Cloud Nine

"Cloud Nine”

By I.S. Gibson




Blue upon blue. A markedly rich, pervasive and profound, suffocatingly gorgeous blue. It was a blue emblematic of majesty and nobility, of a princely life’s luxuries and niceties, and the boy was immediately rapt by this meaningful colour’s tacit promises, this marvellous greeting that betokened his passage into a life renewed. His body was immersed in this splendid ambient blue, as he lay prone, his arms outspread, suspended and utterly still. He could feel fragments of memories slipping from him, yielding to the oblivion. He would have so willingly lingered awash in the lethe, lulled into a deep sleep by its featurelessness, its mysterious peace.

He couldn’t affirm with certainty how much time he had frittered away thus, and, to be honest, he couldn’t be bothered to care, as time was no longer a commodity of any value to him, not in a world of infinity. But his stay here, much to his chagrin, would not last nearly as long as he would hope, for he was roused by a sudden outburst of activity: bright circles of white light penetrating through and asserting themselves unto the vast blue, alighting upon him with their lidless eyes. Thereupon he could feel undulations swaying him subtly, could mark shadows and highlights twisting and twining dancingly on his arms, but it wasn’t until he exhaled and discerned the stream of rising bubbles expiring from his mouth and nostrils that a realization of his whereabouts came to jolt his brain, smacking him out of his trance. Wherever he was, he knew he didn’t belong here.

This isn’t right, he thought calmly at first, and after fully swallowing his circumstances he deemed it far more appropriate to outright panic. His limbs reactively tensed and swashed about, his body prompted by the instinctive craving for something breathable, wheresoever it may be. Other questions would follow, assuredly, but for the nonce matters pertinent to his survival took priority.

After this brief bout of awkward writhing and wriggling, he unwittingly broke the water’s surface, and proceeded to cock his head aside and cuff it to drain his ear. He stopped abruptly, however, as an acute pang bit his neck and restricted its movements. He rubbed his nape and felt its stiffness; he was left utterly perplexed as to what had caused this injury. All he knew was that it was doubly more painful than the cramps he would occasionally incur from sleeping in awkward positions.

He coughed dryly. A salty taste persisted in his mouth, although he could recognize straightaway that he was in the middle of a swimming pool. Its water was tepid, a temperature inviting enough for him to submerge his face once more, and he did so, as his curiosity was piqued. Below him, peculiarly, he could find not even a trace of a floor, and was tempted to dive down in search of it. There was only a gradient that slid down into the deepest of blues, so riveting of his eyes, but he discovered that the longer he gazed into the fathomless chasm, the more his enterprise would stoop to inexplicable terror. Now that he was at his senses, he had this ill foreboding that any plunge into the depths would not ultimately be of his own accord, of his own sense of adventure; it would be a snare of the deep blue, drawing him in seductively to claim him.

Out of the corner of his downward gaze he glimpsed a shadow slinking. Fearful, he turned his head sharply, brooking the pain in his sore neck, and strained to see two scintilla of red fading into the deepness. It wasn’t long before these oddities in colour were completely engulfed by the ubiquitous blue. Coldness coursed through the boy, and he started and resurfaced.

He shivered uncontrollably, as if the water’s temperature had plummeted without a moment’s warning. He would have considered this reason enough to scramble out of the pool, were it not for the fact that it was the only location sufficiently lit by the white circular pool lights. Everywhere else was shrouded in a hazy darkness, revealing only intimations of grand shapes and forms looming above and around him. It disheartened him enough to stay put.

Where am I?

Still shivering, he whimpered softly and mopped his nose. Blood was smeared across the back of his hand. His nose bled, tainting the pool water with gossamerly threads of red. At first he felt a tingling sensation, then another, and another, all of which to him portended something terrible, and he had no recollection of what may be their cause. It wasn’t long before they sharpened into harrowing twinges, scattered about and arresting his body: his wrists, his forehead, his right thigh. He grated his teeth and held his ears, too, as, to worsen his torment, screeching and clanging and shattering noises fizzed and bubbled up from the pool. He didn’t care for the absurdity of this clamour; he was too preoccupied with making a hasty flight. In desperation he lurched forward and attempted to climb out, clawing against the tiled tank.

He covered his teary eyes as his surroundings were at once kindled with light. The shadows retreated to denude the great space, from which an outreached arm, broad and strong and hairy, grasped the boy and hauled him effortlessly out of the water.

