Blue, a short story

Originally for Melu, darling that she is, but I’ve made a few changes here and there, and thought I’d put it up. This is based on a queen in Chinese history, named Bao Si. (Very fictionalized, of course - for one thing, the king was actually a complete failure at being kingly, and the queen… wasn’t so diabolical.)

Enjoy!

Sevenses

Blue

Long ago, when the shores still resounded with the whispers of the gods, when the stones and bones of the world were still young, a mighty king held reign over a vast land. He was revered far and wide, for he had rid the lands of its warring, feuding clans, choosing instead to unite, to focus all the cunning and bravery of its people to countries across the wide depths of the ocean and the endless sea of grass. The loyalty and love of his subjects ensured a long prosperous life, for there was nothing they would not do for him. One word, nay, one look was enough to send a man to his willing death with praises for the king still on his lips.

Such life invites envy, and the gods are jealous beings.

And so one day, while riding through his capital, the king espied a maiden of no ordinary beauty silently attending her old father’s shop. He ordered his men to stop, and they looked on while he dismounted to talk to her. If anyone had dared ask him for the precise content of their conversation, the king would only have been able to shake his head numbly and wonder tremulously at the melodic quality of her velvet tones. He would have said, a tone of bewilderment creeping into his voice, she never so much as smiled.

The king installed the fair maiden in his palatial abode and presented her with all manner of treasures. Jewelry, though they were outshone by the brilliance of her astonishing blue eyes and lustrous dark locks; large precious pearls polished to their utmost beauty, though their lustre paled next to her creamy skin, translucent and sweet as rose petals; scrolls upon scrolls of famous calligraphic works, though none paid them any heed once she entered the room, all flowing grace that made the elaborate ink characters seem only a mockery of elegance.

Though she was literally showered with treasures and honours, the enigmatic expression on her face did not change: she would not smile. None of the servants were able to catch her at smiling, not when she was alone, not at night, during the day, or even looking into the mirrors at the lovely reflection within.

The moon silently waxed and waned above the king’s palace while he tried everything he could think of. The queen died, mysteriously and quietly - the maiden took her position without any sign of disquiet, and was well-mannered though shy with the nobles.

Frustrations rose within the king. He was the lord of his people, commander of one thousand armies and yet a mere girl with deep blue eyes like the ocean could be indifferent to all his attentions!

In short, the king was determined to make her smile.

His counsellors despaired, and begged him to stop his obsession, for none dared to speak the word they were all thinking of: foolishness. They spoke of signs and portents, of red moons and islands disappearing under monstrous waves, of night untamed and the terrors that lurked within, of early winter and frozen blossoms glinting on the trees.

Yet all their efforts were in vain, for he was a mighty man in the prime of life and his mind was set.

All the servants were ordered to serve the queen with utmost attention. Those who could give information, any information at all, on her preferences were rewarded richly.

When the king heard that she liked delicacies of the sea, he commanded his best sea captain to catch the rarest of fish, delicacies worth more than their weight in gold. He laid out a sumptuous feast all served in the manner of tissue-cut raw fish, but only received a quietly voiced thanks.

A lady-in-waiting heard her admiring a noble’s garden and the king decreed that all the penjing masters of the kingdom were to create their shapeliest plant and name it after the swallow, his queen’s favourite bird.

When presented with pot after pot of beautiful miniature trees, she only bowed to the artisans and thanked the men who poured a lifetime’s worth of learning into the treasures now in her possession.

Years passed, and the common folk were subjected to yet more magnificent and esoteric wonders (and the rumours of even stranger doings travelled like wildfire among the populace). People alternately shook their heads in admiration, muttered darkly about the degeneration of youth (for was the queen not a full twenty years younger than the king?) or averred that the royals, bless them, had nothing to do with ordinary folk.

More than once did discussion of the queen’s propensities lead to fights, indeed, if one had kept records and made an account of all the damages… well. One would have been ancient in years once finished.

Those in the outlying isles grew prosperous even as the king continued to pile his lady’s rooms high with rarities: dragon robes from the East, precious incense and amber statuettes of all kinds.

The king was grown old and weary, at last, for ten years had passed and queen had not smiled with her finely shaped lips. She walked the hallways of the palace alone, with a faraway look in her eyes. A young lord from a neighbouring isle, perhaps seeking to gain favour, sought an audience with the queen. Afterward, he went straightaway to the king without delay to whisper secrets into his ear.

The aged king considered what he said very gravely, with the look of a man who knows his friends will not approve of his decisions. Then he stood up and called for the palace to empty itself and for the attendance of his queen.

