Motherheart Dragon Priest

Chapter 8a: Ships and Kites

Motherheart Priest — Chapter 8

The Master did bid the second twelve

to travel across land and sea;

so spreading the word that

all are welcome in the sight of the one.

Gospel of Jaqub

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Master Marco stood on the dock waving us farewell as the ship I had been assigned to, much to the disgust of its Han captain, made its way out on the flowing tide. The captain was a haughty fellow and distinguished himself as a Han instead of a Soong, though the Soong be the most recent flowering of the same stock. He held that his family line extended far back to the empire of the Han and claimed that all that followed were but standing on their shoulders.

I often heard him rebuked by bureaucrats and merchants, many who told him that the Han stood on the shoulders of the Qin, who founded the very first unified empire. Such discussions appeared to be quite common for tradition was strong and family ties oft extended far back in time for which there were full records kept in the libraries and temples.

The Soong Empire encompassed many peoples all with a long rich history and all ready to state their claims of influence within the glorious flowering that was the Soong Empire. Even among Soong crew there was much opinion as to the nature of their many cousins in the empire. The most northern are said to be proud and honest, of the northwest conservative and thrifty, of the east pragmatic and crafty, and those of the south diligent and adaptable. It was a most wonderful example of an illustrious empire.

High above our vessel and tethered to a great winch mounted on the prow, flew a winged contraption, a wooden bird, but more in the shape of a winged box, large enough to bear a man who waved coloured flags to message about the wind and tide and other vessels. The crew told me that if they could not loft the man flyer they would not sail for it bore ill to have insufficient wind at the commencement of the journey. Such a sight was so spectacular as not to be believed unless beheld with one’s own eyes.

To observe a man strapped into a silk covered winged wooden box so designed to direct the flow of air and so be carried heavenwards by the force of the wind is frighteningly wondrous. I was told that in legend the first man to fly in such a fashion was one Yuan Huang Tou during the reign of the sixth century emperor Kao Yang and that Dao monks have been perfecting such man flyers and their handling ever since. And today men go aloft and come back to earth with little effort.

From the glare I received from the Han captain I think he would have preferred for me to have shipped with one of the Jomon captains, as they seemed to be more accepting of others whose appearance is similar to theirs. The Jomon though are enigma to me for their appearance is similar to those of us from Europe. Pale skin, bearded and of rounded eyes and so are different from all others of Asia. They are generally more solid in stature than those I have grown up with, as this seems to accompany those that spend the greater part of their lives at sea for they dwell amid a chain of islands to the east of the Soong coast.

They have a great reverence for the natural world, much the same as the pagan Gaels and Prussians. The Jomon though talk of this not as love but as a living of the Law, of being the Law. The Soong, as do we Christians and many of the others that I have met on my journeyings with the Polos, talk of this reverence for life as an adherence to the Law. It is on this basis that the Holy Mother Church has its foundations. The Church is the enforcer of the Laws of the One True God, of which the Twelve Commandments of Moses are the distillation.

The Jomon though have no need of such laws and commandments as each individual, man and womyn alike, seems to live the Law innately as if they have always been that way. It is their belief that they have always been of this inclination and that they have been the bringers of the Law to the four corners of the earth, though they say the earth is round like a ball much as the Greeks have always told us.