Castle in the Air
Diana Wynne Jones
A magical Arabian Nights tale from the captivating creator of fantasy, Diana Wynne Jones. The dazzling sequel to Howls Moving Castle, now a major animated film.Far to the south in the Land of Ingary, lives a young carpet merchant called Abdullah. In his dreams, he is the long-lost son of a great prince. This dream is a complete castle in the air… or is it?Abdullah’s day-dreams suddenly start to come true when he meets the exquisite Flower-in-the-Night, daughter of the ferocious Sultan of Zanzib. Fate has destined them for each other, but a bad-tempered genie, a hideous djinn, and various villanous bandits have their own ideas. When Flower-in-the-Night is carried off, Abdullah is determined to rescue her – if he can find her.
Illustrated by Tim Stevens
DEDICATION (#ulink_c2eca4ef-9001-5652-8c3f-c120375b093d)
For Francesca
CONTENTS
COVER (#uf49f110b-59e5-50cf-8df3-ee5e9c56f7f4)
TITLE PAGE (#u9f555af5-9e9c-51e6-b742-a3874f23d6ed)
DEDICATION (#uca8e67dd-60b6-5416-9d66-5cef910d039d)
CHAPTER ONE In which Abdullah buys a carpet (#udd08c26e-f43f-5a06-9ef7-43d8a58e33d8)
CHAPTER TWO In which Abdullah is mistaken for a young lady (#u7df038b0-158a-5a59-8f95-9561df7c2377)
CHAPTER THREE In which Flower-in-the-Night discovers several important facts (#u6868f1ce-7cf9-5530-8311-180efecc1167)
CHAPTER FOUR Which concerns marriage and prophecy (#udfd5aad9-203f-5b01-866f-0c79fc61ce98)
CHAPTER FIVE Which tells how Flower-in-the-Night’s father wished to raise Abdullah above all others in the land (#u912d2da5-3aeb-53ca-8848-2201e8ccbaa9)
CHAPTER SIX Which shows how Abdullah went from the frying pan into the fire (#u6fa5d093-c02b-5d9a-86ab-c9c8982dba36)
CHAPTER SEVEN Which introduces the genie (#u0f1df979-6a49-576b-84ed-5a8549a77be1)
CHAPTER EIGHT In which Abdullah’s dreams continue to come true (#u8acc2b5a-24a7-5070-a0c6-80af0a00c303)
CHAPTER NINE In which Abdullah encounters an old soldier (#uda05693e-bd18-5d06-a051-02c2e74d6ae2)
CHAPTER TEN Which tells of violence and bloodshed (#ue0e968e0-6558-5baa-a4d9-8b667aeaddb7)
CHAPTER ELEVEN In which a wild animal causes Abdullah to waste a wish (#ua808793d-c789-54e7-b8df-9cbc68910259)
CHAPTER TWELVE In which the law catches up with Abdullah and the soldier (#u3e8d976d-a38a-5998-bc5d-34456f911efe)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN In which Abdullah challenges Fate (#u3ae0d613-e808-54b0-9d45-1ba2bdec1146)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Which tells how the magic carpet reappeared (#u88303a9b-386f-5ef3-aef9-56738bc7bee1)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN In which the travellers arrive at Kingsbury (#ud7bd02dc-3305-52ef-a0b5-0f2421469eb2)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN In which strange things befall Midnight and Whippersnapper (#u6981f191-a607-56f0-99c4-226b891de8c8)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN In which Abdullah at last reaches the Castle in the Air (#u4d82cf01-ae72-5f51-9e2b-779e4014f805)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Which is rather full of princesses (#ua4203cd8-adf9-5ebc-a45e-0748acf9a162)
CHAPTER NINETEEN In which a soldier, a cook and a carpet seller all state their price (#u188ae646-a3e3-5505-818c-d8b227362818)
CHAPTER TWENTY In which a djinn’s life is found and then hidden (#u43cfedfb-7daa-55b4-9c75-f7df2230c6a3)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE In which the castle comes down to earth (#ue474d099-bb21-500c-920d-c8a9597d6546)
OTHER WORKS (#ua3abd65d-9104-55ba-b2fa-f0efafb7b248)
COPYRIGHT (#u0dae73d5-d44e-54db-9a95-b04d0dcbf603)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#u6794c347-3e68-5fee-b01c-e22756ba3a3a)
CHAPTER ONE In which Abdullah buys a carpet (#ulink_54b42e76-8daa-5257-b12e-6c81f15d26e4)
Far to the south of the land of Ingary, in the Sultanates of Rashpuht, a young carpet merchant called Abdullah lived in the city of Zanzib. As merchants go, he was not rich. His father had been disappointed in him and, when he died, he had only left Abdullah just enough money to buy and stock a modest booth in the north-west corner of the Bazaar. The rest of his father’s money, and the large carpet emporium in the centre of the Bazaar, had all gone to the relatives of his father’s first wife.
