An Incomparable Pearl

  The flames rose, up through what little remained of the body, a body as much flame now as flesh.

  I would be freed and I would free.

  The prince thought he heard a whispering, a whispering coming from the mouth of the cruelly dying boy.

  I would be saved and I would save.

  The flames around the boy’s head were now like those of a lion’s thick mane, the four beams of the cross now also transformed by those same flames into flickering red wings.

  Within the roaring red of the flames, the boy’s body became blackened, charred. Flickering veins of white within those flames suddenly snaked across that darkened flesh, as if from nowhere, or as if released, perhaps, from below the horrendously cracking skin.

  It spread, this entangling of white veins, as a mystical ivy might rapidly spread, seemingly holding the whole all together: until, finally, the darkened material crumbled away into nothing, a figure left sparkling in its place as if made entirely of this white, spiritual flame.

  The prince was unavoidably caught up in all these soaring flames, sensing that his own flesh was being inescapably seared from his own body.

  He fell, in an agonising daze, to the hard ground.

  I would eat and I would be eaten, the flame whispered adoringly.

  *

  When the prince awoke, he was surprised to find that he was still alive.

  Surprised to find that his flesh hadn’t been entirely burned away to nothing after all.

  In fact, he was no longer enjoined to the body of a fawn at the waist. He had the legs of a boy once more.

  The only injury he appeared to have sustained was a wound to his left palm, where a searing hot nail head had burnt him.

  He glanced over towards the tree, expecting this at least to be a charred mess. But it stood exactly as it had looked before it had seemed to burst into flames: the trunk splitting in a way that suggested a cross, the dark, crooked branches devoid of any leaves.

  There was no smell of fire, of charcoaled wood.

  There was no body, no blackened husk, pinioned to the tree.

  The only thing pinioned there, as before, was the resplendent jewel, its hues of red, white and black glittering like a flame.

  He looked over to the breastplate he had taken off to enable him to more easily clamber up the tree. Within the last place of the first row, a similar jewel to that set within the stone now blazed there.

  He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the shiny plate of the armour. Amazingly, his hair had grown to a ridiculous length, as if it had never, ever been shorn throughout his entire life.

  He rose to his feet unsteadily, surprised that he had to get used once more to walking on two feet rather than four hooves, as if newly-born and unprepared for this new world.

  ‘You have transformed the cursed Tree of Death into the blessed Tree of Life.’

  The prince whirled around, wondering who had spoken.

  It was a lion, lying placidly upon the ground.

  The prince couldn’t believe that he hadn’t spotted him before: yet his skin was the colour of the earth, his gracefully rounded form blending into the surroundings as indelibly as a natural mound.

  The prince briefly thought of reaching for the sword and shield he had placed to one side when he had first rested here. Now he put that thought aside, fully aware that they wouldn’t be needed.

  Rising to his feet, the lion languidly approached. Rising up on his two hind legs, the lion transformed into an unashamedly naked man, one with golden skin and flaming red hair.

  ‘I was sent with this,’ he said, producing a golden crown as if from his own side. ‘Not to praise you as our king, understand – but as is our custom, to discover what the Fates have intended for us.’

  The crown boasted only one precious gem, one of the brightest of reds found within a burning coal.

  Stepping closer, the man gently placed the crown neatly and securely upon the prince’s head.

  And ever so briefly the prince’s mind spun, such that it felt his head was being penetrated by the most vicious barbs.

  *

  Chapter 30

  The Clock That Told Time to Hurry Up

  There was once a king who wished to be emperor.

  Of course, that means we could be talking of any time within the life span of the Earth. Talking of any land.

  Most kings wish to be emperors, as bakers wish to cook the prefect cake, and mariners hope to discover new lands.

  The praise his couriers showered upon him meant nothing to him.

  ‘What is the point of being called the greatest king, when any emperor is obviously far greater than I?’ he complained bitterly.

