GREAT CHARTER OF LESSER LILLIPUT
March 20th in the yeare 1725
On this the Day of the Upended Egg, we establish a Sovereigne Nation of free People, on the territorye extending Twelve Hundred Glumgluffs by Fifty Blustrugs, and whose borders are described by Flestrin’s Wall.
We, the Undersigned, confirme these Three Eternal Principles for Us & our Heirs, For Ever—
That We each finde a Course by a Common Compass.
That We only know that We do not know.
And that no Journey has an End.
And that was it, half a page long. All their laws and philosophies, all their hopes and dreams were held in those words. There was no reason to put anything more to paper.
Flestrin’s Wall, as Michael learned, was built by the first Lemuel Gulliver to protect the Little Ones from the world beyond. Over time, the People came to fear everything past it and legends grew as legends do.
They dreamed of a cruel and merciless place outside the Wall—and they called it the Land of Naught and Nil, a nightmare world, bleak and barren, where life could not thrive. According to their Ancient Texts, this world was inhabited by a few last Giants, straggling survivors of a lost, doomed race, tormented by bloodthirsty monsters. The first Gulliver let their own fear keep them here, safe, inside the Wall.
“But how,” Michael asked the old man, “how can I help them?”
It was the Grand Panjandrum who answered: “You will assist Quinbus Flestrin. You will help watch over our Sovereign Nation and help restore what we have lost.”
And that’s what happened. Michael came to the Garden City each day and made right the wrong he’d done. He cleared the scorched remains of old buildings and swept the foundations clear.
The Lesser Lilliputians decided to build a Great Hall, stone and fireproof, in the empty space left by the fire. It would be a library, theatre, seat of government, a gathering place for them all, and home to the Sacred Vault. This vault, as Michael learned, held a never-seen relic called the Inevitable MaGuffin of Lesser Lilliput.
“This,” Topgallant explained, “is the First & Only Secret, the Solution to the Infinite Enigma, the Unraveling of the Eternal Conundrum, the Resolution to the Ever-Lasting Riddle, the One Answer to All Questions: why are we here, where have we come from, where are we destined to go, and so on and so forth.”
“But what exactly,” Michael asked, “is this thing?”
“We don’t exactly know,” one answered. “It’s a mystery and that’s the point.”
“Oh, we tried to get in there, to take a look, but we couldn’t,” from another.
“It’s locked, you see,” added Philament Phlopp, the one with no eyebrows. “Not even Mumraffian Rake, greatest locksmith in all Lesser Lilliput, can open it.”
“But if you never saw what’s in there,” Michael went on, “how do you know for a fact what it is?”
The Grand Panjandrum stepped in to explain: “You ask the wrong question, Brother Ninneter. We know nothing for a fact. Facts are fungible, troublesome things. We don’t put much faith in them.”
“And neither should you,” said another.
“We know it holds the Answer, because we know it holds the answer,” this from one named Fammel Plushes.
“And just because we haven’t gotten the vault open,” the Grand Panjandrum went on, “doesn’t mean the Answer isn’t there, isn’t real. A shoe, cat, sunset, heartache—these things are real, we know that. It takes no particular effort to accept them as such. But the unseen and un-seeable and never-known things, those take a bit of working at. And those are the things most worth believing.”
It was late-autumn now and the days were dropping away as fast as the beech leaves, the nights stretching cold and windy. The boy kept at his job and was mostly happy: he liked the work and liked harmless Mr. Fenn. But Myron was something else. Myron hated Michael and did everything he could to make the boy quit the market.
Michael just ignored him and that made Myron madder still.
And when, on a wet Tuesday in early November, Myron found that his uncle was going to raise Michael’s salary, he grew dizzy with rage.
“I ask you for a raise and you say you can’t afford it!” Myron screamed at his uncle.
“That’s right,” replied Fenn.
Myron thought he would pass out or throw up or both. “Then how can you afford it for him?!”
