"Heart´s Desire" by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

      It is said that Mendarin, the Divine City, the Painted City, was made in the image of the gods' own home of Valehanis. You foreigners always scoff. I can see in your eyes when you come here, and when we tell you, that you think it is only Mendarin arrogance that dares lay claims to godhood in even so tenuous a link, but it is truth.
      Once, in a time not as long ago as many would think, Valehanis was a living and breathing place within the realms of mortal comprehension. What I mean is, Valehanis was once a city of men and women. The gods were always restless beings. The only home they ever wanted was in walls of human hearts and human belief, for no city walls and towers would ever be able to house the essence of such immortal creatures.
      Valehanis was the quintessence of beauty. Its spires rose high above the eastern cliffs where they could stretch their delicate fingers out to touch the sun as it rose each morning, and cry moonlit tears of russet and indigo and gold when the sun set in the evening. The walls of the city glowed with the murals and paintings of the most celebrated artisans of the time (as Mendarin's walls do now). It was the center of all learning, art, and culture.
      There was an Emperor in those times, as there is an Emperor now. Do you know that there has been an unbroken line of imperial rulers from that day to this? If you go to the great libraries of Mendarin you will see I tell the truth. Anyway, there was an Emperor, and he lived ensconced in the highest, most beautiful of all the towers of Valehanis. Assured of his place in the world, of his power, and his wealth, he unconsciously challenged the gods.
      "My reign has wrought a city lovelier than the face of Isandala the Fair," he mused. "When Vervidos dreamt the world into being, he would not have thought to imagine so wondrous a creation. Kane, Lord Death, shall not dare to touch bright Valehanis, for this city is Eternal! And Liri, little Liri cannot ever gain a corrupt foothold in this city of pure wonder."
      This is what the proud and foolish Emperor would think to himself in his most secret thoughts. He would hold this belief locked inside like a delicious tidbit stashed away.
      At times, he would walk upon the arched promenades that connected the shining towers. The sun would dance in dappled choreographies across the rooftops, and he could not help as those thoughts began to echo loud in his mind.
      On occasions, he would ride his steeds through the roads paved with mosaics of past glories, conquests, rebirths. He would see the glory all around him, and he knew that glory was his own. On these occasions it was all he could do to choke back the whisper of those words.
      And one day he spoke them. Softly, it is true. And to himself, it is true.
      But even the sotto voce whispers of a man are heard by the ever-pricked ears of gods and goddesses. The sparrows heard his idle boasts and twittered their message to the rats. The rats twitched their noses and scurried through the maze of underground warrens to the outer walls and squeaked their message to the foxes. The foxes whipped their tales about and snaked and ran and slid through the forest until they found their patron, Liri of the Wood.
      And as Liri played tripping tunes upon her pipe, the foxes chattered a tale to her of a vain human and a city and a challenge. Liri laughed. It was a fluting sound, as lovely as her pipes, as fickle as wind, and as slippery as water. She laughed and laughed and laughed and the foxes laughed with her in their coughing little way. "I believe it is time we paid the Emperor a visit," she said, tucking the pipes away and stroking the copper backs of each of her foxes.
      It so happened that on that very evening the Emperor was hosting a grand affair. Masquerade and sumptuous feasting in honor of his twenty-fifth nameday. All the lords and ladies of the realm were invited. Particularly the single ladies, as the sovereign was as yet unwed.
      In fact, the Emperor cared very little for balls, less for dancing, and young unwed ladies had been the bane of his existence for the past seven years. His advisors had been insistent about the event though. His Eminence must find a suitable wife! His Eminence absolutely had to provide an heir! After all, the Leonis dynasty had been unbroken for over two thousand years. How could His Eminence fail to see the importance of his begetting a child?
      The king was a romantic. It was not a terribly desirable quality for a man who must eventually marry for the good of the empire, but such was fact. He hated the clamoring, petty, simpering nobles who thrust their likewise clamoring, petty, and simpering daughters on him. How was it that reality fell so short of the ballads he had known and loved all his life? If only....
