The Shameful Crown

IN this respect to them, I am ever at the task of constraining the wishes of his protection, to wit anon, the state of those who exist beyond the state of to wit anon, the Noble Snails.  He is now beyond the borders of the known, and that is all; and he has turned to the dust to make his vows.

 

Ever entreating his suffering heart, I pleaded for a moment of reflection, in all of us present, to turn suffering to the dust as well, and neither Fields or Evensor could withstand the leaden gravity of horror by which we measured our approach to him.  “Now, gentlemen, I should like a moment by the sea, and lead me if you will, for you cannot understand what I must do, or why I must do it.  I need a different sort of solitude than this, and the immanence of destiny has shown its unerring hand beyond the state I must seek out.”

 

“How?” I continued from my dread. “Shall the dust proclaim its sovereignty?” And I foresaw then the moment of final departure, and I could see him walking bravely towards the circumambulation room, and knew that I must separate for a while, and let the other two alone as well.

 

I walked out through the corridors and cellars up to my favorite trysting place, the Seville Garden, one of His fourteen palaces he had never seen, or, putting it otherwise, never as I knew his face, going about in the above-places, in his invisibility, as one who is possessed of a great presence, going about unknown to the everyman.  There are those who are vastly advanced in their carriages and mien, but never suspected of these absconding powers, being invisible; He was one such.  In fact, his invisibility meant that all men were aware of him, yet, as he went about in the above parts, he was never suspected to be any more than an ordinary man.  But what he did in secret!  This, not even I knew.

 

This is most salient in light of such grand awe ascribed to him, a man of short height but effulgent presence, should never indeed be seen, if he is one man of power, by those who can only mock at pictures and conform to code.

 

And then I noted as he passed on his way to the circumambulation room, that upon his head was a kind of crown:  not natural, not evoking awe.  But instead shame!  I wondered at this kind of appreciation as if I had some other knowledge unknown to me, and told myself I would remember to ask him about it, if he surfaced to the Seville Garden from the circumambulation room.

 

If I had any knowledge of duty, if I had the execution of duty ever on my forehead, it would be as if they who had appointed me executer had seen the completion of a burdensome task just in time.  In the bounds of duty sworn, it tends to the contents of His will, where it is placed, secretly, to attest to the conditions of desire, and this now tends to the harrowing knowledge that I must hold him to from what he was in his refuge.

 

I decided to go for my usual walk in the Seville Garden, as I had always done after our meetings.  The King had whispered his last word before disappearing into the fore-room, into my ear, a promise to disguise himself and go about the grounds above, and that I would find his articles in the lockers appropriate to my private spa, and that I should know him by the color red and the utterance of the word “robin”.

 

I knew this to be a common practice of his by the intimation of the information he passed on to me, by an instinctual knowledge of his rapport, and that he had often gone by secret ways above.  True it was that he had knowledge of the Seville Garden, and, though he had never openly admitted it, it was understood.

 

So it was in the lilting echoes of the antechamber adjacent to the outer courts and passages, that I dwelt tenaciously upon the meaning of “robin”, as not merely a bird, but an occult reference I had never considered.  I took out my fetish from its pouch and draped it in my hand, tying a knot in one of the tassels, and rubbing my fingers together about it in my usual fashion.

 

I rounded the stairs at a trooping gallop, so eager was I to be in the effulgence of the perennial afternoon of the Seville Gardens.  I switched hands, keeping the copper talisman close to my left palm, uttering as a mantra the day’s code, the single word “robin”.

 

Up I went into the conditioning room that led out into the sacred grove within the palace Isore.  I trailed my own feet at encumbering grazes that often meant greater bounds or overrunning my own knack for the strides.  I paused, summoning up the spirit of the times, for I knew that there was something galvanizing the currents of the garden air, and that my ways must soon be made again, this time into a level, but secret acquaintance with the mysterious man I had come to love.

