*
III
The flute player was a lanky youth. Unkempt hair and a look of innocent loneliness was draped about him like an ill-fitting cloak, but his eyes… his eyes for some reason were like the sun about to rise. Three days prior, the innocent youth had joined ways with a traveling minstrel-knight and his blue-tattooed companion. He was playing for them now, sharing saddle with the squire who waited on them.
The notes of the flute floated about like capricious zephyrs and swept like clouds over the gently rolling hills. The grass was grown long in this western part of the Merry Land, and it wisped about in the breeze between flowering forsythias like unruly hair under the mid-day sun. That diurnal eye was ascending the sky, hanging like a brilliant mandala that expanded in ageless bands of pink and orange adrift on the wide sea of air. The hitchhiking musician’s flute fell into a rhythm that descended like drops in a waterfall, repeating a succession of lonely notes. It almost seemed as if he played a melody backwards, yet the Knight of the Sparrow understood this famous song of protest and unsheathed his lyre, playing sweeping chords as they rode over the hills. It was a strange song the flautist chose, written in disgust of the Church before it fell, yet the Sparrow sang clarion-like the lyrics he knew passing well and accompanied his companion’s mellifluous flute.
O people what have you done:
Locked him in his golden cage,
Made him bend to your religion,
Resurrected him from the grave.
He is the god of nothing
If that is all that you can see —
You are the God of Everything
He is inside you and me.
So lean upon him gently
And call not on him to save you
From your foolish social graces
And the sins you once did waive.
The bloody Church of England
In chains of history
Requests your earthly presence
At the sanctuary for tea.
And the graven image of him you know
With his fallacious crucifix
Confounds me as to who and where and why
And with whom he soon shall mix.
Confessing to your endless sins,
Those endless whining sounds,
You shall be praying till next Thor’s Day
To all the gods that you can count —
O Jesus save me.
The hitchhiker played on alone for a short while more until his notes slowed and tapered away into the noises of only the wind in the grass, and it was several more minutes before anyone spoke.
It was woodsey Hesaid Isee who remarked, “It has been long since I heard that bleakly writ tune by Sir Tull. It seems our guest is a minstrel of no mere skill… and Sir Elisa you know my high opinion of your songbird’s voice.”
The Sparrow’s squire Frontal, who guid the giraffe that he and the hitchhiker both had ridden for a day, spoke up then. “I much enjoyed that melody, Sir,” he said, “but as I am no knight I could not follow the meaning. Sorry am I, yet this prevented me from enjoying the song as much as I might.”
The tattooed mystic smiled under his turban and said, “Squire Frontal, you are confusing what Sir Elisa intended with the actions that Sir Elisa performed. To understand fully, a man must focus on his own interpretation alone: where his mind has filled in spaces left blank by either purpose or accident.”
“Recall,” said the Sparrow, “you must think on both parts of the music: the tones of the flute hold equal importance to my verses and support them. A voice that speaks no words still imparts meaning via melody.”
Hesaid said again, “You must feel the song out with your emotions, and discover how only the suggestions of the words interlock with the melody. Logic is not always able to lend its helping hand. Your conscious mind can struggle with it as much as it wishes, yet lyrics are not constructed in the same manner as a sentence that must be made sense of. These words and tones exist only to complement one another, and you must let your consciousness process them as sub-emotional energy.”
The squire was mystified, but he bowed his head in deference.
“It takes time, good Frontal, and I babble endlessly with the vestigial vernacular of superfluous wisdom.” The turbaned mystic gestured lazily to the clouds. “Think on what I have tried to impart to the extent that you wish. If interest is truly in you then your brain will sort it out as you sleep.”
“Yea,” said the Magician of Time, “and the brain is a wonderful tool. Aha! Siht si tahw?” Sir Elisa’s eyes widened in alarm, and a halt was called suddenly as all the company stared in disbelief at the old man from their nearly-forgotten dream. The Magician of Time sat behind Frontal on his giraffe, where the flautist had been mere moments before. Under the daylight they saw that just as inacross his shoulders. His grisly necklace of animal skulls was the fastener of this great cloak, and the object that had seemed a flute only moments before was now a long gnarled aspen staff. He seemed younger somehow than he had been: his beard was long yet slate-grey instead of snow white. And atop his head rested a pointed wide-brimmed hat of sunrise orange.
