“Your portrait is gone.” Long-Sail pointed to the still-glowing ashes on the ground. “You don’t need the umbrella anymore.”
The princess slowed down the spinning, and the umbrella began to cry like a nightingale. As the canopy fell, the cries grew louder and faster, until they resembled the screams of jackdaws—the final warning before the advent of Death. Then the umbrella closed and the stone spheres at the rim collided together in a series of sharp snaps.
The princess was unharmed.
The captain looked at the princess and let out a long sigh of relief. He turned to the ashes. “It’s too bad. The portrait was lovely, and I would have liked you to see it. But I dared not delay… it was really, really beautiful.”
“Prettier than me?”
“It was you.”
The princess retrieved the two bars of He’ershingenmosiken bath soap. She let go, and the weightless, white bars floated in the air like feathers.
“I’m going to leave the kingdom and sail the seas. Will you come with me?” asked the princess.
“What? But Prince Deep Water already announced that your coronation is tomorrow. He pledged to aid you with all his heart.”
The princess shook her head. “My brother is more suited to be king than I. And if he hadn’t been imprisoned on Tomb Island, he ought to have inherited the throne. When he’s the king, he can stand somewhere high in the palace, and the entire kingdom can see him. But I don’t want to be a queen. I like the outside more than the palace. I don’t want to live the rest of my life in the Storyless Kingdom. I want to go where there are stories.”
“That life is full of danger and hardship.”
“I’m not afraid.” The princess’s eyes glowed with the spark of life in the candlelight. Long-Sail felt everything around him growing brighter again.
“I’m not afraid, either. Princess, I will follow you to the end of the sea, to the end of the world.”
“Then we’ll be the last two to leave the kingdom.” The princess reached out and grabbed the two floating bars of soap.
“We’ll take a sailboat.”
“Yes, with snow-white sails.”
The next morning, on a beach somewhere in the kingdom, people saw a white sail appear in the sea. Behind the sail was a long wake of cloudlike foam. It headed away from the kingdom by the light of the rising sun.
Thereafter, no one in the kingdom knew what happened to Princess Dewdrop and Long-Sail. As a matter of fact, the kingdom never received any information of the outside world. The princess had taken away the last bars of He’ershingenmosiken bath soap, and no one could break through the barriers formed by the schools of glutton fish. But no one complained. The people were used to their serene lives. After this story, there were never any other stories in the Storyless Kingdom.
But sometimes, late at night, some would tell stories that were not stories: imagined lives of Princess Dewdrop and Long-Sail. Everyone imagined different things, but all agreed that they journeyed to many exotic, mysterious kingdoms, including continents as vast as the sea. They lived ever after in wandering and trekking, and no matter where they went, they were happily together.
In the sophon-free room, those who had finished reading began to talk amongst themselves, though most were still absorbed in the world of the Storyless Kingdom, the sea, the princess and the princes. Some remained deep in thought; some stared at the document, as though hoping to glean more meaning from the cover.
“That princess is a lot like you,” said AA to Cheng Xin.
“Try to focus on the serious business here… and am I really that delicate?! I would have held up the umbrella myself.” Cheng Xin was the only one who didn’t bother reading the document. The stories were seared into her memory. She had, of course, wondered many times if Princess Dewdrop was modeled in some measure on herself. But the captain of the guards didn’t resemble Yun Tianming.
Once the chair noticed that everyone present had finished reading, he asked for opinions—mainly suggested directions for next steps to be taken by the various working groups under the IDC.
The committee member representing the literary analysis group asked to speak first. This group had been a last-minute addition, composed mainly of writers and scholars of Common Era literature. It was thought that there might be a minuscule chance—unlikely though it was—that they could be of use.
The speaker was a writer of children’s stories. “I know that from now on, my group is unlikely to make any useful contributions. But I wanted to say a few words first.” He lifted the blue-covered document. “I’m sorry to say that I don’t believe this message can ever be deciphered.”
“Why do you say that?” asked the chair.
