by Bora Chung
“But I am not the only one who will end up in misfortune,” the prince said as he continued to shed tears. “The master of the golden ship cursed my whole family. As long as my father’s blood rules the sands, no one will be safe, he said.”
The princess was taken aback. “But why? Who would make such a fearful curse?”
“It’s because he was defeated in a war and lost one of his arms,” explained the prince. “He said my father had taken his virility, so all my father’s descendants would also have their virility taken from them.” The tears rolled down his cheeks. “If you marry me, our children, and their children, they will all have useless bodies like mine. And when the master of the golden boat invades our land again, this country—ruled by a king with no virility—will immediately fall.”
And the prince lowered his head and cried copiously.
The princess embraced the prince and tried to console him. Her shoulder became drenched with the prince’s tears.
He was gone from her chambers before the sun rose. Sitting alone in the darkness, the princess stared into the brightening gray of the eastern sky. As she watched the golden-gear ship slowly crossing the firmament above the sun rising on the horizon, the princess made a decision.
She was going to go to the master of the golden ship and break the curse for the prince who was to become her husband and for her children who were to be born and their children too.
6
It was not easy, sneaking out of the palace. The princess was a bride whose wedding was imminent, a future queen no less. She was surrounded by handmaidens at all times, and even when she was alone in her room, there was always a guard posted right outside her door. Thus, when the prince again visited her chamber in the middle of the night, she asked for his advice.
“Not only are you beautiful, you are brave,” marveled the prince. “I know a way out of the palace. But once you are out and find your way to the golden ship, you will have to face him on your own. Are you up to it?”
The princess was firm. “I must try. I’m not going to challenge him to a duel, I’m simply a defenseless woman who is asking for a favor. He wouldn’t harm me, would he?”
“We don’t know that. He is a cruel man …” The prince sighed. “If only I could see, then I could accompany you …”
The princess smiled gently. “If you could see, we wouldn’t need to go see the master of the golden ship in the first place. Please do not resent me if I am unsuccessful in my petition.”
“I would never.” The prince gently cupped her chin in his hands. “I am only grateful you are being so brave for me.”
“One more thing,” the princess said. “Even if I succeed, the king will be most displeased to learn that I escaped the palace before the wedding. If I’m discovered on my way back, I may be banished to my country of birth forever.”
“Do not worry. Everything you are doing is for me, and I shall protect you. You are my bride, my wife.”
Instead of an answer, the princess kissed the prince’s lips.
7
The prince led the princess to the back gate of the palace. There, at the gap where the stone wall had cracked slightly, the two lovers passionately embraced and kissed.
“Wait for me,” whispered the princess.
“Come back safely,” answered the prince.
The princess bowed her head as she carefully slipped out the gap in the wall. Allowing herself one look backwards toward the palace, she then gazed up at the moonless, starless sky where the ship of golden gears glinted coldly in the air. She began to walk toward the ship.
8
The sun was merciless in the day, and the princess, having grown up on the grassy plains, was not used to walking for so long on hot sand. She found that it quickly exhausted her, and there was no real respite sitting on the scorching sand, which made her journey to the golden boat a long one.
When she reached the spot right below the floating ship, she rested for a moment in the ship’s shadow and caught her breath. The sunbaked sands were still hot, but thanks to the ship above her head, it was slightly cooler in the shadow. It was the first fragment of shade she had encountered since walking the long distance from the palace.
As she steeled herself, the princess pondered over how she would get on board. The ship swayed a little from side to side in the air. There was no anchor or ropes about it. She was afraid it would sail away from her at any time, disappearing beyond the horizon once more.
Just then, the golden gears made loud creaking sounds as they started to turn.
From between the gears, a golden ladder was lowered.
As she stared in bewilderment, the ladder reached low enough to touch the sand.
The princess stood up. She walked to the middle of the boat’s shadow and began to climb up the ladder. Heated by the sun, the rungs were hot to the touch, almost enough to sear her palms. The princess gritted her teeth and continued to make her way up the ladder, rung by rung.
When she got to the top and stepped onto the deck of the golden boat, the princess heard a low but deep and mysterious voice that seemed to encircle her.
“And how has a princess of the grassy plains made her way to the Ship of Time and Winds?”
The princess looked up.
There, stood the master of the golden ship.
9
Contrary to the princess’s expectations, the master looked like an ordinary man. He wore no golden armor, his face was not made of gears, and his body was not of sand. His skin was copper-colored, his hair seemed to have faded in the sun and wind, and only his eyes flamed a bright gold. As the prince had mentioned, the master of the golden ship had no left arm, and the empty, pale sleeve of his sun-faded shirt fluttered with every breeze.
“Why do you seek the Ship of Time and Winds?” the master asked again.
He looked ordinary, but his voice was not that of a man. Its reverberations were like the loud footsteps of a beast in a cave or an earthquake tearing through the grassy plains.