The man was stout, his smile toothed and amiable, and presently stretching as widely as his bespectacled, whiskered visage would permit. His eyes were little glistening gems lodged deep within furrowed, cavernous sockets. Girded to his belt was, most conspicuously, a hammer of an unwieldy size; he had other odd tools and gadgets and paraphernalia about his person, leading one to surmise that he was a handyman of some sort, and a rather versatile one at that. Pendent from his neck were a pair of flat green shapes resembling trees, and on each two words were written, but at the moment the boy’s vision was too blurred to decipher them. He patted the child’s head and spoke soothingly, “You look all shook up, my lord.”

They were indoors. The ceiling towered overhead, the reflections of the pool capering about ribbed vaults and lofty columns. They were paltry flecks of dust in an immense hall of arcades, lavishly festooned, so mind-bogglingly great and empty that it could return the faintest whisper with a cacophony of echoes.

“Who are you?” struck the boy accusingly.

The portly man laughed in response, and hugged him with unintentional violence. “Ah, you’re a waggish one, my lord.” He unfastened his arms and plopped the boy on the floor so the youngling could recover his bearings.

“Don’t laugh! I mean it.”

“Oh come now. I’ve known you since you were a wee lad, about this tall, I’d reckon,” he said whilst he raised his sweaty hand, aligning it with the boy’s scalp.

“So you haven’t known me very long, then.”

“But you’ve always been this height, my lord. You’ve never been taller or littler, as much as I can ably recall.”

The boy made a wry face and his blank eyes blinked. “Oh,” he acquiesced in short time, although somewhere in the recesses of his mind a misgiving made a muffled protest. “But if I’ve never grown, how does that possibly prove how long you’ve known me?”

“It proves that lengths of time aren’t worth a jot, my lord,” he explained with a deferential dip of his large, round head, and by the boy’s look he was readily accepting of this answer. “Mayhap you shouldn’t swim again anytime soon. You’re awfully inquisitive whenever you come out of there. It’s all the water left tossing about between the ears, I’d wager.”

The boy spoke between chattering teeth, “I wouldn’t dive in again for the life of me. It’s freezing in there. Is there a towel anywhere I could use?”

The man spent a moment rummaging through his accoutrements. At length he declared, “Oh, I’ve got a handkerchief.” He proffered a cloth smirched with dirt, rust, oil, and presumably sweat; on his face was an ingenuous grin of satisfaction with his usefulness.

The boy’s eyes jumped from the cloth to the oafish grin a number of times, the gesture apparently failing on the man. With that as his only option, he’d much rather remain wet and cold and bitter to boot.

“Chop-chop,” spoke a twittering voice from the doorway, followed by a brisk clapping of hands, or, more accurately, flipper-like wings, for the words belonged to a smart and trim penguin who waddled ungainly into the hall – as he did so his unsupple body, with its wings tucked firmly against his flanks, sort of wobbled from side to side like a standing punching bag. His beak was cocked up, his plumage sleek and sheeny; if he were made of porcelain he would have been an ideal ornament atop a fireplace. A clock was inset into his white belly, ticking away with his every mechanical sway. “Dinner’s served, and need I remind you that you still haven’t presented yourself before everyone. Come, my lord, lest your food gets cold.”

The boy jerked his head at the sight. He had this inner urge to gawk at this marvel of a creature, as if it were too unbelievable for him to treat with casual acceptance. In spite of himself, he could only say, “Oh, really?”

“Afraid to say that he’s having a memory lapse,” the man informed.

“Tosh.” The penguin went up to the boy, beckoned him to bow – wriggling his stump of a tail with eagerness – and obligingly slapped his face. “We haven’t the time for such childish rubbish.”

The man frowned and stood between the baffled child and the penguin. “You mustn’t harm the master.”

“A smack in the head does wonders for the senses.” The bird directed his beady, glittering eyes to the pool, and made an observation. “Oh it’s all bloody.”

“Don’t you swear in the master’s presence either.”

“I’m not swearing. I’m making a statement of fact.”

“Then say it’s bloodied.”

The penguin held his head. “Call it whatsoever you like, Hershey. As you’re tending the mess.” He snatched the boy’s hand and carried him away, too swiftly to afford him the chance to wave farewell to his stocky acquaintance. “You’re going to be late, I hope you know.”

“Funny, I was just informed that time doesn’t matter here,” quipped the boy.

