 
Porcelain Princess

Jon Jacks
Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things – The Last Train

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen

Text copyright© 2014 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

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Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

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'Although she may sound like the stuff of fairy tales, the Porcelain Princess is actually as real as you or me...(But) without your belief in her, the Porcelain Princess can only weaken, becoming once more as lifeless as the clay she was originally so lovingly formed from.'

Excerpt from The Porcelain Kingdom

*

# Chapter 1

The Porcelain Child

She was working as quickly as she dared now.

Everyone who saw her could see she was suffering from the Fading. She was now quite transparent, such that anyone could quite clearly make out whatever lay beyond her.

Worse still, as she worked she could tell that her fingers were less substantial than they had been only a few days previously. Almost through will alone, she ensured the consistency of the clay by turning it like a never ending whirlpool in her hands, creating substance and solidarity from what could so easily have dried out and been nothing more than particles of dust.

Even so, the clay she was delicately moulding would at first refuse to obey her probing and caressing, and it would take many attempts to achieve the effect she desired.

The face had to be angelically beautiful. The body – despite its puppet-like joints – had to be as realistic as possible.

Fortunately, as any creator of objects or stories realises, the material you work with seemingly possess its own will to take form; a will that you fight against to the detriment of your creation. The will flows through you, as if that will is merely using you like a convenient tool to accomplish its own aims. It knows better than you what form your creation should ultimately take.

And so her lack of substantiality actually worked to the advantage of the perfect forming of the material she worked with, for she could never hope to bend it completely to her own will.

Even so, she hung so close over the firing of the clay, transforming it all in the crucible of flames into an ethereal, pearl-skinned beauty, that the heat would have burned her badly had she not already been so lacking in substance.

Her husband would tell her to rest, to let him finish her work; but she refused. This, after all, would be her gift to him before she finally Faded from this world.

'She will be the daughter we never had time to have,' she insisted. 'But you, you my dearest, must promise me that you will grant our daughter _life_.'

And as his wife began to finally fade away to nothing before him, and they could no longer even hold hands, her husband promised; he would find the Illuminator.

And she smiled, and whispered, 'I love you'; for they both believed that the Illuminator could grant their daughter the gift of life.

*

# Chapter 2

'Shhhussshhh!'

No matter how quietly the two boys tried to move through the darkened interior of the caravan, the wooden floor creaked loudly beneath their feet.

'Who's going to hear us?' the other boy hissed back, yet keeping his voice low just in case. 'These silly puppets?'

He contemptuously knocked a group of puppets hanging from a pillar by their strings, setting them clattering noisily.

'Shhhussshhhh! People passing by _outside_ might hear us, idiot!'

'So? They'll just think it's that ogre of a Puppet Master and his daughter. Only _we_ know they've both headed off somewhere!'

Quickly and expertly opening and rifling through drawers and cupboards, the boys casually cast aside anything that wasn't worth stealing.

'What're you giggling at?' one of them gruffly demanded of the other.

'I didn't giggle; only _girls_ giggle! I thought it was _you_ giggling!'

'Are you calling me a girl?'

'Course I ain't! It must be the wind whistling through the planks of this old heap!'

Rising up from where he'd been kneeling by an opened cupboard, he glanced nervously around the small, incredibly cluttered room.

'Gives me the creeps, it does, all these weird puppets. All like little demons hanging from their strings.'

He grabbed at a cluster of puppets dangling from the ceiling, glaring fearfully at their sharply angled faces, their mischievously wide eyes and grins.

'Boo!' shrieked a larger, even more devilish face as it suddenly came at him from out of the darkness.

'Yaarrrgghh!' the boy screamed in horror, falling backwards as he tried to hurriedly get away.

The Devil laughed wickedly. He glowered down at the fallen boy.

'Oh, you should've seen your face!' he shrieked, immediately transforming into the boy's friend as he whipped away the evil-looking mask.

'What? Kraig, you idiot!' the fallen boy growled angrily.

Picking up a wooden ornament he'd thrown aside as worthless earlier, he hurled it at his still chuckling friend.

'You almost scared me to death! I thought these ugly puppets had come to life!'

Kraig laughed all the more.

'You're the idiot, Karl! Puppets don't come to life! Look!'

He violently shook a group of hanging puppets.

'Boo!' he snarled directly into their faces.

'Oh yeah?' Karl answered dismissively as he scrambled back onto his feet. 'What about the Porcelain Princess then, smarty pants? _She's_ a puppet. And _she's_ alive!'

'Hah! _That's_ just a story!'

'What do you mean, just a story? You've heard tinkers and travellers swear they've seen her. They say she's real enough!'

'I'm not saying she's not _real_! I'm saying I don't believe she was ever a _puppet_! Besides, she's made of porcelain; not stupid bits of old wood and papier-mâché like this ugly lot!'

He shook and glared at the dangling puppets once more.

'This place still creeps me out,' Kraig admitted.

Karl felt edgier than ever as he noticed the glittering glass and painted eyes looking back at him out of the darkness.

'You saw how they'd managed to paste one of their posters to the top of the old bell tower. It's too Faded to hold _our_ weight; so how'd _they_ get it up there?'

Kraig wasn't listening anymore; he was trying the door leading through to the caravan's living quarters, but it was securely locked.

'I reckon,' he said, thinking aloud, 'that if we started a small fire, we could burn enough of this door away to clamber through.'

'Oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you!'

'What? Stop it, Karl; it doesn't work on _me_ , idiot!'

'It wasn't me,' Karl insisted petulantly, not wanting to be fooled again. 'It was you, sort of throwing your voice, or something.'

'Throwing my voice?'

Turning away from the door, Kraig was surprised to find that Karl was right behind him. The voice he'd heard had seemed to come from somewhere farther back inside the cart's darkened store room.

'But if it wasn't you – arrrgghhh!'

Small, roguishly grinning faces suddenly rushed out of the darkness towards the two boys.

'Wwwaaarrrghhh!' Karl wailed in terror along with Kraig.

*

Using their strings as rope swings, a group of puppets swept towards the cowering boys.

Letting go of their strings to drop to the floor, the puppets surrounded and trapped the two terrified thieves against the door. Even though no longer fixed to their strings, the puppets still moved as if alive. With their legs confidently splayed, and their hands on their hips, their eyes twinkled with mischievous glee.

'Please, please don't hurt us,' Karl pleaded as he and Kraig nervously clung to each other.

'We...we weren't really going to take anything, honest,' Kraig added hopefully, unnerved by the steady glare of the grinning puppets.

'We know,' sternly replied a puppet the boys took to be a beautiful yet evil witch.

'You...you do?' Karl stuttered unsurely. 'How...how?'

'Because we _also_ know how the Porcelain Princess came to life,' said a puppet dressed as if he were an aging yet still frightening wizard.

There were only four puppets, the boys soon realised. And they only came up to the boys' waists. But they were alive. Moving, speaking, breathing, as if they were children suffering some strange physical affliction rather than puppets with a magical life of their own.

Yes, the boys had _heard_ tales of the Porcelain Princess; but they had never actually _seen_ her. Besides, the Porcelain Princess was said to be beautiful, kind, and wise – and no difference in size to a real girl. But _these_ puppets? One was a wicked witch, another a malicious wizard. The third could be either a treacherous Joker or an even more dangerous Devil, going by the immense horns sprouting out of the top of his head. The fourth, although a pretty enough young girl, had an untrustworthy, Elvin sharpness to her face.

The boys shivered in even more terror as something slithered out of the darkness.

It was a puppet dog, clutching what appeared to be a real bone in its jaws. Looking up at the terrified boys, it dropped the bone and hungrily licked its lips.

'How... _how_ did the Porcelain Princess come to life?' Kraig asked, anxiously stumbling over every word as if he feared hearing the puppets' answer.

'Well,' said the elf-like puppet, 'I reckon she was _once_ a _naughty_ girl like me.'

'Or maybe, like me, even a boy.' Suddenly jumping up to grab a pair of hanging strings, the Joker lunged towards the two boys, bringing his evilly grinning face close up to theirs. 'A boy caught _stealing_ from the Puppet Master!'

'You...you were _children_?' Karl's eyes widened in horror.

Each of the puppets nodded gloomily. Even the dog, who added a sad bark.

With a warm smile, the Joker deftly slipped to the floor once more.

'The Master will be _so_ glad you've decided to join us.'

'Wwwwaarggghh,' the boys howled.

*

# Chapter 3

With a sharp shrug of her shoulders, Carey moved the heavy sack on her back into a relatively more comfortable position.

Fully loaded with the posters she'd collected, the sack was awkwardly unbalanced. There was a danger she might tip everything out as she leaned back to look up towards the very top of the town's old bell tower.

'That's obviously another one that the others will have to collect when they head out later,' she said, marvelling at how they had managed to place the poster way up there in the first place.

Grudo nodded in agreement. The tower was suffering so badly from the Fading that it hardly had any more substance than a mirage. It was now nothing more than a mere wisp of reality in the evening light. It would probably be gone completely in a few days.

'We might have to leave it, Carey,' Grudo pointed out sadly.

'We'll see; they'll have to come out here as soon as we're sure there's no one around to see them.'

Carey didn't like to leave any poster behind. She spent a lot of time painting them, and almost as long making the thick, hardy paper from a mix of pulped bark and leaves. Sometimes, however, by the time they came to the end of their shows, a poster placed earlier on a Fading building was now irretrievable, as the structure was no longer capable of supporting even Ferena. (There didn't use to be any problem, of course, when Ferena's wings had still worked!)

Still, placing a poster on a high, Fading building always helped draw the crowds in. The townspeople might not be able to read the poster's details, but from its vivid splashes of bright colours they would recognise it as yet another promotion for the String Theatre that had been pasted all around town overnight. And no one ever failed to wonder how it had been placed there, especially when it shouted out its promise of thrills and magical tales from a building that was now so insubstantial people could effortlessly walk through its walls.

Even when a poster had to be left behind, it became a reminder to the townspeople of the wondrous, almost unbelievable stories they had been entertained with when – the building finally unable to support even something made of paper – the poster slowly fluttered down through ghostly floors and walls to come to rest on the bare earth.

Placing a huge, consoling hand on Carey's shoulder, Grudo deftly used the move to remove her back pack and swing it up onto his own shoulder. Here it joined the half-dozen sacks of posters he'd collected.

'If only Ferena could still use her wings...' he said wistfully.

Carey burned with shame. Of course, she had thought of the very same thing only seconds ago. But, somehow, coming from Grudo – even though he didn't mean it in such a way, and even though he would be horrified to realise how much it hurt her that her failings were so obvious to everyone – it sounded like an admonishment.

'I'm sure we'll find the land where the Illuminator lives one day, Grudo,' she pronounced determinedly as they both turned away from the tower and started heading back towards their caravan. 'The lands we're passing though at the moment are suffering from the Fading far more than those we performed in only last week. I'm _sure_ it's a sign that we're drawing closer!'

Grudo's eyes widened in distress as it dawned on him that Carey had taken his comment as a criticism of her skills.

'Carey, I didn't mean–'

'I know, I know,' Carey reassured him with a wan smile. 'Like you, I was just thinking out loud.'

'You know Carey, even if you're right that we're drawing closer to the Illuminator's lands, we don't know for sure that he'll be able to help us. Even the stories that contain truths often also contain lies – and we can never, ever be sure which is which.'

Grudo may have looked like the offspring of a giantess and an even uglier ogre, but his heart was the equal of Ferena's, his mind even sharper than Durndrin's when it came to wisdom.

Carey shrugged.

'I _know_ I often read too much into the stories; I _know_ I believe parts of the stories that others dismiss as remnants of fairy tales – but as I can't think of any _other_ solution, we _have_ to try!'

'And _I_ know there have been many many times when we thought we were almost there, only to be disappointed yet again. You're taking too much responsibility on your shoulders, young girl – none of us blame you, you know that!'

Their home was now just a few more strides ahead of them. Even in the poor evening light, the immense, ornately carved caravan appeared to be aglow with colour, despite the moon's best attempts to subdue its bright reds, yellows and greens.

'But didn't you notice, Grudo,' Carey persisted, 'that not only were there far more people in the audience suffering the Fading than I've ever seen before, but they also seemed strangely untroubled by it; just as, the stories tell us, people in the Porcelain Princess's kingdom accept the Fading as a blessing!'

'All _I_ noticed, Carey,' Grudo replied sagely, 'was that _everyone_ enjoyed our retelling of the story of the _Porcelain Child_ ; _even_ those poor people who were Fading. Whom, I'm glad to say, we cheered up enough to be rewarded with their laughter and smiles!'

Carey frowned, trying to think of any fact she could recall from the many stories she had read to contradict Grudo's scepticism. But there were too many gaps in even her knowledge of the tales. And, as Grudo had rightly pointed out, there was nothing in any of the stories she had managed to collect that implied an increase in people suffering from the Fading was a sign that your were drawing nearer to the Porcelain Princess's kingdom.

She reached for one of Grudo's huge, gloved hands, nestling her fledging-like hand in his.

'Still,' she said, glancing up at him with a warm smile, 'I can't think of any _other_ way of recognising that we might be drawing closer, _so_ –'

Directly in front of them, the caravan's heavy rear door suddenly flew open with a loud crash. Two boys almost fell out, careering wildly down the short flight of wooden steps in their eagerness to get outside.

To stop them falling and hurting themselves, Grudo instinctively spread out his arms as both boys unavoidably barged into him.

'Well, what _have_ we here?' he asked gruffly, looking down on the boys captured in his arms with a huge grin.

'Wwwwaarggghh,' the boys howled.

*

'Please please mister,' Karl wailed miserably, 'I don't want to be a goat puppet!'

'And I don't want to be a _pig_ , either!' a horrified Kraig agreed. 'We won't tell anyone, mister, honest!'

Carey and Grudo swapped confused glances; then they both heard the laughter coming from inside the caravan.

Grudo glared down at the two boys.

'All right, you can go!' he growled as menacingly as he could manage without bursting into laughter himself. 'But if I _do_ hear you've been telling anyone – you know what's going to happen to you, right?'

'Waaarggghh!' the boys cried, tears in their eyes.

As soon as Grudo released his grip on them, the boys stumbled free, tripping over their own feet in their urgency to get away and falling to the ground. Picking themselves up, they ran off into the evening's darkening light.

'Now, what do you suppose all _that_ was about?' Carey said with a suspicious scowl as she ascended the caravan's steps

It was still dark inside, though Ferena was in the process of carefully lighting a lamp. In the dull glow of both this flickering, yellow flame and the dimmer evening light spilling in before her from the open door, Carey was witness to what could have been nothing more than a typical, well-practised costume change.

Durndrin was slipping out of a wizard's gown, while also deftly untying a long, white beard fixed around his chin. Neris was already rehanging the witch's dress and hat she'd obviously been wearing, while Peregun was detangling himself from a pair of antelope horns he'd borrowed from another puppet and tied around his head. Only Ferena was still dressed in her regular garb of short green dress, but as her wings were hidden under a hooded cloak, she presently looked more Elvin than fairy-like.

The self-congratulating laughter, too, was a commonplace of these costume changes. But what made all this so different from a normal post-show celebration was the mischievous delight they were all taking in the way they had scared the two boys.

'...their _faces_ ...'

'...and when you said we could do with a few more _animals_ ...'

'...goats, pigs, ho ho ho – oho.'

Peregun stopped in mid laugh as soon as he spotted Carey standing in the doorway. She was angrily glowering at them all.

'Well _you_ all seemed highly pleased with yourselves!' she stormed. 'And I'm not sure why; considering you've just revealed that you're alive to what're probably the two most untrustworthy characters in town!'

They had all come to a rigid halt now, frozen in mid-action; Durndrin with the beard's string still painfully caught on his ear, Peregun detaching a devilish tail, Neris half-way through flouncing up her hair. Fortunately, Ferena had safely finished lighting and closing a lamp, and this was now the only light illuminating the room. Grudo blocked off any glow from outside as he entered behind Carey and closed the door behind him.

Durndrin spoke first, if a little nervously.

'Ah, yes, well, we _thought_ of that, see, Carey, when we said, when we _said_ that if they even _attempted_ to tell anyone, right, well, they'd be _instantly_ and _magically_ turned into a puppet _goat_!'

'Or a _pig_!'

Carey glanced down towards the dog partially hiding beneath a rack of costumes. Going by the way he'd pronounced the word 'pig' with such obvious satisfaction, she reckoned she could safely assume that this had been his own contribution to whatever they'd all been saying to those two poor boys.

'A goat or a pig that can still talk just like you, right, Dougy? Meaning they might take the not _unreasonable_ risk that they could always tell people what we'd done to them, so we could be hunted down and forced to change them back – if, of course, we actually _had_ this wondrous magical power to change them in the first place!'

'Ah, no no, Carey,' Peregun insisted, 'we _did_ also say that they'd only be able to manage grunts or bleats.'

'"Grunts" was _my_ idea,' Dougy quickly added, once again with undisguised satisfaction.

Just behind her, Carey heard Grudo chuckling as he placed his sacks of posters on the floor.

'Well, they seem to have thought of everything, don't they Carey?'

The puppets relaxed and smiled once more.

'Oh, er, as everything's happily cleared up now,' Peregun said, still partially locked in the position of removing his tail, 'could someone please help me here? The rheumatism again, I'm afraid.'

'Thought of everything?' Carey snapped, making Durndrin jump as he helped Peregun move his arm once more.

The smiles instantly disappeared.

'They _didn't_ seem to _think_ at all!' Carey snapped again. 'Did they even _think_ that it would've been best in the first place if they hadn't revealed that they were alive? How many times have we told them, Grudo, that they should remain _perfectly_ still whenever anyone else is around or even nearby?'

'Ah, but, Carey, they were stealing, see, and–'

'Stealing?' Carey's angry interjection almost made Durndrin jump. 'Better they steal every coin we've collected today, than that they go around telling everyone we're witches or what have you!'

Neris hurriedly pushed the witch's gown she'd been wearing farther back amongst the rest of the hanging dresses.

'We _had_ stayed still,' Ferena mumbled ashamedly as she stepped closer to Carey. 'But it _sounded_ like they were going to start a fire, so...'

'Is this right?' Carey demanded softly, closely observing every face staring back up at her.

They all nodded.

Carey looked about her, quickly taking in the hanging puppets, the painted scenery, the curtains and costumes. Even the floor and walls, of course, were made from wood.

Wood. String. Cloth. Paints. Methylated spirits.

It would have all gone up in flames in an instant if a fire had been started in here.

'Then...' she began hesitantly, 'I _apologise_ for being angry with you.'

Everyone, including Grudo, grinned with relief. They laughed, cheered, slapped each other on their backs in congratulation.

'But keep down the cheering, right!' Carey cried out over the excited din. 'Or anyone passing will be wondering how just me and Grudo manage to make it sound like we've got a party going on in here!'

*

# Chapter 4

'Is it true you think we're getting closer to where the Illuminator lives?'

Standing with her back to a kneeling Carey, Ferena used what little movement she still possessed in her wings to both part and raise them slightly. It allowed easier access to the small door lying just below what would have been her shoulder blades. Opening this door, Carey peered through the compartment's metallic safety grill, checking that the flame inside was burning brightly. She also made sure that there hadn't been any build-up of either soot or fluff that might later hinder the flame.

'You know what I believe, Ferena,' Carey said in reply to the girl's query. 'I believe that the farther any land lies from the Porcelain Kingdom, the less likely the people living there will believe that the Porcelain Princess actually exists; and so those people fear the Fading.'

As she talked, Carey calmly and deftly took the stopper from the ceramic pot that served as the flame's reservoir. Working quickly, with one hand she placed a funnel in the opening, with her other she carefully poured in methylated spirits from a spouted jar.

Patiently waiting for his turn to have his reservoir refilled, a bare chested Peregun was standing to one side, his shirt and jacket slung over and held in the crock of his right arm.

'And recently, within our audiences,' he said, 'we're seeing more and more people afflicted by the Fading; yet many seem to be at ease with it, even quite happy.'

Having replaced the reservoir's stopper, Carey closed and latched the compartment's door.

'You've noticed too, right? And so yes, _I_ think we _are_ getting closer.'

No one could have failed to notice the emphasis on the _I_. Durndrin, buttoning up his shirt after having his own reservoir topped up earlier, pouted uneasily, unsure whether to make a comment or not. But Neris, vainly readjusting her long, dark hair so that it neatly flowed down her back once more, spoke for them all (even Dougy who, typically for a dog, was already sound asleep beneath an old theatre curtain he'd curled under).

'But Grudo doesn't agree, I take it?'

'But Grudo doesn't agree,' Carey repeated miserably as she helped Ferena slip her green dress back over her delicate wings.

Made of silk and wire, the wings fitted through slits in the back of the dress. Ferena gently fluttered her wings, a simple test to ensure that no loose cotton threads from the dress were caught up in them.

'Maybe it's one of those lands you can only get to when you dream of them...' Ferena said dreamily.

'In _your_ dreams, dear.' Neris grinned cheekily.

'I'm sorry, Ferena,' Carey said, observing the weak fluttering of the wings with great sadness, 'I really can't understand why a refilled reservoir doesn't give them more power, like it used to. There's something I'm missing, obviously – but I really can't fathom out what it is!'

'Never mind, Carey,' Ferena answered kindly, moving aside so that Peregun could take her place in front of the kneeling girl. 'Truth is, they only ever gave me a few minutes' flight when they _did_ work; and it always burned up the spirit _so_ quickly!'

'You do everything you can for us,' Peregun agreed. 'We appreciate everything you do, Carey, you know that.'

Carey opened up Peregun's back, checked the flame, removed the reservoir's stopper.

'Well, thanks everyone, for your confidence in me – even if it is a little misplaced. You're just all so old–'

'Who're you calling old, dearie?' Halting in the middle of her elaborate exercise regime, Neris feigned an irritated scowl.

'Hmn, I _do_ find it harder to remember my lines,' Durndrin said, looking up from preparing his bed.

'I wish I _could_ forget _my_ lines, dear,' Neris declared, vainly stroking her face and neck as she checked for any signs of aging in a nearby mirror

'Hey Durndrin, if you think you've really got a problem, how about taking some of my roles?' Dougy said gloomily. 'How hard's the odd growl for you to recall, eh?'

'Hah, let me _reword_ what I just said, for _all_ your benefit,' Carey chuckled. 'You might all _look_ remarkably young, but I don't have the skills required to keep you all going as smoothly as you're used to! _But_ , when we _finally_ get to meet the Illuminator–'

'Then we all get to be _really_ alive!' they all happily chorused.

*

When Carey walked through into the caravan's other room, Grudo had already pulled down the heavy ledger onto the cabin's small table. He was patiently filling in the columns linking the day's takings to any expenses incurred, such as the food Carey had bought earlier in preparation for tomorrow's journey.

Even as Carey closed the door behind her, the excited laughter coming from the store room could still be clearly heard.

'Let me guess,' Grudo sighed, 'they believe, like you, that we're getting closer, right?'

'They _want_ to believe, Grudo; as I do! Ferena especially _needs_ to believe!'

'Ferena's always got her head in the clouds, hoping someone's going to wave a magic wand someday and–'

'She wants to be flying _around_ in the clouds. And why shouldn't she, when once she _could_ fly?'

'Truth is Carey, what with our memories being as bad as they are, none of us can remember if she ever really _could_ fly.'

'She's got _wings_ hasn't she, Grudo?'

'Well, yes but–'

Grudo gulped as Carey locked eyes with him.

'I know, I know; I'm sorry I'm being so negative. It's just that–'

' _I_ know – you don't want to see me _disappointed_.'

'Disappointed _again_.'

They both smiled warmly at each other. Carey sat down next to Grudo at the table, where he'd already set out a teapot and cup of tea for her.

'If only I knew how to repair everyone,' she said forlornly as she took a sip of tea. Earl Grey with a hint of milk. Just as she liked it. 'Maybe _then_ we wouldn't have to find the Illuminator.'

'No one _expects_ you to know, Carey; you know that. We're all aging, we realise that; it's part of life.'

'Well, thankfully, I reckon Durndrin and Neris are just imagining _their_ problems. Dougy, he's oldest of them all in dog years, I suppose, but he's just embarrassed about the way he can't stop barking at cats, or sniffing walls – or worse! Poor old Ferena and Peregun, despite looking the youngest, seem to be aging the worst.'

'I think we might have to tell Peregun his days of swashbuckling roles are over,' Grudo agreed sadly. 'What he jokily calls his rheumatism almost caused a real problem when we last put on _The Sea Empress_.'

Carey nodded thoughtfully. One of Peregun's knees had locked as he'd charged down a staircase during an elaborate sword fight, sending him bowling down the steps and careering into a number of other puppets. Luckily, _this_ time it had all seemed like an amazingly exciting part of the action to the audience; but _next_ time?

'It will break his heart,' Carey admitted. 'And all because I can't do the job I've been left to do!'

Grudo tried to caress Carey's head as gently as he could. He was fully aware that the huge hands were too heavy, too hard (despite the softness of the gloves he always wore), for him to show her the affection he wanted to.

'I miss him so much,' Carey said, looking up at Grudo with tears forming in her eyes.

'We _all_ do, Carey, we _all_ do.'

Grudo's eyes were every bit as sad as Carey's but, of course, no tears could form.

Carey grinned weakly.

'He'd have been so proud of you Grudo,' she said. 'I...I _do_ realise you're simply trying to give me the fatherly guidance he would have given me, if he was still around.'

Grudo smiled. If he could have cried, he would have.

'Now,' Carey said stoically, rising from her seat and moving behind Grudo, 'it's _your_ turn.'

Expertly lifting the jacket and shirt covering Grudo's broad, wooden back, she unlatched the door revealing his flame and spirit reservoir.

'You know,' Grudo admitted kindly, 'even _I_ wonder if your hands would be tickling me now if I were _really_ alive.'

*

# Chapter 5

The caravan slowly chugged along the reasonably straight but painfully uneven road, puffing out the odd, irritable belch of steam or smoke. Alongside, running in and out of the trees lining the road, Grudo, Neris, Peregun, Durndrin and Ferena were all hurriedly chopping off and collecting large chunks of the branches, tossing them into the cart trailing behind the wagon.

In the driving seat, Carey had little to do but keep a wary eye out for anyone heading their way, or any other signs of human activity in the surrounding forest. As soon as she spotted anything suspicious, she'd give out a warning yell to everyone to stop collecting wood. Dougy, seated on the back of the trailer to keep an eye on their rear, would similarly bark out loudly. In a well-practised move, Grudo would slip off the large sack he'd strapped to his back, holding it open while the others quickly scrambled into it.

By the time any human had approached them, nothing would have seemed out of the ordinary. Naturally, steam driven wagons were a rarity, but most people were aware that such things existed, if a little awestruck and even frightened whenever they actually came across one of these magical contraptions for the first time. Otherwise, all they would see is a young girl driving the beast while her father returned from collecting a sack full of mushrooms and herbs from the forest.

Unless you stepped up incredibly close to him, Grudo appeared surprisingly real. His many joints were hidden by thick jackets, leggings, collars and gloves. His face was almost covered by a thick beard and raggedy hair. His teeth were of ivory, his eyes of glass; and all he had to do was snarl or glare with either to dissuade anyone from stepping _too_ close.

With thankfully so little to do, Carey was glancing through a small pile of books she'd pulled off the caravan's shelves and placed alongside her on the driver's seat. The theatre's retelling of _The Porcelain Child_ had been an undoubted success with the crowds, but Carey was always on the lookout for ways of improving the shows.

Ferena in particular had been excellent in her final role as the porcelain child. The entire audience had gasped as she had seemingly come to life at the very end of the play to tenderly touch the head of her sleeping father. It was an effect made all the more surprising and magical as, for this role alone, Carey allowed her to perform without attaching the strings that gave the impression Ferena and the others were just regular, lifeless puppets. There was a slight risk that their secret might be revealed, Carey realised, but she counted on the audience believing that it was nothing more than a piece of clever theatrical trickery.

Of course, Carey's puppet theatre wasn't the only one to bring the girl to life at the end of the play. Although this wasn't part of the Illuminator's original tale, which ended only on the father's promise that he would find a way of giving her life, everyone agreed that his promise would be fulfilled; how would she become the Porcelain Princess otherwise?

From the stack alongside her, Carey picked out her old and slightly battered copy of _The Porcelain Child_. She should treat such an expensive rarity with more care, she knew, but the whole purpose of the library her ancestors had so patiently collected was to help them give their productions realism and accuracy, whether it came to costume design, the painting of backdrops, or the lines given to their puppet actors.

Every other theatre owner or storyteller she had met on her travels had agreed with her that accuracy was the most important part of any retelling of a tale. Hidden somewhere amongst them, the stories contained universal truths, even historical events and hints of our futures. But who could say for sure where fairy-tale ended and reality and truth began?

Opening the book was like being invited into a whole new world of vivid colour, of striking landscapes, of intricate shapes and patterns drawn from life. It was a frozen reality, giving you the opportunity to study the minutest details of places you might otherwise pass through without a second glance, of actions and events that would take place so quickly you would miss them. It was, too, as if you were seeing it all through the eyes of an inquisitive squirrel perched amongst the trees, a curious robin swooping overhead, or a nosey mouse, peering up through the cluttered pots stored beneath an old set of shelves.

And, when your own curiosity and amazement got the better of you, and you actually reached out and touched a pot, a house, a person; your fingers instantly tingled, as if you were touching roughened clay, cool brick, or, yes, even living flesh.

The first time anyone experienced this, they would jump back in shock, even horror. But then, inquisitive and intrigued, they would tentatively touch the illustration once more, their eyes widening in surprise as they felt their fingers probing into the softness of a pillow, warming from the heat of a flame, or prickling as they touched the short, fine hairs of a hog. With a little practise, they could smell the tang of a farmyard, taste a freshly made tart, or even sneeze when they seemed to stir up the dust covering a floor.

It was easy to understand why the mother and father of the porcelain child had believed the Illuminator would be able to grant her life, Carey thought as she turned to the page portraying their beautiful daughter. Did they ever realise, she wondered, that their own story would end up being told and illustrated by the Illuminator?

