Read Online Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher - Free Book Online Page B

out. The whole city lay before us—beige flat-roofed buildings, studded with bright domes and spindly minarets. The sun, low in the sky, cast long shadows and bathed the highest points in golden light. To the east, like a deep blue silk scarf, lay the river. And beyond, along the horizon, stretched a row of green hills. My mother had grown up beyond the green hills, I suddenly remembered.
    The boats and carts and buildings looked tiny from here. Like toys. Much tinier than they had looked from Auntie Chavas terrace. Toy people jostling in the streets. Toy donkeys and toy camels. A toy herdsman with his flock of toy goats.
    I tried to find the pathway through the city that would take me to Uncle Eli and Auntie Chavas home. But everything looked different. I could recognize a few landmarks—the tanning pits, the domed roofs of the bazaar, the minaret of a nearby mosque—but I couldn’t piece the whole city together and make sense of it.
    Nor could I make sense of the palace roof. The harem, I knew, lay in the middle, but where? I found the garden with the cypress and boxwood trees, but try as I might to match the bumps and hollows in the roof to places I knew, I could not.
    Zaynab was looking off into the distance, still humming. I waited in vain for her to say something—anything.
    Through the window screen, I caught a glimpse of the pigeon houses. Something I had once heard . . . “Do you . . . keep the messenger pigeons?” I asked.
    Zaynab cut off her humming abruptly. “I and my grandfather before me.”
    I sipped my sharbat, searching for something else to say, hoping that
she
would say something. But she was humming under her breath again. Then she said as if to herself, “Pigeons are easier than people.”
    What could I say to
that?
I tipped back my sharbat, finished it. “I . . . should be going back to the harem. Is there another way down . . . besides ... um . . . besides . . .” Now I sounded like the crazy one. But Zaynab rescued me from my own awkward tongue.
    She took my cup and led me out to the terrace. “This way.” She pointed to a long, narrow stairway that wound down into darkness. “You’ll come out near the harem kitchens. The door is unlocked.” Zaynab paused, then added, “I would be glad . . . if you would visit me another day.”
    â€œThank you,” I said. But I didn’t think I’d come. Zaynab was
strange.
    I was nearly past the first curve when Zaynab called down to me. “Marjan?”
    I turned back. Sun streamed all around her into the dim stairwell.
    â€œWatch out for the Khatun. She’s not your friend.”
    It wasn’t until I was back inside the harem that I realized I’d never told her my name.
    *  *  *  
    Dunyazad came to see me in my room after evening prayers. It was hard, now, talking to her. She was careful, polite. But there was none of the warmth that I had felt from her before. None of the
liking.
    She wanted to know how to find the storyteller in the bazaar, and I told her as well as I could, though I didn’t remember exactly where he had been. Somewhere nearthe carpet bazaar, by a fountain. It had been a long time ago. I had been
lost.
Also, he might have changed places. Or moved to another city. Or
died.
    I wanted to let her know what I had overheard, about the Khatun preparing the copper-haired girl to take over Shahrazad’s job. Although I didn’t know how to do it. Dunyazad would wonder how I knew, and the truth was odd enough that she might be suspicious. I told her anyway.
    She just looked at me. Then she said, “Might as well get a
donkey
to tell him stories.”
    So, I thought, after Dunyazad had left, I must have guessed right about what she and Shahrazad were planning. They would send someone to look for the storyteller. Someone who could come and go in and out of the harem. Someone—I hoped—with a good memory. You can’t