Ada : ( The Untold Story )

by Zola Tau

  The simple servant got ready to speak but the Prince sighed and shook his head.

  “Leave her be for, she'll come to her senses when she grows tired." The Prince said.

  As obedience to the Prince, Nari did exactly that and followed him close behind back to the royal grounds till she was dismissed to her quarters and he went to his room. At random times both she and the prince would tell one another they had something to do so they may be rid of the other, only to walk by the palace to check on Ada.

  Meanwhile, the king paced around his room with his hands behind his back. A tiresome woman kneeling before him was crying for her life. "I swear on my life your highness I did taste the tea for his grace." She said over and over again.

  "Then how do you explain his current state?" he yelled. The woman aged in seconds by the intensity in his voice, as she tried to think of a response " By chance do you know if it was the cup itself that was poisoned for I didn't bring the cup to my lips rather I used a spoon, like a tester should that is the only thing that we did different your highness " she finished and faced the ground humbly as her hands trembled waiting for the king's response to her theory.

  The king stopped and thought for a moment staring into the servant's eyes, till finally, he said: "Your wisdom has saved your life "he sighed and then shooed her away as dismissal.

  Like a perplexed bird, not yet decisive on whether he was ready to fly, he walked about repeatedly before proceeding to find his way up to him throne where he sat trembling. With his right fist as a base for his head, he thought out loud.

  "The poor child still sits outside wailing still, yet cruelly he still denies to see her. He’s being too cruel." The king said to himself.

  "If it weren't for my respect in vow I would have her brought in, we don't need another fatality, by cause of both of their stubbornness, his from not wanting to see his daughter, and hers for not placing her health in the utmost care.

  Even at his weakest point, Ada's father refused to allow his daughter to see him as anything but strong, what he didn't seem to understand was that that was exactly what was killing his daughter more than he could ever comprehend.

  When the night came and the day grew once more Ada was still kneeling outside calling for her father. Still, the morning came and the gate door did not open, like the statues, she stared at the palace as if it was foreign treasure, it became clear that even she was cursed with wanting most what she couldn't touch, the palace.

  The mocking rain started to pour in a rhythmic pattern as if drums from the heavens were signaled with each drop that fell onto the hard ground. The wound on her hand getting worse than better by the uncleanliness only caused Ada to cry in both pain and desperation.

  The lost Princess cried as a child would be gone astray in a land with no one else like her, surrounded by a now rapidly aware reality her father shield her from, because... "It was just meant to be a temporary stay!" Ada moaned in a teary cry, she cried to her surrounding since the beings of the land didn't seem to care.

  " Father.... father " she whispered to herself as she grabbed onto the skirt of her hanbok, all in an effort to stay awake, she vowed to herself to not allow her mind the chance to sleep, she didn't want to miss a moment in case her father would be brought before her.

  "Father!" she nodded in repetition as she came in and out of the temptation of sleep, but still she called for her father.

  She wasn't a criminal but here she sat like one. Soon it became too dangerous to close her eyes because all it caused was an image her father deceased, an image that began to seem as a reality the longer she found herself kneeling outside.

  That morning the prince came to visit the headstrong princess, in his hand; he had his birthday hanbok placing it over her to cover her from the rain. He whispered to her in command, telling her to go get rest but all she did was throw mud balls she created at him to keep him away. As stubborn as she was, he too was cursed with the same trait.

  He didn't listen to her rather he grabbed onto her waist from the back and tried in all effort possible to pull her up but like expected she resisted, so instead he knelt down behind her holding her close.

  "Why are they treating me like a prisoner?" she asked softly looking down before she turned her eyes to be one with the Prince." The rain being poured down was so similar to her tears that the prince didn't know where on her face to aid. Instead of temporarily wiping away her pain he just kept her head on his chest and held her close so she could cry it out instead.

  The guards like trees stood there silent and debated their emotions. On the third morning, the gates were dramatically opened and the familiar tiny woman stepped out.