 

And I knew the will must be drawn, for here was a man so important, so obscure, that no one knew who he was.  I longed to have his status, being his attendant and equal, yet I knew that the burden of action, yea, of very speech was entirely his, and that I would never have to dissolve ownership.

 

I wonder now if indeed a gift can bring tragedy, looking back on the fury of obligations, how it had affected his serenity.  All I had had for fourteen years was a voice, and knowledge of anomalous phenomena that would follow my visits with him.  Surely he was a sorcerer, a man given to damnable pursuits, and I turned inside to know of the resignation he surely must have felt.  If I had resigned to a fate worse than death then I should have never known the madness of his duty, the reason for the secrecy and isolation.  As for the common folk, they did not need to know he even existed, and the ways of democracy seemed to avail, as such.

What does a true King look like?

He was not a tall man, though by his build he appeared shorter than he was.  I could not, in surety infer in that moment if I was in fact seeing a man.  His clothes were not expensive.  However, they were the first thing I noticed as he poured forth in that grey light.  The make of them was something I had never met with in my life.  Of a color, they were certain to be akin to the color of dusk, and just as changing.  Perhaps this was a play of the nimbus that engulfed him in my now failing eyes.  Failing with ensconcing guilt, as if I had a forgotten crime or some malady emerging from remission; I couldn’t protect my privacy knowing what this man had sacrificed, his interment as a whole, come to an end.

They were woven all of synthetic wool, fine but not lavish: his clothes, tailored as such I had never seen before.  While I was musing in his glowering ensemble of a light peculiar enough for an entrance, I noticed the contrast of color and shade, as if the real source of the nimbus was the clothes themselves.  I thought absurd of myself for such a ninny of a thought; nevertheless, there it was.  I even traced somewhat of the sunset parting in his eyes.

 

Those eyes, and that mouth suggestive of imperative night, curled (and as I recall I can not award his frown a name) down and yet, beset still by the imperative night I saw with him his firm resolve to step forth.  The light died out from behind him as the oaken door swung shut behind him, yet the idyll of those last glimpses of the strange room behind him lives on now, and in that same moment.  That ephemeral meeting passed into a handshake, his eyes scouring the office for some refuge from his growing terror, and I suggested a glass of wine.

 

“Thank you William, but as yet I have no need to hide, though soon it comes to swearing oaths.”  The other two, lit by my passion to ease this man’s obvious quiver, brought forth into all knowledge and conversation their fervor and arduous zeal for what he could bring, and, I suspect, also selfishly, bring for them, for their gain.

The commotion

D: Night-movements

I read:

“12:30: encountered a man in orange coveralls traversing the outer hallways near the records room. Subject stopped after repeated attempts to gain his attention.”

“12:45: Upon the last attempt, the subject ran straightaway for the conditioning room of the Seville Garden.”

“12:50: gave chase, but upon reaching the Seville Garden, lost the trail, and gave up pursuit.”

“2:30: Fire extinguished in the western wings, in walkway between Seville gardens and the command centre. Minor damage to door to the restricted passages, and security uncompromised.”

I wondered not a long while on these events, and what they were set to mean, and if they had any bearing on the resurgences of the hidden basements, in the moments between awaking, and the knock that soon pounded the knocker of my door.

I was between wonderings, as if the wondering was a part of the expectancy of the recent times. There were the omens and oracles of the self-styled gurus and the poor possessed souls of the outskirts, who longed for knowledge of the hidden, to which I was only too privy to, to bother worrying if they knew. But no secret goes without being found out before long, as soon I was to find.

They came to my door. I knew, without their speaking, what was the call so early at my apartments. Given the nature of the circumstances, before they spoke aught, I sat down on my cushion and stroked the scruff of my dog’s neck.

The old mongrel Duke lowered at my hand, slumping to the floor. There was the issue of the night before to consider, and an immediate impulse to leave my post. Drastic, cruel contender called news, called in that moment beyond my assumption for deep, forced breathing.

