A Lizard in Crimson
|
II.
I
took the bus from Jemma’s across town, which gave me some time to settle
in with Mr. Barrett’s book. I
fished it out of my coat and opened it to the first page, which had a
frontispiece illustration of a weird, sinister-comic, dragonish thing
carrying an oversized jester’s bauble. It looked like an Aubrey
Beardsley done on crystal meth and acid. Under it were the words: THE
GESTE OF THE GREAT WORM It
was very, very weird, equal parts dream, fairytale and theatre of the
absurd, and just short of incomprehensible. The story seemed to be that of
Queen Verdant, her daughter, and the Tyrant Mage, a villain of inscrutable
malice and unclear motive who shows up, evil godmother-style, at the
kid’s first birthday party to trap her with magic “gifts,” while a
great variety of strange and grotesque characters come and go without much
apparent purpose. It was full
of oblique stage directions, ranging from the simply unearthly and surreal
(“Enter the Tyrant Mage crowned in white gold, with attendant Myrmidons,
Raveners, Harrow-Hunters, &c.”) to the completely obscure (“He
casts the Sevenfold Square, and speaks in the manner of the Verge
Domains”). There was no
glossary or any other kind of explanatory material anywhere in the book.
But despite its unrelenting strangeness, there were passages that were
quite beautiful and moving. One
stood out to me from near the end of the first scene: [Enter
the VOICE of the Great Worm, garbed as a Fool, and speaks to the CHILD.] Voice.
Fear not, Scion of Glory, though thy enemy is terrible; for what strength
he has comes of the Great Worm, and that power is in thee too.
All courses flow from the Great Worm, seen and unseen, and many
things are hidden even from clever eyes.
Take heart, daughter of green fields! And have this gift of me: to
know the flawed gem is more precious for its imperfections, nor does it
hold the less light.. Though he will pry into thy weaknesses, he cannot
break thee at them. Know that
which thou art, and heal, though hurt beyond the pitch of despair. I’m
afraid I didn’t get much further than that, as the parade of the bizarre
started to slide off my brain and I drifted off for a few minutes on the
bus. My dreaming thoughts
were a confused muddle of Tyrant Mages, riddling fools, black-bound books,
and lizards in crimson.
|