The princess began to speak. “The curse—” Just then, a wind started to blow. Its heat and dust prevented the princess from finishing what she was saying. She could not see in front of her.
“The curse, I am here to ask you to lift it!” she shouted with all her might, once she realized the wind would not abate. “Please lift the curse that you cast on the king of the desert!”
“What curse?”
Despite the dust storm, the voice of the master came through clear and true. Even the wind seemed to vibrate with it.
“Please restore the prince’s sight! Please allow our children and their children to be born whole!”
The winds suddenly ceased.
“But why?” asked the master of the golden ship in a quiet voice. The princess felt the golden boards beneath her feet and the very sands of the desert below them tremble with those words, and she, too, trembled in fear.
“To curse someone out of spite for losing a war is cowardly!” she shouted as she gathered her courage again. “Please admit your defeat and lift the curse. The prince is to become my husband, and his children my children.”
“I did not curse him,” replied the master. “I do not lower myself to curse mere men.”
“You lie!” The princess was taken aback, but she pressed on. “Why else would the prince be blind from birth?”
“The truth is different from what the princess has been told,” said the master. “They were cursed because they started the war. The air from the horizon to the sun and moon is a place man may not rule. My ship has sailed peacefully in that air since the dawn of time. It was the king of the desert, blinded by his greed for gold, who first drew his weapons.” The voice of the master of the golden ship was calm. “Those who stare for too long at the sun are bound to go blind. The king of the desert made the foolish choice to brandish his sword at the sun. And his progeny will pay for his sins.”
“Please lift the curse!” shouted the princess. “Or at least, tell me ho
w to lift it! The prince of the desert has suffered since birth because of his father’s wrongdoing. For the sake of his unborn children, the future king will never start a war. I give you my word. Please lift the curse!”
The master of the golden ship sighed. Again, the princess felt the golden planks beneath her feet tremble.
“All right,” he said, slowly. “When the rains fall on the desert, release a blind fish into the sea. Then the curse shall be lifted from the prince.” Before the princess could ask him what he meant, the master added a word of warning. “The true nature of man is different from what the princess understands. Even when the curse is lifted, the princess shall not wed the prince.”
And the master of the golden ship lifted his only hand and made a light, flicking gesture.
The next moment, the princess was in the air. As softly as a feather, she swayed in the air before lightly landing on her feet.
10
The princess wandered the desert for a long time.
The place where the golden ship had put her down was not where she had first climbed the ladder. As she had been born and raised on the grassy plains, she had learned from an early age how to read the sun, moon, and stars to discern her position, which was how she could tell with some assurance where she was. But she was surrounded by sand as far as the eye could see, and the dunes shifted whenever the winds blew. No matter how the winds had blown on the grassy plains of her homeland, the land had never shifted shape nor had the trees and grass ever changed their positions. It was unfamiliar terrain to her, and she had no way of predicting how long it would take, walking across the dunes. All she could do was determine where southwest was by the sun and walk in that direction toward the palace.
What he had meant by the blind fish and how she was to find a sea in the middle of the desert—these were mysteries she could not fathom. And as she exhausted herself walking, the princess began to forget about any talk of fish.
She had brought with her some water and dried fruit when she set out from the palace, but that had been long finished by the time she reached the golden ship. The sandy dunes continued to change their shapes, endlessly appearing and reappearing before her. The princess was certain she would meet her death in the desert before she reached the palace.
11
The desert nights were cold. The same winds from the day blew during the night. If she tried to rest, sitting for a moment on the sands, the dune next to her would slowly but threateningly move toward her. If she did not want to get buried, she would have to get up and keep walking.
All feeling left her body as her legs mechanically propelled her forward. Each time she made a step, her foot sank into the sand.
She missed the grassy plains. She missed the flat and wide horizon uninterrupted by high sand dunes. She missed the hard and arid land, the grasses and tumbleweeds that thrived on it. Riding horses over that hard and wide earth, the hoofs striking against the firmness …
The princess tripped over something firm and hard.
She sank into the sand. Quickly, she managed to raise herself out of danger, and she shook herself off and spat the sand out of her mouth before turning around to see what it was that had tripped her.
It was a large, bulky object protruding from beneath the sand.
In the time she had walked to the golden ship and then from it after disembarking, the princess had never felt anything hard about her feet. She crouched before the object and began to dig it out.
The night deepened. The princess, not even knowing what she was excavating, moved her hands without feeling anything. Other than thirst, hunger, and the cold. The thirst … More than anything else, she was thirsty. Her arid homeland also had precious little water, but because she had been a princess, she never had to know how terrible thirst could be. The princess was thirsty enough to want to drink the sand she was shoveling away with her bare hands. Drink the sand …
Just before she was about to drink in the sand she had scooped up in her palms, she quickly came to her senses.
