Impossible Toys

The head advisor scrutinized the master craftsman’s stiff entrance. Two guards pinched the guest’s elbows, a third at his back, spear ready. Even someone so lowly, so humble in dress, could be a threat to the emperor’s life.

The brittle, mud-flecked leather of the master craftsman’s boots squeaked sharply with every step, giving the impression of rats crying a final death echo from the distant walls of the imperial palace. The master craftsman, a gray blemish of poverty, streaked the jasper red and ivory white tiles that had been laid waxily hundreds of years before. In his hand hung heavy a cube of wood and metal. It was a puzzle. The head advisor whispered the story of the box into the emperor’s wrinkled ear: The master craftsman and his apprentice spent four years designing this puzzle such that, in all of the six sovereignties, no one, not even the wisest spiritual guide, nor the most well read librarian, nor the most inspired artist, could solve it.

A smile folded into the emperor’s face. This was the Hour of Amusements, a daily dedication to his pleasure. He signalled the guards to ease their restraint. Without a word, the master craftsman pressed and poked the cube’s edges in a series of smooth twists, his wrinkled hands and knobbed knuckles dancing in the soft light of the great chamber’s heaven-ward windows. Though aged, he moved with a mechanical grace like the running of a watermill. He was careful to obscure the solution from the eyes of the guards, the advisors, the imperial offspring, and even the emperor himself, brushing the cube along the interior of his coat, or guiding his audience’s eyes to one side with a bird-like flutter of fingers. Sounds of sliding wood and rolling metal echoed against the marble ceiling. Minutes passed until, with a clumsy flourish, the craftsman revealed a doll. 

The doll was not particularly beautiful to behold. It had a metal nose like a spear, wooden limbs, angular hips, cloth fingers with unevenly cut wooden knuckles. Though it was crude, and somewhat ugly in the face, what made the doll impressive was its emergence from the space which once held only the cube. How had the planes and angles of the puzzle box become this raggedy, soft-eyed puppet? “It is an ode to nature itself,” said the master craftsman at last. “Flowers bloom. Leaves fall. Life appears, then disappears. Not even the wisest man can say exactly why or how. We, too, are but little dolls destined to return to our box in the ground—a destiny without answers.”

The doll passed from guards to consult elites, from consult elites to imperial daughters, from imperial daughters to the head advisor—a calculated chain, each individual inspecting it for ill will. This process, timely but necessary, brought the sun down low along the mountains. When at last the head advisor declared the object was safe for the emperor’s enjoyment, the emperor grinned like a child, his ancient eyes saucer-round with wonder. He took the doll with great care, its rectangular head and silk hat pinched between forefinger and thumb. He folded in the arms, twisted the long nose, slid the hinged back muscles and jointed shoulder blades, folded and unfolded the collapsable panels that appeared in one limb and disappeared in another. Darkness fell. The emperor returned the crumpled semi-shape back along to the master craftsman who, still careful to hide integral motions behind the tattered layers of his coat, returned the doll to its tight six-sided form.

The master craftsman bowed deep and was escorted out. The doll-box remained: a gift of great wonder and torment.

************

The emperor was known for only a few weaknesses, the first of which was puzzles. He held in his mind a trophy reserved only for himself, a trophy he earned again and again as he solved the most complex of riddles, conundrums, and ancient koans.

Even though the poor and desperate would never overcome suffering under the empire’s selfish rule, never before had there been more clean water, more fresh food, and less death. This was possible due to the head advisor, a shrewd and calculating man who, despite what necessity demanded, had the desire to see the empire thrive. His primary tactical thrust was the manipulation of the emperor’s vice: framing the empire’s dilemmas as puzzles. Lured by the promise of mental exercise, the emperor took an active role in solving the hardships of his people. Natural disasters, rampant diseases, and economic stagnation alike became games to pass the time. But, of course, the emperor had more ego than patience; eager to award himself his mental trophy, he would eventually ask his head advisor for a simple hint. The head advisor would gently massage each hint to bear his philanthropic agenda.

Measuring how much help to grant the emperor was a costly skill, for the emperor’s second weakness was tied to the first. The emperor, like many men before him, hated feeling like a fool. On rare occasions of inferiority and frustration, the emperor donned the wicked scowl of his ancestors, conquering his problems through blood and violence. Problems that couldn’t be pierced by the mind, he would say, must be pierced through the heart.

