Changeling

By

Carole McDonnell

Lacking beauty, regal will, or imperious bearing, Iyoke the third daughter of Queen Mizaka, was mocked as a cuckoo’s egg. Fat and squat, with a round face that smiled too lovingly on everyone, she was deemed a child of some lowly warrior of peasant stock. However, Queen Mizaka’s virtue was renowned throughout all the kingdom of Tentuke, and Iyoke was kind and good-natured. So mockery and rumors faded, although they did not entirely die away.

The time came for Queen Mizaka’s three daughters to be married, and for Iyoke Prince Hans was chosen. His was a lowly northern kingdom – distant and small, and he was the least of his father’s sons. Marriages were also arranged for the other princesses as well. Sembele the beauty—the eldest and whose beauty even the sun blushed to look upon—was betrothed to Crown Prince Jaejoong of the large eastern kingdom. The middle daughter was Nunu. Not as beautiful as her older sister, nor yet as ugly as the youngest, she was nevertheless a princess. Quiet and reserved, with skin the color of rich earth, she wore her plaited hair like a wreathed crown upon her head. She was promised to Prince Biodun third in line to rule a large southern kingdom. Portraits were exchanged –letters too. Iyoke waited through Winter rains for Spring sun to arrive. Not the world’s sun, the soul of the universe, but Hans, her sun, the sun of her heart. 

Life renewed itself and Spring flowers bloomed. But love played with hearts. Prince Hans arrived with pomp and retinue, his hair fairer and wilder, his eyes bluer, his smile sweeter than Iyoke had ever imagined. In the palace’s richly embroidered ebony halls, he gathered love as farmers gather windfall. He gathered Sembele’s love. And because Sembele was beautiful, her hair falling in thick braided rivulets along her shoulders, her skin black as the night, he returned her love to her and cast Iyoke’s aside.

Iyoke removed her silken gown and replaced it with the hemp tunic of the common people. All day, many days, she wept in her chambers.  

“Plain, I am,” she told the wind. “And not like Sembele, lithe, graceful, and regal. “A changeling, they say, of peasant stock with no royal forbears. Yet, Hans loved my simple heart once. See here, his letters. In portrait, he saw my lumpish forms. Yet even then, his gentle words helped bind our souls together. Yet this very soul he saw not when he arrived and his eyes looked on this body. With no painter’s skill to aid me, my ugliness turned his love away. Companion Wind, tell my sister, ‘Sembele, Dark Beauty, you who are so beautiful, you who have the love of great princes, and can choose from many great and powerful princes, return Iyoke’s only love to her.” 

The wind brought the message to Sembele but returned to Iyoke with no answer.

Meanwhile, Prince Jaejoong—Prince Jaejoong more beautiful than all the men and women of all the kingdoms of the world—understood the power of love. Rejection had no power to wound his heart, but the insult irked his father. The old king called his allies together. Trade was disrupted, imported goods refused, exports ceased. Queen Mizaka sent appeasing gifts. King Wung Li relented, and the cast-off prince was called from foreign shores. Prince Jaejoong was ordered to attend the wedding of his former betrothed that all the world would know King Wung Li could both punish and forgive.

At Sembele’s marriage: scarlets and velvets. Silks, satins and linens. Pearl-decked pillows, alabaster jars of spices and perfumes sent by princes from distant lands. After a marriage feast of seven days, Sembele set sail for her husband’s kingdom, her sisters, and her royal parents accompanying her, there to fulfill another seven days of feasting.

The waves roiling, the stars in their height dancing, Jaejoong and Iyoke both being cast off, Prince Jaejoong found Iyoke at the prow of the ship. “Still weeping?” he asked. How joyous and bright of eye he was! “Your tears will overwhelm the sea.  Let your sister have Hans’ love.” He indicated the rolling waves all about. “So strong is Love, as strong as death. Such love your sister has for Hans—I have no doubt it would uphold us if we chose to dance upon the seas.”

