Shadow Spinner (14 page)

All the while, I felt a growing uneasiness. Shahrazad and her sister were as naive about the outer world as I was about the harem. They had no grasp of it at all!

Still, this plan—once I had helped them press the wrinkles out of it—seemed as if it might work. IF we were lucky.

*  *  *  

I returned to the roof.

This day, I found Zaynab preparing to lower a lidded basketful of pigeons over the side. “The pigeon boy is waiting,” she said.

“What will he do with them?”

“He'll give them to a caravan master, who will take them far across the kingdom so that people can send back messages to the Sultan.”

Near the edge of the roof was a sort of barrel on its side, with rope wrapped around it. You could turn it with a handle, like a spit. A winch, Zaynab called it. There was a hook on the end of the rope, which Zaynab attached to a ring at the top of the basket. I pulled my veil over my head and peered down as Zaynab turned the winch and the basket descended with a loud creaking noise. The boy was standing on the street, looking up. I watched him slip the hook off the ring and then scamper away, the basket dangling from his hand.

I stayed there all day, on the roof with Zaynab and her birds. I loved holding the pigeons' soft bodies against mine, taking off the treasured messages and putting them in the small silver casket, which Zaynab delivered to the Sultan's guards. I loved the dusty smell of feathers and the birds' burbling coos when I stroked their heads. I began to get to know them by the names Zaynab had given them, began to tell them apart by the colors of their feathers and by how they behaved. Twice, I caught myself talking to them and,
once, a pigeon flew up onto my shoulder and pecked at my hair.

As I looked out across the city to the green hills at the horizon, my mind started to open up and think about things I had locked out in my fever to get the stories. What lay beyond those hills? I wondered. What kind of places had all those women and girls gone to when they escaped from the city? In the tales, the world beyond the green hills was filled with wonders—carved wooden horses that fly, islands where the soil is made of diamonds, vast kingdoms ruled by women.

Zaynab and I lay on our backs at sunset, watching the pink and purple clouds go sailing across the sky. Then, after prayers, I asked how she had come to live here. She told me that her grandfather had been governor of the messenger pigeons many years ago and that her mother, a wily woman, had finagled the position for her. “I worked for the old sultan, Shahryar's father,” she said. “The old one promised my mother never to replace me—but his son tried to once.” She laughed softly.

“What's funny?” I asked.

“He put in a man who didn't know a pigeon from a duck. He made a mess of things, and so Shahryar called me back.”

“Were you here when . . . during the purge?”

Zaynab nodded, suddenly grave. “I used to ... go down to the harem sometimes. I had friends there. But after the . . . Well, now I don't go there anymore. It was terrible. It—” She turned away from me; I lay still and listened to the deep, mournful cooing of the birds. In a moment, Zaynab turned back and sighed. “I don't. . . get many visitors these days,” she said.

The stars came glimmering out in the deep blue dusk, and after a while, I told Zaynab about Auntie Chava and Uncle Eli. A wave of homesickness engulfed me.

And, after a longer while, Zaynab asked me gently about my foot.

I had never told anyone about it. At my old home, where I had lived with my mother, everybody knew. Auntie Chava knew, too, though she never said a word about it. But she would purse her lips and shake her head sometimes, watching me limp. She was angry about it, I could tell.

But I had never told anyone, myself. I never thought I would. Still, lying on the roof beside Zaynab, looking up at the stars . . . she made me feel that it would be all right to tell.

*  *  *  

My mother is calling me.

“Marjan. Come here,” she says.

I'm afraid. Her voice sounds funny, a little quavery and weak. Her room is dark.

“Come here, Marjan. Come sit beside me.”

I tiptoe into the room. I can see her now, in the dimness—her long, pale face, her dark eyes. I sit down beside her on the pallet. She smiles, runs her hand through my hair. She moves her fingers lightly across my forehead, my eyebrows, my cheeks. “Marjan,” she says, and I can feel the old warmth now, behind the new strange thinness of her voice. I lean against her; her arms fold me in; I can hear the beating of her heart.

“Marjan,” she says again.

She draws in breath and sniffles; I pull away, look into her face. Tears. Her eyes are shining, and there are tears running down her cheeks.

“You'll be all right when I'm gone, my beloved. I know you will. You're strong and you're bright. You're a jewel, Marjan. Always remember that. A beautiful jewel.”

Gone? The fear flares up again. “Where are you going?” I ask. “Take me with you. I want to come, too.”

She folds me in again, and I feel something trembly in her breath. And then she's moving my foot, pulling it away from my body, twisting it so that one side of it is flat against the floor.

“Hold it just like that,” she says, and her voice is so hoarse, it's almost a whisper. “Just for a moment.”

I pull my foot away. “Why?” I ask. “I don't want to.”

She puts my foot back the way it was. “Just trust me, Marjan,” she says. “Leave it there. Just for a moment.”

She's moving now, pushing aside her cushion. There's something in her hands, something heavy, something she can barely lift.

“Madar. . .”

“Put your foot back the way I showed you.” Her voice is harder now, harder than before.

I put my foot back. She's standing now, holding the thing in her hands. A pot. A heavy pot. It's high in the air now, and she's shaking, but the pot keeps going higher.

“Just for a moment,” she says, and then the pot moves and
Madar
moves and pebbles are flying everywhere and pain explodes in my foot. Someone is screaming, and there are footsteps and loud voices, and the voice is still screaming and the pain is still exploding, and it's bright. It's bright. So bright.

*  *  *  

“She did it out of love. You understand that, Marjan, don't you? She did it out of love.”

I didn't know how I had gotten there, with Zaynab's
arms around me. I drew in a shaky breath, fought to keep myself from crying. Another breath. I pulled away, let the old familiar anger fend off tears.

