Shorter Warrior

1. Adjacent to the Cemetery

At a monument beside the tombs of marble and crumbling rock the warrior examined the gash on his left side he had suffered climbing. The cliff face guarding the perimeter of the cemetery had snared him in its hard teeth and thought to swallow him whole. He chipped away an edge of a tooth with his sword hilt and broke free. He continued climbing, but more carefully. Deep forgetfulness hung about the yard. Any remembrance of those interred had melted with the evaporation of the morning dew. No one had tended the yard for years, the mourners themselves buried and gone. Virtue or hatred, desperate ambition or flamboyance, all dried bone and dust, ash.

He leaned against a monument’s base and pondered his own quest. A fading sun warmed his brow. The signature of his journey, completely useless and in desuetude. He stirred himself and extinguished lines of doleful poetry that surfaced in his mind. He must continue, no matter if the writer remembers him not. He turned to go and exit this property of the dead when he saw almost at the edge of his field of vision a stair he swore had not been there before. As it appeared to climb a mound it might offer a clear view of the countryside.

Seven steps of unequal size confronted him. Had the architect been drunk? Such a grand sweep of steps without a temple atop it. Which way were its visitants to proceed? The warrior mounted the steps and stood on the landing and saw a building built into the other side of the mound, keeping it invisible to those coming from the cemetery.

The dragon opened a door and silently regarded the warrior who was looking far out into the distance. “Such a silly vain man,” the dragon said to his cohorts who all chuckled.

The warrior whirled about, his sword drawn.

“Sheer churliness,” the dragon said.

The warrior knew the dragons from elsewhere. He placed his sword back into its scabbard and held down the urge to scold the dragon for startling him.

“Do you have an irrational affinity for the deceased?” the dragon asked.

“Your proximity to the cemetery suggests another explanation. Rather you are the spirits of the dead come from some place out in the far far west.”

That remark puzzled the dragon and made to close the door on the advancing warrior. The warrior wedged his foot and pushed with all his might. The two sides fought furiously.

“These dragons are too damned strong!” the warrior thought. “I have secrets to tell you!” he yelled over the din.

The dragons pulled open the door so quickly the warrior fell head over heels. He lay sprawled inside the dragon’s lair. Dragons with long hair bounds his hands and feet with their braids, while others prepared a noose. When at last the warrior cleared his head, he found himself with only moments more to live. Already they had started a great cauldron at boil and taken down china from the cupboards.

“You dragons are so vexatious!” the warrior cried.

The dragon stirring the soup with a feather asked, “Why?”

“If you intend to eat me, then you ought to invite guests, and I believe I should review the list with you.”

Dragons are dreadfully fearful of committing a faux pas as they are charter members of society. The dragon stirring the cauldron dipped his elbow and declared the heat just perfect. They lifted the warrior high and tightened the noose.

“This is a private party, warrior, and all you see here will eat of the host.”

A loud pounding interrupted the chanting and meditations of the assembled. “The door!” They rushed to answer and opened it a smidge.”Who is it?”

“You’re guests,” Hortense and Heloise clamoured, “Or have you ninnies already forgotten?”

The dragons fell over themselves dodging the door as it swung open.

Hortense and Heloise dressed in flowering pink descended the few steps to the hall and magesterally handed the butler their engraved invitations. “We have gifts!” they announced.

The dragons left whatever they had been doing and bunched around the two girls.

“We have presents for every last one of you.”

Some of the dragons openly wept so happy were they.

Hortense and Heloise handed each dragon a bowed ribbon of pink and kissed each on the cheek.

The dragons blushed. “Are you truly of royal blood?”
“We are royals, if that’s what you mean,” admitted Hortense, “but is not every dragon a monarch?”

A murmuring of assent rose from the floor.

“Here! Here!”

All eyes turned toward the warrior. He banged his recovered sword on the table.

“Will all members of royal houses, Kings, Queens, Princes, Princesses, and other assorted courtiers, be seated, please.”

The dragons broke off into cliques and sat themselves at their respective tables.

