Porcelain Princess

by Jon Jacks

  Now the High Emperor didn’t really have any question he needed answering. He had his armies, his fleets, his wealth and power to ensure that he always got the answer he wanted to any question asked or any problem faced.

  Would he win the next battle his armies took part in? Of course, for he would always ensure victory by putting into the field a force ten times greater than his opponent’s.

  Would his empire, his power and his wealth continue to grow and expand? Well, here was another question; what was to stop him?

  Would he be remembered by history? Now that was a truly foolish question!

  Nonetheless, this idea of the fabulous kimono intrigued him. If it portrayed amongst its pattern any one famous or important who visited the wise woman, then how could the pattern be deemed to be complete and accurate if it failed to incorporate the most important man alive; the High Emperor himself!

  Without a moment’s hesitation, he ordered that a great caravan of camels, oxen, horses and carts should be prepared, such that his entire court would travel with him as he made his way to the far edge of his empire where this wise woman lived. They travelled day and night, while the courtiers and the High Emperor ate, slept or even danced in their smoothly sprung carts. They travelled for month after month, a vast, languidly moving caterpillar of men and women devouring everything it encountered, for even the poorest village was expected to provide it with food, clothing and, yes, the youngest, prettiest women. Only when the caravan arrived at the base of the mountains was it decided that the court and the great carts would have to remain in the foothills, while the High Emperor and a few chosen men continued on through the passes and along the ancient goat tracks.

  At last, they appeared outside the remote hovel of the wise woman. Without waiting for his attendants to arrange an introduction to the wise woman, the High Emperor marched straight into her home.

  ‘If everything they say about this fabulous kimono is true,’ he told himself, ‘then she should already be aware of my arrival; for I should already be a glowing sun on her kimono, blinding every other person nearby!’

  And indeed, the woman was expecting him. She was seated at a low table on which a pot of tea and two cups waited. Despite her age and her wisdom, she was surprisingly beautiful; yet the High Emperor didn’t notice this, his eyes only on the kimono and its pattern as he sought his own, imperious image amongst its elaborately decorative embroidery.

  He saw all the images the traveller had told him of and more. There was a woman who he had heard was a ferocious bandit leader, her men riding alongside her as if they were a wave flowing forth from the underworld itself. There was the inventor of the great wheels that spun and drew water up from lakes to irrigate whole mountains. There were the Three Women of the Council, who had offered themselves as hostages to save their besieged city; then executed their enemy’s leaders as they slept in the morning.

  And the closer he looked, the more people he saw, thousands upon thousands of them. And just as the traveller had also described, the more insignificant the man, the smaller he was portrayed, in many cases hidden amongst the energetic images of other, greater people.

  So where was he, the High Emperor, who could have any one of these nonentities killed on a whim after a particularly disagreeable breakfast?

  Ah, on her back, of course! Where else would there be a clear expanse large enough to take his image?

  He strode around the table, preparing to be amazed by the beauty and colours of his overpowering, omnipresent image. Yet the back of her kimono was hardly different from the front, with its mix of people of varying sizes and capabilities.

  Why was the kimono refusing to react to his presence? When would he appear?

  He strode back towards the front of the table. The woman had calmly poured him a cup of tea from her teapot.

  A question! He had to ask a question of course!

  ‘When will I appear on your kimono?’ he demanded.

  The wise woman didn’t reply. She gracefully slid his cup closer towards him, while indicating that he should take his seat at the table.

  Sitting down at last, he grabbed and drank the tea thirstily, as he had not had anything to drink since first sighting the woman’s home. He slammed the empty cup down on the table.

  Unhurriedly picking up the cup, the wise woman carefully poured any remaining liquid onto a nearby plate then, leaning elegantly across the table, she revealed to her High Emperor the pattern the tealeaves had made in the bottom.

  They showed a man seated at a table, drinking tea.

  The High Emperor furiously snatched the cup from her hands, swirling the image away.

