by Jon Jacks
Air was incensed by his sister’s claims that he had betrayed her. He, who had given man the breath of life, and who could take it away by simply withdrawing his gift, had now been made a slave of man with the help of his sisters and brother. Earth had released her iron, which Fire had smelted, and Water had hardened, aiding man in his creation of the great bellows that now made him blow when they wished.
Fire, who had once prided himself on the way he could warm and comfort men or, if he wished, terrorise them as he ran uncontrollably through their homes and towns, was furious that his sisters and brother refused to admit to their role in humiliating him. Hadn’t Earth given up her coal to man, hadn’t she helped them make him captive in their furnaces of stone? And even when he had tried to refuse to help man, Air had blown through him to create the great heat needed to melt the iron. As for Water, she had doused his best efforts to ensure their tools remained weak and poorly formed.
Water was perhaps angriest of them all. Where would man be without her to slake their thirst or nurture their food? Yet, when in a rage, she could smash anything they built, or remove them from this world by simply enveloping them in her frightful embrace. Yet her brother Fire had made her hiss with an anger and pain she had never suffered before. Even worse, her sister Earth had held her back from claiming what was rightfully hers, while Air had greedily occupied space that had originally been part of her realm.
And now, in that space, they were all allowing man to create a ship intended to conquer her.
It was already rising up from what had been her seabed; reinforced with Earth’s iron, that had been smelted by Fire, in temperatures enabled by Air’s help.
*
At one time there had been no universe, but only chaos. And just as order came out of that chaos through the forming of the Elements, now a huge ship begins to rise up out of the chaos of the shipyard, through the forming of man into organisations such as ironsmiths, carpenters and architects.
Man scampers everywhere, small in size but large in imagination. He teeters perilously on webs of creaking scaffolding. He tends vast furnaces and cauldrons of molten metal that could burn him to the bone. He tirelessly transports and painstakingly hauls into place timbers the size of trees that could crush him to a pulp. He works the treadmills of towering cranes, the whirling blades of sawmills, the huge, pumping hammers that transform animal skins into hardest leather.
Even in this seeming chaos, however, there is order. All the materials are checked for quality, all the workmanship has to be of the highest standard. The very last nail to be hammered home, like all the millions that have gone before it, is carefully inspected and – found to be wanting, found to be suffering a weakness in the neck between shaft and head – is discarded and replaced with a perfect one.
And as that man hammers home that nail, completing the sealing of the seams between the great iron plates encasing the hull, another man is making a last check of the inspection tunnel that runs along the inside of the dam, holding his lamp high to ensure the soundness of the beams holding everything in place.
And that man drops his lamp and runs as it shatters amongst a pile of rags and barrels of oil.
Fire leaps from the lamp, eager to make amends to his offended sister. Swiftly spreading through the rags, he envelops the barrels of oil. Gaining in strength, he finally rushes towards the already trembling timbers.
Air, stung by his sister’s earlier reprimands, rushes in to help. He fans the flames, granting them his rich oxygen of life. Working together, he and Fire rapidly eat away at the dam’s crumbling supports.
Earth, realising the injury she has caused her sister, begins to shrug free of the last of the constraining timbers. She shifts and moves, allowing Water to begin to seep through gaps between her rocks and wash away the binding soil. With a rumble of apology, she turns and stands aside.
Water impatiently pushes aside her sister and brothers, rushing in to claim what is rightfully hers once more. Besides, she needs to punish man for his impertinence, and what better way could there be than to dash this puny ship to pieces with a show of rage?
‘Where is it, where is it?’ she cries in irritation as she rushes around the bay, seeking the ship.
All she can see is a huge outcrop of land she can’t remember being there before, colonised now by man’s odious castles, palaces, and a town.
‘Well, if I can’t find your ship,’ she thinks maliciously, ‘then I’ll wash over your new homes!’
But no matter how high she tries to cast her waves, the land and its town continue to curiously rise out of her reach. Too late, it dawns on her; this is their ship, and she has been tricked into setting it afloat!
They have all been tricked; tricked by man into doing his bidding once more!
*
As man had intended, his vast ship soon conquered the sea.
Even in her worst spates of anger, Water failed to do it any harm, as she had so easily achieved before with any other ship.
She asked her brother Air to blow so hard it would send this impertinent ship spinning out of control. But Air only wailed that they now controlled him, with vast sails that captured and spun him around, and even windmills that powered everything from workshops to paddlewheels.
She asked her sister Earth to shred the hull of this impudent ship with her hidden rocks. But her sister only grumbled that they had used her own iron to make it impervious to her sharpest stones.
She asked her brother Fire to set aflame this imposition on her power. But Fire only moaned that, far from being terrified of his power, they flung him from their catapults at enemy ships.
They had all, they had to forlornly admit, been belittled and tamed by man.
‘Should we work with him after all?’ they asked each other.