      But no. He thrust his heart's desires down beneath the blankets of responsibility.
      He had given in at last because the advisors were getting to be even worse a nuisance than the women. So it was that the reluctant Emperor found himself drumming his fingers on the arm of his throne the evening of the masquerade, while his subjects whirled past him on the dance floor in inebriated delight. Swans and unicorns and dragons and cats. The masks filled the hall with feathered and furred gaiety. Thus far he had managed to slight one buck-toothed dove, at least three rather plump felines, and a very chatty but petulant dragonfly as each found her advances were ignored. He did not care. The night would be horribly endless as it was.
      Just as he was about to gesture to his steward for more wine to ease the passage of time, a sixth sense beckoned his gaze, and he looked up to the entranceway.
      An ethereal specter stood at the top of the staircase. She wore a russet mask of a fox's face, to match the color of the copper mane that flowed down her back. Her gown was of silk so gossamer it looked like shimmering cobwebs. As he watched she walked - no, drifted down the steps. He could not tear his eyes away from that terrifyingly beautiful figure. To his amazement she headed to the foot of his throne and curtsied so low her skirts were a silver puddle at her feet. He found himself on his feet. More than one envious female gaze was upon the woman. Surroundings melted away and all he could hear was his heart pounding in his ears. All he could see was the shimmering mirage of copper, pearl, and flesh before him.
      He descended the dais to stand level with her. He offered a hand to raise her from the obeisance. She rose with a smile. "My Lady," he said through dry lips and parched throat. "What may I have the honor of calling you?"
      The smile never left her face. He was mesmerized by that sensual curve, and did not even notice when she did not answer his question. "Dance with me?" she said. It was half command, half coy question, and there was nothing the Emperor could do but follow as she led him to the floor. The space cleared immediately for them, and soon the Emperor and the fae creature were whirling through dances as if the steps had been choreographed and practiced for hours on end, or a lifetime. Never a falter, never a misstep. Perfect synchronicity.
      Too soon the midnight chimes shook the castle walls.
      The maiden stepped away from the Emperor as the last dolorous bell faded. "I must be leaving now," she said to the Emperor. Was that regret he heard in her voice?
       "No, please. Do not leave. You may stay in the palace. I can have rooms prepared-"
      She smiled again that mysterious smile. Full of mystery and knowledge and dreams beyond his wildest reckoning. "You know I cannot."
      He knew no such thing. "Tell me why-"
       "Goodbye," she said, and turned simply. And left.
      The Emperor was in a daze throughout the rest of the night. He hardly saw the celebrants any longer. Nor did he notice when they began to leave, or when his stewards began to direct the servants in the cleaning. He did not remember climbing the steps to his chambers, nor laying down his head. But he did remember her eyes, her lithe body, the smell of her breath that was like wildflowers, and her hair that was like autumn leaves. He remembered and dreamed fitful dreams that night.
      The next day he strolled his gardens. The maiden's image still spun in his head. Despair had gripped him by now. He had had the night to mull over the girl, and the fact that he knew not where to find her.
      The gardeners were invisible servants, but as always he could still sense them behind the walls of shrubbery. He walked down the paths he had walked a million times before. The curve of branches was carefully orchestrated so that each tree, each bush, each flower was a grand piece of art. As he walked, the vines became more tangled, more unkempt, until finally he stopped, reveries broken. This was not his garden. This was too wild. He spun around in surprise. There was a stillness here. No gardeners lurked behind hedges. It was too preternaturally quiet. The wind held her breath, and it was as if time had stopped. The back of his neck prickled, and an inkling of fear rubbed in his throat. He tried to raise his voice to shout for a servant, a guard, anyone, but just as he was to shatter the silence a lilting voice began to chime from the air around him. He froze. It was an odd sound, like a chant, or a child's singsong rhyme. It went:

