Shadow Spinner (7 page)

Maybe it was someone's private terrace. But no one would be outside now, in the heat of the day. And I could
smell
the fresh air!

There were three arched openings in the window lattice, just above the sill, meant to let air and light in—not to let people out. But maybe I could fit.

I hiked my skirts, thrust one leg over the sill and through an arch, then tried to squeeze leg and head and shoulders through the arch at once.

Too small.

I withdrew my leg, then slipped my head and shoulders through the arch, twisting my shoulders. I wormed slowly forward and, giving one last push with my feet, slid through the opening and down onto the hard floor.

The heat struck me like a blow, but the air was washed of the cloying perfume that filled the harem. I breathed in deep and smelled Cyprus and jasmine and roses. A light breeze rustled in the leaves of a potted palm tree and tinkled in some hanging chimes.

I got up and walked to the carpet. The drinking vessels, I saw, held traces of sharbats. Someone
had been
here not long ago. Moving to the stone railing, I looked down the narrow arm of the terrace. No one here now.

Below lay a large garden with flowers and fruit trees and blooming bushes. Footpaths wound all through it, leading to ponds with floating water lilies and gilded gazebos. A grove of cypress and boxwood trees at the outer edges cast mottled shadows across the ground.

This must be the garden where the Sultan had caught his first wife dallying with her lover. He had sealed its doorways to the harem, so now only men could go there.

A mournful wail pierced the silence; I looked down to see a peacock wandering along the banks of a pond.

This garden was lovely, but I longed to look out upon the city. I longed to smell the familiar city smells. Sweat and spices and manure. The sharp odor of the tanning vats.

I longed for a glimpse of my old home.

But the view to the city was blocked. Perhaps there were other terraces, higher up.

It didn't matter. I had come to air, away from the ghosts. I fetched a cushion from the carpet and took it onto the arm of the terrace. A flowering vine grew out of a glazed planter and twined up a trellis on the wall opposite the railing. From somewhere above came the soft cooings of pigeons at rest. I set the cushion in the
shadow of the wall, leaned back against the trellis, took in a deep breath of jasmine.

My eyelids felt heavy, but I
would
not sleep. I would only rest for a moment.

*  *  *  

I jolted awake. I
had
slept! For how long?

The shadow had moved across the floor and had begun to creep up the stone railing.

Voices. Two of them: an older and a younger. One—unmistakable—was the Khatun.

Was this her own private terrace?

What would she do when she found me here?

I sat paralyzed, unable to decide what to do. Then a grating sound—a key in the lock. I jumped up, ran to the far end of the terrace arm.

They wouldn't see me until they came to the railing. But I should show myself now. Surely coming here was no great sin. No one had told me it was forbidden.

The door creaked open; I started to move toward it. The voices grew suddenly loud.”. . . what she's up to,” the Khatun said, “with that Marjan.”

I froze.

“She
must
have run out of stories. What else could she want with that crippled little monkey?” I recognized the younger voice now. It was the copper-haired girl.

The Khatun laughed, then said more softly, “Oh, there are many possibilities. I'll find out, in good time. My son won't tell me—or he doesn't know himself. He wants to make her
happy,
he says. I don't like it.”

“She can't keep up this storytelling forever—can she? She's got to run out of them someday.”

The Khatun made a grumbling noise. Then, “When
you're
queen,” she said, “I'll keep you well supplied with stories.”

And then the door creaked again, and there were more footfalls and chattering voices, and a tinkling of silver or glass. But now I couldn't show myself. It was too late, after what I'd heard.
When
you're
queen, I'll keep you well supplied with stories.

My heart was pounding wildly. I peered over the railing, hoping to find some little outcropping of roof that I could climb down to until it was safe to go back the way I'd come.

Nothing. It dropped sheer to the garden.

“Hsst!”

What was that?

“Hsst! Up here!”

I looked up, craned my neck until I saw her: a crinkle-faced old woman peering at me from atop the roof. “The trellis!” she hissed, pointing at the wooden trellis against the wall. “Climb it! Now!”

I gaped at her. She smiled—shyly, I thought—and motioned furiously for me to come up.
Who was she?

“Hurry!” she whispered. “They'll see you!”

They'd come and
find
me if they heard her. I looked at the trellis: flimsy-looking crisscrossing slats of wood interlaced with vine. It didn't look sturdy. And the wall was high. If I stayed here and didn't move, no one would see me. I didn't know who this old woman was, or why or
if
she wanted to help me. Maybe this was a trick.

Something moved. A serving woman, coming out from behind the wall. I pressed myself back against the trellis. She said something, and her glance flitted past me. Then she moved back out of sight.

Had she seen me?

I waited a long moment. My bloodbeat rang loud in my ears.

Nothing.

I looked back up; the old woman was gone from the roof. But I couldn't stay here now. Someone
would
see me; it was only a matter of time.

I caught up my fine silk skirts and tucked the ends of them into my sash. Then, clutching the lattice, I wedged my good foot between the slats and pulled myself up. It held.

I tried to climb fast, but the angle of the slats made my bad foot hurt, and my skirts kept tangling between my feet and the lattice, rustling in the leaves. From back on the square part of the terrace, I could hear the Khatun talking and dishes clanking and the wind chimes tinkling, and I prayed that no one would hear me.

I had nearly reached the top when I heard a brittle
crack
and then my bad foot was swimming out in the air and my hand was too—it had slipped off the lattice—and the garden was floating far below. I grabbed for the lattice again; its edges bit into my hands. I groped with my foot for another place to go. There. But would it hold? One hand felt along the edge of the roof for something to grab on to.

Then the old woman was there again, gripping my arm and hauling me up onto a flat piece of roof. My knee hit down with a
thunk.

