Prince Aky
..:: Long Days of the Last Summer ::..
Prince Aky awaked as the sun was rising over the horizon, stepped out of his hammock and walked to the stairs. On the flat roof, clothed with a skirt, he stood to meet the morning beams bathing the city which lied below the palace. The adobe houses which formed Syntia, painted in white with strips of pastel blue or red shined in gold. The sea slowly turning to turquese was framed with ochre clouds flying away to distant lands. Over the twin hills of the bay the two lighthouses proudly displayed the flag of the Kingdom of the Sea as their fires were quenched.
The palace, under the new sun, was beutiful...
Frescoes of dolphins told the stranger than this was a house of joy and hospitality, its many gardens of flowers announced than this was a house of beauty and its central bare temple proclaimed it was a house of prayer.
Prince Aky knelt and closed his eyes. The breeze ran over his shoulder and flowed between his hair ondulating it in the air. Rivers of air cooled his bare soles stopping the world in his mind. For 33 beats Aky kept silent and then started his prayer:
Glorious Giver-Of-Light
Coming from our Mother the Sea
Blessed be!
I kneel before you
Oh Giver of Light
Your sister, Moon, loved me
cared for me this night
and gave me to you.
She gave me her love.
Her love I transmit to you.
Accept the sacrifice of my heart
Because every day I sin.
Purify me with your Light.
Oh, Protector
Oh, Giver
Oh, Light
Untill the day I meet my ancestors
over the Horizon.
See our small family
Our nation
Postrates before you
We worship you, Sun
For your love we know
And in your light
I swim.
So be it.
Thousands of prayers raised to the sky and then life would burst out in the streets of stone. For Aky that would mean to join mom, dad and his siblings for a bowl of sweet potatoes, rice, shark and seeweed and another of nuts and honey over a mat. The would join in the light blue patio which was decorated with a mural of the exodus when their first fathers came from the no-return land, in the beginning of time.
To his right sat, cross-legged, his brother Ter and Leky, the fourth child of the Kingdom of the Moon. The pals would still run around nude and bald under the sun for another two years untill their eighth birthday. So were Jyn and Lea of four and three respectively. His sisters sat to his left: Lyna, twelve, one year older than himself, Kyria, eight and Soo of two. The older girls were clothed with a long white dress rimmed in gold, without sleeves. Soo only had a bronze tiara of two kissing dolphins over her long hair. Singing-Star, the slave girl of twelve garbed with a simpler dress which ended above the knees, stood ready to their needs behind them. Dad, mom and their guests sat in front of the prince.
... Singing Star, the slave, silently, dreamed of impossible loves ...
Above me, my love
Sweet god in your highness
I am a dark pit
She stood sad but could not cry, if he could look at her, if she could look at him. Yet even for those thoughts she felt guilty before the gods.
Yes, the poor girl's heart already ached for the prince. Silently her days went and so wet in tears were her nights.
Finished the breakfast, Aky went for his ablutions and then to the instruction yard. This place was an atrium supplied with six taborets to which writing tablets, stencils and ink pallets were orderly placed on. Presiding, there was a throne for the teacher, House of Flowers, a slave.
Behind the row of seats there was a fountain which marked the center of the atrium; on its sides, bushes of flowers and midget fruit trees competed for beauty.
When Aky and the other pupils arrived they sat on the margins of the atrium and waited for the teacher to come. House-of-Flowers surged from the stairs which led to the servants rooms in the basement followed by Quick-to-Smile, a slave boy who solemnly held in his hands a grey robe. The teacer stood by his seat and then knelt allowing the boy to overdress him. Then he invited the noble students to come and so they entered orderly as in a temple and formed in a row before him.
.- "Why have you came here?" He asked them.
.- "To learn wisdom". The children replied.
.- "What is wisdom?"
.- "What we have to learn".
.- "I welcome you".
That said, House-of-Flowers greeted each one with a kiss in the brow. Then he adressed his pupils again.
