If you don’t know what story cubes are, see the introduction to the story cubes series.
To see the original roll of the story cubes, see yesterday’s post.
A foreign king in his palace had a thirst for blood that could not be quenched. He selected a girl and said if she could tell him a worthy story, he would let her live until tomorrow… otherwise she would be slaughtered like a sheep.
So she spoke for her life, told stories as if her life depended on it: tales of faraway lands and exotic fruits, of heroes and thieves, beggars and genies. She put him under a spell for a thousand nights and a night.
It seems I’ve had quite a few “book report” type of stories lately. That’s because it’s hard to top One Thousand and One Nights, so I wasn’t even going to try this week. It’s the source of so many familiar stories. Even if you’ve never read it (the version I have above is 733 pages), you know stories from it: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad, and Aladdin at the very least. It might (although I can’t say for certain) have influenced William Goldman when he wrote about the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride as Westley recounts how his own life was saved: “Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning,”
It also inspired an outstanding piece of classical music, Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Even if you don’t like classical, give the first 90 seconds a try:
The comments section is the perfect place for what you came up with. I’m sure you did better than I did this week!
I'd love to hear from you!