A Thousand Nights

by E. K. Johnston

  Better, she had had a taste of it. Whether she had seen that bird or called it down on me, she would have felt the power of it, and power was something I could spin as easily as she spun thread. I had taken the hearts of so many men in my time in Lo-Melkhiin’s body that it had become easy, too easy. Now I had a challenge ready-made. I did not know how to bend the heart of a woman, but Lo-Melkhiin did.

  WHEN HE RECOVERED, LO-MELKHIIN dined with me in my room. The serving girls brought in a second table—larger than the one where I ate, and where I kept my lamp and ball—and covered it with a soft blue cloth edged in gold. One girl trimmed all the wicks, and brought in more lamps so that we could see each other clearly as we ate. I watched their preparations with a sick heart. Even if we did not eat for an hour while they prepared, we would still have two hours between dinner and the time I went to sleep. I doubted he would leave me, particularly not if his mother had told him I had woven the attack as it happened, but I had no desire to learn what Lo-Melkhiin did to pass his evenings.

  The henna mistress came and took my hands in hers. She drew me out of the room and across the garden, to the bath. She did not have time, she said, for a full wash, but she could do my hands and my hair.

  I sat patiently while she worked henna into my hair, reddening it. Where her fingers brushed my neck, ears, and forehead, I knew she would leave henna prints on my skin. This she did on purpose, so that smallgods who were not in my family would know I had put the color in my hair. If it were done too neatly, they might think I had been born an oddity, and mark me for their purpose. I did not tell her that her efforts were in vain. I was purpose-marked already.

  She left my hair, and took up her stylus to draw the symbols on my hands. I could only watch in silence for a few moments before my curiosity overwhelmed me.

  “Henna mistress,” I said to her. “What are these symbols that you draw?”

  “Some I will tell you,” she said to me. “But, lady-bless, some are my family’s own secrets. Blessings of our smallgods that we are permitted to draw on others as gifts. Those, I will not give up.”

  “I understand,” I said to her.

  I had wondered what set a good henna artist apart from a lesser one. The mistress always worked on me, though I knew she had several apprentices and at least one daughter—a child of herding-age, had she lived in our father’s tents. Those girls might draw upon one another, or upon the spinners, but they did not touch me, even for practice. Now I knew why. If the henna mistress drew signs of power on my skin, she would want no others to interfere.

  “This one is for luck,” she said to me, and pointed at a wide circle with wings on it. There were several of them on my forearms, hidden in the pattern. “And these are for strength.”

  A tree started at the base of each of my palms, growing leafy branches into each of my fingers. She traced a line I knew to be the desert, and our father’s tents: my history. Then she turned my hands palm up, brought them together, and pulled them toward her own body. I looked down at the pale side of my forearms, pressed together by the way she held me. They were birds, half on each arm, and recognizable only when my hands were held as she had them now.

  “Lady-bless,” she said, and released me.

  “Thank you,” I said to her.

  If I dined with my husband, I would take all the aid I might receive.

  She did not explain any other symbols to me, but I could feel each one as she drew it on. They burned, like skin put too near a candle, when she started them. When she finished each one, the ache sank into my skin and ceased. Every one of them made me stronger, even if I did not know their meaning.

  At last she finished, and clapped her hands sharply. The other girls appeared as she folded away her kit, and began to coil my hair in the elaborate styles I had, at last, become accustomed to. Here again, there were patterns in plaits and pins, and I felt each bit woven and then sealed against me as the girls braided, looped, and secured.

  They brought out my dress, a blue that was several shades darker than the cloth that covered the table, but not yet so dark as the starless sky, and wrapped it around me. It covered the henna mistress’s birds, but I could feel them on my skin as though they flapped their wings against it. The dress was embroidered in dark purple thread as well, making the patterns difficult to see. Again, I needed no eyes and no touch to tell their path. I could not tell if any besides the henna mistress had done this on purpose, but I was as armored as I could be to face dinner and whatever followed with Lo-Melkhiin.

