One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (36 page)

Behind us trudged the funeral retinue of Old Oss, ahead of us the untrammelled coasts of N. Asgard. Beside me? The Lawman, the Coming man: the Odin. Silently now we two walked on ahead, both of us hided from the explosions of the N. wind that nevertheless penetrated to my very Ashopian bones. Once I’d yearned, if only briefly, for a more simple life than that which this fractured Kingship of Ashop had bequeathed me. But now in fulfilment I writhed, privy to the new secrets of Asgard that the Odin was uncovering by the hour. Walked he everywhere upon the furthest reaches of Asgard’s coasts. No stone, no cobble remained unturned as the Odin made his rounds, treading where none other had yet dared to tread – not Old Oss, nor even the Sage-King’s own Lawmen. At a waterlogged yew forest inundated by the North Sea, we watched dumbfounded as the Odin – wading waist-high in the brackish brine – made detailed account of each tree still living, made everywhere fastidious measurings and calculations. Then choosing at last one yew from among the soggy multitude, he pronounced to our gathered throng that this tree ‘shall now and in future become the Merchant, that from which all Asgard shall spring forth’.

Everywhere now in living inventory did the Odin walk, did he beat his bounds. We traipsed across limestone hilltops of Asgard that never before had felt the weight of horse or human; on vicious cliff edges we lingered where sea birds made
not their nests; at deep ravines we trudged manfully down into their depths then up the other side, the civil engineers of the Danmark here-and-there being called upon to remove a danger or construct a path. But when we had at long last concluded the Odin’s chosen itinerary, none but myself and seven others remained in attendance. All others having long fallen by the wayside – despite this day itself being still only hours old – we nine retainers bedded down in recumbence. And although the vicious winds did tear across our wall of hides, yet did we huddle semi-conscious throughout the rest of the day.

We sunk most of us into sleep, down in that windy combe. But the many experiences of my several journeys outside Ashop confused me, thus I ranged somewhere in-between. Without the differing ways of the Great Ab, Old Ball and Old Oss at play in my head, perhaps I should not have felt so compelled to alter the trajectory of Ashop’s kingship. But that was fast becoming my new plan of action. With my own eyes I had observed the fate of Old Oss, and on a sore point I lingered now. When had Old Tüpp done his dealings with the Danmark? How long ago? And why? When had the name of the sacred stream upon Mam Tor’s sides been changed to Odin’s Sitch? Again: how long ago and why? By what political switch had the Odin slipped quietly into the Land of Ashop? Now I recalled with embarrassment my impolitic question to Old Ball during my stay in N. Abbadon; more I recalled his outburst at my thoughtless mouth.

Embarrassed at being unable to answer this simple question, and me the heir to the throne of Ashop, I had quickly blamed the effects of the ephedra for my mealy-mouthèdness and moved the subject along. But now, in the company of the slumbering Odin, how I worried for the future of my own kingdom. In Abbis, the Great Ab employed unswervingly ancient formulas and traditions for his mode of governing. In N. Abbadon, Old Ball combined his own grand talents with an uncanny ability to marshal the greatest thoughts and ideas of other rich minds in the kingdom. But Old Oss had underestimated fatally the powers of the Danmark, and – in relying solely and for too long on his exalted place as an Old One – I saw in Old Oss too many of those same sluggard ways that proliferated in our Ashopian manner of government. Why, it was even due to my father’s own misjudgement that I had suffered garrotting at the hands of the Oberst. Why had Old Tüpp employed such a man to oversee his library? Why had the king a library at all? No books, just the one page. What sophistry! Worse still, whilst nurturing such cultural falsenesses, Old Tüpp had simultaneously ignored the homegrown greatness of Old Dam, had let her magical horticulture slip out of Ashop ignored. Old Dam had made her beginnings not so far from Navio, neither. The locals preserve her name there still, and even claim for themselves Old Tüpp’s belovèd Longitude line to the Grand Paradíe – those five triumphant pillars of oke – that he long ago for intimidation’s sake set up upon Salisbury Plain. But when Old Tüpp had scorned her horticulture, Old Dam had taken her beaver-priests and, at the canny invitation of the Great Ab, headed northeast to practise her
horticulture on the sacred coasts of Sankey, where beaver lodges already proliferated. What a disaster to have befallen Ashop! Nowadays, the holy ones of Old Dam – her beaver-priests, her lodgers, etc. – practise their horticulture solely to maintain the sea fleets of the Danmark and of N. Abbadon. Who but the beaver brings down the great tree? No man never. Who without horticulture sails out to sea? No man never. Without Old Dam and her beavers? No sea travel, no river rides, no Now. And Old Tüpp had given this great Ashopian gift away; let it slip out of the kingdom unappreciated. Oh, how I wrung my hands and gnashed my teeth in frustration and indignation. For how long had my father been depleting needlessly Ashop’s homegrown forces, its powers, its riches?