.- "May Quick-to-Smile, the slave, sit with me to learn?"
.- "We welcome him, so wisdom may never be forgotten".
.- "Let's then make a libation that our Mother may be worshipped in his son".
Let Quick-to-Smile speak to you, gentle reader.
I walked to the fountain with the offering bowl as I always did. I let the waters fell in it, as the rite prescribed, so little drops of water splashed my flace. I used to love it when I was a kid, but at ten I was growing too old for that. Well, maybe a little bit. So I smiled, which is bad in the ceromony, but that's me, so I got serious again and walked back with the filled bowl to the teacher. Then I placed the bowl on the floor and sat by it. No, I did not get a stool or anything... of course. I am a slave, I know, but not one of those who bear loads. Anyway I sat down nicely and got my tablet - twenty years old, of course... I mean I don't think I deserve a brand new one, like the noble kids, but at least one I could tell my own writing from the spots. But just watch me, one day I will be teaching a prince too. Shhh, lesson starts...
At the clap of the hand House of Flowers started his dictation:
Be it known to the children of the Sea that before the begining, the Sea rested in peace. Be it known that She loved. Be it known that She thought. Be it known that She loved what She thought and what She loved She trusted. By her mercy was born the Land, the great land and the miriads of islands, but Land feared her. Since then we cannot see the sea but that of the sea which can be seen.
When the dictation was over, House-of-Flowers and his pupils went to walk around the yard as they always did. Quick to Smile placed himself right after the teacher while the noble students walked as they pleased.
.- "So, what is a man?"
.- "A child of the sea". Answered Krem, a somehow fatty boy, the son of the Guardian of the Treasure.
.- "Indeed, but what else?"
.- "I do not understand the question", said Prince Aky, "we are all men, are not we?"
.- "Yes, but who are we? What is in us which is the same in everyone and yet different to everything which is not a man?"
Quick to Smile knelt before the teacher and then raised to mutter in his ear:
.- "Am I a man?"
The procedure was to ensure that the slave boy could not outsmart his masters.
.- "Quick to Smile has asked a very helpful question indeed. Is he a man?"
.- "No, he is not", answered the seven noble boys in unision. "He is a slave".
.- "Oh? Yet, has he not arms, legs, mind and is not in all other aspects the same than you? What is so special about him?"
Silence flooded the yard till the Prince could answer.
.- "But he serves us".
.- "You have arrived to the truth, dear Prince. Man serves nobody, as the Sea is free, as the Sea, man loves. Love leads to help and it is godly, but obedience to service and it is wordly".
Then the teacher approached Quick to Smile and told him.
.- Do not be sad, Sea does not hate you but loves them more. There is happiness for you too, in serving them.
.- "And what is our happines?" Asked Krem.
.- "Oh, that is a better question..."
After the class was over, only Quick to Smile was left so let him tell what he lived like if you, gentle reader, were there.
Picking up stools or teaching is all just the same. I have not a real life, I am not sorting these tablets for myself, no, I am not happy. Why am I loved less? I dont know, just dont know, it doesn't feel fair.
Well, I know, they were just talking sweet to me. I am the spines nobody wants. I can,t be real happy like that, well... I should be working: the stools all nice in place, cleaning tablets, and finally the libation bowl. I go back to the spring and pour the water back. Again I get splashed and again I smile but I should be sad.
See? Reader, this is what I do every morning. Then I get to have breakfast and lunch all together. Follow me!
Through this corridor, and downstairs. It's a big palace! Well it's ok for me, like I was born here, but maybe it's too big for you. I don't really know you, reader. Anyway, we are going to the kitchen. I always hang around there at this time and help Wide Shoulders.
Come here, through the door, dear reader. Now I will let the scribe coninue the story.
The kitchen was a complex of several rooms which sorrounded a yard. It was in the later than several fires were being kept under boiling earthwaren pots which stood on their three legs. Only one braiser was ready inside for the rare showers that could come.
