The Magic Horse

Scott has adapted this story from Sir Richard Burton's The Arabian Nights with startling authenticity and splendid detail. A wizard presents a king with an ebony horse, inlaid with jewels, for which the price is the king's daughter's hand in marriage. Both the king and his daughter refuse; the wizard puts the king's sonthe Princeon the horse, which flies away with him. The Prince lands the horse on a rooftop by moonlight and enters the room of a sleeping Princess. He loves her on sight, and when she awakens, she loves him too. But they are separated by the wizard, who offers the Princess to a wealthy Sultan. The Prince, of course, saves her, and from behind a shroud of incense they rise up, on the horse, and fly home. The horse is broken up into a thousand pieces. Scott's paintings shimmer with jewel-like intensity. Her text is fluid, each word in place; a more enchanting adaptation of this story is hard to imagine. (58)