This particular picture was one of Carey's favourites. You could feel the coolness and smoothness of the porcelain yet, at the very same time, if you stilled your breathing, slowed you heart from excitedly beating, you could also sense the warmth of the life beneath waiting to be awakened.

Carey had been so entranced by the girl's ethereal beauty that she had made little tweaks to the way she looked herself, trying to capture the way the girl's hair hung in a silken curtain, or how her eyes appeared to sparkle with a sharp intelligence. Of course, it would have been ridiculous if she had been trying to copy the look of a lifeless puppet. But that strange beauty, that remarkable air of intelligence, was even more on display in her far more numerous portrayals as the Porcelain Princess in _The Porcelain Kingdom_ ; a book in which the Illuminator admitted he had overseen an unhappy kingdom until her arrival had helped him rule it wisely, justly and compassionately.

Leaving _The Porcelain Child_ open, Carey reached for the stack of books once more, drawing across and opening up _The Porcelain Kingdom_. Unlike most of the other books in her library, this one was a book that Carey herself had finally managed to track down, paying out almost a year's carefully saved takings for it.

If anything, this was even more sumptuously beautiful than the first book. Whereas _The Porcelain Child_ was, for the most part, a book of beautifully imagined and rendered interiors – the multi-coloured linens of bedrooms, the sagging oak beams of a kitchen, the liquid sparkle of chemicals in the workshop, the bloody glow of the furnace – _The Porcelain Kingdom_ worked on a much vaster scale. Mysterious carriages hurtled through a town's darkened streets. People shuffled around in fear. Even in the day, a towering palace cast foreboding shadows over the houses below. Then comes the dawn, a princess whose skin sparkled like pearls, whose glittering dresses appeared to bring an angelic light to everywhere she walked. The palace is aglow, a beacon of hope and wisdom. Its gates open, not to release darkened carriages, but pageantry and celebration. Suddenly, the town is alive with vibrant markets, with children playing, with feasts and fairs.

Everything that made it so different from _The Porcelain Child_ , of course, also made it almost impossible to put on as a successful show. Worse still, it failed to explain how the Porcelain Princess had arrived in the kingdom, let alone how the porcelain child had been granted life to become the Princess.

There must be another book, a book two in what could only be a trilogy telling the story of the Porcelain Princess.

She had met many people who had claimed to have seen the book, but none who could relate the tale to her.

'It's called _The Porcelain Palace_ ,' the owner of another theatre would assure her.

' _The Porcelain Room_ ; a remarkable tale, though I, er, can't seem to quite recall it at the moment I'm afraid,' a storyteller would say.

'No, no, it's definitely _The Porcelain Balcony_ ,' someone else would confidently declare, only to be rewarded with a room full of jeers and derisive laughter.

This confusion was unusual as, although it was quite common for a book by the Illuminator to be so rare no one had ever seen a copy, at least the story had normally become familiar, spreading through word of mouth alone. The only thing everyone could seem to agree on (apart from the fact that it must have the word _Porcelain_ in the title) was that such a tale must indeed exist, for neither of the other tales recounted how the child's father had discovered the Illuminator's kingdom and given his daughter life.

It was a book that Carey had spent all of her own short life searching for.

For, if she found it, it would also show _her_ the way to the Illuminator's kingdom.

*

Their arrival in the village was a cause for celebration and gasps of wonder in its own right. No one in the village had ever seen a steam wagon.

Even though just about everyone there had heard tales about these weird contraptions, and some were even lucky enough to have seen illustrations of them, in most people's minds they were fairy tales, works of imagination rather than working machines. Of those who believed in their existence, they were surprised by the reality, having never imagined the vast, clouding plumes of steam, the roaring, the popping, the clattering, and the angry hissing.

Everywhere, people were crouching low to peer beneath the wagon, looking for the legs of the horses or oxen they believed must be hidden away somewhere within the wagon to make it move. They would jump, startled, as the wagon suddenly enveloped them in an abrupt snort of steam, like an affronted lady chiding them for daring to peep beneath her dress.

Of course, not everyone was happy with their arrival. There were complaints that washing hung out to dry had been smudged with soot, that horses, sheep, cows and pigs had all been startled (though no one complained of the crows that suddenly fled the nearby fields). But these people would be placated with tickets promising reserved front seats for their children at the next show.

As soon as they reached the village square, Carey and Grudo began to set up the theatre box, pulling out awnings and panels from the side of the wagon, fixing them to other sheets of thick, brightly painted boarding that had been stored in the trailer beneath the engine's wood supply. All quickly and easily slotting together, and held in place by wooden or iron pegs, it was a contraption that was almost as ingenious as the wagon itself, yet another piece of mechanical ingenuity that Carey had inherited from her inventive ancestors.

In the back of the wagon, the others were already preparing for the show, selecting their costumes, even dressing the regular puppets who would also be taking part in the play.

'This is _not_ my favourite play,' Dougy gruffly complained as he slipped into a costume and a heavy head piece specially designed to make him look like a small horse.

'Ah, but it is _my_ favourite,' Durndrin replied happily as he neatly adjusted his farmer's jerkin. 'And all _you've_ got to do, Dougy my friend, is to remember _not_ to wag that damn tail of yours when you're playing being happy!'

*

# Chapter 6

The Meaning of Life

As Jacob toiled in his field, driving his horse and plough before him to turn the soil, he wondered why his life was full of such arduous, repetitive tasks.

He stared miserably ahead, taking in all the solidly packed soil he still had to break up.

He looked behind him towards the many furrows he had already created. He still had to sow the seeds, of course, then water them, hopefully with help from the rain. They would need protecting from the birds, then, as they put out their first delicate shoots, from the wind too. They would also need just the right amount of sun. But eventually, God willing, life would result from his hard work, wheat that would feed his family and thereby grant them life too.

And suddenly, like a strike of lightning could set a tree ablaze, the answer that had eluded so many important and learned men struck him; he knew The Meaning of Life!

'Pen and paper! I need pen and paper, to write it down before I forget it!' he yelped with glee.

He dropped his plough. He left his horse in the middle of the field. He ran back across his carefully turned furrows.

'Wait, wait; what's the rush for Jacob?' cried out one of the other ploughmen working the fields.

'Can't stop, can't stop,' Jacob yelled back anxiously, worried that he might forget The Meaning of Life before he had time to write it down. 'The Meaning of Life! I know The Meaning of Life!'

'Jacob, Jacob, why this mad run?' laughed children playing in the street.

'Can't stop, can't stop,' Jacob shouted back breathlessly. 'The Meaning of Life! I know The Meaning of Life!'

'How do you do, Jaco – well I never, how rude!' complained his neighbour as he hurtled past her, the mud from his boots splattering all over her clean dress.

'Can't stop, can't stop,' Jacob apologised, thinking he would just have to explain the reason for his rudeness later. 'The Meaning of Life! I _know_ The Meaning of Life!'

At last, he was at the door to his house. He flung the door open, barging into his own kitchen as if the hounds of hell were after him.

'Margie, Margie,' he cried out through the door leading to the rest of his house. 'I need a pen, I need paper! Quick, quick; this is important.'

Of course, without waiting for his wife's reply or response, he began to frantically rifle through the drawers in the kitchen, trying to recall where he had last seen a scrap of paper he could use.

'What _is_ the meaning of all this commotion, Jacob?' his wife sternly demanded as she appeared at the kitchen door.

'Pen, paper!' Jacob cried, still fruitlessly rummaging through the clutter of items that had been pushed away into the drawers. 'I need pen and paper!'

'Whatever for Jacob? Have you forgotten your manners? Haven't you remembered that you're supposed to ask nicely for things you need?'

'Yes, yes, I'm sorry Margie dear; but I need it to write down an _inspiration_ , an inspiration that could make us famous! Make us _rich_ , dear!'

He beamed excitedly as, at last, he found the crumpled scrap of paper he'd been looking for.

'But just _look_ at the mess you're making, Jacob!' his wife stormed, looking on in horror at all the things he was strewing across the floor in his eagerness to find pen and paper. 'Have you forgotten that it's best to remain calm and thoughtful when you can't remember where you've put something?'

'Found it, found it!' Jacob yelled in triumph as he held up a blunted stub of a pencil along with his scrap of paper.

He flattened out the crumpled paper. He pressed the pencil against the paper as he began to write.

'Jacob!' his wife shrieked as she tugged the paper out from beneath his hand. 'Has it already slipped your memory how your complaint to the council wasn't taken seriously because you'd written it on a worthless bit of paper?'

With a flourish, she produced a sheet of the finest paper from a drawer that Jacob hadn't got around to searching.

'Yes, yes,' he agreed, taking the paper from her with a grateful smile. 'The Meaning of Life needs to be presented on the finest paper to be taken with the seriousness it deserves!'

'The Meaning of Life?' his wife declared in awe and admiration as Jacob prepared to write his amazing insight down on the perfectly linen-white paper.

She snatched the stubby pencil from his hand.

'Jacob! You can't write down The Meaning of Life with _that_!'

She turned towards a cupboard, producing a wonderfully elegant quill and ink reservoir.

'Can't you hold _anything_ in that empty head of yours? Have you already forgotten how I bought you _this_ for your birthday?'

'Yes, yes, I remember now,' Jacob replied, gleefully accepting the elegant quill handed to him by his wife. 'You said that it would make me look like a man of letters, an educated, knowledgeable man!'

He spread the perfectly blank piece of paper out before him. He dipped the beautifully graceful quill in the ink. He brought it to hover expectantly over the pristine paper.

His wife beamed with pride.

'Well?' she said after a moment in which nothing further had happened.

'I'm thinking, I'm thinking...'

'The Meaning of Life, Jacob; you said you were going to write down The Meaning of Life.'

'Yes, yes, I _did_ , didn't I?'

And so, feeling a fool, mumbling to himself over and over 'The Meaning of Life is...', Jacob prepared to write down the first thing that came into his head.

But the beautifully graceful quill produced no beautifully graceful letters.

And the perfectly linen-white sheet remained perfectly linen-white.

Out in the fields, however, Jacob's ground was left only half tilled. His horse, with nothing better to do, was pondering The Meaning of Life.

Suddenly, the answer that had eluded so many important and learned men struck him.

'Wow, I'll have to make sure I _never_ forget _that_!' the horse resolutely told himself, slowly turning everything over in his mind. For he had neither pen nor paper, or even fingers to write it down with.

And he smiled with contentment.

*

# Chapter 7

Despite the constant rocking of the wagon on the badly rutted road, Carey was busily blending and mixing the paints she would need to replace the posters that had either been damaged or lost to the wind in the last town. The white of eggs, oil, crushed flowers, even seeds and beetles; they all went into her pots.

Open before her, but placed at a distance where it was safe from any splashes, was the Illuminator's _The_ _Porcelain Child_. Carey wanted to match his colours, yet, as always, she was finding this impossible, no matter which combination of ingredients she experimented with.

He could perfectly capture the myriad of greens you could find in a blade of glass, the yellows of every minute scale on a butterfly's wings, the reds of a fiery sunset, the blues of an inquisitive baby's iris.

How did he achieve such detail?

How long did it take him to paint just one of his pictures?

If anyone ever doubted that the Illuminator's tales were based on reality rather than mere fairy tales, they soon changed their minds on seeing his pictures. No one, they would agree, would waste time creating such beautifully accurate illustrations for anything as fleetingly unimportant as a simple fairy story.

If anything, Carey took this belief even further; everything in his pictures served a purpose, everything was done for a reason. And if something within those illustrations seemed unusual or puzzled you, then a careful study of the details, in combination with your own logic and reason, would provide you with an answer.

_The Porcelain Child_ had its own particular puzzle, one that caused Durndrin no end of frustration whenever he played the father; for the father was never really portrayed in the illustrations. He only ever appeared as a shadow, an unclear reflection in an eye or a glazed jug, or seen from behind or so low down that we only ever saw his legs and boots.

'How can I adequately play a fully _rounded_ character, when we know so little of him?' Durndrin would complain after every show, lamenting his own 'unprofessional, unsatisfactory performance.'

'But as you've said yourself Durndrin, you've put more "meat on his bones" than any other theatre could come up with,' one of the others would say in an attempt to reassure him, using one of his own favourite phrases.

As she stared at _The Porcelain Child_ 's illustrations, Carey could understand Durndrin's frustration.

The man's wife was, as you'd expect from the Illuminator, portrayed with a skill that made her leap from the page. You instantly knew the colour and style of her hair, the shape of her face, her nose, the kindness of her eyes. You knew the way she dressed, the graceful way she went about her tasks, the patience and intimacy she displayed when working on the most intricate parts of her creation. Her carefully observed expressions alone allowed you to instinctively sense her complete nature, her probable reaction to almost any event.

Of her husband, however, we have only snippets of information that we can gather from the story itself, and then only in the ways he reacts to his wife.

'Her husband would tell her to rest, to let him finish her work.'

He loved his wife. He was caring, thoughtful. A potter of some sort in his own way too.

'"But you, you my dearest, must promise me that you will grant our daughter _life_."'

He would do anything to please his wife. He would make a promise, and he would endeavour to fulfil that promise. And, like his wife, he wanted a child, a daughter, to love and cherish.

'And she smiled, and whispered, "I love you"; for they both believed that the Illuminator could grant their daughter the gift of life.'

He's a man worthy of even this remarkable woman's love. And he believes in what some people would only dismiss as impossible miracles.

In this way, Carey had realised long ago, you're forming an idea of him around her; and you could achieve something similar by painstakingly studying the illustrations. The wife's deftly portrayed expressions could also be used as clues to her husband's own character.

The way she literally looks up to him is obviously a sign that he's taller than her. But look at the sparkle in her eyes, the grateful, upward turn of her mouth; he's a man to be admired, a man she's overjoyed to share her life with despite their sadness that they have been unable to have a child.

She reaches out a hand to tenderly caress his cheek, her face brimming with warmth, actions that anyone can read as her care for him. See, though, how her mouth is firmly set, her stare direct and firm as if trying to instil courage in him; he loves her so much that, despite his refusal to tilt his head into her welcoming hand, despite the way he must be fighting the urge to desperately clasp his own hand over hers, he's suffering beyond all measure. And yet he tries to hide that pain, fearing that she is already suffering too much herself to have to share his own growing agony.

There is another clue, of course, to his character. And that lies in the expression of the child, in reality lifeless and yet, in the Illuminator's hands, full of life.

Of course, the Illuminator is only portraying what he believes is already there; the _beginnings_ of life. And that means that her father _will_ succeed. He _will_ bring life to his daughter.

The way she had to conjure up an idea of this man from what she knew of his wife was a perfect reversal of Carey's reality for, never having known her mother, she could only form a picture of what her mother had been like through her father's own recollections.

She had been beautiful. She was kind. She was full of laughter. She would have loved to see how intelligent and beautiful Carey had become.

'There's _so_ much of her in you, Carey,' he would sigh, smiling sadly as he tenderly stroked her face.

He would smile in a similarly sad way as he carefully ran his delicate fingers over the face of a puppet that Carey's mother had made.

'It helps me remember her as she patiently created this face,' he had explained when Carey had asked him why certain puppets seemed to make him both sad and happy at the same time. 'I can feel the way she felt as she moulded the papier-mâché into a cheek, or into the hollow of an eye. Or, with this puppet, I can sense the care she took as she tenderly carved the wood into this hooked nose, this protruding chin.'

Handing the puppets to Carey, he had said, ' _Feel_ the faces, Carey; ignore the characters she's creating, but simply clear your find so that you can feel _her_ , feel her _intent_. Sense the senses that _she's_ using, the emotions _she's_ going through.'

Carey had delicately traced the contours of the faces, closing her eyes, hoping that it would somehow magically allow her to have a glimpse of her mother.

She felt the flow of the fingers that had smoothed the papier-mâché into a rounded cheek. She sensed the pressure of a thumb as it was used to form the hard differentiation between the neck and cheek. She was aware of the humour required to pinch the material into an upturned nose.

Her mother was at the table, straining her eyes in the poor light to make sure the face would be right. She wants it to be prefect, as she wants all her little dears to be prefect. They have to entertain, to enthral, after all. His expression must be mischievous, yes, but that doesn't mean I can't give him a knowing grin that, in other circumstances, becomes a warm smile.

She was bringing these wonderful characters to life for others to enjoy, to laugh at and to cheer them on whenever the character being played was clambering out of trouble.

What better life could there be than that?

Her mother was happy, content.

Carey had put the puppet down with a sad yet happy smile.

It was the Fading that had finally taken Carey's mother, her father had told her. When she was young, too young to remember anything about her. It was too long ago for even the puppets to remember anything about her too, as their memories were short lived and always incomplete.

'The Fading isn't anything to be feared,' her father tried to reassure her as he himself succumbed to it later in her life. 'It gives us all time to say our goodbyes. There's nothing worse than to lose someone and suddenly realise we'd left so many things unsaid.'

Carey had held her father's hand for as long as she could before he finally began to slip away into nothingness.

'I love you dad,' she'd said, returning the last lingering glimpses of his sad smile.

*

'Carey!'

Grudo's gruff shout carried back from where he was seated on the caravan's driving seat.

'Someone on the road,' he added. 'Coming towards us.'

'Shussh you lot!' Carey hissed back towards the caravan's rear room, where the others were laughing and joking as they recalled all the things that had gone wrong in previous shows.

The rear room suddenly went quiet. As Carey stoppered her pots of paint and oils, she could already hear the slightly out of tune singing of a man unhurriedly drawing closer.

*

# Chapter 8

The Troubadour's Song

The whitest skin, the fairest face,

An angel's banquet you could grace

Oh lady lady would you marry me,

Even though a pauper I am to thee?

I am no prince, I am no king,

I am no knight, I wield only this ring

This ring with which I would marry thee,

Oh sweet princess, why do thine eyes ne'er notice me?

*

# Chapter 9

Carey quickly scrambled through the cluttered carriage, crawling through the small door that led her out onto the driving seat alongside Grudo.

They were approaching a crossroads. A single rider was heading towards them from the opposite direction.

'He can't hit his high notes, can he?' Grudo winced.

'Bit of a problem too, I think, for a troubadour,' Carey agreed.

'I didn't know we still had any troubadours; and if they sing like that, I can't say I'm surprised.'

The troubadour suddenly stopped singing, letting his lute drop down by his side. He stared at the steam wagon in wide-eyed amazement. Then, with a sharp flex of his knees, he urged his horse into a gallop, rushing across the dusty crossroads towards them.

'My lady, my lady!' he cried, holding on with one hand to both his lute and his large, feathered hat to stop it blowing off. 'At last I have–'

As he brought his horse to a sudden halt alongside the caravan, a large shoulder bag that had gathered momentum in the charge suddenly rose up from behind to strike him heavily across the back of his head. The unexpected blow knocked him out of his saddle, sending him sprawling in the dust. Sheets of paper from the bag scattered high into the air, before falling around him like heavy snow.

'Oh no! Are you all right?' Carey asked in alarm.

She would have jumped down to help, but was blocked by Grudo's massive form as he casually stretched out to pluck the falling sheets from the air.

'All right?' the boy said with a laugh as he scrambled up from the floor and dusted himself down. 'How could I be otherwise, my love, when–'

He abruptly paused, his eyes now wide with confusion as he stared once again at Carey. Along with his dusty, dishevelled clothing, and an untidy mass of golden hair that curled around his otherwise boyishly-handsome face, his puzzled frown made him look like some poor Fool from a play.

'I didn't know we still had any troubadours,' Grudo said gruffly to the bemused boy as he handed down some of the papers to him.

'Oh, er, yes, really?' The boy was as bewildered as if waking up to a painful reality from a pleasant dream. 'We don't, I mean, there probably aren't any other troubadours; I mean, I'm probably the only one now.'

He affected an elegant bow, sweeping his feathered hat low across the ground and stirring up another cloud of dust that made him choke and cough.

'Grudo!'

Carey was aghast when she saw that Grudo was reading through the papers he still held in his hands. She gave him an admonishing jab with her elbow.

'What? Oh yes, sorry,' Grudo growled, turning to hand down the rest of the papers to the boy. 'All this "thee" and "thine"; does anyone still talk like that?'

'They do in _my_ songs,' the boy happily declared, gratefully taking hold of the papers and carelessly stuffing them back into his bag. 'Besides, the words aren't quite right just yet in some of them. I'm still working on those.'

'Ah, I noticed that none of them had any endings; unless they've become a little mixed up.'

The boy quickly checked the sheets he still held in his hand.

'No, no; they're not mixed up,' he sighed thankfully before looking back up at Grudo and Carey. 'There are no endings. I haven't thought of them yet; the endings, I mean. I can't put in an ending before I've thought of it, can I now?'

'Stories with no endings?' Carey exclaimed.

'I take it you don't make much money from being a troubadour,' Grudo scornfully added.

'Ah, now, with _that_ , you may have a point.' The boy was bent low, collecting some of his papers that were still scattered across the ground. 'For I admit, I'm no good at my endings – you know, in the same way that some artists aren't any good at hands.'

'He wouldn't be much of an artist now, would he, if he couldn't draw hands?' Grudo curtly pointed out as Carey gave him a sharp push, hissing at him that they should help the boy pick up his songs.

'He would if he stuck to painting elephants,' the boy said as Grudo clambered down from his seat to help him collect up the scattered papers.

'And there's a great call for that is there, where you come from? Portraits of elephants?'

'Besides,' Carey pointed out more kindly than Grudo, as she also jumped down to help collect the papers, 'you're _sticking_ with writing songs you admit you can't finish!'

'Ah, but _one_ day, I _will_ finish them. Finish them all at once, in one day, too. All my life, you see, I've been working towards the perfect ending.'

'Will they be happy endings?' Carey asked hopefully.

The boy shrugged miserably.

'Who's to say? Not me, for sure.'

'Well if _you_ don't know,' Grudo snorted in exasperation, 'just who _is_ supposed to know?'

'Ah, but who's to say what a happy ending is? If my love loves another, it's happy for her, but misery for me.'

'Ah, so you're not sure if the girl you love loves someone else?' said Carey, thinking she was beginning to understand at last. 'You could ask her, you know? That's usually the easiest way to have an answer.'

'I haven't _met_ her yet, I'm afraid,' the boy shouted up from beneath the caravan, where he'd crawled to retrieve the last of his sheets before they blew away. 'Unless you count meeting her in my dreams.'

'I'm not sure that counts at all,' Grudo sniffed as he tried to straighten out his crumpled collection of sheets. 'Girls in dreams shift and change; who can tell what they really look like?'

Carey stared at Grudo in surprise. Grudo shrugged.

The boy lightly bumped his head on the underside of the caravan as he finally scrambled out from underneath it.

'But in my case, everyone knows what she looks like. Why, isn't she the most famous, the most beautiful princess in the entire world? So wise, so kind, so charming, so full of laughter!'

Carey and Grudo swapped knowing glances.

'The Porcelain Princess?' Carey said.

The boy nodded sheepishly, but his whole face lit up as if just the mention of her name had somehow conjured her up into life before him.

'You shouldn't believe _everything_ you read in stories,' Grudo observed grumpily.

Carey recognised Grudo's familiar complaint. How often had she heard him say this when she was once again letting her hopes rise too high?

'What he means is,' she said to the boy, 'that this girl might all just be nothing more than wishful thinking; she probably isn't real, you know?'

The boy gasped in horror.

'Not real? _Everyone_ knows the Porcelain Princess is as real as you and me!'

'Yes, yes, but I mean the girl you've fallen in love with probably isn't anything like the _real_ Princess.'

'Well, she's made of porcelain for a start!' Grudo snorted brusquely.

The boy smiled as he crammed his saddle bags full with the crumpled sheets.

'Ah, but on _that_ point, my love for her will transform her! And on yours,' he said, grinning warmly at Carey, 'whenever I touch her picture, she comes to life at my touch! We can talk, we can walk together, we can hold each other close!'

'And in these dreams, does she tell you she loves you?'

'Ah, if only she did! But I don't wish to waste our time together by asking her this! Besides, what if the question embarrasses her? What if it embarrasses _me_ , when she answers no?'

'Let's not forget it's an old tale.' Grudo avoided Carey's glare. Once again, it was an old complaint of Grudo's. 'Which means she might also be old.'

'Ah, but as you yourself pointed out my friend, she's of the finest porcelain! How will she age, when there's obviously magic involved?'

'But what about yourself?' Carey asked kindly. 'If you find her, you'd grow old while she would always be a young girl.'

'Ah yes, I _have_ considered this,' the boy admittedly sadly, 'but at worst, I at least get to spend _some_ time with her. And when I'm too old to deserve her love, then I sadly move on. Besides,' he added, brightening, 'isn't it a _magical_ kingdom? How old must the Illuminator be?'

'If he _is_ still alive,' Grudo growled miserably.

'He's still producing his books, surely?'

'Haven't you heard of children who inherit their father's talents?'

Recognising these arguments once more, Carey scowled at Grudo.

'We're searching for her too,' she said to the boy. 'You could join us.'

Now it was Grudo's turn to scowl at her.

'Hmn, I'm tempted,' the boy lied, having noticed Grudo's discouraging grimace. 'But perhaps I'd be better taking this road to my right.'

'Then we'll do the same,' Grudo said as the boy mounted his horse. 'We'll take the road to _our_ right.'

'And if I find I don't end up where I want to be after all, who knows? I might turn around and follow after you!'

'Have you never become disheartened on your search?' Carey suddenly asked him. 'I mean, have you ever wondered if you might be wrong that the kingdom really exists?'

The boy shook his head, a shower of dust falling from out of his hair.

'If I stopped searching, what meaning would my life hold then? Besides, if I hadn't been searching, then a famous king who now rules _his_ kingdom would still be undiscovered, rotting away in a high tower. He heard my singing and, being a bit of a troubadour himself, responded with his own singing! And so at last, his countrymen knew where he was being held!'

'Oh, and he let down his hair did he, to let you climb up?' Grudo chuckled.

'You're mixing up your fairy stories and your histories, my friend,' the boy replied jovially.

'Ah, so, hearing you singing outside his window, he decided he'd _have_ to escape?'

'Grudo! Why are you being so rude?' Carey snapped.

'I'm not offended,' the boy laughed, tugging on his horse's reins, turning her to face the track to his right. 'Whichever way you look at it, my song was the key that unlocked his prison; and you can't expect more of a song than that!'

And with a polite doff of his cap, the troubadour rode off, singing once more.

*

# Chapter 10

The Troubadour's Second Song

I've heard thine hair shines like the finest silk

Your kindness flows more pure than milk

Your face as smooth and white as por...celain

Yet I fear thine heart will ne'er be mine to win

You are the moon, the sun and stars

But alongside your Venus, mine own countenance only jars

I dream the dream that to your queen I'll be king

Yet I dread you won't hear of the love I sing

*

# Chapter 11

'Grudo! Why were you being so incredibly nasty to that poor boy?'

As they climbed back onto the caravan's driving seat, Carey glared angrily at Grudo.

Grudo replied with an embarrassed shrug.

'Well, you know, what with your father no longer being around...'

'You felt it was your role to protect me? From some poor, lovesick boy?'

'Ah, a very _handsome_ and _charming_ boy; but one who lives in dreams, rather than realities.'

'And you don't think I should live in dreams, right?'

Grudo shrugged again.

'Life is hard enough without seeing our hopes for a better life constantly dashed away.'

'Hmn, maybe you're right,' Carey sternly declared, to Grudo's pleasant surprise. 'He _was_ handsome and charming, wasn't he?' she added with a sigh and a dreamy face.

Grudo was horrified.

'Carey, he would only–'

He stopped, having at last noticed Carey's mischievous smirk.

'But nay, he ne'er had eyes for me,' she said with a theatrical sadness.

Grudo smiled.

'Get thee back to work girl,' he chuckled, starting up the caravan.

*

A landscape of pleasant homesteads and well-tended fields soon gave way to thick forest. The track remained straight but narrow, yet it stretched ahead of them as if it were endless, such that the trees appeared to be closing in on it and cutting it off.

Even as night fell, they still hadn't cleared the forest, and still had a long way to go. Everyone had taken up watch around the caravan, on the lookout for any signs of wolves, bears or any other wild creatures that might inhabit the wood. They hoped the caravan's cacophony of noises, its clouds of smoke and steam, and the fiery glow of its furnace, would be enough to scare off any unwanted attention.

Although they had hoped to leave the forest far behind them before setting up camp for the night, they began to realise this would be impossible. Even Grudo and the others required sleep, and everyone was exhausted after a day of constant and fruitless travel. Everyone had begun to doubt that they had chosen the right path to travel. The forest seemed endless, and it felt like it would be days before they reached a town or even a village where they could put on a show.

'We'll build a large fire; that should keep any animals away,' Grudo reassured Carey.

'No, not too big,' Carey insisted, realising that Grudo and the others were putting her safety above theirs. Any fire, even the caravan's furnace, had to be treated with absolute care by the wooden puppets. 'And we'll collect any large stones we can find to surround it.'

'A rehearsal; we must have a rehearsal for tomorrow's show,' Neris declared brightly, hoping she could cheer up her disheartened friends by implying that there _would_ be a show tomorrow.

'Yes, yes,' Ferena agreed excitedly. 'And it must be _everybody's_ favourite; _The Porcelain Kingdom_!'

*

# Chapter 12

The Porcelain Kingdom

Our tale begins, of course, before the arrival of the Princess in the kingdom.

It was an unhappy kingdom.

A dark kingdom.

A dark kingdom in as much as that, although the sun shone here as much as anywhere else, the people sensed only the darkness in their lives.

They noticed the rain storms, or when the sky seemed endlessly dull and dispiriting, but not the bright and breezy days, which they saw as fleeting and few and far between.

They were aware of the months when their crops were flattened, yet took for granted the years when the fields produced all they could want.

They complained of the market sellers who cheated them, the customers who expected too much. They couldn't tolerate the rudeness of others, which drove them to distraction, such that they had little time for the problems of others. They raged at selfishness, at ignorance, at stupidity, at arrogance, wondering why everyone couldn't be more like them.