  The minute the gate opened Ada stood up as frail as she was she raced inside the palace so quickly that the tiny women stepped out the way in fear. She called something out to Ada, but Ada did not hear, Ada didn't want to hear anything other than her father's voice.

  She raced to her father's room in a storm of confusion and fiery then quickly knelt down before her father awaiting his questioning bark of why she was so emotional, but by this time his walnut brown skin was no longer glowing in Majesty. "Even in death, he has a fearing spirit." Ada whelped.

  Ada sat in silence reaching out to simply touch her father's hand but she stopped herself. She examined him from head to toe as her glassy gaze glided along him while he lay with his eyes closed. "Father" Ada finally said out loud, she paused as if he gave her attention to speak before she continued.

  "I came to ask you about when we will be going home." She whispered as her eyes were growing red from the tears she no longer had the feeling to cry.

  "Father, I wonder what my sisters will say with all the new silk I have for them; we will be the most respected in all the land..." She dryly chuckled; still, she received no reply as she knelt staring at her father.

  "What are you going to wear when you see your queen, father?” She asked as her soft smile faded to turn her growing cry into a soft laugh of denial. Her father's hand twitched slightly as the last goodbye and with her wounded hand, she clutched onto it close with red eyes and a sigh.

  "I'll go get ready to leave... to get ready to leave and go home, father!" Ada said speaking to herself, screaming her words lost in the search for the right words to say because of as much as she denied it the man before she was now only a corpse. She kissed her fingertips and placed it onto her father's head, as her dark brown hands trembled out of control, she wept.

  She finally stood up and bowed after some time. Silently she placed a blanket over his head and walked out.

  The prince stood by the doorway awaiting her return as he practiced with himself the words he would say.

  Like fate Ada scrolled by wanting to quickly to disappear. "Princess!" he called out to her expecting her to be ready to run into his arms, but she turned around placing her finger on her lips and shushing him. "Silence.” she whispered to him trembling with denial. "My father is sleeping"

  She finished then turned away in her muddy clothes trying to keep together the last of her already decaying outward being. She fought her tears finding it best, to hurt in the silence and hope that maybe she was mad, and that truly this entity was just the curse as it felt to be. "He's only asleep.” She told herself. "He's only asleep." She kept repeating like a mad woman that she herself agreed she had awakened.

  [제 6장]

  “To mourn in sadness due to a great loss, is not wrong but to bury yourself in it, makes you no more alive than the one you are mourning over.”

  It was said in an old proverb, which she heard from her father, that when a friend dies, all that he owns is left for all those that he cared for, everything he trusted no one but himself could do, is left for those around him to care for as he did. When a ruler passes away in a foreign land, it's that land's leader's job to return the fallen Ruler back to his land, for his spirit to be able to go to rest in a world he knew in the eyes of his heart and cared deeply for.

  For eight day
s and nights, after all that occurred Ada went about, avoiding the king's efforts of comfort and even more his notices that were used to invite her to come dine with him and his family as a form of hospitality.

  As much as the king longed to see her in a state of neutrality, anything other than as depressed as she was he didn’t receive that gift Ada was reluctant to the idea of dining with a king who hadn't yet discovered the killer of the man that made his safety and respect even more obtainable. The king himself felt it was his own responsibility to treat her as his own because even through her silent hurt and the introduction of hatred in her life's changed path in the story she assumed she'd create when she arrived, she still seemed to have treated him like a father more than his own children.

  The only thing unable to be explained was Ada's heart because of the fragile state that it had now acquired. For as long as she could remember, her being and humanity had always been made up of the spirituality from a heart which she followed and lied to so often that she was okay especially when she wasn't. Now that heart has just endured the biggest lie of all, and that lie was that: though her father was no longer here, that she'd be okay.