  ‘These are nothing but dreams,’ his wisest and bravest advisors informed him, pointing out his lack of wealth, of men, to achieve the ends he desired.

  ‘Yet as an emperor,’ he replied scornfully, ‘I would have all these things!’

  Even so, even though he had such foolish advisors put to death, he realised that he could only fulfil his dreams of empire through alternative means: skulduggery, cunning, treachery – or maybe even magic!

  And so through skulduggery, cunning, and treachery he had managed to imprison his kingdom’s greatest magician, Epoptae. And he had threatened Epoptae that he would rot in his stinking prison unless he came up with a marvellous device that would grant the king the freedom to do as he wished.

  Then one day, Epoptae said he had an announcement to make.

  He had done it, he claimed.

  He had developed a device that would give the king power over time itself.

 

  *

  ‘It’s a clock!’

  The courtiers sneered as the device was wheeled into the centre of the hall on a low wagon.

  At first, the court as a whole had gasped, mistaking it from a distance for a vast yet beautifully enamelled shield, one that could only have been constructed by the land’s greatest smiths. Closer observation, however, revealed the labyrinthine mass of gears and cogs it shielded beneath its immense, curving form.

  ‘It is just a clock!’ another agreed contemptuously. ‘I’ve seen these devices before, my lord,’ he continued, turning to his king. ‘Marvellous, yes, in the way they can tell us when it is midday: in case we haven’t noticed that the sun is at its height!’

  ‘Or that it’s night, if we’ve failed to spot that the sun’s asleep!’ another guffawed, joining in with the jest.

  Despite their ridicule, any fair-minded person would have readily admitted that the contraption presented to them was a beautiful work of art.

  Its surface was a mosaic of fragmented mirrors, each sliver a glistening blaze of darkest blue and speckled with gold, a universe in miniature. Around this simulation of a gold-sparkled heavens, brightly coloured representations of the planets waited, immobile, yet doubtlessly eager to whirl into motion.

  For those who know of such things, there were two representations of Venus, her aspects of both Morning and Evening Stars, the difference denoted by lighter and darker hues of copper. There were also two differently hued suns, the brighter one being the rising sun, the duller the one that took shelter within the underworld on a night.

  Naturally, the leaden old man of Saturn sat furthest away from the shield’s centre, a boss featuring Earth’s green disc surmounted by a circular blue sea of purest lapis lazuli.

  It was the glow of this gold speckled stone that the carefully angled mirrors were reflecting, the stone itself being magically lit by a sparkling moon suspended above this Earth and its seas. The moon was held there by the tightly curled head of a rising serpent, whose mouth almost fully devoured it as if it were an egg, leaving only a lower crescent of light to shine.

  ‘There doesn’t even appear to be any mechanical heart or suchlike to power it,’ another sour-faced courtier complained, walking around the huge device, bending low to stare curiously beneath it all. ‘The few I’ve come across have all had springs,
pendulums, or at least some form of water channelling to grant the whole thing a beating heart.’

  ‘Ah, yes my lord,’ Epoptae replied in polite agreement, ‘but such things themselves depend on the passage of time: and so any “clock”, as you call it, can itself do no more than record time’s passing.’

  The courtier frowned, puzzled.

  ‘So, this vast contraption doesn’t even tell us the time?’ he scoffed in disbelief.

  Epoptae nonchalantly turned a little to face his equally perplexed and disappointedly scowling king, pointing out the relevant planets as he spoke.

  ‘My lord, I call this device an Antikythera, or Anti-Kyhtera: for isn’t our Lady of Kythera the Goddess of Love, the Morning Star who is Aphrodite? As the Evening Star, however, and lover of Mars, she is the Goddess of War!’

  The king at last brightened on the long-awaited mention of war.

  ‘And this device…’ he paused, realising he couldn’t really see how this cumbersome contraption could enable him in any way to conduct a war. ‘This device can help me win battles?’

  ‘No, not battles, my lord,’ Epoptae declared confidently, despite the abrupt murmurs of discontent already weaving around the court. ‘Entire wars.’

