A Thousand Nights Read online

  We watched. The rain poured from the sky as from a countless number of jugs. It cut into the rock above us, peeling back the sand and sending it rushing toward the wadi bed. The sheep were soaked through, like how we soaked their wool in dye, and they were giving off a smell I liked even less than the smell before the rain came.

  There was a roaring sound behind the tents, where I could not see. Our father looked down at us, at our hands clenched in his hem, and looked to my sister’s brother, who stood just beyond the cave wall, as wet as the sheep, but with a burning energy in his eyes that did not speak of fear.

  There was another sound, and for a long moment, I did not know what it was. It was my sister screaming. I had never heard her make that sound before, and I stared at her, thinking she must have been injured by the rain. Our father took my face in his hands, and forced me to look back at the tents. Behind them, a great grey wall had risen up where the wadi should have been. It bore down on the circle where we had slept and ate and played, and it crashed down upon it, sweeping through hide and rope like they were nothing.

  The wall continued toward us, rushing up the slope toward the caverns. I felt a scream of my own building in my chest. The water had taken the tents and the places where we slept. If it came into the caves, there was no way out. Our father stood in front of us, and we clung to him as the water came. It stretched for us, and for a long moment I thought we would all be taken. But then, as though it had been checked by a smallgod, the surge pulled back, and though it lapped at our father’s sandals, it did not take him.

  It was then that the ram panicked again. The ewes shifted around him, water swirling around their flanks, and their discomfort heightened his. He charged my sister’s brother, who was watching the water surge past us, and butted him hard. With a cry he fell, rolling down the slope, until the water closed over his head and carried him away.

  Our father keened, but did not move. Had he tried, he would have pulled my sister and me along behind, and while the water might have spared him, it certainly would have taken us. Instead we watched, helpless, as the dark shape of my brother was pulled farther and farther down the wadi, until he passed beyond our sight.

  “Come,” our father said then. “There is nothing left for you to see.”

  The price my mother had warned of was paid, and my sister’s mother wailed when our father told her. She held my sister close and wept. The dead had taken their due, and my sister’s brother would never lie among them. His bones were lost to the desert, and my sister and I had learned the terrible cost of green and life.

  The sound in the garden, I realized as Lo-Melkhiin’s women bathed and perfumed me, was the sound we had heard at the beginning of the flood. It was so soft I had not recognized it at first, until the women had put me in the heated tub and pushed me under the surface to wet my hair. Water had rushed into my nose and ears, and I had come up coughing. They pitied that, like they pitied everything else about me. I was a doomed bride, so provincial that I had never even had enough water for a proper bath. But when my eyes cleared, I knew the sound.

  It was the sound of death and wet and green. It was the sound of cost and worth. But if I could find something like the hem of our father’s robe, if I could find something to hold on to, then it would be the sound of hope.

  THE BOWER SMELLED OF SAGE and jasmine and fear. There was no hint of sheep or sand, for we were in the center of the qasr, and even the desert struggled to meet me here. I sat on cushions sheathed in the finest silk, and all around me hung draperies and veils of a sheer material I could not name. They must have cleaned it since the last wife died, but something lingered. The air was still and thick, and I could not feel the barest breath of wind. The lamps burned hot and straight, unflickering. And I waited.

  They had cut my nails to the quick, finger and toe, and rubbed them with hard grit so that the edges were soft. I could not pluck a thread from my veil, and it would be some days before I could weave again without being as clumsy as a novice. When faced with Lo-Melkhiin’s bare skin, I would not be able to mark it. They had checked my teeth, too. The city women cleaned their teeth with mint water, but we scoured ours with fine sand, collected from the wadi bed. The skulls in our catacombs had neat rows of teeth, even those of my kin who had been old when they died. The women who bathed me had gaps in their mouths or crooked smiles. I wondered if they feared that I would bite him, but I suppose there was nothing they could do.