After three moons of tampering with the doll-box, the emperor felt the pulse of his red ancestral heat. Neither he, nor his head advisor, nor his nineteen consult elites, made any progress. The cube taunted them with unnatural sounds: balls rolling, wood grinding, cloth whipping as if caught in the wind, seeds jingling, the faint ping of a tin bell. Each of the cube’s faces bore chiseled script which no librarian had seen before, no linguist could yet decipher. Every twist and turn teased a promise of forward passage only to pull back with a severed creak or crackle. The only big breakthrough was by the Consult Elite of Grains and Grasses; he discovered a tiny hole in the corner which, when stabbed with a dry shaft of straw, caused a peony-shaped pattern to rotate a quarter turn. This worked once and once only. The emperor, furious that he had missed this exciting moment, struck the consult with the base of a candle holder, fracturing his cheekbone.

Upon seeing the consult elite in bandages, the head advisor knew the game had played out long enough. Only a resolution could satisfy the aching mind. He sent three palace guards to scour the city. 

The next morning, the master craftsman was escorted clumsily through the great chamber, platinum hair unwashed, torso wrapped in a cheap wool blanket. “Your Immortal Wisdom,” the head advisor addressed the emperor, his dagger pressing firmly into the master craftsman’s spine, “the master craftsman is concerned about his gift. Surely you do not need any help in deciphering the mysteries of such a simple toy, yet he is eager to share what he knows.”

The emperor licked his wrinkled lips, inching forward in his throne. Yet, the master craftsman said nothing. Still shocked by the force with which the guards had dragged him from his bed, half-naked, to lay at the emperor’s feet, he could do nothing but shiver, shoulders slumped, taking short but rapid breaths. 

The head advisor brought the doll-box to the master craftsman. “I could shatter this box and reveal its secrets,” he said, palming its deceptive weight, “but isn’t it more civilized to solve our problems without brute force?”

At this, the master craftsman came to his senses. He looked back and forth between the emperor and the head advisor. “Breaking it would reveal no secret. And besides, it is irreplaceable. This is an ode to nature, whose mysteries are eternal, and of which there is only one. Should you destroy it, you will have learned nothing, and lost much.” 

The head advisor caught a flash of the emperor’s eyes, soaking as they now were in their privileged anticipation. He couldn’t allow the dam of madness to break. He forced the master craftsman’s fingers around the cube. “You can save yourself easily. You must solve it for all to see, that the emperor might glimpse the method for himself.”

The master craftsman apologized. He rested the cube on the ivory-and-scarlet tiles, lowered his head, eyes watery. “No man can force a flower to bloom.”

“You have brought the emperor great suffering,” whispered the head advisor, a ripe sadness catching each syllable in the back of his throat. “And now the suffering will spread.”

The master craftsman was shackled, placed face-first into a Lishu coffin, and buried in the soil of the emperor’s garden. The craftsman’s whimpering soul would fertilize the emperor’s pear trees as he passed through to the afterlife.

After dinner, the emperor took to his pear wine and opium. He was sullen. Without the master craftsman, there was no one who knew how to solve the most complex puzzle in all of the six sovereignties. His head advisor, always near, reminded the emperor that indeed there was one other mind who knew the answer to the cube. 

“I shall send for the craftsman’s apprentice at once, Your Immortal Wisdom.”

************

It took another full season to learn the location of the craftsman’s apprentice.

The head advisor was not the sort to succumb to pride. He remained humble in his duty to the emperor and the empire at large, even if at times the empire did not return that selfless devotion. Before the passing of the Immortal Emperor Lem, the head advisor read poems during the Hour of Amusements, earning scars for his rhymes only to hear them bubbling off the emperor’s lips and into history as proof of the divine imperial spirit. He did not mind this imbalance. His unquestioned belief in his role was rivaled by only one other belief, wedged firm in his skull since youth: nothing above the birds or below the worms could escape learning. Through method, organization, and patience, even the universe’s deepest mysteries would one day blossom fully in the minds of men. It was with this granite-encrusted mentality that the head advisor questioned peasants, maneuvered scouts, measured weather patterns, pored over maps, and, after snapping all the pieces into place like wooden blocks, confidently ordered a single troop of soldiers to focus their search deep in the hinterlands of the south.

