A man flew through a window, but nobody laughed, for this was not something you should laugh about. The window was intact. The crystals in their place. There was nothing to laugh at. Then the man climbed to his feet, clumsily tripped, and fell to the ground with a loud bump! And at this the people inside laughed, for they found it very amusing. When the man outside heard them, he quickly darted back inside. He wanted to laugh too, and to this he had every right.
The bold wherein this fellow had appeared from forth in such an agreeable manner presented the shape of a towering spiral adjacent and enlaced to the heavens, as shire and splendid as ivory and unwemmed marble and as drightlike as the erdings of the loftiest eminences, forbearing with it purpurean eyethirls of extant cadence and sojourn and of hues erratic and exuberant; cerulean now they may beseem, to, with outmost secrecy, wend caducean and permute their casts and attributes to an unlike ordainance, as unsteadfast as their alterations.
This nature the complete bold structure comparted, bestowed with sentience and animation and immarcescible in moods and alterations, cadent of permanence and habitude and a fastened constitution, oneiric properties also shared by its neighbours: colourful and osiered to one another in unfeasable amalgamations with their guises and contours—to beget fair and foul horrors, which, agrise with their lewd entities and fair symmetries provided passage to enticing climes of pleasure and despair—deprived of keth and unketh substances, and yet, in contradiction, there they were.
A meting passage stented beyond ken, aery and loose and drowsy and yet compact and veracious and cof: with paths of silver and of golde and of bronze associating and disassociating in consonance and dissonance and coexisting to strene mellifluous melodies from intelligence and logic unrestrained to conjure novel habitudes: widening and thinning, proceeding and receding as the waves of the sea, or, ebbing into contradictory natures: where ascending became descending, wane becomes sovereign, and other kinds.
Of a sudden a namecouth party out of nowhere appeared, a carnival complete crossing these abstract paths; with lustrous carriages of no conceived confections, wonderous they were to behold, with the complete arch of colours agathered in continuous permutation, as when eisied occurs to a chameleon, pulled by golik juglars and buffoons instead of the animals expected, and harnessed with the proper equipment to perform such fare—showered in a variegated downpour of confetti and balloons and serpentins, accompanied by music’s golden tongue—while, towering above them, were their conductors, agreeably waving at the assembled crowd; horses they were, and squirrels and elephants and beasts from the jungles and the seas, from the welkin and the earth, but, as in cosmic jest, chaotically associated among themselves in chimerical designs, and, with the instruments they ported—silver woodland flutes and gravelong organs, merry bells and majestic trumpets and cymbals and dreadful drums—to their bodies conjoined.
Behind them were the fools in marvellous alkin attires—half a colour a side and with a countenance impressed, doted with the faculty of speech, with their caps and ‘tolling tassels’—for they were not tassels in true, but birds a plenty, Gaia’s felefold dossier.
And, after them, were the gentry of Tortuga, with their three-piece-suits, walking sticks and top hats, performing impressive magic tricks and remarkable pirouettes: somersaults and ladders, they could even perform stairs.
So they passed Lancelot and Chaya Nuss. Then, one of the fools farthest behind, detached himself from the carnival’s procession, proceeded to a bold’s portal, and, from one of the tassels from his cap, a lively peacock indeed, produced an unremarkable lock—wooden and simple—which he attached to the bold’s portal and sealed with an elfin strand of his hair with a loud click!
‘Warlocks and fools,’ said Chaya Nuss perceiving Lancelot’s disposition, as she added: ‘If ye hack the warlock’s lock I will owe ye. If not, ye will owe me.’
Lancelot accepted the maiden’s proposal, and, thus, predisposed his first hack toward the lock with his complete might, confident of certain success, but, to his astonishment, it perdured and his sword was dented by the unexpected collision. The second hack he directed toward the portal, if the lock would not cede then the portal’s feeble wooden frame certainly would, it proved, yet again, an unsuccessful fare. The third hack, which was appointed with the intention of shattering the fragile window’s shivering crystals, proved as unprofitable and unsped as those previously attempted.
‘Warlocks. Very useful durin’ wars. Protectin’ houses and all. People would try to get in an’ steal th’ riches. Twas useless, all right. Twas believ’d only the warlock who set th’ lock could open it. Ne’er bother’d usin’ logic, aye. Barely a touch an’ th’ lock falls o’ its own, see? Tis no use tryin’ to break an’ open door, sometimes ye just need to find the right way to ask.’