  ‘Is this some treacherous trick?’ he roared. ‘You think I don’t have my own useless fortune tellers at court? You think I’ve come all this way just to see some useless heap of tea leaves in the bottom of a cup?’

  He spun the cup across the table so that the wise woman could see for herself the shapeless mound of tea leaves lying in the cup’s bottom.

  ‘See!’ he stormed. ‘I only see something resembling a dung heap lying before me!’

  Then, at last, he began to see the pattern of the kimono ripple and change. Over the woman’s right breast, a surprisingly small image of a gloriously robed man was starting to form. But the man was purposely striding forwards, growing in size as he drew nearer. His robes were the purple and magenta robes of an emperor, embossed with a golden sun.

  The High Emperor smiled in satisfaction.

  This foolish kimono had finally recognised who he was!

  ‘There had been no image of the High Emperor,’ the woman politely explained, ‘because no High Emperor had visited me until now.’

  The oncoming man continued to grow in size, allowing the High Emperor to make out more and more detail. Yes, yes; all this was now all so incredibly pleasing! The kimono was accurately representing his very finest robles, with their own intricately embroidered planets and stars.

  He nodded and grinned in approval; and then he frowned in disapproval.

  This image wasn’t quite so accurate after all. It didn’t quite portray his face correctly, showing him as a younger man, and looking nowhere near as serious and as authoritarian as he now liked to present himself.

  ‘But this isn’t me,’ he growled, leaping to his feet. ‘This is my nephew!’

  ‘Yes, I’m emperor now,’ thundered a voice just behind him, ‘elected by the people in your absence!’

  He whirled around, reaching for his sword. But his nephew, approaching lithely and swiftly despite wearing the High Emperor’s finest robes, already had his sword drawn, and held it to his uncle’s throat.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘how do I ensure I don’t let my people down, as my uncle did?’

  The image of the High Emperor on the kimono was still growing. His face was now greater than life size, the fierce glow of the sun on his robes having already enveloped every other person and pattern on the kimono. It glowed stronger and stronger, rapidly taking on the brightness of the sun itself.

  ‘The brightest sun consumes everything,’ the wise woman said. ‘Including, eventually and swiftly, even itself.’

  As the face withered and burnt in the ever expanding glow, the new High Emperor bent his head in shame, avoiding the glare of the sun. But the old emperor, wanting to share in this intense sense of irresistible power, continued to stare in admiration.

  Slowly, the glow began to ebb, the image of the High Emperor shrinking in size until he became hardly larger than his alchemists, his warlords, his administrators.

  ‘Yet the sun that comforts and nurtures,’ the wise woman calmly continued, ‘is one we all gladly welcome into our lives every day, and pray that it will always shine benevolently down upon us.’

  The image of the High Emperor remained situated over the beating heart, the glowing rays of his sun linking each and every one in his empire.

  And that included the poorest man of all portrayed on the kimono; a man who’s m
ind had been addled by staring too long at the sun, and so now played happily on his dung heap.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 28

   

  The audience had appreciated this evening show almost as much as the earlier showing of The Porcelain Doll. They showed their appreciation with claps and cheers, as well as sighs of disappointment when, after the final curtain call, it was announced that the actors would be unable to mingle with the crowd as before because they had important things to attend to.

  ‘So, you’re sure we should leave?’ Peregun asked Carey hopefully, saddened that he’d be leaving his many admirers without even a proper goodbye.

   ‘I know, I know, Peregun,’ Carey replied sadly, looking around at everyone with an apologetic frown. ‘We’ve already been through this; I realise this is the first place where you’ve all actually been able to walk around, as if there’s nothing particularly unusual about you, and so I swear we will come back one day! But at the moment, I can’t stand the sight of that tower looming over me, reminding me of my stupidity!’

  ‘We understand Carey,’ Ferena reassured her. ‘So, let’s just get our posters back, and be on our way!’