“It does when I’ve cooked you dinner, you can damn well be sure of that.”

“No coarse words in front of the lad,” again chided Hershey.

“Oh put a socket wrench in it,” said the penguin as he and the boy disappeared through the doorway and into the corridor.

They winded along the long and torturous path, whose walls were lined with paintings of various dignitaries, all of whom looked unfamiliar to him, at least as much as he could gather through blurred, sidelong glances. They were likely his predecessors, and the boy imagined they were all dignified and rich and important enough for their names to be followed by, say, an epithet, or a number. He fancied that his own name may too precede a particularly weighty number. But before he could conjecture what this number may be, he realized that he had to first discover what his name was.

“Who am I?”

“What are you on about now?” asked the testy penguin.

“Who am I?”

“Doing some spiritual introspection, eh? I’m the last person you should ask for guidance, needless to say.”

“No no, I mean, what is my name?”

“You are Lord Halls, master of this castle.”

“Are you serious? I own all of this?” He took a moment to relish this. “Am I a prince or something, then?”

“Prince. Liege. Seignior. Overlord. Feudal superior. It makes no difference what you’re called, really, as long as you have your people’s respect and fealty.”

“So if I’m a prince, where are the king and queen?”

“The queen. She’s around here somewhere, I’m sure. She always is. Good luck finding her, though.”

The boy frowned. He found the penguin’s answer curt and purposely equivocal, not to mention unfinished. “And the king?”

“A king? Never knew of any king, come to think of it. It’s just been you and the queen, at least since I’ve been in your service.”

“And who are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Wrigley. I’m the seneschal of this household.”

“Nice to meet you, Wrigley. Why do you have a clock on your chest?”

“Because it’s mighty convenient when your livelihood demands punctuality.” His eyes daggered the boy’s. “Are you done questioning yet?”

The boy shrugged. “I suppose.”

As the two trudged on, they passed something that caught the boy’s attention, for it seemed very out of place amongst the seemingly endless display of paintings. It was a white sign on which he could have sworn were written the words “Operating Room”, accompanied by a blue arrow pointing in the direction of their passage.

Presently, they reached the end of the dizzying labyrinth and entered the dining hall, and the penguin courteously sat the boy at the head of the table, underneath low-hanging chandeliers whose shrill light dazzled him, and with perfunctory haste he lit several tall red candles before withdrawing through a pair of swinging doors. The boy’s mouth hung agape in his cushioned seat, which was too large for him to sit in comfortably, his feet dangling awkwardly like a bibbed baby in a highchair. The long rectangular table was rife with sumptuous fare, and before him, ablaze in the candlelight, glinted a perplexingly wide assortment of cutlery, whose specific functions during mealtime the boy could only wildly speculate on. One of the more prominent utensils was a battle-axe, and he concluded that it must be a fine meal awaiting him, if one needed a battle-axe for it. Others of interest included a very small knife akin to a scalpel, and an instrument somewhat like a pair of tongs, with which he tinkered delightfully, attempting to use it to pick up morsels of food.

With an entourage of attendants and, presumably, earnest cooks hovering over him and murmuring mouthfuls of esoteric information to each other, the boy feasted and drank until he was cured of both his aches and appetite, and left himself feeling dazed and disoriented. To accomplish this, he had only eaten two slices of garlic bread and some buttered broccoli, and the rest of the meal was, in the span of many circuits, whisked away by the penguin, who took the plates one by one in his black beak to wastefully dispose of their contents. The boy pouted as he rested his chin on the tablecloth. He hadn’t even gotten to use the battle-axe.

“Come with me now,” bade Wrigley with another of his strident claps that stirred the walls and hallways and had a reception of echoes. He tugged at the boy’s seat.

The boy groaned, “What for?”

“You are a prince, remember. You must survey your fiefdom.”

“Do I have to?”

“Confound it, child,” replied the bird. “It is your duty, and it must be done. Otherwise you’d be reproached as childish and irresponsible. We mustn’t have that.”

Halls arose from his gilt chair. “Fine.”

But the boy was in his dishabille rather than decked out in full regalia. “A tunic half-tucked into jeans,” said the penguin, his head shaking as he walked around him, inspecting him thoroughly. “Hardly seemly attire, but alack, it’ll have to do.”

Halls hadn’t taken the time to examine his own clothing, as he had been unconsciously taking it for granted. “I could fix myself up. Where’s a mirror?”