In and around the yard two dozen servants would go from one place to another tending their various tasks. Of these, however, only two are important for our story: Quick-to-Smile and Wide-Shoulders.
The first was pretending to be cleaning sweet potatoes while the woman sat on the ground, in a moment of rest. Wide-Shoulders had to be a strong woman but delicate at the same time. Earthware pots are hard to move around and cutting with a stone blade needs strength and care. Futhermore it was always an art to measure the precise quantity of salt, and how it should be applied, either in the form of sea water or in solid form which was more convenient but it just did not taste as well. She also needed to be a priestess of sorts: cooking requires prayer and the required blessing. Consequently her big hands knew how to caress, her always bare cracked feet were ready to walk to comfort and in her eyes you could read mom.
Quick- to-Smile, sold as a baby, loved to be by her side. She, well, had some children of her own to care for, bud did not mind to have him around: it traded some effort with her soul for a bit rest of her body. Often, the meeting would not be much different of what it was then. First, Quick-to-Smile entered almost like dancing, looking at everything but nothing in particular. Then he went to Wide-Shoulders and joined her in whatever chore she was tending to. Then Wide-Shoulders would sat to rest and, after a minute of silence, the kid would share the aflictions and joys of his tender heart.
.- "I dont think I can ever be real happy, the boy said without interrupting his job".
.-"Really? Why?"
.- "Because I have no real life. They say that".
.- "Who are they?"
.- "House of Flowers, and he knows everything, and the noble kids".
.- "What did he say?"
.- "That Sea created me to serve the noble kids".
.- "Quick... don't you know you are a slave?"
.- "Yes, but..."
.- "My boy, we can be happy being who we are... I will tell you something: do you know why your mom wanted you to be a slave?"
.- "My mom? You always fed me".
.- "Quicky, you know what I mean".
.- "I dont know my mom".
.- "She did, because she loved you. Here at the palace you live a good life. Look at that belly of yours! Most free kids have a hole there, but you are well fed... and one day you will be somebody important, more than many free men. You will be the teacher of the princes and the minister of kings... never forget that".
.- "Maybe, you are right. I was dreaming too big".
After Quick to Smile departed, Wide Shoulders returned to her chores, but for the rest of the day images of a distant past came to her...
She remembered waking up early, hungry and not knowing if there would be something to eat.
Mom? Can you go with us to the street today? A small girl asked to her dead mother who lied on the earth floor of a hut.
As silence was the response, the little girl sat by her side, touched and understood. Then, she went out to meet her two brothers.
.- "Mom isn't coming with us today. She told them, and leading them by hand, she made her little family to beg, as everyday. Soon, they ended in the hands of slavers".
Many years later, Wide-Shoulders remembered and thought how wise had Quick-to-Smile's mom been. The boy had been spared hunger, or the fate which fell on her brothers, farm hands. The boy, of course, could not see that, for him freedom meant being a king and maybe, the good woman melancholicly thought, he was right because there is no freedom in starving.
Prince Aky spent the rest of the morning playing in the beach, persecuting fishes, collecting sea weed and throwing it over his friends. The sea battle lasted until two servants came with provisions: seafood soup, black rice with squids and sweets. The noble kids darted to the pavillions under which supper would be served and, liying on cushions, they lazily ate. It was taboo to bath after lunch so, until the hour of their return they fantasized about war and how they would die in victorious battle.
At palace, Quick, had remained practising his script and memorising the golden tables. The later were called so in relation to their utility as they could be applied to any problem of accounting, might it be addition, substraction, and the stellar addition which allowed to determine the total of long series of additions, provided they were of a regular kind. He also had some silver problems to memorize, which he like best, as they dealt with real lifes. Issues like knowing how many adobe bricks would a house need or how many workers, already marked him with a sense of pride. Yet, he would spend the day locked in his tiny room, opened by a huge window through which the inmense blue sky would tell him of his dreamed childhood...
