A Thousand Nights (12 page)

“Now,” said Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered. “Ask me your questions, and we will see if we can find the answers you seek.”

IN THE FIRE OF OUR TWELFTH SUMMER, before we were proficient enough with our needles to stitch the purple cloth, but after we had come in from the herds, my mother and my
sister’s mother told us the story of our father’s father’s father, and how he had become our smallgod. We had heard versions of the tale before, sung around the fire or whispered
to his bones when our father was away with the caravan. This time, they promised us, it would be the secret tale. Our father knew it, as was his right, but my brothers did not, which was of course
how they bribed us to keep our seats instead of chasing each other off into the desert to play, as we would rather have done.

Our father’s father’s father had been born on a different wadi, one closer to the city than where we lived now. The wadi’s path through the desert was not straight as the
sand-crow flies, but it was a safer path. The camels could find water there, and green enough to eat. A good hunter could find prey as come to drink, and when lions came, they came only at night,
and roared aplenty to announce themselves. Our father’s father’s father was not a hunter, save at need, and though he was a good enough shot to keep the hyenas and wild dogs off his
herd animals, he was not good enough to get sufficient meat for the whole camp that way. He was content, though, as a herdsman; and by the time he was twenty summers old, he was herd master.

It was the herd master’s job to pick which animals were fit to eat and which were fit to mate, and to pick the path the herds would take. A wise man, it was said, followed his goats. A
fool was led by his sheep. A master, though, picked his own way, and that is what our father’s father’s father did. He had no Skeptic to tell him how the water moved in relation to the
sun, and no Priest to tell him which smallgods to ask for guidance and what offerings to make to catch their attention. He had only himself, and the craft he had learned from his summers under the
desert sun.

The wadi was crowded. Many families made their camps along it, and used the water for small fields and for their own use to drink. Our father’s father’s father’s village was
small, and their herds suffered because there was not enough space for them at the wells. There were many merchants crammed together as well, and they bought and sold and traded the same goods over
and over, until the prices were so high that our father’s father’s father could not afford them. One of the merchants who had the highest prices also had a camel. It was an older beast,
one which knew the desert well. The merchant always left the camel tied to a post in the middle of the market square while he went to talk with the other men. Even when the sun was at its hottest,
the camel would stand patiently in the heat and wait for its master.

One day, when the others had taken the sheep and goats, our father’s father’s father came to the market. He needed to buy a milk goat, because none of his goats were in milk; one of
the village women had died in childbirth, and there was no one to feed her baby girl. The only merchant with a milk goat was the man who also owned the camel, and when our father’s
father’s father saw this, he despaired; for surely he could not afford the price, and then he would lose another member of his village, tiny though she was.

Our father’s father’s father went up to the camel, standing in the hot sun as ever, and stroked its brown nose softly.

“Where is your master?” he said to the camel.

“He has gone to the tents by the wadi, where it is cooler,” said the camel.

Now, our father’s father’s father was surprised. He had not expected the camel to answer him. But he knew that surprise was no reason to be impolite, so he continued, talking to the
camel as he would to the old men who played backgammon in the shade.

“Thank you, revered elder,” he said.

“Why do you seek my master?” asked the camel.

“I need a milk goat for a babe in my village,” said our father’s father’s father. “And your master is the only one on the wadi that has one today.”

“Buy me instead,” said the camel. “I am old, and my master will part with me for less than he will the milk goat.”

“But you cannot feed a child,” protested our father’s father’s father.

“Buy me,” said the camel again. “Buy me and you will not regret it.”

Our father’s father’s father felt foolish indeed, taking advice from a camel. He did not follow the goats, after all, as lesser herdsmen did. On the other hand, the goats did not
actually speak, as the camel had done. So he sighed and went to the tents by the wadi. He haggled with the merchant, who was surprised to be offered anything at all for the camel, and came away
with a good price and an old camel.

They walked back along the wadi together. Our father’s father’s father was sad. The babe had not been fed for almost a day, except on thin porridge, and the women assured him that it
would not be enough. And now he had only an old camel to show for his efforts. He was so downhearted that he did not notice when the camel stopped walking until he ran out of rope and was jerked
backward.

“Master,” said the old camel. “We must go into the desert.”

“Camel,” said our father’s father’s father, “if we go into the desert, we will die.”

“Master,” said the camel again. “We will not.”

The camel turned away from the wadi and pulled our father’s father’s father after him. Though he could have hit the camel and made it turn right, he did not. The camel talked, after
all. It must have had a good reason.

They walked into the desert together. Our father’s father’s father counted his steps as he had been taught, to be sure that he would not walk farther than half his water could
sustain. When he reached the number that said he should turn back, he pulled gently on the camel’s rope.

“Camel,” he said. “I must turn back, or I will run out of water.”

“Master,” said the camel. “Look ahead.”

