She did scream; who could blame her? They were plummeting from rosy twilight into deep midnight as they shot several stories down through a crack in the ceiling of a building below them.
Their speed was broken by two very carefully tied tarps that Aladdin had installed in case of just such an emergency. Their landing, while jarring and painful, was made softer on the piles of sand that had been gathered there by centuries of neglect and wind.
Aladdin leapt up immediately, the girl’s hand still in his. She was right by his side, also too smart to take a moment to recover. But the door was suddenly filled by an unfortunately familiar silhouette.
He appeared too quickly for them to change direction.
Aladdin and the girl slammed into Rasoul’s chest.
“We just keep running into each other, don’t we, Street Rat?” he said with a tired irony. He grabbed Aladdin by his vest, shoving him off to the second squad of guards behind him.
Aladdin cursed. He should have realized something was up when the captain of the guard wasn’t in the tower with the rest. Rasoul had already reconned his hideout and planted himself by the escape route. Irritatingly intelligent.
“It’s the dungeon for you this time, boy. No escape.”
The girl, somewhat incredibly, began to attack the giant captain. Aladdin and the guards watched with similar surprise as she hit Rasoul uselessly in the chest again and again with her small fists.
“Let him go!” she shouted.
“Well, look at that,” Rasoul said, tossing her aside as easily as he had the monkey. “A Street Mouse.”
Aladdin felt his blood boil as the girl tumbled to the floor.
The guards began to laugh; even Rasoul chuckled as he turned to go.
“Unhand him.”
The girl stood up and swept off her robe. “By order of the royal princess!”
Rasoul stopped chuckling and the guards gasped.
Aladdin felt his stomach flip.
That girl, the girl he had spent the afternoon with, the girl who had leapt off the sides of buildings and pole-vaulted off others, who had charmed Abu and shared an apple with him, was not some rich girl off for a jaunt or running away from home. She was a princess. The royal princess.
Jasmine.
Her eyes were black and hard. Her back was straight; her arms hung gracefully at her sides as if she had too much power even to need to put them on her hips or cross them in anger. Her diadem sparkled.
“The princess…?” Aladdin said faintly.
It was said that Jasmine was beautiful; it was said she was quick-witted. Both of these were without question true.
It was also said that she was a witch with a tiger for a familiar. It was said she tore her suitors to shreds—verbally and, vis-à-vis the tiger, occasionally literally.
“Princess Jasmine,” Rasoul said immediately, lowering his eyes and bowing. “What are you doing outside the palace? And with this…Street Rat?”
“That is none of your concern,” Jasmine said. She put her hands on her hips and marched right up into the captain’s space as if he was no more to her than an irritating camel. “Do as I command. Release him.”
“I would, Princess,” Rasoul said. He seemed genuinely regretful. He flicked a look back at Aladdin. Maybe he thought it was all a bit much for a loaf of bread, as well? “Except my orders come from Jafar. You’ll have to take it up with him.”
Aladdin’s heart froze.
Why would the grand vizier care about Aladdin?
“Jafar?” Princess Jasmine was apparently thinking the same thing. But she managed to control her surprise, turning the question into a sneer of disgust.
The last thing Aladdin saw before the guards hauled him off was her concerned eyes hardening.
“Believe me,” she growled, “I will be paying him a visit.”
IF THERE WAS a moon or sun in the sky, it didn’t matter at all.
Underneath the tallest tower in the palace was the deepest pit in Agrabah, the bottom of which was lit by a single torch. No sunlight, moonlight, or starlight had ever touched its depths. The bottommost chamber had been excavated in the dead of a black night by workers who were then murdered and buried under the very stone steps they helped lay—to preserve the secrets of the palace dungeons.
There was only one door that led in: it was windowless and triple-barred. Beyond it were a dozen skeletons still shackled to the wall, left there even after they had decomposed like a forgotten detail in a fairy tale. Scurrying around these were rats that had never seen the light of the sun and probably had something to do with the creation of the skeletons.
Aladdin had only been there for a few hours and hadn’t quite let the obvious finality of the place get to him yet. He was still shocked by the events that had led up to his being there.
“The princess,” he muttered to himself for the fortieth time. “I can’t believe she was the princess. I must have sounded so stupid to her.”
But…maybe…just maybe…she liked him? A little?
And for a moment, in the chilly, foul-smelling dungeon where he was chained, Aladdin let himself dream of the life he would have if he was a prince. Then they could be together. He would have the girl of his dreams and they would all live happily ever after.
Of course, the fact that she was a princess was the reason he was in a dungeon.
It was obvious: his imprisonment had nothing to do with the bread he had stolen. Somehow Jafar had seen them, had known a Street Rat was coming close to desecrating the royal daughter…leading her into a life of poverty, crime, and villainy…and had stopped it.
“Aww, she was worth it, though,” Aladdin sighed, thinking about her eyes, remembering the soft warmth of her hand. For a moment he had touched greatness.
The tiny echoes of chittering interrupted his thoughts.
“Abu?” he asked incredulously, looking up.
Very faintly he could see a tiny shadow of a monkey as it hopped from beam to beam, from stone to stone while he made his way down to the bottom, where Aladdin was.
“Down here!” Aladdin called excitedly.
Abu dropped onto his shoulder. The boy petted him as best he could by rubbing his head into Abu’s furry belly. “Hey, boy, am I glad to see you! Turn around!”
After enjoying a few more moments of their cuddly reunion, Abu did as directed. Using his teeth, Aladdin carefully extracted a needle he had pinned into Abu’s little vest for an occasion such as this. The little monkey wasn’t just a distraction while Aladdin swiped things; the two had many, many other routines they had worked out over the years for getting out of—and into—trouble.
Aladdin turned his head and strained his neck as far as he could, working the needle into the keyhole of his right-hand manacle with his teeth and lips. It was a simple, crude lock; obviously if you were thrown to the bottom of the deepest dungeon in the palace, extreme measures weren’t needed to keep you there.
Which was rapidly bringing Aladdin to the next part of his problem. Once his right hand was free, he easily undid his left…but where was he going to go from there?
Abu chittered angrily. Monkeys obviously did not like being underground or in dungeons. It sounded like he was saying he had done his part; now it was his human friend’s turn to figure out the rest. Fast.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re going. Let’s get away from the palace as fast as we can. I’ll never see her again…” he said wistfully, more concerned with that than their immediate escape. He thought about how she had looked standing on the rooftop, pole in her hand, the wind blowing tendrils of her hair out of her eyes. “She can only marry a prince. I’m a fool.”