Iyoke turned her tear-stained face to his. She smiled but said nothing.

“I will tell you a secret.” The Crown Prince laughed then leaned low to whisper in her ear. “The people of Hans’ country are a proud people. Passionless, and indifferent. Haughty above all other peoples. Believing they have all good things, they are content, desirous of nothing. Among such arrogant and cold people, how could such a one as you live? But there, Sembele will thrive. Like a vine transplanted to its true and native soil.”

The wind blew his long black hair wildly across his face, but Iyoke glanced at the roiling sea, silent.

“Something more,” he continued. “I loved a servant girl in my father’s palace. One whose kind heart was as lovely as yours. For this crime, the king sent me to live in Hans’ country, that I might forget my love for a common girl. He hastened to betrothed me to your sister, Sembele, a princess I would have gladly loved for her portrait soon adorned my chambers. I wrote her, but she answered me not one word. From shyness or pride, I did not know.”

“Sembele finds letters tedious,” Iyoke said, and turned her face from the sea to the smiling prince then toward the festive wedding songs. “She believes that words and eyes must meet at the same time.”

“Ah!” The prince grinned, then winked. “Perhaps she should have said so. My heart would not have hurt as much as it did. It would not have waited in vain, or I would’ve fought the winter winds and the tides of the Cape, arriving in haste at her side.”

“Indeed,” Iyoke said, “much would have been different if you had hastened.”

“Perhaps. And yet, even so, I found joy at that time of desolation.”

Iyoke looked into his eyes and wrinkled her brow. “Did you?” she asked, sadly.

“The couriers brought letters to Hans from you. That good prince is a man of action not of words. I feared you would be as hurt as I was, a voice sent on the wind searching for a response. Therefore, I asked Hans to give me permission to answer your letters.”

“And what did I write of?” she asked him.

“Of hearts, of beauty, of stones, and twigs. You wrote of whatever took your fancy. Without pretense, without guile. So, lacking in purposeful charm, they were charm in perfect essence.”

Iyoke broke into tears, joy and sorrow intermixed. She looked back toward the cabin of the ship where Hans danced with his new bride. “So, it was you I loved?” she asked Jaejoong.

“And I who loved you,” he answered. “Iyoke, we two cast-off ones have each other. Do we not already know each other’s hearts?”

So, to the surprise and joy of all, Jaejoong Crown Prince of the far eastern lands—a kingdom quite large, and greatly feared—married Queen Mizaka’s ugly changeling daughter. 

For Iyoke’s marriage: scarlets and velvets. Silks, satins and linens. Pearl-decked pillows, alabaster jars of spices and perfumes! But more: For Iyoke and Jaejoong, princes bowed, processions of princes from distant lands. For them, a feast of one-hundred-and-eighty-days. For them, not one but eighty ships to attend the future Queen Iyoke and all the royal family, guards, servants, and courtiers, to her new home in the east.

Unaccustomed to such honor, Iyoke fled to her room. To be the praised and admired center of everyone’s world troubled her. In the marriage chamber she stayed, away from all eyes but her husband. Only to Jaejoong would she speak.

“My husband,” she said. “All this love and honor! To be the respected center of such joy, the praised word on everyone’s tongue, to have my family bow to me – I am unaccustomed to it.”

Jaejoong laid his head between her naked breasts. “A new task has been given you,” he said, smiling up at her. He stroked her braids which hung about her shoulder. “To receive such blessings as if they’re your due. Pretend as I do.” He burst out laughing.  “It is the way of kings.” The next morning, she put on royalty and ventured out again.

Feast followed feast, and with each passing ceremony, Iyoke’s royal family was made to bow even lower before her. It hurt the new princess that her family should be made to bow before her. But she was no longer Iyoke the changeling princess of the southern kingdom: she was the wife of the Crown Prince of the great eastern lands.  Pomp was not her desire, but pomp was her due.

