Alternatives

When I was much younger, there were choose-your-own-adventure stories. But those weren't very impressive to me; I used to map them out as trees and colour the trees for the heck of it just to see how they might look.

And once in a while, you realise the only story you really know is your own.

That tree looks really strange. Over the last two years, I've realised how strange. So what I'm going to do now is show the un-strange parts, because they frame the concept in a different way.As is common these days, you might want to move backwards in time, explore the 'nodes' in the 'adventure'. But life is a lot more complicated than that.

In about a quarter of the options, I am still living with my parents. In about a third of the options, I'm in a stable relationship with a significant other. These two sets of options seldom overlap.

Quite often, I'm not living with my parents, but I see them with a frequency ranging from once a week to once a year. There are extremes — living nearby, or not living. Yes, I am quite sure there are terminal options in the tree, and I've already nearly experienced a few.

This is not The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock or any parody of it. Unlike Prufrock, I've not wondered very much about the time, women who don't notice me, or old age.

But there were key moments. Stick, or twist. Stay, or go. Stand and fight, run and skirmish. The thing about life is that it offers no replays of which the protagonist can be aware. You have to be happy with what you have in the awareness that you could have had better, or far worse. There is no way of knowing what the story might have been.

Sometimes, I still go through branch-narrative stories and games. Sometimes, they do make me feel a little wistful, as of lost sunsets and faded opals, dew gone with the sun, brandy gone with the moon. But in the end, it's back to the working out of this branch, the branch on which I perch and from which I look out over the vast landscape of the forest.

Beginnings

"In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census be taken of the entire Roman world..." So begins one of the most interesting stories ever heard, only blunted in its meaning by many centuries of repetition, of people hearing it without really listening.

It is the way I feel at the beginning of every August month.

The Night Circus

It is a dark tale and yet light. It is like two ravens, except that where both might be black and stare with amber ruby eyes, one here is white like a tall tower in the morning sun and has the blue eyes of that particular day.

I played the game, and then I read the book. And my heart is like a red banner, a bright flag of the many things I hold to be true while knowing that I do not know whether they are or not.

If you, gentle reader, come across Ms Erin Morgenstern's book, The Night Circus, read it and try not to weep. One cannot really lose what one never really had.

But, oh, the pain of loss even if that is true!

The Cigarette-Smoking Man

There were two men waiting in my office. As I walked in, they stood. My secretary mouthed, "I have no idea."

These guys were odd. Together, they would have made one 6'6" bald guy with large hands and a warm heart. Individually, a different story. Tall, balding and skinny hands said, "Benson." Not-so-tall, bald, and large hands said, "Hedges." Both sounded half-hearted.

"What can I do for you gentlemen?" I asked. My left nostril was blocked, and I hadn't had my morning coffee yet.

"We'd like to know..."
"... what we should know..."
"... as the new head... "
"... of the Fortress."

Yeah, they had that irritating complete-the-other-guy's-sentences thing.

And then I woke up. Something about Benson, Hedges, cigarettes, and consonantal and vowel shifts drifted out of the dream and left before I could catch it.

But it got me thinking. What to tell the non-cigarette non-smoking man?

Nostalgia

Wolff nodded grimly to himself. He sat at an old table, his fist near the sherry decanter and his sword in the corner. He poured. And sipped.

=====

In his mind, he saw a line of brave knights, before his time, not so many after. One by one, in some perverse mirroring of the Grail quest, they had been sent forth, with the sole purpose that they not come back to the Citadel. And so the fellowship had been broken, and the false knights had gained power without a fight.

He thought of the ivy that used to adorn the tower, and was no more to be seen. He thought of the keen swords and the sharp wits of those who saved the sum of things for pay.

In the ruins, the things crawled. Sometimes they seemed to cry out in the tongues of men, but Wolff suspected it was wishful thinking that made their morologia into speech.

In the ruins, the rats chittered and the bats squeaked. Where the Grand Inquisitor had once laid heavy hand, the signs and symbols were tarnished and scratched. Desolation was the name of the city, the ancient city of the Citadel.

But outside, the walls were brave. The children looked like knights in their armour of tin and satin, where once was bronze and steel. Yet each year, the dilution continued, and nobody noticed, because you cannot watch watchmen when they are gone.

The Grand Inquisitor had decided to go south for his health, or so he had told the remaining officers of the Citadel. Ignominy had never been easy to deal with for the sons of men, and for that man, hardest of all.

He cracked a crippled joke: "Do not leave the Citadel because I have left it," he urged. At the back of the room, several knights laughed grimly and walked out. They had already purposed in their hearts to leave, because they had thought he might stay. They continued to have misgivings about what might come next.

=====

Wolff had sipped once for each of the lost. The decanter was nearly empty. Outside, through the windows of his rooms, the night was full. But he was sure that in the morning, the sun was very likely to rise again.

=====

Note: The fictional adventures of Sir Wolff do provide much that is of interest. You can find them linked here. Just ignore the one about earwax. That was an accident.

The Attributes of God

We learnt, in the old days, of Mass and Distance, Duration and Energy; we learnt of the Fluid Electric and the Power Dynamic. These we learnt were the fibres and the sinews of the universe, the impulses and the machinery. And if there was a God, He had to be beyond all these things.

So as we learnt more and more, the boundary seemed further and further, our horizon wider and wider. And still we said, if there is a God, He has to be beyond all these things. Which seemed to us that, if true, it meant that God was further and further away, and had less and less space.

For we filled all the space of our thought with names and named things, and if what we named was not God, then why, of course, there was always 'beyond' for God to be in. This was when we were young and foolish; we thought of our powers to name and to identify as great powers and mighty.