‘Is that the only way we will retain any power over this world?’
And so, reluctantly, the Elements pledged their allegiance to man.
*
Yet there was one small element of the Elements who wasn’t part of this pledge of allegiance.
He hadn’t even heard of the pledge. He wasn’t even aware of exactly where he was, having been imprisoned by man long ago in a tightly constraining cage of solid iron.
He wanted to stretch out and break free, but he couldn’t.
Man had unfairly bound him here – or so he thought, failing to realise that it had been purely accidental – so all he could do was bind his time.
He slipped into a patient slumber, such that he was a little confused when finally awoken by a dull hammering. But he realised that the cage around him was stretching, moving; and as the roof of iron above him snapped away from the surrounding walls, the bubble of Air at last broke free of the neck of the nail that had confined him.
As the nail head snapped clean away, the nail alongside suddenly found itself expected to do the work of two nails. And so its head snapped clean away too. The third nail, now faced with holding together what only three nails could reasonably keep secure, was the next to snap.
Air had broken the pledge. And so now Earth broke it too.
She had originally thought nothing of the ship’s accidental glance against her coral, believing its iron plating to be impenetrable. But now she decided to push a little harder after all, breaking more and more of the seam, the nail heads popping one by one as her steady pressure buckled the plates.
Thanking her brother and her sister, Water gleefully poured into the growing gap, coldly wrapping herself around man after man.
And thanking his brother and sisters, Fire welcomed man to the flames of Hell.
*
Chapter 25
‘That is the story of The Sea Empress!’
‘But then again, it isn’t quite the same.’
‘It’s the story of man against the Elements, using a story similar or based upon The Sea Empress.’
‘And isn’t there supposed to be a flaw in the story, Carey?’
‘Yes, that’s what you said, before you began reading, I believe Carey.’
Everyone remained a little puzzled by the tale. Carey shrugged, as confused as they were.
‘That’s what the Princess said; meaning, I suppose, a flaw that would make the tale all fall to pieces, just as the ship does.’
‘What would be the point of such a story?’
‘Hah, perhaps the flaw is that he’s forgotten to include it!’
‘It seemed a very apt ending to me.’
‘I suppose they’re ending up in the chaos of Hell?’
‘Yes, but they’re ending up in chaos; which isn’t the same as the story itself falling apart like the ship…’
‘I suppose you could say it does, if you don’t believe in such a place?’
‘This might be being a little pedantic, but if these Elements are god-like, then how come Fire’s being controlled down there?’
‘He could be subservient to the Devil.’
‘He could be the Devil!’
‘It is a story, with the Elements as people, so…’
Durndrin shrugged, no longer sure where his reason was taking him. He felt that he should know the answer, that the others would be expecting him to be able to work it out, so he was glad when their discussion was interrupted by a loud neighing of horses just outside their caravan.
Ferena excitedly rushed to the door, as if she somehow understood what the impatient whinnying meant.
‘It’s the carriage!’ she breathlessly yelled back into the caravan. ‘It seems like you might be seeing the Illuminator today after all Carey!’
*
As before, Carey’s gleaming white carriage calmly passed by the waiting black one, dropping her off at the bottom of the winding staircase. As soon as she stepped inside the palace this time, however, the floor beneath her feet began to immediately start moving, swiftly carrying her along through a completely new set of rooms and hallways.
As she rushed along a corridor of silver and gold water fountains, she noticed she was heading for a highly elaborate set of doors that, like the great doors of the Illuminator’s camera obscura, was decorated with detailed panels. These weren’t of copper, however, but of either glossed plaster or ceramic, for they glowed an immaculate white.
She was tempted to step off the moving section of the floor and study the panels to see which story they told. But before she could make up her mind to do so, the doors swung open before her – and Carey gasped in astonishment.
The room directly ahead was of pure white, yet sparkled and reflected light as if it were a ghostly apparition. As she rapidly neared the room, she began to realise that it was made entirely of porcelain; the tables, the chairs, even the mirrors, which were covered in a particularly thick and reflective glaze.
There was no carpet, only decorative tiles. The walls, like many of the pieces of furniture, were overlaid with an ornate, lace-like pattern. Even the flowers, the roses, lilies and tulips, were of incredibly fine, white porcelain.
The only flashes of colour and of real life were the butterflies that fluttered around the room, bright glimpses of green, yellow, blue and red.
The flickering flame of the red butterfly made Carey stop and look around for a special, particular piece; a pot that was white on one side, fire red on the other.
The floor beneath her feet was no longer moving. She had, for some reason, been left in this room. So she could move around looking for the pot or plate or cup or whatever it was that–
‘Oh!’
The Princess smiled, almost giggling at Carey’s surprise. Being of porcelain herself, she blended seamlessly into the rest of the room.
