Aladdin without the magic lamp, as promised
Once upon a time, there was a boy.
He was young, in his late teens or early twenties or so, and poor. He had lost his parents at a young age and so had been forced to become highly self-sufficient. As a general rule, he tended to avoid the society of others, save for a small monkey he kept as his sole companion. He might be called a beggar, although he was more accurately a thief; he relied solely on himself for survival and neither asked for nor wanted anyone’s help or sympathy. Over the years he had developed quite a remarkable faculty for stealing, even with his handicap, and yet he never took anything that he did not need. His name was Aladdin, and he was handsome and strong, quick and clever, and would easily have become the favorite son of any family. Had he been luckier or the world fairer, he might have grown up a much-beloved prince, but as it were, he must content himself with wishes and longing gazes at the magnificent white-walled palace at the center of the city, from his own humble abode high above the metropolis.
But dreams filled no stomach and sated no hunger, as the boy was sharply reminded by his stomach. He rose from his pallet in one corner of the room and pulled aside the cloth at his makeshift window, sitting down on the sill to survey the gently waking city. The blood of the dawn had long since leaked away along the horizon, leaving a pale, bleached cornflower blue in its wake; the watery, early-morning sunlight shone tentatively down, catching and playing on the palace’s golden domes.
His eyes flicked automatically to the marketplace. It was too early yet to venture down in search of food, he saw; the streets were all but empty and the merchants were only just setting up their carts. He needed more bustle, the press and crush of bodies to hide him, mask his movements with confusion. He could be a magician; just give him a crowd and watch him disappear. He had actually considered the livelihood, once-magic, or sleight of hand, that is to say-until he realized that its nature and his were incongruous and exactly opposite.
Even after so many years, his hunger was still doing its best to get him into trouble. It was a gnawing in his gut, an ache in his head, clawing at the edge of his reason and threatening to make him abandon all sense. He hadn’t eaten last night-he hadn’t been able to get his hands on anything substantial, except for some fruit and scraps of bread. Oh, there had been melons, but melons were too difficult, especially with his condition. He didn’t much like them anyway; his aversion was almost instinctive. Even half-starving this morning, he was glad that he hadn’t stolen the melons. His stomach, desperate for any sort of sustenance, revolted at the thought-and, he reasoned, what was the use in going to the extra trouble to get them if they wouldn’t do him any good anyway?
So Aladdin settled back in his windowsill and simply watched a scene so familiar to him that he could close his eyes and reconstruct it from memory, every detail: the low, dun-colored houses, crowded and claustrophobic; the intricate web of roads; the bazaar sprawling before the gates of the sultan’s palace. His eyes followed the lazy curl of smoke from a baker’s oven and a group of small children frolicking and capering ahead of their mother, on the way to market. He sat and watched the city shake itself from sleep, as the roads filled with people jostling and eager to finish their shopping before the overwhelming heat of the afternoon. It was time, then. He rose stiffly and called to the monkey, who leapt nimbly to his shoulder as he went down the ladder.
He remembered how very difficult even this simple thing had been in those first few months after the injury, before he had learned how to live again. He had been so clumsy, unable to balance properly on the rungs for fear of knocking his arm and reopening the wound-even after it had healed. It used to take him several minutes to get up or down the ladder, and by the end, he would invariably be slicked with sweat. But now, years later with the monkey on his shoulder, it was easier, and he could descend with little effort. He often forget just how much he depended on the animal, but truly, Abu had saved his life.
Aladdin made his way to the bazaar leisurely, letting the monkey prowl out before him. He tried to look casual and nonchalant, unconcerned by anything in the world. He deflected the stares of the passersby with ease, shedding them like water, and soon enough he was lost in the crowd. It was impossible to hear anything over the din of chattering voices and merchants crying their wares-which was just as well, since any shout that might go up at a theft would be promptly neutralized. Abu reclaimed his perch on the boy’s shoulder, his eyes darting about the stalls as Aladdin feigned disinterest. The monkey chittered softly in his ear as they passed a bread stand whose owner was busy attending to other customers; the boy’s hand slipped out and eased a heavy, dark loaf loose from the bottom of the pile. Feeling it shift, he swore under his breath and tucked the bread under his arm, breaking into a dead run without looking back. He heard a familiar roar go up behind him-which is to say that the racket grew louder-as he pelted his way along the street, shouldering his way through the throng after the monkey.
