Kingdom Amongst the Moss Chapter 2

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Chapter 2

My knees and hands stung as they hit the sidewalk. My right fingers vibrated with pain, even under the layer of bandages. Surreal throbbing racked my tendons and legs. I rose, brushing off my braised palms, picking up my trunk and readjusting my satchel.

A large book, bound in an illustrated cover, called at me from the depths below. I bent over to lift it up, and reveled in its title. Arabian Nights. I knew it so well, the stories shaped into my mind, the surviving piece of my life set into words.

Scheherazade lounged on the bed, her airy bantalon the colour of my own, a bright blue of the Red Sea. King Shahryar’s dark eyes housed a concoction of hostility and profound interest in his young wife. Dinarzad, Scheherazade’s younger sister, stretched herself amongst the pillows, listening to her sister with affection. This existed the one thing I knew in all of America at that moment.

Carefully, I wiped the grime off of the book, careful not to get blood onto the pages. Opening to the inside, the dark, soft touch of a hardcover book soothed my hurting hands and restored an unbelieving amount of soft, genuine feeling to my brain.

Gunther Peura

Please return if found

24731 Cassandra Street—Asgard Inn

The rich, black ink crawled across the inside cover. Gunther Peura asked for me to return this edition of my classic fairytales. In Palestine, I reigned as the queen of Arabian Nights, able to recite every tale. If there were any doubts on how Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves went, it was my role to step in and give the exact details. If Sari’s children whined about bed, I’d sit down with them, ignoring my yellowing, battered copy of Arabian Nights in my satchel, knowing the stories by heart. I’d pick up the oud and pluck out a lullaby, the tale skipping out from between my lips, drumming into the small children.

If he etched out his address, would he be willing to give a reward for the book? I reread the scribbled. Asgard Inn. He was living at an inn.

I brushed off my knees, skin flaking to the ground, and stepped out from under the crying, black archway, bracing the street.

I’m no navigator. It took me half an hour to find the inn, when it was just a few minutes down the road from where I started.

The mailbox, swinging off its hinges, supported a black flag with thin numbers, bronzed from time. 24731.

A subtle, pale blue edifice rose into the sky, chipped paint bearing scars from the storms. I strained my eyes. A sign, hanging from the porch post, wood battered from too many quarrels with the weather, proudly bore the name: ASGARD INN.

Embroidered into the walls, designs scampered up and down the building, simple shapes forming patterns, the stitches flaunting a Scandinavian diversion in the Deep South. I recognized these folklore designs from the time Aba invited fresh Swedish-Jewish immigrants to our house, clad in traditional Swedish dresses. Overgrown grass wrestled the yellow and blue, red and purple flowers that were planted wildly into the earth. The front porch housed baskets swinging from the rails, blue petunias spilling over the sides. Large, tin buckets supported miniature gardens of pansies and ground-ferns and irises, sprouting in harmony.

I marched up the cracked, stone path, weaving through the front. I pushed open the door.

This is where it changed.

Oud—Arab guitar-like instrument

Aba—Father