“I am very sorry,” he said, above the loud sobbings. “You should really have consulted me first about this, oh relatives of my father’s first wife, oh much honoured and most honest Justice. It would have saved this misunderstanding. I cannot marry yet. I have made a vow.”
“What vow?” demanded everyone else, the fat brides included, and the Justice added, “Have you registered this vow? To be legal, all vows must be registered with a magistrate.”
This was awkward. Abdullah thought rapidly. “Indeed, it is registered, oh veritable weighing-scale of judgement,” he said. “My father took me to a magistrate to register the vow when he ordered me to make it. I was but a small child at the time. Though I did not understand then, I see now it was because of the prophecy. My father, being a prudent man, did not wish to see his forty gold coins wasted. He made me vow that I would never marry until Fate had placed me above all others in this land. So you see—” Abdullah put his hands in the sleeves of his best suit and bowed regretfully to the two fat brides, “I cannot yet marry you, twin plums of candied sugar, but the time will come.”
Everyone said, “Oh, in that case—!” in various tones of discontent and, to Abdullah’s profound relief, most of them turned away from him.
“I always thought your father was a rather grasping man,” Fatima added.
“Even from beyond the grave,” Assif agreed. “We must wait for this dear boy’s elevation, then.”
The Justice, however, stood his ground. “And which magistrate was it, before whom you made this vow?” he asked.
“I do not know his name,” Abdullah invented, speaking with intense regret. He was sweating rather. “I was a tiny child, and he appeared to me an old man with a long white beard.” That, he thought, would serve as a description of every magistrate there ever was, including the Justice standing before him.
“I shall have to check all records,” the Justice said irritably. He turned to Assif, Hakim and Fatima and – rather coldly – made his formal goodbyes.
Abdullah left with him, almost clinging to the Justice’s official sash in his hurry to get away from the emporium and the two fat brides.
“What a day!” Abdullah said to himself, when he was back inside his booth at last. “If my luck goes on this way, I will not be surprised if I never get the carpet to move again!” Or, he thought as he lay down on the carpet, still dressed in his best, he might get to the night garden only to find that Flower-in-the-Night was too annoyed at his stupidity last night to love him any more. Or she might love him still, but have decided not to fly away with him. Or…
It took him a while to get to sleep.
But when he woke, everything was perfect. The carpet was just gliding to a gentle landing on the moonlit bank. So Abdullah knew he had said the command-word after all, and it was such a short while since he had said it that he almost had a memory of what it was. But it went clean out of his head when Flower-in-the-Night came running eagerly towards him, among the white scented flowers and the round yellow lamps.
“You’re here!” she called as she ran. “I was quite worried!”
She was not angry. Abdullah’s heart sang. “Are you ready to leave?” he called back. “Jump on beside me.”
Flower-in-the-Night laughed delightedly – it was definitely no giggle – and came running on across the lawn. The moon seemed just then to go behind a cloud, because Abdullah saw her lit entirely by the lamps for a moment, golden and eager, as she ran. He stood up and held out his hands to her.
As he did so, the cloud came right down into the lamplight. And it was not a cloud but great black leathery wings, silently beating. A pair of equally leathery arms, with hands that had long fingernails like claws, reached from the shadow of those fanning wings and wrapped themselves round Flower-in-the-Night. Abdullah saw her jerk as those arms stopped her running. She looked round and up. Whatever she saw made her scream, one single, wild, frantic scream, which was cut off when one of the leathery arms changed position to clap its huge taloned hand over her face.
Flower-in-the-Night beat at the arm with her fists, and kicked and struggled, but all quite uselessly. She was lifted up, a small white figure against the huge blackness. The great wings silently beat again. A gigantic foot, with talons like the hands, pressed the turf a yard or so from the bank where Abdullah was still in the act of standing up, and a leathery leg flexed mighty calf muscles as the thing – whatever it was – sprang upright. For the merest instant, Abdullah found himself staring into a hideous leathery face with a ring through its hooked nose and long, upslanting eyes, remote and cruel. The thing was not looking at him. It was simply concentrating on getting itself and its captive airborne.
The next second, it was aloft. Abdullah saw it overhead for a heartbeat longer, a mighty flying djinn dangling a tiny pale human girl in its arms. Then the night swallowed it up. It all happened unbelievably quickly.
“After it! Follow that djinn!” Abdullah ordered the carpet.
The carpet seemed to obey. It bellied up from the bank. Then, almost as if someone had given it another command, it sank back and lay still.
“You moth-eaten doormat!” Abdullah screamed at it.
There was a shout from further down the garden. “This way, men! That scream came from up there!”
Along the arcade, Abdullah glimpsed moonlight on metal helmets and – worse still – golden lamplight on swords and crossbows. He did not wait to explain to these people why he had screamed. He flung himself flat on the carpet.
“Back to the booth!” he whispered to it. “Quickly! Please!”
This time the carpet obeyed, as quickly as it had the night before. It was up off the bank in an eyeblink and then hurtling sideways across a forbiddingly high wall. Abdullah had just a glimpse of a large party of northern mercenaries milling around in the lamplit garden, before he was speeding above the sleeping roofs and moonlit towers of Zanzib. He had barely time to reflect that Flower-in-the-Night’s father must be even richer than he had thought – few people could afford that many hired soldiers, and mercenaries from the north were the most expensive kind – before the carpet planed downwards and brought him smoothly in through the curtains to the middle of his booth.
There he gave himself up to despair.
A djinn had stolen Flower-in-the-Night and the carpet refused to follow. He knew that was not surprising. A djinn, as everyone in Zanzib knew, commanded enormous powers in the air and the earth. No doubt the djinn had, as a precaution, ordered everything in the garden to stay where it was while he carried Flower-in-the-Night away. It had probably not even noticed the carpet, or Abdullah on it, but the carpet’s lesser magic had been forced to give way to the djinn’s command. So the djinn had stolen away Flower-in-the-Night, whom Abdullah loved more than his own soul, just at the moment when she was about to run into his arms, and there seemed nothing he could do.
He wept.
After that, he vowed to throw away all the money hidden in his clothes. It was useless to him now. But before he did, he gave himself over to grief again, noisy misery at first, in which he lamented out loud and beat his breast in the manner of Zanzib; then, as cocks crew and people began moving about, he fell into silent despair. There was no point even in moving. Other people might bustle about and whistle and clank buckets, but