Economous Musgrove Chapter 5 Part 3

Depths still deeper for Economous I am afraid?

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 5 PART 3

Wretched Obscurity

Had this been before – before the portrait and the failed search for the Duke of Rabbits – he might have retreated to the Moldwood to draw, to dream, to forget: but a fellow cause of his confusion, the Lapinduce’s haunt was lost to him now. Instead he bought three bottles of Missus Apostle’s Best Buttressed Claratine from the first goose-a-grab grocer he clapped eyes upon and lost in angry thoughts, somehow he stumbled homeward. Tripping and thumping up the narrow staircase to his garret and ignoring the shouts of his landlady for “Quiet und care, please!” he finally sank himself in to the forgetfulness of a triple helping of cheap fortified wine.

Slouched upon on his sole soiled tandem seat, Economous pondered joining those few acquaintances he had managed to form in this great anonymous city bent on ceaseless endeavour for the unspoken promise of a fortune as reward. The notion, however, of an evening of revelry amongst happier souls he was still yet to fully trust whilst he was so sunk of wind seemed a sour prospect indeed.

He stared now in uncertain awe at the black calibrator of pricesless black elder lain with his numrelogue on the cushion beside him. The spicy scent of the wood seemed to saturate the close air of his cramped dwelling. He took up the wentry rod in his grasp and was amazed once more at the lively tingling he had originally remarked the first time he held the wood, a tingle that grew with every swig of claratine until he was convinced this inanimate tool was animate after all. Yet for all this, it was in some fashion a useless thing: how could he carry such a priceless device about freely without gaining the unpleasant attention of some unpleasant soul with an eye for such things? He certainly could never show it to his fellow concometrists or the masters at Pike Athenaeum or Athingdon Athy. It was just some secret memento of his secret meeting with a secret monster and would remain that way for ever more.

“I name you Miserichord!” he declared with a wry blurt of laughter, plucking the appellation from some half-recalled morsel of history, the tale of an ancient blade of black wood and glass made by forgotten arts.

The tingle of the wood in his hand sharpened abruptly, cutting Economous’ mirth short and causing him the drop the bizarre item to the floor. Glaring at it, his glower turning to a puzzled frown as his mind was already disbelieving what had just happened: that the calibrator had pulsed energetically, like the beat of humours or the wriggle of a live fish he had plucked with hookpoles from the [CREEK NAME HERE] as a child. More perplexing yet was the profound sense that it had done this almost as if in response to its naming.

“Pffff!” the aimless illuminator puffed. “Nonsense! Drunken, wine-bibbled nonsense!”

The image of the panderer on South Arm the fortnight gone – back when the Moldwood was an innocent place of calm and comfort – glaring at him in dignified shock flashed in his mind’s eye, set him to grinning, and her words repeating “How unseemly, sir!” set him to guffaws that had him rocking until his gaze fixed with disconcerting clarity upon his numrelogue, so unwittingly yet blasphemously defaced.

With grim reluctance, he took it up and beheld the gilt-framed, coal brown leather of its cover. Finally opening the hallowed tome to the tear the Lapinduce had made in it, Economous peered at the sundered wasp-paper in waxing dread that even his fall-back future as concometrist was now likely in doubt.

One of the attributes he long admired in the concometrists – in the entire Brotherly Order of Metricians – was their comparatively broader way of reckoning upon the nature of monsters and the nature of everymen. Indeed, as a sworn measurer, he knew just how open such open thinking was. Yet even the most generous-minded metrician he knew at Athingdon Athy would baulk at a tale of a page removed by a mighty monster-lord, let alone the harder-headed brother-measurers of Pike Athenaeum here in Brandenbrass. All he had for excuses then was some false admission of negligence. Flexible as they might have been about a great many notions, the concometrists’ entire devotion to measuring the length, breadth and depth of all the world – and with this the wholeness of the documents that made this possible – was not a place where they bent.

Vision swimming, he began to dab at the incriminating frays, pulling little lose bits and pulling yet more with a clouded yet growing conviction that he might be able to remove the remainder and disguise the damage. Alas! At the wrong moment wine-clumsy fingers tugged a touch too hard, beginning an entire new tear on the following leaf necessitating its complete removal. This proved harder than the Duke of Rabbits had made it seem and only with a great determined wrenching was Economous performed with a histrionic flourish and a leap of conscience like he was a naught, taffie-stealing child. Alak! Such force in turn loosened the sew of the binding of the whole gathering to with the leaf had belonged so that it stuck out noticeably from fore edge.

