But as much as they enjoyed reading, sometimes the girls just wanted to be away from the palace, away from the guards and courtiers and servants and maids, away from the roles of Imperial princesses.
They had snuck out of the palace by hiding inside the carriage of the farmers who delivered fresh produce to the palace kitchen; then they had hitched rides with merchants and farmers until they got to the shore of the lake.
“If we did this more often,” Théra said, “I’m afraid my mother would tear all her hair out. When we get back, she’ll probably make you write the hundred-stroke logograms a hundred times.”
“It’s worth it.”
“It is indeed worth it,” said a new voice.
The girls turned around. The speaker was a lady of extraordinary beauty. Golden-haired and blue-eyed, her brown skin was as smooth as polished amber. A blue silk dress floated around her like a veil of water. Her voice was gentle and cool, like a breeze passing through the leaves of a weeping willow.
Théra stood up and bowed to her in jiri, thinking she was the mistress of the nearby large estate that probably owned this private wharf as well as all the farmland in the area. “We apologize for trespassing; we’ll leave immediately.”
The lady smiled and shook her head. “Why leave? There are four great pleasures in life, and this is one of them.”
“What are the four great pleasures?” asked Fara, instantly curious.
“That would be sitting by a cozy fire in winter while snow falls outside the window; climbing onto a high place after a spring rain to admire a revitalized world; eating crabs with freshly brewed tea next to the fall tides; and dipping your feet into a cool lotus-covered lake in the middle of summer.”
“Oh,” said Fara, a bit disappointed. “I thought you were going to say something more…”
“More impressive?” asked the lady.
Fara nodded.
The lady chuckled. “When you’ve lived for as long as I have, you realize that the greatest pleasures in life are not very impressive at all. It’s better to have one true friend who can understand the voice in your heart when you pluck out a hesitant tune on the zither than to have the unthinking adoration of millions.”
Théra looked closer at the woman’s placid face and realized that she couldn’t tell how old she was: For a moment she seemed as young as Théra herself, but as the sparkling lake changed the light reflected onto her face, she suddenly seemed as old as the grandmothers who tilled the nearby fields.
Théra turned the lady’s words over in her mind. She wasn’t sure she agreed with them, but at least the lady was interesting. “I take it you’re a Fluxist, Mistress?”
“I don’t care much about labels, but I do think Ra Oji was closer to the truth than the other Ano philosophers. Emperor, beggar, princess, maid—for all our toils and struggles, in the end the Flow governs us all.”
“But what you said can’t be right,” Fara suddenly piped up. “I mean… about the great pleasures.”
“Why not?”
“You didn’t mention the love of a handsome man!” said Fara. “That’s the most important thing.”
“Whatever makes you think that?”
“It’s all the stories the ladies—er, the older girls tell her,” said Théra. “And all the plays put on by the traveling puppet opera troupes: Lady Mira killing herself for love; Princess Kikomi killing for love; Lady Zy jumping into the Liru for love.”
The lady sat down on the wharf, careless of the delicate fabric of her dress. She took off her wooden clogs and dipped her feet into the water. Théra saw that her feet were calloused and rough, and instantly she liked her more.
“Come and sit,” said the lady. Then she quirked her brows at Théra. “By your tone, I take it you don’t approve of love much.”
“Songs about men are about friendship, war, sights of faraway lands, and sounds of the eternal sea,” Théra said. “But songs about women—just listen.”
They quieted and listened to the women in the little boats collecting lotus pods.
“I know what the song is about!” said Fara excitedly. “They serve lotus seeds at weddings because it’s good luck: The bride will be pregnant soon and bear many children, like the lotus seedpods.”
“See?” Théra said.
“You sound like another young woman I once knew,” said the lady. “She was not much older than you when we met, and she also had much to say about the fate of women and the price of beauty. But I think you might be judging this song too harshly. Listen.”
The young women in the boats continued to sing, their voices as cool and refreshing as the water at their feet.
“That is lovely,” said Théra.
“Very lovely,” said Fara.
“There’s much wisdom in flowers,” said the lady, “though they’re often dismissed as frivolous.”
“My mother tried to teach me about flowers,” said Théra, “but I suppose that’s why I wasn’t very interested in them. A lotus is a bit like the dandelion. While dandelion seeds ride the wind, lotus seeds ride the water. Both have adventures.” Her eyes dimmed as she spoke. “Even flowers get to do more than some people.”
The lady waved at one of the small boats, and the young woman oared it over, her powerful arms flexing in the sunlight like the firm roots of the lotus. The lady bought a few lotus pods from her, paying with an ingot of silver.
“I don’t have enough money to give you change for that,” said the young woman, laughing. “Mistress, everything in my home added together isn’t even worth that much.”
“Keep it,” said the lady. “Think of it as a gift from Tututika, like the lotus pods themselves.”
The young peasant woman looked at the wealthy lady and nodded solemnly. She crossed her arms before her chest and bowed in jiri. “Thank you. May Tututika always walk amongst us.”
Théra knew that in Géfica, especially in the countryside, the people were pious in their worship of Tututika, the goddess of fresh water and agriculture. It was the custom to be generous to strangers, for the goddess was said to take on human form from time to time to test the beauty of people’s character. Random acts of kindness were not unheard of.
The peasant woman oared away, leaving a wake over the smooth surface of the lake. The lady took out a small bone knife and cut open one of the spongy pods to retrieve the seeds. Then she peeled off the rubbery shell to reveal the white kernels inside.
Fara stared, mesmerized. She had eaten plenty of sugared lotus seeds and loved lotus paste in desserts, but she had never had fresh lotus seeds before. “I’d like one.”
“Fara!” Théra scolded. “That is very rude.”
“I bought them to share,” said the lady, laughing. “But you have to wait. If I give this to you now, you’ll not like it at all.”
As the girls watched, the lady put away the knife, took a hairpin out of her bun, and poked it through the center of the seeds, one by one. “There is a green core in each seed, the germ, which is among the bitterest things you’ll ever taste.”