“O wizard from my dreams!” cried Sir Elisa in disbelief, “How came you to us?!”
With voice-beyond-voice, voicing thoughts directly from his brain, Yalishamba spoke even though his cold lips barely tremored.
What is this?
The time is now:
The magician shall be the musician
All along!
Yalishamba am I,
And Yalishamba even is
My name —
Now that have I come to remember it.
Not always was this my name
And neither is it the only one I shall bear…
I shall gather more,
And have done so.
Farewell, brave travelers.
The words resonated through the ears of their minds though barely did breath pass between Yalishamba’s lips. His eyes seemed bewildered, darting between their faces, and his erratic gesticulations were somehow unnatural.
I followed you from the north-place
To discover from whence you came,
Now follow me to a new place
Where we have just returned from:
Where no one has yet been
Who ever has been mortal.
It holds a message for those who seek:
It has a message for us.
Glancing wide-eyed and pale at his companions, Sir Elisa pulled the goat-skin map from his pack. He unrolled it as he had done so many times of late — to prove that their path took them through a bare blighted field of empty land — yet when his eyes flickered across it he saw that instead there was a great canyon where always had been but field.
That is the place known as the Sylvian Fissure.
It is there you travel,
It is from there
With you
That I have most recently come.
“What is happening?” moaned Frontal.
“In sooth I know not,” whispered the Sparrow.
“At ease, at ease,” intoned Hesaid Isee to them. As the giraffes continued to trot through the swaying grasses and flowers he looked upon the Magician of Time. He pulled the flesh of his own face to stretch out the tattoo of an eye, a blue symbol below his true oculus. In time Hesaid said, “He is real. Somehow. But why will he not speak? This is indeed a profound mystery.”
Yalishamba’s eyes were unseen below the brim of his hat. He sadly lilted, “Egaugnal ruoy kaeps dluoc I hsiw I. Ssendink sih yaper tsum I! Niaga Eydoom Ris ees reve I lliw? Noos os uoy evael ot tnaw ton od I.”
Thus did they ride in silence and confusion for some time, until Yalishamba luft an antenna-like arm into the air. The smooth flowing fabric of his billowing sleeve fell at this incline and exposed his skinny wrinkled magic-arm. As he gestured his hand this way and that in the slight breeze, the clouds began to change shape as they sailed across the sky’s gaseous under-dome. He chose three clouds to the east above the distant Roman highway to transform into striding giraffes — a mirror image of themselves on their expedition. The Magician of Time conjured up many things besides in those fluffy sky voyagers: bluejays, mermaids, baboons, rhinos, fools and buffoons… the work of his magic was subtle. It occurred like this: Sir Elisa might choose a particular cloud, and it would remind him of some object or instance. The more he stared at it the more it began to resemble that object until he seemed to see it floating along, minding its own ethereal business, up in the blue. When the cloud began to remind him of a different object it would after a short while assume that shape instead, and so on, until he shifted his gaze to another cloud and the cycle began anew. After continuing in this manner and repeating the process for many clouds Sir Elisa began to catch himself thinking that it was not Yalishamba’s influence that controlled those puffs of vapor, but perhaps it was himself who was the true miracle-worker. Or perhaps it was the clouds who bestowed their impressions upon him. The Sparrow Knight felt loose, and unstuck in time. For who can be certain of the direction in which fate flows, if it takes the form of a loop? Before the three mortals lost their bearings completely, the Magician of Time spoke with his voice-beyond-voice:
Many miles still remain
Before you arrive
Where I have come from with you.
O dearest Hesaid If-You-Can-See,
I loved the tale you have just finished telling us.
Will you not tell it once again?
If not, I shall make the clouds dance.
Sir Elisa and Frontal shared a glance of infinite confusion, yet the tattooed mystic merely pondered for a moment and cleared his throat. “A tale of my homeland I could tell, if that is what you wish. A tale about the sunken land of Whales… though that name is little more than mockery. Indeed she is sunk low now, to her graveyard below a carnival of sea-creatures, but in the mother-tongue, honey sweet, we called our land Cymru.” Hesaid listened for the rhythm of the animals’ hooves striking the ground, and when the moment was right, he began.