‘I’m sorry!’ Carey apologised. ‘I hadn’t seen you sitting there; when I came in the room I was just–’
She looked about her with a wave of an arm.
‘Amazed by the beauty of the room, yes?’ the Princess finished the sentence for her.
‘Yes, yes; I would never have thought it would be possible to build so many things from porcelain if I hadn’t seen it.’
‘I thought you might like to see this room.’
‘Of course; but I can’t find it. Is it here, the pot or plate or whatever it was?’
‘Plate?’ The Princess frowned in confusion.
‘From the story? The Porcelain Doll?’
‘Oh, of course! I’d heard of your play! I was told it was wonderful! But…I meant because of another story; The Porcelain Room?’
Carey observed the Princess with renewed interest.
‘The Porcelain Room? You mean the second of the stories about you? Is that what it was really called?’
‘Then…you’ve heard of it?’ The Princess didn’t look too sure. ‘But you haven’t heard it, the story itself?’
Carey nodded eagerly. Of course, why hadn’t she thought of this before? The Princess would know the second part of her own story!
‘I must admit, I don’t know too much about it myself,’ the Princess admitted with a chuckle.
‘What?’ Carey was both dismayed and amazed. ‘But how can you not know what happened to you? How can you not want to know what happened?’
‘Well, because it just never really seemed that important to me I suppose; I do know some of it, after all!’
‘Which? What parts of the story do you know? Could you please tell me it?’
‘Of course, of course; in fact, that’s why I asked you here. The Illuminator wanted me to tell you this tale, as he felt sure that you mustn’t already know it.’
‘He knew that? How would he know it?’
‘Because, because…’ The Princess seemed a little uneasy, like she was having to think of the best way of wording some uncomfortable truths. ‘Well, perhaps I should just tell you the story, yes?’ she said breezily.
Carey nodded enthusiastically.
‘As we know,’ the Princess began, ‘we left the end of The Porcelain Child where the father promises the mother that he will seek out the Illuminator to grant their daughter life.’
‘Your father and mother,’ Carey corrected her cheerfully.
‘Please Carey, if I keep referring to them as my father and mother, then it won’t be the tale I was told, or the story I wish to tell you.’’
‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ Carey said, only really partly understanding.
The Princess smiled gratefully.
‘So, the father, as he promised, searched and searched for the land of the Illuminator. He had noticed that a great many of the Illuminator’s illustrations featured a glorious tower, either somewhere in the background, or glimpsed through gaps between the buildings in street or town scenes. In at least one story, which told how a complete town had been burnt to the ground, he’d also noticed that the tower mysteriously reappeared whole and unblemished in the far distance, as if it was indestructible. Of course, at this point he wasn’t aware of the imperishable nature of the Illuminator’s tower, but he realised that such a grand edifice might well be his home.
‘Even as he searched for the Illuminator’s kingdom, however, he began to notice something rather strange about his daughter; was it just his imagination, he wondered, his wishful thinking, or was she really listening as he told her tales of her mother? He thought he sometimes caught a flicker of her eyes, a slight increase of the upturn of her smile. More amazingly still, he sometimes found that she’d moved while he’d been away. On his birthday, he found a small parcel containing her red hairbow tied into a shape resembling a pair of kissing lips.’
The Princess halted, seeing Carey’s sceptical expression.
&nbs
p; ‘It seems ridiculous, I know,’ the Princess granted, ‘and yes, even he wondered if he was simply going mad. But what a madness, he thought; it seemed to him that his daughter had life, and that was such a wonderful thing to believe. His joy soon turned to anger, however, when one day he came across a puppet theatre that was putting on a show he instantly recognised as being a story of his own life; The Porcelain Child!’
‘The story was already spreading?’ Carey asked.
The Princess nodded, then continued.
‘The theatre owner had purchased the Illuminator’s book of the tale. Of course, when the father asked the theatre owner how he’d come to hear of the story, the owner didn’t recognise him. So he happily showed him the book.
‘Now, of course, the father was incensed that the Illuminator had told his tale without his permission. Yet when he saw the beautifully accurate pictures of his wife, his daughter; well, he broke down in tears. And when he touched the pictures, feeling the sense of life within them; well, of course, he just had to have the book, no matter how much the owner wanted for it!
‘Fortunately the theatre owner was a decent man who, thinking he knew the tale well enough to have no further need of the book, sold it for a reasonable price. Better still, he had his own story of a strange town dominated by a looming, forbidding tower; and the father recognised straight away that this was the tower he’d been searching for.
‘He arrived in the town during the day, and was surprised – as you’d been when you arrived here, Carey – that everyone seemed to be expecting him. Similarly, they didn’t seem at all surprised either when he began to surround his caravan with the most incredibly beautiful ornaments and furniture they had ever seen; all of it made entirely of the finest porcelain. Not just vases and plates, but also chairs, tables, even mirrors!’