When the crowd began addressing him as “king,” Alobar gasped. His heart swung off its pendulum, and his blue eyes stiffened like the ponds of December in a bowel-loosening, knee-locking, cider-evaporating attack of déjà vu.
“Viva Fabarum Rex!” he seemed to hear them shout, as if through curtains of snow and cake. “Viva Fabarum Rex! Long live the King of the Bean!”
According to custom, the King of the Bean had absolute license. For twelve days following his chance selection, he reigned supreme, ordering his fellows about and indulging his passions. He was allowed to wallow in every pleasure, however sinful. No door nor bed was barred to him. At any hour, he might enter another's house to eat and drink his fill. If he wanted a neighbor's wife, she was his; likewise any daughter. Obscene behavior, such as urinating on the altar of the church, not only was permitted, it was encouraged. Wherever he went, whatever he did, the Bean King was attended by a rowdy entourage, adjusting his mock crown (so that it always set askew), pulling at his mock robes (so that they revealed his buttocks), plying him with song and cider, cheering him, jeering him, egging him on.
When this was explained to Alobar, he thought, Well, if they desire a king, how fitting it be me. This kingship comes to me by sheer fortune, but I daresay none other is more experienced in the role. True, I had planned to give up these wintry days to contemplation, but it is festival time, and I could use some fun. Frol has satisfied me plenty, but I confess that there be three or four skirts hereabout I would not mind lifting. They wish a monarch, do they? Little do they realize that their bean, in its vegetable wisdom, has selected the one man suited for the job. Haw haw.
Then the peasants explained to him the rest of the custom. At the end of his twelve-day rule, on the Day of the Epiphany, the usual restraints of law and morality were abruptly restored. Still wearing his crooked crown, the King of the Bean was led to a certain meadow outside the village, where his throat was cut.
“Who's there?”
“Alobar. From the village. I must speak with you. Let me in.”
“Go away.”
“No! I cannot go away. I am the King of the Bean.”
Inside the hut there was a laugh, or the ancient animal ancestor of a laugh; a cackle wound like prickly yarn around the wild spindle in the throat of a fox. “You have strayed from your kingdom, Your Majesty. I am not subject to your authority. In fact, go frig yourself.”
Alobar leaned against the shaman's door. Never had he been so near to weeping. If only he had his beard back so that it might sop up the tears. “You don't understand. I am not playing games. I am not one of the peasants. I am a king.”
“So you informed me. King of the Bean. Go swill another cup of cider, Your Highness. And don't forget to ask the priest for forgiveness when you kneel in church on the morrow.”
Alobar bashed the door down with one furious lunge. He careened inside, sending broken sticks flying, and lifted the shaman from his mattress. Without a painted deer skull over his head, the old man did not seem so formidable. Alobar shook him until his various necklaces of various teeth chattered like a flock of enamel jays.
“All right, all right,” said the shaman. “What are you seeking, information or wisdom?”
“Er . . . why . . . uh . . . wisdom!”
“In that case, you're out of luck. Wisdom takes a long time, and you're going to be dead in twelve days.”
Alobar threw the shaman onto his tick. “No, I am not!” he screamed, stamping his feet. “No, I am not!”
“Oh? You're not? But you are 'king' and thus condemned.” The shaman grinned like a weasel running errands for the moon.
“I am twice king and twice condemned—and I am sick and tired of it. First a hair and then a bean. If death wants me, let him ride up on a pale mount, ashes in his mouth, ice in his testicles; let him swing a scythe and make horrible noises, let him come for me in person, not send some hair, some fucking little black bean baked in a goody by mutton-butt peasant wives. Even then I might not go. Frankly, I do not like the way death does business.”
A glimmer of interest showed in the shaman's eyes. He raised himself on his knobby hips. He glanced at the snow that was sifting over the contents of his hut. “Do you feel a bit of a draft? Here, help me hang this skin over the door. Then I'll brew us some mushroom tea, and we can discuss your problem.”