Suddenly he was ripping and pulling and tearing in a venting fit of furry, of whelming frustration at all the forces that seemed to work against him, of panic for a future without a goal. Sobbing – almost growling – Economous beheld the ruin he had made of his precious numrelogue and refusing to own the blame for its destruction, took up the black elder calibrator and flourished it, intent on smashing it too as its touch seemed to fizz in his hand. CRACK! he brought the wentry tool down upon the iron-bound crown of his trunk chest, fracturing the wood and bending the metal fittings. This only served to raise his wrath. CRACK! he swung the swart wood at a beam that held roof from floor, fully expecting the calibrator to fly apart in splinters only to find the beam itself split and splinter near half-way through. Still this did not stop him and eyes fixed upon his tandem seat, he swung the rod high…

… The lightest rattle and smallest thump of front door and deliberate noiselessness in the vestibule three floors below – the telltale quiet of Asthetica’s return – stopped him still.

His dudgeon was vanished in an instant.

Panting, blinking at the disarray and feeling utterly and abjectly foolish, he escaped the wreckage of his violence. Eager to forget so unseemly an outburst, he hastened three steps a stride down the cramped flights to small shuddering vestibule, where his sozzled hopes told him Asthetica was even now reading his reply. He almost fell the final flight when found that though indeed the beautiful lady was there, so was the Reive of Lot-in-the-hole, arriving just in time to witness Lord Fold pluck Economous’ heartfelt note from the Asthetica’s unwary grasp.

To her eternal credit, Asthetica betrayed wide-eyed and red-cheeked shame at the audicity and discourtesy of her guest and made a flapping attempt to take the letter back but was simply thwarted by a raised hand from the reive.

Eyes angry and wide, cognisant of the dire consequence for any lowly soul who dared raise threat against a peer, Economous took a single step down.

The Reive looked up at him with an arch smile the hopeless you fellow slowly descended the last steps. “Such a handsome invitation, man,” he purred with supreme self-confidence. “What a fine and steady hand you have. ’Tis almost pity to break such a noble soul with the information that she chooses to grace this honoured body –” flourishing his hand with a twirl of purple-gloved fingers and flick of wide mauve hems of his sleek frockcoat, he gave a mocking bow to indicate himself “– with her excellent and steady company…”

With a wine-sodden rush in his humours and a flash of red passion so recently revealed in his garret, Economous staggered a second step towards the upstart.

“Alas for you, dear fellow, and you inadequate charms,” Lord Fold continued. “This excellent and steady maid will be with me for the Year Sending at none other than Sashette’s.” Dropping the name of that finest and most fashionable of fine eateries as if it were a trifling thing, the high-blown fellow blinked at Economous, knowing, owl-like. Infinitely secure in his elevated status, a foul gleam in his eyes dared the poorer, lower born man to do more, to go further, to take up his little, low-station anger and act!

“He’s married already, y’know,” Economous slurred in defiance, addressing Asthetica now as if the Reive of Lot-in-the-hole was not there.

Gasping, clutching at her pale, quivering throat, Asthetica looked at him wide-eyed, maybe even ashamed. “I know,” she said in a small voice.

“Why you coarse and stupid fellow!” Lord Fold declaimed with a sneering guffaw. “She already has knowledge of this! Surely if you cannot be so patently stupid and louse-headed to fail to apprehend that a man of broad power and high circumstance such as I could not be so without such slight details being common knowledge. If this is all that vexes you, boy, then know that this steady maid beside me has contented herself as my mistress…” He took Asthetica’s arm in his and patted it possessively.

Flummoxed and desperate to avoid the violence he was sure he would perpetrate if he remained even a breath longer, Economous shoved clumsily between Asthetica and the reive, causing the maiden to cry in alarm. Stumbling from the vestibule and out into the last evening of the old year without hat or neckerchief like some life-lost wastrel, he pushed roughly past the reive’s spurns and hurried down the To-Market lane before him, ignoring the cries of consternation from behind. 

