A Thousand Nights Read Free

Lovely, but second. I could hear the men whisper.
    “Pity,” they hissed. “Pity we did not notice she was as beautiful as her sister.”
    I did not look at them. I held my sister’s hand, and we led the way toward the horses that stamped and sweated by the well. We passed the tents of the other families, those with fewer
sheep and fewer children. The girls followed us, staying close. They sensed that they could hide in my shadow, my purple oasis, and perhaps be safe. We drew our lives from the well, and now one of
us would go to her death by it.
    Lo-Melkhiin did not get down from his horse. He sat above us, casting a shadow across the sand where we stood. I could not see his face. When I looked up at him, all I could see was black and
sun, and it was too bright to bear. I stared at the horse instead. I would not look at the ground. Behind me stood the other girls, and behind them the village elders held the girls’ mothers
back. I wondered who held my mother, with my father and brothers gone, but I did not look back to see. I wished to be stone, to be resolute, but fear whispered in my heart. What if my sister was
chosen, despite my efforts? What if I was chosen, and died? I pushed those thoughts away, and called on the stories I had woven together to make my plan. Those heroes did not falter. They walked
their paths, regardless of what lay before them, and they did not look back.
    “Make me a smallgod,” I whispered to my sister. “When I have gone.”
    “I will make you a smallgod now,” she said to me, and the tack jingled as Lo-Melkhiin’s men dismounted and came near. “What good to be revered when you are dead? We will
begin the moment they take you, and you shall be a smallgod before you reach the qasr.”
    I had prayed to smallgods my whole life. Our father’s father’s father had been a great herdsman, with more sheep than a man could count in one day. He had traded wool to villages far
and near, and it was to him we prayed when our father was away with the caravan. Our father always returned home safely, with gifts for our mothers and work for my brothers and profit for us all,
but sometimes I wondered if it was the smallgod’s doing. For the first time, I wished that our father was here. I knew he would not have saved me, but I might have asked if he had ever felt
the smallgod we prayed to aiding him on the road.
    “Thank you, sister,” I said. I was unsure if it would help me, but it could not harm me.
    Lo-Melkhiin’s guard closed his hand on my arm, but I followed him willingly toward the horses. His face was covered by a sand-scarf, but his eyes betrayed him. He wanted to be here no more
than I did, yet he did his duty, as did I. When he saw that I would not fight him, he relaxed, and his hand became more a guide than a shackle. I stood straight and did not look back, though I
could hear the wails behind me as my mother began to grieve. Perhaps I should have gone to her, instead of my sister’s mother. But she would not have helped me. She would have done what my
father could not, and she would have tried to keep me safe. She would have cost me my sister.
    “I love you,” I called out. The words were for everyone, for my mothers, and the words were only for my sister.
    My sister was on her knees when they put me on the horse, her white linen browned by the sand and her hair falling forward across her face. She chanted in the family tongue, the one my
father’s father’s father practiced when he tended his sheep, the one we heard at my father’s knee as he taught it to my brothers and we sat close by to overhear. My sister’s
mother knelt beside her and chanted too. I could hear the words, but I could not make them out. I knew they were for me, for I could feel the way the wind pulled at my veil, curious to see the face
of the girl who received such fervent prayer.
    Lo-Melkhiin sat atop his horse and laughed, for he thought she wept to lose me. But I knew better. I could