The Book of Pearl

  The young prince heard the trapper howling at his pack, “Kill! Kill!”

  The man would show him no pity. A ripple of fear drove Iliån a little further forward. The forest was there, just a few feet away.

  “Kill!”

  He reached the first pine just when the wolves were snapping at his heels. He thought he could feel the whip crack above his head, and his strength started to fail him. The snow was less thick beneath the trees, but Iliån was struggling to go any further. Behind him, claws tore at the ice and the sledge scraped the bark off the trees. Exhausted, and with his sight failing him, he lost balance and keeled over.

  Right then, a commotion broke out. The harnessed wolves had just leapt between two twin pines, and the body of the sledge was now trapped in the fork. The seven beasts crashed into the snow, the breath knocked out of them. The trapper had been hurled against a tree and was groaning as he tried to stand up again, his right leg fractured.

  Iliån was already on his feet; his face buried in the fur folds of his coat, ready to resume his flight.

  The wolves were going mad, howling as they scrambled against each other, hobbled by their straps.

  Iliån thought he was saved. But cruelty never surrenders easily.

  The hunter had hitched himself up on his elbows and was crawling, his dagger still in his hand. Iliån watched him, unsure of what could justify such an inordinate amount of effort: in his state, the trapper would never make it as far as him.

  Suddenly, the man gripped the wooden sledge, yanked his arm to hoist up his powerless body, and with a cry of pain he brought down his knife in a single stroke, slicing the seven cords that held the wolves.

  For a fraction of a second, time stood still.

  Iliån leant against a trunk and gazed at the beasts, who were stunned by their newfound freedom. The very next instant, he saw them hurtling towards him, jaws gaping and fangs glinting. His life was about to end with this nightmarish vision when a gust of thick, white wind stopped the pouncing wolves mid-flight, covering them completely.

  Iliån was waiting, fists clenched, for the moment he’d be torn to pieces by the horde. Silence. Nothing.

  And then, suddenly, their black shapes fell with a heavy thud under the white veil. Strange grunts shook the snow. A little further away, the cracked voice of the trapper could be heard.

  “Kill!”

  There were the seven creatures, confused and disoriented, but their master didn’t recognize them. They seemed to be bunched together, their bodies devoid of suppleness. The trapper saw great tufts of dark fur sprouting from the snow, rushing in circles, accompanied by anguished snorting.

  One of the animals managed to break away from the frenzy, just a few feet from its wide-eyed master.

  “The devil…”

  Right there in front of him, a huge black wild boar had just reared its head. And then the others, one after the next, picked their snouts out of the snow, latching on to the hunter’s scent.

  He let out a cry of fear. What had become of the wolves from his sledge? The trapper looked around frantically: the fugitive had disappeared.

  “The devil…” he muttered again, with his knife in his trembling hand.

  As the slobbering boars started to bear down on him with their short legs, he saw the remains of the leather straps from the harnesses tethered to their backs.

  Two hours later, Fåra scooped up Iliån’s body from the snow near the summer palace.

  He laid him out before the fireplace in front of the king, who eyed his son with an air of curiosity.

  “You shelter passing pilgrims, Fåra… You bring honour to the palace.”

  “This is your son.”

  “Any lost child is my child.”

  “This is Iliån. He has lived with you for thirteen years. Ever since he was born.”

  The king listened attentively.

  “Tell his mother to comfort him for a while.”

  “His mother is dead, Majesty.”

  A great sadness descended over the king’s face. As he rose painstakingly from his chair, Fåra came to take his arm.

  He helped him kneel down next to his son. The king seemed tired.

  “Poor child,” he said, “without his mother.”

  Fåra watched him stroking the boy’s tousled hair.

  “Poor child.”

  When the king stood up again, Fåra ushered him slowly across the room towards the alcove that served as his bedchamber.

  “Once I had a little daughter who looked just like him,” said the king as he lay down.

  Fåra didn’t have the strength to correct him.

  “Good night, Majesty.”

  “Good night, Fåra.”

  Despite his illness, the king always recognized his old servant, just as a man instinctively finds his hand to protect himself or wipe away a tear.

  Once the king had fallen asleep, Fåra turned towards Iliån, who was lying before the flames. The child had just opened his eyes.

  “You stray too far from the palace, my prince.”

  Iliån smiled. What remained of palaces and princes in the Kingdoms? How had this servant succeeded in keeping the remnants of a forgotten world from tumbling down?

  Single-handedly, Fåra was at once council, court, nurse and queen mother. He served also as the memory and the hands of the old king.

  “I brought back some birds.”

  “Yes,” said Fåra, “I will roast them this evening.”

  But Iliån was remembering his race through the snow, and the moment when he thought he had died.

  “Who can turn a wolf into a wild boar?”

  Fåra cast an anxious look at Iliån.

  “Who is capable of that?”

  The servant said nothing.

  “Answer me, Fåra.”

  “Taåg is capable of that. Your brother’s godfather.”

  “Who else?” insisted Iliån, who knew that Taåg would never have saved his life.

