The Thrill of the Case – Part Four

Read part one, part two or part three of The Thrill of the Case.

Listen to this part of the story read by AI voice Mimic 3.

Everarck distributed the remainder of the e-mails without further incident. More than once he opened his mouth to ask about the Court of one of the array of thoughtful lonely officials abandoned in overlarge dusty offices around the building but, as HR Manager Octomus Dicks had somehow gotten loose from his office and was now snorting and evil-eyeing his way around the building, he decided to complete the task as efficiently as possible and then found a quiet place near the reception area to catch up on tasks he’d been avoiding for several days. As these did not elevate his impression of his own intellect, he contented himself by entering the records in rigorously pedantic detail in the most beautiful script he was capable of producing.

When Everarck got home, the hall telephone awaited him. A black triangular prism with round shiny buttons, its design was wholly predictable and yet Everarck could not help thinking it resembled the key to some deep space alien portal. He took off his jacket and baseball cap and put them on wall hooks that had always been there. He went to see if there was any mail propped next to the toaster. There was: a slender brown envelope, most likely a bill, and a stuffed-looking white packet that was undoubtedly junk mail. He didn’t touch either of them. The main news was that Zagonella had been here at some point. He hoped she’d slept.

Finally, there was nothing left to do except switch on the TV, access the world wide web with their dial-up service, read a newspaper, go for a walk, or check the answering machine. In short, give up, give up, give up, give up or let the consequences of his rash actions wash over him. He checked the answering machine. There were three messages, two of which were a couple of seconds of silence followed by a beep and then suddenly a voice was speaking in a slightly nasal voice that lingered over vowels, making it obvious the speaker was choosing her words with care.

‘Hello, this is Gerellia Noghan calling from the Court of Public Opinion. We received your message, Mr… Fanger. Thank you very much for getting in touch. I understand you’d like to apply for a law regarding… intellectual vanity of some kind, so that you can enter into a case with one of our professional advisors and work towards being acquitted of the charge. If I’ve understood correctly, call me back. My name’s Gerellia Noghan. You can call me on 01867 665 328. I’ll be here until about… 6 pm, maybe a little bit after that.’

‘Oh, God,’ he thought, ‘It’s only 5.37. I’ll have to do it.’

He sat down on the hall chair, an uncomfortable thing with a hard back. His knees jutted into the arc of the living room door, which he didn’t like, even though it was closed. He’d have to listen to the message again as he’d forgotten the number. The corner shop would close soon, and he needed cheese and bread, but that was no excuse either because the nearby Sunny’s didn’t close until 7. Sort out the road tax for Zagonella’s car? Fish the wedding invitation out from behind the fridge? No, it was no good. He’d have to call. He’d have to call. He looked at the phone and imagined picking up the receiver. Yep. There was no doubt about it. He’d have to call.

Read part 5 of The Thrill of the Case.

The Frontier and the Farmstead

We knew each other by the light of the eyes. In fact, before we'd even had a chance to observe such an intimate element of expression, we could have told each other by pace, posture, even direction. I walked on the road up from Hect to Posst, and she on the road down from Posst to Hect. Inevitably, we passed for it was the same road.

The light in the sky had gone yellow a good long while previously and now eased into medium grey on its way to a full-bodied darkness. The woman and I had seen each other on our respective horizons as dark flecks stretching into speck-silhouettes and gradually becoming figures. It had been a journey of steps, one after the other, just as described in Wisdom: a repeated motion so tedious that the mind drifted above the slave body and let it work, taking its own smooth course via memories intrusive, futures built of hope and assumption, images delineated by clouds painted large upon the sky and the treetops and the birds.

We met without imperative or plan, without even knowing the other's name, outside the small village of Tarn. I looked at her with the gaze of a man who seeks rest and repast. She looked at me with the scorn of a woman who'd keep walking till she wore the leather off the soles of her shoes, but in me she recognised an opportunity, and in her I recognised someone much younger, perhaps by only seven summers, but still much, much younger.

'Excuse me, miss. Do you know of any good hostelries in this village? I have walked all day, and now the sun's molten gold ebbs on the low horizon,' I asked the woman.

'Alas, sir, I do not. Indeed, I had not planned on quitting before the night might have earned the right to call itself so.'

'If you do not know the way, I suggest you repair for the night. Bandits have the advantage from dusk till dawn, and the road is in poor condition once one is east of the great forest.'

'Your words are smooth, young master. I hope they are not searching for anything of their own kind in me.'

'Miss, I seek four small luxuries: nourishment, water, repose and cordiality. Perhaps you would be cordial with me. In return, you will approached less often by rough persons if we join together in fellowship.'

'I have no fear of rough persons!'

'I would not suggest that you did. Nonetheless, the boor can vex an honest soul.'

'And you would gallantly save me such a trial?'

'Gladly.'

'It is a fair trade.'

We went then and found a house from which the low thump and grumble of men met our ears. It was adequately lit, and I thought I spied a house girl through a small, thick square of glass. The door yielded when I put my hand upon it, and we entered. The wind and percussion of the house persisted, but I saw eyes come out from their resting places and go back in again, and I knew that behind some such reciprocations lay contingencies. Thus I escorted the young lady to a well-positioned corner where our fellow travellers might be watched.

'So you have quit the frontier,' whispered my companion once two plates of meat and two cups of ale had been placed between us.

'Just as the rose clouds grow dull in the sky tonight, so sets the sun on my dream of a good life in the badlands.'

'Making good from bad? Sir, I pray you do not put yourself to drawing fresh water from the privy in this house.'

I felt a blush that could have blossomed into fury, but instead I delighted in her boldness. A spirit with no flame cannot set the frontier ablaze, and only fire could purify that place.

'It must seem that a mild man speaks to you in this candlelight, but I assure you I was hard as leather and quick as a whip. I meant to rule that lawless land and always assumed I would win.'

'What stayed your hand?' she asked, chin resting on fist, eyes aglow.

'What stayed my hand? It was Wisdom that failed me.'

'What wisdom can you mean? I had not thought to find wisdom amid the snakes and scorpions of the borderlands.'

I had thought so long of the Wisdom of the Extraordinary that it took me aback to find my young companion knew nothing of the world inside my soul.

'What they tell you when you mean to let your own blood to purify the festering hearts of others. Colatus wasn't built in a summer. Many a skeck makes a skondle.'

'Do you mean to tell me that these trite words put a cap on your flame?'

'No words assured or diverted my course, but there is something in a word that is not a word.'

'A breath,' reflected she.

'Aye, in the old tongue, a pneuma. And that is what you reach for when your ears are hungry for Wisdom. You add the breath of others to your own wind. They say, "Forge your own fortune", "Set sight upon the stars, and fall no lower than the mountains." and you gather it all up and send it blowing through you.'

'Do you tell me that the winds of wisdom failed you?'

'Some winds are gyres, and some Wisdom chases only its own hind.'

I did not speak of the dens of greedy men serving a smaller number of even greedier men. I did not speak of how one must meet the demands of the greediest of men to even spend a moment with a girl. I did not tell her how my spirit was caught on the beauty of one such youth, and how I sought and sought to free her, but she did want for freedom and, in the end, I put my silver into the hard hands that knew the key to her cage, and that is where the Wisdom of the Extraordinary carried me, to that low, dark vale.

'It is my own story in its way,' she offered.

I almost retched to think of this good heart in any manner associated with the night when corruption took hold of me.

'What in the blazes do you mean?'

'Well, sir. I do not mean to impose my worthless reflections upon you.'

'No, I apologise. Please continue.'

'Very well. I meant to recount that where I come from, a gyre is a blessing for it is a cycle like a day or a year. Those winds that cross the cycle bring - I mean brought us itinerants who stayed the summer, worked for broth and bread and slept in the barn until those same winds blew them on to other farmsteads, other townships. We neither respect nor trust those whose pneuma doesn't bring them back around as the cycle of the year lifts the frost and ripens the crop.'

'I was raised and lived all my life in a town before I went to the edge. I have never lived in such rural idylls. What of the Wisdom in a land of pleasant cycles?'

'Not so pleasant, sir. Not for one like me. But all the same, the wisdom in such lands is a repeating music with such verses as "Scope before you spring", "Better intact than in tragedy."'

'Ah, they are beautious!'

'They are wretched!' she scowled, '"Mend the rail, and save the fence," "An egg in the pot is worth ten in the nest!"'

She spat out these words which I found so lovely with such contempt that I could hear the untold tale of a wildflower stretching up from seed and opening its flower in the hedgerow of a distant pasture. I felt I could see a spirit that so naturally soared toward the horizon that being forced to walk around in circles made it stumble over its own boots. I imagined an escape from a high window at midnight. I envisioned beatings meant to tame a wild spirit but only rinsing it with sorrow briefly. The Wisdom of the Ordinary, which made my eyes soft and my lips part in longing, to her was a pleasant childhood song so oft repeated that it hardened into the walls of a prison. I could not know really without her telling me, but I was sure hers was such a story, if not in its details then of that ilk.

'And so now you go on to the badlands.'

'I do,' she affirmed, and in the grate of the hostelry, coals were turned to show their white hot cores, but I felt the heat of them from much nearer.

'Then I will do two things for you. First, take my sword. You will need it, and I will not as I have silver enough for a ploughshare.'

'That is very kind, but I can accept no gifts, so I trade my key for your sword. It is the key to my cottage named Windflower in the village of Sop, a half day's walk from Posst.'

'Very well. It is a good trade.'

'And the second thing.'

'I offer you no wisdom, not a shred of advice, only my hope that you succeed where I failed.'

'I offer you the same and wish the same for you,' she replied.

The following morning we broke our fasts early and left the hostelry together. She felt the weight of the sword and looked at the sky, and I felt the shape of the key and murmured 'Windflower' over and over in my heart. And then we parted. She walked on the road from Posst to Hect, and I walked on the road from Hect to Posst, and we sighted one another never again for it was the same road.