After his master’s death, the apprentice had fled with nothing but a skin of water and a knife. The soldiers found him exactly where the head advisor predicted, near the oft-shifting border between this sovereignty and the next, stealing from fishermen and performing street magic. Unlike the master craftsman, who had the firm dignity of an old elk, the craftsman's apprentice was wiry, girlish, and fox-like. His fingers were thin and long, calloused from labor but nimble around cards and coins. The soldiers escorted their new prisoner via carriage from town to town, a journey of several days. Once they arrived at the gates of the imperial city, the emperor’s head advisor joined. He sat across from the apprentice, fingers folded. 

“The emperor,” the head advisor warned, “is not well. The last few moons have been cruel to him, and his cruelty leaks onto his people like water from a cracked vase. It is only a matter of time before the vase breaks completely.” The advisor, old as he was, knew firsthand the wickedness of the former emperor; flesh and fire were his primary amusements, and the head advisor’s own family had been used, like thousands of others, as mere playthings. He would not allow that legacy to be reborn.

The apprentice made no motion, no acknowledgement that he was listening.

“His mind...” the head advisor continued, “it hungers for a solution to your master’s puzzle. He won’t abide this personal shame. As you are the only person who knows its secrets, I recommend you serve it to him well, and in a humble measure, so that he may feel as though he has had no help at all. However, if you do not, he will feed your soul to his garden.”

Lishu coffins were as old as the empire itself. The eldest in a family, rather than die pointlessly in bed, might instead climb willingly into a crate crafted from pearwood to be buried alive. Pear saplings would then be planted in the soil above the crate. It was thought that the spirit of the elder would help the trees grow healthy and strong, feeding his or her family for generations. It was the Immortal Emperor Lem who first perverted this once noble tradition, forcing Lishu coffins upon any he saw fit to punish.

The apprentice winced at the head advisor’s horrifying threat. “You understand nothing,” he whispered, his soft lips trembling. “I have known, of course, that I might die if I do not reveal the puzzle’s secrets. That is why I ran. But, if I do reveal the secrets, die I definitely will. My best hope is to ask you, the real wisdom behind the throne, to let me free.”

The head advisor scratched at his horse-tail beard. He was not swayed by flattery, but there was intrigue in the apprentice’s words, a promise of answers. How could revealing the puzzle’s secret end the apprentice’s life? Was this also why the master craftsman had been so obstinate? He saw only one way forward. 

“I will take the burden of your secret unto myself, then covertly guide the emperor as I have always done.”

The apprentice shook his head. “The nature of the solution... it cannot be shared so easily. You cannot comprehend the puzzle’s trick; if you could, you would not be taking me to the emperor, but to the cemetery. However, there may be a way for me to impart my burden. Take me to my master’s home and I will show you his hidden workshop, one concealed from all eyes. You will find your solution there, and then I can be free.”

The carriage changed course. The head advisor had no intention of letting the apprentice free so easily, but if the master craftsman’s hidden notebooks could prove of value, there was no reason not to make the detour.

The soldiers set watch at the house’s entrance. It was a cramped wood-and-stone structure with a simple thatched roof, built in an almost perfect square. The head advisor had the uncomfortable thought that the master craftsman's doll-box and home were the same in every way but size. As he walked through the front door a peony-shaped etching in the wall gave him a supernatural chill. The benches were dusty and empty. A few food bowls, smothered in fruit flies, speckled the floor near a bed of straw and yak fur. The apprentice, urged by the glimmer of the head advisor’s dagger, rotated a stone in the floor. Each full rotation summoned a grinding noise from below their feet until. With a metal bang, a door of false stones sprung open on a hinge. The apprentice entered the dark passage first, his wrist and ankle shackles knocking against each pine rung of the ladder. The head advisor followed closely behind, lantern in hand.

Beneath the simple home was a wealth of materials: benches overflowing with tools; paper cards used for gambling and tricks; inkwells and brushes; spools of colorful fabric; unbound books, their pages waving like grass in the fresh current of air; strips of leather with and without studs; metal darts, deadly sharp; hand-crafted dice; acrobatic balls; trick mirrors of warped, colorful glass; and an entire wardrobe of disguises befitting a theater troupe. To the head advisor, it looked more like the workshop of an entertainer than that of a master craftsman.

“The secret is in here,” the apprentice’s voice echoed from somewhere deep in the darkness. The head advisor lifted his lantern, but found no company. The apprentice’s shackles laid limp on the dirt floor like dead eels. The soldiers and the head advisor swept the building and its surrounding woods twice over, but there was no sign of their prisoner. He had escaped.