  The girls left me when their tasks were done. They were still afraid of me—though perhaps they were more afraid of the henna mistress, who supervised their work with eagle’s eyes—but they did not shirk. The last girl, who pinned my hem above my slippers after she put them on my feet, hesitated before she left. This was the girl who had brought me my tea on the very first day; though I had seen her several times since, we had not spoken since that time. She passed me a package, wrapped in silk scraps she must have begged from the weavers. Its smell betrayed it to me, and I bowed my head to her. I had not been able to find the tea myself, despite repeated trips to the kitchen and several conversations with the cook and the boys who ran his errands. She had brought it to me.

  “Thank you,” I said to her.

  “You are welcome, lady-bless,” she said to me.

  “Shoo, now, little bird,” said the henna mistress. I was not exactly sure to whom she spoke, and she sounded so like my sister’s mother that I moved before I thought. That made her laugh, to command her lady thus, and the serving girl was smiling as she took her leave. The henna mistress held out a hand. “I will take the tea, lady-bless,” she said to me. “They may search your rooms, but they do not search mine. If you need it, send for me. You always have an excuse to, because you can say you want the henna.”

  I passed the package to her, and she tucked it into her dress. There was too much of my own self that I could not control, but I had these women, and I would have this.

  “Now you must go,” she said to me. “Sit straight on your cushion. Speak only if he addresses you. Take small bites and chew them overlong before you swallow. Do not drink the tea until it has cooled, and if your hands shake, sit on them.”

  She did not lecture me for manners’ sake, but for fear’s. I nodded, mouth dry in the heavy warmth of the bath, and she embraced me as she would her own daughter.

  “Thank you,” I said to her.

  “May your smallgods find you, lady-bless,” she said to me. I had longed for conversation since coming to Lo-Melkhiin’s qasr, and it seemed that at last, some of the women were willing to risk attachment to me. I smiled at the henna mistress, and then she turned me around by my shoulders and pushed me out the door.

  The air in the corridor of the bathhouse was still full of that heavy heat, but the air in the water garden was cool. The sun was over the qasr walls, and all was shaded. A light breeze blew the scent of the evening-blossom flowers toward my rooms, which had all their doors and windows open to catch the wind. I could not linger, though, for Lo-Melkhiin waited for me at the entrance. When he saw me, he extended a hand, the perfect picture of courtliness, and I crossed the garden to meet him.

  “My wife,” he said to me, his warm fingers closing around mine. He did not pinch, and there was no fire. He merely took my hand. “Thank you for dining with me this night.”

  He said it as though he had invited me and I had agreed to it, rather than the invasion that had taken place.

  “I apologize that we have not dined together yet, save for the night of the starfall,” he continued. “I confess, the realm takes up so much of my time, and you were so patient with me that I was inattentive. I beg your forgiveness.”

  I did my best not to look at him. I wondered if he had spent too long in the sun, or if I had. If he thought to charm me, he would have an uphill path to walk.

  “Come,” he said to me when it became apparent that I would not play with him. “The meal is laid.”r />
  In our father’s tents, we eat well. There is meat every evening, and lentils and chickpeas to fill the bowls. We have bread and oil, and our father brings back spices when he travels, because my mother loves to experiment. We eat everything together, sharing and knocking fingers in the serving trays, and there is laughter and family at every meal.

  This was nothing like that. There was bread and oil, but they were set in dishes so fine, I thought if I held the ceramic up to the sun I might see through it. There was a decanter made of glass—more than I had seen in one place in my whole life—filled with wine, and a jug of water next to it for mixing. The meat was cut into small pieces, and arranged to look like the body of one of the mean-spirited long-feathered birds I sometimes found in the garden. The bird’s real neck and head completed the display at the front, while behind, its plumage matched the blue of the tablecloth. I did not recognize the smell of the spices, and there were other dishes I could not recognize.