While his host hunkered over the diminutive adobe hearth, Alobar sniffed at the various braids of dried vegetable matter that hung against the walls, each broadcasting a different version of internal conditions within the plant kingdom, and he fingered the bones, fangs, and snail shells that, like chimes to be rung by the shaman's heavy breathing, dangled from the ceiling. Each fragment of flora and fauna had been removed from its original context and juxtaposed incongruously, yet each seemed perfectly in place. The party in Alobar's head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged. Torn between showing this thought to the door or seating it in a place of honor, Alobar was relieved of the dilemma by a steaming teacup, shoved into his grasp.
The shaman sipped ritualistically. Alobar told his whole story. When only the dregs were left of the one's tea and the other's tale, the shaman took several short pieces of string from his pocket and began to knot them together, mumbling all the while. “In my net,” he mumbled, “I bind the sobs of the dark ice cracking. In my net I bind the ax's response to the pinecone. I bind the larva's curved belly. I bind the hole in the sky where the comets escape. I bind the roots of the rainbow and the flight of the alder.” He went on and on in that manner—"My net binds the hornet's deaf grandmother"—until Alobar was ready to grab him and give him another shaking.
Just as Alobar reached the end of his patience, the shaman unclasped his hands, revealing the pieces of string, which in the knotting, had turned into a delicate violet, its petals the color of love bites on a collarbone. Alobar reached for the flower, but it burst into flame and was consumed in the shaman's fingers without burning them. It was Alobar's turn to mumble. “In the future I shall be more careful about whose door I knock down,” he said, mopping up with his sleeve the tea he had spilled in his astonishment.
The shaman laughed. “Don't pay any attention to that old magic,” he said. “It used to be powerful, but now it is only the pastime of a few crazy old farts who remember how to talk with weeds.” Alobar sought to protest, but the shaman interrupted. “Man is turning away from the plants and animals,” he said. “Slowly he is breaking his bond with them. Someday he will have to reestablish contact, if the universe is to survive. For now, however, it is probably best that he set out on his own in his new direction.”
“How so?”
“A salamander can be only a salamander, an elk an elk, and a bush a bush. True, a bush is complete in its bushness, yet its limits, while not nearly so severe as some foolish men would believe, are fairly obvious. The peasants of Aelfric are like bushes, like salamanders. They were born one thing and will die one thing. But you . . . you have already been a warrior, a king, and a serf, and from the looks of it, you aren't through yet. Thus, you have learned the secret of the new direction. That is: a man can be many things. Maybe anything.
“In the past, there was little separation between the lives of plants and animals and the lives of men. Nowadays, there are men who practice separation, not only from the creatures but from other men. The Romans with their Christianity have promoted the idea of the human individual. But you are neither Roman nor Christian, and you are no less smitten, so perhaps the spirit is in the air. The Romans encourage individualism, but they maintain rigid controls. Sooner or later, men will come along whose belief in the supremacy of the exceptional, extraordinary, isolated individual will cause them to declare themselves exempt from controls. In their uniqueness, they will not hesitate to defy accepted standards. Oh, these men will give Rome—and the Romes that shall follow Rome—a very large headache. You, Alobar, I suspect, are among the first of such men.
“No, no, do not object. I can tell that my words both delight and excite you.”
It was true. And in his delightment and excitement, Alobar had let his tea grow cold, so the shaman warmed his cup.
“Were you an ordinary peasant, I would dazzle you with another trick or two; I'd berate you and comfort you and send you back to Aelfric to face your death without alarm. Most of the peasants are content to die. For them, death means the cessation of toil. At last they can drop their soiled and battered bodies and enter the dimension of pure spirit. Plants and animals are even more comfortable with death. It is the natural end. But man by his nature is an unnatural animal. If any creature stands a chance of defeating death, it is man.
