Dreams of the Compass Rose

by Vera Nazarian

  “Sorcery!” cried out Lord Dava. He ran a couple of steps and sat down on the closest divan, and began to rub his back against the nearby marble pillar.

  “I always knew you were a monkey,” panted Lord Ostavi between bouts of itching, while he rubbed at his belt and his armpits. “Just look at you, a young good-for-nothing, making a fool of himself.”

  “Really? And you are such an example of noble restraint,” responded Lord Dava with a sneer of handsome white teeth, as he violently rubbed the backside of his knees, then his stomach.

  “Oh stop it, both of you!” exclaimed the Princess Makeia, as she scratched her sides and then her waist, moving against the high back of her chair. “And you, Annaelit, in the name of all the gods, stop this—this—whatever it is! I cannot stand this terrible itching!”

  The guests began to hurriedly vacate the hall. There were moans and groans and growls as they left the room, some racing outside, others beginning to jump up and down in a frenzy.

  “Now look! My evening is ruined!” Makeia wailed, ripping off her veils and using them to rub her back like a towel strung out taut in both hands, while her abundant hair came out of its lovely arrangement.

  In the mayhem Annaelit alone stood still as an island.

  “My Princess,” she said. “This is not my doing. For I am only the vessel, the voice that tells the story that has to be told.”

  “It must be that idiot Dava, then!” cried Lord Ostavi, stomping his feet and jumping up and down in place. “Didn’t he just say that he’d rather this whole place be stricken with something or other than apologize to me? Obviously some gods must’ve heard him!”

  “Argh!” cried Lord Dava, sliding back and forth against the seat of the divan with his behind. “I have nothing to do with this, I swear before all!”

  “As I was saying,” continued Annaelit. “Does anyone know the purpose of fleas?”

  “I do!” roared Lord Ostavi. “They are an abomination of the gods, sent upon us as a punishment for our transgressions! Let me know what must be done, and I will do whatever it is I have to do, and sacrifice gold in whatever temple—”

  “I am very sorry, my Lord, but that is incorrect,” Annaelit said. “Anyone else care to respond?”

  “No!” cried Lord Dava. And then he amended, “Yes! Fleas are a trial of our patience, and we must endure them in silence and nobility—”

  “Once again, not so.”

  “Argh! For the sake of mercy, woman, tell us!”

  Princess Makeia had gotten up and was prancing up and down in a frenzy. She lost one of her slippers and it went flying under the divan across the room. “Fleas . . .” she said between gulped breaths, “are obviously here to . . . to make a laughingstock of us for the gods! I mean, look at us!”

  And immediately Princess Makeia grew still as the itching left her. She stood reeling, then cleared her throat as though nothing had happened and ran her fingers through her tousled hair. She looked absolutely charming.

  “Very good, my Lady,” Annaelit said. “You have stumbled upon one of the reasons, and you are thus freed.”

  Makeia looked around in relief and confusion, seeing that there was no one else left in the chamber besides Annaelit, herself, and the two lords.

  Lord Dava had gotten up from his seat by this point, and he and Lord Ostavi were dancing like desert nomad madmen, their hands flailing every which way and sweat running down their faces.

  “All right, all right!” Lord Dava began to scream finally, “I will apologize!” And, turning toward Lord Ostavi while continuing to scratch himself everywhere, heedless of how it appeared, he gasped, “I am sorry, Lord Ostavi! I beg your—argh—your humble forgiveness—owh!—for saying certain disrespectful things to you when a guest in your house!”

  “I accept your—argh—apology!” retorted Lord Ostavi, as he leaped around with unexpected lightness for someone of such a bulky frame.

  “There!” cried Lord Dava, “I’ve apologized! Let this hell be done with!”

  But oddly enough there seemed to be no relief for the two lords, and they continued their macabre jumping spree.

  “Hmm . . .” mused Annaelit, putting a finger to her lips, which normally seemed to help her concentrate. “This is a bit unexpected, my Lords. I was so very sure that an apology and your congenial peacemaking on both sides would result in an end to your ordeal. After all, the moral of the story was to have you picking fleas off each other and thus amusing the gods.”