  If my sister had been part of my wedding, she would have waited with me, and our mothers as well. They would have whispered secrets, things never said aloud to men, but I was alone. I had not been fed, and I was glad. My nerves thus far were settled, but had I a stomach full of city food, new and unusual to me, I may have been otherwise.

  They had not left me a time-candle, and I could not see the sky nor read the water clock that stood in the corner. But I do not think I waited long before he came.

  He wore silks, as I did, except his were dark blue against skin paler than mine. Lo-Melkhiin had been a great hunter once, but no longer did he spend very much time beneath the sun. His trousers were caught above his waist in a jeweled belt that wrapped around him three times, and was fastened with a snake’s head eating its tail. The lamplight gleamed on the worked metal of the clasp, finer than any I had seen. His shirt had wide sleeves. My clothing was all simple ties that, once pulled, would reveal my body underneath. I had no idea how I was meant to undress him.

  He sat, straight-backed and fine, crossing his ankles and placing his hands upon his knees. He did not look like a predator, except for his eyes, which gleamed as they took me in. I breathed slowly, the way an antelope breathes when it smells a lion in the air.

  “My common wife,” he said at length. His voice was very soft, as it had been when he spoke to the horse, but I did not expect him to show me the same kindness he had showed it. “You are not afraid of me. Tell me why.”

  “There is no cause for fear,” I told him.

  “You do not worry that I will call for your death, right in this room, if you do not please me?” he asked.

  “I know you can and might,” I said. “The flood will come, fast and without warning, because the ground is not accustomed to it. And therefore it is not worth fearing.”

  “That much is true,” he said, and smiled. His teeth were straight and there were no gaps between them. “But I think you will do better than one night.”

  “I am yours to command, husband,” I said to him, and met his eyes.

  When my mother spoke to our father, she often said that. He liked it, the way she put herself in his hands. Until just now, I had not realized that since my mother was the one who allowed it, she had more power than even he might have realized. Lo-Melkhiin thought I was less than him; but his was not the only tally.

  Lo-Melkhiin smiled. “Tell me about your sister,” he said to me. “The men whispered that she was fairer, and marveled that I did not choose her. You did that on purpose, and I would know why.”

  There was something in his smile that lit a flame in my soul. The pieces of the tales I knew came quickly to me, the ones shaped like my sister and the ones to which she could be shaped. They flew about me, and I plucked them from the air.

  “There is a fire in my sister,” I said to him, “and I did not want you to have it.”

  “I still might,” he said. “You may die quickly, as you have said.”

  “The law prevents you,” I replied. “The men of the city and of the herds will not allow it. If you break it once, and steal a daughter, what is to stop you again?”

  “I am patient,” Lo-Melkhiin said. “Perhaps I will simply wait.”

  “She will be too old,” I said. “She is my year-twin, and she will be married by the time you return.”

  “The fiery ones do not marry young,” he said. “They wait for fire to match their own. I did not see that in your village.”

  “My sister finds the fire in others,” I said. “Her husband may be the quiet
est man at the market until he sees her. Then he will burn with a flame to match her own.”

  “You are so sure of her,” he said.

  “As sure as my soul,” I said.

  He laughed, head back and teeth gleaming in the light. I felt something stir again, and my own fire grew hotter. I knew this feeling. I had felt it as I rode away from my village and my sister knelt to pray. Perhaps even now, she wore her mother’s priestly-whites and had gathered the other women to her. I leaned toward him.

  “In the desert, where the sun burns the hottest, there is a wind that can strip flesh from bones,” I said. “When it is in season, we leave old camels out to die. We hide in the safety of our tents, with enough food and water to last until the winds have passed. And we wait.

  “The camels moan at first, when the wind starts. They know what is coming. They can smell it. But we tie them hard and they cannot break the bonds that hold them to the earth. They try, though. They try for their lives. They scream when the first blast of hot air strikes them. That is how we know it is no longer safe to go outside, and why we do not kill the camels before the wind comes. They are our last defense against the wind.

