The Porter

The Epic of Roses





Book One:

The Porter

Some words, some pages, fiction 2010





Dawn. The Porter hangs his head.  His bottom lip might begin to protrude.  He is thirteen.  According to the marks on the wall of the cave they have been stranded, lost on the rocks, for almost three years.  And although he misses his home, it is not this that brings moisture to his eyes.  It is his uncertain future.  He must leave the cave today.

         A cold wind rolls in the mouth of the cavern.  The chill has the Porter pull his hands to his shoulders where he feels the blue, white and red insignia on his brown jacket.  The emblem was the flag of the country he once had so much faith in.  But, where was his country now?  It was easy to believe in then, there, in the white-wool tunic of childhood.    Everything was copasetic until the cat got out.  It was all baby-smooth until the naked day broke in.  Grand were the days before any shipwreck that leaves it survivors broken in a nameless land waiting for winter to come and snatch anything still held dear.



Comedy donned tragedy’s mask and sat on the steps to the garden.



         Now the Porter feels his fears swell in the back of his throat.  A flock of excuses take flight in his head.  Secretly he seeks to be a bug or pet, something free from knowledge but…a memory emerges.  He lifts his head to the sky, pursing his lips tight.  He is remembering a line he read on a coin.  The epigram was translated from Old Rubian, “Let your fear be not your governor, brother.” 

He turns from the light of the bright white world where the song of the sea can loud be heard.  He dances across the stones that float like flotsam and jetsam in the tide pool at the mouth of the cave.  He is ready.  He must now see the Queen.  She sits in her throne of golden goose food.  Gray faces bloom like flowers in shadows on the way.

She wears the garb of a Queen, better than most, but with Lee jeans and Pay Less sandals her blood is red.  Her crown sparkles but her throne is constructed from crates of golden goose food.  The crates of goose food fill the cave behind her.  It is a whole season’s harvest.  On the crate to her right the Porter had painted a rose and on the box behind her head, an arch of seven stars.  On the crate to her left he had painted a sword and at her feet, the crescent moon.  He loves his Queen.

He wants the place to look like home.  When the King was alive these signs decorated the Kingdom of Roses.

The Porter was not born of the union of the King and Queen of Roses but adopted after his parents left their bodies.  They were wayfarers taken ill.  They managed to get the infant boy to the care of a villager; then retreated into the wood to die.  The villagers had only enough bread for the mouths at their table and so made the orphan a gift to the court.  The King and Queen had no children.

The seasoned Queen leans in to speak to the Porter.  The last of the tattered survivors lean in to listen.  Her yellow skin gives up a glow, almost golden, and her eyes, brown as her hair, seem to be always smiling inside, even when yoked.  Her nimbus makes him blush.  His green cheeks turn almost as blue as his hair.  His eyes are brown like hers but big and bambi and they seem to point to some distant star. Normally he minds all her words but today he is enthralled as she speaks.

“Dear boy, tell me this.  How is it I can sit on this throne and have it be my burden too?  How have I become the Queen of goose food?  We chartered a contract with the Kingdom of Stars and they betrayed us.  You remember.  We set sail in battle as the Kingdom of Roses burned.  I lost a husband and you lost another father.  If it were not for the heroics of Captain Sebastian we would all be under the sea.  Fortunately, we were dashed across the rocks of this hideous beach.

That rancid King of Stars got greedy and thought he could have the golden goose and the golden goose food.  For ten generations we had an arrangement.  The goose and her food were to remain divided by the Great Sea lest the King of Rubies get his hands on both the goose and her food, controlling the world economy.  Is it not enough having all the rubies and the modern marvels that come with them?  I suppose I could try to understand the avarice of the diabolically wealthy but my heart gasps with the thought of the King of Stars turning coat.  I simply can’t believe his dissidents, his gal, his Star brandishing armada and smug-bold armies taking Roses from Roses.  Oh Porter, why do men go bad?  I tell you what son: I’ve always fought for what was good and right and now my eyes water with injustice.  I’m far too fair a woman to have a throbbing vein pulsating with rage in the middle of my forehead.”

         Her head drops as if from exhaustion.  She begins to speak, lifting her head to make eye contact.

“This is the day we knew was coming and my decision is made.  It has been one year since the last solider left in search of rescue.  Now I will, I must let you go.  I will let my boy go into the hungry abyss.  I will send my Porter to fight the mystery that consumed my soldiers.  How can I toss my treasure to the wheel?”



Quite

“I don’t.  This baby boy didn’t land on my lap so many years ago without reason.  He will find the golden goose.  He must.”

To this the Porter replies.

“I will my Queen, I will.  What you say is true.  We are good people and we deserve an even field.  Once we have the golden goose we will be able to raise an army and take back our Kingdom of Roses.  The hating King of Rubies will have to fall back to the land in the south and we will control Roses in the east and the Kingdom of Stars in the west.  We will go and find our people in the hills and tell them the war is over.  We will tell them the good guys won and the land that was born Roses will stay Roses.  We will tell them that their home is theirs again.  It’s not fair that a wicked land should take a good one.  This is my Dragon my Queen.  Let me go.  Let me go and sink my teeth into the arm of the man that killed my paw.  I seek not vengeance but restitution.  I’ve been hemmed up, put away, in a cave for three years while we wait for the return of shaggy soldiers or a miracle shimmering on the horizon.  I must go with your blessing.  I want to get your chair off your back.  I have my columns in a row too.  I do not act prematurely.  Although I do appear young and consequently naive, I am quite aware of the ramifications of my actions.  Losing a father can put years on a boy, takes the finish off.  Before the sky dropped I wasn’t looking for anything.  What did I need?  I was a boy.  My concern was for play.  I didn’t even need clear skies or warm days.  See, I could have fun in a cold puddle because my house was safe.  My imagination was free.  And then that, that!  That was taken away.  Now I might not have pleasant words for the corpse of the King of Stars but I smell Rubies.  The King of Stars is sharing shade with that snake-faced beast the King of Rubies.  And I, I will sneak under their fence and snatch their golden goose, that it might serve on the side of light and right for a change.”