Abu led him into an empty alleyway. “Good boy, Abu,” he panted as he collapsed against a wall. He took a moment to get his breath back, the loaf of bread balanced over his knees. One would think that after several years-almost a lifetime, actually-of thieving, he’d get used to it, but still, his heart was pounding and he shook slightly with adrenaline. Interestingly enough, it was only after the fact that he trembled at all; during the act itself he could count on himself to be perfectly steady. He narrowed his eyes at his hand; there, it was still.
He had broken off a corner of the loaf for Abu and was just about to take a bite himself when a pair of children wandered into the mouth of the alley. A girl of about twelve or so led her younger brother by the hand; she looked surprised and even a little frightened when she saw Aladdin. For a moment, they simply stared at each other. The girl started to turn away, mumbling what might have been an apology.
“Wait! Here.” Aladdin got to his feet and stepped toward her. After hesitating a moment, he held the bread out to her. “Take it.”
He repeated himself when the girl didn’t seem to understand, and then she smiled at him. She took the loaf and offered it to her brother, and as they hurried away, she remembered her manners enough to turn and add a quick “thanks.”
Aladdin stood in the alleyway looking after the children. He didn’t quite know what to do now; he might go back to the market and steal something else, but it was probably a bit too soon to return. Surely that merchant would have reported him to the guard. Abu was in the process of admonishing him when a great commotion arose from the main street, and Aladdin shushed the monkey and moved forward into the sunlight to see what was happening.
A procession was coming down the thoroughfare, bright and noisy with trumpets and led by a richly-dressed man on a white horse. The crowd murmured in admiration of the man’s clothes, spun of vivid, rare silk, but he wore an ugly expression on his face, full of haughtiness and barely-concealed cruelty.
“He’s on his way to court the princess,” the woman beside him whispered.
Aladdin noticed with sudden alarm that the young boy he had just met, still holding the bread, was scurrying out into the street, his sister crying out behind. The horse spooked. The man’s arm raised, and in his hand he held a whip. Without thinking, Aladdin ran into the road. With his left arm, he pushed the child behind him; he caught the lash on his right.
A collective gasp went up from the crowd. The man’s face twisted in disgust; the children’s mouths dropped open in horror-for the boy had no right hand.
The horseman was the first to recover. The tail of the whip had wrapped itself around the boy’s arm, and now the man struggled to pull it free. He tugged on the handle, hard, and Aladdin fell to his knees, a cloud of dust rising to envelop his body. When the whip came unwound, the man spat on the road. “Cripple,” he hissed, and in the silence the word seemed magnified a thousand times over.
The man rode on, his horse stepping primly around Aladdin and continuing on its prance. The rest of the procession followed suit. The crowd began to disperse, a quiet murmuring having risen among them again, but every single one refused to even so much as glance at the youth knelt in the center of the street.
Aladdin waited until he heard nothing to raise his head. Holding his breath, he glanced cautiously around and sighed with relief when he saw that he had been left alone.
He should be used to it by now-it had been years, after all. He had been fourteen when it happened-or at least, he thought he had been fourteen-but the circumstances surrounding the event were completely lost to him. He could recall no details, and that was probably for the better. He remembered only walking into the bazaar on a morning like any other. In the next scene in his memory, it was night, and he found himself in some side street with a mass of bloodstained cloth wound about his wrist, if it was still technically a wrist, and a length of rope tied tightly at his elbow. That was all.
He got to his feet. Abu was nowhere to be seen, but he would find his way back. Aladdin wondered briefly whether he ought to make another pass at the market, but he would surely be recognized after this debacle. He would take detours and side streets on his way home, where he might be able to swipe something if he were lucky.
