New Suns

by Nisi Shawl

  When Upright Lotus received the Sixth Emperor’s raving letter to the Great Sea Dragon, she essentially rewrote the entire text as a polite warning from a calm and intelligent sovereign who was so supremely confident that he deigned to gently lecture the upstart on the foolishness of his course, providing a detailed and reasoned discourse on the many insurmountable difficulties he would face in taking on the Grand Circle. It was undoubtedly Diviner Supreme who provided her with the appropriate quotations from military classics. The profuse use of passages from the works was designed to intimidate the Great Sea Dragon by exposing his lack of knowledge on conducting a large-scale campaign on land, so further undermining his confidence. The letter gave the impression that the Sixth Emperor was surrounded by learned generals who provided him with such expertise, which they would deploy against the warlord in battle.

  As for Diviner Supreme, the inclusion of the word “green” in his translations of the Great Sea Dragon’s letters was inspired by his knowledge of his sovereign’s early life. The emperor was born and raised in the northern frontier where his father, a member of a tertiary branch of the imperial family, was the lord commander of fortresses, a position his son inherited following his graduation from the Forest of Spears Military Academy. Given the large number of possible candidates to the throne, he had no expectation of attaining it when the sickly and impotent Fifth Emperor died without naming his successor. So he was taken completely by surprise when officials from the High State Council came to his headquarters to announce that they had designated him as the next ruler.

  In that harsh region of frigid winds and rocky hills, there was a folk tradition about a figure who was called the Green Visitor. Parents of disobedient children would leave a window open for the creature, a macabre monster with rotting skin and bladed fingers, to come in at the darkest hour of the night. It would sneak over to the side of a sleeping child, rip off the skin on their face, and gobble it up. His coming was announced by the stench of fish, and he was sometimes depicted as having the head of a fish. Parents in the region corrected the behavior of recalcitrant children by threatening to invite the Green Visitor or by claiming to smell rotten fish in the air.

  The Sixth Emperor was apparently subjected to such warnings during his childhood. With the onset of his madness, he became tormented by the recurring appearance of the Green Visitor in his dreams. The emperor became so terrified that he avoided sleeping as much as he could, so worsening his condition. He also banned fish from the palace, forbade the presence of green objects, and ordered that all things painted green be covered up with a different color. His reference to the Great Sea Dragon as Pirate Fish Stink made Diviner Supreme think that his sovereign harbored the suspicion that the warlord was the Green Visitor incarnate.

  In the last letter Diviner Supreme translated with the numerous additions of the word “green” to frighten the Sixth Emperor, he added one original sentence at the end, promising that the Great Sea Dragon would go away without eating his skin if given the three gifts of title, jade, and liquor. The successful conclusion of a peace treaty with a foreign ruler usually ended with the emperor granting an official title, a jade tablet of the appropriate rank, and finally, precious liquor that they shared.

  The Sixth Emperor surprised everyone with the order to offer the Great Sea Dragon peace. And they were surprised anew when the warlord agreed, on the condition that he was given the highest official title possible. A problem arose when the emperor refused to grant the jade tablet in the rank of green, as he would have nothing to do with something of that color. So his officials offered red jade, with room to negotiate up to white or yellow. The counter offer they received was that the Great Sea Dragon would accept red jade if he was allowed to submit standing up rather than having to prostrate himself on the ground, as was required of those receiving anything below the green. This was agreed upon. The negotiation over the jade color was entirely a play put on by the two translators. Diviner Supreme made it seem as if the Sixth Emperor got the better of the Great Sea Dragon by getting him to acknowledge his subordinate position in accepting the low grade of jade. Meanwhile, Upright Lotus told her master that the tablet of red jade was the mark of the highest recognition of equal status demanded by him, as demonstrated by the fact that he was to accept it on his feet.

  And so the war was averted, with the Sixth Emperor relieved that he had appeased the Green Visitor, and the Great Sea Dragon thinking that he had avoided what was sure to be a disastrous land invasion against an able opponent. Within three years, both of them fell precipitously from power.

  What the Great Sea Dragon thought was the Sixth Emperor’s recognition of his equal status brought him no honor among his sea lords and led to a crisis of confidence. As he had feared, many immediately conspired against him, as they considered the peace he had made with the Grand Circle an act of cowardice. In the ensuing war in South Ocean, his nephew, whom he was grooming to be his successor, was bribed by rebellious sea lords into assassinating him. The Great Sea Dragon managed to escape the attempt and kill his beloved nephew, but his spirit was broken. In the next naval battle, he jumped into an enemy vessel by himself and fought a multitude of soldiers until they brought him down. South Ocean then fell into bloody chaos for the next five years, until the Peace of the Sixteen Sea Lords brought a measure of order back.

