The laughter renewed and Kalim blinked in furious surprise. “What are you laughing at?!” he yelled at the wild crowd.
“They’re laughing in the face of death,” Ascott said from his position over the shoulder of a Citronella twin.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Kalim asked.
“It means if you don’t untie us and we all start running, then this isn’t going to end well. Not for any of us.”
“Put them down,” Kalim ordered. The twins set the two prisoners down with their backs against a tree.
Kalim plucked the gag from Shoal’s mouth. “What is he talking about?” he demanded.
“HeeHeeHee,” Shoal said.
“Oh for Arthur’s sake. Not you as well?”
“HeeHeeHee, the Laughing God. They are summoning him and he is going to destroy us all,” Shoal continued.
“Who in the herbarium is the Laughing God?” Kalim asked anyone who was listening.
“That is,” Ascott said, craning his neck and peering into the sky.
Uncertainty of goatS
A Drakeforth short story
Historically, there has always been conflict between the various sects and factions that evolved from differing interpretations of Arthur’s Tellings.
The truth of Arthur’s early years is a matter of speculation and conjecture. The New Gruffen Church of Arthur, which in 896 elected a goat as their spiritual leader, holds the following account sacred. (Unfortunately, Algaenian Probabites—kwho preached a doctrine of Arthur as a model of irreducible probability that could not be represented by a physical form—assassinated the Capra Pontufex, thus demonstrating they were not kidding around.)
This is a record of the early life of Arthur, as the New Gruffen Church believes it to have unfolded 1500 years ago…
As a simple man without education, irony was not a word that Agelast, son of Lalochezia, claimed to understand.
A goat-follower who made balloon animals as a hobby, Agelast’s life was by its very nature nomadic. This transitory existence was a necessity of his job, which required him to follow his goat herd and, by happy coincidence, gave him a regular supply of the intestines from which he created his inflated sculptures.
For Agelast, balloon-animal construction was the sweetbread atop the cake of his fulfilling life. He had a wife, children, and the companionship of his fellow goatherds, all of whom wandered the bleak and windswept plains of Eastern Mumpsimus. His people had lived on this harsh and unforgiving land for generations, always trailing in the wake of their herds, eyes downcast to avoid stepping in anything pungent. This need for a watchful eye on the ground meant that Agelast’s people had no word for horizon and over three hundred words for goat dung. This cultured ignorance protected Agelast like a goatskin raincoat as he skilfully constructed complex models of goats from their own colons while tiptoeing gracefully through the scattered leavings that marked the grasses’ passage through the herd.
Agelast watched with a sense of pride as his children grew from squirming babies into healthy, windswept children who could deftly tiptoe for miles. At night, he would tell his beloved wife, Gowpen, that the future of the family herd was safe with their sons Jumentous and Quidnunc. Their eldest daughter, Nelipot, would soon be of marriageable age. When that fateful day came, she would leave the family herd in exchange for a dowry of many goats and they would not see her again until the clans came together at Festival time. Agelast’s other daughter was only eight. Her name was Zenzizen and she was the kidney of her father’s eye*.
“What of our youngest son?” Gowpen would ask. “Does he not fill your heart with joy?”
Agelast would frown and mutter, “Arthur.” The word, translated from the language of the goat-followers, meant ‘Goat dung that you can’t get out of the cracks in the sole of your shoe’. It was not the name that Arthur had been given at birth. That name had been forgotten.
Arthur did not follow the traditions of his people. He did not pay attention to the wandering of the flocks. He did not throw stones at the large and feral plains-cats, which lurked in the thin grass, waiting to ambush a passing herd. Worst of all, Arthur smelled of the dung that he stepped in regularly. His eyes were never on the ground. Instead, Arthur gazed beyond the edge of the herd. He looked at the sky a lot and asked many questions.
Agelast welcomed questions when they were on subjects to which his experience and wisdom could be applied. If Arthur ever asked him about the daily travel speed of a herd of goats, their mating habits, the meaning of their various bleats, or even how to tell the health of the herd based solely on a cursory examination of their dung—Agelast could speak at length.
Arthur did not ask normal questions.
“Father,” Arthur asked after he had grown enough to graduate from riding his father’s shoulders to walking beside him. “How far away is the end of the world?”
For Agelast, the end of the world was a concept, not a fact. His world ended at the edge of the herd. The grass they cropped each day was the land he owned. Tomorrow, they would move on to a new patch, and he would own that land instead.
“T’other side of the herd,” Agelast replied.
“But when I ride on your shoulders I can see beyond the end of the herd. I can see tomorrow’s grass.”
Seeing tomorrow’s grass usually meant someone had been dipping his cup into the fermented goat’s milk a little too much. For Agelast’s people, tomorrow’s grass required imagining things that were not yet real. Therefore, they did not exist.
“Grass you’re walking on, that’s real,” Agelast would explain. “Goats—mind your step—they’re real. Rest of it’s in your head.”
Arthur thought on this for a long while, and the silence pleased Agelast.
“What about the goats that we can’t see?” Arthur asked.
