“No matter!” cried my sister. “We will find it. Take us there at once!”
The genie flew away with Tush and his sister
They Start Upon a Journey Through the Air
The genie stooped down over us, and under his right arm he gathered me up, and under his left arm he gathered up my sister. He stamped upon the earth so that it shook, and leaped into the air; and in an instant we were soaring over the treeless plain, and I was sick with dizziness. Higher and higher we mounted, with the speed of an arrow; we seemed to be flying straight into the face of the sun; I could no longer tell which was sea and which was plain below. I closed my eyes.
It was a long time before I opened them again. We were lower, and I could see the plain, flat and grassy, without a tree. The sun declined, and still we kept our course; I thought we should soon be at the end of the world; and still there were no trees anywhere on the plain below us.
I ached in every limb; I cried out, but the genie did not hear me; and when I was ready to faint with exhaustion his speed suddenly relaxed, and I saw, at the edge of the horizon before me, what was, or seemed to be, a city. And still there were no trees.
Scarcely a moment passed before the city rose in plain view; and with a swoop the genie descended upon the earth, and we were standing, all three of us, before a gate in the city wall, and my sister was arranging her hair before her mirror.
A tall and muscular man stood beside the gate, as if on guard. He was chocolate brown in color, and he was bare except for a wide cloth twisted about his middle from waist to thigh, and in his right hand he carried a scimitar, which flashed in the sunlight. I looked around for the genie, but he was gone.
“What city is this?” said I to the Guardian of the Gate.