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.