The Book of Pearl

by Timothee de Fombelle

  “Is the king here? I should like to speak with him,” said Taåg.

  A pool of sludge was spreading around his boots and across the floor, as Taåg leant on his staff, which was covered in fish scales.

  “No, he’s not here,” answered the queen.

  When Iån was aged three, Taåg had been denied permission to take the prince away with him to the marshlands where he wished to take charge of his education. The queen knew that he had never forgiven this affront.

  Now, his dry eyes were trained on her. The queen did her utmost to appear undeterred. She was lying on a chaise-longue because of the heat, propping herself up on her elbows, hiding her belly behind a blue veil. Her servant Fåra stood guard by her side.

  “The king is not here,” she repeated, forgetting that she had said this already. “Be gone with you.”

  Intrigued, Taåg could look at nothing but the round shape that swelled before his eyes.

  “It would appear that he will be returning soon.”

  “I don’t know,” said the queen. “Leave me be.”

  Then, averting her gaze towards the lake, she noticed a grey line where the water had been shortly before.

  “They say you’re expecting a girl.”

  “I don’t know,” replied the queen, distracted.

  Taåg was now looking at the same receding shoreline. The murky lake was descending in the darkness.

  “Tell the king, if you see him, that I came to speak with him,” he murmured.

  “You’re not staying?” asked the young prince.

  His godfather rolled him gently across the floor, and by the time Iån had regained his balance on the muddy ground, Taåg had disappeared. The prince turned his eyes to the lake.

  “Look,” he said to his mother.

  All across the lake, banks of mud were surfacing. Iån went out with a lantern in search of his little boat. The water level was so low that he found it hanging vertically from its mooring post, like a bat.

  The following night there was not a breath of wind. The lake had dried up entirely, and a suffocating stench engulfed the palace. Clouds of mosquitoes rose up from the depths of the mire. Prince Iån was alone with his cries of joy early the next morning, when he was thrilled to discover little pools of water teeming with fish.

  In the four corners of the summer palace, fires were laid with mud-drenched branches to chase away the mosquitoes. Smoke and ash came in through the doors and windows, clinging to the perspiring queen. After the second night, she was running a high fever. And when the alarm was sounded at dawn, the three family doctors found her too weak to be carried back to firm ground.

  It was the hottest day of the summer. A procession of white fish bellies lay in the mud as far as the eye could see. At first, the young prince stayed at his mother’s bedside, holding her hand. He had the bells rung to warn his father, and Fåra sent emissaries, but not one armoured horseman appeared at the bank between the pines. Through gritted teeth, Iån silently cursed the little princess, his sister, and he cursed his father for his absence.

  Taåg sent an envoy to offer help. Iån begged the queen to accept: his godfather had mighty powers. But the queen drew on her last reserves of strength to dispatch the old genie’s messenger.

  It was a dreadful night. The queen’s cries were lost in the lake. Iån blocked his ears and curled up below the palace, amongst the stilts.

  Fåra kept watch over his queen, wringing out the linen cloths that he laid on her brow.

  When the king returned the following day, he saw from afar the smoking braziers on the palace’s pontoons. He crossed the lake on his horse to discover that the queen lay dead, surrounded by subjects wracked with grief. Iån was still by her side, along with Fåra. Nobody was minding the baby, who was sleeping peacefully, all brown with the bloody afterbirth, behind a paper screen. For the child had survived, and been cast into the crib without anyone paying it the least attention.

  The three doctors laid their foreheads on the ground before the king, awaiting their punishment. But the king was no longer aware of anything. Prince Iån wouldn’t even look him in the eye. To his mind, his father was just as guilty as the murderous infant.

  The infatuated king went mad. Young Iån left for the winter castle by the sea. He summoned Taåg, who made the water return to the lake. The king was shut away in the little summer palace with the newborn infant and the old servant Fåra. A fishing boat would occasionally drop off supplies. But soon a rumour spread that the palace’s surroundings were haunted, and that any oarsman who went there would drown. Nobody ever returned.