“Easy,” Fenn answered. “I’m takin’ it out of your pay.”
This couldn’t go on, Myron knew that. He unwrapped another peppermint stick and decided to get rid of that boy, one way or another.
The People of the Garden City held a competition, open to everyone, to find a design for the Great Hall. Soon, blueprints and models began to arrive and these were shown in a tent in the town center. There were submissions from Artists, Accountants, Daydreamers, Professors of Engineering, and these were impressive things, like castles, cathedrals, mammoth structures of stone, with heavy buttressed walls.
The Lesser Lilliputians came each day to marvel at each new design and none of them looked more closely than the little peasant girl, Burra Dryth. She had been born to the poorest family in the village; for her first ten years, she hardly spoke, but only watched. And as she watched, she missed nothing.
Everyone waited for the last model, from the Dean of the Architects. When it arrived, the whole village came to see. His design was remarkable, spectacular, nantwuzzl’d to use their word, a building for the ages!
Burra studied the model and listened to the People praise it. But she wasn’t as sure; she wondered if it wasn’t a monument to the Architect himself, not a place for them all. A new dream began to take hold in her young head and she hurried home to sketch it on paper. Burra knew nothing of designing buildings, but set to teaching herself. She read every book, studied every structure in the city.
And then she went to work. She started making that dream in her head.
Word got around what Burra was doing and the People of Lesser Lilliput shared a few laughs. Burra Dryth, imagine! The odd little rag-girl! What was she thinking?!
The Artists and Professors weren’t amused: the thought of their models next to one from that peasant girl . . . it was unthinkable! They threatened to withdraw, but the Grand Panjandrum calmed them. Only days remained and the competition would be closed, he reminded them. Young Miss Dryth would surely tire of the project before then.
But Burra spent every minute working, all day and all through the night. She couldn’t afford proper materials and built her model from scraps she scavenged in the village, from cardboard and kindling. When she was at last done, she brought it to the town center. A crowd gathered for another good laugh.
But there was no laughter that day.
Her model was unlike anything they’d ever seen: simple, graceful, beautiful, it towered over the others in every way. Its slender walls were cut with long flowing windows, as lively as waterfalls, rising from the ground to an immense stone-tiled dome. The thing was colossal and delicate, majestic, yet welcoming, vast and personal, classical and revolutionary; like their music, it was many ideas at once.
“But this is ridiculous!” someone snorted. “Unbuildable!” another sniffed. Those walls will never support the dome! The whole thing will crash down and kill everyone inside!
But the Dean of the Architects studied Burra’s work and checked each dimension, calculating, recalculating, testing its engineering and the stresses it could hold. The structure, he finally announced, was sound. Burra Dryth had designed a perfect building. In a show of respect, he removed his own model from the competition and Burra was chosen the winner.
Work began right away. A building this size would need all their effort. They would hew massive timbers, carve giant columns, cast thousands of tiles. Michael helped as he could, chiseling stones into blocks. H
e worked every day until his hands were cramped and blistered.
One day, a Tuesday, he lost all track of time. He stayed too long, making stacks of blocks, and was about to be late for his Court check-in. He raced from the garden and ran the miles back to Moss-on-Stone.
He was running up Sheep Street when Nick and the Boys found him and boxed him in the narrow lane. “We need to talk.”
“Can’t talk now, Nick. I’m going to be late.” The town bell was ringing six fifteen.
But Nick needed to know: “Why do you keep letting me down?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE MAHARAJA’S DAUGHTER
A police car slowed and swept its spotlight over the dim street. The Boys slipped into shadow and Nick called from the dark, “Last chance, you dumb squit. Be at the mill tonight, ten o’clock.”
Michael hurried on to the Court and was there in time for check-in, barely. He was home and in bed and asleep by nine. When he didn’t show at the mill at ten, ten thirty, or eleven, Nick angrily told the Boys they’d deal with him later.
