Zomi stared at the new logogram Luan sculpted. The sub-logogram of air-over-heart was formed from a small pear-shaped nodule decorated with three wavy ridges, which rather reminded her of a chicken’s brain. “Explosion… mind… fury?”
Luan laughed out loud. “You’re indeed quick! That is why the Amu poet Nakipo’s famous poem ‘Fury’ is written like this.”
He sculpted the poem in the tray: the elaborate logogram for “fury” at the top, and then two lines of four logograms each below it.
Zomi parsed the logograms one by one:
“I don’t understand. What sort of silly poem is this?”
“You don’t recognize all the inflection glyphs or phonetic adapters yet, so let me read it and then translate for you.”
“Lovely, isn’t it? Nakipo wrote it after an argument with one of her closest friends, and this is deemed one of the finest examples of the imagistic school of poetry popular in old Amu. Each of the poem’s two lines is written with variations of the five sub-logograms found in the single logogram in the poem’s title, combined in various ways to give rise to new meaning. The poem is a finely crafted machine, as carefully designed as an Imperial airship or a jeweled water clock.”
Two young women came toward them from the hamlet. They wore large wicker baskets strapped to their backs and nodded at Luan and Zomi.
“Our guides are here,” said Luan.
Zomi seemed to not hear him; she continued to caress the logograms in the writing tray, the unfinished pastry forgotten to the side.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MERCHANTS AND FARMERS
One by one, the other pana méji were introduced, and they presented their ideas with various degrees of panache. Some put on skits like Kita Thu; some unveiled models or illustrations. One had his servants run around the Grand Audience Hall trying to fly some kites that were supposed to illustrate the elevated tone of his arguments—the lines got tangled and the kites crashed into the balconies, leading to much embarrassment and jokes about the “tangled skein” of his logic. Another chose to engage the Lords of Dara by making them participants in a mini-opera where they’d sing the chorus—that experiment fared about as well as one might expect.
Emperor Ragin quizzed each, jumping from their essays onto new subjects that seemed to interest him more. Now clued in to the true nature of the event, Théra was more appreciative of the stiff, odd answers given by the examinees as well as the subtle flow of power in the Grand Audience Room. It was as if the emperor, the pana méji, and all the attendees at court were playing some elaborate game in which a conversation happened beneath the conversation.
The next examinee, Naroca Huza, was from Géjira, Queen Gin’s realm. He spoke with the crisp, bright vowels of Gan, and the jade hairpins he wore in his triple scroll-bun gleamed in the slanting rays of sunlight.
“Rénga, I will open my presentation with a marvel to honor your wisdom and the diligence of Prime Minister Cogo Yelu.”
Naroca’s servants unpacked their trunks and began to assemble a massive machine in the middle of the Grand Audience Hall. It consisted of two large vertical spokes on either side, and a massive scroll of paper was installed on the right and spooled onto the spoke on the left. The audience could see that the scroll was divided into large rectangles, within each of which was painted a picture.
In front of the spokes was erected a rectangular frame whose size matched the size of the pictures on the scroll. The top and bottom of the frame were each an axle that turned freely. A pair of flat boards was attached to each axle, like a water mill wheel with only two vanes. These flaps were designed so that the vanes in the top and bottom wheels met just in the middle of the frame. As the wheels spun in synchrony, they acted as two rotating doors alternately blocking the view of the scroll behind them—when the flaps met in the middle—and revealing the scroll—when the flaps were parallel to the ground.
An intricate series of gears and belts connected the spools and vaned wheels to a set of foot pedals connected to cranked wheels to the side. The servants sat down on seats located above the pedals and readied themselves.
Everyone in the hall held their breath, waiting to see what sort of magical feat this strange contraption would perform.
Naroca looked around the hall, satisfied that all attention was directed at him. “You may begin!” He waved his hand forcefully.
The servants began to pedal at a steady pace. The gears and belts transferred their motion to the vaned wheels so that they began to flap open and closed, letting light through in rapid succession. At the same time, the massive scroll of paper began to rotate, spooling the paper from the right to the left.
Everyone in the hall gasped.
The images on the scroll seemed to come to life. A ship appeared to be sailing through a tumultuous sea, laden with bags of grain, bolts of silk, and boxes of other goods. Bravely, the ship made it through rain and lightning to arrive at a dock, where a cheering crowd welcomed the sailors.
Then came a map of the Islands of Dara, and the goods of each region appeared on the map one after another as though drawn there by an unseen hand: the prized fish and crabs of Zathin Gulf; the heavy red sorghum and glistening white rice of Cocru; corals and pearls from the coast of Wolf’s Paw; taro and animal pelts from Tan Adü; thick stacks of lumber from Rima; fruits and wines and wool from Faça; incense and silk made in Géjira…
And tiny ships appeared on the map, sailing from one region of Dara to another, leaving trails behind like strands of spider silk. Gradually, the Islands of Dara were woven into a whole, connected by the shining trails of the ships that plied its seas. The ships flickered and grew brighter, as though they were meteors leaving brilliant trails in a dark sky.
Abruptly, the animated images stopped. The entire massive scroll of paper had been unspooled from the right to the left, and the loose end of the paper flapped rhythmically against the machine. The servants slowed down and then stopped pedaling.
The Lords of Dara were unwilling to believe that the marvel had come to an end. It was simply too magical.
Luan smiled knowingly. Though the demonstration was impressive, he understood its principle right away. The animated image had been produced in a similar fashion as the rotating lanterns made by folk artists at the Lantern Festival or schoolboy drawings done in the corners of thick codices. Each successive image differed only slightly from the previous one, and when they were moved with sufficient speed behind a flickering shutter, persistence of vision produced the illusion of motion.
“…if merchants were given the recognition they deserve and the protections they require, then Dara’s prosperity would surely follow.”