by Angela Kulig
He reached for me, but the Grand Vizier slapped him away. The man had truly lost his mind. It must have been madness that I’d seen in his eyes earlier.
There could be no coming back from this.
Not for him.
Not for me.
Blackness was gathering at the edges of my vision, like the storm had gathered on the edge of the world. If I didn’t act then, I’d be unconscious before help could arrive.
So, I let the shift come. I let the wild take me away.
Chapter 9
"Where is the lamp, girl?" the Grand Vizier shouted.
But he couldn’t move me. I was moving myself.
Fur ran along the surface of my skin like a river, and claws sprouted from my fingertips where my hands had just been grasping at his shirt.
Blood welled in the middle of his vest in an angry red blotch, but mid-shift, I hadn't been able to pierce deep enough to kill.
Someone was screaming, and the only thing I knew was that it wasn't me. I was no longer capable.
All I could do was roar. And I did.
The Vizier stumbled back, hand pressed against his wound, shallow as it was.
"What magic is this?" His eyes were wide in disbelief.
And I lunged for him. My grandfather called my name, but I couldn't let him stop me.
I wouldn't have, but in a cloud of red smoke, the Vizier was gone. I heard the heavy door slam shut as I tried desperately to blink the grit from the smoke out of my cat eyes. I knew there was no way I would be able to open a door like this, and by the time I made it out of here, it would be too late. The evil bastard could be anywhere.
"Cyra!" my grandfather called again.
Two guards fell through the door, disheveled. Red welts on their cheeks contrasted sharply against their pale faces. They had their swords raised and pointed in my direction, but my grandfather waved them off.
"Cyra, can you understand me?"
I dipped my striped head and shifted back.
All three men were staring at me with eyes filled with everything from disbelief to horror.
"Leave us," my grandfather said, but the men made no move to go.
The trio attempted to argue but they were silenced. I couldn't say a word in my own defense. I was speechless, and for once, I didn’t care.
What could I possibly say now?
The men left, eyeing me warily as they shut the door. No doubt standing in the corridor with their ears pressed against the wood.
It's okay, I wanted to tell them. My grandfather was safe. The Grand Vizier, however, him I would kill with hand or claw if I ever saw again. I didn't care if I had to rip off his head with nothing but my human teeth. I'd gladly do it.
"Cyra." My grandfather’s words were softer this time as he held out his hand toward me. "Come with me."
In his tone, he was asking, not telling, and I was so shocked that I moved without saying a word.
Grandfather walked through a smaller set of side doors that led to a small garden in the shade. Curtains billowed into the outdoors, trailing after him just as I was.
"I didn’t realize it was the necklace, until now," Grandfather said, taking a seat on a low stone bench under sweeping green branches.
My hand shot up to the amulet around my neck. It was still warm from the shift.
Flowers stood out in a riot of color all over the garden. I supposed as close as this little nook had been to the palace, it had been spared from a great deal of damage from the storm.
"I once saw your mother change herself into a bright bird and sit here in this tree," Grandfather said without looking at me. He was staring at the branches of the tree he was sitting beneath, as though he could still see her there.
I knew how he felt. I wished she was here, too. My mother always knew what to do, and it was that thought that made me realize I was still very much a child in some ways.
I sat on the bench next to him, and he let his eyes drop from the tree to me. "I didn’t realize a lot of things, it seems."
"It's my fault." I wrung my hands together in my lap.
So much of it was my fault. If I loved my kingdom as much as I claimed, I should have married if only to find a ruler who was worthy of them. Now all I had available was empty-headed men—boys, really. Puppets. Perhaps I'd doomed us all for a dream I didn’t dare dream.
"No," my grandfather tipped my chin and met my gaze, "it's mine. I knew of the Vizier’s ambitions, and yet, I kept him here. I thought if I kept him close, that I could keep him in check. It seems as if I have failed at many things."
I thought back to the night I'd seen the Vizier's men with all the gold, and everything else that had happened that night on the edge of the storm.
"Grandfather, the Grand Vizier, he... I think he's been recruiting. I saw them take a child off the street, and I... I thought perhaps it would be okay. The child would be fed and clothed, and have a bed, but now I think... now, I worry about how many people he has indebted to him. And how many of them will come to his aid should he request it."
My grandfather smoothed his beard, seeming to be in thought. Little leaves from the trees overhead fell and tangled in my hair. I was glad Grandfather hadn't asked me when I'd seen this, but he'd watched me change into a giant cat and take a chunk out of the third most powerful man in the kingdom. Perhaps now he'd understand I could take care of myself.
"That is a valid concern." He glanced toward the blue sky. "I have allowed the Vizier to replace many of my own guards with his men. I believe, I believe I shall call up the army. They are loyal to the Sultan."
My breath came out ragged. If Grandfather believed we needed an entire army to fight the word of one man, we were in worse trouble than I thought.
We rose together off the bench. "I will call my General here right away."
I nodded toward him. Perhaps we could come out of this unharmed. Perhaps everything would change… but in a good way.
I turned to him. "And what shall I do?" I wanted to help. I didn't want to sit in my chamber and simply wait for the events to unfold. That wasn't me, perhaps it never had been.