“No mirrors!” snapped the penguin. “They aren’t allowed.”

“How do you expect me to keep spruce, then?”

“You have an entire retinue of attendants. Why do you need a damned mirror?” And Wrigley seized him by the arm and waddled angrily up and down carpeted stairways, through numerous antechambers, a study room with mounting bookshelves and a charming fireplace, then a spacious room suitable for conclaves, with a round table bearing territorial maps, to, finally, a lofty balcony with a marble balustrade. Thereon he was provided with a sceptre and instructed to step forward.

“Don’t slouch,” exhorted the penguin.

The balcony afforded him a wonderful panoramic view; the clear sky was tinged with the pinks and magentas of sunset. It was strikingly odd to him, though, that, as he approached the balustrade, the sky was in fact not perfectly clear, for all its clouds did not rack above him, as one would expect, but below, and appeared to enclose a small tract of land.

Below him, too, and upon this thin land, was a massive congregation of people busily pitching tents and pavilions and setting up wooden tables and platforms. And, as if the rumour that Halls had emerged from his august castle was at once bruited across these throngs of peasants, they all accompanied each other with an upward gaze, ignoring whatever business they were attending, dropping their things, no matter how delicate and costly – someone yelped as he dropped a full barrel of ale on his toe – and they erupted in cheers of praise.

Nervously, Halls raised his hand and waved, loudening the crowd’s acclaim.

“Lo and behold, your loyal vassals,” Wrigley declared with a triumphant swoop of his wing. “They practically revere you, my lord.”

“They are a happy bunch.”

The penguin assumed an upright stance, heaving his chest-clock forward, slipping his wings firmly behind his back. “Light taxes, no military service. They ought to be happy.”

“But where do they live?”

“On the land you provide them.”

The boy clung to the balustrade and leaned forward, scanning from left to right. “Is this everything?”

“This aspect of the castle overlooks your fiefdom in its totality, my lord.”

“All I see is a small floating strip surrounded by clouds.”

“Ah, isn’t it grand?”

“It doesn’t seem all that grand, no. They don’t have much land at all, and there must be literally thousands of tenants. How can they possibly live like that, all huddled into a heap and scrambling on top of each other?”

“Tosh! They have air to breathe. What reason is there to spoil them?” Wrigley jerked his head in a classic avian manner. “This is your world, after all, amidst the clouds. To exist in it is by itself the highest honour. They are beholden to you. And, I might add, they absolutely adore you, particularly the women.”

Halls licked his lips, chapped from the chilly wind. “My world?”

Within the cluster an innocent young woman, dressed in a light blue kirtle, upheld a sign that read: “Marry Me, My Sweet Prince.” He found the proposal very hackneyed, but an earnest attempt nevertheless; with so many willing lasses he could afford to be more particular in his choosing. Other women caught wind of this sly coquetry shortly, and tramped over to the transgressor to viciously battle over rights to the sign. Dusk came and strew its deep orange and red across the sky, and the fray was soon drowned out as the masses regaled themselves, bards singing and strumming their harps, actors performing and burlesquing.

For a moment Halls regarded the white clouds, but soon his eyes assumed an aspect of bemusement, as his mind roamed to other, more pressing matters. He toyed with the thought of what his ideal woman would be, and decided he would later record a list of what qualities appealed to him, since at the moment he couldn’t stipulate any. Maybe she had to be a blonde, or a brunette. It didn’t really matter what colour, as long as she had hair. But certainly she would have to enjoy boyish things, like sports and comic books and air-rifles and video games. And she would have to be an expert chess player, he convinced himself, who relied on strategy and foresight rather than moving the pieces arbitrarily and trying to look like she knew exactly what she was doing. And his thoughts from there divagated further still, imagining what it would be like to demarcate sixty-four large squares and cultivate this useless enclosure of land into something fruitful, such as, say, an enormous chessboard, and have real genuine knights portraying the knights, and real bishops for the bishops, and so forth. He looked to the ill-humoured penguin, pictured him as a helpless, death-bound black pawn, and he smirked.

The penguin, oblivious of his master’s visions, pointed toward the sky. “And here comes your harbinger, as on schedule.”

A few dots of colour spangled the blackening sky, enlarging as they neared the balcony. It was a short, corpulent man floating in the air, holding what must be awfully buoyant balloons, given that he looked like such a burden. He touched gently unto the balustrade, to which he moored his balloons, and with a series of grunts and coughs he unclogged his throat and pulled from his pouch a leaf of paper.