Prince Aky awaked as the sun was rising over the horizon, stepped out of his hammock and walked to the stairs. On the flat roof, clothed with a skirt, he stood to meet the morning beams bathing the city which lied below the palace. The adobe houses which formed Syntia, painted in white with strips of pastel blue or red shined in gold. The sea slowly turning to turquese was framed with ochre clouds flying away to distant lands. Over the twin hills of the bay the two lighthouses proudly displayed the flag of the Kingdom of the Sea as their fires were quenched.
The palace, under the new sun, was beutiful...
Frescoes of dolphins told the stranger than this was a house of joy and hospitality, its many gardens of flowers announced than this was a house of beauty and its central bare temple proclaimed it was a house of prayer.
Prince Aky knelt and closed his eyes. The breeze ran over his shoulder and flowed between his hair ondulating it in the air. Rivers of air cooled his bare soles stopping the world in his mind. For 33 beats Aky kept silent and then started his prayer:
Glorious Giver-Of-Light
Coming from our Mother the Sea
Blessed be!
I kneel before you
Oh Giver of Light
Your sister, Moon, loved me
cared for me this night
and gave me to you.
She gave me her love.
Her love I transmit to you.
Accept the sacrifice of my heart
Because every day I sin.
Purify me with your Light.
Oh, Protector
Oh, Giver
Oh, Light
Untill the day I meet my ancestors
over the Horizon.
See our small family
Our nation
Postrates before you
We worship you, Sun
For your love we know
And in your light
I swim.
So be it.
Thousands of prayers raised to the sky and then life would burst out in the streets of stone. For Aky that would mean to join mom, dad and his siblings for a bowl of sweet potatoes, rice, shark and seeweed and another of nuts and honey over a mat. The would join in the light blue patio which was decorated with a mural of the exodus when their first fathers came from the no-return land, in the beginning of time.
To his right sat, cross-legged, his brother Ter and Leky, the fourth child of the Kingdom of the Moon. The pals would still run around nude and bald under the sun for another two years untill their eighth birthday. So were Jyn and Lea of four and three respectively. His sisters sat to his left: Lyna, twelve, one year older than himself, Kyria, eight and Soo of two. The older girls were clothed with a long white dress rimmed in gold, without sleeves. Soo only had a bronze tiara of two kissing dolphins over her long hair. Singing-Star, the slave girl of twelve garbed with a simpler dress which ended above the knees, stood ready to their needs behind them. Dad, mom and their guests sat in front of the prince.
... Singing Star, the slave, silently, dreamed of impossible loves ...
Above me, my love
Sweet god in your highness
I am a dark pit
She stood sad but could not cry, if he could look at her, if she could look at him. Yet even for those thoughts she felt guilty before the gods.
Yes, the poor girl's heart already ached for the prince. Silently her days went and so wet in tears were her nights.
Finished the breakfast, Aky went for his ablutions and then to the instruction yard. This place was an atrium supplied with six taborets to which writing tablets, stencils and ink pallets were orderly placed on. Presiding, there was a throne for the teacher, House of Flowers, a slave.
Behind the row of seats there was a fountain which marked the center of the atrium; on its sides, bushes of flowers and midget fruit trees competed for beauty.
When Aky and the other pupils arrived they sat on the margins of the atrium and waited for the teacher to come. House-of-Flowers surged from the stairs which led to the servants rooms in the basement followed by Quick-to-Smile, a slave boy who solemnly held in his hands a grey robe. The teacer stood by his seat and then knelt allowing the boy to overdress him. Then he invited the noble students to come and so they entered orderly as in a temple and formed in a row before him.
.- "Why have you came here?" He asked them.
.- "To learn wisdom". The children replied.
.- "What is wisdom?"
.- "What we have to learn".
.- "I welcome you".
That said, House-of-Flowers greeted each one with a kiss in the brow. Then he adressed his pupils again.
