Tales of Wonder

  Viga had a belvedere built around it. There she spent her days, tending the flower, watering it, and turning its soil.

  When visitors arrived at her father’s house, she would tell them the story of her love for Sans Soleil. And the story always ended with this caution: “Sometimes,” Viga would say, “what we believe is stronger than what is true.”

  The Seventh Mandarin

  Once in the East, where the wind blows gently on the bells of the temple, there lived a king of the highest degree.

  He was a good king. And he knew the laws of his land. But of his people he knew nothing at all, for he had never been beyond the high stone walls that surrounded his palace.

  All day long the king read about his kingdom in the books and scrolls that were kept in the palace. And all day long he was guarded and guided by the seven mandarins who had lived all their lives, as the king had, within the palace walls.

  These mandarins were honorable men. They dressed in silken robes and wore embroidered slippers. They ate from porcelain dishes and drank the most delicate teas.

  Now, while it was important that the mandarins guarded and guided their king throughout his days, they had a higher duty still. At night they were the guardians of the king’s soul.

  It was written in the books and scrolls of the kingdom that each night the king’s soul left his body and flew into the sky on the wings of a giant kite. And the king and the seven mandarins believed that what was written in the books and scrolls was true. And so, each mandarin took turns flying the king’s kite through the long, dark hours, keeping it high above the terrors of the night.

  This kite was a giant dragon. Its tail was of silk with colored tassels. Its body was etched with gold. And when the sun quit that kingdom in the East, the giant kite rose like a serpent in the wind, flown by one of the seven mandarins.

  And for uncounted years it was so.

  Now, of all the mandarins, the seventh was the youngest. He was also the most simple. While the other mandarins enjoyed feasting and dancing and many rich pleasures, the seventh mandarin loved only three things in all the world. He loved the king, the books and scrolls of the law, and the king’s giant kite.

  That he loved his king there was no doubt, for the seventh mandarin would not rest until the king rested.

  That he loved the books and scrolls there was also no doubt. Not only did the seventh mandarin believe that what was written therein was true. He also believed that what was not written was not true.

  But more than his king and more than the books and scrolls of the law, the seventh mandarin loved the king’s kite, the carrier of the king’s soul. He could make it dip and soar and crest the currents of air like a falcon trained to his hand.

  One night, when it was the turn of the seventh mandarin to fly the king’s kite, the sky was black with clouds. A wild wind like no wind before it entered the kingdom.

  The seventh mandarin was almost afraid to fly the kite, for he had never seen such a wind. But he knew that he had to send it into the sky. The king’s kite must fly, or the king’s soul would be in danger. And so the seventh mandarin sent the kite aloft.

  The minute the giant kite swam into the sky, it began to rage and strain at the string. It twisted and turned and dived and pulled. The wind gnawed and fretted and goaded the kite, ripping at its tender belly and snatching at its silken tail. At last, with a final snap, the precious kite string parted.

  Before the seventh mandarin’s eyes, the king’s kite sailed wildly over the palace spires, over the roofs of the mandarins’ mansions, over the high walls that surrounded the courtyards, and out of sight.

  “Come back, come back, O Magnificent Wind Bird,” cried the seventh mandarin. “Come back with the king’s soul, and I will tip your tail with gold and melt silver onto your wings.”

  But the kite did not come back.

  The seventh mandarin ran down the steps. He put his cape about his face so that no one would know him. He ran through the echoing corridors. He ran past the mandarins’ mansions and through the gates of the high palace walls. Then he ran where he had never been before—past the neat houses of the merchants, past the tiny homes of the workers, past the canals that held the peddlers’ boats, past the ramshackle, falling-down huts and hovels of the poor.

  At last, in the distance, hovering about the hills that marked the edge of the kingdom, the seventh mandarin saw something flutter like a wounded bird in the sky. And though the wind pushed and pulled at his cape and at last tore it from his back, the seventh mandarin did not stop. He ran and ran until he came to the foot of the mountain.

  There he found the king’s kite. But what a terrible sight met his eyes. The wings of the dragon were dirty and torn. Its tail was shredded and bare. The links of its body were broken apart.

  It would never fly again.

  The seventh mandarin did not know what to do. He was afraid to return to the palace. It was not that he feared for his own life. He feared for the life of his king. For if the king’s soul had flown on the wings of the kite, the king was surely dead.

  Yet, much as he was afraid to return, the seventh mandarin was more afraid not to. And so he gathered the king’s kite in his arms and began the long, slow journey back.

  He carried the king’s kite past the canals and the ramshackle, falling-down huts and hovels of the poor. And as he passed with the broken kite in his arms, it came to him that he had never read of such things in the books and scrolls of the kingdom. Yet the cries and groans he heard were not made by the wind.

  At last, as the first light of the new day touched the gates of the high palace walls, the seventh mandarin entered the courtyard. He climbed the stairs to his chamber and placed the battered, broken kite on his couch.

  Then he sat down and waited to hear of the death of the king.

  Scarcely an hour went by before all seven of the mandarins were summoned to the king’s chamber. The king lay on his golden bed. His face was pale and still. His hands lay like two withered leaves by his side.