Abdullah had never been told why his father was disappointed in him. A prophecy made at Abdullah’s birth had something to do with it. But Abdullah had never bothered to find out more. Instead, from a very early age, he had simply made up daydreams about it. In his daydreams, he was really the long-lost son of a great prince, which meant, of course, that his father was not really his father. It was a complete castle in the air and Abdullah knew it was. Everyone told him he had inherited his father’s looks. When he looked in a mirror, he saw a decidedly handsome young man, in a thin, hawk-faced way, and knew he looked very like the portrait of his father as a young man – always allowing for the fact that his father wore a flourishing moustache, whereas Abdullah was still scraping together the six hairs on his upper lip and hoping they would multiply soon.
Unfortunately, as everyone also agreed, Abdullah had inherited his character from his mother – his father’s second wife. She had been a dreamy and timorous woman, and a great disappointment to everyone. This did not bother Abdullah particularly. The life of a carpet merchant holds few opportunities for bravery and he was, on the whole, content with it. The booth he had bought, though small, turned out to be rather well placed. It was not far from the West Quarter where the rich people lived in their big houses surrounded by beautiful gardens. Better still, it was the first part of the Bazaar the carpet-makers came to when they came into Zanzib from the desert to the north. Both the rich people and the carpet-makers were usually seeking the bigger shops in the centre of the Bazaar, but a surprisingly large number of them were ready to pause at the booth of a young carpet merchant when that young merchant rushed out into their paths and offered them bargains and discounts with most profuse politeness.
In this way, Abdullah was quite often able to buy best quality carpets before anyone else saw them, and sell them at a profit too. In between buying and selling he could sit in his booth and continue with his daydream, which suited him very well. In fact, almost the only trouble in his life came from his father’s first wife’s relations, who would keep visiting him once a month in order to point out his failings.
“But you’re not saving any of your profits!” cried Abdullah’s father’s first wife’s brother’s son, Hakim (whom Abdullah detested), one fateful day.
Abdullah explained that, when he made a profit, his custom was to use that money to buy a better carpet. Thus, although all his money was bound up in his stock, it was getting to be better and better stock. He had enough to live on. And, as he told his father’s relatives, he had no need of more, since he was not married.
“Well you should be married!” cried Abdullah’s father’s first wife’s sister, Fatima (whom Abdullah detested even more). “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – a young man like you should have at least two wives by now!” And, not content with simply saying so, Fatima declared that this time she was going to look out for some wives for him – an offer which made Abdullah shake in his shoes.
“And the more valuable your stock gets, the more likely you are to be robbed, or the more you’ll lose if your booth catches fire – have you thought of that?” nagged Abdullah’s father’s first wife’s uncle’s son, Assif (a man whom Abdullah hated more than the first two put together).
He assured Assif that he always slept in the booth and was very careful of the lamps. At which all three of his father’s first wife’s relatives shook their heads, tut-tutted and went away. This usually meant they would leave him in peace for another month. Abdullah sighed with relief and plunged straight back into his daydream.
