before turning his attention to Felonious.
“And you of the crooked teeth and nose, and arms and legs like a rubber hose, who gets into places no one knows. Yes you, with the greasy hair and the fingers nimble, who threads a needle without a thimble…I smell a thief, I smell a robber, tough as nails, no, not a sobber.”
Now surely you or I may have been offended by the voice’s callous commentary, but not so, Felonious the honorable thief. No, not old Fel; as a matter of fact he couldn’t have been prouder, and he told the voice as much.
“Felonious the honorable thief is at your service, kind sir. Albeit, honorable in degrees to be exact. Steal from the rich and give to the poor, why it’s a fairytale from the days of yore. A little for them and a lot for me, best describes my inclination…a bandit unarmed, so that no one’s harmed, and there you have it, fully explained, my noble occupation.”
“Well at least you are honest, I’ll give you that much… honest for a thief that is,” exclaimed the voice. And with that, now it was my turn to bear the brunt of his brutal kindness.
“And what are we to make of you my son, the tall and dark and handsome one? Of this vagabond group of joker and thief, surely you are the tree and the leaf. Surely you are the brain and the beef. Surely you are the captain and chief.”
“I am Francisco the tree dweller from the hamlet of Castleton in the land of the New Earth, my lord. And since you have already become acquainted with my friends, I’ll spare you further introductions…but back to my original question if I may? Namely, how have we come to find ourselves in this living hell, and more importantly, as my companion the jester hath politely asked as well; who are you, pray tell…pray tell?”
“Never mind who I am, and furthermore, I’ll ask the questions around here,” growled the voice. “First off, you came into this place of your own free will, and so I ask you, as the leader of this pack of wanders, what in God’s name brought you into this land?”
For the life of me, I didn’t know what to say and I was becoming increasingly frustrated by my inability to express my feelings. We were lost and we were searching, that much I knew for sure, but for what I couldn’t say. It was a struggle just to stay alive in this lifeless no man’s land, but despite the waves of darkness and hardship that had befallen us, I sensed a light at the end of the tunnel, and I tried my best to explain the feelings of friendship and shared destiny that kept us going as we fought for survival in this strange, unearthly forest.
“Well, I’m waiting, so speak now or forever be silenced,” demand the voice, and with his insistence weighing heavily on my heart, I fell to my knees and broke down in tears as I begged for mercy.
“Please my lord, take pity on us. We know not of how we came to be in this silent forest of eternal darkness. We know only that we do not belong in this or any other worlds within your realm. We know only that we belong nowhere other than in our fair land of the New Earth. We know only that we want to go home and we want to go now.”
My friends had never seen me in such a weaken state before, and they comforted me greatly in my time of need, while at the same time they lashed out at the voice, heedless of whether he be god or demon.
“How dare you bring a good man to his knees? I care not what foul hex you might lay upon my head, I say shame on you and this accursed world of shadows,” spat out Felonious in a venomous assault, the likes of which I had never heard.
The honorable thief’s willingness to tempt the fates frightened me to no end, but somehow it gave me strength just the same. And if I still had any doubts that required erasing, I needed wait no further, for now it was the roguish jester’s turn to confront his fears, and with his bravery lift my spirits up off the dungeon floor.
“Hey goddy goddy, take heed of our bodies, and cast us out from this dearth. Send us away, to where our forefathers pray, in the kingdom of our birth. We have wandered astray, so be he who you may, and return us at once to the land of the New Earth,” demanded Courtney as he shook a fist to the sky.
But regardless of their bravery, the voice was angered at the audacity of such servile creatures as we and he told us so; how dare we lash out at his higher power, the likes of which we should be thankful just to be in the presence of.
“Who are you three insects to speak to me about worlds of which you know nothing? In the vastness of my universe, you are but a speck of dust, a grain of sand, a teardrop in an ocean of waves. Your world is but a pebble rotating on the tip of my little finger…or if I choose it to be, your world might be nothing more than a figment of imagination peaking out from the mind of a mute and maimed child, real but make-believe, as true as it’s perceived, all at the very same time. “
Clearly my friends had angered the voice, which in turn had me pleading for the forgiveness of us all; and for that matter perhaps for all of New Earth as well.
