Tales of Wonder

by Jane Yolen

  “But not always,” reminded the wind. “Nothing is always.”

  “Is it sad, then, beyond the wall?”

  “Sometimes sad and sometimes happy,” said the wind.

  “But different each day?” asked Danina.

  “Very different.”

  “How strange,” Danina said. “Here things are always the same. Always beautiful. Happy. Good.”

  “How sad,” said the wind. “How dull.” And he leaped over the wall and blew out into the world.

  “Come back,” shouted Danina, rushing to the wall. But her voice was lost against the stones.

  Just then her father came into the garden. He saw his daughter standing by the wall and crying to the top. He ran over to her.

  “Who are you calling? Who has been here?” he demanded.

  “The wind,” said Danina, her eyes bright with memory. “He sang me his song.”

  “The wind does not sing,” said her father. “Only men and birds sing.”

  “This was no bird,” said his daughter.

  “Then,” thought her father, “it must have been a man.” And he resolved to keep Danina from the garden.

  Locked out of her garden, Danina began to wander up and down the long corridors of the house, and what once had seemed like a palace to her began to feel like a prison. Everything seemed false. The happy smiles of the servants she saw as smiles of pity for her ignorance. The gay dancing seemed to hide broken hearts. The paintings disguised sad thoughts. And soon Danina found herself thinking of the wind at every moment, humming his song to the walls, his song about the world—sometimes happy, sometimes sad, but always full of change and challenge.

  Her father, who was not cruel but merely foolish, could not keep her locked up completely. Once a day, for an hour, he allowed Danina to walk along the beach. But three maidservants walked before her. Three manservants walked behind. And the merchant himself watched from a covered chair.

  One chilly day in the fall, when the tops of the waves rolled in white to the shore, Danina strolled on the beach. She pulled her cape around her for warmth. And the three maidservants before her and the three manservants behind shivered in the cold. Her father in his covered chair pulled his blanket to his chin and stared out to sea. He was cold and unhappy, but he was more afraid to leave Danina alone.

  Suddenly the wind blew across the caps of the waves, tossing foam into the air.

  Danina turned to welcome him, stretching out her arms. The cape billowed behind her like the wings of a giant bird.

  “Who are you?” thundered Danina’s father, jumping out of his chair.

  The wind spun around Danina and sang:

  Who am I?

  I call myself the wind.

  I am not always happy.

  I am not always kind.

  “Nonsense,” roared Danina’s father. “Everyone here is always happy and kind. I shall arrest you for trespassing.” And he shouted, “Guards!”

  But before the guards could come, Danina had spread her cape on the water. Then she stepped onto it, raised one corner, and waved goodbye to her father. The blowing wind filled the cape’s corner like the sail of a ship.

  And before Danina’s father had time to call out, before he had time for one word of repentance, she was gone. And the last thing he saw was the billowing cape as Danina and the wind sailed far to the west into the ever-changing world.

  Brothers of the Wind

  The Foal

  In the far reaches of the desert, where men and horses are said to dwell as brothers, a foal was born with wings. The foal was unremarkable in color, a muted brown with no markings. However, the wings—small and crumpled, with fragile ribs and a membrane of gray skin—made it the center of all eyes.

  But the sheik who owned the foal was not pleased. He stood over the newborn, pulling on his graying beard. He shook his head and furrowed his brow. Then he turned quickly, his white robes spinning about him, casting dervish shadows on the ground.

  “This must be Allah’s jest,” he said contemptuously to the slave who tended his horses. “But I do not find it amusing. If horses were meant to be birds, they would be born with beaks and an appetite for flies.”

  “It is so,” said the slave.

  “Take the foal out into the desert,” said the sheik. “Perhaps the sands will welcome this jest with better humor than I.”

  “At once, master,” said the slave. He spoke to the sheik’s back, for his master had already left the tent.