It didn’t matter. The head advisor had found what he was looking for: an ugly, misshapen doll—an exact copy of the one from the puzzle box. He recognized each joint, each curve. There was no distinguishable difference between the one in his hands and the one he had inspected half a year before in the palace’s great chamber. With this, perhaps he could reverse the process, folding the little doll into a cube and, with any luck, learning the truth of its configuration.

The head advisor ordered nearby laborers to haul all of the contents from the master craftsman’s workshop to his own quarters at the palace. He tasked as few underlings as possible, avoiding his typical process of inspection, organization, and labeling. The doll, which he kept hidden beneath his pillow, was best utilized in secret. It did no good to present the emperor with the knowledge of a second toy that, as of yet, also had no solution.

The emperor’s temper increased by the day. He was eager to find the apprentice, but refused to admit it lest he seem desperate and petty. Instead, he dressed up his pettiness as imperial defense. He ordered a hunt for “spies from rival sovereignties,” focusing troops inward like a spear to the empire’s gut.

The head advisor tried to buy time, but to no avail. The first town to be scorched off the map was the one where the master craftsman and his apprentice had lived. The hidden workshop became a darkened smudge. 

Many of the consult elites, often themselves paranoid about immigrant infiltration or influence from neighboring sovereignties, reveled in the empire’s return to form. Too long had they had their powers hindered by unnecessary restraints. They gleefully aided the emperor in his hunt for spies and terrorists, often suggesting cruel creativity which seemed to do nothing but make the consults fatter and richer. Innocent people were dying, bodies piled along the edges of grain fields, or floated into muddy ponds. It was horror masked as wisdom—fabricated to conceal the search for an apprentice just so the emperor could unfold a toy doll. And everyone played along.

As the moons passed, and the soldiers killed, and the consult elites feasted and danced, the emperor never lost sight of his obsession. He pretended to have lost interest, but everyone knew he kept the master craftsman’s gift on his bedside table nested in scraps of notes and diagrams written in his evening opium haze. Neither did the head advisor lose sight of this goal, intent as he was to put a stop to it all, using every free moment to reverse engineer the blocky puppet under his pillow. So it was that late into the nights, ambient with burning fields like stars and screams like chirping crickets, the emperor focused on transforming a cube into a doll while his head advisor focused on transforming a doll into a cube.

************

The day of the puzzle’s anniversary was a revelation, but not one of joy. The head advisor had discovered the terrible secret of the cube and the doll. 

For several moons he had suspected, but it was only on the morning of the anniversary, awoken by the constant bitter smell stuck blackly to the air, that he dared to accept the conclusion. After pouring through the master craftsman’s notes, studying the trick eyeglasses, analyzing the paper forgeries, slipping his hands in and out of false pockets and reversible robes, he understood why neither the master craftsman, nor the apprentice, could reveal the solution. 

There never was a solution. Nor was there ever a puzzle. Nor a craftsman. 

The master craftsman believed that the greatest puzzles of creation had no solutions, and so, to honor that, he had performed the simplest puzzle of all: sleight-of-hand. He was a charlatan. A confidence man. It was all a trick at the emperor’s—and, as was the case, the entire empire’s—expense. And, perhaps, holding onto that secret was the only option available to the two charlatans: revealing their con would ensure execution, whereas saying nothing might allow them escape, or at worst imprisonment in the underground dungeons. Silence was safety.

It was unclear why they would perform such a deception. It was, to the head advisor, a child’s ideology to begin with—a heuristic of incuriosity and incapability. A self-defeating demonstration of inutility. What could they possibly have gained? There was no gold, no silk, no vintage wine or rare gem in the gamble—and certainly no knowledge. All they had done was cornered themselves into a perpetual lie, and driven the world mad in the process.

And now the head advisor himself was burdened by this truth. He drank his morning tea and ventured into the emperor’s great gardens, his mind fastened to the task of the future.

Every day the emperor had grown more manic, more destructive, more bloated with alcohol and weepy with opium, until hope itself had seemed to become ash. Like many powerful men, he used metal weapons to distract from his paper ego. The pretense of fighting intruders had dissolved, and everyone accepted that horror was their new ruler. It was the Lem Era all over again, when even the deepest wells coughed out water rusty with blood.

