by Ben Okri
'But so much larger and simpler and lighter now is my spirit. I thought I would become a giant, but feel myself to be an infinitely free and flying being, like an unusual bird that knows only the air between the stars.'
'So it is after a return such as you have made. Find a way to keep this new place whatever life brings you, and you will be touched with magic. It is not being a prince or king that is special, my son, but being alive to the mystery of life, and glimpsing the true wonder behind it all. To know one's true possibility is greater than being a king of all the earth, my son.'
'I believe that now, father. For the first time I know it in my being. Stories cannot be told of this.'
'They have tried, and found it better to speak indirectly about such matters, or to be silent. As we say, only the deep can talk to the deep. Rest, my son, and tomorrow arise, and greet the people, and be as normal. I return to my tasks.'
'I thank you, my father.'
'You have thanked me already by being such as you are, a special son.'
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next day the prince awoke with a new zest for living, and an unbounded and humble vitality. He leapt out of bed and faced the rising sun and, with his arms stretched out wide as if to embrace the whole world with his love, he breathed in deeply the new air and the magic rays of the sun. He breathed deeply seven times without counting and he stood gazing into the heavens and he gazed over the earth and a most profound and simple prayer of thankfulness burst from his heart. It filled him with such joy, this expression of gratitude for being alive, that he wept without knowing why. He thanked the great surge of life all around him for the good fortune of being alive. He thanked the air for being there. He thanked the sun for its warmth and its mysterious quality of light. He thanked the world for all its colours and its variety. And he thanked the magic of life for eyes to see, for ears to hear, for the feelings he felt, for his heart, for his soul, for his mouth to praise with. He thanked this great life for the beauty of the world, the animals and the plants, for living and for dying, for the sweetness of the newborn babe and the wrinkledness of the aged. He thanked life for rivers and storms, for food and for hunger, for trees, for flowers, for wild animals, for songs, for fathers and mothers, and for all contradictory things that make up life.
The prince was bursting full of a mad exultant gratitude and he breathed deeply and made himself aware of all parts of his body, from his toe to his head, and he felt the expression of life all over him inside and out, and was grateful for every inch of himself, and he went and drank pure water from the sweet wells, holding the gourd up to the sun and drinking with a smile, and he saluted the world and the hidden glory behind it all, and went and had a bath, with a song in his heart, which he allowed to surface on his lips.
And when he had bathed, washing himself all over in simple gratitude for the strange miracle of the living body, he dressed himself in clean, plain and graceful clothes, and went round the court and its environs to thank everyone personally for their prayers and the part they played in his recovery from death. He thanked every single person there was to thank. He thanked the cooks, he thanked the servants, the herbalists, the messengers, the slaves, the gardeners, the cleaners, the elders, the chiefs, the wives, the women, the daughters, and the babies.
The prince then sent emissaries all over the kingdom to convey his personal thankfulness to all the people for their kindness and their prayers which, he said, were so powerful that even the king of death was moved and allowed him to return to them healthy and renewed. He sent a simple message of gratitude to all the people, in all the regions, of all kings, all ages. And he sent his message of thankfulness beyond the kingdom, to other realms, as far and as wide as it was possible to send messages. And he sent these messages through the ordinary routes, and through dreams and moods as his father does.
Then the prince went round the village; and from hut to hut, from abode to abode, knocking on every door, he thanked all the villagers, shaking their hands, embracing them when he could, thanking the astonished men and the bewildered women, the moved young men and the shy girls with tears sparkling in their eyes like diamonds. He thanked them all. He spent many days thanking the people of the realm. He left no one out. He thanked the old men who were now blind. He thanked the old women who couldn't remember who they were. He thanked the anchorites and the hermits in the forest. He thanked the witches and the wizards. He thanked the criminals, the mad, the outcasts, the diseased, the sick, the dying, and he prayed for them too. He thanked the fishermen by the river, and the tappers of wine amongst the tall palm trees. He thanked the hunters in the woods, the farmers in the farms, the women in the marketplace, and the town criers at their wandering posts. He thanked the warriors, the sages, the priests of the shrines. He even sought out the fabled old woman of the forest who lived in isolation away from society and he found her in a foul mood, and he thanked her too. He got an earful of salty curses for presuming to intrude on her chosen solitude. Afterwards, she said powerful prayers for him. He didn't mind her foul mood anyway, because it was an adventure meeting a fabled being.
And then he sent his messengers round with his apologies to anyone in the village that he had neglected to thank for their prayers.
He spent seven days thanking every single person in the environs of the village.
He had even been seen thanking the goats and dogs and cows too, and the trees, and the river, as if they all, in some way, had aided his recovery and helped bring him back from the land of death.
