Dreaming of Zhou Gong

by Traci Harding

  ‘Something on your mind, Uncle?’ Song queried. ‘You seem distracted.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Dan smiled in reassurance. ‘I find your recollections most intriguing. How did it all end, I wonder?’

  ‘Maybe it never did end,’ Song posed, ‘and that is why we are all here?’

  ‘How exciting!’ Fen clapped his hands together, inspired by their banter. ‘Do you think my sisters are involved?’ he asked, and was surprised when both men looked at him, a withering look on their face that he failed to understand. ‘It was just a question.’

  ‘No doubt of it,’ Dan stated, repressing his urge to ring Fen’s neck for opening that barrel of worms right now.

  ‘So you have seen sons of the sky in them?’ Fen asked, whereby he and Song looked at him, expectantly — Song overly keen.

  Dan nodded to confirm. ‘And Shi also.’

  Fen was ecstatic!

  Song was grinning broadly. ‘My father?’

  The duke shook his head to the negative. ‘His son of the sky is elsewhere at present.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Song demanded to know.

  ‘It is my understanding that we are operating inside of time, whereas the king’s other is operating outside of time, along with his brother, the Lord of the Elements.’

  Song looked to Fen. ‘Do you have any idea what he is talking about?’

  Fen shook his head in the negative. ‘But I want my sisters back, so I am in,’ he grinned broadly.

  ‘Everyone wants your sisters,’ Song remarked facetiously. Fen was not amused and neither was Dan.

  ‘Your etiquette and sense of propriety need a lot of work, Ji Song.’ Fen looked back to the duke. ‘So what are we doing here?’

  ‘Just trying to keep history on track at present,’ he enlightened them, ‘and forget that the sons of the sky exist, until our dying day. At least, that was the Great Mother’s advice to me on the matter.’

  ‘The Great Mother is one of them?’ Song was always delighted to have another woman involved.

  ‘She knows much about the sons of the sky,’ Dan said to skirt around the issue, ‘and what is most important in the greater scheme of things, is that you are prepared to ascend to the throne in the near future.’

  ‘Are you saying I have to wait until I die to know what I am really here for?’ Song protested.

  ‘Prince Song is here to lead our dynasty and the land to peace and greatness,’ Dan said clearly, adamantly.

  ‘But the powers, the dreams —’

  ‘Must be put away, as much as possible, until such time as what you came here to do is done,’ Dan lectured, as Song’s resistance grew.

  ‘That sucks! It’s all right for you, you’re old,’ Song argued with his uncle. ‘But Fen and I are still young! It could be fifty years before we die! And then what? We will be old and decrepit and of no use to anyone!’

  ‘I do not know how it works. I am only passing on what I was told,’ Dan stressed.

  ‘By the Great Mother?’

  The query sounded like a threat, and Dan suspected the prince was about to do something very rash. Before he could warn him not to take such action, the prince vanished. ‘Oh dear,’ said Dan.

  ‘His highness is out of control!’ Fen was panicking. ‘I hope for his sake he was not going where I think he went.’

  Dan cocked an eye, feeling Song would find the Great Mother less accommodating and harder to defy than he expected.

  Still. Quiet. Get your bearings. Song had trained himself to recite this instruction upon materialising anywhere. Through trial and error, he had learned that he could not teleport himself anywhere, or to anyone, that he did not have a clear visual image of — so the closest he could get himself to the Great Mother was the central cloister at the House of Yi Wu Li Shan. A quick scan of the area confirmed that no one had seen him arrive, and he made his way swiftly to the Great Mother’s chambers.

  As he reached the doors to the outer chamber, they unexpectedly parted before him, and finding the room beyond empty, the prince entered cautiously. When the doors on the far side of the chamber opened in invitation, the prince proceeded, feeling welcome; when the doors behind him slammed closed, making him jump, Song relinquished any hope of a warm welcome.

  Song had never had a private audience with the Great Mother before, and so had never seen inside her council chamber, which he entered reverently and quietly.

  On this rainy afternoon the Great Mother was seated at a desk, applying ink to bamboo. Her face was veiled; only her eyes were exposed. As she was so completely focused on her task, Song cleared his throat to let her know he was present.

