by Geoff Ryman
Her voice went thin, like the sound of wind in reeds. “Because I was pretty."
If she was pretty, he wanted to see. “I can't see you."
She finally looked up, and her eyelids batted to control the tears, and she tried to smile.
"You look unhappy.” He could not think why that would be.
"Oh no, Prince. It is a great honor to be in the royal enclosure. To be here is to see what life in heaven must be like."
"Do you miss your mother?"
This seemed to cause her distress. She moved from side to side as if caught between two things. “I don't know, sir."
"You're scared!” he said which was such an absurd thing to be that it amused him. He suddenly thought of a fishing cat on a dock taking off in fear when people approached. “Fishing cats are scared and they run away!"
Her eyes slid sideways and she spoke as if reciting a ritual. “We owe everything to the King. From his intercession, the purified waters flow from the hills. The King is our family."
The Prince said, “He's not my family.” Fishing Cat's head spun to see if anyone could hear them. The Prince said, “I miss my family. I have some brothers here, but my mother lives far away in the east."
Cat whispered, “Maybe I miss my mother too.” Very suddenly, she looked up, in something like alarm. “And my sisters too. And my house by the river. We lived near the rice fields and the water. And we all slept together each night."
Cap-Pi-Hau saw the house in his mind.
He saw the broad fields of rice moving in waves like the surface of the Great Lake, and long morning shadows, and the buffaloes in the mire, and rows of trees parasolling houses along the waterways.
He saw home.
He himself had been brought from the country, carried in a howdah with nine other distressed, hot, fearful children. He dimly remembered riding through the City, its streets full of people. Since then, he had not been allowed outside the royal enclosure.
Cap-Pi-Hau had only been able to hear people from over the walls. The calls of stall owners, the barking of dogs, the rumbling of ox-cart wheels, and the constant birdlike chorus of chatter. For him, that was the sound of freedom. He kept trying to imagine what the people were like, because he heard them laugh.
Cap-Pi-Hau asked, “What did you like doing best?"
She considered. “I remember my brother taking the buffalo down to the reservoir, to keep cool. It would stay in the water all day, so we could too."
Cap-Pi-Hau thrust himself up onto her lap, and suddenly she was like an older sister, tending the babe for her mother.
"I want to stay in the water all day,” he beamed. “I want to drive water buffaloes. Great big buffaloes!” Something in the sound of that phrase, big and hearty, made him explode with giggles.
Finally she did too. “You are a buffalo."
"I'm a big, big buffalo and I smell of poo!” He became a bouncing ball of chuckles. Even she chuckled. Laughter made him fond. He tilted his head and his eyes were twinkly, hungry for something different. He writhed in her grasp. “What else did you do?"
She had to think. “My brother would catch frogs or snakes to eat. He was very brave."
"You hunted snakes and frogs?” Cap-Pi-Hau was fascinated. He could see a boy like himself, skinnier maybe. They would hunt together in the reeds. He mimed slamming frogs. “Bam! Bam!” he grinned. “Flat frog! Yum. I want to eat a flat frog."
She joined in. “I want to eat mashed cricket."
"I want to eat....monkey ears!"
That joke wore out. He asked about her family. She had six brothers and sisters. They were the nias of a lord who lived far away from the perfect city. Their canal branched off from the meeting of the three rivers, far to the south. She could see all of that, but she could not remember the name of the place.
All of her brothers and sisters slept in a tidy row on mats. When one of them was sick, that child slept cradled by their mother. So they all pretended to be sick sometimes. One night, so many of them said they were sick that Mother turned away from them all. Then their mother got sick herself. With no one to work the fields, they had to do something to feed all the children, so Fishing Cat was sent away.
The Prince still wanted fun. “And you never went back, never, never, never.” He rocked his head in time to the words. “I never went back either."
Something seemed to come out of them both, like mingled breath.
"What's your name?” she asked, because Cap-Pi-Hau was a nickname.
"Nia!” he said, delighted, and started to chuckle again. “I am Prince Slave!"
