The boy who had freed the beast died young of a fever.
In time, stories of the beast’s appearance became more and more confused. As for the beast itself, other storytellers say it was never seen again. But how could anyone know, since people can’t agree on what it looked like?
The One Who Conquers
ONCE UPON A TIME, some trolls lived deep inside the darkness of their caves. To feed themselves they crawled across the underground pools and streams, groping in the blackness for fish. When fish were scarce, the trolls clawed crumbs of glowing fungus from the cave walls or snatched spiders from their webs. They knew nothing of day or night, but when they were tired they pillowed their heads on stones and shivered themselves to sleep.
A voice came to the trolls in their dreams. “You are wretched creatures who do not even know your wretchedness. See now how other beings live.” In their dreams, the trolls saw another world, a world of light much brighter than the glow of fungus. In this world lived creatures that, like trolls, walked upon two feet, but their ways were not at all the ways of trolls. They kept animals in pens, which made them easy to kill and eat. They made food grow up out of the ground in great abundance. When they were tired, they lay down in softness and warmth.
“What is this?” the trolls wondered in their sleep.
“This is the world of humans. The place you see is a town. The life you live now is hard and cold. I can give you this life that is soft and warm. Your bellies are empty. I can make them always full.”
“Who are you?”
“I am The One Who Conquers. Accept me as your god, and we will take by force the life that I have shown you.” Then he told them his secret name.
When the trolls awoke, they knew that they were wretched. They knew that they wanted to sleep in warmth and softness and to fill their bellies whenever they liked. So they built a mound of stones as a temple to The One Who Conquers, and they prayed to the god by his secret name.
Every night, The One Who Conquers came to them in dreams and showed them what they must do. They must leave their cave and enter the brightness. They must go a long way through a place where fungus grew hard and tall and across another place where fungus grew thin and no higher than a troll’s knees. “Forest,” said the voice in their dreams. “Field.” They must find the town of the other two legged beings, kill them, and take over their lives.
“In the upper realm where it is all one great cavern, how will we find the town?”
“Say my secret name, and you will find it.”
“How will we bear such brightness?” wondered the trolls.
“Say my secret name,” the god told them, “and you will bear it.”
“The creatures you show us are small, but you have shown us that they are good at killing. How will we defeat them?”
“Say my secret name, and I will protect you,” said the voice in their dreams.
Awake, the trolls quarreled among themselves. They fought one another over fish, then complained that the fish were small. They groaned when they lay down on the hard cave floor to sleep.
“You are ready,” said The One Who Conquers in their dreams. “It is time.”
The trolls crept up from the depths of their cave. When they first emerged in the brightness, it wasn’t so bright as they had feared. The roof of the one great cavern glittered with tiny lights.
“Where is the town?” they asked one another. “Which way do we go?” They milled about near the mouth of the cave until one of them remembered to call upon the god by his secret name.
“Follow my sign,” said a voice. In one direction, they saw a green glow in the sky. They followed the glow into the place of trees.
As they made their way, the light began to change. A greater brightness overwhelmed the tiny lights. The sky grew fierce, brighter and brighter, stabbing their eyes. The trolls put their hands over their faces and wept until they remembered to call their god by his secret name. For a moment, green light glowed in their eyes.
“Open wide your eyes,” said a voice. “Look about in the light of day.”
The trolls looked about. They could see without pain, even where a brilliant light shone through to the forest floor. They continued through the forest, and out of the forest across the grassy plain, all the while following the green glow that shone even in the daylight.
They followed the glow to the first farms around the town. There, the trolls began to conquer, surprising men in their fields and women at their cook fires. The trolls conquered young and old. With their bare hands, they conquered cattle. They ate whatever they defeated. As night fell, the trolls crawled into feather beds or piles of straw. They slept in warmth and softness for the first time, bellies full.
“There is more, much more,” promised The One Who Conquers. The trolls dreamed of full larders and even softer beds in the town.
In the morning, the trolls approaching the town heard the sound of a trumpet, which they had never heard before. They saw swords and bows and arrows, which they had seen only in dreams. A few arrows jumped into the sky, and one struck a troll. He howled and fell down, dying.
The trolls stopped. They fell back. More arrows flew.
Only then did the trolls remember to call upon The One Who Conquers. They said his secret name.
The green glow began to shine all over the bodies of the trolls. “At this hour, take this, my blessing,” said a voice. “Go forward, quickly, without fear.”
Just then an arrow struck a troll in the head, but it fell away as if it had struck a stone. A second arrow shattered against the shoulder of another troll. The One Who Conquers urged them on, and the trolls overran the town. In their eagerness, they knocked down walls, tore doors from their hinges, smashed barrels. They snapped the swords of the townsfolk with their hands. A few of the four-legged animals escaped from broken pens, but every one of the human beings was found and conquered before the glow had faded.
