Without further ado, allow me to present this atmospheric vignette by longstanding collaborator Atropos. I hope you enjoy. There is a riddle in this story, and the person who gives the best answer to it in the comments before the next regular upload (on Tuesday) will receive a free premium subscription.
Inside a dream of howling foxes was born the Gloam, some say. From silver clouds on a moonstruck night it dripped like mercury into the waiting mouths of unicorns. And other nonsense.
Suffice to say the Gloam was rare, carted from province to palace amid a train of liveried guards. Through the desert it would creep, in jars of frozen crystal, its speculum gaze hidden in folds of silk and satin.
The caravans were few, and passed through dusty villages like Moham but thrice in a century. Each passing was a festival marked by trumpeters and dancers, squealing children and flame-wreathed jugglers. It was the breath of an Empire in repose passing through cracked desert lungs.
Majram snorted upon hearing the whistles of the caravan heralds slice the gloom of his hut. He was blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, lame in one leg. Majram had seen two such caravans pass, and felt he had seen them all. Gloam had lost its lustre to him, he thought, with a cynical chuckle. His weathered body creaked out of its cosy-chair and over to the shuttered window. The ever blue sky and its ever white sun sneered in at him, while the dancing white shrouds of playing children ran a ragged melody of foolish youth through his fogged vision. Ah, foolish youth…
It happened a week after his first caravan. Thirsting for another taste of that Imperial splendour, he left the shelter of Moham’s blasted homesteads in a chase towards the Cities. He didn’t make it far. Metaphysical thirst is no match for real thirst, and in weaving his wildling way from well to watering hole he let the caravan pass quickly into lands beyond his reach.
Yet it was that abortive journey that made him the richest man in Moham, before even he became a man.
Even in his old age, when the story had wrapped itself around his mind so often that it was as familiar to him as the daily gurgle of his bowels, he could not remember the man’s face. Perhaps it was no man, but a djinn, or some other malicious spirit. Or perhaps it was a lost prince, as he claimed.
“Hearken, boy,” rattled the creature’s voice, hidden behind fluttering winds of coloured silk. “For I am Prince Amret of Valham, the selfsame.”
“You’re no prince,” muttered young Majram. Princes were impossible, in the deserts around Moham. Why would a prince want to come here? No, a djinn was far more likely. All the other nasty and wicked and spiteful things in the cosmos lived in the desert. Djinns probably visited on holiday. “You’re an evil spirit, and I won’t listen.”
The spirit laughed with sudden ferocity, sending the golden circlet of its turban askew. “No prince, sayest thou? Very well. Prince or no prince, my life is in thy hands. For I am lost in this blasted desert. And thou knowest the way.”
“I might and I mightn’t knowest.”
“Thou knowest,” the spirit’s voice had sharpened to a whisper. “And unless thou art to be my guide to a road and oasis, I am to become dust of the desert, prince or no prince, spirit or no spirit.”
“If you’re a djinn,” said Majram, speaking slowly and thinking fast, “then you have to grant wishes. What will you give me if I help you?”
“I shall give you that which is best in the world. I shall give you the root, branch and leaf of every man’s wishes. Not even a true djinn could promise you that.”
“I don’t want a plant,” Majram huffed. “Nor some city vegetable. Won’t grow here anyway. Desert.”
“I see the desert has its share of vegetables already,” said the spirit, though tea-stained teeth. “No, I shall give you something far more precious. Mine oath upon it.”
“Your oath? Your djinni unbreakable oath? What you still manage to trick people with in the stories?”
“Yes, on my djinni unbreakable oath I swear to give you the flower, stalk and stem of every man’s wishes.”
Majram frowned. Something didn’t feel quite final to him. He spat on his canvas-wrapped hand and held it out for the spirit to shake. And the spirit did, with the crushing grip of a grown man’s hand.
“The oasis is two hundred paces in that direction, behind the dune. You’ll find the road another two hundred paces beyond that. Now can I have my wish?”
The ferocity of sudden laughter returned this time in a snarling rage, but then gave way to manic laughter. There was the instability of dune winds in this spirit. He laughed, and he reached into his robes to give Majram…
Well, you know what Majram got. And so did he, smiling in bittersweet recollection of that day, from the sun-bleached window of his hut.
What did Majram get?
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It's Gloam, of course.
The prelude is a of his old age, the Djinn story is of his youth. Upon receiving the Gloam "that abortive journey that made him the richest man in Moham". But the wealth came at a cost, both physically and spiritually to him. He becomes half deaf and blind, crippled. Gloam and the festival lose all joy to him. So it was a poisoned chalice that he recieved. He become materially rich but also bitter and empty. That is why the Djinn laughed.
Oooh, very interesting. I'm useless at riddles, but I eagerly await the astute commenters who, I'm sure, will be along with an answer in short order.