COLLECTED STORIES AND FRAGMENTARY CONVERSATIONS
Inside The Book of Sorren are to be found several stories, along with poems, epigrams, musings, and some completely inexplicable fragments that defy explanation. Some of these stories appear to be lost fragments, or complete stories from the writings of King Sigmus. It is unclear if Sorren collected these writings, or whether he perhaps compiled them from memory, in his own hand, from the extemporaneous ramblings of the King himself. The fact remains that they are written in the same artistic style and measured meter as the many stories of King Sigmus from the book King Bartholomew. I present them here just as Sorren kept them and have made only superficial editing to the text.
Curator’s Note: The story of The Red King poses unusual challenges for the curator as it appears to be significant beyond a mere storytelling. This piece will be shared shortly, after further research has been conducted on it and other related texts. It begins:
“No Iona,” said King Sigmus as he sat back in his chair and prepared a pipe. “I would not speak to you about The Red King. “Are the legends true then?” Iona responded. The King looked at his mistress and smiled slightly before answering. “I am afraid that the story is too horrible for your ears,” he said. “Oh, please Sigmus,” Iona begged. “Tell me the story of The Red King. I promise to stay close to you,” she said coyly. “You will surely protect me.” The King pondered her words, for Iona could be very persuasive. “All right Iona,” he said. “I will tell you, but do not be afraid in the middle of the night when your mind begins to play tricks on you.” And then the King composed himself and began his story.
lesson of St. Nestor
“The Lord has cast the wizards and the demons down.”
These were the words spoken to me with zest by King Sigmus as I re shod his horse and he sat smoking a long thin pipe on the morning after the feast of St. Nestor. I told him that St. Nestor fought a demon and that perhaps the Lord chose to leave some of them alive for us to do battle. The King was instigated by my remark and berated me.
“Confound it Sorren. The Lord does not create demons,” he said with certainty. “The demons have always been here.”
“But if the Lord did not create them . . . how can they be?”
“I do not know,” replied the King. “St. Nestor fought a man, Sorren. The demon was inside the man.”
“Did the man create the demon?” I asked innocently. “If the Lord does not create demons, then surely it must have been the man that created the demon.”
“You best pray that man is never allowed to create demons,” the King answered pointedly. “It is enough to do battle with them.”
The sheep and my sleep
One day at breakfast as the King hungrily ate his meal of eggs and toast with marmalade and a cutlet, he asked me whether I counted sheep in my sleep. He looked up to me to make sure that I was listening. I looked at him, unsure what he was asking because I knew of his strange ways.
“Why would I count sheep?” I asked innocently.
The King next explained to me that the wool of the sheep was soft and warm and represented safety and serenity, those very things which cause a man to slumber. He said further that the counting of sheep was relaxing.
I responded that I could understand the comparisons of wool to safety and serenity. But why would I wish to count these things in my sleep?
To bring peace after a long day, Sorren. To unburden yourself of nagging, persistent questions that can never be answered but only continue to bring further anxiety.
“And what would these sheep be doing?” I asked casually.
“I don’t know!” the King roared. “They are sheep, Sorren. Perhaps they are jumping over a low stonewall, one by one, for that is how I learned.” And then he devoured half of the cutlet in one bite and waited for me to respond.
A moment later I answered. “I think that I could never count sheep, my Lord. Because when I saw these sheep leaping dreamily over the stonewall, I would think that they were trying to escape me and I would begin to worry. I would watch their curious faces and hear their curious bleating and I would become even more concerned. Every sheep that leaped over the stonewall I would count as the loss of woolen tunics and vests and leggings. Every sheep that escaped me would carry with them racks of lamb, and delicious cutlets and soup meat and roasts and milk and cheese . . . think of the cheese my Lord. Imagine how much cheese would be leaping over that stonewall. And think of the vellum and all the unfinished books that could never be written without such precious skin . . .and the cheese. No, I would be ready to dash out of my bed in the darkness and leap over the stonewall after them. I would . . .and when I caught them I would cut their throats one by one. So, how could I sleep after such an adventure?”