“If you were an ordinary serf, I would send you back to Aelfricto assist your neighbors in the public purification they undergo at the end of the old year and the beginning of the new, to help them mock the things they love best in order that they might revere them the more. I'd send you back to wear the sacred mistletoe, to be King of the Bean, to be sacrificed to the good old goddess of agriculture. Instead, I encourage you to ride this strange wind that is blowing through you; to ride it to wherever it will carry you.”
“But which way shall I go?”
“That is between you and the wind. You seem to be searching for a kind of immortality. With that I cannot help you. In the realms that I inhabit, death is a companion. One does not quarrel with one's friend. If you desire to meet masters with power over death, I suggest you travel to the distant east.”
“As far as Hellas?”
“Far, far beyond Hellas.”
“To Egypt, then?” In Alobar's mind, Egypt, with its confounding mirrors, was the end of the trolley line.
“As far as Egypt is, you must go three times that far.”
“Three times farther than Egypt? Are you trying to trick me? I would fall over the edge of the earth!”
The shaman snorted with laughter. “Alobar. The earth does not have an edge.”
It was Alobar's turn to laugh. He thought he might be in the company of a crazy old fart, after all. “What utter nonsense,” he declared.
“You are a free and special man, Alobar. Therefore I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Listen. I converse regularly with the birds and the fish. And the birds and the fish have assured me many times that there isn't any edge. We live on a ball, Alobar. We do. Keep this quiet: the world is round.”
So heady was the idea that Alobar felt faint. He gulped his tea and gazed into the shaman's eyes—eyes as shiny and black as the bean in the cake—to ascertain that he was not being joshed. When he was convinced of the shaman's sincerity, he stood and gathered his hides about him. “I suppose I should be off then.”
“I suppose you should.”
“I surmise that several Feasts of Feasts will be consumed ere I am returned. However, I should be pleased to build you a strong new door when next I pass this way.”
“You plan to return, then?”
“If the world be round, I can scarcely help it.” He chuckled. “Someday, I should like to mingle with my clan again, even if I must disguise myself to do so.”
The shaman shook his head. “I have it on good authority that Lord Aelfric's men are going to attack your old citadel as soon as the roads are dry in spring. They will kill all who resist and baptize the remainder. Long before you return—if you return—the independent city you once ruled will be but another Roman outpost on the frontiers of the Holy Empire.”
Alobar smacked his palm with his fist. “Then I must warn the clan! I'll organize a defense! Maybe we'll attack first! By the golden whiskers of the morning star, we'll show those turnip eaters what battle's about! They'll need more than one god to save their asses ere I and my boys are through, blah blah blah . . .”
“Too late, Alobar, too late.” As if to somehow illustrate his point, the shaman tore a badger mask from the wall and tossed it into the fire. “The foe is not merely Lord Aelfric but the whole of the empire. It is too large, too entrenched, has too much momentum. The world is changing, Alobar.” He gestured at the burning mask. “Don't waste your life trying to hold back the tides of history. History begot Rome, and history someday will bury it. In the meantime, you've other fish to fry. Have you forgotten? Are you to be an individual, a trespasser in territory none else has had the wit or nerve to explore, or just another troublesome mosquito to be swatted by the authorities? You're no longer king or warrior, remember, but something new. It will do your clansmen no good for you to be slain alongside them, but who can guess what benefits may result from a new life wholly led?”
“You are correct,” said Alobar. He sighed. “The clan, its lusty women and its noble hounds, lies behind me. It is forward I must go.”
After embracing the old man, he marched out into the snow. He aimed his boots at the east and forced his heels to follow his toes. Quickly, the little hut of the shaman was out of view. Out of sight, too, was the village and the manor.
Frol must suspect that I am taking swift advantage of my beanship, straddling another's thighs at this late hour, he thought. He sensed that he was causing her some pain, and that, in turn, hurt him. He would miss Frol and the babies, perhaps more intensely than he missed Wren and Mik. But there was a strange wind blowing through him, was there not? Was it not blowing him away?