The daydream was enormously detailed by now. In it, Abdullah was the son of a mighty prince who lived so far to the east that his country was unknown in Zanzib. But Abdullah had been kidnapped at the age of two by a villainous bandit called Kabul Aqba. Kabul Aqba had a hooked nose like the beak of a vulture and wore a gold ring clipped into one of its nostrils. He carried a pistol with a silver-mounted stock with which he menaced Abdullah, and there was a bloodstone in his turban which seemed to give him more than human power. Abdullah was so frightened that he ran away into the desert, where he was found by the man he called his father now. The daydream took no account of the fact that Abdullah’s father had never ventured into the desert in his life: indeed, he had often said that anyone who ventured beyond Zanzib must be mad. Nevertheless, Abdullah could picture every nightmare inch of the dry, thirsty, footsore journey he had made before the good carpet merchant found him. Likewise, he could picture in great detail the palace he had been kidnapped from, with its pillared throne room floored in green porphyry, its women’s quarters and its kitchens, all of the utmost richness. There were seven domes on its roof, each one covered with beaten gold.
Lately, however, the daydream had been concentrating on the princess to whom Abdullah had been betrothed at his birth. She was as highborn as Abdullah and had grown up in his absence into a great beauty with perfect features and huge misty dark eyes. She lived in a palace as rich as Abdullah’s own. You approached it along an avenue lined with angelic statues and entered by way of seven marble courts, each with a fountain in the middle more precious than the last, starting with one made of chrysolite and ending with one of platinum studded with emeralds.
But that day Abdullah found he was not quite satisfied with this arrangement. It was a feeling he often had after a visit from his father’s first wife’s relations. It occurred to him that a good palace ought to have magnificent gardens. Abdullah loved gardens though he knew very little about them. Most of his experience had come from the public parks of Zanzib – where the turf was somewhat trampled and the flowers few – in which he sometimes spent his lunch hour when he could afford to pay one-eyed Jamal to watch his booth. Jamal kept the fried-food stall next door and would, for a coin or so, tie his dog to the front of Abdullah’s booth. Abdullah was well aware that this did not really qualify him to invent a proper garden, but since anything was better than thinking of two wives chosen for him by Fatima, he lost himself in waving fronds and scented walkways in the gardens of his princess.
Or nearly. Before Abdullah was fairly started, he was interrupted by a tall dirty man with a dingy-looking carpet in his arms.
“You buy carpets for selling, son of a great house?” this stranger asked, bowing briefly.
For someone trying to sell a carpet in Zanzib, where buyers and sellers always spoke to one another in the most formal and flowery way, this man’s manner was shockingly abrupt. Abdullah was annoyed anyway because his dream garden was falling to pieces at this interruption from real life. He answered curtly, “That is so, oh king of the desert. You wish to trade with this miserable merchant?”
“Not trade – sell, oh master of a stack of mats,” the stranger corrected him.
Mats! thought Abdullah. This was an insult. One of the carpets on display in front of Abdullah’s booth was a rare floral tufted one from Ingary – or Ochinstan, as they called that land in Zanzib – and there were at least two inside, from Inhico and Farqtan, which the Sultan himself would not have disdained for one of the smaller rooms of his palace. But of course Abdullah could not say this. The manners of Zanzib did not let you praise yourself. Instead, he bowed a coldly shallow bow.
“It is possible that my low and squalid establishment might provide that which you seek, oh pearl of wanderers,” he said, and cast his eye critically over the stranger’s dirty desert robe, the corroded stud in the side of the man’s nose and his tattered headcloth, as he said it.
“It is worse than squalid, mighty seller of floor-coverings,” the stranger agreed. He flapped one end of his dingy carpet towards Jamal, who was frying squid just then in clouds of blue fishy smoke. “Does not the honourable activity of your neighbour penetrate your wares,” he asked, “even to a lasting aroma of octopus?”
Abdullah seethed with such rage inside that he was forced to rub his hands together slavishly to hide it. People were not supposed to mention this sort of thing. And a slight smell of squid might even improve that thing the stranger wanted to sell, he thought, eyeing the drab and threadbare rug in the man’s arms.
