1001 Nights Cast

The sun sets this evening over a desolate landscape. Under a thin veil of sand and dust, the flat earth is baked to rock and cracked from long absence of water. There has been much agony here, she senses, and considers it perhaps fitting that, at the exact moment when she feels she has lost even the last crumbs of her meagre fortune, she should arrive here, alone.

At that moment, the wind rises to a shrill whistle and bursts across the land like a screaming chorus of ghostly voices as it rises in pitch and intensity, whipping a dense cloud of sand and dust into the hollow air until the air is filled, and opaque. Then, just as suddenly, the wind stops.

When the storm settles, a thin man stands before her, clad head to toe in a heavy robe of hand-stitched sackcloth, tied at the waist with a sash of simple rope. As if in response to her obvious surprise, he raises his voice a little, and speaks to her softly.

‘Of course we have met before, you and I, though in very different circumstances.’

‘But——’

‘Please listen carefully to what I am about to tell you, and avoid the temptation to interrupt, for your questions likely will be the same as they were so long ago. And, in any case, the light is fading fast and I may not speak in cover of darkness.’

‘Pray, then tell me your story.’

‘Well, it is your story, but that is neither here nor there.’

And so, as she closes her eyes the better to concentrate on the tale and to make no interruption, the man begins to speak.

***

‘In a mountainous forest which by some miracle had remained untouched in the slightest by humans, an ethereal creature emerged from the edges of the known world into the gathering light of a pale dawn. She trod barefoot and wore only a thin dress made of fine cloth, plain and pale, save for a line of violets stitched across the breast, which echoed in some way the feint blue veins tracing their vital lines beneath the surface of her skin.

‘Her trek had been long and without halt or replenishment and she was yet to scale the higher peaks looming before her, but she retained a cool and happy, even eager, composure as she traipsed the way which nature hinted to her: no footprint or bended frond to follow, instead only the chatter of birds.

‘After some time she came to the top of the highest mountain she could see, and there beheld a vast green valley opening before her. In the distance, the light grew steadily brighter until the hills across the valley, brimming with the new day, could hold it no more, and the highest ridge seemed to catch flame and the sun burst into the valley, turning the loosening yellow autumn leaves of the trees descending its inner slope into golden, shimmering discs.

‘Then, as the burning orb breached the lip of the ridge, it lit golden also the tiny surface of a body of water at the distant base of the valley below, and she knew that she had found her target.

‘Descending as the light grew stronger still, and the earth warmed and sucked and oozed and the grass took on a brighter sheen, so her pale skin seemed to glow with life. She quickened her pace, her cheeks and shoulders and breastplate showing the nectarine infusion of active blood, and she hastened on again until, finally, she came to the edge of what was, in fact, a wide, still lake.

‘At its nearest edge she encountered a gruff and primitive creature, containing elements of man and ape. Slightly stooped of shoulder and covered in coarse, brown, matted fur, he wore a black top hat and tails made of a fine but dusty antique cloth. Where he sat, perched on the stump of an old dead tree, she saw without embarrassment to either of them that he was naked from the waist down, save for his thick coat of fur.

‘In one hand he held a bottle of transparent liquid, a spirit of some sort; in the other, a glass tumbler, filled with ice. The creature huffed and poured a measure of the clear liquid into a glass; swirled; contemplated as the spirit snaked like poison around the ice, then pressed the glass to thick, rough lips, and sipped.

‘And so, the ice broken, the two commenced communication without speaking, and the language they spoke, common and instinctive, was understood by each.

‘“I’m glad at last to have found you,” said she.

“What makes you think it’s me you are looking for?”

“I have found you, and you alone, in this wilderness.”

“And you are sure you know what you are here for.’”

“Yes.”

“Then kindly proceed.”

‘The girl stepped onto a ledge above the lake, smiling as she prepared to dive into its still, empty depths.

‘“First I would like my three wishes.”

“Pfa!” said the ape man. “I suppose you also believe in all the fables you have heard of genies and dragons and fairytale princes and heroines? Perhaps even love?”

“I have no reason not to; and yet, no reason either not to disbelieve them, if you tell me they are not true.”

“I did not say it,” said he. “But in any case I have no power to grant you any wishes; only to add to yours my own.”

“Well then,” she warmed, and the smile burst across her face again, “let it be so.”

‘And with that, she dived in a graceful arc, and as she landed she seemed simultaneously to shatter and vanish, without making so much as a ripple on the surface of the water. Immediately below the surface where she had landed, hundreds of small golden fish flashed briefly in the water, and disappeared down into the depths below. And the ape man smiled.’

***

Out in the desert, where the woman stands with closed eyes and knitted brow, all is silence; she moves not a muscle. And then, the silence is broken by the sudden spatter of thick raindrops.

As if waking from a trance, she opens her eyes. She finds no sign of the thin dusty man, save for the sackcloth he wore. She nudges the base of the sack gingerly with her foot. It is hard as rock, and as still, and does not yield. As the rain falls increasingly heavily, she lifts up the hood and peers inside to find that it is filled to the neck with hundreds of gold pieces.