  “Lord Dava, could you get me right there, please?” said Lord Ostavi, turning with his back to the other. “Yes, there, just a little higher, yes!”

  “No problem, Lord Ostavi,” replied Lord Dava, scratching the other vigorously between the shoulder blades. “Now, would you mind getting me, please, my good friend? Right here, yes! Oh yes!”

  And as Lord Ostavi in turn rubbed his former enemy’s back, both of them moaning in agony, Annaelit and the Princess Makeia watching them in blank puzzlement, Annaelit mused out loud: “Maybe we need to present them with a Trade Agreement to sign, before the gods choose to set them free?”

  “You know, that’s not a bad idea,” retorted the Princess, and then immediately called over some vigorously scratching servants to fetch city scribes and lawyers. As the servants went on their errands, dancing in an itch-frenzy, Princess Makeia took her turn to muse aloud. “I wonder if this divine flea infestation is all over the city, or if it has only honored my house?”

  Her question was answered within the hour as two lawyers and three scribes dressed in fine clothing came jumping into the hall, scratching themselves with a fury that comes only with their honorable professions, and carrying a hastily written-up Trade Agreement.

  “I’ll sign it, whatever it is!” screamed Lord Dava as he lay on the marble floor, flailing his feet in the air, while Lord Ostavi continued to spring up and down and shake himself like a newly hatched and yet somewhat portly chicken.

  “What’s this?” Lord Ostavi moaned, squinting, holding the parchment with one hand as with the other he rubbed his ankles. After one of the scribes had read it to him, he went on, “All it says here is that we agree to trade! Where are the details? The caravans? The bales of silk?

  Boxes of spices?”

  “My Lord, have you any idea how many attempts it took for me to write this one unsullied sentence without scratching myself?” muttered the scribe, twitching in place. “Why, it’s the best I could do, and I am the best! Behold how shaky my penmanship is—an absolute disgrace, yes I know! Well, I was the only one able to even hold the quill in my trembling fingers! Indeed, it is late in the evening, and the whole city is scratching itself as we speak! All work and trade have stopped, all pleasures, for we are dying from this plague of fleas, my Lord!”

  “Enough! Just let me sign the damn thing, Ostavi!” wailed Lord Dava. “Give it to me!

  Argh!”

  Seizing the parchment from the other’s hands and grabbing a writing implement from the scribe, Lord Dava proceeded to scribble a very shaky X in lieu of his signature. He then passed it to Lord Ostavi, who scribbled another X right below.

  “It is witnessed!” Lord Dava cried. “Now, seal it! Quickly, you idiots, before we expire!”

  A leaping and scratching lawyer approached. First he tripped on one end of his long cotton robe then straightened himself and started to tip the jar of wax with a wobbly hand over the parchment that lay on the marble floor.

  Time seemed to slow into eternity when an uncontrollable bodily twitch caused an unexpectedly large and thick dollop of wax to come snaking down and land in hot droplets on his bare toes and his sandals. The lawyer opened his mouth to let out a howl, but, masterfully, suppressed it into a grimace of silently bared teeth and crossed eyes, an admirable display of official dignity. At last, with luck and one quick movement, he managed to pour a proper-sized dab of wax in the appropriate location on the parchment.

  Not wasting an instant, a second lawyer danced up to him carrying a p
rominent city seal, and he slapped the seal onto the wax, at the same time rubbing his backside. After several long itching seconds, the seal was pulled away, and the Agreement was complete.

  And yet nothing happened. There was no relief to the itching. In fact, it seemed to have intensified, judging by the beet-red complexions of the two lords, the lawyers, the scribes, and all the rest of the affected.

  “Oh, my . . .” said Annaelit, biting her knuckle in anxiety. “I just don’t know what to do. I was so sure the Trade Agreement would be the key factor here. . . .”

  “No!” roared Lord Ostavi. “Oh, make it stop, please make it stop! You are a clever girl, Annaelit! Do something!”

  “My Lord . . .” she said. “I am sorry but I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Think!” howled Lord Dava. “You are the one who told the Tale that started all this! And now you have to tell a Tale that ends it!”

