“Sorcerer, that tale is even older than Methuselah,” Jacob said. “But it doesn't turn up in any of the better collections because it isn't good enough.”
“Jacob, why is it necessary for the Commonwealth to regularize such pleasantly irregular people as ourselves here in the Meadows?”
“Because the Commonwealth is on the verge of becoming a Greater Commonwealth, and for that we will need all resources possible.”
“Is your brother so much to you, Jacob? In all ways you seem to have been much the greater man.”
“Then ‘all ways’ is mistaken. I was the hatchet-faced man, young and old. He was always pleasant and handsome. As proof that he was the better man, Dorothy Wild jilted me and married him. She was from back home, you know, from our own three towns, Hanau and Stenau and Kassel. I believe that she returned to the towns, and that she is dead now.”
“Jacob, why aren't my tales good enough for the collections?”
“There's no enemy and no problems in them, Sorcerer. So there's no tales either. As to my own life-tale, you people are providing enemies and problems here. As to the tales that my brother and I collected, the last of them was published forty-one years ago. They were the products of our elongated boyhoods. I'd disown them now and withdraw them, except that they still pay me very well. But in our adult decades, we fought the battle for rationality in all things, and we did very significant scientific work. And we served the Commonwealth. Nobody ever served the Commonwealth better than we did, and no Commonwealth has ever been more regularized.”
“Jacob, doesn't Magic Meadows remind you a little bit of the little town where you were born, Hanau in the little state of Hessen-Kassel. Which has since been swallowed by a bigger state?”
“They remind me of each other a little bit, Sorcerer.”
“Happy flying tonight, Jacob. But you have lost your Magic. That means that it will be a bumpy flight for you. You lost your Magic.”
“But I found a Commonwealth that will engulf the whole world.”
Later in the afternoon, there was a pleasant and musical hammering going on, and there was a sparkling as from a forge. “It is only Schwarzkunstler the Sorcerer repairing wings for persons who will fly tonight,” an old crone told Jacob Grim.
“You people really believe that you fly,” Jacob said with wonder.
“For the good of his soul, every person should fly at least once in life, even if it is at the hour of his death,” said the cheerful and ugly crone. “And the Sorcerer is a making a new set of wings for somebody.”
“I've been here a week and I don't seem to have made much progress,” Jacob mused. “But in another week, my influence for rationalism and against magic and superstition will be apparent.”
“You haven't another week,” the crone told him. “You must die today — tonight.”
“Not so,” Jacob contradicted. “I am the hero of this my own tale; and the hero never dies today but always tomorrow.”
“This is tomorrow, Jacob,” the crone said. “I thought you knew that. You are daydreaming of a woman. Who is she?”
“Dorothy Wild, the wife of my brother William, she whom I've always loved.”
“Dorothy was here in the Meadows today. She has a house only half a mile from here. She arrived in the neighborhood a week ago, the same day you arrived.”
“You are wrong, crone. Dorothy died several years ago.”
“In her case, that only gives her greater mobility.”
Then it was twilit evening. Jacob was walking with the little girl Täuschung or Illusion. “You are my favorite ugly old man,” Täuschung said. “I like you.”
Jacob was pleased by this. “Will you also be flying tonight?” he asked.
“No, I'm not old enough. Next year I'll fly.”
They came to a Rowan tree. Täuschung walked behind it, but it was her mother Zauberei who came out the other side.
“What did happen to the men from the Commonwealth who came here?” he asked her.
“Most of them skipped to Paris or London or Vienna,” she said. “They found the Commonwealth, and especially the Greater Commonwealth that is in the offing, too much to swallow.”
“Oh they of little faith,” Jacob said sorrowfully.
“But your brother fell into the Valley. It's quite near.”
“Then I'll find him there. His blood cries to me from that bleak place.”
“But he doesn't sound bleak. I've heard him laughing there several times. He has such a pleasant laugh. It's also called The Valley of the Talking Bones. The bones of the dead people there talk to each other. Sometimes they sing. They have a good time.”
There was an earth-shaking jolt. “What was that?” Jacob cried.
“Oh, that was ‘The Fall of Night’. It was a sort of pun or joke with us at first. But now we've fleshed the pun to the point where the jolt is severe.”
“Zauberei, why can't I walk over this hill and into the Valley now?”
“The Valley is entirely surrounded by infernal quicksand. It can be entered only from above, from the high air.”
They were at the crest of the hill now, and the darkness was everywhere enlivened by the playful lightning. Persons were already flying aloft.
“It's time for you and I to fly together now, Jacob,” Zauberei said.
“Never!” Jacob cried with animation. “I am a rationalist, and every sort of superstition, such as flying, makes me froth at the mouth.”
“You are frothing now, Jacob, and you do have problems. But I'll grant you a wish now, and it'll obliterate your problems.”
“What are you, a fairy godmother, to grant wishes?”
“Oh, Jacob, it's now known that any good person can grant a wish to any other good person. What is your wish?”
“My only wish is that I might rise above such superstitious clatter.”
“Granted, granted. I grant your wish, Jacob.”