Economous Musgrove Chapter 5 Part 2

Daylight saving has just started and I have lost a hour - a WHOLE hour - from the day. Whatever will I do? Where did it go? To the place where time is killed? 

Anyway, Economous presses on once more; but what is a soul to do when the aftermath of an extraordinary event is just more of the same old boring blah?

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 5 PART 2

Wretched Obscurity

For a long time all Economous could do was blink in awed dismay at the blue sigil rabbits tossing and flicking so prettily on the silken banners while the goodly citizens they represented bustled about beneath them in complete ignorance to their true import. What if they did? What if it suddenly became wide and accepted revelation that a monster-lord dwelt in the very heart of their safety? Would the entire city suddenly rise up in revolt, invade the Moldwood, drive the Lapinduce from his warren and burn the feral park to its stumps? Would they seek to keep such terrible information from the ken of their neighbours already jealous and ever so keen to find just such a powerfully justifiable excuse to band together and wipe their chief rival from the map?

Already perplexed by his secret knowledge, his intelligence of the Lapinduce suddenly felt a ponderous weight indeed. Seeking to escape this increasing heaviness, Economous finally turned his attention to his note and shaking his head to clear it, began:

Most dear Asthetica…

He hesitated for a fretful beat… Is that too emphatic for such a note? Too intimate? His stylus hovered in uncertain hand a moment longer than scrawled on: the greeting would remain, it was how he felt and it needed to be said whatever the outcome.

How can I make amends for my carelessness! I have a profound thing to tell you and can only hope it suffices for my unaccountable absence and my cruel want of basic civility.

Please allow me to meet with you to make my excuses.

May I extend my invitation for you to join me for Lestwichnight tomorrow, that I might spend the ending of one year and the heralding of the new in your…

… While he searched mind and wind for the right word to sum his view of Asthetica’s character, Economous became aware of the twitching regard of beady rabbit eyes glimpsed in the obscurity of a footway that ran between his bunkhouse and its neighbour. Why didn’t you let me find you! he complained inwardly as he glowered at the blighted animals, as if the Lapinduce might fathom such thoughts through what were surely his furtive agents.

In a windy flapping of black wings, a pied daw dropped and landed without warning upon the left balustrade of the tenement steps to peer at Economous with its disconcertingly shrewd yellow eye. Here in the city these birds were despised as cousins of the crow: the barer of ill-news and unhappy dreams. Yet out in the parishlands about Lo such creatures were also held as signals of shifting circumstance for both ill and good.

Economous regarded the handsome bird closely and reflexively began to draw its heavy bill and beady frown upon the top left corner of the letter leaf.

With a peculiar almost word-like croak, the pied daw took wing again and rose up swiftly to disappear over ridgecaps.

Perhaps the time had come for the aimless drawer to shift his circumstance and be more forthright with Miss Grouse about his own, far truer intent; to stride out boldly upon this last path left to him…

 … your excellent and steady company.

Ever in respect and admiration,

[PICTURE HERE]

He marked this with a cartoon of a pair of cooing doves, beak to beak, there heads enclosed with a circle. About to knock upon the Grouse’ hallowed ground floor door, he thought better of it and simply left the brief missive slotted between floor and jamb as the one for him had been, to be found by the damasel on her return from the day’s duties.

To stop himself from being consumed by expectation for a reply the would-be fabulist returned to his apartment for his hat, his coat and his usual bland calibrator and stepped out. He did briefly consider bringing his prize with him instead, but it would surely not do to wander about with an entire yard of black elder in hand… and he was uncertain he wanted to feel its alien restlessness in his hand as he attempted to restore what passed for his mundane routine.

Taking the hour walk from the more salubrious northen-western corner of the Alcoves – where not everyone was an unrepentant scoundrel yet rents were low enough for some one of such inconstant means – he made his way along steadily improving streets to the grand and hectic circuit known as the Spokes. Here it was his intent to employ the afternoon within the green domed colonnades of the grand knavery of Letter and Coursing House, seeking and applying for fabulist work with whichever teratologist would have him.

From his very first day fresh-arrived in Brandenbrass, the Coursing House had served as the focus of Economous’ aspiration, a compass to which he always turned to remind him of his path when low winds threatened to cast him adrift. The Mouldwood now failing him, the knavery would have to do as a refuge.