He mounted the battlements of the city gates, old bones creaking like destiny’s inelegant toe, his queen beside him, her footsteps inaudibly padding on the new stone, barely half a century old, laid down when he first conquered the isle for himself.

Taking the ever-flaming torch had been harder than he’d remembered, bits of its plaster handhold falling away into the depths of the outer circle of the city, which was a no man’s land. Finally he stood at the top, looking down at the sleeping roofs of those loyal citizens who’d served him so well, with their work, wealth and blood. The slight girl (for she had not aged as other mortals had) stood silently at his side, incurious and patient for whatever new whimsies the king had prepared.

Far away, the captains only saw a luminescent arc of orange-red fire rent the sky before all the beacon towers of the isle were awake. As the frantic, heavy-lidded men thundered on foot and horse towards their lord, the maiden stared at the looming cloud of dust, the only sign in the darkness of natural night that all was not right.

When all ten captains of the thousand armies had arrived to lay their swords down at their lord’s feet, he turned to the queen as if to say, “You see? You have the power to lay the world at its feet.”

The beacons made night flee into shadows, into the damp crevices of the stone under the queen’s feet. They seemed to quiver as she smiled at last, lips curving upwards into a prefect crescent. Those assembled were too far to see the expression on her face, nonetheless, a chill rolled off the men. Swords, made of rippling blue metal that could cut a single falling hair, trembled on the ground and sang out for blood.

For the queen’s smile was all that was deadly, a hunter at last spotting recalcitrant prey.

One of the captains thought it put him in mind of the plum tree encased in ice that had crushed and sliced through a group of his men. He leapt up, but his king was as enchanted as ever, and the captain did not dare act rashly before him, not even then.

The king dismissed them, disregarding the anger and disbelief rumbling within the ranks. He had eyes only for the girl at his side, who continued smiling at the retreat of the splendid mass of people, a veritable force to be wielded in the hand of one who was able. The king climbed down, all ague and rheumatism forgotten in the glow of his beloved’s smile. He did not notice the razor in her smile- perhaps he was too accustomed to seeing it in the mirror to care.

They say that the darkest hour comes in the moment before the sun rises to begin another day. In this darkest hour of the night, the king was roused from his sleep by an incongruous echo of tramping feet. He rose and grabbed his ancient sword - he had not yet forgotten what set him on the throne, all those long years ago. He found the young foppish noble waiting for him with his queen, in the great throne hall he’d seen built before his very own eyes. Understanding the carnage around him, the aged king looked at his smiling queen.

The hunter was still there.

She was dressed in the same way as the day he’d met her, a simple robe of white, her creamy skin and blue eyes providing all the colour she’d needed. In the midst of his dead, still-bleeding servants, the cloth remained pure.

She’d opened the doors, he was sure.

The boy standing beside her was young. He had not thought of the outlying armies, still loyal to the king. They would kill him to avenge their lord, if nothing else. Though tonight’s insult was raw, and the flaming torch had lost its potency, they would balk, like a group of quarrelling eages, at serving this young, inexperienced thing. Many of them would try to seize the throne for themselves, and the people of this land would see bloodshed again.

An angry manservant ran past him, howling with rage at the audacity of the traitors, to plunge a crude kitchen knife into the stomach of the queen. He was stopped by one frail white finger, and the man collapsed into the wooden floorboard in a heap of bones and earth.

All the surrounding men backed away at this. They could expect death in battle and rich spoils for their survival, but to be killed at the hands of this sorcery, they would never accept. The king stayed where he was, sword in hand, motionless at the betrayal of one to whom he’d given his everything.

Perhaps divining his thoughts, the queen stopped smiling and opened her eyes. The colour, he thought distantly, was not like the ocean at all, but the deep blue of ice when it has been under centuries of pressure.

“You would, I think, like an explanation?” Always, he thought, she used to speak in that soft velvet voice of hers, though it went unheard by all but the best of servants. Now, though, he simply unsheathed his sword. Its metallic sound was followed by a rushing whisper of swords minutely repositioning themselves.

A bright stroke flashed harmless before the young noble’s nose. The men saw only a gleam before the blood rushed out in torrents. They followed a new lord out to the city, ready to seize the rest of what was now theirs.

As the king’s world faded around him, his queen laid him down in a pool of his own blood and sang to him until his eyes saw a different shore.

And then, she whispered, “My dear, I was the tree you played on when you were little, the lake you filled in to make this city, the air you rent in half as you slew men, the horse you killed in the field of dying men, the sun in your glory and the sea to wash your corpse anew for another life. For I am the vengeance of all those you sent to an early grave.”

- end -