Shadow Spinner

by Susan Fletcher

  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.”

  Chapter 5

  She Needs You

  LESSONS FOR LIFE AND STORYTELLING

  The thing about Shahrazad was, she didn’t give up. When the Sultan was killing a new wife every night, and there were hardly any unmarried girls left in the city, and people were getting madder and madder about what was happening to all of their daughters, and it looked as if there might be a revolt, Shahrazad didn’t just throw up her hands and quit. She did something about it.

  I think that’s why I admired her so much. Of course, she was clever and learned and beautiful, and she knew how to tell stories in the night. I admired her for those things, too. But the important thing was, she didn’t give up.

  Unlike my mother, for instance.

  The 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.”

  Dunyazad moved toward me. I shrank away, clambered to my feet, stumbled backward, scattering dates and almonds on the carpet. But still Dunyazad came, until her face was just a finger-length from my own. “You’re going to tell us, do you hear me? Everything you know about Julnar’s son. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”

  “Stop it, Sister.” Shahrazad’s voice was sharp.

  “But she knows!”

  “I don’t think she does.”

  “You’re too trusting!” Dunyazad wailed. “You’ve always been too trusting!”

  “Sit down, Dunya!” Shahrazad said firmly. “You, too, Marjan. We’ll sort this through. Both of you! Sit down!”

  Dunyazad set her mouth in a hard little frown, with dimples on either side. But she obeyed with a sudden meekness that surprised me. I sat down, too, carefully covering my bad foot with my gown. And then I had to tell them all about getting lost in the bazaar, about the blind storyteller, about how Auntie Chava had taken me away. I could see that Dunyazad still didn’t believe I hadn’t heard the rest of the tale. She sat unmoving, with her arms crossed, eyeing me hard.

  But Shahrazad believed me—I could tell. “If storytellers in the bazaar are telling of Julnar,” she mused, “her story must be widely known. And yet I’ve never heard of her. She’s not in any of my books—”

  “Are you certain?” Dunyazad asked. “You have thousands of tales in your books.”

  “I—like Marjan—would remember,” Shahrazad said. “I’ve read them all and, even though with some it was years ago, the Julnar tale doesn’t sound remotely familiar. Besides, sorting through all my books for one particular tale would be like sifting the desert to find a grain of sugar. And we need it soon.”

  “Where did the Sultan hear it?” Dunyazad asked. “Did he say?”

  “No. It was when he was a boy. His nurse is long dead. And we couldn’t ask the Khatun—”

  “Allah forbid!” Dunyazad said.

  “None of the eunuchs were here then. Our father—”

  “Maybe he knows it!”

  “Maybe. But I don’t know when he’ll be back. Since he’s traveling with the Sultans brother, they’ll probably be stopping along the way to visit with his ministers in different parts of the kingdom.”

  Their father, I knew, was the Sultan’s vizier. He was in charge of supplying new wives. Auntie Chava once told me that he didn’t like this—didn’t approve of it at all. But the Sultan had banished his previous vizier for refusing to give him new wives to kill. This vizier—the old one—had been the Sultan’s father’s vizier and had known the Sultan all his life. The Sultan had trusted him above all other men. So the lesson was clear.

  Even less had Shahrazad’s father liked the idea of giving his own daughter as a wife to the Sultan. But she had begged him to let her try to end the killings, and at last he had relented.

  “I can stretch out the part that Marjan told me for three more nights,” Shahrazad was saying now, “but after that. . .”

  Dunyazad sighed. “Well, if she won’t tell you”—she glanced at me—“you’ll just have to tell the Sultan you don’t know it. Surely he wont. . .” She swallowed. “Surely that will be all right. He’s grown fond of you, Sister, I can tell. Just distract him with another good tale. You can get one from Marjan. Unless she refuses to tell you anything, and then we’ll know for certain whose creature she is.”

  “I’d be happy to tell you . . .” I stammered. “I know many tales, and I was thinking . . . There are five or six unusual ones that you might not know, and I’d be glad . . .” I trailed off, looking at Shahrazad.

  She wasn’t listening. She was looking down, hugging her pillow, biting her lower lip.

  “What?” Dunyazad asked her.

  Shahrazad shook her head.

  “Sister, what?”

  “I ... I told him I knew it.”

  “You what?” Dunyazad’s voice was a whisper.

  “Not in so many words. But he told me how he loved the tale about Julnar’s son, and he asked me if I would tell it, and he seemed so eager, so happy about it. Like a child he seemed. Like an innocent child.” She sighed, gave a sad little laugh, then turned to me. “I was certain you’d know it. Though now that seems foolish. And I led him to believe . . . that I knew it. That I would tell it next.”

  I had the strangest sensation then, as if
my heart were cracking in my chest, as if it were crumbling apart like dried clay.

  The Sultan abhorred deception. He was famous for it. There was a saying in the city: like lying to the Sultan. Eating poison was like lying to the Sultan. Stepping into a nest of cobras was like lying to the Sultan. Plunging a dagger into your heart was like lying to the Sultan.

  I had so wanted to help Shahrazad; I had felt so good thinking I had helped her. But I had only made things worse.

  Dunyazad broke the silence. “When? When did you tell him that? Not when you told the story. Not when I was there.”

  “When he summoned me later this morning. To see our new son.”

  “But why did you say that? That you knew the rest of the tale?”

  Shahrazad shrugged. “He seemed so pleased with me . . . with the baby. And he mentioned the tale again. He asked me straight out if I knew it. I didn’t want to displease him. Didn’t dare! You know that, Dunya, how careful I have to be.” She turned to me. “When I tell him certain tales, I must do it in the most delicate way, wrapping stories inside of stories, so he can learn without knowing that I’m teaching. Or at least—without either of us having to acknowledge it. And he’s never requested anything from me before now. If I were to refuse him his only request—”

  “Only request!” Dunyazad cried. “Save that you keep him entertained to his satisfaction every single night, without ever repeating yourself, whether or not you’ve even given birth that day, or he’ll—”

  “Hush! Keep your voice down, Sister! Walls have rats and rats have ears!”

  I cleared my throat; they both looked at me. “Maybe,” I ventured, “since it was so long ago when the Sultan heard the tale, maybe he’s forgotten exactly how it goes. And I could . . . make up a story about Julnar’s son.”

  Shahrazad looked at me wonderingly. “You can do it just like that?” she asked. “Make up a whole new story?”

  I shrugged. “You can, too.”

  “For me it’s hard. And my stories aren’t very good.”

  “But I’m sure they are”