Free Princess of Dhagabad, The by Anna Kashina

and
angered by his ages of imprisonment. By rushing to the princess’s
rescue he did the same thing any caring human being would have done
in his place, and this makes Hasan to some extent more
understandable to the inhabitants of the palace. The princess is
now allowed to be alone with him, and even to take walks with him
in the garden, including its very distant corners; and now the
princess is eagerly looking forward to showing Hasan her favorite
place.
    The princess and Hasan walk around the
boulder and stop in front of the glade. The princess proudly looks
at her realm: thick silky grass, the even semicircle of the creek
running through its far end, the wall of the jasmine bushes, and
two giant magnolias whose branches and wide leaves create a ceiling
over this place, letting through only the finest web of delicate
sunbeams. The princess feels as if she just walked into the castle
of the queen of the fairies that mere mortals can see only as a
garden glade. She cannot help asking herself whether the djinn can
see the real face of this glade, and what he can see now, standing
beside her at the border of her realm.
    “I want to show you something in the creek,”
the princess says, taking a decisive step into the glade.
    The grass ends close to the edge of the
water, leaving a yellow streak of sand between the silky greenery
and the tickling water. The creek is carefully finding its way
among the rocks scattered in its bed, from time to time creating
tiny waterfalls and deep calm pools. The princess likes to sit on
the bank of this stream, imagining herself reduced to a size
whereby the grass looks like a forest and the deep pool with its
sandy banks and the tiny waterfall like a giant lake. At those
moments she dreams that there are peri living in the lake—the
spirits of air and water, mysterious phantom beauties—and that if
she makes just a tiny effort, she could for a while become one of
them, a part of the lake and the waterfalls.
    The princess carefully puts her hand into the
water and brings out a piece of gravel. Its tiny facets of mica
glitter in the sun.
    “Look at it, Hasan,” she murmurs.
    She wants to tell him how the curves of the
stone fit her little hand, trying to tell her the mystery concealed
in its depth. Failing to find the right words, she holds out the
stone to him and carefully puts it into his palm. In Hasan’s large
hand the stone looks much smaller, but its wet surface still shines
mysteriously in the sun.
    “There is a secret hidden in this stone,” the
princess says, “but it can only talk to your hand. Can you feel
it?”
    She hesitantly looks into Hasan’s face, and
her heart leaps with joy. She sees in his eyes a reflection of her
own enchantment, of the same concentration she always feels
watching closely something as ordinary and as amazing as a piece of
gravel.
    “Every stone hides something, princess,”
Hasan says softly. “Only this stone is able to tell of it better
than others.”
    The princess quivers with excitement. She
brought Hasan here to share a game with him. Never, even in her
wildest fantasy, had she dreamed that he, by far the oldest and the
wisest creature she had ever known, would tell her that her
favorite game was—real.
    “What does the stone tell you, Hasan?” she
asks quietly.
    “I’ll show you, princess. Look closer.”
    The princess carefully looks at the stone.
The effort makes her eyes water; the tiny specks of mica fuse into
a single golden glow. And then she sees, enclosed by the contour of
the stone, an amazing creature—like a tiny lizard, curled to
repeat the curves of the stone that so precisely fits her hand. The
creature sleeps, emanating a golden glow, silent like the gravel
that conceals it.
    Tears fill the princess’s tired eyes forcing
her to blink, and the fiery lizard loses its shape, dissolving into
the golden sparkles of mica in the bright afternoon sun.
    “I saw a creature inside the stone, Hasan,”
the princess