A BP&G adventure - Pockets; Heretic

[joegoda]

As you enter the gate to the Village of Shopkeepers, you might notice that the high arched gateway you have just passed under and through resembles nothing more and nothing less than a pair of ribs, one from the left and one from the right.

They don't look like the ribs one might find that shapes the hull of a ship or boat, nor do they look like the ribs one might find that make up the roof of a house. Those are called trusses anyway, not ribs. The ribs of the gateway don't even look like the ribs one finds on a ribbon, unless it was a very unusual ribbon indeed. No, these ribs looked like the great-grandfather of ribs you might find on your dinner plate after a night of fancy eating, or perhaps just messy eating. These ribs were great, giant, twelve foot tall, bone white bones of ribs, and if you thought that, you would be exactly right.

The gateway to the Village of Shopkeepers is made from the ribs of a very old and very large dragon that died on that very spot years and years ago. There is even a statue to commemorate the event, although the statue looks more like a little girl than a dragon, and the sign on the statue doesn't mention that the gate was made from a dragon so much, but instead warns bad men to stay away, because there are dragons there. In truth of fact, there may indeed be dragons somewhere, but one hasn't been seen for more years than the oldest man in the village has been alive. The story of the gateway has been told, and quite possibly will be told again someday. But not today. No, indeed. Not today.

Straight away from the gate, just about a thousand paces in, if you pace largely, or more paces if you pace smally, you will come to a crossroads. To the right is a dirt road that takes you to the huts and houses and sheds and fields and farms and animals of the farmers that supply the grain and meat and milk and yes, even the ale to the Village.

In return, the Village offers the farmers something not found in your common village, something that you can't find by popping into your local quickmart or faststop. Oh, to be sure, there are things there that you could find in your local quickmart or faststop, like packaged meats and cheeses and sausages and trinkets and handbags and shoes and other things that are fairly common on any world that has a village with shops. But this is a special village. This is a Village with a capital Vee and the Village contains Shopkeepers with a capital Ess.

And what this Village offers that is hard to find in your common village is simply and purely Magic with a capital Emm.

In the Village you could find all sorts of things to purchase. Exploding birthday cakes, magical bottles that never ran dry, love potions, like potions, or potions that created a sort of whimsy. There were flying rugs and carpets and furniture that would position itself depending on your mood. There were toys and balls and dolls that would sing and bounce and dance all by themselves, as if alive. You could by breads that would never be too crusty, and never get moldy. Meats that came from animals you never heard of, but would taste just exactly like you would think they would and should taste, and not one single bite ever, never, tasted like chicken. Unless that was what you wanted, of course.

But that is not what this chapter is about. No. Magic of the sort found in the Village, magic that can grow crops and break your heart with love and send a song winging to your hearts desire on the wings of a snow white and help you grow smarter, faster, stronger... that sort of magic will have to wait for another day and another tale. But rest assured, if you desire magic of that very ordinary sort, you could find it in the Village of Shopkeepers. But you will have to wait, because that is not why we are here.

If you turn to the left of the crossroads, you will wander a stony path that turns into a path of stones, which, in turn becomes a road of cobbles (which, by the way are not made by cobblers or made from cobblers, but are instead flat topped stones made by stoneworkers or, in the case of the Village, magicians), and that road of cobbles becomes a cobbled road, smooth to walk on and easy on the feet.

A bit further up, you will come to the Village Square. Now, it is called the Village Square, although it is not square at all, and is, in fact, rather round. There are four paths leading to the four corners of the Village, which is strange to say about a round square, but there you have it.

In the center of the Village Square, there is a large rock. Large as in roughly man-sized or very tall woman-sized. There is a split down the center of this rock and at the base of the split, which runs from the tiptop of the rock to just near the bottom; there is a single white rose, which never fades no matter how much the sun shines and never dies, no matter how much the snow falls. The rose has been there for a very long time, and will more than likely be there for a long time to come. It has its own story, which is also not for this one to tell.

Walking down the left hand path from the Village Square, you will see all sorts of shops. Milner shops and clothing shops and toys shops and furniture shops and bakeries and butchers and goodness, every shop you might thing possible and a few that you might think only probable. And one or two that might just be near impossible.

There is an alleyway between the Milner and the butcher. This is as it should be, because one should never mix hats with fresh meat. Turning right will lead into the alleyway, and coincidentally, will lead you where this part of the story is supposed to go.

The buildings that line this alleyway are tall, two or three stories and they may seem to lean inward as you pass by. It is quite likely that they do lean in, and it is just as likely that they are talking about you. It is a Magical Village, after all.