  “In days gone by, certain magic-workers did that.”

  “Who?”

  “Taåg has suppressed all the genies of the woods and streams. They are in hiding.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I knew since the beginning that one day you would have to go away.”

  “Answer me. Where are they?”

  “How am I to know? I never leave here. But if one of them did carry out that magic today…”

  At that very instant, not far from there, Taåg knocked at a door with his scale-covered staff. The trapper was stretched out before him on a bearskin in his den, lit by the glow of a torch. His shattered leg was bound between two splints.

  Snoring could be heard from the back of the cave.

  “They’re there,” said the trapper, pointing to the metal grill behind him.

  Taåg stepped into the shadows and put his hands on the bars.

  The beady eyes of the boars penetrated the darkness.

  “I had her,” murmured the trapper. “She was just in front of me.”

  Through the bars, Taåg stirred the muck of the pigsty with his staff.

  “They almost ate me alive,” continued the invalid. “Find the girl who did this to me. Bring me back my wolves.”

  “Don’t give me orders, you fool.”

  “And the puma? I had a white puma. It disappeared.”

  Taåg turned to him.

  “It was almost dead in the snow,” said the trapper. “Did it free itself from its shackles? Am I really to believe that?”

  “Silence. Stop sniffling like your swine.”

  Taåg’s face darkened.

  “What was she like?” he asked.

  “I never saw her face. She’s small, but has the strength of a wild animal.”

  “Don’t mock me. She is thirteen years old.”

  “I swear to you, it’s true.”

  “It’s not her. Someone was there and wanted to save her.”

  “Who?”

  Taåg took the torch fixed to
the wall and walked away.

  “Don’t leave me in the dark…”

  Taåg left to join his men, who were waiting outside with their horses. One of them helped the old genie onto his steed. The trapper’s moans could be heard from his cave.

  Taåg shared the fire around the band’s torches.

  Two other genies lived hidden away on this side of the lake. Taåg had their forests burned. He was powerless against their magic, and could never annihilate them, but he wanted to make them quake with fear and weaken them further by destroying their land. If there were those who were committed to protecting the princess, then perhaps they meant to hand her Iån’s crown. There had been talk of the first insurgents rising up amongst the people. The girl should have been eliminated long ago if she was a threat to their power.

  All around him, Taåg saw flames leaping up in the forest as trees cracked and tumbled into the dark morass of charred wood and snow.

  Iliån sat on the pontoon by the summer palace. He stared at the lake studded with animals fleeing the fire across the ice, and watched as the smoke rose up above the trees. Reindeer rushed by just next to him, and snow partridges sheltered beneath the palace stilts.

  Iliån couldn’t help thinking that he was the one who had lit the fire.

  12

  LOVE

  It was the month of May. Cold rain was falling around her.

  Standing up to her waist in the water, a girl was piling stones to strengthen the dam, in the place where the source of the lake sluiced over it. Each spring, the great thaw swept away the barrier, destroying the pool where she bathed.

  With every new stone she added, the song of the little waterfall she created rang out more clearly. The level was rising around her as the water cascaded from higher up before disappearing into the irises of the stream below.

  Oliå left the source each morning, cleansed of the previous day’s experiences. The days and seasons never left a mark on her. She didn’t age.

  Even her mind was rejuvenated each morning, for Oliå’s youth was not limited to her appearance. Both inside and out, she had been fifteen years old for centuries. Not a day older.

  Higher up, hidden in the rocks above the spring, Iliån was watching her. At last he had discovered whose tiny footprints had been haunting his every night since winter. They belonged to a fairy.

  Crouching in the coolness of the shade, Iliån kept his gaze trained on her.

  He had spent his life making himself invisible, maintaining the illusion of never being born. He knew how to melt into the scenery. Even the birds he hunted with his slingshot would fall without registering his existence.

  Oliå seemed blissfully unconcerned about him or the rain.

  She came out of the water and clambered across the pebbles. When she briefly disappeared from view, those seconds seemed like an eternity to Iliån. He felt them ticking away inside him as he craned his neck to keep her in sight.

  When she reappeared at the edge of the pool, she was talking to someone behind her amongst the rocks. Turning towards the newcomer, who was outside Iliån’s field of vision, she squatted on her haunches, murmuring tenderly, holding out her hands and puckering her lips to entice him towards her. Who was she speaking to in this doe-eyed fashion? Iliån resented these fond gestures and smiles, this affection directed at a stranger. How he longed to hear her voice, lost beneath the rush of the water.

  He crept forward slightly.

  It was a small white puma, struggling to stand on his bandaged legs. He looked at Oliå devotedly, as if he had a great urge to go to her.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked, her hands by her sides now, her voice deeper than her slight frame suggested. “Does it still hurt?”

  Suddenly, the puma lifted his head, sniffed at the air and turned towards Iliån, who ducked too late.

  He had been spotted.

  He jumped onto the moss below, slid between two rocks and delved into the shadow of a thicket. Before he’d had a chance to take another step, she was already there.