  “They scream and scream. If the wind is hot enough, it is over quickly, but sometimes it lingers. Once, my sister could bear it no longer. She stole my brother’s bow and peeled back the tent flap, holding it outward to protect herself from the wind. The wind was in her favor, and she shot the camel to stop it screaming. Our father was so surprised he could not even scold her.”

  “So your sister is a fool,” Lo-Melkhiin said. “And softhearted besides, if she could not bear a camel’s suffering.”

  “No, husband,” I said. “My sister is clever. She held the bow against the tent flap so she would not be burned. And she killed the camel before it could panic and try to break free.

  “It would have stayed tied, and it would have broken its bones. And we needed the bones to be hard and whole,” I said. The fire raged in me with each word I spoke. “We use camel bones as tent poles, to keep the roof above our heads. We use them to prop open the flap that lets the smoke out. The hot wind does not always come. Sometimes an old camel dies, and must be skinned and cleaned in the fashion of antelope, and its bones are useless because they have not been cured by the wind. We cannot use them to build anything. We can hardly even use them for kindling.

  “My sister is no fool and she is not tender-hearted,” I said. “My sister fights for her home, and takes what risks she must. That is why I put myself before her today—why I would not let you have her. My sister burns, and she does not burn for you.”

  Lo-Melkhiin was fast, and grabbed my hands before I could even think to move away. It was his right to touch me however he wished, of course, so it was for the best that I did not shift. Where our skin touched, there was fire of a different kind. I thought I could see it, threads of gold and blue, desert sand and desert sky, bleeding from my body into his, but I had been a long time in the sun that day, and did not trust my eyes. He held on for one breath, then five, then ten. A strand of copper fire wound from his fingers to mine, so faint I wondered why I would imagine it at all, and then he released me.

  “Well done, wife,” he said to me, and stood. “You will do well in my house.”

  And then he was gone, the heavy air stirring behind him as he went into the night.

  I slumped back against the cushions, tired and elated at the same time. I wondered if my sister had felt any of the fire I shared with her tonight. I wonder if she burned, and if she knew why. She must have prayed all day, either to a family smallgod or to the shrine she had promised to make for me. Because I had felt my soul stir, and when Lo-Melkhiin reached for me I had seen the glamour of flames. I did not know what it meant or even what had happened, and I did not care. I could hear the birds in the garden beyond the wall, and though I could not read the water clock, I knew that dawn must be close by. I had spent the night as the wife of Lo-Melkhiin.

  And I had survived.

  Lo-Melkhiin rode into the desert as a man, and he was something else when he came out.

  He had gone to hunt lions, for his mother was fond of spinning yarn from the hair of their tawny manes, and because they preyed upon the villages around the desert’s hem. He rode alone, as befitted a hunter of his class, but Nadarqwi the Farsighted watched his progress from the red stone cliffs, and Sareeyah the Fleetfooted stood beside, ready to dash to Lo-Melkhiin if aid was required.

  Some say Lo-Melkhiin met a cruel god in the dunes that day. Others say he bargained with a devil there. The Skeptics looked up from their marble writing slabs and said he had stayed too long in the sun. God, demon, or otherwise, it mattered not. The true difference was me.

  When I saw him, I knew he should be mine. He was taller than most, shoulders unstooped; he had never ground his own grain. His cloth was tightly woven, and there was something in his eyes that spoke of power. I wanted it, as I had wanted many things. And so I took.

  His mind was harder than I had expected, and it required some effort to slip into the cracks. He loved his people—and he had many of these—well. His sense of duty was strong. He could mend armor and bake bread, though his station rarely required either of him. But at the bottom, underneath the pride he took in his work and home, there was a worry that dragged a chasm through his thoughts.

  He was so young. And his father had ruled so poorly. And his mother was so ill.

