A Thousand Nights

by Johnston, E. K.

  “I am sorry,” I said to her. “I have ruined it.”

  “No, sister,” she said to me. “No one will see that; it is so small. And it is my fault for startling you, but you did not answer me when I spoke.”

  “It is the smallgod,” I said to her. “Sometimes I lose myself.”

  “If that is the price to keep you safe from your wretched husband, then so be it,” she said to me. “Come: we are almost finished.”

  We stitched again as silence grew between us. I chewed the inside of my cheek so that I would not drift into the trance again. My sister was wrong about the price of my living. I had not paid it; at least, not in the way she thought. She had paid more than I; her whole life was rerouted, as though a rock in the wadi bed had forced the water to find a new path. If a rock was large enough, it could shift the whole course of the wadi. Any village that relied upon that wadi might dry out for want of water. The wells would run dry, and there would be nothing but scrub for the sheep and goats to eat. The people would move their tents, leaving behind their dead; or they would stay, and die, and join them. She had made me a smallgod, and I had done this to her.

  I thought to pray that I had not caused too much ruin with my actions, but I had no one to pray to. Our smallgod was gone, passed over for the new one, his spirit resting at last. I could not pray to myself, and there was no comfort for me.

  The lamp burned low as we tied off our threads, and then my sister looked up at me.

  “Sister of mine,” she said to me. “I will see you in the morning.”

  “You see me now,” I said to her, before I remembered that I was dreaming. I reached for her, and caught nothing. “Sister!” I called, but she was gone, and so were the dishdashah and the tent and the lamp. I woke to darkness, sitting up and grasping at nothing in my father’s tent, where he had pitched it.

  “Lady-bless,” said the woman who traveled with Lo-Melkhiin’s mother.

  “I am well,” I said to her, though my heart raced and my breath heaved in my lungs.

  “You are with your family, lady-bless,” she reminded me. “You are safer here than you are when you sleep in the stone qasr.”

  “Yes,” I said to her. “I remember. I only dreamed, that is all. Please, sleep again. I am sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “It is all right, lady-bless,” she said to me. “I do not sleep very much anymore.”

  I lay back down and pulled my hair over my face. I did not know how long I had slept. With the tent flaps shut against the cool night air, it was impossible to tell the hour. I laughed, as quietly as I could. I had become so dependent upon the hour-candles and the water clock, even though I had used the sun as much as possible when I was in the qasr. Without them, and without the sky, I could not guess the time.

  I heard the camels shifting their feet in the sand. Most of them would have knelt down to sleep. If they stood now, it meant that they were rested. I breathed deeply and smelled mostly the rug and the burned oil in the lamp and the perfumes that my companions wore, but at the edge of those scents was the fire the watchman would be standing by. It smelled of embers; they had not added new fuel in some time, so that none would be wasted when the fire was no longer needed.

  If it was not close to dawn, then it was close to the time my father wished to leave. I would not try to sleep again.

  In the dream, my sister had not known that I was the one who had brought her the man she was to marry. Perhaps she thought the smallgod’s power was only enough to keep me alive. I had seen no falsehoods when I slept, but I wondered if, by the time I met her in the waking world, she would have realized what I had wrought. I could not bear her anger and her hatred if she did not like the control I had exerted on her life, but I knew I had earned them both. If she spurned me, I would understand it.

  It was not just that I had found the pale man in my dreams and brought him to my father’s attention, although that was weighty enough. It was that I had made her love him; and he, her. I had told Lo-Melkhiin that the man my sister wed would have a fire only she could reveal. I could not guess how he would burn, then, if it was her choice that was directing him. I could no more guess that than I could have guessed how her determination to make me a smallgod would change me.

  Again, I wished that I could pray, but there was no one to hear my words; even if I could have said them to my own shrine, I feared the power they might unleash if I said them. It was as though I were a water jar, nearly full when the bucket had come out of the well. Instead of pouring the water into another vessel, or back into the well, more water kept coming into my jar. I should have overflowed, spilling the precious liquid onto the sand where grasping roots would find it, but instead the jar kept filling. I knew that soon I would swell under the pressure, but surely the water must overflow. It could not be packed more tightly into the jar.

  Whichever brother was guarding the fire whistled shrilly three long times and then three short times. Beside me the serving girl woke, forgot where she slept, and then remembered with a sigh. Lo-Melkhiin’s mother stirred, and the old woman went to light the lamp.

  “That is the signal to wake,” I said to them. “We must be ready to go again when the whistle sounds once more.”

  “Yes, lady-bless,” the girl said to me.

  She went to the water jar and poured a cup for me, and for Lo-Melkhiin’s mother. By the time my father came to strike the tent, the bedrolls were wrapped, the rugs rolled up, and the serving girl had gone in search of the crates where she was to pack the pillows, lamps, and other contents of the tent.

  “Daughter of mine,” said my father, “we will ride soon, before the sun has finished rising above the horizon.”

  “We will be ready, father,” I said to him.