But if it was a matter of luck, then he knew that that night, which was to be his last on earth, he would go hungry.
---
“Ah, sands of time-reveal to me the one who can enter the cave. My diamond in the rough . . .”
The sand in the hourglass spun. Within the whirlwind, a shimmering mirage began to take shape and solidify: a youth, handsome and dark-haired, running through a street, followed by a woman whose face was obscured by a hood. Jafar’s eyes widened, drinking in the boy’s image.
“Let’s have the guards extend him an invitation to the palace, shall we?”
---
The next day, Aladdin arrived at the bazaar early. As he had feared, his hunger had gotten the best of his judgment. He couldn’t think. The ache in the pit of his stomach compelled him to move, and his body obeyed-and his traitorous feet had taken him here.
The market was near-deserted, as his brain had known it would be. A few of the vendors had already set up their stands and were conversing with each other, probably about the weather or some other dull topic; he made a point not to look at any of them directly, as he was certain that he had, at one point or another, stolen from all of them.
Apart from the merchants, there were only a couple of other souls on the street: a little boy-though not the same one from the day before, thank God-and a girl. Though she wore a simple cloak and hood, he could plainly see that she possessed a comely figure and rather extraordinary features, including the darkest eyes he thought he’d ever seen. What struck him the most, though, apart from her beauty, was how strongly she reminded him of his sister.
It wasn’t necessarily that their countenances were similar, he noted. Rather, it was something in the way that they held themselves, with a certain fragility and birdlike quality that suggested that one wrong move might startle them into flight. He was always holding his breath in his sister’s presence, and it was the same with this girl, despite the thirty feet between them. He hadn’t seen his sister in years, actually; the last he had spotted her, she’d been with a girl infamous among the less moral men of the city.
The girl wandered among the stalls, regarding them with unwarranted wonder and stopping at each one to bend over it with eagerness. He found her quite fascinating in her sheer differentness, and he watched as she came to a stand heaped high with apples. The small boy he had noted earlier was stretching up to pick a fruit but wasn’t quite tall enough, and instead of averting her eyes and moving away, the girl selected the ripest, reddest apple she could find and handed it to the child.
“Here you go,” she said, smiling. The little boy grinned at her and scampered off.
“And just what do you think you’re doing?” a voice demanded.
The girl whirled around, and when she saw the gigantic, rough man standing beside her, she jumped with fright and backed up as quickly as possible.
“Stealing from me, are you?” The man advanced on her.
“No! No, I’d never dream of-”
“You’d better be able to pay for that apple.”
“Yes, of course,” the girl said, relieved, as she fumbled in her cloak for coins. Her eyes widened. “I-I’m afraid I h-haven’t got any money,” she stammered. She looked as though she were about to faint.
“You know what the penalty is for stealing, don’t you?”
She screamed as the shopkeeper grabbed her hand and pinned it on the small table to the side of the cart. He drew his sword and the metal flashed in the light and-
He’d been caught. Aladdin remembered now. He’d been caught; he’d been caught stealing. Melons. He was young, just a kid, really, and still a bit inexperienced. He was clumsy, even with two hands, and had set the entire mound of melons rolling. He’d tripped, fallen on his face, smashed melon all over him. And then there were hands hauling him up, the same glint of metal, blinding pain, and he couldn’t see. He could hear people screaming around him, or perhaps it was just his own voice being ripped from his throat.
With the return of his memory, he was howling, and he had somehow bounded the thirty feet between himself and the girl and stopped the merchant. Aladdin found words pouring from his mouth-excuses, they were-saying that she was his sister, that she wasn’t quite well in the head, and that they were at that very moment going to see the doctor. The next thing he knew, he was leading the girl hurriedly away.
“So this must be your first time in the marketplace,” he said once they had gotten out of earshot. He glanced back over his shoulder. “No, not that way,” he corrected. He reached back for her thin wrist to guide her, but she flinched violently and pulled away.
