The Thousandth Night: The First Night
Title: The Thousandth Night
Fandom: Original Fiction
Pairing: Original characters
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Reader, I take you to a sun soaked land ‘cross oceans, mountains and deserts of sand. Through the bazaar where rare wonders are sold to a man upon a throne of pure gold. With graven face he ponders kingly cares. Who among his wives shall carry the heir?
The First Night
Ahmar poked her head out from behind a curtain, nervously searching the room. “You called for me? My lord?” she hastily added, still not used to addressing him as sultan.
“Yes, Ahmar,” the sultan smiled. “I thought you would like to go first since your child is due so soon.”
The redheaded woman nodded her head, sitting down heavily on a silken cushion. “I do have a story for you. It is not a very good one, but I have heard it since I was a child.” The sultan indicated for her to continue. Ahmar took a deep breath.
“I come from a place many weeks sailing from here, which we call Éire in our tongue. It is a lush land, full of green and magic, shared with the other creatures. The people tell such stories as old women selling wind in bags, a man changing into a mouse to catch a fairy dancer, little men with gold in rainbow pockets, and thimbles large enough to use as a boat. However, no tales are as dear to our hearts as those of the selkies. They are seal-people, living in the ocean in their animal forms, but occasionally they shed their skins to become human. A selkie man is handsome, with nearly magic powers to seduce our land-women. If a human girl goes missing during the tide ebb or out at sea, she has found a home with a seal husband. The selkie women are no less beautiful to the eyes of mortal man, but far less willing then their mortal counterparts to leave home. However, should a cunning man steal her skin, she will have no choice but to follow him back to his home. This, my king, is the story of one such selkie.”
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The Selkie’s Skin
One day, when the skies were gray, and clouds relinquished their water drop by drop, a fisherman walked upon the ocean shoreline. He had lost his net on the sea that morning, and now searched in the hopes that it would be returned upon the waves. It was a false hope, he knew, but something kept him going along, looking for the twisted rope along the tide edge.
He stopped, suddenly, full of surprise, not because he had found his net, but due to a wondrous sight. Upon the rocks that jutted into the water was a woman carefully pulling off a gray sealskin, revealing the pale flesh beneath. A selkie! The fisherman watched, entranced as she pulled it from her legs, laid it on the rock and leaped into the sea. Her seal-sisters flocked around her, and she smiled, playing in the ocean as easily as she had in her other form. The water flowed smoothly around her figure, caressing like a lover as she dived deep and stayed under the surface for far longer than any human possibly could. She emerged from the sea, flinging her hair back in a wet arc, and grinned, looking about for the other seals, but her smile abruptly faded when she saw none to greet her. The selkies had fled when they saw the fisherman, who had crept onto the rock and stolen her sealskin.
He held it now, in his hands, standing upon a beach devoid of any life besides himself and the seal-woman. The selkie walked carefully towards the fisherman, her dark hair forming clumps down her naked back as she rose out of the seawater. She spoke no words, but her eyes beseeched the fisherman, saying what she could not. Please, please give me back my skin.
The fisherman looked at her pleading eyes and the need in her face, but also at her body, dripping cold drops onto the sand. A small flame of desire entered him, and he could think of nothing more he wanted at this moment than the woman standing in front of him. He hardened his heart to her entreaties.
“You are coming with me,” he told her, folding up her skin underneath his arm. “You will become my wife. I will be a good husband to you and give you many sons.”
The selkie’s eyes flickered comprehension, anger, and possibly a little fear, but she still said nothing. The fisherman led her to his home, where he clothed her and then, the next day, introduced her to his family. She stayed quiet through all their questions. Who was she, where did she come from, what was her name? There was no answer.
The fisherman’s mother asked her son, “Where did you find this woman? I would swear she knows what we say, but she speaks not a word.”
“I was walking along the beach, looking for my net, when I saw her struggling in the waves. She seemed to be drowning, and so I dove in to save her.” The fisherman opened his mouth to say more, but was interrupted by a loud, coarse laugh behind him. He turned around to find his new wife was making the sound, the same harsh, barking cry the seals used.
And so they called her Ronat, which means “seal.”
