“Dhani, the best kings, and queens, know when to be diplomatic.” So self-satisfied. “You see?”
I did see, but I never bowed my chin deeply enough for Jaya Megalang. Couldn’t stay out of matters of kingdom that were none of my concern. I said those were my matters because I was the future Queen. He said I never listened, and when I said I saw no reason to listen to a bitter old soldier, he spat, “You’ll never be Queen, you spoiled wretch!” That is why he called my mother a shaman queen and I a creature of the outer darkness.
Tigers stayed away from us. The jungle is full of them; they carry off scavenging children. But they left our children alone. One night, I saw amber eyes peering at me through foliage, but when I shifted my gaze for a moment, they disappeared. My people cried, “We are blessed!” and “Dyah watches over us!” but I couldn’t feel my mother anywhere in that suffocating greenery. I wondered if the tigers knew we were marked for something worse.
About a week in, someone suggested that we should be on the coast by now. These destitute people, half-mad with heat, looked to me for leadership and I froze, as if I were still staring at that tiger. Every forward step brought me closer to my greatest fear: I would make a terrible Queen.
They could have left me. They would have had the right. My title was worthless, I didn’t know the way, and I couldn’t speak. I still believe it was fear of tigers that stopped them from deserting but no matter — they gathered at my feet, stroked my hem, and muttered good-luck incantations.
A few days passed of this quiet praying. And then the old healer saw me cradling a woman so sick she seemed to melt and asked if I wasn’t scared of disease. By then, we had lost four; tigers may have ignored us, but flies and mosquitoes didn’t. But plagues never touched me, nor my mother and father, I assumed because we were royalty. I once smiled when I heard a handmaid say Arda and Murti had water poison — she later told Jaya Megalang that I’d rejoiced at my brothers’ suffering, but it wasn’t that. I’d rejoiced to know I was sole heir to my father’s throne.
“No,” I said, “because I am my parents’ daughter. I have their blood.”
This was nothing new, but from then on, “Their Blood!” became a rallying cry. They tested me: Fed me foul water and spoiled fish, had me bury the infected woman when she died, had me sleep in insect nests. Every time I survived, our collective trust in my being, in my essence and power, swelled. They threw themselves to the ground. I could have walked across their backs.
My mother’s death had undone me. I’d believed she would live forever. With that rule broken, nothing else seemed real. I started swimming maniacally, paddling across dingy palace canals, sleeping in rice paddies. My father sent me to a house on the beach to “recover.” If I’d gotten hurt, I might have been shocked back to reality, but even when I crashed into a rock at sea, my body just swallowed the impact and washed ashore.
I realized, as I lay on the sand watching black coconut fronds stir the white sky, that though the sun is blinding, we are ruled by a great dark Truth. The first Truth is this: People Die. The second: There Is A Place Beyond.
My father took me home after I agreed to sleep indoors again and declared me cured. Truly, I was altered. When the elephant tossed him off its neck and crushed him, I did not cry. “He has joined my mother,” I said. “I will see them in time.”
After My Blood and I were hailed as bearers of the kingdom eternal, I made up my mind about four things: We were going South; we would continue until we reached Jungkuno; there, I would receive my inheritance; and we would take back Alunijo. I rolled my conviction up with my people’s devotion into a little leaden ball in my head that I called “Truth.”
At first, it was strange to carry Truth inside me instead of worshipping its black shadow-shape from a distance. But as soon as I accepted that these four things were True, the fecund jungle began to make sense. I started to smell sea-salt and hear the caw of gulls under the giggles of jungle-birds. I chose easy-going paths. A profound calm that only comes from self-assurance settled upon me. It can lead you into folly, if you are like my father. So, you must wind your focus tight as a closed fist, as my mother did, and listen, not only to the whine of your own hunger but to the roar of Truth. In our final days in the jungle, I thought only of Jungkuno, never of being Queen. In my dreams, clouds roiled like tentacles above wind-whipped flags. “There is a place!” I cried when I was particularly overcome. My people cried with gratitude.