Hortense and Heloise sat at the main dais on either side of the warrior who presided over all.

A question arose from the floor. The warrior bade the dragon speak his mind.

The dragon cleared his throat and in this way toasted his bow tie. “Weren’t you to be the morsel for this feast?”

Many of the dragons clapped in approval.

Heloise stood. “My menu reads Fish Soup.”

Tufts of shouting burst out between the party that favored fish soup and those who wanted warrior soup. Violence threatened to mar this heretofore peaceful tableau.

The warrior hastily banged this sword hilt on the table top. “The next dragon who argues will have his head cut off.” Such was the menace in the warrior’s voice that the dragons now docile took up their spoons and sipped the fish stock.

“By the way,” asked Hortense midway through the meal, “Just what is the secret ingredient in this dish?”

The warrior lifted his plate of soup off the table and showed them the guest of honor smiling back at them.

“Glad to be here,” said the fish.

Hortense and Heloise moved their plates aside and peered into the table. The fish puckered her lips and gave them a kiss.

2. Sleeping Dragons

The warrior abandoned authorship, seeking, deliverance by an obscure divine principal, women, the borrowing of light, and any and all books he had ever read. He carried only the clothes he wore.

“What nonsense are you following after now?” the dragon asked him. “Is it purity?” He grinned at the warrior’s expressionless face. “Swallow a cat?” He poked at the warrior’s lack of fortune. “You look poor, vagantlike.”

The warrior knew this particular dragon from somewhere, but he couldn’t place it. “Your name, dragon. I can’t remember your name.”

“But you never give us a name, warrior, and after all, maybe I don’t need one.”

The warrior nodded. “I am leaving.”

The dragon feigned surprise, “You don’t mean it. Where would you go?”

The warrior looked over the dragon’s shoulder. “Somewhere you don’t see.” He moved silently away.

This aroused the dragon’s curiosity. He marched alongside the warrior down streets they had walked hundreds of times. “Are you crazy?” he asked the warrior.

The warrior scanned every alley between buildings and every vacant lot. The dragon matched his gaze and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“Enamoured of nothingness?”

He remained mute.

“You are rather dull.”

The warrior kept up his pace quickly traversing the blocks. He arrived with the onset of evening and its lengthening shadows upon a small park. His eyes shown momentarily with a hint of recognition. The dragon noticed a difference in the warrior’s carriage. Both of them heard a pounding of a peg into the ground hardened by the cold. The warrior entered the park. He pulled open a heavy iron gate and slammed it shut before the dragon could follow. By the time the dragon managed to heave open the gate the warrior had vanished into the increasing shadow of the oncoming night. He sniffed the air for a scent. The air was heavy with an undefinable fragrance. He lit a branch fallen off one of the trees to drive away the gloom. The glow of the torch served only to deepen the twilight. After a few furtive steps in search he turned back toward the street and struggled to find the gate.

The warrior had passed through the screen of trees. A man had just finished setting two thick wooden pegs into the ground. The pegs were red and the cords attached to them passed through a hole in the pegs. They stretched the cord tight parallel to the ground and almost touching it, and then disappeared into the sky overhead. The man regarded the warrior without comment. The warrior stepped closer, and saw behind the man and into the area bounded by the cord a vast field sloping upward with long golden grasses.

“I would enter this way,” the warrior said.

“You may go left or right, but you are forbidden entry to this realm that I guard.”

The warrior saw that the red pegs defined the borders of that realm and that on either side was the park as it always had been. “Still, I would seek entrance.”

The guardian shook his head and withdrew a sword. “As you prefer.”

The warrior advanced and the guardian struck expertly at his head throwing the warrior back. He ducked under the blow and rising struck at the guardian’s waist who leapt over the attack and kicked the warrior in the jaw. He partially deflected the brutal kick, yet he flipped over and landed in a heap against a tree. “You are a fool,” he said to the unconscious warrior.

When the warrior awoke he found himself ensnarled in a crude webbing of heavy cord. A few dragons were smoking by the tree. The warrior twisted in the netting and the cords cut deeper into his flesh. He was trapped. “Am I a prisoner?”