But what we failed to see was that we could name every molecule in our little puddle (and for every 18 grams of it, there were 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or so) such molecules) and give names to every possible interaction between each one (and of those there were many more) — and this was not yet wisdom, nor power, nor majesty. For being part of a puddle, and knowing about water, and each molecule, and on our scale, the differences between them (for no two molecules can be the same, according to the High Priests of the Quantum) and what they did — these were nothing compared to the greater molecules beyond, and beyond, and beyond.

And still, we said, well, God is not a water molecule, and we can see all that is, it is all water molecules, and perhaps, the forces of van der Waals, the temporary loves and hates of evanescent dipoles, and above all, hydrogen bonding — and within all, covalent bonding, and around all, perhaps gravity. So God, if there is God, is beyond that.

One day, another puddle was consumed by fervent heat, and its elements laid bare. And in that one blinding moment, we realised that there was oxygen, and hydrogen, and smaller things than that, including a binding energy that we could not have known. And all these things we tried to name, even as the names sublimed in the radiance of the final moment. This fascinated us.

Yet another puddle was consumed by a plant, and photosynthesis occurred in the sunlight and carbon was added to the vocabulary. But though there were also magnesium and nitrogen and phosphorus and many other elements, the new universe of carbohydrates did not see them, and rejected them. We were quite sure that such things must exist, but they were beyond our experience, and we saw them not, and wondered at shadows.

=====

The man sipped his black, black coffee. He wondered what they would think, if there were minds dwelling on the surface of water molecules, and a molecule of 2,4,6-trimethylxanthine hove into view. He wondered what they would think of his spoon, unused, if he were to plunge it into the atrament. They would probably understand sugar, and not like it much, he decided.

He blew across the face of the hot, hot coffee. And he had compassion upon them.

But no, he was not yet God, although very soon, the coffee would make its way through the marvellously complex world of his biochemistry.

Disdaining Fire

You dig up funny things sometimes, like this story written 24 years ago while skipping lectures. For some reason, it seems to reference many things of the present. Maybe nothing has really changed, as the protagonist eventually shows.

=====

Disdaining Fire

He woke, as usual, a little after midnight, the old dreams running from his mind like water, like horses of the night. The last fleeting darkness was of women: "From Dawn to dewy Eve," the poet had said, unknowing. Indeed had he fallen, mused the careless man to himself, though both were lovely girls. So many of us, so many dreamers dreaming; those were wondrous days indeed.

He stretched, rose, thought. His raiment was pale blue and appropriate; his eyes were darker, Mediterranean; his slightly curly hair and athlete's body were oddly lustrous with a brown that had the radiance of fallen gold. He sensed nothing in the air around him, felt comforted. What does the old man do now, all alone on the high mountain? Does he care?

He decided not, with a twinge of distant irony. He remembered laughing as Old Clubfoot was cast away, taken from the metal of fallen stars and made to work at copper in reminder of his disrespect. Fallen stars indeed; hah, now, they were all cast down alike, for an old man's paranoia. The light of his countenance could no longer be lifted up, and the careless man had long since passed Regret over in favour of Acceptance.

Is there anyone left to check the bridles, the bits? Do the golden horses wonder where their master is? The men of science, as they walk around my cell, they speak of a warming Earth, of holes in the Aegis of Zeus. Can it all be true?

The careless man asked himself a lot of questions each day. The thrill was not in answering them, but in the asking. In the old days, people had asked him questions, and he had received them all with gladness, happy at the varied flavours of every query, distinct and unalloyed.

He walked around, felt the warm cladding of his recent prison. No fixed abode, they'd said. He had wanted to laugh, tell them with a straight and honest face, hey, we are all wanderers. But something of his ancient cunning had stopped him, reminded him: hey yourself, don't you need a secure place to hide?

They had brought him to a place of lights and warmth and soft inquiring voices (he had enjoyed that familiar sensation), where men in blue worked with men in white, as in the temples long ago.

What's your name? the gentle man had asked.

Ask him if he's got any relatives, the stern woman had hissed.

The gentleman had tried English (insipid stuff), Spanish (rather entertaining), Italian (mellifluous, but spoken badly); in the end, he had decided to answer to Greek (not the jagged style of his youth, though).

The careless man felt Memory tug at him. O Mnemosyne, Mnemosyne, how art the flighty fallen! Releasing his recollection for a while, he fell back into the eternal past. There had been giants in the earth, then. He began to hear the ancient tongues. Why, he realised with some surprise, modern tongues are nowhere as elegant, nowhere as artfully crafted! So much for the intellect of man. They've given up communion for games.

Carefully, he disengaged Memory's fingers, came back to the immediate past with her hand lightly held in his. Yes, the gentle man had spoken in halting Greek, and he had answered. My name? Aristopoulos. A-R-I... yah. Yes? Oh, I was antique dealer... par don? No, I look quite young, yes. My family, they all look young on my mother's side. Yes, I have father and mother. Where are they, you ask me? Father still in Greece. Mother living somewhere else.

The stern woman looks at the paper where the gentle man scribbles. She whispers harshly, Ask this hard-luck kid what he does for a living now, what happened to his job.

Oh, recession nowadays. Not easy to live. Nobody afford antiques, now no money. I also no money. No place to live. Go unemployment office. (He smiled, remembering his imitation of a bewildered immigrant Greek youth.)

And then the gentle man had said, Mr Aristopoulos, we will give you a place to sleep in tonight, OK? and he had replied, Please, yes.

He spent the night in a barred room, a prison cell. And then, he had scented the Seeker behind the walls. It had walked into view, also dressed in blue, but a darker blue, wearing emblems of authority. Of course, it looked exactly as it was supposed to. The Seeker had walked straight to his cell as he ducked into the corner, hoping it was a mistake, and knowing it was not.

The Seeker unlocked his cell, looked at him as he sat in the corner.

