Scheherazade Explains

You know, I get asked that question a lot:

Why on earth didn’t you gut the bastard as he slept?

I have a lot of answers and really it depends on the day and my mood and if I’ve eaten.

So then, the Because:

-He was the king, chosen by God.

-He was only a man. A sad man carrying the pain of all his fathers, all his gods. No rest. He needed stories probably more than any other human being I’ve met in my long life. He needed sleep. He needed to put on some weight, this god-king, this murderer. The murdered girls, you see, were not the thing for his stress.

-He was my first love.

-I knew that anything I said wouldn’t hold up in a court of man; corpse of a god-king, whispers of “witch”.

I don’t need to tell you what he did, but the reminder is helpful, so let us be blunt. The king, the killer, the golden boy saturated with his own power: he married a new virgin every dawn, and every night, her shaking mother came from the town below to collect her child’s lifeless body. I wish I could tell you that this was the first girl-killer but we know, don’t we, that this is an older crime than the king with a broken heart. I wish I could tell you that kings and virgins will be old news by next year. I wish I could tell you that not so many girls died, or that they didn’t have names, or that they were all very beautiful and therefore just a plot device and tragic and sexy. I can’t- the Because is: I know all of their names.

That’s why he was in the business of killing girls, you see. He had a broken heart. I broke it. With every blade drawn across the throat of every girl, with every murdered story, every shaking mother, he wept and he cursed me. Me! What a tale. And that is how the king of this time and this place managed to continue in this way, laying blame at my feet, night after night, one thousand and one dead girls; he cried. He had a broken heart. He’d had it rough in love. His damage excused his sociopathy and the town- the family of the dead girls- pointed their rage at me. The bloody hands of the missing queen, who’d gone away and begun the carnage as surely as if the first virgin had been her knife at dawn.

I was young when I married the king. I wanted to travel. I wanted to learn about politics and philosophy before I attempted to rule a kingdom or try my hand at love. He was sweet, my king, back then. He was young also, and he wanted only to be in love. I lasted for exactly one thousand days and on the thousandth night I left, because the world was maddeningly large and there were so many languages to learn and I explained it all in my letter, which I can only assume the king, my husband, never read, as he began his gory practice soon thereafter.

I didn’t hear of it, not for a long time. I was bathing in holy rivers and dancing like a wild animal and drinking in literature in massive libraries and sitting at the feet of grandmothers to listen to their stories. I had many lovers and ate delicious food everywhere I went and sought out the teachers and dancers and poets and priests I’d read and apologized to no one, for none of my appetites. I fell completely in love with the world and its wine and its women. I felt shattered by beauty, taken over by it, possessed. When I heard what had happened in the place I used to call my home, that it had been possessed by death, I walked back, retracing my steps, foot over toughened foot, and when I came to the gates of the king I looked him in the eye and smiled, and said my love, it’s been too long. The only lie.

I know how badly he wanted to kill me, those first nights back. I’d wake with his breath on my shoulder, hand trembling at my neck, but I wasn’t afraid. What I had learned from the grandmothers sustained me and told me exactly what to do- he needed stories. Poor man, he had no imagination. He was eaten up by cruelty, consumed by his own masturbatory fits of grief, sleepless with his sins. Kingdom going to ruin, fear everywhere, no art no rivers no delicious food only fear- and no girls anywhere. I moved through the palace cutting the heavy drapes down, bathed us both in starlight, brought fresh fruit in, told him story after story after story- my great seduction, my secret, the tales of the world that he’d never tasted behind his narrow gates, soothed the stupid mad beast with words. I lit a candle for each of the dead girls every night and yes, I’ll admit this to you, under the cover of these nights and this story, that I felt eaten by his sins too. That maybe it was my fault. That how could he be this way if my sweet boy-king was what he was then, he feels such remorse, see him shiver and shake in his sleepless nights, the brides all at his throat which is of course what is waiting, where else is there for them to wait, forsaken as they are by their families who ate his lies and spat at my feet. That maybe the murderer of women would not have killed at all had I only been sweeter, kinder, less world more wife. The dead girls, my sisters, they breathed in the candle smoke, orchid and sulfur and sunshine, and they said never mind your guilt we’re ready send him to us.

I stretched awake on the thousand-and-second dawn of my return, first and last queen, my muscles quick and young still, and yawned. I took the crown from the head of the murdered man sprawled next to me, his sightless eyes wide horrified how could I, and placed it upon my own head. How could I? Like that. I made myself a pot of strong coffee and sat watching the sun rise over my world.