On the six hundred and nineteenth night, Scheherazade set down her cup of rosewater and said: “Tonight, O King, I shall tell you of a prince, a horse carved from ebony, and the small peg that taught him patience.”
In the city of Shiraz, on the morning of the spring festival, a wandering craftsman arrived at the palace gates with a horse made entirely of polished black wood. Its mane was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and its eyes were two round chips of amber. “This steed,” the craftsman told the Sultan, “can gallop through the clouds faster than any falcon.”
The Sultan’s son, Prince Tamir, was young and quick and could never wait for anything. Before the craftsman had finished his explanation, Tamir leapt into the saddle and twisted the little peg behind the horse’s right ear. At once the ebony horse shot into the sky like an arrow from a bow.
Lost Among the Clouds
Higher and higher it climbed, past the storks and past the thinnest clouds, until the palace looked no larger than a sugar cube. Tamir laughed with delight, but then the cold wind bit his cheeks and he realised he had no idea how to come down. He pulled the reins. He shouted. He kicked. The horse only rose further toward the pale morning moon.
At last, trembling, the prince did what he had never done in his life: he stopped and looked carefully. Running his fingers along the smooth neck, he found a second peg, tiny and hidden, behind the left ear. He turned it slowly, and the ebony horse drifted downward like a falling leaf.
He landed on the roof of a garden palace in a distant land, where a princess named Shams was reading beneath an orange tree. She was startled at first, then amused, for the stranger arrived windswept and apologising for trampling her jasmine.
The Long Road Home
Tamir stayed many days, learning her language and telling her stories of Shiraz. When at last they flew home together, he no longer turned every peg at once. He asked, he listened, and he studied the horse before each flight.
Scheherazade smiled softly at the King. “Haste may lift you up, my lord, but only patience knows the way back down. Every wonder hides a second peg for the one who pauses to look.”
And because the first light was touching the windows, she fell silent, promising a still more marvellous tale the following night.
