Shadow Spinner (9 page)

“Shh!” she said. I could hear her fumbling at something, and then a click, and there was a crack of light down low that grew into a square. We crawled—Dunyazad first, then me—through the small, low doorway into Shahrazad's suite.

Shahrazad came forward to greet us, motioning us to
be quiet. I kissed the floor at her feet and, rising, saw the chest behind her, the one they had spoken of the day before. It was the size and shape of a small coffin, made of dark-varnished rosewood, with a deep, complicated design carved on its lid. One of its hinges had twisted and pulled away from the wood, and a long, raw scratch scarred the front panel.

“It saddened me to do that,” Shahrazad said, looking at the scratch. “I've always liked this chest. But. . .”

But if the chest weren't damaged, she couldn't send it out of the harem for repair.

Shahrazad handed me a pair of sandals and a veil—a fine full-length black veil, made of heavy slubbed silk. It made me uneasy, the veil. It would mark me as a rich woman. And rich women, though they might go to the bazaar from time to time, would have male relatives and eunuchs with them.

“Do you have . . . another veil?” I asked her. “One not so fine?”

The sisters exchanged a glance. “It's mine,” Dunyazad said. “It's the least fine one I own.”

Now Dunyazad embraced her sister and made for the hidden panel door. She stooped to go through it, then turned back to me. “May Allah keep all hateful things from you,” she said. I couldn't read in her voice whether she truly meant it or not. Then she disappeared into the passage; the panel clicked shut behind her.

Shahrazad was opening the chest. “I put pillows inside,” she said. “I got in myself to see how it would feel. You can breathe; some of the carving on the lid goes all the way through. Do you see?” She pointed to a pattern of holes on the inside of the lid. A moment before, with the
lid closed, I had not seen that they pierced it through. “My legs were cramped,” Shahrazad went on, “but you're not so tall as I. Anyway, you won't be in there long. The cabinetmaker's shop, they tell me, is not far. And remember, they'll come to pick you up before sunset prayers. They lock the harem gates at dusk. Don't be late, Marjan—no matter what! Oh! and . . .” She reached inside her sash. “I almost forgot. Here.” She put three heavy gold dinars in my hand. I gaped at them. “Isn't that enough?” she asked.

I was about to tell her that in fact, they were far too much. These dinars would draw attention to me, draw
suspicion
to me. Copper fils would be better, with maybe a silver dirham or two. But before I had a chance to say it, she dropped two more dinars into my hands, saying, “Better too many than too few.”

A loud knock at the door; I jumped.

“Hurry!” Shahrazad whispered. “Get in!” She pushed me gently toward the chest.

I thrust the coins into the folds of my sash. Quickly, I climbed inside and put on the sandals. I couldn't straighten my legs. But when I bent them, lying on my back, and put my feet against the end wall of the chest, it wasn't uncomfortable. Shahrazad tucked a pillow between my head and the wall of the chest and covered me up to my neck with a narrow carpet. “So no one can peer through the holes and see you,” she said softly. She lowered the lid, then lifted it again—just a crack—and I was staring up into her eyes.

“Thank you, Marjan,” she said.

Knocking again. The lid came down, and I heard the metallic clinking of a key in the lock of the trunk.

A wild rush of panic surged up inside me, and for a
moment, it was hard to breathe. I resisted the urge to call out, to push at the lid.

And then I remembered a story I had heard about a boy who was imprisoned in a copper bottle by magic. He calmed his fears by imagining he was a silkworm in its cocoon. So I imagined that I was a silkworm, too—safe and snug in my own cozy home. No one could see me here. No one could harm me. I gulped down a deep breath—it smelled of sandalwood—and felt my panic ebb.

It was dark in the chest, though not completely. Light trickled through the cluster of holes in the lid.

I could hear low, muffled voices. The barest hint of Shahrazad's perfume lingered in the sandalwood-smelling air. Then there were footfalls, coming this way.

I braced myself, pushing my head against one end, my feet against the other, my hands on either side. “The important thing is that you don't move,” Shahrazad had said the day before when she had explained the plan. I had asked her if the bearers wouldn't know, from the weight of me, that someone was in the chest. She told me that the chest itself was so heavy, they wouldn't know the difference. And she told me not to stir.

All at once, the chest was hefted into the air with little jerks and sways and lurches. I heard the sounds of fabric rubbing against wood, and labored breathing, and soft bumps as the chest hit against something. Someone's leg. It would have to be a eunuch's. None of the harem women would be strong enough to carry the chest, and tradesmen would never come inside Shahrazad's rooms. In my mind, I pictured the young eunuch, the one who had smiled at me. Might
he
be one of the bearers? Might he be the one who
knew?

Now we were going down, though the chest was level, not tipping. They must be walking side by side down the stairs. Then the sound of splashing water: the courtyard.

Soon, I lost track of where we were. There were too many ups and downs, too many turnings this way and that. It had grown hot inside the chest. Before long I heard a loud creaking noise—a gate, I thought—and then the sounds of the street rushed in. Shoutings. Cart rumblings. Cloppings of hooves on stone. Beyond the fragrance of sandalwood, I could smell the street—sweat and animal fur and manure. All at once, my feet lurched upward and my head pressed hard against the pillow. The bottom of the chest was scraping against something—a cart? A shrill, rasping noise. A clunk. For a moment, all was still.

Then we were moving again—a different kind of moving. Something rumbled beneath me—it
must
be a cart—with quakes and jostles, sudden sharp jolts. I was
very
hot now. A bead of sweat trickled off my forehead into my hair.

I tried at first to imagine where we were going, which streets we were on, but before long I was thoroughly confused. And I didn't know where the shop was that they were smuggling me to.

Smuggling. Like the outlaw who smuggled girls out of the city so that they wouldn't become brides of the Sultan. Abu Muslem was what they called him; nobody knew his real name. My mother had spoken of him, but she hadn't
done
anything about it. If she had done the right thing, I would have been safe and whole.

At last, the cart stopped. I heard that same shrill rasp—the back gate hinge of the cart, I guessed. I braced
myself. The chest dropped suddenly—I heard the grunt of an exhaled breath—then I was carried for a short distance and set down upon something solid and flat.

Footsteps, moving away. The sound of a door shutting.

Then nothing. I could hear street sounds, but they were muffled, faraway sounding.

I waited.

Hot. Sweat streamed off my face into my hair. My back was soaked.

Was this the cabinetmaker's shop?

Little light seeped in through the holes in the chest lid, so I must be in a shaded place. I breathed in deep, trying to see if I could
smell
this place, and I thought I caught a whiff of varnish.

Suddenly, I heard footfalls. There was the clinking of the key in the lock, and then footfalls again. Running away.

Shahrazad had told me that someone would come to unlock the chest at the cabinetmaker's shop. But she had said that they would help me out of the chest, that they would point me in the direction of the bazaar.

I waited awhile longer. All quiet.

Why didn't someone open the lid?

Was it safe to get out?

Still quiet.

At last, I could bear it no longer. I pushed back the carpet and slowly lifted the lid of the chest. Just a crack. I could see a clutter of trunks and chests and cabinets and tables. Beyond, hanging on the wall, I could make out the shapes of woodworking tools.

No one there.

I opened the lid and clambered out, pulling my veil
over my head and holding it securely under my chin. My legs felt stiff and a little bit numb. My bad foot ached. I stretched out, looking over the rest of the room—a small, dark room with heavy drapes drawn across the windows. The door had been left ajar.

Still no one. Why was there no one here?

All at once it struck me that no one had spoken on my whole journey here in the chest. The bearers in the harem had not spoken, and the cart driver had not spoken, and again, since I had arrived here at the cabinetmakers, I had heard not a single voice. People
would
speak when they shared a task. They would say, “I'll go first,” or “I'll take up the rear.” They would comment on the heaviness or the lightness of the chest, or they would greet someone working nearby.

They didn't want me to hear them. They didn't want me to see them. They didn't want me to know who they were. No one wanted to be connected with any secret goings-on at the harem. You could die for that, if you were on the wrong side. And going against the Khatun . . .
put
you on the wrong side.

I shook off the thought. What was important was finding the storyteller. I
had
to find him. Today. Otherwise, Shahrazad would die.

I crept to the door and peered out into the brightness. A courtyard. Empty, save for the cart and one lonely palm tree in a patch of dirt near the wall. The gate leading to the street was ajar.

I moved to the tree, scooped out some dirt in one hand and rubbed it into the splendid slubbed silk. There. Now it didn't look
quite
so fine.

I walked briskly to the gate and let myself out.

I
came out in a deserted, narrow alley, lined with walls and doors. A little way to my left, the alley ended in a stone wall. To my right, some distance away, I could see a street—a busy street—cutting across the alley. I memorized the look of the wooden door to the cabinetmaker's courtyard—how it nestled in the arch of the wall, how its white paint had begun to peel at one corner. It was the third door from the end of the alley. I could remember that.

I made my way to the street and put memory to use again, fixing the intersection in my mind—the green door
on one wall, the metal grillwork of a high window across the street.

The crowd flowed in a great, strong river to the left, with only a few trickles moving right. So I went left, too. I didn't recognize this place, but I knew that most people would be going toward the bazaar. I threaded my way among pack mules and merchants, through groups of women carrying bundles on their heads, between a band of musicians and some important dignitary being carried on a litter. Soon, not far ahead, I could see the high, open-sided domes of the bazaar.

The bazaar was huge, and I knew my way about only parts of it, and not the part where I had seen the blind storyteller. He had been near the carpet bazaar—but where? I tried to picture the fountain—the one I had told Dunyazad about. There weren't many fountains in the bazaar. It shouldn't be hard to find.

I headed through the narrow shop-lined streets toward the carpet bazaar. It was not far from the food stalls, I remembered. I knew that place well, for I had gone there many times to shop with Auntie Chava.

I cut through the crowd—ducking this way to avoid a swinging elbow, darting that way to dodge a heavy boot, slipping into short-lived pockets of space as they opened up in the throng before me.

Light and dark washed over me as I moved through patches of hot sunlight into cool, welcome stretches of shade—a domed arcade, a stone arch that spanned the street, wide canopies jutting out from the shops, a roof of hanging shawls strung overhead from one side of the street to the other.

And everywhere there was noise—merchants crying
their wares; street musicians playing horns and lutes and drums; mule drivers cursing; women haggling; caged birds screeching; brass workers' mallets pinging and clanging and bonging. Smells drifted past: sawdust, perfume, leather, dye, feathers, manure—all mingled with the ever-present odor of sweat.

Now, just ahead, I could see the food stalls: the fruit sellers, the spice sellers, the grain sellers. I pushed through the crowd of women—women thumping melons, women squeezing eggplants, women inspecting pomegranates for bugs. I moved past buckets of fresh fish, baskets of cheese, heaped mounds of spices in rough hempen bags. I breathed in the familiar smells of this place: ripe fruit and briny olives. Raw fish and pungent cheeses. Cinnamon and cumin, jasmine and myrtle, saffron and cloves.

Every other time I had been here, I had been with Auntie Chava. The smells nearly conjured her up.

I glanced about me, feeling a sudden, sharp surge of hope. Just to
see
her . . .

Searching, I moved through the crowd. I looked for her face; I watched the swaying movement of long veils and robes for her walk; I listened through the clamor for her voice—complaining that the quinces were bruised or the price of dates disgraceful. I would
know
Auntie Chava. I knew her by heart.