When we disembarked at Doefrit's Bend, I requisitioned the elephant. The slave boy who had been leading it had no way to stop me. As I was leading the elephant away I looked back and saw the expression of absolute dread on his face, and realized that his loss of the behemoth would lead to a severe beating, if not death. So I requisitioned him, too. My two lieutenants were witnesses to this fumbling procedure, and reacted in their expected ways. Andraescav sneered a little from his station behind the princess. Vaenahma regarded me with a little smile that somehow combined admiration and cynicism. It seemed to say, “here is a stupid old man who is trying to be good.” Never mind. The slave boy was named Cloehen, and he would be with us later at the House of Song.

  The advantage of an elephant is that everyone looks at it first. A princess and her retinue can walk calmly behind it in the hope that all onlookers will be distracted and might not even notice their presence. It is said that in the Previous World elephants only had one trunk, and that they were bald. They must have been very ugly indeed. Our elephant was old enough to have sprouted three trunks, and its luxurious nap of hair had been carefully braided, probably by the slave boy, who I allowed to ride on its back. Its heavy legs didn’t really shake the ground, but they gave the impression of doing so, and people scattered from its path. That’s the other advantage of an elephant. If you need to process in one direction while everyone else is coming in the opposite direction, an elephant will open the way for you.

  Doefrit’s Bend is a very popular place. The river splits there, like a string unwinding into separate threads, and runs between limestone outcroppings. These outcroppings have the advantage of being quite flat on the top, and suitable for houses and little shops. They connect to each other by rope bridges that span the river, and the inhabitants have the charming custom of tying colored ribbons to the ropes. The whole place looks like a woman with green and gray hair who has decorated her coiffure with little bows.

  The rope bridges couldn’t support the elephant, of course, but fortunately there is a wide and much traveled road that cuts through the bluffs and has its own bridges built of solid wood. Since the denizens of Doefrit’s Bend are so whimsical, they have carved the railings of these bridges in very imaginative and somewhat scandalous ways. An innocent walker may find himself trailing a supportive hand over carved flowers and leaves, and then suddenly find that his palm is resting on a breast or a phallus. Doefrit’s Bend was founded by river pirates, and they liked their little jokes. The bridges were just wide enough for the elephant.

  After leaving the town, the road continued to be festooned by ribbons and carvings. It moved first through a grove of old orunehew trees, and the branches hung low and dripped with ribbons. The elephant was annoyed by this, and raised its tusks to rip them down, showering its back with splintering wood and causing poor Cloehen to duck and cover his head with his arms. The splinters showered down on us as well as we walked behind it. I heard Andraescav grunt his disapproval, and glanced back to see if the princess was annoyed. But she was looking up and smiling, charmed by the destruction. It was a dangerous thing to do, as a splinter could easily have lodged in her face. But the innocent perfection of her skin seemed to deny the possibility of any damage, and she was protected by an aura of royalty. Martiveht was smiling as well.

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  But when we emerged from the woods we found a crowd of locals who had been waiting for us to pass, and they were angry. An old man limped forward, supported by a stick and a little girl, and said, “Them woods have been the pride and joy of Rahasabahst for a hundred generations.”

  I glanced back. The destruction had felt worse than it looked, but I was sorry to have marred the orunehews. It was like marring the people’s memories. “I’m sorry, grandfather,” I said. “I didn’t know that the elephant would cause such destruction.”

  “Just doing whatever is convenient, I suppose,” he grumbled, “and not minding the consequences.”

  He limped past us, going to inspect the damage, and the crowd followed him, casting dirty looks at us as they went. The sun was shining brightly and the day was cool. As I looked back at the woods, I saw the sunbeams catch in the wood dust that was floating in the air. It was as if the destruction was making the sunlight visible, turning beams of light into tangible things.

  Martiveht was looking, too. “Those sunbeams look as if you could hang a cloak on them,” she said. “I half expect to see a floating ribbon, suspended in the light.”

  It was very fanciful and poetic, and neither Martiveht nor myself could claim to be poets. But it tied us together, somehow, that moment of acting outside of our natures. Iyedraeka was fretting.

  “I wish we had some gold,” she said, “to give to the old man.”

  “That would offend him,” Vaenahma said, and their voice was very tart. “You cannot buy a way past destruction.”

  It was such a surprising thing for a member of the guard to say to a noble, much less a princess, that everyone paused. The men shifted their feet nervously. I felt the compulsion to do something, to dress Vaenahma down, maybe strike them. Andraescav was eyeing me eagerly, wanting nothing more than to see his rival shamed in that way. I made to take a step forward, but Iyedraeka put a hand on my arm. She addressed Vaenahma directly.

  “You are right, champion. I was merely sorry at having been the cause of this destruction. I wanted to make amends in some way.”

  The expression on Vaenahma’s face was very odd. I believe that after their experiences with the Prince of Kemestmahlae they had resolved never to become enamored by a royal again. Yet here was a princess who showed humility, who was open to the possibility of regret, who was unashamed of being kind.

  Yet here is the thing about Iyedraeka that has always surprised me, the thing that led to all of our trouble. She could be so honest about her actions and see herself so clearly. But she was entirely naive about other people. As if she expected that other people were somehow just reflections of herself. That’s a different kind of arrogance. An innocent kind, no doubt. But it would almost have been better if she had luxuriated in riches and made unreasonable demands on her slaves. If she had been the kind of princess who delighted in manipulations and studied her mirror for hours on end. She was beautiful, both in her person and in her nature, and she expected to find beauty in everyone else. And that’s why she was hurrying to the Shrine that day, much to the everlasting regret of everyone who went with her.

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  Copyright KPB Stevens, 2025.

  Orunehew

  The Earliest Histories, Collected and Compiled by Vaetraht Dunandee

  This entry comes from a cache of letters, dated to the fifth century. Author unknown.