Sir Apropos of Nothing

by Peter David

  Basically, all of life was nothing more than a story. A tale, a fable, with all the beats and twists and turns meticulously mapped out, all the parts assigned, all the characters positioned in their proper places and carrying out their ordained tasks.

  Which was all well and good if one was the hero. It meant that your destiny would be a magnificent one, with many hardships that you would overcome before getting your just rewards.

  But now I saw clearly, the shrouds dropping from my eyes. I saw myself for who and what I was. Saw all my weaknesses, both in body and spirit, heard my position in the scheme of things, looked back upon my life and where I was in relation to Tacit, and was forced to an inescapable and inevitable conclusion.

  Tacit the brave, Tacit the determined, Tacit the unstoppable, was clearly the protagonist of some sort of epic tale. He was the Great Hero, whose coming was foreseen. Gods help me, Entipy—that raging brat of a princess—had been right. He would indeed save her, most likely with the aid of his newly found phoenix bird, which he’d probably been led to through some riddle or sorcerous turn or clue in a quest or some other damned twist of fate that was so prevalent in those annoying fantasy yarns. Tacit was the hero, THE hero.

  Me …

  I was a supporting player.

  I had a bit part. I was a walk on, a one-off, whose presence was worth a chapter or two at most, a few lines in a ballad. I was there not to serve any purpose or goal of my own, but instead to highlight and underscore Tacit’s greatness. I was comedy relief at best, a throwaway character at worst. I was never intended to amount to anything. I had been placed at the outskirts of the epic to be someone who fleshed out Tacit’s world. I existed to showcase the fundamental humanity and gallantry of Tacit, who was the leading player.

  My entire life didn’t matter. Everything that had happened, from the circumstances of my birth to the nature of my mother’s death, from my betrayal by Astel to my experiences in the castle … and anything I was to do in the future … none of it was remotely relevant to anything or of any real consequence.

  I didn’t have a life, not a real one. I simply had a backstory which existed to flesh me out as a mildly interesting subsidiary character.

  On some level, I must have sensed it all along. Perhaps it had derived from the constant sense that I needed Tacit far more than he needed me. Or perhaps it came from the realization that Tacit probably had given me not a moment’s thought since that day I had told him what I really thought. He had walked away secure in the knowledge that what I believed didn’t matter one iota in the grand scheme of things. Because he didn’t disappear from my life; I disappeared from his. I became an offstage, forgotten character, relegated to the early chapters of Tacit’s great adventure and then forgotten. At most, I would be mentioned in passing, with appropriate contempt, by Entipy, as she clutched onto his middle while they rode astride the phoenix, being carried away to their new home and his new position as ruler of Isteria. All his previous “crimes” would be forgiven, for his greatness would be recognized immediately and his incontrovertible place would be assured.

  He had moved beyond me. He was on to the climax of his adventure. All he had to do was gain the phoenix’s trust, use the creature to free Entipy from the Harpers Bizarre, and head back to his new home in triumph. Oh, Entipy wouldn’t want to go back to the palace, but he would probably insist. “Your parents must know that you’re safe,” he would say nobly, and when they returned to the castle, then would come the hero’s welcome and the happily ever after …

  And I would be stuck living out the rest of a life that had no purpose, no point, no worth …

  … other than to make Tacit look good.

  And that song he was singing … the one to the phoenix, about precisely where I stood in the order of things. Only two possibilities existed: Either it was some sort of tribute to his own wonderfulness that he was in the process of composing, in which case my so-called friend was putting together ballads which aggrandized him and made me the fool …

  … or else, as I had first surmised, it was some weaver ballad that he had learned, in which case it was entirely possible that he had known it when we were younger, and had befriended me not out of generosity but because he knew it was supposed to happen, and was fulfilling that which had been predicted so that he could have his great, happy, wonderful ending.

