Week 5 Story - 800 Tales to Fall in Love

 

 

Scheherazade
Art by Lisa Parfenova: Source

Source: Arabian Nights
Author: Andrew Lang
Link: Here

It's her demeanor that unsettles the sultan first.

Usually the women he marries come to him with fear visible in their painted eyes, and terror audible as their painted lips quiver with fear. But Scheherazade arrives calm, pleasant, and tender as he takes her to bed. The next morning it's her voice that wakes him, hushed as the sun weakly filters through the lingering dark of the night as day barely arrives.

He lays in bed and listens. When she stops, Shahryar finally rouses and asks her to finish. But Scheherazade calmly points out that the world doesn't wait, not even for a Sultan, and there is truth in her words. When she asks to live another day to finish the story, Shahryar doesn't hesitate to grant her another day, and as he walks down the halls to where his court waits, only then does he realize that the decision came as easily as water fills an empty cup. However, he feels unsatisfied. There is a thirst. The unfinished story haunts him, and he wakes up early to sit next to his wife and her sister to listen to it finally weave to an end.

Again, an unfinished story. And it takes three days of this woman alive that the whispers start. He expects her to boast of her cleverness of tricking him. Then she will surely join the rest, as his pride outweighs his curiosity. But Scheherazade remains quiet, kind, and greets him at the end of the day with unfeigned pleasure at his return that he almost believes her.

It takes 100 tales for him to trust that she enjoys his company.

Another 200 for him to ignore the whispers of how she'd bewitched him.

Then 500 more for him to fall in love.

Shahryar is seized with an explicable terror. Not again, he thinks. This woman is his prisoner, and she keeps herself from death by purchasing life a day at a time, a story at a time. He slowly realizes that he's mirrored by the monsters in her stories. That he can be compared to the villains who need to be tricked for the heroes to live happily, so he keeps quiet. Doesn't speak a word of his heart and how it quickens when he sees her. The illusion is maintained, until the morning she turns to him, finally poured empty of stories. Scheherazade had run dry for him.

But again, as the first day he met her, there is no fear on her face.

Not all the villains in her tales find redemption, but Shahryar humbles himself to attempt it by finally, and without the threat of death -- asking her to marry him without duress. She will live without him, and she will live with him. The choice is hers. He cannot kill her.

Scheherazade touches his face and chooses him.

Now, finally, their story can really start.

Author's Note:

"One Thousand and One Nights" follows Scheherazade's attempts to survive every evening with the Sultan, her husband, who after being betrayed by the first wife he loves now marries a new woman every day and kills her the following morning. Scheherazade escapes this fate by telling a story every morning and stopping at a pivotal part when the Sultan has to leave for his daily duties. She does this for 1000 nights, until finally she tells her husband that she has no more stories to tell but by this time the Sultan has fallen in love with her and allows her to live without them. I wanted to tell a short story from the Sultan Shahryar's point of view, and how he gradually found redemption through his time with her.