VIII. Travel

Year 968 (19th Year of King Gwangjong's Reign)

“The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.” =Buddha

The fields stretched out in front of him. They always did. More than home, palace, friends or family, it was the fields that where his companion.  

13^th Prince Wang Baek -Ah sat under a tree recording the words to a new song he had heard in town that morning. 

 The song was hummed and sung by a mother to her child as she rocked the baby to sleep and he drew them. 

The song was now in his head and he knew until he recorded the words and tried to replay the tune it wouldn’t leave his head.  He was grateful for the quiet and the lack of interruptions. He wanted to practice playing the tune.

The words to the many simple songs he had heard over the years sung by the common people, spoke of their suffering, their fears, their resilience and sometimes as did this song, their hopes for their children. 

King Taejo, his father, had set him on a quest to record his people by drawing them when he was younger. Little had he known then, that this path would become his salvation. A place that allowed him to live with some measure of freedom.

As a Prince, living inside the palace, he had witnessed the death of family and friends in pursuit and defense of a throne.

He had known the rise and fall of kingdoms. Including his own royal house in Sillas. 

Kings rose and fell trying to strengthen and unify their kingdoms.

As an artist he traveled and lived among the common people.

He recorded their hearts, through songs, and drawings.

He knew now, that true unification in any Kingdom relied on a King understanding their own people.

His own brother, King Gwangjong ruled with the same hope.  He had once stood by his side. In the time before she was gone.

Her face came back again filling his mind. Every shape, curve and outline. He remembered her, all of her.

She had been too young to carry the full weight of her people and their fallen kingdom.  He had been too young to understand, she carried the weight alone.

Until it was too late.

Until his arms had filled with her fallen, broken body.

He knew loss, it traveled with him every day.

Thoughts of the palace, and of her made him stop recording the words to the song. Instead, he picked up the book he used for his drawings and opened its pages.

The King had asked to meet with him and embark on a new mission. 

Ji-Mong’s death a year ago had raised new questions for the King concerning Hae Soo.

A part of him had understood the King’s request. 

His heart understood his brother.  The King had wanted more than a picture drawn of her, to remember.

He wanted to capture her heart as well in those pictures. The moments she had shared with them, the Princes.

She had brought out the best in them. She had changed them.

Those times had been a spring for all of them, when brothers had met as brothers. 

Time would change them all.

His own memories of Hae Soo had been narrated to the King when he returned to the palace and they had met.

Ji-Mong  had seemed to think Hae Soo came from a different world.  He had said that thinking back, there where many instances that showed this.

The King had asked him,“Baek- Ah, you knew her well. Do you know of such instances?” 

As a result of that meeting, he had spent part of the last year traveling.

Meeting his brother’s.  Visiting their homes.   

In doing this he was also recording his brother’s stories of their time before the all out fight for the throne.

Her story involved his brother’s too.

8^th Prince Wang Wook had been able to provide details of her life outside the palace and the time she had lived in his household.

14^th Prince Wang Jung had returned to his home after an earlier stay at the temple while recovering from an injury. He too had added a story of an encounter between him and Hae Soo in which she had come to his defense.

He had drawn a few sketches of his own.

Memories of moments shared with his brothers. As his own testament to those days.

He looked through all the sketches in his book. He planned to turn them into full color paintings.  He would add his signature signet once they were finished and send them to the palace.

He turned the pages to the sketches stopping when he reached the sketch of Prince Wang Wook carrying Lady Myung Hee on his back in her last moments. Hae Soo had walked right behind him.  

The sketch triggered a memory of him and Hae Soo drinking after Lady Myung Hee's death.

Every day they had drunk, and drunk.

Hae Soo and him, caring only about how to drown the pain and loneliness they both felt after her death.

Both of them might not have started out as friends but Lady Myung Hee's death had changed that too. 

He had tried to explain to her customs any royal family member understood,

but Hae Soo never fit, or seemed to know what should have been second nature to her station in life. 

Everyone blamed this on her memory loss, but he could see it was more than that.

During one of their many conversations she had taught him about the importance of freedom and she had said to him,

“Please stop talking about taking people. This place always treats people like they are property. Just wait a thousand years.   There is no one above you. There is no one below you…..How long is life anyway?

Your status is this, the Prince is that……

Listen to me Baek -Ah.

You could be living well, and still just end up dying someday.

You can fall right out of the sky.

Then end up living in a place like this;

so, just follow your heart and live.

Do everything you want to do.

And live however you want to,

OK?”

13^th Prince, turned the pages in his book.  The last sketch he had drawn he would keep for himself.

It was of Hae Soo walking in an open field.

Her hands outstretched to touch the tall sunflowers.

He had used lighter tones to represent the moment, letting light stream into the drawing.

The drawing showed him the young Hae Soo he remembered. 

Still hopeful, still following her heart, before loss too would fill her days.

Above her he had drawn an open sky.

He spoke to her drawing as if she could listen, “I hope you find your open sky. 

1,000 years from now, with no one above or below you.

I’ve tried to keep your secret, friend,

but time is unfolding the truth. 

Perhaps this too is just another part of all our fates.”