  To hell with me, and my concerns, and my own aspirations. Only Tacit the Mighty, Tacit the Daring, Tacit the Hero, mattered. The one ostensible friend I’d ever had in this world … and even to him, I was nothing but something to be stepped over … or stepped on.

  That was when I snapped.

  In all fairness, I think if you had realized that you were fairly irrelevant, you would have, too.

  For the briefest of moments, my rage went inward, and I came that close to throwing myself upon my sword as a final testament to my frustration and sense of bleak hopelessness. But just as quickly, I aimed my hostility in the proper direction: Outward. Outward toward the one who had made my life inconsequential: Tacit.

  There was a rock in my hand. I had no idea how it came to be there. I didn’t even remember picking it up. It was perfect and smooth and cool in my overheated palm. It was as if my hand was moving before my head had processed the information, and then I drew back my arm and I threw.

  Under any other circumstance, Tacit would have sensed it. A movement of a rock hurtling toward him would have been as loud as a gong to him, just from the violent way in which it sliced through the air. But Tacit was completely lost in the bonding between himself and the phoenix, oblivious to the world around him. And that obliviousness cost him.

  The rock struck him squarely in the side of the head.

  Because he was completely unprepared for it, Tacit went down. He looked stunned and confused, as if ejected from a place of peace, even ecstasy. Clearly he hadn’t even fully registered what had happened; all he knew was that he had been severely jolted and he wasn’t entirely sure why or how. As for the phoenix, it seemed just as confused. The way its head whipped about, I could tell that its eyes were still not completely focused on the world around it. Doubtless within the next minute or two it would know what it was about, but at the moment it was as perplexed and uncertain as any newborn.

  In all my wretched existence, I never moved as quickly as I did then. I covered the distance between us in just a few strides, using my staff to vault the final few yards. Tacit was still dazed, and only in the last second did he see me coming. Even as he did, though, his mind was trying to make sense out of what was happening. Consequently, he did nothing to stop me because he still hadn’t quite figured out what the hell I was doing there. In his perplexed state, determining the why of why I was there was more important than anticipating and blocking my next move.

  I braced myself and swung my staff as hard and fast as I ever had in my life. I slammed it into his skull, and if the rock had dazed him, the damage my heavy staff did was far worse. I heard something break, and it wasn’t the staff. Instead it was the satisfying snap of bone. Tacit went down, his jaw at an odd angle, little “unhhh” sounds floating from his throat. He tried to sit up. I saw a small puddle of blood where his head had been a moment, and spotted a couple of his teeth in the middle of it. I wondered if he was in pain. I wondered if he was feeling anything. I wondered why I wondered even as I swung the staff once more. This time he tried ever so slightly to put up a defense, but it was utterly inadequate. The staff came in on his blind side, on the side covered by the patch, and it struck home, opening a huge gash in his forehead. Blood poured down his face. There was always a lot of blood in such wounds, far out of proportion to the severity of the cut itself, but in this case the collateral damage was devastating, for the blood blinded his good eye.

  The phoenix now knew that something was desperately wrong. It screeched in fear, and flapped its wings. This time it managed to do more than move air around, and I saw the wings developing the strength required to move the creature.
This was a being of a magical origin, not bound by normal rules of natural development. Its strength and abilities were growing not by days, but by seconds. The phoenix started to rise into the air.

  Tacit began to stand, his legs bending wildly, and I swept his legs out from under him with the staff. He went down and I heard him call out my name, heard him say “Apropos!” in a tone that had confusion, betrayal, anger, and a thirst for revenge all intertwined. At least I think he said “Apropos.” With the combination of the newly missing teeth and apparently broken jaw, it wasn’t the most articulate couple of syllables I’d ever heard.

  Then I drove the staff home. I didn’t swing it in an arc this time, but instead rammed it forward like a spear, taking Tacit squarely in the forehead. Mercifully for Tacit I didn’t have the blade extended, or I would have driven it straight into his brain. I figured I owed him something for all the help he had given me, and here I had repaid the debt: I was letting him live.