After many days, the time came for Queen Mizake and her family to depart. At the imperial table, Sembele spoke. She straightened her back and inhaled deeply. “That mother should be compelled to bow to you!” she said. “That my eyes should be open to see this!”

“It is not my will.” Iyoke squeezed her husband’s hand, trembled at her sister’s anger. “The people will it so.”

Her husband corrected his love, turned his eyes to behold his wife’s face. “Your own people, the people of the eastern lands, will it so.”

“A people that would have been my people,” Sembele said under her breath.

“My love”—Prince Hans sat at his wife’s left.—“Am I not enough?”

“Enough,” she said, fuming. “But not your kingdom.”

Hans stood up, bowed to those at the table and walked outside. Nunu also rose. The King of the eastern lands clasped his hands called for more wine and Queen Mizake kept on eating.

“My sister, Iyoke”—Nunu extended her hand.—“come and wonder at your kingdom with me.”

Iyoke stood up, bowed to her new royal parent who smiled upon her, bowed to her mother Queen Mizake. Slowly she let loose her husband’s hand.

This is what Nunu said as they walked the ship, chrysanthemums and lilies to be transplanted in the royal gardens swaying near their feet. “For one year, I’ve been married to Prince Biodun.”

“A blessing, Sister,” Iyoke answered.

“I was not as lovely as Sembele,” Nunu continued, “and the wealth of our kingdom did not hang upon my back, arms, ankles, and neck. But I was a princess so a husband was easily found.”

“True words, Sister,” Iyoke peered into the mental distance at the land that had never quite been her native home.

“Biodun is a handsome, affable man,” Nunu said. “His black skin is velvet as the night. His eyes shine with wisdom. His lips utter wit. True, he is proud, but he is third in line to rule a great southern kingdom.”

“You are truly blessed, My Sister,” Nunu said, her eyes shining with happiness for her sister.

But tears fell from Nunu’s eyes. She spoke slowly. “Blessed, but not loved.”

Iyoke hugged her sister. “He will learn to love you yet, Sister. Your kindness and shrewdness will make it so.”

“Perhaps he will love me for those few charms I have. If love comes, it comes. But in whatever state I am, I have learned to be satisfied. Biodun is allowed a harem. Limitless. As many as the stars if he wishes. Doubtless he will find many lovelier than I who will rejoice his heart and perhaps will apportion less and less of his heart to me as the years go by. But you and I are quite armed against being unloved. Our father and mother have taught us well, have they not?”

“They have, Sister.”

Although her sister spoke bitter words, Iyoke could not help but see the wisdom in them. Both Nunu and Iyoke had lived in the shadow of their well-favored, much-honored sister. Their spirits had not been honed to praise, or their souls to expecting greatness. Iyoke turned her inward gaze from her ancestors’ homeland toward the open sea. Home, her new home, awaited her. There, perhaps, she would be loved. But if her new people did not love her, that hardly mattered: Jaejoong loved her.

“Still, a princess is a princess,” Nunu continued. “Unloved though she may have been. Therefore, I have told Biodun to remember from whom I am descended—great queens, noble kings. Moreover, I am his first wife. It is understood—come what may, whoever he may love—I am always to be his chief wife.”

“Not a small thing.” Iyoke pulled her silken mantle across her shoulder against the wildly-blowing southern wind.

“And if fortune blesses Biodun by killing his older brother—”

“My sister! No!” Iyoke shouted. “It cannot be.”

Nunu raised an eyebrow. “Can it not? My husband is evil, My Sister.”

“But do not match his evil, Sister.” Her worried frown became a burst of laughter that sounded like ripples in a pond. “And yet I do not believe you could ever match his evil. Others, perhaps, allow evil to taint them. But your soul is too pure to be tainted thus. Indeed, I believe you would do all you can to prevent his evil if you had the choice.”

“All I can, but no more,” Nunu answered. “For I will not give my life to protect another. Even if I am as noble as you say, don’t the most noble learn at last to protect themselves?”

