Free Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher Page B

. . . she has an idea.”
    I turned to Dunyazad. She was looking down, away from me, as if she were studying the pattern of the carpet.
    â€œShe wanted to go with you,” Shahrazad said, “but I forbade her. It will be . . . dangerous.”
    She waited, then, silent.
Dangerous.
As if I would object to a thing because it was dangerous. As if
she
hadn’t faced danger every night for nearly three years.
    â€œJust tell me what it is,” I said, “and I’ll do it. I would do anything for you.”
    *  *  *  
    The next morning, after the moazzen’s call to dawn prayer, Dunyazad came to fetch me. I was expecting her. We had gone over the whole plan the afternoon before in Shahrazad’s quarters. Now Dunyazad didn’t say a word, only put her finger to her lips, signaling me to hush. She peeked out into the hallway; I followed her down the stairs and into a small wood-paneled room. Gently, she pushed on one of the panels. A soft
click.
The panel became a door that swung silently in toward us.
    She motioned me through the opening, into darkness. I turned to watch as she came in after, as she grasped a latch on the door and pulled it shut. Then I couldn’t see anything at all.
    I felt her moving past me, breathed her perfume. Itsmelled fresh, like rain. Then she took hold of my wrist and tugged me behind her through the passage.
    I was afraid that my bad foot would thump too loudly on the hard stone floor. I was afraid that I would trip and fall. I ran one hand along the wall for balance—I felt wood, then stone, then wood. Dunyazad let go of my wrist, and now I could just barely see the back of her. We turned a corner; light seeped in through a carved sandstone screen in the wall. When we had passed, it grew dim, then dark again.
    It was like that in the passage. Tar black, and then dimly lit when we came upon screens of wood or sandstone, or metal grillworks, or odd little cutouts in the walls that must, I thought, be part of designs on the other side.
    I kept wishing for a lamp, but of course we couldn’t use one. It would shine through the holes; people might see us going by. Anyway, Dunyazad seemed to have memorized these dark passages with her feet.
    Unlike the first day she led me through the hidden passages, we didn’t go in and out of the main part of the harem. Dunyazad went fast, still—too fast for my liking. But now she grabbed my wrist from time to time and steered me.
    At last, she stopped. It was in one of the dark places; I ran into her with an
“oof!”
and then whispered that I was sorry.
    â€œShh!” 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 tobe 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.
    â€œIt 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.
    â€œDo you have . . . another veil?” I asked her. “One not so fine?”
    The sisters exchanged a glance. “It’s mine,” Dunyazad said.