Chapter 36
The king—who was so wealthy that he never ate twice from the same golden dish, and who could have spent the rest of his life counting the jewels in his vaults and died without seeing them all—said that she could have anything in the world that she wanted. Gold, jewels, spices, slaves—"Name it," he said, "and it will be yours." But all that she asked was to be admitted to his private garden. This, and nothing else, she craved. And this was the one thing in the world that he said he couldn't give her. *** She'd been born a slave, the youngest of nine children and the smallest, and also the only one to live to an age where she could work. This was in the time when people thought the world had just four corners, and that a camel could carry you from one end of it to the other, and that b
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