      I am fog and I am mist and I am all that can't be tamed.
      I am born of devil's kiss for I am fickle and insane.
      Love me. Can you guess my name?

       "Who's there?" he asked. His voice quavered. He spun around, but there was no other sound. The unnatural stillness prevailed. "Where are you? Come out from hiding!" In response the air shivered and the voice rang out again:

      Only fools will chase the wind and seek to win at godly games.
      Rules are wrought of human minds and games are my art, my realm, my reign.
      Fear me. Liri is my name.

      On that last phrase the bushes in front of him rustled, and from the branches stepped a red fox. A grin stretched across her muzzle. "Liri, Liri is my name," she said again, and began to lick her paws.
      Fear turned to disgust in the Emperor. "Get out, goddess of thieves and misfits. I have no desire to have you in my city. Away!"
      The foxed coughed and it took the Emperor a moment to realize she was laughing. "Oh, silly, silly emperor. You cannot banish human nature. Might as well banish your own heart. You brought me here after all."
       "I did no such thing," he said. She continued to laugh at him.
       "Besides," she went on as if he had said nothing, "we are not in Your City. You are in My Forest. Can you not tell the difference?" Her tail flicked in an encompassing gesture, strangely human in a twisted way.
       "Send me back," he said stiffly.
      She sighed. "No sense of adventure. Pity. Come now, you don't want to go back so soon do you? You've just arrived -"
       "Send me back." He turned sharply on his heel and started to march back along the path though it did not look familiar.
      Another drawn out sigh as the fox trotted alongside him. "Ah dear me. If that is what you wish. I had only thought to help you as I happen to know your little maiden of the night before."
      That stopped the Emperor dead in his tracks. "Who is she? You know her?" he demanded.
      The fox pretended boredom. "Yes."
       "Is she one of your followers?"
      Another fox-ish laugh. "She is dear to me."
       "Tell me her name!"
       "No." With a flip of russet tail, the insolent creature turned away and vanished into the underbrush. "Go home silly man." The words chimed and shook in the air. The Emperor made a mad dive for the bushes, but Liri was gone. As he stood, pulling twigs from his hair another wave of despair washed over him.
       "Your Eminence?" A tentative gardener was looking on the Emperor with eyes agog. "Did you...lose something? I can send some boys to search for you...." His voice trailed off as the Emperor glared at him.
      The stillness was gone. The wind blew again, and he knew he was no longer in Liri's wood. "It is nothing." He stormed off to the palace.
      After he realized that Liri had some unnatural connection with the maiden of the night before, the Emperor reluctantly tried to put her from his mind. He refused to have anything to do with the fey goddess of chaos and wildness.
      And yet...
      Her scent haunted him.
      Her phantom eyes seared him.
      Her ghostly touch whispered in his memory.
      He threw himself with frantic relish into his daily routines. He heard his petitioners with desperate attentiveness. He rode his stallions so hard their mouths foamed and their heads drooped when he returned them to the stables.
      But thoughts of her would not leave him in peace, and he knew that with every woman that walked past him, he could not help but stare and pray that her lips would break into the smile of his maiden. At last he conceded that he must find her. He needed her as he needed nothing else.
      He sent out proclamations to the corners of his land. He offered great rewards to anyone who could tell him the name of the mysterious fox maiden with russet hair and cobweb gowns. Months passed. An endless train of women stepped forward claiming to be she, but the instant he set eyes on them he knew they were false.
      A month later he was standing in the gardens when that breathless stillness suddenly blanketed the shadows. Once more the birdcry stopped and the leaves ceased their rustle. The only sound was the familiar voice mocking:

      Aimless hunt and foolish cries. Lovelorn wits of royal swain!
      He goes searching far and wide, seeking for a hidden flame!
      Beg me! Liri is my name.

