decay

DECAY V: Millions

One million people attended her funeral, and the whole of the six million within the Western Inusian Empire would soon believe that she had truly perished.
	It had to be this way, she told herself. I needed to die for my nation to live.
	That did not make the taste of it any less bitter in her mouth… but it was the truth. Princess Vainia Sestrum knew it.
	Her name was Noltia now, she reminded herself. Noltia the orphan. It was styled like her ancestor of old, Nolterya the Warrior Queen, who had led one of the final Mortisyan defenses against the Inusian conquerors, more than a thousand years ago. It was an obviously Western name, but so old and irrelevant to those in the place that she was to go to next that it did not matter at all.
	The sun is beginning to set. I must go, she urged herself. Yet even with express knowledge of what her life would amount to starting at this moment, the dead princess Vainia could not tear her eyes away from her funeral as it mourned throughout the streets of Grainis.
	She had made sure that her death was elaborate and mysterious, but unable to deny. No one had known of her plans, not even loving Asearya. That part hurt her as well, but it was also necessary. For months now, she had been feigning an illness that would never fade; even more recently, she had been purposely engaging in outbursts that heralded the onset of madness. Most outrageously, she had begun to sleep on her own, insisting on complete solitude in the tower that was farthest from the royal estate in Grainis and closest to the sea. When the tower had collapsed, as she had been preparing it for after months of meticulous destruction to its most hidden and most crucial bases, the massive destruction and commotion left no mistake: the princess had died within the throes of her own madness and isolation. She was the only one in the tower when it fell; no one could ever dispute that.
	The smashed bone remnants her parents buried were not hers, of course. Vainia wept when she kidnapped and killed the girl from the main complex of the royal palace, day before her planned death. Now, on the day of her funeral, she mourned for her. No one would be able to tell that she had been dead for days, not with tons of crushing stone grinding her to little more than dust. I am dead now in spirit, and you are dead in body, little Malita. Asearya had always liked Malita, the princess knew, because she looked much like Vainia. This, too, would break Vainia’s best friend’s heart. A spirit, a body, and a heart. Necessary sacrifices for the revival of Mortisya.
	The funeral was the largest event that had taken place in the Western Inusian Empire for as long as Vainia had been alive. The peasants and smallfolk of the kingdom loved their little fiery veiled princess, that much she knew, but the extent of their love was still staggering to behold. Her closed casket had been paraded down the main streets of Grainis for twelve hours; all of the citizens had thrown themselves and their belongings in the path of the slow hearse, proclaiming that nothing was worth keeping if their princess was lost. She could hear the moans even at the top of the tallest hills overlooking once-great Grainis, and she could clearly see the million people crowding around every part of the city. The vast majority of them, like any part of a Western city, were gravelly poor and barely able to dress themselves in rags.
	I will save you all, Vainia told herself, when she finally tore her eyes away from the far-off scene of her own funeral. They thought her dead, so for now, Royal Princess Nolstuvainia Sestrum IX was dead. But I will return. I will make Mortisya as great as it once was. And I will destroy this Empire.
	To the north was the sea, and above her was the moon, white and weeping. It was presumptuous of her, she knew, but the dead princess imagined that the moon wept for her, too.
	On a whim, she decided to visit the old man that lived near the sea. His shack was far from the city and the official ports, and near his makeshift dock – bordered by a natural wall of reefs and rocks – was a single raft of wood and hard natural paste. She had gone fishing with the old man in the raft years ago, when she was still just a veiled child and he was a little less old. Once more, her heart pained her with the sacrifice that had to be made. All for Mortisya.
	She had not expected the old man to be awake. The dead princess cursed to herself as she caught a glimpse of the man outside of his cottage, a long wooden staff in one hand teetering slowly on the rocky ground. The waves padding ahead of them, gently jostling the raft, were pitch black.
	The man turned. “Who blesses me with their presence this night?”
	She made no attempt to hide herself. The new night and her plain black traveling cloak did enough of that for her. “A traveler,” she simply said. “I seek exodus in my mourning.”
	He turned fully, knobbed knees shaking beneath a long and grimy robe. “For whom do you mourn, sweet child?”
	“A great princess, and a great nation.”
	“Oh, is that what all that noise is, over by the capital?” He laughed. “I never would have thought you to mourn for anyone, sweet child. Don’t you remember once telling me that you would never weep for anyone?”
	She realized that he was blind now – and that he could recognize her by her voice. The dead princess could not help but laugh. “You remember me, old man? A simple peasant girl that wanted to see the sunset?”
	“Of course, child.” He started to hobble towards her. “I could never forget my favorite pupil. You were always so full of life, so ready to learn. Even though I never asked you for help, you were so intent on fishing with me. Even though you were the worst fisherwoman I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Hahaha!”
	The dead princess nursed a gentle smile. “Thank you, good sir. I will always cherish those memories.”
	“Knowing that fills a man like me with joy. You will be mourning for me, too, soon. It pains me to say so, but I feel it in my bones, like a wind of the storm… I will be beneath the waves soon. I have been very unlucky lately.”
	She looked at the unseeing man with mourning heavy in her chest, and considered her plan of immediate action.
	“You need my boat, child?” he continued. “You have to do this?”
	“I must.”
	“I do not understand. Why must you flee? Your mourning drives you off so far from home?”
	“It does,” she replied. “I must go far from here, far enough so that the mourning cries never reach my ears. I will be unlucky, too, it seems.”
	“Ah well,” he said with a shrug and a toothless grin, “wherever one sails to, the seas will always bring them back home.”
	“You used to say that often.”
	“May I ask who passed, child?” At the dead princess’ hesitance, the old man nodded and patted her on her shoulder. “Worry not. I had a family, once. They were simple and loving… but the sea called to me more than the fields outside of the capital did. My family ridiculed me, they left me, and I went to the sea, all those years ago…”
	She looked down at the smiling bald man with bewilderment. “You… you never told me that story, old man.”
	“No story. It is true.”
	“I… I’m sorry…”
	“No, it is alright. I went back to search for them, to rekindle with my wife and children… but they did not make it through the next winter without me. That was many years ago, but I believe my daughter would have been as old as you are now, child. Ah…” He started to limp slowly towards his cottage.
	“You never gave me your name, old man,” the princess said, her eyes staring straight out into the sea. Her hands had curled into mournful fists.
	“And you, your own. What is a name, but a lie? My name is the sea, child. That is all I am. My desires, stripped of all vanities.”
	“The sea is quite beautiful tonight, old man.”
	“I like to think it always is.” He turned back around, now at the ex-royal’s side. “Will you describe it for me, one last time? I am tired, and my eyes do not work nearly as well as they once did.”
	“The moon weeps on the ripples of onyx,” Vainia said. “The sea looks endless, and it is at peace.”
	He smiled wide, and the gaps beneath his gums glistened. “You will fish for me, won’t you? While you’re out there, my child?”
	“I will.”
	“And before you go – will you tell me your name? Your true name.”
	“The world.”
	She watched the old man bleed out in peace as she rowed away from the cottage and the mourning city. An entire Empire mourned for Vainia Sestrum, but the now dead princess mourned for the sea and one innocent servant girl.