  The boy froze.

  In front of him stood Oliå, her hair and dress still dripping. She was staring at the ground, more vexed than intimidated.

  “If you get caught every time you go out, you’d be better off staying indoors.”

  Iliån hid his trembling hands in his sleeves.

  “Was it you who helped me, back in the winter?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The wolves…”

  “What wolves?”

  “You saved the little puma, too.”

  She looked up.

  “At least he’s learnt not to go running through the woods any more,” she said.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “The trapper slashed his hamstrings.”

  Iliån clenched his fists.

  “The trapper doesn’t kill outright,” she added. “Meat keeps for longer when it’s alive.”

  “He’s a jackal, that man.”

  “Jackals don’t harm anyone.”

  “Why did you protect me?”

  At last she looked him in the eye.

  The sky had cleared and they were left with the sweet smell that follows the rain.

  “You mustn’t go outdoors any more,” she said. “They won’t touch you so long as you remain in the palace. They would never be allowed to enter the resting place of a queen.”

  They looked at each other again, then she closed her eyes and suddenly seemed to become very distant.

  Iliån felt as if he were being grabbed by the hand and dragged backwards through the green oaks. Yet Oliå hadn’t moved; her fingers were still resting on the bark of the tree. As Iliån felt himself being whisked away, he was unable to put up any kind of resistance. He was being made to run over the brambles, his body and will impelled by an invisible force. He was eager to turn back to see her one last time, but the forest concealed them from each other.

  An hour later, Iliån swam beneath the stilts of the palace and hauled himself up on a post to catch his breath. He felt the severing of the invisible thread that had caused him to flee.

  Yet some forces are more powerful than magic. Another thread, a golden one, remained tied to the centre of his breast. A thread which he could never undo.

  Iliån had grown up with his father’s stories, told over endless nights and winters, but he had always sensed that there was a piece missing from the mechanism of these tales. Finally he understood the secret hiding behind all these stories, the mysterious cog that brought them springing to life; that turned ducks into swans, and caused jealousy and duels; that drove queens to despair, flung armies into battle or inspired the adventures of a valiant little tailor; that caused a king’s madness.

  With his feet in the water, still soaked in sweat from his running, he was beginning to discover the secret.

  Despite Oliå’s warnings, Iliån didn’t remain secluded in his breezy palace. The very next day, he startled her near her pool. She chased him away, erecting walls of thorny bushes with a single stroke of her hand.

  But the following day, he was back again.

  And every day. Some nights, too.

  Oliå’s scolding became less convincing; none of her tricks kept him at bay for long. And when too much time elapsed between his forays, she would wander through the woods, sick with anxiety. Her memory spanned an eternity, but there was nothing in it to explain this numbness.

  She stood at the ready, scanning the lake expectantly.

  She too was discovering the same secret, forbidden to fairies: the life-affirming force of love, that brings with it birth and death.

  PART TWO

  KEEPING GRIEF ALIVE

  13

  JOSHUA ILIÅN PEARL

  THERE WERE EIGHT OF THEM INSIDE, SOME SITTING, others lying against the cowshed walls. All the men were crouched under their horses, which dozed standing up. It was the 22 June 1941, and a series of battles had ripped through Lorraine in north-east Fr
ance, close to the border with Germany.

  They wore the uniform of the Moroccan Spahi Regiment and, with their capes and turbans covered in dust, they looked like desert cavalrymen lost in a war that didn’t belong to them.

  They had just taken refuge in this farm in the French countryside. Outside, the explosions had ceased. The silence was a foretaste of paradise.

  “What about the flag?” came a voice.

  The seven other men stiffened in the straw and stared at one another.

  “Where’s El Fassi?”

  They were only there because they’d survived the bloodiest of battles, a month earlier and a little higher up the border in the Ardennes mountains. So they weren’t about to leave one of theirs in some corner of a forest in Lorraine.

  “Pearl?”

  A young soldier had stood up.

  “What are you doing, Pearl?” the lieutenant called out to him again.

  “I’m off to find Corporal El Fassi, Lieutenant.”

  The troop had just fought for eight solid hours by a river, in an attempt to delay the advance of the German tanks. That was their mission in the face of the invader: to win time. In the end they’d had to retreat, collapsing behind these metre-thick walls to rally their remaining strength.

  “I’ll catch up with the rear,” added Private Pearl.

  “No, you’re staying with us.”

  “But he has our flag, Lieutenant.”

  Catching the young soldier’s eye in the gloom, the lieutenant appeared less assured now. They had mislaid their flag.

  Of course, the missing corporal was far more than the group’s standard-bearer. Brahim El Fassi was an heroic old soldier, whose beard made him look like an ancient prophet and who took care of everyone without a word ever passing his lips. In the deepest part of the desert, he let his horse drink from his flask first. But on the battlefield, men were no longer called El Fassi or Pearl, and the flag was worth at least fifty men. So it was because of the lost flag that the lieutenant changed his mind.

  “Stop before nightfall if you haven’t found anything. Don’t play at being the hero.”