It was indeed glorious. Clouds had come up from the south and had spread like a ruby landscape across the sky. Abdullah saw ranges of purple mountains flushed wine red in one part; a smoking orange rift like the heart of a volcano; a calm rosy lake. Out beyond, laid against an infinity of gold-blue sky-sea, were islands, reefs, bays, and promontories. It was as if they were looking at the seacoast of heaven or the land that looks westward to Paradise.

“And that cloud there,” the soldier said, pointing. “Doesn’t that one look just like a castle?”

It did. It stood on a high headland above a sky-lagoon, a marvel of slender gold, ruby, and indigo turrets. A glimpse of golden sky through the tallest tower was like a window. It reminded Abdullah poignantly of the cloud he had seen above the Sultan’s palace while he was being dragged off to the dungeon. Though it was not in the least the same shape, it brought back his sorrows to him so forcefully that he cried out.

“O Flower-in-the-Night, where are you?”

Chapter Eleven

IN WHICH A WILD ANIMAL CAUSES ABDULLAH TO WASTE A WISH

The soldier turned on his elbow and stared at Abdullah.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” said Abdullah, “except that my life has been full of disappointments.”

“Tell,” said the soldier. “Unburden. I told you about me, after all.”

“You would never believe me,” said Abdullah. “My sorrows surpass even yours, most murderous musketeer.”

“Try me,” said the soldier.

Somehow it was not hard to tell, what with the sunset and the misery that sunset brought surging up in Abdullah. So, as the castle slowly spread and dissolved into sandbars in the sky-lagoon and the whole sunset faded gently to purple, to brown, and finally to three dark red streaks like the healing claw marks on the soldier’s face, Abdullah told the soldier his story. Or at any rate, he told the gist of it. He did not, of course, tell anything so personal as his own daydreams or the uncomfortable way they had of coming true lately, and he was very careful to say nothing at all about the genie. He did not trust the soldier not to take the bottle and vanish with it during the night, and he was helped in this editing of the facts by a strong suspicion that the soldier had not told his whole story, either. The end of the story was quite difficult to tell with the genie left out, but Abdullah thought he managed rather well. He gave the impression he had escaped from his chains and from the bandits more or less by willpower alone, and then that he had walked all the way north to Ingary.