One of the dragons threw his cigarette into the fire crackling in the morning chill. “You are whatever you choose to be.” They roared in derision.

“Why am I here, then? Answer me that at least.”

An important looking dragon with a heavy gray beard settled down beside him and opened a book. “You are the writer, aren’t you?” He flipped through the pages of the book.

The warrior eyed this dragon nervously. “Are you referring to my stories?”

“Of course.”

“Do you have the right author before you?”

The dragon was tickled by the question. “Did you hear that boys? He wants to know if we have the right man.”

“Your history was checked carefully before we captured you sleeping.”

The memory of the fight started to come back to him. “So I lost.”

The dragon cleared his throat like a schoolmaster and read, “The warrior left authorship…” and then he stopped. ‘Now what does that mean?”

“I didn’t mean for you to see that.”

The dragon stroked his beard. “Did you intend to cut off our existence with the mere writing of a few words?” aghast at his own suggestion.

“No. I deny the charge.”

“Then why did you bother to write it at all?”

“I don’t really know.”

The elder dragon screamed. “Then cut off his head!”

The two dragons smoking and schmoozing by the fire hurried over to their elder’s side. “Don’t you think we would do better just to cook him?”

The elder dragon weighed the choices. “What do you think, warrior?”

“Read the story.”

The elder began to read the story aloud. First one dragon let his head droop in sleep, then another dozed until the bunch of them lay on the ground snoring.

Some stories are so boring with absolutely nothing happening that the hearers, if they are so unfortunate to be within hearing, fall asleep. The warrior reached for a knife within reach if he stretched to his utmost. He cut through the cords just enough that he could squeeze through. Then he tiptoed out of the park of the sleeping dragons.

3. The Master of Ceremonies

“Over here!” a man hallooed him halfway down the block.

The warrior at first ignored the man’s voice thinking he couldn’t be addressing him.

The man impatiently called him again. “Here!”

The warrior slowly advanced toward the man and saw he resembled his father, H. The warrior had not seen him except in dream and that only a few times since his death. When he was near, he said, “I seek truth not counterfeit.” He stopped in wonder. The resemblance was so strong it sent shivers up his spine. “Dad!”

The man held out his arms and the two of them hugged. Neither knew if the flow of time might draw one of them away.

The warrior’s tears fell on his father’s shoulders. “I thought I would never meet you again. I saw you once in a dream ride away on a great dark horse far over the fields of the earth into the realm of death. Is this you?” He could feel the man’s corporality, and yet a thread of doubt twisted around his neck. He was entranced by the form of this man. “My father?”

He felt a tugging at his throat. Someone was pulling on the thread that had knotted around him and it pulled him onto his back. He frantically tore at the thread with his hands trying to unknot himself so that he wouldn’t choke.

A horse dragged him by the thread roughly over the road. At last he untied himself. The horse continued on its way. He stood unsteadily and inspected his body for injuries. He had only bruises. Of his father there was no trace.

“Was he ever there?” He scratched his face without being aware.

“And what is it you do with all that time you have?” he heard someone say. It was a woman’s voice.

“Who are you?” He had never seen her in this city before.

“Have you already forgotten? We made love last night in your dreams.”

He remembered a fragrance or was that his imagination he couldn’t tell, and nothing more. Something about her couldn’t trust. A crowd of people welled up to the street out of the subway exit and swallowed her. He looked up into the sky to see if it was the same sky as yesterday. He could discern nothing strange. Was he altered somehow?

He stepped into the dark threshold of a bar out of the sunlight. At the washstand in the bathroom he looked at his face to see if it had changed. “You are handsome,” he thought. The image in the mirror replied, “Thank you.” He turned at movement at the corner of his eye. He could have sworn it was a semblance of himself running out of the bathroom. He began a hot pursuit of his other self. “Is this the cause of all this illusion and trickery.” He meant to find the one responsible.

