Christy Lenzi - The Forty Thieves

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

251 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010

Text copyright 2019 by Christy Lenzi

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Manufactured in the United States of America MAP 1019

First Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lenzi, Christy, author.

Title: The forty thieves / by Christy Lenzi.

Description: First edition. | New York, NY: Yellow Jacket, [2019]

Summary: A loose retelling of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, set in tenth-century Baghdad, in which twelve-year-old Marjana tries to keep her brother, Jamal, from joining a gang while helping Ali Baba, their masters cruel brother. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019018448 (print) | LCCN 2019019973 (ebook) | Subjects: | CYAC: Brothers and sistersFiction. | SlaveryFiction. | GangsFiction. | Ali Baba (Legendary character)Fiction. | Baghdad (Iraq)History10th centuryFiction. | IraqHistory10th CenturyFiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Legends, Myths, Fables / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Historical / Asia. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L445 (ebook) LCC PZ7.1.L445 For 2019

ISBN 978-1-4998-0945-9

yellowjacketreads.com

For Noah and Joshua

Contents

CHAPTER

The moon is a pearl against the black skin of night. I reach for it and sigh as I lie on my mat beneath the window. My little brother sighs, too. The snores of the nearby women and children drone in our ears like mosquitoes, but thats not what keeps us from sleep.

Jamals nose almost touches mine. I dont like when you wake me up with your dreams. His worry forms a line across the smooth surface of his forehead. If the dreams are about Mother, then why do they make you cry?

I draw in a deep breath. If only the scent of jasmine could fill me up like a bottle of perfume, I might not feel so hollow. Its not the dreams that make me cry. I close my fingers over the moon until it disappears. Its the waking.

Marjana. He wiggles closer. Tell me about Mother. How did our umi choose our names again?

Umi said she never would have believed that she would hold a treasure in her hands until the day she held me, so she gave me a name that means little pearlher precious treasure. I roll the words over my tongue like savory morsels. And you! You were such a dashing little fellow, she chose the name Jamal because it means handsome, of course.

But what did Umis name mean?

I smile at the ceiling. Wishes.

Jamal edges himself into the curve of my body. His skin smells of olive oil and goats milk. Tell me the twirling story, he whispers.

Close your eyes, little donkey. I run my hands through his curly black hair. I was just a twig of a girlabout seven years ago.

How old?

I was Using my fingers, I count off seven from my twelve years. Maybe five years old. And you were fat and round inside Umis belly; she could barely hold the lute to play a song because you were in the way. I tickle him between the ribs to make him giggle.

But one day Umi played the Twirling Song. She said if I spun around to the music, it would carry me to Allah, and when it stopped, His angels would fly me home. So Mother played the lute, and I twirled until all the colors of the world ran together. I spun until all the people, creatures, earth, and sky melted together into one beautiful, perfect paradise. When the music stopped, I fell to the floor, and the world kept spinning. Umis laughter danced around and around with the colors until everything finally slowed down, and the angels brought me back home.

Jamal gazes at the ceiling, wide-eyed. Magic, he whispers.

No, not magic, Jamal. It was a sacred Sufi ritual. Umis twirling was a way to feel closer to Allah.

Whats a

Shh. I trace his profile with my fingertip. I didnt want to admit that I knew so little about Mothers beliefs, though I longed to. Thats my favorite memory of Umi.

Jamals shoulders tense. Why did our umi give us away?

I sigh. Ive explained hundreds of times. You know thats not what happened. When she died, her master gave us to his sister and her husband as a wedding present. And youa messy, stinky little boy. Not much of a wedding present. I dig my fingers into his side to make him smile again, but he shrugs my hands away.

You should learn to play the Twirling Song on your lute, Marjana. Then Ill spin up to Allah and ask him to fly us both to Umi. Then you wont be so sad when you wake from your dreams.

A lump swells in my throat. I cant.

Why not?

Ive forgotten the tune. I push him gently away and rise from my mat. Im hungry. Ill go slice a pear for us. It hurts to think about the emptiness inside me that Jamal can see. I concentrate on stepping only on the patches of moonlight that slip through the openings in the carved window screens. I make it all the way to the cupboard without touching a single dark spot.

Finding a silver paring knife, I cut the skin from a pear in one long coil as a thrush sings a lonesome tune outside the harem walls. The ribbon of fruit skin drops to the table, and the birdsong ends, replaced with a new sounda low rumble of thunder.

Impossible. The wet season wont come for months, and theres no smell of rain. Suddenly, little hairs on my arms stand up. The sounds not an approaching storm, but the thundering of many hoofbeats like an army galloping into battle. The noise grows louder. The pear slips from my fingers and rolls across the mosaic floor. My heart changes its rhythm like a drum banging out a warning. Hoofbeats rumble in my chest and under my feet. When the knife shakes in my trembling fingers, I clutch it so tightly my knuckles turn white. Its as if the wind of fate is hurtling toward me like a sandstorm.

The storm of hoofbeats roars right up to the house.

My heart pounds against my rib cage, trying to escape.

With a sound like a thunderclap, doors crack and rip off their hinges. An army of men on horses crashes into the house with gleaming scimitars.

I scream, frozen in place. Other screams pierce the air as the sleepers in the harem wake to a nightmare. Slave women grab their children. Mistress and her little niece and nephew clutch each other, their eyes wide with terror. Jamals face turns pale as a lepers.

A tall, thin man with a long dark beard and a face as cold as the devils rides up the front steps and through the doorway. His stallion rears and snorts, nostrils flaring.

A chill shoots down my spine.

Masters away on a journey, but his eunuch khdim guards rush in, swords drawn.

Theyre outnumbered.

The captain, this devil-man, spurs his horse and charges at their leader.

I scream, turning away, but the thwack of the mans scimitar says the guard is dead. Mistress sobs as the men crash through the house, grabbing silver, gold, anything valuable. The women scream and try to hide the children as riders whisk people onto their horsestheyre taking Mistresss niece and nephew along with the slaves.