Queen of Cahraman: A Retelling of Aladdin (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 3)

by Lucy Tempest

  “H-how was I supposed to foresee getting rid of her would lead to th-this?”

  “You knew she was a witch! What good ever came from angering witches?”

  As if dodging the sense in his words, she looked away from him in my direction, and her face blanched.

  She swayed. “You.”

  Before I could say anything, Loujaïne launched herself at me.

  It took a second to realize her target stood beside me. My mother.

  “How dare you show your face here,” she shrieked, grabbing handfuls of her shawl. “Came back to gloat? See how far we’ve all fallen since you left?”

  Fury burned through my blood like oil. I was about to slap Loujaïne’s hands away when my mother raised a finger to me.

  “I promise you, I’m here to help,” my mother said quietly.

  Not listening, Loujaïne shook her, if only by how much she herself was shaking, tears flowing down her cheeks. “You ruined my life!”

  “I didn’t do anything to you,” my mother insisted, watching Loujaïne with the last thing I’d expected in her eyes. Pity. Her patient gentleness jarred me more than Loujaine’s feeble hysteria. “I have never used my magic to harm anyone, ever.”

  “You ruined me the day you cursed my child…” Loujaïne’s voice cracked, shoulders shaking, eyes haunted. “My baby. They took my baby. Told me he was cursed, was a demon, that I was damaged and returned me home dishonored, divorced—told everyone I was barren. Threw us both away like we were trash—all because you cursed me.”

  Whatever patience my mother fled her as she grabbed her shoulders. “Look at me—Loujaïne, look at me.” Loujaïne seemed to snap out of a daze, focused red-swollen eyes on her. “I didn’t do anything to your child, and I think deep down you know it.”

  “Then why did he turn out like that? Why would they fear him? Why would they kill him?” she blubbered, sounding completely broken, hunched and shaking like she was smaller, younger, weak and afraid. Like the girl I’d seen in the Valley of Memories.

  Her resemblance to Fairuza had always been in the cold exquisiteness of their shared beauty. But Fairuza, the proud, ambitious, seemingly ruthless princess had turned out to be a scared girl fighting to save her life. Now her aunt seemed to be a damaged one, who’d known irrevocable loss and rejection, and had hardened in an effort to never experience either again.

  “How he looks is nothing wrong or dangerous. It’s a bit like…red hair,” my mother said. “You know how people used to accuse women of adultery whenever they birthed a redheaded child? Then we found that trait could skip generations or needed both parents to have the trait in their ancestry?”

  Sniffing loudly, Loujaïne nodded.

  “Your son has a similar state.” She softly stroked her shoulders. “It’s not your fault. It’s not a curse either. It just happens.”

  Loujaïne cried harder, falling into my mother, still clutching her shawl. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I just wanted to make it out of childbirth alive. I was just a girl. I was happy to be with the man I wanted…to be doing my duty as a princess and a wife…to start my own family…then they told me I birthed a demon and wouldn’t let me see him…threw him away to die…” She buried her face into her shoulder and wailed, “Witches took my mother’s life while she was still pregnant! What else was I supposed to think?”

  “It’s alright.” My mother shushed her, stroking her back. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I was only seventeen,” Loujaïne whispered shakily.

  That made my heart twist as I remembered the glimpse of her postpartum. Younger than me, much more vulnerable than I’d ever been, yet fighting with Azal’s father, demanding her baby. Her horror when he’d told her what they’d done to him still echoed within me.

  She finally seemed to be running of out of tears and shudders. “I lost my husband, my child, and I was publically humiliated for years, for being divorced, for being barren, for having my nephew—my only chance at raising a child—favor that witch. She knew. She knew everything and taunted me. Told me that Azal married you. Then she let Cyrus keep that boy because she knew how he would make me feel. It killed me every day to see him, to see the child I could have had, see how big and strong and noble he could have grown, if they didn’t throw him away, if they didn’t kill him.”

  Cyrus came closer, touching her gently. “They tried, but they didn’t kill him. Ayman is your child.”