.- "May Quick-to-Smile, the slave, sit with me to learn?"
.- "We welcome him, so wisdom may never be forgotten".
.- "Let's then make a libation that our Mother may be worshipped in his son".
Let Quick-to-Smile speak to you, gentle reader.
I walked to the fountain with the offering bowl as I always did. I let the waters fell in it, as the rite prescribed, so little drops of water splashed my flace. I used to love it when I was a kid, but at ten I was growing too old for that. Well, maybe a little bit. So I smiled, which is bad in the ceromony, but that's me, so I got serious again and walked back with the filled bowl to the teacher. Then I placed the bowl on the floor and sat by it. No, I did not get a stool or anything... of course. I am a slave, I know, but not one of those who bear loads. Anyway I sat down nicely and got my tablet - twenty years old, of course... I mean I don't think I deserve a brand new one, like the noble kids, but at least one I could tell my own writing from the spots. But just watch me, one day I will be teaching a prince too. Shhh, lesson starts...
At the clap of the hand House of Flowers started his dictation:
Be it known to the children of the Sea that before the begining, the Sea rested in peace. Be it known that She loved. Be it known that She thought. Be it known that She loved what She thought and what She loved She trusted. By her mercy was born the Land, the great land and the miriads of islands, but Land feared her. Since then we cannot see the sea but that of the sea which can be seen.
When the dictation was over, House-of-Flowers and his pupils went to walk around the yard as they always did. Quick to Smile placed himself right after the teacher while the noble students walked as they pleased.
.- "So, what is a man?"
.- "A child of the sea". Answered Krem, a somehow fatty boy, the son of the Guardian of the Treasure.
.- "Indeed, but what else?"
.- "I do not understand the question", said Prince Aky, "we are all men, are not we?"
.- "Yes, but who are we? What is in us which is the same in everyone and yet different to everything which is not a man?"
Quick to Smile knelt before the teacher and then raised to mutter in his ear:
.- "Am I a man?"
The procedure was to ensure that the slave boy could not outsmart his masters.
.- "Quick to Smile has asked a very helpful question indeed. Is he a man?"
.- "No, he is not", answered the seven noble boys in unision. "He is a slave".
.- "Oh? Yet, has he not arms, legs, mind and is not in all other aspects the same than you? What is so special about him?"
Silence flooded the yard till the Prince could answer.
.- "But he serves us".
.- "You have arrived to the truth, dear Prince. Man serves nobody, as the Sea is free, as the Sea, man loves. Love leads to help and it is godly, but obedience to service and it is wordly".
Then the teacher approached Quick to Smile and told him.
.- Do not be sad, Sea does not hate you but loves them more. There is happiness for you too, in serving them.
.- "And what is our happines?" Asked Krem.
.- "Oh, that is a better question..."
After the class was over, only Quick to Smile was left so let him tell what he lived like if you, gentle reader, were there.
Picking up stools or teaching is all just the same. I have not a real life, I am not sorting these tablets for myself, no, I am not happy. Why am I loved less? I dont know, just dont know, it doesn't feel fair.
Well, I know, they were just talking sweet to me. I am the spines nobody wants. I can,t be real happy like that, well... I should be working: the stools all nice in place, cleaning tablets, and finally the libation bowl. I go back to the spring and pour the water back. Again I get splashed and again I smile but I should be sad.
See? Reader, this is what I do every morning. Then I get to have breakfast and lunch all together. Follow me!
Through this corridor, and downstairs. It's a big palace! Well it's ok for me, like I was born here, but maybe it's too big for you. I don't really know you, reader. Anyway, we are going to the kitchen. I always hang around there at this time and help Wide Shoulders.
Come here, through the door, dear reader. Now I will let the scribe coninue the story.
The kitchen was a complex of several rooms which sorrounded a yard. It was in the later than several fires were being kept under boiling earthwaren pots which stood on their three legs. Only one braiser was ready inside for the rare showers that could come.