“I have heard it said, Sister.”

Nunu hugged her sister’s shoulder. “Do not fear. I will be quite safe. I have lived too long among intrigue to be taken by surprise. And while our mother is yet alive, how shall he kill me? The kingdom of Tentuke is his near neighbor and all mother’s allies surround him. No, My Sister, I shall be quite safe. So, yes, it appears that I will become chief queen of his land.” Now, Nunu also laughed. “And you are to become a queen of a great land, yourself. Therefore, forget our sister’s jealousy and think on future love and future greatness. There are lands which honor us, even if our own people treat us ill.” She turned toward the imperial cabin where the nuptial festivities continued. Through the doors, Iyoke could see robed performers celebrating her love story in dance. “Let us look ahead at future joys and future loves, for that is all we have. I only warn you. Beware! The time will come when this mother of ours dies. And then, beware. For our sister will then be queen of her own land. And if she remains unchanged, this raging of hers will grow. And before a sister’s jealousy, who is able to stand?”

#

Long, long, Queen Mizaka lived. And while she lived, the sisters remained at peace with each other. Hans’ little country was as small as ever. His father the king still reigned, but that mattered little. Sembele was wife of a third son and would never become queen. In the southern kingdom, after several extraordinarily sudden deaths in the line of succession, Biodun became king and Nunu, chief wife, became Queen. In Iyoke’s kingdom, the old king grew old but still reigned and Prince Jaejoong and his princess lived in the winter palace on the edge of the great salt sea. They had one sorrow only: In their twenty years together, Iyoke had borne only daughters. It was not like Tentuke where queens had ruled freely and equally with men. Several times, the lords of the imperial palace suggested Jaejoong take a concubine. He did not. Instead, the prince betrothed his eldest daughter to the son of his younger brother. Thus, he forfeited his kingdom for love of his wife. 

At last, news came to the eastern kingdom that Queen Mizaka lay dying. Trembling, grieving, Iyoke prepared her heart. Throughout her marriage, she had exiled herself from her homeland. When she thought of the south country, she remembered only the belittling voiceless scorn of her kinsmen and their mocking jibes about being a changeling. But she now cast aside her fear and she and Prince Jaejoong set sail. When she arrived at her native land, her people bowed low to greet her.

The queen lay in her golden chamber dying, the royal ebony staff in her hand. She spoke to her three daughters, all three having rushed to her side. “My husband awaits me in the sky realm. This staff weighs heavy in hands and now I pass it and all it represents to the one who will rule my kingdom.”

“Oh mother,” her daughters said, “Oh mother, do not die.”

“Death comes to all,” the queen answered. “Iyoke, my youngest, you are happy. When you were young, I feared the kingdom might become yours. You would have ruled with equity, but you do not love your people. Nor they you. Stay, then, in the far eastern lands, you and your daughters.  This is not the land for you.”

Iyoke bowed. She did not say: Mother, I have loved our people. Queen Mizake would not have believed her. She only wept and said, “Great Queen, Dear Mother, do not die.”

“Die I must.” Queen Mizake turned her eyes to her second daughter. “Nunu, your kingdom is near at hand. A stone’s throw. And you have daughters and sons. In your husband’s kingdom, men rule. Rather, boys with little knowledge and even fewer morals rule. I had thought to give my nation to you, for one of your daughters. But I fear all your children have acquired your husband’s ways. Like their father’s fathers, they will war among themselves, leaving you no offspring. No offspring, I said. For your boys will kill each other. And your daughters will learn the power of poisons. It is the way of their father’s people.”

Nunu straightened her back, looked askance at her dying mother. “I will remember your words, Mother,” she said. “But let not a curse upon my children be the last words on your lips.”

