What is it to draw something that is not meant to exist?
Economous
musgrove
© D.M.Cornish
PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION
Chapter 4 PART 2
An Uncommon request
The sun
achieved its apex and swung beyond unheeded by the would-be fabulist and his
astounding unmoving model. Rabbits began to gather bout his feet and upon the
rubble about him, all facing him as if engrossed by his process, but he scarce
noticed them as he drew and drew and drew. It was movement in shadows of his
vision’s corners that finally distracted him, perhaps more a shifting of threwd – if such a thing were possible –
than of bodies finally arresting his attention. Looking quickly beyond the
olive trunk into gloom of the deeper cellar, Economous was abruptly brought out
of his creative stupor. For there he saw several bogles lurking there – small
monsters mostly, many about the size of a child, each in its own bafflingly
distinct form. One covered in a segmented grey shell Economous could only be likened
to an over-large cousin to the pillboys that infested the danker corners of his
garret. Another had the form of a swollen and distorted frog; a third maybe in
shape like a pile from a nightman’s cart suddenly sprung to life. Barely
discernible in the deepest cellar gloom behind these – as if aloof from such
lesser creatures – lurked a taller being whose only fathomable detail was its
ill-proportioned head like that of an over-sized magpie or daw. This it
appeared to turn oh so bird-like one way then the next as if to get the best
view of the frail, foolish vistor.
Economous
entire sense of the state of the cosmos lurched and faltered.
It was one
shock to find a lord of monsters allowing a city to be built up about it; yet
how were such forbidden creatures able to come and go with such unhindered
facility? What of the famed might of the city’s guarding war engines? What of
her many rings of impassable walls perforated by bastion gates that in a moment
could each become a fortress unto itself? What of the white waters of her
harbours prowling with countless iron-skinned rams crewed by hundreds of
hardened and vigilant vinegaroons?
Economous was
so perplexed his stylus quivered in the usually steady pinch of thumb and
forefinger. So terribly aware now of these watching bogles, he thought he could
make out hushed but urgent conversation from the smaller kind.
“Eat the
wombson, I say, and be done with its intrusion! We have talking to be done that
cannot wait…”
“Aye, aye, a
scrawny pink morsel for evening grubbings…”
“He’ll never let us, oh no…”
In terrified
dismay, the would-be fabulist ceased his drafting completely.
“TO HUSH WITH
YOU!” the Lapinduce hissed with sudden vehemence over its silk coated shoulder.
“I did not ask for you to follow me hence. Be still or I shall send each of you
unanswered back to your masters and mistresses…”
There was a
frightened tittering, a shuffling of feet – or whatever mode of appendage each
beastling might have moved upon – as the squat shadows shoved and poked at each
other, then quiet.
“Do not mind my
other guests, Master Pen,” the lord of monsters said in tones of pointed – and
strangely mundane – impatience. “They have been sent to rupture my peace and
pester me to join one cause or the other of my lorded equals to the north who
wrestle over some everyman fortress long known as Winstresslewe.”
The would-be
fabulist suddenly felt very little and very foolish in a world brim-filled with
towering behemoths older and wiser than the stones themselves, who passed so
easily through the most staunch of everyman defences like these were mere
cheesecloth.
“I beseech you,
everyman,” the Lapinduce lifted a velvet-downed paw in supplication and smiled –
a weird sight to behold in so impossible a face with a mouthful of over-sized
teeth. “Continue…”
Blinking
rapidly to focus himself back upon his drawing, Economous pressed on. The day’s
shadows grew long indeed when finally he felt that perhaps he might have drawn
as much as he could of the marvels of his dread subject. The would-be fabulist
held out his numrelogue to stare at it for one long confirming squint, flicking
his eyes between the final image to its likeness and back again, over and over,
making an adjustment. Despite the great weight of expectation that had knotted
and turned in his innards, he had produced as fine a portrait as he had ever
made. Indeed in the glow of evening and in the presence of this mighty and
prohibited king of beasts he was suddenly awakened to a deep sense of
fittingness he had not known in a very long time. Never-the-less, in fear of
the crushing of his fragile soul should his monstrous patron prove to be
disappointed with the work, Economous hesitated to reveal the finished
drawing.
“The day waxes
long, son of brevity,” the Lapinduce spoke, his rasping-rich words thrusting in
on the would-be fabulist’s prevarications. “By your winkings and starings and
the lack of scrawling me thinks you are complete. Come, present to me what I
look like to you. Let me see how the count of centuries has tolled upon my
face.”
Only now
realising with a shocked blink the lateness of the hour, Economous passed his
vaunted recording book to the Duke of Rabbits and held his breath half in hope,
half in dread. His stomach gave a hungry lurch.
Stroking its
chin with one hand while it held out its stylus-drawn portrait with the other,
the Lapinduce tilted its bestial head to the left, then titled it to the right,
its grey cat’s eyes squinting just as Economous’ had.
Fretting all the
errors that suddenly seemed so obvious to him, Economous held his entire being
in thrumming, expectant stasis.