  Tacit tumbled backward with a huge bruise on his forehead. He lay on his back, staring sightlessly toward the sky, and for just a moment I wondered if he wasn’t actually dead, my “mercy” a bit too late. Then I had no time to give it any thought, for the phoenix was airborne. Confused, frightened, and determined to put as much distance between itself and this place of violence as it possibly could, the phoenix was getting out of there.

  I wasn’t about to let that happen. As I had moments before, I took several quick steps forward, jammed the pole into the ground, and drove my body upward powered by the only part of my body worth a damn, my arms. For a split second I thought I wasn’t going to make it, and then my desperate hand snagged onto the feathers on the phoenix’s back.

  The bird let out an alarmed yelp, pivoted, tried to shake me off. We were already twenty feet in the air and rising fast. A fall from that height was not going to do me a lot of good. Several feathers came loose from the creature, and I almost lost my grip. Somehow, displaying strength I would not have thought I had, I propelled myself upward and snared one arm around the phoenix’s neck, securing my hold.

  Thirty, forty feet in the air, higher still, moving at a dizzying pace, and then the phoenix flipped over, trying to toss me, and I was dangling. My right leg was useless, my left leg seeking purchase and finding none, and the only thing that was preventing me from falling was my left arm wrapped around the bird’s neck. In my right hand was my staff. The blade was still contained in the staff, which meant I could probably have killed the stupid thing, but one quick glance down convinced me of the folly of that notion. If the bird died at that moment, it would predecease me by only a very short time.

  I thrust upward with my right hand, bringing the staff across the phoenix’s neck, then shifted my grip from the bird’s neck to the other side of the staff. “Stop it, you overgrown parakeet! You’re mine now!” I shouted, even as I performed the equivalent of a midair chin-up. In accomplishing that I was able to bring my left leg up and around, under the creature’s belly, so that even though I was upside down I was now flat against the creature’s back and clearly not being shaken off anytime soon.

  “You’re mine!” I said again, not knowing if the creature understood me and not caring, hoping that my tone of voice alone would underscore the fact that I was serious. The creature screeched in protest, but I ignored it. “You’re mine, and you will go where I tell you, now! Now!”

  And with that I secured my grip on the back of the bird’s head and angled the beast forward and down. It continued to try and fight me, but I could sense its resolve was weakening.

  The creature was confused. I couldn’t blame it. On some level, it sensed that it was supposed to figure into the grand scheme of things. It knew—as Tacit obviously had—that it had a role to fulfill in destiny’s master plan, and that role was to be fulfilled now. But it obviously sensed that something wasn’t right. It wasn’t sophisticated or intelligent enough to determine just what precisely was wrong.

  As for me, I no longer cared about right and wrong. All I knew was this: I had “wanted” my entire life. Wanted something, anything, to call my own. Wanted to break out of the little box that I had been placed in, first by society, then by the knights, and now by destiny itself. I didn’t want to go through my life and end up Apropos of nothing.

  And there had been Tacit, ready to step into his designated spot.

  It had all been so hideously unfair. I was not ready to accept or concede the possibility that Tacit might be better, worthier than me. Instead I saw in him, with his self-aggrandizing ballads, a smug symbol of everything that had been lacking in my life, and if I usurped that symbol, then maybe my life would no longer seem so empty, so filled only with bile and frustration and cynicism.

  If I could take Tacit’s place in the story … I could be the hero.

  It was really that simple. I would hijack destiny’s plot, laugh in the face of the author, and write my own ending. I would turn it around. No longer would I be Apropos the disposable character. Instead I would take over the narrative and drive it in a direction more to my liking.

  That was my plan, at least, provided I could get the damned bird to cooperate.

  The phoenix tried to shake me off once more, but I was holding on too tightly. It struggled beneath my grip, fought to throw me off, failed. It flapped around in midair, not going in any particular direction, but instead simply hanging there like a swimmer treading water.

