Free Charades by Janette Turner Hospital Page A

ferns that uncurled themselves like the fingers of a baby.
    Are there any good fathers? I asked him.
    They come good and bad, he said, and everything in between.
    Make me a father, I said. A good one. And tell him to me. And this was the bone man’s tale, but it’s my tale too. I was always inventing fathers.
    Once upon a time, in the northern hemisphere, there lived a king who had three sons — well no, not three sons, because the youngest child was a daughter. And behind the king, crouching at the back of his throne, lived a dream, and the dream had the king in its coils. Sleeping and waking, it had him, until he summoned his counsellors to his chambers.
    I dream of a land that does not exist, he said. I see deserts, but also small steamy pockets of forest. I see cities that cling to the edges of a dead hot heart as froth clings to the sides of my beer mug. The people who live in this dream have the faces of children. They worship the sun, they do not believe that a world exists beyond their shores, they are full of thoughtless cruelties. As flies rub their legs, these people rub the past from themselves. Interpret this dream for me.
    And his counsellors said: This is the dream of Terra Australis, O King, which is like unto the dream of El Dorado.
    And they read unto him from the scrolls of the sea captains and cartographers:
    But, altho’ the remote parts of the southern hemisphere remain undiscovered, we have traces from ancient times, warranted by latter experience, of rich and valuable countries in it … It has been commonly alleged, and perhaps not without good reason, from a consideration of the weight of land to water, that a Continent is wanting on the South of the Equator, to counterpoize the land on the North, and to maintain the equilibrium necessary for the earth’s motion …
    We read, O King, from An Account of the Discoveries made in the South Pacific Ocean , published here in London in this year of our Lord, 1767. This dream, O King, they said, has caused much royal insomnia and the loss of many ships.
    And the king said: Send in unto me my three children.
    And his counsellors answered: This is no voyage and no country for women, young or old, O King. Shall we not send only your two sons?
    But the king, being a rare and compassionate father, knew that his sons would take care of themselves. It was when he looked into the future for his daughter that his heart contracted, and so to all three he offered a riddle and a prize.
    Go forth, he said, and seek the kingdom of my dream, which shall go to the finder. And the solver of my riddle will be provided with ships for the voyage.
    Here is the riddle, he said. The country of my dream is beautiful and harsh, a man’s country according to my counsellors and cartographers and geomancers. A man’s country, they insist. A place where women will not be wanted, where it is unlikely that they will survive. When Terra Australis is found, therefore, how shall I people it with women?
    And his eldest son answered: O Father, you must send into the dreamland maidens of great beauty and tenderness, whose skills in the making and feathering of nests are legendary. Then the men of that country will learn to desire wives and will protect them.
    But his second son answered: O Father, you must cause an itch to fall upon the men of that country, an itch for which the dream of a woman is the only cure.
    Then the youngest one, his daughter, spoke. You must ensure that the men of that dreamplace continue to despise and ridicule and underestimate the women, she said. Then the women will learn laughter and independence and they will survive.
    And the king was well pleased with his daughter’s answer and he commissioned a fleet to sail into the dream in the year of our Lord 1787. And he arranged safe passage on a ship called Supply for his youngest child, who stepped ashore on the coast of the dream in January, 1788, and who