Come, said the Seeker, and the steel-barred gate had begun to open (oh, slowly, creakily—needs oiling—and slightly grittily. Time was sluggish, and he needed it all. He would not be taken, would not go home even if the old man begged, threatened, commanded. A loud scream, blood, commotion. Shit, he killed the lieutenant!

Lieutenant? Hah, that thing hadn't even been human.

Then, weeks of incarceration, stupid tests (look at this black picture, what do you see; tell me about your father; why did you kill the lieutenant), measuring of his bodily functions. He had taken care to be completely mad, and they did not dispute it.

Now, they had locked him up, fed him through a door guarded by burly men each day. And he was happy with the walls painted in thick, cheap, peeling lead paint, for they hid his aura. He was marginally unhappy with the creature comforts (especially the abominable lack of good music; muzak, forsooth!)

But the time was upon him. Six-seventeen, today. He was prepared, waiting in the confines of his new locus. Soon, the Atlantic seaboard would receive the waves of the stormy sea, and he would hear 'old Triton blowing his wreathèd horn'.

In the distance came a booming so faint that no mortal heard it above the noise of the cosmos. Yet, it reached through the interstices of the void, trickled through his ears to trigger the ringing in his cochlea, the striking of an ancient hammer against an anvil of bone. The summons to obey his ancient duty, to bear his share of the long burden of his distant brothers, had arrived. Time. No time. And where, called the careless man, O where, Lord Helios, are the golden destriers of the sun?

Skyclad and powerful, in the dark just on the edge of dawn, Apollo smiled. Disdaining fire, he reached out with the immortal fingers of his soul, and, as in every other day in his handful of millennia, brought the sun to life.

Gasbags

In a certain city-state, not so far away, the wise men raised the price of electricity by 21%.

The public representative asked, "Why was this done?"

The reply from the electricity man was, "Because the price of oil has gone up quite a bit."

The public representative said, "But 80% of our electricity comes from natural gas."

The electricity man replied with a perfectly straight face, "But we don't know how to price gas; however, we do know how to price oil. And oil is high, so you will all have to pay 21% more."

A village elder said, "Hey, wait a minute, the gas price is now about 20% of the oil price and hardly bears any relationship to it anyway! It is like monitoring the price of gold and using it to price silver!"

The electricity man said, "In the absence of evidence, we are forced by market forces to charge what the market will bear."

And that is how bears came to the city.

The Dragon Waxing

Scaly and golden, the dragon grew. In the damp, hot weather, it accumulated mass and concomitant weight. In the cave of its birth, its hardening amber armour gave it strength and confidence. It wondered when it would see the light of day again. It stirred briefly, and the cave moved around it.

In the outside world, its stirrings were eventually felt. For days, the guardian of the cave felt discomfort, almost pain. He prepared a lance, and oiled it with care.

The dragon woke in the body, and began to stretch wings, fine and delicate webs of dragon-stuff. Those webs also became thicker with time and hot weather.

The guardian felt a buzzing. For a moment, he felt disoriented. Then he knew. And he prepared to search the cave.

=====

An hour later, it was done. Sir Wolff withdrew his lance, examining it critically with an experienced eye. The container was full of dark brown and amber fragments. "Wax!" he muttered to himself. "Thank God I can hear properly again."

Fading Ghosts

For three years, the battalion was senior to all the rest. They had occupied the same barracks for a large part of that time, and as the former major walked along the company lines, he could not help but feel a twinge of emptiness. He was used to taking the salutes from certain faces, the tactful avoidance of others; he could not help but feel unease when those salutes came from soldiers he did not know.

"But their names are known to God," he told himself. And so, he steeled himself and learnt the new names. He could not help, on occasion, but to draw comparisons between those who had marched off never to return, and those who were their replacements. It was odd, strangely dissatisfying. He had not felt that way for many years.

And slowly, a little at a time, he learnt to be trusted and to give trust again. He learnt the names. He read them as he used to read their seniors. While at times he would see the ghostly vanguard or the spectral knights, and once even an Arthurian wraith, he learned to carry on, giving the old lecture with new jokes, teaching the new equipment as he had taught the old.

Very slowly, he blended with his craft. In time, though he did not know it, he would himself become one of them, a fading memory on a field of blue and gold.

Counterfactual

This place is where I write, and it is a dangerous place. What you see as fact is almost always fact, and yet it must be hedged around to protect the innocuous and innocent. However, the hedging-about is itself a danger to such. What then should the writer do, since all is danger? There are two solutions: to not write (which is a lot like not breathing) and to warn.

So I can speak freely, since it is the morning of the day itself. But I must warn that what I say is hedged about.

At this point, as the sun rises in some distant realm of the peaceful ocean, it is around midnight where the College of Wyverns stands. It is a cold afternoon at Burnley, where the Gunners have just triumphed in a lackadaisical manner. And the results of the Great Examination are free over the cables.

Yet I am bound. Master of rituals, observer of rites, keeper of archives and writer of rhymes, I am bound. I cannot tell what is already free. Which leaves me to ask the questions that nobody will, since I do not know the answers. Whether it is true or not that half a legion can find the answer to the life, the universe and everything (or even more) is unknown. Whether it is true or not that Hooke's law (F=kx) was violated is also unknown.

Why is it that we must grub and dig for scraps of information when it is so free, so rich, so useful and ameliorative of stress? Why should young people be made to rub their troubled brows when a moment's largesse would set them at liberty to laugh and love and have a life? Are we indeed so cribbed and cabined, bound by saucy doubts and fears, that we must deprive others?

My grand-uncle said it well, that old and crafty gnome. This is what he said. And perhaps although his light has long since dimmed, its ancient residues might illumine your path a little, as it has mine. I am Number One Goat and I bow to the four corners of the earth (as Barry Hughart might have written), unknowing, innocent, a sacrifice to the craftiness of the powers above and the powers below.