  *

  The court’s murmurs of discontent had changed to those of amused disbelief.

  The king, however, stepped down from the raised floor where his and his queen’s thrones sat, quickly tripping around this intriguing machine while eyeing it with interest, perhaps even elation.

  The queen stayed seated, her own expression, like the tone of her speech, entirely sceptical and scathing.

  ‘What do you do with it, wizard?’ she taunted Epoptae disdainfully. ‘Throw it at them? No doubt using the world’s greatest trebuchet, which – hopefully – you already have prepared for us, waiting outside?’

  Epoptae remained calm and assured as – as if prepared for this dismissal of his contraption – he produced a long thread of cotton, dangling it in the air from one hand before him as he unhurriedly approached the king.

  ‘My lord, if I may provide a simple demonstration of how my much and unfairly derided “clock” works…?’

  Even though he frowned uncertainly, the king nodded his assent.

  To uneasy chuckles from his audience, Epoptae began to merely run the fingers of his other hand up and down the dangling thread.

  ‘If life really were nothing but a loose thread, as many tales of the Three Fates indicate, then this would be the only movement such a simple thread, a simple line, allows us,’ Epoptae observed. ‘Up and down: and no other moves at all, unless we wish to throw ourselves out into an unknown and unforgiving space!’

  He snapped his fingers away from the thread, waving them like a fluttering then dying insect, as if demonstrating the foolishness of such an action.

  ‘Fortunately, life is not really so simple,’ he continued, using his fluttering fingers to conjure up more threads from the air, weaving them swiftly in and out, deftly transforming the first, single thread into a tapestry of a beautifully dressed maiden.

  ‘Is this whole thing descending into nothing but childish trickery?’ the queen irately growled. ‘Is this all our renowned magician is good for, after all? Hoping his jests amuse the simpleminded, as friars wish to claim they’ve saved souls, and seamstresses dream of creating the most perfect dress?’

  ‘It’s true it’s a childlike trick, something conjured up from within my sleeve,’ Epoptae admitted nonchalantly, ‘but one that serves a purpose: for what do we have now, but a square rather than a mere line, granting us a means to travel not only up and down – but also from side to side. A height, and width.’

  As he had demonstrated a moment before with the sole thread, he used the movement of his fingers to show how they could now wander over, even caress, this portrayal of a maid.

  ‘And yet, no matter how hard we try, we can never grasp her,’ he added, demonstrating once again how his fingers could not ever hope to probe inside the tapestry’s image. ‘The only way we can achieve that is if, like us, like a stuffed pillow, she exists completely within our world.’

  With a twirl of his fingers, he conjured up more threads in the air, along with a flurry of duck down feathers, interlacing them all together so that the maiden was now like a cathedral sculpture, but one soft and pliable.

  At last, of course, he had something he could hold, as if she were a real woman, but one rendered in miniature.

  ‘Tricks, silly tricks!’ the queen continued to sneer. ‘No doubt our enemies are supposed to die of boredom!’

  Ignoring the queen’s scorn, the wizard used his fingers once more to show that he could now move them up, down, from side to side, back and forth – and even around this figure.

  ‘This is our world, existing as if we are effectively within a box, with height, width, and depth. Three planes; and, it seems, no more.’

  He looked about him throughout the court, his gaze challenging, daring anyone to contradict him.

  ‘What about the reflection in a mirror?’ someone asked bravely.

  ‘Ah, and have you ever grasped the delightful form you see standing before you in your mirror every morning?’ the wizard as equally daringly asked, raising appreciative guffaws.

  ‘Then what of a lake, when…no, no – of course, we can’t grasp that either, can we?’ another courtier said, correcting himself before he was also ridiculed.

  ‘Anyone else? Can anyone think of a fourth plane?’ Epoptae assuredly demanded of the court.

  This time, it seemed, there would be no takers to his challenge.