  Days prior, before her father wouldn't wake from his sleep, Ada refused to cry, because to her crying would be too honest to face so she hid away in his room and sat silently where he once woke up every morning when they first arrived in Gojoseon. The rocking chair he uses to sit in to read and write letters back home shrieked a lonely cry when Ada touched it, as ghosts of her father's memory raced around the room, by works of his uptight act of fearlessness.

  Ada stared into the empty space, thinking about the first day they arrived in the cursed land. Ada replayed it in mind as she went and sat in his rocking chair, with her legs up rocking her body back and forth like a child yearning to be put to sleep.

  Ada reminisced on the day she had raced into her father's room their first night here. When the sun went to rest: discomfort approached Ada, because she was yet not accustomed to living so far from her family and the fragile look of confidence she obtained was now threatened by those that looked nothing like her. Ada ran to her father often, especially the first day when the princesses all except the youngest, who was not present greeted her quickly, even so as kind as they pretended to, as they were the eldest sister and the middle sister, paid her no mind, it was as if the introduction never occurred. Ever since that moment they would avoid her. The Princes were outside the palace walls playing archery in the woods and would be for another two weeks at the time, so she felt both alone and terrified in that state when she raced to her father.

  "And now I am all terrified and alone again father." Ada scoffed tearfully. That day to her surprise when she found her father he was in a meeting with the king and his advisors. Like he occasionally did, her father gave her a stare of anger that day and that alone helped her excuse herself out.

  The young princess sat in front of her father's room waiting till the king and everyone departed to bring her troubles to his attention. When they did eventually finish she was not aware of the time because she had caught into the grasp of dreamland. Fast asleep she stayed in front of his room after she had previously spent the hour before crying and throwing a fit about this new land like a child.

  Sometime during it all, her father placed her in his bed as he slept on a thick blanket by the door as a method of protecting his daughter from all her nervousness and anxiety so that if they were to see him guarding the door they would not be able to come inside and bother her as she slept. When she woke up that day, she was confused as to how she ended up inside her father's room. To her right on the floor, the blanket her father slept on was folded neatly beside her. After she was fully awake and washed up for the day she decided to search for her vanished father. While she went on a voyage to try and find him she continued to curse herself reawakening memories of anything she may have done wrong the day before. Ada was lost in her thought only to find her father outside drinking hibiscus tea and looking at the leaves dance from underneath the blossom tree.

  Elegantly Ada walked up to her father bowed and sat beside him. "Thank you, for letting me rest the night in your room, Father.” She said quietly. “I did no such thing." her father joked.

  "You should be thankful you didn't get punished for running in my room during a meeting and when I didn't call." he whispered, trying both to set his daughter off guard and keep his fearful demeanor.

  Ada remembered feeling both relief and amused at her father's effort to seem so fearful all the time. That moment on that day was special because it was the first time in a long time Ada and her father were able to console the loss of the late queen, Ada's mother. Through the action of just being present there for one another after ten years, and acknowledging one another's existence was all needed. Her father tried to make it appear as if he had everything together so often that he pushed people away but in that moment he disregarded what he felt was a way to live, and turned to his daughter as his priority. Ada remembered sitting there cuddling close to her father as they went over memories and laughed for the first time in the twenty years of her life, Ada beamed a smile she had not smiled since her mother's passing. To the hurting princess that was the best memory Ada had of this land every day after was bland till recently. She glared at the empty world as she slowly stopped trying to remember, memories that only made her hurt.

  As she came back into reality from the walk through her hidden memories, she was so filled with anger and so frightened that she kicked the air violently like a child, then suddenly froze, dropped back into the rocking chair then grabbed her knees up close to herself. She began shaking as the chair rocked back and forth violently with each word she spoke out loud.

  "Father, why were you so stubborn, you couldn't even let me hold your hand as you left? Why did you leave me here alone, did you hate me that much that you'd leave me deserted only a short time into this visit?" She heard herself ask. Ada trembled endlessly trying to keep the composure of a Princess.