They walked through the streets of their town keeping to the shadows, their heads hanging low, their voices stilled or nothing more than a whisper, forever nervous of the edgy, unfriendly people that crossed their paths.

And over everything there loomed the high tower, its vast shadow moving steadily across the town like a cloak of watchful darkness, its steady progression like a clock ticking away at and devouring the hours of their lives.

Then, at night, when everything else was dark, the tower's windows blazed with light, a hellish inferno of illicit, demonic activity.

No one with any sense would be around at this time of night. No one would draw attention to their homes by lighting a candle, or curiously drawing aside their curtains.

When the town's darkness was at its most complete, the gates within the high walls surrounding the tower would briefly open. From directly inside the walls, there would come a clatter of iron wheels on cobbles, the snorts or neighing of hellish horses readying for the off.

They were the last warnings for any fool still abroad to run for home.

As the great gates closed behind it, the black carriage would career through the streets, the hooves of its equally black horses thundering as they pumped against the hard stone, the wheels roaring like great windmills spinning in the most terrifying hurricane.

Some said that, as they cowered in their beds, they could hear the crack of the driver's whip. But if that were true, then the driver was invisible. Others swore that they had seen the horses snorting flames, but most people who had been unfortunate enough to have encountered them simply refused to relive their experience.

The carriage carried no passenger, everyone knew. Unless you counted the souls who were about to be given over to the Fading.

On the seats and floor, there lay only stacked strongboxes containing books. The most beautiful books money could buy, with the most wonderful illustrations imaginable. But these were the works of the Illuminator, and so they were illustrations that you hoped, you prayed, didn't feature you in any shape, or form, or way.

For that simple portrayal would suck the very life out of you. And you would become just one more victim of the Fading.

As the carriage finally headed out of town on one of the many roads leading to other lands, where the books would be published and sold, another carriage would enter the town on one of the other roads, its strongboxes empty and light. Even so, this empty carriage thundered through the streets, aiming to reach the gates while the town was still at its darkest.

Even the arrival of the morning wouldn't bring any relief from the townspeople's fear. For most frightening of all was news that copies of the illustrations had appeared on their side of the tower's wall. Then, no matter what other tasks they had set themselves to accomplish that morning, they would fearfully make their way towards the wall. Here they would even more fearfully view the illustrations, carefully checking them for any sign of themselves or anyone they cared for.

Every now and again, their fear of the tower and its demonic works became so great (or perhaps it was that they actually _overcame_ their fear; no one was quite sure) that a courageous man or woman would rise up from amongst them, calling on everyone to attack it. Brandishing old swords, pitchforks, scythes and flaming torches, they would storm the walls. They would break down the tower's great doors, they would rush through its marbled rooms, its mirrored halls, expecting at any moment to be faced by the cohorts of demons and devils they believed helped the Illuminator complete his evil tasks.

But the tower was always empty. There weren't any demons. There weren't any soldiers, any staff either. And there was nothing to say the Illuminator had ever lived here. There wasn't even any sign of the dark horses that drew the carriages.

It was as if everyone in the tower had been magically spirited away. Which only added to the people's awe and fear.

'Burn it! Burn this evil place down to the ground!' the cry would go up.

They would torch the velvet curtains, set fire to chairs they had deliberately piled up, rush through the rooms once more with blazing blankets and sheets trailing behind them, such that they would set everything they touched ablaze.

Then, from the safety of the town, they would gleefully watch as the whole tower blazed, cheering as whole sections broke off to tumble to the ground in vast showers of sparks.

'That's it, go ahead and enjoy yourselves while you can,' older men and women who refused to join the attack would grumble knowingly. 'You'll see, you'll see,' they would add ominously.

And in the morning, they did see; they saw the tower completely restored, as if the attack had been nothing more than an exhilarating dream.

'It's...it's not _possible_!' the previous night's attackers would groan in disbelief. 'I saw it burning! It lit up the whole town! I felt the heat of the flames, even standing here, in the town square!'

Eventually, the attacks ceased. What was the point, when the tower appeared indestructible? It never even suffered the Fading, even though it had appeared in far more illustrations than any other building, any person.

The mysterious, black carriages continued to hurtle dangerously through the town's darkened streets. Copies of the illustrations would still appear outside the tower's high walls.

People and buildings still succumbed to the Fading.

It was just something they had to live with, the townspeople had realised. Even moving to another town wouldn't save them; the illustrations had as much effect beyond the surrounding forests as they did in their own lands. The Illuminator could see and picture, it seemed, anyone he chose, even if they lived on the edges of the world.

It was said that the Illuminator had, long ago, tried to explain his actions.

His illustrations – or illuminations, as he preferred to call them, hence his name – were mere devices to bring the characters of his stories to life in his readers' imaginations, he had insisted.

But no one was prepared to believe such a simplistic explanation. Everyone knew that his 'illuminations' were responsible for the Fading.

The Illuminator never again showed himself (if, indeed, he had ever revealed himself in the first place) to offer any further explanation. The tower included a large balcony that overlooked the town, where he was said to have appeared on the day he had spoken to them. But if any townspeople still looked up to the balcony with any expectation that he might appear there again, they did so in vain. If he did ever appear there, some said, it would only be to announce that he had decide to bring the world to an end.

One day, however, someone did appear on the balcony; but it wasn't anyone they were expecting.

No matter where you were in the town on that day, you couldn't fail to hear the unexpectedly joyful fanfare of trumpets that had abruptly erupted from the tower. Blacksmiths stilled the ringing of their anvils, tavern keepers halted the rolling of their heavy barrels down in the cellars, maids stopped the whirl of their spinning wheels or looms, the squishing of their milking, and children brought their play to an end in the middle of an excited yell.

'Who's playing the music?' they anxiously asked each other as they all wormed their way through the streets towards the beckoning tower. 'Why?' asked others. 'What on earth can it mean?'

'The _end_ of the Earth!' answered some as they nervously grasped the hands of their children.

Even as they all gathered beneath the balcony, the curtains behind the immense French windows were seen to move, to be disturbed. Then they opened, flowing smoothly to either side.

As the doors themselves opened, everyone gasped. Some fell to their knees, weeping.

The fanfare of trumpets came to an abrupt halt, letting an awed silence quickly ripple across the crowd.

In the darkness of the tower's interior, there was a flash of purest white, growing, increasing in size as it drew nearer to the doors leading onto the balcony.

The most beautiful girl anyone had ever seen stepped out into the sun.

Her dress, the dress of a princess, glistened as if decorated with the finest pearls, the most expensive lace. Her hair shone as if made of the richest silk. Her face was flawless, her skin as pure as the world's most painstakingly made porcelain.

She gave off an angelic light (as everyone would later agree in awed tones).

She continued walking until she was standing on the very edge of the balcony. She looked down on them all, her head moving slightly as she took in (as they each believed) each and every one of the assembled crowd.

She smiled.

Even though they were all too far away to see clearly, each and every one of them knew that she had smiled. They knew this because they suddenly felt flooded with her happiness, her benevolence, her own remarkable wonder of the world and everything that was in it.

She waved.

She waved at him, at her, each and every one of them knowing that he or she was the one in particular that she had spotted amongst the crowd, singling them out for her friendly wave.

Each and every one of them waved back.

The Princess didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She simply turned and walked back through the balcony doors back into the palace. (Suddenly, no one thought of it as being a tower anymore. The tower had at last disappeared; it was now a palace.)

It was over! The terror was over!

Their Princess didn't need to tell them this for them to know.

They cheered. They threw their hats into the air. They danced ridiculously excitable jigs. They made their own joyful music, with hastily produced flutes, with barrels transformed into drums.

They reached out to hold hands with whoever was nearest to them, groups forming into circles or lines that wheeled amid or snaked around everyone else. They hugged complete strangers, inviting them for a drink at the tavern, even dinner at their home at the next available opportunity.

Clothes that only a moment ago had seemed dull and poor now blazed with colour as everyone happily mingled. Children who had been nothing but noisy pests, forever getting under their feet, spread laughter and gay tom-foolery wherever they went. Market stalls dismissed as uninteresting and full of ill formed goods were, on a second look, revealed to be selling the most unique, handmade wares.

And just the appearance of their Princess had caused all this?

They were amazed!

How was it possible?

Where had she come from?

Who was she?

Why hadn't she spoken?

How had she reassured them all despite not saying a word?

They asked these questions, of course. Asked themselves. Asked each other.

But they weren't really bothered abut receiving any answers.

They were happy. That was the main thing. And they were sure that, at last, all their worries were over. Yes, there would be minor problems to deal with, as there always would be; but they _would_ be dealt with!

Why, look at how their magnificent palace stretched towards the heavens themselves, showing that _anything_ was possible! Look at how it glowed in the sun, like a vast beacon of hope!

As night fell, the palace continued to benevolently watch over them, the warm glow from its brightly lit rooms like gloriously large lanterns that spread and shared their light with the peacefully sleeping townspeople.

There were no dark carriages that night.

There were no copies of illustrations waiting to be viewed in the morning.

For the first time ever, it seemed, the town awoke as any other town awakes; full of hope and expectation, and wondering what challenges and triumphs the new day would bring.

*

When the sun was at its brightest, another fanfare of trumpets sounded out across the town.

Everyone glanced up towards the balcony. But there was no movement there.

Their Princess didn't appear.

This time it was the gates that opened.

From inside the walls, there came the snort and whinnying of proud horses, the clatter of wheels on cob stone.

The driverless carriage unhurriedly pulled out through the gates. The prancing horses were of purest white. The carriage itself, even its wheels, could have been made of porcelain or mother of pearl, it gleamed so wondrously white, reflecting the tones and shades of everything it passed as fluid rainbows. (In fact, people would later say, the main body was so perfectly spherical that it could only have been formed from a gigantic pearl, skilfully hollowed out from within.)

It was their Princess, everyone was sure, even before anyone began to catch glimpses of her behind the brightly shimmering windows. She leaned forward in her seat, gaily waving at each and every person she passed. She smiled. She giggled with joy as children playfully ran alongside her carriage, easily keeping up with its languid progress towards the town square. The townspeople followed it too, waving at their Princess, waving at each other as more people joined their steady progression towards the square.

In the very centre of the square, the carriage pulled to a halt. A thin central band of the carriage began to wheel forward, while also sliding open at its rear, slowly elevating the Princess up through the roof until she was standing on its very top. A flaring safety rail formed around her, but it was invisible against the innumerable layers of lace of her resplendent dress, such that she appeared like a queen proudly standing astride the globe she ruled.

The whole crowd gasped in awe. She was even more beautiful than they had imagined. Her skin was as perfectly white, as indelibly flawless, as astonishingly smooth, as luminously glistening, as a pearl.

There was something about her, those closest to her realised, that wasn't _quite_ real. But who could quibble about that, who would care? That just made her more magical than ever, didn't it?

Some of the people gathered around her even recognised her for who she really was; she was the Porcelain Child. The Porcelain Child come to life, as the stories had foretold. And what could be more magical, more amazing, than that?

The crowd stilled and quietened as it dawned on them that their Princess was about to speak.

'You may think that I'm here to tell you that there will be no more Fading, no more illustrations.'

Her voice was clear, confident and, some people swore, almost musical. She wasn't shouting, and yet her message carried surprisingly far, reaching even the edges of the large throng of people who had gathered to see and hear her.

She smiled warmly as she spoke, as if she were telling them good news rather than preparing them, it seemed, to accept the continuous existence of the Fading and the illustrations that caused it. And so the people around her smiled too, for they realised that this could not be the bad news they would once have taken it to be.

'You shouldn't fear these illustrations, or the Fading,' their beautiful Princess continued.

And everyone wondered why she said this, because they no longer did fear them.

'To explain, I need to tell you a story,' their Princess said. 'It's partly a story you all know well; yet now there is another part of the tale that needs to be told. It's the tale of the Porcelain Child.'

Those who had already guessed the truth nodded sagely, congratulating themselves on their wisdom. For others, the truth dawned on them at different points as she recounted her story, raising gasps of wonder, of joy, of even something that felt strangely close to a spiritually enlightening experience.

'As we all know, the Porcelain Child was created through the most incredible outpouring of love. Every child, I would hope, is created through a shared love, such that that love is there for all to see. Yet the Porcelain Child had to be created with an even higher level of love, for every finger, every turn of a cheek, every curve of its mouth, had to be carefully considered and realised by her mother. The mother had to believe, too, that her own great love would suffuse and inhabit her child, giving the girl life. And the father, he had to believe too, in the mother and their child. And his love for them both would have to be yet another kind of love, a selfless love, a sacrificial love, dedicating his own life to bringing life to another, to their daughter.'

She paused, as if to ensure that everyone had time to fully grasp the meaning behind her words. Some of the people were already crying in wonder and happiness. More people fell to their knees, blessing the world, the whole of creation.

'Now as tales of the child's creation spread, love for the child grew and grew throughout all the lands where the story was told, listened to, and read. All these people, each and every one, wanted to believe that it was possible to grant her life. And it was this great love of everyone, this belief that the child _will_ attain life, that eventually _gives_ the child life. Gives _me_ life.'

Now the whole crowd gasped as they were filled with a shimmering joy.

'The power of your great and focused love, your shared imagination, is greater than you think. If enough believe, it can grant life.'

Once again, she paused, waited.

'But I tell you this; it cannot give life to someone whose time has come. No power, no wishful thinking, no magic, can prevent this. And this is what you have feared; that the Illuminator's illustrations were the cause of your passing and your suffering.'

She shook her head.

'This is not the case.'

She briefly waited once more.

'The Illuminator knows that you fear – yes, even hate with your whole being – his works. He knows, too, that you could never accept his works like you love the Porcelain Child, a creation way beyond his own limited capabilities. His own works are as nothing compared to this outpouring of love, of joy, of belief in a better life.'

The crowd was silent, patiently listening to the Princess's story.

'The Illuminator realises that there's neither love for him nor trust. He is unapproachable, distant; and so you can't be blamed for misunderstanding his purpose. To rebuild your connection and trust in him, you need someone you can identify with and already trust; someone that you yourselves have given life to.'

She only needed to smile for everyone to know whom she meant.

'Those who succumb to the Fading,' she continued, 'their time has come. If someone appears in an illustration, but their time is not yet here, then they will not Fade, nor yet die. But if their time _is_ close, then just as your great and shared and focused love can give life, it can also help prolong it in those who would otherwise have passed all too quickly away; and this is what we call the Fading. The Fading is a time that gives you the chance to say the things that would otherwise have been left unsaid. What regrets do we suffer when someone passes out of our lives before we have told them how much we appreciate them, how much we love them? The Fading, then, is not a curse but a blessing; for it's a time when we can _all_ experience an outpouring of our love for each other. Don't fear that time. Don't waste it.'

This time as she smiled, those closest to her would later recall how they seemed to be suffused with the love she spoke of. Those farther away, however, swore that it was a brief, blinding glow of light that left them blinking in amazement.

The carriage's inner band began to slowly twirl once more, lowering their Princess back inside, closing up behind her as she became seated once more. The horses turned, unhurriedly heading back towards the palace where people were already being taken on as the Princess's gardeners, her carpenters, her musicians.

As the great gates of the palace's walls opened, few people failed to see a black carriage waiting just inside. It couldn't be ignored. Its presence was too ominous and threatening to be dismissed as nothing to fear. Only a fool would disregard its portent.

But as the gleamingly white porcelain carriage trotted past it, then as the gates closed once more, the dark carriage first faded then completely disappeared from view.

The town celebrated, putting on a vast fair that no one had seen the likes of for hundreds of years. They invited anyone who was lucky enough to hear of it. There were musicians and massed, joyful dances. There were ingenious mechanical rides, and boat swings for the children. There were stalls with games to play and prizes to win, or selling all manner of weird and wonderful goods from near and far away. And, of course, there were puppet shows and storytellers.

And many people already understood why the Porcelain Princess had arrived amongst them.

Although she may sound like the stuff of fairy tales, the Porcelain Princess is actually as real as you or me. We fear that our lives are fragile, that our world is set hard and unchangeable; yet if the Porcelain Princess lives, she gives us the reassurance we need that this porcelain world is ours to watch over. For we are the only part of creation that can truly understand itself; and therefore we _are_ creation itself.

And so you must also realise that without your belief in her, the Porcelain Princess can only weaken, becoming once more as lifeless as the clay she was originally so lovingly formed from.

Fortunately, the tale of the wise rule of the Porcelain Princess was already beginning to be told, to be elaborated on, and to spread.

*

# Chapter 13

It was midday before the steam caravan finally cleared the last, more loosely scattered trees of the forest. The road stretched on before them, however, with no towns, villages or even hostelries along the way. There were farms to be seen on both sides of the track, but each one of these was too far away and too remote to be worth a visit.

'Perhaps they just don't like living together around here,' Peregun said miserably, eager to put on another show.

Even as night fell, they continued travelling in the hope that they would at last catch a sign of a town in the distance, its lights beckoning them on. And, eventually, this hope was rewarded, the number of lit lanterns and windows at first growing the closer they got, only to start winking out one by one as its people prepared for sleep. By the time they reached the edges of the town, it was in complete darkness. It was past midnight, and there wasn't even a sliver of a moon to give them any light.

So as not to wake the town's sleeping inhabitants, Carey shut the caravan's engine down to a slow purr, while Grudo strapped on the type of harness more usually seen on a horse to pull it quietly along the streets. The others had already slipped off into the darkness to paste the show's posters in the most unusual and unexpected places they could find.

As they would have to remain awake until everyone had safely returned, Carey and Grudo began to swiftly set up the theatre as soon as they reached the town square. They worked quietly and confidently, despite having only the dim glow of a few lamps to see by. It would be quite a shock for the townspeople, Carey thought with pleasure, when they saw that this theatre had sprung up in their midst overnight.

Neris and Peregun were the first to return, followed not long after by Ferena, Durndrin and Dougy. They were laughing excitedly, regaling each other with tales of the difficult positions they had scaled to give the posters maximum impact.

'We put a lot of ours on a wall, which wasn't particularly difficult,' Neris admitted, 'but it was already covered with posters so, just in case there's a rival theatre in town, we thought, well...'

'Neris! That's so unfair,' Carey chided her.

'But makes perfectly sound business sense,' Grudo sagely pointed out.

'Who were the posters for?' Carey asked, curious to know if it was a theatre she had heard of but never come across before, or if it was owned by people she'd met and happily chatted with on previous occasions. If it were the latter, she realised, she would _have_ to remove their own posters.

'Hard to say.' Peregun shrugged. 'It's so incredibly dark out there at the moment.'

'I bet they were for The Porcelain Theatre!' Durndrin grinned knowingly.

'Ah, but do you mean "The One and Only", or "The Original and Best"?' Peregun asked with a rich laugh.

They all laughed. A great many traveling shows had decided to call themselves The Porcelain Theatre. Carey liked the name too, but had decided they should keep the name handed down to her through generations of travelling showmen and women; The String Theatre. Besides, it was a far more accurate name for their kind of show, wasn't it?

'Which show will we put on tomorrow?' Ferena asked, flicking through a rack of her favourite costumes, the ones she wore when playing an elf, a queen, or a white witch.

'Not _The Meaning of Life_?' Dougy growled hopefully.

'I hope tonight's rehearsal's going to be a _quick_ one.' Neris vainly checked her face in a mirror. 'Even I need my beauty sleep, you know.'

'The show we already rehearsed for _last_ night of course,' Carey said determinedly. ' _The Porcelain Kingdom_!'

*

When Carey woke up the next morning, the long, almost uninterrupted travelling of the previous two days meant that she was still a little drowsy. She stumbled noisily around the cabin as she searched for fresh clothes, a little water to drink, something to prepare for breakfast. She opened the front door a little, to let in both fresh air and the morning light.

Outside, she could hear the steady patter of what sounded like a waterfall, or at least running water.

Was she still asleep? Was she dreaming?

She leaned forward, peering out of the front doorway.

The caravan was surrounded by people. They were all lightly clapping too, making the odd noise she had mistakenly taken to be running water.

As they saw her peer out of the door, they all clapped even louder. There were even cheers, and cries of joy.

She jumped back in shock, instinctively drawing her flimsy night clothes about herself.

'What the?' She noticed that the others had at last blearily stirred from their beds, having been as exhausted as she was by the long journey. 'Just where the heck did you put the posters this time?' she asked them in wonder.

They clambered up on desks and racks and each other, barely opening the shutters covering the windows to cautiously stare outside.

No matter where they looked, there were people outside. Many were sitting on the floor, as if they had been waiting for the show to begin for a long time. Even so, everyone seemed remarkably happy. They had brought food with them, which they were sharing out, as if taking part in a vast picnic. Children were running amongst them, playing catch, flying small kites, or just moving from group to group.

'That burst of clapping earlier was better than we've received for some shows,' Neris said wryly.

'The Fading; some of them have the Fading, but they don't seem to care,' an awestruck Peregun said, ignoring her.

'No, it's not just that they don't care,' Durndrin politely corrected him. 'They actually seem just as happy as everyone else, as happy as those who aren't suffering from it.'

Carey thought they must be imagining all this, yet when she looked out amongst the crowd once more, she saw that they were right; there were a number of people in various stages of the Fading, yet they were acting no differently from anyone else surrounding them. They smiled, they gossiped, they chuckled, they ate and distributed food. They held hands as best they could with whoever they were with. Most amazing of all, children would happily and even deliberately pass through those who were now little more than mirages, giggling with a shivering delight as if they had run through nothing more than a fountain's spraying waters.

Making his way closer towards the still slightly open door, Grudo pushed it open a little wider, giving himself a better view of the square and the area of town lying beyond it.

'Ah, now the answer to all _that_ might be _that_ ,' he said mysteriously, pointing up into the air.

Following Grudo's directions, Carey looked outside.

Caught in the glow of the rising sun, the towering white palace glistened and sparkled, flaring here and there on one side with a flame-red radiance.

'We've found it,' Carey sighed. 'We're here; the Porcelain Kingdom.'

*

# Chapter 14

'What's everyone doing here so early?' Dougy complained. 'What time did you put on the posters, Carey?'

'I don't think they're really bothered when its starts.' Peregun moved from one side of the wagon to the other, carefully peering out of the still shuttered windows. 'They look like they're all enjoying themselves anyway!'

Carey had to agree with him. No one seemed impatient, or in any rush for anything to happen. Some of them had settled down on small rugs, blankets or cushions, with a book, knitting, sewing, or piece of wood to whittle in their hands. A few entertainers had already taken advantage of the gathering of the crowd, putting on a show of juggling, contortionism, balancing or magic.

'I haven't had my breakfast yet!' Carey explained as her stomach quietly rumbled. 'I was hoping to get some fresh bread!''

There was knock on the caravan's rear door. With a well-practised signal to everyone but Grudo that they should either hide or stay perfectly still, Carey went to answer it.

The woman at the door was so Faded that Carey could easily see right through her, seeing a man just behind her unloading fresh bread, fruit and other essential food from a small cart.

'You'll be wanting fresh bread, I take it?' the woman said with a smile that seemed like nothing more than a trick of the light.

Before Carey could express her surprise, the woman herself appeared briefly startled, exclaiming, 'My my, I should've been expecting it of course; but it's still a shock seeing you like this, if you don't mind me saying so!'

She studied Carey closely as she spoke, an experience made even more eerie for poor Carey because she could see that the man standing behind was also staring at her in amazement.

'I'm...I'm sorry,' Carey stammered uneasily, 'but I haven't got any money ready, so I need to–'

'Money?' The woman started, as if offended. 'Oh, you don't need money, girl!' she added kindly. 'It's free, free for you. Not just from me, you understand? We all had a collection, knowing that you'd be short of provisions after your unexpectedly long journey here.'

The man was now stacking the sacks of food up against the side of the caravan, gradually emptying the cart. He was no longer staring at Carey but, rather, was carefully admiring the caravan.

'Why, thank you, that's...well, could you please thank all your friends for me?' Carey was a little embarrassed by the woman's unexpected generosity. 'I'm...I'm...well, I don't know what to say. This has never happened to me before.'

'Well, to us neither of course!' the woman said mysteriously, grinning hugely.

'Oh, the show!' Carey said, thinking she understood what the woman meant. 'Are you really saying you've never seen a show before?'

'The show? Well, of course, we've seen _plenty_ of shows!' The woman reached out to tenderly stroke Carey's cheek. 'But not _your_ show, Carey!'

Perhaps Carey should have asked how the woman knew her name. But the thought didn't even cross her mind, for as soon as the woman touched her, she felt happier than she had ever felt in her life.

Her mother and father were standing close by, holding hands as they proudly watched over her. For a moment, it felt as if they were about to step even closer to her, to embrace her and tell her to stay a while longer with them, for they knew how much she had missed them.

But the woman withdrew her hand, and the vision vanished, as if it had been nothing more than Carey's overactive imagination. Even so, Carey reached for the woman's withdrawing hand, hoping to bathe in that wonderfully uplifting experience once more. But her hand passed through the woman's arm as if there were nothing there, despite the way it had felt so soft and warm and real against her cheek.

It hadn't been a real experience, of course, Carey realised. She had no idea what her mother had looked like. The woman in her vision wasn't her own mother but someone else's mother, an image formed from pictures of another woman who had featured so much in her life; the mother of the Porcelain Child.

She still tingled with an incredible sense of joy, however, a joy that she saw replicated in the woman's beatific smile.

'Please, I hope you don't mind me asking,' Carey said tentatively, 'but I've noticed that, well, although I'd expected that there'd be an _acceptance_ of the Fading here, you seem – well, even a little happy about it!'

'People like myself don't call it the Fading anymore, Carey dear. We're the Illumini, or, as some call us, the Illuminated. What we _have_ accepted is that soon we'll be once again re-joining the Memeory that forms this world and everything in it.'

'Then...you...sort of fade away into this memory?' Carey was thinking of her mother and father once more, wondering if the woman meant that everybody disappeared into this 'memory' as she called it.

'"Become as one with it" you mean?' the woman chuckled good naturedly. 'Goodness gracious no, child! What would be the point of that, eh, if we simply ceased to exist as individuals by being absorbed into some vast, other thing? We'd just as surely be gone now, wouldn't we? No no; we still remain as we are, for this is as we always were.'

She tapped her head.

'It's up here that counts; who we really are. And it's only taken up temporary lodging here too, forming what we falsely think is _us_ around it. It's our _thought_ that creates the body, not the other way around, like we think. _That's_ the real us; and _that_ can't die. _That_ will always live on. No one can take that away from us, because it always was and always will be.'

She passed her hand through the wooden frame of the caravan's doorway.

'We create this from wood and iron, yet fail to realise we form the wood and the iron itself. The trees, the rocks, the soil; we don't just _fill_ everything, we _are_ everything. We've forgotten that we've created all these false boundaries, these imaginary edges were we think one thing ends and another begins.'

The woman could see the doubt on Carey's face.

'Tell me,' she said, 'when you're frustrated, and the things around you seem to only add to your frustration by letting you down; do you think that's a _coincidence_? Do you think it only happens to you?'

'These could do with putting somewhere safe,' the man unintentionally interrupted as he pointed to the large jugs he'd placed against the caravan's wheel. 'It's the spirit; for your little friends,' he added nonchalantly, grinning up at Carey.

'Friends?' said Carey, taken aback. 'Oh, er, you mean _lamps_ ; spirit for my _lamps_!'

After swapping a knowing glance with the man, the woman said, 'Don't you worry Carey; if you're not ready to introduce the others to us just yet, we understand. They've been a secret for so long, a few more minutes or hours won't make any difference now, will it?'

'I think she means us, Carey,' Dougy said, crawling out with relief from beneath a pile of costumes, where he'd been getting hotter and hotter with every passing second.

'Ah, Dougy!' the woman said with obvious delight. 'See Carey, I said we'd understand.'

' _I_ don't understand!' Carey exclaimed in exasperation. 'I don't understand how you know so much about us! How you seemed to be expecting us!'

'Well, because of the Illuminator, of course! He somehow sees so much of what's going on in the world. He doesn't tell us everything he sees, naturally; but he does keep us informed of things he believes might concern us, such as your arrival in town.'

'Then he knows we're here?' Carey glanced back over her shoulder, almost as if she could somehow see through the caravan's roof and see the gleaming palace towering over them. 'He knows _why_ we're here?'

'Of course he knows; there's little he doesn't know, you ask me.'

The others had all cautiously stepped out of their hiding places, blinking, stretching, smiling stupidly, as if they had all just woken up from a dreamy sleep. It was so unusual to be revealing themselves to someone other than Carey, a totally new experience for them.

They looked to Carey, waiting for her permission to step outside.

Carey nodded, smiled. She and Grudo stood aside, leaving the way towards the door clear.

The woman stepped back, clearing the doorway.

Being the bravest, Peregun was the first to approach the open doorway. He paused on the top step, looking out over the assembled crowd.

'Peregun! It's Peregun!' someone cried out excitedly.

As one, as if it were a vast living creature, the crowd audibly breathed in before erupting in cheers, clapping and joyful laughter. It rippled and swayed too, as people moved to get a better view.

'Neris! Neris is there too now!' the cry went up as Peregun began to nervously descend the steps and Neris took his place.

'Ferena!'

'Durndrin!'

'Dougy!'

The crowd shouted out their names as they each appeared in the doorway. Each also received a fresh, excited burst of clapping and cheers.

On reaching the bottom of the short flight of wooden steps, they were immediately surrounded by people wanting to touch them, hug them, or drape silk or lace scarves and neckerchiefs about them. Everyone stared at them with the awe of disbelieving children. The children themselves chuckled when they saw that, for once, they weren't the smallest people in the crowd.

Carey laughed too when she saw how bewildered her friends were. They were edgy, enthralled, amazed, like children experiencing a dip in the sea for the very first time, being both incredibly scared and yet also ridiculously exhilarated.

And every one of them giggled with happiness.

*

Grudo was the next to peer out of the door, bending low and edging out slightly sideways to get his massive bulk smoothly through the door frame.

'Grudo!' everyone yelled in a mix of joy and wonderment at his size.

As he stepped down he looked just as bewildered as the others. He had, of course, walked and moved amongst living people many times, but he had never been greeted in such an ecstatic fashion. So, just as for the others, all this was an entirely new experience for him.