  ‘The ones in the square and on the tower wall first!’ Carey rose to her feet determinedly. ‘Then hopefully that’s the last I have to look at it for a long long time!’

   

   

  *

   

   

  The String Theatre’s posters were plastered for quite a distance either side of the gates on the tower’s wall. Underneath them, their frayed and torn edges clearly showing, were posters for previous shows and storytellers who had visited the town, the first one uncovered being a promotion of ‘Mr Morgan’s famous and thrilling rendition of the true story of Tam o’ Shanter and the Cutty Sark!’

  Each time Peregun took down one of their posters, another poster for another, earlier show was uncovered. As he neared the gate, however, he was no longer uncovering promotions for rival theatre productions; they were copies of the Illuminator’s illustrations, many so weathered that their previously vibrant colours had faded to pastel shades.

  ‘Oh, and look at this!’ Peregun exclaimed excitedly with a loud guffaw, calling on the others nearby to come and see an illustration that was obviously more recent, its colours and shapes still entrancing and luminous. ‘And who do you think we have here?’

  The others were collecting posters from different points around the square, but they all heard Peregun’s call and laughter. Ferena was the first to rush over to see what Peregun had uncovered under the posters, and she too immediately joined in with his laughter. Neris and Durndrin were next at the wall, and they also started chuckling. It was an odd sight, as they were all still wearing their costumes from the show.

  ‘Who’s this shifty character acting so suspiciously by the walls, do you think?’ Durndrin declared mischievously, standing in front of the illustration as Carey, Dougy and Grudo made their way across the square, blocking any clear view they might have had of it.

  He stepped aside only as they finally came up right behind him. Dougy guffawed as uncontrollably as Peregun. Carey tried her best to hold it back, but she couldn’t help giggling either.

  Grudo gruffly snorted, mumbling, ‘Very funny, very funny.’

  It was an illustration of Grudo, standing on his own by the bare, white wall, looking lost, worried and forlorn.

  ‘There’s another new illustration under here,’ Peregun said, as he began to strip off another poster, revealing a virtually entirely white rendition of the porcelain room in all its glistening glory.

  ‘Didn’t you say you’d been to the porcelain room, Carey?’ Neris asked casually.

  ‘And here she is!’ Peregun gasped once he’d fully uncovered the illustration. He pointed to Carey sitting on one of the porcelain chairs as she talked to the Princess. ‘It’s a picture of you with the Princess!’

  ‘What? How dare he–’  

  Carey abruptly stared at the picture in confusion. She looked at the posters Peregun had already taken off the walls and, rolling them up, placed in his sacks.

  ‘But how’s a picture of that ended up under our posters? Posters we put up when we first arrived here!’

  Grudo shrugged. ‘Perhaps some of our posters blew down; and someone else stuck them back up.’

  Even Grudo didn’t look as if he accepted it as a reasonable explanation.

  ‘Let’s see what’s under the poster below,’ Carey said, beginning to take it down itself.

  It was a perfectly beautiful and incredibly vibrantly coloured illustration of the show of The Glorious Pattern of The Kimono that they had put on.

  ‘This…this doesn’t make any sense!’ Carey wailed, ripping off the next poster and throwing it to the floor without any care of how much she damaged it.

  The next illustration portrayed her visit to the gallery and its display of sketches and water colours, the work in progress for the Illuminator’s The Elemental Flaw.

  ‘All of these illustrations – how dare he use us all in one of his stories without asking our permission!’

  Carey was furious now, yet still bewildered that all of these pictures seemed to have been placed on the wall before Peregun and the others had pasted up the theatre’s posters.

  It didn’t make any sense.

  It wasn’t possible.

  They were all urgently pulling off the posters now, throwing them to the floor even though a slight breeze was already picking some of them up and wafting them chaotically across the square.

  They uncovered further illustrations of Carey’s trip in the white carriage, their show of The Porcelain Child, and even one of Peregun and Neris working in the dark as they pasted their posters over a wall already covered with illustrations.

