KhanQuest

Chapter I

The Summons

In the town of Princeton lives a queen named Anna.

Her father, the Khan, loved the songs of a famous minstrel. Every year, on the ninth day of the tenth month, the people of the steppe gather to sing those songs on the minstrel's birthday.

This year, the Imperial Chancellery sends for the Queen of Princeton.

The summons falls to the Chancellery's most junior clerk, who has never once written to a queen. He means to write Царица, tsaritsa, the proper word for one. His quill writes Царит.

Царит is not a title. It is a verb: reigns. To a Hebrew ear it is one breath from Sarit, little princess. The clerk considers it for a long moment, decides it will do, and seals the envelope three times.

Chapter III

The Orders

The envelope reaches Princeton at dawn, sealed in red, green and gold.

Inside is a single page of orders. Ride east. Cross the great river. Find the steppe. Follow the music.

She reads it twice, checks the NJ Transit app, and saddles her horse anyway.

Chapter V

The Inspection

At Princeton Junction, a second conductor inspects her properly, magnifying glass and all. Front. Side. Back. Pearls nearly to the ceiling. A cloak lined with ikat, the dyed silk of the Silk Road.

Not merely a knyazhna, obviously. He crosses it out and writes Царица. Tsaritsa.

Chapter VI

The Plains

Past the Junction the land opens out: reeds to the horizon, a sky with nothing in it, banners on tall poles marching east. Surely this is the steppe.

The horse thinks so. For the first time all day, it fits.

It is not the steppe. It is the Meadowlands, in New Jersey. As she rides along the line, the banners of her domain fly beside her.

Chapter VIII

The Hall of the Firmament

On the far bank waits the Hall of the Firmament: glass roof, steel ribs, light falling straight down. It is Moynihan Train Hall, built inside New York's old General Post Office. So the Chancellery is a post office. Of course it is.

The horse waits outside on Eighth Avenue. The whole hall bows, and not to the horse.

The clerk who wrote the summons is waiting for her. He takes the envelope and, for the first time, reads past the title to the name. Anna Khan Akselrod. Khan: ruler of the steppe. He stamps the last box: Хан.

Every other title on that envelope was a guess. This one she was born with.

Chapter X

The Steppe

At dusk she puts the cloak back on, collects the horse from Eighth Avenue, and rides uptown.

The steppe, it turns out, is a field in the middle of Manhattan: Strawberry Fields, in Central Park, across from the minstrel's old home.

Every year on his birthday, people gather here around one word set in stone, and sing.

The horse finds grass. She lights a candle and sings the songs her father loved.