By this time everyone had run away except for Abdullah and Kabul Aqba, Abdullah because he could barely move in his chains and Kabul Aqba because he was clearly unexpectedly brave. The genie glowered at the two of them.
“I am the slave of the bottle,” he said. “Much as I hate and detest the whole arrangement, I have to tell you that he who owns me is allowed one wish every day and I am forced to grant it.” And he added menacingly, “What is your wish?”
“I wish—” began Abdullah.
Kabul Aqba quickly rammed his hand across Abdullah’s mouth. “I am the one wishing,” he said. “Get that quite clear, genie!”
“I hear,” said the genie. “What wish?”
“One moment,” said Kabul Aqba. He put his face close to Abdullah’s ear. His breath smelled even worse than his hand, although neither, Abdullah had to admit, was a patch on Jamal’s dog. “Well, magician,” the bandit whispered, “you’ve proved you know what you’re talking about. Advise me what to wish and I’ll make you a free man and an honored member of my band. But if you try to make a wish yourself, I kill you. Understand?” He put the muzzle of his pistol to Abdullah’s head and let go of his mouth. “What shall I wish?”
“Well,” said Abdullah, “the wisest and kindest wish would be to
wish your two toads turned back into men.”
Kabul Aqba spared a surprised glance for the two toads. They were crawling uncertainly along the muddy edge of the pool, obviously wondering whether they could swim or not. “A waste of a wish,” he said. “Think again.”
Abdullah racked his brain for what might please a bandit chief most. “You could ask for limitless wealth, of course,” he said, “but you would then need to carry your money, so perhaps you should first wish for a team of sturdy camels. And you would need to defend this treasure. Perhaps your first wish should be for a supply of the famous weapons of the north, or—”
“But which?” demanded Kabul Aqba. “Hurry. The genie is becoming impatient.”
This was true. The genie was not exactly tapping his foot, since he had no feet to tap, but there was something about his looming, lowering blue face that suggested there would be two more toads by the pool if he had to wait much longer.
A very short burst of thought was enough to convince Abdullah that his situation, despite the chains, would be very much worse if he became a toad. “Why not wish for a feast?” he said lamely.
“That’s better!” said Kabul Aqba. He clapped Abdullah on the shoulder and sprang up jovially. “I wish for a most lavish feast,” he said.
The genie bowed, rather like a candle flame bending in a draft. “Done,” he said sourly. “And much good may it do you.” And he poured himself carefully back into his bottle again.
It was a very lavish feast. It arrived almost at once, with a dull whoomping noise, on a long table with a striped awning above it for shade, and with it arrived livened slaves to serve it. The rest of the bandits rather quickly got over their fear and came racing back to lounge on cushions and eat delicate food from golden dishes and to shout at the slaves for more, more, more! The servants were, Abdullah found when he got a chance to talk to some of them, the slaves of the Sultan of Zanzib himself, and the feast should have been the Sultan’s.
This news made Abdullah feel just a little better. He spent the feast still in chains, hitched up against a handy palm tree. Though he had not expected anything better from Kabul Aqba, it was still hard. At least Kabul Aqba remembered him from time to time and, with a lordly wave of his hand, sent a slave over with a golden dish or a jug of wine.
For there was plenty. Every so often there was another muffled whoomp and a fresh course would arrive, carried by more bewildered slaves, or there would be what looked like the pick of the Sultan’s wine cellar loaded onto a jeweled trolley, or an astonished group of musicians. Whenever Kabul Aqba sent a new slave over to Abdullah, Abdullah found that slave only too ready to answer questions.
“In truth, noble captive of a desert king,” one told him, “the Sultan was most enraged when the first and second courses so mysteriously disappeared. On the third course, which is this roast peacock that I carry, he placed a guard of mercenaries to escort us from the kitchen, but we were snatched from beside them, even at the very door of the banquet hall, and instantly found ourselves in this oasis instead.”
The Sultan, Abdullah thought, must be getting hungrier and hungrier.
Later a troupe of dancing girls appeared, snatched in the same way. That must have enraged the Sultan even more. These dancers made Abdullah melancholy. He thought of Flower-in-the-Night, who was twice as beautiful as any of them, and tears came into his eyes.
As the jollity around the table grew, the two toads sat in the shallow edge of the pond, hooting mournfully. No doubt they felt at least as bad about things as Abdullah did.
The moment night fell, the slaves, the musicians, and the dancing girls all vanished, though what was left of the food and wine stayed. The bandits by then had glutted themselves and then sated themselves again after that. Most of them fell asleep where they sat. But to Abdullah’s dismay, Kabul Aqba got up—a little unsteadily—and collected the genie bottle from under the table. He made sure it was corked. Then he staggered over to the magic carpet and lay down on it with the bottle in his hand. He fell asleep almost at once.
Abdullah sat against the palm tree in increasing anxiety. If the genie had returned the stolen slaves to the palace in Zanzib—and it seemed likely that he had—then someone was going to ask them angry questions. They would all tell the same story of being forced to serve a band of robbers, while a well-dressed young man in chains sat and watched from a palm tree. The Sultan would put two and two together. He was no fool. Even now a troop of soldiers could be setting out on fast racing camels to hunt the desert for a certain small oasis.
But that was not the greatest of Abdullah’s worries. He watched the sleeping Kabul Aqba in even greater anxiety. He was about to lose the magic carpet and, of course, an extremely useful genie with it.
Sure enough, after about half an hour Kabul Aqba rolled over on to his back and his mouth came open. As no doubt Jamal’s dog had done, as Abdullah himself must have done—but surely not so very loudly?—Kabul Aqba uttered an enormous rasping snore. The carpet quivered. Abdullah saw it clearly in the light of the rising moon rise a foot or so from the ground, where it hung and waited. Abdullah conjectured that it was busy interpreting whatever dream Kabul Aqba was having just then. What a bandit chief might dream about Abdullah had no idea, but the carpet knew. It soared into the air and began to fly.
Abdullah looked up as it glided over the palm fronds above him and had one last try at influencing it. “O most unfortunate carpet!” he called out softly. “I would have treated you so much more kindly!”
Maybe the carpet heard him. Or maybe it was an accident. But something roundish and faintly glimmering rolled off the edge of the carpet and dropped with a light thunk on the sand a few feet from Abdullah. It was the genie bottle. Abdullah reached out, as quickly as he could without too much rattling and jingling of his chains, and dragged the bottle into hiding between his back and the palm tree. Then he sat and waited for morning, feeling decidedly more hopeful.
Chapter 8
In which Abdullah’s dreams continue to come true.