Three Prologues

She had known from a very young age about the power of words. She had watched, hidden in the shadows, as her father exiled men and women for speaking treason, and ended lives with a few glancing words. And yet, for as long as she could remember, she had been told to speak up; to sing and and dance, recite verses and make witty jokes. For that, they would twitter and applaud and pinch her cheeks. They never seemed to understand how easily words could be used as weapons against them.

On her sixteenth birthday, her father, expansive with feasting and good humour, called her in front of the entire court. "My child," he said, "I have decided to give you a great gift. Ask me for whatever you want, and I will give it to you."

"Whatever I want?" She repeated uncertainly. And the great hall shifted with hushed anticipation. Dressed all in white, the skirts of her kaftan falling with the pure lines of a snowdrop, she looked even younger than she was. Too young to know how to use such a gift, or so many thought.

"I— I—ah," She looked at the sea of faces before her, some frowning, some smirking, others whispering behind their hands, and finally, finally, felt the weight of decision settle upon her like a soft fur mantle on a cold night.

She asked for the gift of silence. And from then on, refused to speak a word.

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Romantically-minded suitors were drawn to her legend like trembling moths to the moon. The silent princess drew out a madness in their blood. She was a challenge to be broken, a mystery to be cracked and solved. There were rumours that the silent princess would take to husband, the first man to make her speak. But she never spoke, and so never did.

In time, however, they came to her because she listened. Behind the fragrant sandalwood screen that separated them, she sat with her face shrouded in seven shimmering veils, and listened serenely to their secrets.

They all fell in love with her, of course. A mute, beautiful wife, who would never tell them no, or give advice, or say anything for that matter, wasn't that the dream?

The more melancholic ones, disappointed by their failure to tempt her to speech, went away and killed themselves at the foot of the nearest mountain as their final grand ode to unrequited love. The more practical ones, having unburdened their sorrows, went away feeling lighter and happier. They commissioned ceramic artists to fire whole skeletons of clay and to lay them at the same mountain-- by now growing a delicate tower of ivory. It felt, they thought, as if you were leaving an old troubled self behind, and walking away a new person.

Meanwhile, the silent princess sat in her bower making notes of various heartaches, sorrows and griefs, sold foolish prince's secrets, and negotiated treaties. She had become, you see, her kingdom's spymaster.

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The pasha's sixth son was running. He had always been running. He had been running since the day he broke the old woman's three pitchers three times and now he couldn't outrun the curse. It had caught up with him.

In his younger days, he had been a brat. Now, he was one of those golden characters: good-looking, somehow full of decency and easy manners, even though, or maybe the reason why, everyone found it hard to deny him anything. But as a little boy, the spoiled child of his father's old age, he hadn't shown much promise.

He had fought his brothers like a savage pup, trampled flowerbeds, smashed crockery, yelling and hooting and eating slugs. He got away because he looked at them every time with his mournful, tawny eyes, too big for his scratched-up, scrawny little boy frame, and then everyone just had to forgive him. That is, until the day he smashed the pitchers.

He'd been amusing himself with his new gift, a golden ball, when the old woman walked past with a pitcher on her shoulder. As easy as breathing, he threw the ball straight at the pitcher. It broke into a thousand pieces.

The old woman shrugged. After all, accidents happen, and went to get another. The pasha's sixth son ran to retrieve his ball. But just as the old woman was lowering the pitcher into the well, she yelped and it exploded into smithereens. He'd thrown the ball at the pitcher again.

The third time it happened, the old woman was half-mad with rage. She stomped towards him, shaking her fists, as he cowered in the summerhouse quivering with laughter and fear. "Think you can get away with everything, O Pasha's Son?" She sneered, "Well, I curse you, I curse you to fall in love with the silent princess." Then she vanished.

He ran out to get a better look, then ran in again in case she was just hiding, but changed his mind and ran out again. The old woman really had disappeared! He was perplexed, but then his friends came looking for him to play a new game, and in the end, he forgot her words.

But he never forgot that whirling, feverish feeling of fear and excitement when she cursed him. It really seemed as if something was going to catch up with him some day, something to devour his bones and turn him inside out. So he learnt how to tame his wildness, his curdled waywardness, that the beast of the curse would never find him. But it did. It still did.