The executors came in. Spared innocuous excuses, I was given the full report. Untimely, like dancing fingers over hills mid-morning time, as late as had come, news unwonted of peace rescued my fear. I knew I was being called to no ordinary meeting with His Most Crossed Otherness.

“The time has come, vice-regent. He has called, and we are here to execute his will.” Rushed in suddenly with force, these men called executers out of awe came quickly, pulling me out of my senses. There came the possibilities, shreds of implications, doubts, affairs long forgotten, brought to the surface by those words spoken, tainted with premonitions.

Duke slouched and laid his head on the floor. More sudden than my ears pricked, crepuscular rays shone through my windowpane, as if stolen: lighting my face. The reason for the visit was sheer gravity. They asked at no great lengths of my attachments. It was known by some that he favored me more than they all, for I would someday dispose of him, as promised.

Nevertheless, I had sworn duties outside of his oaths that were known by some, these executers they called, in that I was bound by the oaths sworn, though secret and spoken out of affinity. I rose. “God.” Walking now beside me, Fields and Evensor by name, the two executers led me out, of my own free will, into the hall, from my corner of the house in the west wing, to the isolation of the further domiciles downstairs.

They led me into the room. I had been in this room a thousand times before, and then as I lived, I was compelled by habit to dismiss the two officers. But they would not go. I had expected this day would come, details and remittances accounted for, every cent, for fourteen or fifteen years, came to this. “Go ahead,” Fields said. The two had come at such an inopportune time, or rather, the affair as a whole, with the transference of funds from hand to hand, terminating with me. As his accountant, vice-regent and friend, I alone should have expected the tides to turn as such.

I sat down next to the bookshelf at my desk, took out the ledger and pen, and made as if to write. “Push the button.” I looked: of course I knew what to do—as I had a thousand times, a thousand times without them there, but I held my patience for as long as I could. “We have our orders.” The three of us had our duties to him, and though I was his vice-regent, I ranked below the executers, at least in his personal affairs. We were the only ones who ever heard his voice, yet none of us, in all his fifteen years as King, had ever seen his face.

As I pushed the button, the speaker in the wall let out some slight feedback, as always. I always felt it was a kind of confession, these meetings, sitting next to the grate like this, converting numbers in my ledger, a kind of spiritual inventory. I wondered if Fields and Evensor felt the same way in their offices. Then, His voice came through.

“William?” His voice was tremulous, imbuing a child-like, almost happy tone with the secret telepathy we four shared. “William?” Again, the speaker crackled now, a slight nuance we had come to expect from his end in our meetings. “William, it is time.” I stared at the wall until time no longer had any meaning to me. He called to me through his luxurious prison through that grate in the wall, and suddenly I was torn with utter compassion for him, then great joy that he would finally be free. But, free to die alone, no matter who fought, who followed, who spent tears.

“It is time for me to leave. That is why I have allowed Marc and Charles here to witness this. They know you are not responsible. I have been watching.” I always knew what he could do, but surely he could not be everywhere, and still I died to my self to know the utter isolation, the pure resignation that he felt.

With a start, I withheld the little courage I had left to face him as he came. It was a device he used many times throughout my meetings; a manner of use that would test my resolve without leaving me utterly disarmed. I speak, of course, about my due sense of guilt arising from such close an affinity with him. I justified countless times to myself my actions in this way, reminding myself of that sense of separation I knew and felt. If it had been truly an affect of his frailty I cannot say. But something held me back. Something, a notion left clouded behind me as the jamb slid aside and he poured forth in his primal entrance, standing in a grey light.

A Meeting of Hearts

LET me begin where the tides of war begin to recede. Herein is obscured the will of the secret king, and the denunciation of the rebirth of false mercy. As I am ever at the task of executing the wishes of his perfection, I oft lay recourse to the daguerreotypes of the Noble Snails, and the matter of my own questing in The Castle of the Noble Snails.

