The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (68 page)

“At last,” the emperor cried, but not too loudly, for he feared that the sound of his own voice might break some precarious spell.

Anxiously, he waded into the lagoon, being careless with the condition of his black silk robe.

“For many years I have been faithful,” he exclaimed aloud. “I have spilled my royal seed every twenty-eighth night. I have offered the precious pearls, and selected a palace
lady for the supreme sacrifice. I have prayed that the eternal burning in my heart will come to peace. And now I see that the hour for rejoicing has indeed arrived.”

The great emperor beheld that the eerie glow on the sacred rock issued from a membranous sac that contained a gestating female form. It was only a question of hours before the salty seawater
would yield her, fully formed.

The emperor was so elated, so exalted in his joy that at long last the sea was responding to his tireless yearning and offering him up his bride, that he was tempted to hurry her progress by
summoning more semen from within himself; tempted to shower her with pearls; even tempted to loosen his black robe and let the power of his fiery heart shine into her developing face and bring her
more rapidly into being. But she was in a fragile stage and patience was of the utmost importance.

The palace ladies, having not received the customary summons, had gathered curiously on the teakwood verandah, watching their emperor in awed silence as he stood waist-deep in the salty lagoon,
his black robe soaking and his beautiful black hair blowing free in the gentle breeze.

More and more the sacred spot glowed before their very eyes, slowly transforming the membranous sac into a discernible female form.

“She’s come!” he announced at last, turning to address the palace ladies and weeping openly as the quickening wind showered his beautiful hair with falling petals, the
clustered blossoms trembling on the trees and filling the air with the delicate music of the tiny silver chimes. “She has eyes!” he continued at last, gaining control of himself.
“I’ve seen them glowing. She’s opened her eyes!”

The ladies of the palace gasped and made haste in sending for the court magician to cut the delicate woman from the membranous sac and release her supple form to the Earth’s
atmosphere.

“It’s happening very quickly now!” the emperor shouted, returning his attention to his creature. “She’s moving rapidly along. We must begin. Where is my
magician?”

The magician came at once in a cloud of jasmine smoke and a burst of iridescent light. Reciting a secret incantation that has long been forgotten by the palace ladies who witnessed the event,
the magician set to work on the treasure from the sea. With his terrifyingly long, sharp fingernails, cultivated for just this occasion, he carefully tore the membranous sac free from the female
creature.

With a sharp yelp, she cried as she encountered the open air, then slid from the sac into the warm seawater.

It is said that when the emperor, to prevent her from slipping away from him and drifting out to sea, grabbed her in the water by one of her tender ankles and pulled her to him, she glowed all
the more. At first, it seemed that his robe had perhaps loosened, but this was not the case. The female creature contained a fire of her own.

The emperor lifted her carefully out of the water and into his arms. She was round-eyed and golden-haired, although covered in a viscous fluid. She was round-bellied, too, and round-bottomed.
She was so round and golden that the ladies of the palace were said to be reminded of the fabled fat-bellied moon that had existed long ago, the moon that had waxed full as the mighty sun filled
her to bursting, scattering them forever in a multitude of stars across the unending sky.

“You there!” the emperor pointed, as he set his treasured creature on the crowded verandah, “and you: take her to the sacred chamber and ready her to be my bride. And
you,” he added, pointing to a third palace lady, “fetch my high priest from the inner sanctum and tell him of my great good fortune.”

The ladies who had not been chosen bowed their heads in disappointment, stealing glances at the strange round-bottomed creature as she was escorted, on unsteady legs, to the sacred chamber.

“Disperse!” the emperor commanded.

In a flurry of black robes and flying hair, the ladies of the palace disappeared.

The emperor, masking his sudden royal terror with a dignified calm, beseeched his court magician, “What becomes of me now?”

“What becomes of you?” the magician roared with delight as he disappeared in a cloud of jasmine smoke. “What becomes of you? You administer the royal touch, you coax her lips
to part. If she releases a pearl, she is indeed your bride. Then she will steal your fire and you will die.”