Walking down this alleyway, one could almost if one knew how to listen properly, hear the words of the language the buildings used, as they spoke of their day, of the people that came and went and the silliness of those creatures called humans.

At the end of this alleyway, you would find a old three-story building, rickety and not quite standing upright. The front door would be ajar, as if seeming to offer invite, though the old door is a bit grumpy and might give a bit of a struggle at first. In truth, if you had no business here, the door would not have opened at all, no matter how you pulled or pleaded or pushed or cried or cajoled or raged. It would have stubbornly ignored your advances, turned a cold shoulder to you and let you know it was going to the dance with someone else entirely, thank you very much.

Once past the front door guard, you will find yourself at the very foot of a steep stair, which creaks and moans and groans and complains with each and every step. There are two small landings, old, musty, dusty, cobwebby, and in desperate need of a good cleaning, where you can stop and catch your breath if you have a need. There are halls to the left and right of each landing, leading to other rooms, and quite possibly other buildings. These halls carry secrets, secrets hidden, and secrets mysterious. Then again, they might just be the homes of people that work the bakery, the butchery, the pub or any of the other magical shops in the Village. It is not for us to go a’ knocking today.

On the third landing, there is ONE door and one door only and there are no halls leading off into darkened and mysterious other areas. This door is a Door with a capital D. There is dust here, and spidery webs containing spiders that chitter at you and scramble at your approach. The floorboards under your feet on this landing will moan and creak and threaten you with a very long fall that will never come. These floor board like to make a lot of noise, but are really very nice when you get to know them.

The Door, as you reach for the old and greened doorknob, will pull back, reticent to let you touch it. It will complain of its old bones and its abuse over the years. It will tell you tales of how its green peeling paint was once shiny and new and the doorknob you just tried to touch was the most expensive ivory in the land, and how it was once owned by a princess who grew into a queen and became a librarian. This is a Door you must let know, first off, foremost that you are serious about entering, otherwise it will delay you forever with its endless groans and screeches.

But once past the Door, once inside the single room that contains all the writings that had been done for many, many decades, you will find the StoryTeller.

Short, balding, pointed ears tufted with fine gray hairs, he can usually be found at his paper-covered desk, scritching away at his latest creation. Sometimes he will pause for thought, and listen to the air as it whispers the latest tale being told in his ancient ear. Sometimes he will scratch at the balding spot between his ears, the high domed area where hair once populated before it evacuated to find less busy ground. Sometimes he will sit back, prop his feet on the desk and polish his small, round, rimless glasses, and sigh, and smile, and grin, or he will push all the paper away and just let tears run down his cheeks, silent sobs racking his thin chest.

Today, on this very day, as we stand silent and invisible, the Storyteller is shaking his head slowly, which makes the hair on his ears wave to and fro as if there were an oscillating fan nearby. He is also making noises from his mouth, which is pursed together, and making him look as though he has eaten the most sour persimmon there was ever grown.

The noise he makes is this: "Tch tch tch." Three times the sound of pigeons wearing tap shoes come from his lips. And then three times more and then again for three times. He gently removes his rimless glasses from where they are perched on his nose and wipes them with a circular motion on the nearly clean silk handkerchief he carries in the breast pocket of his red vest.

He replaces the glasses on his nose, and pushes them up until the fit into the notch that has grown into cartilage over the decades and centuries and leans back in his chair, which lets out a high-pitched squeal from the indignation of being forced into such an unseemly position.

He sits like this for a few long moments, such moments being measured by heartbeats, hourglasses and clocks that tick and are wound by hand and key. Electric clocks never measure moments. Those sort of clocks, those that have a long tail to shove into the wall, or carry little tubes called batteries from which they steal power, measure time, which is an entirely different matter altogether from measuring moments.

He sits with his long, thin, hairy knuckled fingers steepled in front of his pale blue almond shaped eyes. He sits this way while shadows move from left to right and while clouds move from up to down and back up again. Stars are born, dance through the heavens in their starry gravitational wellish fashion, flare into incredible shows of ego and inflation, and then pass away back to the marvelous star stuff they came from while he sits with his long, thin, hairy knuckled fingers steepled thusly.

Perhaps it is only a few moments or perhaps it is a lifetime or two, before the Storyteller leans forward again to his desk, his chair giving shrieks of joy at being released from its torturous captivity. The StoryTeller reaches forward to his quill with the heavy green feather and red veining and picks the quill up thoughtfully, which is to say that he was full of thought when he picked the quill up, not that he was thoughtful of picking the quill up. A quill, to the best of our knowledge, has not a thought in its head, as it doesn't have a head. It does have a nib, however, and that is why quills are often from royalty.

Gently, with the gentleness of a mother bird preening the feathers of her newly downed chicks, the StoryTeller cleans the nib on this quill. He ensures that the nib is as sharp as it has ever been and always will be. A sharp nib is important in some matters and this quill, with its heavy green feather and red veining is indeed an important quill for indeedly important matters.

The StoryTeller opens a bottle of never before opened ink, which lies on a previously unexplored corner of his desk, said corner, dark and dusty, having been hidden under a stack of yellowed parchment, the decaying cover of which once contained the words 'London Directory - 1895'. The meaning of these words are lost to all but the StoryTeller and it is believe that the story to be told is of such boring quality that it will never be written down, lest the story drive it's readers into permanent sleep.

He dips the quill's nib into the inkbottle gently, as gently as a first kiss, as gentle as a good nights sleep, and then holds the nib up for inspection. He wipes the nip softly upon a sheet of vellum to check the stroke of his pen, and then stares for a time at the pen-stroke with his pale eyes very close to the paper, his bulbous nose almost touching the paper, gleaning whatever he can from the tiny and secret messages hidden in the single scribble of ink.

Apparently satisfied, or looking as satisfied as one can when no one else is looking, the StoryTeller turns to a page of white parchment on his desk. There are words on this parchment, filling it from side to side and from top to bottom. The words are new, which is not to say these are words that have never been spoken or written, but rather the order of the words on the page is newly born to the page, having never been on the page before or even out shopping or to a theater show. This is a page of a new story, freshly born, newly minted, right out of the package of the StoryTeller's mind and heart, which of course, heard the story from the wind that whispers through the Universe.

This is not any old page, either. It is the last page. The last page of a very long story that had been decades and decades in the writing. The very last page of a story telling the very last part of a story, and just sitting waiting, waiting for the final pen stroke. The page was waiting for the thing all pages wait for when they are involved, part and parcel in a story. All pages in stories wait for that final pen stroke. It is what they live for, exist for, dream of. The pen strokes that mark out the words 'The End'.

Those words did not yet exist on this page, or on any of the other pages before it. Those pen strokes lay stolen away in some far off land of parchment dreams, pending their entrance, hiding beyond the curtains, way, way back in the proscenium, which is that space that actors hide in before they come on stage. These words were waiting their chance, though, and champing at the bit as only unwritten words that will be and must be written can.

Instead of writing those words down, however, the StoryTeller takes the indeedly important quill and with two large bold moves, does something that, in recent or ancient memory, written or spoken, he had never done before. The StoryTeller strikes out a section of the page with large, bold slashes of purplish blackish ink that has the sparkles of sun-light hidden away in it and the quill makes a scritch sound like the sound of children carrying ice-cream and roller-skating on a boardwalk on a warm sunny day near the ocean.

Sitting back and pulling his silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, the StoryTeller cleans his nib gently, gently and tells it what a good job it did, murmuring like a momma cat to a baby kitten while he did so. If he knew that he was being watched, he would straighten and blush, making harrumph noises in the back of his throat and excuses for his sounds. He would then, most politely, usher the watchers out of the room, through the old and creaky door, which would not let the watchers back in, no matter how they pulled or pushed or bribed or twisted or turned the door and its ivory knob.

What you have just seen is an event in history. No, rather, it is an event in changing history. The StoryTeller is re-writing the end of a story already lived.

And you must wait for the next chapter, as it has not been written yet, because a thing cannot be re-written. It can only be written, and once written it is forever and ever. That does not mean, however, that something new cannot be written to take its place.

Comments

[capi.livejournal.com]

In the Village you could find all sorts of things to purchase. Exploding birthday cakes, magical bottles that never ran dry, love potions, like potions, or potions that created a sort of whimsy. There were flying rugs and carpets and furniture that would position itself depending on your mood. There were toys and balls and dolls that would sing and bounce and dance all by themselves, as if alive. You could by breads... (( buy?? ))
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He replaces the glasses on his nose, and pushes them up until the fit.... (( the fit... or THEY fit?? ))
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He dips the quill's nib into the inkbottle gently, as gently as a first kiss, as gentle as a good nights sleep, and then holds the nib up for inspection. He wipes the nip softly upon a sheet of vellum to check the stroke of his pen, and then stares for a time at the pen-stroke with his pale eyes very close to the paper, his bulbous nose almost touching the paper, gleaning whatever he can from the tiny and secret messages hidden in the single scribble of ink.

Poetry, dear heart. BEAUTIFUL.
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Oh..... !!!!! *breathless*

*waits*