His other self left no trail. Every time he passed a plate glass window of a shop he spied his other self grinning back at him. It occurred that others might have noticed that there were two of him. People kept milling by him on their own way after their own pursuits.

“I think I’ll get a drink,” he thought.

“Do you thirst? For the truth?” a sign read dead ahead of him with an arrow pointing east. He looked over eastward. He decided to go through the door to that building, perhaps a hall of some kind. He pushed through the door and thought to meet his maker.

A crowd of dragons stood around a barrel of punch humming an age old tune peculiar to their species. The warrior barged right in.

“A warrior!” one of the dragons cried. They gave him some elbow room. Another dragon pumped him on the back. “I have read your works, warrior, and I find them a witness to the search for truth. And this flower has grown so rare in this our world.”

The warrior caught his breath. “Is there no stopping to the endless chatter about me?”

A few other dragons donned masks of the warrior and began a flood of endless chatter. “Did you see the sky this afternoon? The clouds amazed me.”

The warrior interrupted. “Can you imitators identify the source of this and all other jokes?”

“Absolutely hilarious, warrior.” And they smiled just like the warrior with just the hint of a grimace. He balanced precipitously on the edge of madness and clarity.

“You are the author, you silly.” Someone in the rear began a refrain of, “For he’s a jolly good writer, for he’s a jolly good writer.” The house thundered in appreciation. Some of the more glamorous dragons wore skirts and murmured, “We are the woman you are forever after.”

The warrior’s eyes glinted with tears in the hall’s low lights. “I can hardly see you. How do I know you are not teasing me?”

“Pinch yourself! And see if you are not dreaming.”

The warrior thought this sage advice, the first he had heard the whole day. “Do any of you have tweezers?”

He sought the master of ceremonies. This portly dragon sat at a small round table nursing a drink. He looked up at the warrior’s approach, and yawned. “And what do you want?”
“Some tweezers.”

“I am not a dentist or a tailor or a seamstress’s paramour or a commercilizer of the truth. Ask elsewhere if you want satisfaction.”

“That was excessively long winded.”

“Keep your opinions to yourself, or better yet, write them down in one of your stories. Only these dragons will read it, and they are beneath my contempt.” He drained his glass, stood, and exited through a rear door.

The warrior appealed to another dragon standing nearby, his assistant he presumed. He refused to answer any of the warrior’s questions and pointed to the clock on the wall overhead.

The warrior looked up with shock at the apparition. He remembered the watch his father had given him before all the terribleness that was to come unfolded. His father’s face was staring down at him at the goings on. Was this a preordained time? He puzzled over all the coincidences occurring that day.

4. Once The Inner Chime Is Heard

“A lovely thought, though I prefer a nuance more sublime.” Hortense refused to explain. “Do you think this flame will burn forever, warrior?”

“I imagine so, if I continue to write.”

She laughed.

“What is so amusing?”

“The dragon and the fish and some others I don’t know approach us. Shall we meet them?”

He looked down the street also. “I could elude them only so long. I suppose they are also drawn by the fire.”

“The fire has a power perhaps unknown to us both.”

“Well met at last!” the warrior roared.

The dragon and the fish and the assemblage gathered around them. “We have missed you.”

“Your gratitude and warmth disarm me. What brings you here?”
The dragon smiled. “That fire upon that altar burns fiercely like a jewel dazzling in the sunlight. Are you its cause?”
The warrior asked Hortense to come forward out of the shadow. “It was her doing, dragon.”

The dragon happily took her hand. “A deft work.”

She ignored the compliment. “And what do the other beings accompanying you want?”

“Our collective purpose concerns the warrior’s stories. Am I right in supposing that it is these very stories that burn so gayly yonder?”

The other dragons nodded and the fish perched herself on the dragon’s forehead.

“I smell a fish,” the dragon said saltily.

“I may or may not be the ultimate author. At times I consider myself an author, if not of my own life, then of others.”

The dragon guffawed. “A funny sentiment. So who is this other author?”

“No one is the author of his own life,” said the warrior.

“Least of all you?”

“I have my doubts.”

The dragon thought a moment. “I propose a tribunal to ferret out the answer.”

