This made the woman feel immensely proud.
“You and Mom, the two of us are going to live together,” she whispered to the pale shadow-child she held in her arms. “We’re going to be happy here forever.”
She kissed the child’s soft, white forehead.
This trace of a small child, who had waited for her mom for so long in the black basement of a dark concrete building, looked up at the woman she had been searching for and gave a bright smile.
Ruler of the Winds and Sands
0
In the air above a sandy desert floated a ship made of golden gears. Sunlight glinted on each and every tooth of the thousands of gears that went tick-tick-tick, making the airborne vessel shine as brilliantly as the sun. This shimmering, flashing ship of gears slowly traversed the hot air above the desert sands, buoyed by the boiling heat and golden waves of reflected light that surrounded its hull.
1
The master of the ship was said to be a great warrior and a powerful sorcerer. According to ancient lore, the king of the desert had battled the master of the boat for control over the land that stretched even beyond the horizon to the golden sun. In the final battle, the king managed to sever the master’s left arm. The master of the golden ship, with blood spraying from his severed arm, shouted and cursed the king of the desert.
“You have taken my virility, and so I shall take that of your descendants! You have scattered my blood on these lands, and for that, none who rule these sands will ever be safe from harm.”
The king of the desert did not believe in curses. As he watched the master of the golden ship ride his horse of golden gears up into the air undulating in the sunlight, the king smiled victoriously. Drops of blood dotted the path where the master of the golden boat passed. They boiled like little flames before immediately drying out in the suffocating heat, a sight that made the king of the desert laugh with such malicious will and volume that he clearly hoped it would carry over to the decks of the ship.
2
Not long after, the king of the desert had a son. The prince was born blind. The king’s rage pierced the sky. The queen, overcome with disappointment, lingered a little before dying.
Left without a mother, the prince was raised by the servants and handmaidens of the palace. The handmaidens took great care of him, but their hearts were always filled with fear. The king of the desert was rage itself, and the prince was a curse. The servants and handmaidens, in trying to avoid that rage and the curse, stooped their backs low and kept their heads down at all times. This was why, even as they fed or clothed or rocked the prince to sleep at night, there was no love in their hearts for him.
In order to survive, children come to their own understanding of their place in their world. It looks as if children are limited in what they are conscious of, but they comprehend very quickly the intention of adults and the trust given to them, better and more precisely than adults themselves do. The prince grew up surrounded by beauty and riches, among people who were polite and well-mannered but had no sincerity. As far as the prince knew, that was just what the world and its people were like.
3
The prince became a boy, and after a little while, a youth. He was blind and, as the only issue of the desert king, the crown prince. And so, the king of the desert, when his son came of age, dispatched emissaries across the endless stretches of sand to the people who lived on the grass plains to ask for a princess who would be queen of the desert.
The ruler of the grass plains knew the prince of the desert was blind, and he made this his reason for refusing at first. But when he was presented with the silks and jewels that the emissaries had brought with them, he soon changed his mind. This was how the princess of the grass plains came to follow the emissaries to the desert where she was to be wedded to the cursed prince.
4
The wedding was set for three months hence. All the servants and courtiers busied themselves with seemingly endless wedding preparations. The sleepy palace in the desert suddenly turned into a hive of activity.
The prince was very curious about the princess of the grass plains who was to become his bride. He wondered whether she knew he was blind and why she would come all this way to marry him if she did, or how she would react if she didn’t … The prince was well aware of the ancient tradition of the groom not meeting the bride before the wedding, but he was determined to know what kind of person his bride-to-be was before it was too late.
Ever since he was little, the prince had been familiar with the various shortcuts and hidden passages in the palace. Since no one suspected a blind prince would know of such paths, the prince was able to explore the palace to his heart’s content and go wherever he pleased. Even the darkest corner where light didn’t reach was not a problem for him, and the prince was able to hide wherever he desired in the palace. This was how, on a night while everyone else was asleep, he was able to creep into the inner chamber where the princess was being kept.