For many nights thereafter, the trolls feasted as they had feasted on the farms. Bellies full, they dozed through the days. In their dreams, they saw the town as it would be, with animals in their pens awaiting slaughter. Farmers plowed the fields and raised up grain. Blacksmiths repaired the broken swords and beat the crumpled trumpet round again. The town would be as it had been, but its people would be trolls. In dreams, the trolls learned to keep the fruits of conquest.
And so they did. The trolls lived the lives of the beings they had vanquished. They rounded up the cattle that had escaped. They rebuilt the walls, rehung the doors. They repaired the well in the town square and made the town their own.
The trolls did not forget The One Who Conquers. They tore down the town’s old holy building and built a temple to their god in its place. They praised him above all other gods. They were rich, and on holy nights they gave over a portion of their riches as sacrifice to him and him alone.
They no longer heard the voice of their god in their dreams. They no longer dreamed together, never awoke from a single vision that all had shared. Even so, the trolls remembered him and honored him, their divine patron.
The trolls grew ever more comfortable, and stayed that way until the night when something half like a fish and half like a man heaved itself over the lip of the well and staggered across the square. It overturned a cart and tried to bite a troll who killed it with a sword. Then another such monster crawled out of the well. This one glowed green and the trolls broke their swords against it. When the trolls tried to shoot it, their arrows shattered and fell harmless on the cobblestones. More monsters crawled one after the other from the well. They, too, glowed green.
Trolls fought. Trolls died.
As they tried to save themselves, the trolls called out to their god. They said, “Help us!”
No voice answered them.
The monsters smashed walls. They reached their glowing arms into cellars where trolls were hiding.
Calling their god by his secret name, trolls said, “Help us! Why won’t you help us?”
At last a voice answered them. It said, “I am The One Who Conquers.”
Tiny Bells
SLEEPER, SLEEP WELL. Sleep until morning. And listen.
I am a dream. Once I was a man. Once I dreamed as you now dream, woke as you will awaken. I used to walk the world between earth and sky. Now I am a memory. If you wake to memories of a life you never lived, it is because you have let me enter your dreams. Threads of my life will be woven with your own.
Sleeper, I bring you a story. In the time of the Empire, the people of my village lived simply. We were happy. In our valley, we were at peace. The Emperor’s armies were vast and we were his people.
People in the village of the next valley over were happy, too, as far as we could tell. Like us, they tended their flocks, sheared and traded wool. Like us, they planted wheat, ground flour, baked bread. For their feasts, they too roasted mutton.
But instead of proper houses, they built round huts, like mounds of stone. Instead of putting icons on their walls, they hung cut branches over their doors. The men tied bands of blue cloth on their heads, and the women wore metal bells on their wrists. They feasted much as we did on holy days, but for them, different days were holy.
We rarely met. From our farthest pastures, we saw them in their own farthest fields. In springtime, we sometimes passed them on the road to the market. When they spoke, we understood them, though some of their words were strange.
We had been separate like that for generations. We might have gone on, separate, for generations more if the Emperor and his army had not come to our mountains on their way to conquer the east. But come they did. More men than we had ever seen, men with swords and banners, camped on our hillsides. Their horses outnumbered our sheep. We saw the Emperor’s square black tent in the distance. His general came among us, commanding the soldiers to carry off our biggest rams, to empty the fullest granaries. “Do not be afraid,” he told us. “You are the Emperor’s own people. We will leave enough to sustain you.”
With the next dawn, the army was on the march again, over the pass into the next valley. At first, we did not think of the people there. We thought of the hard winter ahead, of the smaller harvest of wool for spring.
When we saw a great smoke, we knew from what distant fires it was rising. Then we did think of the other village. We remembered the general’s words. “You are the Emperor’s own people.” When we took our flocks to our most distant pastures, we saw no other flocks, no other herders. I went into their valley. I saw the ruins of their round houses, the ashes of their granaries. Of the people themselves, there was no sign.
As the days grew short, though, those people came to us in dreams. My widowed mother dreamed of a woman her own age who was a widow also. My daughter dreamed of a little girl who wore bells on her wrist. In my own dreams I met a man whose favorite ram was black, like my own. In our dreams they said to us, “We are lost. We were driven from our homes and from this world. We are a memory only. Give us refuge. Give us a place here in your dreams.”
Had they come to us alive, strangers fleeing before soldiers, we would have turned them away. They were not like us. We built our houses square and true. Icons blessed us from our walls. We spoke the Emperor’s own tongue, feasted on the proper holy days.
But they came one by one, an old man to an old man so that they both remembered the same droughts and floods. They came one by one, a young mother to a young mother so that they knew the same weariness of waking throughout the night, and the same joy. They came one by one, a child as another child’s playmate.
In dreams, I tended my flocks with the man who had a black ram. He taught me a song that I remembered when I awoke, and I sang it as I took my flock to pasture under the waking sun. In dreams, my daughter learned a game that she played with the other children when their chores were done. In dreams, my wife learned to make a yellow tea that she poured when I returned hungry and tired. It was good. I sang her the song, explained the words that were strange. Some of them she already knew.
Asleep, I asked the man why he hung a green branch over his door. Asleep, I asked him how he dyed wool blue. Asleep, I asked him who the traders were who would trade for tiny bells. My daughter wanted some to tie at her wrist.
In the spring, our village smelled sweeter for the branches over our doors. In the summer, our daughters jingled wherever they went.
The Emperor’s campaign in the east was long. When the soldiers finally returned to our valley, there were not so many of them as before. They looked harder and bigger. Their general rode among us. He told the men to take everything—every lamb, every grain of wheat.
“But we are the Emperor’s own people!” we said.
“Are you indeed?” said the general, and the way he shaped the words was strange in our ears.
We brought icons from our houses to show him.
Soldiers lit torches from our cook fires.
I tore the green branch from my house and flung it to the ground. Women wept and clawed at the bells on their daughters’ wrists. The general drew his sword. The soldiers drew theirs.
Sleeper, I am a dream. Once I dreamed as you now dream, woke as you will awaken. Now I am a shadow of memory—your memory, if you will give me refuge. And here is my brother, who once tended a flock as I tended mine, who had a black ram, who was a stranger to me, but no longer. We were driven from our homes and from this world. Take us in. Give us a place here in your dreams.
The Dead Boy At Your Window
IN A DISTANT COUNTRY WHERE the towns had improbable names, a woman looked upon the unmoving form of her newborn baby and refused to see what the midwife saw. This was her son. She had brought him forth in agony, and now he must suck. She pressed his lips to her breast.
“But he is dead!” said the midwife.
“No,” his mother lied. “I felt him suck just now.” Her lie was as milk to the baby, who really was dead but who now opened his dead eyes and began to kick his dead legs. “There, do you see?” And she made the midwife call the father in to know his son.
The dead boy never did suck at his mother’s breast. He sipped no water, never took food of any kind, so of course he never grew. But his father, who was handy with all things mechanical, built a rack for stretching him so that, year by year, he could be as tall as the other children.
When he had seen six winters, his parents sent him to school. Though he was as tall as the other students, the dead boy was strange to look upon. His bald head was almost the right size, but the rest of him was thin as a piece of leather and dry as a stick. He tried to make up for his ugliness with diligence, and every night he was up late practicing his letters and numbers.
His voice was like the rasping of dry leaves. Because it was so hard to hear him, the teacher made all the other students hold their breaths when he gave an answer. She called on him often, and he was always right.
Naturally, the other children despised him. The bullies sometimes waited for him after school, but beating him, even with sticks, did him no harm. He wouldn’t even cry out.
One windy day, the bullies stole a ball of twine from their teacher’s desk, and after school, they held the dead boy on the ground with his arms out so that he took the shape of a cross. They ran a stick in through his left shirt sleeve and out through the right. They stretched his shirt tails down to his ankles, tied everything in place, fastened the ball of twine to a buttonhole, and launched him. To their delight, the dead boy made an excellent kite. It only added to their pleasure to see that owing to the weight of his head, he flew upside down.
When they were bored with watching the dead boy fly, they let go of the string. The dead boy did not drift back to earth, as any ordinary kite would do. He glided. He could steer a little, though he was mostly at the mercy of the winds. And he could not come down. Indeed, the wind blew him higher and higher.
The sun set, and still the dead boy rode the wind. The moon rose and by its glow he saw the fields and forests drifting by. He saw mountain
ranges pass beneath him, and oceans and continents. At last the winds gentled, then ceased, and he glided down to the ground in a strange country. The ground was bare. The moon and stars had vanished from the sky. The air seemed gray and shrouded. The dead boy leaned to one side and shook himself until the stick fell from his shirt. He wound up the twine that had trailed behind him and waited for the sun to rise. Hour after long hour, there was only the same grayness. So he began to wander.
He encountered a man who looked much like himself, a bald head atop leathery limbs. “Where am I?” the dead boy asked.
The man looked at the grayness all around. “Where?” the man said. His voice, like the dead boy’s, sounded like the whisper of dead leaves stirring.
A woman emerged from the grayness. Her head was bald, too, and her body dried out. “This!” she rasped, touching the dead boy’s shirt. “I remember this!” She tugged on the dead boy’s sleeve. “I had a thing like this!”
“Clothes?” said the dead boy.
“Clothes!” the woman cried. “That’s what it is called!”
More shriveled people came out of the grayness. They crowded close to see the strange dead boy who wore clothes. Now the dead boy knew where he was. “This is the land of the dead.”
“Why do you have clothes?” asked the dead woman. “We came here with nothing! Why do you have clothes?”
“I have always been dead,” said the dead boy, “but I spent six years among the living.”
“Six years!” said one of the dead. “And you have only just now come to us?”
“Did you know my wife?” asked a dead man. “Is she still among the living?”
“Give me news of my son!”
“What about my sister?”
The dead people crowded closer.
The dead boy said, “What is your sister’s name?” But the dead could not remember the names of their loved ones. They did not even remember their own names. Likewise, the names of the places where they had lived, the numbers given to their years, the manners or fashions of their times, all of these they had forgotten.
The Keyhole Opera Page 13