  The law of the Kingdoms dictated that Prince Iån had to wait until he was fifteen to be crowned. He took up residence in the towers of the castle, high up amongst the squawking gulls. At the tender age of seven, he made Taåg his advisor and regent while he awaited his coronation.

  10

  THE SOURCE OF THE LAKE

  Thirteen years passed.

  In the winter, the lake remained frozen and the stilts rose up above the snow. Only the edge of the forest traced the banks of the lake.

  A man came out into the cold. He was wearing a fur cloak and thick mittens that made his hands look like the claws of a crab. It was Fåra, the queen’s servant. His ageless face seemed carved from ice. He walked to the edge of the pontoon and turned to inspect the tiny empire over which he stood guard. In the summer, the holes in the walls and the mangled roofs let the air rush in, along with the rain and the birds. But all through the winter, the ruins of the palace were buried in snow, rendering it impenetrable.

  Fåra retraced his steps, glancing left at the path in the snow, where the tracks were no larger than those of a white hare. He scanned the horizon keenly to try to see the much-loved little figure. But there wasn’t a single movement anywhere. All was white and perfectly still.

  Fåra returned to the palace.

  “Where is she? Where is the sweet one?” a voice asked.

  The king was sitting before the fire. He had heard Fåra enter.

  “Is that you, Fåra?”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “And the sweet one? Where is she hiding?”

  “She died, Majesty. Thirteen years ago.”

  The king shook with silent laughter. When Fåra picked up the blankets that had fallen to his master’s feet, the king grabbed him by the sleeve.

  “Is she punishing me for my battles?” he whispered.

  Fåra shook his head tenderly.

  “She loved you, Majesty.”

  “Is it night?”

  “No, it is day.”

  “So why does she insist on this endless sleeping?” asked the king, who knew of realms where the beauties woke up in the end.

  “She died,” Fåra repeated.

  The king let out a sigh, a gentle sigh, as though weary of the queen’s capricious games, as though her idleness kept her lingering in her bed.

  “The sweet one.”

  Fåra had turned away to conceal his tears. Who cared for him in his grief? He had adored the queen, but each morning the king, in his madness, unwittingly reopened Fåra’s wounds.

  The old servant gladly thought instead about the white hare, who must have been running in the snow somewhere, and who was the palace’s one consolation.

  Several leagues from there, Iån had been ruling for five years. He was now twenty years old. His land was in a far more derelict state than the icy ruins resting on the lake. It was a land of tears. He had begun by plundering his people, emptying the forests of all their creatures, razing the cherry trees and wheat fields, and sowing fear everywhere. Out on the open sea, nets were cast down to the deepest waters where the last mermaids had found sanctuary. In the barns, unicorn meat was hung up to dry.

  “Majesty, your archers have returned.”

  Taåg was standing at the young king’s side. Though the years of his regency remained a bitter memory, Iån had succeeded in surpassing his former tutor’s inhumanity.

  “How m
any are they?”

  “Eleven.”

  Following his godfather’s lead, Iån had drained the land and was now eager to explore other realms, those whose stories were “done”, and whose people were supposed to live happily ever after.

  These people avoided venturing anywhere near the boundaries of lands whose stories were not yet done. But in the very first year of his reign, Iån had built a lightship on the reef to attract passing boats, only to then raid them.

  No one could have imagined such a crime. Even Taåg had been locked in a tower for three years because he had reproached his master for attacking these realms. Having just been released after renouncing his criticism, he was now seeking to regain the king’s favour.

  The young king had decided to send fifteen of his finest mercenaries to prepare to invade.

  “Only eleven archers have returned?”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “Bring them to me.”

  Taåg covered his grey lips with the palm of his hand.

  “First I must talk to you of a problem.”

  Despite recent years of both honour and humiliation, Taåg’s face stayed true to its marshland origins, and he still left trails of mud in his wake.