She stopped walking. “Th-thank you very much, but I-I’d better be on my way,” she said. She seemed nervous, shifty. When he took a step back toward her, she recoiled and put her hands up, as if the mere action would construct a wall between them. The words came out clear and forceful this time: “Don’t come any closer. Please.”
Aladdin had opened his mouth to respond when he saw them-the guards, pointing at him. “Come on!” he yelled, and he grabbed the girl and bolted. To his surprise, she ran with him.
They turned corner after corner after corner, choosing right or left at random until finally they had run into a dead end. “What do we do?” the girl asked frantically.
He was silent for a while. “There’s nothing we can do,” he answered finally. “We’re trapped. I expect they’ll kill us. My name is Aladdin, by the way.” He turned with a grim smile and held out his hand to shake hers.
She didn’t take it. “But they can’t kill us.”
“They can.”
“But-I’m the princess.”
In that moment of shock, the guards appeared.
---
“You say he’s crippled.”
“Yes, sire,” the guard affirmed. “Right hand cut off at the wrist. Surprisingly good thief, though,” he added.
“But he’s a cripple,” repeated Jafar. “He has no right hand.”
“That’s correct, sire.”
Jafar considered for a moment. He thought about the cave, and the lamp. On the one hand, the boy wouldn’t be able to release the genie inside for his own purposes-but on the other, a cripple was a cripple, and he was a liability.
“Very well, then,” he said briskly. “Execute him. Has the princess been told yet?”
The guard was confused. “Of . . . the execution, sire?”
“No, of course not. Women have no part in these matters. Of her engagement, to the prince who arrived yesterday morning. Before she ran away.”
“Oh-if I’m correct, I believe her father should be telling her right now. Sire.”
“Very well, you’re dismissed,” Jafar said, waving his hand.
The guard nodded and disappeared, and Jafar thought he might take a stroll through the gardens to mull over a new plan, but his ruminations were unpleasantly interrupted by the sound of gagging. He turned to find that he was not alone-for there in a corner of the garden the princess was bent over, clutching her throat and retching.
He was young, in his late teens or early twenties or so, and poor. He had lost his parents at a young age and so had been forced to become highly self-sufficient. As a general rule, he tended to avoid the society of others, save for a small monkey he kept as his sole companion. He might be called a beggar, although he was more accurately a thief; he relied solely on himself for survival and neither asked for nor wanted anyone’s help or sympathy. Over the years he had developed quite a remarkable faculty for stealing, even with his handicap, and yet he never took anything that he did not need. His name was Aladdin, and he was handsome and strong, quick and clever, and would easily have become the favorite son of any family. Had he been luckier or the world fairer, he might have grown up a much-beloved prince, but as it were, he must content himself with wishes and longing gazes at the magnificent white-walled palace at the center of the city, from his own humble abode high above the metropolis.
But dreams filled no stomach and sated no hunger, as the boy was sharply reminded by his stomach. He rose from his pallet in one corner of the room and pulled aside the cloth at his makeshift window, sitting down on the sill to survey the gently waking city. The blood of the dawn had long since leaked away along the horizon, leaving a pale, bleached cornflower blue in its wake; the watery, early-morning sunlight shone tentatively down, catching and playing on the palace’s golden domes.
His eyes flicked automatically to the marketplace. It was too early yet to venture down in search of food, he saw; the streets were all but empty and the merchants were only just setting up their carts. He needed more bustle, the press and crush of bodies to hide him, mask his movements with confusion. He could be a magician; just give him a crowd and watch him disappear. He had actually considered the livelihood, once-magic, or sleight of hand, that is to say-until he realized that its nature and his were incongruous and exactly opposite.
Even after so many years, his hunger was still doing its best to get him into trouble. It was a gnawing in his gut, an ache in his head, clawing at the edge of his reason and threatening to make him abandon all sense. He hadn’t eaten last night-he hadn’t been able to get his hands on anything substantial, except for some fruit and scraps of bread. Oh, there had been melons, but melons were too difficult, especially with his condition. He didn’t much like them anyway; his aversion was almost instinctive. Even half-starving this morning, he was glad that he hadn’t stolen the melons. His stomach, desperate for any sort of sustenance, revolted at the thought-and, he reasoned, what was the use in going to the extra trouble to get them if they wouldn’t do him any good anyway?
