Writing Excercise Continued — LJ icons part 2

 

Once upon a time in a land that little boys and girls have never heard of before because it is beyond the ellipses of the sky, beyond the farthest glimmer of light, beyond a comet’s tail, there was a small kingdom.

The king of that land lived in a monstrous castle made of white stone with marble statues of creatures that have never been to our world. These creatures had feathered limbs that weren’t wings, cloven legs that glided without a pitter patter to betray them, scales instead of skin that changed shapes and colors which told so many stories a child would die before he watched them all.

The King of this land was good and kind. The people smiled as they bowed, and they did not mock him. The only ones who feared him were those who skulked about in the shadows with drawn blades, that turned the ground red and made women into weeping widows.

The King had in his service a thin old man with a white beard that dipped and curved like ocean glass. He was the Glass-smith. The windows that spoke of rainbows and colors that twisted and writhed and coupled together were made with his hands, and he was very proud of his work for they were beautiful underneath the light of the suns and the moons and the stars.

One day, with his magic, he fashioned a Glass that measured the changes of the moons as they flared and dimmed. He filled this instrument with sand from shores that had never before felt the step of man and had known only silence.

The Glass-smith presented his instrument to the king, and he said, “If the glass is turned to allow the grains to fall, time shall cease and the moment will last beyond changes of the moon, beyond measure.”

“How can this be?” the King asked.

“It is an old magic, your Kindness, so old that it is almost forgotten. But I have remembered it after long nights of searching and anguish and hope. These sands which have known only silence will fall forever, for there is no end to silence. Silence there has been, silence there is now — for even underneath our words there is a silence, and silence there will ever be.”

The king folded his hands across his breasts. “The moment will not cease?”

“No, your Kindness.” The Glass-smith’s voice shook with joy. “Any moment you wish would never end is before you. This is my gift to you, your Kindness.”

The King put both his hands on the Glass-smith’s shoulders. “I hesitate to use this gift, old friend. It seems good, and not good, in the same moment.”

“I leave it to your Kindness to decide,” the Glass-smith said. “Know that I only want you to have happiness forever.”

The good King put his gift away in his own bed chambers. Often, as he lay next to his queen, he wished that he could stay beside her forever, listen to her breath, and watch the shadows of her dreams. Then his eyes would slip to the Glass that measured the changes of the moons, and he would yearn to turn it.

In time, the Queen and King decided to have a son between them. The baby grew within her and the yearnings grew scarcer, for the King wished to see his son a man. He was pleased when the Glass-smith fashioned for his unborn son a crystal pony that galloped in circles when a key embedded in its back had been wound and turned.

Shortly before the babe was born, a neighboring lord marched against the King’s land. Dragons who fed from hate and bitterness bore his soldiers and serpents who spat poison that spread fear and hopelessness circled themselves around the swordsmen’s necks.

Some swore they saw a dark cloud accompany them, and that whoever encountered this cloud would lose his life. Others said it was nothing but their own cloud of fear.

The conquering lord swept across the land leaving a black mark behind him. Children cried in the streets and women slept alone in their beds.

The King himself led the last platoon against his enemy. The Glass-smith watched him go with tears in his eyes, cursing the day he grew too old and too weak to carry a sword. With pleading words, he looked within the reflection of the Glass, beyond the walls of the castle, to the battlefield. From the Glass, he heard the clash of swords, the battle shouts of men, the screams of fear and anger and grief as one of their fellows dropped to the ground and stained the green grass with their blood.

The Glass-smith had no words when he saw an arrow pierce the heart of his Kindness, the King. He said no words and cried no tears and only wished to see his Kindness once more. From the reflection of the Glass, he heard the king’s breath struggle in his mouth and knew he was still alive.

His Kindness. His friend.

The Glass-smith turned the Glass over and allowed the sands of silence to fall.

At first there was nothing, but then the Glass-smith saw the his Kindness the King still breathe even though an arrow blocked the way and he went dancing down the hall. Tonight, the Queen would have been a widow alone with her tears. But not anymore, the death would never come.

The Queen’s chamber door was open and the Glass-smith entered with the news on his tongue and joy in his eyes.

But the Queen’s bed sheets were stained crimson and her legs were red and the door for the child dripped with blood. She held a puddle of blood that screamed and cried and begged in her arms. The water from her eyes washed away the blood on her cheeks.

“Why hasn’t he died?” the queen sobbed. “His heart is wrong or his lungs are broken. Every breath is a scream. Why won’t he die so that the pain will be no more?”

And the Glass-smith turned away from the sight with a sickness in his mouth and a plague in his heart.

He looked once more in the reflection of the Glass and saw his Kindness the King clutch at the arrow in his heart as he struggled to lift his sword. Gutless men still staggered on, plunging and stabbing and killing even though those they struck did not die.

The Glass-smith screamed as he saw the blood on the field and the blood in the bed. He struck the Glass upon the table. The glass shattered, but the silent grains of sand fell from the table to the floor and never ceased.

Then the Glass-smith upturned the table so that there would be nothing from which the sand to fall. But there was a crack in the floor and the golden sand of silence flowed into the crack and did not stop.

He fell to his knees and wept.

He wept for a long time, but did not know the count of the moon‘s changes.

In the hallways, he heard the bloodied screams of an infant and the tears of the mother.

In the shattered glass, the swords still clashed and the arrows flew and his Kindness the King staggered in the fight and did not die.

Sometimes, the Glass-smith wondered if they had not all turned into crystal toys with keys in their backs as they galloped ‘round and ‘round in circles waiting and waiting for and end…

And as the sands of silence slipped between the crack in the floor, he remembered that circles have no end.

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