  “Yes, because this is the lousiest story I have ever heard!”

  “End it now, Teller of Tales!”

  And, as they all stared at her, between their spasms of itching, Annaelit cleared her throat and tremulously began to tell the end of a very odd Tale. “Thus it came to pass that the fleas were tormenting the two great lords and—and—oh, I can’t!”

  “What?” roared Lord Ostavi.

  “I cannot tell this Tale . . .” whispered Annaelit, shaking. “Don’t you see, I am in it. I cannot tell my own tale! No storyteller can!”

  In that moment there was a crackling in the air, as though a thundercloud had broken open in the chamber, and the residual electricity licked the walls with a bluish shadow that stood in contrast with the warm, golden lamplight.

  And in the next heartbeat, a man stood in the room before them. He was tall and well built, and yet his face managed to remain shadowed—an unreadable spot.

  “Pokreh! God of Things Left Over!” Annaelit cried.

  Yes, it is I. For something is very much left over in this moment of moments, Teller of Tales, spoke a voice in her mind.

  “What must I do, my Lord? Tell me what I must do to free these people from the agony of the ludicrousness? For it is my fault, and my story! And yet I cannot end it, surely, for I am a player in it. I am in this Tale!”

  In that moment, the god laughed. His voice rumbled amid the crackling electricity. “Look at you all,” he said. “Scratching silly flea-ridden mortals, who have brought this upon yourselves, and continue to do so.”

  He pointed a finger at Annaelit, saying, “You. Why do you think you cannot end this Tale?”

  “Because I am in it!” she said. “How can I?”

  “How can you not? Who else has the ability to guide and conclude your own Tale but you?”

  said the god. “And I do not speak merely of any Tale you tell, but of a greater Tale, the one which unfolds around you and engulfs you in the river of time.”

  “I thought—” said Annaelit, “I thought that it was written and navigated by the will of the gods such as yourself.”

  Nonsense. The navigator in the living story is a player as much as the others. The gods merely draw the symbol lights upon the sky, to be read. The navigator is the one who makes use of them. The navigator follows the road formed by celestial symbols toward a destination at the other end of the Compass Rose, always moving toward the distant horizon which comprises the wondrous opposite side.

  The navigator fathoms and then forms the road always from the elements of the world . . . The navigator, and the captain, and the ship, and the ocean, and the journey, and the destination

  —all of them are you.

  Behind you, before you, and beyond you. Such is the living story. And then the man spoke out loud. “End the Tale now, Annaelit. For if you cannot, no one can. Neither death, nor time, not even all the gods combined.”

  For none of us are you.

  “And so it was,” replied Annaelit, “that Pokreh, god of Things Left Over, came to bring wisdom to a foolish woman whose name was Annaelit, Teller of Tales. And in that moment of wisdom, the divine plague left the others around her, and the Illusion of fleas was now in the past, in back of them all, while ahead lay something else—the rest of their living journey.”

  And as the last word fell from her lips, like a blossom of light, peace indeed settled upon all those present and the agony left them.

  Lord Dava and Lord Ostavi stood still, breathing heavily from their ordeal.

  “Your lesson, but not this Tale, is now concluded,” said the god with the obscured face. And, as he faded from their sight, there came soft laughter, to echo and dance between the walls, like a million tiny insects receding. . . .

  “Once upon a time,” spoke Annaelit, the Teller of Tales, in a hovel filled with children, “there were young clever children listening to the words of a certain Teller of Tales.”

  “That’s you, Annaelit!” A little girl giggled.

  “Why yes, and so it was.” Annaelit smiled. “Now then, the children’s homes were comfortable, and there was always food on the table, for their city had prospered from a healthy trade between two lands. And yet something made them come repeatedly to a poor little old hovel where she lived, that Teller of Tales whose name was Annaelit. Do you know what it was?”

  “What?” cried a little boy. And then he scratched himself, for a tiny little thing had just bitten him behind the ear.

  “Why, surely you know, children!” retorted the storyteller, smiling. “Just think what it could be that caused the children to return to a poor hovel! Surely not the fleas?”

  “The stories!” cried a very tiny girl. “The children liked the stories!”