  At around the time of the Great Sea Dragon’s final battle, the Sixth Emperor expressed his desire to visit his original homeland in the northern frontier. He confided to one of his eunuchs that he did not fear going there to pay respects at the graves of his ancestors because the Green Visitor was no longer there. The monster had been pacified and sent far away, acting as his official in charge of South Ocean. It was also rumored that he meant to establish a North Capital and move his court there permanently. On the night after he arrived at the central fortress where he was born and raised, he used a secret passage to sneak out of his chamber in the middle of the night. He ventured outside and walked until he came to the house of a goatherd where he asked for directions to the path up a nearby mountain. When the goatherd suggested that he wait till daylight to travel, the emperor told him that he needed to get to the summit by dawn so that the first light of the new day would transform him into an immortal spirit. After he was shown the path, he granted the goatherd his cloak of radiant worm fabric and went on his way. He was never seen by anyone again.

  The next day, when his eunuchs realized that he was missing, they kept it a secret at the fortress but mobilized the soldiers of a nearby garrison and sent them out in every direction to search for him. When the eunuchs were informed of the goatherd’s story, the soldiers were dispatched up the mountain, but they eventually returned without having found any sign of him. In their panic, the eunuchs fabricated an imperial order and activated the troops of the fortress to slaughter all the soldiers of the garrison as well as the goatherd and his family under the false charge of fomenting a rebellion. In what came to be called the Rule of the Fifty Half-Men, the eunuchs continued to run the state while hiding the emperor’s disappearance for almost a year, hoping in vain that he would show up somewhere.

  They thought that they had killed every member of the goatherd’s family but one of the boys they had executed was actually a neighbor’s child who had come to the house to play. The real son was returning from an errand when he witnessed the killing of his family and hid inside a rotten tree. After the soldiers were gone, he begged all the way to the neighboring province where he was taken by some bandits and sold off as a slave. After a few months of working as a water carrier, he managed to escape and reach a town where an uncle on his mother’s side of the family lived. He told the uncle his story, and the uncle told a local official who brought the tale to the magistrate. It eventually reached the ear of the governor, who sent a letter to the Sixth Emperor’s nephew who was returning to West Capital from a pacifying expedition to the New Frontier of the far west where barbarians ate their food raw. He diverted his force to th
e town where he personally interrogated the goatherd’s son. Enraged by what he learned, he gathered more soldiers and marched to the north, where he arrested and executed the fifty eunuchs. Within a month he arrived at West Capital, got rid of the Sixth Emperor’s children by his murdered concubines, and ascended the throne as the Seventh Emperor. He also adopted the courageous and resourceful son of the goatherd who went on to have an illustrious career as a military officer, eventually becoming the commandant of the Forest of Spears.

  There is one last element of the secret history of the Peace of Five Peaks Island to be told, though it can only be related in a speculative manner. The recently discovered letters that Upright Lotus sent to Diviner Supreme show that in the aftermath of their conspiracy to manipulate events through deliberate mistranslations, they planned to reunite at some point in the future. They knew that they had to be extremely careful, since it would raise suspicion if they were seen together by someone who knew their identities. For that reason, Diviner Supreme planned to decline the offer of a position in the imperial court and leave West Capital as soon as possible to settle in some remote place in the southeast, as close to South Ocean as possible. But then his mother died and he had to go into mourning period during which he could neither receive nor send correspondences, which caused a delay in their plan. When he was finally able to leave the capital and establish a home far away from the scrutiny of government officials, it was Upright Lotus who met with difficulties as she tried to arrange a passage into the Grand Circle.

  Despite the remoteness of Diviner Supreme’s last home, he did not lead the life of a hermit. He had his school, and many scholars who journeyed all the way there to meet and consult with the famed linguist reported that he led a rich social life surrounded by students and friends. The Seventh Emperor himself sent envoys to offer him a position in his court on no less than three occasions, but he declined each time, claiming to be too ill to travel, an apparent lie as he lived a very long life. It is most unfortunate that none of the visitors have written of the presence of Upright Lotus at his house. There is actually no reason to expect any of them to have done so, given the low status of women in this period. Men of the time would have hardly deigned to distinguish between a wife, a concubine, or a servant maiden who served them liquor and meals, but then withdrew to the women’s quarters. Consequently, we cannot know if Upright Lotus ever managed to make her way to him.

  When he wrote the narrative poem Upright Lotus toward the end of his life, was it a celebration of how he came to first meet his beloved with whom he shared a long, happy life together? Or is it a work of melancholy remembrance, of the one who was never able to reach him, leaving him to lead the rest of his life in solitary longing? I confess that it pains me deeply that we will, in all probability, never know.

  The great mural painting “Peace of Five Peaks Island” is indeed the kind of monument to peacemakers that the Grand Historian Silver Mirror dreamed of in a civilization that has reached the age of wisdom. Yet it was not the gloriously attired Sixth Emperor or the proudly standing Great Sea Dragon who were the true heroes of the event. What all people who value peace and humanity should celebrate is the secret but truly great achievement of their interpreters, barely visible in the background of the picture as well as of history itself, who quietly and subtly saved the lives of hundreds of thousands through the virtuous use of unfaithful translations.

  [Marginal Note: My true and dear beloved, how well you have weaved the story together from so many disparate documents across the ages, in different scripts and genres. How you have rendered the invisible visible, how you brought clarity to the obscure, and how you shed light on the hidden. Yet, I must express disappointment at one aspect of your narrative.