Up the marble steps and through heavy wooden doors, Economous strode into the cool Removing his tricorn he took his place in the shortest of the three lines before the clerking stalls and he basked for a breath in the soft blue glow of the gretchen globes that hung in rows of carbuncles from the high domed ceiling. Costly luminescent pearls each the size of a pumpkin, these gretchens were said to be formed in the gizzards of the sea-dwelling kraulschwimmen and spat up to be found by unnaturally brave meerlunkers or fortune-favoured beachcombers. In this lofty space – this house of goals achieved – it was his hope to avoid the heights of his anxiety through the shuffling of papers and arguing with the ubiquitously disdainful and obstructive knaving clerks.

A loud clearing of the throat brought Economous to abrupt awareness.

A teratologist was standing on his right, clearly insisting upon pushing ahead of Economous in the line.

It was an unchallenged custom of any knavery that the monster-hunters themselves had implicit seniority. And though no decent teratologist would ever be so rude as to push in directly, it was a given that they should be allowed ahead of any lesser soul in any queue – especially the longer sort. The best sort of monster-slayer did not stand in any manner of line, of course, but had staff – a factotum or valet or hand-maiden – to do such petty things for them.

Economous stepped back reflexively with scarce a glance at the upstart knave.

For a dark, gizzard-tumbling beat he thought it was the very teratologist he had last served with such ill result these sixteen months gone, the one whose kill he had foiled with his fascination for the small bogle they were certificated to kill.

It was not.

The fellow – a lightning-grasping fulgar with a great red diamond in the middle of his forehead – fixed him with a withering smirk before taking his enforced place at the line’s head.

Let him scowl and glower¸ Economous counselled himself. I fathom he could not stand a moment in the court of a lord of monsters. Well aware of where he was – a veritable bastion committed entirely to monster-slaughter – the would-be fabulist stifled this route of thinking lest it somehow show on his dial and sink him in to deeper strife.

With the fulgar came a servant hefting a clearly weighty bag that was most surely holding the severed trophy of a successful hunt: the necessary proof for gaining a glorious pot of prize money.

Had the creature deserved such a bitter ending?

The dangerous question flashed across Economous’ thoughts and was gone again before he could arrest it. Keeping his face from showing guilt and knowing full well how absurd he was being, he looked to left and right to see if anyone in the queues at either hand had noticed him having such a treacherous idea. No one was paying him even the slightest regard.

 “One might reckon that with your soiled reputation, Master Musgrove,” came the sardonic voice of the knaving clerk in the now vacated lattice before him, “you would cease wasting our time with your continued applications.”

Too shocked at himself, Economous had not realised the teratologist had concluded their business and moved on. Seeking to shove all sedonary notions as far from his inner turnings as he could, he stepped to the stall and got on with the usual trade of finding employment. Yet, as he sparred words with the quill-licking clerks and carefully filled and filed several Certificates of Intention and Offer of Compact a notion occurred that stopped his labour short. Stylus hovering over the seventh Intent he had filled that day, he blinked sightlessly at the latticed booth screen before him.

How can I join the hunt for monsters now that I have met one of their lords?

With a defeated sigh, he put his elbows heavily on the scribing shelf of the booth and covered his face with his hands.

Surely of all souls I have to own that not all monsters ought be slain outright?

What of his ambitions now?

For the last two years he had been telling himself that teratologists only pursued the worst monsters, those who by their violence had brought such deadly attention upon themselves. In his deepest thoughts he had always known that this was a thin rationale; that in the thrill of the chase and with it wealth and glory, no teratologist made such nice distinctions. The rationale was thin, yes, but it had let him live within a society were the common opinion – the only opinion – was that all monsters were worthy only of destruction. Ever since his shaggy childhood saviour had been mercilessly and mindlessly hunted by the stoutest souls of Lo and a teratologist from the city sent for to find and properly “do the wicked creature in!” he had been schooled in this all too well. More than this, such thin thinking had let him somewhat untroubled of soul to seek an alliance with monster-hunters as their fabulist.

