Porcelain Princess (13 page)

‘
Well, obviously, it must be waiting for you Carey!’ a man
said confidently.

Carey turned
back to look at the carriage once more. Yes, it had stopped
directly opposite her. And the door was right in front of
her.

But all this was
just a coincidence, surely?

‘
No,
no; it can’t be me,’ she insisted nervously. ‘I mean,
why
me? There must be some mistake!’

‘
This
is what you wanted, isn’t it?’ someone close by said.

‘
It’s
your chance to see the Illuminator.’

‘
Go
on girl!’ someone else kindly urged as she received another gentle
push in her back.

She stepped,
almost stumbled forward, expecting the door to humiliatingly close
before her as she approached it. But the door remained open, the
steps remained in place.

She warily
placed a foot on the lowest of the steps, expecting the step to
suddenly withdraw from beneath her at any second.

Nothing
happened.

She stepped up
onto the next step.

She leaned
forward into the carriage’s wondrously upholstered
interior.

As she stepped
inside, the steps were swiftly raised behind her, and the door
silently closed. As soon as she was comfortably seated, the horses
began to elegantly and smoothly turn the carriage
around.

The crowds
parted once more for the carriage. Seeing Carey inside, they waved
and cheered as if it were the Princess herself making her way
through them.

As she wasn’t
sure what else she should do, Carey cheerfully waved
back.

*

Even as her
white carriage slowly approached the open gates, Carey could see
the black carriage waiting inside the walls. The black horses
impatiently pawed the ground, eager to set out on their own task,
even though there must still be quite a time to pass before they’d
be allowed to leave. Perhaps they were always on call, Carey
reasoned, as no one was really sure when they would be next
needed.

The gates swung
silently to behind her as the carriage entered the palace
courtyard.

Suddenly she
felt very alone. There were no signs of any human activity. Even
the cheering of the crowd had abruptly come to an end as the gates
had closed, as if their closing had instantly drowned out all sound
from outside.

The courtyard,
however, was magnificent, with plush green lawns framed and cut
across by a whirl of paving. Trees and bushes had been carefully
trimmed into all manner of elaborate shapes, from squares to
pyramids, and spirals to web-like structures.

Even leaning
against the window and looking up as high as she could, Carey
couldn’t see where the top of the palace itself ended. She could
see, though, that it was made up of an array of towers sprouting
still further towers, all held together by vast, connecting arches
and bridges. It glittered as if formed from the most glorious
coral, the clouds flowing past its upper reaches like languidly
shifting shoals of fish.

The carriage
drew to a halt at the bottom of an incredibly wide set of steps
that elegantly curved their way up towards the palace’s immense
doors. As the carriage’s door opened, so did these great
doors.

Tripping down
the carriage’s own steps, Carey stepped out onto the staircase. The
carriage’s door closed quietly behind her then, with nothing more
than the almost silent trotting of the horses, the carriage slowly
drew away from the steps, leaving Carey all alone beneath the
imperiously dominating palace.

Carey quickly
ascended the stairs. She stepped through the great
doors.

It was like
walking into the very midst of a rainbow (if, of course, that were
actually possible).

Carey had once
been fortunate enough to bathe in a completely clear pool beneath a
waterfall where, when she ducked below the surface, she was amazed
to see how the sunlight split into thousands of sparkling rainbows,
playing amongst the ripples and waves flowing everywhere about her.
But that experience was as nothing to what she was seeing
now.

As if the
world’s entire hoard of jewels had been crushed and scattered in
the air, every colour Carey had ever come across sparkled and
glowed, hovered and flowed, no matter where she looked. The light
formed into foxes, cows, dragons, men, women, ships, and castles,
all of them lingering and mingling in the vast space stretching
before her.

Only when she
ignored all this imposing play of light and forced herself to look
beyond it did she see the building’s actual structure, as minimal
as it was. The stonework was little more than a fine tracery, with
vast windows of stained glass supported between it. Gigantic
circular windows, formed like the closely set sails of a windmill,
twirled slowly as a light breeze caught and rippled along their
edges.

Suddenly, Carey
didn’t just feel all alone but also very small and inconsequential
too.

Why would the
Porcelain Princess, let along the Illuminator, want to see
her
?

And even if they
did, what if all the tales she had heard about the Illuminator
before the Princess’s arrival were true? What if she didn’t really
control him, but he, secretly, controlled her?

Where were all
the demons, the devils, who had once inhabited the dark
tower?

She shivered as
a huge, dark shape enveloped her, seemingly passing through her as
it continued to whirl on through the air. It was a whale, colossal
and beautiful, and actually of the darkest blue rather than black.
It appeared to rise up through the space, as if striving to leap
free of the building itself.

For the first
time, she began to recognise the characters flowing about
her.

The Fox’s
Fingers
.

The Old Woman
& the Young Girl’s Shoes
.

Our Laudable
Tinker & the Impoverished Judge
.

They were all
taken from tales that the Illuminator had illustrated. Some that
she recognised, others that she didn’t, or at least couldn’t yet
place.

The whale swam
amongst them all, chased by the white sails and bright pennants of
a pursuing fleet.

Ah yes; she knew
that
story.

*

The
Whale & the Devil

For the eighth
time that year, the fishing fleet returned from a month at sea with
little to show for it.

‘
The
shoals have deserted us!’ the fishermen unhappily
wailed.