  ‘And yet,’ Epoptae said within the silence that had descend throughout the hall, ‘are we really to believe that our Lord in Heaven restricted himself to the three planes he’s confined us to?’

  ‘The spiritual! The spiritual plane!’ an archbishop abruptly bellowed assertively, certain that he would not be refuted, still less made fun off.

  ‘Hah, and just how often do even you walk upon – or even grasp – this “spiritual” plane on your daily travels?’ Epoptae queried light-heartedly, immediately adding with good grace, ‘But, being more generous, I would allow that our esteemed archbishop is correct; in that his god allows himself a plane apparently denied to us until we exit these Earthly realms.’

  As he spoke, he produced as if from nowhere a large darning needle, aggressively forcing its glittering point through the heart of the pillow-like maiden he still held.

  The queen briefly gasped, as if she feared that it was somehow her own heart that he had pierced.

  Working the hole larger, the wizard pulled a single thread through the pierced maiden, handing one end, the bared end, of the thread to the king, while retaining the other end in his own hand. He ensured the thread remained level, the maid hovering between them both: and then, as he slowly raised his own end of the thread, the maid began to slip towards the king’s hand.

  ‘This, of course, is what the thread of the Fates really means to us; it is the duration of our lives, which they can cut short at any moment.’

  He produced, once again as if from nowhere, a pair of small shears he readied to cut the thread, preventing her from reaching he king. And yet, before he snapped the thread, he lowered his own hand, allowing the maid to slide back towards his own hand.

  ‘Now where is the glorious lady, my lord?’

  The king glowered at the wizard, as if worried he was being made a fool of.

  ‘She’s almost with you, of course!’ he snapped.

  ‘But a moment ago, she was almost within your grasp.’

  ‘Only because you lowered your part of the thread, wizard!’ the king insisted furiously, dropping his own hand so that the maid rushed towards his own hand.

  Instead of being frustrated by the king’s action, however, Epoptae was exuberant.

  ‘This apparently simple thread is time, my lord,’ he announced, running a finger and thumb along the thread as he had done earlier.
br />   My Lord Lofuerine,’ he added quickly, making a polite, reverential bow to the courtier who had earlier mocked the machine’s lack of any evident power source, ‘spoke of power: yet what has more power over man than time?’

  ‘Philosophy, wizard,’ Lord Lofuerine scoffed, to the amusement of the queen, ‘and I know of no philosophy that wins any battles, let alone wars!’

  ‘And yet,’ the wizard answered, lowering his own end of the thread yet again, letting the maid rush towards him, ‘the maid has fled once more from the king’s grasp: and now she is mine and mine alone!’

  Letting his end of the thread drop, he triumphantly grasped the maid.

  ‘But no one can control time like this, letting things move back and forth!’ the king protested.

  ‘Not letting, but making, my lord,’ the wizard carefully corrected the king. ‘And so imagine, if you will, if the threads of the Fates can be persuaded to fall our way: being able to force the return of a spy who flattered himself he had escaped, to refight a battle you thought lost – or ensure the blow you otherwise wouldn’t have seen coming was actually something you prepared for yesterday!’

  ‘There’s no device that can change the direction of time!’ a courtier hollered contemptuously from somewhere deep within the awestruck crowd.

  ‘This was true,’ the wizard coolly replied, ‘there was no such device until yesterday!’

  *

  With the repositioning of a simple lever, the wizard set his glorious device into motion.

  The planets began to whirl in their resplendent motions – yet whereas some turned anti-clockwise, others turned otherwise, as if caught in the sparkling, starry scales and coils of the serpent, whose head so securely clung on to that sheared, glowing moon.

  Even those planets turning correctly about the earth and its moon were caught within the spirals of yet another serpent, this one whose head had only just become visible, in the sphere beyond even Saturn, its long, forking tongue supporting the very brightest of sliver orbs.

  ‘What devilish order of the planets is this, wizard?’ the queen protested ferociously.