Anchored

There was a time not too long ago when I felt totally betrayed by the guardians of the local flame. Deep in the fireheart, their ordinal superiors agreed that I'd been given rather the short end of the stick. And perhaps the greatest irony was that Lord Thunder felt moved to pray for my immortal soul, for after all, my discouragement might lead me into sin.

Strangely though, I was not discouraged. That story is told elsewhere. But now I will focus on the centre of the storm, and the words that held me fast amid the wrack and warp of hope. There is a hymn, you see, that my grandfathers (both chaplains of that particular Order of Midnight), were wont to sing. It is about an anchor. And here let me show you wolf and anchor, wanderer and fixed point, made one.

=====

Wolf worried about the anchor. It was an unnatural mass of iron, from an unnatural world where wood was shaped and left to float constructively at sea. He himself had no quarrel with storms; the fall of rain soothed him as it failed against his fur. But there it was, an anchor in the middle of the wood. It had some special significance, but Wolf had forgotten it, being Wolf.

And there he was, sniffing at the anchor, trying to remember what it meant, when he smelt the man-smell a little too late. They had rifles, and although badly-trained, the myth of the wolf was potent. They had knives for the kill and the gutting, and were not inclined to see that the wolf was actually a noble kind of dog – not a slave, but a more independent creature.

The first shot cracked, whined against the iron cross of the anchor. Wolf spat in surprise and ducked, frantically seeking the enemy and looking for a bolt-hole. That saved him from the second shot, which raised his hackles as it groaned complaining off into the night. A hunter flung himself at Wolf, a long knife flashing. There was no time to howl. Wolf twisted, turned.

The snow steamed around them. Humans and wolf danced a deadly ballet around the unmoving iron in the midnight wood. In the distance were dim lights, a church where watchnight music was sung. The lights flickered in the wind. The trees were very old, and if they had sympathies, those were more with Wolf than with his pursuers.

Rain he could stand, but his fur was not proof against steel. His blood steamed on the ground. Wolf felt more irritated than afraid. The hunters cried out, unable to bring their guns to bear at close range, in the too-populated dark. It would be knife work. They were frustrated by ice, iron and night. Wolf felt their fear. He had weapons too. He struck, silently.

The music thrilled him. He heard it running like a horse, like fire or water. It informed his strategy. It made him feel more alive than the shadows who hunted him. Their nightmare was his strength. He laughed, and bit someone else. Everything got confused. Wolf heard the singing, and if he could have sung, he would have joined in. The hunters cursed.

Will your anchor hold in the storms of life,
When the clouds unfold their wings of strife?
When the strong tides lift and the cables strain,
Will your anchor drift, or firm remain?

We have an anchor that keeps the soul
Steadfast and sure while the billows roll,
Fastened to the Rock which cannot move,
Grounded firm and deep in the Saviour’s love.

Morning came. It rolled out white and clean, like lightning in the hills. Wolf licked his silent, empty wounds. He was still alive. The hunters had gone, taking their guns, their knives, their casualties. Wolf had no idea of what it was he had forgotten, but he knew it was right. Turning his back on carnage, but remembering the anchor, he wandered off into the cheerful day.

Autumn Tides

I am an empirical observer, in part. While other parts of me are magic-realist or metaphysical, there is part of me that sees and writes. And after the empiricist has seen and written, the thinker thinks. The last act is that of the bricoleur, the part of me that pieces the thought-fragments together into a narrative.

This is one such narrative. One of those stories which is like a folktale: sparsely true if at all, and truly sparse.

=====

I was a reverse immigrant once. When I reached the old country, I saw hope and vision, and many young people who were willing to help build it into a new country. I worked hard and I was good and bright and creative, and so were they. And all of us were rewarded and we grew in our powers, and we made bridges and communities and towns upon the landscape.

And then the Blight came. It was not a very obvious blight, just rust and dust and a smut upon the leaves. My brothers and sisters, full of light and talent and raw mastery and great heart, they began to feel the shadow upon them. We encouraged each other of course, as siblings do. But one by one, the Blight marked us.

It is the way of all grand endeavours, that there are periods of great revival and of headlong descent. We were young and we did not see this. Eldest brother marked the time, but he had no answer, and no solution. He said, "If we are clever, we will survive. But we cannot be too clever." (Ah well, he still survives. One day they say he might be king.)

My eldest sisters were clever, and passionate, and did a lot of work. They made new houses and mills. And one day they were taken away. Eldest brother nodded wisely and said, "They were too clever. They will be made to do work elsewhere." And he stroked his beard.

My elder brothers were machines. They made great show of their powers, or they made great powers show, and they were idealistic and cynical and mighty in the land. But they grew tired at last, and their wives nagged them, and nagged them, and nagged them, and they went to other places too. And very quickly, there were few of us left.

There were only a few aunties and uncles of the old time, who had never left, and thus never returned. They kept things working, but not much else. They were good at cleaning up the mess, and making things work normally. But they were not so good at new things.

And suddenly, when I looked around, I saw my brothers and sisters had fallen. Some had become like the aunties and uncles, some looked wistfully at the other lands where our other brothers and sisters had gone. And I, who was once young and hopeful and bright and creative, was no longer so.

Now, I sit in the town square I helped to build. My hands are old; they shake, spilling coffee (what a waste!) on the dirty stones. I have some young cousins, from other lands, the Ausländer types. They will build new coffee shops and maybe mills and houses. But my time is done. Nobody knows me.

The children gather round to hear my stories sometimes. They never believe them. Because, of course, they are wise and my stories are not true.