A month after our father died, Murti and I met beside the pool where Arda once drowned a palace pup. Murti was just a little boy trying to grow a mustache. He was born when I was five. When he melted into crybaby tears, I’d often had to console him. “You must leave,” he said. “Arda will hurt you if you stay.”
It was only natural that my brothers betrayed me. Nestling birds peck their siblings to death, to eliminate competition for love or food. The boys’ mothers always whispered to them, at sunbaked ceremonies where they sat two rows behind me — but my mother whispered to me, too: “You are the one, my sweet. You were made to be Queen.”
I told Murti so. He’d read the law enough times. I was afraid to say it aloud, but if my mother was Mother of Kingdoms, the Kingdom could only reside in me.
“Sister, I know. But the Prime Minister has the soldiers ... they don’t answer to you.” His eye twitched. I think he was suggesting he become my minder and talk to men on my behalf — a terrible idea, since he was just a weak-spined scholar.
“They have no discipline,” I said, “and Jaya Megalang is a brute. Decline’s already started. Since my mother died, it’s been nothing but accidents and terrible weather. We have no luck at sea. Soon, all our rivals will come to our gates and start nibbling.”
Murti shook his head. “Don’t talk about decline, Dhani. They don’t want to hear it.”
“Declined” is a polite word to describe Jungkuno. More accurate is probably “abandoned.” We saw the remains of houses, temples, guard posts — now, all was water-logged and riddled with seaweed. Tiny white snails like maggots crawled across every manmade surface. And there was not a single soul. It felt as if we’d been delivered out of Hell, only to find the world of the dead.
We camped on the beach. There were scattered protests from those who wanted “a roof, after all this time,” but I was taught not to go uninvited into the houses of strangers. “The weather is fine,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm because I too was close to ruin. “We sleep outdoors.”
There was barely any talk, save when a girl shouted that the surf was “full of fish!” — then we quietly reaped that harvest that belonged to whoever had lived in those dark, time-eaten houses on the dunes. I didn’t know if we’d survive this disappointment, if I could coax them to accept this dilapidated village as compensation for their lost membership in the Alunijo Empire. I went to sleep curled like a nautilus. What else can you call a dark sea but the end of the world?
Then, in the dead of night, they came: out of the houses, and out of the sea. Those from the houses had long gills like knife slices instead of ears; their gray skin shone in the moonlight. Their mouths opened deep into their cheeks. Long, gangly fingers dangled at the ends of long gangly arms. The ones from the sea looked even less human. They stood slumped and uncomfortable, with water thrashing their legs.
“Princess Dhani,” said one from a house who wore an old fishing net like a shawl. Its voice was too pure for its soggy corpse-skin. “Why did you come back?”
No one knew what to say. My people were so startled, still stuck in a restless sleep, that I don’t think they understood it as language. I was the only one who could look at them without wanting to scream, because I’d been looking into those black, bulbous eyes my entire life: my eyes in the mirror; my mother’s eyes, after midnight; my father’s eyes, when he was hungry. “I have never been here before,” I said. “I don’t know you.”
“Truth. We are Wong Jeru and you should be Queen of Alunijo.” Little smile. Long teeth. “Where is your mo
ther? Your father?”
“Both are dead,” I said and the creatures howled. After a few anxious heartbeats, I realized they were yelling, Murdered! “No! My father had an accident. My mother had a sickness …” I lost my voice, remembering her sudden disintegration — one day, we were watching the boats haul in fish, breathing in sea-salt because my mother said it kept us young — the next, she was dying, a blackened and bloody mess on a foul bed. I was ushered out. Princess might get sick. But what about Our Blood?
The creatures did not like this explanation, either. They sounded like gulls swarming a school of fish and children began to cry. “Sickness! Sickness!” The one wearing the net lunged forward on thick frog-legs and hissed, “She was a daughter of Dagon! What sickness could touch a Wong Jeru? Your mother was murdered, girl!”
It was the first time I heard the name of Father Dagon. This must have been how my birth-father felt upon seeing my mother and hearing music swirl around her like a ribbon coming unwound. It isn’t lust, nor fear. It’s an awakening. It’s the blow of the heavy gong of Truth. I saw the great golden eyes my mother spoke of and felt his two-note name (“Da-aa-ay-gonnn ….”) drum against my bones. It gave my people an uncomfortable shudder — they are human through and through, nearly numb to Truth as I now understand — but I was cracked open, my raw soul quivering and metamorphosing before this tremendous power.
