The Prince of Clay

On the ninth day of the merchant war in Delhi, the great pottery-maker Oan Assaf died. He was not a rich man and had little family but for his three daughters, it seemed as if the clouds cried along with them and buried their homes in mud from the mountains above from where they got their clay.

The two oldest daughters saw this as a curse upon their family and left with the first man to offer his hand in marriage. But the youngest, Etuei, and some might say the fairest refused to let her father’s life go to waste. She had no suitor because of her young age and she had no money on which to build her own life, not that the merchants would ever let her sell as a woman of her low status. Nevertheless, her skill with pottery was great and she was determined not to let herself die a beggar on the streets.

So she covered herself in clay, as her father had always lived, and learned to walk hunched over, as her father had walked after years of bending over a kiln, and soon her fair face became a scowl as fitting an elderly man. And the other merchants, marveled by her skill, were fooled into thinking her father lived on while his corpse remained covered under a mountain of the clay he lived by.

A great distance away, a king had lost his wife and in an act of mourning, his entire dominion dressed in white. But the king had a son, Ahmed, who refused to let the loss of his mother consume him. Instead, he pondered the state of his father’s realm with an ever-mourning king, and he brought to his father’s attention that he had no path. He saw no fate in a lost kingdom. This worried the king greatly, not that his son had lost his faith in his father’s ability but in himself to rule.

The next day, he set out with his court to Africa to see the great wise woman that had brought him to his wife and asked her what fortune awaited his son.

“I do not see Fate, milord, nor do I see your prince a happy man. You will die soon and your heir will be lost to nobility. Your empire will turn to dust and you will lay buried beneath the mud,” the wise woman foretold.

The king could not bear to hear the news and on his way back to his kingdom, he stopped by the greatest markets in Cairo and asked for the greatest skilled metal-worker. But none would answer to a king, as they thought themselves too great and thought the king a fool for wanting to cheat Fate.

So he asked a beggar on the road to Agar where he could find someone to make his son a bride and the beggar responded all too quickly, “Go to Delhi, king. Ask for the pottery-maker Assaf. He is old but skilled. Treat him well and he will grant you any wish.”

The prince did not like the king’s insistence but followed his father to Delhi where, dressed as common merchants, approached the pottery-maker at his post. As soon as Etuei saw the prince through her mask of clay, she knew she would someday serve him.

“Make my son a wife, potter. Make him a beauty worthy of his children, so beautiful he will never wish to abandon his position, or her,” the king asked of Etuei.

“Sire, I can make him a beauty of great majesty but it’s not beauty that rules a kingdom. It’s soul. And that I cannot give a clay woman,” she responded roughly to hide her gentle voice. The son smiled at this. Perhaps he’d be free of his father’s mad plan, but no.

“She needs no soul. She needn’t speak. She is a woman, a mere vessel for his children. This is what I ask of you.”

Etuei did not like his plan, or how he spoke to her, but she knew great wealth could come from helping a king. And so she followed him and the prince back to their palace where she would build him a woman. They gave her a workshop and mounds of clay from her father’s mountain and 3 days later, he gave the prince a woman of the only she shape she knew: her own. But in jealousy, in fear of letting her prince love anyone but her, she made her so childish, so smug, so stubborn a character that her heart, even as the rest of her turned to flesh, refused to soften and remained a hard reminder of the mountain from whence she came… a never-failing heart of clay.

For years the prince was miserable. His wife was a pill and he refused to bear any children with her. Etuei was asked to stay at the palace, a royal pottery-maker. She befriended the prince and sometimes that was enough to keep her happy and working. But in late nights, when she took away her mask and went to bed, she would dream of the prince and wished he could see the smile beneath her father’s scowl.

The king soon died, just as the woman foretold. The prince took over his kingdom but the court insisted he bear a child, an heir should the woman’s prophecy come true and the kingdom fall to ruin. But the boy prince refused.

“Never!” he yelled through the halls. “I may take her as my wife but I can never love her.”

His words echoed throughout the castle, even down to the pottery-maker’s shop. It livened her heart and tore at her at the same time that her prince was unhappy. The prince came to her that day and begged her to make him a new wife, one with a heart to love.

“I cannot do this, milord,” she responded. “I have no heart to give you. You may take mine and give it to your wife, if it would please you but I can give her no heart. She is as cold as the mountain clay.”