“Please kind sir, we meant you no disrespect, but I beg that you might endeavor to understand our plight. We are merely lonely warriors who have travelled far and wide, seeking out the truth wherever we go, but we know not of these strange lands that we find ourselves in.”
If nothing else, the voice was a good soul deep within his heart and he couldn’t stay mad at the poor pitiable creatures of his dominion such as us, no matter how much mischief we got ourselves into. But on the other hand, he wasn’t above teaching his children a lesson for posterity’s sake.
“Ah, don’t mind me my fair friends…for I am but a misguided and crotchety old man who sometimes takes out his anger in the most inappropriate of ways. I know why you are here and so don’t you, the answer is as clear as the light in this beam that holds you.”
A dumbfounded perplexity settled over my companions and me as we huddled around each other in an attempt to unravel the mystery…but still confusion reigned over us.
The voice sensed our bemusement and he laughed in spite of himself as he administered our next clue.
“Come on now my friends…think. What is it that every man searches for?”
When it came to riddles, my natural propensity was to look to Court for an answer. But for one of the few times that I could ever remember, the jester was stumped, and all he could do was to shake his head in defeat. For his part, Felonious fared no better, and so I withdrew into a ball of concentration as I repeated the question to myself over and over; “What is it that every man searches for?”
I thought of my father, lost in the great battles of New Earth, and then I thought of my mother, stricken by the traveler’s plague, an illness which sent her slowly to her end. And finally I thought of the maiden princess, Salamandra, back in our homeland, sitting alone in the castle of her widowed father, John the reigning King of New Earth. I thought of the times I spent staring up at the light of her room in the turret facing the Eastern sky. How beautiful, how fair, and yet how lonely she appeared to be, cursed as she was to wait for the courtship of a prince who might never come. For so it was written in the prophecy of stone that the princess must remain a virgin queen until such a time that a prince, suited for royalty, was revealed by the converging light of the three moons, a beam rumored to be much like the light that I now stood under with my two companions.
Through the years of my youth and into my coming of age, long had I imagined myself in Salamandra’s arms, stroking her shimmering, silken hair of golden hues. And yet who was I but a commoner born of peasant’s blood. Surely, I had no more of a chance at courting the fair princess than I had at finding a needle hidden in a haystack the size of countryside barn. By all accounts, she was nothing more than a forbidden fruit to me, just like the fabled serpent hungrily writhing in the tree of apples in search of a lusty meal. But still I ached for her touch just the same.
And as my thoughts crystallized, all of a sudden the answer to the voice’s question became abundantly clear, as clear as the brilliant purple glow of the great rectangular sun of New Earth on a bright summer morning in Castleton.
&nb
sp; “We in the land of New Earth search for love,” I shouted up to the heavens.
“Splendid!” exclaimed the voice in a tone that was suddenly joyful, “now was that such a difficult question my friends? I suspect that you knew the answer all along,”
I looked at my companions and smiled in delight as Courtney raised his hand and spoke to the voice in an inquiring tone.
“Excuse me my lord but please enlighten me more, is this thing we call love, not a thing of folklore? It’s reckless, it’s careless, it’s a topic of songs…but for the life of me I cannot tell you to whom it belongs.”
“To speak in your vernacular, Court jester spectacular,” answered the voice with a chuckle, “love is the light from which we’ve all evolved, but love is also a riddle that can never be solved.”
“Surely you jest kind voice in the sky…for surely as sure as I am a jester…am I to believe, love cannot be sequestered? So tell us dear sir, can it really be real? Can it be that…with a kiss it is sealed?” countered an incredulous Courtney.
“Oh my dear jester, all I may tell you is that there are things in this life we must decide on our own, but if you open your heart, you are never alone,” advised the voice before once again seeking the council of Felonious.
“And how about you,