Children rushed towards him, almost treating him like a playground climbing frame in the way they reached up for and swung off his massive arms, or sat astride his feet so that they had a ride as he walked.

Finally, Carey appeared in the doorway, pausing as everyone else had done so far to take in this wonderful sight of a massed crowd cheering their every appearance and move. The clapping and cheers for Carey were the loudest of all, however.

With a smile, the woman and her companion began to step away, taking their now empty cart with them.

'Wait, wait – I didn't thank you enough for everything,' Carey said just in time to the woman before she disappeared into the crowd. 'I mean, I'm sorry, I'm so rude; I never asked you your name, even though you brought me all these free supplies.'

'Veraiconica,' the woman replied; then she turned, walked off and became one more person in the vast tide of love and joy surrounding Carey and her friends.

Ferena was showing a group of astounded children how her wings flapped, jumping up in the air as if about to take off, then shrugging sadly as she explained they no longer worked as well as they used to. Peregun was charming an excited gaggle of young women, even though every one of them was at least twice his height. Neris was being as equally seductive, the men surrounding her entranced by her beauty and elegant moves, though even women were clamouring around her, asking for all manner of advice on controlling their husbands' wayward ways. Durndrin was smoking a pipe, regaling his own admirers with some tales or adventures that seemed to involve an awful lot of hand twirling, swift leaps, and spins. As Carey looked around, Grudo appeared to have mysteriously vanished until she saw him seated on the floor, quite happily acting as the adventure playground the children had taken him to be. As for Dougy, well, he really was nowhere to be seen; Carey could only assume that, like any other dog, he was tearing around in-between people's legs and feet, and he was wherever the crowd appeared to flow, shiver and abruptly laugh out as if unexpectedly disturbed.

Carey walked amongst everyone as if in a dream, unable to take it all in. She couldn't hear what they were all saying. They moved in and out of her vision without her really registering their presence.

Her mind was on the show they would have to put on.

How could they put on a show that wouldn't disappoint the high expectations of all these people?

What show could it be?

It couldn't be _The Porcelain Kingdom_. How many times must they have seen that? How many times had they heard the story?

How could you possibly put on a play that would be all about them? They'd spot flaws in the story. They might even be insulted. After all, every story needed a slight retelling to become a play; you added lines of speech, or bursts of action, all things that might only be implied in the original but were necessary to tell the tale accurately. Unfortunately, there was always someone who disagreed with the changes you'd made.

No no; it couldn't be _The Porcelain Kingdom_.

'Ferena!' she shouted, spotting her running amongst the crowd, leading a line of children. 'The show; what play should we put on?'

'We don't _need_ to put on a show, Carey; we could just fall down and they'd all cheer!'

As Ferena and her group snaked off into the crowd, Carey looked anxiously around for one of the others.

'Durndrin! The show!' Carey cried out.

'Yes, yes!' Durndrin yelled back enthusiastically. 'We _must_ put on a show for them; without fake strings too!'

Neris was already putting on a show, a dance of twirls and low bows. Peregun, spotting Carey heading towards him, was too excited to give her time to speak.

'Isn't all this amazing Carey? We don't have to hide away in secret anymore! It's like...it's like we really are alive Carey! You did it girl, you did it; you've given us a life, of a kind!'

'But the _show_ Peregun; we need to prepare for the show!'

'Yes, yes, we're all prepared Carey! All the costumes are ready!'

'No no; it can't be _The Porcelain Kingdom_. Not here!'

Neris glanced up from her dancing, instantly understanding Carey's dilemma.

'How about _The Caliph's New Lace-maker_?'

'No, no Neris; not even one by the Illuminator, I think. They've probably heard it too many times. We need something else; a tale from one of our other books!'

'But Carey, we haven't rehearsed!' Ferena insisted apprehensively as she snaked past the others once more.

'Rehearsed? Oh come on girl, we know most of these tales off by heart!' Neris replied dismissively.

'That's right; I could do them in my sleep!' Durndrin agreed.

'You _do_ do them in your sleep, dear,' Neris pointed out.

' _The Lion who Refused to Roar_ has always been my favourite!' panted Dougy as he suddenly appeared from between everyone's legs. 'Look, I've _finally_ admitted I can't help it,' he added, noticing Neris's admonishing glare as he began to hungrily lick the hands of the giggling children. 'And you know what? I'm having _fun_!'

Carey had never felt so confused, so unsure about what to do.

She looked around at the happy crowd, wondering how she could ever hope to please them when they had all gathered so early and waited so long.

The sun was rising but still low in the sky. Its rays played along the sides of the looming palace, the stone glistening as if it were the finest glazed porcelain, apart from those areas still aglow with a flickering scarlet and crimson, as if set aflame.

'I know,' Carey suddenly said, 'I know the show to put on.'

*

# Chapter 15

The Porcelain Doll

Like any other child, Kilita always looked forward to and enjoyed the bedtime stories that her mother and father would read to her. They were almost always fairy tales, of course, but that didn't matter to Kilita, as these were her favourite stories.

The favourites amongst her favourites, however, were the tales of the Porcelain Princess. So much so, in fact, that her parents found that they were having to make up their own tales of the Princess, adding these stories to the many legends that had already grown up around her. Fortunately for the girl, her mother had a lively imagination, while her father was exceptionally good at putting on the gruff voices of ogres or the tinnier tones of fairies, bringing everything to life for her.

Throughout the day, Kilita would repeat these stories to her enthralled friends, varying them slightly by taking out the parts of tales that seemed even to her to be obviously ridiculous and unbelievable. For, unusually for her village, Kilita didn't think these stories were fairy tales at all, but were descriptions of a kingdom that really existed.

'Oh, she'll grow out of it, you'll see,' Kilita's mother would reassure her father. 'All children do after a while; let's just leave her believing in magic for a little bit longer, eh?'

As Kilita's group of friends grew up, the older ones gradually stopped believing in the magic. They began to secretly find it amusing that Kilita continued to believe in such obviously silly stories.

'This _is_ going on too long,' her father said to her mother. 'Perhaps I should tell her that, even though I've travelled just about everywhere selling our pottery, I've never come across anything that resembles this magical kingdom.'

'No no, dear; she's still so young. It might break her heart to learn the truth. I have a better idea; let's buy her a book, in which she can see for herself that the story isn't real but just a fairy tale.'

Now books were expensive, particularly the original books illustrated by the Illuminator. Even so, Kilita's parents loved her dearly, and wanted the best for her that they could afford. Naturally, they couldn't afford a book by the Illuminator, but slightly less expensive copies were available.

Kilita's eyes opened wide with wonder when her parents presented her with the book. They widened even farther as she opened the book and took in the beautiful illustrations.

The Princess was far more beautiful than Kilita had ever imagined. The palace, too, was far taller, much whiter, and sparkled with more light than she would have guessed.

She touched one of the pictures of the Princess, having heard in many tales that if you touched the illustrations, the people portrayed seem to move, even to come alive, beneath your fingers. In some rare cases you could find yourself somehow transported to the kingdom itself.

Nothing happened.

She could have been disappointed, but she wasn't.

She realised that the book must have cost her parents a ridiculous amount of money.

'It's the most amazing thing I've ever owned,' she said, before telling them how much she loved them.

'Now I know what it looks like, I've even more chance of finding her kingdom,' she added proudly.

' _Finding_ her kingdom?' her mother repeated in disbelief.

'Oh, I know it won't be easy,' the girl replied, having misunderstood her mother's bewilderment. 'I've been trying to work out where it might be for so long now, but it's difficult because there are so many stories; and I'm not sure which are true and which have just been made up.'

'Kilita,' her father said suddenly, seeing this as an opportunity, 'have you ever thought that it doesn't seem _quite_ believable, does it, that a princess made of porcelain could be alive?'

'But father, I've often heard you saying that porcelain is the most magical substance in the world!'

Her parents sighed resignedly. They had indeed said this, and many many times too.

Being potters, they had been seeking the secret of making porcelain for years. They experimented almost daily with exotic chemical mixtures, the addition of strange ingredients, the changing of oven temperatures. Yet still the secret eluded them.

'If she still won't grow out of this strange belief,' Kilita's mother said to her father later, 'then perhaps we should combine our own obsession with hers to help take her mind off it; because by giving her her own piece of magic, perhaps we can shake her out of this nonsense once and for all!'

Now they practised finding the secret of porcelain every spare moment of the day, because their love for their daughter was now involved. At last, they achieved their goal, their first creation from this magical substance being a delicate face, a fine pair of hands and arms, the lower legs of a child. The rest they created from material stuffed with rags, hiding it all behind a dress made from the best lace they could afford.

As soon as she saw the porcelain doll, Kilita loved it more than anything else in the world, apart from her parents. Straight away, she refused to be ever parted from her doll, whom she called Tiko.

Tiko would sit up alongside Kilita in bed as they listened to the bedtime stories, wide eyed in amazement at what she was hearing, never daring to interrupt. She would go to sleep as soon as Kilita fell asleep, but would already be awake when Kilita woke up. Sitting at the table for meals, Tiko would never eat, as she was impatient for Kilita to finish, so they could begin playing together once more.

When they went out together, no one thought it unusual. After all, there was nothing strange about a girl of Kilita's age having a doll; it was just her belief that certain fairy tales were true that people found odd.

For once, her parents weren't worried about her. For when she realises her doll can never, ever come to life, they told themselves – despite it being made of the magical porcelain, and despite all the love that had been poured into it during its creation – then, finally, Kilita would come to realise that tales of the Porcelain Princess couldn't possibly be true.

Now when she was out with her friends, Kilita would tell them tales of Tiko. Of course, such tales should have been immediately taken by her listeners as nothing more than made up stories, yet Kilita told them all with such incredible detail, and without changing them in any way each and every time, that some people began to wonder if there wasn't _some_ truth in them after all. More amazingly still, Tiko would sit alongside with a knowing smile on her face, as if proudly listening to the retelling of her adventures. The younger children especially would giggle and chuckle, and gawp in wonder or horror depending on which point the stories had reached.

Every child had already decided on which was his or her favourite story.

Many preferred the stories where Tiko was a little mischievous, a little uncontrollable, such as the time she accidently let a nearby farmer's pigs loose from their sty (an event that everyone knew had actually happened). She tried to round them up, running after them across the fields, only to finish up in such a filthy state that she had to have three very hot baths before she gleamed like a princess once more.

Others always wanted to hear how both Kilita and Tiko had once fallen asleep by a small pool, not realising that it was inhabited by water sprites. Those who knew of the water sprites quite rightly feared them, for they would kidnap unwary children and make them forget all about their parents and friends, their past lives, by taking them down into the watery depths, where they would eventually become water sprites themselves.

And so, as if sleep walking in a powerful dream, Kilita rose to her feet and started walking towards the pool, unknowingly entranced by the evilly giggling water sprites. But, of course, the water sprites weren't to know that Tiko was also alive, thinking she was nothing more than a rather pretty but useless doll. Realising the danger Kilita was in, Tiko chased after her, tugging hard on her dress to pull her back from the water's edge.

But Kilita kept on walking, firmly under the control of the water sprites, and stepped into the pool. Tiko next tried climbing up Kilita's dress, sitting on her shoulders and shouting as loudly as she could in her ears to try and wake her; but it was all no use. Kilita was now up to her knees in the water. At last, the triumphant water sprites rose up from the waters, surrounding poor Kilita as they prepared to drag her down with them back towards the very bottom of the pool.

'Stop, you can't take her,' Tiko cried. 'I feel it's only right that I should warn you that she will be of no use to you, and will bring you only bad luck!'

'No use to us?' The water sprites stopped what they were doing, looking up at Tiko in surprise, for they had never seen anything like her before. 'Bring us only bad luck? How do you know this? Who or what are you?'

'Don't you really know?' replied Tiko, sounding as amazed as she could possibly manage. 'Why, look at me; can't you tell that I am really this poor girl's soul, preparing to depart her? Do you think any girl would be foolish enough to just simply fall _asleep_ by your pool? No, I'm warning you, it brings only bad luck to take the soulless into your home. So I think you would be best returning her to land.'

The water sprites looked at each other as they considered this. Then they looked up at Tiko once more.

'We thank you for your warning,' they said. 'But please, can you stay with her a moment longer to ensure she doesn't fall into our pool by accident? A soulless child can never become one of us!'

'Of course,' Tiko said graciously, glad to see that Kilita had already been released from her charm and was waking up. 'See,' she added, 'I'm taking control of her once more, so that I can lead her back to where she had lain down for her perpetual rest.'

Kilita was still a little dazed, but she could now hear what Tiko was saying. She could also feel the cold of the water she was standing in, and she could see the sprites gathered around her. She slowly turned around in the water, unhurriedly heading back to the land as if still under a spell.

With a series of plops and gurgles, the sprites vanished into the water. And Kilita made her way home, thankful that Tiko her guardian angel had saved her from becoming just one more mischievous water sprite.

'And many of us know that there really is such a pool,' Kilita would warn at the end of her story, 'the deep and dark pool past the windmill that no child must go near.'

Even those who didn't believe the story – and, of course, only the very youngest did – accepted that it made children stay away from what could be a dangerous pool. Another popular story similarly told them that they should be kind to smaller creatures.

A boy from another village took a strange delight in capturing butterflies, pinning them to a board so that he could admire them at his leisure. He thought they looked far more beautiful mounted on his walls than flying around wherever they pleased, sharing their beauty with everyone lucky enough to see them.

When Kilita and Tiko had come across him adding to his collection in the corn fields, Tiko had been briefly left speechless by his cruelty.

'Stop that!' she managed to shout at last.

'Oh, and how are _you_ going to stop me?' the boy sneered at Kilita, thinking she had been the one who had shouted at him.

'We'll pin _you_ to a board if we have to!'

The boy gawped in surprise and horror when he realised that it was the doll who was angrily yelling at him. Dropping everything, he ran back across the fields, heading back to his own village as quickly as he could.

Quickly, Kilita and Tiko released the butterflies he had been collecting in a stoppered pot, watching entranced as the gloriously coloured creatures gratefully fluttered around the girls before flying off. But the boy had also left behind a large bag, and in this bag they found a number of butterflies that the boy had already pinned to a wooden board.

Kilita looked at the butterflies fixed to the board, wishing there was something they could do for them. Tiko began to slowly blow on the wings of the butterflies, making them flutter as if they were all preparing to take off. As she blew a little harder, the wings fluttered harder too, as if the butterflies were now eager to fly away.

Tiko began to carefully remove each pin, pulling it free of the board, then even more carefully withdrawing it completely from the body of the butterfly. The butterfly wings continued to flutter and beat silently at the air; and as Tiko removed each pin, the butterfly would gratefully soar into the air.

Each and every butterfly released by Tiko that day wanted the world to know what she had done for them.

So some changed their patterns to feature Tiko's eyes. Of course, not every butterfly agreed on the shape or colour of Tiko's eyes. But this is only natural, because each one saw her from a different angle, or in a slightly different light, or when she was staring at them in wonderment, or happiness, or when she was full of pity for how they had been so cruelly treated.

Other butterflies included the curls of her hair in their patterns, or the curves of her mouth, even the upturn of her pretty little nose. Still others took on the redness of her lips, the greens and blues of her eyes, the gold of her hair.

And so even today, you can look at a butterfly and see something in its pattern that recalls the time Tiko had rescued them.

As Kilita said the final lines of one of her tales, the listening children would look towards each other, trying to gauge from the expressions of their friends just how much of the story they had believed. They _wanted_ to believe in the magic of the tales, of course, but they didn't want to look too silly either by believing _everything_ they had just heard.

No matter how much of the stories the children took to be true, they would still gather around Kilita to hear other tales, or to hear their favourites told once more. It allowed their parents time to get on with their work around the village, and they showed their appreciation by slipping a coin into Kilita's hand every now and again, or offering her some of their wares or produce.

Kilita's own parents, however, were not at all happy with her storytelling. She was gradually coming to an age where they would have to start looking for a suitable husband for her. But who would accept a girl who seemed to forever have her head in the clouds? Who would marry a girl so obviously unprepared for the arduous life that anyone born into the village had to eventually accept as their lot?

'Oh, will she _never_ grow out of this stupidity?' Kilita's parents sighed.

*

One night, the village was hit by a storm the likes of which had never been seen before, or would ever be seen again.

The rain pummelled even the hardened soil of the roads into a muddy swamp. Wind clawed and tore at the thatch of the houses, threatening to strip many of them bare. It overturned small carts, and tossed discarded farm tools around the streets, transforming them into devilishly dangerous weapons. The thunder rumbled as loudly and regularly as if the whole world were waging war on the poor village. It was so dark that anyone could have been forgiven for believing the sun had been permanently banished.

The only light came from the lightning that struck the ground so hard it shook it and made it tremble. Where the ends of the lightning forks stretched out, they set afire trees, hayricks and barns.

With a crack and crackle of triumph, a bolt reached out for Kilita's home. The thatch immediately burst into flame, the supporting timbers quickly following it. The stored chemicals and pottery glazes inside exploded and burned ferociously, giving no one any chance of escape.

When the storm finally began to ease and the villagers finally dared to leave their homes, very little but a charred mass of timbers and stone remained of the pottery. Despite the still heavy rain, the villagers began to frantically search amongst the wreckage in the hope of finding someone alive. Timbers that had been transformed into little more than charcoal were hefted aside, still smouldering hay from the thatched roof was carried away, heavier pieces were hauled clear by urgently harnessed horses. As the rain at last began to ease and their task became easier, however, it soon became plain to everyone that they were no longer searching for survivors. All they would find now, they all agreed, would be the bodies of the two potters and their daughter.

Even so, their hopes were suddenly raised when they uncovered a section of the workshop that had fallen in on itself in such a way that it had protected a whole area of shelving, with every piece of pottery saved from being even slightly cracked. The heat of the flames had been so intense here, however, that it had not only hardened the porcelain to a gleaming white but, on the side where the flames had been strongest, it had also turned it a bright fire red. Encouraging glimpses of the edges of a white lace dress amongst the shelves similarly turned to disappointment when it was found it was nothing more than the doll Tiko, her face white and smiling, her golden hair transformed into a flaming scarlet matching the red glow of the surrounding pots.

There wasn't a single sign of the family, not a single sign that anyone had even lived here.

No one can remember who first noticed an odd thing about the hardened pots.

Down one side, between the band of red and white, there was a bright mosaic of miniature squares, each one of which contained a mix of intense colours. They were incredibly small sections of Kilita's book, someone realised, which must have shredded and burned in the fire, the individual pieces being carried aloft by the hot air until they stuck to the clay of the pots.

Down the other side of each pot, however, there was something even more remarkable, a pattern of purest magenta running from the red of the flames into the cool safety of the snow white porcelain. And this pattern was the same on every jug, every dish, every jar.

A young girl, a woman, and a man, all holding hands as they fled the flames.

And here, of course, the tale could end.

You could, after all, decide for yourself how the story has ended.

Is it a sad ending, the family having perished in the fire, even though they have at least being immortalised in a popular piece of pottery?

Or is it a happy ending, the pattern being merely a hint that the family have indeed survived?

Perhaps you prefer your endings to be even more magical, in which case you'll prefer to believe that all the love and life Kilita had poured into Tiko had been returned by the now lifeless doll, ensuring that the girl and her parents continued to live on amongst the patterns of their own pottery.

Whichever of these descriptions best describes you, perhaps you should read on.

*

As you're probably aware, the pottery created in the fire became a highly sought after style, leading to countless copies being made and sold around the world. On the rare occasions that an original piece becomes available at a respected auction house, it can expect to command ridiculous prices, as well as much envious squabbling amongst its many collectors.

One of those collectors, we are reliably lead to believe, is the Porcelain Princess herself. She owns at least five pieces, and perhaps even Tiko herself.

Even here though, there are disagreements about how she came to acquire these rare and valuable pieces.

As one version would have it, the Princess had been intrigued by the tales that she had heard and – already in possession of a truly remarkable room made entirely of porcelain – she had sent her soldiers and courtiers far and wide in search of as many original items as they could discover and purchase.

According to another version, however, only Tiko had been acquired in this way, with the aim of reuniting her with the pots that had magically appeared within the porcelain room on the very night of the fire.

But thankfully both versions agree on one thing; when the Porcelain Princess had curiously run her fingers across the porcelain pot, she had felt a connection, a tingling of life. The girl in the pattern moved, turned to her, smiled.

The girl held out her hand, the Princess graciously allowing her to tightly grasp her finger. Gently pulling her finger back, the Princess smiled as first the girl's hand and then her arm came free of the porcelain. More and more of the girl appeared from the pattern of the pot, gradually growing in size as she stepped completely clear.

The girl, of course, didn't let go of her mother's hand. And so her mother was next to step out of the pattern. Kilita's father followed on close behind as he, too, continued to hold his wife's hand, ensuring the connection of new life flowed between them all.

They all looked about themselves in bewilderment. One minute they were trapped in a ferocious fire, and now they were standing in a fabulously beautiful room made entirely of porcelain. And even more amazingly, the Porcelain Princess was standing directly in front of them.

'Are we dreaming? Have we somehow ended up in a fairy tale?' Kilita's parents wondered.

Kilita was as amazed as her parents, but for completely different reasons. She had always believed in the existence of the Porcelain Princess, of course; but as she had grown older, she had also begun to believe that she would never, ever meet her.

'Your highness!' she gasped excitedly, bowing low before her

Kilita's parents fell to their knees, unsure how to behave or what to do.

The Princess held out a hand to Kilita, telling them all to stand.

'This, I believe, is yours,' she joyously said to Kilita, reaching out for and handing Tiko to her.

Gasping in wonder once more, Kilita tightly hugged Tiko close to her cheek.

And Tiko, of course, smiled.

For she couldn't have been happier that this particular story had ended in this way.

*

# Chapter 16

The clapping and cheering at the end of the show was the most enthusiastic they had ever experienced. The crowd that had gathered around them, of course, was the biggest they had ever drawn. Added to this, however, each and every person in the audience had risen to their feet and were now clapping as if the show had been the most amazing they had ever seen.

'I told you all we had to do was fall down and they'd all cheer!' Ferena chuckled excitedly to the others as they trooped on stage to take their curtain call.

This was the first time they had ever taken a curtain call in which they didn't have to pretend they were puppets. They waved and bowed with exhilarated flourishes.

'Er, actually,' Peregun said doubtfully, 'has anyone noticed that they're not looking our way?'

It was true; everyone in the crowd had turned slightly to look towards the palace.

Carey and Grudo had also noticed the crowd's strange behaviour. They curiously stepped out from behind the theatre as the others leapt down from the stage. Moving towards and mingling with the front rows of their audience, they followed everyone's gaze.

Everyone was looking up towards the palace's balcony, where first the curtains and then the immense French windows were slowly being drawn open.

There was a flash of brilliant white in the darkness lying beyond the windows.

And then the Porcelain Princess stepped out onto the balcony.

*

Carey had thought the cheering at the end of their show would be the loudest she would ever hear, but now the cries of jubilation were deafening.

The Porcelain Princess was more resplendently beautiful than Carey had ever imagined. The dress alone glittered as if suffused with the richest pearls, the purest diamonds. Her skin shone in the sunlight as if it were the most glorious mother-of-pearl.

And her smile; her smile was the most gracious smile Carey had ever seen. Carey knew this for sure, even though she was much too far away to see if the Princess was actually smiling or not.

Even more amazingly, she was smiling directly at Carey. Somehow, the Princess had spotted her amongst this vast crowd, singling her out amongst so many to smile at her, and her alone. Welcoming her to the Porcelain Kingdom.

In a daze, Carey moved through the crowd, wanting to get closer, ever closer, to the Princess standing on her balcony. She dimly realised that she must have left her friends behind, but she knew they wouldn't mind, they would understand.

Carey was halfway through the massed crowd when the Princess gave a last, prolonged wave – then vanished once more into the palace, the French windows silently closing behind her.

The crowd sighed, a mix of pleasure and disappointment.

Carey blinked, as if awaking from a dream.

Was that it?

Had she come all this way, only to be rewarded with only the very briefest glimpse of the Porcelain Princess?

It dawned on her that she hadn't thought of how she would manage to arrange an audience with the Princess, let alone the Illuminator.

What if they didn't want to see her?

What if they were too busy?

Even though she was smaller than most of the people standing around her, she could see the high, white walls surrounding the palace rising above the heads of the edges of the crowd. In many places the wall was plastered with posters announcing their show, particularly around the tall white gate pillars, where they had been pasted over other, older posters.

The crowd sighed again. And the gates began to slowly open.

*

# Chapter 17

The crowd obediently parted as the white carriage made its way through them.

How had the Princess managed to get down from the balcony and into the carriage in such a short space of time? Carey wondered. She didn't think it was possible, yet, realising the carriage was heading in her direction, Carey moved aside with everyone else to clear the way for it, hoping to catch another glimpse of the Princess as it made its way past her.

But the carriage was empty.

She wasn't the only one to be disappointed by this. There were many exclamations of surprise, giving Carey the impression that this was all very unusual.

There were even more astonished gasps as the carriage suddenly stopped in the middle of the crowd.

The door opened.

A set of glitteringly white steps dropped down from the bottom of the doorway, the last step hanging just slightly above the floor.

'Well, go on then, my dear.'

Carey felt a gentle push in her back. She looked back over her shoulder. A woman was smiling down at her.

'What?' Carey said, confused. 'I'm sorry; what do you mean?'

The other people standing around her were also smiling knowingly at her.

'Well, obviously, it must be waiting for you Carey!' a man said confidently.

Carey turned back to look at the carriage once more. Yes, it had stopped directly opposite her. And the door was right in front of her.

But all this was just a coincidence, surely?

'No, no; it can't be me,' she insisted nervously. 'I mean, _why_ me? There must be some mistake!'

'This is what you wanted, isn't it?' someone close by said.

'It's your chance to see the Illuminator.'

'Go on girl!' someone else kindly urged as she received another gentle push in her back.

She stepped, almost stumbled forward, expecting the door to humiliatingly close before her as she approached it. But the door remained open, the steps remained in place.

She warily placed a foot on the lowest of the steps, expecting the step to suddenly withdraw from beneath her at any second.

Nothing happened.

She stepped up onto the next step.

She leaned forward into the carriage's wondrously upholstered interior.

As she stepped inside, the steps were swiftly raised behind her, and the door silently closed. As soon as she was comfortably seated, the horses began to elegantly and smoothly turn the carriage around.

The crowds parted once more for the carriage. Seeing Carey inside, they waved and cheered as if it were the Princess herself making her way through them.

As she wasn't sure what else she should do, Carey cheerfully waved back.

*

Even as her white carriage slowly approached the open gates, Carey could see the black carriage waiting inside the walls. The black horses impatiently pawed the ground, eager to set out on their own task, even though there must still be quite a time to pass before they'd be allowed to leave. Perhaps they were always on call, Carey reasoned, as no one was really sure when they would be next needed.

The gates swung silently to behind her as the carriage entered the palace courtyard.

Suddenly she felt very alone. There were no signs of any human activity. Even the cheering of the crowd had abruptly come to an end as the gates had closed, as if their closing had instantly drowned out all sound from outside.

The courtyard, however, was magnificent, with plush green lawns framed and cut across by a whirl of paving. Trees and bushes had been carefully trimmed into all manner of elaborate shapes, from squares to pyramids, and spirals to web-like structures.

Even leaning against the window and looking up as high as she could, Carey couldn't see where the top of the palace itself ended. She could see, though, that it was made up of an array of towers sprouting still further towers, all held together by vast, connecting arches and bridges. It glittered as if formed from the most glorious coral, the clouds flowing past its upper reaches like languidly shifting shoals of fish.

The carriage drew to a halt at the bottom of an incredibly wide set of steps that elegantly curved their way up towards the palace's immense doors. As the carriage's door opened, so did these great doors.

Tripping down the carriage's own steps, Carey stepped out onto the staircase. The carriage's door closed quietly behind her then, with nothing more than the almost silent trotting of the horses, the carriage slowly drew away from the steps, leaving Carey all alone beneath the imperiously dominating palace.

Carey quickly ascended the stairs. She stepped through the great doors.

It was like walking into the very midst of a rainbow (if, of course, that were actually possible).

Carey had once been fortunate enough to bathe in a completely clear pool beneath a waterfall where, when she ducked below the surface, she was amazed to see how the sunlight split into thousands of sparkling rainbows, playing amongst the ripples and waves flowing everywhere about her. But that experience was as nothing to what she was seeing now.

As if the world's entire hoard of jewels had been crushed and scattered in the air, every colour Carey had ever come across sparkled and glowed, hovered and flowed, no matter where she looked. The light formed into foxes, cows, dragons, men, women, ships, and castles, all of them lingering and mingling in the vast space stretching before her.

Only when she ignored all this imposing play of light and forced herself to look beyond it did she see the building's actual structure, as minimal as it was. The stonework was little more than a fine tracery, with vast windows of stained glass supported between it. Gigantic circular windows, formed like the closely set sails of a windmill, twirled slowly as a light breeze caught and rippled along their edges.

Suddenly, Carey didn't just feel all alone but also very small and inconsequential too.

Why would the Porcelain Princess, let along the Illuminator, want to see _her_?

And even if they did, what if all the tales she had heard about the Illuminator before the Princess's arrival were true? What if she didn't really control him, but he, secretly, controlled her?

Where were all the demons, the devils, who had once inhabited the dark tower?

She shivered as a huge, dark shape enveloped her, seemingly passing through her as it continued to whirl on through the air. It was a whale, colossal and beautiful, and actually of the darkest blue rather than black. It appeared to rise up through the space, as if striving to leap free of the building itself.

For the first time, she began to recognise the characters flowing about her.

_The Fox's Fingers_.

_The Old Woman & the Young Girl's Shoes_.

_Our Laudable Tinker & the Impoverished Judge_.

They were all taken from tales that the Illuminator had illustrated. Some that she recognised, others that she didn't, or at least couldn't yet place.

The whale swam amongst them all, chased by the white sails and bright pennants of a pursuing fleet.

Ah yes; she knew _that_ story.