      He scoffed. "Beg you? I don't need a goddess of fools to help me find one woman."
       "But I know where she is," chuckled the fox at his feet. Her black eyes gleamed.
       "Liri is not needed."
       "But Liri knows. Dare to ask, and I can tell you, little emperor."
       "You know nothing."
       "Her name is Lirelin."
      A part of the Emperor wanted at that moment to fall to his knees and beg at that point. But he was a proud man, remember? That pride was the source of Liri's torture of him in the first place. He drew himself up. "I am an Emperor. I have all the lands at my feet." Determination sparked in his eye. "I can find the maid on my own." Lirelin. Her name rolled in his mind and danced upon his thoughts like the skip and swirl of autumn leaves on a wind. It was beauty incarnate. "I can find Lirelin on my own."
      The goddess laughed. "I shall give you anything you wish if you can achieve that!"
       "I want nothing of you."
       "And I shall take what I want from you if you cannot," she continued.
      Her words sunk in, and for a moment the Emperor blanched pale white, but then a sort of rictus smile twisted his lips, for he was a proud man, and mingled with that pride was a touch of arrogance, aspiration, and greed. And these were not all bad things, for though they are faults, he was a man, and he had his flaws and he had his merits. "So it shall be," he said.
      He had the feeling that if foxes had hands, Liri would be clapping in delight at that moment. "I shall give you three questions then. Three questions that I will answer with three riddles. But beware, the broader the questions, the more riddling my riddles will be. You will have a moon-cycle to mull over each answer before I will demand my Answers. Ask away little emperor."
      Visions of gaining whatever his heart desired danced through the Emperor's head. "Where then, is Lirelin?" he asked. Riddle though she might, he would know the answer, for he fancied himself a man of intellect and up to such paltry games.

      She is near and she is far. She is distant as your breath.
      She is close as northern star, and as touchable as death.

      Something approaching a rage came over the Emperor then. "What is this?!" he cried. "That is no riddle! A child could come with something that made more sense. That is idle babble. You speak in circles that are nothing more than nonsense."
       "You were warned." Then she was gone.
      The Emperor seethed, but there was nothing more for him to do but to take up the search. He had made a bet with a god. He was determined to win. So when he returned to his palace, he sent out the missives, near and far, to all the distant lands beyond even his Empire. He knew her name now at least. Lirelin. Lirelin. Lirelin. He could not stop the name from tumbling in his thoughts over and over, and from rolling off his tongue like the sweetest nectar. Lirelin.... "Find Lirelin for me," he commanded his soldiers. "Find her and I shall grant you titles and wealth!" he offered his ambassadors. "Give me knowledge to find my Lirelin, and I shall give you anything in my power!" he told his advisors.
      The soldiers went out among his people, and searched house to house, but they found nothing. Not even a whisper of Lirelin, though many had seen her at the masquerade.
      The ambassadors went to foreign kings, sought the daughters of distant empires. They wheedled and cajoled with promised wealth and treaties should the maiden be brought forth from hiding, but none of the daughters were a match for Lirelin.
      His advisors had their networks of spies in every crack of the Empire. Not a fly could buzz but that they would know of it. But not a one brought back word of the fair Lirelin.
      At last a moon-cycle had passed and the Emperor was no further in his quest than he had when he struck his bet, though he was much harried and there were desperate lines at the corners of his eyes. His heart was heavy with the loss he endured. So it was that when Liri reappeared he was much less belligerent. "I have sought near. And I have sought far. I have looked to the ends of the earth, and I have turned over every stone under my own nose. And yet it is as if Lirelin were a ghost. Tell me," he said, "who is this Lirelin? What kind of woman can escape my breadth?"
      Liri did not laugh at him this time. He saw a glint of something in her eye. It might have been a tint of pity.

      Chase a shadow and you've made more progress than to hunt and sift
      through all your weary mortal days - for she's ethereal as mist!