But now he had not simply glimpsed but spent a day in the very company of a monster – a king of monsters no less. His thin rationale was blasted; with a shock he could see that driven by selfish ambition he too had lapsed into his own kind of mindlessness, operating upon the thoughtless presumption of doing right.

A great groan of frustration roiled in his milt.

One small sour consolation was that he had participated in only three such hunts, and for the first time felt some good that he had helped that childlike bogle of the last of these to escape destruction, however unintentional it might have been. He must have unwittingly given actual voice to this inward cry, for looking up at last he found the factoti, the teratology agents, the lesser teratologists filling their own papers and other desperate souls in the booths on on either hand looked up to frown or sneer or snicker at him.

Bereft and aimless, would-be fabuilist no longer, Economous fled the Knaving House. 

Economous Musgrove Chapter 5 Part 1

Survived and enlarged of property, what will Economous do now with his entry into a wider wilder world? What great heights of confidence and action will he now achieve from such wondrous happenstance?

I like that you get to see my "working in progress": the blanks and spaces that must occur until things are fully fathomed. Writing happens by layers, I have found, rather than some great single largely correct out-pouring - or maybe that is just my limitation. Ah well, as long as it gets writ, I do not mind.

It was noted some posts back that the tree in the Lapinduce' court in Factotum was a walnut, but that I had got it wrong in this story as an olive: I have, alas, been too subtle it seems, for my intent in this was to highlight that we were in fact in a different region to the one Rossaümund found himself - that the Lapinduce has more than one court. Indeed, tho not stated, my thinking was that Economous was met in a more "public" area whilst Rossaümund had been granted entrance into the deeps within the great Cunobillin's parkland realm. I have surely dropped the ball at times, but not in this case I hope.

I am also very gratified to learn that the tale (up to now at least) has not perhaps taken any presumed routes: I hope I might continue to keep you guessing (for your entertainment, of course, and not just for the sake of it or to some how fell "cleverer").

Blessings.

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 5 PART 1

Wretched Obscurity

concometrist ~ definition …… Properly the Amicable Fraternity of Athenaeus, a great and learned father of history, said to be the last great scholar of Phlegm and the first king of the Attics …………MORE………

The chase lead him back and about through trees, the over-sized rabbit called Ogh proving every bit as fractious as its twin, leaping on and on, pausing just in view then springing away when Economous hurried near only to halt once again and wait to be pursued. Fumbling and faltering, hands reaching grasp for his stolen satchel if ever he was near enough to Ogh to try, Economous was unwittingly drawn to the very gates of the Moldwood. Here before the very foot of the now closed park gates, the rabbit-thief simply dropped the satchel and job done, leapt away into the dark before Economous could do another thing.

Frame heaving as he caught his breath at last, the would-be fabulist jogged to a halt and snatched up his bag, looking up at the black-iron gate – now shut at days end – as he did. A sly smile twitched at the corners of Economous’ mouth as he considered that the gate was likely locked and that he was held within the park for the night, forcing the Duke of Rabbits to play host again, at least until morning. He gave the wrought frame a single testing tug and found with a start and sinking wind that it came open. Someone is not doing their duty, he thought with a sharp look to the cheerily lit windows of the gatekeeper’s cottage built into the very stone wall of the park.

Hurrying home as full night took hold, Economous was glad it was dark. For, if it was day he was certain all could read upon his face that he possessed the wondrous, outrageously damning knowledge of a monster found in the inner-most precincts of the city; a nicker-lord dwelling undetected behind the many rings of curtain wall raised over centuries to keep such dread things out. Uncomfortable feelings leapt up painfully from long unheeded wells of childhood memory. His fellow townsfolk of Lo had regarded him with perplexing caution after his survival from the harthwood savaging, and he was certain all the nameless city-living souls passing now about him on the slate-cobbled walks were casting the same sceptical – almost accusing – looks his way.

Somehow found his way home. Up the tight stairs, door opened then locked again against all the suspicions, he lay abed his soul and mind animated by perplexing combination of relief to be off hostile streets and a low aching kind of grief at so brief a time with a king of monsters so abruptly concluded. Agitated and sleepless, he took out the mystic black elder calibrator – his fee for services rendered – from is bag. The instant he grasped the mystic wood a buzzing – quick, almost alive – transmitted into his palm and up his arm. What was this thing he had been paid, this object of the monster world? Was it everyman-made, or monster-made? Did monsters even makethings? The Lapinduce would surely have the answers – if only Economous had thought to ask such wonders before he had been so suddenly ejected.