  “What problem?”

  “The summer palace…”

  Iån turned to Taåg. Not a soul had entered the palace since the death of the queen. The fishermen no longer even left food at the end of the pontoon.

  “The old lunatic is dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So?”

  “There are tracks in the snow. Each day, someone is escaping from the summer palace.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “The trapper who provides your skins.”

  Iån went over to the window as Taåg continued, “The king and his servant are too old to walk for hours in the snow. But there is perhaps…”

  “Silence!”

  Iån didn’t need Taåg’s prompting to recall the creature that had killed his mother during childbirth. The doctors had declared a daughter. Was she escaping to throttle the few remaining foxes and devour their flesh by sinking her black teeth into it? He pictured her as an evil beast made feral by her life in the wild. But could she have survived the solitude of the lake?

  “Tell the trapper to watch her.”

  “No one has ever seen her…”

  Iån turned abruptly to face his advisor, who stammered, “What should he do if he finds her?”

  “Let him keep her skin to pay for the catch.”

  Taåg was not sure he had understood correctly.

  “Majesty…”

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear.”

  The white hare that kept escaping the decayed palace was not thirsting for the blood of foxes or lynxes. It fled the ruins before daybreak to cross the frozen lake without being seen by the lookouts.

  It left silent marks in the snow. Not a sound, not even a whisper as it passed. A shadow amongst the shadows, fleet and stealthy.

  And when the sun rose, it was already hidden away deep in the forest, where the light glided over it. Through the narrow slit of the creature’s ermine cap, its eyes resembled those of the late queen. But this was no little princess – no, these eyes belong to a boy. A thirteen-year-old boy in a coat of white fur.

  They had been expecting a girl, but a little boy had arrived instead, abandoned without a second glance in the crib. The old servant had named him Iliån, which means, “he who shall never reign”.

  He skirted round the lakeside without leaving the cover of the pines. Iliån was wearing the cord and leather pouch of a slingshot wrapped round his wrist. Each evening he would bring back the starlings he had shot from the topmost branches of the trees. But this morning, he didn’t even look up when the wing of a bird disturbed the air. He was making for the source of the lake with a determined step.

  The banks formed little coves that took an age to bypass. In summer he crossed them by swimming, but in wintertime, when the weather was clear, he didn’t dare span the ice floe. He would have been too visible a target in this white landscape, so Iliån hugged the bank. It took him nearly three hours to reach the source of the lake.

  The undergrowth became very thick. In springtime, it would be impassable. The source was in a sunken fold in the lakeside. This uneven corner was set amongst treacherous rocks and trees, all covered in snow.

  A few days earlier, Iliån had crossed these barriers in the aftermath of a storm by digging through the snow, which had enveloped the whole area with a layer several feet thick. But already this snow was less even. In places, it had collapsed into crevices and the fine coating from the night before meant there were several hidden traps.

  Finally he arrived at the snowy hollow above the source of the lake, which looked as smooth and soft as a feather cushion. There wasn’t a single mark on the surface, but the stream could be heard trickling deep beneath the snow.

  When he had discovered this place for the first time, after the blizzard, Iliån had spotted a ring of footprints on it. Bare feet that scarcely made any indent on the snow. These prints were unplaceable and didn’t seem to lead anywhere, as if they traced the life cycle of someone born there one minute but who vanished the next. Thirty seconds in winter – a life more fleeting than a mayfly’s.

  But now there were no more footprints. The feather cushion was flawless.

  Iliån lay down on a mound, at the foot of a tree, to scan the area. He had been raised by two old men, one of whom, his father, had lost all reason. All other living beings he kept at a safe distance of three hundred paces or more, even when he hid in the reeds or the branches to spy on them. These faint footprints had obsessed Iliån for days now. He knew the trapper’s boot-marks and the deep grooves of his sledge, as well as the prints of all the animals round the lake, such as the four-toed egret in the summer mud, but these bare feet in the snow…

  Flakes were beginning to fall. Iliån pricked up his ears. In the distance, he could hear howling.

