Chapter 21 (continues)
“The Final Chapter”
[published but unedited thus far; tomorrow, perhaps, unless I don’t make it through the night]
[Glad to say I made it through the night and made a number of changes as well, for the betterment of fairytales everywhere, I’m certain!]
[Well, well. So Elesandra is an illusion. Primavera is real, but she may also be Raissa, who may also be Primavera. I shall need a better mind than mine to figure all of these women out and untangle these final events.
I also see I am going to end up with 21 chapters (by cheating a little) rather than 20. That’s actually good. 7 x 3 = 21. I like numbers. 21 + 7 = 28. Interestingly, 28 is the middle number in the 6 number mystical set of 142857. Why is it mystical, inquiring minds want to know? The answer is in the multiplication tables, so that if you multiply the 6 digit number by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, you will get the same 6 digits but in a different pattern. (Who says it’s not an ordered universe?) For example: 142857 x 2 = 285714. Isn’t that neat? That I learned in reading about Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland Decoded, and I did the math here in my head. So, next: 142857 x 3 = 428571. Let’s see: 142857 x 4 = 571428. Next (whew; getting harder to do in my head, though I know what the numbers will be): 142857 x 5 = 714285. Last but not least: 142857 x 6 = 857142. What happens when you try it by 7: 142857 x 7 = 999999. And that’s pretty neat too, for we are short only one digit from 1,000,000. Which means it’s time to see whether or not the Prince ends up with the lovely lady. And, if so, how? And even better, who?]
“What business is that?” Philip ruffled his feathers while he waited to see what the Prince was going to say.
Meanwhile the Wizard King looked down on the knight and the bird. The Sprit stood beside him, though oddly only his head was visible. “Stop that, else I’ll turn you into a bird for the next twenty-five years or glue you to a wall with only your head visible.”
“Sorry, Master.” Aventó didn’t look particularly apologetic, though he immediately became wholly present, feet to shoulders, beside the Wizard. “What next do you desire? Can I turn them into giant spiders? That would be entertaining!”
“No. Definitely not. Testing the good Prince’s quality is one thing. Bedeviling him is another, and he has done admirably well thus far. I approve of my daughter’s choice!”
[I had almost forgotten! One of the two lovely ladies is the Wizard King’s daughter? I had indeed almost forgotten. I wonder which one and what the Wizard’s relationship is to the Gryphon, as well. I may soon need a genealogical chart just to keep track of who is related to whom, and how. Let’s figure out the Wizard King’s next move, now that Godric is fresh out of the hall of mirrors]
“What next then, Master?”
“Turn his horse loose so that it might return to the Aspen grove and Adriel. Once you have done that, make certain the Prince looks into the mirror!”
“Like a bee that buzzes nigh,
Swifter than a butterfly,
I shall make the ladies cry,
Laugh and sing and finally sigh,
For a puckish Sprit am I!”
With a song and a mystic swirl the Sprit zoomed down the long castle hall, released Aspen and guided her off the island, and swiftly returned, invisible now, to where Godric and Philip were talking. Aventó flew into the mirror, vanished, made himself visible in the shape of a celestial Angel, all eyes and wings and shining light. Godric saw the light shining from the creature in the mirror, moved a step closer and looked. Immediately he was swept into the light and vanished.
The Prince closed his eyes against the brightness. When he opened them, he was no longer in the Wizard’s castle, but in a lush green and flowery meadow. Philip was shaking himself at the Prince’s feet, looking as bewildered as a crow can look.
“Now you see me,
Now you don’t;
First an Angel—
Now a demon-goat!”
With those words the Sprit suddenly appeared as a red-eyed shaggy creature with sharp horns and a grey-white beard, half the size of a man. It looked as if it were about to eat Philip, but when Godric started to draw the sword of fire, the demon-goat disappeared.
Philip flew into the air and called out, ”Where did that monster go?”
“I don’t know. Either we are in the wrong place or it is. Maybe that’s why it vanished. I think it was from a place I visited earlier. A nasty desert place. Maybe it went back there. The question is where are we, and what happened to the castle?”
Godric looked around the flowery meadow and saw a grove of Aspen trees, as well as the Wizard King’s castle in the distance. There appeared to be no one else around. “Let’s check out the Aspen grove; it might prove promising.”
The Prince and the crow set off across the flowery meadow on a path that led them to the trees. Ahead of them Godric saw a blue, red and golden shape slip among the trees. At least the Gryphon appears to be here already, thought the Prince. He and Philip followed the path into the grove of Aspen trees until they came to a softly flowing stream, much like the one in the place where he had met Primavera and Raissa. Philip landed on a sturdy tree branch close to where Godric stood.
