Torandot Redux

"Forget her, Cefalu," Gayle consoled. He lit up his pipe and turned back to face his friend. "Turan's a goddamn princess and you're just a--"

Cefalu was no longer behind him on the cobblestone streets of Karakorum, but had climbed atop the shingles of a nearby roof.

Gayle dropped his yasun, letting the lit tobacco spill on his feet. "Cefalu!!-- Gah!" He quickly brushed the embers off his foot and looked back at the roof. His friend was gone.

Mumbling to himself, Gayle jockeyed onto a narrow fence, as Cefalu must have, and jumped to hang from the roof lip above. "Goddamn it, Cefalu! Are you insane?! You're going to get yourself killed! and me with you!"

Gayle gripped the budge in the shingles as leverage to lift his leg over the lip. Then, using is hoisted leg as a lever, rolled onto the roof, slapping his back against the hard, fired clay tiles. Gayle stared at the starry sky above, his spine aching. "Wow," he sputtered, between heavy breathes. "If Turan doesn't kill you, I will."

Gayle rolled again, now to his feet and climbed the ascent after his friend. As he reached the ridge, the entire Mongolian capital came into view. The lanterns along the streets swung in the breeze, their light dancing against the dark, blue stonework of the city. It was like a reflection of twinkling stars above. And there, near the tall and foreboding castle tower was Cefalu, standing under the window of Princess Turan of Karakorum.

"Oh shit!" Gayle dashed from roof to roof, nearly slipping and falling to his death several times. How did Cefalu make it there so fast? Gayle thought.

He was nearly two homes away when suddenly the faces came into view. The faces of many men that came to the Karakorum to wed the heiress of the Great Mongolian Empire, but never left. As they sought Turan's hand, she took their heads and stuck them on pikes around the castle walls.

Gayle knew this was a dangerous place when they were invited to play for the court of the Khagan. He figured they would strum their strings, western style, lay low, throw back a few of the local beverages, and bed a local lass. Or lad. Whatever he could find at the end of the night.

He did not expect to be climbing on the roofs of the city chasing after his vocalist. Gayle watched his friend boldly stare at the window of the princess above her head. It was the same stare Cefalu gave the princess when she refused her. Defiant. Angry. Prideful.

This was in direct contrast to the gaping maws of the severed heads along the castle wall. Those men failed to answer the princess' three riddles. But Cefalu, after their performance for the khagan and his courtiers, was confident she would not be the first woman to join them.

So she asked the stunning princess Turan if she could endure the “Trial of the Three Enigmas." The princess, seeing no harm in humoring and humbling a foreigner, politely acquiesced. After all, how could a foreigner, let alone as woman, answer her devilish conundrums.

"What is born each night and dies each dawn?" Turan questioned, her silky, quiet voice somehow audible throughout the royal garden.

Gayle watched Cefalu consider the question, then, with a sip from her glass of fermented mare's milk, declared, "Hope!"

The court was aghast. Turan silenced them with a gesture from her delicate wrist. Her deathly stare was unbroken as she walked toward Cefalu.

"What flickers...," Turan whispered, with the weight of an aria, "....red and warm like a flame..."

Turan, blazing her dark, black eyes into Cefalu's, gently lifted the musician’s chin with her forefinger and thumb. "...Yet is not a flame?"

After many hours of music and revelry, the khagan's garden was silent. The anticipation of the foreigner's answer enthralled everyone, from the Mongolian emperor himself to the slaves fanning him.

Cefalu leaned in, as if to kiss the princess on her soft, pale cheek, and breathed, "Blood."

The court exploded in shock. Two riddles down. Gayle wondered how many men had gotten this far. Realizing that he was about to watch his bandmate get decapitated, he decided to step in.

"Ok, your majesty! That is the close of our performance." Gayle motioned the crowd to clap, as he had done at the end of every show with a bad audience. The confused courtiers slowly began to clap along with him. "We thank you for your extraordinary hospitability and the opportunity to be with you this night! We wish you, and the Great lord of the Mongol Empire a sweet and pleasant--"

"Ice!" bellowed Turan. Gayle flew backward into the crowd, as if someone pulled him away from the scene. The stage was no longer his. Now, it was a duet between Turan and Cefalu.

"What is like ice..." Turan roared, "but burns..."

The princess turned her back to Cefalu and faced a gold tree sculpture. Her father had it made for her by a European craftsmen he took prisoner years ago. "...And if it accepts you as a slave...." Turan turned back to face her enemy, "...would make you a king?!"

The garden was again silent, save for the guards moving through the crowd toward Cefalu. Gayle lost feeling in his legs. He fell to the dirt. He could not raise his eyes to see what was to come next. As the guards closed in around her, the Cefalu sang, "Turan!"

The court was shattered. The guards unsheathed their blades as the princess fell to her knees, weeping. Cefalu raised her hands above her head. She turned to look at the crumbled form of Turan on the ground.

"Did I not answer incorrectly?" Cefalu smiled.

The swords moved closer toward the foreigner when suddenly the princess stepped between them. "Stop," she whispered. The guards pulled away, but weapons still drawn.

"You were right," the princess reluctantly admitted. "But why you? why you, of all the men on earth? Why you?!"

Cefalu sang into the princess' ear, "Because your majesty… I am precisely what you wanted… I am no man."

The entire band was thrown on its ear from the castle grounds and told to leave the city immediately. As the rest of the musicians scuttled off to the port with haste, Gayle walked with Cefalu along the streets, hopefully to console her.

Minutes later, they were on the roof outside the castle, beneath the princess' window.

"Turan!" Cefalu screamed. "Turan! if you still want me dead... then answer MY riddle!"

The window began to illuminate as Turan appeared in frame. Her cold beauty was shined in the moonlight.

Cefalu smiled. "What is my name?!"

The princess was about to blurt "Cefalu" when she realized the conundrum. The singer was not asking for her name. That would be too easy. No, what this beautiful, foreign woman wanted to hear was something different. She wanted to know what she represented to the princess. What her victory over the Three Enigmas meant.

Cefalu could see the Turan pondering and smirked from ear to ear. "If before morning you can discover the name I bear, then I shall forfeit my life!"

Gayle was aghast. "NO!" Cefalu turned away from the castle walls and jumped onto the roof to stand beside Gayle. Cefalu’s smile was radiant, and Gayle knew what that look meant.

"Nessun dorma! Nessun dormaaaaaaaa!" Cefalu sang jumping from rooftop to rooftop. "Tu pure, o, Princessa! nella tua fredda stanza!”

Gayle trailed after her. “Cefalu, will you be quiet!”

“Guardi le stelle, che tremano d'amore e di speranza!” As she jumped to the next roof, Cefalu pounded her foot on the tiles, echoing into the sleepy homes beneath. “Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me, il nome mio nessun saprà! ”

Th city began to awake, roused from their slumber as foreigner signing an aria at the top of her lungs. “No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dirò, quando la luce splenderà!” Cefalu danced along the shingles, as denizens screamed epithets as her.

"What is wrong with you?!"

"Get off my house, you filthy bastard!"

"Sure! you can't sleep! I can't sleep! We get it!!! Beat it!"

“Ed il mio bacio scioglierà!," Cefalu belted, dancing above the city streets like a woman without a care. "Il silencio che ti fa mia!”

Gayle tried to keep pace, but his vocalist was also an experienced dancer, able to keep balance along the narrowest of surfaces. “Cefalu! The locals are getting restless!” He was suddenly hit with a volley of rotten vegetables launched from the growing mob below. “Goddamn it! Don’t take it out on me!”

Cefalu darted and ducked passed the incoming projectiles as she made her way above the city toward the port. “ Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle! Tramontate, stelle!! All'alba vincerò! ”

Angry, tired, and covered in puree of old produce, Gayle finally caught up to Cefalu. “Stop, Cefalu! Stop! There is no way out of this! If the princess doesn’t kill you, this town will!”

Cefalu cradled Gayle’s face in her soft hands. “I will win. I will win…. You will see my friend.” She jumped from the last roof onto a nearby boat, and from the boat onto the dock. She glid across the wooden planks toward the musician’s ship, Gayle in tow.

Behind him was a mob of angry Mongolians, ready to beat, maim, and filet the visiting band of foreigners. The ship took off once Cefalu and Gayle made it aboard. The mob screamed and pelleted the ship with anything in reach. “Tough crowd, huh?” joked one of the musicians. Gayle punched him in the arm.

Cefalu looked back at the crowd, searching. He did not see the princess anywhere.

Suddenly, as the ship reached the edge of the port’s seawall, a woman appeared atop, wearing a flowing nightgown. “Do you guys see that?” bellowed one of the musicians. Cefalu turned and saw her: Princess Turan of Karakorum.

As the ship passed the seawall, Cefalu walked starboard to face her, as the sun’s light crept over the horizon. “Vincero, princessa. Vincero.”

The princess smiled, “No, my Love.” Turan leapt from the seawall and into Cefalu’s arms aboard the vessel. They embraced. They kissed. And they left their anger, pride and resentment behind them.