They were hitting another big house on the hill; Peter had checked it and found the owners were away on holiday. The place was long and narrow and golden stone, set close to the street, a long hedge to one side. Nick waited down the block in the old Victor, and the Boys set to work on a window. They jimmied it partway, but it wouldn’t go wider. Michael could’ve slipped through with no problem, but it was a tight fit for the rest of them.
Phil and Peter got in, but Gordy’s thick gut wedged him tight. “Somebody help me,” he squealed.
“What’s your problem?” Peter snapped.
“I’m stuck, for God’s sake! Can’t you see I’m stuuuck!” Gordy squealed.
“Stop squealing,” Phil told him.
“I’m not squealing!” Gordy squealed again.
The house was empty, Peter was right about that. Except for the German Shepherd. The dog hadn’t taken a holiday. Gordy’s squeals brought it running. It raced for the Boys and they ran for the nearest door. But Gordy was still jammed in the window and the dog turned on him. Now the barking and screaming brought the whole neighborhood. Nick didn’t wait, but took off in the old car.
Police flooded the street in short minutes. Peter and Phil got away, but Gordy only got a face full of dog bites and a year in YOI.
Nick drove all the way to the crossroads. He turned off the engine and sat in the car and pounded the dash. Why was this happening? He was losing control of everything; nothing was going right for him. Michael wouldn’t have gotten stuck in that window. It would’ve been all right if he’d been here to help. Nick had put a lot of time and effort into the kid, and Michael kept letting him down.
Maybe Freddie was right: maybe the boy needed a good beating.
When Michael went back to the cottage the next day, he found Lemuel in a far corner of the back garden, where the little farms gave way to forest, clearing late-autumn leaves from the wall drains. It was a chore he had to keep up.
“If this gets blocked in a hard rain,” he said, “the whole city will be underwater.”
The two of them carried leaves and twigs from the garden. Michael went looking for a wheelbarrow, but found none. He tried the barn, but its doors were padlocked. He asked Lemuel if there might be one in the barn and the old man said no, there was only a car in there.
“A car? I didn’t know you drove.”
“Never have, never will.”
“Then why,” the boy asked, “do you have one?”
Lemuel answered with this story.
“When I was young, I captained my own ship, one of the last on the India route. It was mid-July as I set off on another voyage. The sailing was smooth at first and my ship soon rounded the African Cape. We were in the middle of a calm sea when the monsoon hit and the whole ocean turned on us. The storm thundered across the water like a thousand horses. Clouds as big as mountains hid the sun, the air turned bitter cold, and the rain hit like hornet stings. Gale winds lifted the waves higher and higher still, each peak shredding into foam. Lightning came in blinding blasts and rattled every plank of the ship, every bone in my body.
“I called the crew to haul up the foresail and square the yards as we raced over one wind-driven swell and into the deep trough below. We were blown miles off-course, but there was nothing we could do. We went where the storm took us. My men climbed the rain-slicked rat lines and clung to the yardarms and pulled in more sail; but even then, it was too late. The wind was driving us onto a rocky shore.
“By dawn, the worst of the monsoon had passed. We’d been blown halfway up a beach, the mainmast splintered and barely standing. But we were alive, not a man lost.
“Some farmers took me and my crew by ox-cart to the nearest village, and I hired woodworkers to repair the ship. As my crew settled in for a long wait, I decided to explore. I set off one morning, alone, into the wilderness, through a steaming rhododendron jungle, under tamarind trees full of screaming parrots and monkeys, and across hot mud-thickened rivers flowing with crocodiles.
“As I moved through a narrow canyon, I began to hear a sound, a strange new sound, a music like I’d never heard. I followed and it led me through an overgrown pass, where the mountain walls opened onto a plain. There was something here, mostly lost to trees and jungle vine. If I hadn’t looked twice, I might not’ve seen it.
