Princess of Dhagabad, The (23 page)

Waves of fiery tresses flow down her fair
body, more perfect than a marble goddess’s, as her beautiful lines
and curves make you wildly hunger for every part of her. As you
caress her, every ringlet of her fiery curls seems to burn you,
making you mad with desire. You let her undress you, unable to keep
your hands, your eyes, your mind—or what little is left of it—off
her. You try to hold back, afraid to be too rough in your
impatience, and she laughs at your awkward and careful approach as
you see the fire in her eyes rise, coming from the very depths of
her mysterious, sensual being. You can feel her tremble at your
touch, giving in more and more to your caresses, to your kisses, to
your own fire, more powerful than anything you have felt before.
Her arms become stronger, clinging to you, drawing you down onto
the bed, and as her moans of desire become louder, as she opens up,
submitting herself to you, your mind leaves you completely, giving
in to wild passion beyond control.

She is your match, and more. She is
everything a perfect woman should be. She takes you in completely,
body and soul. Sinking into the abyss of her arms and lips, of the
piercing feeling of her burning body against yours, you feel that
you have become one with her to the point of being unable to
separate your bodies, your sensations, your very souls that seem to
join in their growing desire and soar to reach the point of
ultimate pleasure as a single powerful and harmonious beast.

And later, after many hours of unimaginable
happiness, emerging into the light and fire of her emerald eyes,
you feel as if you have burned and been reborn from your ashes like
the legendary phoenix. And then, much later, between kisses, still
unable to take your hands, eyes, or mind off her, you finally ask
the question, long overdue:

“
What is your name, my lady?”

She answers with laughter, her voice ringing
like a bell in the cool breeze:

“
My name is Zobeide, Hasan.”

You feel the princess stir near you and
suddenly you remember yourself, realizing that you are still
holding her hand and that, before your memories took you away, you
were trying to calm her and scare away the nightmares. You cannot
help but wonder what kind of dreams you may have sent her just now.
And you also wonder how it is that such memories found you and
carried you away—you, bodiless spirit in the presence of a pure,
innocent child.

Chapter 13. A Look Into the Past

“Hasan.” The princess shyly raises her head
to look her djinn in the face. They are standing on a palace
balcony, admiring the garden from one of the side towers. She is
still shivering from her feelings of the night before and from her
dreams that she doesn’t remember clearly but which filled her with
sensations even more disturbingly pleasant and somewhat more
shameful that her wakeful thoughts. She knows that Hasan can
normally read into her feelings and thoughts, and that realization
makes her uneasy. She is not quite sure how to behave.

“Princess?” The djinn looks at her with easy
friendliness and the princess relaxes a bit. Most of it was
probably just a dream, and she cannot really answer for her dreams,
can she? Besides, she can hardly hope to deceive Hasan about her
true feelings, even if she herself hasn’t yet sorted them out. It
is best not to spoil their fun with her foolish doubts. Especially
today, when she has thought of something of which she is very
proud.

“We are always doing what I want,” the
princess says. “Let’s for once do something you want.”

With triumph she watches the lost expression
on his face. It seems that she has finally been able to surprise
him!

“I am your slave, princess,” the djinn
answers automatically. “I always want the same things you
want.”

“Wouldn’t you like to go somewhere?” she
insists. “Aren’t there any people you want to see? I cannot believe
there is nobody in this world you know…”

“Somebody I know and somebody I would want to
see are two different things, princess,” Hasan says
thoughtfully.

The princess is pleased to see something she
was hoping for since the very beginning of their conversation.
Hasan’s face lights up with a very special smile, an absentminded
smile addressed this time not to her but to his own memories, his
distant thoughts that the princess is unable to penetrate.

“There is one place, princess…if you really
want that.”

“Very much!” Saying that, the princess
immediately regrets the force of her eagerness. What if he guesses
that this request, besides her wish to please him, bears a hidden
wish to satisfy her own curiosity? But he will guess, anyway. She
should know by now how useless it is to try to hide her feelings
from her djinn.

“Come here, princess,” Hasan says, and the
princess for the very first time hears a special enthusiasm in his
voice. Could it be that her plan is working so easily? Is he really
pleased with her unexpected wish?

Before the princess realizes what is
happening, the warm sea wind is already blowing her shawl about and
hitting her face, leaving a salty taste on her lips. They are
sitting in a sailboat, and she can see no sign of land anywhere.
Hasan is shifting the single sail with the careless ease of a born
sailor, expertly guiding the tiny boat across the endless, rolling
waves.

Following his gaze, the princess sees a tiny
blue shadow off the bow, barely visible on the horizon.

“Where are we going, Hasan?” she asks.

“You’ll see, princess.”

“That island?” The princess looks doubtfully
at the semi-transparent shadow that seems unreal on the edge of
ocean and sky. “But it is so far!”

“We are going faster than you think,
princess,” Hasan says. “We’ll be there in a half hour.”

Holding her breath, the princess watches the
strange island grow larger with unbelievable speed. Cliffs rise in
front of them, covered with the curled green of trees. A mountain
on one side of the island makes it look like a giant animal with
its back sticking out of the water. Hasan, maneuvering with ease,
guides the boat between numerous underwater reefs, betrayed only by
spots of white foam boiling on the dark surface of the water. A
narrow passage opens into a cove surrounded by smooth rock walls.
Inside the cove the water is mirror still, and a white crescent of
coral sand separates the sea from the wild greenery of a tropical
forest. The princess doesn’t recall ever seeing so much green at
once. Peering into the darkness of the forest, she sees marble
stairs going up, straight into the canopy of the immense trees.

