Joy Prior
Book Report: A Book of a 1,000 Days
Author: Shannon Hale
Professor Young
Sections from the book
Day 1
My lady and I are being shut up in a tower for seven years.
Lady Saren is sitting on the floor, staring at the wall, and hasn’t moved even to scratch for an hour or more. Poor thing. It’s a shame I don’t have fresh yak dung or anything strong-smelling to scare the misery out of her.
I nearly warned him that such words would bring him bad luck and canker his own heart. Thank the Ancestors that my lady’s fit stopped me from speaking out of turn. When I pulled her back, her hands were red from beating at the bricks and streaked with wet cement. This isn’t exactly a happy-celebration morning, but I don’t see what good it does to thrash about.
“Easy, my lady,” I said, the way I’d speak to a feisty ram. It wasn’t too hard to hold my lady back, even squirming as she was. I’m fifteen years, and though skinny as a skinned hare, I’m strong as a yak, or so my mama used to say. I sang the calming song, the one that goes, “oh, moth on a wind, oh, leaf on a stream,” and invites the hearer into dreaming. I feared my lady was so angry she wouldn’t heed the song. But she must’ve been eager to sleep, because now she’s snoring on my lap. Happily the brush and ink are at hand so I can keep writing. When you can’t move, there isn’t much to do but think, and I don’t much want to think right now.
Page 1 to page 2
“My lady, I’m Dashti. I’m your new maid.”
“You can’t be, they’re all hiding from me because they don’t want-“ She considered me. “What is your name?”
“Dashti, my lady,” I told her again.
She hopped off her bed and grabbed my wrist, but tight. Her swiftness and force startled me. “Swear you’ll serve me, Dashti. Swear you won’t abandon me. Swear it!”
Page 15
Golden Lines
Mama saying…
“You have to know someone a thousand days before you can glimpse her soul."
“'Are you sad? Then just wait a minute.”
Questions
What was the mother of Lady Saren doing this whole time? Was she killed before the girls were locked up in the tower? Does Saren have any siblings?
What “group” did the two men who came to plunder the tower belong to?
Alternative Book Report
A story from Dashti’s childhood
Mama looks up when she hears me walking towards her. Her hair blows like tree branches in the wind across her checks and nose. I try to roll the sticks out of my arm into a pile near the fire but the nobs on the sticks leave white scratches on my arms and the pile looks scattered and meager. I smile when I look up at mama, knowing one day I will bring her the biggest, most sticks any one could carry.
I don’t look like mama. Mama looks like she belongs in the trees and the wind. My face is red; I have a red splotch across my face. I don’t belong in the world.
She smiles at me and opens her arms. Her red shall drapes across her arms, and I fall into the folds of her red shall. I belong to mama. The Ancestors were kind to give me a mama I belong to.
I like how she smells. Her clothes smell like dirt and her hair smells like sweet rice and smoke. I rub my red check against her and she cuddles me close. I am still little enough that I fit in her arms even when she is sitting. Through the waves of scruffy red I can hear the rhythm of her heart beat, and then she starts singing.
Her voice is warms my cold fingers. It starts a fire in my chest that flickers and licks up my bones and around my wrists and ankles until I it feels as if my fingers are candle wicks and I fell all a glow. She lets me stay in her lap while she stirs the soup and keeps singing. A few lumps and roots float to the top, and I count them out loud to myself.
I feel her ribs shiver through the red shall and I wrap my hands wrap around her trying to warm her like how her singing warms me. My arms are too short to make it all around her hunched over frame, but I don’t let go. She kisses my red check and I open my eyes, not realizing I had been squinting. She brushes my hair back with her fingers, and sings again.
She sings so slow I can watch the words her lips are making. I sing too. Only the words I know, only the notes I remember, but I can hear my voice and mama’s voice.