Suddenly with a flash of lightning and a loud clap of thunder Andor the Wizard King appeared on the other side of the stream, dressed in a robe of purple with two dark, fur-lined strips down the front. His hair was black though sprinkled through with grey; his eyes were bright and dark. Next to him stood a large black dog, slowly wagging its tail. Like the eyes of the demon-goat, the dog’s eyes were red.
The Wizard King looked across the stream at Godric. “Forgive the dramatic entrance, Prince, but I understand you wish to meet my daughter,” he said. “I am here to arrange that.” His dark eyes seemed almost to twinkle.
“Your daughter? I—yes, if your daughter is who I think she is. I would very much like to meet her.”
“Are you willing to fight the Dragon of the Purple Mountain to win her hand? That is the test all suitors must take.”
“Father, you mustn’t tease the young Prince.” The voice came from the lovely woman who stepped from the trees beside Godric. “I think you have tested him enough!”
Godric turned toward her. “Raissa?” he said, as she walked up to him, dressed in a green dress that stopped just above her knees. Godric looked into her dark shining eyes, eyes like her father’s, and smiled. “Fifty dragons,” he said. “Though I think I have already fought a very nasty demon for you.”
“Yes. And you were wounded in the process. I trust your arm is fully healed?”
“It is indeed. Thank you. Sometime you must tell me how you ended up in that predicament. And after dressing the wound, you disappeared in the night. I thought I might have dreamed that whole adventure, except that the wound was real enough, and your care.”
“Some day I will be glad to, but for now it’s time to meet my father.” She looked across the stream and waved at her father, the Wizard King, who walked across the stream to where the couple were standing. The dog obediently followed him. Neither sank beneath the surface of the water.
“Father, may I formally present Prince Godric of Nodd?”
“Prince Godric, may I present my father, Andor, the Wizard King of Ardor?”
“Young man,” he said, “I am pleased to meet you. You have proven yourself to be a worthy person, and I welcome you.”
“Thank you, Sir.” The Prince bowed and the Wizard King nodded his head just enough. Both of them looked at Raissa, who was looking across the stream at the Gryphon who had come slightly out from within the trees. When Godric looked into her eyes, he could see the Gryphon reflected there. Curiouser and curiouser, he thought, but then the Gryphon disappeared and Raissa turned to him. He thought how beautiful she was, in every way, and how fortunate he was to have found her.
[This would be a good moment to explain that in reading a commentary on Psalm 23, I came across a definition of metaphor that could be relevant: “Psalm 23 begins with a metaphor: The LORD is my shepherd. In a metaphor something is said to be something else that it obviously and literally is not. A word used as a metaphor brings all that it denotes and connotes in ordinary language to the explication of that to which it is related. A metaphor used for theological purposes is very serious business. It does not simply describe by comparison; it identifies by equation. A metaphor becomes the image as which and through which something or someone is known and understood. It conveys more, and it speaks more powerfully than is possible to do in discursive speech. A metaphor is not as precise and limited as discursive speech. It draws on varied experience and evokes imagination. It is therefore plastic in meaning, capable of polysemy.”
“Plasticity,” a delightful concept, one thing perhaps molded into something else. All art is in some sense plastic, transformational; something to which the reader might attend?]
The Wizard King then looked up into the nearby tree. “Philip,” he called, “I know who your are. Would you like to be more than you currently are?”
“I don’t understand,” said Philip from his perch in the tree.
The Wizard turned to the black dog who had stayed by his side throughout. “Come, Aventó, let them see your real form.” The dog in a flash of black fur and a wag of the tail revealed himself as the mischievous Sprit he truly was, an apparently thin young man wearing tights and a tight-fitting shirt. His ears were pointed and he had a large grin on his puckish face. “Greetings all,” he said. “Welcome to Wonderland!”
“Now,” said the Wizard King in his deep somber voice, “if you would like an upgrade, I can change you from a talking crow into such a creature as Aventó, a Sprit; that would be a serious transformation, so to speak, but, however, non reversible, so think carefully.”
While the Prince and Raissa had been holding hands and talking softly, the Prince turned from her and looked up at Philip and grinned broadly. “Well,” said Philip, “that sounds wonderful, if not a little scary, but I have a mate, whom I have missed and whom I love dearly, more even than Tessa, and she’s one lovely bird whom I could not possibly leave. Her name’s Sophia.”
“We could work a transformation there too, if she has no objections. I can send Aventó swiftly to find her and bring her here. Would that be acceptable?”
“Indeed, Sir Wizard King, but she is back in the land of Nodd where I left her to come on this adventure. How will you find her?”