The queen smiled half to herself then spoke to Sembele, her favored daughter. “Dear Daughter, Great Princess Sembele, you are married to the least of princes in the least of lands. It is not the life I had planned for you. To you should have come greater honor, greater tribute. But you rejected my warnings and clung to the boy. And you added stupidity to stupidity by envying Iyoke although the choice was yours. Yet, you are my beloved daughter, my dearest joy. A large kingdom you desire, therefore a large kingdom you will have. Live here among your own people—you, Prince Hans, and your children. Let the past rest. My kingdom – your native land—is not as great as you could have had if you had chosen Jaejoong, but it is not small, either.”

Thus saying, she placed the staff in Sembele’s hand.

The staff in her right hand, Sembele flung herself upon her dying mother. Iyoke, too, knelt at the bedside, but Nunu stood.

“Mother,” Sembele pleaded. “Do not die. You alone have loved and honored me. Who on earth do I have but you?”

But Queen Mizake did die, and was buried. Thereafter, Sembele left the northern land to rule Tentuke with her husband. Her accession to the throne was accomplished with great pomp, and the common people received their Beauty with feasts, ribands, and much celebrating. But Sembele soon began to despise the size of her kingdom. True, it was larger than Hans’ country but it was not a tenth the size of Jaejoong’s land. When Sembele proposed war on a neighboring kingdom, her advisors hardly knew how to answer her. Resources were plenty, their peoples lived in harmony, why set forth to conquer?

But Sembele answered, “Have you not seen how those of the eastern kingdom have sought to encroach on our land? Have they not sent spies into the southern lands to spy out our happiness?”

The advisors had seen no such thing, but they kept silent.

Queen Sembele held forth the ebony staff of her ancestors. “All these lands of the south were once a large kingdom. Powerful and fierce, the lost great southern kingdom was impregnable and safe from attack. But now, what have we become? Small villages at the mercy of fierce kings.”

Years had passed since war had decimated towns and blood had washed away the lives of widows and orphans. The counselors had forgotten the odor of staling blood. They therefore agreed to the wisdom of consolidating the nations, whether those nations desired it or no. Nation after nation toppled and Tentuke grew larger, gorging itself on tinier kingdoms. Still, it was not half the size of Jaejoong’s kingdom.

Far across the seas, Iyoke was all too aware of her sister’s malevolence. Whether in country fields or on the cobblestone roads of her adopted homeland, tidings continually overwhelmed her. One night, as fireflies danced over rice fields, she spoke to her husband, “The kingdom adjoining Tentuke is ruled by Queen Nunu and Prince Biodun. I have no doubt my sister longs to devour it and add it to her already bloated kingdom.”

Jaejoong held her close. “Indeed, she will. But it will not remedy your sister’s ailment. For joining kingdom to kingdom will increase the territory but not the wealth.”

She looked into her husband’s face. “So, Sembele will not be satisfied.”

“Indeed, she will not.”

“I shall travel forth to my former homeland and plead with my sister to spare Nunu’s land.”

Her husband held her hands firmly and his eyes challenged hers. “Indeed, my wife, you will not travel there. For she will not listen. Rather, she will say that envy caused you to travel forth, because you feared her kingdom would rival yours.”

Days came and passed, Summer bloomed and faded. Queen Nunu sent word to Iyoke that she and King Biodun had paid Empress Sembele a visit.

“The Empress received us with great pomp and show of her kingdom’s glory,” the letter declared. “Inside the throne room, I bowed before our sister. ‘Queen Sembele,’ I said, ‘I have come to plead for the safety of my kingdom. I know that the wisdom and weaponry of Hans’ people have caused you to crush other nations, and that it is within your power to destroy us. But I plead with you to remember we shared a mother, a mother who would not want you to destroy your own sister.’

“‘The Empress answered, ‘You were never a loving sister to me. Why should I spare your kingdom or your life?’

“‘Not so, Queen Sembele,’ I answered. ‘A dear loving sister I have been to you. Even when our mother raised you high above us.’