In and around the yard two dozen servants would go from one place to another tending their various tasks. Of these, however, only two are important for our story: Quick-to-Smile and Wide-Shoulders.
The first was pretending to be cleaning sweet potatoes while the woman sat on the ground, in a moment of rest. Wide-Shoulders had to be a strong woman but delicate at the same time. Earthware pots are hard to move around and cutting with a stone blade needs strength and care. Futhermore it was always an art to measure the precise quantity of salt, and how it should be applied, either in the form of sea water or in solid form which was more convenient but it just did not taste as well. She also needed to be a priestess of sorts: cooking requires prayer and the required blessing. Consequently her big hands knew how to caress, her always bare cracked feet were ready to walk to comfort and in her eyes you could read mom.
Quick- to-Smile, sold as a baby, loved to be by her side. She, well, had some children of her own to care for, bud did not mind to have him around: it traded some effort with her soul for a bit rest of her body. Often, the meeting would not be much different of what it was then. First, Quick-to-Smile entered almost like dancing, looking at everything but nothing in particular. Then he went to Wide-Shoulders and joined her in whatever chore she was tending to. Then Wide-Shoulders would sat to rest and, after a minute of silence, the kid would share the aflictions and joys of his tender heart.
.- "I dont think I can ever be real happy, the boy said without interrupting his job".
.-"Really? Why?"
.- "Because I have no real life. They say that".
.- "Who are they?"
.- "House of Flowers, and he knows everything, and the noble kids".
.- "What did he say?"
.- "That Sea created me to serve the noble kids".
.- "Quick... don't you know you are a slave?"
.- "Yes, but..."
.- "My boy, we can be happy being who we are... I will tell you something: do you know why your mom wanted you to be a slave?"
.- "My mom? You always fed me".
.- "Quicky, you know what I mean".
.- "I dont know my mom".
.- "She did, because she loved you. Here at the palace you live a good life. Look at that belly of yours! Most free kids have a hole there, but you are well fed... and one day you will be somebody important, more than many free men. You will be the teacher of the princes and the minister of kings... never forget that".
.- "Maybe, you are right. I was dreaming too big".
After Quick to Smile departed, Wide Shoulders returned to her chores, but for the rest of the day images of a distant past came to her...
She remembered waking up early, hungry and not knowing if there would be something to eat.
Mom? Can you go with us to the street today? A small girl asked to her dead mother who lied on the earth floor of a hut.
As silence was the response, the little girl sat by her side, touched and understood. Then, she went out to meet her two brothers.
.- "Mom isn't coming with us today. She told them, and leading them by hand, she made her little family to beg, as everyday. Soon, they ended in the hands of slavers".
Many years later, Wide-Shoulders remembered and thought how wise had Quick-to-Smile's mom been. The boy had been spared hunger, or the fate which fell on her brothers, farm hands. The boy, of course, could not see that, for him freedom meant being a king and maybe, the good woman melancholicly thought, he was right because there is no freedom in starving.
Prince Aky spent the rest of the morning playing in the beach, persecuting fishes, collecting sea weed and throwing it over his friends. The sea battle lasted until two servants came with provisions: seafood soup, black rice with squids and sweets. The noble kids darted to the pavillions under which supper would be served and, liying on cushions, they lazily ate. It was taboo to bath after lunch so, until the hour of their return they fantasized about war and how they would die in victorious battle.
At palace, Quick, had remained practising his script and memorising the golden tables. The later were called so in relation to their utility as they could be applied to any problem of accounting, might it be addition, substraction, and the stellar addition which allowed to determine the total of long series of additions, provided they were of a regular kind. He also had some silver problems to memorize, which he like best, as they dealt with real lifes. Issues like knowing how many adobe bricks would a house need or how many workers, already marked him with a sense of pride. Yet, he would spend the day locked in his tiny room, opened by a huge window through which the inmense blue sky would tell him of his dreamed childhood...