Years rose and fell like the waves outside the fisherman’s cottage. He had kept his promise and married her, becoming a good husband and a father to the three sons and a daughter she bore him. Ronat dutifully did the work of a wife, keeping house and raising the children, but never made another sound since her seal’s laugh. Though she did not speak to her children, somehow they had an innate sense of their mother’s meaning. It was whispered that they were Weir-children, with their black eyes, webbing where finger met hand, and perpetually damp hair. If the young ones were aware of this superstition, they did not care, for they even strengthened the rumor by playing on the surf with the seals there, imitating their cries and calling them “Auntie” and “Uncle”. Ronat watched their playing with her kin, but did not venture near her seal-siblings, nor call out, nor even touch the salty water. She looked sadly towards the horizon, but made not a sound.
It was a light spring day, the kind where all the flowers bloomed and fish practically leapt straight into the frying pan. Ronat was in the kitchen of the small cottage, chopping up vegetables for the evening’s stew. A pot bubbled over the fire in the next room, where the two eldest boys and their sister played with the wooden animals their father had carved for them. The youngest boy slept soundly in his crib, softly suckling a webbed thumb. The older ones sang as they played. They were children’s nonsense songs of lullabies and mother’s milk, but also of the boundless sea and salty shores. Ronat paid them no mind, until her daughter started chanting a rhyme she had never heard before.
The fire is where the ashes are,
The ashes gray as smoke.
The smoke travels upward to
The place I keep my yoke.
Ronat dropped the knife with a clatter. She rushed into the room, where her children looked at her questioningly. Where did you learn that song? she somehow asked the girl.
The youngster blinked and pointed at her eldest brother. The boy explained, “Father was singing it when he took me out on his boat yesterday. Is it a bad song?”
Relief and joy sprung to Ronat’s eyes for the first time in years. She kissed the boys and her daughter, gently, as if she were going away and not coming back. Exiting the house, she drew a bucket of water from the well outside, and unceremoniously splashed it over the hearth fire, extinguishing its flame.
The fisherman trudged up the path to his home not long after Ronat made her discovery, weary after a long day. However, when the house came in sight, no smoke could be seen coming from the chimney, and there were patchy holes on the thatched roof. Fearing robbers, or worse, slavers, the fisherman ran into the cottage, finding only his four children looking up at him with their dark eyes. He cast about for his wife, but saw only that the fire was out, the ashes still warm, and when he looked up the chimney, his secret package gone.
“Where is your mother?” he demanded of his children.
The two eldest looked at each other, but the youngest piped up. “She said she was going to go home. But that doesn’t make sense, because she was home when she said it.”
All the blood drained out of the fisherman’s face, and he bolted out of the door. Running down to the beach, he desperately called her name, “Ronat! Ronat! RONAAAAT!” but only the gulls and the sea answered him back. He continued down the coast, yelling her name until he was hoarse from the exertion and salted air. Still he went on and on, when he finally spotted something. A group of seals clustered in the same area, by the same rocks where he found his sea-wife those ten years ago. They reacted to his presence, barking and backing away, forming a protective ring around one slightly smaller one, with coat dirtied by ashes and a slightly distended belly.
“No . . .” The fisherman whispered. “Ronat!” he cried out again.
The seals paid the exhausted man no heed, pushing their lost sister into the sea, quickly swimming farther out to the deeper waters. The fisherman watched them go, helpless. His years with the selkie had suddenly come crashing down like a wave on a rock, costing him both wife and unborn child in a single crest of foam. He turned from the sea, returning to his empty home and motherless children. From the distance, he heard the sound of seals barking.
Ahmar completed her story, leaving the sultan in her world of sea and seals. “That is all?” he questioned her, not entirely satisfied by the ending.
“Yes, my lord,” she replied, and started to say more, but winced in sudden pain. The sultan knew what was happening.
“Jabir!” he called out to a eunuch standing in the hallway. Jabir came into the room and bowed. “Take my wife back to the harem and get the doctor. Tell him that it is time.” The eunuch gave another bow and carefully lifted Ahmar, carrying her back into the women’s quarters. The sultan was not allowed to enter while she was in labor, and so waited the many hours until dawn. A tired woman appeared in his rooms a few hours after morning prayers, with a small bundle in her arms. The sultan joyously named his new flame-haired daughter Haruah.