  Loujaïne shook her head, refusing to look at him. “My child is dead.”

  “He’s not, look at him!” Cyrus pulled her off my mother, turning her to face Ayman. “He has Azal’s nose and brows and jaw, and now I think of it, your cheekbones and eyes. He was only born with the same coloring as the White Shadow of Avesta. They’re only people who look different from most, that’s all.”

  I rushed to my mother’s side, pressing her to my side as we watched Loujaïne’s eyes fly open in shock, taking in Ayman, seeming to consider for the first time that he could be her son.

  Then she lurched, shaking her head. “If you’re citing the White Shadow then none of your explanations could be real. He’s a fairytale, spun from someone’s imagination.”

  “Actually, the White Shadow was a historical figure,” Esfandiar piped up cheerfully. “I knew him myself.”

  Loujaïne blinked at Esfandiar. “And who is this madman?”

  “I am Esfandiar of Gypsum.” He bowed deeply before a stunned Loujaïne, his yellow eyes crackling with eagerness. “You must be a descendant of Queen Zafira as well. You have her cheekbones, and her eyes, but not their color. Her Majesty’s eyes were the most wondrous of blues, like sapphires in a—”

  “Would you please shut up?” Cyrus ordered, shooting Esfandiar with a hail of dislike, only tempered by the hope that his method would end up saving Ayman. Then he focused back on his aunt, cajoling her. “‘Ametti, please, he really is your son. He was saved from the desert by the simurgh outside…”

  “Simurgh?”

  As if hearing them, the simurgh poked her head through the balcony, making Loujaïne shriek and cling to Cyrus.

  Cyrus soothed her. “See? So many things we haven’t seen for ourselves until we thought they are might be just stories are real. Ayman is your son and that was why Nariman insisted he stayed with us. Because he was our blood, and so he could be with me, and you, so she can give him a home, one he was denied. If she taunted you, too, I don’t know…did she ever tell you he was your son?”

  “She did, once, and if I resented her before that, I hated her afterwards. To torment me with this idea when she knew what really happened to my child…”

  “It wasn’t a lie. She was trying to give you back the child you lost. When you refused to believe her, when she had no way to prove it to you, well…you’re both headstrong women and you fought over those you should have loved together. I have no excuse for either of you.” He exhaled forcibly. “But you’re both not important here. Ayman is. He was thrown away, yet he survived, and grew up into everything any man could hope for in a friend, or a mother could hope for in a son. I know now it wasn’t you who denied him a first chance at life, but you owe him a second…”

  “Mithras,” she suddenly said solemnly.

  Cyrus blinked at her. “What?”

  “His name was meant to be Mithras.” Loujaïne’s breath hitched. “I—I gave birth to him at night—it was dim and I was exhausted and I thought he was blond, like my grandfather, King Mithrenes. So I simplified his name so people wouldn’t mispronounce it. Then another nurse came in with a lantern…and I knew he was actually colorless and—and I didn’t care. He was my baby and I thought him the most beautiful thing in the world. I went to sleep as they took him away, and woke up in my bed, discarded, uncleaned and that awful man was standing over me.

  “I asked for my baby and he-he told me he was a curse, that I brought shame upon his line, and they couldn’t let anyone know…that they got rid of him… I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t te
ll anyone otherwise when they said I gave birth to a stillborn, that I was infertile and it was the product of a fertility potion.”

  Cyrus loosened his arms as he watched her with an unreadable expression. The already oppressive mood dipped further, chilling me to the bone.

  I’d already known most of that, but hearing it from her, seeing her anguish was terrible. I could also feel my mother stiffening beside me. She hadn’t known of the extent of Loujaïne’s abuse at the hand of her husband’s family.

