A Thousand Nights
Page 22
“Then, yes,” I said to him. “I will marry you again, and take the seat you offer at your side.”
Lo-Melkhiin smiled and took my hand. I had tasted power and I had used it up, but now I would get more of another kind. We would share it, and keep each other from the dark. The sun gleamed in the desert sky, and the stones of the walls reflected the golden light all around the garden, but there was no fire where our fingers met.
Already, the story is changing.
When men tell it in the souks and in the desert, they shape it to fit their understanding. It passes from caravan to caravan, to places where they have never heard of the one called Lo-Melkhiin. The words change language, and meaning is lost and gained in every vowel’s shift. They change the monster into a man, and they change her into something that can be used to teach a lesson: if you are clever and if you are good, the monster will not have you.
You should not believe everything you hear.
Good men fall to monsters every day. Clever men are tricked by their own pride or by pretty words. That is what happened to the king in the tale she tells. He was clever and good, and the monster plucked him from the desert like he was little more than sand. She was clever and good as well, so good she wished to take her sister’s place, and so clever she made it so. That is not what saved her from the monster.
The story will mean different things to every person who hears it. That is how she meant for it to be. I can tell you of the meaning I found, the new purpose and direction for my life, but it will be nothing to you if you do not understand why she told it in the first place.
There is life, and there is living—and that is what she learned.
She told the story in small pieces; that much is true. It came to her in undyed wool, which she could spin, or in threads that she could stitch or weave. She did not tell it every night, and she did not tell it always to the same person. Sometimes she told it only to herself, using the tools and the strength given to her by others. That did not make its power any less, and that power gave her life.
Living came later, when she learned to tell the story on purpose.
The monster tested her, pulling at her soul and rending her spirit. She clung to life, and in the clinging she might have become a monster too, except she chose the path her story would take. She chose white stone walls and a golden crown. She chose to debate words of law, and to never grind her own grain. She chose to fight men every day, and then fight their sons, who thought they knew better than their fathers.
Her own legend was swallowed up by the creatures she made. All six of them went out into the world and were given new names by the people who saw them. Each had special powers that she did not intend, which waited to be unlocked as people learned to communicate with them. They spread out across the earth, to places where men did not live at all; each prospered in its own way, but they never forgot the girl who made them.
If you listen long enough to the whispers, you will hear the truth. Until then, I will tell you this: the world is made safe by a woman. She bound the monster up and cast him out, and the man who was left was saved. For one thousand nights, I lived a nightmare in the dark, but when the nights numbered a thousand and one, the nightmare was ended.
Al-ammiyyah, the common tongue, had saved the king.
finis
MASSIVE THANKS TO:
Josh Adams, who championed this book before it was even a book, and called me while I was napping at least four times a week during March of 2014 to talk about it.
Emily Meehan, who took me very seriously when I told her that no, no one was ever going to get a name. Also, Marci Senders: I remain stunned by the book design, and would like to wallpaper my house with the cover art.
My family, especially EJ and Jen, who loaned me their cottage; Sarah and Dan, who loaned me rent money; and Ian and Emily, who checked in to make sure I was okay. And to my London aunt, uncle, and cousins (plus Team Bentley!), who took care of me before and after my surgery.
Emma and Colleen, who read each chapter as I wrote it, and Faith, Laura, RJ, and Tessa, who read it when I was done and told me how to make it better. Also Carrie Ryan, who gave excellent career advice to a rookie author, even though she does not remember the conversation, and who answered a super-cryptic e-mail in a very helpful manner.
The writers of the Fourteenery and the Hanging Garden are all ludicrously fabulous, and I am better off for knowing them.
Finally, I could not have written this book without the time I spent in Jordan, working with Dr. Michèle Daviau and Dr. Michael Weigl on the Wadi ath-Thamad project. Four years of school and six summers in the desert, and more learned than I really understood at the time. Thank you.
E. K. JOHNSTON is a forensic archaeologist by training, a bookseller and author by trade, and a grammarian by nature. She spends a great deal of time on the Internet because it is less expensive than going to Scotland. She can probably tell you, to the instant, when she fell in love with any particular song; but don’t ask her, because then it will be stuck in both of your heads.