Monthly Archives: June 2012

In the silence after the elegy Cat returned to Marlowe’s feet, twisting between his legs in the way cats do. Marlowe stooped to pick him up, something Cat rarely permitted. Now he seemed subdued. Marlowe scratched Cat’s ears absently. Odd how he never noticed the purple any more.

One of the men brought a burning brand from the last of the village fires and handed it to Grace, who pushed it in amongst the dry moss and small branches at the base of the pyre. Flames began to flicker and smoke curled up into the quiet air.

There was a dry scraping and rustling as a mouse that had found its way into the pyre was sent scurrying by the smoke and heat. A pair of tiny eyes could be seen in the gathering dusk as the little creature paused in fear at the open space it would have to cross to safety.

Cat said, “I must save him!” and squirmed free of Marlowe’s arms, landing heavily on his paws and leaping into the pile of burning logs.

Marlowe watched aghast as Cat leaped into the flames and captured the terrified mouse in the swift clamp of his jaw. A gentle but definite flick of his neck sent the tiny creature tumbling to safety where it was promptly pounced upon by Daphne, who pinned its tail with her paw and then let go, waiting for the mouse to move before she pinned it again.

Cat jumped down from the fire just as the log on which he was standing burst into flame. He landed with unsurprisingly feline grace in front of Daphne. Skeezicks was in the background watching carefully, muttering to himself, “Is this what cats do? O! I could do that… hmmm… maybe not…”

“Let it go,” Cat said firmly. “You’re well fed. You don’t need to kill to live.”

“It is my nature,” Daphne replied.

“And this is mine,” said Cat, catching her a cuff with his paw and hissing. She shrank back and the mouse ran for the safety of the outer darkness. Cat watched it go with a smile.

Grace watched the little drama play out in the shadows of the flame. The fae boy Ea watched by her side. “Can the leopard change ~ from hunter to a helper ~ of its former prey?”

“Until he gets hungry enough, I suppose,” Grace replied absently.

“You soon are leaving,” he went on. “I have been given the job ~ of going with you.”

Grace’s eyes didn’t leave the fire, where her father’s body burned. “Why?”

“To see if such change ~ is found in felines only ~ or also your kind.”

“I fear you will be disappointed.”

“What can’t happen with ~ that crazy little thing called ~ love?”

Grace watched his eyes grow wide with the struggled not to speak four more syllables, and then she took his hand and said, “It might be… love.”

As the fire died down the call came to board the ship. It was full night now, and the tide had lifted the hull off the sand. “Hurry, or we’ll miss the tide!” the Captain called. “There’s not a moment to lose!”

Not for the first time Marlowe wondered why sailors were always in such a rush. If he had a penny for every time he’d heard that call and been told there wasn’t a moment to lose he’d have… three pounds sixpence, the part of his brain that had not forgotten his legacy as a merchant tanner’s son computed.

He’d led a well-traveled life. And now the end of all his travels was come. One last voyage home. He wondered if any of his family or friends were still alive. Time ran differently, here among the fae, certainly if the past two days were any indication. Perhaps he was returning to a changed world, a world where men flew through the skies, where lack of want brought peace between nations, where poets and artists were duly honoured by their peers.

He shook his head sadly. No fairy tale of knowledge nor the long result of time for him.

As he turned away from the fire a figure in the shadows caught his eye.

“–to wound the autumnal poet?” he asked. Dry leaves were scattered under his feet. The in-dark cried out for a name. A whole, closed universe seemed to swirl in the silent space between them, full of passion and confusion and love. He felt all language sunder on silence.

She asked him, “What… who… will you remember when you remember me?”

“I am limited, finite, fixed,” he replied. “And I am afraid that the universe is infinite and incomprehensible. That time loops back on itself like a helix of semi-precious stones, twisting and stretching like a snake swallowing its own tail. I will remember that you opened the doors of perception, and allowed me to see everything as it may really be. Infinite. But I remain. Limited. Finite. Fixed.”

She shook her head, not understanding. He thought he could still hear them, walking in the trees, not speaking. Out of the halls of vapour and light. She said, “Goodbye my love. I have come to–”

Marlowe felt like a bit of driftwood, caught in a whirlpool and spun about again and again until some vagrant fluence pushed it free. He looked at Drunais, wondering how long they had stood there, frozen in this closed eternal moment while time turned in on itself and held them in its hands.

