1
The wall is always present.
The villagers watch. I hear their thoughts through their stares. Is he an idiot? Slam and kick – yell. Before their lips can move to ask the question they have their answer. He’s an idiot. And while the nubile and rotting continue to stare. Continue to smile and frown. The ones prying the village’s life from the surrounding fields move on. An idiot is not a worthy distraction.
There is a pin-prick of pain somewhere behind my eyes, radiating down to my teeth. Is this wall that pain manifest? Or vice-versa? Surely to be rid of one is to be rid of the other. To beat on the wall is to beat at the pain. And I am beating.
And stop.
And Breathe.
Breathe.
Sag, slump, falter. And stare at the ground. A meet between man and earth. It is trodden by God. And we are his feet. At times I feel like a big toe. Like I’m providing balance, and carving a path through the weeds, and the dirt. I am stubbed often but I am always first. And yet I am treated as if I am a spur in the heel.
They stare. They pass through my block. I leave, and trek back. Not far. Steps. I am standing in the prints I left five paces away from my travel’s end.
I squint.
I can almost see it. There is a faint wavering to the air that hangs across the land as far as the eye can follow from white-blue mountain to dark wood as if a curtain placed by some grand jester-king. I can hear him. This is my land. You are mine and you are of my land. You may not leave. And as he says this he is laughing.
I think I’m screaming because something is burning through my throat. Headfirst, I’m charging. I hit it and my spine goes rigid. I pass beyond into blackness.
The wall is always present. No matter which direction I head in I always encounter it. Even in the abyss of unexpected sleep I am aware of. I will never move through.
2
I am slow to open my eyes. Several realizations spring into the darkness behind my lids. I am hot. I am thirsty. My head, back and shoulders are sore.
There are voices. Two of them, both belonging men.
“It’ll take a good two weeks to reach the city. If we didn’t stop to rest it would still take a week at least.” The voice was gruff. Deep. I imagine the man as the fat, muscular type, covered in hair, stubbled and bald. He probably has blackening teeth and is responsible for several illegitimate, now-orphan children.
“But we’ve already wasted to-“ Something wet brushes my face.
“Dipper, stop lickin’ him!”
My eyes snap open. The face of a filthy blonde cherub, bathed orange in fire light, is hovering over my own. I start to yell. The noise dies a horrible, coughing death. It feels as if thousands of sores have reopened in my throat.
The kid, after landing on his ass some feet away spits. The glob falls short, lands on my hand. I could vomit. I could return the gesture in a far more effective way. But I don’t. I wipe it on the ground. And rub the dirt that sticks to my hand on my pants.
I hate spit. I think I could cut the hand off if it wasn’t so necessary.
I rise. Snatch at the child’s shirt and heft it from the ground. Its struggling, I’m not sure if it’s a boy or girl. I check – its a boy.
“Wait.” The one with a matte brown mop of a cut is raising a hand in my direction. “We’re harmless.” Both men are thin, with heads full of hair, and perfect teeth. I see no weapons.
A tooth finds its way into my knuckle. Fingernails into my arm. I drop the child and wince at the oomph he makes upon impact.
“Except for Dipper.” Says the other man. The child scrambles beneath the wagon. The blue of this one’s eye barely stands out from the white, and his pupil seems to be trying to eat it. He’s wearing a patch over the other eye.
“Who are you?” Talking hurts.
“Egon Vychild, and Harold Larini, King Interininum’s personal people curators.” Says the one with both eyes, Egon. It sounds like he’s building up to something
“Oh.” People appreciate being acknowledged when they speak. Oh is my choice of acknowledgement.
“King Interininum, son of the late King Carlisle the Ignacious, has tasked us, two humble, glory-women-and-food starved artists” he pronounces artists as ‘arteests’, “with traveling to the farthest stretches of his lands to collect the essence of his vassals that he might know the appearance of those who choose to live in such a land, that he may feel connected to them in order to properly rule them, and avoid his family’s heritage of growing irreversibly connected to the stones of their thrones.”
“Oh.”
“God, Fate, Royalty, and Beauty shown to us in the waters of an immaterial basin where we needed to go. The actions of those within these areas revealed who we needed. You are the last of the collection.” He has one of the most musical voices I’ve heard.
“Oh.”
We are staring at each other. It is hard to lock eyes with two people at once, but I think I’m managing.
“What’s your name?”
“_____. Why didn’t you approach me in town?”
“We started to. But you knocked yourself out. The village’s medic sold you to us for a couple coins.”
That’s comforting. As comforting as waking up in the middle of a field with a couple of strangers when you were supposed to be in confines of a village.
“I need to paint you, and then you can be on your way.”
3
The painting turns out to be a bit more arduous than I had expected. They request that I assume the pose I’d taken when I first showed I was awake, Dipper included. The bastard was light when I was considering killing someone. I don’t know if I’ll be able to use my right arm after this though. And the pose took ages to get ‘right’.
I’m not used to nudity, but Egon promised me some money after he’s finish.
Something buzzes passed my ear. There is a tit-tit of disapproval at the change in my facial expression, and the following twitch as something unknown lands on my back.
The tickle of what can only be an ill-intented creature traces circles around my shoulder blades. Explores to the middle of my neck. Lingers. Can they see it? They don’t say anything if they can. The spot itches, but then it travels south. Down my spine. To a fissure most sacred.
Dipper goes flying as I begin to dance across the camp. I flex my butt-cheeks and crush the bug. Except it isn’t crushed. It wriggles out and flies away unharmed, chewing a mouthful of my flesh.
I return to my pose, with a glaring Dipper, and they finish the painting.
They refuse to show it to me. I am allowed to dress, given the money and pointed. They go to sleep inside their wagon.
4
I am at the wall again, and all of eternity is stretching before me. A valley ripe with grain. An ocean of rippling amber.
I believe now – I can’t be sure, but I’m pretty confident – that this border is the edge of a place called Madness. Of a land ruled by a shadow painted gold, and cloaked beneath music and art and words.
I lay a hand against the wall, and lean against it for a time. Until a pink-grey form moves in the distance, standing tall against the waving crop. I watch it trace a zig-zag towards me. And as the sun falls behind I see that it is an elephant.
I thought animals had a tendency to avoid people, but this one is definitely targeting me, if slowly closing the gap. Its lazy path ends. The silhouettes of men rise from the either side of it and I see why it’s stopped.
They have spears and they are jumping up and down at the promise of meat. The elephant raises its trunk, as if to say hello or goodbye. I wave back. Satisfied, it gores one of the men and is subsequently brought the earth by net, and throated.
I expect the ground to shudder and the strangled cry of the beast to pierce my existence. But the land is still. There are only crickets here.
I drag my hand along the wall for a while and follow it east, away from the sight of the murder.
5
There is a city beyond the wall. I have heard that it is called Aven. And that there are many entrances. And that its people are happy. They are fed. They are clothed. And they are rich.
These people supposedly lay their wealth aside though. For what good are diamonds and crowns when every other man has them? And every man there does have them. They lay these things aside and bow. For the one thing that none of them can ever own, or surpass, is the one they call King.
They wage wars for this man. For he is more than a man, they say. And while they add to their glittering piles, and further fill their troves, they ruin their enemies. They gather their souls and pile them at his feet, and foreheads to polished sandal ask for greatness. Ask for acknowledgement. Ask for nothing.
They are conglomerate, but they are solitary.
I sleep within sight of Aven.
And when I wake I see the pink-grey of denied companion carving a rut into the ground as it is pulled to Aven’s gates.
If I were in power, and could cross the boundary, I would wade a bloodletting campaign through the city, and if I had power I would bring back the elephant. But he has been taken. And divided. And there is no return from that.
6
I walk away. The moon has arced a silver luminescent path into the sky.
It is three days before I stumble across a horseless Egon carrying a still wet painting atop his head. “Aventils tooks Dipper.” He says. “Harold went after him.”
“Oh.”
We walk, sleep, and eat our way to Interininum. He is a skinny, ruby clothed, plum-faced man. After reveling at Egon’s work and accompaniment of the work’s subject, he falls into a decline and begins dismantling his palace that his countrymen may build from its materials and realize their importance to his kingdom. He settles for a loft, a gallery of the pieces he’s collected, and a courthouse. His throne is taken to the center of town, because he’d like to tan whilst ruling.
7
As I move away from the once-palace I see violence. Men beat men – beat women – beat children. Who beat each other. People beat on stone, beat on the land, their lungs beat on the air and the ear. I see a family pet felled by crossbow. A family felled by foresightlessness. Plants are torn from ground, and eaten, after an existence of death as a supplement. Birds push hatchlings from nests and the babies do not learn to fly. A goat is sacrificed. A man is crushed and his pulp is mixed with oil and painted on the faces of his witnesses. Fire burns. Water drowns. Wind strips of nutrients. And earth crushes.
I wonder.
Madness has cross beyond its boundaries and consummated a relationship with the essence of consumption. Sent the world spinning, whirling and blurring. And left all that was intended separate a whole.
And far below a burning night sky, where the wind blows cold, and the limbs of trees hang heavy with fruit I find the wall again. And here there is a woman leaning against it even as other pass beyond.
Together we follow it a place empty of people. Where we discover a hole in it. We cannot fit more than our shoulders through, but something smaller might pass beyond.
We build a home, and in anxiety a child is born and loved and put through the hole. He falls clumsily to the other side but stands and after too long of a too short locking of eyes walks into a land beyond what is known.
As his silhouette disappears behind the crest of a hill and the glare of a rising sun, I am left with the question. Will he come back?
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