So Aladdin settled back in his windowsill and simply watched a scene so familiar to him that he could close his eyes and reconstruct it from memory, every detail: the low, dun-colored houses, crowded and claustrophobic; the intricate web of roads; the bazaar sprawling before the gates of the sultan’s palace. His eyes followed the lazy curl of smoke from a baker’s oven and a group of small children frolicking and capering ahead of their mother, on the way to market. He sat and watched the city shake itself from sleep, as the roads filled with people jostling and eager to finish their shopping before the overwhelming heat of the afternoon. It was time, then. He rose stiffly and called to the monkey, who leapt nimbly to his shoulder as he went down the ladder.
He remembered how very difficult even this simple thing had been in those first few months after the injury, before he had learned how to live again. He had been so clumsy, unable to balance properly on the rungs for fear of knocking his arm and reopening the wound-even after it had healed. It used to take him several minutes to get up or down the ladder, and by the end, he would invariably be slicked with sweat. But now, years later with the monkey on his shoulder, it was easier, and he could descend with little effort. He often forget just how much he depended on the animal, but truly, Abu had saved his life.
Aladdin made his way to the bazaar leisurely, letting the monkey prowl out before him. He tried to look casual and nonchalant, unconcerned by anything in the world. He deflected the stares of the passersby with ease, shedding them like water, and soon enough he was lost in the crowd. It was impossible to hear anything over the din of chattering voices and merchants crying their wares-which was just as well, since any shout that might go up at a theft would be promptly neutralized. Abu reclaimed his perch on the boy’s shoulder, his eyes darting about the stalls as Aladdin feigned disinterest. The monkey chittered softly in his ear as they passed a bread stand whose owner was busy attending to other customers; the boy’s hand slipped out and eased a heavy, dark loaf loose from the bottom of the pile. Feeling it shift, he swore under his breath and tucked the bread under his arm, breaking into a dead run without looking back. He heard a familiar roar go up behind him-which is to say that the racket grew louder-as he pelted his way along the street, shouldering his way through the throng after the monkey.
Abu led him into an empty alleyway. “Good boy, Abu,” he panted as he collapsed against a wall. He took a moment to get his breath back, the loaf of bread balanced over his knees. One would think that after several years-almost a lifetime, actually-of thieving, he’d get used to it, but still, his heart was pounding and he shook slightly with adrenaline. Interestingly enough, it was only after the fact that he trembled at all; during the act itself he could count on himself to be perfectly steady. He narrowed his eyes at his hand; there, it was still.
He had broken off a corner of the loaf for Abu and was just about to take a bite himself when a pair of children wandered into the mouth of the alley. A girl of about twelve or so led her younger brother by the hand; she looked surprised and even a little frightened when she saw Aladdin. For a moment, they simply stared at each other. The girl started to turn away, mumbling what might have been an apology.
“Wait! Here.” Aladdin got to his feet and stepped toward her. After hesitating a moment, he held the bread out to her. “Take it.”
He repeated himself when the girl didn’t seem to understand, and then she smiled at him. She took the loaf and offered it to her brother, and as they hurried away, she remembered her manners enough to turn and add a quick “thanks.”
Aladdin stood in the alleyway looking after the children. He didn’t quite know what to do now; he might go back to the market and steal something else, but it was probably a bit too soon to return. Surely that merchant would have reported him to the guard. Abu was in the process of admonishing him when a great commotion arose from the main street, and Aladdin shushed the monkey and moved forward into the sunlight to see what was happening.
A procession was coming down the thoroughfare, bright and noisy with trumpets and led by a richly-dressed man on a white horse. The crowd murmured in admiration of the man’s clothes, spun of vivid, rare silk, but he wore an ugly expression on his face, full of haughtiness and barely-concealed cruelty.
