Chapter Text
Aimi, Beautiful Love, was a most beloved princess. Her husband Maruki adored her, and his father, that magnificent king, indulged her like a favorite daughter. Her attendants were her husband’s younger sisters. They bathed her and dressed her and sang for her pleasure; they embroidered her clothing and tidied her bed. They combed her hair in the morning and brought her perfume in the evening, before she lay down with her husband. They would not let her do anything for herself.
For Aimi, the king opened his treasure boxes. Her attendants dressed her in cloth dyed all the colors of sunshine, so soft it slipped over her skin like a lover’s kisses. They adorned her with pearls, with beads of red and yellow crystal, with the sunny yellow copper, heavy and incorruptible, that bedecked her husband’s house and everyone in it. They presented her with trinket boxes and embroidered pouches, mirrors, and painted hats. She had no robe, but days were so warm in her husband’s country that no one wore an outer garment, and at night—she never went out at night.
The name of the king’s house was the Palace-of-Heaven. The house was large; a person had to shout to be heard on the opposite side of the hall. Not that Aimi ever shouted. If she needed anything, an attendant ran to get it for her.
The wood the house was built of (Aimi never learned its name) was a wonderful thing; it never cracked or rotted, and when burnished it glowed with a sunny light even in the depths of night. Carvings adorned every post and beam of the house, and treasure boxes, stacked floor to ceiling, lined the walls.
The food in the king’s house (she never learned its name either) was as delightful as everything else: sweet, fatty, smooth on her tongue. They always encouraged her to eat as much as she liked. Only the queen consumed more than she did.
Palace-of-Heaven stood atop a white sand beach, overlooking a sea of transparent blue. Behind the house rose a forest of the yellow-copper trees from which, they told her, the house had been built. Its leaves chimed in the breeze that blew from the sea. Clad in bark, the trees did not shine as the house did, so the forest-unlike house or beach-was a place of shifting, light-spangled shadow.
The house was beautiful; the people were beautiful; her food and clothes were beautiful. What gave Aimi true joy, however, was how much her husband’s family loved her. In the morning they greeted her as if she brought happiness the way the dawn brings light. In the evening they said goodnight as if parting from her grieved them. In between, they invited her into every pastime; they made her feel as if nothing could happen properly without her. Even the queen, whom Aimi suspected of disapproving of her son’s bride, never did worse than offer a greeting in place of a kiss, or a single word in contrast with her daughters’ affectionate chatter.
And nights, when Aimi retired with her handsome, ardent, adoring husband—the nights, when she was the sole object of his attention—those were the most glorious of all. He would call himself a slave and Aimi his master; he would murmur the delights of each swell and hollow of her body. His caresses were like summer all over her skin. He would heat her up until he burned her blind and unknowing, and then he would hold her in his arms until they cooled enough to begin again.
On the night they had married, after he kissed her the very first time, he had whispered promises in her ear. “I know what you want,” he told her. “I will give it all to you.”
And he had.
That was how she lived for a long time.
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Then the dreams began.
Later she thought they must have lived inside her all along, drifting on currents that flowed far beneath thought and memory. Slowly the dreams swam upward.
In one dream that returned over and over, she struggled through blue water, desperate for air. In another she pushed at the stars, trying to break through to the darkness beyond. She was searching in every dream, but she never knew in the dream or upon awaking what she searched for.
After one of those dreams, she always woke to doubt. She was so different from these people. She did not know how to be merry and bright, how to laugh and chatter or joke, how to hug or kiss her sisters-in-law with half the warmth they spontaneously radiated upon her. Her husband whispered the most rapturous words in her ear, but she could not speak that way to him in return. She did not know why. They called her sweet-tempered and loving, but during those wakeful nights she could discover no love inside her, only a blank mist.
At times, Aimi felt she resembled her mother-in-law. The queen, like her, had come from a different place. The queen, like her, lacked the luminous skin and blue eyes of her husband’s family. The queen, like her, was hungry and reticent.
On the other hand, Takemi Death-Bringer was clearly not a person with doubts. The rare embrace or few quiet words she would give her children, the looks she cast in the king’s direction, made Aimi certain that wherever the unsmiling queen kept her emotions, they were neither insubstantial nor hidden from her.
And the queen knew where she came from. The king hosted the queen’s relatives from time to time, and they looked like her: dark, sharp-nosed, with hooded eyes and enormous appetites. Even after feasting from sundown to sunup, they would eye Aimi in a predatory way she found unsettling.
No one ever mentioned Aimi’s relatives and they never came to visit. At night she would wonder why she could not remember her life before her marriage, but it was not a thing she was able to ask about in daylight.
Other dreams came to her as time went on, of running endlessly, of people lying broken and red-stained. She began to feel that her dreams were monsters lurking beneath the bright surface of her life, hungry to wrench her down into darkness. After such a dream she would cling to her husband until he awoke and chased away all glimpses of the monsters with his love.
Once she tried to tell him about the dreams. “Don’t pay attention,” he said. “They can’t hurt you here.”
She tried to follow his advice, but it worked less and less well. And slowly, doubt began to seep into the daytime.
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A path led into the forest behind the house, under those yellow leaves so translucent they might have been made of the thinnest shell. One day Aimi thought: the path must lead to the creek that supplied the house with water.
She could picture such a creek, rushing through shade and dappled sunlight. The noise of water over stone would be as lovely as a song, always changing, never ending.
When she asked her husband’s oldest sister about it, Kasumi said, “You don’t want to walk in the forest.”
“The trees are sharp,” said Sumire, the only child of the king whose eyes were black like the queen’s. “The leaves will rip your clothes and cut your feet.”
Aimi was puzzled because they never denied her anything. “Couldn’t I go along the beach to the creek?”
“There’s no creek,” said Sumire.
“Oh, Aimi,” Kasumi said, “Weren’t we going to have a game of throwing sticks? Don’t disappoint us!”
Her look of playful entreaty was irresistible, and Aimi dropped the subject. But she began to notice how freely they came and went from the house. The queen was away often, and the king left nearly every morning, returning only at night. When the king rested, her husband would go instead. Maruki would tie on a pair of odd, unadorned shoes and fetch something from his father’s apartment that he carried out of the house. Like the king, he returned after dark, weary as if from a day of labor. At the house, no one ever labored.
They did take her when the entire household traveled to a feast. From the king’s great boat, Aimi would watch the passing forest, but she never spied the outlet of a creek.
After one of these feasts, she would gaze into the abalone mirror her husband had given her. With her dark eyes, small nose, and pale skin, she did not look like anyone else she had seen. Wherever her people lived, it was so far away that she was the only one here.