“It was a temple, hid in the wild growth, a hundred feet high and half a mile wide, carved from one mountainous rock, thousands of years ago. It was so old, its gods had been forgotten. The entrance was flanked by sixty-foot stone Elephant Kings, settled on haunches, trunks raised in trumpet, crowns on their great smiling heads. The rest of the façade was a maze of dancing monkeys, some real, some not. And still there was the music, coming from within the temple.
“I had a lantern with me and made my way into an overpowering dark where night snakes hunted as they liked. I chased away a krait, small, deadly thing, and went deeper into the man-carved cave, following where the music led. The air was cooler here by twenty degrees and a few monkeys followed me in, but lost interest soon enough. I moved down a long corridor, lined with angry stone tigers.
“Next, I came to a domed chamber, full of bat-smell and lit by candles. Dancers spun across every surface, as they had since the day they were carved. It was an otherworldly place, quiet and still. There is a word here, nirvana, for heaven, perfection, and it can be translated as ‘beyond the wind.’ And that’s what this was: a perfect place, beyond all wind.
“In the middle of the room, surrounded by a hundred flickering candles, a young woman sat playing a flute. It was an extraordinary music, with no beginning or end. I stood there listening for a long time before she turned and saw me.
“She started to scream, but smiled. I learned that her name was Maya and she came to this place to practice the music she composed. The perfect dome played her song back in echo and she studied its sound. Her father, a Maharajah, had brought her here earlier that day. He was off on a tiger hunt, and she chose to stay and make music in the old temple.
“Maya was as beautiful as the melody she played, still and serene, dark-haired, with emerald eyes that seemed set on some distant future. She didn’t wear the red bindi on her forehead, mark of a married woman.
“I was about to speak when we were both knocked from our feet. Our candlelight went out and we were blind in that windless dark. It was an earthquake, the worst in three hundred years, and the cave began to crumble around us. I found my way to Maya and realized she was hurt, her leg near crushed under falling stone. I carried her, climbing over rubble, both of us fighting to breathe the dirt-thick air. Each step seemed to take an hour, and the next one longer. But, in time, we saw a dim gold glow—last rays of a setting sun—and I went toward it.
“We were hardly out when the shrine collapsed, great Elephant Kings peel
ing away and crashing to bright dust. Her white dress was orange, dyed by dirt and sweat and blood.
“The night came fast and Maya was falling in and out of consciousness. I knew she needed a doctor, and soon. Landslides had blocked our path from the canyon, and I had to carry her up an unsteady rock slope.
“We were out of the canyon and surrounded by jungle—dark and alive with animal sounds, every creature in mindless panic. Tigers were passing a few feet away, running from a fear they’d never known. Maya was unconscious again and I had no idea where we were or should go. I was lost, without map or compass.
“Her father found us then. When the earthquake hit, he and his entourage of forty, all on elephant, came charging back. A Mahout, an elephant driver, helped settle Maya in the covered howdah and we began the journey home.
“The Maharaja’s palace, untouched by the quake, was built of brilliant marble and set on an island in a man-made lake. A gold-and-ivory-trimmed barge carried us to it. The infirmary here was better than many hospitals, and a team of personal doctors set Maya’s leg.
“The Maharaja was grateful to me for saving his one child, and he offered me many gifts. I thanked him, but turned these down. Not long after, my ship was repaired and I sailed home and forgot about the Maharaja—but I never forgot his daughter.
“Then, on a stormy afternoon the following spring, a truck showed up at the farm with a crate, from Bois-Colombes, in France. The Maharaja had ordered a motorcar built for me. Three hundred horsepower, fourteen feet long, an incredible Hispano-Suiza, full of carved ivory and rosewood. The company called it Adventure, after my ship. There were plans to build more, but it was too expensive to make in mass. So I had—I have—the only one. Never drove it, never learned how. But it’s still there, in the barn, in the crate.”
“Did you go back?” the boy wanted to know. “Did you see her again?”
The Last of the Gullivers Page 5
