by Ben Okri
And she was there, as in a dream that time forgot, in the perfect enchantment of a lifetime. The prince, upon seeing her, and without knowing why, began to weep silently, with a smile in his soul as warm and tender as the young sun in its moment of early gold.
At that same moment, the girl who stood apart called out to her companions and they gathered about her in a circle and she said:
'My friends, I feel today a special sadness, as if at last a god has given me all I ever wished for, but I can't see it because I am such a fool. How can this be?'
And her companions giggled at her riddle and danced around her in a circle, singing their ditty, in sweet melodies, without giving her an answer.
And she turned and turned with their dancing till she was quite dizzy and then beyond dizzy and began to dance herself and then they all began a game of chasing one another up and down the shore and into the forest and back again.
And then the prince noticed that she was alone. They had come to do their washing on the stones of the river and the morning had cleansed away their task; and their games, which were their celebration at their task's end, were over. They had eaten fruits and laughed and talked of suitors and mimicked the various men characters in the life of the tribe and had shared dreams and notions and had borne their sundry buckets on their heads and had gone back to their homes. And only the one who stood apart now lingered at the river, as if waiting for its god, or for a voice, to address her, as once it did, when she was more innocent. But when nothing happened, when she waited, and sang a little, and looked about her expectantly, and a wind bore down on her, making her tremble a little, she decided to return home. She now had three flowers in her hand, which she played with. One was yellow, another blue, and the third one was red, and she seemed to love them all.
She seemed also to fall into a happy smile of a half-dream as she made her way through the flowering plants and into the forest.
When she had looked about her expectantly the prince had the desire to speak to her, but a wiser urge made him hold his peace. At last he was learning the lesson of the heron, his personal bird-spirit. He kept silent when he most wanted to express that within him which was too much to express. And he watched her as if his soul had left his body and had joined her being for ever. But he kept still. And he breathed gently properly, as if he were breathing in the sweet life of the sun itself. And when she started to wander away from the river, he had no choice but to follow. He had no idea if this was the right thing to do or not, but as the moon draws the tides, or the sun setting in the west draws our gaze homewards, so he found himself following this dream of his life that had at last come alive.
She moved gently among the shadows in the forest. She alone of all the girls bore no bucket on her head. She had come empty-handed, to keep her friends company in their tasks, and was leaving with flowers. Her slender form and smiling walk delighted the imps of the forest.
CHAPTER TWENTY–TWO
She seemed merely to be wandering. Wandering in a dream. The prince followed her through the trees that her presence made magical. Everything that she went past changed with her passing. He followed her through new villages where sculptures of him rose from the shrines. He saw the sculptures but did not recognise them for what they were. She went down into a valley and emerged into another forest that was blue within the shade of its trees. It was a complicated journey. She seemed on a private ritual of discovering the world about her. Often she would stop to gaze at the trees as if looking for something or someone within them. Often she would feel their trunks and tap them and listen to their interiors. She behaved quite strangely, and this fascinated the prince.
And then, at a certain junction, where paths met, and where you could have a clear sight of the sky, and where the air fairly bristled with unaccountable whispers, she did something quite amazing. She suddenly stopped, and became alert, and awake, and stood very still, like a warrior waiting for a sign before charging into battle. Then she looked to the left and to the right, she looked above and then below, and the prince watched in baffled astonishment as she stepped into one of the gaps between the trees. She walked into the gap and disappeared completely, as if into a dream, or as if from a dream fading in daylight. And he hesitated for one moment only before he hurried and leapt into the same gap between things that she had vanished into; and on the other side he found himself in quite a different world, the same world but different. He found himself in the same place as he was before he leapt into the gap between things, but it was strange. The shadows were still blue. He was still in the same forest. The junction where the paths met still quivered with enigmas. But it was not the same. In the distance he saw her walking and singing to herself along the forest path that was like a rough ribbon of subdued gold amid banks of wild greens and high trees. He saw her stop and talk to a snail on the path and saw her lift the snail and place it among the plants on the other side.
Not long afterwards he followed her into the dazzling environs of her village, where the fabled tribe of artists lived and created in secrecy and to maximum effect, in the unseen spaces of the kingdom.
CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE
Following the principle of the heron, the prince made himself indistinct and indistinguishable and managed to wander among the tribe of artists without drawing attention to himself. And so he was able to see into what building she entered, that was her home; and so he was able to make discreet enquiries and learn something about her family. He explored the environs of the village, lingered in the palm-wine bars, asked further questions from fellow drinkers, and contemplated spending the night at the edge of the forest. But he had visions of eating raw tuberous roots and not sleeping for all the noises of wild animals circulating the darkness and he imagined himself being devoured by wild beasts if he so much as dozed off, and so he decided to return home instead. But he was lucky that day, for as he set off home he saw her leave her house and he followed her round the edges of the village, past the shrine, into the woods, and saw her step into another gap which shone like a little moon barely visible in daylight. And when he hurriedly stepped through that gap as well he caught sight of her disappearing into an unusual-looking hut with an ordinary door. She was in there a long time. Then just as he was about to leave someone came out of the door and looked around. The man who came out had eyes like those of a wild eagle. He was clearly a man of mysteries in the fullness of his powers. He looked about him, as if sensing something new in the air; then, uttering a few potent incantations, he withdrew into the hut, leaving some mysterious quivering form of his spirit lingering outside, still watching, till that too faded into afterglows.
The prince didn't linger a moment longer, but hurried home the way he had come. He was careful to return through all the gaps, thereby making sure that he left nothing of himself behind and that he didn't get trapped in the forest, or lost in a world he did not know, a world, maybe, of forest dreams, and legends.
CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR
The more the elders of the kingdom tried to fill the gaps, the more gaps appeared. The elders and the chiefs of the king's court precipitated a great crisis among themselves and in the kingdom. And they caused many evils to come into existence because they feared that the gaps that loomed and appeared to their paranoid scrutiny were in the world about them and in tradition. With each passing day doubts grew amongst them about the truth of anything. They were no longer sure when a certain innovation had become the beginning of a tradition, or whether the tradition had been there since the beginning of the world. Their earth became shaky, and one day they overheard the prince saying to one of the children in the palace that the world stood on air, and that nothing held up the earth in space, and that in a dream he had seen the world as a shining blue bowl in a vast sea of nothingness, dotted with stars.
'This earth is held up by air, by mystery, by nothing,' he said to the children.
'How come we don't fall off then?' one of them asked.
'Because it is the
same nothing that keeps us on the land. Some people walk upside-down, with their heads facing downward, and they don't fall off into the big nothing. A power invisible keeps us here, not our power.'
The children were silent. Then one said:
'So the earth stands on air?'
'On nothing,' the prince said, smiling.
The chiefs and elders overheard these words and this began another bout of talk and fevered discussions. It awakened more fears. They met at night and gazed into the heavens and could not see that which held the earth in space. This made them see more gaps, which they had to destroy.
Often the chiefs and elders, unable to sleep, watched the gaps growing in the kingdom. This phenomenon began to paralyse them. Chief Okadu was heard screaming in his sleep. His wives assured him that there were no gaps in the world, but his raw red eyes could not unsee that which he had begun to see. The paranoia of the chiefs, made worse by the horror that they stood on air, that their world was held up by nothing, began the destruction of the potent mythology by which they controlled the kingdom in the name of the king. They thought of having the prince poisoned, and enlisted the support of one of the king's wives, the most disaffected. Three times they attempted to poison the prince but each time the food was eaten by an eagle, or a dog, or a monkey that appeared in the prince's chamber before he was ready. Three times he saw empty plates on the table where food should have been; and he took it as a sign to fast. He fasted till he received another sign which he took to mean it was time again for him to meet the family of the maiden, in disguise at first, following the principle of the heron. The sign came in the form of a dream in which he was sitting at the foot of a master and the maiden was at the door, looking out at a spectacle in the street.
The prince told his father that he would be away for seven days and would return each night. His father nodded and asked no questions, and didn't laugh. But there was an odd twinkle in his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY–FIVE
That morning, passing into the gaps that were like afterglows, the prince, in disguise, made his way through the forest and past the yellow valley and back into the blue shade of woods near the village of the artists, and went directly to the workshop of the maiden's father. He sat outside its unremarkable door, and he sang an ancient song that went like this:
'If you cannot find it
On earth
Seek for it in the
Sea
If you cannot find it
In the sea
Seek for it in the
Sky
If you cannot find it
In the sky
Seek for it in the
Fire
And if you cannot find it
In the fire
Seek for it in your
Dreams
If it isn't there
Then it is nowhere.