  The slave clapped his hands twice. At the sound, so sharp in the desert’s silence, a boy appeared. His name was Lateef, the tender one, the one full of pity and tears. He was an orphan’s orphan and small for his age, with dark hair and skin the color of an old coin. His eyes burned fiercely, black suns in a bronze sky, but they were always quick to cloud over. And though Lateef was handsome and hardworking, the sheik’s chief slave knew that the boy’s tenderness was a great fault and that he was often the butt of jokes. Indeed, without a living mother or father to teach him other ways or to protect him from his tormentors, he was at the mercy of all. Lateef was always given the hardest and most unpleasant chores to do. He was the lowest slave in the sheik’s household.

  “I am here,” Lateef said in his gentle voice.

  “Ah, the tender one,” said the keeper of horses. “Do you see this foal? This new one? It is not pleasing to our master. It is Allah’s jest. For if a horse were meant to be a bird, it would make a nest of sticks and straw.”

  Lateef looked down at the foal as it sucked contentedly at its mother’s teat. He loved being with the horses, for only with them did Lateef feel brave and strong. The little foal’s sides moved in and out, and at each movement the fragile, membranous wings seemed to flutter. Lateef’s hand moved to touch one wing, and his heart filled with wonder.

  But the keeper of horses spoke cruelly, cutting across Lateef’s thoughts. “You are to take this jest far out beyond the sight of the oasis and leave it in the sand.” He turned in imitation of the sheik, his robes spinning around him.

  Lateef spoke as the turn began. “Perhaps …” he said daringly. “Perhaps it is not Allah’s jest at all. Perhaps … perhaps …” and he spoke so softly, he almost did not say it aloud. “Perhaps it is Allah’s test.”

  The keeper of horses stopped in midturn, his exit ruined, his robes collapsing in confused folds and entangling his ankles. “You piece of carrion,” he said in a loud, tight voice. “Do you dare to question the sheik?”

  “Yes. No. But I thought …” Lateef began.

  “You have no thoughts,” said the keeper of horses. “You are a slave. A slave of slaves. You will do only as you are ordered.”

  “So let it be,” murmured Lateef, his eyes filling. He looked meekly at the ground until the keeper of horses had left the tent. But though his eyes were on the ground, his mind was not. Questions spun inside his head. This wonder, this foal with wings—might it not truly be Allah’s test? And what if he failed this test as he seemed to fail everything else? He had to think about it. And, even though a slave must not think, he could not stop himself.

  “And do it at once!” came the command through the tent flap as the keeper of horses poked his head in for one last word. “You are not only too tender but also too slow.”

  Lateef took a wineskin that hung from a leather thong on the side of the tent to fill it with milk from the foal’s mother. He shouldered the foal aside and softly squeezed the milk in steady streams into an earthen bowl, then carefully poured it from the bowl into the skin flask. While Lateef worked, the foal nuzzled his ear and even tried to suck on it.

  When the skin flask was full, Lateef knelt and put his head under the foal’s belly, settling the small creature around his shoulders. Then he stood slowly, holding on to the foal’s thin legs. The foal made only one tiny sound, between a sigh and a whicker, and then lay still. Lateef kept up a continual flow of words, almost a song.

  “Little brother, new and weak,” he crooned, “
we must go out into the sun. Do not fear the eye of God, for all that has happened, all that will happen, is already written. And if it is written that we brothers will survive, it will surely be so.”

  Then Lateef walked out of the tent.

  The Desert

  Lateef and the foal both blinked as the bright sun fell upon them. From the inside of the tent, the mare cried out, an anguished farewell. The foal gave a little shudder and was still.

  But Lateef was not still. He looked around once at the village of tents that rimmed the oasis. He watched as some slave girls, younger even than he, bent over the well and drew up water. He had known them all his life, but they were still strangers to him. His mother had died at his birth; her mother had died the same way. He was indeed an orphan’s orphan, a no-man’s child, a slave of slaves. He would leave this home of familiar strangers with no regrets and take his burden—jest or test—out into the burning sands. He had thought about it, though thinking was not for slaves. He had thought about it and decided that he would stay with the foal. His orders were to take it out into the sands. And perhaps the keeper of horses expected them both to die there. But what if their deaths were not written? Could that be part of Allah’s test? He would go out into the sands as ordered, and then turn north to Akbir. Akbir, the city of dreams. If it were written anywhere that the foal was to live, in Akbir that writing could be understood.

