The eldest of their daughters is so inspired by the king and queen that it forms how she sees the world. She recognises the mundane mystique of romantic love that is ubiquitous at a glance, but, when you look closer, you notice the tessellation of understanding, patience, friendship and attraction. She sees both the miracle of the spark igniting and also the working, because it takes work, and for the work to work, you have to respect each other, like each other. She is fascinated by how much romantic love can soften a hard life, highlight the best of you, not condemn the worst of you. It is a gift she cherished witnessing with the king and queen, and so she made it her mission to capture a little of it and gift it to others; the hope of it all, the light of it all. The king and queen brought love to life for her. She saw it up close, in vivid, bold, bright strokes of pigment. She saw the nobility, its integrity, its rock-like stolidity in rich, illuminating colour. In sharing it, she hopes to make the world a little brighter.
Time was constructed with love in mind. It is why the moments before a desired kiss stretch, why when your lips are finally introduced with another pair, it feels as if they have wanted to meet for some time, and why a day with your loved one can feel like an eternity on turbo-speed. Achingly, deliciously slow, but too fast, over too quick, melting between too-hot fingers. Time and love are intertwined, they are both measures of life, they are the two clocks. And, for love to operate as it should, it is imperative that the timing should be right. Just as it is in this story.
Author’s Note
When choosing which tales would form a basis for my stories, I was careful to select those with themes that I could draw out and weave upon. As many of the original folktales and myths are so ancient, they’re impossible to date, and, naturally, they were rife with misogyny and violence and were created within heavily patriarchal contexts. With this book I was able to re-imagine these stories in a manner that meant that the women were centred; it was less about being chosen and more about their agency in allowing themselves to love and be loved.
Naleli’s story, for instance, was originally from a tale entitled ‘How Khosi Chose His Wife’， within which the heroine is a woman whose extreme beauty was hidden by her parents with a cloak of crocodile skin to protect her from roving eyes. While hidden in a bush （extremely creepy!）， Khosi spies on her washing in her pool, disrobed of her crocodile skin, and proceeds to ‘fall in love’ with her and selects her as his bride. In the original story, the woman has little consent, and the prince is predatory. However, with the crocodile skin, I saw the potential to write a story about a woman who is judged and treated differently throughout her life because of her external looks, but eventually she learns to love the skin she’s in, without having to shed anything. Another example is Yaa’s original story; she was a shallow, ditzy young woman damned to the land of the dead for choosing to marry a rich, glamorous and handsome stranger, instead of the noble prince from her village that her parents had chosen for her. The moral of the story was essentially ‘parents know best’。 I decided to invert the tale to make it one about agency and resistance against parental expectations, which can sometimes suppress our essence. It’s about not being punished for exercising autonomy but rather being empowered by it, a theme evident in many of the tales.
This book provided me the wonderful opportunity to play with myths, stretching them into newer versions and worlds far removed from where they began, while still ensuring they remained tethered to their roots. Psyche and Eros had me trying to cram Olympus into a sleek office building, imagining what Cupid would be like if he was a charming media bro. The original story of Zhinu is called ‘The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl’， in which both characters represent stars （and, incidentally, is another story in which a man walks in on a woman bathing naked in a pool）。 It was so fun asking questions such as: what if she wove songs? What if I consolidate myth and reality and make her a star on earth; a popstar who doesn’t know her worth? Also, how do I bring a cow into this new story alongside bridges formed from magpies?
With others I got to delve into and twist history. In Nefertiti, I got to meld fact with fantasy in a way that was thrilling for a casual history nerd like me. The mystery surrounding the specifics of the life of Nefertiti gave me so much ambit to play with. I turned Ancient Egypt （Kemet） into a dystopian metropolis where the gods were mortal. I distilled Ancient Egyptian philosophy and built a world from it. Ma’at was a goddess of justice, harmony and balance, and Isfet was a philosophic concept of chaos, injustice and evil. I wanted to raise questions of justice: where does it lie, and what does it mean in a world that is evil? Can justice exist in a universe where that which is dark is posited as light? Ultimately, in the story, we see justice side with Nefertiti, a woman who fights to end oppression through morally questionable acts. Though a romance, it was such a privilege to have the room to tease out complexities like these, even in a short story.