  Surely, thought the seventh mandarin, I have killed my king. And he began to weep.

  But slowly the king opened his eyes.

  “I dreamed a dream last night,” he said, his voice low and filled with pain. “I dreamed that in my kingdom there are ramshackle hovels and huts that are falling down.”

  “It is not so,” said the six mandarins, for they had never been beyond the high palace walls and so had never seen such things.

  Only the seventh mandarin was silent.

  “I dreamed that in my kingdom,” continued the king, “there are people who sigh and moan—people who cry and groan when the night is dark and deep.”

  “It is not so,” said the six mandarins, for they had never read of such things in the books and scrolls.

  The seventh mandarin was silent.

  “If it is not so,” said the king, slowly raising his hand to his head, “then how have I dreamed it? For is it not written that the dream is the eye of the soul? And if my soul was flying on the wings of my kite and these things are not so, then how did my dream see all this?”

  The six mandarins were silent.

  Then the seventh mandarin spoke. He was afraid, but he spoke. And he said, “O King, I saw these same things last night, and I did not dream!”

  The six mandarins looked at the seventh mandarin in astonishment.

  But the seventh mandarin continued. “The wind was a wild, mad beast. It ripped your kite from my hands. And the kite flew like an angel in the night to these same huts and hovels of which you dreamed. And there are many who moan and sigh, who groan and cry beyond the high palace walls. There are many—although it is not written in any of the books or scrolls of the kingdom.”

  Then the seventh mandarin bowed his head and waited for his doom. For it was death to fail the king. And it was death to damage his kite. And it was death to say that what was not written in the books and scrolls was so.

  Then the king spoke, his voice low and cr
ackling like the pages of an ancient book. “For three reasons that you already know, you deserve to die.”

  The other mandarins looked at one another and nodded.

  “But,” said the king, sitting up in his golden bed, “for discovering the truth and not fearing to reveal it, you deserve to live.” And he signaled the seventh mandarin to stand at his right hand.

  That very night, the king and his seven mandarins made their way to the mountain at the edge of the kingdom. There they buried the king’s kite with honors.

  And the next morning, when the kingdom awoke, the people found that the high walls surrounding the palace had been leveled to the ground.

  As for the king, he never again relied solely upon the laws of the land, but instead rode daily with his mandarins through the kingdom. He met with his people and heard their pleas. He listened and looked as well as read.

  The mandarins never again had to fly the king’s kite as a duty. Instead, once a year, at a great feast, they sent a giant dragon kite into the sky to remind themselves and their king of the folly of believing only what is written.

  And the king, with the seventh mandarin always by his side, ruled a land of good and plenty until he came to the end of his days.

  The Soul Fisher

  In a time when the rivers ran crystal clear all the way down to the sea, there lived a man in a cave. The cave was in the center of the world and was fed by many streams. It was mostly dark in the cave, and the spring waters made it slippery and cold. Yet the man lived there alone all the year around.

  He bathed in the cold, clear streams. He caught the blind fish that swam in the dark, whose shapes were ugly but whose meat was sweet. And he fished out stoppered bottles that washed into a central pool.

  In each bottle was a message from the world outside the cave.

  And when the man had taken the bottle from the pool and unstoppered it, he would read the message by the light of his single torch. Then, with a pen made from the rib of a fish and silver ink made from fish scales, he would try to scribe an answer. The answer he placed back in the bottle, which he set upright in a whittled boat with a miniature torch at the bow. Sailing out, the flickering bowlight would cast its answer onto the sides of the cave.

  The man was called the Fisher of Souls.

  Now there was, at that time, a great and terrible war in the world outside the cave, and even little children took to carrying swords. Where once the land had been green with spring, it was now sere and torn with a thousand wounds. During one gasp in the respiration of battle, someone had an idea.

  “Why don’t we ask the Fisher of Souls to come out of the cave. Instead of sending us messages one by one by one, he could tell all of us what to do at the same time, and in this way end the war.”

  At first it was just one man and one thought, and the war overwhelmed the one. But a woman took up his cry, so then there were two of them wandering the land.

  “Call up the Fisher of Souls from his cave,” they cried. “Instead of helping one by one, he can help us all at the same time.”

  They wandered from village to town, from city to farm, and the one who had become two became ten and then twenty and then forty and then hundreds.

  But the Soul Fisher could not hear them, living as he did far down under the land in his cold, dark home.

  “Why don’t we send him a message?” asked a child. “Each message could read the same.”

  So the hundreds of men and women and children laid down their swords and wrote the same message on scraps of paper. They placed these messages in stoppered bottles and tossed them into the streams. And soon all the bottles swam their slow, blind passage to the Soul Fisher’s pool.

  “Come up to the light. Help us stop the war,” read the notes.

  The Soul Fisher read note after note, and each was the same. The message moved him deeply. He thought that he would like to tell the people all at once what to do. But then he shook his head wearily and brushed his long, gray hair out of his eyes with a thin hand. He took up his pen and wrote “If there is real need, I will come.”

