Empress of the Sun, Ch.2
2 The Pink Princess
by Sally Oh
(copyright 2016, Patricia Ormsby)
The very next day, all of Neverwet was abuzz with sorts the of interesting stories and speculations one would expect from such an unusual event. This was from TheWaterproof Times columnist Georgianna Notewright.
-------“People have always said that nothing ever happens in Neverwet. With the arrival of our fine fellow humanoids, the LDS, we never even get wet anymore! And now, that, of course, is an exaggeration. (Georgianna? Exaggerate?) There is always something salacious going on. Yeh just gotta know where to look for it.
“But yesterday! Yesterday?! Yeh’d a had to have been blind, deaf, not to mention stupid, not to have noticed or heard or somehow sensed there was sump’n big going on. I will not belabor you with details on what everybody around Puget Sound already knows, that a gawky-looking seaplane arrived from Japan and plopped down like an albatross right out here next to Neverwet. That, folks, was the ‘swimming stork’! I kid you not! So what was the little bundle of joy it was bringing us? That has yet to be revealed.
“Now if yeh did not have binoculars like some folks did, yeh have to take other folks’ words for ‘the rest of the story.’ But this is what we know. They did some gossamer sorts of goofing around reminiscent of what tent caterpillars did to my plum tree last year. You wonder if they’d brought over the Insect God. Every slanted-eye individual in or near Rock Hills must have shown up. From like nowhere. They had their cavalry here, and an army of guys in white with big black jugs on their heads, which don’t really look like they would protect them in battle, and they were equipped with short wooden bats. (But, yes, yeh do wonder what they could do with the bats if they took a notion.) And they had a phalanx of their finest young sam-yoo-rai swordsguys. Not only that, they had OUR army out there pointing OUR guns at anyone who might disturb THEIR procession.
“Any time they passed a house or village they repeated the tent caterpillar show. (At night, I’m told, they just cut the torches and snuck through.) Y'know, if yeh really want to keep yer arrival a secret, this is not how yeh go about doing it. Which has everyone speculating. ‘Probably a decoy.’
“Y’know I have my manicure to worry about, so I sent a couple spies out to see what was going on. Here’s what they said.
“The guys that were holding up the sheer white cloth, that was a bit over six feet high, would run ahead to each settlement and rest until the parade caught up with’m. It was possible to go up and chat with’m at those times. They were shy. A bit slow with the English. They explained their clothing. Kimonos, hakamas and jikatabi boots. The cloven-hoof sort of ones. They didn’t think their clothing was special. (Well, I for one would not be caught dead in it.) But they admitted it was a special occasion.
“When they say ‘yah,’ by the way, it means ‘no’ not ‘yes.’ So they can actually say ‘no,’ it just doesn’t look like they can.
“They refused to say who it was that was so important they had to spend the entire day trying to conceal his or her, well, it actually appears to be ‘their,’ presence.
“We are assured, however, that whoever they are, they are not ‘dangerous.’
“Now I don’t need to tell yeh that whenever yeh hold an ostentatious event from which everyone else is excluded, somebody or other is going to crash it. Can yeh row a sieve across the sound? I didn’t think so.
“Some of Neverwet’s finest recycler roustabouts took it upon themselves to get a closer view of the procession to see what they could find out. They got on their horses and galloped up the back roads so they didn’t run into the army. Our army! (A shame they never came up with a good emoticon for a roll of the eyes!)
“They went all the way out to The Cat’s Meow, and waited there, disguised somehow as patrons. (Easy to do.) When the procession arrived, it was so quiet they would have missed it if the soldiers assigned to guard the event hadn’t come in and told everyone it had arrived and to be respectful, please.
“A couple’a the boys went upstairs (which the soldiers had told them most expressly not to do, but they were discreet enough to get away with it). They saw all the knights and swordsguys and people all marching along in formation, and a few hustling about, spiffying up this and that detail. (Yes, they do that even in their sleep!)
“A couple of the other boys went outside, where they waited patiently and politely just outside the cloth barrier. And they could tell a sizeable crowd was coming through, but they waited until they heard a single rap on the pane up above’m.”
“Then they ducked under the cloth with a whoop and holler. I mean, it was just amazing they didn’t get killed. But, of course, they’d thought to get another boy to go over and chat up the soldiers. It was well planned, just as if they had been Japanese too, so they managed to pull it off.
“Now what they saw, and I am hearing this second-hand, mind yeh, is the five palanquins, with the bearers getting a bit jostled and some lady attendants shrieking (it was hard to tell them from the men until that point). The swordsguys drew their weapons and wielded them in rapid succession all around them, of course, in threatening stances. So our brave fellows feigned surprise and bowed out (pun intended). And then they ran like the devil for their horses and dodged outta Dodge, thereby missing the best part of yesterday’s show.
“It was the guys upstairs who saw what happened next. In the middle of the commotion, the paper door on the middle palanquin, the biggest and most ostentatious, the one you’d expect to hold the Emperor, slid open and a face appeared, blinking in the mid-afternoon sunlight through thick glasses. Then one of the attendants hustled over and slid the door shut again. And what was His Majesty wearing? A pink dress!!!
“What’d I tell yeh? Decoy!!! Remember yeh heard it here first. Now, where is His Majesty?
“Ta-ta until next week!”
-------No one actually bothered to pursue the naughty boys. The army might have, but nobody had been hurt, and there were more important things to attend to for the time being. Of course, both of the boys continued looking over their shoulder for quite a while, and when the identities of the palanquins’ passengers were revealed, their friends also feared they themselves might be targeted in the night on some god-forsaken street. That was how the Japanese were known to deal with perceived insults and injustices.
Back at the port, though, once the procession had gone out of sight beyond the first set of ruins, the seaplane started its engines up again, but rather than taking off or proceeding to the naval station as everyone anticipated, it merely taxied over to the pier and docked there. Two ancient Japanese pilots in black leather alighted with a laugh and were joined by a few of the Japanese fishermen, smoking and bowing vigorously, who’d moored their boats and removed and stowed the motors. Their critical role in the drama had finished and it was time for a good drink.
Over the next few days, they would help dismantle the seaplane, which was carried away piece by piece to the fishermen’s huts, and from there, somewhere safe and secret in the dead of night.
As for the procession at The Cat’s Meow, order was quickly restored and it continued on its way with no further events. I suppose, most people are more sensible in their dealings with folks wielding guns and swords.
The pace of the procession, already laborious, slowed further as everyone tired. The cloth bearers bowed out at dusk, with torch bearers taking their place. The horsemen departed then too, along with their bevy of manure catchers. The Army of the Cascade Republic continued to provide protection. The swordsmen, torch bearers, water bearers, palanquin bearers and other attendants finally delivered their secret passengers to their destination some time in the deep dark hours of the boar.
The palanquins used that day were all identical white lacquer with golden chrysanthemum seals, except that the middle one was a size bigger. The occupant of that was nothing but a girl in a pink dress, with very long black hair, thick glasses, slightly buck teeth. A really ordinary Japanese face. And that was it. She was dubbed the “Pink Princess,” and known fondly as that in Cascadia from then on.
A few days later, they were informed that the boys upstairs had been the first to get a glimpse of Her Majesty, the Empress of Japan.