Porcelain Princess (9 page)

*

It was midday
before the steam caravan finally cleared the last, more loosely
scattered trees of the forest. The road stretched on before them,
however, with no towns, villages or even hostelries along the way.
There were farms to be seen on both sides of the track, but each
one of these was too far away and too remote to be worth a
visit.

‘
Perhaps they just don’t like living together around here,’
Peregun said miserably, eager to put on another show.

Even as night
fell, they continued travelling in the hope that they would at last
catch a sign of a town in the distance, its lights beckoning them
on. And, eventually, this hope was rewarded, the number of lit
lanterns and windows at first growing the closer they got, only to
start winking out one by one as its people prepared for sleep. By
the time they reached the edges of the town, it was in complete
darkness. It was past midnight, and there wasn’t even a sliver of a
moon to give them any light.

So as not to
wake the town’s sleeping inhabitants, Carey shut the caravan’s
engine down to a slow purr, while Grudo strapped on the type of
harness more usually seen on a horse to pull it quietly along the
streets. The others had already slipped off into the darkness to
paste the show’s posters in the most unusual and unexpected places
they could find.

As they would
have to remain awake until everyone had safely returned, Carey and
Grudo began to swiftly set up the theatre as soon as they reached
the town square. They worked quietly and confidently, despite
having only the dim glow of a few lamps to see by. It would be
quite a shock for the townspeople, Carey thought with pleasure,
when they saw that this theatre had sprung up in their midst
overnight.

Neris and
Peregun were the first to return, followed not long after by
Ferena, Durndrin and Dougy. They were laughing excitedly, regaling
each other with tales of the difficult positions they had scaled to
give the posters maximum impact.

‘
We
put a lot of ours on a wall, which wasn’t particularly difficult,’
Neris admitted, ‘but it was already covered with posters so, just
in case there’s a rival theatre in town, we thought,
well…’

‘
Neris! That’s so unfair,’ Carey chided her.

‘
But
makes perfectly sound business sense,’ Grudo sagely pointed
out.

‘
Who
were the posters for?’ Carey asked, curious to know if it was a
theatre she had heard of but never come across before, or if it was
owned by people she’d met and happily chatted with on previous
occasions. If it were the latter, she realised, she would
have
to remove their own posters.

‘
Hard
to say.’ Peregun shrugged. ‘It’s so incredibly dark out there at
the moment.’

‘
I
bet they were for The Porcelain Theatre!’ Durndrin grinned
knowingly.

‘
Ah,
but do you mean “The One and Only”, or “The Original and Best”?’
Peregun asked with a rich laugh.

They all
laughed. A great many traveling shows had decided to call
themselves The Porcelain Theatre. Carey liked the name too, but had
decided they should keep the name handed down to her through
generations of travelling showmen and women; The String Theatre.
Besides, it was a far more accurate name for their kind of show,
wasn’t it?

‘
Which show will we put on tomorrow?’ Ferena asked, flicking
through a rack of her favourite costumes, the ones she wore when
playing an elf, a queen, or a white witch.

‘
Not
The Meaning of Life
?’ Dougy growled hopefully.

‘
I
hope tonight’s rehearsal’s going to be a
quick
one.’ Neris
vainly checked her face in a mirror. ‘Even I need my beauty sleep,
you know.’

‘
The
show we already rehearsed for
last
night of course,’ Carey
said determinedly. ‘
The Porcelain Kingdom
!’

*

When Carey woke
up the next morning, the long, almost uninterrupted travelling of
the previous two days meant that she was still a little drowsy. She
stumbled noisily around the cabin as she searched for fresh
clothes, a little water to drink, something to prepare for
breakfast. She opened the front door a little, to let in both fresh
air and the morning light.

Outside, she
could hear the steady patter of what sounded like a waterfall, or
at least running water.

Was she still
asleep? Was she dreaming?

She leaned
forward, peering out of the front doorway.

The caravan was
surrounded by people. They were all lightly clapping too, making
the odd noise she had mistakenly taken to be running
water.

As they saw her
peer out of the door, they all clapped even louder. There were even
cheers, and cries of joy.

She jumped back
in shock, instinctively drawing her flimsy night clothes about
herself.

‘
What
the?’ She noticed that the others had at last blearily stirred from
their beds, having been as exhausted as she was by the long
journey. ‘Just where the heck did you put the posters this time?’
she asked them in wonder.

They clambered
up on desks and racks and each other, barely opening the shutters
covering the windows to cautiously stare outside.

No matter where
they looked, there were people outside. Many were sitting on the
floor, as if they had been waiting for the show to begin for a long
time. Even so, everyone seemed remarkably happy. They had brought
food with them, which they were sharing out, as if taking part in a
vast picnic. Children were running amongst them, playing catch,
flying small kites, or just moving from group to group.

‘
That
burst of clapping earlier was better than we’ve received for some
shows,’ Neris said wryly.

‘
The
Fading; some of them have the Fading, but they don’t seem to care,’
an awestruck Peregun said, ignoring her.

‘
No,
it’s not just that they don’t care,’ Durndrin politely corrected
him. ‘They actually seem just as happy as everyone else, as happy
as those who aren’t suffering from it.’

Carey thought
they must be imagining all this, yet when she looked out amongst
the crowd once more, she saw that they were right; there were a
number of people in various stages of the Fading, yet they were
acting no differently from anyone else surrounding them. They
smiled, they gossiped, they chuckled, they ate and distributed
food. They held hands as best they could with whoever they were
with. Most amazing of all, children would happily and even
deliberately pass through those who were now little more than
mirages, giggling with a shivering delight as if they had run
through nothing more than a fountain’s spraying waters.