  Within days, the men and women and children replied: “There is need. We all need.”

  The Soul Fisher read note after note, and each was the same. So he wrote a simple answer—“I am coming”—and sent it into the stream. Then, with his torch in one hand, the other touching the dark, dank walls of the cave, he followed the answer through the twisting tunnel up and up toward the light of the world.

  It took him many days to reach the mouth of the cave. The sudden wind guttered his torch. The late-afternoon sun hurt his eyes. The sound of the animals in the fields broke like great waves upon his ears.

  Emerging from the cave, the Soul Fisher saw hundreds of people standing in silence on the plain before him. Then they waved their arms wildly, and the vision cut like a thousand swords.

  They cried out, “Fisher of Souls, Fisher of Souls!” and the noise of it would have turned him around if the messages they had sent had not carried him forward.

  The Fisher of Souls stepped into the crowd, and it parted as if struck by an invisible blow. The ground felt strangely familiar beneath his feet. He walked without willing it to the gates of a palace. Then he moved through the gates to the palace itself, through room after room till he came to a golden throne. He mounted the steps and sat on the throne.

  And all the while the hundreds of people followed crying out his name: “Fisher of Souls! Fisher of Souls!”

  With a great effort, he raised his hands for silence. And there fell upon the palace a silence as deep as any he had ever heard in a cave.

  “I am here in answer to your one great need,” he said. “I have come to answer your one great need.” His hands felt along the throne’s ornate sides, remembering on their own. Then, speaking to himself, the Soul Fisher said, “Once long ago—so long ago there are hardly any of you here who might remember it—this was my throne and I was your king. I tried to rule wisely. But whenever I made a judgment, not everyone was pleased. One ruling led to another, and again there were those who were not pleased. So I ran away from my throne and fled to the cave.” He sighed, his voice cracking. “It is a hard life, the cave,” he said, “but far easier than here. To answer one wish at a time, to solve one small problem at a time, to please each seeker without hurting another, is easier than trying to answer many.”

  But no one was listening to the Soul Fisher. For no sooner had he begun to speak than the people broke the silence, too.

  “I need,” shouted one woman.

  She was jostled aside by another. “We need …” began a man.

  Two women shoved him aside. “Listen to us, O Fisher of Souls,” they cried.

  A small child ran up to the throne and pulled at his hand. “I need—” and was slapped away by a crone.

  “One at a time,” the Soul Fisher begged.

  But no one heard. The people jostled and shouted and pushed and shoved to get to him. They argued and wrangled and finally a sword was lifted.

  No one noticed the Soul Fisher slipping away.

  He walked slowly down the marble halls and out into the rent land. He walked past the broken houses and torn fields, past burned-out farmyards and gutted barns, until he came at last to the mouth of his cave. Sadly he looked around at the hills and valleys of his kingdom. Then he made a small fire and relit his torch.

  Holding his torch in one hand, he descended the winding, slippery tunnel back to the center of the cave.

  There in the sputtering light of the torch, he sat down on the cold rocks. He watched the blind fish swim back and forth. And he waited for the first stoppered bottle to arrive with a question.

  He knew he would not have long to wait.

  One Old Man, with Seals

  The day was clear and sharp and fresh when I first heard the seals. They were crying, a symphony of calls. The bulls coughed a low bass. The pups had a mewing whimper, not unlike the cry of a human child. I heard them as I ran around the lighthouse
, the slippery sands making my ritual laps more exercise than I needed, more than the doctor said a seventy-five-year-old woman should indulge in. Of course he didn’t say it quite like that. Doctors never do. He said: “A woman of your age …” and left it for me to fill in the blanks. It was a physician’s pathetically inept attempt at tact. Any lie told then would be mine, not his.

  However, as much as doctors know about blood and bones, they never do probe the secret recesses of the heart. And my heart told me that I was still twenty-five. Well, forty-five, anyway. And I had my own methods of gray liberation.

  I had bought a lighthouse, abandoned as unsafe and no longer viable by the Coast Guard. (Much as I had been by the county library system. One abandoned and no-longer-viable children’s librarian, greatly weathered and worth one gold watch, no more.) I spent a good part of my savings renovating, building bookcases, and having a phone line brought in. And making sure the electricity would run my refrigerator, freezer, hi-fi, and TV set. I am a solitary, not a primitive, and my passion is the news. With in-town cable, I could have watched twenty-four hours a day. But in my lighthouse, news magazines and books of history took up the slack.

  Used to a life of discipline and organization, I kept to a rigid schedule even though there was no one to impress with my dedication. But I always sang as I worked. As some obscure poet has written, “No faith can last that never sings.” Up at daylight, a light breakfast while watching the morning newscasters, commercials a perfect time to scan Newsweek or Time. Then off for my morning run. Three laps seemed just right to get lungs and heart working. Then back inside to read until my nephew called. He is a classics scholar at the university, and my favorite relative. I’ve marked him down in my will for all my books and subscriptions—and the lighthouse. The others will split the little bit of money I have left. Since I have been a collector of fine and rare history books for over fifty years, my nephew will be well off, though he doesn’t know it yet.