5) A Dream
Once upon a time, in an era of shifting ages, there lived an evil
toad-king and his beautiful fairy queen. You can only begin to imagine
the size of the toad king; he was as big as the moon, so big that the
layers of his being had manifested themselves as three separate
creatures, one within another. The innermost creature was conscious, a
evil grinning dwarf the shape and size of a basketball, with a nose
that trailed down his face to wrap around his belly. This little dwarf
nestled in the iris of a great pink eye, the size of a castle, an
enormous unseeing thing that looked outwards but never spoke. The eye
itself, as big as it was, was no more than a tiny ball of flesh
dangling from the back of the great toad’s cavernous throat. One could
only see the eye and the tiny dwarf occasionally, when the toad ate
with its mouth open, or when it grinned stupidly at a passing court
jester. The toad sat atop a mountain throne, impossibly large on top of
the crumbling rock, an enormous axe by his side. the tiny crown, long
lost, was said in legend to be somewhere atop his head.
“Gar, I smell a passing boar!” the tiny dwarf would echo out into the
darkness of the toad’s mouth. “We’re so fucking hungry. Axe that thing
so we can eat, you stupid fucking toad!”
The enormous pink eye would blink slowly, it’s fleshy wet lids rolling
wetly over the cursing dwarf. Occasionally, the dwarf’s scheming would
bear fruit, as the toad’s axe would fall upon the jester, a courtier,
or perhaps a passing god. The three could feast for a hundred years on a
lesser god.
The dreamer of this dream wonders how such an improbable being came to
take the hand of the fairy queen, a tiny, lovely, winged thing that one
could only see, briefly, as she shot off to the corners of her kingdom
to aid her subjects. That is, of course, unless you were in need, in
which case she was always there, holding your hand in her impossibly
small one, helping you through things.
The dreamer also wonders how the toad was able to sire the fairy queen’s
seven daughters. Seven vain girls with the beauty of their mother and
the temperament of their evil father. The seven princesses were
constantly riding out into the kingdom and wreaking havoc, intent on
undoing their mother’s good work. They found it to be excellent sport.
In the great mines at the base of the toad-king’s throne, a boy labored
away in indentured servitude. He was small, a human, as fragile as
mortals can be. But in his chest burned the heart of a hero. And, in
his eighteenth year, in a moment that was entirely impossible though it
now seems like it could not have happened in other way, the fairy queen fell
deeply in love with this boy. His entire life was to be but a second in
hers, and yet in that blink of her eye she found the desire to hand
over an entire existence to be one with another.
The boy did not notice the burgeoning love of his queen, however, as he
was questing into the heart of the mountain, struggling in ever-deeper
mines in search of something that he was sure was there. A freedom,
somehow, from the tyranny that the world had rained in lashes upon his
back and in walls of unyielding rock.
One day, the boy’s pick broke through the wall of a giant cave. As he
stepped in, he saw that it had been carved out by an ancient tree,
roots sinking deep into the earth and branches pushing upwards into the
rock above. Immediately, he realized that this single tree supported the
entire base of the mountain. In a single flurry of chopping, the boy
could fell the tree and collapse the toad-king’s throne, crumbling as
it was from the king’s weight and the decaying slime that issued from
his pores. The boy snuck away from that place, vowing to bring back an
axe the next morning to bring the toad-king down from his throne in an
avalanche of crushing rock.
That night, the fairy queen came to visit the boy, as over the years she
had found increasingly tenuous excuses to be at his side. But this
visit was not to be one of her happy, heart-fluttering evenings. She saw
that night that the fire in his heart had raged into his eyes, and she
feared what the boy might do with his hatred for the king.
She did not know what to do. She could not speak to him that night, nor
even look into his flickering eyes. In desperation, she asked her seven
daughters to follow him, to see what he was to do, and bring him to her
if they had to. For though she knew her husband had done terrible
things, she did not believe that anyone should be killed for their
transgressions, nor did she believe that anyone should kill in hatred.
The following morning, the princesses crept after the boy as he found an
axe and wound his way down through the tunnels to the ancient tree.
They discovered him just as he was about to take his first swing at the
base of the tree. Enraged by the realization of what he was about to do,
they tore the axe from his hands and ravaged his body with their claws.
Then they dragged his limp body, struggling with its last bits of life,
back to the surface, and flung it at their father’s feet.
The queen was overcome with grief when she saw what had happened to her
only love. She flew upwards and upwards, ever higher, beating her
wings, pleading for the boy’s life. The king, seeing the love with
which his queen cried out, picked up his axe and with a single, cruel
motion, ground its base into the boy’s stomach, dealing him a final,
mortal wound.
The queen’s heart sank like a stone. Her wings went limp, and she
followed her heart to the ground. Her body landed in twisted agony
beside his, and in this last breath, they looked into one another’s
eyes, searching for their sadness to have a meaning.
And as the last bit of air left their lungs, the boy finally realized
how much he loved the fairy queen, how much she had loved him, and with
the connection complete, they were able to share one last dream with
one another. . .
Life began again when they met, the boy and the fairy queen. There was
giggling in the tall grass and poking at one anothers’ awkward bodies.
In time, they were married, the princely young boy now a king, and the
seven daughters they raised together rode off in all directions to bear
the light of their kingdom to all the surrounding lands.
They had made much of their lives, the boy and the fairy queen, but
amidst their accomplishments and royal responsibilities, the intensity
of their love –a thing that, unbeknownst to them in this dream, had
survived death– had faded. And it was once again upon death that the
boy king and fairy queen found something that life had hidden from them
until the last moment. And again, they dreamed. . .
A farmer and his wife planted millet on the side of this green hill,
filling the valley with their laughter, and every night they wept with
the joy of their closeness. They had a young son who trundled wildly
after them pulling his little wooden cart behind him. He would squeal
with excited laughter whenever his parents lifted him up to the sky. I
am so happy, the father cried one day, saying it only before he and his
wife were overcome with the force of that feeling. The joy of that
moment multiplied infinitely with its preciousness, for it was ending. .
.
For it was the last flicker of life that they had of that dream, that
dream that filled the last bit of light of a dream dreamt by a boy king
and his queen, the king and queen living a life in the last moment of
agony of two would-be lovers, bodies twisted at the feet of an evil toad
king.
]]>