12
The princess wept. Her throat was so dry that it felt like it was splitting into pieces and there was not a drop of liquid in her body, but amazingly there were still tears coming out of her eyes. Leaning against the huge thing she had been digging out, the princess let her tears flow. She was scared, cold, and unbelievably thirsty. I’m going to die in the desert, she thought. She would never see the morning again. Or the sunrise. Never again would she behold the blind prince desperately waiting for her in the palace, the grassy plains she had been born and raised on, her parents. She would die, sink into the sand, and her body would never be found. The thought made her cry even harder. Her tears became wails, and the princess threw herself upon the mysterious object in the middle of the desert, screaming her grief out into the desert night underneath the stars.
The bulky thing she had been leaning her forehead on was soon drenched in her tears.
She continued to cry.
The object her forehead was leaning against moved.
She threw herself back in surprise. Her tears stopped.
A giant fish was flailing in the sands.
The princess was so shocked, she started stumbling backwards before falling on her behind.
The thing protruding from the sand was the head of a fish. Even in the dim light of the moon, she could clearly make out the milky film clouding over a single eye.
“When the rains fall on the desert, release a blind fish into the sea.”
The princess came to her senses. She immediately began to dig out the flailing fish from the sands.
Just a moment ago she had been exhausted and crying, but a strength she had not known she possessed now flowed through her. She furiously attacked the sand, first exposing the gills, then the backfin, and soon the body. After she had excavated the tail, the princess cautiously touched the fish’s eye. With the gentlest brush of her fingertips, the thin, hard film over the eye shattered into flakes.
The fish swung its tail widely. It launched itself from the sands into the cold night sky. The moment it leaped for the sprinkling of stars against deep indigo, the princess heard a sound as if the night sky, clear as glass, was shattering.
Rain began to fall.
Water poured from the cracks in the sky. The princess got to her feet as cold, fresh water drenched her whole body. She opened her mouth to the rain and drank it all in. Even when her thirst was quenched many times over, she spread her arms to the sky and kept drinking in the rain, dancing with joy.
The blind fish had returned to the vast sea, and rain fell from the desert sky.
The princess was elated. Her fear of death, her homesickness, it was all forgotten. Who she was, why she was in the middle of the desert—she was so overjoyed that she forgot it all.
And the princess woke from her sleep.
Far away, she saw the gates of the palace.
13
The palace was bustling by the time the princess had returned. There was a festival going on in the courtyard, and soldiers gathered before the gate.
“The curse has been lifted! The prince can see!” shouted the soldiers as they ate and drank to their hearts’ content. “God has willed for the curse to be lifted; this is a sign that we should kill the sorcerer!”
This alarmed the princess. As she jostled through the feasting soldiers and made her way toward the main palace building, she saw that the king was giving a speech from one of the balconies.
“… and when the sorcerer is slain, the golden ship will be ours! All the gold and jewels in the ship will belong to us, and with this flying vessel, we shall conquer even greater lands beyond the horizon!”
The prince, who was standing next to the king, opened his now-seeing eyes wide and shouted, “The gold is ours! All the world is ours!”
The soldiers, aristocrats, and servants roared in unison. It was enough to make the walls of the palace shake.
Fear gripped the princess.
“Wa
s the master of the golden ship telling the truth?” she shouted up at the prince high above her. “That the war wasn’t because of the land beyond the horizon but started because you were blinded by greed for gold?”
Silence fell upon the palace. All the people gathered beneath the balcony turned and stared at the princess.
The prince was the first to speak.
“Seize her!” he shouted, pointing to her. “She’s a whore of the sorcerer! Seize her!”
At his command, the soldiers threw their wine goblets aside and dashed toward the princess.
She tried to run. But she was soon surrounded by the king’s men. Before she had taken even two paces, she was caught.
“A witch! A traitor! A whore of the sorcerer, slandering the king to bring him down!” shouted the prince as he stared down at the princess struggling against the soldiers. “Kill her!”
At the prince’s command, more soldiers appeared with their swords and spears.
The princess, held back by the soldiers, looked up at the prince on the balcony. The moment their eyes met, she became speechless. There was no recourse for objection or mercy in his gaze.
He was expressionless. The light that had found its way into his eyes was cold and lifeless. This strange man staring down at her and cruelly ordering her death was not the same prince who had shed tears on her shoulder.
The soldiers’ swords came for her throat. Petrified, the princess shut her eyes tight.
In that moment, the wind began to blow.
14
Sandstorms swept the palace. No one could open their eyes or even breathe because of the flying dust, sand, and earth. The sand dug into the people’s noses, ears, and mouths. Without realizing it, the soldiers surrounding the princess dropped their weapons. Everyone frantically attempted to shield their faces, screwing their eyes shut and coughing.
And then came a rumbling noise. Screams ensued. The princess, through a crack in the fingers she had put over her face, watched as the balcony of the palace collapsed. The king and prince who had stood there fell with it, surrounded by the storm. Rocks and rubble fell over them.
The ground began to shake. The princess looked down. She could see the sand that covered the horizon sinking into ever-widening cracks.