*

# Chapter 18

The Whale & the Devil

For the eighth time that year, the fishing fleet returned from a month at sea with little to show for it.

'The shoals have deserted us!' the fishermen unhappily wailed.

'The men have let us down again!' the women stormed.

'Our mothers leave us to go hungry!' the children complained.

'We can't feed our horses, so they can't plough the fields.

'We can't feed our dogs, so our hunting fails.

'We can't feed our cats, so rats and mice steal our supplies.

'We can't feed our land, so all our corn dies.'

But on the ninth time that the fleet set sail, a whale appeared amongst them.

'It's an omen!' the men happily cried. 'A good omen! See how its spout bursts forth like a fountain of plenty. Follow the whale, and it will lead us to fresh shoals!'

So the men trimmed their sails, and set to their oars, and eased on their rudders, following the whale across the sea to a fishing ground the likes of which they had never seen. They cast their nets, they drew them in.

'Look at our nets! They're fit to burst!' the men yelled in delight as they hauled catch after catch aboard, more than they had ever caught, more than they needed.

'Only fools would scorn such good fortune,' they told each other happily as they set for home.

'The shoals have returned to us!' the fishermen triumphantly declared.

'The men have done us proud again!' the women trilled.

'Our mothers would never let us go hungry!' the children sang.

'We can feed our horses, so they can plough the fields.

'We can feed our dogs, so our hunting's a success.

'We can feed our cats, so rats and mice won't steal our supplies.

'We can feed our land, so all our corn grows so high.'

And so now each month the fleet set sail, it waited patiently for the arrival of the whale.

'There, there's the whale!' they would cry out excitedly as she came amongst them once more.

So they trimmed their sails, and set to their oars, and eased on their rudders, following the whale across the sea to fishing grounds the likes of which they had never seen. They cast their nets, they drew them in.

'The small fish, who needs them?' the men declared, tossing the dead fish they didn't need back into the sea.

'Don't look down on such good fortune,' others yelled, cramming their holds so full of fish that many were crushed and made useless to anyone.

But on the ninth time that the fleet followed the whale, the shoals weren't quite so plentiful anymore.

'Why, we've often seen better catches than this!' the men grumbled, remembering only the good times, and forgetting the bad.

They cast their nets, they drew them in.

'What fools threw away perfectly good fish last time?' they moaned.

'Don't pack them in so badly we waste them!' the captains barked.

'Why didn't we smoke and preserve the fish when they were plentiful?' their crews muttered.

So they trimmed their sails, and set to their oars, and eased on their rudders, and headed for home.

'The shoals aren't what they were!' the fishermen howled.

'The men bring back mostly excuses again!' the women snapped.

'Our mothers sometimes let us go hungry!' the children whined.

'We can barely feed our horses, so they struggle to plough the fields.

'We can barely feed our dogs, so our hunting's not what it was.

'We can barely feed our cats, so rats and mice nibble at our supplies.

'We can barely feed our land, so all our corn doesn't stretch so high.'

One day, a man arrived in the fishing village.

'You fools!' he snarled. 'Don't you see what's really happening here? Don't you see who's really to blame? The whale has been feeding off _your_ good fortune! Following you to the fishing grounds fortune led _you_ to! What do you think such a great beast feeds on? Shrimps and pebbles? It's been feeding on your fish with its great maw, and scaring the rest away with its even greater greed!'

'No, no,' some good men amongst the villagers protested in defence of the whale. 'The whale herself was our great fortune, let us not forget that!'

'I have it on good authority,' the man reposted, 'that the whale is akin to the Devil himself!'

'No, no!' Now even fewer men protested the whale's innocence. 'Don't you remember how we all saw and commented on the way the sun's light would form rainbows in the spray of the whale's glorious spouts of water?'

But these men were now very few, and they were easily shouted down.

'We don't need to listen to you!' the villagers cried. 'Who are you to think you speak for us, when this most learned and intelligent man has fortunately arrived amongst us to warn us of our folly?'

'This is correct,' the man said, 'for I have indeed studied such things to a most impressive degree. But I will forgive the ill-informed amongst you, for they are not to know as I know – having read the most august journals, available only to the world's elite – that the whale has been observed on many occasions dragging simple fishermen like yourselves to their deaths!'

'How? How does the whale do this?' all the men now fearfully demanded of the man, fearing for their own lives, thinking themselves truly fortunate that this man had arrived in time to warn them of the fate that could have awaited them.

'By devious means, by entrapment, as the Devil himself works! The whale lies still upon the ocean, allowing soil to wash upon its back. Then the birds bring seeds, and grass and bushes grow upon it, until the whale takes on the semblance of an island. And then when some poor fishing vessel seeks safe harbour from the tossing waves, and beaches itself on this semblance of an island; well then at last the whale dives down and down into the sea's depths, taking the boat and all its poor men with it!'

'It's true, it's true!' someone cried out in terror. 'How many times did we see this monstrous beast waiting like this but we only thought it was basking in the sun?'

'So, why do you hunger and go without when you can kill two birds with one stone?' the man reasonably asked the crowd. 'For the whale itself is the equivalent of a vast catch of fish, with meat and blubber and oil to keep the whole village fed for a year!

'You can feed your horses, so you can plough the fields.

'You can feed your dogs, so your hunting's a success.

'You can feed your cats, so rats and mice won't steal your supplies.

'You can feed your land, so all your corn grows so high.'

'The shoals will return to us!' the fishermen merrily predicted.

'The men will have done us proud again!' the women reassured themselves.

'Our mothers will never let us go hungry!' the children believed.

So the fishermen trimmed their sails, and set to their oars, and eased on their rudders, and the fleet set sail. They cast their nets aside, they drew out their harpoons. And soon the whale appeared amongst them.

'See how its spout bursts forth like a poisoned spring!' the men cried. 'It's an omen! An ill omen! Follow the whale, else it will lead our souls to their doom!'

Following the whale across the sea, they came to fishing grounds the likes of which they had never seen. But they ignored the fish. They didn't draw them in. They cast their harpoons.

In their anger, they cast them again and again. But not one hit its mark, for the great whale at last dived down and down, seeking safe harbour in the depths of the sea.

And the whale, like the great shoals of fish, was never seen again.

And what of the Devil?

Well, that very night he stole away from the village, laughing at the fisher folk and their stupidity.

*

# Chapter 19

At the other end of the great room, a large set of doors silently opened.

When the Porcelain Princess stepped through the doors, she sparkled in the colour-saturated air as if she were the most glorious thing in existence.

Never, ever, had Carey seen so many brilliant tones and shades all in one place. The reds of robin breasts, the greens of butterfly wings, the blues of warm seas, the silver of flashing swords, the golds of endless wheat fields, and a glorious magenta that swirled and eddied as if drawn from the midst of the cosmos itself. A treasure hoard would have seemed dull and uninteresting by comparison.

The Princess glided across the floor. She smiled at Carey – and then she stopped, and she stared, and her eyes opened wide in amazement.

Carey wasn't sure, but as she was also completely amazed, she guessed she must look the same.

_Exactly_ the same.

They studied each other as if catching themselves by surprise in a mirror and, suddenly realising that the image was more real than they had previously imagined, reaching out as if to touch this semblance of their hair, this perfect copy of their face; but then swiftly withdrawing their hand back, as if thinking that fulfilling the touch would somehow either destroy the magic or, worse, draw them ever deeper into its grip.

'I...I can't believe it...'

'I was expecting...but not this...'

'...told it was true, yet...'

'...the pictures, they showed that...'

They circled each other, each swapping one place for the other, then swapping back again as they moved positions once more.

The Princess giggled.

Carey chuckled.

Then they both laughed together, as if they could have been long lost sisters reunited again at long last.

'I would have invited you here earlier,' the Princess finally admitted, indicating with a wave of her hand that she wanted Carey to walk with her back towards the doors leading deeper into the palace, 'but I wanted to give you time to put on one of your shows. I'm sorry I missed it; but I heard your puppets were remarkable!'

As the Princess spoke and walked alongside her, Carey noticed that her movements weren't at all puppet-like, as she'd come to expect living with her friends.

'And that's why you're here of course; to give your friends life?'

The Princess said it in such a way that it came across as a question, as if she were giving Carey the chance to ask herself if that were the real reason why she was here.

'I realise it seems odd, even a little greedy,' Carey admitted. 'I mean, it's already incredible that my friends can move and talk, as if alive. But as you know – well, I _suppose_ you know, seeing that everyone here already seems to know so much about me! – it's not a real life, but all thanks to these ingenious mechanisms developed by my grandfathers and what have you. The trouble is, as my friends can _think_ , they _know_ it's not a _real_ life. They realise what they have, but also what they're _missing_.'

'Hah, so you're saying they want to be _really_ alive; like me, you mean?'

The Princess smiled as she observed Carey curiously.

Carey sighed with relief. She had begun to wonder how she would phrase the many questions she wanted to ask the Princess.

'Er, yes,' Carey said, still a little nervous about how she would ask her next question. It seemed a rude, intrusive question to ask; yet she had travelled so far, and for so long, she _had_ to ask it now. 'How did it happen? _How_ did you suddenly come to life?'

'Well, as it seemed to _me_ , Carey, I _did_ just "suddenly" come to life! Like anyone else, I can't remember a time when I _wasn't_ here; at some point, I just became aware that I was _here_. Strange as it seems, when it comes to explaining why and how I'm here, just like anyone else I only have the stories about me to go on. Are you saying you don't believe those stories, Carey?'

'Imagination? You believe it really is the power of everyone's imagination that gives you life?'

The Princess stopped in the doorway, turning to look back into the room they had just stepped out of. The air swam with colour, flowing, undulating and glistening like a captive aurora borealis.

'See all this quite wonderful magenta?' the Princess asked, pointing out the areas where the purplish-pink tones were most evident.

'How could I miss it? It's beautiful.'

'Well, take a look at the windows themselves; then tell me what you see there.'

Carey looked up towards the windows, taking in the incredible beauty of the stained glass images, the bright yet surprisingly dark reds, greens, blues and yellows, the sparkling, misty silver.

And then it struck her what the Princess wanted her to see; or, rather, _not_ see.

'There's no magenta in the windows themselves; not even any purples or pinks. But doesn't that just mean that the colours are blending in the air to create the magenta?'

'Yes; and no. For, as our finest alchemists and natural philosophers can verify, magenta is a colour that shouldn't exist.'

'Shouldn't exist?' Carey was confused. 'But it's _there_ ; we can _see_ it.'

Turning back to face the way they had originally been heading, the Princess started walking once more.

'Yes, yet according to those who know of spectrums and rays of light, magenta exists in space already occupied by other _types_ of rays; rays that can transfer messages over great distances, or even damage our bodies.'

'The colour magenta can _harm_ us?' Carey said, horrified, as she walked alongside the Princess.

'No, no, thankfully not,' the Princess chuckled. 'I simply used it as an example of how things we take for granted aren't always what they seem. Take yourself for instance Carey; how old are you?'

They were moving through the rooms much quicker than they were walking, as if the carpet beneath their feet were also swiftly moving, taking them along at great speed through hallways and larger, multi-mirrored areas.

'Oh, well, I...I've never really thought of it before,' Carey replied, a little surprised that she couldn't give a more definite answer. 'I've been so busy travelling, trying to find your kingdom or arranging shows, it never seemed important to me.'

It was true, she suddenly realised; she had never given her age much if any thought. There had always seemed to be so many more important things to think about.

'Ah yes; I take it you've been searching for a _very_ long time. For how long, do you think? Months? Years?'

Just as the carpets in the rooms seemed to be carrying them smoothly along, whenever they reached and stepped onto one of the long, gracefully curving staircases, these too carried them upwards at dizzying speed.

'Oh years and years, I think,' Carey answered the Princess doubtfully. She couldn't really remember how long it had been. 'Well, no – I suppose it must just _seem_ like years and years, of course. I stopped counting long ago; so long ago in fact, I can't even remember when I stopped counting!'

'Well, to _look_ at you,' the Princess said, looking Carey up and down, 'I'd say you were around fourteen or sixteen. And me? Even though I look very much the same age as you, I suppose you have _some_ idea of _my_ age, yes?'

'Oh, almost a hundred years at least, maybe,' Carey said casually before realising it might sound like an insult to the Princess. 'Oh, er, sorry! Not that you look anything _like_ it, of course!'

The Princess laughed good naturedly.

'Like you, I gave up counting _long_ ago!'

*

# Chapter 20

'From here, you can see where the Illuminator works,' the Princess declared proudly, casually waving a hand towards the incredibly tall windows running the entire length of a corridor they had entered at the top of a long, graciously rising flight of stairs.

Their walking now was unhurried and back to normal, as neither the carpet nor the floor moved in this particular room. So Carey excitedly skipped over towards one of the windows, leaning closely against the glass and peering up towards the slim, high tower she could see jutting out from the wall at the farthest end of the corridor.

At its top, the towered flared out into what could have been a ball of glass, it had so many windows. On one side, however, this ball extended out into yet another but stubbier tower, this one completely windowless and topped with a gloriously white dome. The dome was split down its centre, with what looked like a gigantic telescope protruding from it.

Behind her, Carey heard an odd clanking, a shiver of metal over metal.

Turning, she found herself surrounded by the strangest and smallest knights she had ever seen, every one of which had a long, sharp spear pointed directly at her.

'Captain!' the Princess barked from slightly higher up the corridor.

As Carey had peered out of the window, the Princess had continued to walk along the hallway, and now – hearing the same metallic clinks Carey had heard – she had turned back to see what was going on. In response to her call, one of the armoured soldiers spun around on his heels, giving her a smart salute. There wasn't really anything to differentiate him from his men for, just like them, he was an amalgam of wood, leather and iron plates. He was hardly much taller than Peregun, and moved just as jerkily.

'She's with me, Captain,' the Princess calmly explained.

The armoured men immediately stepped back away from Carey, smartly raising their spears in the same, easy movement and bringing them tightly up against their sides.

'You can stand your men down; and thank you for your and their alertness.'

The men stepped farther back, spinning sharply on their feet. Then each one headed towards an alcove in the wall. As soon as one of them reached an alcove, his constituent parts moved and flowed over each other until he had blended into the wall, a flame and oil reservoir smoothly slipping out from within his back to become an innocent looking wall lamp.

'Sorry, Carey,' the Princess apologised. 'They're here to protect the Illuminator's privacy; because you'd dropped back behind me, they took you as a threat.'

At the farthest end of the corridor, they turned into the doorway that lead into the base of the Illuminator's tower. Spiral stairs ran up through the tower's interior, much as steps run up the inside of a lighthouse, although these were a beautifully elaborate mix of wrought iron and stone.

'You saw the Illuminator's room, when you looked out of the window?' the Princess asked Carey as she led the way up the stairs.

'Yes; with what looks like a large telescope or something?'

'It's a set of lenses, but not a telescope. It's more like, I suppose, a camera obscura; you've heard of a camera obscura before?'

'Isn't it a darkened room, where the lenses can project images from outside against its walls?'

'That's right; only in this case, the room doesn't have to be darkened, as it isn't light but other energy rays that the lenses are collecting together and projecting.'

'Not light?' Carey said breathlessly, the steps running up much higher and for longer than she had originally supposed. 'Is that possible?'

The Princess chuckled.

'Well, obviously yes, Carey; how would the Illuminator create his illustrations otherwise?'

At last, they reached the top of the stairs, coming out into the very centre of what Carey had taken to be a ball of glass when she had viewed it from below. The walls were indeed mainly of glass, with only a wrought iron frame holding the variously shaped panes together. Between these glass walls and the steps there ran a gallery, again of finely wrought and ingeniously patterned iron. The light from the windows illuminated all manner of sketches and watercolours placed around the gallery on easels and slim plinths.

'These aren't illustrations but just ideas the Illuminator's working on,' the Princess explained, seeing Carey's interest in the roughly yet expertly rendered pictures.

Carey recognised the drawing and paintings as work in progress, being familiar with the use of colour swatches and experimental draft outlines when she was designing her posters. Here, too, were sticks of charcoal, pencil stubs, paint blocks, squeezed tubes and bottles of diluting and cleaning oils.

She stared curiously at the various images the Illuminator was bringing together on his canvases and boards and paper. There were deft executions of men toiling, of industry, of whole landscapes being changed. The Elements – Air, Fire, Water, Earth – were portrayed in god-like magnificence, as if the story being told were one of the ancient myths.

There was something about the pictures that seemed familiar to Carey, almost as if they were trying to remind her of a well-known story, yet she couldn't quite work out which one it could be. Although not as brilliantly coloured or detailed as the Illuminator's final illustrations, these sketches still hummed with a vibrancy and life Carey could never hope to capture in her posters.

'I'd always told myself he must have some secret ingredient,' Carey admitted, scrutinising the equipment surrounding the canvases and finding to her dismay that there was nothing out of the ordinary amongst the paints. 'But all I can see here are things I've bought myself.'

'Ah, but for his _final_ illustrations, he of course doesn't use paint!' the Princess replied, looking back as she made her way towards two great doors on the other side of the gallery.

'No paints?'

Looking up, Carey followed the Princess as she crossed the gallery. The doors she was heading for were massive, of both thick oak and iron, and heavily adorned with scenes of beaten and embossed copper

'The colours flow from his fingertips!'

'No! How can he possibly do that?'

'Use your imagination, Carey!' Having tried to open the doors and finding them solidly unmoving, the Princess stepped back with a disappointed frown. 'Ah, sorry Carey; I had hoped the doors would be open. But it seems he doesn't want to be disturbed.'

'But...can't you knock?' Carey was dismayed. 'Can't you just open the doors anyway, ask him if I could please just see him for a moment? I've travelled so far! And for so long!'

She looked up at the doors, massive and impregnable. Just beyond them, just a few steps away now, was the Illuminator, the man she'd been searching for all this time.

'Carey, please try and understand.' The Princess placed a comforting hand on Carey's shoulder. 'Even I rarely get to see the Illuminator; his work is important, difficult, and he doesn't like to be disturbed when he's working on anything. As for opening the doors, well, they can only be opened by a code that even I'm not supposed to know!'

Carey stared forlornly at the doors, wondering what this secret code could be. If only she knew, she'd use it, bursting in on the Illuminator and insisting he helped her friends no matter how busy he was and no matter how upset he'd be at being disturbed.

But the doors were like the forbidding entrance to a fortress, wrought of thick iron, the trunks of great trees. Even the beaten copper panels, she recognised now, emanated a sense of immense power and strength; for they told the familiar tale of _The Sea Empress_.

*

# Chapter 21

The Sea Empress

The vast armies of the great Empress Atlantopatris were feared wherever they went, the thunder of their marching alone enough to make fortresses and walled cities quake and fall in submission. The land she ruled over soon stretched for thousands of miles, taking in forests, mountains, endless grass plains, and great lakes, such that her lands came to be known as The Empire of The Earth.

She had conquered and brought together so many other empires that The Empire of The Earth almost completely surrounded a huge sea, upon which the Empress's trading ships plied back and forth between increasingly prosperous ports. Yet here, the Empress realised, was a weakness to her empire, for the sea was not really hers to control.

Of course, her magnificent navies, just like her invincible armies, had carried all before them, relentlessly obliterating anyone foolish enough to try and oppose them. Yet the sea itself remained unconquered, for it could smash apart a whole naval fleet in little more than an evening of storms. Her trading fleets often fared even worse, their precious cargoes of uncountable gems, heady perfumes and rich silks decorating nothing but the sea bottom rather than the Empress's lords and ladies.

'I must tame this last great foe!' the Empress fumed.

'Build me a ship,' she ordered, 'a ship impervious to her highest waves, her sudden storms, her sharp and hidden rocks. Build it so large that the waves beat uselessly against it, as if it were an island that refuses to succumb to the worst that she can throw against it. Build it with our hardest wood, then plate its hull with our most perfectly formed iron, so that there is no weakness her rocks can probe for. Call her _The Sea Empress_ , for, through her, I will rule over an Empire of The Sea!'

And so the incredible resources of The Empire of The Earth were called upon to build this magnificent ship. Whole forests were cut down and, in innumerable sawmills across the empire, transformed into countless beams and planks. Iron was mined, along with the coal that would smelt it, and worked into girders and plates. Canvas was prepared in sheets encompassing entire fields. Huge caravans of camels and horses and carts transported all this from each and every side of the empire to Atlantopatris's capital. The Empress's fleets were also used in the transportation of these materials, of course, but as if knowing of and fearing the intent of men and their ruler, the sea took a particularly heavy toll of these ships.

Even the shipyard in which the great vessel was being slowly put together had had to be specially constructed. A whole bay had been dammed, then the waters pumped away, creating the dry dock in which the carpenters, ironsmiths, and shipbuilders could safely work.

When, at last, _The Sea Empress_ was complete, the dam was destroyed by setting fire to its props; and the Sea rushed into the bay once more, wondering what she would find there.

The Sea herself gasped at the magnificence of _The Sea Empress_.

As the Empress had commanded, _The Sea Empress_ wasn't so much a ship but a floating island. It was a city of the sea, with buildings of stone and marble, with roads and streets for carts and horses, with markets and places of entertainment, including a coliseum where her citizens would sit enthralled watching chariot races and mock battles. It even had its own harbour and dock, for _The Sea Empress_ was never intended to go ashore but, rather, to let relatively smaller ships move between her and the land.

As _The Sea Empress_ left the shelter of the bay, the Sea laughed with glee; ' _Now_ we'll see just how powerful this arrogant empress is!'

The Sea shrugged her great blue cloak, with its deeper shades of green, its decorative sprays of white. She whipped it up into the air, causing a rippling of wind to become a gust and the gust to become a storm. She threw up her spray, as high as it would go, so that when it fell back to earth it had become a hard, torrential rain.

The Sea beat relentlessly against _The Sea Empress_ , seeking to smash its side with her iron-hard blows, to send it tossing and turning on her highest waves, to send it heading uncontrollably towards her sharp and hidden rocks.

The Empress Atlantopatris was on board, of course. She was in her opulent palace, with its vast marbled halls, its courtyards of vines and fountains, entertaining foreign dignitaries with dancing and feasts, a demonstration of how her power had increased beyond all measure with the building of _The Sea Empress_. Secretly, every dignitary aboard that day wanted the remorseless attack of the Sea to prevail, even if it resulted in their own deaths; for otherwise, who could resist the Empress and her iron-clad ship?

Yet no dancer was forced to make a faulty step. Not even the slightest drop of wine was spilt. For _The Sea Empress_ sailed on as smoothly as if the Sea were at her calmest.

The only ones to shake and quake and shiver and feel sick to their very souls were the assembled dignitaries. For they had seen _The Sea Empress_ 's unbreachable fortifications, that even the greatest fleets would uselessly smash themselves against. They had seen its army of thousands of men, a thousand horses, and hundreds of elephants. If the Sea herself couldn't make this vast war machine tremble, then what chance their empires? That very night, as the Sea herself tired of the fruitlessness of her rage, they each began the process of capitulation and amalgamation into The Empire of The Earth and The Sea.

'How did these weak, puny creatures manage this?' the Sea seethed as she forfeited her great harvests; the shoals that the men hauled in in their nets, the lobsters they raised in their pots, the whales they harpooned and quickly transformed into oil for their lamps and perfumes.

'Hah, working together through me, these weak, puny creatures have turned your own power against you!' the Empress Atlantopatris triumphantly answered, proudly watching the great windmills that turned the immense paddlewheels that churned the sea. 'No force on earth can stop us now!'

Sailing beyond the pillars that hold up the sky, _The Sea Empress_ conquered ever more land for the empire, controlled more and more of the sea. Eventually, with no more land to overcome, no more seas to master, she headed for home.

After combating the ferocious ocean that lay beyond the pillars, the sea around their homeland seemed calm, clear, and reassuringly familiar. After all, for hundreds of years they had recorded and mapped the currents, depths and rocks around these islands, and so they knew of the idiosyncrasies and dangers of these waters surprisingly well. Everyone aboard _The Sea Empress_ laughed at the primitive fears they had once held about these placid seas.

Submitting to the power of _The Sea Empress_ , the blue sea turned white with fear, then blushed pink and red with shame.

'It's coral!' someone cried out, recognising the colours and the shapes of the fragile pieces left floating on the waves. 'We've smashed through a coral reef!'

'Nonsense, we have our maps,' everyone laughed at his alarm. 'The rocks and the coral reef are all far too deep for even our hull to touch!'

But unlike rocks, whose positions rarely change, coral is a living organism, the home and creation of countless, incredibly small creatures. And so the reef had grown in size since it had been mapped all those years ago.

'Besides, our great iron plates can't be pierced or gashed!'

But the coral hadn't tried to either pierce or gash the great iron plates. Instead, turning _The Sea Empress_ 's own weight and momentum against it, the coral had merely buckled the plates.

And the Sea, seeing a small gap appear where the great plates had been joined together, gleefully poured in. She rushed into the holds of the great vessel, where its many captured treasures had been stored. She flooded into the cellars of the great houses, where wines from around the world were shelved. She ran down the city streets, transforming them first into streams then into great rivers.

She brought down the walls of the coliseum, the towers, the windmills. She welcomed the harbour waters back into her embrace once more.

And as the Empress Atlantopatris sank with her great ship, she wailed at the Sea, 'What great and mighty god helped you manage this?'

'Oh great and mighty Empress,' the Sea replied, rippling with laughter, 'let me be the first and last to tell you; you were defeated by the weakest and puniest creatures of all!'

*

# Chapter 22

'Isn't there _any_ way that I can get to see him?' Carey asked wistfully, forlornly staring at the immense doors.

'Sorry Carey, not today it seems.'

The Princess stepped over towards one of the easels, one that supported a large sketchbook rather than a canvas.

'Of course, he's always valued his privacy, putting his work before any socialising; which, I'm afraid, was obviously the cause of so many problems in the past.'

Taking the sketchbook off the easel, she turned and handed it to Carey.

'Until you _do_ get to see him, perhaps this might compensate you for your patience? It's the story he's basing all these ideas on.' With a wave of a hand, she indicated the surrounding pictures. 'You'd be the first to see how you could turn it into a play for your theatre.'

Eagerly flicking through the book, Carey was amazed by the beauty of the Illuminator's flowing script, as well as the energy and skill of the countless coloured sketches and ideas he'd included alongside. Seeing the sketchbook like this, as well as having just had her attention drawn to the panelling on the doors, she suddenly understood what had been familiar about the drawing and paintings displayed around the gallery.

' _The Sea Empress_ ,' she said, finding it hard to hide her disappointment, her sense that she'd been tricked somehow, coming all this way only to be given a story that just about everyone knew. Just as the Princess had done only moments before, she indicated the surrounding paintings with a casually dismissive wave of a hand. 'I mean all these pictures of industry, mining, construction. All the flames, the molten metals and the felling and sawing of the trees; it's just another, more detailed retelling of _The Sea Empress_.'

'Hah, it's _based_ on _The Sea Empress_ , yes,' the Princess agreed surprisingly enthusiastically as she made her way back to and began descending the spiral stairway once more. 'But in this case the Illuminator is trying to imagine what _The Sea Empress_ would be like if, instead of being a _ship_ , it was a _book_!'

'But...but if it's a _book_ , it's just the _story_ of _The Sea Empress_ ; isn't it?'

Carey sounded doubtful as she followed on behind the Princess.

'Quite often, when the Illuminator is trying to think of an original way of telling a story, he first thinks of an amazing or wondrous object, or a powerful sensation, event or song – such as an elaborately carved church, the flowering of a certain bloom, or the anguished love of a repetitive melody – and then he thinks; Now, what would _that_ be like if it were a _book_?'

'I...still don't understand the difference; sorry.'

Despite admitting this, Carey clung on tightly to the sketchbook, realising this might be something incredibly precious and different after all.

'Well _The Sea Empress_ , the _ship_ , of course, was powerful, magnificent, opulent; and yet it contained the minute yet fatal flaw that would doom it!'

'Flaw? I can't remember hearing of any flaw in the ship.'

'The buckled plates, the way a gap appeared at their joints? That could only have happened, the Illuminator has reasoned, if some of the nails holding them together were flawed; perhaps even just _one_ of the nails!'

They had almost approached the bottom of the stairwell, and Cary was just a little dizzy after walking around in circle after circle.

'So the _book_ has a flaw? In its binding? Its cover?'

'No; the flaw must be contained _within_ the story. It mustn't even be clearly described, either, but hidden until it reveals itself through the resulting chaos!'

Carey didn't feel that this conversation was getting her any closer to understanding what the story was all about.

'Well, I must say there are certainly plenty of flaws like that in life,' Carey said, thinking of her own life. 'Although I'm not sure that I've come across any hidden in stories!'

'Actually, I think some of what seem to be our happiest stories have flaws in them, if you think about them hard enough.'

As they had at last reached the bottom of the tower and were standing in the long corridor once more, the Princess had turned to face Carey. She smiled, yet there was a loneliness and sadness in her eyes that Carey hadn't noticed before.

Carey glanced about her at the opulent room, with its rich curtains, its thick, luxurious carpet, its sparkling mirrors framed with ornate gold. Yes, it's a palace, an envious place to live; but just how wonderful a place is it to live in if there's no one to share it with? She realised that she would rather live in her cramped caravan with her friends than here, in all this comfort and indulgence, if it meant living on her own.

The Princess was lonely. It wasn't a fairy tale existence after all.

'What do you do here, Princess? I mean, when you're not running your kingdom; what do you do in your own time?'

Carey suddenly feared she might have gone too far, asking such a rudely inquisitive question. Fortunately, the Princess didn't seem to mind.

'Why, I read of course!' she answered, and gaily enough too to make Carey wonder if she hadn't imagined after all that the Princess seemed lonely.

'That's it? Just read?'

Carey had only just noticed that they weren't heading back the way they had arrived but, instead, had passed through a door leading off from the corridor directly opposite the tower. They were on the moving carpet once more too, hurtling along at ridiculous speed through a series of narrow hallways that finally deposited them in a sunlit reading room. There were only a few shelves, and these held only a few, leather bound books. Other books were laid open on angled tables situated in bay windows, a high chair pulled up at each table, in readiness for anyone who wished to read that particular book. Thin curtains had been pulled across these windows, dimming the light, yet Carey still glimpsed small illustrations in the books that glittered with what seemed to be real gold. The colours were as bright as enamels too; gloriously rich reds, blues and greens.