The north, south, and east regions had been combed extensively. Even bordering sovereignties had been infiltrated, at risk of conflict, in this desperate search for... what? Many soldiers had no idea what they were looking for any more. Even those who remembered their early orders to find the master craftsman’s apprentice had only vague descriptions, shapeless information, and no more trail to follow. It seemed likely that the apprentice had already been killed in one of the many raids—hanged or trampled or burned in a fire. The head advisor was of no use in this secret pursuit; even if he could determine the apprentice’s whereabouts, and even if he could coordinate his capture among the chaos of the consult elites’ interferences, he knew that retrieving the apprentice was no longer the avenue through which order could be restored.

The apprentice, however, had been hiding in plain sight. The head advisor was correct in his assessment of the master craftsman, to an extent. They were resourceful, dishonest, and clever, often making their way through life with elaborate schemes, theatrical performances, and no small amount of pickpocketing. Their best work was in forgeries: documents, cheap heirlooms, and even the odd piece of art. Maybe not craftsmen per se, but crafty.

After removing his shackles, the apprentice slipped out of the workshop, killed a soldier, and took his place. It wasn’t simple, but it was fast. He spent the rest of that evening in disguise, his head low, covering his trail while pretending to search for... himself. Luckily, none of the soldiers in the retinue were familiar enough with each other to notice his infiltration. After arriving at the palace, he kept up the act, using forgery and deception to secure himself a low-level position. Among the ranks he even found spiritual allies, brethren who followed the same teachings as he and his master; those who exalt the mysteries of nature above all else. 

Over the next three moons, as he watched the countryside burn and the villages blow away in the wind, the apprentice understood the same truth that the head advisor had known all along: there would be no security for the empire if the emperor was not sated. But could anything be done? It stood to reason that even if he or the head advisor revealed the truth of the puzzle’s unsolvable nature, the emperor’s mood might remain forever darkened and their lives would be sacrificed for nothing. It was in the emperor’s nature, after all, to shed blood. 

Perhaps their former peace had always been momentary. The empire had always been known for its cruelty, at the best of times only a hair’s-width away. There was even talk of diplomatic hardships among the six sovereignties. One harsh rumor, one bad-mannered guest, one bad meal, one spilled wineskin—anything, maybe everything, was an ember that could light the fire of war. Could the apprentice and his master truly be blamed for summoning the inevitable? All they had done was shine the truth of the universe into the emperor’s eyes—a simple, six-sided truth. Could peace and truth coexist?

The apprentice approached the head advisor in the great Lishu garden. It was a misty morning, the pears swollen with juicy flesh, falling like fat drops of rain at even the slightest breeze. The head advisor, often not concerned with the palace guards, realized his own foolishness after the apprentice removed his helmet. He reached for his security chime, but was stopped short by a warning thrust of the apprentice’s sword.

“It is no use,” the apprentice said. “We are both dead unless we can devise a way to appease our great emperor without wounding his pride.”

“I see you have finally come around to understanding the world as I do,” the head advisor said, holding back his venom. Diplomacy was always his preferred course of action, even if it seemed like it had been ages since it was of any use. “You propose an alliance?”

“We are already allies, like it or not. I know you have the doll in your possession. A man of your intelligence must have figured out its secret by now.”

“Yes. The doll I found in your master’s workshop is the same doll presented to the emperor one year ago.”

“It is one and the same,” the apprentice said, lowering his sword. “Those who are compelled towards the complex are blind to the simple. One box, one doll... swapped beneath your noses.”

“If but only I understood why...”

The apprentice thought for a long moment. “You would have to ask my master. He believed the worldview laid out by the philosophers of the peony movement, ages gone. Perhaps that lit his inspiration. I only helped create the two objects.”

“My mind has been sharpened through the years by countless issues, dire knots which promised no untying. Yet, even with this extensive training, I see no way forward. Even if I had your quick fingers and light feet, switching the doll and the box would not suffice; the emperor would want to toggle its form back and forth, a method of play that does not exist.”

“I may be a thief and, to some, a trickster, but my master did truly have the ability of craft, which he taught me well. I could craft a real doll-box—one that is easy enough for the emperor to solve.”

“A simpler toy? Hmmm... that could work.”

“There is another problem. Even hidden as I am among the palace guards, I am not trusted enough to approach the emperor in the great chamber, nor am I stealthy enough to enter his private rooms. I cannot make the switch.”

