The World Above

by Cameron Dokey

  “The kingdom of our father is a vast one. Let us then divide it between us, each attending to his own domains and never making war upon the other. In this way, our people will know peace and all will prosper.”

  To which Shazaman replied, “Firstborn of our father, my brother, Shahrayar! Truly you are our father’s worthy successor for, even in your greatness, you seek to do me honor. And, as I love you no less than you love me, I will therefore be satisfied with the lands you grane me and never seek to overthrow, you.”

  Then Shahrayar divided the kingdom, keeping for himself the vast lands of India Indochina. But to his brother he gave the city of Samarkand, the trade routes and the lands thereof—all jewels of great value.

  And so the brothers embraced each other and parted.

  But all this is yet to come, for I have let the story run on ahead of itself.

  Now, at his father’s death, Shahrayar inherited not only the king’s lands. He also inherited his court and palace. He inherited courtiers and advisors. Chief among them, most high and highly prized, was his vizier. A fitting title! One which means, “the one who bears burdens.”

  What burdens this vizier was to bear in the service of his young king shall soon be told.

  The vizier was older than his new master, being more of Shahrayar’s father’s age, and he had two daughters. Though they were far apart in years, they were close in love. The younger was a child of ten as this tale opens. Her name was Dinarzad. The elder was a young woman of seventeen. She was called Shahrazad.

  Dinarzad’s mother had been a great lady at court. But Shahrazad’s mother had come from afar. Ah! Many were the tales told about her: Maju the Storyteller.

  As a young man the vizier had led the forces of Shahrayar’s father to a great victory, deep in the heart of India. When he returned home, he brought with him a bride, daughter of a people both fierce and pround. They lived not in cities and settlements as others did, but traveled always from place to place, as if their true home in the world had yet to be found. They obeyed the laws of all the lands they passed through, yet made alliances with none.

  Greatly honored among them were drabardi—the tellers of stories and fortunes. It was whispered that the vizier’s young wife was greater than all the drabardi who had come before her. So great was her gift that her people wept and cast themselves upon the ground when they understood that she meant to part from them. For, once gone, she would become a stranger and could never return. So said their customs. And it had been prophesied at Maju’s birth that in her time, she would come to bear the greatest drabardi of them all.

  Though she loved the vizier, when the time for parting with her people came, Maju wept also. For many days and nights the tears fell from her eyes without ceasing, across all the miles to her new country. Only when the outrunners declared that the towers of the king’s palace were acrually in view did Maju dry her eyes. For the sake of a story she herself would never tell, she knew that she must put away her sorrow.

  And so it was that Maju the Storyteller came to her new home. She was possessed of an intellect as sharp as the blade of a newly honed knife, and a beauty so terrible only a few could bear to look upon it. But Maju herself had never had to pass the test of gazing upon her own features. For she was as it was whispered all the truly great drabardi are:

  Maju the Storyteller was blind.

  The vizier and Maju lived quietly in their quarters in the king’s great palace. In the second year of their marriage. Maju presented the vizier with a child. A daughter. They gave to her the name of Shahrazad.

  Though Shahrazad grew to young womanhood in the palace, she kept herself far from the pomp and citcumstance of court functions. Her father, the vizier, sat at the king’s right hand. He was loved and trusted. But, even as the years went by and Shahrazad’s mother showed herself to be true and virtuous, few of the people she had come to live among gave their love to Maju the Storyteller. She had not been born in that place, and the fear of such a one proved to be too strong.

  And so even as the parents in the kingdom with-held their love and trust from the mother, so did they teach their children to do the same to her child. And though she never saw them nor lived amongst them, Shahrazad grew up like the people of her mother. Searching yet never finding her true place in the world. And she grew up lonely.

  The palace of the king was vast and lovely, and in it there flowed many beautiful fountains. One in particular, the young Shahrazad loved. It was not large, rather a small pool shaded by a pomegranate tree and tucked into a corner of a secluded garden. In it swam many beautiful goldfish. It was tiled with stone of such a piercing blue that looking down into the water was exactly the same as looking up into the sky.

