Might as well finish up this block of EH:

The Tale of the Jinniyah and the King

Oh, this should be fun.

     "It is told (but only the Eye of God is All-seeing!)

Watcher: No, that's my line.

that

long ago and far away there was once a young king.  Now this king
was a bad king, for he coveted the lands of neighboring kingdoms
and wasted his soldiers in foolish invasions; he was greedy for
money, and so he taxed his people until they groaned for mercy,
and then he taxed them yet more; and he lusted for the pleasures
of the flesh... but I will not describe his cruel ways with
women, for there are children present.

But isn't that what all people who lose to such kings say? :)

     "It came to this king's ears that there slept, on the
Forbidden Island where no one goes (because it is forbidden,
among other reasons), a jinni of great power who would grant
three wishes to whosoever awoke it from its sleep.  The king
immediately bethought himself of the power and riches and harem
he might gain by mastering this jinni, and his avaricious dreams
overcame his feeble wisdom.

He can't be that unwise if he was king and managed to maintain his hold on
power. :P

'
  So the king commanded that a ship be

prepared, provisioned with the finest viands and crewed by the
most skilled sailors and navigators of his kingdom,

What he got were a crew full of drunks and a captain that had crashed the
last five ships he commanded.

     "As the king approached, he saw that the jinni was in fact a
jinniyah.

But her being Jewish meant nothing to him, for of all the king's foibles,
racism was not one of them: He held everyone in equal contempt.

 Her face was as fair as a pearl without flaw,

In fact it was one, which made for a very weird looking jinniyah

her hair

was the color of the great ice cliffs at the top of the world,
and her body was a vision out of the lustful dreams of men,

homosexual ones, which meant she looked like how a good female friend would
appear rather than how heterosexual males want their women to look like.

richly clad in clothing of a bygone age.  Floating above her was
a great staff in the shape of a key.

Phayllic imagery abounded.

     "And when the king had recovered, dashing the tears of pain
from his eyes, lo! he saw that the jinniyah now stood upright
upon the air at the foot of her bed, and yet it seemed that she
still slept.  At this, the king remembered the proper legend, and
recalled that the jinniyah must be awakened by

having hot sex with her.

 the winding of a

key, and realized that he held the key in his hand.  He sought
eagerly beneath her clothing, and there at the small of her back
he found a socket, and thrust the tip of

his ten inch long [deleted].

     "At this, the jinniyah stepped forward and wrested the staff
from the king as easily as though she were wresting a lollipop
from a baby, muttering unto herself, 'Another idiot, after all
these years.'  She examined the king with her cerulean eyes,
nodded to herself, and addressed him thusly: 'Hast thou sold thy
soul to Shaitan, lord of all evil beings?'

King: No. I sold it to Beelzabib, the Cole Slaw Demon. Merely an evil side
order to Shaitan.

     "'Not bloody likely,' the king replied.  'Now, about my
wishes--'

     "'Canst thou abjure me by the Names of the Marids of the
four quarters?'

King: Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo.

Jinniyah: Bugger. He got it right. They usually forget Zeppo.

     "The jinniyah took no notice of him, continuing in a voice
replete with doom: 'But I also vowed that if the third thousand
years began and I still slept, it would be a sign that all men
had become cowards (not at all like the daring adventurers we had
in the old days), and I vowed that whomsoever would awaken me,
him I would slay with great care and attention to detail.'

King: Hey! If I had been around in any of the previous two-thousand years, I
would have been here earlier, okay? Don't come down on my ass cause everyone
before me were wussies.

     "The jinniyah grinned, a grin as beautiful and terrible as
the unsheathing of a brightly-polished scimitar, and said, in a
voice like the clicking of abacus beads: 'Three thousand, one
hundred and seventeen years, forty-two days, three hours, eleven
minutes, and sixteen seconds.'

Jinniyah: And I have to go the bathroom really bad now.

to his attention (which shows the wisdom of listening to humble
tale-tellers such as myself), was that this jinniyah was an
ifritah.  She was, in fact, the most powerful of the evil ifrits
who had consumed the many-towered cities of the world in the
Great War of legend which ended when the Eye of God blinked for
the first time.  In a time long before the king awakened her, but
long after that war, the jinniyah was a slave of whoever wound
her key, and would go to and fro at her master's command and kill
any and all whom he willed.  But it came to pass that she fell in
love with her master's arch-enemy, a young sage of great wisdom
and kindness, and refused to kill him despite her master's
orders.

I see where this chronoligically takes place now. Cute.

 For his part, the sage was filled with pity and love for

her, and set her free from her slavery, for he saw that she
repented the evil deeds she had done.  Together they vanquished
those who assailed them, and saved this magnificent world
thereby.  That was only the first of their adventures together,
and they had many more...

Until he died because he had contracted a case of syphillis. It wasn't from
the syphillis, mind you. It was because he had it and the jinniyah didn't.

     "After the death of the sage, the people of the kingdom
feared the jinniyah, for they remembered her power, and now she
had no master but her own will.  Now, no part of her will (which
also now encompassed the will of the sage, you will remember)
desired any harm to come to the kingdom or its people, and indeed
she had done much for their benefit.  But their fear did not
abate, and the sight of this saddened her, so that she resolved
to return to her ancient refuge, there to sleep away the years
dreaming dreams of Paradise shared with her beloved.

Rather than actually try to live a life of her own. How sad.

     "As a consequence of the presence of the sage's soul within
her,

Hmm. Here's a problem. If this tale is known, and if it's widely accepted
that Makoto's soul is within her, then this in a way is virtual immortality
for him. One wonders why others who would seek such a form of eternal life
hadn't come after Ifurita to duplicate this amazing feat.

     "They walked all the way back to his kingdom, and the
adventures they had on the way (though those are-- yes, yes, you
know, they are stories for another time) began to teach the young
king the value of courtesy, of honesty, and of keeping one's
pantaloons buttoned.

But mostly, it taught him how to bide his time and wait for the proper
moment to strike his foes dead. He would do such when it came to this
Ifurita. Already his mind bubbled with various ideas as to how this might be
accomplished from his time spent with her.

Odd how that's never the moral of the story. It's by my experience what far
more people would learn in such a situation that the 'good lesson for the
day' bit. ^_^

     The audience gathered in the village marketplace was silent
for a while, hoping that that was not the end of the tale, but it
was.  And then a brave child asked, "Did all that really happen?"

     The tale-teller laughed, not loud or long, but with such joy
and love of life that the hearts of all who heard were lightened
by it.  "Oh, yes, it all really happened," she said.

Tale-teller: I know it for a fact because despite my outward appearance, I'm
really a XV80-Cleanser unit from five thousand years ago. My sole purpose
was to deactivate Ifurita units when their command nodules were neutralized,
lest they run out of control and try to destroy their creators. When I was
accidentily activated by a fisherman a hundred years ago, and came across
the Ifurita unit, I executed my primary directive and shut her down,
downloading all of her memories into me.

Child: That's terrible. Why did you tell us the story of the Jinniyah and
the King that's what really happened in the end?

Tale-teller: Because that's the real moral of the story: there are no
guarentees that you can live happily ever after no matter how powerful you
think you are and all the precautions you take.

Child: That sucks.

Tale-teller: That's life. Deal with it. Now shoo away before I decide to
shut you down next.


Seriously, though. Very nice story. Flowed well and it was an amusing thing
to read. Classic fable set in the EH world. Liked it.

D.B. Sommer



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