As I blinked against the bright light, on one side of the temple I saw the forty-odd bandits standing, armed, waiting. On the other side was a mob of perhaps two hundred country folk, also armed, though not as heavily. When we came out, the innkeeper’s wife came forward from among them.
In a surprisingly elegant way, the woman said, “Master Eskiya, Baron Rostov, Master Aladdin, welcome to the Temple Zingana, dedicated to the ideals of Zarathustra. We trust your unguided tour was enlightening?”
“And whom are we addressing?” asked Yossarian, with equal suavity.
“I am Lady Petunara, Zarathustran high priestess.”
Yossarian bowed as to an equal. “I am Hagop Yossarian, servant of Zarathustra and chief priest of the Most High.”
Lady Petunara scowled at him. “You, sir, are no priest of the true word! You are a barbarous Armenian heretic! You come here to rob my people of our heritage, our pillar, and you call yourself a man of Zarathustra?”
“This certainly does complicate things,” I thought.
Lady Petunara turned and advanced gracefully upon me. In a regal tone, she cried, “And you! You must be quite the thief! The temple opens only three days a year, in the dead of winter. How did you get in to draw those pictures we found in your room and not die?”
“I simply saw the door and walked in, My Lady,” I said with a slight but humble bow. “There were no traps yesterday.”
“Impossible!” she said frostily.
Yossarian responded, “Quite possible, Lady Petunara, if the traps are sun-based. There are two times in a year when the sun crosses a certain spot in the sky. You have simply forgotten about one of them.”
Lady Petunara looked at her husband, who shrugged silently. She looked back at us and sighed. “I admit, much knowledge of the ancient lore has been lost. We are a small group and the ravages of time have recently been severe. But we will still keep our own!”
I was beginning to see a solution here. “If I may be so bold,” I interrupted, “let us consider what we each need here.
“You, Yossarian, need knowledge that you can take home to free your Armenian people from the Turkish yoke they are now under, right? And you would prefer it in the form of a scroll you can point to.”
Yossarian nodded.
“You, Petunara, want the true knowledge of what the ancient texts teach? You need to know if you’re saying the right things to your people after all these generations, don’t you?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yes,” she said.
I looked at Aladdin. “You want to impress your beloved’s family enough to make her your wife, right?”
“… Yes,” he said.
Finally I turned to the Djinni. “And you need to build understanding and faith in humanity. You think of humans as basically greedy. I think that’s because you’ve presented yourself as an easy, get-rich treasure.” I didn’t wait for any comment on that from him.
“And what I need is probably some humility. Because I honestly think I can solve all your problems!
“Djinni Abdul, I’m ready to make a wish.”
“I stand ready to grant it,” the Djinni said.
I put my arm around Aladdin’s shoulders. “I wish that you give this boy’s story a happy ending.”
Abdul frowned. “That’s a tall order. Are you sure you don’t want something for yourself, something simpler?”
“Maybe, but that wouldn’t solve either your problem or Aladdin’s. If he marries his merchant-princess and they live as happily ever after as married people ever do, that’s a good happy ending.”
The Djinni smiled and the boy laughed. “This is going to be quite a story, boy!” said Abdul.
I turned to the woman. “Lady Petunara, if you were to see the ancient text, could you read it?”
She blushed a bit. “Oh, my goodness, no! My great-great-grandmother might have stumbled through it, but not I.”
“Could you read it, Yossarian?”
“Would I have come all this way if I could not?” he snapped, then mellowed. “On second thought, perhaps I would have. But, yes, I’m sure I can. While I was a monk near Lake Van, I spent years studying copies of ancient texts.”
I turned once more to the Djinni. “I have a second wish, Abdul.”
“Yes, O Master,” he said.
I held my hands in front of me. “I wish that the ancient texts hidden among the scrolls in the cave temple be now in my hands.”
Abdul nodded, and I held two ancient scrolls. I was sure Yossarian could have identified them eventually, but between the time saved and the drama, it was worth using up a wish.
Yossarian’s jaw dropped. “That was so easy!”
I presented the scrolls to him. “I give these to you, on two conditions. You must teach Petunara and one or two of her people to read them. And you must not carry them back to Armenia until faithful transcriptions have been made to leave with her. Doing that should help in the teaching; copying is one way my father taught me.”
The two Zarathustran priests looked at each other, then clasped hands in a way that I suspected only initiates knew how to do. I gave the scrolls to Yossarian.
“There!” I said. “And Djinni Abdul, here is your lamp to use for your next adventure.
“I believe we’ve had a wonderful afternoon of problem solving.”
“But what did you get from all this, Your Excellency?” asked Aladdin.
I patted him on the shoulder. “I have a great story to tell, of bandits and thieves and ancient treasure, of honorable people, and a happy ending, which is priceless.”
-- The End --