Agelast did a quick count of his herd. His concept of numbers was purely practical. One goat, two goats, and a variation on herd of goats. Without needing specific terms for the numbers, he could take in his flock at a glance and know if any of them were missing.
“They’re all there,” he said.
“Even when we can’t see them?” Arthur asked.
Agelast frowned. It made sense that the goats were real. You saw a goat, or goats, or goats. You knew when it was dark that they were there, because of the noises they made and their smell. “You can smell them at night,” he said.
“What about the other goats, the ones that aren’t in our herd?”
This is where Agelast found Arthur’s incessant questioning irritating. Goats were goats. Talking about other goats made no sense.
“There’s no other goats,” he said as a final ruling on the subject. “Until we see them,” he added, the logic of this being inescapable.
“So, we make the goats by seeing them?” Arthur asked, his eyes going wide.
“What?” Agelast knew exactly how goats were made, but traditionally that conversation came later in a boy’s life, in a complex and confusing conversation that involved a lot of red-faced mumbling by the father and the use of balloon animals as props.
“Festival,” Agelast announced. “That’s when we make new goats. Everyone comes together, we give them goats, and they give us goats. They make more goats.”
The clans only came together once a year, after the snows on the higher steppes had melted and the fresh growth of grass had stirred the bellies of the goats to bring forth their annual young.
“Will we go to Festival soon?” Arthur asked.
Agelast shrugged. “Probably.” The cold days had passed and the land was warming again. The goats would lead them, as they always had.
“Probably,” Arthur repeated, his mind collating the wisdom of his father and the uncertainty of goats.
As he grew, Arthur found less satisfaction in his father’s answers and relied more on his own thinking instead. Foll
owing goats as they mowed the grass didn’t require much attention, and he made up games and posed questions to himself that would occupy him for days. He experimented with ideas, challenging himself to find answers to the mysteries that plagued him. How far away is the end of the world? Why can you not see everything? What happens to things you haven’t seen yet?
The annual clan gathering of Festival presented Arthur with more questions. He observed and considered how the presence of other people and their goats fitted in with his developing view of the Universe.
By the time he was twelve, Arthur spent more time silently following the paths in his own head than he did talking to others.
His mother worried about him, his brothers teased him, and his father just frowned as the boy stepped in kaprino (a pellet-like scattering).
“The festival is coming,” Gowpen reminded Agelast one evening as they sat together by the embers of a drying fire. Agelast grunted and carefully turned the inflated goat intestines so they would dry evenly.
“I wonder if it might be time to send Arthur away,” Gowpen continued.
“He’ll only find his way back.” Agelast had considered leaving Arthur behind several times over the years. For all his lack of ability to survive as a goat-follower, the boy showed a strange kind of intelligence. “Least he doesn’t talk much anymore.”
“I-think-he-should-go-to-The-City,” Gowpen said in a rush.
Agelast turned and stared at his wife. She looked back at him with an expression of calm stubbornness.
“City’s not real,” Agelast said at last.
“You’ve heard the stories at Festival, same as I have. Someone always knows someone who met someone who heard about someone who saw The City once.”
“Arthur’d die out there without you to remind him to eat,” Agelast said.
“Jumentous and Quidnunc have learnt all you can teach them about goats. They’ll want to find wives and start their own herds soon. Do you really want to have Arthur beside you until you’re too old to walk?”
When she put it like that, Agelast could see her point.
“I’ll talk to him,” Gowpen said, and patted her husband’s knee.
Arthur found the idea of The City intriguing. He asked questions that his mother could not answer, until Gowpen told him The City was something he would have to find for himself.
This appealed to Arthur’s need for self-discovery and exploration. He sank into silent contemplation until they arrived at the Festival. Then he went among the clans and asked everyone if they knew anyone who had met someone who heard about someone who saw The City once.
After two days of walking among the hundreds of goatskin tents, he found someone.
“My name is Arthur,” he announced. “I hear you have knowledge of The City.”
A girl, close to his own age, regarded the thin and scruffy boy who stood before her. He had the same dark hair and tanned skin as everyone else she knew. Everyone except her.
“I am Magnesia. It means ‘pale as milk’. I was not born to the goat-followers of my clan. I was a grass child.”
Arthur stared at the girl. Clearly she hadn’t been born among the clans that walked carefully in the wake of the wandering goatherds. Her hair and skin were as white as summer clouds. Being a grass child meant Magnesia was a lost baby, who by simple luck had been found before she died of exposure or hungry plains-cats.
“What do you know of The City?” he asked again.
“Nothing,” Magnesia admitted, and Arthur turned to leave.
“Wait,” the pale girl called after him. “I know nothing of The City, but I have something that does.”
Arthur came back and Magnesia lifted a folded cloth out of her tent. She held it out to him.
“What kind of skin is this?” he asked, marvelling at the softness of the hide.
“I don’t think it is made from skin. I think it’s woven from hair, like mine.”
Arthur’s nose wrinkled and he jerked his hand back from the cloth. “That’s disgusting,” he said.