“He’s on his way to court the princess,” the woman beside him whispered.
Aladdin noticed with sudden alarm that the young boy he had just met, still holding the bread, was scurrying out into the street, his sister crying out behind. The horse spooked. The man’s arm raised, and in his hand he held a whip. Without thinking, Aladdin ran into the road. With his left arm, he pushed the child behind him; he caught the lash on his right.
A collective gasp went up from the crowd. The man’s face twisted in disgust; the children’s mouths dropped open in horror-for the boy had no right hand.
The horseman was the first to recover. The tail of the whip had wrapped itself around the boy’s arm, and now the man struggled to pull it free. He tugged on the handle, hard, and Aladdin fell to his knees, a cloud of dust rising to envelop his body. When the whip came unwound, the man spat on the road. “Cripple,” he hissed, and in the silence the word seemed magnified a thousand times over.
The man rode on, his horse stepping primly around Aladdin and continuing on its prance. The rest of the procession followed suit. The crowd began to disperse, a quiet murmuring having risen among them again, but every single one refused to even so much as glance at the youth knelt in the center of the street.
Aladdin waited until he heard nothing to raise his head. Holding his breath, he glanced cautiously around and sighed with relief when he saw that he had been left alone.
He should be used to it by now-it had been years, after all. He had been fourteen when it happened-or at least, he thought he had been fourteen-but the circumstances surrounding the event were completely lost to him. He could recall no details, and that was probably for the better. He remembered only walking into the bazaar on a morning like any other. In the next scene in his memory, it was night, and he found himself in some side street with a mass of bloodstained cloth wound about his wrist, if it was still technically a wrist, and a length of rope tied tightly at his elbow. That was all.
He got to his feet. Abu was nowhere to be seen, but he would find his way back. Aladdin wondered briefly whether he ought to make another pass at the market, but he would surely be recognized after this debacle. He would take detours and side streets on his way home, where he might be able to swipe something if he were lucky.
But if it was a matter of luck, then he knew that that night, which was to be his last on earth, he would go hungry.
---
“Ah, sands of time-reveal to me the one who can enter the cave. My diamond in the rough . . .”
The sand in the hourglass spun. Within the whirlwind, a shimmering mirage began to take shape and solidify: a youth, handsome and dark-haired, running through a street, followed by a woman whose face was obscured by a hood. Jafar’s eyes widened, drinking in the boy’s image.
“Let’s have the guards extend him an invitation to the palace, shall we?”
---
The next day, Aladdin arrived at the bazaar early. As he had feared, his hunger had gotten the best of his judgment. He couldn’t think. The ache in the pit of his stomach compelled him to move, and his body obeyed-and his traitorous feet had taken him here.
The market was near-deserted, as his brain had known it would be. A few of the vendors had already set up their stands and were conversing with each other, probably about the weather or some other dull topic; he made a point not to look at any of them directly, as he was certain that he had, at one point or another, stolen from all of them.
Apart from the merchants, there were only a couple of other souls on the street: a little boy-though not the same one from the day before, thank God-and a girl. Though she wore a simple cloak and hood, he could plainly see that she possessed a comely figure and rather extraordinary features, including the darkest eyes he thought he’d ever seen. What struck him the most, though, apart from her beauty, was how strongly she reminded him of his sister.
It wasn’t necessarily that their countenances were similar, he noted. Rather, it was something in the way that they held themselves, with a certain fragility and birdlike quality that suggested that one wrong move might startle them into flight. He was always holding his breath in his sister’s presence, and it was the same with this girl, despite the thirty feet between them. He hadn’t seen his sister in years, actually; the last he had spotted her, she’d been with a girl infamous among the less moral men of the city.
The girl wandered among the stalls, regarding them with unwarranted wonder and stopping at each one to bend over it with eagerness. He found her quite fascinating in her sheer differentness, and he watched as she came to a stand heaped high with apples. The small boy he had noted earlier was stretching up to pick a fruit but wasn’t quite tall enough, and instead of averting her eyes and moving away, the girl selected the ripest, reddest apple she could find and handed it to the child.