By the time I could think again, some in my party had started to argue with our hosts, these “people of the deep.” Who did these clammy Wong Jeru think they were? What abominable place did they come from — “Sea is home,” the Wong Jeru interrupted, pointing webbed fingers at the dark water, “with Mother and Father forever” — and why they were telling lies about Queen-Mother Dyah?
“Silence!” I screamed. My people closed their mouths and hunched their shoulders. The Wong Jeru curled their lips and the heavy blackness at the center of their eyes fell upon me. “I want to hear what they have to say.”
They came from water. They are all descendants of Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, whose tentacles touch the surface from time to time. They reached out to the villagers of Jungkuno, and offered them enough fish and gold that they could gobble up three nearby settlements, including a struggling trade town, and prompt Alunijo to come bearing gifts and collecting tributes. The only “tribute” the Wong Jeru collected for all this prosperity was the chance to make hybrids. Strong, undying hybrids who would serve Father Dagon and Mother Hydra on the only terrain that posed a challenge: land. Jungkuno made a pragmatic decision and many hybrids were born.
Some hybrids looked just as amphibious as their Wong Jeru parent; others, like Dyah, were beautiful, with faces like drowned stars. Prince Sora was another beautiful hybrid, though he was raised in Alunijo and had no waking memory of Mother or Father, or the Wong Jeru female who birthed him after meeting his father, King Tungga, on the beach. As a baby, Sora was brought to Alunijo and presented to his royal father. “Here,” the mother gurgled, “Your heir.” King Tungga’s queen was infertile. She had little choice.
So, together, my mother and father made an empire for the Wong Jeru, for Father Dagon and Mother Hydra. Until Jaya Megalang killed my mother. Until my father thought he could tame elephants. My stupid father. No wonder he failed. Fish do not tame elephants.
The beach was cold; the night had endured forever. A clammy hand touched mine, and I took a sharp and painful breath. “Take back the throne, Princess. Make Alunijo great again, as your mother and father did. Show them what immortality means.”
“You’re the only one that can, Princess Dhani.” That time, it was one of mine, a human. My long-suffering people looked terrified, their eyes swollen nearly as badly as the Wong Jeru’s, but they let the Wong Jeru squeeze close and drool on their shoulders. Only one Wong Jeru gnawed a human. They were all my people now. “Your brothers don’t have The Blood.”
But I only said yes after I asked the Wong Jeru what they wanted with an empire. They answered simply, “Mother and Father want to grow and be glorious,” and we suddenly understood each other perfectly.
I told my people to return to Alunijo and stay quiet, to tell the court I’d drowned. I promised to return on the first Kliwon of the next month. We would need time for the swim and for me to grow my gills. “I’ll remember every one of you,” I said. “You will not be unrewarded.” They kissed my hands — my alien hands, but they did not care; they loved me so — and said they would meet me at the beach. I might have cried if Truth weren’t armor-plating my heart.
Then I turned, shed what remained of my soiled clothes, and went into the water. The sea was no longer dark but glowing, not from moonshine but from something deep and hidden. Something within. The lumbering Wong Jeru are full of grace beneath the waves, silken and smiling and cosmic blue, not gray. The music down below is overwhelming.
My half-brother Arda was getting married. I didn’t know the girl. I assumed she was some princess of another subordinate people. She seemed excruciatingly unhappy, even before I made it clear that I had not come back from the outer darkness to wish them well. I like to think that when I removed her head, I was saving her from a lifetime of pain.
Arda ran as soon as the Wong Jeru climbed onto the stage, leaving behind his bride. This did not surprise me. He had shown me no loyalty, either. Some warriors think family must “take care” of family — I respect such honor codes, but Arda surrendered the right to be killed by me. I sent the Wong Jeru after him, after giving them license to consume. Best not to waste fuel, I say.