"I will give you orders!” she chuckled, something irrepressible bubbling up.
"I will have to dust floors for you,” he giggled.
"I will say, you, prince, come here and help me with this thing.” She snapped her fingers.
"You can call me Prince Nia."
She chuckled. “You can call me Princess Nia!"
For some reason the laughter faded.
"I hardly remember my home either,” said Cap-Pi-Hau.
Until the day of his marriage, Cap-Pi-Hau called himself Prince Nia. When people expressed astonishment at the choice, he would explain. “All princes are hereditary slaves."
* * * *
The day of the procession arrived.
The Sun King's great new temple was to be consecrated.
Prince Nia stood high on the steps of an elephant platform. Ahead of him the next batch of hostage children crowded the platform, scowling at the sunlight, flicking their fly whisks.
The Prince had never stood so high off the ground. He was now level with the upper storey of the Aerial Palace. There were no walls and all the curtains were raised.
He saw servants scurrying, carrying, airing, beating—taking advantage of their mistresses’ absence to perfect the toilet of the rooms. Category girls ran with armloads of blackened flowers to throw them away. They beat cushions against each other. They shifted low bronze tables so that the floor could be wiped.
In the corners, musical instruments were carefully stood at attention, their wooden bellies gleaming. The lamp hooks screwed into the pillars were swirling bronze images of smoke or cloud-flowers. The rooms had handsome water butts of their own, with fired glazed patterns. The pillars on the upper floor were ornately carved, with images of celestial maidens, as if the rooms were already high in heaven.
He could see the lintels and the gables close up. Monsters called makara spewed out fabulous beasts from their mouths. Gods abducted women. Brahma rode his giant goose; Krishna split a demon asura in two. Regularly recurring shapes of flames or lotus petals were embedded with glass pieces. And the roof! It was tiled with metal, armoured like a soldier's breastplate. The metal was dull grey like a cloudy sky, smooth and streaked from rain. So many things had been kept from him!
An elephant lumbered towards them. It was old, and the howdah on its back wobbled on its loose skin.
It was not a good elephant. The howdah was functional, no carvings. The beast came close to them and coughed, and its breath smelled of dead mice.
Now the King's elephant! Its tusks would be sheathed in gold, and the howdah would rest on a beautiful big carpet!
The children began to advance one at a time onto the elephant's unsteady back.
And the King himself, is he blue, Nia wondered, like Vishnu? If he is the Sun Shield, is he blinding, like the sun?
Someone shoved Nia from behind, trying to push him aside. Nia thrust back and turned. It was an older, more important prince. “Get out of the way. I am higher rank than you.” It was the son of the King's nephew.
"We all climb up and take our turn."
At the top of the steps, a kamlaa-category slave herded them. “Okay, come on, press in, as many as possible.” He wore only a twist of cloth and was hot, bored, and studded with insect bites. He grabbed hold of the Prince's shoulders and pulled him forward. Nia tossed his shoulders free. He wanted to board the howdah by himself. In the future, I
will be a warrior, Nia thought; I will need to be able to do this like a warrior. He saw himself standing with one foot outside the howdah, firing his arrows.
The kamlaa peremptorily scooped him up and half-flung him onto the howdah. Prince Nia stumbled onto a girl's heel; she elbowed him back. Nia's face burned with shame. He heard older boys laugh at him.
Then the kamlaa said, “Okay that's enough, step back."
The King's nephew's son tried to crowd in, but the kamlaa shoved him back. The higher prince fixed Nia with a glare and stuck his thumb through his fingers at him.
The elephant heaved itself forward, turning. Was the procession beginning? Prince Nia craned his neck to see. All he saw was embroidered backs. Nia prised the backs apart and squeezed his way through to the front. Two older boys rammed him in the ribs. “You are taller than me,” Nia said. “You should let me see!"
The elephant came to rest, in no shade at all. They waited. Sweat trickled down the Prince's back.
"I need to pee,” whispered a little girl.