      This time he did not send for men of the mortal plane, but for spiritualists, priests, and wizards. They gathered in his courtyard on the third day of his summoning. There was a pungent sent of holiness in the air, and incense that clung to robes, and of hidden mysteries. "Seek my Lirelin with all the powers of your disposal," he told them, "And I shall build you a temple, a library, a monument if you succeed."
      The men and women of learning murmured to themselves, and argued philosophies, and speculated on spells, and then they went off in their own directions to seek among the Mysteries the answer to the Emperor's question.
      As the moon-cycle wore on, the lines at the Emperor's eyes grew deeper. Servants whispered that he looked pale and sickly, and those who tended his chambers at night said that in his dreams he always cried out one name....
      Eventually he fell ill. The mages and priests kept coming back to him with their reports, but not a one could tell him of success. The ghosts did not know of her. The spirits had never seen such a maiden. The gods did not speak.
      With each report, the Emperor grew more and more pale, and ate less, and drank less.
      At last the end of the moon-cycle came. He had not found Lirelin yet.
      He was too ill to leave his bed, but Liri came to him in his chambers.
       "Little Emperor, you do not fare so well this time."
       "No, I do not," he ceded.
       "Do you admit to failure so soon?"
      The Emperor did not answer.
       "Well, come then. You still have one more question, and one more riddle of me," she said. She perched upon the foot of his bed, curled in a ball of red-gold fur with intent eyes that seared the flesh and soul and that never graced a creature or a human.
      It was a long time before he responded. Liri seemed to understand that he needed that time to gather himself. At last he said, "Does she exist outside of my own mind? Is she a phantasm of my imagination?" The words echoed miserably and half fearfully.
       "Ah, so now we are near the crux of this whole thing," Liri said in a whisper. She stood and paced in three circles before settling down again on the Emperor's pillow. Those eyes stared into his, and he felt like drowning in those ebony depths.

      She is of Lir.i
      She is of Men.
      She is wild hope and heart's dream; Lirelin!

      The Emperor did not realized how tense his body was until the chanting voice had ceased. His muscles relaxed then, and he fell back in the deep pillows.
       "Ah," he said.
      The fox nodded.
       "Did she ever exist? In any time? Any place?"
       "Only within you."
       "And thus she is never to be found," he laughed. "Oh, you do toy with me Liri."
      The fox leapt off the bed in a blur of motion. She whipped her tail around, and between one blink of the eye and the next, it was no longer a russet fox that crouched on the floor, but a woman-goddess fierce to gaze upon. She stood slowly, gracefully.
      Now, the Emperor had seen carvings and paintings of Liri, as I am sure you have. Sometimes she is depicted as an innocuous little fox. At other times she is a warrior of fiery hair and will. And then there is her third form - Liri of the Wood. In this form she is all that is wild. She is hidden desire whether it be passion for love or passion to kill. She is a Trickster, and a Scholar, and a Lover.
      Her eyes were triumphant, and tender when she looked upon the Emperor.
       "Who wins this then?" he asked weakly, though he already knew the answer.
       "I do."
       "And what do you want of me?" asked the Emperor.
       "This city," said Liri.

      So it was that humans left Valehalis, and the glorious city of men became the glorious city of gods...who had no desire for cities or walls or a place to live. Valehalis fell to the pride and greed of a single man, and the whim of Liri. And yet...the Emperor was a man behind those failings, and who can fault him for seeking his heart's dearest desire?
      The gods took pity on him. Or maybe they envied him - for gods cannot know the agonies and glories of human imperfection. Or perhaps fickle Liri prevailed upon them to grant him one gift.
      This is what the gods did:
      Vervidos picked that phantasm of desire from the Emperor's heart and molded it to flesh and blood and air. He breathed life to the statue's mouth. Isandala the Fair granted the gift of beauty beyond any other woman of the world. Lord Kane kissed the woman's forehead to give her the gift of death and mortality as a human. And Liri...she gave the woman a name, and a will, and a strength, and a heart that not even an Emperor could stop from falling in love with. And then they sent Lirelin, this flesh and blood Lirelin out into the world.
      Lirelin found the Emperor, or he found her. It was Lirelin's vision, and the Emperor's memory that raised Mendarin, and since then, the Leonis Emperors have ruled from the spires this, the Divine City.

Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
July 16, 2000