“A thousand years, love ~ so I will remember you ~ as the summer ends.”

“The summer will not end within my soul
while still the memory of you remains
to remind me how the wave’s long roll
of time and chance reality constrains.
We are not fated to combine as one
No matter how our courses closely run.”

He drew her close and kissed her. While it lasted, it lasted forever.

“It little profits that an idle man,
matched by a purple cat, I rant and rave
uneven verse before an audience
who fight and kill and die and know not peace.
Yet I cannot rest from speaking: I will raise
my voice against the storms of nascent war
whose bloody rains fall fat and thick upon
the wine-dark sea. I shall become a name
to reckon with along the corridors
where diplomats and princes make their plans
to solve the blight of scarcity and fear
by raining random death upon the world.

There lies the bay. The ship awaits, her crew
embarking for our homeward voyage. I go
from all of this, from you, as one reborn.
The slow tide rises. I live anew
perhaps to find some work of noble note
not unbecoming one who wrote of gods
and mortals striding ‘cross the war-torn world
for my purpose holds: to sail into
the sunrise and return from whence I came
carrying a message for my lords
whose will I served; and yet I will now strive
to seek and find a way to make them yield.”
Captain Stone gave the order to weight the anchor on the turn of the tide.

“98 pounds, six ounces and a scruple!” the mate replied.

“Funny what a difference a definite article makes,” Marlowe said absently to Cat, watching the moonlit shoreline turn and drift. Or perhaps it was the ship. Nothing seemed quite real.

He looked around the deck. Bundles and bags were still scattered everywhere, although the crew were already busy stowing and stacking. Marlowe felt worn out, as if he’d lived a vigorous year or more in the past two days.

Lady Belinda stood at the rail, Don Diego by her side. She was waving goodbye to the Fae. They did not wave back. Toward the stern Captain Stone was fending off the blandishments of Marie the Mermaid, although Marlowe thought he detected a certain yielding of the Puritan’s frosty demeanor as he pushed her away. “Call me Fish-Tail,” she said. “All my friends do.”

“What do you think the world will be like, when we return?” asked Cat. He was trying not to watch Daphne and Skeezicks snuggling up together by Grace and Ea. Marlowe was trying not to watch the fading figure he thought was probably Drunais on the increasingly distant shore.

“The same,” Marlowe said, with a hopeful weariness. As the ship moved away from shore time seemed to stretch out, like fabric stitched at an awkward join. They were moving smoothly over the calm sea, sails full even though there was no wind. Tuc the seal king surfaced to watch them ghost by.

“Do you think…?”

“Yes?”

“I will turn back into an ordinary cat?”

Marlowe shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m certainly not going to turn back into an ordinary man.”

“If this was one of my plays we’d all be dead by now, each by our own hand,” Marlowe mused.

Cat commented, “Then I suppose we should be grateful for a more humane Author, and Artist.”

“We are the authors of unfolding fate:
the captains of our time, our human lives.
A change in course can never come too late
while still the heart has love and sinews strive
to build a better world where peace may grow
where one day children never war will know.”

On the beach the Fae were watching. “Do you think we should have told them?” Siduri asked Athis.

“They’ll find out soon enough,” Athis replied, as the ship vanished into the not-quite-distance.

Somewhere nearby Rothgar the sea-bear swam on through the deep.

The story is now complete! Read in one big page (recommended) or one page at a time or by Chapter:

1: Good With a Knife | 2: The White Hart | 3: Close to the Edge | 4: For Whom the Bell Tolls | 5: When Your Ship Comes In
6: The Fey Five | 7: On The Beach | 8: Feast of Confusion | 9: Fighting War | 10: Return to the Place of Your Beginnings



Read in one big page




1: Good With a Knife | 2: The White Hart | 3: Close to the Edge | 4: For Whom the Bell Tolls | 5: When Your Ship Comes In
6: The Fey Five | 7: On The Beach | 8: Feast of Confusion | 9: Fighting War | 10: Return to the Place of Your Beginnings