The bow of the boat creases the white sand,
and while Hasan carefully furls the sail, the princess sees a woman
standing motionlessly at the bottom of the marble staircase. From a
distance the princess cannot see her face, but her long narrow
dress, shining yellow in the sun like scaly dragon skin, and her
strange flame-red hair almost reaching to the ground are so unusual
that the princess freezes in amazement. A wide golden band encloses
the woman’s brow, and golden bracelets shine on her bare arms.

“Let’s go, princess,” Hasan says behind
her.

“Do you see that, Hasan?” the princess
whispers.

Smiling, Hasan jumps out of the boat and
carefully carries the princess ashore. The strange woman is already
walking to meet them, her hair flying around her like tongues of
flame.

“May I be struck by lightning if this is not
Hasan!” The woman laughs and extends her arms. Her face bears the
perfection of the marble statues of ancient goddesses. Her laughter
is carefree like a child’s, but in her narrow green eyes there is
something ancient as the world itself and as inevitable as doom.
The princess feels shivers going through her body. But Hasan does
not seem to share her fright. He laughs in response and takes the
woman’s hands, and the princess sees a strange ring with a
yellowish semitransparent stone on the woman’s right
forefinger.

“Time has no power over you, Zobeide.” Hasan
moves away from the woman and looks her over with the delight of a
brother looking at his sister after a long separation. Or, perhaps,
the princess suddenly thinks, there is something more in his smile,
in his eyes, as he looks at the strange woman he calls Zobeide.
Fascinated by his new expression, the princess feels at the same
time a painful sting of something she has never experienced. She
cannot help but wonder what this Zobeide really is to Hasan, and
why he wished to see
her
of all the people he must know in
the world.

Shaking off these unpleasant thoughts, she
returns to reality, as Hasan and Zobeide continue their
conversation.

“Appearances are deceiving, Hasan.” Zobeide
laughs. “I feel older than the rocks that formed this island. But
when I see you here, just like two thousand years ago… Did my
messengers lie to me saying that you had turned into an old bronze
piece?”

“Your messengers spoke the truth,” Hasan
says.

“But… I didn’t know that a djinn can become
free!”

“I am a slave.” Hasan pulls back his sleeve
to reveal a wide metal bracelet binding his wrist.

“A slave?” It seems that Zobeide has only
just noticed the princess standing aside on the white sand. “And
this is…”

“My mistress,” Hasan introduces, “the
princess of Dhagabad. Be kind to her, Zobeide.”

“The princess of Dhagabad?” Zobeide leaves
Hasan and approaches the princess in a couple of long strides.
“Greetings, girl.”

“Greetings, Zobeide,” the princess says. She
is uneasy under the intense gaze of her green eyes, but knowing
that Hasan won’t let her be hurt, she forces herself to look
straight at Zobeide.

“Did you order Hasan to come here?” Zobeide
asks. “How did you know?”

“I asked Hasan to take me wherever he
wanted,” the princess answers.

“I am happy at your choice, Hasan!” Zobeide
turns to Hasan and suddenly she looks like a little helpless girl.
A shiver runs through her body and the princess sees tears brimming
in her narrow green eyes. This fleeting impression, though, lasts
only for a second and then Zobeide becomes stately and magnificent
again.

“Two thousand years is too long, Hasan,” she
says.

“I would like to be able to disagree,
Zobeide,” Hasan says with such sadness that the princess freezes to
the spot. She has never heard Hasan sound like that. What she hears
now in his voice sounds so similar to the pain she saw in his eyes
when they first met. She feels a sting again, thinking that this
woman, this Zobeide, has brought out Hasan’s deepest feelings where
she has failed so many times… She looks searchingly at Hasan’s
face, but as she manages to catch his eye, he already looks happy
and carefree again.

Zobeide straightens up, as if suddenly
remembering her duties.

“We shouldn’t stay here on the beach,” she
says. “I haven’t had any visitors for ages! Welcome to the Island
of the Elements. Let’s go!”

They follow Zobeide up the marble stairs into
the cool shade of the trees, where Zobeide’s shiny dress becomes a
natural part of the forest greenery. The princess holds her breath,
forgetting all her unpleasant thoughts at the sight of the
mysterious forest. It somehow seems like a place where all life
began, a place that holds the key to all mysteries in the world.
Tall smooth trees rise like arrows to a ceiling of intertwined
branches, garlands of strange flowers hanging down. Ivy winds along
the huge tree trunks, spreading out its large waxy leaves to the
forest moisture. A brook quietly tinkles among rocks thickly
covered with moss, forming here and there tiny pools and
waterfalls. As she looks more deeply into the endless shade of
leaves, she sees vapor rising from the ground between the giant
trunks. She feels a breath of the humid air that seems to be born
within the trees themselves, bringing the fresh smell of earth and
leaves strong and clear, as if this were the place where this smell
was created.

Looming ahead, they see the greenish stone
walls of an ancient palace, which gradually become more and more
visible in the warm dimness of the forest. Walking through an
arched gateway along a dark narrow gallery, through a long string
of empty rooms and halls, they finally arrive in a giant green
hall. The center of the hall is occupied by a marble basin, its
clear greenish water moving and rippling as it rises to the surface
in boiling domes as if from an underwater spring. Zobeide leads
them around the basin to the end of the hall, where giant windows
stand widely open in the light breeze, carrying the fresh, heady
smells of earth, sea and pines—not as strong here as in the forest
outside, but filled with the same primeval, breathtaking richness.
Three low armchairs are set around a glass table right next to the
window. Zobeide walks up to it, indicating the seats for her
guests.