  ‘I am very aware you are here.’ She did not disturb herself, but finished what she was writing.

  ‘Do you not wonder how I got here?’ the prince queried.

  ‘I know how you got here,’ she replied. ‘Why do you think I am veiled?’

  ‘Are you not impressed?’ Song tried the tactic that had worked on Hudan.

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘But I am Wu —’

  The Great Mother put down her pen and stood. ‘You are a disrespectful upstart, show-off and womaniser, and you always were!’

  Song pulled his head in. ‘I resent … some of that.’

  ‘Tough!’ she said, as if he were no one of consequence. ‘And I shall tell you something else for nothing. These traits have seen you pulled from our missions before, so I would be very wary, dutiful, gracious and attentive to your lessons, young prince, or you shall find yourself off the team once again.’

  ‘There must be some mistake.’

  ‘I do not make mistakes,’ she replied ‘but you surely do. If you ever set foot on this mount again, uninvited, I shall withdraw our holy mandate from your dynasty and leave you to it.’

  ‘But Great Mother, I have these dreams —’

  ‘Forget them. Accomplish all that Ji Song must,’ she proffered, ‘and you can create a peace that will extend far beyond your lifetime. Only then will the sons of the sky come for you.’

  ‘Then tell me mine is a short reign,’ Song pleaded.

  ‘I should hope not. You have yet to even wed or bear an heir … legitimately,’ she added, and Song was frustrated. ‘And before you even ask, the answer is no.’

  ‘What was the question?’ Song queried.

  ‘No, you cannot wed Jiang Hudan. No, you are not meant to be with her, nor was she ever yours.’ The Great Mother crushed him with the information. ‘You have a strong bond with her, but she is not the love of your life, Song. That mystery still lays ahead of you in this life, and so your future in Zhou is not so grim and meaningless as you think. Indeed, for most of your life, the sons of the sky will not be given a second thought. You will be too busy.’

  Song felt the wind had rushed from his sails; he felt depleted and Yi Wu seemed raring to go. ‘I have a list of works for you to begin work on, that your father has given his prior blessing to,’ she advised. ‘Let us have tea and discuss it.’

  Song nodded to be polite, sincerely wishing he’d never come.

  When the prince returned to Haojing, he was dazed, despondent and not very talkative. He had a bamboo scroll in his possession that he handed to Dan.

  ‘What is this?’ The duke unfurled the document to read.

  ‘We have a lot of work to do,’ was all Song said, ahead of excusing himself for the rest of the day. ‘I need to … process.’

  ‘That is exactly how I feel every time I speak with Yi Wu,’ Dan sympathised, still reading, as Song turned and headed for the door. ‘I note that finding a wife for you is high on the list of priorities,’ the duke said, eager to see Song thus distracted.

  The prince halted and looked back at the duke — the chore of fielding candidates would have fallen to the queen, and the king was certainly in no fit state. ‘You pick one that makes political sense, Zhou Gong. I could not care less who she is.’

  ‘That is not how our new system of marriage is supposed to work,’
Dan pointed out. ‘That is hardly going to serve to make for a happy family life, highness.’

  ‘If that is the aim, my baby brother will be next king on the throne,’ Song insisted and his frustration fuelled his departure.

  Fen exhaled heavily, discouraged. ‘You have your work cut out for you, my duke.’

  ‘A bit of divine guidance would not go astray,’ Dan considered.

  ‘Yi Jing: the Book of Changes?’ Fen suggested, ready to fetch the scrolls.

  ‘No. I have something else in mind, an experiment.’ Dan was quietly mulling over something Hudan had said the night before.

  ‘I wish now that the Lord of Time had awakened my dormant other, when he had the chance, so I could know what has gone before.’

  Fen had been teaching Dan the Wu laws regarding summoning entities, and one of these — the law of three requests — stated that to summon any entity, you must know their name and recite it three times. He may not have known the name of the Lord of the Elements — Hudan had gone to great lengths to keep that secret — but Dan did know the name of the Lord of Time, and if he could awaken Dan’s sleeper within so that he could fathom the past, surely the path forward would also be clarified.