Magnesia shrugged. People often expressed disgust at her pale skin and grass-yellow hair. Goats could be white, but for people to be that colour was unnatural.
“I think this came from The City. The couple who raised me said that there were signs of people passing near where they found me. The people had returned to the grass.”
“All things come from the grass, and all things shall return to it,” Arthur said, reciting the words his father believed.
“Except the things that don’t,” Magnesia replied.
“Do you believe that there is nothing beyond the grass we see every day?” Arthur asked her.
Magnesia gave him a calculating look unlike anything Arthur had experienced before. Somewhere, deep in his nascent adolescence, interest stirred and he looked at her with a fresh curiosity. After a moment, Magnesia tilted her head and leant forward to catch Arthur’s line of sight.
“Hello? Sorry if I’m interrupting. We were talking about The City?”
Arthur blushed. He wasn’t used to other people wanting to talk about things that couldn’t be seen. “Uhh, yeah. How do you know the hair mat came from The City?”
Magnesia rolled an edge of the rug over and pointed at a faded label. “Can you read?” she asked. “Of course you can’t. I had to ask someone who does. It says, Donut Bleech. Cyty of Errm.”
“What does that mean?” Arthur whispered.
“I think it means that The City is called Errm. There is a man there called Donut Bleech. He may know who my parents were and why they were travelling across the Eastern Mumpsimus.”
“If he knows all that, he must be a very wise man indeed,” Arthur agreed. “I would like to meet this Donut Bleech.”
Magnesia unfolded the cloth. “See these patterns—they’re woven into the fabric. They show where things are. I think this green blob is the plains we live on, and the blue-coloured part is the edge of the world. Which means The City would be this bit here.”
Some accounts insist that the journey of Arthur from the Festival of Goats to the city of Errm took forty years. More secular scholars agree the journey could not have taken forty years, and that the word for hours— mok—was mistranslated as the word for years—muk—in early analysis of the ancient Logorrhean texts, from which much of what we know about Arthur’s early years is drawn.
Arthurians today agree that Arthur travelled the short distance on foot in a reasonable amount of time, giving rise to the proverb, “Arthur does not muk about.”
History (as written by The Victors) tells us that the city of Errm stood on the coast of the Argoan Sea and was crafted from local limestone and marble. The walls and buildings of the city reflected the late afternoon sun with a blinding glare, leading the citizens to proudly say that all who approached the great city did so with their heads bowed.
Beneath the retina-searing facades, Errm had all the common features of an ancient city where thousands of people gathered to live and work without the benefits of such infrastructure details as trash collection and the removal of dead beggars off the street.
When Arthur and Magnesia arrived at The City, they plunged into a river of fast-flowing humanity and animality that flowed into Errm like an open drain into a cesspit.
With its myriad sights and smells, some so strong you could almost see them too, Errm delighted and amazed Arthur. Everywhere people jostled and bounced off each other. They collided and congregated in small groups intent on an unknown purpose, before separating and going off in different directions. To Arthur, so unused to seeing large numbers of people in one place, it seemed that when the groups formed, and then dissipated, there were more people leaving the group than had arrived. He absorbed it all, adapting his nascent views and ideas about the Universe in light of his observations and conclusions.
He pushed (and shoved)
onwards to the heart of Errm and joined many other wanderers, and people who could not afford to work full-time as beggars, in the courtyard of the temple of Phrontisterion, Goddess of ideas and scholarly debate.
Here, men and women gathered to discuss and argue matters of philosophy, politics and religion. Occasionally, a wide-eyed lunatic accosted the wise and spoke of a new way of thinking based on evidence, called scyence.
The more educated dismissed scyence as a fad much like the short-lived religion of Degustation, whose adherents taught that the Universe was nothing more than a banquet of many courses for unseen gods whose dining habits caused the varied fortunes of men. Degustians lived in fear of an apocalyptic event they called The Cheque, at which time the world would end as the divine diners fell upon each other in an apocalyptic orgy of violence and arguments over the unanswerable question of Who Ordered What?
It is written that Arthur learned a great deal during his time in the city of Errm. He ate at the various street-side food stalls and spent much time in the public kazitoria facilities, popular among those who had not yet learned to avoid the wares of the various street-side food stalls.
The wider community of religious zealots in Errm fell into two broad categories. At one end of the spectrum were the gross prophets. They engaged in blood sacrifice, did not bathe, and imposed strange dietary restrictions on their followers. The other type were the net prophets, who focused on gaining followers, and taking whatever cash and worldly goods they could convince them to part with. It intrigued Arthur that no one found this odd or offensive. Everyone believed in something and used a variety of writings, philosophies, and explanations to justify their belief.
The questioning and heated debates thrilled Arthur. He spent all the hours he could in the courtyard, listening to the men and women speak.
Depending on the calendar consulted, it is written that in the third week of the month of Zot, or the seventh week of the quarter of Curdle, or on the eve of the transit of the Bifurcated Tonsil into the constellation of the Moth, Arthur’s First Revelation was made to the people.
Pisces of Fate Page 17