Then I looked up to see if the King was becoming annoyed by my ranting, but to my astonishment, he was asleep. I had put him to sleep. Feeling slightly guilty I began to back away, but suddenly the expression on his face changed, and with a slowly curling smile, he opened his eyes and said.
“No, I think I shall never count another sheep, Sorren. It will be enough for me to count the times you continue to confound me.” Then he rose from the table with a smile and clapped me on the back as he left the room.
Hagen and the Mighty Oak
Today the King brought in a special man to do a special job for him. He brought in a woodchopper, not a woodsman, but a woodchopper, because Hagen only wants to be called a woodchopper. But Hagen is more than just a man that chops trees . . . the King would only bring in a special woodchopper. And so the King called him Hagen the Woodchopper. Hagen turned out to be a large, hulking man, somewhat stupid looking, fat, oafish and slow of wit, but he had an agreeable smile. He was a man of few words.
I was instructed to lead the woodchopper to the tree that the King wanted taken down. I was not told why the tree was to be taken down, only that it was. Hagen lumbered like a beast as we went out to the tree. He looked around and seemed to take notice of everything around him as does a creature with highly formed abilities. I pointed to the tree. It was an old and withered oak, planted by some long-forgotten King to mark the place for some unknown reason.
"Destroy this tree," I told him without ceremony.
The woodchopper looked at me, and then at the tree before saying: "This is a sacred tree."
I thanked him for his wisdom, and with a smile, I said: "Destroy it."
The woodchopper remained silent, and I waited for him to begin his arduous task of hewing, but he did not hew.
"What are you waiting for?" I asked.
"This tree deserves our respect," he answered. "I must prepare the tree for destruction, for it is far older and wiser than we."
"You speak with the trees?" I was surprised to find such a sentiment from a woodchopper of all things. What a strange thing for a woodchopper to be reluctant to fell a tree, I mused.
"Of course I speak to the trees Hagen replied dryly. "Why do you think the King sent for me?"
Of course he was serious, and I knew it. Men such as this were known about the land, and the people tended to leave them in peace, for they were wild and unpredictable, pagan it was even said and far beyond the redemption of Christ.
"What do the trees say to you?" I asked. I was beginning to fear this man for his untamed wildness, but I did not allow him to know.
"The trees tell me many things," Hagen answered. "Would you like me to talk with this tree before I destroy it? I will tell it that you are not responsible for its destruction."
"That is not necessary," I replied. "But Hagen," I continued, "what is so sacred about this tree? To me it is just an oak."
Hagen scratched his beard in thought. Then he wrinkled his nose and pulled on his ear. "That is what the trees say to me. They are just men, the trees say. Why should we breathe for them? Why should we grow for them and turn sunlight into fruit? They show no respect, and yet they expect our breath, only to cut us down the moment we are inconvenient."
"They say that?" I replied with anger.
"The trees are not filled with hatred and malice as are people. The trees do not plot against one another as do the people. The trees have rejected these things, and they are as they were, for they have not been tempted, and they have not fallen."
Slowly, even as a tree turns different colors when the cold winds blow from the North, I began to see this offish man in a new light, and I felt guilt at the petty way I had so thoroughly misjudged him. And now I saw Hagen as a man of true wisdom and not just a man of words.
"Do you know this tree, Hagen?" I asked him with a newfound respect. "Do you know why the King asked you to destroy it?"
Then Hagen said something that I shall never forget. And as I write these words I see the woodchopper as he was that day.
"I will talk to it, and I will learn the reason," he said.
Then he stood before the tree and took notice of it as if to regard its true nature. He put his hands on the trunk and seemed to absorb its essence into his own body even as heat is taken in through sunlight. Next, he withdrew a knife from his belt, but he did not attack the tree, instead, he sliced the tip of his finger and held the slowly seeping blood to the tree, and in this way, I believe the tree took regard of Hagen. After a few minutes, Hagen opened his eyes and stepped away from the tree. He walked over to where I was waiting and then he sat down on the ground before me.
"I will do as the King has asked," he said.
A gentle breeze blew between us, and I waited for him to continue. He scratched his beard, and then he put his finger in his mouth to clean off the blood. When he looked at me I knew that he was an odd man, a special man, just as the King had said.