“How could a person love you and then hurt you that way?” I demanded. “Maim you for the rest of your life? So that people would laugh at you and nobody would ever marry you and you would always have to be someone else's servant?”

“Marjan! She did it to keep you from the Sultan. He was killing a wife every night. He vowed to keep it up forever. And you were her beautiful little girl, and she wasn't going to be there to protect you.”

I knew she did it to protect me. I knew that. But if she had been strong, she would have found another way. If she had been clever and brave, like Shahrazad. If she hadn't given up. Many mothers sent their daughters away over the green hills with Abu Muslem. Many mothers escaped and took their daughters with them. But my mother maimed me, and then drank poison and died.

I knew she did it to protect me. But I would never forgive her for it. I couldn't.

“She should have been strong,” I said, and I could hear the coldness in my voice.

Zaynab was shaking her head. Tears were streaming down her face. “This is hard, my dear,” she said. “This is very, very hard.”

I
slept uneasily that night, jolted awake by the slightest sounds: whispers of footsteps outside my door, hushed voices, a child's cry from some far-off corner of the harem. And then came a soft knocking, which at first seemed part of a dream, but was still there when the dream had melted away.

Footsteps, fading to silence.

I rolled up my pallet and groped through darkness toward the doorway, until my foot kicked something soft and lumpy. I leaned down, touched it, ran it through my hands to feel the shape of it. A coarse veil. Good.

I dressed then, by
feel,
except for my sandals, which I held because they would make too much noise. Pulling aside the curtain, I had just enough light to see the shape of a sleeping woman on the floor.

Not sleeping. Drugged. Someone—maybe the one who had knocked—had given her sharbat laced with a sleeping potion. That had been part of the plan.

I bent down, peered into her face. Soraya.

I stole down the stairs and into the courtyard below.

The harem was dark, lit only by a milky moonlight glow that seeped in through the window grills. Shapes loomed before me, just thickenings in the gloom until, as I came near, they sharpened into familiar things: a pillar, a fountain, an urn.

I had memorized the way. Through the courtyard with the blue fountain, down a flight of stairs, through the corridor with the black-and-white-tiled floor, up again to the courtyard with the gold-inlaid ceiling. Then more corridors and more stairs—going down and down and down until I was blind with darkness, but my nose pricked to life with the smell of kitchen spices. Turn right through a narrow doorway; feel for the flint on the table, feel for the lamp.

Light bloomed up before me, illuminating the place where I stood. A storeroom. Crates and baskets and bulging burlap bags were stacked against three walls. A row of huge ceramic jars stood along the fourth—with three tall leather olive oil jars at one end. Two, I saw, had been marked with white chalk.

I had heard, in the old tales, of people hiding inside empty olive oil jars. But the tales never said how they did it. I took off my veil and then, as quietly as I could,
dragged some crates in front of one of the marked jars. I stacked them up like stairs, until the highest one came nearly to the lip of the jar. I put on my sandals, then set my veil and the lamp on the uppermost crate. Looking down, I could see that the seam in the leather jar had been taken apart at the top, so I could slip easily through the neck.

I sat on the crate, dangled my feet into the jar. Once in, I wouldn't be able to get back out. Not without help. I took a deep breath, blew out the lamp, then slid down inside the jar. My hips caught, but I pulled at the loosened seam and wriggled through.

It was slick and oily and reeked of olives. When I stood up straight, the top of my head—to my eyes—poked through the neck of the jar. Later, I would have to crouch. I reached one arm up through the opening and, finding my veil, pulled it down through the hole and wrapped it around me.

I stood waiting in the dark.

The bad thing about waiting is that your mind has nothing to do. So then it thinks of things to do—to terrify you. My mind kept sending me pictures of the Khatun, and then the fear would come welling up inside me, and it would be hard to breathe.

What if somebody came into the storeroom with a lamp and saw the stacked crates? What if they found me, and then told the Khatun?

I gave myself something else to think about. The plan, what we had to do.

Ayaz. He was supposed to look for me twice a day at the fountain in the carpet bazaar. And I was sure that he would—because of the dinars. He was probably
living
there now, searching for me, dreaming his greedy little dreams. I went over what I would say to him and to the storyteller.

After a while, my shoulder began to itch. Then my bad foot began to throb, and my leg was cramping up. I had just started to stretch, to push one arm up through the neck of the jar, when I heard the call to morning prayer. I couldn't pray properly in this jar. Later, I would make it up.

Now was the dangerous time. People would be stirring. They might finish their prayers before Dunyazad came.

Soon, I heard the pad of bare footsteps, coming near. Was it Dunyazad? I crouched down into the jar and, looking up, saw light flickering across the ceiling.

They were in here now, the footsteps. I heard a gritty, scraping sound. Someone was moving the crates, scooting them across the floor. It must be Dunyazad!

“Dunyazad?” I said softly.

The scraping sound stopped. Quiet.
Please be Dunyazad,
I thought. The scrapes started up again.

Cold fear gathered around my heart. Why didn't she say something? Why didn't she answer?

Suddenly, a second, lighter set of footsteps, coming fast. The heavier footsteps thudded twice, then were silent. A swish of fabric, a murmur, and then, “Marjan!” came a whispered voice. “Stay down. Take this.”

Dunyazad!

Something flat and round appeared above the hole, blocking the flickering light. The bottom of a wicker bird basket. I squatted down as far as I could, guided the basket through the neck of the jar and into the widest part.

Please don't coo,
I thought. I breathed in the dusty scent of feathers, mingled with the smell of olive oil. I could feel something moving, could hear the pigeons' feet making scratchy noises. But no cooing.