Read Online Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher - Free Book Online

into my sash. Then, clutching the lattice, I wedged my good foot between the slats and pulled myself up. It held.
    I tried to climb fast, but the angle of the slats made my bad foot hurt, and my skirts kept tangling between my feet and the lattice, rustling in the leaves. From back on the square part of the terrace, I could hear the Khatun talking and dishes clanking and the wind chimes tinkling, and I prayed that no one would hear me.
    I had nearly reached the top when I heard a brittle
crack
and then my bad foot was swimming out in the air and my hand was too—it had slipped off the lattice—and the garden was floating far below. I grabbed for the lattice again; its edges bit into my hands. I groped with my foot for another place to go. There. But would it hold? One hand felt along the edge of the roof for something to grab on to.
    Then the old woman was there again, gripping my arm and hauling me up onto a flat piece of roof. My knee hit down with a
thunk.
    â€œWhat was that?” I heard from below.
    Footsteps. They were coming nearer; they were on the balcony, just beneath us.
    â€œGet behind me,” the old woman whispered. “Don’t letthem see you.” I scrambled behind her, then, “There now, my dear,” she said in a high, rich, warbling voice. “Don’t flap your wings so loud; the ghosts’ll hear you.” She was hunched over, facing me, with her back to the terrace, cupping her hands as if she were cradling something within them.
    Was she
mad?
    â€œThere, my dear. No flapping. They won’t hurt you.”
    Then from below, a voice: “Zaynab! Get along with you. You know you’re not allowed near this terrace.”
    The woman made a little clucking sound with her tongue. She shooed me before her across the roof.
    â€œTalking to her birds again,” I heard someone say down below. “Crazy old Zaynab!”

Chapter 7
Crazy Zaynab
    L ESSONS FOR L IFE AND S TORYTELLING
    When you tell the old tales, like Shahrazad, you become a keeper of ancient lore. You collect the wisdom of the world, and you remember. Next, you brush off the dust, press out the wrinkles, maybe mend a tear or two. Then you present the old tales as gifts to your listeners. You might alter the cut of a story as well, or embroider in some touches of your own. But your tales have a history before you.
    There is another way of being a storyteller. Like a spider, you can spin a fragile thread out of your own life—from the shadows of your dreams. Then you weave it and snip it and stitch it. At last, you put on the poor garment and wear it out into the world.
    T he roof was huge and scary. Most of it was flat, but it was broken up into pieces: a small flat piece over here, a higher flat piece over there, a big square hole that dropped down to a courtyard with no railing and no warning, a cupola, a minaret. Most houses you see use all of their roof space for living. But you could tell that this roof was notmade for that. There were no railings round the flat spaces, and the mud surfaces were dirty and unadorned.
    Zaynab moved before me like a cat—a plump, round cat—gliding along the flat parts, leaping across gaps, scaling rickety ladders from one level to the next, mincing along ledges, skirting the bases of cupolas. She was amazingly nimble. There was a light springiness to her step, and yet a sort of heaviness in her feet when she jumped that made them land solidly where they were supposed to, without teetering.
    I was afraid. The ground looked far below, and sometimes, there was nothing at all between it and me.
    â€œDon’t look down!” Zaynab called to me.
    But it was hard not to look down. I wanted to see my feet, where they were supposed to step, but often, just beyond the edge of them, was
down.
Down into a tiled courtyard, or down to another level of roof, or down into the garden below.
    I hadn’t wanted to follow her. She had shooed me away from the