Jan. 31, 2006; 11:15 a.m.

Standard disclaimers apply. (meaning I'm too lazy to write one, but you didn't need to know that) Unbeta'ed.

Shahrastini

By Ninetails

Prologue

A story is alive, as you and I are.

It is rounded by muscle and sinew. Surging with blood. Layered with skin, both rough and smooth. At its core lies soft marrow of hard, white bone. A story beats with the heart of every person who has ever strained ears to listen. On the breath of the storyteller, it soars. Until its images and deeds become so real you can see them in the air, shimmering like oases on the horizon.

A story can fly like a bee, so straight and swift you catch only the hum of its passing. Or move so slowly it seems motionless, curled upon itself like a snake in the sun. It can vanish like smoke before the wind. Linger like perfume in the nose. Change with every telling, yet always remain the same.

I am a storyteller, like my mother before me, and her father before her. These things I know.

Yet, in spite of all this, I have told no story for almost more years than I care to remember. Perhaps that is why I have the need to tell one now.

Not just any story. My story. A story told hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Of a girl who saved her life and her king's by telling a tale of a thousand and one.

You sit up a little straighter in your chair. "But wait!" I hear you cry. "I have no need to hear, to read, this story. I have heard it many times before."

And this may be true, I must admit. For my story is not a new one. It is old, even as I am now old.

Though you cannot see me (not quite yet, for you have not yet truly decided to enter the life of this story), I smile. I take no offense at your objection. I can be patient, although I cannot say that this is easy for me to be.

I watch, as your hand hovers in midair above the page. Will you go forward, or back? Turn the page, or close the cover?

There is a pause.

Then from across the space that separates us, I see the change come over you. Your hand, so still and steady just a moment ago, now trembles in a slight movement toward the next page…

I smile again, for I know that you are mine now.

Or, to be more precise, you are the story's.

For I recognize the thing that has happened: You have felt the tantalizing brush of surprise. And, close upon its heels, so swift nothing on earth could have prevented its coming, anticipation.

This tale, which you thought so long asleep as to be incapable of offering anything new, has given a surprising stretch, reach out, and caught you in its arms. Even as your mind thought to refuse, your heart reached back, already surrendering to the story's ancient spell.

Can you see me now? Not as I am, but as I was?

They named me Shahrazad, which I confess to be a little inaccurate. At seventeen years of age, straight and slim, with chestnut hair and amethyst eyes. My skin, the color of the pale dried camel skins that are my land's most prized trade. Others who have told my tale have said that I was beautiful beyond compare, even more beautiful than most women. But I can see with no eyes but my own, and so I am no judge.

Are you ready to hear my greatest secret? The one that I have never spoken? You know only a small part of my story. What I am about to relate has never been told before.

I see you set the pages down into your lap with a thunk. "But how can this be?" you ask. All have heard of the storyteller so gifted with words that she told tales for one thousand and one nights in a row. With her gift, her voice alone, she saved her own life and that of countless others. Through the years, this story has been handed down, with never a hint at anything left out, or anything changed. How, then, can what I claim be true? How can there be anything more?

Listen now. Listen truly. Fall under my storyteller's spell. Did I not say that a story could change in the telling yet remain the same in its innermost soul?

Did you truly believe that what you had been told was all there was to know? That such was the only truth?

Did you ever stop to wonder how the spirit of a man, once a wise and benevolent king, could so lose its way as to plan to make a maiden a bride at night and take her life the very next morning? Did you ever wonder how such a spirit, gone so far astray, could find its way into the light once more, not with the help of a maiden, but with the help of one such as I?

Was it truly done with words alone?

Or could it be that there was something more?

Something kept hidden. Held back, untold. A story within a story. Not just the trunk and limbs, which have been told countless times, but something new. Something only I can tell you.

Forget all that you think you know about me. Remember that what you have heard was always told by others. You have never heard me tell my own tale before. No one has, for I have never told. I will tell it to you now.

Listen to my name as I send it across the years. Do you not hear its power? The way both syllables are hard and soft all at once, even as I was? They illuminate and darken. Reveal and conceal. The name of a man concealed by the countless stories told of him.

Whisper it now as my story begins.

… Duo.

TBC

Author's Notes:

Plot ain't mine, as usual. It's taken from a book I had once, "The Storyteller's Daughter," WHICH ISN'T MINE. I'll give credit to the author once I search for who she is. Heh. Work with this story will be slow. I really have no time to work on a multichapter. College life sucks. Gah. And if ever someone decides to leave reviews, I won't be able to reply like I used to. I think. banned it, ne? I have a sneaking suspicion that I am one of the causes of this (just look at the replies to reviews in my other fics… and no, I'm not actually telling you to read the fics). Ok, 'nuff said.