The sky was a velvety black paw pressing on the white landscape with a feline delicacy, stars flying like sparks from its fur. The cry of an owl, brooding over its ruby appetites, cut through the frigid air like a vibrating pin. Then, all was silent except for the soft crunch, like ants chewing wax, of his boots upon the snow. His steps quickened. They took up a gay rhythm. He was very nearly dancing across the frozen fields.
“The world is round,” he sang, in tune with his footfalls.
“Existence can be rearranged. A man can be many things.
“I am special and free.
“And the world is round round round.”
A few weeks later, Alobar was awakened by a hot sun in his face and a hot stench in his nostrils. He sat up in the grass and rubbed his eyes. Don't ask where the rest of that dream went, Alobar. All dreams continue in the beyond.
The warm sunlight gave him a lazy, comfortable, lie-around-all-morning-and-scratch-your-armpits feeling, but inside his nose the cilia were waving, the turbinates were knocking, and the spheno-ethmoidal recess was on red alert: by Woden's honey pots, what a scent!
Nearby, a flock was grazing, and Alobar guessed the aroma must be its fault, but fie on wool and a pox on mutton if sheep were so rude to the proboscis. Perhaps in warm climates, sheep take on the odor of their cousins, thought Alobar, for surely it was the essence of goat that permeated his nasal passages, and rutting goat at that.
With a flock so close, there must be a shepherd in the vicinity. Maybe I can talk him out of a few crumbs of breakfast ere I get me to a prettier-smelling place. Alobar went to rise but something snagged his cloak and pulled him back down. Again he tried to stand, again he was yanked to the sod. He reached behind him to free himself from the branch or vine that held him, but he touched nothing. Scooting forward a few feet on his rump, he made another attempt at rising, and another and another, each with the same result. Angry and a little frightened, he drew his knife and, still sitting, whirled around. There was no one behind him. With all of the elastic in his leg muscles, he snapped himself upward. Thud! Down he went like a sack of meteorites addressed special delivery to gravity.
This time he just sat there, fingering his blade, giving every sheep on the hillside a good look at his expression of frustration, bewilderment, and humiliation. Nearly a quarter of an hour passed before, very slowly, centimeter by centimeter, sinew by sinew, he commenced cautiously to draw himself upright. And he made it! He was standing! He stretched, expelled a sigh of relief that fluttered the lashes of a ewe twenty yards away, and strode off, only in midstride to fall flat on his new growth of beard.
An outburst of wild, magn
ificent laughter resounded over the hillside and echoed from the crags in the distance; wild laughter because its notes were outside the range of the normal human voice and so uninhibited as to make the shaman's cackle seem fettered; magnificent laughter because it seemed huge in scope and rare in distribution; laughter that was simultaneously strange and familiar and that instilled in Alobar the fear of the unknown and the joy of self-recognition. It was laughter that might have been squeezed from the tubes of his own darkest heart, then amplified fifty times through the bellows of a loon's ass.
The laughter evidently affected the sheep, for all at once they began to bleat and kick, the oldest rams in the flock cavorting as if they were lambs. A breeze suddenly raked the landscape, drawing from the grasses a dark murmuring, and setting the thistle bushes to chattering like thin teeth. Bees abandoned the gorse to fly in crazy circles a few feet above ground, while the birdsong that previously had gladdened the hillside lowered appreciably in volume, its capricious trills and whistles replaced by a consistent melodic line, almost reverent in tone. The unease that Alobar experienced was as piercing as a thorn, yet there was a pleasant tightening in his groin, and his limbs felt ticklish and kinetic, inspired beyond his control to join the flock in its awkward dance. The way he found himself moving horizontally through the grass made him wonder if he had not been seized by the Serpent Power, if there were not an edge, after all, and if he were not dangerously close to it.