The Crossing of the Ways
Riding on the wings of the wind the jester departed from the company of the dark town, taking his mind elsewhere in search of a time and place where all was well. He noticed, as he rode, a silence which pervaded the very rocks and fields he passed. Listening harder than he had ever been accustomed to listen before he rode through the quiet world looking all around as seeping paranoia caught up with him. He was riding though a gentle valley at night, with the light of the strong moon casting a silver shadow on the grey ground behind him. In the darkness he strained his ears to hear any sound, even the rustle of life in the trees. He heard nothing but the sound of his horse walking underneath him. The hills drifted away on each side until he was walking in a moonlit panic through acres of silence fields. He knew he would soon be on the place where Michael had claimed that he had been attacked, and so he was looking out all the harder so he wouldn’t be set upon by the same force which took the town by surprise.
A cloud, loose from it’s aerial herds, drifted to cover the moons face in the heavens and the jester in black melted into the background of night in an instant. Feeling a sudden and inexplicable urge to stop and dismount the man did so, leading his horse into the shadows of a lonely tree at a cross-way on the silver road.
He waited in the shadows, watching the road for he knew someone was approaching on foot because he could hear the noise of one, or maybe two people coming closer. As he listened to the voices, loud in the silence, his hood was stirred by a cold northern breeze, and the cloud scudded from the moon. In the wind the jester heard a new sound, much closer than the voices. It sounded like the rigging of a ship straining in a gale, but there were no ships on the road, and the breeze was a gale to none but the feather. And yet the noise persisted with a repeating harmonic which gave the jester mind of a pendulumic motion. He looked up and saw much to his lasting surprise a man suspended from one of the thick branches of the tree, swinging slowing in the breeze. His feet were just seeping the air above the jester's head, and his long dead and maggot-ridden eyes stared down at him in a face much reminiscent of those men who knew not what he said. Taken aback by the hung man above him the jester had taken his ears from the road, and when he next returned their service to the track he heard close as thought ot be spoken to a man walking alone for there were only one set of footprints. From his point in the cover of the tree the jester could hear some of what the man was muttering, but it made but half sense even to a professional fool.
‘They make no words to the mindful, preferring to preach long to the rocks than take a moment to look at what they speak and know what although they may make a house from those poor stones never will they serve other than to be hewn.’
The jester heard this and said to himself under his hood and beyond breath. ‘This man speaks in riddles of the addled brain, and yet I recognise him. I shall attempt to learn more.’
The jester took pains to step out carefully and avoid unbalancing that which was just shy of toppling as it stood. His care went amiss and the man took a look at his dark robes and vaulted high into the air. From there he collapsed to his knees and crouched in a ball, quaking and muttering to himself of demons which do not exist and those who fight a fight meant for no man. The jester looked upon him and approached, pointing to the high gallows-tree.
‘Good sir, pray, who there hangs as corrupt fruit from that nature’s arm?’
The shaking man stopped for a time, and raised his head. Around his mouth the jester could make out the scars of a poor operation to remove chords from his lips. In fear the man looked high into the tree and once more sought solace in the ground beneath himself.
‘A man was he, both fair and good. A just man, a man of many tenders and of much portal greatness. I looked on that man before I entered and therefore after I left. It was he whom I saw upon my retribution just as in my relegation. The two faced one, both smiling. One mask in welcome and the other in rejection. To me was he a man, no more, but a man who knew and used his mind that he was granted with in his position on the very edge of the den of villainy. I forgive him now his admittance of men to that place of woe, as I am sure he has been forgiven where he is now. Those eyes, so greedily now eaten by the span of the fly, which looked upon the serving platter of the grinning demon every day and never once saw what he was making so. It now has no matter, for the gate is gone and he is nothing more. I say, dark and foreboding sir, this man you ask after was the gatekeeper of that much misguided town now ashes in the wind. See, he smiles to the ground beneath him in greeting. He is grateful to be dead now he has been deprived of his means and mode. I would that I could be also, and yet my death was hindered by a foul witch who saw fit to heal me from my hurts and so prolong that which makes me less than previously every day it is endured.’
The man had fallen once more into a ball and was mumbling under his breath. The jester looked upon that man hanging so from the tree with a new light in his eyes. He walked up to the body, looking all the while into it’s dead and rotten eyes. Gritting his teeth the jester seized dangling foot and swung the hanging body with a great push. It swooped high, and the jester ducked as it sailed over his head. He listened hard and heard under the creaking of the branch and rope the tale of twin bells held somewhere about his person. On hearing this the jester turned back to the road and the man cowering there.
‘Stand good sir and tell me of your journey.’
The man cowering on the ground looked sideways up at the looming jester who, with the moon framing his head, was all darkness.
‘My journey is that of a struggle most mighty between that which must be obeyed and he who proceeds in following. If to large words you look I shall call it war, for blood has been shed upon it’s cause and no man can claim to be at peace until they have striven and conquered the attackers or taken flight from them and hid amongst the strong rocks.’
‘Of war?’ said the jester, ‘Tell of the battles and reason this war with haste for it is on this task I travel.’
‘Then to you sir I give my much used sorrow. Go not in search of this war, because every man who can avoid it is more a man than if those forces ranged against him force him into conflict.’
‘I search not to partake of that violence of spirit sir, and yet I do claim to wish knowledge on this which I ask.’
‘Knowledge of such things does not exist. Once they are within they cannot be locked in the mind, they spread to the limbs and thence to the soul. You cannot watch as the hawk watches the pigeon on high. I say once more look not for this hidden war for already it has clamed many casualties and from it’s clutches no man escapes, as is proven there.’ The man pointed from the floor to the tree, where the swinging gatekeeper had slowed to a mournful semi-heartbeat.
‘I thank you for your concern although it is misplaced in this telling. I shall not hold you responsible should I be taken by this war of which you speak, if you tell me where the latest battle in it’s course has been fought.’
The man on the road stood up, looking the jester directly in the eye. He had a wild brightness to the edges of his vision, and he waved his hands all around.
‘Look not where it has been fought, rather find that small place like the nail lost amidst the haystack where it has not been fought, for to find they most recent battlefield the search ends at the very end of the nearest nose.’
With that, and before the jester could summon him to speak more in sense, the man skipped away down the road, looking left and right and singing about a recipe for exploding weasel.
Left alone with his convicted acquaintance the jester felt more than ever the impending doom which hovered as the clouds of the moon of his life. He sat down in the road, looking hard at the dark earth, a fool in a world of wisdom.