There needs be the matters of the grotesque, in attempts giving justice to peace, and the daguerreotypes leave me to unrest. Such as had been the state beyond the status of his estate, in the cellars, as I had found; I look now and see, laughing. So close was it to me. So obvious as the event unfolded, that I could not see in hindsight, were these daguerreotypes in the cellars, I reproved him often for not disposing of them in one manner or another.

Yes, there shall be crabbed impressions of words from time to time, my digressions often are warped in a way that is not good. But this shall not detract from my present cast of mind at this, remembering the daguerreotypes in his cellars in the times before I ever saw his face.

I must remember that you know nothing of these things. My immanence since his departure to that sea has warped also my humility. Where it is said, “the ship that rests above the stars—who needed to be consoled, in that departure…..”

Again I ask: Does a gift bring tragedy? Hidden in the bosom of desire for now, I will weep for his confusion inconsolably.

I had been reading, I remember that fateful morning. Having just arisen from a very light sleep, for I remember the watchmen shouting at all hours, and as soon as the voices faded and I fell into my swoons, again arose those shirking banters by the way of the portico outside.

I lost myself in the silence that I understood to be the movement of Spirit. I can’t describe the state by a name. Something I have come to love in the years passing is the moments surfacing just before getting out of my bed. The moment of awaking is far more wonderful to me than that of falling asleep. I can remember it, I can experience it, but never can I describe the sheer wonder of the phenomena.

My teapot was sitting just off from my bed on a little table I had strictly used to set it on, and only it. A cup before bed, as I put away my books and clothes, preparing for my nightly journey to the mountains of the moon, where I would set traps for the little crows who nest amid the gloomy seas.

I removed the electrodes from my temples, and set the helmet on my nightstand. The voice moved in from the speaker, softly at first, bringing me back to my senses.

“Good morning, William. Today is March 17th, the anniversary of your cousin Kent’s wedding. I have prepared a solid meal today, of lentil and eggs. Toast is optional. Would you like toast?” My peace of spirit associating the re-entry into conscious thought was eased at the digital voice of Margaret, and I spent a soothing moment in thought, relishing her sensual voice.

“Yes, I think I would like toast. Is butter available today?”

“No, only jam. Would you like jam?”

“Yes, please. Currant, or grape. It does not matter.”

The music began to play, which I straightway turned off, the dial sitting next to where I kept my helmet. I picked up my meditation book, and turned to a random page. It said:

“To give and not to squander is the necessary discretion of the wise. Learn first to give, and then, coming like a charge against the enemy’s devices, quickly coming into surety thou shalt fall. He shall not make an ambush for thee, for thou hast all the forces of right lending. And if you come into malice because of your gift, then offer up your remnants to him, and he shall have to leave without his rights.”

I lay there in bed for a matter of minutes and thought about my dream, first copying the passage, and what it must signify parallel to this insight I had received upon awakening. I often scowled at the lack of time there was for me to entertain the remnants of my dreams before I was compelled by duty to my breakfast, but I had done it for so long, I was inured, and not as resentful than as if I had not been given the dream to start with.

It was my usual scenario starting out. I awoke alone upon the moon in my dirigible, letting down upon the spot of earth that was just outside my cabin. I dropped like a leaf upon the stony ground and shuddered with the realization that it was real: where I was, the other avocation that I was entrusted to here, and the malaise of knowing such a lonely place was all I could remit.

I had gone into my cottage where it seemed that I was led to by the fickle spirit I called Nod, and only knew because, I felt I had created this lonely world, forgetting my other life on earth at times, overwelmed and exhausted by the horrific solitude of living there and collecting data. I recorded every feeling in my voice-journal and lived solely on the little crops I grew in the greenhouse of my Soteria, pining ever after beef and wine.