“That does it,” he said in a flash of clarity to the steep, thickly beamed ceiling.

He would make good on his declaration to return fully equipped to the Lapinduce’s lair to paint a proper, wall-worthy daub of the great creature, something to even begin to approach some small beginning of parity with so extravagant overpayment.

Thus resolved, Economous closed his eyes and remembered nothing more until morning.

                                    *          *          *          *          *

Again and again, Economous returned with easel, paints, brushes and canvas to seek the Rabbit Duke out, searching far into the trees, spending whole days on nothing else, trying to retrace those steps on that wondrous day that had lead him to the monster-lord. Yet every time he was certain he was on the right trail, it just deposited on the far side of the Mouldwood – by the street known as the Dove – or simply lead him back where he had begun. At other moments on promising trails he found the threwd about him grow so heavy and daunting that he actually staggered under its invisible, formless pressure and weeping with frustration, was forced to withdraw. This at least was some small confirmation in the midst of his growing self- rebuking doubt that somethingdread and intelligent dwelt in the park.

For an entire week and into the next Economous employed himself in this fruitless hunt, careless of washing, of changes of clothes, of eating, missing his single, precious weekly meeting with Asthetica in his obsession. It was a great outpouring of effort to round out the year and it produced nought: he never saw the Lapinduce again, nor even once glimpsed either of the over-large buck-rabbits that were the urchin’s servants.

Yet it was a letter found forced under the jamb of his garret door that finally brought him to sense. It must have been hand delivered, for all official post always came by the intermediary of Missus Everrest, his patient yet scornful landlady. The hand that had written his name so elegantly upon its facing fold was unmistakably that of his beloved. It read:

Mister Musgrove

You are missed.

It was concluded by a stamp of the ellegant manu propa – the personal sign – that Asthetica had formed for her at no small fee by the notable manua proscripta writer, Blandus Sandle.

That was the entirety of the message, but its effect was like a blow.

Taking a hold of himself, Economous left his garret, went down and sat outside upon the stony bunkhouse step to write a reply to leave with Madam Grouse. Being the middle of a Solemnday – indeed, the second to last day of the year – he knew well enough that his beloved would not be at her home but working as all the most modern lectry-class girls did these days. Stylus hovering above a blank letter page, he blinked up at the sky, a dazzling stripe within its frame of steeply peaked half-house roofs and many many jutting chimnies.

About him the Brandenbrass hummed with a very tangible expectancy of Lestwich – the last day of the year – a defiant show of enthusiasm to push back the heavy expectation of sudden disaster that had gripped one and all since Winstermill’s fall. On the lane before him that went down to the markets and along the street on either hand, wreaths and withies of boxthorn – the traditional monster deterrent – festooned every transom, ledge and lintel in far greater number than Economous recalled from any previous year-sending. Intersped with these were hung small flags of empire and of city: the golden Imperial owl against a barred field of rouge and leuc – red and white, and a rabbit in ducal blue against bars of leuc and sable – black and white, flying together in heightened anticipation of the Emperor’s imminent arrival in the new year. Not normally given – like all good concometrists – to the common mania for anything Imperial, Economous found that he too held a small but certain thrill at the thought of the Emperor, Procrustès IV Clementis Rex Haacobin himself – and his grand court with him – stepping the streets of Brandenbrass. The formally stated cause for the visit was the display of yet another Imperial grandson and continuing addition to the posterity of the Haacobin line: the very child whose arrival into this vexing world had prompted the changing of the spring-time months. Yet in actual purpose it was far more their great imperial father coming, bringing comfort to them all.

Tapping stylus to chin for a further pondering moment, Economous watched the cerulean-hued sigil dancing upon the city’s flags: Con Robbart was the name common souls had for it – Cuniculus Robustus, the Stalwart Rabbit. Did Brandenbrass’ masters know just how present and apt a symbol it was? The general reckoning was that the sigil simply stood for the crowd of rabbits that infested the nooks and shadows of Brandenbrass. Had the historied founders of this grand, long-thriving city once actually known who it was that dwelt in their midst? Had they knowingly built their city about the dread monster-lord? How else could it be that the Moldwood had been so long preserved despite the centuries of ever-increasing expansion and crowding demand? Coming quickly, one upon the next, such shocking thoughts came like a blow, yet as disconcerting as these might have been, the final conclusion came with all the sting of a ringing slap:

 Do the current lords know even now?

