Salaam

This is from a dream I had this morning. It was all grand and adventurous, so I thought it merited being written up into a short story. Dreams can be a bit weird here and there and not connect in places, so I'm using artistic license to help the flow. For those who don't know, a tasbeeh or subha is a rosary/'necklace of beads' used for dhikr.

Quote:

It was night in the market place but traders still crowded around the stalls. In the shallow light of flaming torches, men in turbans and coloured robes traded goods and information.
In a corner underneath one of the torches sat a group of three such men, in somewhat shabbier garb. I approached them and was invited into their circle. They were discussing something of great importance, something about the evil that was afoot. The armies of darkness were gathering and the fate of mankind was in peril. They charged me with the duty of saving the world and placed into my possession two powerful artefacts, without which, I could not complete my mission. Two tasbeehs of great power!
One of them was very beautiful and made from hallowed items that gave the tasbeeh its phenomenal power. The other was plainer looking but had been the tasbeeh of a great shaykh and was imbued with some of his power.
I took the artefacts and made to set out on my mission when I bumped into a cloaked traveller. The night had faded into dawn without my noticing it and the traveller uttered a blessing and left me. That was when the guards fell upon me and I found myself dragged across the empty square which had only moments ago hosted the market. The three men were gone and instead there was a great crowd baying for my blood.
I was dragged around to the back of a large building whilst the gallows were being prepared in the square. I lay on the floor panting; the tasbeehs clutched tight to my chest, whilst four guards paced around me, my death was imminent.

Suddenly, an ice-cream van came roaring into the yard and a length of rope was tossed out of a window to me! I grabbed hold of it and the van revved up and began to drive. The guards pulled out guns and started firing at me, but I held the tasbeehs out and the bullets were miraculously deflected away. The guards looked confused and started crying because they had got separated form the other guards. I told them to go round the building into the great square and they would find lots of other guards. They were so happy to hear this that they smiled and waved as I escaped.
Then the van was out of the yard and was dragging me after it. I climbed up the rope and onto the ice cream van and we quickly left the town behind. But then the driver decided to ditch the van. H e got out I saw it was the hooded traveller I'd met earlier on. We raced away together through green hills and got lost.

Somehow we picked up a man, a woman and a small, violent dwarf called Frenchie. We also found ourselves a sled that we managed to power with the tasbeehs and were making our way over the hills.
A dark figure came racing towards us from behind and we as it got closer we saw it was an evil witch, with her henchman son. They were travelling on a sled powered by huskies and they were getting closer all the time. Everyone aboard the sled started to panic, we thought we were dead for sure. This was one nasty witch and we knew she had a penchant for violent murder!
Their sled got close to ours and I strained hard, willing the sled to go faster and it probably would have too, if we hadn't hit the mud. The ground suddenly turned muddy and boggish and the sled lost speed, this didn’t affect the witch much though, whose sled breasted the hill and rocket towards us and then her son was reaching for the sled and she was making homicidal sweeping gestures with her clawed hands.
The woman on our sled started screaming as the witch's son reached forward to grab the sled but Frenchie, bless his little heart, leapt at him and hammered his violent little fists into the henchman's face. This stunned the behemoth and the barrage from the best, bare-knuckle fighter in the dwarven aristocracy continued.
Thankfully it was enough and as night fell we managed to shake them. We left the sled and climbed a small hill and found ourselves in a dark but cosy dwelling.

Their, we met two other men who seemed to have knowledge of our mission. They were elderly in appearance and sagacious in manner. They seated us in a circle and told us that I was the guardian of the tasbeehs and only those tasbeehs would defeat the great evil and only I knew how to use them. To guide us on our mission they summoned forth a powerful helper. A mist coalesced and from it strode forth the help, the daughter of a great saint.
Now during this mad escape-cum-journey I had been having thought of weaving together the two tasbeehs into an artefact of tremendous power and using this new weapon to take on the forces of evil head to head and destroy them! That was the master plan but I could seem to get my fingers around the fiddly sewing that would be involved. I revealed my plan to seated fellowship and showed held the tasbeehs up for inspection. Everyone marvelled at them and one of them asked which was the most powerful. I said in my opinion it was the one which had belonged to the shaykh because it had the power of a living saint permeating through its beads. With everyone's attention now on the new arrival, the daughter, I decided to collect the tasbeehs and realised they were missing. I made every stand up and look around but they had gone. I told every one that they were suspects and I was going to find a way of checking them all to see who had stolen them. They weren't happy with this because they thought we were friends, but I told them with cold logic that if we were the only ones who had been there when the tasbeehs were lost, the culprit was one of us.

I didn't get to search them though because it transpired that a woman I'd been betrothed to many years ago had turned up to marry me. I was whisked away to the palace of my parents and there was a crowd of impostors all pretending to be my potential wife. Then I remembered my betrothed was called 'One-eye'. So I called for One-eye and the assembled women parted and this alien with half of her face wrinkled and misshapen stepped forward. She had one good eye and one alien eye and she had an uncouth manner which my parents found to be quite rude. After making a few tasteless jokes we got married and spent the night at the palace.

I woke in the middle of the night and, restless from the time spent with my bride, went wandering around the palace kitchens. There I had a vision of someone giving me instructions for the next part of my mission. At this point I should mention that this presence had been guiding me all along the mission so I was not that surprised to hear him speaking. What was surprising though was that for the first time I could see him. He soon realised I was looking at him and panicked as I recognised whop he was. The cloaked wanderer who had accompanied me on the journey. The vision ended and I realised he had been sent to betray me; I grabbed his throat and began to throttle him, wondering why he would help me if it was just a front to corrupt the mission.

Then I woke up.