By the time he had finished with his thanking he was due for another recovery. And so he stayed at home and convalesced from the exhaustion of being grateful. And when the king heard that he had taken to his bed to enjoy a second recovery the king found it so funny that he laughed throughout his dinner at the extensive tenderness of his frail son.
That night, while the prince slept, the king watched over him, and chuckled deep into the night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On the first day of his recovery, after he had performed his new morning rites, the prince set off into the forest, drawn there by an irresistible mood and longing for a golden dawn that seemed now so ancient in his memory, so far away from the present time as to be almost something that happened in another life, long ago. He stole away from the palace at dawn, after he had ceremoniously and with deep breaths greeted the rising sun, and made his way to the edges of the forest.
At first he lingered. This way his life had often drawn him in a dream. Often, in a dream, in death, he found his life's true happiness on the invisible trail through the forest to an appointment that wasn't kept, by someone he hadn't met but who he knew was the love of his life. And this loss of her, this failure to keep her promise, had somehow led to his death. And yet here he was again, on the same trail, risking a second death in a second betrayal.
He sensed, as he lingered at the edge of the forest, that all love must lead to death, of one kind or another. All love must lead to death. And out of this death a new man or woman is born. But he sensed also that love does not lead to only one death, but to several deaths; and that because of love one must keep dying and being reborn, from time to time. And that love dies only when you resist another death which love brings upon you, in order that you be reborn, and grow. That is why there are few real loves in the world, because people fear yet another death that they must endure. They count the deaths and rebirths they have undergone and say 'so many and no more, so far but no further; I will not die again for you, but intend to stay here where I am, how I am now, and here in this fixed place. I intend to build the castle of myself on this rock.'
And the prince sensed that there was no end to the deaths that love brings about, and no end to the rebirths either. Each death making us lighter, freer, simpler, more human, more vulnerable, more strong, more spiritual, more tender, and more universal. Till we become unrepresentative of our clan, tribe, country, sex, religion, or any other classification; but just a beautifully dyi
ng living being, dying and being reborn, regenerated, refined, for ever, till we become a kind of dream of light, thought the prince, without words, in a shudder, as he plunged into the cool shade of the forest.
He felt dew-beaded webs enmesh his face. He was assaulted wonderfully by all the smells of the forest, the vegetation, the sleeping earth, the breathing tree trunks, the fragrance of green and hidden living beings, the mood of tranquil spirits, the smell of flowers, of the path, of rotting leaves, of the sun yielding the odour of dew on grass, on the path, the rich marmoreal immemorial odour of the forest, which he had forgotten all the time that he had been in the kingdom of death.
Had he forgotten the trail, and where it led? Yes. He had forgotten his favoured pathway to the place by the river. But he was guided down another, down a new pathway, that led him past wonders he didn't notice or see, but which impacted on his new spirit, his new self, and which he would see later in his dreams, and upon awakening would wonder where such sights had come from, where such marvellous visions had their origin. For he passed through many worlds in the forest, all of them invisible and intangible, and all of them real. These things too are written in the book of life among the stars.
The prince was still quite weak; but he had a great appetite for life, a great hunger to live, to see, to feel. No longer did he want to dream. He had done all his dreaming in the land of death. He had dreamt his life through, dreamt it to its dregs. He had dreamt everything in advance, and knew, somewhere in him, that some of what he had dreamt was provisional, and could be changed, depending on what he did, what forces he put into motion; but, regardless, he now wanted to live right through. He wanted to live it all, with open eyes, and an enlightened spirit. He wanted to live the great challenge of his life, and to square the impossible circle of destiny by the feat of his loving will, and his vision. He wanted to be the conqueror of his own life, of himself. Others, he knew, were famous for conquering the world. He wanted to conquer himself, his destiny, his fate, with the simple power of love. That was his modest desire, this frail prince of a laughing realm.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
And so he set off through the forest, and wandered a long time, through that dawn, as the sun shone its sharp clear warm rays through the fingers of leaves and branches. The forest was new to him, and had become full of more stories in its mood than it had been before. He lost his way and found new paths and pursued a dimly intuited course in a direction that was as vague to him as a dream disappearing upon awakening. Lost in the forest, he wandered the paths that pleased him, and made many discoveries. He came upon quite a few huts of isolated dwellers in the great forest. And whenever he passed one of these lonely huts an old man or an old woman would be sitting outside the door watching him with tranquil eyes. And when he greeted them they would smile and stay silent. The prince began to think that he was encountering the same person, the same old man who changed further on into an old woman, sitting outside a hut that wasn't really there. Always smiling, never speaking.