Economous Musgrove Chapter 4 Part 2

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 provesa 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.

Economous Musgrove Chapter 4 Part 1

And here we be again, with Economous perched upon the threshold of dread and wondrous things.

I think I shall now go and have a look at the comments from last week.

Enjoy (oh, I sure hope you do - sorry for the maybe odd break in this weeks words, but the chapter had no easy place to sever it, so I just made shift as best I could...)

Economous

musgrove

    

© D.M.Cornish

PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH OR REPRODUCE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION

Chapter 4 PART 1

An Uncommon request

word ~ definition …………

In a dread of involuntary awe, Economous dropped to his knees, expecting in any beat to feel the crash of crushing violence to come down upon his neck.

It’s true! It’s true! rang with child-like astonishment in his quailing soul.

A peculiar and loud click came from the mighty creature’s mouth, like it was clashing its long front teeth together. “Do not bow to me, son of the short-lived!” it spoke with open dismay, its voice rasping yet somehow rich – a voice no human throat could make and the very same that had compliment his drawing two days gone. “Such worship is not mine to demand nor receive. Come stand again and let me behold so peculiar a creature more fully.”

Economous swallowed and slowly got back to his feet. The back of his neck pinched sharply as trembling, he dared to look the dread thing in the eye.

Is this an eating or a saving kind of monster?

It peered at him closely, almost accusingly, a stare of pale grey from eyes like nothing the would-be fabulist had even gazed into before; eyes that held secrets beyond measuring, that had watched spans of time past reckoning and witnessed calamities that would have driven lesser beings raving mad.

The would-be fabulist wanted to look away, to bow again, to not provoke this eoned creature a mite further. Yet his gaze locked with the mighty beast, he found that he could not move.

“I behold that you are a womb-born,” it spoke again, bending its face close to his so that the perfume of blossom and loam filled his senses, “who is better reconciled to what you would name monstrous things than most of your all-too-brief kind.”

It took a moment to recognise that the rabbit-beast was expecting some form of response. Economous mouth opened, but not a sound came out. He tried again, squeezing at his rebelious vocal organs. “I – I …”

This seemed enough for the creature for it continued: “It has been some time as you brief ones reckon it since an everyman has found peace and sought only gentle occupations in my wooded courts. I have enjoyed you calling on us to scribble and dream: you are a fine draughtsman, sir.”

Economous ducked his head, finding his voice at last. “Y-you are the first to say it so, my lord.” Such an appellation felt awkward in his mouth, yet to call such a magestic creature by anything else seemed profoundly unfitting.

“I am – oh son of vapour – an urchin-lord; the great undying Cunobillin you might have read on in you measurers’ library; the master of this city you Brandenmen think your own, and if I say something is so, then – Providence alone only contradict me – it is so!”

Economous had indeed read upon one named Cunobollin, a dread creature famed for terrorising the wild Piltmen – whom they called the Haraman – before Brandentown’s Burgundian ancestors came from the east to subdue them. There were many books in Athingdon’s three libraries that pronounced on many such beings and Economous had read every one, each several times, whether he had permission to or not. Most texts offered only conjecture as to the existence of any kind of recognisable heirarchy amongst monsters; the most invective refused such notions as being a signal of proper intelligence and consequently impossible. Yet here was one now, defying all common and stoutly held convention.

Refusing to fall to his knees again and incite further ire, the everyman clamped his jaw shut and vowed not to speak again before this dread urchin-lord. Yet questions were piling in his concometrist’s mind like a jam of carriages at high noon on the Spokes.

“I seldom allow any creature into my deeper sanctuaries.” The Lapinduce looked about the ruined, tree-grown cellar. “And few is the count of those whom I have welcomed into my inner courts. Most everymen fool enough to make a determined enterprise into my park find themselves upon the otherside no matter how hard press their explorations. Others come for ill reasons and seldom more than once, yet you linger in my garden week upon week and show yourself happy to do so. How curious, I marvelled to myself as I watched you quietly. But more than benign curiosity, I smell on you that you have met my frair – my brother monsters – before… and been marked by the meeting.” It clacked its teeth together and went silent, letting its observation linger.