  "What am I now, what am I father... without you to tell the world where I am from?" The more Ada spoke the more she broke the lies she told her heart. Her anger became a scream and she yelled.

  "You let me cry and rot in the rain as you just left me, did you not value me enough to let me see your face as you left...father... why have you and mother left me without aid? " she cried as she was shuddering.

  On the rocking chair sat a young woman so accustomed to bottling up her emotions. She held the lid on so tightly that for so long, from the time her mother passed till now, she stayed emotionless to many things, but as it is said all things did have an end, and in the fragile moment Ada cried alone refusing to open her father's door for anyone ending her obduracy to be emotional in her father's personal space.

  Looking back on the day they held a ceremony for her father. Ada remembered how he was rested in golden wraps and clothing. Placed in a handmade death basket, that was carved out and decorated in jewels, so that his body may be preserved in the cool soil till it would be sent back to his land. On that day, even the king shed tears, which seemed genuine.

  Ada's face was blank resistant to emotion, as everyone else cried she, his daughter didn't shed a single tear but a ruler from a strange land did.

  "Why didn't I cry? Why didn't I cry for my father!? "She yelled at herself broken and destabilized inside from stress.

  Ada cried all the tears and more that she once pretended never existed. So there she sat in the rocking chair, shaking as if a lost puppy in the rain all muddied up with no home her own, the princess wept.

  The joy of the sun diminished itself and night came again, in her father's room, Ada sat. If anyone who did not know her knew her father, they would truly agree that, she was her father's child, stubborn and silent on the topic of her pain, and denied all help.

  She rested with the personal lie of being okay, and too prideful to accept assistance. Time passed from morning till dawn, Ada sat in her father's room, which to
her was the closest things to his arms she felt she had, she longed to be in his presence, like any child would be stuck in a new world and unaware of what steps to take. As if his ghosts, surrounded her. Ada stuck out her hand into the open room and continued to cry. Tears rolled down her cheeks, snot filled her nostrils, and her throat was clogged with saliva. The composure a princess was to take at all times had now broken, at last it died along with her father. “Maybe I’ll see you soon.” She spoke out loud as she leaned into the rocking chair, with her face, swollen from dears. Just like that she closed her eyes, in hopes to see her father. If not before her in flesh, then at least she felt it just, to see him in her dreams.

  The following day, Ada woke up in a strange room. The room was clean and lacking of color giving a minimalistic aspect, aside from a bed, which she was in. The rectangular like container in which the bed resided within, was decorated in bronze metal. The bed itself was small by comparison to the size of the container, yet elegant at the same time with the excessive decoration of gold outlining the bed itself. A blue satin blanket lied on top of a thick, cotton white blanket, both were laying across her body keeping her warm, rolled and tucked in tightly, keeping her secure her in like a mother would a child.

  She raised her hand to feel the warm wet towel that rested on her forehead. In an effort of trying to process how she ended up in the room, she looked around. From the bed one could see a smaller room on the side in a peculiar way it portrayed an illusion as if a huge rectangular hole in the wall was transformed into another room, the entrance way seemed smaller than most, about half the size of a regular one, a little unusual making the room seem like a room for a child.

  The mysterious room contained a table, ink, books, and papers all across the floor. Ada twisting her brows in confusion, forced herself up, with a lift of her hands as she was yawning. She quickly set her arm back down again, as she wrinkled her nose. "I feel sorry for the one whose nose even came close to me.” She said to herself in reference to the smell that the minimal breeze in the room brought to the room. As she was making effort to get up, from a bed that was tightly tucked, she remained distracted to her surroundings. The sound of metal suddenly hit the floor. Ada looked up in fright like anyone would, only to find herself face to face with Nari, the young servant all pale and tired out, fearing more for Ada's life more than Ada did her own life. As a sigh of relief, Nari released tears down her cheeks in place of words. Ada embarrassed looked at, her left hand that was all wrapped up in a now worn out faded and bloody off-white cloth.