'This isn't the library, of course; just certain books I've had brought in here for reading.'

The Princess said it remarkably casually, but Carey knew enough about books to know that these were ancient and therefore incredibly rare and expensive. They weren't printed, as most books now were, but hand lettered and illustrated, each one an individual work of art painstakingly created by perhaps one man over years of solitary work. Carey could also tell by the way the pages gleamed that they weren't of paper but of vellum, which pointed to these books being centuries old.

'It's poetry,' the Princess continued to explain, drawing closer towards the books on display. 'Love poetry; so beautiful, so heartfelt, it breaks your heart just reading it.'

The lettering of the books was elaborate, a decoration in its own right Carey thought. But the illustrations were so wonderfully intricate you could get lost just trying to follow the patterns of elongated and intertwining animals and plants. Where the patterns became pictures, they may have been scenes of life from hundreds of years ago, but they were still recognisable to Carey as everyday life of today; farmers ploughing fields, women herding geese, boys and girls playing on greens. Great white castles dominated green fields and forests, red-tiled towns sat beneath snow topped mountains, ships with vast sails sought shelter from storms in busy ports. Then there were the areas of life Carey knew existed, but had never experienced herself; well-dressed ladies attending court, knights being unhorsed in tournaments, pageants of pageboys and musicians.

'There's a romance in these poems that's missing from so many of today's stories,' the Princess sighed.

She reached out and touched one of the pictures. Instantly, her eyes glazed over, a dreamy, dazed look crossing her face as if she had abruptly being transported into the scene. It reminded Carey of the way she felt whenever she touched a character in one of the Illuminator's illustrations.

'The troubadours would tour the land, singing their songs of love.' The Princess spoke as if she really were in a dream.

'Well there's still at least _one_ troubadour left; I meet him when travelling here.'

'You've met a troubadour?'

The Princess said it as if it were the most amazing thing she'd ever heard. Her eyes opened wide as she looked at Carey as if she were the luckiest girl in the world.

'I really didn't realise that there were still any around, although I'd wished and wished and wished that there was at least one who could sing his songs to me! Handsome, witty, playful, charming. Spending all his time writing his songs and stories about the girl he loves!'

As the Princess took her hand away from the picture, Carey saw that it portrayed a golden haired man, mounted on a chestnut horse and playing a lute.

'This troubadour was handsome enough,' Carey said. 'But unfortunately he wasn't very good at his endings!'

The Princess giggled happily.

'Not very good at his endings? That's not unusual for a troubadour, Carey! In fact, that means he's a _true_ troubadour!'

She wistfully turned the pages of the book before her, revealing more and more of the beautiful illustrations, this time of gloriously dressed ladies walking alone in gardens or staring sadly out of windows.

'Many people of today read these songs and think they end strangely, or even that an essential part of it has been lost over the centuries. Yet they simply don't end the way we have come to expect them to end, with everything neatly resolved and explained for us; as if we ourselves have no imagination!'

'But what kind of story is that?' Carey complained. 'Why tell a story if you yourself can't be bothered to work out how it ends? You're saying they expect the reader to come up with their own ending?'

'And why not? He's singing his love song to his beloved; and so only she can decide how it will end – happily or miserably! Only she has the key to unlock the ending he desires! Don't you think that's so wonderfully romantic, Carey?'

She moved towards the window, staring out of it as wistfully as any of the ladies portrayed in the book's illustrations.

'Why can't that happen to _me_ , Carey? Why can't it happen for real? Why can't _I_ have a troubadour who seeks _my_ love?'

Carey realised she should tell the Princess a little more about the troubadour.

'But you're–'

'Yes, yes, I know what you're about to say; but I'm being selfish!' the Princess suddenly declared, excitedly whirling away from the window. 'So locked up in my own selfishness that I'm not thinking of the sadness of this real troubadour, who's hopelessly waiting for his beloved to respond to his verses! I wonder who she is. I wonder how she'll respond. Poor man; to love her so and not know if she returns his love!'

Carey had to stop herself from smiling. The Princess sounded just like the troubadour, with her romantic ideals, the way she talked of love as if it were all some elaborate game.

'Well, I'm not sure if it's really for me to say, Princess; only you could answer your question, I suppose.'

'Me? Why me? Do I know her?'

She rushed towards one of the windows overlooking the town.

'Is it one of the girls in town? How wonderful! Perhaps I could persuade her to make this dear troubadour happy, do you think? I could offer to support their marriage; with flowers and a carriage for their wedding, a pretty little cottage for them to live in!'

Looking away from the window, the Princess noticed Carey's embarrassment.

'Carey? Is there something you're not telling me?'

'The girl _does_ live in town...'

'Hah, I _thought_ so!'

'In fact, I _believe_ she's in this very palace...'

The Princess gasped, her eyes opening wide in delight and astonishment.

'Carey! You? This troubadour loves you!'

She tripped swiftly across the floor, grasping Carey's hands and forcing her into a joyful dance.

'Oh how _wonderful_ Carey, how I envy you! We must arrange–'

She halted in mid-sentence, having realised that Carey was holding back from dancing with her.

'Oh, you don't love him Carey?'

'Well...'

Carey shrugged.

'...it's not _me_ he loves.'

'Not you?' The Princess frowned bemusedly.

Suddenly, the Princess looked strangely horrified.

'It's _me_?' Now she was full of disbelief.

'Me?' She grinned with wide-eyed delight.

'But wait,' she said dismissively. 'He doesn't know me at all!'

'He dreams of you every night, he says,' Carey explained.

'Still; a _dream_.' The Princess frowned thoughtfully. 'In his _dream_ , I could be _anybody_. I could be some...some _dream_ person, couldn't I? Not a _real_ girl!'

'He's read everything he can about you. And, of course, he's seen all your pictures; so he knows what you _look_ like. He knows you're kind, wise...'

'Oh, the poor poor man!' The Princess shook her head sadly. 'His idea of me is all based on stories! As I said, it's just a _dream_ version of me he really loves. How could I ever live up to whatever this dream woman of his is like?'

'He _also_ said that, when he touched your pictures, he _seriously_ believed that you came to him in his dreams.'

The Princess appeared to briefly freeze, she was so startled. Slowly, she reached out towards Carey, gently touching her on her arm.

'This troubadour, Carey; does he have hair that's as gold as the sun?'

'Yes, yes! He _did_!'

The Princess beamed. She stepped away, waltzing excitedly around the room, tipping her head back as if looking up into the eyes of the tall troubadour she seemed to believe was already holding her in his arms.

'He's real, he's real, he's real! The boy of my dreams is _real_!'

*

# Chapter 23

There was still a small crowd gathered around the caravan and, although they weren't putting on an actual show, Carey's friends were managing to keep everyone entertained. As before, the crowd had split up into groups surrounding their particular favourite, and they laughed, giggled or clapped every now and again, though Carey couldn't really see who they were surrounding, let alone what they were applauding.

Hearing the approach of Carey's carriage, people began to turn to look her way. Grudo rose up from amongst them, children hanging off his arm. Dougy was the next to appear, effortlessly running through or between everyone's legs to excitedly dash towards the oncoming carriage.

'It's Carey! She's back!' Carey heard Peregun exultantly cry out as the carriage drew to a halt and the door opened. 'Sorry girls; I have to leave you for the moment!'

There were sighs of disappointment from everyone as Carey's friends made their apologies and, stepping outside of the crowd, started to head towards her.

'How did it go?'

'What's going to happen?'

' _When's_ it going to happen?'

'What's the Princess like?'

'What did the Illuminator say?'

They all grinned expectantly. Carey felt terrible, knowing that she was going to disappoint them all.

'Sorry everyone, not today; _tomorrow_! I'll be seeing him _tomorrow_!'

'Tomorrow's fine!' Grudo growled happily, placing a comforting arm around Carey's shoulders. 'We've waited this long; what's one more day? And I never thought I'd be saying _that_ , so that's an amazing achievement in itself girl!'

'That's right, that's right!' Durndrin agreed, his face almost splitting he was smiling so much. 'Who'd have thought it, eh? Who'd have thought we'd actually arrive here?'

'Hey, are you saying you actually _doubted_ Carey, Durndrin?' Ferena laughed.

Durndrin would have blushed if puppets could blush.

'Well, I didn't actually mean th–'

'That's all right, Durndrin,' Carey chuckled forgivingly. 'Thing is, to be honest, I'd doubted it myself sometimes!'

'And I see you have yet _another_ book?' Neris said, raising her eyes in mock admonishment as she indicated the sketchbook in Carey's hands with a nod of her head.

'Yes, yes!' Carey declared eagerly, realising that the new story given to her might help allay any disappointment her friends might secretly feel. 'It's a new story; a story I want to read to you all straight away, to see if you think we can turn it into a play!'

*

# Chapter 24

The Elemental Flaw

The men, thousands of them, toiled in the earth, so far underground that many of them feared they might break through at any moment into the fires of Hell. And as they burrowed farther and farther into the earth, the men piled up behind them whole new mountain ranges, transforming plains into a whole new landscape. Elsewhere, the earth was dropped into the sea on the edges of a great bay, creating the dam that would reclaim the land for man. And to create the supports for the mines, and the framework for the dam, and the carts that transported the rock and soil, whole forests were steadily being felled.

The Earth was outraged. Hadn't she helped house and feed man since they had first arrived here? And hadn't she, when she was angry with their behaviour, made them tremble with fear when she had quaked with rage? And now here they were digging deep into her very body, strewing her entrails out wherever they wished, robbing her of her riches of iron and coal. Worse still, they had corralled her sister and brothers into aiding her subjugation. How could they have tunnelled so deeply without the help of her brother Air, who had flowed along behind them, ensuring they retained the breath of life? Fire had lit their way, as well as smelting her iron until it also bent to man's will. Then Water had hardened the iron in its new form, tools the men used to hack away at her all the more.

Air was incensed by his sister's claims that he had betrayed her. He, who had given man the breath of life, and who could take it away by simply withdrawing his gift, had now been made a slave of man with the help of his sisters and brother. Earth had released her iron, which Fire had smelted, and Water had hardened, aiding man in his creation of the great bellows that now made him blow when they wished.

Fire, who had once prided himself on the way he could warm and comfort men or, if he wished, terrorise them as he ran uncontrollably through their homes and towns, was furious that his sisters and brother refused to admit to their role in humiliating him. Hadn't Earth given up her coal to man, hadn't she helped them make him captive in their furnaces of stone? And even when he had tried to refuse to help man, Air had blown through him to create the great heat needed to melt the iron. As for Water, she had doused his best efforts to ensure their tools remained weak and poorly formed.

Water was perhaps angriest of them all. Where would man be without her to slake their thirst or nurture their food? Yet, when in a rage, she could smash anything they built, or remove them from this world by simply enveloping them in her frightful embrace. Yet her brother Fire had made her hiss with an anger and pain she had never suffered before. Even worse, her sister Earth had held her back from claiming what was rightfully hers, while Air had greedily occupied space that had originally been part of her realm.

And now, in that space, they were all allowing man to create a ship intended to conquer her.

It was already rising up from what had been her seabed; reinforced with Earth's iron, that had been smelted by Fire, in temperatures enabled by Air's help.

*

At one time there had been no universe, but only chaos. And just as order came out of that chaos through the forming of the Elements, now a huge ship begins to rise up out of the chaos of the shipyard, through the forming of man into organisations such as ironsmiths, carpenters and architects.

Man scampers everywhere, small in size but large in imagination. He teeters perilously on webs of creaking scaffolding. He tends vast furnaces and cauldrons of molten metal that could burn him to the bone. He tirelessly transports and painstakingly hauls into place timbers the size of trees that could crush him to a pulp. He works the treadmills of towering cranes, the whirling blades of sawmills, the huge, pumping hammers that transform animal skins into hardest leather.

Even in this seeming chaos, however, there is order. All the materials are checked for quality, all the workmanship has to be of the highest standard. The very last nail to be hammered home, like all the millions that have gone before it, is carefully inspected and – found to be wanting, found to be suffering a weakness in the neck between shaft and head – is discarded and replaced with a perfect one.

And as that man hammers home that nail, completing the sealing of the seams between the great iron plates encasing the hull, another man is making a last check of the inspection tunnel that runs along the inside of the dam, holding his lamp high to ensure the soundness of the beams holding everything in place.

And that man drops his lamp and runs as it shatters amongst a pile of rags and barrels of oil.

Fire leaps from the lamp, eager to make amends to his offended sister. Swiftly spreading through the rags, he envelops the barrels of oil. Gaining in strength, he finally rushes towards the already trembling timbers.

Air, stung by his sister's earlier reprimands, rushes in to help. He fans the flames, granting them his rich oxygen of life. Working together, he and Fire rapidly eat away at the dam's crumbling supports.

Earth, realising the injury she has caused her sister, begins to shrug free of the last of the constraining timbers. She shifts and moves, allowing Water to begin to seep through gaps between her rocks and wash away the binding soil. With a rumble of apology, she turns and stands aside.

Water impatiently pushes aside her sister and brothers, rushing in to claim what is rightfully hers once more. Besides, she needs to punish man for his impertinence, and what better way could there be than to dash this puny ship to pieces with a show of rage?

'Where is it, where is it?' she cries in irritation as she rushes around the bay, seeking the ship.

All she can see is a huge outcrop of land she can't remember being there before, colonised now by man's odious castles, palaces, and a town.

'Well, if I can't find your ship,' she thinks maliciously, 'then I'll wash over your new homes!'

But no matter how high she tries to cast her waves, the land and its town continue to curiously rise out of her reach. Too late, it dawns on her; this is their ship, and she has been tricked into setting it afloat!

They have _all_ been tricked; tricked by man into doing his bidding once more!

*

As man had intended, his vast ship soon conquered the sea.

Even in her worst spates of anger, Water failed to do it any harm, as she had so easily achieved before with any other ship.

She asked her brother Air to blow so hard it would send this impertinent ship spinning out of control. But Air only wailed that they now controlled him, with vast sails that captured and spun him around, and even windmills that powered everything from workshops to paddlewheels.

She asked her sister Earth to shred the hull of this impudent ship with her hidden rocks. But her sister only grumbled that they had used her own iron to make it impervious to her sharpest stones.

She asked her brother Fire to set aflame this imposition on her power. But Fire only moaned that, far from being terrified of his power, they flung him from their catapults at enemy ships.

They had all, they had to forlornly admit, been belittled and tamed by man.

'Should we work with him after all?' they asked each other.

'Is that the only way we will retain any power over this world?'

And so, reluctantly, the Elements pledged their allegiance to man.

*

Yet there was one small element of the Elements who wasn't part of this pledge of allegiance.

He hadn't even heard of the pledge. He wasn't even aware of exactly where he was, having been imprisoned by man long ago in a tightly constraining cage of solid iron.

He wanted to stretch out and break free, but he couldn't.

Man had unfairly bound him here – or so he thought, failing to realise that it had been purely accidental – so all he could do was bind his time.

He slipped into a patient slumber, such that he was a little confused when finally awoken by a dull hammering. But he realised that the cage around him was stretching, moving; and as the roof of iron above him snapped away from the surrounding walls, the bubble of Air at last broke free of the neck of the nail that had confined him.

As the nail head snapped clean away, the nail alongside suddenly found itself expected to do the work of two nails. And so its head snapped clean away too. The third nail, now faced with holding together what only three nails could reasonably keep secure, was the next to snap.

Air had broken the pledge. And so now Earth broke it too.

She had originally thought nothing of the ship's accidental glance against her coral, believing its iron plating to be impenetrable. But now she decided to push a little harder after all, breaking more and more of the seam, the nail heads popping one by one as her steady pressure buckled the plates.

Thanking her brother and her sister, Water gleefully poured into the growing gap, coldly wrapping herself around man after man.

And thanking his brother and sisters, Fire welcomed man to the flames of Hell.

*

# Chapter 25

'That _is_ the story of _The Sea Empress_!'

'But then again, it isn't _quite_ the same.'

'It's the story of man against the Elements, using a story _similar_ or _based_ upon _The Sea Empress_.'

'And isn't there supposed to be a flaw in the story, Carey?'

'Yes, that's what you said, before you began reading, I believe Carey.'

Everyone remained a little puzzled by the tale. Carey shrugged, as confused as they were.

'That's what the Princess said; meaning, I suppose, a flaw that would make the tale all fall to pieces, just as the ship does.'

'What would be the point of such a story?'

'Hah, perhaps the flaw is that he's forgotten to _include_ it!'

'It seemed a very _apt_ ending to me.'

'I suppose they're ending up in the _chaos_ of Hell?'

'Yes, but _they're_ ending up in chaos; which isn't the same as the story _itself_ falling apart like the ship...'

'I suppose you could say it _does_ , if you don't believe in such a place?'

'This _might_ be being a _little_ pedantic, but if these Elements _are_ god-like, then how come Fire's being controlled down there?'

'He could be _subservient_ to the Devil.'

'He could _be_ the Devil!'

'It _is_ a story, with the Elements as people, so...'

Durndrin shrugged, no longer sure where his reason was taking him. He felt that he should know the answer, that the others would be expecting him to be able to work it out, so he was glad when their discussion was interrupted by a loud neighing of horses just outside their caravan.

Ferena excitedly rushed to the door, as if she somehow understood what the impatient whinnying meant.

'It's the carriage!' she breathlessly yelled back into the caravan. 'It seems like you might be seeing the Illuminator today after all Carey!'

*

As before, Carey's gleaming white carriage calmly passed by the waiting black one, dropping her off at the bottom of the winding staircase. As soon as she stepped inside the palace this time, however, the floor beneath her feet began to immediately start moving, swiftly carrying her along through a completely new set of rooms and hallways.

As she rushed along a corridor of silver and gold water fountains, she noticed she was heading for a highly elaborate set of doors that, like the great doors of the Illuminator's camera obscura, was decorated with detailed panels. These weren't of copper, however, but of either glossed plaster or ceramic, for they glowed an immaculate white.

She was tempted to step off the moving section of the floor and study the panels to see which story they told. But before she could make up her mind to do so, the doors swung open before her – and Carey gasped in astonishment.

The room directly ahead was of pure white, yet sparkled and reflected light as if it were a ghostly apparition. As she rapidly neared the room, she began to realise that it was made entirely of porcelain; the tables, the chairs, even the mirrors, which were covered in a particularly thick and reflective glaze.

There was no carpet, only decorative tiles. The walls, like many of the pieces of furniture, were overlaid with an ornate, lace-like pattern. Even the flowers, the roses, lilies and tulips, were of incredibly fine, white porcelain.

The only flashes of colour and of real life were the butterflies that fluttered around the room, bright glimpses of green, yellow, blue and red.

The flickering flame of the red butterfly made Carey stop and look around for a special, particular piece; a pot that was white on one side, fire red on the other.

The floor beneath her feet was no longer moving. She had, for some reason, been left in this room. So she could move around looking for the pot or plate or cup or whatever it was that–

'Oh!'

The Princess smiled, almost giggling at Carey's surprise. Being of porcelain herself, she blended seamlessly into the rest of the room.

'I'm sorry!' Carey apologised. 'I hadn't seen you sitting there; when I came in the room I was just–'

She looked about her with a wave of an arm.

'Amazed by the beauty of the room, yes?' the Princess finished the sentence for her.

'Yes, yes; I would never have thought it would be possible to build so many things from porcelain if I hadn't seen it.'

'I thought you might like to see this room.'

'Of course; but I can't find it. Is it here, the pot or plate or whatever it was?'

'Plate?' The Princess frowned in confusion.

'From the story? _The Porcelain Doll_?'

'Oh, of course! I'd heard of your play! I was told it was wonderful! But...I meant because of another story; _The Porcelain Room_?'

Carey observed the Princess with renewed interest.

' _The Porcelain Room_? You mean the second of the stories about you? Is that what it was _really_ called?'

'Then...you've heard _of_ it?' The Princess didn't look too sure. 'But you haven't _heard_ it, the story itself?'

Carey nodded eagerly. Of course, why hadn't she thought of this before? The Princess would know the second part of her own story!

'I must admit, I don't know _too_ much about it myself,' the Princess admitted with a chuckle.

'What?' Carey was both dismayed and amazed. 'But how can you _not_ know what happened to you? How can you not _want_ to know what happened?'

'Well, because it just never really seemed _that_ important to me I suppose; I do know _some_ of it, after all!'

'Which? What parts of the story _do_ you know? Could you please tell me it?'

'Of course, of course; in fact, that's why I asked you here. The Illuminator wanted me to tell you this tale, as he felt sure that you mustn't already know it.'

'He knew that? How would he know it?'

'Because, because...' The Princess seemed a little uneasy, like she was having to think of the best way of wording some uncomfortable truths. 'Well, perhaps I should just _tell_ you the story, yes?' she said breezily.

Carey nodded enthusiastically.

'As we know,' the Princess began, 'we left the end of _The_ _Porcelain Child_ where the father promises the mother that he will seek out the Illuminator to grant their daughter life.'

' _Your_ father and mother,' Carey corrected her cheerfully.

'Please Carey, if I keep referring to them as my father and mother, then it won't be the tale I was told, or the story I wish to tell you.''

'Yes, yes, I understand,' Carey said, only really partly understanding.

The Princess smiled gratefully.

'So, the father, as he promised, searched and searched for the land of the Illuminator. He had noticed that a great many of the Illuminator's illustrations featured a glorious tower, either somewhere in the background, or glimpsed through gaps between the buildings in street or town scenes. In at least one story, which told how a complete town had been burnt to the ground, he'd also noticed that the tower mysteriously reappeared whole and unblemished in the far distance, as if it was indestructible. Of course, at this point he wasn't aware of the imperishable nature of the Illuminator's tower, but he realised that such a grand edifice might well be his home.

'Even as he searched for the Illuminator's kingdom, however, he began to notice something rather strange about his daughter; was it just his imagination, he wondered, his wishful thinking, or was she really listening as he told her tales of her mother? He thought he sometimes caught a flicker of her eyes, a slight increase of the upturn of her smile. More amazingly still, he sometimes found that she'd moved while he'd been away. On his birthday, he found a small parcel containing her red hairbow tied into a shape resembling a pair of kissing lips.'

The Princess halted, seeing Carey's sceptical expression.

'It seems ridiculous, I know,' the Princess granted, 'and yes, even he wondered if he was simply going mad. But _what_ a madness, he thought; it seemed to him that his daughter had life, and that was such a wonderful thing to believe. His joy soon turned to anger, however, when one day he came across a puppet theatre that was putting on a show he instantly recognised as being a story of his own life; _The Porcelain Child_!'

'The story was already spreading?' Carey asked.

The Princess nodded, then continued.

'The theatre owner had purchased the Illuminator's book of the tale. Of course, when the father asked the theatre owner how he'd come to hear of the story, the owner didn't recognise him. So he happily showed him the book.

'Now, of course, the father was incensed that the Illuminator had told his tale without his permission. Yet when he saw the beautifully accurate pictures of his wife, his daughter; well, he broke down in tears. And when he touched the pictures, feeling the sense of life within them; well, of course, he just had to have the book, no matter how much the owner wanted for it!

'Fortunately the theatre owner was a decent man who, thinking he knew the tale well enough to have no further need of the book, sold it for a reasonable price. Better still, he had his own story of a strange town dominated by a looming, forbidding tower; and the father recognised straight away that this was the tower he'd been searching for.

'He arrived in the town during the day, and was surprised – as you'd been when you arrived here, Carey – that everyone seemed to be expecting him. Similarly, they didn't seem at all surprised either when he began to surround his caravan with the most incredibly beautiful ornaments and furniture they had ever seen; all of it made entirely of the finest porcelain. Not just vases and plates, but also chairs, tables, even mirrors!'

Carey glanced about the room, wondering if all of this was his creation.

'The prices for even the simplest piece, however, were completely out of the reach of even the richest of the townspeople. Not that they didn't think the prices fair; everything he'd made was a work of art in its own right. Of course, not a single piece was sold. And so, even as night fell, they remained in place around his caravan, the townspeople having reassured him that nothing would be stolen as everyone would be safely in their beds.

'As he took to his own bed, he wasn't bothered that he hadn't sold anything. Knowing that a busy and important man like the Illuminator wouldn't just see anyone who turned up in his town, he had been creating these wonderful pieces over the years simply to create a sensation that the Illuminator would find impossible to ignore.

'Now naturally, this was still the time when – when the town's darkness was at its most complete – the gates within the tower's high walls would briefly open, and the black carriage would thunder across the square. It had only one purpose; to deliver the latest story to the rest of the world. As far as the black horses were concerned, anything in their way that wasn't alive (and, some people were sure, even anything that _was_ alive!) clearly shouldn't _be_ in their way! They charged through the display of white porcelain, shattering everything they touched, smashing everything they didn't as the shards flew around the square like glistening pieces of ice, shattering their sister pieces.

'Woken by the terrifying noise of pounding hooves and cracking porcelain, the father leapt out of bed, rushing to the caravan's door and flinging it open. His priceless collection of porcelain had vanished, replaced by nothing but oddly shaped pieces scattered across the dark ground.

'Now he had nothing to offer the Illuminator!

'How would he grant his poor daughter life now?

'He had never felt so helpless in his life. His whole body sagged. His head dropped low. He wept and wept.

'In fact, it was such an incredibly low point in his life, a time of utter dismay like he had never experienced before, that we can never be sure what he might have done next. Fortunately, his daughter was close by. And he distinctly heard her say to him that night, "Don't worry Father; you _will_ give me life!"

'And so, the next day he knew what he had to do; he would put on a show!'

'A show?' Carey asked, amazed.

'A puppet show! Didn't I say he was a Puppet Master?'

'But all the ceramics, the porcelain!'

'He and his wife had learned its secrets only to give their daughter life!'

'Still; it's a bit of a coincidence, isn't it? I mean, with me also owning a puppet theatre!'

'The world is full of them, Carey; puppet theatres, I mean!'

Cary shrugged. That was true enough.

'Which show?' she asked out of professional curiosity, not really sure if the Princess would have an answer.

'Well, what else Carey? _The Porcelain Child_! And what a show he put on, by all accounts. His audience recognised the story, naturally; they'd even seen other shows of it, played by both real actors and puppets. Yet, they had _never_ seen it being played with such incredible emotion, such empathy – and of course, now _we_ know the reason why. It was a story of his own life, after all. Yet the most amazing surprise was to come at the very end – the revealing of the porcelain child herself!

'They weren't to know that this was the _real_ porcelain child; and yet, somehow, everyone who saw her that day instinctively knew that she had to be! She was everything the Illuminator's illustrations had promised. Every previous show had ended in disappointment; the puppet porcelain child being quite obviously another puppet, the actress being just another child rather than anything unusual or magical. But _this_ porcelain child – why, it was just how they'd all imagined her, a child existing between two worlds!'

'Surely,' Carey blurted out unsurely, ' _surely_ he didn't put his...well, his _daughter_ on stage as a _puppet_?'

'She was _off_ stage, but yes, she was _part_ of the show; as if, once again, she existed between two worlds! He didn't have strings, making her move, if _that's_ what you mean!'

The Princess pulled a face, as if she also found such an idea distasteful.

'And yet – afterwards, countless people would swear that they saw her move! That she smiled. Moved her eyes. Even gave a little wave.

'As soon as the curtains had closed on her, her father walked through the ecstatically clapping crowd towards the gates of the walled tower. There was the most amazed gasp from the crowd as the gates opened – and he calmly walked inside, the gates instantly closing behind him.

'He mounted the stairway outside. He entered the palace through the great doors. He almost froze in fear as the floor began to move beneath his feet. He stared in wonder at the rooms he was being swiftly carried through. And he almost wept in agonised disappointment once again when he found himself dropped off here, in the porcelain room!'

'So this was already here, even then? Despite his skill with porcelain, he wasn't the one who created it?'

'Hah, wait; you're jumping a little ahead of me, Carey. But what was _he_ to think when _he_ saw this fabulous room? What hope did he have of offering the Illuminator anything special when he already possessed such a wondrous room? He trembled with fear and dismay.

'"I'm...I'm sorry," he said nervously, intending to apologise for wasting the Illuminator's time. But then he stood tall; despite his fear, despite having nothing to offer in return, he must still try to fulfil his promise to his wife and grant life to their daughter. "I _know_ it's such a ridiculously incredible thing to ask for, but–"

'The Illuminator stopped him with the simple raising of a hand.

'"I know why you're here. And I know you think you have nothing you can offer me in return for granting your request."

'The girl's father nodded miserably.

'The Illuminator picked up a particularly ornate vase.

'"Perhaps you could cast your expert eye over this beautiful piece...?"

'Taking the piece, the man observed it curiously.

'"Why, I think...think it looks _surprisingly_ like one of mine, one I–"

'"It _is_ one of yours. Quite, quite remarkable; and I thank you for this room."

'Bewildered, the man stared around the room

'"I never made so _many_ pieces! And everything I made is outside, smashed beyond repair!"

'"You made at least one of each – which was more than enough for me, for this room. I know what you intended to offer me; a whole room of porcelain, like this one. But you would have had to spend years creating it; and it would have been such a waste of your time, creating something I could so easily have created for me. Besides, it wouldn't have been fair – as I can't grant you what you want."

'"Then – there's no hope for me or my daughter after all?" the man asked forlornly.

'Once again, the poor man felt crushed by life. The Illuminator reached out to consolingly touch him on his shoulder.

'"Please, think of what you were asking for; even if I could grant such a thing, how would it look that I granted only you this incredible favour? How many others would seek me out, demanding that I grant it to them too?"

'The man nodded sadly, but managed a wry, understanding smile.

'"Yes, yes; I should have realised."

'"There's still the matter of payment, I believe?" The Illuminator indicated the room with a glance of his eyes and a flick of his fingers

'"I don't need payment – I just needed–"

'"Unfortunately, although it may not be _quite_ what you'd hoped for, the payment I have in mind will, I think, _still_ be of interest to you; would you accept a _semblance_ of life for your daughter? Such that she will talk, walk, move, see, hear, breath; but she will not yet be truly alive."

