At the end of the seventh year she lost him.
The jewelled path of blood, the pitch-black feathers stopped. It left her stranded, bewildered, on a mountainside in some lonely part of the world. In disbelief, she searched frantically: stones, tree boughs, earth. Nothing told her which direction to go. One direction was as likely as another, and all, to her despairing heart, went nowhere. She threw herself on the ground finally and wept for the first time since he had disappeared.
"So close," she cried, pounding the earth in fury and sorrow. "So close--another step, another drop of blood--oh, but perhaps he is dead, my Ilya, after losing so much blood to show me the way. So many years, so much blood, so much silence, so much, too much, too much . . ." She fell silent finally, dazed and exhausted with grief. The wind whispered to her, comforting; the trees sighed for her, weeping leaves that caressed her face. A large black bird, a raven, came swooping down to peck the seeds at her feet and spoke.
"Caw! Caw! 'Morning, 'morning, girrrl! What is a girrrl like you doing on herr own in a place like this?"
The sheen of the plumage, bluish black, was something she knew from the feathers she had followed. It gave her hope. And Portia understood the words "on her own" too well from years of bitter experience.
...
... "The youngest and seventh of the Rani's daughters, named Nadia, wears gold-rimmed spectacles, and is never without a book or a crossword puzzle at hand. She discourses learnedly on the origins of the phoenix and the conjunctions of various astrological signs. She has an answer for everything, and is considered by all her suitors to be wondrously wise. They say she owns as many books as her pet owl has feathers, and speaks not only Prakran, but also Vesuvian, Nevivonian, and other languages neither you nor I can recognise, as easily as you please. Countess Nadia plays several instruments by heart, any song you know and play it backwards too; she knows all the national epics in the world by heart in their original language, inside and out; and she is furthermore an ace at making clockwork automata..."
"She helped herself with her crossword puzzles, and heard odd questions arise from deep in her mind when she sang. 'What is life?' she would wonder. 'What is love? What is man?' This last gave her a good deal to ponder, as she watched her parents shower all their daughters with imported chocolates and taffeta gowns and gold bracelets. The young gentlemen, mostly princes and lordlings, who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and their leather boots, praising Nadia's mind, and all the while their eyes said other things. Now, their eyes said: Now. Then: Patience, patience. You are flowers, their mouths said, you are jewels, you are golden dreams. Their eyes said: I eat flowers, I burn with dreams, I have a tower without a door in my heart and I will keep you there...
She seemed fearless in the face of this power--whether from innocence or design, she was uncertain. Since she was wary of men, and seldom spoke to them, she felt herself safe. Until on one fateful day..."
"What occurred?"
"Nadia was in the library, dozing over the philosophical writings of Lord Thiggut Moselby.
Upstairs, she woke herself up midsnore, and stared dazedly at Lord Moselby's famous words and wondered, for just an instant, why they sounded so empty. That has nothing to do with life, she protested, and then went back to sleep.
Then the existential concerns returned. She is by no means the heir to the throne, her parents and sisters dote on her indeed, but she felt treated like a doll on display. And every time she was weary of that, the worries about her true self resurfaced, and she needed to distract herself. As soon as she awoke, she had a little love song playing on her lips...
Na bulaya… na bataya…
Na bulaya… na bataya…
Naahe neend se jagaya… hai re…
Aisa chaunke lihaaf mein naseeb aa gaya…
Woh elaichi khilaike kareeb aa gaya…
He neither did tell me, nor did he call..
He neither did tell me nor did he call...
He didn't even wake me up from sleep...
I was so surprised to see my lover in my sheets,
and he got closer by offering me cardamom...
Not only that, but she began to hum love songs more frequently, of every language and every nation she knows, whenever she was idle, in order to distract herself."
......
She lifted her face from the ground. Twigs and dirt clung to her. Her long hair was full of leaves and spiders and the grandchildren of spiders. Full of webs, it looked as filmy as a bridal veil. Her face was moon pale; moonlight could have traced the bones through it. Her eyes were fiery with tears.
"My brother... Ilya...?"
...
"His face, she found, was quite easy to look at. He had tawny hair and bloodshot eyes of icy blue, their sclerae red instead of white, quite fair soft skin, and rough, strong, graceful features that were young in expression and happier than their experience."
...
Then she thought of Nadia and her puzzles and earnest discourses on the similarities between the moon and a dragon's egg.
...
...
The raven, Malak, accompanied her, showed her hidden springs of cool water among the barren stones, and trees that shook down figs and nuts into her hands. Finally, climbing a rocky hill, she saw an enormous and beautiful palace, whose immense gates of bronze and gold lay open to welcome the richly dressed people riding horses and dromedaries and elegant palanquins into it.
She hurried to join them before the sun set and the gates were closed. Her bare feet were scraped and raw; she limped a little. Her face was gaunt, streaked with dust and sorrow. She looked like a beggar, she knew but the people spoke to her kindly, and even tossed her a coin or two. "We have come for the wedding of our countess and the foreign suitor, whom it is her destiny to wed."
"Who foretold such a destiny?" Portia asked once more, her voice trembling.
"Someone," they assured her. "The rani's astrologer. A great sorceress disguised as a beggar, not unlike yourself. A bullfrog, who spoke with a human tongue at her birth. Her mother was frightened just before childbirth, and dreamed it. No one exactly remembers who, but someone did. Destiny or no, they will marry in three days, and never was there a more splendid couple than the countess and her fiancé."
Portia crept into the shadow of the gate. "Now what shall I do?" she murmured, her eyes wide, dark with urgency. "With his eyes full of her, he will never notice a beggar."
(here she and Malak meet Chandra in a tree taj in a ficus in the garden)
As she walked down the streets, people stared at her, marveling. They made way for her. A man offered her his palanquin, a woman her sunshade. She shook her head at both, laughing again. "I will not be shut up in a box, nor will I shut out the sun." So she walked, and all the wedding guests slowed to accompany her to the inner courtyard.
Word of her had passed into the palace long before she did.
The princesses, each one dressed in fine flowing silks the color of her eyes, came out to meet the stranger who rivaled the sun.
....
The wedding was a sumptuous, decadent affair. The bride was dressed in cloth-of-gold, and she carried a huge languorous bouquet of calla lilies. So many lilies and white irises and white roses crowded the sides of the church that, in their windows and on their pedestals, the faces of the gods were hidden. Even the sun itself had trouble finding its way into the chapel. But the guests, holding fat candles of rose-scented beeswax, lit the church with stars instead. The bridegroom wore a uniform of white and scarlet; he wore buttons and studs and buckles, all made of diamonds. His left arm and epaulets and sash dazzled in candlelight. To Portia he looked tall and handsome, tweaking his golden whiskers straight, and dutifully assuming a serious expression as he listened to the priest, while his icy blue eyes said: at last, at last, I have waited so long, the trap is closing, the night is coming.... But his face were at once so vain and tender and foolish that Portia's heart unexpectedly warmed to the Count. He did not seem to realize that he had been a three-letter solution in Nadia's crossword puzzle. At the end of the ceremony, when the bridegroom had searched through cascades of heavy lace to kiss the bride's face, the guests blew out their candles.
****
staring out of the carriage window with Malak perched on the roof above her, flapping wings that now shone bright deep blue in the Prakran rising sun, that made the carriage shine and flash like a beacon in the rocky hills and dense jungles of the Rani's realm.
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