“‘This I do not remember,’ our sister the Empress Sembele replied. She then clapped her hands and called two courtiers to her side. They came bowing, carrying goblets of gold and platters of silver.

“Then this great Empress spoke thusly, ‘And yet, because you are my sister, I will spare your life, although I have not spared the lives of the kings of the former territories.’

“So, this is the news, Dear Sister, Prince Biodun’s land has become tributary to Tentuke, and it is also rumored that the Prince himself lies servant to the Empress. Yet, our sister remains unsettled. For it is not greed or lust for power that drives her onward but envy and jealousy that you, her unworthy sister, should have been blessed with a happy life. Therefore, My Sister, beware snares. This sister of ours, this great Empress, is set to provoke war with you.”

When Iyoke read the letter, she could not imagine how war could rise. But soon, she understood.

Sembele began to seek occasion to trouble the ships that sailed to and from the eastern kingdom. Merchant ship or navy, the ships of Queen Iyoke were set upon by Tentuke pirates. The blood of King Jaejoong’s seamen – for he had become king at last—flowed congealed upon the waters. Their corpses were returned to their home shores in battered hulls, defiled by Sembele’s warriors.

“Let me go to my sister,” Iyoke begged, kneeling before the king her husband. “For am I not the cause of all the world’s evil? Is not my joy the root of the deaths of so many innocents, both common and royal?” She tugged at his sleeve as if her heart would break.

“And what will you do when you reach her kingdom?” King Jaejoong asked. “Who is able to stand against so great a jealousy?”

“Perhaps, perhaps, if she thought me unhappy, if she thought me mocked and married to an evil tyrant . . . if she considered me dishonored and pitiable in her sight . . .”

King Jaejoong raised an eyebrow, shook his head then raised his sobbing wife from the floor. “Would you destroy my honor to ease her spite? Even if you would, I would not. Not that I honor my honor so much, but I will not lie about my greatest happiness to please any. Are you not a symbol of our great kingdom and my great joy? Why should you – the gem of our kingdom—hide your beauty and happiness to quell another’s jealousy?”

So Iyoke could not go. And the king gave warning to Tentuke: Sembele was to desist or war would rain down on her kingdom. This warning brought great joy to the Empress’ heart. Was this not what she had longed for? She defied Jaejoong’s challenge and war ensued, the battlefield being the land ruled by the puppet King Biodun.

Riding fiercely, like an eddying gust, Sembele went forth with her armies galloping across the valley and through rushing water to battle her sister. Ten thousand horsemen and fifty thousand foot soldiers followed in her wake, their ebony bodies gleaming in the sunrise. Black clouds covered the sky, and although the midday sun beat down upon sparse desert plains, trees shivered in fear.

Meanwhile her sister Queen Iyoke, like a tender bird, trembled atop a hillside near the ocean shore. Although the desert wind blew hot, Iyoke’s fingers were numb and her hands clammy and moist. Like the trees, and quite unlike a princess, she too shivered. But not from fear of herself. Behind her, an army of soldiers with features unlike her own. Jaejoong’s great army. By eastern ship they had come, in fleets past counting, as numerous as the bees of the forest.

Iyoke had never seen a battle before. And the thought that she was the root and cause of such bloodshed was hard for her to endure. When the imperial ships had returned to the eastern kingdom with its ruined men and decaying corpses, she had walked onto the blood-stained ship and grieved for her husband’s countrymen – her adopted people. But this, this cutting and ripping of flesh before her eyes – her heart could not bear it.  Nor could she bear to see the dead bodies of those of her native land. So, she felt a changeling’s guilt rather than a Queen’s anger.

A soldier blew the war trumpet. Alerted, King Jaejoong’s mare raised its head. The king firmly held its reins. With the other, he thrust a lance in his wife’s hand. “My wife, command my captains – for they are yours.  Mount your horse. For it smells anger. Yes, even the wind rouses itself at your sister’s wrath. Yet you stand here, trembling.”