“Good evening, your lordliness,” he said mannerly, and then he pivoted on his foot towards the masses, adjusting his glasses, and with a booming voice he silenced them and proclaimed his public announcements, reading aloud from the notepaper. He had brought with him tidings from the outer lands, of what lay beyond the barricade of clouds, and these messages were largely of misfortune and despair: political tension, territorial disputes, riots and picketing, and epic wars. To the boy these tales were riveting, but the rest of the audience yawned or prated amongst themselves; it was evident that they were sorely bored. It wasn’t until the harbinger spoke of trifles, such as a child grazing her knee as she fell off a bicycle, or a pet dog leaping over a stone fence and scurrying off while its owners searched for it frantically, or a crab being found mysteriously dangling from high up in a sea grape tree in the backyard, would the crowd fix their ears to his every word, and were almost floored with suspense. A handful of them nearly swooned at some points during his report.

The harbinger rambled on without end as dusk segued into night, furling and unfurling his long red moustache habitually. And eventually the boy too had grown disinterested in his harangue, as eloquent and ardent a speaker he may be.

“Time to wrap it up, herald. You’ve overstayed your welcome,” said the penguin as he skipped forward and shooed the man away as if he were an idle bird perched on a windowsill. “Visiting hours is over.”

The paunchy man snorted in protest at the penguin. He returned the leaf of paper to his pouch, untied his balloons, and sprang into the air clumsily, plunging sharply but then gradually ascending, swaying to and fro, and he floated away until he was indistinguishable from the starry night sky.

The boy slumped against the balustrade, head nestled in his arms, gazing pensively at the clouds, wondering where the balloon man had come from and where he was headed, until some activity in his peripheral vision nabbed his attention, what to his disregardful eyes was an appendage, or the like, of a shadow skulking furtively behind him and then fleeing as soon as it sensed its presence was uncovered. The boy swerved rapidly and scoured his proximities: the balcony, the wide room that spilled into the balcony, and, finally, the convivial tenants below him. Down there a sole figure, tall and lank, was jostling through the assemblage of vassals, wielding a lantern that illuminated his kempt grey hair, his sober countenance and tidy apparel contrasting from the drunken revelry persisting all around him. Unrelentingly and surlily he shoved and shouldered his way to the forefront and, when there at last, raised the lantern aloft and waved it as if he were brandishing it or signalling an army that was nowhere to be found, peering at the boy with sinister eyes aglow, and the people encircling him stumbled back, their hearts disquieted and joys sunk, according this stranger as much distance as they could on such a confined plot of land.

The crisis spurred a panic through the gathering like a chill sent up a spine. On the outskirts of the commotion an elderly man, unmindful of its cause, assumed from circumstances that they were under assault of monstrous beasts hungering for human flesh, whirled around with uneven, hobbling steps, while madly hollering, “Dragons! Dragons!” He was immediately leapt on and restrained before he caused any unnecessary alarm.

“Grant me entry,” the cryptic stranger before the gates bellowed thunderously. And, in doing so, he became the cynosure of all eyes, including the penguin’s.

“Who is that?” the boy asked the penguin, but his query went unanswered.

Wrigley stiffened himself into a militant carriage, and slid his beak through the interstice between two balusters. “What business do you bring to these gates, foreigner?”

“It is the concern of the boy only,” replied the stranger.

The penguin, incensed, ruffled his plumage. “You are in the master’s land, outlander, so you will abide by the master’s precepts and address him properly and accordingly.”

The man locked the boy in a cold, inimical glower, and asserted, “Your master is a fraud.”

The vassals gasped in unison.

But the penguin was unfazed. He looked as if he were merely carrying out his duty and nothing more, not caring to take the offence personally. “It makes you a foolhardy man to utter words of sedition within an earshot of the royal guard.” With a swipe of his wing, archers marched along the battlement and through every crenel and loophole and machilocation an arrow was directed at the stranger.