“What, what is this? What sort of shackles are these things on me?”
“You made a wish and I granted it,” chortled Zauberei. “These things that are suddenly upon you aren't shackles. They are the new wings that the Sorcerer made for you this afternoon. With them you may rise above every clatter and clutter. Come fly with me! If your heart is merry and true you will fly to a merry place. But if your heart is bleak, you will fall down, down, down, and burst upon the jagged ground. You have a choice.”
Swearing and fuming, Jacob Grim fought against the grotesque things that now had him in their coils. But, grotesque or not, the more he struggled with them the higher he rose into the air. With a banging and rattle of wings he was flying, much against his will.
“But what if I still don't believe I'm flying?” he croaked.
“You'd better believe it,” jibed the chimney swift that was flying circles around him in the air, “or you'll fall, and it's a thousand feet down.”
“What's that dingy white stuff scattered in the Valley below?” Jacob cried in a voice that was a little bit out of control.
“Just the bones of unbelievers who fell from the great height,” the chimney swift laughed.
“What's that river twinkling in the lightning, quite near?”
“The River Fulda,” the Swift said.
“How could it be?” Jacob argued. “I lived near the River Fulda.”
Then the chimney swift, out of pure malice, chanted a verse:
“Old Grim Jacob, hear my chants.
Notice, Grim, you've lost your pants.”
No pants, high in the air, and the lightning played on him like spotlights, and even the thunder was laughing at him. But Jacob would not be intimidated.
“An unbeliever has got to believe in his unbelief,” he cried out.
“You were told you'd have a choice,” croaked a night-black rook that was coasting around his head, “but you must take it now.”
“I do take it,” Jacob howled in his anger. “I abjure the whole idea that I am flying high in the air. I refuse the whole doubl
e-damned superstitious illusion!”
He took his choice, and his wings fell clear off him. He fell down and down, faster and faster, to crash —
“Not if I don't believe it!” he roared in his stubborn voice.
“Especially if you don't believe it!” roared a voice even more stubborn than his own.
— to crash so hard that he splattered and scattered his bones and his viscera and one of his eyeballs all across the floor of the Valley. Oh, and he was still pantless when he crashed! That hurt him the most.
But there was still a piece of his head that hung together, with his hatchet face still as sharp as before, with his stubborn and jutting chin still a-jut, and with one eye still in the remnant of its socket, baleful as the eye of a basilisk.
The scattered pieces of Jacob were strewn very close to those of his brother William who had crashed there four years earlier. William had also lost his magic, and he also had rejected the illusion that he was flying. And one doesn't regain his magic all at once.
“How long?” a piece of Jacob called out miserably.
“Oh, not too long, Jacob,” a piece of his brother William called out in a happier tone. “Oh, I am glad to have you here with me! It'll be about a thousand years before we regain it, but we have plenty of time here.”
Officially Wilhelm Grimm was buried in 1859 and his brother Jacob was buried in 1863 in St. Matthews Churchyard in West Berlin of the growing Commonwealth of Prussia, whose growing they had both served so faithfully. But Dorothy Wild, the Wife of Wilhelm, the romance of Jacob, was not buried with them. She was buried, according to written instructions that she left, back in her hometown of Kassel. But strange and spooky stories began after the burial of the second brother Jacob in West Berlin. So, about two years after the second burial, both graves were opened. And both bodies were in them, quite inert, and giving no evidence that they ever rose and walked, as superstitious people had reported. The bodies were like old parchment, brown and ragged looking, and curiously caved in. But nobody thought to check whether the bones were still in those shrunken bodies.
They weren't.
Their bones were half of Germany away from there, in a queer place sometimes called the Valley of the Unbelievers and sometimes the Valley of the Talking Bones. The two dead brothers talked to each other and to other boney people there. And they taught the other boney people folk-songs and led them in the singing. And Dorothy Wild, the wife of William, the romance of Jacob, came to visit them every day. She brought a pair of pants so Jacob could cover some of his boney parts and suffer less embarrassment. But wait a minute. Wasn't she dead too?
Sure she was, and that gave her greater mobility. And Kassel, one of the towns where they had all lived, was only half a mile from the Valley.
Sometimes the Brothers coaxed other boney folks to remember and tell old stories, and they did so.
“They're not very good tales,” one pile-of-bones said, “but we like them, and they're better than nothing.”
The most massive pile of bones in the Valley of the Talking Bones were those of the Giant Gog. “I am the biggest and oldest of all of you,” he told the other boney people, “and I had the longest and slowest fall of any of you down into this cursed valley, down through the ancient water. I was riding on the ridge-pole of the Ark, and the Ark bucked me off. So I drowned and ended up here. I'm the most massive of you all.”
The tales told by Gog's bones were also the most massive of all. It takes his bones at least three days to tell the shortest of his tales. But in some ways they are the best. They haven't the shortcomings of which Jacob complains in most of the tales there.
There are enemies in Gog's bones' tales. There are problems and conflicts in them. A giant who has been rubbing people and bones the wrong way for five thousand years will have plenty of enemies, plenty of troubles, plenty of conflicts.
The boney people in the Valley have whittled chess pieces out of their own bones and they play chess with them. Some of them are among the best chess players in all the Germanies.
And the thousand years that it takes for the two brothers to regain their lost magic isn't really such a long time. A hundred years of it has already elapsed, and it only took a hundred years to do it.
Anamnesis
Keroul, keroul, the dogs do growl,
The Duffeys are in Saint Lou.
They catch the eye, and none knows why.
Their humor's a little bit blue.
The Duffeys so far were one day wonders in St. Louis. They were a jingling novelty who were everywhere, and Duffey's jokes were all around the town. Most of the Duffeys were in the Rounders' Club that first evening, and they had about taken it over without a shot being fired, except by that loud cap pistol that Marie Schultz had. No, that noise that Dotty Yekouris was making wasn't shots; it was firecrackers, real big ones, that she was lighting and throwing about at random. Doesn't everyone love the acrid hot smell of big firecrackers!
The Duffeys seemed quite a bit overdone. Their colors were a bit too garish. They were too loud, they were too big, they were too intelligent. Those four excesses taken together come very near to spelling out bad manners. Very near but not quite. For the name of their game was ‘fun’. When Marie swept through the big rooms of the Rounders' Club, firing her pistol and carrying her husband Hans a-riding on her shoulders, everybody in Rounders' understood that it was fun. Things like this were much more common in Rounders' than in other clubs. Now the young lady customers there began to give their boyfriends rides on their backs and shoulders and to claim that this made them Duffeys too, whatever Duffeys were.
Well, if Melchisedech made them, why were they so damnably overdone? Because everything that Melchisedech did was damnably overdone. One of the most overdone of the Duffeys was Absalom Stein.
The Absalom, surnamed the Stein,
Was full of purple fire.
In some more ancient life he's been
Great Hiram King of Tyre.
Well that was true. In a former life Absalom had been King of Tyre, or even in the on-going present life. But what was he doing this evening? He was sitting on the lap of a middle-aged school teacher, and she seemed quite pleased about it.
Some of the Duffeys had never seen each other before, and most of them had never seen their supposed maker Melchisedech Duffey. But they quickly guessed each others' identities and cried out in delight the names they had never heard before. It was magic, sheer magic, Duffey magic.
Did the Duffeys know that they were grotesquely overdone? Some did, some didn't, some suspected it, but it wouldn't have made any difference. The name of the game would always be ‘fun’ for them, and it didn't matter much whether they were overdone or not.
One thing about Hans Schultz, he was always active.
Hans Schultz had been a lot of things
The Orpheus (sometimes shown with wings),
Apollo, with a lyre that sings
The Faust, whose dong the Devil dings,
But now, tonight, what 'tis he slings?
Oh, Hans had just been seized with a wild urge for a tallish, slim slightly boney girl, with a tallish and slim smile on her face, who was standing in the center of one of the big rooms. He believed that this girl, like himself, was a Duffey, but he couldn't guess which one and he was good at guessing. Probably he had never even heard her name, but that was no reason for not being able to guess it, with a little bit of Duffey magic. Anyhow, if she were a Duffey, he'd treat her as a Duffey.
He came up behind the tallish girl and vaulted onto her shoulders. That should have jarred her but it didn't. Well dammit, she should have pretended that it jarred her, but she didn't.
“This is as good an introduction as any, Hans,” she said. “I guessed you without too much trouble, though I had never heard of you. I also guessed your beautiful wife, Marie. I am Mary Catherine Carruthers from Chicago, supposedly Casey's girlfriend, and Show Boat Piccone invited me down to this strange conclave. You were rather well known as a
girl rider when you were Orpheus, were you not? Will you know Duffey when you see him? Is Finnegan here yet? I dreamed of him last night, so I know that I'll recognize him when I see him. Don't you think it's rather magic the way we Duffeys recognize each other, even those we've never seen or heard of before? Do you want me to turn this into a truly electrifying ride and give you an experience you've never had? I can, you know. Or do you not realize yet what sort of creature I am?”
“I'm pretty sure I'll know Duffey when I see him, yes. And it is all rather magic. Finnegan isn't here yet, but he's supposed to be in town sometime tonight. No, do not give me a truly electrifying experience such as I've never had before. You're already ahead of me. You spoiled my surprise and took the wind out of my sails. No, I guess I don't know what sort of a creature you are, if you put it that way. What are you?”
“I'm a nymph, an Oread Hipparion, an Oread Pony, one to be ridden.”
“Who told you that you were?”
“Duffey told me. He recognized what I was when I was nine years old.”
“But they aren't creatures of Duffey, they're of another recension.”
“Some are, some aren't. I'm both. I'm a Duffey creature, and I'm also such a nymph. I am a creature of Duffey, and I am also a Mountain Nymph, one to be ridden. At first thought it seems slightly grotesque that the great heroes should ride on the shoulders of such slight girls, of such slight nymphs. But then it seems something elegant, something of so magical a luxury that it takes the breath away.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 347