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Previous Chapter Next Chapter
Fandom: Original Fiction
Pairing: Original characters
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Reader, I take you to a sun soaked land ‘cross oceans, mountains and deserts of sand. Through the bazaar where rare wonders are sold to a man upon a throne of pure gold. With graven face he ponders kingly cares. Who among his wives shall carry the heir?
The First Night
Ahmar poked her head out from behind a curtain, nervously searching the room. “You called for me? My lord?” she hastily added, still not used to addressing him as sultan.
“Yes, Ahmar,” the sultan smiled. “I thought you would like to go first since your child is due so soon.”
The redheaded woman nodded her head, sitting down heavily on a silken cushion. “I do have a story for you. It is not a very good one, but I have heard it since I was a child.” The sultan indicated for her to continue. Ahmar took a deep breath.
“I come from a place many weeks sailing from here, which we call Éire in our tongue. It is a lush land, full of green and magic, shared with the other creatures. The people tell such stories as old women selling wind in bags, a man changing into a mouse to catch a fairy dancer, little men with gold in rainbow pockets, and thimbles large enough to use as a boat. However, no tales are as dear to our hearts as those of the selkies. They are seal-people, living in the ocean in their animal forms, but occasionally they shed their skins to become human. A selkie man is handsome, with nearly magic powers to seduce our land-women. If a human girl goes missing during the tide ebb or out at sea, she has found a home with a seal husband. The selkie women are no less beautiful to the eyes of mortal man, but far less willing then their mortal counterparts to leave home. However, should a cunning man steal her skin, she will have no choice but to follow him back to his home. This, my king, is the story of one such selkie.”
------
The Selkie’s Skin
One day, when the skies were gray, and clouds relinquished their water drop by drop, a fisherman walked upon the ocean shoreline. He had lost his net on the sea that morning, and now searched in the hopes that it would be returned upon the waves. It was a false hope, he knew, but something kept him going along, looking for the twisted rope along the tide edge.
He stopped, suddenly, full of surprise, not because he had found his net, but due to a wondrous sight. Upon the rocks that jutted into the water was a woman carefully pulling off a gray sealskin, revealing the pale flesh beneath. A selkie! The fisherman watched, entranced as she pulled it from her legs, laid it on the rock and leaped into the sea. Her seal-sisters flocked around her, and she smiled, playing in the ocean as easily as she had in her other form. The water flowed smoothly around her figure, caressing like a lover as she dived deep and stayed under the surface for far longer than any human possibly could. She emerged from the sea, flinging her hair back in a wet arc, and grinned, looking about for the other seals, but her smile abruptly faded when she saw none to greet her. The selkies had fled when they saw the fisherman, who had crept onto the rock and stolen her sealskin.
He held it now, in his hands, standing upon a beach devoid of any life besides himself and the seal-woman. The selkie walked carefully towards the fisherman, her dark hair forming clumps down her naked back as she rose out of the seawater. She spoke no words, but her eyes beseeched the fisherman, saying what she could not. Please, please give me back my skin.
The fisherman looked at her pleading eyes and the need in her face, but also at her body, dripping cold drops onto the sand. A small flame of desire entered him, and he could think of nothing more he wanted at this moment than the woman standing in front of him. He hardened his heart to her entreaties.
“You are coming with me,” he told her, folding up her skin underneath his arm. “You will become my wife. I will be a good husband to you and give you many sons.”
The selkie’s eyes flickered comprehension, anger, and possibly a little fear, but she still said nothing. The fisherman led her to his home, where he clothed her and then, the next day, introduced her to his family. She stayed quiet through all their questions. Who was she, where did she come from, what was her name? There was no answer.
The fisherman’s mother asked her son, “Where did you find this woman? I would swear she knows what we say, but she speaks not a word.”
“I was walking along the beach, looking for my net, when I saw her struggling in the waves. She seemed to be drowning, and so I dove in to save her.” The fisherman opened his mouth to say more, but was interrupted by a loud, coarse laugh behind him. He turned around to find his new wife was making the sound, the same harsh, barking cry the seals used.
And so they called her Ronat, which means “seal.”