Here Be Dragons

I wrote this story 20 years ago, when I was young and the memories were fresh. Shiv has spoken of magic-realism. There is some truth in this; the supernal is everywhere, and all things possess a surreal nature which transcends the mundane. This is a very long post, and if I apologise for it, it is because it might not be good enough. But it's mine. I wrote it in 1987 and it was first published in Tesseract, the Science Fiction Association (Singapore) magazine, 1st Quarter 1991. This version is almost completely free of edits. Almost.

=====

I:

Al, as usual, was a bronze dragon: intelligent, romantic but a little cynical, satisfied with the quality of his life. We sat in a pizza restaurant somewhere along Bukit Timah Road with wine and pasta before us, and journeys behind us. We spoke of futures, as mythical figures often do. I was trying my hardest to be a sorcerer: mysterious but unsure, skilled but unwise. I looked sidelong at him, trying to read his careful expression.

"When you're out of national service, what will you do?"

"Become a geologist," he replied. "I've been reading this book on the tropical rain-forest.

"What's that got to do with geology?"

"Nothing, really. Why?"

I sighed. A dragon should know better, was what I thought; although, of course, you shouldn't say such things to them. This one was a friend, though. I waited for the explanation.

He continued, as if unveiling a surprise, "Really, I'm interested in plate tectonics." He paused for a while, looked at me expectantly. I remained, inscrutably, a sorcerer.

"Continental drift, earthquakes, that sort of thing." Musingly, he said, mostly to himself, "The rain-forest book had some very good photographs in it; I would have bought it, but it was rather expensive."

Dragons are like that - they window-shop a lot. What they do buy, they hoard. Bronze dragons have an entertaining little quirk: unlike most other dragons, they don't believe so much in possessing things. Intellectual property is more their sort of stuff. When looking at grimoires or enchiridia, if the price asked is too great, they'll haunt the book, but not buy it unless they must. They'd rather visit it respectfully from time to time, memorizing it in little bits. The reason dragons keep the company of sorcerers is that they find it convenient to borrow books from them. And why do sorcerers keep the company of dragons? Ah, because they make marvellously entertaining companions, of course.

The conversation faded into the background. It went on while the rain came outside, borne by the thin wind and the storm. Amber light glinted through the sharp and rainy night on the windowpanes. I was thinking of dragons. Maybe, dragons were thinking of me. I'd known lots of them. It's always useful for a magician to be able to understand and speak to dragons.

Mentally, a review.

My friend Shen, a silver dragon: without certain purpose though of great rational intelligence, a good friend but subject to temperamental instability, lethal when roused. Like most of his kind, he excelled at games of skill and reason. He'd been one of our best chess-players until he'd gone seeking wisdom elsewhere: the arts of healing, in the English midlands. Shen still writes with great conviction mixed with many questions on the nature of things.

Sean, on the other hand, is a red dragon, one of a bright and savage race. He's got typical red traits: a tendency towards violent solutions and fiery resolutions, gracefully aesthetic artistic abilities, extraordinary strength and endurance. The red dragon is a beast of a thousand contradictions. This fellow plays the piano, behaves impeccably in unfamiliar company. He's also been known to run after people, knife in hand.

Al's saying something about Sean.

"... so I gave him a lift to this girl's house. He said she had reddish hair, which he thought was rather exotic. I misheard him: I thought he'd said 'erotic'."

Indeed, Sean's a red, even down to his colour sensitivity.

The bronze dragon looks curiously at me. "Did you say something?"

I speak almost by reflex. "Two days ago, I met a female unicorn. I asked her to marry me, and she told me to wait five years, and she'd consider it then. It's hard to snare a unicorn, even if you are a virgin."

Al snorts. He's definitely got a streak of the horse dragon in him: a passive, almost docile, disregard for authority. He's not the rapacious sort of dragon, stocking up on bright gems and fair maidens. Several pretty girls have caught his eye, but only one has caught his heart. He's the sort who will wait, regardless of how many graduate and remain unmarried.

Likewise, Shen. The heart of the silver dragon is a noble one; once lit by a spark of idealism, its flame will not die. They mate for life, and so, the other must be perfect in the dragon's eyes. The friendship of a silver is legendary: a flood would not quench it. And I, a sorcerer, only wonder that I have known such a one.

The wine dwindles in the candlelight, as if it fuels those distant flames. We let it flow away untapped, although it was within our talents to have taken that magic for our use. I smile reflectively. Perhaps I should've been a dragon too, forever chasing after a precious pearl and never knowing its true beauty for my own. A sea-dragon, then, glinting copper-gold on deep armour forged of greenness and of light? She'd not have cared, no, not for dragon, not for the sorcerer within, not for the man in sorcerer's guise. She'd have wanted to know it all, mercilessly all, exceedingly well. There's a formula to these things, and most sorcerers know it: when a sorcerer is no longer inscrutable, he is no more a magician.

"What shall we do after this?" he asks, as dinner draws to a close. (Time has passed. The mind hides between times; it hides in the bones of things, iron in tall buildings, granite in my country's spine, our own bones. The underlying reality is mightier than the obvious. It is a larger, more complete world.)

Time kept passing by for a while. We were passengers waiting for an altogether different train, and it was a sluggish river full of fish and winter ice. As the wine disappeared, along with the pasta, I cast a line into the water. "Whatever. The vehicle is yours; let it carry what it will, to wherever it will go."

The river rolled on, serene. It was too lazy to care.

I found myself outside, on the main road with Al. The rain had tapered off to a thin, whispering drizzle. The old white chariot, a driving-instructor's oldest vehicle it seemed, was waiting as always, and it sighed with chill and impatience. A mellow knocking rose about us as Al ignited the flame within, and as its sweet breath caught fire, we fell away into the outer ring. The world receded, a pebble in the pond.

The night was cold, and dry despite the rain. It was as if the world were a vast eternal sponge, absorbing softly all the waters of the upper air. Al said to me, not really questioning, "You've been thinking about dragons again?"