  ‘No wonder they were expecting us!’ Carey breathed as she came across pictures of their arrival in the town and their trip through the forest.

  ‘He’s even written our names under these pictures.’

  It was hard to tell if Durndrin was speaking in shock or admiration as he pointed out their hand-scripted names in a clear patch running along the bottom of the illustrations.

  ‘Well, he’s not getting this completely right,’ Grudo sniffed determinedly as he nodded back to his own illustration. ‘I’ve never stood by this wall like he’s pictured me there!’

  They had by now arrived at the gates. There were more posters, probably covering more illustrations, on the other side of the gates. But everyone had seen enough.

  Carey strode over towards the centre of gates and started fiercely banging on them.

  ‘He’s still got some explaining to do Grudo!’ she shouted back to the others over the noise of her own hard knocking. ‘This tower’s already made me look stupid enough without him telling the whole world about it!’

  She looked up at the tower as she fiercely kicked the great white gates.

  ‘Open up! Open up now!’

  But the gates not only refused to open, they didn’t even shake in the slightest under her most ferocious banging and kicking. They were completely immoveable.

  ‘You aren’t going to get in there,’ Grudo calmly pointed out. ‘If you want to get in, we’re going to have to think of some other way of getting over the walls.’

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 29

   

   ‘How about you just call on the Princess?’ Ferena said hopefully, pointing up towards the balcony. ‘You seem to have gotten on well with her so far.’

  Carey glanced up at the balcony uncertainly.

  ‘How much has she known what’s going on though?’

  ‘It’s worth a try, surely?’ Durndrin said, already walking off towards the part of the wall lying just beneath the balcony.

  With a shrug or swapped expressions sa
ying ‘Well, why not?’, the others followed after him.

  ‘If I knew we’d be running, I’d’ve dumped this damn kimono!’ Neris complained, having to move her feet twice as fast as the others due to the short steps the tightly confining dress was forcing her to make.

  When they were standing beneath the balcony, they looked up, realising it suddenly seemed an awful lot higher up the tower than they had first imagined.

  ‘Grudo, I think you’re the one who’s going to have to give her a shout if she’s going to hear us.’

  Grudo looked uncharacteristically aghast at Carey’s words. He glanced uneasily about the square.

  ‘But people might hear…’

  ‘Grudo! This is important!’ Carey insisted.

  Grudo sighed resignedly.

  He moved closer to the wall, threw his head back – and shouted as quietly as he could up towards the balcony.

  ‘Princess! Oh Princess!’

  ‘Now who does this remind me of?’ Peregun grinned.

  ‘Oh, this isn’t going to work anyway, is it?’ Neris snorted scornfully. ‘If they’re not going to open the gates, she’s hardly going to just suddenly appear up there like some guardian angel and let us in, is she?

  ‘Now if only we had a rope…’ Ferena breathed wistfully, looking up at the balcony with a dreamy look on her face.

  ‘And if only there was already one of us up there, so they could tie one end and throw the other down to us,’ Durndrin said, emulating her wistful expression.

  ‘Typically airy fairy idea I’m afraid, Ferena,’ Dougy agreed with a groan as he weighed up how ridiculously high the balcony appeared to him from his even lower point on the ground.

  ‘Unless…’ Ferena blurted out excitedly as, strangely, she bent down to inspect the hem running along the bottom of Neris’s kimono. ‘I noticed this loose thread…’

  ‘Oh yes, it is getting a bit threadbare.’

  Neris was a little puzzled that Ferena had chosen to bring up the state of her kimono at this particular moment, but she was even more surprised when Ferena suddenly rose to her feet, still clutching the loose thread. Neris had to ungainly spin on her feet as her dress began to swiftly unravel.

  ‘Ferena! My dress!’

  The unravelling became even worse as, with a fiercely resolute expression, Ferena began to slowly rise off the floor, her wings behind her fluttering at a ridiculously fast rate.