph—and in failing them both, failed himself.

Allah's Test

In the morning Lateef was up early. He rubbed the horse's sides with scented oils. He wove ribbons into its black mane. And all the while he crooned to the horse, “Oh, my brother, do not fail me as I fear I have failed you. Be humble. Take the caliph onto your back. For you are young and healthy, and he is old and sick. He is the dreamer and you are the dream.”

The horse whickered softly and blew its warm breath on Lateef's neck.

Then Lateef took the horse out into the ring.

Soon the caliph came, borne in a chair that was carried by four strong men. Behind them came the caliph's advisers. Then, in order of their importance, came the caliph's wives. Finally, led in by the armed guards, came the men and women and children of Akbir, for the word had gone out to the souks and mosques: “Come see Caliph Al-Mansur ride his dream.”

Only then, when Lateef saw how many people waited and watched, did he truly become afraid. What would happen if the caliph failed in front of all these people? Would they blame the horse for not bearing the caliph's weight? Would they blame Lateef for not training the horse well? Or would they blame the caliph? Failure, after all, was for slaves, not for rulers.

The caliph was helped from his chair, but then he signaled his people away. Slowly he approached the horse. Putting his hand to the horse's nose, he let Wind Brother smell him. He moved his hand carefully along the horse's flanks, touching the wings in a curious, tentative gesture, as if he had never really seen them clearly before. He spoke softly, so that only the horse and Lateef could hear: “I am the dreamer, you are the dream. I think I am ready to ride.”

Lateef waited.

The horse waited.

All the men and women and children of Akbir waited.

Suddenly, so swiftly it surprised them all, the caliph took a deep breath and leaped onto the horse's back. He sat very tall on Wind Brother, his hands twisted in the horse's mane, his legs carefully in front of the wings. Eyes closed, the caliph smiled. And his smile was a child's, sweetly content.

For a long, breath-held moment, nothing happened. Then the horse gave a mighty shudder and reared back on his hind legs. He spun around and dropped onto all fours, arching his back. The caliph, still smiling, flew into the air and landed heavily on the ground. He did not get up again.

The horse did not move, even when Lateef ran over to him and touched his nose, his neck, his side. But as Lateef swung himself astride, he felt the horse's flanks trembling.

“Be not afraid,” Lateef whispered to the horse. “I am here. What they try to do to you, they must do to me first. In this I will not fail you.”

The chief of the caliph's guards ran toward the boy and the horse, his great silver scimitar raised above his head. As the scimitar began to sing its death song on the trip down through the air, Lateef leaned forward, guarding the horse's neck with his own. But he did not feel any blow. All he felt was a rush of wind as the horse began to pump its mighty wings for the first time.

Lateef turned his head. Above them he could still see the image of the silver sword. Then at his knee he felt a hand. He looked down. A boy about his own age stood there, in white robes, with a white
dulband
on his head. In the turban's center was the caliph's red jewel.

“I am free and ready to ride,” the boy said, a shadowy smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“Then mount, my brother,” whispered Lateef, putting his hand down and pulling the boy up behind him. “Ride your dream.”

With a mighty motion, the horse's wings pumped once again, filling with air and sky. He lifted them beyond the sword, beyond the walls of the palace. They circled the minarets once, and Lateef looked down. He could see a crowd gathering around the fallen figures of a caliph, a horse, a ragged boy. Only here and there was a man or a woman or a child who dared to look up, who saw the dream-riders in the sky.

And then they were gone, the three: over a river that was a thin ribbon in the sand, over the changing patterns of the desert, to the place where there are neither slaves nor rulers and where all living beings truly dwell as brothers—the palace of the winds.

The Golden Balls

Not all princesses are selfish. No. But it is an occupational hazard. Perhaps it is even in the genes, inbred along with fine, thin noses and high arches, along with slender fingers and a swanlike neck.

There was a princess once endowed with all those graces at birth. Her father—a robust sort, given to hunting and sharing bones with his dogs—had married well. That meant his wife came with properly and looks, and was gracious enough to expire after producing an heir. The heir was a boy who looked a lot like his father and screamed in similar lusty tones from one wetnurse to another until he found an ample breast that pleased him.

The heir was not the firstborn, however. He came second, after a sister. But primogeniture ruled him first. First at school, first at play, first in the hearts of his countrymen.

His sister turned her attention to golden balls.

She dallied with these golden balls in all manner of places: behind the cookstove, in the palace garden, under privet hedges, and once—just once—on the edge of a well deep in the forest.
That
was a mistake.

The splash could be heard for no more than a meter, but her cries could be heard for a mile.

No doubt she might have remained hours weeping by the well, unheard, unsung in song or story, had not an ambitious, amphibious hero climbed flipper after flipper to the rim of his world.

He gave her back what she most desired. He took from her what she did not wish to give.

“And will we meet again?” he whispered at last, his voice as slippery as kitchen grease, as bubbly as beer.

“By the wellspring,” she gasped, putting him off, pushing his knobby body from hers.

“In your bed,” he said. It was not a frog's demand.

To escape him, to keep him, she agreed. Then raising her skirts to show her slim ankles and high arches, she made a charming moue with her mouth and fled.

He leaped after her but was left behind. By the hop, it was many miles to the palace door. He made it in time for dinner.

By then the princess had changed her dress. The dampness had left a rash on her swanlike neck. The front of the skirt had been spotted with more than tears. She smiled meaningfully at the table, blandly at her brother who was now the king. He recognized the implications of that smile.

“Answer the door,” said the king before there was a knock. He knew it would come, had come, would come again. “Answer the door,” he said to his sister, ignoring the entire servant class.

She went to the door and lifted the latch, but the frog had already slipped in.

Three hops, seven hops, nine hops, thirteen; he was at the table. He dragged one frogleg, but he was on time.

The princess would have fed him tidbits under the table. She would have put her foot against his. She would have touched him where no one could see. But the king leaned down and spoke to the frog. “You are well suited,” he said lifting the creature to her plate.

“Eat,” commanded the king.

It was a royal performance. The frog's quick tongue darted around the princess's plate. Occasionally it flicked her hand, between her fingers, under her rings.