“Steal it?!” he emperor cried out to the vanishing smoke. “But I thought we were destined to share my fire, throughout eternity!”

“You will,” a voice thundered on the scattering wind, “but the nature of everlasting love is first to surrender!”

When the high priest was summoned from the inner sanctum and told of the great good fortune, he cautioned the palace ladies sternly, announcing that he would not be
hurried.

“Preparing the emperor’s bride – if she is, indeed, his bride – is a task that requires diligence and patience.”

He entered the sacred room with a ceremonial demeanour. Like the emperor, the high priest was regal. He, too, wore a flowing robe of fine, black silk. His face was appointed with the same high
cheekbones, set off by piercing black, almond-shaped eyes.

If he felt at all aroused by the sight of the treasured creature, if his heartbeat quickened, he showed no signs of it. He approached the trembling female, whose watery round eyes blinked
painfully in the candle-lit chamber, and said quietly to her: “So you are the long-awaited treasure of semen and pearls, nourished on seawater and fire.”

The female creature could not yet respond, though it seemed to those present that she understood his meaning.

“Tonight, my dear,” he continued, “you will feel a burning sensation. This is natural, as you’re adjusting to the surface of your own skin. Later, if the emperor can coax
your lips to open and you release a pearl, then you are indeed his bride and will be forever. If you fail to produce a pearl, then it’s simply not your time. You will dissolve once again into
the sea and we will resume our vigil. Come,” he entreated her. “We will make you ready. We will start with the ceremonial ablution.”

As the ladies readied the shallow basin, the high priest from the inner sanctum explained: “We don’t want to shock the surface of her skin. We must proceed with precision and care.
She has been nurtured on salty seawater until now. She will fight us if we don’t introduce her to the purified water in increments.”

The creature was helped to stand in the enamelled basin and was held firmly by either arm by the palace ladies.

“I’ll begin with your enchanting face,” the high priest announced quietly. As he pressed the soaked sea sponge to the creature’s delicate cheek, she resisted only
slightly, for his touch was light. As he carefully washed the traces of the membranous sac from her unusual face, the high priest studied her thoughtfully. Though he’d never actually seen a
round-eyed creature, he’d heard about them in fabled myths and legends, as he’d prepared his whole life for just this moment of readying the emperor’s bride.

“That wasn’t so bad”, he encouraged her as he completed the cleansing of the creature’s face and began on her pale shoulders. Her skin was still so new, so delicate, it
was verily translucent, like gleaming pearls.

The priest dipped the sea sponge once again into the purified water and rinsed it lightly over the creature’s arms. “You see,” he directed the attention of the palace ladies,
“how her skin is blanketed in golden hairs which weren’t perceptible at first? She seems to be undergoing the final completion process right before our eyes.”

The palace ladies marvelled at the female with respectful awe.

“You see how the quality of her skin is changing?” he continued excitedly, bathing the beauty’s arms. “How it is covered with downy hair? This is a very good
sign.”

When it seemed the female was steady enough on her feet, one of the palace ladies attended to the creature’s hair. It was long and tangled and still slippery with the viscous fluid from
the sac. The palace lady lathered the long golden strands with a mild soap normally reserved for bathing infants. Carelessly, however, the palace lady ascended a small stool and poured purified
water over the top of the creature’s head to rinse away the suds.

“No, no, no!” the high priest cried.

But it was too late. A terrible whimpering ensued that was of such a high pitch it pierced all their hearts and chilled their spines. The creature attempted to flee the basin but the high priest
grabbed her and steadied her back in the bowl.

“We’ll try to be a little more careful”, he assured her, glancing sternly at the palace ladies.

The creature blinked at him, seemingly terrified.

“That was probably the worst of it,” he encouraged her again.

The lady culprit, in turn, stepped timidly from her stool and retreated quietly to a chair in the corner.

The high priest continued his steady, meticulous cleansing of the creature, washing her round breasts and her full, round belly. When he came to that delicate spot between the creature’s
legs, he carefully washed the membranous residue from her tightly curled golden hairs.