  “I commend you, master of the caravan,” said Lo-Melkhiin’s mother to my father, when he would have turned back to his work. He looked back at her. The early light made the lion’s-mane wig shine pale. “Your tents are as comfortable as any place that I have ever slept,” she said. “My son was right to trust you with the keeping of his beloved wife, and with me.”

  “I thank you, mother-of-the-king,” my father said, and bowed. “Your words do me honor and lighten my heart. I had feared you would not be able to rest easy in the desert sand.”

  “It is no more dangerous than anywhere else,” said Lo-Melkhiin’s mother.

  My father nodded, and went to strike the tent. Before long, we were all on the backs of our camels. My heart was light and heavy with every beat. I did not know what was before me. All I knew was that every step brought me closer to where my sister would be wed.

  WE CAME TO A PART OF the wadi where I recognized every bend and every stone. I knew the slope of the banks, and where the pools would be. Here, we passed sheep and goats brought to drink by the children whose job it was to tend the herds. They looked up at us as we went by, waving to my father and to my brother, but were silent in their awe of me. This made me sad—I had not been gone from them for so long that they should forget who taught them the way of the herds—but then I remembered who rode beside me.

  In the qasr, Lo-Melkhiin’s mother was imposing, her lion’s-mane wig and her straight stance a fixture of the palace. In the desert, she was a startlement to look upon. The hair of the wig was a tawny gold in the sun, reflecting the sand like she was a living lion astride a camel, not a woman. The boy who rode behind her, aware of the looks being sent his way, sat straight too; though I wondered if he might have had fun if he slid down and played with the children who were minding the herds.

  Every now and then, one of my married brothers took his camel out of the line and brought it to its knees. Then a child, one of his own get, would climb up, and they would be on their way again. My brothers’ wives were all from different villages that my father traded with when he was out with the caravan, and they did not share a tent the way my mother shared with my sister’s mother, but their children ran wild in the desert together, and sometimes it was hard to remember whic
h of them belonged to which of my brothers.

  There were plenty of children left on the ground to tend the sheep and goats. I could tell that these were not just our herds that grazed. My father’s mark was on many flanks, but there were at least eight other herds besides. My sister’s wedding, it seemed, was to be a grand affair, with guests from up and down the wadi, and across the sand besides.

  We passed by the rocky hill with the caves where we buried our dead. I looked, half-afraid that I would see a jealous smallgod glaring down at me—the lowly girl who had stolen his power—and what I saw nearly made me jerk the rein and halt my camel. It was tradition, when villages gathered, that at least the priestly members of each clan would bring a stone from their wadi bed to leave on the path that led up to the caves. I had expected, given the marks on the sheep I had counted, perhaps eight or ten, certainly no more than a dozen. Instead, I could not count them, there were so many. Hundreds of stones, pebbles that a child might carry and rocks the size of my father’s fist, lined the path. Only if every man, woman, and child my father had ever met when he was out with the caravan had come—only then could they have brought this many stones. I could not fathom why they had been invited.

  My father was a proud man, but he was not foolish. He would not seek to impress me, whatever my new status, and he had not known Lo-Melkhiin’s mother would come, so he could not have sought to impress her, either. He would not care if I told Lo-Melkhiin about the wedding he had given my sister, knowing that he could never match the splendor of the qasr. The pale man from the mountains that my sister was to marry had no family close by, and no ties to the caravan that were not also shared by my father and brothers, so the numbers could not have been swelled by him.

  We saw the tents before I had finished reasoning my puzzle through. They stretched away from the wadi in both directions, spaced carefully around the wells and around the privies, so that the two would never meet to the befoulment of the former. I saw cook fires beyond counting, the smoke from a hundred roasting goats and more besides filling the air. Everywhere I looked, women kneaded bread or milled grain for more flour. Younger children than those out with the herds carried baskets of dates and figs and pomegranates between the fires at the direction of their mothers. Men butchered cattle, while others built pens to house the animals that had come with the guests.

  Each tent was marked with a strip of fabric. I thought, like as with sheep, that this was so a person might tell to whom the tent belonged; but then a breeze came through, and I saw that all the flags were the same. Purple fabric—not too much, because of the expense—marked every tent in the encampment. Beside me, Lo-Melkhiin’s mother looked around her, a worried expression on her face. I turned to ask her, but then my camel knelt and I heard a cry I knew as well as my own heart.

  “Sister!”

  And there she was, flying across the sand with her hair streaming behind her as no bride’s should. I did not care what Lo-Melkhiin’s mother thought of us, or if our mothers would scold us for our scandalous behavior later. I was off my camel almost before its belly hit the ground. The sand was a burning fire on my thinly shod slippers, but I did not care. My sister’s arms were around me, and mine were around her again.

  “I have missed you, sister of mine,” I whispered for her ears alone. “And I am glad to come to see you.”

  “Sister,” she said to me. “I am glad that you are here to see at all.”

  The sheep and goats surrounded us then, as the children went to touch her. It was good luck to touch a bride, but it should have been more difficult for them; as brides we were meant to remain in our mother’s tents until the wedding. I did not know if it was good luck to touch a smallgod, but I hoped it was. The children brushed against me as they went to her. There was no longer any taking us for one another, though. Her laughing eyes had not stilled, as mine had. Her hair hung freely beneath her veil, where mine was braided and pinned against my skull. And my dishdashah was much finer than was hers, though the quality of the embroidery was more or less the same.

