Like A Veil
Erotic Tales of the Arabian Nights
edited by Michelle Labbé and Cecilia Tan
Published by Circlet Press, Inc.
Cambridge, MA
edited by Michelle Labbé and Cecilia Tan
Copyright © 2010 by Circlet Press, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Cover Illustration © Lunamarina | Dreamstime.com
Published by
Circlet Press, Inc.
39 Hurlbut Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
www.circlet.com
Smashwords Edition
This electronic version was converted to multiple ebook formats with the Smashwords Meatgrinder. It contains all of the text and stories, but does not replicate the design or layout of a printed book. Please report any problems you find with the ebook to us at "circletintern@gmail.com" or by visiting the Bug Report section of our web site (www.circlet.com).
License Notes
Please do not support online piracy of copyrighted works. This ebook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the purchaser only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, or if you received this ebook copied from a friend or by other means, please support the writers who made it possible by purchasing a copy yourself from Smashwords.com or one of the publisher's other retail partners. Thank you for your support.
Her Way by Anya Levin
Blue-Eyed Djinn by Angela Goldsberry
Catch and Release by Sunny Moraine
The Eater of Stories by Sophia Deri-Bowen
The Arabian Nights offer a thousand and one nights of story, each more compelling than the last. The fabled Shahrazad lay in bed with the sultan each night and wove tales as rich as damask to captivate him. The erotic possibilities are countless. Shahrazad tantalized, withholding satisfaction, each night denying the release of a conclusion to her storytelling. The stories she told were mysterious, enchanting, and frequently erotic. We find her thousand and one nights populated with djinni and other demon lovers, with magic carpets and veiled temptresses.
Shahrazad and her tales have inspired other storytellers from the beginning. The earliest surviving manuscript dates from the fourteenth century, and comprises only about three hundred nights of stories. Since that time, legions of anonymous writers have appended their own tales onto that number, each making their own contributions to fill the framework with the thousand and one nights promised. The Arabian Nights' introduction to the West by translator Antoine Galland in 1705 sparked a frenzy and a Middle Eastern renaissance as French, and later English, readers became enamored of the exotic-seeming tales. Even prurient translators who produced expurgated versions rejecting the sexual content of many tales could not fully rob the tales of their beguiling, sensuous power. Later translations restored censored passages and gave the tales back their wondrous eroticism.
Like a Veil offers four tales inspired by this rich tradition that are as compelling as any Shahrazad might have related. A wanderer seeks access to a legendary forbidden city in "Her Way"-- but first she must convince the mysterious gatekeeper of her worth. In "Blue-Eyed Djinn," a Sultan gets more, much more, than he bargained for when a djinn offers him a night of pleasure unlike any other. "Catch and Release" tells the story of a star-traveling fisherman and the djinn who grants him what he's been searching for. Finally, two young lovers' lives are forever changed in "The Eater of Stories," but they find solace in one another.
Read these tales late at night and think of Shahrazad seducing the sultan with her words night after night, drawing out the pleasure and the power of each story she told. Let these four stories entice your mind and awaken your senses until the morning overtakes you.
--Michelle Labbé
by
Anya Levin
They say that magic lives in the desert, but I'm not sure I've found it yet.
There's something beyond mundane belief and certainty, to be sure. Once past the stone bastions of civilization, as our small party edged into the eternal, ever-changing wilderness, it seemed as though a stone fell from my shoulders. Blinders, as they like to say, fell from my eyes. Things became possible that have been scoffed at by those who consider themselves rational. Stories discounted as mythical or euphemistic in countless ancient storybooks become eerily reasonable to a mind subjected to the open sprawl of the desert and the baking heat of the sun high above.
Are such revelations--realizations--magic, or just the unfortunate side-effects of one's brain boiling away? It was hard to tell.
Whatever the impetus behind the sudden freeing of my brain, for that's what it was, in truth, it only made it easier to follow the robed form of our guide as he led the way. It only made my imagination run all the more rampant with forbidden, fantastical, and visceral longings. Fantasies rose to my mind as we plodded through the sands, images and feelings that I never would have contemplated airing in the sunlight before, let alone allowing to affect me so much that each footstep of my hump-backed mount left me squirming that much more.
It was a good thing that I adored the heat, as we'd been traversing a mostly unmapped section of desert for nearly a week already. If I'd been a northerner born and bred I'd no doubt be miserable. As it was, I'd long since stopped wishing for a bath or fresh clothing. My current burning desire--well, the desire that had some chance of being fulfilled, at least--was for a modicum of privacy to urinate, or even to change my increasingly saturated underthings.
Such a thing would be dangerous in the desert, of course, where direction can be difficult to ascertain even with a compass, and I'd long grown used to the two men I traveled with being within sight and hearing at all times, but realistic necessities didn't eradicate those wistful desires.
"We're almost there," Clay called.
His voice was muted by the cloth that covered his mouth, and the fact that he was two camel-lengths ahead of me, but the news did give a sense of momentary mental buoyancy. I admitted to myself that I'd started to despair of ever reaching our goal, despite the fact that I'd been the one most insistent throughout our journey that we'd finally find the lost city.
"I don't see any buildings," Mark shouted. Big, burly, skeptical Mark. He'd come along just in case, I think, because he was afraid that if I did find anything and he wasn't a part of the expedition, he'd lose all standing in his department back miles away at the University.
"The desert is deceptive," Clay yelled back. It was a phrase that fell from his lips often. As if he were the only one of us who'd ever trekked through a desert. As if anyone could achieve the places that Mark and I held without practical archaeological experience. That included desert treks in both our cases.
"Besides," Clay continued. "Even the biggest city can be buried with enough sand." Which was all too true.
We'd barely managed to gather the funds for Clay's salary.