  Loujaïne stepped away from Cyrus as she wiped her face, started regaining her composure. “While my brother had his own disastrous marriage, he still got his heir and became king, and my sister went to the end of the Folkshore to become a queen and have many children. But I was sent home, my child killed, and myself shunned. And I wasn’t even given the chance to raise you, the motherless child of my own blood. That honor went to that witch.” She hunched, arms wrapped around her middle. “I couldn’t stand her being there, a living reminder of all our tragedies. My mother, Jumana, Azal, my child—she had to go. The only way I could feel at peace, to have a purpose and a place in my family was if she left never to return.”

  Cyrus exhaled heavily. “And you finally got Father to banish her. Which led to all of this.”

  “I just wanted her to go away,” she rasped. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “None of that matters now. What matters is that we undo everything.”

  Loujaïne looked at my mother and I with reddened eyes. “You told me your mother was dead.”

  I nodded. “I thought she was. We’ve just found each other again.”

  An overwhelming array of emotions sailed across her eyes. I had a hunch some were inspired by what we represented. Mother and child reunited after years. Something she could now have.

  Silence permeated the room, before I reached out to touch her. “You couldn’t save him once, but you can now.”

  Her lips worked. “What if he isn’t my child? I can’t bear having this hope dashed. It’s why I never wanted to even suspect he could be my son.”

  “If he isn’t your child, then we all lose him,” Cyrus said. “But he is. You can have him back. We can all have him back.”

  She turned to the bloodstained statue, tension stiffening her back. “I can only hope.”

  At her nod, Cyrus carefully cut Loujaïne’s hand, and she set her bleeding hand on Ayman’s chest.

  Blood flowed, bright red and fluid and far too much to be coming from that cut, like it was spilling from his heart. And every place it splattered, a crack appeared.

  The cracks deepened and spread throughout the statue.

  I was shaking with fear it would only break him apart, then he’d be gone for real. But as piece after another burst apart, landing at our feet, it revealed the flesh of the man trapped within.

  My heart was bursting with elation long before Ayman fell into our arms and the scimitar he’d been holding over his head hit the floor with a loud clang.

  Long, white hair in disarray, pale face pink with exertion and reddish eyes wide with confusion, Ayman held onto both Cyrus and myself as he found his feet and looked around with the reserved shock only he was capable of.

  After he’d given everything and everyone a good, hard look, especially Cherine—who waved at him with an awkward grin—Ayman asked Cyrus and I, “I assume I didn’t miss the wedding?”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  To say Ayman was flabbergasted was an understatement.

  It wasn’t like he showed it. I only felt it, because I now knew him. His silence and expressionless were explicit with his deepening shock. About the state of Cahraman, his true parentage, his relationship to Cyrus, and the way he’d been broken out of his stone prison. He clearly, and thankfully, didn’t remember a thing since Nariman had petrified him. He didn’t seem to remember much about the confrontation with her itself.

  As Cyrus filled him in, he left out my own revelation for me to tell, but I wasn’t ready for it yet. Instead, I tried to focus on my mother and Esfandiar as they discussed Post-Avestan desert kingdoms.

  I learned that Almaskham and all lands south of it were called the Jawaher—Jewel nations. I knew Almaskham meant ‘diamond in the rough’, but Cahraman and it’s original capital, Anbur, both meant ‘amber’ in the literary and common tongue.

  “The island of Iacoöt, named for Zafira’s father, means ‘ruby’,” continued Esfandiar.

  “A tradition her line keeps to this day,” my mother added. “King Xerxes named Loujaïne and Zomoroda ‘silver’ and ‘emerald’ respectively, for their eyes, I assume.”

  Esfandiar nodded enthusiastically. “Zafira herself, as you might guess, was named for her sapphire eyes.”

  It was safe to assume Esfandiar had been and remained in love with Cyrus’s ancestor. The fact that she was long dead must have been a jarring realization, but it seemed his release from a centuries-long imprisonment had made him a bit hysterical, augmenting an already gregarious personality, translating into this chatty, chipper mood.

  I soon couldn’t keep my attention away from the kitchen, where Ayman’s kept moving back and forth from Cherine to Cyrus to Loujaïne.

  He appeared baffled by Cherine’s affectionate behavior, relieved by Cyrus’s presence and unnerved by Loujaïne’s complete shift in personality.

