Slave of the Lamp

      Janine Ashbless

       Rub it! Rub it harder! Oh – oh, yes! Don’t stop! Yes, I’m coming!

      In an indigo-hued cloud I gush forth from the neck of the Lamp, swelling immensely. Flesh thickens into solidity as it contacts the air. New skin, the colour of a twilight sky, webs across sheets of muscle. I open my just-formed mouth to take great breaths, smelling wild sage and dust, incense and cardamom and the hated stink of humanity. Then I stretch my limbs and groan with the indescribable pleasure of incarnation.

      There’s plenty of room to stretch. I am outdoors this time. As I blink my eyes into focus I see I’m standing in a broad valley walled by yellow hills. Around me kneel the Children of Earth, their faces hidden in their sleeves. They are so small that I might crush one into the dirt with the ball of my bare foot, and I laugh in contempt. My shout booms from the cliff faces.

      ‘Djinni!’ Only one figure does not kneel or avert her gaze. She stands in her royal robes under a canopy, surrounded by a sea of bowed heads, and she looks at me without flinching. Her hair is like the mane of a lion, though the pelt across her shoulder is that of a leopard. A broad collar of gold lies upon her breasts, and in her hands sits the Lamp.

      Bilqis: Queen of the Land of Sheba. Under the necklace, the jut of her breasts is most enticing to the eye.

      ‘Djinni,’ she says, in that throaty voice, ‘you should appear in more seemly guise.’

      I glance down at myself, pleased by what I see. Every inch of my flesh thrills to the sensation of release from confinement, my male member no less than the rest. It stands as solid as the central pillar of a temple, and as blue as a storm cloud. I grasp it in my fist, caressing it lovingly, rediscovering that particular pleasure.

      ‘Does it not please you, mistress?’ I ask, grinning at her. My cock is hot and full, and so hard that if I lay upon a mountaintop I could prop up the dome of the sky with it. And it has not escaped my notice that the mortal queen stands almost exactly as tall as it does. I might wear her as an ornament. That mental picture is gratifying.

      She jerks her head, and I am pleased to have discomfited her. I give myself a stroke and my cock springs back and slaps against the hard wall of my stomach.

      ‘Cover yourself!’ she mouths. Then, louder: ‘I command it.’

      I shrug, trying not to show my prickling irritation. I cannot disobey, of course. She summoned me from the Lamp, and I am its slave. With the mere lift of an eyebrow I attire myself in loose turquoise-blue trousers, then I tuck my swollen glans behind the waistband. I put my fists on my hips, largely to stop me reaching down and sweeping into ruin the whole verminous swarm at my feet. ‘Your every whim is as divine law to me, mistress,’ I say silkily.

      She relaxes a little. She is beautiful – no longer with the fawn-like charm of youth, to be sure, but lushly curved – yet she stands upon her modesty among men, as I remember. I comprehend how my naked masculinity must disturb the peace of her woman’s mind, like a wild bull rampaging through a tidy garden.

      ‘I have a task for you, djinni,’ she says.

      A baby wails.

      My interest sharpens as I recall that she was pregnant the last time I saw her, though now her womb is empty. Looking among the entourage crouching in the dirt, I spot the small form cradled in the crook of a nursemaid’s arm. It appears to be trying to escape from its captivity. The girl pulls it to her anxiously.

      ‘Is that the child?’ I ask, my voice a rumble like distant thunder. ‘Is that the get of Solomon the Wise?’ It is hard to conceal my loathing of that name and Bilqis casts a sharp, maternal glance over her shoulder, bristling.

      ‘He is my son,’ she says. ‘And it is my command that you never bring him to harm.’

      ‘A son?’ I laugh, wanting to hurt. ‘After sixty generations of queens in Sheba?’

      ‘My son,’ she repeats, warningly. ‘And he will be great among the kings of the world. And you will kneel before him. Now.’

      I clench my teeth. Then I sink to my knees and press my forehead to the earth. I have no choice.

      ‘Djinni,’ she says, mollified, ‘I have a task for you.’

      ‘Mistress.’

      ‘Vizier, show him the plans.’

      I raise myself to hands and knees in order to look down at a bent old man with a grey beard, who comes forward unfurling a scroll. He looks like he is about to soil his silk robe in fear. He can’t even look me in the face. On the parchment is a picture of what seems to be a wall.

      ‘Do you see?’ says Bilqis. ‘I want you to build me a dam right across the Wadi Dhana here. To those measurements. With sluice gates at either end, as depicted – so that, when the river runs full again, water may be trapped here and used to irrigate the land around. Do you understand, djinni? It must be built of stone and fit to stand for a thousand years. That is my command.’

      I dig my talons into the sand. But part of me recognises that I would rather be out here, even slaving as a menial builder for her, than be confined again inside the Lamp. It is a welcome respite.

      ‘To hear, mistress, is to obey.’

      * * *

      I was a parting gift. Imagine that, if you can! King Solomon gave me to her as a slave, the day she gathered up her entourage and set out from Jerusalem on the long journey home. She carried another farewell present inside her belly that day, though I do not think he knew about that. The unformed seedling in her belly was a blazing fire to my eye, but I was certainly not about to volunteer any such information to him.

      The arrogance of the man takes my breath away still. He’d had lamps of brass and gold made to hang in his palace – each one the shape of a tear, as if the sun itself had wept. Into each lamp he’d bound one of my brothers or sisters, so that their undying flames might illuminate his stinking slovenly rooms. Can you comprehend such an obscenity – the Firstborn, the Children of Fire, the Lords of the Sky and the Earth, imprisoned and made to light up the corners of some miserable little sandstone palace in a backwater shit-hole? I, who have stood upon the ziggurats of Uruk and Harappa and Babylon, and had emperors cast their crowns at my feet! I, who have walked the Walls of the Earth, and looked over into the star-strewn void!

      Solomon the Wise, eh? Solomon the Sorcerer. His people profess to abhor the magical arts, but he is the most cunning, ruthless and puissant of wizards. He has dug secrets out of the underworld and tricked the divine names from the lips of angels.

      Bilqis knows all that, of course. She sought him out because his wisdom and learning were renowned, even