And then, to the surprise of all those present, the creature released her water, sending a stream of it in a great splash down into the basin. It was so sudden, even the dignified high priest
couldn’t hide his surprise.

The two palace ladies glanced gleefully at each other, while the creature rapidly blinked her round eyes and smiled.

“You’re pleased with yourself, is that it?” the high priest sighed.

The creature’s eyes shone all the more.

“Well, as reluctant as I am to admit it, that was an extremely good sign. Come,” he said, urning to the palace ladies, “we can’t let her just stand in it. One of you
empty this basin and we’ll attend to her feet.”

At last the creature was washed and dried, her hair hanging in fluffy golden curls. The ladies helped her into an embroidered robe of crimson and, following the high priest,
led her through an intricately carved passageway, deep into the sacred chamber where the great emperor anxiously waited.

No one but the high priest had ever entered this level of the emperor’s sacred chamber.

It was ablaze with flickering candles, and the palace ladies gazed in wonder at the splendid secret room, at the vibrant murals that lined its walls, depicting the distant mountains as they
shimmered in an endless vista, rising beyond the mystical clouds.

The room itself was alive with flowers and smelled faintly of heaven, as an aroma of dizzying fragrance scented the air.

Along one wall a towering waterfall trickled and splashed lightly over jagged layers of flat stones, adorned on either side by velvety moss and wild ferns. The water, which seemed to the palace
ladies to originate somehow from the majestic lagoon, splashed endlessly into a deep but contained pool, where fat goldfish with billowy fins darted among the sunken rocks and underwater
greenery.

The emperor himself was seated rather tentatively on a huge carved throne of teakwood in the centre of the chamber, set grandly on a raised platform of graduated marble, each platform carved by
hand to form ornate and opulent steps.

Beyond the throne, and mostly hidden from view by carved ivory screens depicting the fable of the sun and moon in their coital embrace in heaven before they burst into the multitude of stars,
stood the royal bed. All the ladies could discern from where they stood was that a beautiful lace netting, suspended from a delicate fixture in the ceiling, draped over the royal resting place like
a heavenly veil. The palace ladies recognized this exquisite lace as the type made by the ancient ladies of the distant palisades; the cliff-dwelling ancients who lived so high in the peaks that
even in the scorching days of mid-summer, they could not be reached without first traversing for many days deep gorges of ice and snow.

When the great emperor realized the palace ladies were too curious for his comfort, he dispersed them. His high priest, though, remained behind.

“Tell me,” the emperor beseeched him, “how do I live through this night? If she won’t produce a pearl, she will dissolve into salty water and I will die from the pain of
losing her. If she does produce a pearl, I am told she will steal my fire. Either way, I will die.”

The high priest chose his words carefully. “There is much I do not know. I only know we have prepared for this throughout our entire existences. If the time has not yet come for her to be
your bride – and let me add that the signs do not seem to point to this outcome – rest assured she will come again, at a more propitious time, for that is the nature of all that exists;
that is the ebb and flow of life, and that is the law of the sea. If, however, her time has come and she is ready to accept your fire, look on it as a release. You will not die, not in the mortal
sense; you will transmogrify into something grander, for you are an energy that never ends.”

The emperor tried to take comfort in the high priest’s words, but he could not overlook the hint of sorrow creeping into the high priest’s face.

“I’ve been lonely far too long”, the emperor began. But then he saw that mere words were useless in the face of destiny and so he bid his high priest to take leave of the
sacred chamber.

The emperor parted the lace netting and helped his bride onto the conjugal bed. It was a fine, large bed of carved cedar, padded with a thick mat of embroidered silk over a layer of down.

The emperor could not help but marvel at his creature. Her fine limbs and well-appointed face made her seem quite human, but her curling tresses and translucent skin were much softer than
anything he’d known.

He propped her tender back against a pile of soft pillows and then climbed onto the bed himself. He knelt next to her and studied the perfect roundness of her form.