Years rose and fell like the waves outside the fisherman’s cottage. He had kept his promise and married her, becoming a good husband and a father to the three sons and a daughter she bore him. Ronat dutifully did the work of a wife, keeping house and raising the children, but never made another sound since her seal’s laugh. Though she did not speak to her children, somehow they had an innate sense of their mother’s meaning. It was whispered that they were Weir-children, with their black eyes, webbing where finger met hand, and perpetually damp hair. If the young ones were aware of this superstition, they did not care, for they even strengthened the rumor by playing on the surf with the seals there, imitating their cries and calling them “Auntie” and “Uncle”. Ronat watched their playing with her kin, but did not venture near her seal-siblings, nor call out, nor even touch the salty water. She looked sadly towards the horizon, but made not a sound.
It was a light spring day, the kind where all the flowers bloomed and fish practically leapt straight into the frying pan. Ronat was in the kitchen of the small cottage, chopping up vegetables for the evening’s stew. A pot bubbled over the fire in the next room, where the two eldest boys and their sister played with the wooden animals their father had carved for them. The youngest boy slept soundly in his crib, softly suckling a webbed thumb. The older ones sang as they played. They were children’s nonsense songs of lullabies and mother’s milk, but also of the boundless sea and salty shores. Ronat paid them no mind, until her daughter started chanting a rhyme she had never heard before.
The fire is where the ashes are,
The ashes gray as smoke.
The smoke travels upward to
The place I keep my yoke.
Ronat dropped the knife with a clatter. She rushed into the room, where her children looked at her questioningly. Where did you learn that song? she somehow asked the girl.
The youngster blinked and pointed at her eldest brother. The boy explained, “Father was singing it when he took me out on his boat yesterday. Is it a bad song?”
Relief and joy sprung to Ronat’s eyes for the first time in years. She kissed the boys and her daughter, gently, as if she were going away and not coming back. Exiting the house, she drew a bucket of water from the well outside, and unceremoniously splashed it over the hearth fire, extinguishing its flame.
The fisherman trudged up the path to his home not long after Ronat made her discovery, weary after a long day. However, when the house came in sight, no smoke could be seen coming from the chimney, and there were patchy holes on the thatched roof. Fearing robbers, or worse, slavers, the fisherman ran into the cottage, finding only his four children looking up at him with their dark eyes. He cast about for his wife, but saw only that the fire was out, the ashes still warm, and when he looked up the chimney, his secret package gone.
“Where is your mother?” he demanded of his children.
The two eldest looked at each other, but the youngest piped up. “She said she was going to go home. But that doesn’t make sense, because she was home when she said it.”
All the blood drained out of the fisherman’s face, and he bolted out of the door. Running down to the beach, he desperately called her name, “Ronat! Ronat! RONAAAAT!” but only the gulls and the sea answered him back. He continued down the coast, yelling her name until he was hoarse from the exertion and salted air. Still he went on and on, when he finally spotted something. A group of seals clustered in the same area, by the same rocks where he found his sea-wife those ten years ago. They reacted to his presence, barking and backing away, forming a protective ring around one slightly smaller one, with coat dirtied by ashes and a slightly distended belly.
“No . . .” The fisherman whispered. “Ronat!” he cried out again.
The seals paid the exhausted man no heed, pushing their lost sister into the sea, quickly swimming farther out to the deeper waters. The fisherman watched them go, helpless. His years with the selkie had suddenly come crashing down like a wave on a rock, costing him both wife and unborn child in a single crest of foam. He turned from the sea, returning to his empty home and motherless children. From the distance, he heard the sound of seals barking.
Ahmar completed her story, leaving the sultan in her world of sea and seals. “That is all?” he questioned her, not entirely satisfied by the ending.
“Yes, my lord,” she replied, and started to say more, but winced in sudden pain. The sultan knew what was happening.
“Jabir!” he called out to a eunuch standing in the hallway. Jabir came into the room and bowed. “Take my wife back to the harem and get the doctor. Tell him that it is time.” The eunuch gave another bow and carefully lifted Ahmar, carrying her back into the women’s quarters. The sultan was not allowed to enter while she was in labor, and so waited the many hours until dawn. A tired woman appeared in his rooms a few hours after morning prayers, with a small bundle in her arms. The sultan joyously named his new flame-haired daughter Haruah.
------
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