  Once the house had settled for the night and there was no danger of being disturbed, Dan steadied his nerve. The Lord of the Elements had not wanted his brother involved in the worldly affairs of this time, but as the elemental lord had not offered up his name for counsel if required, the duke felt compelled to proceed with what he had.

  He requested the counsel of the Lord of Time and summoned him: ‘Hreen, Hreen, Hreen.’

  The duke caught his breath as a young son of the sky manifested before him, pale of face, with large round eyes as dark as Dan’s own. His hair was dark and straight, and fell long around his face and shoulders as Fen’s did. He was attired entirely in black and the clothing covered him like a skin: his boots covered his shins to just below the knee and had fasteners up the side. These were made of what appeared to be metal, but the strange back material must have been extremely lightweight, as the lord’s movement did not appeared hindered in the least. The belt around his waist had wonders hanging from it, the purposes of which Dan could not imagine — weapons, or tools, perhaps?

  ‘Hello, father,’ the lord said, grinning broadly. ‘You never call.’

  ‘That actually worked.’ The duke was amazed.

  ‘Technically, no, as I am not a creature of the otherworld like my brother,’ and the lord held an arm out for the duke to feel. ‘I am as living as you are.’

  When the duke felt the strange skin covering the lord’s arm he was astounded. ‘That is why your spirit is not in Ji Fa.’

  The lord winked at him, just as Fa used to when they were siblings with no titles or responsibilities. ‘I just happened to be around, checking up on the team, as I do from time to time. I sure as hell have nothing better to do at present. Still, if my brother finds out we’ve spoken, he’s not going to be happy.’ Rhun looked about the room, warily, and with a wave of his hand put out the flame in the lantern. ‘No plants,’ he noted, ‘no airflow.’ The shutters on the windows were closed. ‘You don’t have any water in here, do you?’

  ‘No,’ replied Dan curiously.

  ‘No precious stones or crystals?’

  ‘Nothing like that. Why?’

  ‘If there are no living elements present, there are no elementals to report back to his lordship,’ Rhun explained.

  ‘It’s a good thing I did not summon you out of doors!’ Dan exclaimed.

  ‘A very good thing,’ the lord concurred, taking a seat opposite the duke. ‘So what is on your mind?’

  ‘I want you to return my cosmic memory.’

  Rhun forced a laugh and shook his head. ‘If I was permitted, do you not think I would have already? Besides, that task you, in particular, can accomplish on your own.’

  Dan was discouraged by the response.

  ‘Why do you feel you need it all at once?’ the lord asked. ‘I am sure this has something to do with mother.’

  ‘That’s right!’ Dan’s eyes lit up. ‘If we are your parents, then LuChen cannot have been married to someone else.’

  ‘Hah! If that is your worry, then have none!’ The lord cut through the air with his hand in emphasis. ‘I have known you both through many, many lifetimes, and you have never chosen anyone but her, unless you were forced, deceived, or enchanted.’

  Dan was baffled and frustrated! ‘Then where does her close connection with Song come from?’

  ‘Ah … now I see,’ Rhun nodded surely. ‘You’ve had this problem before.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’ Dan was not sure if he should be hopeful or alarmed.

  ‘The soul in question is fiercely protective of mother as they are very much alike; like twins or twin-souls say, and have often incarnated as siblings … whereas you are more a soul mate. Do you see? Even when they are not related they still feel that strong bond.’

  Dan nodded. What the lord was saying made perfect sense. ‘So, what did I do about it in the past?’

  ‘You aided him to find his own soul mate,’ Rhun said, stating the obvious.

  ‘She is a son of the sky also?’ the duke asked, wondering if there were others he hadn’t found yet.

  ‘She is, but she was not chosen for this mission,’ Rhun was sorry to say.

  ‘Then she shall not be so easy for me to spot. If she is even incarnate in this time.’ Dan had the feeling he would be looking for a needle in a haystack.

  ‘Oh, she is bound to be,’ Rhun encouraged, ‘and will surely cross paths with your prince eventually.’