The man stood there, immobile and blinking sparingly as his stern gaze cast upon the boy not once yielded. In his mouth was a pipe, which he shifted from one corner of his mouth to the other. He raised his hand calmly, slowly, and the archers drew in their bowstrings closer, and after a last inhalation the outlander took the pipe between his fingers and blew rings of smoke, and, although he couldn’t explain why, this sight triggered an onrush of fragmented images within the boy’s mind. Something about this old man was awfully familiar to him. One image was of this very man sitting in a corner of a sunlit porch, on his designated wicker chair, laughing to himself as he listened to the radio, or amusing himself with many years’ worth of experiences and memories. Another, teaching him how to properly cast a fishing rod near an islet of mangroves surrounded by the clearest blue water. And in another he appropriated a strict presence as he severely scolded the boy for watching television instead of assisting his mother with washing the dishes. And emanating from the old man, like an aura, was a perpetual haze of smoke.

The boy snapped out of his trance. “I think you should let him in. Hear what he has to say.”

“Absolutely not,” said the penguin succinctly. “We don’t submit to mutineers.”

Wrigley had replied with such domineering harshness that the boy quailed and thought better than to defy him. He sat on the balustrade, eyes averted, and decided to keep to the background in these diplomatic affairs.

“You’ve grown so much and yet so little,” the stranger said. “Tell me, are you this much of a coward? You’ve shirked from responsibility and now your plan is to shirk from life too? Snap out of this, boy!”

The penguin, his expression stolid, lifted his wing as a warning, for if it were to fall, the fortress’ entire armaments would converge upon the outsider.

“You can feel touch, can’t you? Do you feel her?” he continued with an undaunted face beneath angled eyes and furrowed brows. “She’s holding your hand. She’s asking you to come back to her.”

The devoted vassals found that a line had long since been crossed, and came to the conclusion that they must act. As a mob they beleaguered the intruder, but were warded off as he unsheathed a sword and began hacking and slashing at any limb within its stroke.

The penguin dropped his wing decidedly, ordering a flurry of arrows.

The boy did not speak. At length he pushed himself up and darted a cross look at his seneschal before re-entering the castle.

Wrigley examined the aftermath from the safety of the balcony. “Oh it’s all bloodied,” he commented.

But none of the blood streaked across the field was of the intended target, who had evaded the barrage and vanished within the droves of faceless folk. Bodies were sprawled on top of each other, riddled with arrows. The tenants prepared to tally up the casualties.

The boy spent most of the night exploring his household, but he found himself making little progress in the grand scale of things, as the place was too expansive to be traversed in a single night’s undertaking. His legs carried him long after sleepiness crept up to him, as though he was driven by something the stranger had said, as though, for some reason, he suspected that the stranger had been speaking of his mother. With this on his mind, he assigned himself the task of finding the queen’s boudoir in this boundless maze of finery and paintings and carpets. He eventually came to a narrow flight of stairs, which mounted to a door that looked more like it led to a rickety attic than anywhere else. Still, having covered so much ground, he had grown desperate and would leave no room unchecked. He climbed the stairway, but, to his exasperation, the door was locked firmly. Wrigley caught him roving about the halls at this late hour and sent him back to his bedroom under an escort of guards.

Therein he malingered indefinitely. It had grown into a sort of a skill of his. Either that, or the people he was tricking were more lenient than he was accustomed to.

Although there wasn’t a day and night cycle in the strictest sense of the concept, the boy felt that he had whiled much time away hence lying listlessly on his grand-sized bed, with its soft bedclothes and festooned valances and its fauna of stuffed animals. He stared at the ceiling, then at the wall, then at the window, basking in pencils of sunlight and moonlight – the light’s source usually concerned him little. Every so often he would shut his eyes and concentrate on his tactile sensations to feel for those phantom pains, but all he could perceive was the comfort of the sheets and pillows beneath him. At times he felt a slight tingling on his wrist, like something thin pricking into his skin, and at other times he felt entirely senseless and numb. In spite of a cold, smelly fug of sterility that hung in the air about him and agitated him, he failed to see any point in getting up, even to open the glass windows and let in a refreshing breeze to dispel the stillness. His servants scuffled into his room like automata and attended to these annoyances instead, without his bidding them to do so, exercising everything within their menial power to ensure that his spell of languor was at least restful. The wind didn’t end up helping much.

He had been told that his absence from his routine public exposure had concerned his vassals, that their sportive spirits had been lost, and that they were all squatting on the ground, moping their time away. They refused to work, he had been apprised, although he questioned silently what their work could possibly entail, given that they didn’t have much in the way of arable land to plough and till.

It appeared to him that his pause of movement and sprightliness brought about a pause in time itself across his fiefdom. He never before realized that their bond was this tight and intimate.

