The sultan lay in his bedchamber, cooing to his harem.

He called to his favorite concubine, who approached shyly and lay beside him, warming her feet, which were cold from the marble floor.
She whispered a poem very softly to herself. She imagined the artifice in the sultan's bedchamber, wooden animals and silken tapestries gathered. She lay on a feather bed and the sultan lay a bunch of grapes on her face.
"Eat, darling." He spoke milk.
She ate them, and they were very sweet grapes. She rested a moment.
The sultan puckered his lips next to her ear, making kissing sounds. He touched her inner thigh and touched her necklace, inlaid with lapis.

She kissed his earlobe and asked him a question in a moment of intimacy: "What, my liege, do you most fear?"
He pressed the sides of her face with his warm hands, which were slightly damp. He responded calmly. "I cannot tell you what I most fear." He kissed her over and over. "I cannot tell you what I most fear, sweet mistress, because then you will use it to exploit me."
The concubine massaged his chin. "I am certain of the care I may take when thinking of you." She nestled and paused, breathing. "I may tell you what I fear, however."
The sultan did not move. He snorted in mock exasperation. "Perhaps you ought not."
The concubine massaged his chin again. "But I shall now. I fear ruining the moments we share, or sullying the great affection we have for one another."
He clapped his hand over her mouth.
She spoke into it, "I fear this so, every day I live. I cannot move or breathe from this fear."

The sultan rose from his feather bed and ate an apricot, tossing the pit into bed next to her. "You will do well to plant this in the garden. Nurture it and cause it to grow large and fruitful. That is all that remains for it, the stone."
She took the stone and placed it underneath her pillow every night for two years before finally planting it in the countryside on one of her many trips. It was stunted and bore a multitude of minuscule and inedible fruit.

A cockatoo in the cage of the sultan's bedchamber spoke of fear when offered crackers, and this could never be trained out of the bird. It was killed and buried in the garden, next to a rose bush, which bloomed very brightly and fully.