That night I remember, I had raised up the flag as soon as I had gone inside. But instead of the usual insignia, the brown, four-pointed star and panda, it seemed orange, and fiery, as if it were in flames. However, I cannot remember if there were flames on the flag, or if indeed the flag itself was on fire as I raised it. The next thing I remembered in my journal was the fact that all throughout the recent treks to the moon, I had always this accompanying sensation that there was something hiding, living in my cottage with me, something I could not see.

This had gone on, as I noted in my journal, for quite a considerable time. The records show that since at least January I had noted a strange presence, not menacing, but definitely of a different order of habit and instinct than that of myself.

So the flag, the strange presence, and another anomaly was written in my journal when I awoke. That a massive object was lying just beyond earth, a dark object so that I could not distinguish it from the empty space, but it made a sound in the atmosphere around me, as if it were right upon my little plot upon the surface of the moon.

When I had finally overcome the languor, and the pinpointing of these certain images, mixed with the melody of Margaret’s voice, I was about my necessaries. I moved over the visions of the night, what I recalled in the moments between my nips. I drew my attention to my gait, and checked the movements of my limbs beset on all sides by the fleeting rains of retreating clouds. Surely it was a matter of self-consciousness for all that it impressed my attention then as now. All of this is without place. I tended to put more emphasis on long term memory of dreams, and not so much as I may do now, concerning a time, or a place not far removed. I set the journal down.

I looked into my cup of tea, expecting to see evidence in the leaves of my salvation, which I ever held dear and often looked for because of some question about choices I knew someday I must have to make. That day was the day. I say I practiced tasseography rather less to know the future, than to understand the present state of things. When I look into an oracle it is as much an act out of simple boredom, for I had the idea that I was bound for some kind of glory beyond what I knew in taking my ledgers to account, for the animals, and even as Vice-regent, I had come to expect the monotony of most solemn trust.

What started out as simple interest in Divinity proved to degenerate into curiosity in the anomalous, and the reading of certain pulp writers of fiction, fiction about wizards and such. It was really silly, I know. Still, today, I still enjoy looking into Divinity, and even lay a shred or two of interest in spiritualism.

Having completed my dream journal and the reading of the previous night’s tea leaves, I decided to sit in my sun-room and enjoy the insulated coolness of the conditioned air. I looked out through the southern window upon the Seville Garden.

There beside the solitary cypress a withered and pitiable screen of sedges wound around a not small Dutch birdhouse covered in hexes which were, for the most part, yellow and green; and a path. Beside the path, one I often trodded to make merry of my caste of earthborn wear a barrier of simple asphodels wound dither in their almost human gender. In the mornings, oft I would sit along the southern wall of my sun-room watching the ordinary folk as they held hands, or kissed within the hidden corners of the southern yard, almost too far for me to see from where I sat. I would walk among them and vex my spirit in it’s ever lonely stages ascending the rungs of secret fame, and wonder painfully at my own misery. How much they didn’t know about their own country, their own heritage and history was equally hard for me to bear, knowing what I did of these most brittle truths. The sagacity of garb, speaking in the colors worn on certain days, beyond the notice of these folk reminded me of what I longed ever for.

But it collected the folk in their festivals from before the time of our own order of the day, those winding paths, those asphodels diffusing the simulated air. Upon the top of the enclosed garden was the circle of glass, and right below it, the prominent fans that set the level of the seasons as best as was possible; and beyond, a world almost unknown to them, a world I wish I never knew.

Also in the garden there were two fountains along the eastern wall, which shot in luscious streams into one eachother, shaped much in the manner of an abstract fresco, too surreal to suggest aught but some erotic women in pose. I sternly shunned such vulgarities and not once or twice fought to have them removed, and very well could have, except that it would draw too much attention to my secret office, for all who knew me in the Seville Garden, knew that I hated those awful statues.

