Night the Fifteenth: The Knife and the Water-Melon

Ajib scales the Magnet Mountain and, guided by a mysterious voice in a dream, finds a brass bow and three enchanted arrows. He shoots the horseman from the dome, and the brass steed drops at his feet. The sea rises to the mountaintop, and a skiff of laton carries him ten days toward the Islands of Safety, on one condition: never name Allah. But when he sights land, joy overwhelms him, he cries out the name of God, and the skiff overturns and sinks. He swims ashore on a lonely island.

There he watches slaves uncover a hidden trap-door beneath the earth, where a wealthy father has buried his beautiful son. Astrologers foretold the boy would die in his fifteenth year, slain by one Prince Ajib, fifty days after the horseman fell from the mountain. So Ajib, hidden in a tree, hears his own name spoken as the boy's death. He descends, conceals who he is, and swears to himself that he will never harm him.

For thirty-nine days he serves the youth with tenderness: food, games, stories, songs. Affection takes root, and Ajib smiles at fate, certain the stars lied. But on the fortieth night, as he cuts a water-melon, his foot slips, and the knife buries itself in the boy's heart. The last of the forty dangerous days was not yet past. He had escaped the sea, the Ifrits, and the mountain, only to fulfill the prophecy with his own hand.

A king's son cannot outrun his own name, and in these tales, fate always finds the hand it was promised to.

Night the Fourteenth: The Fire That Conquers Fire

The Second Kalandar's tale reaches its climax. The King's daughter summons the Ifrit, and their duel becomes a chain of transformations: lion and sword, serpent and scorpion, eagle and vulture, wolf and cat. The Ifrit hides as a worm inside a pomegranate, and when the fruit bursts, the princess, now a snow-white cock, devours every scattered seed, except one, which rolls to the fountain and hides in the water. From that single overlooked grain the battle resumes as fish, then as living fire.

The Ifrit burns to ashes, but his last sparks still strike: one destroys the Kalandar's eye, one scorches the King's face, and one kills the Castrato. The princess restores the ape to human form, but she is fatally wounded, for that hidden seed held the Jinni's life. A black spark climbs her body, she testifies to her faith, and she becomes ashes beside her enemy. The King mourns, builds a tomb over her, and banishes the Kalandar, who dons the black wool and wanders to Baghdad, weeping verses of patience and aloe.

Then the Third Kalandar steps forward, promising a stranger tale, for he invited his own fate. He is Ajib, a king's son whose fleet is driven toward the Magnet Mountain, whose loadstone pulls every nail from every hull. The ships come apart, Ajib alone survives, and a stairway carved in stone leads him toward the brass horseman whose talisman holds the mountain's spell.

One hidden seed can decide a life, and in these tales, deliverance and sacrifice always arrive together.

Our night holds two tales woven together. First, the Tale of the Envier and the Envied: a man eaten alive by his neighbor's success tries to destroy him, even pushing him down a ruined well. But the Jann rescue the holy man, who overhears their secret cure for a possessed princess, rises from the well, heals her, marries her, and becomes Wazir and finally Sultan. When he finds his old enemy standing in his path, he responds not with revenge but with gold, camels, and safe passage home. Mercy given freely, even to those who tried to kill you.

The second thread carries the Second Kalandar deeper into ruin. Dragged back before the Ifrit, he and the captive lady each refuse to behead the other, communicating love through glances alone while the monster waits. She protects him to the end and pays with her life. Hoping for mercy, the Kalandar tells the Envier's tale, but the Ifrit is unmoved and turns him into an ape instead. Yet even in a baboon's body he retains his wit, dazzling a foreign king with seven styles of calligraphy and winning at chess, until the king's daughter, Sitt al-Husn, reveals the truth: this beast is an ensorcelled prince, and she knows the magic to free him.