Making his way
closer towards the still slightly open door, Grudo pushed it open a
little wider, giving himself a better view of the square and the
area of town lying beyond it.

‘
Ah,
now the answer to all
that
might be
that
,’ he said
mysteriously, pointing up into the air.

Following
Grudo’s directions, Carey looked outside.

Caught in the
glow of the rising sun, the towering white palace glistened and
sparkled, flaring here and there on one side with a flame-red
radiance.

‘
We’ve found it,’ Carey sighed. ‘We’re here; the Porcelain
Kingdom.’

*

‘
What’s everyone doing here so early?’ Dougy complained. ‘What
time did you put on the posters, Carey?’

‘
I
don’t think they’re really bothered when its starts.’ Peregun moved
from one side of the wagon to the other, carefully peering out of
the still shuttered windows. ‘They look like they’re all enjoying
themselves anyway!’

Carey had to
agree with him. No one seemed impatient, or in any rush for
anything to happen. Some of them had settled down on small rugs,
blankets or cushions, with a book, knitting, sewing, or piece of
wood to whittle in their hands. A few entertainers had already
taken advantage of the gathering of the crowd, putting on a show of
juggling, contortionism, balancing or magic.

‘
I
haven’t had my breakfast yet!’ Carey explained as her stomach
quietly rumbled. ‘I was hoping to get some fresh
bread!’’

There was knock
on the caravan’s rear door. With a well-practised signal to
everyone but Grudo that they should either hide or stay perfectly
still, Carey went to answer it.

The woman at the
door was so Faded that Carey could easily see right through her,
seeing a man just behind her unloading fresh bread, fruit and other
essential food from a small cart.

‘
You’ll be wanting fresh bread, I take it?’ the woman said
with a smile that seemed like nothing more than a trick of the
light.

Before Carey
could express her surprise, the woman herself appeared briefly
startled, exclaiming, ‘My my, I should’ve been expecting it of
course; but it’s still a shock seeing you like this, if you don’t
mind me saying so!’

She studied
Carey closely as she spoke, an experience made even more eerie for
poor Carey because she could see that the man standing behind was
also staring at her in amazement.

‘
I’m…I’m sorry,’ Carey stammered uneasily, ‘but I haven’t got
any money ready, so I need to–’

‘
Money?’ The woman started, as if offended. ‘Oh, you don’t
need money, girl!’ she added kindly. ‘It’s free, free for you. Not
just from me, you understand? We all had a collection, knowing that
you’d be short of provisions after your unexpectedly long journey
here.’

The man was now
stacking the sacks of food up against the side of the caravan,
gradually emptying the cart. He was no longer staring at Carey but,
rather, was carefully admiring the caravan.

‘
Why,
thank you, that’s…well, could you please thank all your friends for
me?’ Carey was a little embarrassed by the woman’s unexpected
generosity. ‘I’m…I’m…well, I don’t know what to say. This has never
happened to me before.’

‘
Well, to us neither of course!’ the woman said mysteriously,
grinning hugely.

‘
Oh,
the show!’ Carey said, thinking she understood what the woman
meant. ‘Are you really saying you’ve never seen a show
before?’

‘
The
show? Well, of course, we’ve seen
plenty
of shows!’ The
woman reached out to tenderly stroke Carey’s cheek. ‘But not
your
show, Carey!’

Perhaps Carey
should have asked how the woman knew her name. But the thought
didn’t even cross her mind, for as soon as the woman touched her,
she felt happier than she had ever felt in her life.

Her mother and
father were standing close by, holding hands as they proudly
watched over her. For a moment, it felt as if they were about to
step even closer to her, to embrace her and tell her to stay a
while longer with them, for they knew how much she had missed
them.

But the woman
withdrew her hand, and the vision vanished, as if it had been
nothing more than Carey’s overactive imagination. Even so, Carey
reached for the woman’s withdrawing hand, hoping to bathe in that
wonderfully uplifting experience once more. But her hand passed
through the woman’s arm as if there were nothing there, despite the
way it had felt so soft and warm and real against her
cheek.

It hadn’t been a
real experience, of course, Carey realised. She had no idea what
her mother had looked like. The woman in her vision wasn’t her own
mother but someone else’s mother, an image formed from pictures of
another woman who had featured so much in her life; the mother of
the Porcelain Child.

She still
tingled with an incredible sense of joy, however, a joy that she
saw replicated in the woman’s beatific smile.

‘
Please, I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Carey said
tentatively, ‘but I’ve noticed that, well, although I’d expected
that there’d be an
acceptance
of the Fading here, you seem –
well, even a little happy about it!’

‘
People like myself don’t call it the Fading anymore, Carey
dear. We’re the Illumini, or, as some call us, the Illuminated.
What we
have
accepted is that soon we’ll be once again
re-joining the Memeory that forms this world and everything in
it.’

‘
Then…you…sort of fade away into this memory?’ Carey was
thinking of her mother and father once more, wondering if the woman
meant that everybody disappeared into this ‘memory’ as she called
it.

‘“
Become as one with it” you mean?’ the woman chuckled good
naturedly. ‘Goodness gracious no, child! What would be the point of
that, eh, if we simply ceased to exist as individuals by being
absorbed into some vast, other thing? We’d just as surely be gone
now, wouldn’t we? No no; we still remain as we are, for this is as
we always were.’

She tapped her
head.

‘
It’s
up here that counts; who we really are. And it’s only taken up
temporary lodging here too, forming what we falsely think is
us
around it. It’s our
thought
that creates the body,
not the other way around, like we think.
That’s
the real us;
and
that
can’t die.
That
will always live on. No one
can take that away from us, because it always was and always will
be.’