Before a dread king of nickers, an ancient creature who so clearly fathomed far beyond the usual ken, Economous found the admission rising easier than ever it had. “Aye, when I… I was a boy, living west in L… Lo.” Even now the old reluctance tried to catch at his words.

“And you won through the encounter.”

Economous could not tell if this was a question or and observation. He answered anyway. “I was rescued by one m-monster –” was that even the right word to use before such a being? “– from – from the hunger of another.”

“And who believed such a story, I wonder…” the monster-lord’s feline eyes glittered with bitter humour.

“It was insisted that such a thing was not possible and my silence for evermore demanded of me.”

Tapping its downy, black chin with an equally swarthy fore-knuckle, the Duke of Rabbits regarded him closely. “So it has long been,” he said at last.

It seemed to Economous that – impossibilities upon impossibilities – this creature truly understood him, that in that moment he had gained the sympathy of this dread nicker-lord and that he in turn was well disposed to it. “Sir, if I may…” he dared in the encouragement of this insight. “What do you want of me?”

“I have seen you draw my little kin, son of brevity, and now I desire that you would draw me too. I would like a graphice, an imago, a spectacle de vue – a portrait– of myself, for it has been many generations as you would reckon them since the last tender soul presented themselves for the task and it pleases me to gain another. It will be a record of your passing to remind me in later centuries.”

Suddenly, Economous’ self-taught, unacademied skills seemed for the first time to him to be scant and dangerously inadequate. Yet to decline was surely worse than what ever feeble image he would produce. “If that is what you wish for, sir, then I shall do my best to grant it,” he replied with firm tone designed to bolster his own failing courage.

To this the Lapinduce perched itself upon a particularly large knobble in an oliveroot, crossed one leg upon the other, folded its long long hands about its knees and stared up into nothing like a person well suited to sitting for a portrait.

“Do – do you have a preferred side, sir?” he asked reflexively, as he did of all customers seeking a spedigraph.

“Side, sir?” the Lapinduce cocked a shaggy brow at him. “Why, my own side always.”

Economous swallowed. “Aye, of course, my lord… and… and which sphere of your face would you have me draw?”

“I think you will find this current one is as good as its twin,” the Lapinduce said with a haughty and slightly wounded air and the sat unnaturally still, chin lifted like some historied heldin from the hailed paintings of Economous' long dead mentors.

Yet the fabulist could not draw; how could he when the impossible was solid and breathing and very much possible before him? Time ceased as Economous just sat and blinked and struggled and failed, struggled and failed to comprehend his situation.

How long it was before the creature stirred could not be told but eventually the monster-lord looked sidelong to the befuddled everymen sat before him and declared dryly, “Unless you have unlocked the lost telegraphic arts of the Phlegmish goests, I do believe stylus must make contact with paper for an image to be forthcoming…”

Economous shook himself as if startled. “Oh… oh, yes - yes, indeed, sir. My apologies…” And, ears ringing and senses reeling with wonder of it all, he began to draw.

Perched upon toppled stonework, numrelogue open upon his knees, the fabulist shook his head and squinted studiously and long at his outlandish sitter, fixing the Lapinduce’ alien form into his inner eye before he dared put stylus to paper. At last – and all too aware of the oddness of his position – Economous began to draw, striving with every line to capture the full-rounded form and render it accurately on the contrary flatness of a single page. Stylus frequently hovering in pent potential mere fractions from paper as he looked long at his subject, the would-be fabulist strove to get the fineness of the glossy felt of the rabbit-lord’s silken black fur down true; to describe as precisely as he could the true relationship between the great protruding front teeth, the rabbits nose, the grand sweep of those mighty ears; to find the exact sit of the gleaming silk collar upon the shaggy neck; to find exactly how to line the profile glimpse of the mighty therian’s eon-seeing eyes.

For his part, the Duke of Rabbits made an excellent subject, sitting with preternatural stillness, never once twitching, itching, looking over to see how the portrait was coming along.