'"Yes, yes!" The man was suddenly overjoyed. "It's more, I suppose, than I could have ever _realistically_ hoped for!"

'Of course, they both knew that this wasn't entirely true; but they also recognised that this was an acceptable compromise for them both.

'"It will also require something more of you, I'm afraid; a sacrifice on your part, but one that, if I'm being frank, you would have eventually made anyway, in the circumstances."

'"I'm not sure I understand."

'The Illuminator quietened the man's worries with a smile and the slight raising of a hand.

'"I will explain some more, of course, before you finally agree. But to help you come to terms with your sacrifice, I will enable you to initially grant this semblance of life to _seven_ of your chosen creations!"'

'Seven? Seven puppets?' Carey was startled, abruptly recognising the connections. 'Not just his daughter, but also _six_ of his puppets? No, no! This is _more_ than coincidence, this is–'

This is what? She wasn't at all sure. Her head whirled. What was the Princess saying? The six puppets could only be her friends, couldn't they?

The Princess was holding her firmly by the shoulders, as if she'd had to stop her falling over in a daze.

'Carey, please, yes, you're _right_ ; it's _not_ a coincidence, I'm afraid. I'm sorry, but...I'm going to have to disappoint you.'

She stepped back, deftly unbuttoning a small section of her bodice to reveal perfectly white porcelain underneath. Just as swiftly, she opened a tiny flap where her heart would be.

And just inside, a bright flame flickered above a small spirit reservoir.

*

# Chapter 26

Carey ran from the room. She ran even though the moving floor was already carrying her along at a terrific rate.

She rushed down the staircase outside. Refusing to wait for the carriage, she ran towards the gates, even though they were closed. As she approached them, they opened however; and she sprinted out into the square.

Out in the square, surrounded by their little groups of admirers, her friends saw her running towards the caravan. Realising she was upset, they quickly excused themselves to their disappointed followers and ran after her.

'What's wrong?' each of them said anxiously as they clambered into the confines of the caravan where everyone was swiftly gathering.

'The Princess,' Carey explained bitterly, almost tearfully, 'isn't _really_ alive after all! Like you, she's just kept alive by a flame!'

'Oh, so this really is as good as it gets?'

Peregun said it in a way that was hard to interpret as either disappointment or contentment.

'We _do_ have a life that no other puppet can dream of; literally, in fact,' Durndrin pointed out with a more definite sense of resignation.

'We can't complain I suppose, Carey.'

Grudo placed a consoling arm around Carey's quivering shoulders. He wasn't quite sure if she was shaking with anger or anguish.

'We _can_ complain if we spent all of our lives trying to find an answer to something that all turns out to be a mechanical trick!' Carey spat out, raising her head with a hard expression of determination on her face, her eyes glaring with fury. 'If we'd known the truth, we could have all saved ourselves an awful lot of trouble; and the false raising of hope!'

Grudo gave her a reassuring hug of the shoulders.

'Carey, please; just calm down for a minute so _we_ can work out what's going on here. You were with the Princess for an awful lot longer than it takes her to show you her flame; so what else did she exactly say?'

'She told me the story of _The Porcelain Room_.'

'Ah, so it really _is_ called that.' Ferena couldn't resist a smirk of satisfaction; she had frequently insisted that it seemed the most likely title to the second part of the series.

'Yes; and we could have saved ourselves all this trouble if we'd only found that story ages ago! We'd also know that you and the Princess are, well; more or less brothers and sisters!'

'Really?' Neris was intrigued. 'A sister of royalty? Does that make _me_ a princess?'

She gave an elegant wave and twirl. But Dougy was troubled by this news.

'Wait, wait; how are we brothers and sisters? I can't remember there ever been anybody but us!'

'Oh come on Dougy,' Ferena chuckled. 'It's not like we've got the world's greatest memories, have we?'

'So who made us then?' Durndrin frowned as his mind whirled. 'If we're sisters and brothers, you're also saying, I suppose, that the girl's father and mother in _The Porcelain Child_ also made us, right?'

Carey gave a sharp nod of her head.

'And that's another shock for me, because all this time I've been reading that story without realising they must be my great grandparents or great-greats or what have you!'

'Well that would explain how you and the Princess come to look so alike, like you told us,' Ferena said. 'Think about it; when the mother was creating her child, she'd be basing how she looked on some other girl in the family. It's a family likeness; which means the Princess really _is_ part of the family, I suppose.'

'Hmn, but didn't the father _effectively_ remain childless, so how...' Grudo, not wishing to upset Carey any further, twirled his huge hands, a sign that he wanted her to work out the rest of his thinking for herself.

'Oh don't be ridiculous, Grudo!' Neris chided him. 'Obviously, he must have remarried!'

'He didn't seem the remarrying kind to _me_ ,' Grudo sniffed.

Carey placed a comforting hand on Grudo's huge arm.

'I know what you mean Grudo; but just how lonely and hurt would he have been after giving up his daughter–'

'He _gave_ _up_ his daughter?' Peregun was aghast.

'Well, the Princess avoided mentioning it herself,' Carey admitted. 'But think about it; she's _here_ , isn't she? And she _did_ say that part of the Illuminator's deal for giving her some sort of life involved her father making a sacrifice. The Illuminator needed the Princess to stop everyone fearing the Fading. In return, that's how you all came to be alive; my great granddad or whoever he was could give life to seven of you, including his daughter.'

'Bit of a rough deal,' Neris pouted. 'Sure, she gets some sort of life, but she has to hang around forever in a more or less empty palace with the weird guy who tricked her father.'

'It's not easy to see who it was hardest on; her father or her?' Ferena wiped away a tear.

'She wouldn't really _know_ her father, I suppose.' Durndrin didn't look like he actually believed what he was saying. 'I mean, she'd only be aware of what was happening once she came to life, so she wouldn't have had time to get to know him.'

'Ah, but in the _story_ ,' Carey said, remembering another part of it, 'her father seems to think that he sees signs of life in her _before_ they arrive in the kingdom. Then again, he's not sure if he's just _imagining_ it; and as he agreed to the Illuminator's harsh deal, he must have finally decided it _was_ all in his mind.'

'If this way was the only way for her to gain her life, what choice did either of them really have?' Ferena was struggling to stop herself from weeping.

'And none of us – well, Carey excepted, of course – would be here if they hadn't both made their sacrifice!' Even Peregun looked serious and thoughtful.

Carey, too, had begun to recognise the enormity of the Princess's sacrifice. Suddenly, however, she scowled as something dawned on her.

'But in her speech, when she first arrives here, the Princess _definitely_ says she's alive!'

'Ah, you mean in _The Porcelain Kingdom_?' There was a slight hint of irony in Grudo's comment. 'In the _story_?'

Carey recognised Grudo's cynical, wry raising of his eyebrows.

'You're saying – saying that might _not_ have been her _real_ speech?'

'Who could remember her exact words? Besides, we know the whole aim of the Illuminator was to allay fear of the Fading.'

Carey bit her lip.

'But I _so_ wanted to believe!'

She looked around at everyone, her eyes full of apology and hurt.

'I should have _known_ it was impossible! I'm such a _fool_!'

She looked up at Grudo, reaching out for and taking a grip of one of his huge hands.

'You were right; and I was wrong!'

'No no, Carey, you were right to wish for the best for us.'

Caressing her hand, Grudo stared out of the open doorway, looking up towards and glaring bitterly at the looming tower.

'It's the _Illuminator_ who's done us all wrong!'

*

# Chapter 27

The Glorious Pattern of The Kimono

It is said that not long after chaos had been banished from the universe by a semblance of order imposed in its place, the threads of life were used to weave a fabulous kimono that could reveal the future to anyone who asked its wearer a reasonable question.

Whatever the truth of this, it is known that a family who had produced generations of wise women claimed to have possessed this kimono for at least a thousand years, and it was through the remarkable powers of this fabulous object that they themselves received their skills of prophesy. Of course, many doubted the truth of this claim, citing as reason for their cynicism the meagre living standards of the women, for they lived in little more than a tumbledown shack on the farthest edges of the empire.

The High Emperor himself was of this opinion, until he heard from a traveller and historian of great repute that he had seen this kimono for himself. Moreover, the traveller's own image had appeared within the kimono's pattern, and was now featured there amongst a whole host of important people who had visited the wise woman.

'A famous astrologer, who asked as to the real nature of the planets, was surrounded by the swirls of a most wondrous cosmos,' he reverently assured the High Emperor. 'A warlord who pleaded for help in restoring peace to his region was portrayed in a circle of enjoined hands, while an artist who had requested the secret of granting a semblance of realism to her sculptures is herself rendered on the kimono as if about to leap forth from the embroidery. The greater the man or woman, the greater his or her image appears in the pattern.'

Now the High Emperor didn't really have any question he needed answering. He had his armies, his fleets, his wealth and power to ensure that he always got the answer he wanted to any question asked or any problem faced.

Would he win the next battle his armies took part in? Of course, for he would always ensure victory by putting into the field a force ten times greater than his opponent's.

Would his empire, his power and his wealth continue to grow and expand? Well, here was another question; what was to stop him?

Would he be remembered by history? Now that was a truly foolish question!

Nonetheless, this idea of the fabulous kimono intrigued him. If it portrayed amongst its pattern any one famous or important who visited the wise woman, then how could the pattern be deemed to be complete and accurate if it failed to incorporate the most important man alive; the High Emperor himself!

Without a moment's hesitation, he ordered that a great caravan of camels, oxen, horses and carts should be prepared, such that his entire court would travel with him as he made his way to the far edge of his empire where this wise woman lived. They travelled day and night, while the courtiers and the High Emperor ate, slept or even danced in their smoothly sprung carts. They travelled for month after month, a vast, languidly moving caterpillar of men and women devouring everything it encountered, for even the poorest village was expected to provide it with food, clothing and, yes, the youngest, prettiest women. Only when the caravan arrived at the base of the mountains was it decided that the court and the great carts would have to remain in the foothills, while the High Emperor and a few chosen men continued on through the passes and along the ancient goat tracks.

At last, they appeared outside the remote hovel of the wise woman. Without waiting for his attendants to arrange an introduction to the wise woman, the High Emperor marched straight into her home.

'If everything they say about this fabulous kimono is true,' he told himself, 'then she should already be aware of my arrival; for I should already be a glowing sun on her kimono, blinding every other person nearby!'

And indeed, the woman was expecting him. She was seated at a low table on which a pot of tea and two cups waited. Despite her age and her wisdom, she was surprisingly beautiful; yet the High Emperor didn't notice this, his eyes only on the kimono and its pattern as he sought his own, imperious image amongst its elaborately decorative embroidery.

He saw all the images the traveller had told him of and more. There was a woman who he had heard was a ferocious bandit leader, her men riding alongside her as if they were a wave flowing forth from the underworld itself. There was the inventor of the great wheels that spun and drew water up from lakes to irrigate whole mountains. There were the Three Women of the Council, who had offered themselves as hostages to save their besieged city; then executed their enemy's leaders as they slept in the morning.

And the closer he looked, the more people he saw, thousands upon thousands of them. And just as the traveller had also described, the more insignificant the man, the smaller he was portrayed, in many cases hidden amongst the energetic images of other, greater people.

So where was he, the High Emperor, who could have any one of these nonentities killed on a whim after a particularly disagreeable breakfast?

Ah, on her _back_ , of course! Where else would there be a clear expanse large enough to take his image?

He strode around the table, preparing to be amazed by the beauty and colours of his overpowering, omnipresent image. Yet the back of her kimono was hardly different from the front, with its mix of people of varying sizes and capabilities.

Why was the kimono refusing to react to his presence? When would he appear?

He strode back towards the front of the table. The woman had calmly poured him a cup of tea from her teapot.

A question! He had to ask a question of course!

'When will I appear on your kimono?' he demanded.

The wise woman didn't reply. She gracefully slid his cup closer towards him, while indicating that he should take his seat at the table.

Sitting down at last, he grabbed and drank the tea thirstily, as he had not had anything to drink since first sighting the woman's home. He slammed the empty cup down on the table.

Unhurriedly picking up the cup, the wise woman carefully poured any remaining liquid onto a nearby plate then, leaning elegantly across the table, she revealed to her High Emperor the pattern the tealeaves had made in the bottom.

They showed a man seated at a table, drinking tea.

The High Emperor furiously snatched the cup from her hands, swirling the image away.

'Is this some treacherous trick?' he roared. 'You think I don't have my own useless fortune tellers at court? You think I've come all this way just to see some useless heap of tea leaves in the bottom of a cup?'

He spun the cup across the table so that the wise woman could see for herself the shapeless mound of tea leaves lying in the cup's bottom.

'See!' he stormed. 'I only see something resembling a dung heap lying before me!'

Then, at last, he began to see the pattern of the kimono ripple and change. Over the woman's right breast, a surprisingly small image of a gloriously robed man was starting to form. But the man was purposely striding forwards, growing in size as he drew nearer. His robes were the purple and magenta robes of an emperor, embossed with a golden sun.

The High Emperor smiled in satisfaction.

This foolish kimono had finally recognised who he was!

'There had been no image of the High Emperor,' the woman politely explained, 'because no High Emperor had visited me until now.'

The oncoming man continued to grow in size, allowing the High Emperor to make out more and more detail. Yes, yes; all this was now all so incredibly pleasing! The kimono was accurately representing his very finest robles, with their own intricately embroidered planets and stars.

He nodded and grinned in approval; and then he frowned in disapproval.

This image wasn't quite so accurate after all. It didn't quite portray his face correctly, showing him as a younger man, and looking nowhere near as serious and as authoritarian as he now liked to present himself.

'But this isn't _me_ ,' he growled, leaping to his feet. 'This is my _nephew_!'

'Yes, I'm emperor now,' thundered a voice just behind him, 'elected by the people in your absence!'

He whirled around, reaching for his sword. But his nephew, approaching lithely and swiftly despite wearing the High Emperor's finest robes, already had his sword drawn, and held it to his uncle's throat.

'Tell me,' he said, 'how do I ensure I don't let my people down, as my uncle did?'

The image of the High Emperor on the kimono was still growing. His face was now greater than life size, the fierce glow of the sun on his robes having already enveloped every other person and pattern on the kimono. It glowed stronger and stronger, rapidly taking on the brightness of the sun itself.

'The brightest sun consumes everything,' the wise woman said. 'Including, eventually and swiftly, even itself.'

As the face withered and burnt in the ever expanding glow, the new High Emperor bent his head in shame, avoiding the glare of the sun. But the old emperor, wanting to share in this intense sense of irresistible power, continued to stare in admiration.

Slowly, the glow began to ebb, the image of the High Emperor shrinking in size until he became hardly larger than his alchemists, his warlords, his administrators.

'Yet the sun that comforts and nurtures,' the wise woman calmly continued, 'is one we all gladly welcome into our lives every day, and pray that it will always shine benevolently down upon us.'

The image of the High Emperor remained situated over the beating heart, the glowing rays of his sun linking each and every one in his empire.

And that included the poorest man of all portrayed on the kimono; a man who's mind had been addled by staring too long at the sun, and so now played happily on his dung heap.

*

# Chapter 28

The audience had appreciated this evening show almost as much as the earlier showing of _The Porcelain Doll_. They showed their appreciation with claps and cheers, as well as sighs of disappointment when, after the final curtain call, it was announced that the actors would be unable to mingle with the crowd as before because they had important things to attend to.

'So, you're sure we should leave?' Peregun asked Carey hopefully, saddened that he'd be leaving his many admirers without even a proper goodbye.

'I know, I know, Peregun,' Carey replied sadly, looking around at everyone with an apologetic frown. 'We've already been through this; I realise this is the first place where you've all actually been able to walk around, as if there's nothing _particularly_ unusual about you, and so I _swear_ we _will_ come back _one_ day! But at the moment, I can't stand the sight of that tower looming over me, reminding me of my stupidity!'

'We understand Carey,' Ferena reassured her. 'So, let's just get our posters back, and be on our way!'

'The ones in the square and on the tower wall first!' Carey rose to her feet determinedly. 'Then hopefully that's the last I have to look at it for a long long time!'

*

The String Theatre's posters were plastered for quite a distance either side of the gates on the tower's wall. Underneath them, their frayed and torn edges clearly showing, were posters for previous shows and storytellers who had visited the town, the first one uncovered being a promotion of 'Mr Morgan's famous and thrilling rendition of the _true_ story of _Tam o' Shanter_ and the Cutty Sark!'

Each time Peregun took down one of their posters, another poster for another, earlier show was uncovered. As he neared the gate, however, he was no longer uncovering promotions for rival theatre productions; they were copies of the Illuminator's illustrations, many so weathered that their previously vibrant colours had faded to pastel shades.

'Oh, and look at this!' Peregun exclaimed excitedly with a loud guffaw, calling on the others nearby to come and see an illustration that was obviously more recent, its colours and shapes still entrancing and luminous. 'And who do you think we have here?'

The others were collecting posters from different points around the square, but they all heard Peregun's call and laughter. Ferena was the first to rush over to see what Peregun had uncovered under the posters, and she too immediately joined in with his laughter. Neris and Durndrin were next at the wall, and they also started chuckling. It was an odd sight, as they were all still wearing their costumes from the show.

'Who's this shifty character acting so suspiciously by the walls, do you think?' Durndrin declared mischievously, standing in front of the illustration as Carey, Dougy and Grudo made their way across the square, blocking any clear view they might have had of it.

He stepped aside only as they finally came up right behind him. Dougy guffawed as uncontrollably as Peregun. Carey tried her best to hold it back, but she couldn't help giggling either.

Grudo gruffly snorted, mumbling, 'Very funny, very funny.'

It was an illustration of Grudo, standing on his own by the bare, white wall, looking lost, worried and forlorn.

'There's another new illustration under here,' Peregun said, as he began to strip off another poster, revealing a virtually entirely white rendition of the porcelain room in all its glistening glory.

'Didn't you say you'd been to the porcelain room, Carey?' Neris asked casually.

'And here she is!' Peregun gasped once he'd fully uncovered the illustration. He pointed to Carey sitting on one of the porcelain chairs as she talked to the Princess. 'It's a picture of you with the Princess!'

'What? How dare he–'

Carey abruptly stared at the picture in confusion. She looked at the posters Peregun had already taken off the walls and, rolling them up, placed in his sacks.

'But how's a picture of that ended up _under_ our posters? Posters we put up when we _first_ arrived here!'

Grudo shrugged. 'Perhaps some of our posters blew down; and someone else stuck them back up.'

Even Grudo didn't look as if he accepted it as a reasonable explanation.

'Let's see what's under the poster below,' Carey said, beginning to take it down itself.

It was a perfectly beautiful and incredibly vibrantly coloured illustration of the show of _The Glorious Pattern of The Kimono_ that they had put on.

'This...this doesn't make any sense!' Carey wailed, ripping off the next poster and throwing it to the floor without any care of how much she damaged it.

The next illustration portrayed her visit to the gallery and its display of sketches and water colours, the work in progress for the Illuminator's _The Elemental Flaw_.

'All of these illustrations – how _dare_ he use us all in one of his stories without asking our permission!'

Carey was furious now, yet still bewildered that all of these pictures seemed to have been placed on the wall before Peregun and the others had pasted up the theatre's posters.

It didn't make any sense.

It wasn't possible.

They were all urgently pulling off the posters now, throwing them to the floor even though a slight breeze was already picking some of them up and wafting them chaotically across the square.

They uncovered further illustrations of Carey's trip in the white carriage, their show of _The Porcelain Child_ , and even one of Peregun and Neris working in the dark as they pasted their posters over a wall already covered with illustrations.

'No wonder they were expecting us!' Carey breathed as she came across pictures of their arrival in the town and their trip through the forest.

'He's even written our names under these pictures.'

It was hard to tell if Durndrin was speaking in shock or admiration as he pointed out their hand-scripted names in a clear patch running along the bottom of the illustrations.

'Well, he's not getting this _completely_ right,' Grudo sniffed determinedly as he nodded back to his own illustration. 'I've never stood by this wall like he's pictured me there!'

They had by now arrived at the gates. There were more posters, probably covering more illustrations, on the other side of the gates. But everyone had seen enough.

Carey strode over towards the centre of gates and started fiercely banging on them.

'He's still got some explaining to do Grudo!' she shouted back to the others over the noise of her own hard knocking. 'This tower's already made me look stupid enough without him telling the whole world about it!'

She looked up at the tower as she fiercely kicked the great white gates.

'Open up! Open up now!'

But the gates not only refused to open, they didn't even shake in the slightest under her most ferocious banging and kicking. They were completely immoveable.

'You aren't going to get in there,' Grudo calmly pointed out. 'If you want to get in, we're going to have to think of some other way of getting over the walls.'

*

# Chapter 29

'How about you just call on the Princess?' Ferena said hopefully, pointing up towards the balcony. 'You seem to have gotten on well with her so far.'

Carey glanced up at the balcony uncertainly.

'How much has she known what's going on though?'

'It's worth a try, surely?' Durndrin said, already walking off towards the part of the wall lying just beneath the balcony.

With a shrug or swapped expressions saying 'Well, why not?', the others followed after him.

'If I knew we'd be running, I'd've dumped this damn kimono!' Neris complained, having to move her feet twice as fast as the others due to the short steps the tightly confining dress was forcing her to make.

When they were standing beneath the balcony, they looked up, realising it suddenly seemed an awful lot higher up the tower than they had first imagined.

'Grudo, I think you're the one who's going to have to give her a shout if she's going to hear us.'

Grudo looked uncharacteristically aghast at Carey's words. He glanced uneasily about the square.

'But people might hear...'

'Grudo! This is important!' Carey insisted.

Grudo sighed resignedly.

He moved closer to the wall, threw his head back – and shouted as quietly as he could up towards the balcony.

'Princess! Oh Princess!'

'Now who does _this_ remind me of?' Peregun grinned.

'Oh, this isn't going to work anyway, is it?' Neris snorted scornfully. 'If they're not going to open the gates, she's hardly going to just suddenly appear up there like some guardian angel and let us in, is she?

'Now if only we had a rope...' Ferena breathed wistfully, looking up at the balcony with a dreamy look on her face.

'And if only there was already one of us up there, so they could tie one end and throw the other down to us,' Durndrin said, emulating her wistful expression.

'Typically airy fairy idea I'm afraid, Ferena,' Dougy agreed with a groan as he weighed up how ridiculously high the balcony appeared to him from his even lower point on the ground.

'Unless...' Ferena blurted out excitedly as, strangely, she bent down to inspect the hem running along the bottom of Neris's kimono. 'I noticed this loose thread...'

'Oh yes, it _is_ getting a _bit_ threadbare.'

Neris was a little puzzled that Ferena had chosen to bring up the state of her kimono at this particular moment, but she was even more surprised when Ferena suddenly rose to her feet, still clutching the loose thread. Neris had to ungainly spin on her feet as her dress began to swiftly unravel.

'Ferena! My dress!'

The unravelling became even worse as, with a fiercely resolute expression, Ferena began to slowly rise off the floor, her wings behind her fluttering at a ridiculously fast rate.

'Ferena!' Carey cried out in shock as Ferena continued to rise.

Neris twirled faster and faster as her dress unravelled.

'I don't know why she's doing this,' she wailed, 'but someone please get me a new dress before I have nothing to wear!'

'And rope; bring back a _rope_!' Ferena shouted back down to everyone. ' _I'm_ going to be the one who ties our rope!' she added with a satisfied grin at Durndrin.

*

# Chapter 30

By the time Ferena had reached and landed safely if a little ungainly on the balcony rail, she was exhausted. But she still had work to do. She had to haul in the long thread, gradually bringing up behind it the rope that Peregun had brought back from the caravan. As soon as Ferena was safely on the balcony, he'd tied the rope to his end of the thread, which he'd snapped off what was left of Neris's kimono.

Neris had disgustedly cast aside the new dress he'd also brought back with him.

'I'll stick with the shorter version of the kimono, thanks,' she'd declared haughtily. 'Who knows, it might even set a new trend amongst girls who've got the legs for it?'

'Done it!' Ferena wheezed from the edge of the balcony. 'The windows are open, and the rope's firmly tied up here. You can climb up now.'

It wasn't as easy climbing up the rope as Carey had thought it would be but, using first the wall and then the wall of the tower itself, she found it was easiest walking her way up towards the balcony. The far lither Peregun and Neris, who had both gone up before her, helped her clamber over the rail.

'Er, bit of a problem here,' Dougy barked up from below. 'I'm not exactly built for rope climbing. As for Grudo's suggestion that he can tie me to the rope and you can haul me up; well, is there anything more humiliating you can think of?'

'Here's _another_ suggestion then!' Grudo shouted up disgruntledly. 'Peregun? You remember _The Pirate and Fate's Necklace_?'

'I most certainly do!' Peregun shouted back gaily as, slipping out his samurai sword from its scabbard, he ran at, grabbed, and athletically swung up the long, flowing curtains. Although it wasn't sharp, the sword's blade was good enough to slash away the loops of material holding the curtains in place on the rail.

'No no, wait, _I_ remember that show too!' Dougy protested as, down below, Grudo firmly took him by his front paws.

'Aaaaahh! No no!' Dougy uselessly pleaded as Grudo began to whirl him round and round in the air, as if they were both taking part in some bizarre version of the throwing the hammer.

'Ready Peregun?' Grudo cried out.

'Ready!' Peregun yelled back.

'No no, what if you get – aaarrrggghhhhhhh!'

Grudo had let go of Dougy, sending him twirling through the air up towards the balcony.

'Arrggghhhh!' Dougy continued to cry in fear, even as he landed in the safety net that his friends had made of the curtains.

'You next Grudo!' Carey shouted down from the balcony as the shaken Dougy gratefully slipped down to the floor from the curtain's being held by his friends.

'The gates Carey!' Grudo yelled back up towards her. 'The _gates_ are _opening_!'

*

# Chapter 31

The huge gates opened silently, without even the slightest creak.

Grudo watched their opening apprehensively. On the balcony, everyone stopped what they were doing to stare worriedly at the opening gates.

Even before the gates were fully open, there was a thunderous clattering of hooves and iron-rimmed wheels on cobblestone. The black carriage hurtled through the widening gap, the dark horses' pumping muscles glistening in the light like the finest velvet.

For a moment, as it pounded across the square, Carey feared that the carriage was going to career into their caravan. But without any change of course, it narrowly avoided any collision, rushing past the caravan close enough to send the theatre's flags and pennants rippling in its passing wake.

As it continued on its way down the winding streets, townspeople suddenly finding themselves in its path nervously jumped aside. They stared after it in shock, shaking their heads as if they had never seen such a thing.

'I thought the black carriage only came out to play at night?' Peregun whispered in awe.

'So did I,' Carey agreed thoughtfully.

'Carey, I thin–'

Ferena sound so weak and terrified that everyone whirled around to see what was troubling her. She was moving slowly, an expression of deep regret on her face.

'...used up too much fuel...'

Her voice was faint and fading. Her moves were so slight now, they were hardly noticeable.

Carey fell to her knees by Ferena's side.

'Ferena, I filled it only–'

'...my flying, it–'

Ferena abruptly froze.

'Ferena! No! This can't be–'

'Look out!'

With the angry snap of splitting wood, a large table leg came flying towards them all from somewhere inside the darkened room. As Carey protectively wrapped herself around Ferena, everyone else ducked. The leg whirled harmlessly across the balcony, the rope tied to it writhing in the air like a frenzied serpent.

'Grudo!'

Rushing to the balcony's rail and staring down towards the square, they were horrified to see Grudo spread-eagled across the cobblestones. The rope lay coiled about him, the wooden leg lying off to one side.

'He was trying to climb up! It couldn't take his weight!' Durndrin howled anxiously.

'Grudo!' Carey screamed.

'It's all right, it's all right Carey!' Grudo shouted out reassuringly, rising to his feet and shaking off the rope snaking about him. 'I'd only got a few feet when it snapped!'

He looked down despondently at the broken leg and the rope tied to it.

'Looks like you'll have to go on without me,' he cried out resignedly.

Carey sadly glanced back at the frozen Ferena.

'He's right; we'll have to come back for them.'

She leaned over the balcony rail, shouting out to Grudo once more.

'We'll be back, once we've sorted all this out!'

Grudo gave them a gloomy wave; then they disappeared into the room.

He was left standing on his own by the bare, white wall, looking lost, worried and forlorn.

*

# Chapter 32

'Watch out for moving floors!' Carey warned as soon as they entered the room.

Carefully, they all placed their feet tentatively down on the floor, ready to snatch then back as soon as the floor began to try and whisk them away. After a while, after they hadn't encountered a single section of moving floor, they all began to feel just a little foolish.

'You're sure about this, Carey?' Peregun asked doubtfully. 'Moving floors?'

'Well every time _I've_ been here, they've moved!' an embarrassed Carey insisted indignantly.

'Shhussshhh!'

Neris was glaring at them with wide, chiding eyes, her finger up against her mouth in a sign to stop talking. She pointed off to another part of the large room.

It took Carey a moment to realise what she was pointing at. It was the Princess, slumped lifelessly in a chair, her white dress making her look much like the white lace upholstery of the furniture, the large flower displays of blinding white blooms.

'We've already made enough noise to wake the dead!' Peregun irritably whispered back. Yet, like the others, he was tiptoeing as quietly as he could towards the Princess.

Carey nervously reached out to touch the Princess.

'Perhaps she's also run out of – yaarrghh!'

Everyone instinctively jumped back as the Princess abruptly sat up in her chair.

'Sorry, sorry,' the Princess exclaimed breathlessly when she saw how she had shocked them all. 'I just needed a nap; I've been _so_ busy lately, what with – well, I've been _so_ busy for years and years, come to think of it!'

'Princess, _I'm_ sorry for waking you up like this,' Carey stated firmly. 'But _none_ of us want the Illuminator to publish a book about our visit here!'