The Tale of the Lost Land of Whales
“It has been forgotten that long before the Roman foreigners arrove on our island we were of one people, just as our island was once one forest divid only by tribes and inlets across varied locales. Though much was strife and blood in the antediluvian days of the Unknowing Age, we adhered to our prescribed Cycle and lived as one with our mother the earth. As the mystics in Cymru, we were the keepers of hidden lunar wisdom, dark beneath our shadowed trees. A sacred grove of oaks that grew along our peninsula was once the hub of druidic knowledge, and we gathered within the circle of our celestial henge to study and rejoice — though that place was wove of wood and now exists only in the depths of our past. But then… then it was an eternal testament to the sweeping of the year across the sky, the dramatic cycle of our Gods made flesh across our universe. No longer do we live as such, having grown apart from nature and her yearly wheel. But then… but then. Far younger was I during the Unknowing Age, though young I still do seem, and every night the telling of tales across the sequined sky unfolded fresh. For each celestial story learned, I earned one blue tattoo. My people knew their stars as dearly as we knew ourselves and as we knew our Gods: our minds made flesh. In druidic dress we held our orgies to the moon and blessed our fields and made love with the planetary mother. Our years seemed eternal in those days, and so was our enlightened king eternal. Yea, and he was our blessed raven: as long as we had our ‘Bendigaidfran,’ our tribe was everlasting. He was Blessed King Washing in the speech of men, and just as I am not yet old this king was fair of face for all the days I knew him. Our years seemed eternal in that age, yet it is not strange for such illusions to hold sway until their very termination. Bendigaidfran is gone now of course, and the land of Whales is sunk countless fathoms. But then… but then.
“After countless eons of life, a Roman host did sail to Britain’s shores with cloaks of red and armor, bearing strange standards of their foreign land. King Washing did go to the host with all the leaders of native villages to try and wage a peace. The leaders met in red Roman tents along the shore, and it was found that we shared many Gods with them. That truth is the sadness that misaligned my bones for ever afterwards. Unbeknownst to any, King Washing’s half-brother had come to the outpost drunk on worry and the fear of change. He slipped aboard the foreign ships and, roaring, made a blaze to match the hate within his heart. Our king and kings that cared for safety of the realm apologized how best they could: the northern king bestowed his sister for a wife on them, and our Bendigaidfran offered up a cauldron said to raise the dead — consecrated deep within our woods in many a whole-moon’s blood. Yet all these gifts could not prevent those Roman legions from slaying our trees to rebuild the ships that had been lost to them.
“And though we shared some Gods the same, a gluttony I saw in them that over-roech their bounds. They had become hungry from being full, and desired ever more food to eat until they burst. They took such swaths of our wood that our island has not yet recovered, and they took my home. Once acquainted with our fabled isle from gathering her trees, these foreign men developed a desire to rule. It was they who constructed the mammoth marble highway of Tchrelma’Montgomery that even from this western edge of England can be seen through the mists of distance. It was said they hailed from a vasty empire in farther lands, and that it was expanding round our mother’s throat. And this in sooth I am sure you know: when wishing to fill a glass with something precious, the old liquid must first be lost. These legions born of another country knew well this hint of wisdom, and knew my mystic home to be a beating heart of celtic lore, philosophy, and religion. They would have buried us if our greatest druids had not broken off from England and called the seething ocean up to swallow ourselves. Yet our enlightened Bendigaidfran bestowed on his people the gift of his own life. When all we knew had sunk beneath the waves he journeyed off to a place of power and ritually drowned himself in a certain consecrated pool. King Washing’s body may have since been lost, yet as he fell from great height he severed his own head and it became a flapping raven that flew off to many lands with the essence of our ways for to teach.
“And so it came to pass that we were lost, and I am a member of the lonely few who still survive that sunken empire. Rather than let our wisdoms perish upon a hungry foreign sword of man, the druidry relinquished ties to land and took our home beneath the yawning seas. Thus, call my home in common tongue the Land of Whales to mock its absence… yet know it bears a different name within the anchors of my shrouded heart.”