Page 19 of Prima (After the End #8)
Chapter Eleven
The present
Who are you? How do we know each other?
Ren’s questions still echo in the air when a new realization slams into him: The vambraces and the Old Sinoscript character on the inside, whatever their significance, must be linked to the fate of his family.
Lady Sun sets aside the glass of guava juice still in her hand. “Go ahead, ask me the new question that has just occurred to you.”
A question along the lines of Do you know what happened to my mother and my sister?—is that what she means?
The 舟pendant has half disappeared behind the neckline of her dress.
He stares, barely caring that it’s rude.
He has drawn and fixated upon the circled logogram thousands of times during the past four years.
And burned all those scraps of paper bearing the mysterious symbol in inchoate prayers to the universe, and scattered the ash on Five’s little island, at the roots of young jackfruit trees.
She leans to the side, against the paneling behind the bench. Belatedly he realizes that the pendant too has shifted and now rests upon the rise of her breast.
He looks up. “Why do you not answer the questions I already asked?”
She grips the pendant, her knuckles white. He sucks in a breath at the tightness of her hold, anxious that she would snap the pendant in half. And hurt herself.
She exhales and drops her hand to her lap. “You already know who I am. I am Sun Yi, until recently a member of the Secretariat, the Prima Inter Pares during my final year.
“As for how we know each other—I would say we do not know each other in the present tense.”
His heart thuds. "And in the past sense?”
She smooths a wrinkle on the skirt of her malachite-green dress—green, his favorite color.
“Ten years ago, near the end of my Grand Tour, we stumbled upon each other. But we spent very little time together and by any standard—or at least the standards that I’m accustomed to—we’d be considered to have been barely acquainted. ”
Barely acquainted.
He believes her, because she does not look at him, as if she too does not wish to face the scarcity of their history, the thinness of their association.
Yet…
“Did I—did I grill those scallops for you?”
I wanted to be nineteen again—and falling in love for the first time.
She lifts her head slowly, her gaze coming to rest on his face as if with great reluctance. “Yes.”
And what happened to that love? What happened in those ten long years?
She rises abruptly, disappears into the cabin, and returns with an envelope. She hands the envelope to him. “Questions about your mother and sister are easier to answer.”
Because they are still his beloved family, the separation and his loss of memory notwithstanding?
He stood up when she did and remains standing after he accepts the envelope, as she is still on her feet.
Tell me more about us, he wants to say.
But how is she to do that? She cannot reminisce with him because he recalls nothing, nor can she recount events as if he, a central participant, was merely a curious bystander.
That he does not know who she is to him makes it impossible for her to gauge who he is to her, in the present tense.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.
And realizes immediately that he has said the worst possible thing.
She pales. The corners of her lips lift in a semblance of a smile. She points to the envelope. “Go ahead. I’ll give you some privacy.”
She heads for the deck. His first instinct is to go after her, but what about when he has caught up with her? What then?
He drops back slowly onto the bench and it’s another minute before he can open the envelope. It contains four strips of film. He picks up one and holds it to the light.
It’s the orca. He’s always thought it a female, judging by the shape of its dorsal fin. And it appears he’s correct: She is swimming with a beautiful calf by her side, mother and daughter frolicking while several pod mates play in the background.
His vision blurs instantly with unshed tears.
The next film strip has his mother in every frame, standing before a wall of books, reading in an easy chair, writing at a desk, and rearranging books on a shelf. She is obviously older than she was in that photograph he’d hidden, yet she looks not just younger, but healthier and happier.
Tears sting the back of his eyes again. The Potentate might not agree that women shouldn’t be taught to read, but he does not want them to read too much.
Ren remembers promising her that once he had his own place, he would bring her new books with every visit—and leave with the same number of books so that to the casual observer, her paltry collection would appear unchanged, at least in quantity.
But now she has so many books, hers to own and to enjoy freely.
Nin, his sister, features in the following strip, studying, standing outside a classroom, stirring the contents of a beaker, and eating in a canteen surrounded by her friends.
Four years ago, he wouldn’t have recognized her if he and their mother hadn’t been in the frame.
But this time, her face has changed again and she looks so much like their mother.
So much like him.
The last strip contains images of the two women together, cooking, talking, sitting side-by-side in a garden, browsing the wares in an alley lined with small shops.
His tears fall.
It’s possible that after he moved out of the palace to his own house, he was able to obtain permission for them to visit once in a while. But all he can remember is being a boy, watching helplessly as his mother yearned for the wider world, for the ability to walk down a street by herself.
He wipes at his eyes. It was all he ever wanted for them, that they should live free and safe.
He studies the film strips again, drops them back into the envelope, and opens the nearest sketchbook to tuck the envelope inside.
Lady Sun must have reordered the stack because now the topmost volume is the first one.
And when he lifts its cover, he is greeted with the image of a woman, her hair and dress flying, on a raft.
The raft recedes and recedes, until it has disappeared among the stars.
He used to think that he had the Wandering Sailor search for a spouse rather than a parent or a sibling as a matter of plausible deniability, in case unfriendly parties discovered his little story. But now…
He closes the sketchbook and goes out on deck. The few navigation lights barely illuminate the bow, where she stands, her hair a dark, wind-blown banner, but they shed enough light on the water for him to see her raft, gliding not far away alongside his vessel.
She’s not leaving, is she?
She extends a tiny glass in his direction. “Congratulations, prince.”
She did not have anything in her hands when she left the lounging area just now.
Did she bring the glass—and the bottle of rice liquor at her feet—on deck when he was sleeping?
He sometimes does that, takes his boat out at night and nurses a drink by himself: Somewhere in the world, someone must be looking up at the same bejeweled sky and feeling the same impossible longing.
He gazes at her, this silhouette at the edge of his boat, her features visible only as muted star gleam and deep shadows. Then he asks, so quietly he can barely hear, “Are you the woman on the raft?”