Beth stared at her closed curtains as they traveled the mile toward the royal palace on the hill. She ignored the voices calling out, pleading for the brides to look, to taste, to come and try this or that. Then she heard children, and she couldn’t resist.
Peeking around her curtain, she saw small children following them eagerly. When they saw her face, they cheered. It seemed the height of bad manners not to respond to them.
Her earlier resolve forgotten, she pushed aside the curtains and slid awkwardly out of the palanquin in her elaborate gown and headdress. The carriers stopped with a gasp, holding the palanquin steady so she didn’t fall on her face.
The kids came forward, cheering noisily, and so did the other people in the souk. The palanquin carriers looked at each other nervously. Beth wondered if she was making a mistake. Ahead of her, she saw the other four palanquins, all of them with curtains closed as ordered, leaving her behind.
“Hello,” Beth said in English—she didn’t want to risk another international incident by mispronouncing anything—and smiled warmly. “I’m so pleased to meet you.”
“What is your name, miss?” one of the children called in English.
“Beth.” She leaned forward. “What’s yours?”
As crowds came toward her in the crowded market square, she braced herself for questions. But they didn’t ask any. They just welcomed her.
“Try my fig, mademoiselle, we have the greatest figs!” a merchant said, holding it out.
“And this,” a plump woman called to her. “My honey pastry is the best in the world.”
Beth tried both fig and pastry, leaving her fingertips sticky with honey. She licked it off with relish, to the crowd’s delight. As someone asked for a selfie with her, Beth posed with a ready smile. And all the while, people were speaking around her, eager to tell her about their king.
“Miss Beth, if His Highness chooses you, you’re blessed.”
“King Omar, he has done so much for this country.”
“He’s sending my gi
rls to college...”
“He saved my son’s business...”
“Our country, it is the happiest place now in the world.”
And they looked at her, waiting for her reaction.
“I love this place already,” she told them honestly. “Any woman would be honored to be Queen of Samarqara.”
They beamed at her.
Ahead of her, the other palanquins had disappeared entirely from the souk. The other brides were following the rules. None had even opened their palanquin’s curtains.
She heard a loud noise behind her and turned. She gasped when she saw her stopped palanquin had blocked the path of the royal horseguards behind them. One of the soldiers, a scrawny-looking youth, seemed to be struggling to hold back his mount.
Everything happened in a rush.
A toddler, perhaps three years old, ran forward to join the clamoring older children. He didn’t notice the nervous horse, a thousand pounds of muscle barely controlled by the young soldier astride him.
Beth heard a woman’s terrified scream as the oblivious, smiling child rushed headlong beneath the sharp, slashing hooves—
Beth moved without thinking. She snatched the toddler out of the way, turning her body to protect him as she held up one hand in the horse’s line of sight. Surprised, the animal stepped back. Desperately, she softly whispered calming words, as she’d done to the horses back at her grandmother’s Texas ranch when they were hot or confused or scared.
For a split second, she saw the animal’s bared teeth and hooves and thought she was about to die. Then the horse’s eyes stopped rolling. The soldier regained control of the reins, and Beth exhaled, handing the toddler to his mother, who threw her arms around her child with a sob.
“Beth,” someone suddenly cried in the crowd.
Within seconds, it turned into a noisy chant. “Beth! Beth! Beth!”
The palanquin bearers looked at each other uneasily.