“What was that?” I heard from below.

Footsteps. They were coming nearer; they were on the balcony, just beneath us.

“Get behind me,” the old woman whispered. “Don't let
them see you.” I scrambled behind her, then, “There now, my dear,” she said in a high, rich, warbling voice. “Don't flap your wings so loud; the ghosts'll hear you.” She was hunched over, facing me, with her back to the terrace, cupping her hands as if she were cradling something within them.

Was she
mad?

“There, my dear. No flapping. They won't hurt you.”

Then from below, a voice: “Zaynab! Get along with you. You know you're not allowed near this terrace.”

The woman made a little clucking sound with her tongue. She shooed me before her across the roof.

“Talking to her birds again,” I heard someone say down below. “Crazy old Zaynab!”

T
he roof was huge and scary. Most of it was flat, but it was broken up into pieces: a small flat piece over here, a higher flat piece over there, a big square hole that dropped down to a courtyard with no railing and no warning, a cupola, a minaret. Most houses you see use all of their roof space for living. But you could tell that this roof was not
made for that. There were no railings round the flat spaces, and the mud surfaces were dirty and unadorned.

Zaynab moved before me like a cat—a plump, round cat—gliding along the flat parts, leaping across gaps, scaling rickety ladders from one level to the next, mincing along ledges, skirting the bases of cupolas. She was amazingly nimble. There was a light springiness to her step, and yet a sort of heaviness in her feet when she jumped that made them land solidly where they were supposed to, without teetering.

I was afraid. The ground looked far below, and sometimes, there was nothing at all between it and me.

“Don't look down!” Zaynab called to me.

But it was hard not to look down. I wanted to see my feet, where they were supposed to step, but often, just beyond the edge of them, was
down.
Down into a tiled courtyard, or down to another level of roof, or down into the garden below.

I hadn't wanted to follow her. She had shooed me away from the Khatun's terrace until we were out of view, then had climbed up a ladder to another level of roof and disappeared. I had stood there, gaping at the rickety ladder, at the space where I had last seen her. She had appeared again—above me.
“Hsst!
Up here!”

I couldn't go back. And I couldn't stay up there all day, on the bare mud roof above the Khatun's terrace. So I had followed, favoring my bad foot—gingerly setting it on the ladder's narrow rungs, scooting it along ledges, walking around the gaps that Zaynab jumped over.

But Zaynab didn't seem to notice my crippled foot or consider that one misstep could plunge me to my death.
Don't look down!
was all the advice she offered.

What was I doing, following a crazy woman across this treacherous roof?

But I thought of the Khatun and kept going.

At last, as I was hauling myself up another ladder, a small, circular pavilion arose before me on a tiled rooftop terrace. The pavilion was made of yellow bricks, with a domed roof and a row of slender, arched windows all the way around. Nearby, flowering bushes and trees sprouted up from clay pots. Bird droppings speckled the floor, growing denser and denser toward the far end, where I saw three pigeon lofts—thatched mud huts shaped like cones. They were pierced with clusters of small round holes, with sticks poking out beneath. Pigeons peered out through the holes, perched on the sticks, preened on the loft roofs, and strutted on the low wall that edged the terrace. From within the lofts welled up the rich, peaceful, burbling sound of many contented birds.

When I turned around, Zaynab was looking at me; she quickly averted her eyes. A pigeon sat on her shoulder, pecked at her gray hair. Her robes were mottled with telltale white streaks. “Would you . . .” Again she seemed shy. “Would you like a cup of sharbat?”

It would have been rude to refuse. I followed her into the shade of the pavilion.

The carpets, scattered about the floor, were faded and frayed and littered with feathers. White droppings splotched the tiles. It smelled musty. Of
bird.
Yet it was a fine room, with designs in green and brown tiles on the floor and in purple and blue on the high ceiling. Like earth and sky, I thought.

Humming a tuneless tune, Zaynab poured water into a bowl and hastily scrubbed two clay cups. The wash
water turned chalky white. Bird droppings in the cups? It seemed likely, because now two more pigeons flew in and joined the one pecking at Zaynab's hair. I watched warily as she ladled sharbat from an earthenware jar. Still, she didn't seem really
crazy
—except for the reckless jaunt across the roof and the birds on her shoulders and that imaginary bird she had talked to. Unless you counted terrible housekeeping as a sign of craziness. Which Auntie Chava probably would.

Who
was
this Zaynab? I wondered. What did she do here? Why had she saved me from the Khatun? Or . . .
had
she saved me?

“Here you go, my dear,” Zaynab said, handing me a cup of sharbat.

My dear.
That was what she had called the imaginary bird. Still, the sharbat looked clean enough. I had half feared to find a feather floating in it—or worse. Sipping, I found that it was sweet and good.

I smiled at Zaynab. “This is delicious,” I said. “Thank you.”

She nodded, smiled, ducked her head, then quickly turned and scattered some seeds on the tile floor. The birds on her shoulders fluttered down and began pecking; four or five new pigeons sailed in through the windows and joined them. Zaynab sat staring at the pigeons, humming softly to herself. Abruptly, she broke off and looked at me.

“Do you like views?” she asked.

“Views?”

“The view,” she said. “Over there. We can look. If you want. You don't have to unless you want to.”

“I'd like to,” I said.

We crossed to a window and silently looked out. The whole city lay before us—beige flat-roofed buildings, studded with bright domes and spindly minarets. The sun, low in the sky, cast long shadows and bathed the highest points in golden light. To the east, like a deep blue silk scarf, lay the river. And beyond, along the horizon, stretched a row of green hills. My mother had grown up beyond the green hills, I suddenly remembered.