by John Mellor
On the question of stones having brains, he had decided that quite clearly they shouldn't. A brain wasn't a possession like a house, or a pair of shoes. It was more like having a child - it was a responsibility. This particular stone, certainly, did not have the maturity, the sense of values necessary to cope with the responsibility of having a brain. It worried him a great deal.
The stone was still in the same place where he remembered it, looking a little more worn perhaps, but then it was seven years since he had seen it. He suspected that he probably looked a little worn himself.
He walked up to the stone and spoke without preamble: “Well, do you know what the price is?"
The stone seemed to suddenly jolt out of a private reverie. “Yes," it cried, excitedly. “I do. Thank God you have come." And the philosopher felt tentacles like fingers of fire reaching into his brain. His head seemed to implode and he fell to his knees, clutching his throbbing temples, screaming with pain as the stone inexorably sucked from his brain all the knowledge and experience, every thought and solitary idea, feeling, supposition and conclusion that nearly eighty years of philosophical study and reflection had gathered together.
He fell to the ground, spent. The stone seemed almost to swell visibly with all its sudden accumulation of the philosopher's painstakingly acquired knowledge. It didn't speak.
After a surprisingly short while the philosopher rose to his feet. Drained of all that his brain had stored over the years, he stumbled away through the woods, like a child.
The next day the magician arrived, appearing suddenly in front of the stone.
“Well," he said abruptly, “where is it?"
“It's all right in here," gloated the stone just before it shattered into a myriad tiny shards, spreading like motes of dust through the dappled sunbeams filtering down from between the branches of the old oak trees.
The magician walked slowly away, a little smile playing on his lips. It was funny, he mused, how a stone could drain a man's brain, and a man could drain a stone's brain, but a man couldn't drain a man's brain.
If he had been a philosopher,
he might have wondered about that.
o ------------------------ o
The young boy closed the book on the Fifth Gift
and remained a while with his thoughts
in the lonely tower at the end of the beach
And the Angel watched over him
o ------------------------ o
Get Thee Behind Me
IT WAS late in the evening when the boy finally went in search of the Angel. He had spent a long time struggling with this fifth story. Intelligence? Knowledge? But something did not quite fit. He felt there was something missing; as though the story were incomplete. The magician appeared to have triumphed, which did not seem right; and yet there was a clear hint at the end that he had not. The magician had obviously overlooked something; and that something would seem to be the clue. The boy had clearly missed it as well.
He found the Angel in her cottage, snug beside a cosy fire; for it was a cold night. The boy was glad to join her and he drew up a chair into the warm glow thrown out by the crackling logs. The Angel made tea for them both.
“There is something missing in that story," he said, when he had warmed up. He sat crouched over the cheerful fire, clutching his mug of tea in both hands. “Something I missed anyway," he added.
The Angel peered into the flickering, dancing flames, and thought for a moment. “Yes," she agreed, a trifle reluctantly it seemed to the boy. “It is a little inconclusive in a way." She paused, stirring her tea; then seemed to come to a decision. “Would you like to hear the rest of the story - what happened to the magician afterwards?"
“Yes," said the boy, “I would. Presumably he now has in his brain all the knowledge and wisdom that the philosopher accumulated over the years of his life?" It was a question.
“Presumably," the Angel concurred. Her mind seemed far away. She got up and pottered about the cottage - trimming the lamps, stirring the stew, replenishing the wood-basket. Then she made some more tea and sat down to pick up the story.
“The magician went home, convinced, as you say, that he now had all the knowledge and wisdom from the philosopher's brain. And he was a happy man. For he wanted power, and he knew that supreme intelligence and knowledge, such as possessed by the philosopher, would give him that power.
He lived in a strange land, peopled by wizards and warlocks, witches, werewolves and all those who follow the left-hand path of Lucifer. Many of these creatures had great power, derived from pacts negotiated with the Devil; but the magician wanted to rule them all. And he was cunning enough to know that wisdom gained from other than Satan would be peculiarly powerful in this land, free as it would be from the obligations and restrictions with which the Devil controlled the powers of his acolytes. The Devil would brook no competition from mortals.
And so the magician came home, and immediately began to work on a plan that would enable him to control the whole of the land, and stand even against Lucifer himself. He pored over his ancient books of spells and magic; he scoured the forest at the full moon for powerful herbs and plants - digitalis, amanita, the screaming mandrake. He scrawled cabalistic signs over the walls of his house and chanted strange mantras. He mixed potions and spells, consulted with witches and bats, and studied the Tarot cards to find the most decisive moment to strike.
Finally, he was ready. He had the right potion mixed, the finest conjurations prepared, the correct pattern of pentacle designed. The moon was almost full, and his horoscope confirmed the Tarot's indication that he was now at his strongest.
That night he went out shortly before midnight to a particular spot in the forest, where he marked out the specially designed pentacle in the soil with a stick he had carefully prepared, steeped in a broth of chickens’ entrails and bats' livers. He stood in the centre of the star, drank his brew, then walked slowly round the inside of the pattern seven times widdershins, chanting the most powerful invocation to the Devil that he had been able to find.