  This quiet corner of the palace was Shahrazad’s favorite place—the closest she had ever come to finding where she belonged, And so it happened that one day at the beginning of her eighth year, her happiness at being in the place she loved best made Shahrazed set aside her usual caution, and she was taken by surprise.

  A group of courtiers’ children set upon her, lifted her up, and threw her into the pool with such force that the branchers of the pomegranate tree shook above her. Shahrazad struck her head upon the stones that lined the pool and her red blood flowed out into the water.

  When the courtiers’ children saw what they had done, they became afraid. How terrible, they feared, would be the revenge of Maju the Storyteller! And so they fled, leaving Shahrazad sitting in a pool of bloody water, sobbing as though her heart would break. And thus her mother found her.

  “Why do they treat me so?” Shahrazad cried when she saw her mother. “I do nothing to them. Nothing!”

  Though she thought perhaps her own heart would break when she heard the pain and despair in her daughter’s voice, Maju the Storyteller answered calmly, “Nothing is all you need do, Shahrazad, my daughter. Being yourself is enough. For you are not the same as they are, and they can neither forgive nor forget it. Come now, dry your eyes and get out of the water.”

  But Shahrazad was hurt and angry, and she felt rebellious. She stayed right where she was. “But I want to be the same!” she cried. “Why must I be different?” She splashed the water with an angry fist. “I won’t get out until you tell me.”

  Before Shahrazad knew what her mother intended, Maju the Storyteller strode to the fountain, lifted her skirts, and waded into the water. She tore one of her sleeves and made a bandage to bind Shahrazad’s bleeding head. How Maju knew to do this when she could not see the injury, Shahrazad did not know.

  “Get up, go into our apartments, and put on dry clothing,” Maju commanded her daughter. “Then go to my chest and bring me the length of cloth you will find inside.”

  Though her spirit still felt bruised, Shahrazad did as her mother commanded, for she understood that this was the only way Maju would give her an answer—with a story.

  While Shahrazad changed into dry clothes, Maju the Storyteller stood in the water, her blind eyes east downward. As if she could see the pool Shahrazad loved so well, now bloody and sullied. And from her eyes there fell two tears, one each from the left eye and the right. As Maju’s tears struck the water, the pool was cleansed, and the water ran clear once more.

  When Shahrazad returned, she found her mother sitting beside the fountain, her skirts already dry. At the sound of her daughter’s foot-steps, Maju held out a hand.

  “What have you brought me?” she inquired.

  Shahrazad reached out and placed a length of cloth into her mother’s hand. It was silk as fine and sheer as gossamer, the same color blue as the stones that lined the fountain. Shahrazad watched as Maju brushed her fingers across the surface of the cloth, and she felt the hair rise on her arms.

  For she knew that woven into the cloth so finely that only the hands of the storyteller could discover it, there was a tale waiting to be told. And she knew that this was the true storyteller’s art. Not the speaking aloud, for that was something anyone might do, but the decipherin
g of the tale woven into the cloth. A secret known only to the drabardi.

  “Ah!” Maju said when she was finished. “You have chosen well, my little one.”

  Shahrazad made a sound that might have been a laugh and plopped down beside her mother on the edge of the fountain.

  “It was hardly a choice,” she said. “That was the only piece of cloth in the whole trunk.”

  “That’s as it should be,” Maju replied with a smile, “For it means that this story is yours. Will you hear it?”

  “I will,” said Shahrazad.

  “Then I will give you its name,” said her mother. “It is called . . .”

  About the Author

  CAMERON DOKEY is the author of more than thirty young adult novels. Her most recent titles in the Once upon a Time series include Winter’s Child, Wild Orchid, Belle, and Before Midnight. Her other Simon & Schuster endeavors include a book in the Simon Pulse Romantic Comedies line, How NOT to Spend Your Senior Year. Cameron lives in Seattle, Washington.