Monday, May 16, 2005
The Moon's Day
Excavating:
The thrice-plaited beard showed him to be a devil of the Old Ways.
“I am Nestor. I bring you greetings.”
“And?” Taurus was weary, but impatient, too. One hour of ceremony before the devil spoke. These pagans do not come to bring simple greetings.
“I have a plan.”
“Indeed. You are sure, Old One, it is not a curse?”
The old man doffed mantle and tunic. His muscled chest belied the age upon his face. “The curse is already upon you. I bring you empty hands to unspoon the light.”
“Old Man, speak a language nearer my age. Unwitch you tongue: you dishonor my home.”
Nestor smiled ruefully. “As I said, the curse is already upon you. The language I speak is your language. The tongue of your forests – your forests that have drowned.”
Taurus was indignant. “I know of no floods - ”
“They are not floods the new eye can see. But, believe me, your forests are oceaned. I lament your loss - ”
“We move on, Old Man. Our benighted Queen - ”
“I was not speaking of your Queen, Taurus.” The king bristled at such pagan familiarity. “Even now, she stands beside you.” The old man lifted his hand to calm the king’s indignation. “And that is what I lament: your loss of vision. What god would have you cut out your eyes to honor his name?”
“I see you quite clearly, Nestor, and I see that you are a nuisance. I also see that there is no one beside me, except the fool of a councilor who bid me let you in.” At these words, there was the unmistakable touch of a warm hand upon his shoulder. It was not the first he had felt of her.
“Another casualty of your wise ways, Taurus. Since when was crossing the rivermists given a name such as death? Since when was there ever such a word? Believe me, Taurus, in truth I do not dishonor your God. The blasphemy is that the word is your own invention. No God would conjure such a thing. You cast out your eyes for your own purposes.”
“And what might those purposes be, Old One?”
“I’ll not match wits with you in child’s play, Taurus. I came to give you back your Queen.”
“You waste my day, pilgrim. We have grieved my sister’s passing. She is dead: we look to reunion, but that day is beyond us all. Till then, we have work to do. Our grief is done.”
“Your oceaned forests say otherwise.”
“Damn you for the witch’s foul bastard that you are, old man!” Taurus leaped from his throne, drawing his sword of lightning. “I will have your head now!,” he cried, but his hand was stilled by the ghost of a touch upon his throat. You will do no such thing, my brother.
All too clear to the old man watching his Queen in her star-dipped raiment. He could smell the river upon her. It was long his theory that the children of the New God simply denied what was in fact before them, but in that he was wrong. In less than two generations after the nailing of their manGod, the blindness was complete.
Chastened by his sister’s spectral hand, Taurus sat back down upon the throne that still bore her blue and silver colors. Sister of the moon¾a mockery of the red pride of the black bull her brother. His hand shivered at the touch of her silks upon his skin. You shrink from the touch of dead fabric upon your skin, brother? What doth my tongue in your ear then, you arrogant cow? Nestor smiled at the crackle of sister’s lips upon brother. The smile was not concealed: no comfort to this king whose older subjects could see the methods of his sister’s tortures.
“I will indulge you but a moment more, Old Man. What would you have of me?”
“Three days. No more. Come with me to the shores of your oceaned woods.”
“I will not spare a moment’s breath for utter foolishness, Nestor. But, I will spare the fool that bid me see you. My most worthy Longman. Throw him into my oceaned forests for all I care. And jump in behind him. This kingdom has fools to spare. Two will not be missed.”
The queen winked at the old man. Now you have the one for whom you came.
Wordless, the smallest of bows, the old man left.
Taurus was not through with his own fool. Later, in the rooms of his chief assassin, he unburdened the rest of his plan. “Three days, Longman. Go with the senile madman to these so-called oceaned forests. Sink his body in the highest limbs of my drowning trees, for all I care. But, bring me his head.”
Brave words for a man who felt the still point of his sister’s blade at his own heart.
Longman found the old man beside a dry streambed beneath the towers of the dead queen’s castle. The king’s assassin had the executioner’s gentleness of heart. It came of many lips having kissed the blade of his axe. He set food and drink beside his traveling companion.
“Ninety years I’ve bathed in this green crystal stream,” said the old man, ignoring the feast laid out beside him. “Three kings and two queens have crossed the rivers, and now another - in all those years, never was this mountain’s heart dry. But now, my brother, mere weeks after Gwyneth’s descent - dry as bone.”
Longman’s charity was reserved for a senile man, not an infidel. “Do not call me brother, old devil.” The assassin’s hand went involuntarily to the cross at his throat. “And do not speak of descent. You yourself told the king - ”
“Taurus, gentle boy, I told Taurus. He is no king to me. Does the sun not descend only to return at next day’s dawn? Does the moon not mingle with her own darkness? You are not the lad - ”
“No sir, I am not the lad.” The giant’s hand was still at his own throat. Blades shatter, but not his Master’s cross.
