Free Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher Page A

me.Three of them found me after their midday naps and pestered me to tell them a story, then more children appeared as if by magic as I spun the tale. It was one I had made up. I decided to try it, see how it went. When I finished, a boy who had come in late began to beg for another story. Then they were all begging, even the gazelle girl. She even offered to let me pet her gazelle. I told them three more stories—including another one I had made up. I attempted some of the voice-and-body things Shahrazad had done, but I couldn’t do them half as well. The children were begging for more when their mothers shooed them away, saying I must need a rest.
    But I truly didn’t mind.
    The next day just after dawn, I again watched Shahrazad emerge from the Sultans quarters. Alive! But only one more night remained of the Julnar story.
    And still she didn’t summon me.
    Was that a good sign? Or bad?
    The children found me earlier this day and pestered me even longer for stories. When my voice grew hoarse and I told them to come back the next day, the gazelle girl—her name was Mitra—followed me about, talking about her pet, telling me the names of everyone in the harem and what she thought of them, until her aunt called her away.
    Even so, I had plenty of time left over to worry that afternoon. Nothing much
happened
in the harem, other than the morning pilgrimage to see Shahrazad. You could hear the moazzen calling for prayer three times a day. Twice a day, food appeared in my room. I had never seen who brought it; I was always wandering.
    My mind went round and round about Shahrazad’sdilemma and I was filled with an ever-growing sense of helplessness and doom.
    At last, after afternoon prayers, I returned up the spiral kitchen stairway to Zaynab.
    I still couldn’t make up my mind about her: whether she was crazy or a spy for the Khatun. But that terrace—away from ghosts and conspiracies, away from the perfume-heavy air of the harem—drew me.
    She didn’t seem surprised to see me. She looked up, blinking, when I came out of the stairway, and her face lit with a smile. She was holding a pigeon cupped in her hands; as I watched, she released it into the air. I gazed at the bird sailing over the tiny toy city and felt, just for a moment, that all my cares and worries and grievances were but toy things, too, and that life was truly peaceful and safe.
    Zaynab
did
talk to her birds, I found. But it didn’t seem crazy.
    It seemed as though they
listened.

Chapter 8
On the Wrong Side
    L ESSONS FOR L IFE AND S TORYTELLING
    Sometimes, when you listen to a story, you get a new idea of what’s possible in the world. I don’t mean just strange customs and faraway places—though you can learn a lot from those. What I mean is that you can get a new idea of what’s possible
for you
—something you never thought of, or you never saw very much in real life.
    When I’m scared, I like to think about the brave people in stories I know. And I think, Maybe I could be like
that.
    L ate in the afternoon of my third day in the harem, Dunyazad appeared while I was telling the children a story and summoned me to her sister. I had to break off in the middle. When the children complained, I told them they would have to be like the Sultan and wait for the next day.
    I couldn’t tell from Dunyazad’s expression whether they had found the story or not. She seemed guarded, her emotions carefully veiled. She didn’t trust me anymore. But one look at Shahrazad’s face told me everything.
    They didn’t have it.
    â€œWe . . . couldn’t find him, Marjan,” she said, as I rose from kneeling at her feet. “We don’t know if we were looking at the right fountain, or . . . Might he have moved from that place?”
    â€œIt’s . . . possible,” I said. Though entertainers usually staked out the same spots for years, they did
sometimes
move.
    â€œMy sister