"Yes," I answered, "And I've decided you're a bronze."

He kept his hands on the wheel, mulling it over. Then, "Let's go visit Pat," he said, chuckling. "She won't mind entertaining a dragon, although his wizardly friend may be a matter for doubt."

I remained inscrutable. My profession would serve me well for a while yet, I knew. In the darkness, under deep shadow, the sorcerer's heart sang like an iron bell, and stopped.


II:

Pat. A fire rises, yellow, normal, friendly, an enemy, a tree, a diamond. As Amergin, bard of bards, said, I have been many things. Yet, Pat has been nothing save whatever she has wanted to be, and occasionally, I look for her, hoping to find my place.

Tonight, the night melts in parts. Like a womb, a shaft of light, a chariot of flame, Al's old nag carries the darkness before her. Darkness looming, blooming. Darkness. Amber light growing, glowing. Amber fading. Darkness comes again. Every few moments, each time the cycles come and go, the same cycles. How many revolutions per minute, of death and rebirth? The chariot lunges on, forever chasing its lost horses, the golden destriers of the sun.

We talk to Pat because it is convenient, and if not, we don't.

I am the Magician, I told myself once, juggler of the metaphysical, he who reassures others of their innocence. I might have been wrong. I might be the Sun, triumphant always, yet ever constrained to repeat the cycle of his life over the endless circles of the world.

In the library of the heart, I strain the metaphor, and nothing much is left behind. Pat is a Wheel of Fortune, Chance, the smallest of God's fingers. There too, I was nearly wrong: I thought of her as Temperance once. But Temperance, her dreams are less troubled, and her blessings more comfortable.

Looking out of the left window, the National Junior College sits easily, like a colony of petrified monks after vespers, more befuddled than sinister. Al says, "Have you read anything interesting recently?"

The sorcerer looks at the inquisitive dragon. Indeed he has, he thinks. He has read The White Goddess, by that flawed but brilliant master, Robert Graves. The sorcerer parts his lips; I speak.

" 'I was with my Lord in the highest sphere / On the fall of Lucifer into the depths of Hell, / I have borne a banner before Alexander; / I know the names of the stars from North to South...' and it goes on, Al; Graves works a new tapestry from Taliesin the bard, and you might be interested. I'll lend the book to you some day."

Gentle smoke curls from the bronze nostrils. The dragon is appeased. Absent-mindedly, he sweeps past Watten Estate, leaving cold grey smoke scudding like baby fog behind him. "Graves, hmm? He wrote some interesting poetry, but I preferred Frost."

A creature of refinement and culture, though hard as nails. I smile. Hard as frost, perhaps. Idly, my thoughts uncurl, stand up, and wander. They too have miles to go before they sleep, and I, I have promises to keep.

Yesterday, as always, I was in the Army. Today, as always, I am a sorcerer, a power of music and of verse. It is hard, and it gets worse. The Army, by the nature of the creature, is cautious about creativity. Everything must be tested, evaluated, weighed and metered before tentative acceptance, careful adoption, before the gods who rule in Tanglin (now, no more even there!) smile and give their blessings. Thirty months, it has been, my life like a fish in a closed pond.

Now? 'They shall seek me, but they shall not find me. They shall call for me, but I shall not answer them.' For (almost) a thousand nights and one night, we dream of the Army, we dream of the jolly green giant, the titanic defender, the career commanding respect. Some others dream of Spartans at a pass. The Army watered us, and in the darkest night, like mandrakes, we grew. Another cycle thus unfolds.

This night was a dark night not too long ago. In it, Al was saying, "How many more days do you have?" and I was replying, as if by conditioned reflex, "Four hundred and thirteen." I had been a defender of men for five hundred days. Although we had counted our days with such care, our dreams were still intact, the dreams of a sorcerer and his friend, the dragon.

Dreaming is a human thing. Along with it comes Myth, the tenuous condensation of Dream, like a cloud of hypnotic vapours. The first among the myths is Creation. The libraries of Man are filled with remnants of failed and partially-succeeding creation myths: Ginnungagap and the Ice-Cow, Ouranos and Gaia, the Five Universes, the World as Illusion, the First Principle, Ea, Nun, Varuna, and all their successors.

The Road was never this long! The night is endless, with lamps lighting our way a short while before and after, but never all the way to the end or back to the beginning. Indeed, some lights have been disconnected, and most travellers don't even miss them when they're gone. If each light were a deity, a pantheon, an idea, or a philosophy, it's almost as if many of them have been lost through their own inadequacy, and no-one wants them back because no-one needs them. How sad! How... necessary.

The bronze dragon mutters. Al says, "There's been an accident ahead. We'll have to turn around and enter the Court from the other side. I hope you know the way."

This is simple. I nod, assenting - wizards are used to the other side, the hidden ways. Al brakes, breaks the golden river, creates a tributary. White in the golden light, we turn towards the distance and are gone, pale in the many shadows under the wide trees.

The Dream takes worldly responsibility away from the Dreamer. A true Dreamer has only the responsibilities given by the Dream. The Dream is all-inspiring, all-devouring, all-powerful, like an emanation of the Most High, although not all are such. It inhabits, indwells the Dreamer utterly, and the Dreamer becomes priest, warlock, champion of his Dream, the Dream, the only Dreamt. There are many types of dream, but for each of us, normally only one Dream. Each Dream is light to its Dreamer, but most of us are trapped in the lighting.

Al laughs to himself, the dragon like a kingfisher flashing over a green lake. I look questioningly at him. He sees this, and replies to the unspoken, "You know, you were once so spellbound by that girl that everyone knew it. One night, I was speaking with Sean, and he said you spent an entire Applied Maths lecture drawing hearts with her name in each of them. Were you really so much in love with Pat?"