  Three hundred paces from there, the trapper was cracking his whip to silence his wolves. They were harnessed to a sledge, onto which he had trussed the body of a small white puma. The wounded beast had just fallen into a trap bristling with stakes on the other side of the lake. The puma was still breathing. Excited by this catch, the seven wolves now howled at a new scent they had just unearthed. The trapper brought them to a halt with cries and a few cracks of the whip. He dropped to his knees and looked down at the forest floor. The snow was falling more thickly now.

  It was indeed her: the feral girl from the summer palace. He recognized the runaway’s tracks. The powdery snow had barely been touched. His wolves huddled tightly around him, sniffing the bloody dagger strapped to their master’s thigh.

  Taåg had ordered him to catch her only if she escaped again. She had just passed through this place. Soon the tracks would be covered by the snow. He had to act fast. The wolves had fallen back in line, so the trapper climbed onto his sledge and followed the trail.

  The pack rushed headlong between the trees. Once more the wolves had picked up the unmistakable scent of their quarry. They were entirely silent, their breathing muffled by the cottony snow. Ahead of them, the footprints were gradually becoming blotted out. Even the forest appeared to be dissolving before their eyes. In the freezing cold, the intense odours from the little puma suddenly began to throw the wolves’ senses into confusion as they weaved and jostled between the trunks. The trapper tried to peer through the thick curtain of snow, the lash of his whip stinging the animals’ backs.

  Iliån didn’t need eyes to find his way again. He continued forward through the vast whiteness. He thought of Fåra, who was awaiting his return at the palace. The wind was getting up. No doubt his father was sitting before the fire, regaling himself with tales of giants and a little girl in a red hood lost in the forest. These stories from other kingdoms represented the final frontier of sanity in his mind. Iliån had grown up in the presence of th
is man reduced to his memories, who held his hand aloft as he re-enacted the twirl of glass slippers around the ballroom.

  Suddenly, two paces away from him, a noise stopped Iliån in his tracks. He caught his breath. The next instant, a seven-headed monster reared up out of the snow.

  11

  METAMORPHOSIS

  The first wolf almost ripped its harness as it lurched forward to seize Iliån by the head. The leather straps stopped it in mid-flight as the boy rolled away in the snow to avoid the beast. Veering to one side, the rest of the pack thundered after him with a surge of energy.

  At the back of the sledge, emerging from the cloud of powder, the trapper realized what had provoked the shock. In front of him, someone was plunging down the snowy valley. Finally he had found the little fugitive.

  They were in a clearing on a slope. Now and then, the wind chased away the mist to reveal the trees down below. The sledge forged ahead without meeting any obstacles. Iliån skimmed over the snow as the hunter bellowed at his wolves.

  “Kill!”

  He had just drawn his dagger from his right thigh. He still hadn’t seen the face of his prey, hidden as it was by the snow and wind. It was nothing but a silhouette that sliced through the air to keep ahead of the wolves. In a few seconds, she would be in the forest.

  Once it had crossed the treeline, the sledge couldn’t follow her through the tightly packed trunks. He only had a few dozen yards left to catch her.

  The hunter leant forward and, with a slash of his dagger, cut the cords that held the body of the little puma. At the first hillock, the animal bounced off and slid down the piste, with its paws still tied. The sledge seemed to fly. Relieved of this load, the wolves felt as if the wind was propelling them forward. They were homing in on their prey.

  Iliån was targeting the first trees, now so close, but he could feel the tornado of hot panting and animal smells behind him. This whirlwind was gaining on him.

  Iliån knew the trapper. He’d seen him separating a litter of fox cubs from their mother with a pitchfork, and gutting game while it was still alive. He starved his wolves and pricked them to stir up their savagery. Above their cage, he hung sacks filled with blood.