A Thousand Nights (31 page)

Then she went out to find her husband. She could not help her mother and mine, because I wore her priestly clothes.

The boy brought me a slice of melon. It soothed my throat, and I thanked him. He ran away from me, hiding behind the old woman. She took him in her lap again—this time he did not fight
her—and began to sing. It was a song about the morning, and even though the sun was still hours from the sky, I was glad of it. I did not want to be thinking dark thoughts.

A buzzing sound came close to my ear. I looked, and there was one of my bees, a bee no longer. It was still golden, but it was person-shaped. It held a tiny staff in place of a stinger, like a
shepherd for tiny sheep, and it trailed fine golden dust behind it. A wadi toad crouched by my feet. Its hands were webbed, but not quite toad-like, and its knees bent, like an old man’s. It
held a water jar, but before I could take it, one of my goats did instead. It walked on two legs now, fine limbs white and gleaming in the lamplight, and poured the water on Lo-Melkhiin’s
face. The other creatures could not fit inside the tent, but I heard the scream of a fiery sand-crow, and smelled the brimstone it left in the air as it flew. I heard the stomp of my new-horned
horse, and felt the heat that came from the belly of my lizard. My creatures were still with us, and they would do good.

Lo-Melkhiin coughed, and his eyes opened. I looked into them, afraid that I might see a hollow thing there. If there was madness or cruelty, I would have to kill him, and I did not know if I
could. The eyes that looked at me were kind. I could see his mother in them, the way she hoped and wished. I could see what must be his father, the foolish king that everyone had loved anyway. And
I could see the wisdom and peacefulness that were his alone. Though we had been married for nearly three moons and I had seen him almost every day, I felt that I looked upon my husband for the
first time.

“Al-ammiyyah,”
he said to me.
Common.
The old insult had no edge, and I judged it a good beginning.

“Lie still,” I said to him. “You must rest, and drink more water.”

The wadi toad waddled more than it hopped now, but it went to fill its jar and returned without spilling any, like my sister and I had done when we carried one jar between us.

“Go,” said Lo-Melkhiin’s mother. “Tell your people what you have seen.”

I went out from the tent and saw them. I told them that Lo-Melkhiin would live, that his heart was restored, and that he would be the good king they remembered. I told them that when the dead
were buried, they could go home, and tell everyone they met that peace had come. I told my sister that her wedding would be a sacred day now, the day that men remembered how peace had been won. My
new bees flew around me as I spoke, trailing their golden dust through the air, and no one doubted my words.

I went to my father and to my living brothers, embracing them. My mother and my sister’s mother labored still, so I would have to wait to speak to them, and my sister had gone with her
husband into their tent, so we could not put our heads together and talk as we once had. Those days, I knew, were past. We would have other secrets now, and other tasks to tend as we whispered
them.

For three nights, my mother and my sister’s mother buried the dead, and for three nights, Lo-Melkhiin recovered. At last, their work was done, and he was well. I went to them and thanked
them, and they put their arms around me and wept. They knew then that they would lose me again; but this time, I would go because I wished it.

I traded three pots of the golden dust for five horses. The boy had collected it for me, chasing the bees like it was the greatest game he had ever played. Lo-Melkhiin took the gelded male,
putting the boy in front of him as he rode. I had a black mount, and Lo-Melkhiin’s mother and the two other women rode mares that were brown. We set out across the desert as we had before,
except this time my sister did not pray as we went. This time, I looked back at my father’s tents until they were gone from my view, and when Lo-Melkhiin promised me that I could visit, I
knew he meant to keep his word.

We came into the city as the sun was setting. The guards at the gate were surprised to see us. They said they had seen strange lights over the desert on the night when we had battled, and that
they did not think Lo-Melkhiin would ever return. A few of the city lords had clearly thought so too, but once it became clear that the king had come back, they behaved themselves.

Lo-Melkhiin called Firh Stonetouched to him, and said that he no longer had to carve stone if he did not wish it. He also gave the carver all of his statues back, and said that Firh could do as
he wished with them. I did not ask what became of them, but the statues disappeared from the gardens overnight, and I hoped he had turned them into dust. A statue appeared in my water garden at the
same time. It was another great cat, but this time it was a lioness, not a lion, and her eyes were not haunted as the other statues’ had been.

“This one is yours, lady-bless,” Firh Stonetouched said to me. “I carved it with your blessing, and I will do no others.”

“It is beautiful,” I said to him, because it was. “And I am grateful.”

He bowed, and left me. I sat staring at the statue until another shadow came into the garden, and Lo-Melkhiin was there.

“Will you stay with me, Al-ammiyyah?” he asked me. “I will not make you. The Skeptics say the wedding does not have to stand, and that you can return to your father’s
tents, and to a match of his making—or none at all—if you choose.”

“I will stay, husband,” I said to him. “I have become accustomed to the qasr, and to the people here. I thought the desert was my home, but it is no longer. Your home is mine
now, and I will live in it.”

“Let me make you the queen in truth, then,” he said to me. “Marry me again, if you will. I will give you a crown and a place on my council.”

“The petty lords will never allow that,” I said to him.

“They are afraid of you,” he said to me. “They are afraid of what the palace women say you have done. If we tell them now, they will do it.”

I considered his words. When I had lived here before, I had had little to occupy my time. I did not wish for the same thing again, but I had thought I would take part in running the household,
only. A seat on the council—to hear petitioners and advise judgment—was much more to my liking, though I had not thought it was within my grasp. A golden bee flew amongst the flowers of
my water garden. My creatures had followed me to the city, and lived even inside the qasr walls. They would remind everyone what I had done.

“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.

A
lready, 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.