Chaya Nuss concluded her explanation with a fickle hint of amusement concealed within her voice at the knight’s attempts to breach entrance and confused countenance ere resuming their walk through Tortuga’s permanently altering paysages and reams, as Lancelot, warily, followed behind: at times in desperate pursue through unexpected battlefields with descending missiles and endless paths, and, others through climes of impossible compositions, but the piratess’ character and demeanour persevered unaltered in her tranquil walk as the somnial climes meddled and collided into each other, as did the folk they passed—with lion bodies and human heads, men of straw and tin can, creatures of myth and other planes—abstract illusions by a wiel cast, phantasms blending to create and in so to fade, but not even they could alter the piratess’ lund.
They continued this way until they reached an edifice of unmeet proportions with a lengthsome waiting line of people at its entrance and to which Chaya Nuss payed no attention nor consideration to, as they vanished and reappeared and wend into other people, and her, like a phantasm, passed them through.
Lancelot, by instinct, momentarily ceased to contemplate the edifice he was to enter; a wonderous marvel of nature and human architecture, an inverted man o’ war seamlessly blended to a disproportionate jellyfish of equal proportions to the vessel, whose puffed up sails hesitated to march it onwards, and, had it not been for the anchor deep below the sea above their heads, this would have certainly been accomplished.
From a rope, or a tentacle mayhaps, it was complicated to discern, hung a sign with the following inscribed: The Shrewd Mermaid of The Shore.
Carousal and mirth. The clink of foaming chalices and the flintlocks thunder. The creak of wood under heavy feet, and the shrill song of queans’ laughter. The rasping of stools clouded by uncessant conversation bielded by sources of heat into elation.
It was unlike what the outward vessel presented, but its habitude in accordance with Tortuga’s: muckle tables expanded wide and dissite, grander than the folk they somned with their guestings, or, extant to be seen and lumined by eldern lanterns and candelabras, and, other instruments of illumination unketh.
Occupied and plenished with quaint folk; wielers and mages and warlocks and jugglers, magiciennes and tylyesters and gyre-carlines, and ledes pertened to otherkin planes and periods in plenar mell conjoined. A-resting on one of these tables was captain Butterbeer Beerback, by the spirits inebriated and his mind censured from any continued conversation with his playfere, a mere of dainteth wlite.
Then, a reirding voice a-sundered the inn and its guests, and, as if by sygaldrye its interiors completely forchanged as did its guests: ‘Chaya Nuss,’ it rebounded, as his eyesene was withlosen to the inn’s wending.
The voice pertained to a pirate as sable as marble and as candid as stainless ebony, echoing with the facility sea-waves and ocean winds possess against profound ocean caves and grottos, bearing with them and impressed sense of wakeness and tranquillity of replenishment and slumber to those, who unwarily, list to their lathings.
His beard was creis, with beads adorned and trinkets and dun of blee, and from which yhonged numerous bodies of proportions dissonant; old-yeared father cloaks of oakwood, stuffed tigers and other wonders shafting and unshafting at his every curl as they ascended and descended and their blees commutated.
His hair was lengthsome and murky and short and lightsome as it descended on his indumentary, which compromised compact and uncompact shaft, and, in so, it was denied. As was his countenance; wemed with crevasses, and yet, juvenescent with the lustiness of a young tiger, perdurant and impressed on his sole orb—for the other, most like by hurt, was concealed behind a patch—as it sought the wending inn, and, in so, encountered the object of his purpose. Chaya Nuss.
The piratess hied to his embrace with the nimbleness of a young she-panther; a warm filial encounter it was for cherished companionship and affection, and yet, cold and detached and chilly for it was delegated aside and intruded upon by coin and interest, as Chaya Nuss, with imperceptible subtlety, deposited inside the pirate’s pocket a bag of wealth notorious.
‘Here on a visit,’ he acknowledged as they separated, his countenance presenting a keth smile, so returned by Chaya Nuss.
And then Lancelot quoth, ‘Who are you, sire?’
‘Has Chaya Nuss told ye nothin’? Nor whom am I? I am Tortuga, and I am Elsewhen, he who was before and shall remain thereafter. The missing eye ye see by my wife was plucked, and thence Elsewhen was created, and when the five and a half Suns clear the skies and the four Moons wane, then ye can see the fingers of she who holds it.
‘For I bring Entropy and Change. I commerce with Life and shudder Death. But come inside, past these curtains. Yer interests I know but so I have forgotten. For I am Chaos.’
‘Tis true what he says,’ said Chaya Nuss addressing the knight’s wonderous look after the pirate had ingressed behind the curtains, her countenance heled by her tresses in unsene adumbration, and, in so, any indication of the expression she may have presented or borne.