“Here you go,” she said, smiling. The little boy grinned at her and scampered off.
“And just what do you think you’re doing?” a voice demanded.
The girl whirled around, and when she saw the gigantic, rough man standing beside her, she jumped with fright and backed up as quickly as possible.
“Stealing from me, are you?” The man advanced on her.
“No! No, I’d never dream of-”
“You’d better be able to pay for that apple.”
“Yes, of course,” the girl said, relieved, as she fumbled in her cloak for coins. Her eyes widened. “I-I’m afraid I h-haven’t got any money,” she stammered. She looked as though she were about to faint.
“You know what the penalty is for stealing, don’t you?”
She screamed as the shopkeeper grabbed her hand and pinned it on the small table to the side of the cart. He drew his sword and the metal flashed in the light and-
He’d been caught. Aladdin remembered now. He’d been caught; he’d been caught stealing. Melons. He was young, just a kid, really, and still a bit inexperienced. He was clumsy, even with two hands, and had set the entire mound of melons rolling. He’d tripped, fallen on his face, smashed melon all over him. And then there were hands hauling him up, the same glint of metal, blinding pain, and he couldn’t see. He could hear people screaming around him, or perhaps it was just his own voice being ripped from his throat.
With the return of his memory, he was howling, and he had somehow bounded the thirty feet between himself and the girl and stopped the merchant. Aladdin found words pouring from his mouth-excuses, they were-saying that she was his sister, that she wasn’t quite well in the head, and that they were at that very moment going to see the doctor. The next thing he knew, he was leading the girl hurriedly away.
“So this must be your first time in the marketplace,” he said once they had gotten out of earshot. He glanced back over his shoulder. “No, not that way,” he corrected. He reached back for her thin wrist to guide her, but she flinched violently and pulled away.
She stopped walking. “Th-thank you very much, but I-I’d better be on my way,” she said. She seemed nervous, shifty. When he took a step back toward her, she recoiled and put her hands up, as if the mere action would construct a wall between them. The words came out clear and forceful this time: “Don’t come any closer. Please.”
Aladdin had opened his mouth to respond when he saw them-the guards, pointing at him. “Come on!” he yelled, and he grabbed the girl and bolted. To his surprise, she ran with him.
They turned corner after corner after corner, choosing right or left at random until finally they had run into a dead end. “What do we do?” the girl asked frantically.
He was silent for a while. “There’s nothing we can do,” he answered finally. “We’re trapped. I expect they’ll kill us. My name is Aladdin, by the way.” He turned with a grim smile and held out his hand to shake hers.
She didn’t take it. “But they can’t kill us.”
“They can.”
“But-I’m the princess.”
In that moment of shock, the guards appeared.
---
“You say he’s crippled.”
“Yes, sire,” the guard affirmed. “Right hand cut off at the wrist. Surprisingly good thief, though,” he added.
“But he’s a cripple,” repeated Jafar. “He has no right hand.”
“That’s correct, sire.”
Jafar considered for a moment. He thought about the cave, and the lamp. On the one hand, the boy wouldn’t be able to release the genie inside for his own purposes-but on the other, a cripple was a cripple, and he was a liability.
“Very well, then,” he said briskly. “Execute him. Has the princess been told yet?”
The guard was confused. “Of . . . the execution, sire?”
“No, of course not. Women have no part in these matters. Of her engagement, to the prince who arrived yesterday morning. Before she ran away.”
“Oh-if I’m correct, I believe her father should be telling her right now. Sire.”
“Very well, you’re dismissed,” Jafar said, waving his hand.
The guard nodded and disappeared, and Jafar thought he might take a stroll through the gardens to mull over a new plan, but his ruminations were unpleasantly interrupted by the sound of gagging. He turned to find that he was not alone-for there in a corner of the garden the princess was bent over, clutching her throat and retching.