“Leave that to me,” said the Sprit, “I have long-distance connections”; and with a song and a flourish he vanished, leaving only the song in the air:
‘O what a wondrous Sprit am I
Off to the land of Nodd I fly
To fetch the mate of yonder crow.
Off in a flash I sing and go!’”
He returned in no more than 21 seconds later carrying a flustered and disgruntled female crow. She looked up in the tree and saw Philip. “Philip, is that you? What in the name of the great I Am is going on here?”
“Sophia, calm down a bit; we have a chance to become something more than we are, something better. The Wizard here can transform us into Sprites, like the one who brought you here. He would change me, but I said not without you. So, what do you say? I think we should. We will never have another opportunity like this, though it is apparently a permanent transformation.”
“Who wouldn’t want to be like me!” chirped the Sprit, “for,
“I found her in an Aspen tree,
Sitting with a dusky band
Of blackbirds in a distant land!
Scooped her up and brought her here,
Much to her chagrin and fear!
“A crow can’t be a songbird, but a Sprit can sing and crow. Bow wow, bark bark, caw caw!” Aventó swiftly became the black, red-eyed dog, a small, leafy tree of oddly shaped yellow leaves, a large black bird with yellow eyes, busting out as Himself again, grinning broadly.
Sophia looked at Aventó who was still grinning happily, obviously pleased with himself. “So, we would be like him? Flitting, changing shape, flying and singing if we so chose? We would have magical powers as well?” She had flown to the limb where Philip was perched. The Wizard King nodded and said yes. “Besides,” he added, “this Sprit has gotten a little too pleased with himself lately and needs some practical discipline, perhaps stuck in the bole of a tree for twelve or so years!”
“O Master, that wouldn’t be nice! I promise I’ll behave in the future, more less!” he added in a whisper.
“Good,” said the Wizard King, winking at his daughter and the Prince.
“What about us, Sir? Will we be servants too?” Philip asked.
“No. You will be free to enjoy your new status and revel in your new powers. The only condition is that you use them for good and not evil and not selfishly, though some pranks are permissible; use them selfishly or for evil and they will turn and destroy you. In any case you might also wish to come and work for me from time to time too. Nothing arduous. Just errands that require speed and some dexterity and intelligence. As Aventó lives with me, you might wish to live with my daughter and, I suspect, her soon-to-be husband. They seem to be delighting in one another’s company, don’t you think?”
The Prince, hearing the Wizard’s words, asked him whether he had his blessing for their marriage, and the Wizard King and proud father, of course, said yes. Having given them his blessing, he cast two spells, intricate in design and in a strange and foreign language; the first spell called up a dark feathery cloud that seemed to inhale Sophia and Philip, swallow them whole, then spit them out as shapely Sprits, dressed in tights like Aventó ; the second spell, equally intricate, produced a lavish banquet on the lawn of the floating island, the magical place they had gone to once they left the Wizard King’s castle. And with those transformations, marriages and feasts, the fairytale comes to a boisterous, full and happy ending.
Except, it should be said that for the marriage of Raissa and Godric, the Bridesmaids were Primavera and Adriel with Su Linn, the Dragon Lady in attendance, and undoubtedly the Godmother to-be of any children born to the loving couple. Godric’s father, King Bolt of Nodd, and a small entourage of nobles and their wives, made the trip from Nodd to Ardor for the wedding. Godric, the shining and very handsome Prince, would have no one except Philip as his best man (best Sprit, as it were). The Prince insisted that Sophia stand with them, for by the time of the wedding, Sophia had become fast friends with both Godric and Raissa. Their gift to the young lovers was an incredibly expensive silver and metal samovar from the other side of the world. Some people even drank tea at the wedding.
One other note, the Demon that Godric had bravely fought and killed stayed dead, and the severely wounded, cyclopean, “hungry” River Troll, thanks to some powerful magic on the part of the Dragon Lady, recovered and apparently learned his lesson and controlled his river’s behavior in the way in which the creator had intended. He was, however, not invited to the wedding.
Finally, the Bride and Groom met the mysterious, twy-natured, blue, red and golden Gryphon in the woods on the castle estate where we understand that he gave them his blessing, as well as some relevant instruction for the marriage to prosper, which the happy couple were glad to receive. In fact as they returned from that meeting their faces and bodies fairly glowed with what could be called celestial light!
Image: It’s Christmas: celestial light in the stable, you will notice. The Imp, or something, or someone wouldn’t print my wonderful image of the Gryphon! Thus it had to be the nativity scene; I suspect secondary causes at work here! And, in fact, everywhere!
