'Flame of the Ocean' - Chapter IV
The feast was small and uninspired, cuts from a few sorts of fish with yuzu fruits brought from above. The wedding before it was a hurried and unremarkable ceremony. It all seemed meagre fare for a princess, but Kasumi wasn’t surprised. It was the third wedding in as many years in the palace, with the least impressive husband.
They had begun in high style. Sayuri, the eldest Namika, was wed to the shogun’s heir from the land above. All the imperial court, and all the court of the dragon king, assembled to hear the betrothal, and then to celebrate the wedding. A hundred chests of treasure were the wedding gifts, and the feasting and dancing lasted through the night. The next year, Hikari, the second Namika, was wedded to a daimyo. His small retinue was brought down to the palace for the celebration, some of the more important whale pods attended, and finely wrapped gifts of money were given at a feast that lasted until evening.
Now it was Ayako, the youngest Namika, marrying a minor samurai, and no one tied to him had come from the surface for the celebration. Only a few lesser schools of fish represented the East Sea. The gifts were hand-me-down trinkets and bobbles. The husband wasn’t enough of a match to justify anything more, so Mother said.
Kasumi stifled a yawn. She had no taste for the old puffer fish set before her, and no ear for the melancholy songs the porpoise had chosen as entertainment. Satoshi and Hayami are dyeing clothes today, she remembered. They had asked her to join them, offered to teach her how to draw with rice paste to create shapes in the dye. Instead she was here, for the third year straight, with nothing to do but look about the hall.
All of the husbands were seated with Father. The shogun’s heir was on his right, whispering into his ear about getting a tidal wave to help with some war or other. The daimyo, a fat jolly man, sat on Father’s left and helped himself to every dumpling in his reach. The samurai, denied a place nearer the dragon whose daughter he had just taken, scowled and rattled his sword. Kasumi wished she had a sword. Rattling her sleeve didn’t make nearly as pleasing a sound.
Mother spoke with the schools of fish down at the other end of the table. She had directed this wedding, as she had all the others, and was all puffed up over the success it had been in her eyes. The fish bobbed politely in the water as she talked about it, but never dared to interrupt. In their place, Kasumi would have swum off ages ago.
Across the table from her were her three sisters. It was the first time Namika were all together in the same room since Sayuri’s wedding. All of them had been beautiful in their ceremonies, in their white kimonos trimmed in red, with headdresses they made themselves. But Kasumi didn’t think any of them enjoyed their weddings. None of them met their husbands before the ceremony, and none of them had any say in the matches. “So it was when I married your father,” Mother had told each in turn. “I did my duty in the wedding, and I know you will too.” And so they had.
They were no longer a perfect set, moving and speaking as one. Sayuri was still plump from her first babe. The child slumbered in a sling across his mother’s chest, and Sayuri kept looking down on him with an exhausted joy that was nowhere to be seen whenever she looked over at her husband. Hikari was still trim, but she had taken to painting her face and wearing the gaudiest fashions. She traded glances and giggles with a handmaiden she and her husband had brought with them, so often that Kasumi guessed the daimyo had to know about it, and not mind. Ayako was still in her white kimono, poking at her supper with her with shaking hands. Her eyes couldn’t seem to stay still, darting from her new husband to her old sisters and back again.
It was hard to think of them as Namika anymore, hard almost to remember that they had ever been Namika. But that was all they had ever been to Kasumi; she didn’t know how to think of them as three instead of one. Many times in their childhood, they had looked together at Kasumi, appraising her with their black pearl eyes. “This is our sister?” they seemed to say. “She’s not one of us.” And now here I am, thought Kasumi, wondering if these sad, lost fools can be my sisters. What a difference a wedding or three makes.
The only eyes appraising Kasumi now belonged to Sayuri’s husband. The shogun’s heir had been looking at her all day, with a cold glare Kasumi couldn’t read. He leaned in to whisper in Father’s ear, his eyes never leaving her. He took a scroll from his sleeve and put it in Father’s claws. The dragon king read it once, and once again. Then he reared up, beckoned to Mother with his tail, and to Kasumi with his free hand. “Follow me,” he ordered.
It was never good when Father said that, but Kasumi didn’t argue. She waited until Mother grabbed onto Father’s back, then swam after them through the palace.
The further in they went, the less sunlight filtering down from the surface there was to light the way. In these inner chambers, thousands of little firefly squid kept constant vigil to lend the halls their glow. They clung to nearly every inch of the innermost chamber of the palace, the throne room. There rested the great black stone that was the dragon king’s seat, its oily shine brought out by the blue glow of the squid.
The dragon king snaked his way over to his throne, He set mother down across the top rail and handed her the scroll. He sat up tall, fanned his beard out in the water, and motioned for Kasumi to tread before him.
“Your sisters are all wed,” he said. “Some years later than they should have been, but we were loath to see them go. You have come of age this year, and we mean to see you wed as soon as can be.” He paused, as if expecting an argument, but Kasumi said nothing.
“But we’ve despaired of finding a match for you,” said Mother. “All of our friends and allies down here know you too well to have you, and the best alliances we could make with the surface have been made with your sisters.”
“The shogun has solved the matter for us,” said the dragon king. “A merchant he favors has been widowed. This poor man looks to advance his station, something the shogun wishes for his friend. What higher advancement than to join the dragon’s brood?”
“He has already been summoned to the port city,” said Mother. “We shall fetch him down here within a fortnight. The wedding will take place soon after. Your sisters will stay with us until then, to help prepare and instruct you. You will –”
“No.”
Father roared and Mother snapped her fan shut, but Kasumi straightened her back and put her chin out, as if that would give her “no” more power.
“There are gifts from the merchant for us,” said Father, who had a dragon’s love of metals. “And stronger ties to the shogun besides. It’s as good a match for you as could be hoped for.”
“We thought you might be pleased with this,” said Mother. “You swim up one of our rivers whenever you can. This man lives far inland. You would be well away from our waters.”
“It’s never been the waters I wanted away from,” answered Kasumi.
“But one way or another, you will be away from them. So is my word.” The dragon king pulled himself up higher and blew his whiskers out. “Try to flee to distant waters if you dare, or hold up in your room. When all sea life pays us homage, when emperors grant us their sisters, when shoguns make pacts to have us decimate their enemies, do you imagine you will be safe?”
Kasumi had seen her father in true wrath, though not with her. He had broken the great ice sheet to the north once when it had grown too large. He had swallowed whole whale pods who defied his fishing ordinances. Thrice in Kasumi’s lifetime, he had ruined whole fleets for mocking his writ over the water’s surface. Only another true dragon could check his power or escape his eye in the water. But would he turn that wrath on me? For all their quarrels, Kasumi had never thought so before. If the swipes of his claws in punishment were more cutting as she grew, she never felt true anger in them. But she saw nothing reassuring in Father’s eyes now, or Mother’s.
“The East Sea, and all within it, are ours to command,” said the dragon king. “You will go to land, and you will marry this merchant.”
“I won’t,” said Kasumi.
“You will,” said her mother.
“I can’t,” said Kasumi.
“Oh? You’ve gone from ‘won’t’ to ‘can’t?’ And why is that?” Mother turned her fan in and out, and Father twirled one whisker around his claws.
Because I don’t want to wake up tired or gaudy or lost, thought Kasumi.
Because this merchant will be as fine a match as the other three you made.
Because I am your own dragonspawn, flame of the ocean, and what more reason is there?
“You swim up one of our rivers whenever you can,” Mother had said. They knew where she went in the water. But does Father’s eye reach above the surface?
“I am not free to marry the merchant,” she said, “because I am already betrothed.”