water. It lapped at the stone below his feet, reaching now higher, now lower. Muted colors floated on its surface, the afternoon sunlight reflecting in the ever-changing dips of the waves. Still it was hard to believe that this was not some expert illusion, intended to befuddle him. At any moment he expected the city and water to dissolve, to be replaced by the familiar steppes and plateaus of the Syrian Desert, his home for close to two hundred years. And yet the moments ticked away, and New York Harbor remained stubbornly intact.
How, he wondered, had he come to this place?
The Syrian Desert is neither the harshest nor the most barren of the Arabian deserts, but it is nevertheless a forbidding place for those who do not know its secrets. It was here that the Djinni was born, in what men would later call the seventh century.
Of the many types of djinn—they are a highly diverse race, with many different forms and abilities—he was one of the most powerful and intelligent. His true form was insubstantial as a wisp of air, and invisible to the human eye. When in this form, he could summon winds, and ride them across the desert. But he could also take on the shape of any animal, and become as solid as if he were made of muscle and bone. He would see with that animal’s eyes, feel with that animal’s skin—but his true nature was always that of the djinn, who were creatures of fire, in the same manner that humans are said to be creatures of earth. And like all his brethren djinn, from the loathsome, flesh-eating ghuls to the tricksterish ifrits, he never stayed in any one shape for very long.
The djinn tend to be solitary creatures, and this one was more so than most. In his younger years, he’d participated in the haphazard rituals and airborne skirmishes of what could loosely be called djinn society. Some minor slight or squabble would be seized upon, and hundreds of djinn would summon the winds and ride them into battle, clan against clan. The gigantic whirlwinds they caused would fill the air with sand, and the other denizens of the desert would take shelter in caves and the shadows of boulders, waiting for the storm to pass.
But as he matured, the Djinni grew dissatisfied with these diversions, and took to wandering the desert alone. He was inquisitive by nature—though no one thing could hold his attention for long—and rode the winds as far west as the Libyan Desert, and east to the plains of Isfahan. In doing so, he took more of a risk than was sensible. Even in the driest desert a rainstorm could strike with little warning, and a Djinni caught in the rain was in mortal danger. For no matter what shape a Djinni might assume, be it human or animal or its own true shape of no shape at all, it was still a living spark of fire, and could easily be extinguished.
But whether luck or skill guided his path, the Djinni was never caught out and roamed wherever he would. He used these trips as opportunities to search for veins of silver and gold, for the djinn are natural metalsmiths, and this one was unusually adept. He could work the metals into strands no thicker than a hair, or into sheets, or twisted ropes. The only metal he could not touch was iron: for like all his kind, he held a powerful dread of iron, and shied away from rocks veined with ore in the way a man might recoil from a poisonous snake.
One can wander far and wide in the desert without spying another creature of intelligence. But the djinn were far from alone, for they had dwelt as neighbors with humans for many thousands of years. There were the Bedouin, the roving tribes of herdsmen who scratched out their perilous existence on what the desert had to offer. And there were also the human cities far to the east and west, which grew larger every year, and sent their caravans through the desert between them. But neighbors though they were, both humans and djinn harbored a deep distrust of each other. Humankind’s fear was perhaps more acute, for the djinn had the advantage of invisibility or disguise. Certain wells and caves and rock-strewn passes were considered habitations of the djinn, and to trespass was to invite calamity. Bedouin women pinned amulets of iron beads to their babies’ clothing, to repel any djinn that might try to possess them, or carry them away and turn them to changelings. It was said among the human storytellers that there had once been wizards, men of great and dangerous knowledge, who’d learned to command and control the djinn, and trap them in lamps or flasks. These wizards, the storytellers said, had long since passed from existence, and only the faintest shadows of their powers remained.
But the lives of the djinn were very long—a djinni’s lifespan might last eight or nine times the length of a human’s—and their memories of the wizards had not yet faded to legend. The elder djinn warned against encounters with humans, and called them conniving and perfidious. The wizards’ lost knowledge, they said, might be found again. It was best to be cautious. And so interactions between the two races mostly were kept to the occasional encounter, usually provoked by the lesser djinn, the ghuls and ifrits who could not keep themselves from mischief.
When young, the Djinni had listened to the elders’ warnings and taken heed. In his travels he’d avoided the Bedouin, and steered clear of the caravans that moved slowly across the landscape, bound for the markets of Syria and Jazira, Iraq and Isfahan. But it was perhaps inevitable that one day he should spy upon the horizon a column of some twenty or thirty men, their camels loaded with precious goods, and think, why should he not investigate? The djinn of old had been incautious and foolhardy in allowing themselves to be captured, but he was neither. No harm would come from merely observing.
He approached the caravan slowly and fell in behind at a safe distance, matching their pace. The men wore long, loose robes of many layers, all dusty with travel, and covered their heads with checked cloth against the sun. Snatches of their conversations carried to the Djinni on the wind: the time to their next destination, or the likelihood of bandits. He heard the weariness in their voices, saw the fatigue that hunched their backs. These were no wizards! If they’d had any powers they would magic themselves across the desert, and save themselves this endless plodding.
After a few hours the sun began to lower, and the caravan passed into an unfamiliar part of the desert. The Djinni remembered his caution, and turned back toward safer ground. But this glimpse of humankind had only inflamed his curiosity. He began to watch for the caravans, and followed them more and more often, though always at a distance; for if he drew too close, the animals would grow nervous and skittish, and even the men would feel him as a wind at their backs. At night, when they came to rest at an oasis or caravanserai, the Djinni would listen to them talk. Sometimes they spoke of the distances they had to travel, their pains and worries and woes. Other times they spoke of their childhoods, and the fireside tales their mothers and aunts and grandmothers had told them. They exchanged well-worn stories, boasts of their own or of the warriors of ages past, kings and caliphs and wazirs. They all knew the stories by heart, though they never told them the same way twice and quibbled happily over the details. The Djinni was especially fascinated at any mention of the djinn, as when the men told tales of Sulayman, the human ruler who seven hundred years before had yoked the djinn to his rule, the first and last of the human kings to do so.
The Djinni watched, and listened, and decided they were a fascinating paradox. What drove these short-lived creatures to be so oddly self-destructive, with their punishing journeys and brutal battles? And how, at barely eighteen or twenty years of age, could they grow to be so intelligent and cunning? They spoke of amazing accomplishments, in cities such as ash-Sham and al-Quds: sprawling markets and new mosques, wondrous buildings such as the world had never seen. Djinn-kind, who did not like to be enclosed, had never attempted anything to compare; at most the homes of the djinn were bare shelters against the rain. But the Djinni grew intrigued by the idea. And so he selected a spot in a valley and, when he was not chasing caravans, began to build himself a palace. He heated and shaped the desert sands into curving sheets of opaque blue-green glass, forming walls and staircases, floors and balconies. Around the walls he wove a filigree of silver and gold, so that the palace appeared to be netted inside a shining web. He spent months making and unmaking it according to his whim, and twice razed it to the ground in frustration. Even when whole and habitable, the palace was never truly finished. Some rooms sat open to the stars, their ceilings confiscated to serve as floors elsewhere. The web of filigree grew as he found veins of metal in the desert rocks, and then