“Kind potter, you have a noble heart and for this I cannot take it. But I can never love her. I cannot stand her presence. It sickens me.”

It made her smile to know he didn’t love the clay woman, so much that it made a crack in her clay face. The prince went to hold her hand and her smile became so large that it broke through the clay mask and she quickly turned from him.

“Potter, what do you hide from me?” the prince asked.

“Nothing, Prince,” she began and looked around for anything to inspire her excuse to hide. She saw by kiln an empty obsidian glass she used to keep the flames cool and handed it to him.

He raised an eyebrow and asked what it was for.

“I cannot find her a heart, sir, for I am too old and tired to search for one myself. If you truly wish someone to love, go find her. Leave! Spend the rest of your days with her. But if she should die, take her heart and bring it to me in this glass and I will make your woman new,” she said, trying to keep her clay mask from cracking. But the more her face held, the more her own heart broke to send her prince away.

“Very well, old man. I’ll leave the kingdom, if you think it wise. I’ll find me a servant to my kingdom and choose wisely, I will. I’ll marry her and when the time comes, I’ll come to you and you will make her new.”

And so the prince left and the kingdom slowly turned to dust, just as the wise woman foretold. And Etuei waited faithfully for her prince to come back. Years passed and the weight of her clay mask was becoming too great. Servants left bit by bit, old loyals slowly losing faith. But she remained.

Then a year came when she was all alone in the dusty palace, so she returned home to the mountains and her small house surrounded by clay where she could shed her mask and scowl. When her sisters saw her return, buried in jewels from the palace, they instantly swarmed to take the riches, which Etuei was more than glad to share since all she wanted was off getting married and having children while she slowly rotted in old roots.

Until one day, a knock came at her door and there stood the prince with the glass in his hand, no longer empty, and tears of loss running down his face. “I come seeking the great potter,” he said to Etuei who no longer bared the mask. The prince had aged, ungracefully but with good years under him and love. Oh yes, she saw love in his tears, in his welcoming smile.

“There’s only me, my prince,” she responded.

“You recognize me,” the prince said, surprised.

“Well of course. It was I that gave you that glass, after all.”

Through her words, he felt the kind potter come to life but could not see beyond her face, the face of the woman he once longed desperately to escape. “Woman, who are you? What is your name?” he asked, coming into the old house. Instantly, he saw the mask of the old man sitting on the wall shelf all her other cherished possessions.

“I am Etuei, daughter of Assaf. I am the hands that comforted you in times of heartbreak. I am the words that kept you wise. I am the one that longed to see you smile, even at the cost of my own tears. And I am the one that sent you into the world to find this heart now in your hands,” she spoke, looking at the dying heart in the glass.

“My dear potter, can you save her?”

“You learn how I have waited, how I gave my life to serve you, and you still want the woman in the glass?” she asked, feeling cold tears smear the clay dust across her cheeks.

“You told me to find her. You told me to find love and forsake my kingdom.”

“But I bear you my face now, Prince! I told you to go so you’d find what I can never give you: a face untarnished by pride and clay,” she pleaded, waiting forever for this day only to find his love had found another. “But in my love for you, if you so wish, I’ll make you your wife anew and I’ll go back to my face of clay.”

The prince could not help but feel for the girl, now woman, but he agreed to come the following day with the heart and the glass and come for the body of his new woman. But when he arrived, it was not his wife, at least in body. The clay woman was beautiful but not the one he loved.

The prince was astounded. It looked just like his wife. He set down the glass on the table and walked over to marvel at his new wife.

Etuei, tired and lonely, sat down on the table and stared at the heart. The prince smiled and sat down before her. “Does my kingdom wait?” he asked, not bothering to console her.

“Your kingdom’s left, sir. It’s left you and your palace has turned to dust.”

Just as the prince went to stand, the glass slid from the table onto the floor. He exclaimed in terror and ran to catch the pieces of her broken heart. “No!” he yelled. “What will happen to my wife’s empty vessel?”

“She will wither and die just like the first.”

“Then give her my heart,” he begged.

“You will die, sir.”

“I don’t care. I want her back.”

Etuei shed a tear and grabbed another empty glass from the shelf of priced possessions. “Here,” she said and handed him the glass. “Take my own heart and put it in the empty vessel. I know I can never replace her, sir, but I promise this new woman will love you just as much if not more.”

And with that, she took a shard from the floor and plunged it into herself.