Page 13 of Prima (After the End #8)

Chapter Seven

Four years ago

“Do you remember when I came to see you at the hospital, and you asked me about our past dealings?” asks Five.

Ren shivers despite the early evening residual heat. He recalls that day exactly. Their father’s eunuchs had been in the room, too, and he had pretended that he remembered none of the occasions Five listed, instead of just the few lost to memory.

Not long afterward he was sent away for two years of “volunteering”.

Ahead, the capital is coming into view on the horizon, a great stretch of stone edifices along the waterfront, the sprawling palace halfway up the hills, its windows and glazed roof tiles sparkling in the setting sun.

He’s been back a week—at one point he thought he would spend the rest of his life on the outlying islands.

During his exile, he received regular care packages from Five and his mother, the Noble Consort, delivered by senior servants in person to signal their support.

Upon his return, Ren called on the Noble Consort as soon as he thanked the Potentate in person for the latter’s “leniency”.

Five had been there at his mother’s side, waiting to receive Ren.

But this outing to Five’s domain is the first chance they’ve had to speak to each other alone.

From time to time, the Potentate rewards one of his sons with an islet as the prince’s own domain.

It is a dreaded gift, as the recipient must then expend his own resources for reclamation.

Five’s luck wasn’t too bad. His domain did not bankrupt him during the Plant Cover-removal phase and has turned out to be somewhat usable.

They ambled about on the flat-enough island, visiting small orchards that have been laid out and planted.

“I was told these jackfruit trees will start bearing fruits in another two years,” said Five, as they stopped to rest at the edge of yet another array of young trees.

“I’ll come prune them, so they don’t grow too tall,” offered Ren. “Apparently I’m extremely fond of jackfruit mooncakes.”

“For sure you were always eating them at one point. Before that I hadn’t even known you liked sweet things.”

For hours upon hours, Ren was content to weed between rows of saplings as Five, pacing up and down, brought him up to date on what was going on in the palace, the capital, and elsewhere in the realm.

But now, with the Potentate’s Palace in view, this question out of nowhere.

The breeze is stiff. Ren steers closer to the wind to generate less forward force—Five is uncomfortable at excessive speeds.

“I remember,” he says.

“Good. I always worry a bit about...you know, what else you might have forgotten in the meanwhile.” Five is eight years senior to Ren and has kind but anxious eyes.

“Anyway, those last few times we saw each other before your incident, I would have preferred not to bring them up before Father’s eunuchs.

But they took place in public and I didn’t want the eunuchs to think that I was hiding anything. ”

Ren tenses in anticipation. “Were you?”

“Good question. Two months before everything happened, we left in the same ride after a banquet and you asked if I had a dentist I trusted. I gave you a name.

“A few weeks later, when we ran into each other again, I asked if you found the dentist satisfactory. You said yes. That was all we said and all I expected we’d ever say on the subject.”

Pinpricks of both dread and excitement dance along Ren’s spine. “But?”

“But mere days before you were due to take your esteemed mother and our dear sister to the sperm whale nursing ground, we were thrown together again at a reception. You pulled me aside and made me promise to remind you about the dentist, if more than eighteen months passed and you didn’t say anything to me about it first.”

A gust whips through the rigging. A school of flying fish leap up into the air. The boat, cutting through higher waves, jostles.

“So this is your reminder, brother,” says Five, gripping a line to steady himself. “I hope I’ve done what you needed me to do.”

* * *

Two weeks later, Ren visits the same dentist again. When he leaves, he has in his possession a length of microfilm that was hidden inside his upper right second molar.

He doesn’t go home. Except for his cook, who has been with him since he moved to his own modest establishment at twelve, all the other servants are new and assigned by the palace and he doesn’t trust them not to report his doings to the palace.

Or worse, to Prince Four’s mother, who hates Ren with a barely concealed bloodlust.

In the end, he takes himself to the Royal Library, where he has been a frequent visitor of late, conceals himself in an out-of-the-way carrel, and studies the microfilm with a jeweler’s loupe of 20x magnification.

The first frame is a sepia family portrait. Two women are seated in front, one a teenager, the other entering middle age. Behind them stands Ren, his hands on their shoulders.

He scarcely recognizes his own mother. In his truncated memory, she remains forever a woman of twenty-seven, sad-eyed but still full of hope. In this photograph, she looks not only much older but numb, numbly sitting, numbly staring, numbly enduring yet another day in the Potentate’s Palace.

The girl he would not have been able to identify at all were it not for her proximity to his mother and himself. So this is what Nin looks like, almost grown up. Tears blur his view. He wipes them away before he can study the next frame of the microfilm.

Dragon Gate, twin pillars from a time that sowed the seeds of its own destruction.

He always hoped that the two people he loved most managed to cross the Disputed Waters into New Ryukyu.

This image, hidden before their departure, gives no hint as to their success or failure, but at least confirms their collective intention.

The next frame is an orca. He peers at it in wonder. Did he used to know it? Surely they must have been at least very good friends. He can scarcely imagine the immense privilege of being this wild, beautiful creature’s companion.

The last frame highlights a pair of vambraces. Not the pair found with him when he was rescued at sea. These are sleeker, more beautifully streamlined. His appear to be a sincere yet inferior imitation.

The left vambrace of the pair, turned over and opened up, features an Old Sinoscript character on the inside, inscribed in a circle, its brushstrokes fluid and elegant. Next to this vambrace is a note in his own handwriting: 舟is blue in color.

His heart pounding, he looks up the character 舟(zhou) in a dictionary and learns that it means “small watercraft”, which…conveys no significance at all.

He goes back to the carrel and stares and stares at this final image. It refuses to make sense. Why are the vambraces important? What does the inscription signify? And why does he need to know that it is blue in color, a detail otherwise lost in the black-and-white photograph?

* * *

Life goes on; his, with one more mystery burning at the center.

He builds himself a cabin on Five’s island and goes out often to tend to the orchards.

He takes classes at the Maritime University because the Potentate is displeased that he no longer remembers anything about shipbuilding or naval architecture.

He hires a tutor to teach him Old Sinoscript, which, according to Five’s mother, he used to know well enough to read the ancient sutras in her collection aloud to her.

He looks after his own vambraces with extra care. He gives the Wandering Sailor a blue vessel and a companion orca. When he eventually acquires another boat, he names it The Blue Sampan, because “sampan” is a small watercraft from a place and a time when the word 舟was still commonly used.

And he wonders fervently about everything he does not know, everything he may never find out in this lifetime.