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PRELUDE

ONCE THERE WAS A CHILD WHOSE FACE WAS LIKE THE NEW MOON SHINING on cypress trees and the feathers of waterbirds She was a strange child, full of secrets She would sit alone in the great Palace Garden on winter nights, pressing her hands into the snow and watching it reens and wisteria; she drank from the silver fountains studded with lapis; she ate cold pears under a canopy of pines on rainy afternoons

Now this child had a strange and wonderful birthmark, in that her eyelids and the flesh around her eyes were stained a deep indigo-black, like ink pooled in china pots It gave her the mysterious, taciturn look of an owl on ivory rafters, or a raccoon drinking fro river It colored her eyes such that when she was grown she would never have to smoke her eyelashes with kohl

For this irl was abandoned to wander the Garden around the arded her with trepidation and terror, wondering if her deformity reflected poorly on their virtue The other nobles fir court Their children, who often roaeese, kept away from her, lest she curse them with her terrible powers The Sultan could not decide

—after all, if she were a de aith her like so rass In the end, all preferred that she simply remain silent and far away, so that none would have to confront the dilemma

And so it went like this for e roses sprang and withered

But one day another child cah not too near, hesitant as a deer about to bolt into the shadows His face was like a winter sun, his forirl in her tattered silk dress and shabby cloak which had once been white, and touched her eyelids with his sweet-scented forefinger She found, to her surprise, that she endured his touch, for she was lonely and ever full of sorrow

“Are you really a spirit? A very wicked spirit? Why are your eyes dark like that, like the lake before the dawn?” The pretty boy-child cocked his head to one side, an ibis in

“I around but his voice broke hoarsely The girl continued to stare at him while thetrees wavered in the east wind When she spoke her voice was the low hum of cicadas in the far-misted hills

“Why not?”

“I areat General and wear a scarlet cloak” At this there was alirl’s pale lips

“And you have coirl-demon who haunts the Garden?” she whispered

“Oh, no, I…” The boy spread his hands, feeling suddenly that he had shown very bad for the way

“No one has spoken so h adraped in furs” The girl stared again, ih her dusky eyes and she seemed to make a decision within herself “Shall I tell you the truth, then? Tell you s and sone so quiet it was almost without breath

“I asked, didn’t I? I can keep secrets My sister says I a of the Thieves in the nursery story” There was another long silence, as clouds covered the sun And the girl began to speak very softly, almost afraid to hear her own voice

“On an evening, when I was a very sate, and twisting her hands a the rose roots told me this: I was not born with this mark A spirit came into my cradle on the seventh day of the seventh month of my life, and while my mother slept in her snohite bed, the spirit touched my face, and left there many tales and spells, like the tattoos of sailors The verses and songs were so great in nu, unbroken streak of jet on my eyelids But they are the words of the river and the ic, and when the tales are all read out, and heard end to shining end, to the last syllable, the spirit will return and judge me