The Emperor of the Ancient Word and Other Fantastic Stories. Darrell Schweitzer

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      Tom and Nick ran. Nick continued his discourse on how the world was ending, the sunrise would never come, there would be no more pennies, warm cups of ale, or inn floors to sleep on. He started to sob. His tears froze and fell down like sparkling diamonds. He stopped to scoop some of them up, wondering if he might be able to use a few to buy ale and mutton.

      Tom turned to him and shook him.

      “Nick. You’re almost making sense, a fearful thing from a madman.”

      “Saint Fibberdeygibbet preserve us! What shall we do?”

      “I think we should sleep on it.”

      “Are we not already dreaming? That makes no sense at all!”

      “Exactly.”

      So they lay down in the street, in the snow and mud, and again slept, and again dreamed, though they were never sure they had ever awakened. A coach ran over them almost at once, but it was a phantom coach, drawn by flaming, headless horses, conveying a bishop of London speedily to Hell (or possibly a bishop of Hell speedily to London), and so it hardly disturbed their rest.

      * * * * * * *

      Meanwhile the poet rose from his desk and paced the room, mournfully, yet again. His fancies gathered all around him, thick as gnats, or fleas, or flies...he would decide which later on...and he imagined himself no more than vermin, crawling on the face of mankind...and all ladies gazed upon him as if they were foul specters, or he was...and he yearned for someone who could understand the burning yearning he had in his breast...that phrase, he knew, would have to go into the rubbish heap, as soon as he found the words, as soon as inspiration returned....

      * * * * * * *

      Tom O’Bedlam slept, and dreamed that he rode in a phantom coach drawn by flaming, headless horses (there were a lot of them on the streets this night; business was booming for spectral conveyances of all sorts) and that a queen in all her finery sat across from him.

      The coach sped; it jostled and swayed as it rattled over the rough streets.

      The queen’s head, which had been in her lap, bounced to the floor at Tom’s feet.

      “Oh dear,” she said. “You must excuse me.”

      Gently, Tom placed the queen’s head back in her lap. There was no room to bow, but he swept his hat from his head in a gallant gesture, bells jingling.

      “Are you a Fool?” she asked.

      “Are they the ones who say ‘i’faith’ and ‘hey, nonny-nonny,’ and call everybody ‘nuncle?”

      “Yes. My husband had one like that.”

      “Tiresome lot. No, I, Your Highness, am a madman.”

      Her Highness found that to be something of a relief. It was a relief, too, to have a sympathetic ear to talk to, as she recounted how the King and wronged her, jilted her, and lopped her head off for good measure, which didn’t even let enjoy the afterlife, because of the constant, tedious obligation to rise from her grave and haunt him.

      “We ghosts wail and sing a lot,” she said. “Not that it does much good. No matter how off-key we are, I think he likes it.”

      Tom commiserated. He did remark, incidentally, on how the sun did not rise and the world seemed to have come to an end, but only incidentally, remaining focussed on what really mattered, which is to say the lady’s sorrows, lost love, broken hearts, and the miscarriage of romance.

      “Ah me,” the ex-queen sighed. The coach bumped. This time her head bounced into Tom’s lap.

      “Ah, you...by the way, while you’re here...are these your fancies that fill and haunt the night, that forbid the sun to rise...?”

      She groped forward and took her head back.

      “You have been a friend to me, sir. I would grant you any favor I have within my power...but, alas, my powers have been much curtailed by, by...you know.” She hefted her head and gestured with it. “All I can offer you is the advice, that, being a madman, you alone understand the mystery that is love, and that if you find the one who is most wounded in love, and somehow heal that wound, then the world will go on as before...though I can’t see why even a madman would want that.”

      “You’d have to be mad to understand, Majesty. Being dead isn’t enough.”

      “Ah, yes, of course—”

      Just then the coach hit a particularly large bump, the door flew open, and Tom tumbled out into a snowbank.

      He sat up, sputtering, awake (relatively speaking), though some distance from where he had lain down with Nick.

      On his way there he passed a line of monks who chanted solemnly and hit themselves on the forehead with wooden tablets. He passed pure maidens, gallant highwaymen, dashing pirates, honest politicians, and other such persons as inhabit dreams.

      He came again upon the One with the scythe, hood, and hourglass, who hissed at him, “Ssayyy...don’t we havvv an appp-pointmenttt?”

      He spun the hourglass with his finger and hurried on.

      Above him, there were now eight moons in the sky. A ninth seemed to have become stuck somehow on the spire of St. Paul’s, like an apple on the tip of a knife. The Man in this particular Moon complained vehemently. His dog barked. He dropped his lantern into the street, where it exploded into glittering shards, each of which, Tom knew, was filled with enchantment and could lead someone on a magical, romantic quest, or provide some great and impossible revelation, or boon—but he didn’t have time for that.

      The air was thick with melancholy. Gloom hung over the city like a damp fog, dimming the outlines of the rooftops to a dull blur. In the houses as he passed, he heard sleepers cry out and sob in their dreams, dreams which might never, ever end at the rate things were going.

      He found Nick lying in the street. Several pigs nuzzled around him. But sufficient Melancholy had puddled there (a foul, dark fluid, like slops) that they were the most sorrowful pigs Tom had ever seem. They merely gazed at him reproachfully as he shooed them away.

      He shook his friend. “Nick! Nick!”

      “Oh alas,” said Nick, awakening. “I was dreaming of meat pies. I almost had a bite when—”

      “Come on!”

      “Come whither?”

      “Hither. Thither.”

      “Blither.”

      “Oh, yes. Do so Nicholas. Absolutely. Your madness is like a rare sapling, gently nurtured, which now grows into a vast forest that shall not be cut down in a single night.”

      “But what if that night never ends, Tom?”

      Tom told him what the headless queen had suggested.

      “Now you’re almost making sense, Tom. Beware! Beware!” Nick jangled his bells in warning.

      Tom СКАЧАТЬ