They had almost reached the top when a falling stalactite caught the back of the carpet. It plunged down with the stone. Aladdin threw himself and Abu off and managed to catch the end of the stairs at the edge of the cat’s mouth. The cave was shaking too much for him to be able to pull himself up and over the side.
Like a miracle, the old man appeared.
“Help me out!” Aladdin cried.
“Throw me the lamp!” the old man demanded.
Aladdin could barely process what he had said, it was so insane.
“I can’t hold on! Come on! Give me your hand!”
“First give me the lamp!” the old man insisted, a wild look in his eyes.
Survival won out over logic. Aladdin managed to reach into his sash, where he had stashed the lamp, and pulled it out with his free hand, holding on desperately with the other.
The old man grabbed it and cackled triumphantly. “Yesss!” he screamed. “At last!”
Aladdin managed to get one leg up into a crevice. Abu scampered off his head, making it easier.
The old man came forward to the edge, a menacing gleam in his eye.
He began to hammer at Aladdin’s fingers with his cane.
“What are you doing?” Aladdin cried.
“Giving you your reward. Your eternal reward.”
The old man—now standing strangely straight—pulled out an evil-looking black dagger and raised it above his head.
Abu bit the man on the toe.
He screamed—but managed to kick Aladdin’s fingers.
Aladdin tumbled back into the cavern, falling into the darkness and lava.
A soft thump let him know the carpet had managed to find and catch him. A quick monkey scream meant he’d gotten Abu, too. Slowly and shakily, as if the magic carpet was tired and beat-up itself, it lowered all three of them to a cliff high above the lava. Aladdin watched in dismay as the cavern above them, the stone cat’s mouth, yawned and screamed one last time before snapping shut and settling down beneath the sands.
Aladdin was stuck, sealed hundreds of feet belowground, with no way out, no treasure—
—and no lamp.
THE SUN ROSE ABOVE the palace of Agrabah, seeming to dim before the gold-and-white greatness of the house of the sultan.
The princess Jasmine was seething.
She had, in fact, been seething since the evening before. Since the boy she had been just about to kiss was whisked away by the guards. Since she had stalked back to the palace on foot herself, not caring who saw her.
When she had arrived at the palace, Jasmine immediately demanded to be taken to the royal prison, where mostly harmless troublemakers and tax evaders were kept.
The boy was not there.
She demanded to be taken to the dungeon, where thieves, goat stealers, and murderers were locked up.
The boy was not there.
Losing patience, she demanded to be taken to the secret royal oubliette, where the worst rapists, enemies of the state, and caravan raiders were thrown to be forgotten. Forever. Reluctantly, a pair of the stoutest guards armed with two scimitars apiece took her down to investigate.
The boy was not there.
So she had started questioning the guards themselves. The younger ones, the lower-ranked ones, clearly had no idea about the boy or anything that had happened. Those higher in command were evasive. The ones who had actually brought the boy in could not be found. And Rasoul was silent on the matter.
“My lips are sealed,” he said, somewhat apologetically. “By orders of Jafar himself.”
“He is not an enemy of the state or a spy,” Jasmine cried, exasperated. She almost lost her temper and stomped her foot like the angry little girl she felt like. “He’s just a boy. A harmless boy who was showing me around Agrabah.”
Rasoul continued to say nothing. But his eyes betrayed something at the last thing she said.
Jasmine realized with horror where this whole thing—and the boy—was going.
“I was not going to run off with him!” she yelled. Probably. “He wasn’t going to…We weren’t going to…”
Rasoul looked uncomfortable.
She composed herself quickly.
“I will go find Jafar and clear this up immediately,” she said, stalking off.
“As you will, Your Highness,” Rasoul called after her. But he sounded relieved.
Several hours later Jasmine had failed to find her father’s creepy adviser. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he was purposefully hiding from her and her wrath. It was time to go see her father, officially, and make some princessy demands.
“He will no doubt be in his playroom,” she growled. Then she stopped. “Study,” she said, correcting herself. Who knew who was listening?
She stalked down the halls, not caring who heard the stomp of her feet in their silk slippers. Seething and trying to track down the boy hadn’t left her a chance to bathe or change since the night before. Her thick black hair was coming out of its bands. Tendrils waved behind her like snakes. She scratched the side of her nose with a very unprincessy rub of the back of her hand. She had sweated in the hot streets of the market and the Quarter of the Street Rats, and it had dried; the feeling of its still being there and not immediately washed off was new to her. Not bad, necessarily, but new.
She threw open the carved doors to the giant, airy “study” where her father spent all his time since her mother had passed away. She sighed as she passed the table with the giant clockwork model of Agrabah—whose tiny water clock really did work, making miniature suns and moons rise and fall with the day. She rolled her eyes at the colorful silk kites hanging from the ceiling that were brought from the far east and looked like dragons.
She found her father with his latest favorite toy, an intricate balancing game that had come from somewhere in the far west. Tiny carved animals like puzzle pieces had to be placed carefully on top of each other in descending order of size, finishing with the mouse.
Currently he held a yellow duck in his hand and was frowning at it.
“Father,” she said politely, trying not to startle him. She ground her teeth and reined in her impatience.
“Oh! Jasmine!” the sultan said, beaming. He was a fat, old little man with a beard as white as the snow on top of far-off mountains. He had been old when he married Jasmine’s mother, but the white was less then—merely streaks of clouds on the same dark mountains. His turban was also white and topped with a smooth round ruby and an iridescent blue feather. Cloth of gold trimmed his robes, and turquoise decorated his sash.
He paused, taking her in: her own turquoise pants were dusty and had a tear near her ankle. Her sash was askew. Her top might have been turned just a little.
“Dearest, is everything all right?”
Jasmine took a deep breath and smoothed back the hair around her face, at least.
“No, Father, everything is not all right. I slipped out of the palace last night—”
“Jasmine!” her father admonished.
She took another deep breath and continued. “And Jafar had his guards arrest a boy who saved me from having my hand cut off at the market.”
The sultan blinked.
“Jafar,” she began again slowly, “had his guards…arrest…a boy…”
“Your hand cut off?” the sultan said, in something between the outraged yell of a sultan and the shriek of a father.