It was a Wednesday, and I was due for my weekly rendevouz with Lela, of whom much can and will be said. It was popcorn day, a day we looked forward to, to commemorate the earmark of our relationship. Although it wasn’t a physical relationship, we would touch our hands together, and it was hard not to have a gleeful fancy looking in each other’s eyes. Even in the beginning, when I was under the impression that she was a priestess, I tried to hide my post from her, but could not. So, when she revealed that she knew the secret, she revealed to me that she was not, in fact, a holy woman, but “an interested party, who cares as much about the country as anyone who knew it, too.” Then she expressed envy at my status and position, which angered me. I decided to hide my ire from her, for it would only do our country in.

After careful consideration of what life for me would be like if I had the freedom that some men have, to sleep until the afternoon, to work at will and in no certain frame of reference, I quickly decided that it is better to know the truth about the state, than to walk naievly through it, counting my lucky stars that I was given such fragile commands to uphold the structure of peace and scientific inquiry. Now after that I had risen, I took care of my hygene in the bathroom and placing the passage from the meditation book that I had copied on the bathroom mirror, removing the one I had placed there months ago, that said: “Quit eating ice-cream”.

The bathroom needed a quick cleaning, so I opened the cabinet below the sink and produced the cleaning supplies and went to work on the toilet and the bathtub. I spent ten minutes scrubbing that bathtub until my hands were covered with a wet, green powder, until that thing sparkled like a 10 carat diamond ring. I then realized I had only twenty or thirty minutes left until I would be needed for my meeting with the board of counselors in the auditorium. Wednesdays were my only days off from meeting with He To Whom All My Affection And Worthy Praise Must Needs Be Offered, and consequently, the day that I was afforded much free activity. It was this such fact that I repeatedly told myself, that my meetings with Lela, and my meetings with the board, could not possibly be considered any kind of rest, and told myself again, that I was due for a sabbatical. But it had been fourteen years, and I had not had one yet. I peered out onto the Seville Garden and watched a squirrel bury a pecan.

I was in the sunroom, having finished with my morning rituals, and had twenty minutes to read the newspaper, which time I tuned the music to a station that played muzack covers of songs I never liked in the first place, and laughed at my own credulity. There were deaths, and marriages, and a looking-into of a recent crime in Holpern Abbey, and I larked at my good fortune to never have crime in my quarters here at home in the eastern wing. Crime is not an option for someone of my good fortune. I simply have to comply with His directions, the advice of Lela and the board of counsellors, and all of my needs are seen to. Clothing, home, necessarily my safety, and the refinements of a well-to-do celibate were among my more usual rewards for living right, and doing my job; but there were others. I could claim a familiarity with secret knowledge, was given many gifts of strange and unusual import, such as might make a man believe that none could equal, but only by complying with that necessary humility of knowing that one day, I will die.

I then set to find out the events that had ensued the night before, while I was ripped from my excursions to the moon. I turned the computer on and sat down at the screen. I accessed the log of the night watchmen to see if it had been written yet. It had. I printed the reports and sat down to figure out what the commotion could have been.

Eulogy

The King in the Coffer at the bottom of the sea

The condition of peace is questionable, where He rests for our memory, rests for all misfortune, the King of Kinds, his Kindness and his possession.

Compose then, all lengths of eulogy and powers of restraint at this, you who would laugh at your own misfortune as if at a piece of animated wood, for you know not if it be so. If it goes well for some things unknown to remain spoken, and not for some others, I do well to slough it off loudly, if I only knew He could hear it.

The status of peace is coveted. He is condemned our sake. The best we may approach the tragic paradox is to recount His feats: of sacrifice, or waffling over imperatives. These I can, with no question of relevance, consider abstractly over my use to him. True, but heart-wrenching to the dabbler is the composure of the adept, because He considered it.

Now in the giving forth of the needs, I redouble my efforts to seem unaffected. For the sorcery of Fury, it is engraved in gold upon the coffer he is suspended in: “For One Man Alone”, though I know of another. Myself, I contest that dreams end at death; that the world can not continue because of this, but one never knows these things, does he?

Any other condemned man would assure himself by my unique nature, but not this King of Kinds, for he is beyond the threshold of acceptance.