  “Very good, Leti!” said Annaelit. “Now, can any of you tell me what it is about the stories that made them come back?”

  “Is it the words?” said Leti, staring back at Annaelit with intense eyes.

  “Sometimes,” replied Annaelit. “Sometimes it is the words. And at other times it is the people and the things and the places that come alive in the stories. But most often it is that thing that neither the people nor the places, nor the stories themselves, could describe to you, but can only hint at from a great distance on the opposite side of the horizon.”

  “What is it? What’s on the horizon?” whispered another child.

  And Annaelit smiled again.

  “Oh, it is a delicate precious thing,” she said. “Some of the storytellers call it wonder. And I promise to tell you more of this extraordinary marvelous thing another day. But for now, my children, at last, this particular Tale is concluded.”

  DREAM ELEVEN

  NIGHT OF A THOUSAND MOONS

  Legend has it that once in a thousand years comes a night in the deepest Midsummer when a thousand moons fill the sky. In that moment, terrible wonders take place. Also, strange trickeries are wrought, as the Lord of Illusion takes advantage of mortals.

  Whether you go South, North, West, or East of the Compass Rose, you will find everywhere, from the lowest town to the greatest city, there is Carnival held every year on that night. All work ceases from sundown till the next dawn, and the whole world is mad with revelry, superstition and Illusions of light.

  On such a Carnival night, you may dance and drink and lose all sense in the pleasures of the moment. . . . But above all else you must don a mask to cover your face from things unspoken. For it is said that if you do not, and the moons come, you will be lost forever. . . .

  * * *

  “Masks for sale!” cried the street peddler, pushing forward a gaudy cart on three wheels. It was a contraption piled high with masterpieces and travesties of porcelain and clay, feathers and ribbons, golden braid and purple sequins, and other bits and pieces of stuff like the rainbow. Yaro stood with the heavy basket of potatoes balanced on her bony hip, and watched the peddler roll by with his merchandise. She was returning from the market with goods for the table of her mistress and had little time for idle gawking. But the shiny colorful mass caught her nearsighted eyes with its undula
ting sprinkles of reflected rhinestone mini-lights from the sunglare, the smooth blots of bright colors. Yaro blinked, then turned, rearranging the basket and her faded shawl, and was once again on her way through the narrow twisting city streets. Her head was kept perpetually lowered, and her gaze directed to the ground, as was proper for a lowly servant and as irked her considerably, since Yaro had a willful streak. Somehow she managed to avoid running into the increasingly raucous passersby and keep the contents of her basket intact. Soon she would reach the higher ground where the gardens began, and where the finer houses stood, including that of the Princess Egiras, whom she served.

  Tonight was Carnival night. Early afternoon, and already stores were closing for the revelries ahead, while joy-establishments were getting ready for the crowds and mask sellers were everywhere, flaunting the most extravagant of their wares.

  Masks must be worn on the Night of a Thousand Moons. From the lowliest beggar to the richest lord, all would put on the shield of safety over their faces, with the eyeholes covered by lenses of amber crystal. It was the only thing that could offer protection from the occult terror that would come if this Carnival night were to be the fateful one in a thousand. In her pocket Yaro had a simple mask sewn of goatskin, with tiny thin amber lenses, the cheapest thing she could buy off a higher servant who had used this mask last year. It was customary to have a new mask for every Carnival, but Yaro was too poor to worry about handme-downs. At the great house of the Princess Egiras, Yaro came through the back servant entrance, stumbling under the weight of the basket, and nearly ran into the wide chest of a tall silent man, with skin dark as the desert night, who stood lounging at the doors.

  “Oh! Sorry, my Lord Nadir!” she mumbled, and felt warmth come rushing invisibly to her dark cheeks.

  He had reached out a hand in reflex, and gently straightened her basket which had been threatening to spill over.

  “You carry a heavy load,” he said softly. His eyes were darker than black, pupil-less, and somewhere deep was a richness of wisdom, like the earth.

  “Thank, you, m’Lord,” she said, and then moved past him into the hallway and then into the kitchens. As she disappeared from his sight she experienced vertigo at the sense of a trail of his gaze upon her back.