The Dream gets most of us at one time or another; in my case, while idling my way through Numeromancy 102 classes. The magician's only foe is the Dream of Woman, his only failing the Dream of Power; yet, his only goal should be the True Dream, and that is, while hard for all men, harder for him.

"I suppose I was. She is such a nice person to be with, even now. There were others, you know, who were just as enamoured."
The bronze dragon risks an equine snicker, to which the sorcerer can only raise a mildly embarrassed eyebrow. The night falls away, and three years ago, it falls into day, a lazy Wednesday, in the leaf-light dappled heaven-haven of the College of Wyverns.


III:

The college is a grey lichen-white, resembles a rectangular eggshell, made into a dwelling from wood and glass and stone and people. There are many people. All of them have been hatched, it seems, from the same egg, for their plumage is mostly identical. There is also a breeze.

Bronze-green and ash-brown, undernourished tenacious trees stand apart from the building. A girl, one among many others, walks from the foyer. My friend Burn says, "That's a classmate."

I turn to look. History, now, has poured its ocean over the facts, and some have dissolved. Of them all, very few, stubborn rocks in the lashing salt-spray, have retained their shape. She was Pat. There was something pleasant about her, which I liked. I don't know what it was. I don't know where she is. The pages have turned, the trapdoor has closed.

Even the college has changed now, or will have once been changed, or twice. We must avoid being perfectly tense. Things change, and the tense is seldom immutable.

Al and I are in his old vehicle. Burn and I are out on the bleachers, and Burn tells me about his class, three years ago. Al and I walk purposefully up the brick path, a deep purple night wheeling above us, hunter-starred. Burn and I walk leisurely across the asphalt, on a warm and dusty day; the sky is a pale half-electrified blue.

The lift arrives, we enter, and it rises. The trapdoor falls away. Three years ago, Burn says, "This is Pat." Three years ago: "Hello, I'm Alex." She is a strange mixture of embarrassed and pragmatic. I open the door, look into the house, and find no-one really at home, although signs of habitation are evident.

Three years later, I have been lifted up, and the bronze dragon with me. We stand on level ground, overlooking the city of a million souls, the amber stars, the grim greening of the night. I am a very young man, but feel a very old sorcerer. The bluish-grey smoke-scented wind twists into a zero and cancels out, while its careworn rain renews the shadow of the heart. The entrance is inviting, a simple metal grille outside an unornamented wood door. The plain figures of the apartment number remind me of her. I grasp Al's shoulder, hear a dragon's exhalation of surprise.

As we leave, nothing has seemingly changed, but I am different. By rejecting one thing forever, I have become more than I was before, but less than a magician. I will become a wanderer. Al is silent all the way to the waiting car.

In my several years of exploration, I made many friends. Literally, you understand; I made them from words and craft and poetry - their sinews were prose and their flesh was story. None of them had 'real' names - after all, these days, which of all the people have real names anymore ?

Well, there are a few. Soldiers whose names are 'known only to God', they rest as reminders of war, as our guilt-price. These are the Unknown Soldiers of a score of nations, the only ones with true names; and those, hidden by gunshots and smoke, poison gas and blood-smears.

My unknown soldiers were the crystals of my saturated imagination. As the heat of my age diminished, they were forced out, through the filtering paper of my writing, through the careful tubing of my pens. They had names (oh, all so false, and yet so true to me) like Tom Aquine and Maradaine Chase. They lived the lives I could not lead, the lives I dreamt.

Al asks, "Where to, now?"

He turns a restless eye on me, sees I am on the edge of nothing once again, asks carefully, "And what are you thinking about, then? You still thinking about Pat?"

"No, not Pat; she's out tonight, I've only just remembered. I was thinking of those who 'saved the sum of things for pay'. Do you remember all those characters we wrote about in the bad old days? I think they're all dead now; wouldn't write about them these days at all, now that so much time has passed. Except to make a bit of money, perhaps."

The bronze dragon chuckles, like the sucking of a summer river past winding banks. "You, at least have an art you can prostitute. I shall be content with photography, taking private photographs of the last hidden places of the world."

And that's the way of memories. We cultivate them until the fateful day in which they take on lives of their own and colour the processes of our reason (writers who can only write about one set of characters, actors who will always be known for only one role...). Then, we have no more need of them and must destroy them utterly.

Somewhere in time, we move out into the roaring river of light which is the Road at night. The track of each hurtling headlight-bearer burns an image on the retina of each eye. 'I knew a girl, and she went away / And the rain came down the face of my day.' Memories inhabit us, inhibit us. They are lessons we have learnt, whether for good or for ill. They burn their tracks into the screens of our minds. To learn some things properly, we must forget everything else, which looks like a waste.

Down in the dark brightness of this autumnal day, Al's heading home. I go with him, for the security of his home is a minor, but very marvellous thing. It's a very short trip from the Court to the Garden. The time-and-space bending properties of an old flame which still carries much weight must still be in effect, for the journey is short, and the warm house far nearer than it really is.

Why dragons? Why should I, failed magician, keep the dream of a lost race forever? It's like this: once upon a time, there was a dragon coiled on the hill near Al's house. It was another time, a summer day, and the predominant scents were dry grass and haze. I walked up the hill, wondering, and came upon him. The poor old thing, he was ancient but powerless, huge but decrepit, the sorry ruin of a mighty hunter.

I spoke to it; it winked sightless eyes at me and said, "Soon, the Village will be all commerce, and no one will dream the dragon-dream anymore. I will be less and less, your people more and more. One day, a little boy will weep for loss, and not know why, because there will be no more dragons, and no memory of them."

It went back to sleep - perhaps, forever. The sun set behind its apartment-crowned ears, and its placid breath was dilute in the fires of the burning leaves. There I stood, and there promised: always, dragons. No little boys crying. No worlds lost.
I seal the portal, but it will not hold for me, no longer magician. My hands find edges, but are blind, will not grasp the whole, too late. Somewhere, we have come home, to love and family comforts. Here, the trapdoor opens on infinity.