The room behind the purpurean curtains, as Chaya Nuss had instructed Lancelot, was commonly addressed, simply, as The Chamber. Anered to it were seven adjacent chambers which corresponded to the seven succedent names: Above, Below, Time and Space, Before and After and Inside and Outside.
Convening altogether inwith The Chamber, and, at the selfsame time preserving their proper singular spaces, so their tel anredly wharved, and, any fand at describing them was as unnut as trying to feng life. The single variable which steedfast stayed was the table, which bore the selfsame name.
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There it was where Lancelot entreated the sea-thief for succour on his quest, but, the sware received was disapproving.
And the sea-thief had said, ‘A lovely quean she sounds like. But no, her I have not seen.’
And, perceiving Lancelot’s desperat the sea-thief had ministered a dwarf yclept Small Macred, which had eluded Lancelot’s sene until then, with the body he wished inveighed. Anon this was procured; a picture of height airy and sovereign beshading the snow-clad mountains with its ten thousand feet, and its brede, twice its height it was, and yet, easily ported by the dwarf wherein Atlas might fall, and, ere his master placed, who ensearched it with substantious interest.
Portrayed on it was a wealy clad man in silks and velvets and furs and satins, with an arm in placid rest on a stool. His hair was longsome and wavy, carnadine hued as on his outward cerulean habiliment it descended. Winsome and regal and fair was his countenance, depainted with twain thin moustachios, and, what ensued was derned. So was the portrait of Ser Whimsy de Pomposé.
From it five personages emerged, each carent of a sense and yet endowed with the selfsame, who engaged with the sea-thief in lengthsome rede, and as it occurred Ser Whimsy de Pomposé unrolled and unbegun scroll strenuously read by the pirate, and, contrary to what its contents may express, for vacant they were, the resolution was adverse.
Har, har, har and hark,Hear and hear the pirate song!We sail, we steal, and do no wrong,The fancy boats we leave starkWith sword and hook and cannon blow,Before they flee at our bark,To sleep—in the depths down below,As we plunge, and sack, and steal at sea,As far as our ken will let us see,For we are fast, and we are strong,Har, har, har and hark,Hear and hear the pirate song!
Reigh and smolt, bliss and dreariness Chaya Nuss’ countenance expressed, attached to other sentiments which constituted and defined her humanity. Lovely was she then, in that instant brief, not for the contrasting sentiments expressed, which neither added nor removed from her person what by nature, character, propriety, and demeanour, had been established since birth, and would stay, thenceforth, until the event of Death.
Nor was it caused by the ale resting on the table, for her lund was still and tormentuous, and her faculties of reasoning, mobility, and speech, were preserved and intact. It steamed from happy chance and caprice, but these were only the purveyors of doubt and trust.
She had bared her entire person and nature ere the knight—maidenly and fragile and vulnerable she was as the softest petals, and yet, fierce and wild and untamed as a pantheress, attached to other facettes, which hither may not be, by mortal pen, captured or escribed—and, which, by her own folly to the knight would for ever remain unconveyed.
Lancelot was a-slumbering on the table, inebriated by the ales and wines ingested in a contest by Chaya Nuss suggested, which endeavoured wrongly for him, unsure of how thereafter to proceed. And so the moment had passed.
‘Where is Varaya Venima?’ Questioned Whiteman Black, the pirate they had maintained conversation with insofar, as he placed himself by Lancelot’s side. ‘They have been askin’ for her: crews and captains. And Flowerpot Vase wants to show her her new ship. Ye two used to be inseparable.’
‘Sometimes together,’ corrected Chaya Nuss. ‘Don’t twist my words. She’s been busy an’ barely has time o’ her won. Her duties occupy most her time, and her wooers what she doesn’t have. She’s as dedicate an’ attentive to them as she is with her duties. Answerin’ their letters from the morrow to th’ rise o’ th’ Sun with that clean style o’ hers till the candles have burned out. Barely sleeps.
‘An they shower her with gifts and presents. Tis no wonder. She’s chamin’ an’ folk love her an’ she takes good care o’ herself. They send her birds and boats full o’ th’ finest their lands can offer. Before we used to have new cannons every day, and cap’n Butterbeer Beerback owns his fortune to her. Hangin’ in nets in his chambers he has it. He use’d to ransack their ships and keep their gold. Twas an astute way to go about it. A quick way to make oneself rich. We needn’t to work too.
‘They didn’t mind it o’ course. Saw it as a way to please th’ adoptive father. That was till cap’n Butterbeer Beerback grew tir’d o’ them an’ their presence an’ their presents. Want’d to be a pirate again, he said. Didn’t know what to do with so much gold. Didn’t know where to keep it. Twould sink the ship! So he attack’d them an’ sank a few. It made things worse.