"This mighty oak stands alone from men and from other trees, for it has been punished. But today its punishment has ended, the sacrifice is ended, and I shall give it peace."
I looked at him with awe, for I could not imagine what gift or what sorcery could have given him this ability. He continued.
"There is the spirit of a man captured in this tree, and it was to the spirit of this man that the tree endured such punishment, and so it is that the world of men may torture the myriad creatures held in its charge. A great and evil sorcery is at work here, but I will put an end to it at once."
Then he lifted his huge axe and prepared his first stroke. But suddenly I stopped him.
"Wait, Hagen," I said. "Tell me about this spirit. Tell me about the spirit of this man interred."
"I feel great sorrow," Hagen said. "I feel a great sorrow endured until the tree has begun to wither, even as the great punishment has withered the soul of the one interred. A great and noble tree knows the soul of man through the blood. There was blood, much blood spilled by the one here interred, but it was not noble, and it was spilled with grief and great violence. That is all I will tell you."
Then he lifted the mighty axe and delivered such a powerful blow to the tree, that surely, the mighty punishment, and the mighty sacrifice was now ended.
The Present for the King
Image by Frank Pfeiffer
King Bartholomew paced back and forth in his chamber like a caged animal. His thoughts came to him thus in such a way as if they were to be coaxed from a dormant brain or filtered through the celestial ether above the outermost sphere. His thoughts were like elusive animals that had to be hunted and caught before they could be revealed, and even then, they would not reveal themselves and would need to be killed. He was a vessel, intercepting these sub-lunar thoughts lest they evaporate or be captured by an enemy with greater lucidity. Such was the tortured and inarticulate mind of the King on this day.
The King was exhausted. A tray of untouched food lay on the table by the door, and he could not remember if perhaps that was yesterday’s meal, or the day before, but he couldn’t remember if he was even hungry so that he quickly forgot about it. He was plagued for two days now with a paradox, a paradox that would not reveal its secret, and the King was convinced that there was a secret to be revealed to the acute mind. Messages were being transmitted across oceans and continents, secrets were being shared with the masters of the craft of gnosis, but the King would know the hidden things of these outer realms.
Infinity was the realm of God, and were God to reveal his secrets to those that sought his secrets in special code, he would reveal them in the form of mathematics and the beauty of geometrical pattern. This Bartholomew was convinced of, for were it not to be so, many of the world’s greatest thinkers, including Saint Augustine, would have wasted their time in folly.
What troubled the King now was a single thought, a single thought that, if expanded and extrapolated into infinity, exploded into pure abstraction and chaos. If the code were to be written in the form of numbers, those numbers could be used to understand everything, even the writer of the code, and could be used to rewrite the code itself. But first the code would need to be codified, and that would require an understanding of the code, which had not yet been revealed. Bartholomew was convinced that the understanding of infinite magnitude was the path to an understanding of the structure of the code. Parmenides gave a precious clue, but his work had sadly been lost and fell into disrepute by modern philosophers that could not accept a philosophy in which all is revealed. The study of mathematics and philosophy had become esoteric and hidden in the special nomenclature of alchemy and those that would control all things. Parmenides believed that the universe was full. For were the universe not to be full would mean that there were places that contained nothing, and that there were other places that contained matter. But where was the evidence of this pervasive nothingness? God had made the world in seven days and then he rested. That must mean that the universe was finished and was not being made, for were the universe still being made, clusters of nothingness would collide with matter and chaos would creep into the world. But that must imply that the substance of the universe, the apeiron, was fixed and that nothing more could be done. Now if the substance of the universe fills the entire universe, how was anything to move? Something cannot move into a position of space that is already occupied. This seemed to imply that the universe was filled with nothing, and that this incorporeal nothingness pervaded all things. When Bartholomew converted this idea into numbers, the very nature of his sanity began to trouble him. He was now pacing his chamber silently letting this new revelation destroy his already troubled mind when Iona entered his chamber quietly. Now the King could hear a soft, reluctant voice that he recognized as Iona and suddenly he realized that she was speaking to him.
“A package has been delivered to you by coach, Bartholomew,” she said. “Shall I have it brought in?”