The prince was done with dreams. He wanted to be, to act, to do. He didn't even mind the idea of suffering. The forest changed all around him. He passed a crowded feast of the dead and didn't recognise those who had loved him as a child because he didn't see them. They watched him wander through their feast in sadness that he didn't see. But he paused just after he had passed their midst, and he looked back, and looked round, and gave a shiver, and carried on. And one or two of the dead wanted to go after him and tell him how much affection they felt for him, but they were restrained by the others. And they watched him go, knowing that soon he would join them, for time is short among the dead, time is fast.
The prince soon broke the confusion of so many paths and found himself by the river where he had left his heart among the wild flowers. And he found his familiar spot in the bushes. It was much changed now. The rains had made the vegetation more luscious, and the parting among the branches where he nestled and watched the shore was quite overgrown and had forgotten him altogether. So he made a new place for himself there; and with a heart beating fast to a new expectation, he waited with a dream to see if a dream he'd had would come true on this the first day of his freedom from death.
But there by the river, he fell into a mild hallucination in which he saw a shrine sailing down the river on a yellow boat. He saw the oracle wandering about, babbling. He saw the oracle sinking. He saw the shrine of the oldest god flying in the air. The shoreline was full of spirits and strange beings; they were holding a great meeting. Then he saw a white form dancing in pure light on the water, turning, spiralling, dispersing a radiance everywhere that was pure sweetness to the blinded eyes, and when it was gone there was darkness.
Then the prince saw figures with metal chains linking their legs and wrists. They were being led by cloud-coloured men with hats on their heads. They had guns and they had servants with them who carried luggage and who kept the chained figures in control. The chained figures were often whipped. Then they were bundled on to boats and borne away into the blinding reflections of the river. He heard their poignant lament from beyond the horizon, as if they were drowning in the land where the sun went to after it had left the sky of the kingdom ...
The prince did not understand what he saw, and took it for another vision. And he went back home, taking a more familiar route. He was more troubled than before. What he had seen had awoken in him a profound unease that had been sleeping in him, and growing while it slept.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The world that the prince saw now was not the world he saw before his illness. It was a different world, and much had changed in it, subtly. The kingdom that he saw now was different from the one he saw before his long illness. Something had changed in the air. There seemed to be more gaps between things, between trees, between huts and houses, between people. He noticed these gaps everywhere, and he didn't understand. Then, after a while, he wasn't sure if what he noticed were absences, or if they were actual things. These gaps, were they substances? Or were they simply spaces? This puzzled him.
The next day that he set out to the forest, bound for his watching place near the river, where he still hoped that one day the dream he sought might return, he noticed the gaps as if for the first time. They seemed real. And when he noticed them he began to see them everywhere, again. He saw the gaps spreading between the trees, obliterating them, slowly. He saw these gaps along the shore, obliterating the edges of the river, till he witnessed, in mesmerised amazement, the apparent shrinking of the waters on the shoreline. He noticed the gaps appear among the bushes, the plants, the shrubs. He rubbed his eyes, convinced that he was somehow dreaming with eyes wide open the gradual disappearance of the natural world that he knew. He rubbed his eyes, and yet it continued to happen, and he continued to see gaps sprout between things. He saw holes appear in the river, and he expected the water to drain away, but it didn't. He saw holes appear on the shore. He saw gaps spread in the sky, and birds flew into these gaps, and never reappeared. This truly troubled him and, without waiting too long, he hurried home to ponder this new terrifying phenomenon.
When he got home to the palace he went straight to bed, and covered himself with a blanket, and shut his eyes to the world. But even in his sleep, the gaps appeared. There were strange gaps in his dreams.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next day the prince arose, performed his rites of awakening, and set about the kingdom. He did not go to his watching place that day. He went about the kingdom like a beggar, and he looked, using his eyes as he had never done before. And what he saw astounded him. He saw gaps everywhere, growing. He saw gaps in people's faces, gaps in their eyes, he heard gaps in their voices, gaps in their words. Some of the mothers had given birth to babies that were part gaps, part human. He was frightened by this.
'Where are the gaps coming from?' he asked himself, aloud. 'Have they always been there and I am just noticing them now, or are they recent?'
He asked questions of people, and he
realised their minds were full of gaps. There were gaps in the history, gaps in the traditions, gaps in their reasoning, gaps in their knowledge, gaps in their laughter, gaps in their suffering. He saw people whose hands were disappearing, whose faces were turning into gaps, who walked on one leg because their other leg had been eaten away by the gaps, but they didn't know it. Apparently no one else saw the gaps in them or around them. But the prince saw the gaps spreading in the villages, gaps in the dances, in the drumming, gaps in the farms. He said to the people:
'Where are the gaps coming from?'
But no one seemed to know what he was talking about. So he sought out the wise men and women of the kingdom, to find answers to his anguished questions ...
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
