3

THE PALACE OF WILTED FLOWERS

When Emma opened her eyes again, she saw a bright red sun hanging above a very, very strange-looking country. There were palm trees and towers and domes and white houses stuck together like a giant honeycomb.

“Oh, Barakash! So I finally see you again!” Karim crooned. He wiped a tear from his nose. Then he began to dissolve into blue smoke. “My return should remain a secret for now!” he whispered to Emma. “You should land in front of the palace. The palace is right behind those palm trees there.” And with that he disappeared into his bottle.

“Land? What are you talking about?” Emma cried out. The tassels of the carpet only barely missed snagging on a spire. “Karim!” she hissed into the bottle. “Come back! I can’t do this.”

“Pull the tassels and call ‘yallah!’ ” the genie whispered. “The carpet usually obeys quite well.”

And truly, after Emma had pulled three tassels of the fringe and had shouted “yallah!” five times, the carpet landed as lightly as a feather in front of the caliph’s palace. The streets and alleys lay deserted. Only an old woman was dragging her donkey across the square. The sight of a flying carpet did not seem to surprise her at all.

“And what now?” Emma whispered into the bottle. Tristan jumped off the carpet and made straight for the next palm tree to lift his leg.

“This may feel a little wet!” the genie whispered.

And before Emma could ask him exactly what he meant, it had already happened. “Yuck!” she hissed angrily. “Did you just spit in my ear?”

“Forgive me, my mistress!” the genie whispered. “But now you can understand our language. Go to the guard by the main entrance and tell him you have a message for Maimun, the caliph of Barakash. You must insist that you can deliver it only to Maimun in person.”

Emma did as he said, though she was still angry about the spitting. She tucked Karim’s bottle into her bathrobe and rolled up the flying carpet before waving Tristan to her. The dog had been giving the palace wall a good sniff. Her heart beating wildly, Emma went to the gate.

The guard had a giant scimitar, he wore the tallest turban Emma had ever seen, and he looked quite cranky.

“Excuse me,” Emma said. She tried to look as dignified as possible (which wasn’t very easy in a bathrobe). “I have an urgent message for Maimun, the caliph of Barakash.”

“And what is that message, you little flea?” the guard asked. He ran a thumb along the blade of his hideous saber.

“The message is from Karim, the most powerful of the blue genies,” Emma answered. “And I can deliver it only to the caliph himself.”

“Karim?” the guard grunted. “He’s gone. There’s only one genie in Barakash now, and that is Sahim the Insatiable.”

“Really?” Emma replied. “If you don’t bring me to the caliph right away, Karim will put a knot in your saber. Then you’ll see that he’s not gone.”

“Will you listen to that!” the guard growled. He leaned down toward Emma and smiled, exposing five and a half gold teeth. “Listen, you obnoxious daughter of a sandmite!” he whispered into Emma’s ear. “All of Barakash would rejoice if Karim returned, but nobody has seen him in more than a hundred days.”

“I have,” said Emma.

The guard again smiled his shiny, gold-toothed smile. Then he called a servant who was so big that Tristan could have completely disappeared in his slippers. Without giving Emma a glance, the servant opened the gate and led her into the palace.

Emma had never been in a palace before. Where she came from didn’t have too many palaces. But she was sure there couldn’t have been a palace more beautiful than this one anywhere in the world.

Sadly, Tristan didn’t seem to notice any of this. Emma had to constantly stop him from peeing on the pillars.

Yes, the palace of the caliph of Barakash was indeed beautiful. But it felt as if sadness itself lived there. All the servants Emma saw kept their heads bowed low. There were no smiles on their faces, and as they walked through the gardens, Tristan’s paws sank deeply into a layer of wilted flowers. “Sahim dried up all our wells!” the huge servant whispered to Emma. “He hates water, because it is cool and because it reflects the blue sky. Yellow genies hate everything that is blue and everything that is cooler than their hot yellow skin. They even hate the night, because it is cold and makes them stiff. That’s why Sahim only comes at midday, when it is so hot that even the lizards hide in the shade, and when the air you breathe burns your tongue.”

“Does he come every day?” Emma asked with worry.

The servant shook his head. “Sometimes we don’t see him for several days,” he whispered. “But he sends his scorpions. They are his eyes. They used to hunt only during the night, but Sahim taught them to love the burning sun as much as he does.”

“Scorpions?” Emma asked. She nearly stumbled over Tristan, who had again lifted his leg next to a pillar.

“Shhh!” the servant hissed as he put his finger to his lips. Emma looked around, but all she saw were two lizards that looked nothing like scorpions.

“And when Sahim comes himself?” Emma whispered. “What happens then?”

“The Master of Evil has many demands!” the servant whispered back. He had stopped in front of a door that was so tall even he could barely reach the handle. “The last time he took all of the caliph’s tame golden flamingos, and he commanded that everything blue in the palace be burned. Even though the caliph’s dromedary loves nothing better than blue grapes. Oh, it is terrible!” And with a deep, very deep sigh, he opened the massive door.