'Oh, but didn't you see the carriage leave?' The Princess seemed a little puzzled. 'It's already on its way; I can't think of anything that can stop those horses once they have a task to complete!'

'The carriage was taking _our_ book?' Carey wasn't sure whether to be outraged or amazed. 'But...but that's _ridiculous_! What sort of book ends with me in the porcelain room with you, or with our play?'

'Besides,' Durndrin added, trying to find a fault in the Princess's reasoning, 'I thought the horses didn't leave until midnight with any book!'

'Normally they don't; but the Illuminator realised you'd refuse permission to publish if he waited.'

'We _don't_ give our permission!'

'Well, there you are, you see,' the Princess said breezily. 'And now, as for Carey's question – about it being ridiculous to end the story on our meeting in the porcelain room – naturally, I _completely_ agree!'

'Then why has it gone?' Neris asked. 'You've sent out a book that you admit ends ridiculously!'

'Oh, it doesn't end _there_ of course!' The Princess gave a grin that implied it would be crazy to think otherwise. 'It ends sort of happily, of course! Otherwise, it would have been called _The Porcelain World_!'

'A "sort of" happy ending?' Peregun frowned quizzically.

'Even _I_ don't know how he's ended it _exactly_ ,' the Princess admitted, adding with a sad bow of her head, 'and I'm afraid that many of these stories don't always end up how _some_ people would like.'

'I suppose she means that even a happy ending isn't a happy one for the bad guy,' Neris observed with a scowl.

'So now _we're_ the bad guys?' Carey frowned petulantly.

The Princess looked appalled.

'Oh no no; you're the good "guys", if that's the way you want to put it!'

'Erm, _she's_ the one dressed in _white_ ,' Peregun pointed out.

'None of this makes any sense anyway,' Dougy growled. 'I mean, how does he create an ending to something like this, something that's really happening?'

'That's right,' Durndrin snapped accusingly at the poor Princess. 'It's going to be the wrong ending, no matter how he ends it!'

The Princess smiled, totally unfazed by Durndrin's aggression.

'He's amazingly good at _guessing_ the right ending!'

'Guessing?' Carey laughed bitterly. 'So now he thinks he can predict our future?'

'But we all see into our future just a _little_ bit Carey! Whenever we start to say a sentence, we don't have to stop and think about what we're going to say, yet we always begin it with the right words and make it all come out sounding right. The Illuminator just stretches that ability, anticipating our regular patterns of behaviour.'

'So you're saying we're all "Oh so predictable"?' Neris stepped closer to the Princess. 'You know, I'm not sure we can believe a _single_ word you say. You say you're just like us, a flame-driven puppet; but I've been watching you, and you move as smoothly as a _ballet_ dancer, girl!'

'I assure you, Neris,' replied the Princess, at last sounding affronted by the accusation, 'that I _do_ have a flame, just like you.'

To prove that she was telling the truth, she was already opening up her dress, together with the compartment where her heart should be.

'There!' she said proudly, displaying her flame to the curious Neris. 'Now do yo–'

The Princess froze as Neris blew out the flame.

'Hah, didn't I always say I was the greatest living actress?' Neris declared confidently as she stood back from the motionless Princess.

'Depends on what you mean by _living_ I suppose,' Dougy said drily.

'Neris!' Carey exclaimed when she had finally gotten over her shock.

'Look, sorry,' Neris said, 'but we've come a _long_ way for this, haven't we?'

*

# Chapter 33

Out in the corridor, it dawned on them that no one, not even Carey, knew the way around the palace.

'So, which way to this Illuminator's gallery?' Neris asked as, like the others, she pondered whether they'd be better going left or right.

The floor started moving, taking them all off towards the left.

'Hah, all you had to do was _ask_!' Dougy said with obvious satisfaction as they were swiftly carried along the long hallway.

It was a journey every bit as astounding as all the ones Carey had been on so far, taking them through colourfully tiled courtyards, overgrown cloisters, and seemingly endless rooms, usually decorated in some particular way, such as purely in wondrously grained wood, or entirely of glass.

Eventually, the moving floor came to a halt outside a door that Carey immediately recognised.

'Wait!' she declared urgently, holding out her arms on either side to stop everyone from heading towards the beckoning door. 'Beyond this door, there's a long hallway guarded by soldiers!'

'Soldiers? _Now_ you tell us!' Durndrin breathed nervously.

'Soldiers? Now _that_ sounds more like it!' said Peregun, stepping forward, rolling up his sleeves.

Carey held him back.

'Heavily _armoured_ soldiers, who just pop out of the wall as anyone enters.'

'Ahh!' Peregun grinned doubtfully as he studied his stage sword.

'Now this is where a small dog _always_ comes in handy,' Dougy said brightly. 'I'm too fast and too small for them to catch; let me in first, and I'll lead them away from you. Carey, are there any doors I should head for?'

Carey wanted to ask Dougy if he was sure about attempting this, but she could see from the determined look on his face that there wasn't any point trying to talk him out of it. Besides, what other option did they have?

'On your left, Dougy. _We_ head to the right, a door leading into the Illuminator's tower.'

'Got it; exit, stage left,' Dougy said, preparing himself. 'Let me at 'em Carey!'

Carey threw open the door and Dougy rushed in, barking and yelping the loudest he could manage. Whenever he passed one of the flaming lights on the walls, it would instantly slip out of its alcove and smoothly take the shape of an armoured knight that, raising its spear, would chase after Dougy. With a chaotic clattering of iron plates and clumping boots, the soldiers sprinted along the hallway, with little hope of catching the far faster and playfully weaving little dog.

Glancing over his shoulders with a taunting bark, Dougy ducked through the doors on the left, the much more cumbersome armoured men tearing after him as fast as they could manage. In a moment, the hallway was as silent as it had been only moments before.

'Was it just me, or did Dougy seem to be enjoying that?' Peregun asked mischievously as he peered around the door to make sure the way was clear.

Everyone rushed towards the door that opened up into the Illuminator's tower, clambering up the stairs as quickly as they could. It should have been dark on the spiralling staircase, but every so often a blazing flame lit their way.

'Er, I might be being overly anxious here,' Durndrin admitted a little anxiously, 'but didn't you say it's the lights that change into soldiers?'

On the stairs behind them, they heard the heavy clanking of armoured men rushing up after them. Whirling around, they all saw the light just behind Peregun coming from out of the wall and transforming into one of the small knights.

'I'll take care of them!' Peregun declared confidently as he withdrew his sword once more. 'You go on; but blow out the flames in front of you!'

Neris, who was leading the way, had already figured that out and was swiftly blowing out each flame as she came across it. Carey and Durndrin each blew out the flame nearest to them, catching each of the soldiers in mid transformation. The little knights instantly froze, partially remaining as a part of the wall.

'Peregun, do you need any help?' Durndrin shouted back down the tower through the cacophony of clashing swords and armour.

'Never better, my friend!' came the reassuring reply.

Although he was using the flat of his curved blade so he wouldn't cause the little men any permanent injuries, Peregun was using all the tricks he'd learnt in his many swashbuckling roles. Every now and again, he'd kick out at the lead solider, sending him flying back into and knocking over his own men in the stairwell's cramped confines.

'I've got the blood of pirates, of musketeers, flowing through my veins! No one can – ooopppss!'

As he kicked out once more, the knee of his other leg locked. Completely out of balance, he tumbled forwards down the stairs.

He crashed into the oncoming men, bowling them over. They all tumbled down the stairs, the horrendously loud noise of falling knights mingling with Peregun's own cries.

'Ouch!'

'Oww!'

'Ouch!'

As they finally reached the bottom of the stairs, a slightly dazed Peregun looked about him at the tangled pile of groaning men he'd landed on.

'Hah! Works _every_ time!'

'You sure you're all right down there?' one of his friends called out from somewhere higher up the tower.

'Fine, fine! You go on!' Peregun yelled back in-between swiftly blowing out all of the flames that had been powering the knights.

'Opps!' he said, as every one of his limbs locked in position, leaving him stranded on top of the lifeless knights.

*

# Chapter 34

Neris was fiercely gasping for breath by the time she reached the top of the stairs.

'I'm...I'm all...all right,' she breathlessly reassured a concerned Carey, standing aside to wave Durndrin through towards the great doors. 'Though _goodness_ ...knows...what I'd...be like...if I...I didn't do...my ex...exercises – ohh!'

'Neris? What's wrong?'

Neris smiled wanly.

'My...flame...fighting for ox...oxygen, I thi–'

She froze, her eyes wide with surprise.

'Durndrin!' Carey cried out as she dashed towards where he was painstakingly inspecting the doors. 'I need to take a light from your flame–'

'Carey!' Durndrin interrupted her urgently, having fleetingly glanced back to see the motionless Neris. 'She's the ultimate professional, who always insists the show must go on! And the show this time is getting you through these doors before those soldiers tire of chasing Dougy and head back here!'

Carey uncertainly looked Neris's way. Then she looked back to Durndrin and nodded; yes, he was right.

'So we need a code,' she said, studying the door panels as closely as he was, pressing on a piece of embossed coral in the hope that it would set in motion some secret mechanism.

'It's not the coral even though, yes, that's what sank the ship.'

Durndrin spoke disinterestedly, his focus still on working out how to open the doors.

Turning his head, he looked back towards the gallery.

'The nail; according to the Illuminator, the weakness was a nail.'

'A nail?' Carey moaned desperately, looking the doors up and down. 'Have you seen how many nails there are in these doors?'

Bulbously-headed iron nails formed a great deal of the design, giving a sense of robustness to the general pattern. The huge iron hinges that stretched across each door were also held firmly in place by thick bolts and screws that could also easily be described as being nails. Even worse, various types of smaller, less obvious nails had been used to fix the copper panels within their decoratively carved wooden frames.

'Besides,' Carey added more hopefully, 'these doors have obviously been here long before he started thinking of his story.'

'Hmn, you're sure of that are you, Carey?' Durndrin was doing his best to carefully check each nail. 'What if he's had his idea for the story flowing around in his head for years?' With a flick of his head, he indicated the gallery lying behind him. 'What if all this work's not meant to be published, but is just here as a clue to cracking the code?'

'Why give anybody a clue? And just how literally are we supposed to take his tale anyway?

'Your first question; who knows? A test? Your second; very literally, I suspect. This _is_ the _Illuminator_ , remember?'

Carey tried to push on both doors at once, in a vain attempt to see if their movement revealed anything that seemed slightly loose. The doors didn't even move.

'It's like trying to move aside _two_ massive ships!'

' _Two_?' Durndrin repeated curiously, stepping back and taking a fresh look at the doors. 'There was only _one_ ship.'

'Now that's _really_ being too literal, Durndrin!'

'Hmn, I'm not so sure,' Durndrin answered, moving away from where the doors came together and, stepping over towards one side of the door frame, swiftly running his hands over every piece of wood, copper or iron decoration he could see. ' _One_ ship, _one_ door?'

He touched one of the huge hinges that fixed this particular door to the frame.

' _Iron_ ,' he whispered, deep in thought. 'The _elemental_ flaw.'

His fingers moved lightly and quickly over the hinge's elaborately ornamental swirls.

'Iron's an _element_ ; does that mean it has a _flaw_?'

He grimaced in disappointment as, arriving at the point where the hinge was fixed to the frame, he had to admit he hadn't found any deliberate weakness along its entire length.

'No no; wait!' he declared excitedly. 'It's a flaw which makes it _entirely_ useless! The nail without its head _isn't_ a nail!'

He ran his fingers and his eyes over the area where the hinge flared out to accept the iron bar holding both it and therefore the door in place.

'So for a _hinge_ that would mean it isn't _really_ a hinge, which would mean – yes!'

There was an almost invisible gap between the great piece of iron that was fixed to the door and the flared section that supposedly held it to the frame.

'So if I'm right that all this is really _one_ great door–'

Grabbing a decorative swirl of the hinge and using it like a handle, he pulled hard; and the hinge on his side cleanly snapped apart, the great door beginning to swing open on the hinge fixed to the other side of the frame.

'It is _one_ door!' Carey gasped with relief.

Durndrin was obviously struggling to pull the door open. Even though there wasn't much of a gap, he urgently groaned, 'It's got a really strong spring – quick, Carey! Get through the gap!'

Carey slipped through it, spinning around with the intention of pushing against the door to allow Durndrin to follow her.

'Carey!' Durndrin yelled in alarm. 'I can't hold it anymo–'

The door slammed shut behind Carey, leaving her last friend on the other side.

*

# Chapter 35

Normally when a door slams shut on you, you suddenly become aware of the silence.

In Carey's case, she suddenly became aware of the clash of steel, the frightening whinnying of a horse, and the aggressive snorting of some unknown beast.

She whirled around.

A knight and his mount, both of whom were suffering the Fading, were desperately fighting a ferociously taloned dragon. Carey had always thought of dragons as being mythical creatures, but apart from the fact that he was as faint and mirage-like as his opponents, this one seemed real enough.

The thunderous noise vanished in an instant as the knight and dragon disappeared, an old woman feeding hungrily clucking chickens appearing alongside in their place. She, too, seemed to be a victim of the Fading, and she too suddenly vanished, replaced by sailors being uncontrollably tossed across the angled deck of a storm-tossed ship,

Abruptly, the booming roar of wind and waves vanished, but this time the men were left struggling against the storm in total silence until they in turn were replaced by a young couple trying to make their way through a mountain's thick snow.

A tinkling of cups to her right made Cary turn away from the transparent reflections of life and look over to another part of the room. A man was standing by a small table, set out for tea-for-two. He was reasonably young, even handsome, and dressed like a meagrely paid teacher; not at all what Carey had been expecting.

'It's a good to see you again, Carey,' the man said as he poured tea from a teapot into the two cups on the table.

'Again?'

'Ah yes, of course, you don't remember of course.' Putting down the teapot, he began to add milk to the tea. 'A necessary precaution, I'm afraid; but one I finally hope to set right.'

He poured just a hint of milk into one cup and, with a wave of his hand, he invited Carey to take a seat.

Carey's eyes were on the tea set; half white, half flame red, with three fleeing figures portrayed in magenta.

'So it was true?' Carey asked as she drew closer to the table. 'The tale of _The Porcelain Doll_ was true?'

The man carefully placed the milk jug next to the elegantly tall teapot. The faint images gradually circling the room were now passing behind him; a family boating on a lake, an elaborate ballet production, a battle waged between armies mounted on mammoths.

Carey noticed that the teapot was missing its fleeing family.

'Some say such a story isn't possible,' the man said, his voice rich and melodiously entrancing, 'but who decides what's possible and what isn't in a story; or, for that matter, what is and what isn't in reality?'

Now seated at the table, Carey took a sip of her tea. She couldn't mistake the perfumed tones of an excellent Earl Grey.

'You have to stop your carriage,' Carey declared firmly, as if suddenly remembering why she was really here. 'We don't want _our_ story told!'

Sitting down at the table, the man shook his head apologetically.

'Too late for that, my dear; I mean, I'm afraid your story was being told long before you entered the forest.'

'But I just saw your carriage leave!' Carey protested.

'Ah, yes; just a little bit of theatre to spur you on – and to prove to you that the Princess isn't completely aware of _everything_ I put in motion. This story of you for instance; I hope you don't mind, but I've added my own, personal postscript? I'd like someone very dear to me to finally have something a little better than a "sort of" happy ending.'

'Someone dear to you? The Princess? What right do _you_ have to decide what makes someone happy?'

The man hung his head almost shamefully.

'I don't presume _any_ such thing, Carey; as you can see, this room and I just act as a conduit, a channel, for all the world's imagination and emotion.'

He drew Carey's attention back to the images languidly whirling around the room. The knight was now badly injured and, in a daze, he and his exhausted horse were being led by a cackling demon. A wolf slinked back into the forest, a chicken between his teeth. The ship rose out of the water, caught in the fateful embrace of the multi-tentacled kraken. The young couple were crossing a precariously delicate bridge spanning the gap between mountains.

'Ask any writer, any composer, any artist, Carey, and they will tell you that their creations seems to flow through them from _something_ lying outside and beyond them; and that's because they mistakenly believe that _they_ are the reality, rather than this _something_ , the linking of the consciousness of each and every one of us.'

'But you've taken _control_ of it; turned yourself into some sort of...of _god_!'

As he rose from his seat and stepped towards the ever-changing images, the man shook his head sadly.

'That's the elemental flaw, to believe that there are gods or such things that have control over us. Yet if that were true, we'd have no control over _anything_ – when we quite clearly do. But by thinking they _might_ exist, we give them life, relieving ourselves of any sense of responsibility while placing control of our lives in their hands.'

He reached into an image of a library and, when he withdrew his hand, he was holding a book. He placed it on the table in front of Carey.

_The Porcelain Room_.

Carey stared at the title of the book placed before her.

'While you read it, I'd like to finish some work,' the man said, stepping away again and this time completely immersing himself in one of the images.

The grappling armoured bears froze around him, their sword strokes and defensive moves of their shields halted in mid-action. With a whirl of his hands, a two-dimensional version of the scene began to appear before him, hovering in the air, the colours smoothly flowing from his fingertips.

Carey would have liked to watch him work.

But most of all, she wanted to read the book.

*

# Chapter 36

When she opened the book, the very first illustration made her gasp.

'Father!'

She shook her head, telling herself not to be so silly.

Of course, it was her grandfather, or great granddad, or whatever relation he was to her. Obviously, there'd be a family resemblance.

She was tempted to flick through the first part of the story, as the Princess had already told her that part. But even at a glance of the text and illustrations, Carey could see that the book's version of the tale differed slightly to the one told by the Princess.

A book will always be different to a remembered tale. But it also contained details that the Princess had probably deemed unimportant when it came to her retelling of the story; yet to Carey, they were very important indeed.

The wonderfully vivid illustration of the puppet theatre putting on _The Porcelain Child_ showed Grudo before he had attained his mechanical life. Yet here he was given a semblance of life, for Carey's grandfather had ingeniously connected his own limbs to Grudo's using thin rods, such that the looming giant – positioned high above even her grandfather on a raised section behind the stage – appeared to be the real Puppet Master. Another revelation was the unveiling of the porcelain child at the end of the show, for she was truly beautiful, truly astonishing, as she sparkled whiter than a crisp layer of snow.

Naturally, all the illustrations were wondrously beautiful. There was a particularly highly detailed series portraying her grandfather working on the mechanism for the puppets that the Illuminator had revealed to him. Carey could clearly make out the way he'd painstakingly constructed the spirit reservoirs, the complicated array of cogs, pulleys and wires, all in sizes that would have confounded an accomplished watchmaker. Then, studiously and laboriously, he had fixed all these workings into his chosen puppets.

Once he knew the secret, Carey wondered, why didn't he give life to more of his puppets? Was it something to do with whatever agreement he'd made with the Illuminator?

When it came to bringing life to his daughter, it wasn't just his skill that shone out from the illustrations, but also his incredible love for his child. And whether it was the addition of that love, or whether it was something extra included in that agreement with the Illuminator, there was obviously already something different in the way his daughter came to life as he lit her flame and closed the compartment over her heart.

'Father?' she said, smiling at him dreamily as her eyes unhurriedly blinked open. 'How long have I been sleeping?'

Her father reached out towards her, stroking her face with the most incredible tenderness.

'A long long time, my darling,' he said, fighting hard to hold back his tears. 'Far longer than I would have wished for; but you're awake now.'

Rising up from where she had been uncomfortably slumped in the caravan's cosiest chair, she wrapped her arms around her father.

'I _do_ love you dad!' she cried happily.

*

# Chapter 37

The Princess had known her father after all!

She had _loved_ her father!

And yet her father had freely given her up, leaving her to live here instead with the Illuminator!

Carey was shocked. She had even stopped reading the book for a while, glancing up at the Illuminator as he swiftly worked on the illustration of some strange contraption that seemed to be flying in the air.

How could he have insisted that the Princess was separated from her father and left with him?

Over the next few pages of the book, it was patently clear that father and daughter loved each other so much that they delighted in enjoying the simplest pleasures together; repairing a wheel of the caravan, taking a walk in a country lane, mixing paints for the posters and puppets. He was joyfully amazed when she simply called him 'Father', and happier than any man could be when he held her in his arms and told her he loved her. And in each illustration, the girl was incredibly becoming more beautiful, more real, such that there was increasingly little difference between her and a real girl.

As Carey read on, she began to spot more and more elements in the tale that the Princess either hadn't thought to mention or wasn't even aware of herself. Then again, of course, Carey had fled the room before the Princess had had the chance to explain more.

She turned a page; and her grandfather was standing for the first time in the very room that Carey was now seated in.

*

# Chapter 38

The Porcelain Room

Pages 25 to 35

When he had finally gotten over the shock of seeing all the flickering images revolving round the room, the Father looked more closely about him with even more confusion.

'But my materials; to do as you ask, I need the clay, my work tools.'

The Illuminator smiled as he shook his head.

'No; you need only your love, which you have in abundance.'

With a wave of his hand, the images surrounding them vanished. In their place was an image that made the Father gasp with joy.

It was his daughter, happily playing in the palace's garden where he had left her only moments before. She was watching the butterflies flitter between the blooms, their bright tones contrasting with equally vibrant shades of the flowers. She laughed in delight as swallows swooped low across the garden's fountains, dipping their beaks in the pooling water.

'Now, you're sure you're willing to make the sacrifice we spoke of?'

'I'm sure,' the Father answered.

He loved his daughter more than he could ever have possibly imagined he would. To give his daughter a real life, he would happily give even his own life.

'As we both know,' he continued resignedly, stepping closer to the translucent image of his daughter, wanting to touch and hug her once more, 'handling the chemicals for my porcelain has already shortened my life anyway; I'm willing to embrace the Fading for the sake of–'

He gasped in surprise as, reaching out to touch his daughter's cheek, materials began to flow from his fingertips. As his hands now instinctively moved through the air, he saw he was recreating a physical image of his daughter right before him.

But no; it wasn't an image, he realised. This girl he was creating was every bit as real, as beautiful, as his own daughter. There were slight differences too; this girl was made of porcelain, just as his own daughter had originally been formed from it. Her dress was different too, being the white lace and expensive pearls of a dress fit for a princess.

He cried as he was filled with a sense of incredible joy, feeling the presence of his wife as she worked through him, her love combining indistinguishably with his love in this act that would finally grant a real, _true_ life to their daughter.

The Princess standing before him opened her eyes dreamily, as if simply waking up from a long long sleep.

'Oh, I'm _ever_ so sorry,' she said drowsily, 'I must have been asleep.'

*

He pushed on the lever, let out the stop; and the steam wagon grumpily chugged into life.

All his puppets were safely stored in the back, out of view of everyone. Not that anyone was giving him and his wagon even a second glance today. As he carefully made his way around the edges of the huge crowd that had gathered in the square, all eyes were on the palace's balcony. They gasped, sighed and cheered as he slowly made his way towards one of the snaking streets that would take him out of town.

There was no need to stay here any longer. The Illuminator had already fulfilled his side of the bargain; in fact, it had turned out, he had fulfilled it months ago, as he had already illustrated and published their story. It had already been read by thousands of people, and was probably being read at this very moment too. It meant that, like his wife, he would gradually succumb to the Fading. But more importantly, it ensured that in the imaginations of so many, many readers, their daughter was truly a living, breathing girl.

The crowd cheered ecstatically as, high up on her balcony, where she had appeared for the very first time only moments ago, the Princess gave a last few, final waves.

'Oh, she's just _so_ beautiful, don't you think Father?' his daughter sighed as, seated alongside him, she leant over slightly in her seat to get a better view.

' _Very_ beautiful,' her father grinned, his eyes on his daughter rather than on the Princess.

As the Princess left the balcony and moved back into her rooms, his daughter at last sat up properly in her seat.

'Do you think that, one day,' she asked, 'people will tell fabulous stories about her?'

'Of _course_ they will,' her father replied, giving her a loving hug. 'Just as, one day, I'm sure they'll be telling _wonderful_ stories about you too, Carey!'

*

# Chapter 39

Carey sat bolt upright in her chair, clutching at her heart as if to check that it was still beating, that it wasn't just an area warmed by a spirit-fuelled flame.

'I'm...I'm _not_ a _puppet_!' she exclaimed, angry and bewildered.

'Of _course_ you're not a puppet, Carey!'

The Illuminator was standing quite close, having finished his work. Stepping closer, he affectionately and reassuringly placed his hands on her shoulders.

'He really was your father; and your mother was really your mother, for she gave birth to you, and your father gave life to you. Just as much as any father and mother give birth and life to their child.'

' _The Porcelain Child_! Then she...she really was _my_ mother?'

She grimaced in anguish as she recalled the innumerable times that she had touched and felt the presence of that beautiful, wonderful woman portrayed in the illustrations; and she had never, ever realised that this woman was her _mother_.

'No!' She furiously leapt from her chair, sending it spinning and falling behind her. 'This isn't _natural_! _I'm_ not natural!'

Her body almost froze with horror at the realisation, her face crumpling in distress, the tears welling up in her eyes, falling down her cheeks.

The Illuminator took her in his arms, holding her close, holding her tenderly.

'It's hard to understand just yet,' he admitted sympathetically. 'But in those very first days of a child's creation in the womb, when it's the very smallest and most malleable collection of cells, what do you think is really giving it the will to take form? Haven't I already explained that? You were simply helped to take form in a material hardly less malleable, brought into being as you flowed into life through the incredible love of your mother and father. And now that everyone has read the new story of the achievements of you and your friends, how can they fail to see that you deserve to live at last like a real girl?'

Carey pulled back slightly, more confused than ever.

'But...but I've always thought of myself as _being_ a real girl?'

'And you are, you are! But everyone who's read _The Porcelain Child_ and _The Porcelain Room_ still see you as a girl of _fourteen_ , Carey!'

'Well yes, of course, I...I...'

She was trying to work out in her bewildered mind what the Illuminator could be hinting at.

'But the Princess?' she said uncertainly. 'She's almost a _hundred_ years old?'

The Illuminator nodded in a way that implied he not only agreed but also wanted her to keep putting further pieces of the puzzle together.

'But she was created as a copy of _me_ , which means...'

'Which means, Carey, that we need to show everyone how you've grown and matured _inside_. I know they want everything to turn out well for you and your friends. We had to let them know it's now time for them to help and let you _really_ grow.'

The great door swung partially open. The Princess slipped in through the gap. The door opened wider, allowing a few wildly grinning young men and women to step through, most of whom looked strangely familiar to Carey. Behind them all, after he let go of the door, came a similarly wildly grinning Grudo.

And immediately, Carey recognised the rest of her friends. She rushed towards them all, unsure who to hug and hold first, calling out their names in surprise and delight.

'Neris! Peregun! Durndrin! You're _really_ alive!'

Now they were humans, they were all taller, all younger than they had been, being around eighteen or twenty. They hugged her back, a look of happy surprise still etched on all their faces.

'And _you_ ,' Neris said mysteriously, fondly stroking Carey's face, ' _you_ look so _wonderful_!'

'Grudo!'

He, at least, _wasn't_ taller than he had been. But he was now much warmer and softer to hug.

'You did it girl, you did it!' he proclaimed proudly, giving her an extra tight hug.

'And Ferena!' Carey exclaimed as she at last noticed the small fairy flying around their heads.

Ferena lightly landed on Carey's shoulder.

'Isn't it wonderful, Carey?' she trilled joyously. 'The Princess says this is obviously what everyone wanted for us.'

'But Dougy, where's Dou–'

Carey stopped in mid-sentence as a young boy sheepishly stepped towards her.

'I never really wanted to be a dog,' he explained with a weak smile, his voice apologetic yet getting brighter and more excited as he added, 'but I've always liked messing around; so this is perfect, really.'

The Princess had politely remained standing to one side. She warmly smiled when Carey at last glanced her way.

'I suppose we're sort of sisters, yes?'

'Sort of,' Carey agreed with a chuckle.

Reaching for each other, they embraced each other as if they were indeed long-lost sisters.

'But I don't understand,' Carey admitted as they slightly stood apart once more. 'Why...why are you still like _this_ , still of _porcelain_ ; when you could obviously be _really_ alive, be _real_ too?'

'Oh, but I'm perfectly happy with who I am; and I _am_ alive,' the Princess declared cheerfully, opening the compartment by her heart.

The flame still remained unlit. Yet the Princess was moving and talking; and giggling happily.

'Then you...' Carey began unsurely.

'Let you through to meet the Illuminator? Of course!'

She stepped closer to Carey once more, reaching up to lovingly touch her face, making her turn her head slightly so that she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror that appeared amongst the whirling images.

'And I think it was all worth it, don't you; my wonderful, _older_ sister?'

Despite its translucency, the mirror reflected Carey's own image back to her faultlessly.

No wonder the Princess had had to reach up to touch her! Carey was taller than she had been, more assured in her stance and the directness of her look. She possessed a different kind of beauty too, one she instantly felt perfectly at ease with.

'And now, if you _don't_ mind,' the Illuminator pronounced with a satisfied grin, 'I _do_ have a great deal of work to do here!'

They all left the room, observing and embracing each other with undiminishing amazement, laughing, and wondering what they should all do together next.

'My garden, everyone, you must see my garden!' the Princess announced gleefully.

The garden; at last Carey could remember the day she'd been in the garden. It was the day she'd first noticed how wonderfully gorgeous flowers were, how amazingly brightly coloured butterflies could be.

It had also been the day her father had helped give life to the Princess – her younger sister.

'And a show; we must start working on a new show,' they all agreed. 'One we'll call _The Porcelain Princess_!'

*
Postscript

by the Illuminator

Well, isn't that how stories about young, beautiful princesses are supposed to end?

Our rich yet once lonely Princess now has friends, even a long-lost older sister, and a whole library full of all those love poems she just so _loves_ to read.

What more could she possibly want?

What's that?

Really?

You think _that's_ the perfect ending, do you?

You know what?

I think I _agree_ with you!

Yes, yes; that would indeed be a _very_ happy ending for the Princess.

Thank you _so_ much!

She really _will_ enjoy that ending, I'm certain.

Oh dear – in fact, I can _already_ hear his singing!

And he really _can't_ hit those high notes, can he?

End
If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things – The Last Train

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen

