Copyright © 2011
Evan Morris
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Published by Evan Morris at Smashwords
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Acknowledgements
The title of this collection is a partial quote from Hamlet, Act I, scene I, in which soldiers first encounter the ghost of Hamlet’s father. “How now, Horatio!” says Bernardo. “You tremble and look pale: is not this something more than fantasy?”
The cover image contains an image obtained under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license. The image was originally produced by the Vancouver Film School. A copy of the license can be viewed at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/. The original image can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vancouverfilmschool/4688639021/sizes/l/in/photostream/.
Table of Contents
The stories in this collection were written at widely differing times, starting in the early 1990s. The most recent story was written in about 2003. They have been collected together because they represent what can only be described as ‘fantasy fiction’, although the title of the collection suggests other currents.
The stories are not presented in the order they were written, but rather in the order that I think makes for the best reading experience. Cow, for instance, is the last story in the collection but is the first of these that I wrote, way back in about 1994, when the whole world was unrecognizably different. I put it at the end because it has the character of a dessert.
Taking the other stories, in reverse order from their appearance here: Those Who Are Watching Us is a sort of morality tale not unfamiliar to the genre. It was originally science fiction (or at least science fantasy) in that the central conceit involved Neandertals. Rewrites led it in a different direction, which I like more.
Rosalinde is the only short story I’ve ever completed without knowing where it was going to end. Normally I’m incapable of even starting without having a clear idea of the destination, but in this case I wrote the story as a kind of extended dream, over a period of a few weeks, chipping away at it at night until I felt it had concluded.
Lasanian Tonic is a political satire, but you needn’t know that to enjoy it. The title, which has mystified some readers, is a near-acronym for the name Antonin Scalia, which belongs to a justice of the US Supreme Court who is an abject buffoon.
Liberté is a story that I know when I wrote (roughly the same time as The Events at King’s Dogs) but about which I can remember nothing else. I don’t know why I wrote it, or what it was supposed to be about; I have the vague idea that it started with just the thought of two men arguing about a world they could not see, from inside a prison cell, and developed from there.
Lastly, or firstly, The Events at King’s Dogs: although it is a complete story in its own right, it seems like it could form part of a larger sequence that remains to be written. In some ways it as (at least emotionally) a prequel to Those Who Are Watching Us, although it was written later. I can’t pin down why, but it is one my favourites of my own stories.
We travel to King’s Dogs in the dark of night, but our passage does not go unnoticed. From the moment our small party bundles into the nondescript wagon, camouflaged as something much less than it really is, I sense eyes upon us, and whispers about us, rumours everywhere, like ivy.
The king seems to notice it as well, although he is not much more than a boy, still wrapped up in mourning, both outwardly in his attire, and inwardly. His father recently deceased, he now assumes a throne of great moment. It is a throne that he will elevate, for he is destined to be more than merely loved; he is destined to be legendary. They will call him the Sun King, and forgive his caprices, his uglinesses, his foppery and foolishness and, yes, his debauchery. They will forgive him everything, this boy, Louis, and his name will echo across oceans, like a Biblical decree.
I see this.
And I see also the boy himself, the prettiness of him despite, or perhaps because of, his confused, slightly callous grief. I see the way he is looking at me as if he hopes I will not notice. And the way he looks at the others, without speaking, except to tell one to move his foot, another to give him room, disguising his acuity in a layer of small grievances, so that they will think less of him. How clever that is. And I see beneath it all two things that no one else can see, because he hides them well: fear and fascination.
-oOo-
We travel away from densely populated areas, through the night, our wheels creaking in old tracks. Our journey takes us off the main roads for a long while, accompanied only by the sound of our breathing and the clatter of our vehicle, trundling through the dark. A humble cart, no more. Bearing an earthly majesty. Only a boy, with beautiful locks.
During the night, all sleep but I. Even the king sleeps, although he resists its advances until shortly before dawn, finally succumbing when the others are already stirring uncomfortably. I remain vigilant. I look out at the world growing whiter like decaying bones. It whitens to a point of near excruciating delicacy, as it always has since Time began, and then, on the brink of impossibility, the colours come back, like blood. Birds sing, creatures scuttle and bump as our wheels shoot small stones into the undergrowth. The king mutters in his sleep, and cries out softly, “Non, papa! Ne me quitte pas!” No, daddy, don’t leave me.
-oOo-
The farm at King’s Dogs lies in a hollow, bordered on three sides by forest. Mist lies in the little valley as we creak over the last rise, and the scene strikes me as altogether consuming. The taste of the dense moisture, the smell of loam and leaves, thicken my tongue and bring me to the edge of weeping. But I do not weep. I avert my eyes.
“Wake him,” I tell his protector. The man glowers at me, but obeys as all obey. He wakes the king.
“Are we there?” he asks groggily, but no one speaks. They all are looking out at the mist and – through the mist, barely visible but present as a smell, and as a pressure on the skin – the ancient woodlands.
The king also surveys the scene, and for a moment he is unable to disguise an expression of naked awe. Then he seems to recollect himself. What is it out there? Only some mist, only some trees. It is damp and distressing, and he is far from home.
He sniffs and feigns indifference. He is the owner of all he sees.
But there are things he does not own. So many things. And some of them await him here. They have been telling of his coming all through the night as we rode. I could hear them, passing tales along the secret ribbons of their tongues, using wind, using water. The clatter of stones down a hillside in the dark of midnight, the snapping back of branches in an inky gust, the harsh outcryings of the sleeping people, maidens, labourers, innkeepers, their dreams bending back with odd elbows. This is the discourse of the dark.
-oOo-
We unbundle into the damp morning, and stand there like portentous geese, hissing steam. The king’s coterie supervises a small and flustered clutch of peasants as they unload valises and carry them towards the chambers that are reserved for such visits. A fat man dressed in livery into which he has clearly clambered hastily – his buttons yet undone – emerges from the main house, bowing and cooing empty reverences, like a gauche, clockwork pigeon. I stand alone, partially out of sight, watching the mist slide and simmer across the vague shapes of heavy trees.
From the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of nervous movement, and quickly turn to see a girl – no more than ten years old – running from the edge of the main house to a stack of wood nearer the cart. She sees me seeing her and stops, petrified. Of course, she cannot know what I am. To her I am merely a black presence, hooded, in the king’s company and therefore terrifying. And to me she ought only be a child, misbehaving innocuously. But there is something in her demeanour that makes me yearn to speak to her, to soothe her fright, and reveal the truth, not only about myself, but about everything I know.
I stare at her as the seconds tick by, and then I look away, return to my engagement with the nearby forest. I wonder if the girl has continued on towards the wood pile, or turned in defeat and retreated to the main house.
I wonder, but I do not look to see.
-oOo-
Breakfast is served in an enclosure between the farm buildings. The king and his courtiers, as well as the head dog-breeder (the clockwork pigeon), fall to, but I eat nothing. Breakfast is chicken’s eggs and loaves and milk and butter. The king eats quietly, and there is an air of solemnity, perhaps imposed by my stony silence and my cowl. Ducks hoot and squeak somewhere nearby and there is the constant, almost river-like barking of the king’s dogs, housed in several breeding pens.
I excuse myself from the table, knowing that when the food is eaten the king will probably inspect his dogs, and then return to bed until the afternoon. I will not be needed before he wakes.
The sun has begun to burn the mist away, and the forest is clearly visible on the edge of the farm. As I hasten towards it I sense someone watching me, and suspect it is the same young spy as previously. I do not look, and after a moment, I do not care. Let be what will. The forest calls me.
I resist tears for ten steps into the wood’s embrace, and then cannot resist them further. I reach out a hand to touch the thrumming bole of a majestic oak, and feel what seems like years of anguish, solitude, and yearning, all crack like crisp ice and release a stream of catastrophic homecoming in my soul. My knees touch loam and my throat aches with a million nettles, rose-barbs, bloody thorns. My nostrils choke with the thick stink of leaf, beetle, tuber, moss, black mud. And my ears throb with the clatter of bark, the jangling shriek of sunlight on stems, the quick flicker of a bug’s wing, the scattering of many seeds. A sound, tangled, like the sound of vines, high-pitched and coloured green, sings out of me painfully, ravaging my jaw with sobs. My tears soak the ground before my face, and then my face is pressed into the ground and I am breathing her, my swarthy sister, Earth, again, at last.
Some minutes after my initial collapse I manage to restore myself to a kind of outward composure, although I feel light-headed, weak-limbed, emptied.
I walk deeper into the woods, now certain that I am being followed. The little child is unable to conceal her footfalls, although she must think she is succeeding, for she does not hesitate to follow where I lead. I make for water, a pool in a forest glade. I emerge from the tree-line into a sunlit clearing and immediately my black outer robe seems bitter. I untie it and cast it aside, revealing to my pursuer what must shock her into speechlessness: my priestly vestments.
I kneel beside the silky water and drink the first sustenance to cross my lips in days. The sun strokes the back of my neck with languid fingers, and although I know I must try to fight this urge – if only to preserve some level of illusion in the mind of my secret witness – I find I am completely enchanted, unable to act against my inner volition.
I disrobe and step into the water.
It is this final act that proves too much, and I hear the child’s footsteps fleeing recklessly back the way we came, twigs snapping at her heels like teeth. What must she think? A mysterious stranger in the king’s company grows insane in the woodlands, weeping, clawing the soil, then staggers to the water and is seen to be a priest. And worse, much worse, the priest disrobes and is seen to be what cannot be.
It is not merely my nudity that has frightened her, but my anatomy.
I drift across the surface of the drowsy pond, like a white lily or a drowned virgin, watching the sky wheel, far away, but going nowhere. My ears are beneath the surface of the water so that I can listen to the tadpoles whispering in confusion.
I dry myself on the mid-morning grass while butterflies split and merge in the clean air around my head. Then I dress again and go in search of the ones who called us here.
-oOo-
Night comes, leaking out from the leaves like oil. Since mid-afternoon I have been sitting outside the king’s sleeping chamber, watching clouds migrate slowly westward. The clouds pause here and there to confer with one another, to pass along traveller’s tales, to study maps. Then they press on, like pilgrims, towards rain elsewhere.
By twilight there are no more clouds. The king has been awake for some time, discussing matters with his advisors. Briefly, in the afternoon, he went out to the dogs again, and as he passed my seat I felt him shudder. On his return, he did not look at me.
Now it is time. I rise and tap on the door. The courtier who opens it also does not look at me, but pretends disdain, although I can see the fingers of his free hand trembling, and see the whiteness of the knuckles on the door handle.
The king, as I have instructed, is dressed in rags and tatters, taken, no doubt, from some unfortunate peasant on the property. His feet are bare, his hair untied and unadorned. It hangs like black silk about his boyish features.
“Come.” I take his hand and move with him towards the door. There is a gasp from his attendants, but the king makes no sound, although I feel him stiffen. Whether this is from dread of what is coming, or revulsion at my touch, I cannot say. “Come. Those who would witness, follow.”
Like supplicants to the holiest of shrines we move out of the building into the night. None speaks. Outside, night-birds mutter and puff themselves up, but we cannot see them. We tramp over the ground towards the lurking tree line, and as we go I feel the king’s hand relax in mine, although he continues to tremble. Before we get to the trees, however, I bring the company to a halt.
“What -?” the king begins, but I quiet him with a gesture. To the darkness of a hay-rick, I say: “Come to me.”
There is a moment of bewilderment among the party, and then the farmer’s daughter who tracked me in the morning steps out from her hiding place. She is wide-eyed, aghast, clutching her little hands to her clavicle. I hold out an open palm to her, and although she is visibly terrified, she comes to me, unblinking, and puts her hand in mine.
As if on cue, some of the dogs in the nearby kennels begin to snort and whine, and then to bark uncontrollably.
We proceed into the forest. At night its true nature is revealed, when people sleep and the world is unhindered by their expectations of it. The trees are thicker, the leaves colder and more potent. Footfalls blend into an ancient rhythm, and even breathing seems different, deeper and more engrossing. We trudge along a path I know, but which the others cannot see. I hear occasional mutterings, and the odd suppressed yowl as a thorn scrapes an ankle or a branch taps against a brow. I continue to hold the two hands of my companions, and I hope that the verdant current coursing through my skin and veins can somehow throb out through my palms and fingers, and enter them through theirs.
For perhaps an hour we clatter through the underbrush, but it seems to me like moments, each framed as a memory: a patch of starred sky between branches, the glimmer of moonlight on the hip of a leaf, the ever-present sound of a stream, whose course we are following, although it is invisible to us.
We arrive at a certain group of primordial trees, gathered here as if to consider some grave affair. Each is broader around the belly than a man can grasp, and they stretch up and out the top of the woods, like sentinels.
“Stand off,” I tell the king’s attendants, and noticing them for the first time since we left, I realize they are speechless with fear. They cluster together near one of the trees, their finery and rich accoutrements ridiculous in this sacred grove.
I cast off my black outer robe and step away from king and girl, into the middle of the circle formed by the trees.
“Well met, Night,” I say. “Well met, black rook and raw owl. Well met, root, treefoot, bug, puck, beetle. Well met, I say to those who listen in dark places, and those who sleep these several years. Well met, and hear me now. I bring to you the king of the leeches, the king of termites and crawling things. Here is the crown prince of the broken branch and the bitter water, and the guardian of bracken sod. Here is the cutter, the lord of hacking and breaking, the master of crushing and burning and despite. Here is he who will slice you and spurn you, whose children will rob you and bruise you, and whose grandchildren will butcher you to the last breath in a black time. To you, my sister Earth, I bleed acrid tears, and ask you to send forth now your other children, to greet the king of dank pools and dereliction, and to bless the regent of their inevitable ruin.”
I turn and bring the king towards me by the arm. His face is a wax mask and he shakes with fever. Sweat has sprung up across his brow and down his neck, and his mouth gapes as if he cannot breathe enough.
I leave him in the center of the circle and step back to the farmer’s girl, who is remarkably calm, immobile, watching.
The king sinks to his knees, arms held out as if he knows what is coming. But he cannot know. It is inconceivable. Slowly, they emerge. First, normal creatures, insects, small vermin, worms. Moths collide around his head. Tiny birds and beetles fly into the clearing, buzz, squeak, land on his shoulders, his head. A mouse inspects his ear, and a scorpion as long as my index finger scuttles across his brow and then disappears down into the filthy clothing he is wearing. Slick earthworms pour up around his legs and crawl over his tender flesh.
Behind me someone chokes on his nausea, and then vomits. I keep my eyes fixed on the king, who has closed his and is clenching his jaw as if to fight off his own bile. Then there is a gust of wind and a sustained, almost inaudible shriek. All the small things slither and scuttle off his body, back into the shadows. The king inhales deeply, and begins to cry.
From around the base of the trees come the other creatures. At first, the king’s attendants seem so confused they do not even recognize these things as creatures, but then suddenly the knowledge strikes home and as a man they cry out the name of their saviour, Christ, and draw together as if confronted by an army of devils.
But they are not devils, and only the farmer’s child seems to realize this. She moves as if to go to them, but I restrain her.
They come on many silver legs, and many green feet, and many tuberous bellies. They slope out of their hiding places, adopting these small appearances so that all of them can fit into the grove. Some of them have chosen wings, some stalks instead of legs. The largest is as tall as a dandelion flower, but most are shorter than a finger. Their chatter is like the rustling of leaves, the rattling of seeds in dried seed-pods. They gather around the king, forming a circular audience, watching him intently, as he watches them, an expression of absolute astonishment on his face.
I step up beside him and kneel also. I speak to them in their ancient tongue, whispering.
“Do you accept him?”
“We accept him.”
“Will you tell him?”
“We will tell him.”
“He is yours.”
“He is ours.”
“Let him serve you.”
“We shall let him.”
I rise and give the signal. “Then tell him of your grief.”
Instantly they flood towards the king, collecting on every available surface of his body, crawling into his ears, even into his mouth, like a swarm of bees, except they do not buzz. Instead, they rustle and rattle and scratch, forming a living heap with the king at their core. Within moments another sound begins to mingle with their telling, a sound of anguished moaning, and then sonorous sobbing, as the king, their king, is told of their infinite heartbreak. The sobbing grows louder and more hoarse, and the king rises to his feet with the multitude of Earth’s children scattering off him and out from him in all directions as he weeps, roaring, his face contorted like the face of a madman, his eyes feral and red with tears.
He staggers towards the nearest of the trees and falls against it, attempting to embrace it, pressing his face against its bark, scraping his cheek and then sliding down into a crumpled mess at the tree’s feet, bellowing his agony at it, clawing the soil that gives it succour. The mob flutters and crawls towards him again to resume its awful story.
I turn and take the farm-girl’s hand. All the courtiers have fled already, abandoning their king to whatever wild fate they imagined would befall him. I say to the girl: “We must leave him.”
The girl nods, her own eyes also wet with tears, as if she knows what they are saying to the king. Perhaps she does. I cloak myself, no longer priest, now merely strange again, and we depart, leaving the king to his coronation.
-oOo-
In a bruised dawn he returns. I am seated on a low stool in the morning mist, and see him emerge from the forest, mostly naked, ragged, stumbling randomly about the sod like the Nazarene, resurrected and confused.
His passage is marked by frequent collapses, and occasionally he crawls some way before standing again. He veers away from the main buildings, making for the dog kennels. I rise and follow him in there, to find him sprawled among the frenzied creatures, whining as they whine, half-crying, half-laughing. He smells of every sort of woodland stink, and is dressed only in a loincloth of woven leaves. Upon his head, a crown of myrtle, sage, honeysuckle, rosemarine, dandelions, and thyme. No fleurs du lys.
I extract him from among the licking dogs and move him to a seat. For a time, he seems not to recognize me. Then his attention focuses on my face, and he stares for a second before his features crumple like a child’s, and he is weeping again. I hold him to me and he does not resist. He sobs against my breast and presses his hands into me, as if to reassure himself that I am human.
We stay that way for a long time, but I am unworried. His attendants, having regained some fervour for their roles, have long been beating the forests in search of him, and the farm-workers, of course, know nothing. We are safe in here, as long as is required.