At precisely midnight, in the streaming silver light of the full moon, he held up his arms and called on Lucifer himself to appear. And in the silver-dappled blackness under the trees where the cold light of that full moon picked out slivers and patches of dead leaves carpeting the forest; where all the rustling and whimpers of nocturnal animals had ceased; in the middle of that dead, cold, dark silence, something began to move.
The ground itself began to move, but no leaves rustled. The trees seemed to back away from the five-pointed star in which the magician stood, clearing a path for something. The earth began to rumble. Black clouds fled across the face of the unsmiling moon, as though running from something. And that cold, milky light flickered and danced, faded, then flickered again, picking out the tumbling dead leaves, heaving on the ground as though on the back of a gigantic surfacing mole.
And a patchy mist arose, from the ground and from the sky, to meet in swirling fronds around the head of the magician. He stood firmly in the centre of his pentacle, holding his little black wand to the sky, chanting still, calling for the presence of the mighty Lucifer. There was no wind, but dead leaves and broken twigs whirled around the magician, caught up in that twirling mist. A deep sighing seemed to emanate from the surrounding trees, then suddenly Lucifer himself stood before the magician - a vision so horrific that he flung up his arm to shield his eyes. His eardrums reverberated with the deep sound of the Devil's voice - a sound that seemed to come from and spread into the earth itself.
‘Who dares summon the dreaded Lucifer?'
The magician stood rooted to his pentacle, hardly able to move, the presence of his adversary was so overwhelming. His wand shaking like the branches of the nearby trees, he quickly ran over the spell in his mind - the spell that he had calculated would put the Devil under his power. Now, with the confrontation here, he was suddenly not so sure. With the Devil's next words, he was even less sure.
‘I
demand once again, and only once, to know who dares summon me - Lucifer, Asmodeus, Satan, Prince of Darkness, Guardian of All Evil, King of All This Land.'
The magician stammered nervously.
‘I-I-It is I - the magician - who summon thee.' He sprinkled some powder around the edges of his pentacle and made a sign with his wand. It seemed to give him strength to go on.
‘It is I, Oh Lucifer, I who am the greatest magician in this land, the most powerful man between all its four corners; I, with power beyond even thee, who both summon and challenge the Prince of Darkness.' And rapidly he muttered his spell.
He was not quite sure what would then happen, but he certainly had not envisaged what did: the Devil laughed.
The trees shook; even the moon seemed to shiver as the Devil laughed. The magician certainly shivered; things did not seem to be going quite according to plan.
‘You dare challenge me? Ho-ho-ho!' roared the Devil. Then he stopped laughing, and the magician started shaking.
‘You dare challenge me, miserable magician!' The Devil's voice was cold, thin, ghastly. ‘Me - the Lord of All Evil. What gives a worm of a magician the power to challenge Satan himself?'
‘I-I-I have power and knowledge, wisdom that is denied you. With that I challenge you for the rule of this land.' But it lacked conviction, even to the magician himself.
‘Stolen from the philosopher,' said the Devil, and he spat in disgust.
‘From the philosopher you have stolen nothing I do not already possess. All knowledge and all intelligence is mine, including that of the philosopher. Only the philosopher's wisdom - that you thought you had taken - can withstand me.
‘But you did not take his wisdom. You took everything from his brain, but his wisdom does not lie there; his wisdom lies in his soul. A man does not create thoughts with his brain, O foolish magician, he simply stores them there; he creates thoughts with his mind, and his mind belongs to his soul. Even I cannot take away from a man's soul what the Lord God has put there; even I, the Great Evil One, can do no more than blind a man to the existence of that soul; I cannot separate him from it, nor from the wisdom therein.'
The magician nearly fainted. Only abject terror kept him standing, as it wildly pumped adrenalin through his shattered body. He had made an horrendous mistake; and the Devil never forgave mistakes.
The Devil pressed on relentlessly: ‘If you had had the wisdom of the philosopher, you would have known that I cannot be defeated. Only by the power of the Lord God when he so chooses. A mortal is granted the strength to fight me, but he can never defeat me.
‘He can resist me, but never bind me; banish me, but never chain me. Only the Lord God will do that, and only when the time comes. I reign a thousand years, and must be allowed to do so; for how can a man know the glory of God without first seeing me?
‘With the wisdom of the philosopher you would have understood that, and you would not have challenged me. You would have left me to lie in the darkness, for I claim only those who seek me.
‘And you, magician, have summoned me. You I claim as mine.'
The magician crumpled to the ground clutching his head; and the Devil laughed again.
‘For so long you evade me, man of magic, and now you are mine. All that you had, all that you sought, all that you stole, all that you are, is mine.' Then the Devil vanished.
The forest returned to normal; except for the magician, who lay slavering on the ground, his wand and pentacle gone. His teeth seemed a little longer than they had been, and tufty black hairs were beginning to sprout from his face and the backs of his hands."
The Angel poked the embers and refilled her tea.