Adults lay sprawled in the shade under the silk-cottons. Soldiers lay sleeping, wearing what they wore to battle, a twist of cloth and an amulet for protection. Cap-Pi-Hau scowled. Why didn't they dress for the consecration? Their ears were sliced and lengthened, but they wore no earrings.
The musicians were worse. They had propped their standards up against the wall. A great gong slept on the ground. The men squatted, casting ivories as if in a games house. Did they not know that the King created glory through the Gods? That was why their house had a roof made of lead.
The afternoon baked and buzzed and there was not enough room to sit down. Finally someone shouted, “The King goes forth! The King goes forth!"
A Brahmin, his hair bundled up under a cloth tied with pearls, was being trotted forward in a palanquin.
The Brahmin shouted again. “Get ready, stand up! Stop sprawling about the place!” He tried to look very important, which puffed out his cheeks and his beard, as if his nose was going to disappear under hair. The Prince laughed and clapped his hands. “He looks silly!"
Grand ladies stood up and arranged themselves in imitation of the lotus, pink, smiling, and somehow cool. Category girls scurried forward with tapers to light their candles or pluck at and straighten the trains of threaded flower buds that hung down from the royal diadems.
The musicians tucked their ivories into their loincloths next to their genitals for luck. They shouldered up long sweeping poles that bore standards: flags that trailed in the shape of flames, or brass images of dancing Hanuman, the monkey king.
A gong sounded from behind the royal house. A gong somewhere in front replied. The tabla drums, the conches, and the horns began to blare and wail and beat. Everything quickened into one swirling, rousing motion. The procession inflated, unfolded, and caught the sunlight.
The footsoldiers began to march in rows of four, spears raised, feet crunching the ground in unison and sweeping off the first group of musicians along with them. A midget acrobat danced and somersaulted alongside the musicians, and the children in the howdahs applauded.
Then, more graceful, the palace women swayed forward, nursing their candles behind cupped hands.
"Oh hell!” one of the boys yelped. “You stupid little civet, you've pissed all over my feet!"
Prince Nia burst into giggles at the idea of the noble prince having to shake pee-pee from his feet.
The boy was mean and snarled at the little girl. “You've defiled a holy day. The guards will come and peel off your skin. Your whole body will turn into one big scab."
The little girl wailed.
Nia laughed again. “You're just trying to scare her."
Scaring a baby wasn't much fun. Fun was telling a big boy that he was a liar when there wasn't enough space to throw a punch. Nia turned to the little girl. “They won't pull your skin off. We're not important enough. He just thinks his feet are important."
Nia laughed at his own joke and this time, some of the other children joined in. The older boy's eyes went dark, and seemed to withdraw like snails into their shells.
Endure. That was the main task of a royal child.
Suddenly, at last, the elephant lurched forward. They were on their way! The Prince stood up higher, propping his thighs against the railing. He could see everything!
They rocked through the narrow passageway towards the main terrace. Nia finally saw close up the sandstone carvings of heavenly maidens, monsters, and smiling princes with swords.
They were going to leave the royal house. I'm going to see them, thought the Prince; I'm going to see the people outside!
They swayed out into the royal park.
There were the twelve towers of justice, tiny temples that stored the tall parasols. Miscreants were displayed on their steps, to show their missing toes.
The howdah dipped down and the Prince saw the faces of slave women beaming up at them. The women cheered and threw rice and held up their infants to see. No men; their men were all in the parade as soldiers.
Beyond them were their houses—small, firm, and boiled clean in tidy rows. Planks made walkways over puddles. The air smelled of smoke, sweat, and steaming noodles. The Prince tried to peer through the doorways to see what hung from the walls or rested on the floors. Did they sleep in hammocks? What games did the children play?
"What are you looking there for, the tower's over there!” said one of the boys and pointed.
Tuh. Just the Meru, the Bronze Mountain. They could see that any day. Its spire was tall, but everybody said that the King's great new temple was taller.