  I knew that this was it. This was the moment to firmly grasp the reins of destiny and send it galloping in a direction that suited my fancy. Unfortunately, I had a slight drawback: not being a hero, I had no clue as to what I should do next. I had thrust myself into the role, rather than been destined for it through fate and nature, as Tacit had been.

  For a few seconds, I felt panic welling up inside me. Perhaps this had not been such a great idea after all.

  The phoenix, possibly sensing my hesitation, let out another ear-piercing scream and then threw itself through the air. I let out a shriek of my own—rather girlish, I hate to admit—but held on nonetheless. Fortunately the noise I had made was drowned out by the phoenix’s own.

  Tacit probably would have enjoyed the ride. He would have considered the experience and adventure somewhat exhilarating. Me, I was just doing everything I could not to heave up what I’d eaten that morning as the bird banked sharply and wheeled through the air.

  It was then that I spotted, from on high, the Harpers Bizarre.

  The phoenix did as well, and it angled its head in curiosity as it stared down at the strange creatures. The Harpers were gliding across the tops of the trees, clutching onto high branches and thrusting themselves forward, their wings moving their distorted bodies through the air with considerable alacrity. I strained my eyes and was able to make out the struggling form of the Princess Entipy. No one Harper seemed able to control her. Instead she was being carried by four Harpers, one each gripping one of her limbs. Even in such an uncomfortable and unfortunate position, she continued to struggle. I had to credit her this: She didn’t take defeat easily.

  It was at that moment that I realized what the heroic thing would be to do: rescue Entipy. Clearly that was what Tacit had intended. And if he had intended it, why … that meant that it was supposed to happen. Destiny’s plan, as fate would have it, and all those other niceties. But since I had impulsively commandeered the role of hero, it was incumbent upon me to assume all the responsibilities therein.

  Except I had no stomach for going up against the Harpers again. I had gotten away from them once, and counted myself lucky.

  The phoenix, however, had other ideas. For it should be remembered that the phoenix was still a newborn, and newborns tend to be rather hungry. Now, there was no record of any phoenix ever having attacked, devoured, or tried to devour a human being. Smaller winged creatures, on the other hand, seemed to be well within the confines of the phoenix’s preferred menu.

  Consequently, the phoenix took one look at the Harpers Bizarre and sensed it
s first meal. I have no idea whether the phoenix even remembered I was on board at the time. If it did remember, it certainly didn’t attach much importance to my presence. Instead it folded its wings back and dove toward the Harpers, who were still unaware that they had been targeted as an entree.

  Aileron was in the lead, as was appropriate for a leader, and it was he who spotted the phoenix first. The phoenix had not made any noise at that point; some instinct simply warned Aileron to look up. He saw the phoenix dropping like a boulder, its claws outstretched, descending at horrifying speed. Aileron shouted an alarm to the rest of his warriors, and the phoenix—knowing that it had been spotted—let out a screeeeeee of such deafening proportions that I could only assume it had done so for the purpose of freezing its intended prey in their tracks.

  To some degree, it worked. A number of the Harpers Bizarre looked up at the oncoming bird and stopped right where they were. They stared upward with eyes so wide and so terrified that I thought their orbs were going to leap out of their faces and try to make a break for it on their own.

  “Arroooooowwws!” shouted Aileron, and his order got through to some of them, but not all. Even as some of the Harpers nocked their arrows, the phoenix tore into them, its claws out and slicing through them with such ease that one would have thought the bird was sliding a knife through cheese.

  Entipy continued to struggle, and her captors had no idea which way to look. They saw several of their fellows gutted in seconds, saw others firing arrows, saw the bird bearing down on them, and did the only thing they could—scattered and ran. This left Entipy with no support at all, and she fell, but not far. Where she was at that point, the branches were particularly dense. She didn’t plunge more than a couple of feet before coming to a halt on upswept branches. She thrashed about, the branches tearing at her clothes, shouting imprecations and letting anyone within hearing distance know that they were going to rue the day.