“WISDOM," she said, “was the fifth gift.”
o ------------------------ o
~ The Sixth Gift ~
George and the Weed
AFTER THE disappearance of the Snow Queen on her voyage to the strange planet her daughter, the Ice Princess, was crowned Queen in her place. She became the seventh queen to reign over the kingdom, and seemingly the most benign, despite her cold nature.
The old rigid social mores and restrictions were swept aside; rules relaxed and regulations rescinded. The Queen's subjects were encouraged to express themselves, in the arts, music and fashion, dancing and singing. Money flowed from the royal coffers, jobs were provided for everyone, and no-one went hungry.
The Queen looked after all. Her mighty army of ministers built huge housing and entertainment complexes for the people, roads and railways, dance halls and leisure centres. Every household had a car and television, every man a wife, every child a social worker. The land flowed with milk and honey; even the clouds and the cuckoos were catered for. Only the Queen's gardener, a grumpy old man named George, was unimpressed.
George was not a happy man. He had three lazy sons who did nothing but preen themselves and go dancing. He could never get them to help him in the garden. Which was fair enough, but then they never did anything else either. And perhaps that was fair enough too, for what else was there? Apart from dancing and drinking and fighting in the streets. There were areas in the city, the old man reflected, that seemed no longer subject to law and order.
But then, order was frowned upon these days. It 'stifled the creative instinct' he had heard some buffoon of an intellectual say on television the previous night. Even he, a simple gardener, knew what twaddle that was. He had spent his whole life with plants, watching them grow and procreate. It was obvious to him that order was the creative instinct. All natural creation produced order. Any idiot could see that. Yet the greatest brains in the land did not seem able to. Too simple and blatantly obvious for them, he supposed. Their thoughts were like their clothes - fancy, over-complicated and fashionable.
He could see no end to it all. Perhaps that weirdo pop singer should have wrecked the whole city while he was at it. Then all those pimps and parasites would have to face up to a bit of real nitty-gritty. Even the Queen, plucked from her ivory palace, might be forced to see life as it really was.
Life for George was certainly not what he would have wished for himself. The Queen paid him little; his house leaked; and his wife, a slatternly woman who did no more than she had to, was the sort who only stopped nagging in order to voice a genuine grievance. There was little comfort for him there.
The only joy in George's life lay in tending gardens. He loved plants. There was a natural harmony to their lives, a balanced flow of patterns, that he had never found in his. He cherished his plants, talked to them, encouraged them. He was, an extremely good gardener.
But he did not like this new palace garden. There was something wrong, something he could not get to grips with. However tenderly he cared for them, his plants just would not grow properly. They barely managed to stagger out of the soil, and were even then stunted, sickly and threadbare. Leaves would die and fall off for no apparent reason. Vegetables were small and tasteless, while flowers often did not bloom at all. If it had not been for the weeds, he would have known there was something wrong with the soil. He could have treated it, or even changed it.
But the weeds - and they were plants after all - grew like wildfire, with no encouragement from him whatsoever. If the weeds grew, so should the plants. But they did not.
Perhaps he just did not spend enough time with them. He seemed to spend so much of each day chopping out weeds, there was little time left for the flowers and vegetables. The weeds grew everywhere, and the faster he raked them out the faster they seemed to grow.
He tried digging them up. He tried burning them. He tried poisoning them. But they just seemed to pop up again as though nothing had happened.
Finally, in desperation, with his garden looking more like a jungle, he went to seek the advice of the Old Wise Woman who lived in the forest. He had known her for many years, and on past occasions when he had consulted her with problems she had never been wrong. Devious sometimes; obscure frequently; but never wrong. On the other hand she would not always give advice on the problem p
roffered. Sometimes she would discuss an entirely different matter, apparently unrelated. He always discovered eventually that the advice given was closer to the real heart of the problem than had been the question asked. At other times she would simply refuse to say anything at all. On these occasions the apparent trouble simply sorted itself out.
George often had the uncomfortable feeling that the old woman knew and understood far more than she ever let on. But whatever else happened, she was always sympathetic, so he went to see her. He told neither the Queen nor his wife, for both disapproved most strongly of Old Wise Women and the like. To his wife she was a witch; to the Queen, a senile old fool.
She had expected him, as she always did. George could never fathom out how she knew when he was coming, but she never failed to. It sometimes seemed that she knew before he did. She gestured him to a chair opposite hers by the fire and poured him out a cup of tea, home-made from various herbs gathered in the forest.
Her little cottage was cosy, but simple. She had no possessions to speak of. She would point to her head when asked what she owned, and the sky when asked what she needed. She spoke little. Her age was anyone's guess.
The two of them sat quietly by the fire supping their tea. The old lady smoked, filling her pipe with the gift of tobacco brought by the gardener. After a while she looked at George and shook her head slowly.
“You can do nothing, old man," she said. He had not asked her anything as yet, but she knew, somehow, why he was there. If she had not had such kind, gentle eyes, it would have been most unnerving. But her deep, grey, gentle eyes spoke of an inner goodness. If she knew something, it was right that she should. As was the way she came about it. George just sat and listened, and the old lady continued: