Castle In The Air Part 1

Castle in the Air.

Diana Wynne Jones.

1.

In which Abdullah buys a carpet Far to the south of the land of Ingary, in the Sultanates of Rashpuht, a young carpet merchant called Abdullah lived in the city of Zanzib. As merchants go, he was not rich. His father had been disappointed in him, and when he died, he had only left Abdullah just enough money to buy and stock a modest booth in the northwest corner of the Bazaar. The rest of his father's money, and the large carpet emporium in the center of the Bazaar, had all gone to the relatives of his father's first wife.

Abdullah had never been told why his father was disappointed in him. Aprophecy made at Abdullah's birth had something to do with it. But Abdullah had never bothered to find out more. Instead, from a very early age, he had simply made up daydreams about it. In his daydreams, he was really the long-lost son of a great prince, which meant, of course, that his father was not really his father. It was a complete castle in the air, and Abdullah knew it was. Everyone told him he inherited his father's looks. When he looked in a mirror, he saw a decidedly handsome young man, in a thin, hawk- faced way, and knew he looked very like the portrait of his father as a young man, always allowing for the fact that his father wore a 2.flouris.h.i.+ng mustache, whereas Abdullah was still sc.r.a.ping together the six hairs on his upper lip and hoping they would multiply soon.

Unfortunately, as everyone also agreed, Abdullah had inherited his character from his mother-his father's second wife-who had been a dreamy and timorous woman and a great disappointment to everyone. This did not bother Abdullah particularly. The life of a carpet merchant holds few opportunities for bravery, and he was, on the whole, content with it.

The booth he had bought, though small, turned out to be rather well placed. It was not far from the West Quarter, where the rich people lived in their big houses surrounded by beautiful gardens. Better still, it was the first part of the Bazaar the carpet makers came to when they came into Zanzib from the desert to the north. Both the rich people and the carpet makers were usually seeking the bigger shops in the center of the Bazaar, but a surprisingly large number of them were ready to pause at the booth of a young carpet merchant when that young merchant rushed out into their paths and offered them bargains and discounts with most profuse politeness.

In this way, Abdullah was quite often able to buy best-quality carpets before anyone else saw them, and sell them at a profit, too. In between buying and selling he could sit in his booth and continue with his daydream, which suited him very well. In fact, almost the only trouble in his life came from his father's first wife's relations, who would keep visiting him once a month in order to point out his failings.

"But you're not saving any of your profits!" cried Abdullah's father's first wife's brother's son, Hakim (whom Abdullah detested), one fateful day.

Abdullah explained that when he made a profit, his custom was to use that money to buy a better carpet. Thus, although all his money was bound up in his stock, it was getting to be better and better stock. He had enough to live on. And as he told his father's relatives, he had no need of more since he was not married.

"Well, you should be married!" cried Abdullah's father's first wife's sister, Fatima (whom Abdullah detested even more than Hakim). "I've said it once, and I'll say it again-a young man like 3.you should have at least two wives by now!" And not content with simply saying so, Fatima declared that this time she was going to look out for some wives for him-an offer which made Abdullah shake in his shoes.

"And the more valuable your stock gets, the more likely you are to berobbed, or the more you'll lose if your booth catches fire. Have you thought of that?" nagged Abdullah's father's first wife's uncle's son, a.s.sif (a man whom Abdullah hated more than the first two put together).

He a.s.sured a.s.sif that he always slept in the booth and was very careful of the lamps. At that all three of his father's first wife's relatives shook their heads, rut-tutted, and went away. This usually meant they would leave him in peace for another month. Abdullah sighed with relief and plunged straight back into his daydream.

The daydream was enormously detailed by now. In it, Abdullah was the son of a mighty prince who lived so far to the east that his country was unknown in Zanzib. But Abdullah had been kidnapped at the age of two by a villainous bandit called Kabul Aqba. Kabul Aqba had a hooked nose like the beak of a vulture and wore a gold ring clipped into one of his nostrils. He carried a pistol with a silver- mounted stock with which he menaced Abdullah, and there was a bloodstone in his turban which seemed to give him more than human power. Abdullah was so frightened that he ran away into the desert, where he was found by the man he called his father now. The daydream took no account of the fact that Abdullah's father had never ventured into the desert in his life; indeed, he had often said that anyone who ventured beyond Zanzib must be mad.

Nevertheless, Abdullah could picture every nightmare inch of the dry, thirsty, footsore journey he had made before the good carpet merchant found him. Likewise, he could picture in great detail the palace he had been kidnapped from, with its pillared throne room floored in green porphyry, its women's quarters, and its kitchens, all of the utmost richness. There were seven domes on its roof, each one covered with beaten gold.

Lately, however, the daydream had been concentrating on the princess to whom Abdullah had been betrothed at his birth. She 4.was as highborn as Abdullah and had grown up in his absence into a great beauty with perfect features and huge misty dark eyes. She lived in a palace as rich as Abdullah's own. You approached it along an avenue lined with angelic statues and entered by way of seven marble courts, each with a fountain in the middle more precious than the last, starting with one made of chrysolite and ending with one of platinum studded with emeralds.

But that day Abdullah found he was not quite satisfied with this arrangement. It was a feeling he often had after a visit from his father's first wife's relations. It occurred to him that a good palace ought to have magnificent gardens. Abdullah loved gardens, though he knew very little about them. Most of his experience had come from the public parks of Zanzib-where the turf was somewhat trampled and the flowers few-in which he sometimes spent his lunch hour when he could afford to pay one-eyed Jamal to watch his booth. Jamal kept the fried food stall next door and would, for a coin or so, tie his dog to the front of Abdullah's booth. Abdullah was well aware that this did not really qualify him to invent a proper garden, but since anything was better than thinking of two wives chosen for him by Fatima, he lost himself in waving fronds and scented walkways in the gardens of his princess.

Or nearly. Before Abdullah was fairly started, he was interrupted by a tall, dirty man with a dingy-looking carpet in his arms."You buy carpets for selling, son of a great house?" this stranger asked, bowing briefly.

For someone trying to sell a carpet in Zanzib, where buyers and sellers always spoke to one another in the most formal and flowery way, this man's manner was shockingly abrupt. Abdullah was annoyed anyway because his dream garden was falling to pieces at this interruption from real life. He answered curtly. "That is so, O king of the desert. You wish to trade with this miserable merchant?"

"Not trade-sell, O master of a stack of mats," the stranger corrected him.

Mats! thought Abdullah. This was an insult. One of the carpets on display in front of Abdullah's booth was a rare floral tufted one from Ingary-or Ochinstan, as that land was called in Zanzib-and 5.there were at least two inside, from Inhico and Farqtan, which the Sultan himself would not have disdained for one of the smaller rooms of his palace. But of course, Abdullah could not say this. The manners of Zanzib did not let you praise yourself. Instead, he bowed a coldly shallow bow. "It is possible that my low and squalid establishment might provide that which you seek, O pearl of wanderers," he said, and cast his eye critically over the stranger's dirty desert robe, the corroded stud in the side of the man's nose, and his tattered headcloth as he said it.

"It is worse than squalid, mighty seller of floor coverings," the stranger agreed. He flapped one end of his dingy carpet toward Jamal, who was frying squid just then in clouds of blue, fishy smoke. "Does not the honorable activity of your neighbor penetrate your wares," he asked, "even to a lasting aroma of octopus?"

Abdullah seethed with such rage inside that he was forced to rub his hands together slavishly to hide it. People were not supposed to mention this sort of thing. And a slight smell of squid might even improve that thing the stranger wanted to sell, he thought, eyeing the drab and threadbare rug in the man's arms. "Your humble servant takes care to fumigate the interior of his booth with lavish perfumes, O prince of wisdom," he said. "Perhaps the heroic sensitivity of the prince's nose will nevertheless allow him to show this beggarly trader his merchandise?"

"Of course, it does, O lily among mackerel," the stranger retorted. "Why else should I stand here?"

Abdullah reluctantly parted the curtains and ushered the man inside his booth. There he turned up the lamp which hung from the center pole but, upon sniffing, decided that he was not going to waste incense on this person. The interior smelled quite strongly enough of yesterday's scents. "What magnificence have you to unroll before my unworthy eyes?"

he asked dubiously.

"This, buyer of bargains!" the man said, and with a deft thrust of one arm, he caused the carpet to unroll across the floor.

Abdullah could do this, too. A carpet merchant learned these things. He was not impressed. He stuck his hands in his sleeves in a primly servile att.i.tude and surveyed the merchandise. The carpet6 was not large. Unrolled, it was even dingier than he had thought- although the pattern was unusual, or it would have been if most of it had not been worn away. What was left was dirty, and its edges were frayed.

"Alas, this poor salesman can only stretch to three copper coins for this most ornamental of rugs," he observed. "It is the limit of my slender purse. Times are hard, O captain of many camels. Is the price acceptable in any way?"

"I'll take FIVE HUNDRED," said the stranger.

"What?" said Abdullah.

"GOLD coins," added the stranger.

"The king of all desert bandits is surely pleased to jest?" said Abdullah. "Or maybe, having found my small booth lacking in anything but the smell of frying squid, he wishes to leave and try a richer merchant?"

"Not particularly," said the stranger. "Although I will leave if you are not interested, O neighbor of kippers. It is, of course, a magic carpet."

Abdullah had heard that one before. He bowed over his tucked- up hands.

"Many and various are the virtues said to reside in carpets," he agreed.

"Which one does the poet of the sands claim for this? Does it welcome a man home to his tent? Does it bring peace to the hearth? Or maybe," he said, poking the frayed edge suggestively with one toe, "it is said never to wear out?"

"It flies," said the stranger. "It flies wherever the owner commands, O smallest of small minds."

Abdullah looked up into the man's somber face, where the desert had entrenched deep lines down each cheek. A sneer made those lines deeper still. Abdullah found he disliked this person almost as much as he disliked his father's first wife's uncle's son. "You must convince this unbeliever," he said. "If the carpet can be put through its paces, O monarch of mendacity, then some bargain might be struck."

"Willingly," said the tall man, and stepped upon the carpet.

At this moment one of the regular upsets happened at the fried food stall next door. Probably some street boys had tried to steal 7.some squid. At any rate, Jamal's dog burst out barking; various people, Jamal included, began yelling, and both sounds were nearly drowned by the clash of saucepans and the hissing of hot fat.

Cheating was a way of life in Zanzib. Abdullah did not allow his attention to be distracted for one instant from the stranger and his carpet. It was quite possible the man had bribed Jamal to cause a distraction. He had mentioned Jamal rather often, as if Jamal were on his mind. Abdullah kept his eyes sternly on the tall figure of the man and particularly on the dirty feet planted on the carpet. But he spared a corner of one eye for the man's face, and he saw the man's lips move.His alert ears even caught the words too feet upward despite the din from next door. And he looked even more carefully when the carpet rose smoothly from the floor and hovered about level with Abdullah's knees, so that the stranger's tattered headgear was not quite brus.h.i.+ng the roof of the booth. Abdullah looked for rods underneath. He searched for wires that might have been deftly hooked to the roof. He took hold of the lamp and tipped it about, so that its light played both over and under the carpet.

The stranger stood with his arms folded and the sneer entrenched on his face while Abdullah performed these tests. "See?" he said. "Is the most desperate of doubters now convinced? Am I standing in the air, or am I not?" He had to shout. The noise was still deafening from next door.

Abdullah was forced to admit that the carpet did appear to be up in the air without any means of support that he could find. "Very nearly," he shouted back. "The next part of the demonstration is for you to dismount and for me to ride that carpet."

The man frowned. "Why so? What have your other senses to add to the evidence of your eyes, O dragon of dubiety?"

"It could be a one-man carpet," Abdullah bawled, "as some dogs are."

Jamal's dog was still bellowing away outside, so it was natural to think of this. Jamal's dog bit anyone who touched it except Jamal.

The stranger sighed. "Down," he said, and the carpet sank gently to the floor. The stranger stepped off and bowed Abdullah toward it. "It is yours to test, O sheikh of shrewdness."

8.With considerable excitement, Abdullah stepped onto the carpet. "Go up two feet," he said to it-or, rather, yelled. It sounded as if the constables of the City Watch had arrived at Jamal's stall now. They were clas.h.i.+ng weapons and bawling to be told what had happened.

And the carpet obeyed Abdullah. It rose two feet in a smooth surge which left Abdullah's stomach behind it. He sat down rather hastily. The carpet was perfectly comfortable to sit on. It felt like a very tight hammock. "This woefully sluggish intellect is becoming convinced," he confessed to the stranger. "What was your price again, O paragon of generosity? Two hundred silver?"

"Five hundred GOLD," said the stranger. "Tell the carpet to descend, and we will discuss the matter."

Abdullah told the carpet, "Down, and land on the floor," and it did so, thus removing a slight nagging doubt in Abdullah's mind that the stranger had said something extra when Abdullah first stepped on it which had been drowned in the din from next door. He bounced to his feet, and the bargaining commenced. "The utmost of my purse is one hundred and fifty gold," he explained, "and that is when I shake it out and feel all around the seams."

"Then you must fetch out your other purse or even feel under your mattress," the stranger rejoined. "For the limit of my generosity is four hundred and ninety-five gold, and I would not sell at all but for the most pressing need.""I might squeeze another forty-five gold from the sole of my left shoe,"

Abdullah replied. "That I keep for emergencies, and it is my pitiful all."

"Examine your right shoe," the stranger answered. "Four- fifty."

And so it went on. An hour later the stranger departed from the booth with 210 gold pieces, leaving Abdullah the delighted owner of what seemed to be a genuine-if threadbare-magic carpet. He was still mistrustful. He did not believe that anyone, even a desert wanderer with few needs, would part with a real flying carpet-albeit nearly worn out-for less than 400 gold pieces. It was too useful- 9.better than a camel, because it did not need to eat-and a good camel cost at least 450 in gold.

There had to be a catch. And there was one trick Abdullah had heard of.

It was usually worked with horses or dogs. A man would come and sell a trusting farmer or hunter a truly superb animal for a surprisingly small price, saying that it was all that stood between himself and starvation.

The delighted farmer (or hunter) would put the horse in a stall (or the dog in a kennel) for the night. In the morning it would be gone, being trained to slip its halter (or collar) and return to its owner in the night. It seemed to Abdullah that a suitably obedient carpet could be trained to do the same. So, before he left his booth, he very carefully wrapped the magic carpet around one of the poles that supported the roof and bound it there, around and around, with a whole reel of twine, which he then tied to one of the iron stakes at the base of the wall.

"I think you'll find it hard to escape from that," he told it, and went out to discover what had been going on at the food stall.

The stall was quiet now, and tidy. Jamal was sitting on its counter, mournfully hugging his dog.

"What happened?" asked Abdullah.

"Some thieving boys spilled all my squid," Jamal said. "My whole day's stock down in the dirt, lost, gone!"

Abdullah was so pleased with his bargain that he gave Jamal two silver pieces to buy more squid. Jamal wept with grat.i.tude and embraced Abdullah. His dog not only failed to bite Abdullah; it licked his hand.

Abdullah smiled. Life was good. He went off whistling to find a good supper while the dog guarded his booth.

When the evening was staining the sky red behind the domes and minarets of Zanzib, Abdullah came back, still whistling, full of plans to sell the carpet to the Sultan himself for a very large price indeed. He found the carpet exactly where he had left it. Or would it be better to approach the Grand Vizier, he wondered while he was was.h.i.+ng, and suggest that the Vizier might wish to make the Sultan a present of it? That way he could ask for even more money. At the thought of how valuable that made the carpet, the story of 10.the horse trained to slip its halter began to nag at him again. As he got into his nights.h.i.+rt, Abdullah began to visualize the carpetwriggling free. It was old and pliable. It was probably very well trained. It could certainly slither out from behind the twine. Even if it did not, he knew the idea would keep him awake all night.

In the end, he carefully cut the twine away and spread the carpet on top of the pile of his most valuable rugs, which he always used as a bed.

Then he put on his nightcap-which was necessary, because the cold winds blew off the desert and filled the booth with drafts-spread his blanket over him, blew out his lamp, and slept.

2.

In which Abdullah is mistaken for a young lady

He woke to find himself lying on a bank, with the carpet still underneath him, in a garden more beautiful than any he had imagined.

Abdullah was convinced that this was a dream. Here was the garden he had been trying to imagine when the stranger so rudely interrupted him. Here the moon was nearly full and riding high above, casting light as white as paint on a hundred small fragrant flowers in the gra.s.s around him.

Round yellow lamps hung in the trees, dispelling the dense black shadows from the moon. Abdullah thought this was a very pleasing idea. By the two lights, white and yellow, he could see an arcade of creepers supported on elegant pillars, beyond the lawn where he lay, and from somewhere behind that, hidden water was quietly trickling.

It was so cool and so heavenlike that Abdullah got up and went in search of the hidden water, wandering down the arcade, where starry blooms brushed his face, all white and hushed in the moonlight, and bell-like flowers breathed out the headiest and gentlest of scents. As one does in dreams, Abdullah fingered a great waxy lily here and detoured deliriously there into a dell of pale 12.roses. He had never before had a dream that was anything like so beautiful.

The water, when he found it beyond some big fernlike bushes dripping dew, was a simple marble fountain in another lawn, lit by strings of lamps in the bushes, which made the rippling water into a marvel of gold and silver crescents. Abdullah wandered toward it raptly.

There was only one thing needed to complete his rapture, and as in all the best dreams, it was there. An extremely lovely girl came across the lawn to meet him, treading softly on the damp gra.s.s with bare feet. The gauzy garments floating around her showed her to be slender, but not thin, just like the princess from Abdullah's daydream. When she was near Abdullah, he saw that her face was not quite a perfect oval as the face of his dream princess should have been, nor were her huge dark eyes at all misty. In fact, they examined his face keenly, with evident interest. Abdullah hastily adjusted his dream, for she was certainlyvery beautiful. And when she spoke, her voice was all he could have desired, being light and merry as the water in the fountain and the voice of a very definite person, too.

"Are you a new kind of servant?" she said.

People always did ask strange things in dreams, Abdullah thought. "No, masterpiece of my imagination," he said. "Know that I am really the long-lost son of a distant prince."

"Oh," she said. "Then that may make a difference. Does that mean you're a different kind of woman from me?"

Abdullah stared at the girl of his dreams in some perplexity. "I'm not a woman!" he said.

"Are you sure?" she asked. "You are wearing a dress."

Abdullah looked down and discovered that, in the way of dreams, he was wearing his nights.h.i.+rt. "This is just my strange foreign garb," he said hastily. "My true country is far from here. I a.s.sure you that I am a man."

"Oh, no," she said decidedly. "You can't be a man. You're quite the wrong shape. Men are twice as thick as you all over, and their stomachs come out in a fat bit that's called a belly. And they have 13.gray hair all over their faces and nothing but s.h.i.+ny skin on their heads. You've got hair on your head like me and almost none on your face." Then, as Abdullah put his hand rather indignantly to the six hairs on his upper lip, she asked, "Or have you got bare skin under your hat?"

"Certainly not," said Abdullah, who was proud of his thick, wavy hair.

He put his hand to his head and removed what turned out to be his nightcap. "Look," he said.

"Ah," she said. Her lovely face was puzzled. "You have hair that's almost as nice as mine. I don't understand."

"I'm not sure I do, either," said Abdullah. "Could it be that you have not seen very many men?"

"Of course not," she said. "Don't be silly. I've only seen my father!

But I've seen quite a lot of him, so I do know."

"But don't you ever go out at all?" Abdullah asked helplessly.

She laughed. "Yes, I'm out now. This is my night garden. My father had it made so that I wouldn't ruin my looks going out in the sun."

"I mean, out into the town, to see all the people," Abdullah explained.

"Well, no, not yet," she admitted. As if that bothered her a little, she twirled away from him and went to sit on the edge of the fountain.

Turning to look up at him, she said, "My father tells me I might be able to go out and see the town sometimes after I'm married-if my husband allows me to-but it won't be this town. My father's arranging for me to marry a prince from Ochinstan. Until then I have to stay inside thesewalls, of course."

Abdullah had heard that some of the very rich people in Zanzib kept their daughters-and even their wives, too-almost like prisoners inside their grand houses. He had many times wished someone would keep his father's first wife's sister, Fatima, that way. But now, in this dream, it seemed to him that this custom was entirely unreasonable and not fair to this lovely girl at all. Fancy not knowing what a normal young man looked like!