“Leave that to me,” the head advisor said, running his long fingernails through his goat-white beard. “I am his most trusted advisor. I might only wait until he has had an evening of opium or pear wine. But can you truly make this doll-box?”

“Allow me unfettered access to your quarters, with all the notes and tools of my former master, and I shall make an earnest attempt.”

************

The two worked together, but apart. During the day, the head advisor attended his imperial duties, often constraining the rampant powers of the consult elites, while the apprentice worked at sketching, carving, and wood-stitching together a box that could contain the doll. At night, the apprentice would take up his regular guard duties along the walls and balconies of the palace. The head advisor would inspect the faces of the box and mark which details needed altered or sharpened to look more like the box which the emperor would no doubt be intimately familiar with. They spent half a moon in this routine, passing each other like ghosts, imprinting themselves into each other’s lives with scratchy notes, shuffled bed spreads, and awkward smells.

The final forgery looked as perfect as could be. All it needed was to feel correct in the emperor’s palm. The head advisor weighed the original and the forgery against a bowl of water; the apprentice hid grains of sand and metal shavings throughout the doll’s felt and the box’s hinges. While they were making these final adjustments, the emperor allowed the burning of rival sovereignty’s woodlands just to see the color of its flames. Peace could wait no longer.

“I shall take you to His Immortal Wisdom in the great chamber. You will give him the hints needed to guide his hands.”

“That cannot be so,” the apprentice said. “Surely, after all of this evasion, I risk my left being dragged to his feet in such a way. Instead, I will stay among the guards, as I am now accustomed. You must give him the instructions yourself.”

“And how shall I explain where I obtained this information?”

“You are the clever one, the head advisor to the emperor himself. Surely you can muster up a believable lie.”

The head advisor thought on this for a moment. “I must tell him that you were captured and are being tortured in the dungeons.” “And if he wishes to see me himself? I do not plan to appear, and another escape will not look well for you.”

“I will say you perished. Once this is all over, you will be free to wander as a ghost, and we will find our empire in a much more satisfying state.”

The apprentice agreed to this ruse, then explained the instructions for the doll-box in simple, precise terms.

That night, the head advisor switched the original doll-box with the forgery. The switch was simplicity itself, and yet his heart saddened at the deception. Everything he did was for the good of the empire, and for his majesty the emperor himself. Removing the burden of the unanswerable question was, to him, the greatest gift he could provide, yet it stung his core belief: all truths can be learned. Favoring the solvable forgery was the easy way out. Massaging information—even manipulating the emperor—was not new to him, of course. Those were necessities of his role. But beneath the mantle of his duties, he never questioned his own integrity. Did he support a world in which mysteries would forever remain mysteries? Where man, ultimately, had no control? Where the thinking mind was the puppet of its questions, an impossible toy for an unpredictable child?

The next morning, the emperor finished his two breakfasts and perfumed bath just before noon. He sat in his great throne and called for the Hour of Amusements, which once showcased the best dancers, string players, game crafters, and storytellers of the empire, but had instead become a prolonged, saggy-eyed staring contest with the doll-box cushioned to his side.

“Your Immortal Wisdom,” the head advisor said softly. “You should know that I have successfully caught the craftsman’s apprentice. He suffered an unfortunate death to the sharp blades of our investigators, but not before giving me the answers to the puzzle box... assuming, of course, you still take interest in that outmoded diversion.”

The emperor sat erect in his velvet pillows, a wild light in his eyes. The doll-box fell quickly to his fingertips.

“I’m certain that Your Immortal Wisdom does not have need of aid.” The head advisor dipped low as he spoke. “It is all but known you have already figured out the first step by pointing the peony outward, then twisting your left thumb into the center circle of the westmost face.”

The emperor was already at work, tumbling and twisting the device around his thumbs, grinning at each new click. The new box was barely a puzzle. It slid open after three rough motions, loose iron balls and strips of cloth scattering across the ornate tiles. Within moments the box was fully transformed into the ugly doll with the odd nose.

The emperor stood and cheered; twelve personal guards, nineteen consult elites, three concubines, and forty-five palace soldiers all broke etiquette and joined in, a symphony of authentic joy. They had been imprisoned with tension for over a year. The emperor danced with the doll, as if in a waltz, an ancient skeleton in a twirl of robes. He puppeted the toy from chair arm to chair arm, then along the red-and-white tile floor, delighting in the act, his childlike spirit infecting every servant, every soldier, every wall tapestry, every ceiling-high window pane.