“The truth might unfold at last.”

The dragon summoned forth judges from among the throng who accompanied him. Each one doffed a wig, a blanket, and sat austerly near the fire. A light of truth? “Bring the warrior.”

He strode into the bellyful of judges. “I am here.”

“Do you seek to menace the court with your speaking?” the chief judge barked.

“I meant to discourage illusions, my liege.”

They suspected tricks were in the offing. A stout dragon hefted a spear and pointed it squarely at his chest. “This is serious business. No jokes.”
“I will answer directly and offer no hint of circumlocution. You need only ask.”

The judges snorted. “We assert he lies and fabricates uncontrollably, hence his stories. There is no end to the nonsense.”

The warrior said quietly, “I deny this.”

They hissed. The fish upspoke. “Call Hortense.”

Hortense climbed onto the seat next to the warrior.

“What is your view of the matter, Miss,” the chief judge asked her circumspectly.

Hortense pointed to the fire. “It burns brightly because it destroys illusion. The warrior told me it would burn forever.”

She would say no more despite the dragon’s pleading.

The judges regarded the warrior with even more puzzlement.

“It is hopeless to explain. I would only create loops within loops, rings, circles and spheres.”

The dragons would not relent. “We shall enter the domain of your mind, warrior.”

“By what means?”
“The fish here is an able surgeon.”

The warrior appraised the fish. “She has no hands.”

“That is merely the obvious. There is more to it than that. We are not the pack of idiots you may have intended us to be.”

The warrior agreed. What choice did he have?

The fish spoke after a prolonged silence signalling deep introspection. “The dragons enjoy an existence apart from whatever the warrior may write. It is futile for any dragon to press the warrior to provide a meaning for his existence. It is for the dragon himself who must delve for that answer.”

“I think this business has ended,” said the warrior. The flame of the burning stories blazed brighter. The dragons heaved their blankets and wigs into the fire. The warrior at last recognized them silhouetted against the burning fire as familial ties, his own aspirations for earthly grandeur and fatherly approval, his daughters, and all the people he had loved.

“Where will all this get you?” asked Hortense.

He saw within her lay a goddess dormant he had never before noticed. If he only touched her now the goddess within would be realized. “Shall we dance?”

She half turned away.

He lifted her into the sky and they danced that day and evening that followed, and the day after that in continuum, for no end was there to the dancing once the inner chime was heard.

5. The Rising Of The Dead H.

“Do you still grieve for the dead H.?”

The warrior feigned ignorance of the question, bothered by the sudden appearance of the dragon.

The dragon persisted. “I ask you if you are still in mourning for H. or not, and if not, then tell me.”

“If H. wants to rise, then let him. It is no affair of mine.”

“Are you a liar, warrior, from bitterness or from indifference?”

The warrior turned to the side so as to hide the tears welling in his eyes. “In your dragonish wisdom, you misinterpret signs. I would not spill the contents of my mind with which you would play. It may just be ghosts making the day so forlorn.”

The dragon blew fire to light the torches hanging unlit on the walls of a street where now they both stood. “There is a shadow among us.”

“I should defend myself,” said the warrior, feeling the shadow also.

“Do you really believe it has malign intent? Perhaps it is one of my meditations taking form.”

“I would smite you, if you come closer, shadow,” said the warrior.

The shadow filled like a sail and then collapsed in the ever changing torch light.

“I thought you fearless.”

“I spent many years meditating that I was not the dead H. though I look just like him. Appearances are indeed deceiving.”

The dragon meanwhile took special delight in this magical theater. He endowed the shadow with a heart of fire and eyes blazing forth from a countenance of flame. The shadow stepped out from the wall.

“It was a dreary place. Are you my master?” He addressed the dragon.

“There is a tie between us, shadow, truly, but I only called you forth into existence. I would not teach you.”

The warrior watched in awe as the shadow spoke. The shadow turned toward him. “Are you my brother?”
The warrior did not answer. Instead he marveled at the uncanny resemblance this shadow had to his brothers, even to himself. Could H. have fathered another son unbeknownst to anyone till now?

The shadow stood mute and apprehensive.

“Do you have a name?” the warrior asked.

“Would you so hastily reveal your own name?” asked the dragon. “What is your name, warrior? By all the heavens I should know by now by right, by goodness and justice. You are my creator and I am the creator of this shadow.”

The warrior saw the shadow take on a more definite shape. Now he resembled a youth golden and fair.

He took a step back. “This day has grown most strange.”

The dragon scratched his jaw. ‘Why go about denying the existence of this or that, warrior. You are the long snouted fool, not I.”

“My name is still something I dwell on continually. I would not give you a hint lest you make of it a joke.”

“I guess your name is something the masters within you dispute about, so that sometimes you are called one thing and another times another, all of which is confusing.”

“You are tiresome, dragon. Why not hold your tongue still?”

“My tongue is a fiendish animal with a will of its own somehow related to fire.”

The warrior sidestepped a jet of flame emitted from the dragon’s nostrils.

“You must be named,” the dragon said to the youth. “What shall we do?”

The warrior frowned. “This problem has no easy solution.”

The youth suggested nothing of himself, where he came from, what he knew about his past or any hopes for the future.

“Are you satisfied to go about life without a name? A name is a shield of sorts,” offered the warrior.

After a length of pondering the youth said, “I would be named, lords.”

“We should douse those accursed torches, dragon, and leave this place. We must find what will suit this youth best.”

The dragon felt ill at ease to extinguish any light no matter how inconsequential. So he made them glow at a very low ambience.

The warrior gave it no mind. “Follow me, if you will.”

Hortense stood on the street admiring herself in a mirror taken from her purse. She saw the warrior, dragon and a comely youth emerge from a crack in the wall. She quickly closed the mirror, fit it snugly in her purse, about faced, and practically stepped right into the warrior’s march. “How do you all do?” she asked.

The warrior awoke from his mentations. “I didn’t know you visited these neighborhoods, Hortense.”

“I wander now and then. You never know what you might find.” She looked at the youth.

The dragon stepped in front of the youth. “Hortense, we are on a quest for the sake of this youth. Will you interfere?”

She smiled. “You are quite dramatic, dragon. Why not save yourself for the stage? I have heard auditions are being held soon for the play in the theater for the upcoming season.”

The warrior thanked the gods for this clue. “You mean the theater just down the street?

“Yes, though I know nothing more about it.”

“Then let’s go. Will you join us, Hortense?”

She weighed the choice while watching the youth slip out from behind the dragon. He gave her not the slightest bit of attention. Rather he looked up at the sky as if in wonderment.

The warrior started off and they all joined him. They found the place, but it was closed for repair and refurbishment. They came upon the heavy oaken doors now closed, and stood in front of them. “What are we to do?” the warrior asked. “I will push against the doors.” He heaved with all of his might, but they did not budge. He turned to the dragon who had greater bulk. The dragon leaned against them and pushed until his veins almost burst.”Are we locked out of the auditions?”

The youth stepped forward. “I will try, uncles.” He loosened his shirt and heaved like they did. Foiled he stepped back and reflected. He knocked, but no answer came.

“Is there a bell?” asked Hortense.

The lintels were as smooth as mother nature. No bell. They retreated and read the fanfare and bills plastered on the walls. Notice of the upcoming play headlined the news. Hortense squinted at the renderings of the actors drawn on the posters. There off to the side of the stage stood a yellow haired youth that closely resembled the youth who now stood beside her.

She took his hand and pointed to that figure. “Is that you?”
He followed her gaze. “I suppose so, Hortense.”

The dragon also noticed it and showed the warrior. They stood still and guessed at the likelihood of such a possibility. The warrior shook his head. “But what is the title of this play?”

It had been smeared by dirt and grime and was partially unreadable. “Perhaps the marquee?”

They looked up at the darkened marquee in the increasing gloom of the evening. It read: “The Rising of the Dead H. and Others Variously Attired,” by Marc Ostrovsky.