Iyoke’s turned from her husband, looked toward her sister’s army in the distance and threw the lance to the ground. “Sembele will relent,” she said.

King Jaejoong dismounted, retrieved the scorned lance. From the dirt he raised it, and thrust it toward her. “Sisters have murdered sisters ages long! And will long after. If not to gain or keep kingdoms, at least to preserve their own lives.”

Again, she pushed the lance into Jaejoong’s impatient hands. Sembele’s army was a league and a half away. Soon, sister would look on sister at the foot of the mountain. “Why can I not murder as other sisters have?”

“Indeed!” Her husband didn’t hide his anger. “Indeed!” Prince Jaejoong, not often angry, the lover of her soul loved his people and his country as well. When roused, his temper was unmatched, his actions unpredictable. He mounted his horse, but left the lance rooted in the ground. “With this you will thrust your sister through, as she thrust through your seamen as they journeyed peacefully across the ocean.”

“I cannot, I will not.”

“Murder is in her heart. Have you not seen it?” He shouted. “Do you think she will spare you should she lose this battle? She will not! Look and see. A fifth of our imperial army has sailed the seas to battle. Let them not see you retreat from bloodshed. No one bends to obey a passionless queen?”

“If she must die, you must do it,” she answered her husband, and the wind blew her braid – woven in the fashion of the women of the southern kingdoms—across her face.

“Our daughter’s future depends on your actions this day. Who will respect the daughter if he does not respect the mother?”

Heart-beating, she climbed to her horse. She understood well her husband’s thoughts. Her honor would reflect on her daughter. To destroy Sembele would secure Iyoke’s daughter as chief wife, no matter how many concubines the future king took. 

Prince Jaejoong stirred his horse, kept it steady between his legs. He edged it closer to his wife. “Sonless, I have been. Plagued with the death of children, I have been. Plagued with a wife who, like a thirsty reed, soaks up love and yet cannot receive it. Plagued with a wife who treats the handmaids as her equals! And yet I have loved you. If I die before you, how will you survive in our kingdom? My love” –his words pleaded— “a queen’s opportunity is here. At last, you will receive honor in the sight of the imperial court. Only but kill this false empress and receive honor as a queen worthy of our people.”

Again, she didn’t answer.

“What is blood?”

Again, she remained silent.

“She is no sister to you!” He turned aside and left her there atop the mountain.

The Queen remained there, beaten by her thoughts. Am I in truth a queen? she asked herself. Perhaps I am a changeling, a cuckoo’s egg.

The day wore on, and broken bodies were continually crushed, like fallen leaves ground to powder. Bones seemed to melt into the riverbed, indistinguishable in the bloodmeal of mud, sand, leaves, stench, ravens, and flies. Piled high along the riverbed, corpses were trampled by fierce horses, even fiercer men.

Soon it became evident that Sembele’s troops were being routed, and Iyoke began to dread what she knew would soon take place: Soon Sembele would be brought before her, and Jaejoong would demand. . .

No, I cannot do it, Iyoke told herself. All about her, blood mingled with blood. The blood of both her peoples. And am I the cause of all this? She asked herself. Had I been beautiful, such a war would not have happened!

Then as the sun began to set, it happened. A trumpet call came: Sembele was captured, her captains killed and her army dispersed, defeated. The Empress, her husband, and her lover Prince Biodun were dragged by King Jaejoong’s captains to Jaejoong and his wife.

Jaejoong dismounted and walked toward the defeated Sembele. He called his wife to his side and once again handed her the lance. She took it. He waited, and as Jaejoong watched, she lifted the lance high and plunged it deep into her own breast. Nunu, standing by, was not so full of self-loathing. She retrieved the lance from her sister’s bloody hands and with one swift blow, thrust Sembele and Biodun clean through.

It is said by the old ones that Nunu married Prince Hans. But this she would not do. It is said by the modern scholars that King Jaejoong took Nunu to wife. This also, I do not believe.