"I think I could use the counsel of Abbas,” Grandfather said with a wink. “Do you suppose you could fetch him for me?"
I smiled and shifted again into the great hawk from the previous night, and let the wind carry me up and up.
With a birds-eye view, I picked up my old trail back to the temple, and the wind carried my wings, doing most of the work to get me there.
I shifted back before I'd even touched down. Landing on stone steps as a girl jarred my teeth, but I ran through the pain.
Abbas was speaking to a group of children at the base of the statue of a beautiful woman. He appeared half-wild as he joked with them, and it was then that I remembered what he had said to me the night before, about my fortunes changing.
But how had he known?
I waited silently for him to finish, but he noticed me first and excused himself.
With one hand on my shoulder, he led me out of hearing distance of the little crowd. "I am a bit surprised to see you so soon, after..." he began, but I cut him off.
"The Grand Vizier just accused me of thievery." I leaned in and kept my voice just above a whisper.
Abbas's eyes went wide. "He... what? "
"He said I took a lamp from him, of all things, but then he attacked me."
Sweat had broken out along his hairline.
"I nearly blacked out because the guards couldn't get to me fast enough, and I… I just shifted… in front of Grandfather, then the Vizier fled."
Abbas made a dreadful gurgling sound, as if sweat was sprouting inside his throat as well and drowning him.
"Your grandfather..." He trailed off in horror.
"Knew my mother could shift, saw her do it, and was.... mostly all right about it, actually. We have much greater concerns, though. Some of which involve you."
I filled Abbas in before shifting into a sleek black horse and carrying him on
my back all the way to the palace. I didn't want to wait, and neither did he. Though, he had at first balked at riding on me.
The palace was so quiet when we returned, I thought something more awful than even I could have planned before, must have happened in my absence.
I saw no guards. Not my grandfather, not the red-sashed men of the Vizier, and I supposed that was a mercy.
It was Mara we saw first as she rounded a corner. Red-faced and holding a giant kitchen knife raised above her head, as she expected she'd have to use it to slay some invisible foe.
"You, come with me," Mara reached for my arm, "and you," she said to Abbas, "Our Sultan is waiting for you in the parlor."
Mara lowered her knife enough to grab me with her other sweaty hand and dragged me back to my room. I was exhausted, but I didn’t want to go. Resisting the urge to ask her what had happened—because I already knew, I attempted to wiggle free of her fingers.
"You stop that, you've had another suitor arrive and—"
"Now?" I looked at her, astonished, my mouth near falling open. She had to be kidding me.
And yet, I knew Grandfather couldn’t just send them away, because then other countries might realize what distress we were in. And with the army needed here to deal with the Vizier's men... we couldn’t afford any outside problems to add to our anguish.
"I'll walk." I attempted to gain my composure, but I was failing. The tone in my voice was giving it away.
"You most certainly will and hurry it up. Imani swears you'll like this one." Mara was near marching at my side, nudging me along.
But Imani always said things like that. She had never understood why I wouldn't just marry any old handsome prince who came my way, and always sighed woefully when they left empty-handed. She was undoubtedly busy writing fairy tales about us in her head.
"I doubt that." I gave her a sideways glance. Because other than the fact I'd disliked everyone who had come along so far, I was far too preoccupied to even try.
"You never know," Mara smiled with a hint of a smirk, "he could be the one you've been waiting for. To begin with, he isn't even a prince."
That look was quite mysterious. Even on Mara. She rarely smiled.
I had to admit, that piqued my interest, and I was bathed and dressed, and wrapped again before I could work out why.
There was laughter sounding through the parlor doors like a light music. I didn't know how Abbas and Grandfather could appear so happy when everything around us seemed so grave, but somehow, they were, and I wished they would share their secret with me.
Food and drink lined one wall, and golden curtains fluttered on another. In the back of the room, on pillows of gold and jade, sat Grandfather. Abbas sat in the place where the Grand Vizier ordinarily would, laughing at something a man sitting across from them had just said.
I couldn’t see the man's face, and yet something about him seemed familiar.
The laughter died down as Abbas glanced to see me at the entrance to the parlor. As he smiled brilliantly at me, the man they were laughing with rose to his feet. He was wearing alabaster from head to toe, save for gold rings on two of his fingers. As he faced me, I gasped. It couldn’t be. Perhaps I had really died at the hands of the Grand Vizier. Perhaps this was heaven all along.
Chapter 10
"Aladdin." His name flowed from my lips as if I’d just run here from the temple without stopping—full of breath, full of wonder, and I felt light-headed.
"Princess." He bowed, an elegant sweeping motion that looked so strange for him, I couldn’t stop staring. His tunic touched the ground behind him, he dipped so low. It appeared as though an ivory puddle grew beneath him, as if someone had erased the entire world in his wake. I felt as if it had been.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
How was this possible was what I really wanted to know?
When Mara had said he wasn’t a prince, I had expected to be introduced to a duke. Some King’s nephew. Some mild-mannered second stringer.
Not Aladdin. I hadn’t dared hope. I hadn’t dared wish.