‘
The
men have let us down again!’ the women stormed.

‘
Our
mothers leave us to go hungry!’ the children complained.

‘
We
can’t feed our horses, so they can’t plough the fields.

‘
We
can’t feed our dogs, so our hunting fails.

‘
We
can’t feed our cats, so rats and mice steal our
supplies.

‘
We
can’t feed our land, so all our corn dies.’

But on the ninth
time that the fleet set sail, a whale appeared amongst
them.

‘
It’s
an omen!’ the men happily cried. ‘A good omen! See how its spout
bursts forth like a fountain of plenty. Follow the whale, and it
will lead us to fresh shoals!’

So the men
trimmed their sails, and set to their oars, and eased on their
rudders, following the whale across the sea to a fishing ground the
likes of which they had never seen. They cast their nets, they drew
them in.

‘
Look
at our nets! They’re fit to burst!’ the men yelled in delight as
they hauled catch after catch aboard, more than they had ever
caught, more than they needed.

‘
Only
fools would scorn such good fortune,’ they told each other happily
as they set for home.

‘
The
shoals have returned to us!’ the fishermen triumphantly
declared.

‘
The
men have done us proud again!’ the women trilled.

‘
Our
mothers would never let us go hungry!’ the children
sang.

‘
We
can feed our horses, so they can plough the fields.

‘
We
can feed our dogs, so our hunting’s a success.

‘
We
can feed our cats, so rats and mice won’t steal our
supplies.

‘
We
can feed our land, so all our corn grows so high.’

And so now each
month the fleet set sail, it waited patiently for the arrival of
the whale.

‘
There, there’s the whale!’ they would cry out excitedly as
she came amongst them once more.

So they trimmed
their sails, and set to their oars, and eased on their rudders,
following the whale across the sea to fishing grounds the likes of
which they had never seen. They cast their nets, they drew them
in.

‘
The
small fish, who needs them?’ the men declared, tossing the dead
fish they didn’t need back into the sea.

‘
Don’t look down on such good fortune,’ others yelled,
cramming their holds so full of fish that many were crushed and
made useless to anyone.

But on the ninth
time that the fleet followed the whale, the shoals weren’t quite so
plentiful anymore.

‘
Why,
we’ve often seen better catches than this!’ the men grumbled,
remembering only the good times, and forgetting the bad.

They cast their
nets, they drew them in.

‘
What
fools threw away perfectly good fish last time?’ they
moaned.

‘
Don’t pack them in so badly we waste them!’ the captains
barked.

‘
Why
didn’t we smoke and preserve the fish when they were plentiful?’
their crews muttered.

So they trimmed
their sails, and set to their oars, and eased on their rudders, and
headed for home.

‘
The
shoals aren’t what they were!’ the fishermen howled.

‘
The
men bring back mostly excuses again!’ the women snapped.

‘
Our
mothers sometimes let us go hungry!’ the children
whined.

‘
We
can barely feed our horses, so they struggle to plough the
fields.

‘
We
can barely feed our dogs, so our hunting’s not what it
was.

‘
We
can barely feed our cats, so rats and mice nibble at our
supplies.

‘
We
can barely feed our land, so all our corn doesn’t stretch so
high.’

One day, a man
arrived in the fishing village.

‘
You
fools!’ he snarled. ‘Don’t you see what’s really happening here?
Don’t you see who’s really to blame? The whale has been feeding off
your
good fortune! Following you to the fishing grounds
fortune led
you
to! What do you think such a great beast
feeds on? Shrimps and pebbles? It’s been feeding on your fish with
its great maw, and scaring the rest away with its even greater
greed!’

‘
No,
no,’ some good men amongst the villagers protested in defence of
the whale. ‘The whale herself was our great fortune, let us not
forget that!’

‘
I
have it on good authority,’ the man reposted, ‘that the whale is
akin to the Devil himself!’

‘
No,
no,’ Now even fewer men protested the whale’s innocence. ‘Don’t you
remember how we all saw and commented on the way the sun’s light
would form rainbows in the spray of the whale’s glorious spouts of
water?’

But these men
were now very few, and they were easily shouted down.

‘
We
don’t need to listen to you!’ the villagers cried. ‘Who are you to
think you speak for us, when this most learned and intelligent man
has fortunately arrived amongst us to warn us of our
folly?’

‘
This
is correct,’ the man said, ‘for I have indeed studied such things
to a most impressive degree. But I will forgive the ill-informed
amongst you, for they are not to know as I know – having read the
most august journals, available only to the world’s elite – that
the whale has been observed on many occasions dragging simple
fishermen like yourselves to their deaths!’

‘
How?
How does the whale do this?’ all the men now fearfully demanded of
the man, fearing for their own lives, thinking themselves truly
fortunate that this man had arrived in time to warn them of the
fate that could have awaited them.

‘
By
devious means, by entrapment, as the Devil himself works! The whale
lies still upon the ocean, allowing soil to wash upon its back.
Then the birds bring seeds, and grass and bushes grow upon it,
until the whale takes on the semblance of an island. And then when
some poor fishing vessel seeks safe harbour from the tossing waves,
and beaches itself on this semblance of an island; well then at
last the whale dives down and down into the sea’s depths, taking
the boat and all its poor men with it!’

‘
It’s
true, it’s true!’ someone cried out in terror. ‘How many times did
we see this monstrous beast waiting like this but we only thought
it was basking in the sun?’