Porcelain Princess (21 page)

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 mind had been addled by staring too long at the sun, and so
now played happily on his dung heap.

*

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 the 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.’

*

‘
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 saying ‘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.