But this… this was… how had anyone even known to bring him here, and where had he gotten those clothes?
“That is what I would like to know as well.” the Grand Vizier’s voice echoed as he blew in behind me. He had some nerve, waltzing into the palace again. Though we couldn’t be sure he’d ever even left.
“General,” Grandfather barked, and that was when I realized it was the hulking form of the army commander behind me, but I also realized he’d come in with the Vizier before my grandfather had.
And that our troubles were compounding faster than I could move.
I tried to make my way closer to the men on the other side of the room, where my grandfather now stood behind Aladdin. Abbas stood between them.
Only I was too slow. I assumed like Abbas, who now shielded my grandfather with his own body and a blade, that they would be aiming for the Sultan.
Instead, the general pinned me with one bare- and scarred arm. It was thicker than my entire chest, I realized, as he pressed into me.
“Remove her necklace, you fool, or she’ll be taking your head off soon enough,” the Grand Vizier spat.
He only needed one arm to hold me down or even crush me, so with the other, he ripped off my mother’s amulet in an instant. The torn clasp cut me a new one of blood in its descent. It pooled between my breasts like a red-hot ruby pendent.
I didn’t dare cry out. I didn’t even dare breathe.
“Don’t hurt her!” Aladdin shouted, but Abbas was whispering something beneath his breath, and Grandfather was whiter than his head covering.
"Do you still want this shrew for a bride, boy?” the Grand Vizier said. “Even if I steal the kingdom from underneath her? Be my guest, but give me the lamp, and I shall allow you to run to the ends of the earth, but if you refuse to hand it over quickly, she'll be dead."
"I don't know wha—" Aladdin started, but the Vizier cut him off.
"Don't you, though?" He sneered. "What did you wish for, boy, I wonder? Perhaps enough gold to sway a Sultan?"
Aladdin had one hand rolled into a fist, but the other one held something small behind his back.
"I just wanted her to be happy, that was all I wished," Aladdin said.
And the Vizier laughed a horrible cutting laugh—it was the sound of lightning as it struck the trees. It was the sound of fire coming.
"Don't you try and summon the genie, boy, despite what your dear friend Abbas is whispering in your ear. No doubt, he’s the one who told you of its existence to begin with. You'll be dead before any magic can be made. You'll be dead before you can begin to make another wish."
Genie?
It was then I remembered what Abbas had said about my fortune changing, how he’d been so convinced of it then.
Aladdin swallowed heavily but pulled from behind his back an unremarkable oil lamp. It was so small, so ordinary looking. I couldn't understand why the Grand Vizier was making such a fuss over it.
He neared Aladdin, slithering like a snake, just until within striking distance, but stopped.
Aladdin still didn’t give it up.
"And now you realize what you have lost. You could have had anything, boy. Power, riches, kingdoms. But you squandered it. There were three wishes, you know, three wishes only once every hundred years, and you wasted one you never should have had on a girl who will never be happy. Not if I have anything to say about it."
In a move so swift I almost missed it, the Grand Vizier finally did strike. He seemed to lengthen in height, just as he grabbed and turned.
At first, I thought his shoulders were shaking with laughter, but they were shaking with effort. The Grand Vizier had wadded up the end of his tunic and was rubbing wildly at the lamp.
Madness, I thought, it must be madness, but then clouds of smoke began to ripple out of the lamp. They rolled in every direction—black and blue, purple and gray, and a familiar feeling of magic along wit
h it.
The magic of the storm last night, that savage power was now engulfing everything, and with that magic, came a man.
No, not a man, something other, something else.
The being had skin the purple-black of thunderclouds, somehow all the colors and none of them at once. He had no legs, just more of the whirling clouds where they should have been, arms even thicker than the man’s arms who were choking me.
"Genie, for my first wish, I want the princess cursed." He said the word like a roll of thunder, but I couldn't hold on to the sound of it in my head.
Cursed.
"No," my grandfather roared.
"No," Aladdin cried.
"It is already done." The genie simply bowed his head in reply.
I felt nothing. No change. There was no sharpness, only the fear that couldn’t spread any further in my veins. I was already at my limit. My heart was being squeezed too hard… By the general and the universe.
But the Grand Vizier wasn’t satisfied. He appeared murderous, and he considered the genie’s words and paced the open space of the room. As if he wasn’t afraid of that magic, even though any sane person should be.
I could hear the wind from the power beating down the halls of the palace—this was the epicenter—the storm last night must have been what happened in the aftermath of a wish.
"What do you mean, it is already done?" the Grand Vizier asked him carefully.
"All those who wear the Amulet of the Changed are cursed." The genie’s voice was strange as he spoke. Like a thin layer of water running across jagged stones.
The Vizier spat, but I couldn't make peace with what he'd uttered. The truth of it. I fought against the general's arm, until he was forced to use both of them to hold me.
I couldn't be cursed.... And yet, if I was, what about my mother? Was that why she—
The Vizier swore at the genie and shouted. I couldn't understand why such magic didn’t just snuff the life right out of him. It pressed down as if it could extinguish the light out of the entire room.
"You tricked me." The Grand Vizier found his voice at last.