  ‘But I have to find him a wife now!’ the duke said in desperation. ‘Can you give me some inkling of her character at least?’

  ‘Well, I never actually met his better half, but I had known a few past incarnations of her and …’ His brow furrowed as he brought her to mind. ‘She is tenacious, and will probably seem completely indifferent to your prince’s charms … but the more immune she appears, the more interested she is. Oh, and she is very likely more martial than he is — he tends to find assertive women attractive.’

  ‘Which is why he finds Hudan so alluring,’ Dan mused, understanding. ‘But the only women like Hudan are Wu, who do not marry.’

  ‘Do not be so sure, or you’ll just make the task much more difficult.’ He grinned broadly in support. ‘Anything else?’

  The lord had done Dan an admirable service, and although Dan did not want to be seen to play favourites, he liked Rhun more than his tricky brother and, wished to return the kindness. ‘Were you there at Yin when we attempted to take down Dragonface?’

  ‘No.’ The time lord was obviously annoyed. ‘My brother trapped me in an obelisk whilst that was going down, and now we’ve lost that son of a bitch again! What of it?’

  ‘I saw a son of the sky in Wu Geng, the last Prince of the Shang, that I did not recognise and your brother didn’t either,’ Dan disclosed. ‘Hudan asked him if you should be consulted, but he —’

  ‘Doesn’t want me involved, I know,’ Rhun concluded, frowning and obviously finding the news interesting.

  ‘What did you do last time around that made things go so horribly wrong?’ Dan had wondered this ever since the lord’s brother had first mentioned it.

  ‘The creature you call Dragonface stole my time-hopping transport and destroyed my planet in my absence. Meantime, I made you and Hudan aware of one another, romantically speaking, and you ran off together, resulting in decades of war when it should have been peaceful, and then Dragonface returned and took full advantage of the chaos. It was then that my brother aided me to steal my transport back and I returned home to discover that I had been the one to cause the very disaster that I had fled into time to escape!’

  Dan’s jaw was dropping open. ‘So how did we get involved.’

  ‘Fortunately for me, I had already recruited your beloved to quantum jump across from your parallel universe and warn me
of the threat to my people. You and all the other dormant souls you see in those around you, came with her, and volunteered to help me right this mess.’

  ‘There is more than one universe?’ Dan had not considered this, let alone that you could jump between them! ‘Hudan did all this?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Rhun said proudly, ‘she is quite the strategist where reworking time is concerned. You don’t call her Time —’ The lord bit his tongue. ‘Nearly did it.’

  ‘What?’ Dan was dying to know.

  One of the window shutters rattled as the wind rapped against it, and Rhun stood, looking nervous. ‘Nothing.’ The lord closed the subject. ‘I shall investigate that other matter.’

  ‘Must you go?’ The duke could have spoken with him all night.

  ‘I’ll be around,’ Rhun assured him. ‘Good luck with your lady hunt.’

  Moments after the lord vanished, the shutters on the window burst open and the duke’s eyes widened in wonder as he saw faint impressions of beautiful women in the wind that whipped around the room. The spectres wound about each other as they searched the interior, completely ignoring Dan. When they found nothing of interest, the ghostly ladies fled back out the window and the wind died out.

  The duke slapped his hands to his face, mind-blown by the events of the evening. With every contact he had with the sons of the sky, his own expansive nature and purpose became clearer and more real to him. How could he not be awed and inspired by what the distant future held in store? He’d been told several times now that he could recapture his ancient memory and he now aspired to pursue that goal with far greater vigour.

  Over the next several months the prince continued to train and study diligently, and the screening process for his queen began in earnest. Across the kingdom nobles were invited to send forth their daughters for the prince’s consideration. The candidates were physically screened by the queen’s sister, and if they were found to be exceedingly beautiful, and maidens still, they were referred to Zhou Gong and Zhou Bo Fen Gong for an interview. If the candidate was found to be of pleasing character and intelligent, they were granted a private audience with Ji Song. Neither Zhou Gong nor the king would allow the prince to forego the responsibility of choosing his own life partner and possible future Queen of Zhou.