  That is where I set my claws and teeth. I pulled upon his doubts, laying them bare beneath the hot sun. And where he quailed, I set my conquest.

  He fought—the best ones fight—but it was too late. I had him and he was mine. I stepped upon his duties and buried his loves. I kept only those pieces of him I wanted. The power. The knowledge. The ability to rule.

  When I opened his eyes for the first time, the world was smaller, but it was mine. The air filled his lungs because I let it. I could just as easily have snuffed him out. If I had wanted, I could have made him remove his shoes and let the sand burn his feet.

  I kept him in a corner of his mind, which I had not always done before. Usually when I took someone, they burned out fast and left me hungry. But Lo-Melkhiin was different. He was stronger. And it pleased me to hear him scream.

  There was a roar, and I stood, leaning on his spear. My spear. I held it in his hands—my hands—as the lion drew near. Lo-Melkhiin knew how to kill them without spoiling the pelt. He could make their deaths swift and painless, and take the mane home to his mother, who loved them even through her illness.

  But there were hyenas close by, too, and when I threw his spear—my spear—I pinned down the lion’s paw. My prey roared again, this time in pain. The hyenas heard the call and answered, their laughter rolling across the dunes as they spread out to surround the injured beast.

  The lion tried to fight them, but the hyenas were too many, their jaws too strong. They tore the golden beast to pieces, hair and blood and bone spread out across the sand, and then they ate him, because they could.

  I made Lo-Melkhiin watch.

  IT WAS A BREEZE THAT WOKE ME, sweet-smelling air untouched by heavy incense. And for a moment, I forgot where it was I slept, but then the serving girl laid the tray beside my pillowed head and I remembered. I breathed the clean air, let in by the open door I had not even seen the night before when the candles had turned my eyes to haze, and sat up.

  “Lady-bless,” said the serving girl, “you must drink the tea.”

  I wondered if she had come to bring breakfast to the other girls and found only their corpses in the silk. She showed no surprise at finding me alive, and no relief either. She held the cup out to me, its ceramic shell so thin I marveled it could hold liquid at all, and I took it from her with both hands. It tasted awful, and I recognized the flavor of the herbs from my mother’s description of them. This was the tea that kept a babe from settling. Lo-Melkhiin had only touched my hands, but I drank it down nonetheless.

  There had been powers I did not und
erstand in the room with us last night. In the soft sunlight, it was hard to remember, but easier to believe. I still felt the faint stirrings in my chest and knew I could not doubt. The light that had passed between us, first from me to him and then back as different colors, was like nothing of which I had seen or heard. And I did not know who in this place I could ask.

  “Lady-bless,” said the serving girl, “will you eat?”

  I wondered if she expected tears from me, or lamentations. I crossed my ankles, and held out a hand for the bowl instead. She bowed over it, and the bronze was cool in my fingers. The food was simple, as though the cook who prepared it knew that I was desert-born and feared that my new surroundings would make me ill. I folded hummus into bread and ate slowly, and the serving girl watched.

  She had my number of summers, I thought, though she was lighter skinned beneath her veils. She had not seen the sun and felt the wind as I had. Her nails were short, like mine, and her hair was bound up neatly in coils around her head. It was a more elaborate style than I had ever attempted, and I wondered how I might duplicate it, since I could not see how it was fastened beneath her silks. Then I remembered the bathhouse the evening before, and remembered that I might never do my own hair again. A queen’s hair would be elegant, and put in place by someone else.

  When I finished, she set the bowl down on the tray and pulled a cord near the foot of the bed. It rang with a soft chime, calling the other serving girls into the room. They began to open shutters and windows, air and light streaming in, and one took away the dishes. The first girl held her hands out to me, and I let her pull me from the bed. I followed her back along the path, where I could hear the whispering water again. I stopped, to see if she would let me, and when she did not push, I looked at the source of the sound. I had lived the night to see this, and I was not disappointed.