  “I must remember to speak with the cook tomorrow,” Lo-Melkhiin said, still as conversationally as he had in the garden. “Usually he presents each course, so that we might appreciate its artistry, but tonight I do not wish to be disturbed. Please, my wife, take your seat.”

  I sank onto one of the cushions, my spine as straight as I could manage, thanks to the henna mistress’s instructions, and tucked my feet neatly into my dress. When I put my ankles together, I felt the matching signs the henna mistress had drawn on my heels recognize each other, and they warmed my cold blood.

  Lo-Melkhiin sat beside me. If we had sat across from one another, we would not have been able to see each other because of the bird. I could see the raised platform where my bed was, but I did my best not to think about it.

  I sat still as Lo-Melkhiin poured and mixed the wine, and set each kind of food on a plate. There was one cup and one bowl. We would share. If he tried to feed me with his own hands, I would bite off his fingers. He took a long drink of the wine, and passed it to me. My drink was much shorter, barely wetting my mouth. It was stronger than I liked, in any case.

  He began to eat, making no move toward me, and so I ate too. I took pieces of bread and wrapped them around each morsel I ate, chewing for as long as I could.

  “I cannot make you afraid of me,” he said. I was glad I had taken a small bite; otherwise I might have choked. Instead, I swallowed neatly, and took a sip of the too-strong wine before I looked at him.

  “I do not waste my fear,” I said to him. “I have told you that.”

  “I know,” he said to me. “You fear nothing because the desert will get you in the end, regardless. It is predictable, like the water clock. I had thought to be unpredictable, and see if that would set you off.”

  “I have herded goats, my lord,” I said to him. “They have taught me what it means to be unpredictable.”

  “You have studied birds, too,” he said to me. His eyes were like the far horizon when a sandstorm lurks beyond it.

  “I have studied nothing,” I said to him. “I am no Skeptic. If the desert has taught me and I lived, then it is because I learned.”

  “Yes,” he said to me. His hand closed around an eating knife he did not need. “Somehow, you live.”

  MY OWN EATING KNIFE WAS too far away for me to reach without being obvious that it was my intent to seize it. Since the food was already cut, I had seen no reason to keep it close. If I lived, I promised that I would never be so thoughtless as to let Lo-Melkhiin get his knife while I didn’t have mine again. I did not think I could defeat him, but I could slash his face and give him a memory of what my death cost him.

  Lo-Melkhiin twisted the handle, and then balanced the blade upon one of his fingers. It did not cut his skin. The lamplight gleamed on the bright bronze as he spun it, throwing spots of light on the walls of my room and then twirling them into a spiral. It might have been pretty, had I not imagined spots of blood following in their wake.

  The only thing I had within easy reach was the salt cellar. It was still full, and the grains were coarse. It would be as though I threw sand in his face, if I hurled it at him. It might buy me time to get the knife.

  Lo-Melkhiin threw the knife up in the air, and it spun in a whirl of light. I leaned toward the salt, ready, but when he grabbed the hilt again, it was only to twist it down and stick the point into the table. I hovered, unsure of what he might do next, and then he bent toward me.

  “It won’t be a knife, my love,” he said to me. His voice was low. “I can promise you that.”

  He sat up and clapped his hands. The serving girls came back and cleared the table, except for the wine, and then a man came with a packet. Lo-Melkhiin took it and waved him away. He opened it, and I saw maps of the desert. Where the qasr was, and where all the villages were marked. Many of the places had a red mark through them, and I felt what little supper I had managed roil in my stomach. Those were the places that had given him a wife.

  “Would you like to see how I plan a hunt, my wife?” he said to me.

  “No, my lord,” I said to him. “I have my own tasks.”

  It was not precisely true, but I did have the spindle and the white thread I had spun when I had gone into the vision to see my sister. I could weave it, I supposed, though I did not have a lap loom, so I was not sure what I would use. The serving girl who carried away the ruined tablecloth saw me with the thread in my hands and nodded. She returned with a loom shortly, and I sat down to weave while Lo-Melkhiin plotted his desert horrors.