  It was noon when Lateef set out, and the fierce eye of the sun was at its hottest. It was a time when no son of the desert would ordinarily dare the sands. But Lateef had no choice. If he did not leave at once, he would be beaten for disobedience. If he did not leave at once, his courage—what little there was—would fail him. And if he did not leave at once, some other slave would take the foal and leave it out on the desert, and then the foal with wings would surely die.

  North to Akbir. Lateef felt the sand give way beneath his feet. It poured away from his sandals like water. Walking in the desert was hard, and made harder still by the heavy burden he was carrying on his back.

  He turned once to look at the oasis. It was now only a shimmering line on the horizon. He could see no movement there. He continued until even that line disappeared, until his legs were weak and his head burned beneath his dulband. Only then did he stop, kneel down, and place the foal gently onto the sand. He shaded it with his own shadow.

  The foal looked up at the boy, its eyes brown and pleading.

  “Only one small drink now,” cautioned Lateef. He held the wineskin out and pressed its side. Milk streamed into the foal’s mouth and down the sides of its cheeks.

  “Aiee,” Lateef said to himself, “too quickly!” He gave one more small squeeze on the wineskin, then capped it. All the while he watched the foal. It licked feebly at the remaining milk on its muzzle. Its brown flanks heaved in and out. At each outward breath, the membranous wings were pushed up, but they seemed to have no life of their own.

  Lateef sat back on his heels and matched his breathing to the foal’s. Then, tentatively, he reached over and touched one wing. It looked like a crumpled veil, silken soft and slightly slippery to the touch. Yet it was tougher than it looked. Lateef was reminded suddenly of the dancing women he had glimpsed going in and out of the sheik’s tent. They had that same soft toughness about them.

  He touched the wing again. Then, holding it by the thin rib with one hand, he stretched it out as far as it would go. The wing unfolded like a leaf, and Lateef could see the dark brown veins running through it and feel the tiny knobs of bone. The foal gave a sudden soft grunt and, at the same moment, Lateef felt the wing contract. He let it go, and it snapped shut with a soft swishing sound.

  “So,” he said to the foal, “you can move the wing. You can shut it even if you cannot open it. That is good. But now I wonder: will you ever fly? Perhaps that is Allah’s real test.”

  He stood up and looked around. All was sand. There was no difference between what was behind him and what was before. Yet he was a boy of the desert. He knew how to find directions from the traveling sun. Akbir lay to the north.

  “Come, winged one,” he said, bending down to lift the foal to his shoulders again. “Come, little brother. There is no way for us but north.”

  The foal made no noise as Lateef set out again. And except for Lateef’s own breathing, the desert was silent. It drank up all sound. So, with the sand below, the sky above, and only the wind-sculpted dunes to break the unending horizon, Lateef walked on. He felt that he labored across a painted picture, so still was the land.

  Then suddenly, rising up from the place where sand and sky meet, Lateef saw a great watery shape. First it was a beast, then a towered city, then an oasis surrounded by trees. The changes were slow, one image running into the next as a river is absorbed into the sea. Something in Lateef leaped with the sight, and for a moment he let himself cry out in hope. But as the tears filled his eyes, Lateef reminded himself: “It is not a beast, not an oasis, not Akbir. It is only a mirage. Sun on the brain and sand in the eye.” He spoke over his shoulder to the foal. “And I wonder what it is you see there, little brother.” Then, closing his eyes and heart to the mocking vision, he trudged on, over the wind-scoured ripples, the changing, changeless designs on the desert floor.

  When night came, he walked many miles farther under the light of the indifferent stars. Finally exhausted, he set his burden down and slept. But his sleep was fitful and full of dreams. He dreamed of sand, of sun, of stars. But he never once dreamed of the little horse that had curled against his chest, confident of the coming day.

  The City

  Before dawn, before the sun could once more coax the shadow beasts and cloud cities to rise, Lateef set out again. He let the foal suck on the bottle and allowed himself a few sips as well. He dared not think about the coming heat or that his left foot had a cramp in it, or that his shoulders ached from the burdensome foal, or that his heart could not stop trembling with fear. He refused to let himself think about those things. Instead he thought about Akbir.