One day a light rap fell upon his bedroom door, and in entered the handyman, whistling softly and carrying his toolkit, and he set up a temporary workplace in front of one of the walls, busying himself with something.

The boy turned his head a while afterwards, as if he hadn’t before been aware of his company. “What are you doing, Hershey?”

Hershey started at the voice, jumped up, and with slumping shoulders he turned to the master. “Oh, good to see you’re well, my lord. I was worried for a moment. Anyway, thought you might appreciate an air-conditioning unit in here.”

“Can we afford that?”

“Pardon, my lord?”

“Never mind. I suppose we can.”

“Hope you feel better, sir.” Hershey returned to his business.

An aroma wafted through the air and alighted upon the boy’s nose. He sniffed. “Hershey.”

Hershey dropped his tools and pounced back to his feet, and spoke complaisantly, “In your service, my lord.”

“What are you wearing round your neck, exactly?”

“Oh, these, sir?” He palmed the cut-out pine trees. “Funny you mention them, because they’re a real enigma.”

The boy mustered the strength to sit up. He yawned widely and emphatically and stretched his limbs. “How so?”

Hershey approached him with quiet steps, and slanted forwards, as if he were ready to tell a secret, chary that someone may overhear them. “Well, I’m not sure what they are, and especially not sure how they got themselves near the pool, but it was a most precarious place for them. Whoever’s guilty would assuredly be flogged, if I had any clout here. These little harmless things were what caused the Accident.” He said the last word with such resonance that the boy imagined it would have been capitalized if written.

The boy somehow recognized the smell. It was pleasantly minty. “Accident?”

“You were walking by the pool and slipped on them. Knocked your head soundly and fell into the water. It’s a miracle you didn’t drown yourself.”

The boy sat there on the cosiest of beds, hugging his knees. He would have leapt up at last and welcomed the day, but his pestilent melancholy lingered. Nothing as of late made a whit of sense to him. He would have readily believed Hershey’s explanation. It wrapped things up so neatly, it truly did. But on the surface only.

Halls held out his cupped hand. “May I see them?”

Hershey tore the thread round his fleshy neck and placed the two tree shapes in the boy’s hand. The boy rubbed his fingers gently over them, but their touch disclosed nothing. Both of the trees, however, bore the words “Air Freshener”. He put them to his nostrils and inbreathed deeply, reminiscently.

The boy tossed his sheets aside and clambered excitedly up to his wardrobe, fumbling through his habiliments. “Hershey, you wouldn’t happen to be a locksmith, would you?”

“A man of many talents is at your humblest service, my lord.”

Together they went through the halls, purposefully but surreptitiously, until they came to the locked door at the end of the flight of stairs. Hershey lumbered up the small steps and chinked and plinked at the lock with one of his tools momentarily, failed at picking it thus, so he stood there with his arms innocuously placed behind his back, whistling to himself and patiently abiding until no other of the house’s attendants was in sight, and then took up his hammer proudly and began bashing the lock until it broke off. With a triumphant grin he laid the door open for his master. He made it a point to remain in his place as the boy stepped through. “My lord, this would be overstepping my bounds, I think. I have my job to consider,” he explained.

The boy nodded assent and closed the door behind him.

The room was scantly lit, but the shafts of light were providing enough for him to see that everywhere was laden with dust from what one would assume was years or even decades of disuse, and was stacked almost to the ceiling with furniture – lamps and chairs and lounges and cupboards and cabinets – all draped in white cloths. As he undraped them and inspected them, these articles seemed simple and crude in their construction and design, unbefitting of this grandiose, stately residence, but they had this homely appeal to them. So he decided to rummage through the room, pulling out from underneath the tables several cardboard boxes full of old memorabilia, and he was embarrassed by photographs of him as a chubby baby, cross-eyed and buck-toothed, sitting in a bathtub or playing with a toy truck. He dumped these pictures into one of the boxes and began emptying the others with the hopes to organize them, and he discovered to his shock that all the photos were of him and nobody else. No family, no friends. Everything was about him.

In a brief access of rage he doubled his fists and kicked the cardboard boxes back underneath the tables, and in the process was distracted by another shadowy movement in the corner of his eye, and he glanced askance, accidentally kicking one of the boxes too violently, and heard a shattering noise as it crashed into something frail, like glass. He crouched down and peered, eager to learn what it was. Then he sprawled on the floor and outstretched his arm, reaching beneath the table, and fingered over pointed shards for the object.