Crickets began
to call to each other; frogs took up their gurgling song too. The firmament
cleared and span now with a billion stars and still the Lapinduce beheld the
fresh-scrawled image. Yet as the light failed so the ruined, tree-grown cellar
began to glow with bluish moss-light gleaming from the crevices between the
ancient foundation stones.
Finally the
Duke of Rabbits spoke.
“Such admirable
labour deserves rewarding,” the creature pronounced, then clacked its wicked
sharp teeth together.
At this summons
two over-large rabbits appeared from the darkness beyond, together drawing a
long oiled bag along by cords in their mouth. One was the very same which had
served that morning as so inconstant a guide, and its aid could have been its
twin.
The Lapinduce
stood, stooped took up the bag. Stepping to Economous to tower once more over
the everyman, it bent an elegant bow and presented the bag to the would-be
fabulist. “A wage for honest labour,” it proclaimed.
Taking the yard
long bag gratefully, Economous drew out the satin draws and rolled the
unfastened mouth of the bag down to show its contents. Here in the wan, fungal
light, he found a what was obviously a calibrator. Yet it was like none he had
beheld before, fashioned from a dark wood rather than the light oak as his
current one was, its graduations – of inlaid silver – not marking the usual quicks,
inches or feet but some other span of measure in base five and base ten. By the
smell alone Economous knew that this antique item was made from the wood of a
nigh-mythic black elder. Did this Lord of monsters realise what a kingly gift
he was giving for so simple a thing as the spedigraph just performed?
“I am of the
understanding that you call such things wentry,”
the Lapinduce observed mildly.
Wentry! Blithely items said to possess
qualities beyond any mundane object of similar form. Provoked by such marvels,
Economous’ athenaeum-found book-learning come back to him from libraries
in his mind he did not previously believe he possessed.
“This –” his
voice caught for a moment as he gripped the hallowed wood and felt a prickling
sensation in his palm. “This is too
much, my lord! I – I shall return again with proper pigments and a full-stretched
canvas to make a truly worthy image
of you!”
“You have honoured
me, womb-born, so why do you refuse my own honouring of you?”
Economous suddenly
felt ashamed of himself but was shocked from his chagrin by the abrupt sound tearing
of untearable velum from its binding as the Lapinduce carefully but easily
parted his portrait from the other pages of the would-be fabulist’s numrelogue.
Come with no other equipment, he had – as was his custom – drawn it in his
numrelogue, and now the folly of this dawned upon him: for in diligent service
of continuity and completeness it was forbidden for any concometrist to tear
even one page from their numrelogue, unless driven by direst need.
I am already under reprimand from the athy
here for drawing in my log, what will they do to me now it is incomplete?
Stunned by the
impossibility of the circumstance, Economous surrendered helplessly to the mutilation
of his sacred tome. Perhaps being cast out from the league of metricians for
such further defacement might turn to his benefit? There was nought he could do
about this current crime that made such ejection likely: the truth would not be
a helpful defence.
“The night’s
signals pivot above us,” the Lapinduce spoke into the humming night. “It is good
for you to return to your usual path of life so long to you, so short to me.”
“But –”
Economous began to counter, cricking his neck to look the monster-lord in the
face, if not in the terrible eye. He was not ready now to be parted from the
melancholy wonder of this mighty creature. He wanted yet to be consumed once
more in bliss of that sad, vital and all too brief music, to dwell for a little
longer in the strangely discomforting clarity that seemed to radiate from every
follicle of the monster-lord’s fur, every fibre of his silken frock-coat, every
bole and craggy load of rubble. “But –”
The Duke of
Rabbits raised a paw to silenced him. “Each time in its place and each place
for its time, womb-born,” it said with an almost fatherly tone. “My servant Ogh
will lead you out again,” it continued, the same paw now gesturing to one of
the pair of rabbits who had brought the princely prize and now waited amongst
the roots of the old olive. “I hope he proves
a better guide to lead you out than his brother, Urgh, proved to be on leading
you in,” their master added as if talking as much to the dumb beasts themselves
as to Ecomomous.
One of the
rabbits dropped its ears for a beat as if chastened and its fellow – the one
named as Ogh – loped forward, pausing before the would-be fabulist to wink and
twitch its nose at him.
Half-standing, Economous
tried to formulate some cause, some excuse, some reason to remain.
Ogh seized the
strap of Economous’ satchel lying at the would-be fabulist’s feet, and with a startling
show of strength, leapt away into the darkening wood, dragging the bag behind.
With a stifled
yelp, the would-be fabulist was properly on his feet, yet still unwilling to go
his head quickly swivelled as he looked from Lapinduce, calm, silent, waiting,
to his hastily departing property and back.
“I…!”
Catching up his
hat and numrelogue, his old calibrator and the velvet bag holding the new, the
would-be fabulist made a sketch of a bow. With a hurried, incoherently
apologetic farewell, Economous chased after the rapidly retreating rabbit and
vowed to return to paint a more fitting image of the Lapinduce, Duke of
Rabbits, lord of monsters.
