7

A COOL WIND

It turned out to be a horrible night. (Even more horrible than when one of Emma’s brothers had poured dishwashing soap into her nose.) Tristan slept as though he was in the most peaceful place on earth, but Emma couldn’t keep her eyes closed. I shouldn’t have opened that bottle! she thought at least three hundred and thirty-five times while she stared into the darkness. The yellow genie snored so loudly that her ears began to hurt. A new day dawned, but the only sign of that was a few stray rays of sunshine trickling through the old walls and onto Sahim’s nose.

After his breakfast, which consisted of countless little fragrant cakes, the yellow genie set off to pay a visit to Barakash’s neighboring kingdom. His pale servants dusted the treasure with peacock feathers and threw dry bread into the cages.

Most of the animals in Sahim’s collection were ones Emma had never seen before. But there were also sand-colored foxes with batlike ears, lizards with spikes on their tails, and long-necked flamingos that poked their beaks through the bars.

Emma wondered how long they’d been here. With every hour she spent in her awful cage, her hope that Karim would come to rescue her shrank a little more. And when Sahim returned that evening to drop into his spiderweb, that hope was barely as big as a pea. A very, very small pea.

The yellow genie devoured a sack of pomegranates and thirteen cinnamon cakes before going to sleep. The torches died one by one, until Sahim’s pale-yellow belly was the only thing glowing in the dark. And Emma felt a tear run down her cheek.

“Oh, Tristan! I don’t think Karim will come!” she whispered. “Would you mind cheering me up a bit? You could lick that tear off my cheek, maybe?”

But Tristan just lifted his head.

A cool breeze brushed over Emma’s face. It drifted so cool and damp through the old palace that Sahim shuddered in his sleep and tossed and turned on his hammock.

“Karim?” Emma breathed.

“Shhh!” came the reply. And a heartbeat later, Karim’s flying carpet appeared from the darkness. Kneeling next to the blue genie were Maimun and the dromedary.

“My mistress, forgive us for coming only now!” Karim whispered. “But this palace wasn’t easy to find! Luckily the forever-hungry dromedary has a fine nose!”

The dromedary snorted and cast a bored glance around the hall.

Maimun pulled a bunch of keys from his gold-embroidered cloak. “This time Sahim really went too far!” he whispered, while he unlocked Emma’s cage with trembling hands. “Capturing my guests! Does he think I’ll let him get away with everything? You look even paler than before, oh flower of a cold land!”

“Where did you get the keys?” Emma whispered. As she stepped on the carpet, she decided she did like Maimun after all.

“We took them off two fellows who looked even paler than you,” Maimun answered quietly. “We stuffed them into Karim’s bottle. But they didn’t have his nose ring.”

“Of course not!” Emma whispered back. “Because Sahim is wearing it as an earring!”

Maimun cast a worried look at the yellow genie. Karim, however, seemed so angry that his color changed until his bald head looked like a very ripe blue grape.

“My nose ring on his . . . ear?” he growled. “How dare he, that son of a slimy snail, of a tailless dog? Oh, forgive me”—Karim bowed to Tristan—“forgive me, king of all dogs. That just slipped out.”

Tristan smacked his lips and sniffed the dromedary’s backside.

Karim drifted silently into the air. “Wait here,” he breathed. And before Maimun or Emma realized what he was doing, he was already drifting, like a pale-blue balloon, toward Sahim’s spiderweb hammock.

Karim looked so ridiculously small compared to the yellow genie that Emma’s fear nearly made her forget to breathe.

Sahim snorted in his sleep, and he rubbed his fat belly. Fifteen black spiders were sitting on it.

“Please keep sleeping, you monster,” Emma whispered. “Please!”

Nothing moved in the other cages. All of the yellow genie’s prisoners seemed to be fast asleep. Only one of the flamingos pulled its head out from under its wing and stared at the flying carpet.

Karim was now only an arm’s length from Sahim’s mustard-yellow earlobe.

“Oh, please hurry, Karim!” Emma heard Maimun mutter.

Something rustled beneath them. The flamingo had pushed its beak through the bars.

“Maimun! Didn’t you say Sahim stole your tame flamingos?” Emma whispered. “Is that one of them over there?”

“Where?” Maimun asked. He turned around.

The bird with the crooked beak let out a bloodcurdling screech of joy as it recognized its former master. The Barbary sheep lifted their heads and began to bleat. The gold jackals barked, and the desert monitors hissed.

And Sahim woke.

With a howl, the yellow genie shot up from his hammock just as Karim’s fingers closed around his ring. “Ahhh! What is this?” Sahim bellowed. He shook his head so hard that the spiders and scorpions scattered from his turban.

Sahim’s yellow fingers reached for his ear, which Karim was dangling from like a blue gemstone.

“Karim, you miserable pip of a grape—that can only be you!” Sahim boomed, while Karim wriggled like an eel to avoid his fingers. “Just you wait! I shall crack you open like a bug!”

“We have to help him, Maimun!” Emma screamed. “Or do you want to watch him be crushed? Yallah!” she shouted, grabbing the fringe of the carpet—forgetting in her excitement that she only knew the order for landing. The carpet lurched downward. The dromedary fell over, and Maimun nearly dropped headfirst into a jug. Tristan just managed to catch his trouser leg.

“What are you doing?” Maimun screeched. He pulled Emma’s fingers off the carpet and only barely steered the carpet clear of a giant spiderweb. But as he turned it, Sahim’s burning eyes were already fixed on them.

“And who do we have here?” he boomed. “The caliph of Barakash delivers his dromedary to me in person. Or did you come to steal my little Sandy Head?”

The dromedary hid its head behind Maimun’s back, and Tristan growled so loudly that his entire body trembled.

Emma couldn’t take her eyes off Karim, who was still hanging on to his nose ring and trying to pull it off Sahim’s earlobe.

“Yes, exactly. That’s why I’m here, you thieving sack of mustard!” Maimun screamed as loudly as he could up at the yellow cat eyes. “I am taking it all back, everything you stole from me. And then I will release your prisoners.”

“Really?” Sahim growled. His eyes narrowed. He took a breath—and blew them all off the carpet.

I knew it! I shouldn’t have opened the bottle, Emma thought as she fell. A sticky spiderweb slowed her fall a little, but she still landed hard on a pile of dusty carpets. Tristan dropped onto her belly. The dromedary landed on its own hump. And Maimun went headfirst into a giant clay jar.

With a nasty grin, Sahim reached for his earlobe again. And this time he managed to grab hold of Karim, despite how hard the blue genie kicked and wriggled.

“Let go of the ring, you bluebird brain!” Sahim growled.

“It is mine!” Karim shouted feebly.

“Let goooo!” Sahim howled. He yanked so hard at Karim’s legs that his earlobe stretched like a piece of yellow chewing gum.

Then it happened. Suddenly. The nose ring opened.

Sahim howled and grabbed his ear, but it was too late. Karim was already fixing the ring to his shrunken nose.

And finally he grew.