  I believed he’d heard whispers of her story in Almaskham as nothing got totally suppressed, must have felt it could have been him that Loujaïne had supposedly discarded. That explained why he’d always watched her with those heavy eyes. Now he knew she was his mother, he seemed in as much of a loss as her about how to handle the new dynamic.

  Suddenly, the simurgh landed back on the balcony. It poked her head inside before letting out a deafening squawk at the sight of Ayman alive and well. From his reaction, it seemed this was a part Cyrus hadn’t gotten to yet. He burst to his feet, stood open-mouthed.

  Then he bounded towards the simurgh and, arms wide open, he threw himself at her.

  The simurgh did something new. She enfolded him in her wings, letting him hug her, headbutting him, and making a deep, purring noise like that of a giant cat.

  All the water I’d drunk seemed to be streaming back from my eyes as I watched the brother I’d never known I had in the maternal embrace of the bird who’d almost eaten me.

  Then I noticed Loujaïne’s stricken face, and my heart lurched in unwilling sympathy. There was no question how it made her feel to witness the way he was reuniting with the one he considered his true mother. She might have saved his life, but it would take a long while for him, for them, to learn how to be mother and son from scratch.

  If they ever did. If we had time.

  When he finally returned to Cyrus’s side, I drew in a bolstering breath and went to sit beside him.

  Without any preliminaries, I blurted out, “I’m Azal’s daughter, too.”

  His pale brows pinched and his purple eyes flashed red. He stared at me, right into my soul, as everything around us seemed to hold its breath.

  Then he finally shrugged. “I always fantasized about having a family. Especially a sister. Someone strong and funny and loyal and brave—and a little crazy. Then I met you and I thought, ‘Yes, just like her.’”

  I threw myself at him the way he’d hurled himself at the simurgh.

  I only managed to peel myself off him, mainly so as not to drown him, and because I found Cora grabbing Esfandiar by the scruff of his neck. I had to step in before she damaged our main, if defective, weapon. I didn’t know if even an immortal could be impervious to her blunt force and wrath.

  As I separated them, she turned on me. “Why isn’t he obeying me and getting food?” The growl of her stomach was almost as loud her voice as she shook the bottle. “Didn’t you find him in here?”

  “Not anyone who holds the bottle gets to make demands.” I tapped my ring. “I’m the only one who can make wishes of him, remember?”

  Cora goggled a
t Esfandiar. “You mean he was in your ring—too? How?”

  A quick explanation, about that and about how conjuring stuff wasn’t how his magic worked, made Cora glower down at him in frustration, before slamming hard into his shoulder and storming off. If he’d been human, she would have dislocated it. I somehow had a feeling Cora was becoming something—more, before our very eyes.

  Just in time to defuse her agitation, Cyrus announced they’d go get food.

  As Ayman jumped up to follow him, I objected. He’d been de-stoned an hour ago after months of petrification. He insisted he felt as fresh as if he’d been napping for said months.

  They were gone for only a couple of hours. With the guards in disarray after the Cora Revolt, and our arrival, they didn’t even have to steal food. When some people recognized their prince, they all offered whatever they could. Cyrus didn’t only come back laden with food enough for a week, but with a strengthened resolve to be the prince and savior they all needed.

  During dinner Cyrus talked the most, detailing our trip through Barzakh and beyond. I found myself detaching and watching the gathered group.

  In the strangest way, it was almost like a family dinner.

  Here I sat with my mother, my half-brother, my betrothed and his aunt, two of my three closest friends and my pseudo-jann, who was old enough to be our collective uncle.

  This small, intimate setting was one of the simple things I’d always longed for back on Ericura, where my dreams were limited to marrying any local boy, raising my children alongside Bonnie’s, and to having an extended family.

  Now my dreams of one had come about through a nightmare. One that might never end.

  My musings came to an end when Cyrus began to detail the plan to get back into the palace. He’d barely said a few sentences when Cherine interrupted him.

  “This will not work.”