But I did kill Jaya Megalang — not to do him any honors, but to be sure he was dead. This was the man who had killed my mother and dug up her bones. After his bodyguards had been knifed or bitten or bludgeoned, after the wedding stage was slick with blood, I approached him. “I always knew you were a monster,” he hissed. “You and that damned witch you called a mother. I should have slit your throat when you were a baby.”
“Yes, we are monsters,” I said, “but so was my father. You live in a monster’s empire. You’re only upset because you’re not the biggest monster anymore.”
“You’re mad. You’re mad if you think you can run a kingdom with salamanders. Do they even have brains?” His breathing was heavy. He was, finally, the fearful one. “Or just teeth?”
I smiled. “They are Truth and you only have lies. Truth is Order, Prime Minister, and Order is Truth.”
I did not kill Murti — I saw him standing dumb like a manservant and told my army, both human and Wong Jeru, not to touch him. Instead, I let him stand in the center of his unraveling world, and when it was all over, when I took my seat on the throne of Alunijo and lifted my bloody keris above my head, he knelt with the others. By then, it was dawn. Someone shouted, “Hail Queen Dhani the Undying!” and a great roar of triumph burst out from the sea, sending waves all the way to the coconut palms tied with batik, swaying high upon the sand.
Ask about Queen Dhani the Undying, Priestess of the Faith, Shaman Queen. Ask the traders and longshoremen at any of Asia’s busy harbors. Ask at any of the courts of Song, Chola, Khmer. Ask them if they have ever seen a dead Wong Jeru. The answer will probably be no. If a sailor tells you he’s killed one personally, you’ve met a liar. Ask to see something from an Alunijo tradeship and they may show you, for a price. Alunijo gold is probably their greatest treasure. You will not find it on the market because no one ever parts with it. It is handed down on deathbeds, mother to daughter and father to son, often as little dancing idols fashioned in memory of me. If you ever see one, in the Asian Peoples wing of some European history museum, note the arms — an Alunijo idol will have arms like a sea-snake. Or you could simply ask the curator if the museum is “haunted.” That will probably show you the Truth.
Ask and you will hear fear. We weren’t unfriendly, but we were ruthless. Our boats never sank. Even if they had, our people never drowned. When I was nearly fifty, Father Dagon gifted me control over sea-winds and currents. In the Indo-Pacific, that is all that m
atters. I only unleashed a monsoon once, against over-confident Nippon; fear did the rest.
If you’re unlucky, you’ll meet a “true believer” in this or that Abrahamic religion. To them, I am the Demon Queen. They’ll say I was in league with Satan, even though I only ever served Truth. And Truth is brutal, yes. Truth does not care for human dreams. But I had no interest in converting anyone, least of all the weak and foolish, the ones unchosen by Father and Mother. Truth is Order and Order is Truth. Their place is down below, with Jaya Megalang and other detritus. Fear’s the primal god of humans, anyway.
If you are extraordinarily lucky — and ready — you will find a man or woman who knows R’lyeh. It happened to me when I was 412 and I met a shipwrecked chieftain from the Bird of Paradise, Papua Island. “Queen Dhani,” he said, grinning to show his chattering teeth, “I have been to the most amazing city.”
Insane people are the reason I never got bored. I usually let the Wong Jeru eat anything they pulled from the sea, but this time, I stayed them. My guard, the latest I had named Little Murti, licked his grouper lips impatiently. “What city, little man?” I asked. “Is it better than Xanadu?”
“Oh, yes, Queen Dhani. In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
Then he tumbled over laughing and promptly died. Little Murti asked for permission to eat him, which I gave with an absent nod. I had already begun once more to alter. I felt My Blood boiling over, felt the rest of my sensory life go numb. I saw the lead ball of Truth opening before my eyes, cleaving once, then again.
When I turned 500, I left. I dove off my ship at sundown and swam away. By then, I took no joy in empire — the alliances and processions, the shallow exotica. I thought of nothing but R’lyeh, of waking this High Priest Cthulhu. I no longer cared for names, or faces, or food. I did not sleep. I saw my great empire for what it Truly was: a pile of children’s toys, nothing but a game. Father Dagon and Mother Hydra wrapped me in tentacles, and whispered, “This is Enough,” but “enough” was a compromise I was not willing to make.
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