The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

messages. Thankfully they are all literate in the Latin alphabet and a number of us can use it, but it is still awkward.”
    Koyama said thoughtfully: “Their High King spoke perfect Japanese . . . Sado-ga-shima dialect, even . . . and apparently Korean as well. And now his daughter does. I still do not understand that. Certainly none of the others have any, Majesty.”
    “Yes, I recall, and I was astonished at his fluency even then,” she said. “The difficulty in speaking with them is very awkward; we cannot expect a ruler to act as our interpreter whenever it would be convenient. We must master their language as rapidly as possible, and that applies to you all, and to your subordinates.”
    Her mouth twisted a little wryly. Her tutors had been convinced that she could already speak fluent English. She had studied dutifully, even though it had seemed a useless accomplishment to her.
    They were very wrong, and so was I!
    It would have been extremely useful to speak English now, but though she could handle the written language easily enough, several embarrassing attempts at the spoken tongue had proved incomprehensible to the locals. Nor could she follow more than a word or two per sentence when
they
spoke. The sounds that English-speakers actually used were excruciatingly difficult—many of them were identical to her ear but were distinct and crucial to meaning—and the spelling in the supposedly phonetic Latin alphabet was bizarrely useless as a guide. Why did
night
have a
g
and an
h
and no
e
on the end?
    And while she was not sure, she suspected that at least two very different
dialects
of English were involved here.
    The
Kami
know it’s hard enough to understand someone from Hachijo, the way they mumble everything as if their mouths were full and call a field a mountain or say garbage for firewood. It might be something like that. And I don’t even know which dialect is more important! But the important thing here is—
    “It is the sword he carried, and that his daughter now bears, that did these things,” Reiko said flatly. “It is . . .
shintai
.”
    She turned slightly and bowed to the urn. Everyone followed suit; it wasn’t necessary to speak.
Shintai
was a word with many implications: literally it meant something that served as the dwelling of a
kami.
    Most commonly it was at the center of a shrine, and it could be a rock, a tree, a waterfall . . . or an object like a sword. Some considered the relationship merely symbolic, but the ancient tales could make the power embodied in a
shintai
sound quite bluntly literal. Her father’s quest involved taking the stories very seriously indeed, and they now had direct proof in the light of day that he had been absolutely right.
    Koyama went on slowly: “These people . . . they are not at all as I would have imagined Americans, from the records and stories. Even two generations after the Change. Though they recognized
us
immediately, what we were and where we came from. Even using our own terms; I heard their ruler’s daughter say
Nihon
as soon as she saw us closely. Curious.”
    “As far as custom and appearance go, I suspect that we too might be surprising to someone who had no knowledge of Japan since Heisei 10,” she said; that spring was when the machines had stopped. “Since we have returned to many of the older ways.”
    She reminded herself to think of the Western calendar as well, though it wasn’t much used in everyday speech anymore: Heisei 10 was 1998 AD.
    “And just as surprising to someone brought forward in time from before Meiji, Majesty,” Koyama said, surprising
her
a little. “Though they might take a little longer to realize it. History cannot be completely undone, even by the Change, nor can the past be truly brought back even if you wear its clothes.”
    True enough,
she thought.
I am not about to shave my eyebrows off or blacken my teeth or apologize for existing every time I speak to a man.
    “My father once said he