Once the din died down, the emperor started the next puzzle; he had to figure out how to transform the doll back into the box. Eager to please, the head advisor told the emperor what to do without bothering to hide it in a suggestion. He repeated the apprentice’s brief instructions word for word.

“Face the doll, then press its stomach twice with both thumbs.”

Upon doing so, a thin metal dart the length of a pinky finger shot from the doll’s nose, piercing the emperor’s left eye, lodging in his brain. The emperor wailed and writhed on the floor. Advisors, concubines, medics, and guards clamored over to him, each getting in the other’s way, until finally there seemed like nothing they could do. The emperor died in a crumpled spasm.

The medic, an ancient man with a hunched back, announced that the death was painless and dignified, the dart having been laced with poison. True or not, all eyes were now on the head advisor, who hadn’t moved an inch and was pale as snow.

“The advisor assassinated our great emperor!” a voice yelled from behind. The head advisor turned to the large group of soldiers, but couldn’t tell who was speaking. “Inspect his quarters!” the voice continued. “Tools of the craft! Notes on every surface! He built this weapon with his own hands!”

************

No one questioned how a faceless soldier could know the contents of the head advisor’s room. The evidence was undeniable. There, among his plain furnishings, an entire workshop of drawings and prototypes had spread like ivy, including sharpened darts dipped in poison.

The head advisor begged for a search to be held—a hunt for the apprentice assassin—but he had already sold the lie of the apprentice’s death. None of the consult elites, nor the many sons and daughters of the emperor, entertained his stories. The consult elites were especially delighted at the betrayal, which would allow them to manipulate the power vacuum without the self-righteous head advisor hampering their fun. 

Down below the palace, where air had not been breathed into human lungs for over a century, the former head advisor—now just an old man with no position, no purpose—spent twelve nights in desperate ache, drinking water that drizzled from who-knows-where down stone walls. Tubers and aged grain tumbled under the door at odd intervals. His skin ached as he slept, pinched between rock and bone. He kept himself sane by perfecting poems about triumphs and solving arithmetic riddles in his head.

On the thirteenth night, he was escorted to the imperial gardens. Among the pear trees, lined in orderly rows like gravestones, a hole contained a pearwood crate. A Lishu coffin.

The old man was helped into the crate by two soldiers, each at one elbow. He sensed no cruelty in them. Perhaps this is how the elderly were always handled during this ritual, back when it was an honor undertaken by family patriarchs. He sat on the hard wood, boney wrists and brittle ankles shackled together, knees brushing his wisp of beard, chest tight, slow breaths. 

As one soldier shoveled fragrant black soil around the sides of the coffin, the other removed his helmet. It was the apprentice.

“We had grown close in our work,” he said, dark circles under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in days. “Sad... that we have come to this.”

“I should have known,” the old man managed, sucking cool midnight air through his teeth. “This was all a plan to assassinate the emperor. All the pieces were there. I should have put them together.”

“It was never such. This is the problem with the minds of men such as yourself, always seeing the shadows and never the light. The doll-box was a gift, pure and simple—a gift from my master to yours.” 

As the apprentice spoke, the other soldier stayed on task, one spade of soil after another, never missing a beat. Dig, swing. Dig, swing. Both soldiers, the old man realized, were moving pieces in a larger game that had been playing out under his nose for... for how long? To what end? If only he could have more time to calculate, to deduce.

“Help me comprehend,” the old man wheezed.

“That is not the way.” Lips tightened. “In seeking the beauty of the peony, the arrogant man cuts and peels at the bud. The bloom itself is destroyed, and the beauty along with it.”

The old man shuddered. His weathered jaw hung dry.

The apprentice said nothing else. He lobbed the mangled, ugly toy doll into the Lishu coffin, then slid a lid over the top. By dawn, the hole was filled. A single healthy sapling flexed its leaves in the sunlight.

Over the next few years, the empire crumpled and creased, its borders weakened by fire, rebellion, and war. Leadership flowed in and out like the tide. Its legacy of power and cruelty was washed clean and replaced by echoes and exports. Whether or not the old man was able to make sense of his predicament in his final hours, folded in his box with the dirt and worms, is a mystery of its own... but he did make an elegant pear wine.

------------

Sources:

• Image: Lannie "Merlandese" Neely III