“Your humble servant takes care to fumigate the interior of his booth with lavish perfumes, oh prince of wisdom,” he said. “Perhaps the heroic sensitivity of the prince’s nose will nevertheless allow him to show this beggarly trader his merchandise?”
“Of course it does, oh lily among mackerel,” the stranger retorted. “Why else should I stand here?”
Abdullah reluctantly parted the curtains and ushered the man inside his booth. There he turned up the lamp which hung from the centre pole, but, upon sniffing, decided that he was not going to waste incense on this person. The interior smelt quite strongly enough of yesterday’s scents. “What magnificence have you to unroll before my unworthy eyes?” he asked dubiously.
“This, buyer of bargains!” the man said and, with a deft thrust of one arm, he caused the carpet to unroll across the floor.
Abdullah could do this too. A carpet merchant learnt these things. He was not impressed. He stuck his hands in his sleeves in a primly servile attitude and surveyed the merchandise. The carpet was not large. Unrolled, it was even dingier than he had thought – although the pattern was unusual, or it would have been if most of it had not been worn away. What was left was dirty and its edges were frayed.
“Alas, this poor salesman can only stretch to three copper coins for this most ornamental of rugs,” he observed. “It is the limit of my slender purse. Times are hard, oh captain of many camels. Is the price acceptable in any way?”
“I’ll take FIVE HUNDRED,” said the stranger.
“What?” said Abdullah.
“GOLD coins,” added the stranger.
“The king of all desert bandits is surely pleased to jest?” said Abdullah. “Or maybe, having found my small booth lacking in anything but the smell of frying squid, he wishes to leave and try a richer merchant?”
“Not particularly,” said the stranger. “Although I will leave if you are not interested, oh neighbour of kippers. It is of course a magic carpet.”
Abdullah had heard that one before. He bowed over his tucked-up hands. “Many and various are the virtues said to reside in carpets,” he agreed. “Which one does the poet of the sands claim for this? Does it welcome a man home to his tent? Does it bring peace to the hearth? Or maybe,” he said, poking the frayed edge suggestively with one toe, “it is said never to wear out?”
“It flies,” said the stranger. “It flies wherever the owner commands, oh smallest of small minds.”
Abdullah looked up into the man’s sombre face, where the desert had entrenched deep lines down each cheek. A sneer made those lines deeper still. Abdullah found he disliked this person almost as much as he disliked his father’s first wife’s uncle’s son. “You must convince this unbeliever,” he said. “If the carpet can be put through its paces, oh monarch of mendacity, then some bargain might be struck.”
“Willingly,” said the tall man and stepped upon the carpet.
At this moment, one of the regular upsets happened at the fried-food stall next door. Probably some street boys had tried to steal some squid. At any rate, Jamal’s dog burst out barking; various people, Jamal included, began yelling, and both sounds were nearly drowned by the clash of saucepans and the hissing of hot fat.
Cheating was a way of life in Zanzib. Abdullah did not allow his attention to be distracted for one instant from the stranger and his carpet. It was quite possible the man had bribed Jamal to cause a distraction. He had mentioned Jamal rather often, as if Jamal were on his mind. Abdullah kept his eyes sternly on the tall figure of the man and particularly on the dirty feet planted on the carpet. But he spared a corner of one eye for the man’s face and he saw the man’s lips move. His alert ears even caught the words “two feet upwards” despite the din from next door. And he looked even more carefully when the carpet rose smoothly from the floor and hovered about level with Abdullah’s knees, so that the stranger’s tattered headgear was not quite brushing the roof of the booth. Abdullah looked for rods underneath. He searched for wires that might have been deftly hooked to the roof. He took hold of the lamp and tipped it about, so that its light played both over and under the carpet.
The stranger stood with his arms folded and the sneer entrenched on his face while Abdullah performed these tests. “See?” he said. “Is the most desperate of doubters now convinced? Am I standing in the air, or am I not?” He had to shout rather. The noise was still deafening from next door.
Abdullah was forced to admit that the carpet did appear to be up in the air without any means of support that he could find. “Very nearly,” he shouted back. “The next part of the demonstration is for you to dismount and for me to ride that carpet.”
The man frowned. “Why so? What have your other senses to add to the evidence of your eyes, oh dragon of dubiety?”
“It could be a one-man carpet,” Abdullah bawled. “As some dogs are.” Jamal’s dog was still bellowing away outside, so it was natural to think of this. Jamal’s dog bit anyone who touched it, except Jamal.
The stranger sighed. “Down,” he said, and the carpet sank gently to the floor. The stranger stepped off and bowed Abdullah towards it. “It is yours to test, oh sheik of shrewdness.”
With considerable excitement, Abdullah stepped on to the carpet. “Go up two feet,” he said to it – or rather yelled. It sounded as if the constables of the City Watch had arrived at Jamal’s stall now. They were clashing weapons and bawling to be told what had happened.
And the carpet obeyed Abdullah. It rose two feet in a smooth surge which left Abdullah’s stomach behind it. He sat down rather hastily. The carpet was perfectly comfortable to sit on. It felt like a very tight hammock. “This woefully sluggish intellect is becoming convinced,” he confessed to the stranger. “What was your price again, oh paragon of generosity? Two hundred silver?”
“Five hundred gold,” said the stranger. “Tell the carpet to descend and we will discuss the matter.”
Abdullah told the carpet, “Down, and land on the floor,” and it did so, thus removing a slight nagging doubt in Abdullah’s mind that the stranger had said something extra when Abdullah first stepped on it, which had been drowned in the din from next door. He bounced to his feet and the bargaining commenced.
“The utmost of my purse is one hundred and fifty gold,” he explained, “and that is when I shake it out and feel all round the seams.”
“Then you must fetch out your other purse or even feel under your mattress,” the stranger rejoined. “For the limit of my generosity is four hundred and ninety-five gold and I would not sell at all but for the most pressing need.”
“I might squeeze another forty-five gold from the sole of my left shoe,” Abdullah replied. “That I keep for emergencies, and it is my pitiful all.”
“Examine your right shoe,” the stranger answered. “Four-fifty.”
And so it went on. An hour later the stranger departed from the booth with two hundred and ten gold pieces, leaving Abdullah the delighted owner of what seemed to be a genuine – if threadbare – magic carpet. He was still mistrustful. He did not believe that anyone, even a desert wanderer with few needs, would part with a real flying carpet – albeit nearly worn out – for less than four hundred gold pieces. It was too useful – better than a camel, because it did not need to eat – and a good camel cost at least four hundred and fifty in gold.
There had to be a catch. And there was one trick Abdullah had heard of. It was usually worked with horses or dogs. A man would come and sell a trusting farmer or hunter a truly superb animal for a surprisingly small price, saying that it was all that stood between himself and starvation. The delighted farmer (or hunter) would put the horse in a stall (or the dog in a kennel) for the night. In the morning it would be gone, being trained to slip its halter (or collar) and return to its owner in the night. It seemed to Abdullah that a suitably obedient carpet could be trained to do the same. So, before he left his booth, he very carefully wrapped the magic carpet round one of the poles that supported the roof and bound it there, round and round, with a whole reel of twine, which he then tied to one of the iron stakes at the base of the wall.
“I think you’ll find it hard to escape from that,” he told it, and went out to discover what had been going on at the food stall.
The stall was quiet now, and tidy. Jamal was sitting on its counter, mournfully hugging his dog.
“What happened?” asked Abdullah.
“Some thieving boys spilt all my squid,” Jamal said. “My whole day’s stock down in the dirt, lost, gone!”
Abdullah was so pleased with his bargain that he gave Jamal two silver pieces to buy more squid. Jamal wept with gratitude and embraced Abdullah. His dog not only failed to bite Abdullah: it licked his hand. Abdullah smiled. Life was good. He went off whistling to find a good supper while the dog guarded his booth.
When the evening was staining the sky red behind the domes and minarets of Zanzib, Abdullah came back, still whistling, full of plans to sell the carpet to the Sultan himself for a very large price indeed. He found the carpet exactly where he had left it. Or would it be better to approach the Grand Vizir, he wondered while he was washing, and suggest that the Vizir might wish to make the Sultan a present of it? That way, he could ask for even more money. At the thought of how valuable that made the carpet, the story of the horse trained to slip its halter began to nag at him again. As he got into his nightshirt, Abdullah began to visualise the carpet wriggling free. It was old and pliable. It was probably very well trained. It could certainly slither out from behind the twine. Even if it did not, he knew the idea would keep him awake all night.
In the end, he carefully cut the twine away and spread the carpet on top of the pile of his most valuable rugs, which he always used as a bed. Then he put on his nightcap – which was necessary, because the cold winds blew off the desert and filled the booth with draughts – spread his blanket over him, blew out his lamp and slept.
CHAPTER TWO In which Abdullah is mistaken for a young lady (#ulink_a823db0b-7608-572c-8a42-88c9b4f22dea)
He woke to find himself lying on a bank, with the carpet still underneath him, in a garden more beautiful than any he had imagined.
Abdullah was convinced that this was a dream. Here was the garden he had been trying to imagine when the stranger so rudely interrupted him. Here the moon was nearly full and riding high above, casting light as white as paint on a hundred small fragrant flowers in the grass around him. Round yellow lamps hung in the trees, dispelling the dense black shadows from the moon. Abdullah thought this was a very pleasing idea. By the two lights, white and yellow, he could see an arcade of creepers supported on elegant pillars, beyond the lawn where he lay; and from somewhere behind that, hidden water was quietly trickling.
It was so cool and so heaven-like that Abdullah got up and went in search of the hidden water, wandering down the arcade, where starry blooms brushed his face, all white and hushed in the moonlight, and bell-like flowers breathed out the headiest and gentlest of scents. As one does in dreams, Abdullah fingered a great waxy lily here, and detoured deliciously there into a dell of pale roses. He had never before had a dream that was anything like so beautiful.
The water, when he found it beyond some big fern-like bushes dripping dew, was a simple marble fountain in another lawn, lit by strings of lamps in the bushes which made the rippling water into a marvel of gold and silver crescents. Abdullah wandered towards it raptly.
There was only one thing needed to complete his rapture and, as in all the best dreams, it was there. An extremely lovely girl came across the lawn to meet him, treading softly on the damp grass with bare feet. The gauzy garments floating round her showed her to be slender, but not thin, just like the princess from Abdullah’s daydream. When she was near Abdullah, he saw that her face was not quite a perfect oval as the face of his dream princess should have been, and nor were her huge dark eyes at all misty. In fact, they examined his face keenly, with evident interest. Abdullah hastily adjusted his dream, for she was certainly very beautiful. And when she spoke, her voice was all he could have desired, being light and merry as the water in the fountain and the voice of a very definite person too.
“Are you a new kind of servant?” she said.
People always did ask strange things in dreams, Abdullah thought. “No, masterpiece of my imagination,” he said. “Know that I am really the long-lost son of a distant prince.”
“Oh,” she said. “Then that may make a difference. Does that mean you’re a different kind of woman from me?”
Abdullah stared at the girl of his dreams in some perplexity. “I’m not a woman!” he said.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “You are wearing a dress.”
Abdullah looked down and discovered that, in the way of dreams, he was wearing his nightshirt. “This is just my strange foreign garb,” he said hastily. “My true country is far from here. I assure you that I am a man.”
“Oh no,” she said decidedly. “You can’t be a man. You’re quite the wrong shape. Men are twice as thick as you all over and their stomachs come out in a fat bit that’s called a belly. And they have grey hair all over their faces and nothing but shiny skin on their heads. You’ve got hair on your head like me and almost none on your face.” Then, as Abdullah put his hand rather indignantly to the six hairs on his upper lip, she asked, “Or have you got bare skin under your hat?”
“Certainly not,” said Abdullah, who was proud of his thick wavy hair. He put his hand to his head and removed what turned out to be his nightcap. “Look,” he said.
“Ah,” she said. Her lovely face was puzzled. “You have hair that’s almost as nice as mine. I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure I do either,” said Abdullah. “Could it be that you have not seen very many men?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Don’t be silly – I’ve only seen my father! But I’ve seen quite a lot of him, so I do know.”
“But – don’t you ever go out at all?” Abdullah asked helplessly.
She laughed. “Yes, I’m out now. This is my night garden. My father had it made so that I wouldn’t ruin my looks going out in the sun.”
“I mean, out into the town, to see all the people,” Abdullah explained.
“Well, no, not yet,” she admitted. As if that bothered her a little, she twirled away from him and went to sit on the edge of the fountain. Turning to look up at him, she said, “My father tells me I might be able to go out and see the town sometimes after I’m married – if my husband allows me to – but it won’t be this town. My father’s arranging for me to marry a prince from Ochinstan. Until then I have to stay inside these walls of course.”
Abdullah had heard that some of the very rich people in Zanzib kept their daughters – and even their wives too – almost like prisoners inside their grand houses. He had many times wished someone would keep his father’s first wife’s sister Fatima that way. But now, in this dream, it seemed to him that this custom was entirely unreasonable and not fair on this lovely girl at all. Fancy not knowing what a normal young man looked like!
“Pardon my asking, but is the prince from Ochinstan perhaps old and a little ugly?” he said.
“Well,” she said, evidently not quite sure, “my father says he’s in his prime, just like my father is himself. But I believe the problem lies in the brutal nature of men. If another man saw me before the prince did, my father says he would instantly fall in love with me and carry me off, which would ruin all my father’s plans, naturally. He says most men are great beasts. Are you a beast?”
“Not in the least,” said Abdullah.
“I thought not,” she said, and looked up at him with great concern. “You do not seem to me to be a beast. This makes me quite sure that you can’t really be a man.” Evidently she was one of those people who like to cling to a theory once they have made it. After considering a moment, she asked, “Could your family, perhaps, for reasons of their own, have brought you up to believe a falsehood?”
Abdullah would have liked to say that the boot was on the other foot, but, since that struck him as impolite, he simply shook his head and thought how generous of her it was to be so worried about him, and how the worry on her face only made it more beautiful – not to speak of the way her eyes shone compassionately in the gold and silver light reflecting from the fountain.
“Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that you are from a distant country,” she said, and patted the edge of the fountain beside her. “Sit down and tell me all about it.”
“Tell me your name first,” said Abdullah.
“It’s rather a silly name,” she said nervously. “I’m called Flower-in-the-Night.”
It was the perfect name for the girl of his dreams, Abdullah thought. He gazed down at her admiringly. “My name is Abdullah,” he said.
“They even gave you a man’s name!” Flower-in-the-Night exclaimed indignantly. “Do sit down and tell me.”
Abdullah sat on the marble kerb beside her and thought that this was a very real dream. The stone was cold. Splashes from the fountain soaked into his nightshirt, while the sweet smell of rosewater from Flower-in-the-Night mingled most realistically with scents from the flowers in the garden. But since it was a dream, it followed that his daydreams were true here too. So Abdullah told her all about the palace he had lived in as a prince and how he was kidnapped by Kabul Aqba and escaped into the desert, where the carpet merchant found him.
Flower-in-the-Night listened with complete sympathy. “How terrifying! How exhausting!” she said. “Could it be that your foster father was in league with the bandits to deceive you?”
Abdullah had a growing feeling, despite the fact that he was only dreaming, that he was getting her sympathy on false pretences. He agreed that his father could have been in the pay of Kabul Aqba, and then changed the subject. “Let us get back to your father and his plans,” he said. “It seems to me a little awkward that you should marry this prince from Ochinstan without having seen any other men to compare him to. How are you going to know whether you love him or not?”
“You have a point,” she said. “This worries me too sometimes.”
“Then I tell you what,” Abdullah said. “Suppose I come back tomorrow night and bring you pictures of as many men as I can find? That should give you some standard to compare the prince with.” Dream or not, Abdullah had absolutely no doubt that he would be back tomorrow. This would give him a proper excuse.
Flower-in-the-Night considered this offer, swaying dubiously back and forth with her hands clasped round her knees. Abdullah could almost see rows of fat bald men with grey beards passing in front of her mind’s eye.
“I assure you,” he said, “that men come in every sort of size and shape.”
“Then that would be very instructive,” she agreed. “At least it would give me an excuse to see you again. You’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”
This made Abdullah even more determined to come back tomorrow. He told himself it would be unfair to leave her in such a state of ignorance. “And I think the same about you,” he said shyly.
At this, to his disappointment, Flower-in-the-Night got up to leave. “I have to go indoors now,” she said. “A first visit must last no longer than half an hour, and I’m almost sure you’ve been here twice as long as that. But now we know one another, you can stay at least two hours next time.”
“Thank you. I shall,” said Abdullah.
She smiled and passed away like a dream, beyond the fountain and behind two frondy flowering shrubs.
After that, the garden, the moonlight and the scents seemed rather tame. Abdullah could think of nothing better to do than wander back the way he had come. And there, on the moonlit bank, he found the carpet. He had forgotten about it completely. But since it was there in the dream too, he lay down on it and fell asleep.
He woke up some hours later with blinding daylight streaming in through the chinks in his booth. The smell of the day before yesterday’s incense hanging about in the air struck him as cheap and suffocating. In fact the whole booth was fusty and frowsty and cheap. And he had earache because his nightcap seemed to have fallen off in the night. But at least, he found while he hunted for the nightcap, the carpet had not made off in the night. It was still underneath him. This was the one good thing he could see in what suddenly struck him as a thoroughly dull and depressing life.
Here Jamal, who was still grateful for the silver pieces, shouted outside that he had breakfast ready for both of them. Abdullah gladly flung back the curtains of the booth. Cocks crowed in the distance. The sky was glowing blue, and shafts of strong sunlight sliced through the blue dust and old incense inside the booth. Even in that strong light, Abdullah failed to discover his nightcap. And he was more depressed than ever.
“Tell me, do you sometimes find yourself unaccountably sad on some days?” he asked Jamal as the two of them sat cross-legged in the sun outside to eat.
Jamal tenderly fed a piece of sugar pastry to his dog. “I would have been sad today,” he said, “but for you. I think someone paid those wretched boys to steal. They were so thorough. And on top of that, the Watch fined me. Did I say? I think I have enemies, my friend.”
Though this confirmed Abdullah’s suspicions of the stranger who sold him the carpet, it was not much help. “Maybe,” he said, “you should be more careful about whom you let your dog bite.”
“Not I!” said Jamal. “I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so.”
After breakfast, Abdullah looked for his nightcap again. It was simply not there. He tried thinking carefully back to the last time he truly remembered wearing it. That was when he lay down to sleep the previous night, when he was thinking of taking the carpet to the Grand Vizir. After that came the dream. He had found he was wearing the nightcap then. He remembered taking it off to show Flower-in-the-Night (what a lovely name!) that he was not bald. From then on, as far as he could recall, he had carried the nightcap in his hand until the moment when he had sat down beside her on the edge of the fountain. After that, when he recounted the history of his kidnapping by Kabul Aqba, he had a clear memory of waving both hands freely as he talked and he knew that the nightcap had not been in either one. Things did disappear like that in dreams, he knew, but the evidence pointed, all the same, to his having dropped it as he sat down. Was it possible he had left it lying on the grass beside the fountain? In which case—
Abdullah stood stock-still in the centre of the booth, staring into the rays of sunlight which, oddly enough, no longer seemed full of squalid motes of dust and old incense. Instead, they were pure golden slices of heaven itself.
“It was not a dream!” said Abdullah.
Somehow, his depression was clean gone. Even breathing was easier.
“It was real!” he said.
He went to stand thoughtfully looking down at the magic carpet. That had been in the dream too. In which case—“It follows that you transported me to some rich man’s garden while I slept,” he said to it. “Perhaps I spoke and ordered you to do so in my sleep. Very likely. I was thinking of gardens. You are even more valuable than I realised!”
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