  There are two ways to sit while you are weaving. My mother and my sister’s mother had made sure that my sister and I learned both. The first way I much preferred, as I was meant to, because it was more comfortable. I could sit that way for hours, at need, but if I did that tonight, there was the possibility that I might slip into the weaving trance, and I did not wish to do that while Lo-Melkhiin could watch. The second way, I sat on my own foot, and if I did not shift sides every now and then, breaking my concentration, the foot would fall asleep and I would get a cramp. The first way was how my mother and my sister’s mother wove when they were together. The second way was how they wove when they sat in the tents of our father’s caravan, weaving with the women while he traded with the men.

  “Your cloth will be the same quality,” my sister’s mother said to us, “but your ears will hear better.”

  I tucked one foot beneath me. Since it was concealed by my dress, it was impossible for any but a weaver to tell how I sat. My shoulders and the slant of my hips might betray me, but I doubted Lo-Melkhiin knew to look for that. I would merely have to ensure he was not watching me when I shifted.

  I began to set the warp. Since I was making nothing in particular, I put the threads as close together as I could, leaving just enough slack in them that I might pass my fingers through, leading the thread. This would be finely woven cloth when I was done. Perhaps they would shroud me in it, if I finished enough to cover my face before Lo-Melkhiin strangled me.

  He labored over his maps, to what end I did not care to guess, and drank freely from the decanter without mixing. I hoped that meant he would fall asleep at the table and not make it to the bed, but in my heart I knew better. He would no more take risks with me than I did with him. At least the knives were gone. Despite what he said, I knew that it was much easier to slit something’s throat than it was to smother it.

  Once the warp was set to my liking, I took a long loop of thread off of the skein and coiled it around my fingers. My mother told me that her mother had had to use a needle to pull a fine warp apart, because her fingers were so gnarled with age, but mine were still fine and thin. I could pass the thread through the warp using my fingers to pull up the threads I wanted, and push back those I didn’t. I simply had to be careful not to stretch it too far.

  I switched feet, and began to weave.

  When my sister and I had seen ten winters each, she became ill with a fever, and I did not share it. This was not our way. We had always done everything together, and thoug
h I was hale while she burned and wept for her mother, I longed to join her on the pallet. My brothers told me I was foolish, and in my heart I knew it, but she was my sister, and I missed her when I walked to the well on my own.

  On the third day after she fell into a fever, my mother sent me for water again. I went willingly enough, as I was glad to do my part to heal her, but I knew I could not carry as much water by myself, and wished she would send one of my brothers instead. Our father insisted that they be out with the cattle, as they were calving. So to the well I went, with a smaller jar and a heavy heart.

  I drew water as easily as I could have done alone, and had just got the pail to the crest of the well when a sound in the bushes on the far side made me look up. My heavy heart stopped beating altogether. There was a sand viper, and I knew that if there was one, there had to be another somewhere close by; they do not hunt alone.

  We stared at one another for a long moment, the snake and I, and no second one revealed itself. I had no stones with me, as I could not carry them and the water jar at the same time. The snake did not move again, and after a long, hot moment in the desert sun, I dared to move. I poured the water into my jar, and released the pail back into the well. Then I bent and picked up the jar, and walked backward, keeping my eye on the viper as I went. It watched me go, motionless as ever, and finally disappeared back into the bushes when it realized I had gone outside its striking distance.

  I told my sister when she was well again, after our father had cut away all the bushes around the well so that no snakes might hide in them.

  “Perhaps it saw that you were alone and did not strike,” she said to me. “Perhaps it was alone too, and knew you shared a spirit at that moment.”

  “Perhaps I am very lucky,” I said to her. “Or perhaps I do not look like I would taste very good.”

  She laughed.

  The weft snaked through the warp as I bid it, and I felt the viper again. I looked up in Lo-Melkhiin’s eyes, though he still sat at his table and his maps. I switched feet, not caring if he saw me do it, and bent back to my work. I had no stones, and I could not stop a viper, but I could be patient.