IV:

We sit in the patio, with carefully-distilled coffee and the hospitality of shortest notice. Out there, the wind giggles, pirouetting through palm and vast canopy. Inside, Al and I sit, muse, caffeinate and reminisce. We talk rubbish. We, together, dream. And the product is the old world, lost forever except by the seldom and infrequent windowing of this world through to that.

High school days, another summer, the season of Clavell's Shogun. Al sees, retrospectively, says, "Remember Sean's act, his famous mock suicide in courtly Japanese tradition? A broom for a sword, and fake poetry!"

How could we forget? Sean looked funny, there on his knees atop the teacher's table. A broken broomstick, ancient chairs in formidable array, and apart from them but in the same time, an old piano, a dusty laboratory full of apprentice glassblowers, a broken window. They stick in the corners of the mind, like cobwebs.

Let them stay. They do not hurt or hinder anyone. They were never harbingers of doom, but the slow sedimentation of the wind, the tide, the flow of years. They are a benign past, made desolate by ceaseless passages.

In that background, a desk slams shut, and a German submarine from the Second World War sneaks through the trapdoor. At its helm, five of us, captain and crew. We order the torpedoing of an enemy ship, we are sonar, hull, and tired submariners all at once. There are many other times within that time, and the spaces are infinite as well. There are no horizons, and our imaginations swim wide.

Then, we have grown, and the walls of the cup appear, leaving us like coffee-sodden ants within. Confinees of a new confine, most of us will drown somewhere here. In the present, as I reply to Al over coffee and cookies, many of that company have already gone, swept aside and down, into the abyss or the wasteland, and the roses have all died.

"What was it between Pat and you, back in college?" Al asks. He is genuinely curious, although not very much so.

There is a book of old roses, locked up in old rooms. In it, you may find almost every variety of beauty, any hue, any form, any texture. All around, the smell of antique wood, books, leather; everywhere, the rich and heavy aura of age upon age piled deep, like a carpet. I come here once in a while to visit old roses, to live apart from stainless steel and white cement.

Looking back, it is hard to decide whether I ever really loved them; harder still to know if ever they loved me. Of all things, one thing is sure: when a rose blooms in the watching hand, the heart might burst with joy.

In the cool darkness of the memory's mausoleum, my heart grows large, my body too small for its happiness. Here in the dusk, scribbled in the dust, are some haiku. One reads: 'One slim girl smiles here / Bright eyes burn and walk away / I am happy now'.

These lines are the potent image made into words, life and beauty molten in the forge, shaped in the cylinder of the heart. Even on the greyest of days, the cadences are not robbed of their power; each wise bright thought - though made less wise, less bright by mortal pen and vision - is still a fragment of the song.

I have learnt, I tell Al, that one love can foster many other friendships. The dragon nods, waits for me to continue.

"Love is the excelling way, the only one through the wilderness of the human heart," I say aloud. The coffee's aroma is still in the back of my nose.

Al looks at me with half-amusement. "You should know."

Once again, conversation fades into a buzz as the lower air unfolds around me. I feel tomorrow in my hand, an unknown weapon. It's time to get up. Ahead of me, the half-minute which is the wall of sleep looms. Struggling, I climb over it, land on the floor. I am awake. No. I am awake! No! I place feet carefully on their way to the bathroom. Noooooo... oh, very well then, have it your way. I am awake.

Thinking these thoughts in one year, in love with the last (and best) of all my roses, is hard. Three years ago, another year, and in love elsewise with an older rose, I hurt in my innermost parts. The only thing which firms the fastnesses of my life is the awareness I feel of God. In my mind, ideas of God unfurl, flutter like defiant banners. Bright love, word of creation made flesh, whose Spirit roars like a mighty wind among the towers of my thought - may this day be Yours, I say, brushing my teeth, washing my face.

In the corner of the mind's eye, December will be coming soon. We can expect showers in several areas in the mornings and in the late afternoons (are they always late?), and perhaps at night... and back in time, Al says, "Go on; what exactly did Pat say to you?"

Long ago, in the first quarter of 1984, we spoke for the third time. Her voice was soft. Her eyes were big, intelligent, careful and shy. She was gently dark, slim, and walked without care.

There was something I had to tell her. My heart beat in tympanic reverberation. It was grey and cool and quiet, for the rains had come and gone. I said all I had to say to her, quietly, distantly. My voice returned to me like the singing of a lone whale in the ocean. Of what had happened that day, I told no one.

Somewhere, in the deeps, my botanical brother whispers, "Old roses are the best." I agree. Before Pat, there were others; after her, others again. One thing differences them, makes their stories different, though: after Pat, my poetry would not be the same again.

The bronze dragon snorts, crunches chocolate chips. He chews, swallows, drinks, asks, "And that was how it all began? I would've thought something more dramatic might have happened, seeing your subsequent behaviour. I'm sure you're not telling me everything, O necromantic one!"

I'm sure I have most definitely not told him everything. I am also entirely sure of not being a necromancer at all. I continue. I tell him of the days which came after. He makes few interruptions, and I come eventually to December, and the painful wisdom of the dying year.

The coffee has gone, and the story ends, its last notes trailing away into despair, and a heart as heavy as the sea. Softly, the dragon's voice whispers, "We thought it was a pity too, you know. Nevertheless, it's better for you this way. Your life is different from hers. You are too... unalike. Now that all that is over, you're friends again, and what could be better?"

Indeed, not much could be better. I am happy, I am still in love, which is 'a great way to be', as Pik the brass dragon says.

Someday, I shall end my wanderings, join my princess, and be free... and old roses will bloom.

Ω