The Queen:

“And, if you need to share your story on the road?”

The Porter:

         “I am the Porter of the S.S. Pioneer of the Navy of Roses. I am a Green refugee raised on the charity of Roses, my Kingdom, my people…The Kingdom of Roses boasts a history of moral sovereignty in the midst of uncertainty that is told in short by the Legend of the Three Canyons.

 

The First Canyon: Adam left Tigers.  He took with him his followers claiming that the Kingdom of Tigers had become corrupt and was courting the return of catastrophe.  They crossed the Great River leaving Tigers behind and entering the Strange Lands.  Adam’s Caste lived without peace for many years as all the lands we’re claimed by local clans.  Seeking refuge and settling for less desirable lands, they made their way to the Mountains.  The stony hillsides were hard to farm and many had left to join the uncouth tribes where food was abundant.

One day, saddened by his choices, Adam climbed the tallest mountain.  He saw no new lands.  The mountains were held by the sea.  He knew that the night would beat him down the jagged peak so he dipped into a crevice that opened into a cave.  But he wasn’t alone.  There was movement in the dark.  He called out but no one answered.  There was a honk.  Then there was another.  Adam raised his lantern.  He walked into the black and saw a glimmer of gold.  It was the Golden Goose.  Around the goose’s neck was a ribbon and a note that said feed me.  He opened the note and found a special recipe for Golden Goose-Grain.

The Goose laid many golden eggs allowing Adam’s Caste to trade with the locals.  They flourished at the center of trade routes and with the bounty of the Sea to the north.  Snug in the Mountains, Adam became the King of Peaks and the Kingdom of Peaks was born.



The Second Canyon:  The Kingdom of Peaks prospered for twenty-two generation before the King of Rubies came to power, the Second Great Canyon.  He was a young king, much loved, and a little pitied as his father had died from a mysterious illness.  He was out on a hunt when a robed figure approached him in the dark forest at dusk.  The tall monk spoke with age and offered up the location of a ruby lined mine in exchange for the occasional ear of the court.  This is all he would need, an old man with no use for rubies.  The young king had heard stories as a boy.  He heard the Great Ones used rubies to create the technologies that eventually became be their undoing but, he wouldn’t let that happen.  This time they would be wiser.  It worked.  Rubies and ruby-powered products became the lands greatest export and the kingdom became the Kingdom of Rubies and the king the King of Rubies.  The shadowy monk didn’t disappear back into the forest though either.  He seemed to be around a bit, often spotted in the King’s Court at night.  Word began to move that he was a wizard.



The Third Great Canyon: Two hundred years passed and the King of Rubies had not aged a day since his alliance with Nox Noctis, the dark wizard.  The wizard was now a part of the king’s court and consulted the king on matters of state.  It was the year 1021.  It was the year of the Great Green Uprising.  The mines made us green and the rubies made them red.  The Prince of Trees gathered the green workers together to oppose the stiff Red Oppression.  Nox Noctis then whispered to the king “The only way to rule Rubies is with the head of the Prince of Trees.”  The Prince of Tree was tried for crimes against the state and lost his head.  Trees fell divided.  Life went on in Rubies but smiles became scarce.

The King of Rubies, whom had had many children and wives, and watched heirs to his throne die from old age, was in for a surprise by 1032.  Disillusioned descendents of his first born son, siblings, a would be prince and princess, split town in the night taking with them the Golden Goose and the recipe for her food and the half of the army they had won over.  One would go west to found Stars with the goose and the other east to found Roses with her food.  The goose and her food were kept apart to keep them from the avid hands of the King of Rubies.  The trade pact of goose food for gold was made between Stars and Roses and every year each would send their queen across the sea with their bloodline’s cargo.

This is the Legend of the Three Canyons.  This is our true story I may say to strangers but, to enlist help in confidence I must speak of the present.  There is now a forth canyon untold to history.  Now, Stars has turned on Roses. Our alliance is broken and Stars occupies Roses.  Our only chance is with the goose and we have no problem snatching her from the talons of avarice. 

         

Oh, my Queen my heart, mind and soul are on board for this and all clouds of doubt have been blown out to sea.”



The Queen:

“Then go.  Go, with my blessing.  And if there is only one angel in the heavens above, know she will be with you.  Remember my boy, heroes aren’t born they’re forged, formed under pressure like diamonds.  The image of the sword to my left is only a symbol for we have turned against the old ways knowing violence causes violence and even in the name of peace it, is, still, violence.  But for a mortal defending a kingdom and a boy defending his life this rule blurs and I give you my knife.  This blue glass dagger is fragile so, sting like a bee my son, only if you truly have to.”



The Porter takes the knife from the Queen’s soft hands and ogles it.  While he is transfixed on the light-catching knife the Queen of Roses leans in and leaves a delicate kiss on his crown.  He looks up.  She turns away.  She raises her arm and, slowly her finger and, points at the bouquet of light warming the exit of a cave he calls home.  He turns to see the gaggle of tattered survivors, family nouveau, standing by him with gifts for his journey.  Hanging eyes and barrowed smiles garnish the weary lot.  A cluster of shabby hands push forth first a map, then a canteen, some rations and finally the spyglass.  The spyglass is the only one they have.  There are hugs and tears, coagulations and doubts all with an undertone of, don’t forget us.  The Porter disappears into the light of the world.  He watches freedom and loss join hands and skip off into the distance.