It was a mirror coated in grime and dust. Nothing interesting, so he placed it on the table and continued his search. But he was promptly reminded that he hadn’t seen his own reflection, so, weary and filthy, he returned to it afterwards and sloppily rubbed its surface with his already sullied sleeve. He looked at it, then tilted it and looked at it again, and repeated this several times as his brain tried to register what it was perceiving.

His reflection was in no way out of the ordinary, though he was admittedly dirtier and more dishevelled than he had initially thought. What was bothersome to him was the fact that no matter what angle he looked from, there hulked an amorphous blanket of pure blackness behind him, dissolving at its extremities into his familiar whereabouts as they met his peripheral vision.

And, as he held the mirror at arm’s length and span around several times, he watched with marvel and disquietude as the objects in his rear view seemed to materialize out of, as well as dematerialise into, this sneakily imposing bulk of sheer nothingness.

He flung the mirror into one of the boxes, sat down, and held his head broodingly. He wasn’t really a scion of an illustrious family who kept this castle and this fiefdom. He wasn’t really anybody.

Everything was lucid to him now. He couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I knew penguins couldn’t talk.”

“My lord, I’m not quite sure I’m allowed to do that,” the sentry stammered through his helmet, as he stood in noble defence of the front gate.

“I’m the master here,” said the boy, “I make the allowances and disallowances.” He had spent the whole afternoon slipping through the attendants indoors and the tower vigil and patrolmen outside, and by this point he was fatigued and irritable. He confronted this one forthright; he supposed his exalted state of enlightenment had granted him an inkling of boldness. “Let me through.”

“You should at least not venture out there without an armed escort,” the gatekeeper pleaded. “I’ll call some people to accompany you.”

“No,” protested the boy, and he sealed his eyes tightly, and, when reopened, the harness of armour that harboured the gatekeeper crumpled and clanked unto the ground as if it had in fact contained within it nothing more than a pocket of air.

He set out unto the field, destined for its margin, for the white swelling clouds thereat, the curtains behind the stage concealing the inner workings of things. He ran because he at last could say that he yearned to discover its mystery, and he ran also because he was a celebrity amongst an army of fanatic idolisers, whom were alerted to him with wonted briskness and, once again quick to forsake whatever they had been occupying themselves with, streamed after him like a swarm of bees, the clamours of their rushing feet subdued only by their hails and cheers.

In front of Halls, standing amidst the stark whiteness of the clouds, was the old outlander, the firmness of his face now lost behind loose folds of wrinkles, holding his hand out, as he had been doing for quite some time, as if insisting upon it one day taking his precious boy’s. “Be brave,” he whispered, “and don’t look back.”

The boy slowed his pace and stooped before him, panting.

“I beseech you to think collectedly,” said the sharp and abrupt voice of Wrigley. “My lord, your worries, your duties, your mistakes, your regrets, they all reck not here, every one of them. Here you can start afresh, howsoever you want.”

The penguin hunkered down on his stumpy frame, and by his sides were a host of the castle’s attendants, and a few of the guards, and a horde of vassals, all aflutter and trembling and digging their teeth into their lips. Hershey stood with them, smiling abashedly, uncertain of what the sides were, much less which one to take.

The boy combed them all with his eyes, his brows knitting. And he looked to the outlander’s hand – veined, bony, and doddering, with pronounced creases in his skin – and then his eyes climbed up the arm and met his visage, which showed warmth and sincerity.

“What happened?”

“The car hydroplaned. You almost didn’t make it. You were lodged tightly under the car, headfirst in a puddle when they found you.”

“Is mummy all right?”

The old man was loath to answer. His chest sunk, and it seemed like his outreached arm had suddenly become cumbersome to him.

The boy scowled, his eyes dampened.

“Answer him, Ted,” said a sourceless voice from the clouds.

“Her injuries were worse than yours,” said the old man, sounding like every word pained him when it escaped his thin lips. “She slammed her head badly.”

The boy felt weak and nauseous. He collapsed and ground his hands into the lush grass of his fief, his eyes blear. And for a while he sat there doing nothing, immured in his shock, until his right arm at last arose slowly, tentatively, decisively, and then, signalling the archers whose arrowheads were steadfast to this shade of an old man, he swooped it downwards in a manner he emulated with faithfulness, as if it were in homage, and the penguin cocked his head up and found it flattering.

“It all recks not,” the boy said between stifled breaths.