  My true and dear beloved, could you really only have told the secret history of the unfaithful translators from the point of view of the man? I already know what your response to that will be. As you point out more than once, the events took place during a historical period that was a particularly low time for women, when they were subjugated, marginalized, and rendered invisible to such an extent that it is almost impossible for historians to gather much reliable information about their lives. This was true even for women of the highest status families, who were forbidden from learning, restricted to their quarters, and kept away from the social life of the larger community. Having made forays into research myself, I understand the difficulties involved.

  But I must ask you, my true and dear beloved, have you tried hard enough? Or did your knowledge of the paucity of historical evidence on women of the Primal dynasty make you give up too quickly? Did you even attempt to read around the absence of information? To put it in another way, were you not bothered enough by the question of who Upright Lotus was to look further in search of her identity? Even her name is one that was given to her by a man.

  For instance, you speculated that she might have been a member of a southern merchant family who worked as an assistant to her father. We know that indeed women played a greater role in South Ocean and its islands, a few even heading merchant concerns. Beyond merely theorizing about the origin of Upright Lotus, have you delved into that historical context? Even if you were not able to find any information about her before the Peace on Five Peaks Island, the research may have shed light on the life of such an intellectually gifted woman who worked for her family’s business and then for a powerful sea lord.

  But, my true and dear beloved, what bothers me the most is your lack of a detailed analysis of the letters Upright Lotus sent to Diviner Supreme. You say that they provided the essential clues that allowed you to decode Diviner Supreme’s poem. How did they do so? Also, what exactly do the letters say, what is her writing style, what do they reveal about the character of the writer? You wrote, on that day on Five Peaks Island when Diviner Supreme fell in love with her, “he gazed at her luminous eyes that shone with sad intelligence.” How did he look to her? Did she also fall in love with him? Or did she have her own reasons for her actions? After they successfully averted war, did she really want to be with him? Would she have wanted to take the enormous risk of traveling by herself to the Grand Circle, just so she could live in a society where she would have to lead a restricted existence? Would she have indeed done all that just to be with him, or could she have made her own way and led her own life? Even if they were never reunited, leaving Diviner Supreme to lead a life of, as you say “solitary longing,” that doesn’t necessarily make it a tragedy for Upright Lotus. She may have found happiness in a different world.

  I assume, my true and dear beloved, that the letters do not provide direct answers to those questions, as otherwise you would have revealed them. But you must see how your neglect of their specific contents deprives the reader of what may turn out to be clues to another alternate view of the events. A secret history within the secret history of the Peace of Five Peaks Island, if you will.

  You have done well, my true and dear beloved, but you can do better and you must do better. We all must, in our never-ending task of rendering the invisible visible, bringing clarity to the obscure, and shedding light on the hidden.

  My true and dear beloved...]

  Come Home to Atropos

  Steven Barnes

  EDITORIAL NOTE TO Carver Kofax:

  I understand that monies have been exchanged and that the Atropos account has been good for us in the past. However, I’m not entirely certain that we want to continue working with this project beyond this point. There are certain legalities (yes, this infomercial can be placed upon the internet through offshore servers) and moral questions that have to enter the equation. I’m not entirely certain that our finance department has considered the implications though I do acknowledge and respect the time and effort already invested. We agreed to the contract and I suppose we must continue, but I wish to formally register my discomfort with the situation. I am also puzzled about the stipulation that the infomercial be promoted to primarily white upper class markets. Isn’
t this racist?

  —Adrien Stein, President, Stein and Baker Advertising

  [The following is rough script submitted for your approval. The Art Department can be trusted to add their own input and illustrations as we continue the process of development. Musical accompaniment is not my forte, but perhaps some of the more celebratory tunes by their native group Los Muertos?

  — Carver Kofax, creative operations, Stein and Baker Advertising]

  INFOMERCIAL SCRIPT, PROJECT ATROPOS

  [Image: Crashing Caribbean waves beneath a summer moon. FX to enhance silvery reflection on the romantic waves. Narrator’s voice should have that “this is a cola nut” quality. Is that guy still alive?]

  Narrator: Come home to Atropos, my friend. Here in the Caribbean you will experience a paradise of golden beaches and sunny days, enough to fill your senses and melt away your cares and woes.

  [Image: Friendly brown-skinned natives. And should we change ‘days’ above? Technically, the average stay is less than 24 hours, after all.]

  Narrator: We understand your very special situation and our smiling, happy guides will welcome you from the moment that you step off the plane—

  [Image: St. Atropos airport. (Please FX wipe hurricane damage. Make it look good!) Can we get B-roll of arrivals? And for God’s sake, clean them up. Drooling and wheelchair-bound just isn’t sexy.]

  NARRATOR: —surrounding you with love and support as you approach your final experience. While others may have mocked and discouraged you, telling you you haven’t the right to do as you wish with your own bodies, we understand that all journeys come to an end, and that choosing the moment for that is one of the greatest rights a human being can enjoy. We are a people who remember a time when our bodies did not belong to us, when we were told that there would be divine judgement for the ending of pain and sorrow. Understanding is the birth of compassion.