  “Come,” she said to me, pulling free of the small hands that reached for her. “I will take you to your mother.”

  I followed her, my feet finding their old skill of walking on the shifting, burning sand as though I had never left it. She led me past tent after tent, each with the purple flag, and each with men and women I did not recognize standing near them. The scent of cooking food was strong, still, as we walked, but another scent began to take its place. Fire, not for cooking, burned close to our destination. When we were close enough to see it, I saw a small stove built above the fire, and a bowl on the stove. A man stood there with pale skin and hair the color of saffron stirred in water, and I knew that he was the man my sister was to wed. He looked into the bowl, waiting for something, and though I could not see over the rim, I knew the bowl was full of the bright metal from the mountains, and that he would shape it when it could be shaped.

  My sister did not look at him overlong for a girl who was meant to be in love. Part of me was glad at that, if it meant she loved me still, but part of me worried. If I had made her love him, perhaps she only felt it when I wished her to.

  I pushed such thoughts aside when she pulled me past him and into a tent that was so familiar I would have known it with my eyes shut. My mother waited there, and my sister’s mother, and they both wept when they saw me, drawing the veil from my face so that they could kiss me and pull me into their arms as though they would never again let me go.

  “Mother,” I said to them. “Mothers of my heart, I have missed you both so much.”

  They did not speak, only tightened their arms while my sister waited beside me. When they had secured me in their memories enough to let me go, they relinquished me back to her, and we sat on the rug as we once had, when we stitched secrets into cloth.

  My sister had smiled then, as she smiled now, and I knew she meant to tell me a secret as we sat. Before she spoke, though, she traced my braids, feeling each pin that anchored the style.

  “I can show you how it works, if you like,” I said to her. “I have learned how to do it, and the girl who has come with me will help. You can borrow my pins.”

  “I want nothing of Lo-Melkhiin’s when I wed,” she said to me. Her voice was bitter, like the hard yellow fruit my father bought when he traded near the blue desert.

  “You will have me,” I said to her. “And I am his.”

  “You are mine,” she said to me. “As I am yours. We have done too much for even a demon to separate us.”

  I knew then that she had seen, at least in part, the visions I had; and that when I saw the dress she would marry in, there would be my stitches in the thread, and my blood staining the hem.

  “Sister,” I said to her. “I must return to him.”

  “Do you like the qasr so much?” she asked me.

  “I do not,” I said to her. “But if I do not return to him, he will wed another girl, and she will die.”

  “I care not,” my sister said to me. “Lo-Melkhiin will not live to wed another after that.”

  I saw it then, clearly in the light of the desert sun. I knew why Lo-Melkhiin’s mother had been worried before she even got off her camel. I knew why the herds had come, and why the men, women and children had left so many stones on the path to the cave where we buried our dead. I knew why there were so many roasting goats and so many baskets of dates, which would not go bad even if they were left out in the sun.

  My father had come to the qasr and begged my husband to release me for a wedding, but he had lied. The peace I had struggled to hold myself to in the qasr was at risk from the desert, and I could not stop it. My husband had let me come—unwittingly or not, it did not matter. What mattered was that I stood with my family, with my sister and my mother, my sister’s mother and my father, my brothers and their children, and every man, woman, and child my father had ever met while he was out in the desert with the caravan. They might dance and feast. They might play backgammon a
nd talk of the fires of summers past, but this was no wedding.

  This was war.

  The human sand-crawlers thought they were so clever. They thought if they buried their business in sand, and conducted it far away from the walls of my city, that I would not learn what they were doing.

  They were wrong.

  I did not need the eyes and ears of men to spy for me, though I had plenty of both at my disposal. My kind were haunting the desert still, preying upon men as they were moved to, though none of them had risen as high as I had done. I had shut myself off from them so they would not follow my example and supplant me, but now I opened myself to them again. It was they who brought me word, whispered in my mind where only Lo-Melkhiin could overhear us; and he could not stop us, so I did not care.

  The desert rats were gathering for a wedding that was not a wedding.

  When my bride’s father had come to me, and brought his sons to ask my favor, I had had a choice. I craved their blood to be spilled at her feet, more than I craved sunlight and pretty things. But if I had washed her with their blood, she would never have turned to me; their rebellion might have faltered without them, but it would not have died.

  I had to let them go, to let them all go. I had not even kept a hostage to toy with and mutilate, or perhaps to turn over to another of my kin, while they were gone. I sent Lo-Melkhiin’s mother, as would be expected of a human king who sent his wife into the desert. When they were gone, I found the qasr empty without them. Without her.

  I did not muster my army. I refused to use a force of men to quell this desert uprising. Men might have seen me for what I was at last. I could have laid waste to their desert on my own, but that would have taken time I did not care to spend, and much of my power. Instead I called my kind to me, meeting with them in the night, where once I had listened to my Skeptics talk about the stars. They saw how powerful I had become, and listened to my words with hungry ears.