The Storyteller's Daughter by Cameron Dokey

Author:Cameron Dokey
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: SOC035000
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Published: 2002-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

SHAHRAZAD RESUMES HER TALE

“Now,” said Shahrazad that night, “where was I?”

“I know! I know!” Dinarzad cried, “You were telling about the king, and how he was well and truly …”

“Dinarzad,” Shahrazad interrupted, laying a hand on her younger sister’s head, for Dinarzad sat at her feet just as she had the night before. “Remember that this is not your story, but Shahrayar’s.”

At Shahrazad’s words, Dinarzad caught her breath. How could she have forgotten herself so? she wondered. Her relief that her sister had been spared, her delight that Shahrazad’s plan seemed to be working had driven every other thought from Dinarzad’s mind. It had even made her forget her awe of Shahrayar.

I cannot afford to forget, she thought. Not while he holds Shahrazad’s life so tightly in his hands.

She hung her head. “I beg your pardon, my lord.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Shahrayar said easily from where he stood near the trunk. Never guessing what was in Dinarzad’s thoughts, knowing only that he was secretly delighted that she was as interested in the story as he was. “To tell you the truth, I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who is so eager.”

At his words, Dinarzad’s face lit up in a surprised smile, Shahrayar smiled back. This is how it should be, he thought. Comfortable. Like a family. And suddenly his whole body was flooded with so many different sensations that he could make no sense of any of them, and he sat down upon the lid of the trunk.

“My lord!” Dinarzad cried in alarm. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Shahrayar replied, though the truth was, he was far from certain. When had the room grown so warm? “It’s just—perhaps a glass of something cool to drink?”

“Dinarzad,” Shahrazad said. “Ring for a servant, and have him bring His Majesty a cup of water from the deepest well.”

Dinarzad did as her sister instructed while Shahrayar sat motionless upon Maju the Storyteller’s ebony trunk, a great tingling filling all his limbs, but most particularly the region of his heart. The room around him began to shimmer, and suddenly it seemed to Shahrayar that he could see his future unfurling like a great silk ribbon before him.

He blinked, for his eyes were all but blinded by the vision’s textures, its richness, and its color. The life he suddenly envisioned blazed with possibilities, and the greatest one of all was the one he least expected: the possibility for love.

But as yet this chance was nothing more than a bright glimmer in the distance. To reach it, Shahrayar perceived that he would have to pass through places where he could not see his way straight, if at all. Places where the road was filled with traps and shadows. With a thousand nameless, faceless, unguessed-at things that could deprive him of the love for which he suddenly so longed. And just the thought of these dangers twisted like knives in his heart.

For the first time, he began to understand just what he had made of himself in his high tower.

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