‘They return’d, all right. Thousands an’ thousands o’ them convoys, an’ against them he could do nothin’ but accept their gifts. We had new cannons e’ery hour after that, an’ more golde than we could keep.
‘Varaya could be a queen if she want’d to. An empress. Rule Padwa Mahar as her marii shadii, or Ihmar Nahar Duur as th’ asleck nahaam, Khemesh doesn’t shy with his presents to her; once they sent her a floatin’ temple, an’ she’s worshipp’d i’ a few as th’ sethi nefiri I heard. Common folk an’ lesser nobles send her letters too. She always answers back, an’ learns the language if she has to.
‘But she has no interest i’ them an’ only does it out o’ kindness an’ politeness an’ responsibility an’ respect. She's a Daughter o’ The Brine, as much she claims herself. But they must be gettin’ into her head. A few nights ago her bearin’ broke, began weepin’ all o’ a sudden an’ apologizin’. It frighten’d me to see her like that. Didn’t know what to do o’ th’ shock.
‘An’ once interrupted when Captain Butterbeer Beerback was speakin’ with a prisoner. Caught him by surprise an’ didn’t bid too well for her. Had her cleanin’ dishes till her hands bled, an’ then forgot about it. Had to remind him myself. Wasn’t aware o’ how much doin’ these sort o’ things frighten’d her. Later he apologised, brought her a ship.
‘But ye know how he’s ‘bout these things, ye don’t know what may befall ye. She was lucky. Last time I did so cap’n had me cleanin’ the ship like Tidle Tied. Had to stay in bed for a month, ears bleedin’. And other it struck his fancy to punish Adder Tongue fer sneezin’ too loudly an’ wettin’ the ship. Had him peelin’ potatoes with his nose for a month. Don’t want to know how he fared.
‘I suppose e’en a ripple can shake a vast calm ocean. An’ yet sometimes I feel like I don’t know her. We have been sahrin’ the same chamber for years, by cap’n Butterbeer Beerback’s orders; ‘Men in a room and women in another!’ he says. Till a whim strikes him an’ he changes his opinion an’ cries ‘I see no princesses i’ my ship bearin’ gold, to the deck below with ye!’
‘Longest was ten years. Sharin’ stories i’ the night. Talkin’ in whispers. She has combed my hair a few times before, tryin’ to arrange the mess it is best she could. Twas useless o’ course. Tis dirty, stick’d together an’ greasy. There’s nothin’ maidenly about it, only th’ brine. Feels like I scratch’d her surface an’ her mine, perfect strangers. That we are. But in those ten years I have ne’er seen her smile. I have ne’er seen her laugh or her calmness shatter. So shaken.
‘No. ye remember when we found Varaya all those years back o’ a raft? Ye had yer two eyes back then, whatever they were worth. Was with two kids an’ a tiger, sailin’ near Inwa Dahir. Twas madness. We was engaged o’ a battle. Cannonballs flyin’ every where. Smoke an’ shouts an’ blood an’ confusion. Th’ five an’ a half Suns burnin’. The brine shakin’. An’ then from out o’ nowhere a raft with three kids an’ a tiger.
‘Two isolated, most like. Dyin’, if not dead. An’ Varaya, barely able to stand o’ her feet. Saw them by chance. Pull’d Varaya out o’ the ship, screamin’ an’ shoutin’ an’ fightin’ to get back o’ th’ raft. Twas useless, all right. Twas carried by th’ brine. Lost from sight. An’ I wouldn’t let her. She would’ve killed herself.
‘Her heartbreakin’ screams still haunt me to this day from the madness of that day. She didn’t speak to me for months. Don’t blame her. But cap’n Butterbeer Beerback took a liking to her an’ adopt’d her. Taught her our craft. A few years later she sailed to Padwa Mahar, past th’ Edge o’ The World, a few times o’ her own. Tryin’ to find somethin’, but whatever that was I can’t tell. Her friends were, most like, dead.
‘Funnily ‘nough we came across th’ girl by chance o’ a port a few years later. She was doin’ fine by herself. A takin’ girl. Offer’d her a place o’ th’ ship, but she refused. Twas no wonder. She was very savvy an’ already had a crew o’ her own an’ a ship.
‘It angers me to see her. Like lookin’ into a contrastin’ mirror. She’ll inherit The Whisper That Travels North and Never Back South, no doubt. ‘A crew follows gold no blood,’ says cap’n Butterbeer Beerback. Right he is.’