Our father’s father’s father looked, and there at the edge of his gaze was a familiar sight. There was a low green line, where oleander bushes grew in clumps. When he got closer, he
knew, he would see the pink flowers. Those only grew where there was water. They only grew where there was a wadi.

“Camel!” said our father’s father’s father. “How did you know that this was here?”

“I am a camel,” said the camel. “We can find water.”

“Why show it to me?” he asked.

“My old master never listened,” said the camel. “You did.”

They walked to the wadi together. Our father’s father’s father’s mind teemed with plans. They could move the whole village here. Yes, it was farther from the city walls, but
that didn’t matter if they had more space, and more water. They could expand the herds and not worry about fighting for their food and drink. All at once, he remembered the baby, and was
sore-hearted. He knew that prices must be paid, but this seemed like a very steep one.

“Master,” said the camel. “Look again.”

Our father’s father’s father heard it before he saw, and recognized the sound. In the shade of the oleanders there was a goat, laid down to have her kids in the cooler sand on the
wadi bank. Our father’s father’s father knelt beside her, and saw that she was wild and claimed by no one’s herd. He helped her birth her kids, and then lifted them up in his
arms. The she-goat he placed on the camel’s neck, and she lay there as calmly as if she had been born to mind his touch. The kids he bore himself, back across the desert to his tents.

There was great rejoicing that night. Our father’s father’s father had gone to market for a milk goat and returned with not only that, but three kids and a camel besides. And even
better, he told them of the second wadi. In the morning, they packed up their things and went out from that place. They crossed the burning sand, and found shade under the oleanders where to pitch
their tents. Soon enough, they found the cave where to bury their dead.

As our father’s father’s father had hoped, the herds flourished there. He led the caravans in trade, and oversaw the wealth of the village. When he died, they wrapped him up in fine
white cloth and set him in the hillside, next to where he had seen the old camel buried, and then they built the shrine.

“Your father and your brothers,” my mother said to us, “pray to your father’s father’s father because of the way the herds multiplied and the way the trade
increased. We pray to him as you do, for those reasons too. But that is not the only reason we pray to him.”

“This is the secret,” my sister’s mother said to us. Her eyes burned the way they did when she wore the priestly-whites and sang with my mother before our father’s tents,
even though we were only sitting in the shade of the oleanders and spinning thread. “This is the part of the tale that you must keep close to your hearts, all your days.”

My sister promised, words spilling from her lips like oil from a jug. I was so in awe of the tale and of the promise of something my brothers could not have, I could only nod.

“The baby that lived because of the milk goat was my mother’s mother’s mother,” my mother said to us. “If she had died, I would not have wed your father, and you,
my daughter, would not have been born at all.”

“I would not have my dearest friend,” my sister’s mother said to us. “And you, my daughter, would have no sister.”

We clasped hands, my sister and I. We had come so close to never having each other, and we had not known it until that moment. All at once, our bond was even stronger. We had always prayed to
our family’s smallgod, but now we put our hearts into every word, and our work into every offering we left at the shrine. We gave thanks as much as we asked for blessings, and we made sure to
pour out cool water where the bones of the camel were laid. And if we left oil and bread where my mother’s mother’s mother was buried, we were not the only ones to do so, but that was a
secret too.

Until that day in the garden when I sat down with Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered, and learned to spit olive pits through the air, that was all I had known of smallgods.

“DO YOU BELIEVE IN SMALLGODS?” I asked of Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered.

“I do not disbelieve them,” he said to me. “That is the nature of Skeptics, remember. We would rather debate than know for certain.”

“Do you understand how smallgods receive their powers?” I asked then. I had to come at him like the wadi, with its meandering lines. I could not come at him as the sand-crow
flew.

“I do,” he said to me. “But when Skeptics talk, we often explain things we already know. In the telling, we dredge up the memory of half-forgotten facts or inspire new ones. So
tell me how smallgods are made.”

“When a person dies, if he has done something great, his son and his grandsons will build a shrine,” I said to him. “They will pray to him and leave offerings of oil and bread.
They will carry memories of him with them in the caravan, and he will help them if he can.”

Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered was nodding.

“And the more prayers that are said and the more offerings that are laid will increase the smallgod’s power,” he said. “Until his children’s children’s
children forget him, and he becomes nothing more than a pile of bones in the desert sand.”

“That is what the Priests say,” I said to him.

“What do you say?” he asked of me.

I thought about it, chewing on a piece of bread longer than I needed to before swallowing it down.

“I say that our father and my brothers have always returned to us,” I told him. “And that our herds multiply and no one goes hungry in our father’s tents, even if there
is a season when the wadi does not flood.”

“But is that the smallgod?” he asked of me. “Or is it that your father is a good tradesman?”

“Can it not be both?” I asked in return. “Can our father be a pious man and a clever one, who is served by himself and favored by a smallgod?”

“There is no way to test that,” he said to me. “And it must be tested to be proven.”

I considered his words. I had never thought to prove that a smallgod existed. I had only ever known they had.