When at last the nine of us arose from our long rest, I felt refreshed. Again we set off briskly
and
at a pretty pace. My mind at last was polished clear of insignificance and only great horizons of ideas did shape my thoughts. But no matter how I tried to place myself amidst the future plans of Ashop? Came on me like a thunderous bell always the answer: No! Came on me like a thunderous knell, always the answer: Go! In Future Ashop, said the voice, let only greatness rule your famous Navio. Let the ways of the Old Ones fade into the past. Let those autocratic methods wither and implode. Make way for Ashop’s Queen of Horticulture – dear Old Dam – and set the Odin at her motherlode. And when at last the nine of us returned to that yew forest? Whilst others rested, I approached the Odin with my plan.

Righteous death indeed was what my kingdom required. My meditations these long trudgeful hours in company of the Odin, in mute appreciation of his patient observation and diagnoses, had revealed only slackened worn-out ways among my own dynasty. Moreover, was the Odin not surprised at my suggestion; he candidly admitted that indictments were prepared against my father. Thus was I in harmony with the future of my kingdom. Thus was I in harmony with the tenets of the Lawman. Thus could my contraption and my corpse – both brought together – be carried by my stout Select to my eternal tether. Nevertheless did the Odin greatly lament this outcome.

Presently, our nine did return to the Merchant. Rugged, right separate it stood from the rest. Next to it a tree stump they readied as a prince’s plinth. Stood upon the tree stump, would I be there wrenched out of life. And whilst the Odin directed, so the seven men with the weight of their bodies did drag down a supple bough from this great yew, a springy limb the men did snare and tie it tight with river reed twine. At the rope’s far end did they fashion a noose which the Lawman would slip round my neck. Thus, as the Odin began his great chants, his long incantations, his magical spells, so I stood there in life and I smiled. Then came the Play at life’s end: those words we must speak as a Prince of Ashop, those words we must speak as a Lawman of the Danmark.

And with that, I climbed upon the stump. The Odin put the noose around my neck and climbed down. The seven let loose their grip on the branch and my feet slipped from under me right there on the slippery stump. The branch shot up, wrenching my head into the yew, my neck snapped from ear-to-ear whilst my body and limbs followed only considerably after. And
thus, between two worlds did I briefly linger, betaken by justice, betaken by truth. And here I died. And here I hung. No more Bjond. Ashop New Begun.

And as I died and death took hold of me, a sound: a distant sound seven hundred miles hence. From under the ground beneath the stump of Ashop’s once-great World Tree came a weeping, came a singing, came a choir of women’s voices. The colleges were awakening. Till now mute, rendered so by the tree’s infamous toppling infinite years before, so were the singers of Ashop already waking, the singers of Ashop already of their own volition had found their voices. What of the three colleges of the Past, of the Present, of the Becoming Time? All three – so long suppressed – now burst forth into life as never before. Clamorous chants, renegade streams, irrigated dreams. Across the heavens they chimed, across the skies they chimed, across the whole world they chimed.

Here in the sediment of life where I lay, down in the muddiest emulsions of me, still I struggled and twitched in survival. Even at the onset of death, how life is fashioned only to persist. How
I encouraged my marrow, my blood and my vapours! How I encouraged my bones and my flesh to rally once more! Ah me, such is life that, having once obtained, never can it be lightly extinguished. Ask even of the flea so casually ground between forefinger and thumb, still will it confess as it expires: ‘How much I did love that life!’

To be alive in this world and to be dead elsewhere. None should try it, none would bear it lightly as I now discovered. For here in quite another world, a world of light, did I begin to breathe again. Above me, a wash of sluggish shapes and dreary forms and perfunctory patches of warmth rolled by me like sleep matter dragged ’cross the dozing eyes of some reluctant snoozer. And I like a newborn reached out to those shapes, reached up for their meaning, their movement, their life! And as I sunk down and down, so did the face of a human angel stare also down into what people call their ‘eyes’, what I therefore also called my ‘eyes’. For I was human again: some kind of human. Not formed yet, but not dead neither. And in that formation, as low as it yet was, seeped I out of the ground at a trajectory low but yet inclined enough to seek a path downhill, a path of least resistance. This dribbler drizzling lightly upon some not unhealthy upland? Why, this would run and run and soon would I again become: back from Bjond. I was Rock. Or rather I would be soon.