‘Who is he?’ Whiteman Black asked Chaya Nuss after a long pause, as, with his wooden leg, he pointed at Lancelot.
‘A nincompoop. A child in armour playin’ knight,’ responded Chaya Nuss. ‘Didn’t notice I snammed his coin when first we found him i’ th’ brine. Probably didn’t remember he had it. Still believes cap’n Butterbeer Beerback’s helpin’ him by workin’ for Tomato Cherry. To protect his knightly oath, he says. If ye work o’ a pirate ship ye are still a pirate. Tis common sense. He’s a nincompoop, all right. So easy to manipulate tis not e’en funny.
‘Proposed to me last week. Says he’ll make me Lady o’ Th’ Orange Apple Tree. His family don’t have much, he says, but once his quest is complete he wants us to wed. If ye bring a thief to your house he’ll clean it. Besides, tis not good mixing a tigress and a dragon. They’ll fight.’
‘What did ye answer?’
‘Nothin’,’ responded Chaya Nuss. ‘Shot him i’ the leg.’
Whiteman Black on the table his legs reposed, which to twain wither amber-eyed she-panthers they converted by the piratess forheed as he ensearched her countenance for inklings concerning her soothfast sentiments: and yet, much as was his insistence and perseverance, it was unsped.
Chaya Nuss was undern, an open book, and that was her wry: her character, demeanour, and disposition were completely exposed and unrestrained, and, for others to observe and inspect and interpret and engage with as they pleased, and, these same characteristics were the staddle of her unstathelfast character; if a text and its contents were thoroughly exposed but tharned the solicitation required to entreat others into forgetfulness as it was engaged with, which others did possess and could so successfully achieve with ease, then, any thorough revisitation was considered unkin and importune by those well-queem, and, couthly, acquainted with it, and whom, in theory and in practice and at first glance, had comprehended the ideas expressed thereof, mithing what in guise was presented discovert.
‘Perhaps ye should have accepted his proposal, O, Chaya Nuss! Ye first crossed this threshold years ago, or was it yestermorn? Mine inn was well enough, with liquors and ales from Otherworld. And Chaya Nuss. A young gazelle ye were. Laughing and jesting with the men of other crews.
‘Ye lacked any education, formal and informal, but were quick-witted enough to seize life’s opportunities. And look at ye now lassie. Elsewhen’s wealthiest quean. I almost mistook ye for a man then, but ye were just a rough pearl. The spitting image of your mother ye was. What I didn’t suspect was that ye had also inherited her character.
‘Told ye nothing back then, and everything. And, during yer whole stay, ye evaded mine eyes, shily, and when they met, abashed, ye looked away. I couldn’t read ye then, nor can I now. And when ye left ye were generous, I thought, payed more than necessary, which I pointed to ye. But ye just said, ‘For the reparations,’ ere closing the door behind you, what attention was I to give these words? Words from a titter, not yet a quean?
‘Dearly did I pay for that, when, to my astonishment, a ship befell The Shrewd Mermaid of The Shore. And ye laughing from afar. To sail on the brine, ye said, true that was. Life never lets ye down because ye have never been up. So says my lady. Opposed we were, and opposed we are. When I first met her I didn’t know anything about her, and that made her charming. I didn’t know whom she was, and that made her delightful.
‘We espoused in ignorance within the fortnight, and here we still are. We travelled a lot by her insistence till she was fat with child. I didn’t listen to her then, a quean’s caprice, that was all there was, when what she needed was rest. But life has an odd way of coiling on herself. ‘The Pantheress of Sheckmeth,’ I heard on port, and the description was hers.
‘She had had six previous wealthy husbands before, whom, with their wealth, disappeared. I was number seven. So I stole her meagre fortune and our daughters; it cost me an eye, but she lost an arm.’
Whiteman Black arose from the table and placed himself concurrent to Ser Whimsy de Pomposé’s portrait, to which the five personages who had emerged from it were rifely returning as Small Macred upheld it with twain arms bove his head, as he bespaked his rede.
‘I can’t tell ye how to live yer life lassie, nor advise ye on it. I’ll have more luck returning to my wife than guessing what takes place inside yer head and what ye truly want, and, is not, punctual caprice. Live your life how ye will it. Accept it or deny it? It won’t matter. But it will make ye wiser.
‘And if ye tire of terrestrial life, then return to yer beloved brine: for that I am certain ye love.’
And Whiteman Black i-goed inwith the portrait, which trylled in Small Macred’s hands, ere, nosefully, tumbling to the floor, to present a portrait anew of a wight neither candid nor sable.