This is nowhere
And I like it here ...'
The prince sang this peculiar song in a sweet poignant voice that was unused to singing and indeed betrayed no talent for song, but the mood of it soothed him as he waited. And he sang himself to sleep, and sang gently in his sleep, with his head resting against a pole in front of the door of the workshop. And when the maidens father arrived that morning for work he saw a strange and strangely beautiful youth at the entrance to his secret workshop, singing in his sleep, singing words that moved him somewhat. And before the young man woke up, before he spoke, the maiden's father knew that this young man was going to play an important part in his life. He knew, instantly, in fact, that this inexplicable youth had already altered his life, and the life of his family, and the life of the tribe. He saw the future in the frail form of this youth who had now awoken and who had solemn smiling eyes like one who has not yet decided whether to live or die.
'What do you want?' he asked the youth gruffly.
'Sir,' said the youth, smiling shyly, 'your fame is great, and your art is greater, and I have travelled a long way, past the regions of death, sir, just to come and serve you. I ask nothing in return. I do not even ask to be instructed. I dare not, sir, ask so great an honour from so great a master as you. I desire only to serve you in any way you want and in the evenings I will return to my land; this I would like to do till you no longer wish it, sir.'
The maiden's father stared at the youth. He was quite mesmerised by his inexplicable frailty and beauty. There was something profoundly unusual about the youth; and some whisper told the father of the maiden that he couldn't refuse this modest request, even from a total stranger. The older man sensed the youth was of unique birth, and might even be something other than he seemed. And so unusually feeling himself under the sway of a kindly invisible power, and without knowing why, or what he was saying, he said:
'I accept. You shall serve me as I instruct you to do. But you must only do as I instruct you. Nothing else in my household is your business. You learn nothing of my art. I will teach you nothing. You will sit and serve till I decide otherwise. I have no need of a servant and I don't know why I am doing this. In the evenings and at night you may do as you wish, except don't disgrace me in any way. And you must not reveal anything of what you see here. Silence and discretion I demand of you. And you must not speak to my daughter.'
The prince bowed his head gracefully.
'Thank you, sir,' he said. 'This is the greatest honour of my life.'
The older man stared at him in puzzlement. His feelings were mixed and confused. He had not felt like this for a long time indeed. He felt in some obscure way that it was he who should be thanking the youth, and that it was he who was honoured. This confusion somewhat annoyed him. Few things ever did. The master was encountering something that baffled him, that eluded the powers of his intuition, that silenced his guiding spirit. And he knew for the first time in years a delicate kind of fear, a terror that bordered on illumination.
'Who are you anyway, where do you come from?' the older man asked sternly, in that complicated state of mind.
The prince smiled gently.
'I am a poor lost person, sir, separated from my family during our journeys, and I found myself here.'
'I thought you said you had come a long way because ...'
'A long way, sir, have I travelled because of your art and your fame, past the land of death even. The earth itself can bear witness to this. And the wind will speak for me. The stars watched my journeys with keen eyes. You may ask them, sir, when I am not around, and they will bear me out.'
The older man fell under the grip of a disquieting amazement.
'Who is your father?'
'One who laughs, sir.'
'I see. And your mother?'
'She is happy among the stars. She flew to heaven when I was young.'
There was a pause. Then the older man said:
'You begin today.'
'May you be blessed, sir, for the greatness of your heart.'
The older man stepped into his secret workshop with his new servant.
CHAPTER TWENTY–SIX
When the maiden came to see her father that afternoon she did not notice the new servant. He sat in a corner, under the wall, among the statues and images. Light poured in from a space in the wall above his head. He sat in absolute stillness, as he had been instructed, and breathed the way that bronze statues do, inaudibly without motion. The maiden didn't notice the new servant but she noticed the form of a new notion in wood that her father had half dreamt into space. Her father worked in silence, among stones, among chunks of wood, at a table, dreaming with quiet intensity new beings into form, as if he were praying, or conjuring in deep silence. Meanwhile his daughter sat at her favourite chair and spoke thoughts that came to her mind, partially aware that her voice had a nice effect on the mood of the workshop, and made the statues in the dark listen, as if to one beloved. She had been to the river that day, she said, and had found it barren ...
