The Vizier's Other Daughter

It was the same thing every night for the past 200 nights: Shahrazad goes and sees the sultan, does her things then calls for me. I have memorized that script she gave me to say. Repeating it over in my mind:

“Sister, if you are not sleepy, tell us one of your lovely little tales to while away the nights, before I bid you good-bye at day-break, for I don’t know what will happen to you tomorrow.”  Or  “Please, sister, if you are not sleepy, tell us one of your little tales.”

Shahrazad would then turn to Shahrayar and ask for permission to finish a story. He of course would say yes because she would leave off the night before at an important moment.  

I would then say, “What an entertaining story!”, or something similar to this. And she would reply always with, “ Tomorrow night I shall tell you something even stranger, more wonderful, and more entertaining if the king spares me and lets me live.”

Sultan Shahravar always wound up letting her live so that he could hear the end of the story that she was telling. What the Sultan did not know was that I, Dinarzad, was the one coming up with these stories that my sister was telling.

Both Shahrazad and I had come up with this plan of teaching the Sultan a lesson and convincing him to stop killing women. I, however, could not tell these stories for one reason: I had been scared when I was younger by my mother in hopes that by ruining my beauty and perfection the sultan would never choose me to marry. She had tried to with my sister, but my father had forbade her to do so and kept a watchful eye over her, never did he think that she would have harmed me.

Every afternoon after Shahrazad took a nap to recover from the long night I told her more of the story to tell the Sultan. I would go out into the market and see an old storyteller we had known since I was a small child. This man had told me hundreds of stories, all which had taught me a lesson that I needed to learn at that time. It had given me the idea to tell these to the Sultan to help him learn. I would tell him where we had left off in the story and how and what the Sultan’s reactions had been. The storyteller would then spin a tale from the old story based on the Sultan’s reactions to make sure the lesson was taught that needed to be taught. This is how it went for the past 200 nights.

That is, until this afternoon.

I had seen that Shahrazad had gotten off to bed safely and sneaked off into the market place to find the old storyteller. When I returned home, I went to wake her but she did not move. Her body was as cold as the fresh water from the well. She had died. I did not know what to do.  The only thing I could think of was to hope that the Sultan would consider marrying me if he thought that I knew the end of the last tale that my sister had finished.

After my father, the Sultan’s viziers, explained that my sister had somehow suddenly died and that he knew that his majesty had wanted to hear the end of the story, he suggested that I should be the one to tell the story because I knew the end. The Sultan permitted this to happen and I wound up in his bed telling him the story. However at the end of the night something was different than it had been all those nights I had been in there with my sister. The sultan was not looking like he wanted to hear more he instead had an emotionless face. It was one of the scariest faces I had ever seen before. There was a quick movement of his eyes and suddenly I felt the cold smooth beaded rope around my neck tightening.