  Akbir. His great-grandmother had been from Akbir. The daughter of a kitchenmaid, without a father to claim her, she had been sold into slavery. To the father of the father of Lateef’s master, the sheik. Lateef understood well that being the son of so many generations of slaves made him a person worth nothing. Less than nothing. Yet he dared to hope that, in Akbir, the home of his ancestors, he might change his position. With the foal as his touchstone, might he not even become a free man? A trainer of horses? An owner of stables?

  He closed his eyes against the rising fantasy. Best, he cautioned himself, to think of only one thing at a time. Allah’s jest or Allah’s test. After all, he had no real idea what he would be able to do when he reached the pebbled streets, the mosaic mosques, the towered palaces of Akbir.

  Walking forward quickly, his mind on the desert and not on his dreams, Lateef continued on. Even when he passed some horsemen at last and a caravan that jangled across his path for hours, he did not permit himself to dream. And in all that time, he spoke to no one other than the foal with whom he shared the wineskin.

  But Lateef was not fooled into thinking that they had managed to come so far without the help of some unacknowledged miracle. After all, though he was an orphan, the great-grandson of a city dweller, he had been reared in the desert. His people had seventeen different words for sand, and not one of them was a compliment. He well knew that a solitary traveler could not hope to walk across the desert under the sun’s unrelenting eye without more to stave off thirst than a single flask of mare’s milk. And yet they had done so, the boy and the foal, and were alive as they finally stumbled onto one of the dirt-packed back streets of Akbir. Still, as if afraid of giving tongue to the word “miracle”—as if speech might unmake it—Lateef remained silent. He set the foal down and then, as it stood testing its wobbly legs against the ground, Lateef bowed down and kissed the road at the foal’s feet.

  The foal took a few steps down a road that led off to one side. Then it turned i
ts head toward Lateef and whickered.

  “Aiee, brother. That road it shall be,” Lateef said. He caught up with the foal easily and gave it the last of the milk. Then he stroked its velvety nose and lifted it for one last ride upon his back.

  Surprisingly there was no one in the street, nor in the roadways they crossed, nor in the souk, the marketplace, where stalls and stands carried handwork, and foodstuffs enough to feed a multitude. Puzzling at this, Lateef explored further, passing from dirt roads to pebbled streets, from pebbled streets to roadways studded with colorful patterned stones.

  The foal nuzzled his ear, and at that moment Lateef heard a strange moaning. He turned and followed the sound until he came to a line of high walls. Standing in front of the walls were hundreds of people.

  Women, dressed in black mourning robes, cried out and poured sand upon their heads. Men in black pants and ragged shirts wailed and tore at their own beards. Even the children, in their best clothes, rolled over and over in the roadway, sobbing. And the name that he heard on every lip was “Al-Mansur. Al-Mansur.”

  Lateef was amazed. He had never seen such extravagant grief. The dwellers of the desert, with whom he had lived all his life, were proud of their ability to endure tragedy and pain. Water, they said, was too precious to be wasted in tears. Their faces never showed hurt. That was why Lateef, who cried at another’s pain and could not disguise his griefs, had been called “tender one” and despised by all.

  As Lateef watched the wailing men and women and children, he felt tears start down his own cheeks. Embarrassed, he went over to one young mourner who was rolling in the street and stopped him gently with his foot.

  “Tell me, city brother,” said Lateef, “for whom do we weep?”

  The boy looked up. “Oh, boy with horse shawl,” he began, “we cry because our great king of kings, the caliph Al-Mansur, is dying for want of a strange horse, a horse that he has seen only in his dreams. And though the caliph is a man of mighty dreams, he has always before been able to have whatever he dreamed. Only this time he cannot. And none of our doctors—the greatest physicians in the world—can cure him. They cannot cure him, for now he dreams of his death and, as it is written, there is no remedy for death.” Then the boy fell back and pulled up some of the pebbles in the street, digging in the dirt beneath them. He covered his head with this dirt and began wailing again, this time louder than before.