The road narrowed into shade and they passed into the market. The Prince saw a stall with an awning and a wooden box full of sawdust. Ice! It came all the way from the Himalayas on boats in layers of sawdust. He saw a Chinese man press a chip of it to his forehead. He had a goatee, and was ignorant enough to wear royal flower-cloth. The Khmer stall-wife was smiling secretly at him.
The howdah slumped the other way. The Prince saw sky and branches; he steadied himself, clinging to the rail, and looked down. Beyond the stalls were ragged huts, shaggy with palm-frond panels. A woman bowed before a beehive oven of earth, blowing air into it through a bamboo pipe.
The air smelled now of rotten fruit and latrines. The Prince saw a dog chomp on the spine and head of a fish.
Splat! The little girl squealed in fear. Overripe rambutan had splattered over their shoulders. Overhead, boys grinned from the branches of trees and then swung down. One of the kamlaa took off after them with a stick.
Along the road, other people watched in silence.
One of them gazed back at Nia. His mouth hung open with the baffled sadness of someone mulling over the incomprehensible. How is it, he seemed to ask, that you stand on a elephant in flowered cloth, and my son stands here with no clothes to wear at all?
The man standing next to him was so lean that every strand of muscle showed in lines like combed hair. His gaze turned to follow the howdah, insolent, fierce, and angry.
These were the great people of Kambujadesa? The young prince didn't like them at all. They were ugly, their houses were ugly, and they smelled.
This was Yashodharapura, abode of the Gods, the perfect city. The soldiers should come and take away all such people.
The procession moved on, into the precinct of the holy mountain, Yashodharaparvata.
Here in the old center of the city, everything was better. Wives of temple workers, all of them royal tenants, waved tiny banners. Their hair was held in handsome fittings, and they wore collars of intricate bronze.
Nice people, smiling people. They dipped and bowed and held up their hands for princes, as was fitting.
Their houses stood on firm stilts and were linked by covered walkways. Airy cloth bellied outward from the rooms. The Prince glimpsed the canals beyond, full of boats. Amid fruit trees, carved stone steps led down to small reservoirs.
Prince Nia turned around and saw stone steps going all t
he way up the miraculous hill of Yashodharaparvata. The trees were hung with celebratory banners, and the gates to the hilltop temple had sprouted poles that supported ladders of colored cloth. From the top of the hill, golden kites swooped and dipped. The kites reflected white sunlight that continued to dapple the inside of the Prince's eyes long after he looked away.
The procession passed into orchards and rice fields and dust began to drift over the howdah like smoke.
Suddenly they came upon a new, raw desert. All the trees had been cleared, their fresh yellow stumps staring out of the earth. Dust blew as if out of a thousand fires, and above rose the new temple, the Vishnuloka.
The Prince was disappointed. The five towers were not that much bigger than the spire of Mount Meru. They were made of raw uncarved stone, unfinished and undecorated blocks that bore down on each other. The towers looked like the toy buildings he himself made out of clay cubes. Some banners trailed limply from the scaffolding.
Ahead of them, pickaxes rose and fell out of a great ditch. Men struggled up the banks, passing baskets of dirt to queues of women and children who swept the baskets away hand-to-hand into the distance. Boys ran back with empty baskets. To the Prince the workers looked like busy termites swarming around their nests.
More banners bobbed on poles that marked where the entrance would be. The elephant passed between them and rocked the children up onto a causeway that crossed the moat. The moat looked like a dry riverbed running due north, sweltering with a few puddles.
The elephant did a slow dance round to join a row of waiting elephants. The Prince saw the puffy faces of other children in howdahs sagging in the sun. They waited again, on a plain of churned earth.
The Prince craned his neck to the right. “I can't see the rest of the parade,” he said.
"Aw, poor little baby,” said the boy whose feet had been peed on.
Another elephant full of unwanted princes churned up the dust and came to rest beside them. Dust polished the Prince's eyes every time he blinked.
Finally an elephant strode past them, shaded by two heaving parasols. The howdah was carved and balanced on a beautiful rug, and on it stood a high-born warrior. He wore a felt coat and a diadem and a bronze tiara, rising up like an open lotus. He stood holding his arrows in his hand.