“Yes,” answered Bartholomew shaking off the torpor that nearly froze him. “Yes, have it brought in at once.”
Two servants entered carrying a crate the dimensions of which were roughly eight cubic feet, but it must have been extremely heavy for the servants carried it with great care. They set it down near the door, bowed, then left the room being followed by Iona. The King tried to think if he should be expecting a package and he could not convince his mind that there was any reason for any package to be delivered. He walked to the crate and looked for a note or letter hoping to discover the name of the sender. There must be a letter inside, he thought. Prying loose the boards with an iron bar that he used to tend his furnace he broke open the crate with great difficulty. Inside was filled with densely packed material presumably to protect the contents. Digging through the packing material the King discovered another box, this one being much smaller. He removed it and set it on a table near the light from a window. A letter was attached to the box. Tearing open the letter the King read:
This is a gift for one so enamored with time.
But this clock does not tell of anything so fine
As the hours get smaller and smaller, what will you find
When you look to before what is buried behind
“What, a riddle?” thought the King. “What nonsense!”
Then he threw the letter down and turned his attention to the shining object inside the box. Removing the object with great care he set it down on the table. Then he set his eyes on the most beautiful object he had ever seen.
It was an instrument the purpose of which he could only speculate. The object was made almost entirely of brass except for a glass dome that fit over the top and protected an exquisite combination of clockwork mechanism packed tightly with tiny springs, levers, screws, and catches necessary to control myriad whirling and churning automata. There were three smaller round dials covered by thick glass that were inscribed with numerical values the meaning of which he could not guess, and it was clear that the device either recorded some value or measured some unknown property. The King’s eyes were fixed on the magnificent instrument like a child’s eye to fire. He brought his hand to his face and stroked his chin. All around the circumference of the object were numbers and graduation marks presumably for tuning the object. Positioned around the device at quadrants that seemed to correspond to a zodiacal chart or a strange cosmology of the instrument were protruding levers with elaborate markings and the King imagined that they would be used for conducting experimental calculations and fixing points of reference. Attached to the feet of the instrument was an elaborate leveling device, but the King could not understand the details because it appeared to be able to be adjusted to a geometry that did not exist. To the King’s knowledge, this was geometry unheard of or dreamt by neither mathematician nor sorcerer and the strange spatial quality made him uneasy.
The King picked it up and turned it over to see if it were signed. Beneath the device was only a winding mechanism for setting the instrument in motion, whatever motions that could possibly be. The King hesitated. No, he would not set it in motion just yet, in truth because of a strange apprehension that worked to balance his childlike desire to leap foreword. The King was frightened of this instrument.
Carefully he set the instrument down on the table and walked to the window. A light breeze was flowing in from the sea as always and the King loved the smell of the moist air. The note said that the instrument did not measure time, but if not time, then what? Glancing back to the machine, the King shuddered. There was something very unsettling about that machine. Strange thoughts were taking shape within his mind, and though he tried to resist them they became more coherent but for his effort to demolish them.
Time was a measure of all things. The King in his muse now began to contemplate the very nature of time itself, and not just the association of different events. The King wondered, could time exist independently of the events by which the measurement was time? Was time something that was regulated by the very nature of its own existence? Or could time be altered . . .?
On the lawn he could see Iona, sitting on a bench reading one of her horrible novels. The King could never understand how she could be so fascinated in the details of a life that had never been lived. He was saddened by her joy in the endless description of people and things that never were and never could be. Iona would become lost in these worlds that existed only in her mind and he wondered how these mirages could stay with her for days and nights as if her very world were being encased in a crystal sphere that only she could see.
Suddenly the king shifted his thoughts. Time does not regulate these worlds such as the world of Iona’s muse. There are plateau’s that are made to exist outside the chains of time, and these plateau’s can be visited and visited and possibly . . .
Turning his gaze away, the King stepped back into his chamber. A new thought was taking hold of him. He walked to the instrument and stared at it. The engraving that decorated and illustrated the instrument was written in a language that he did not understand. Mysterious glyphs embellished the dials and hinted at a level of esotericism that frightened the King. He had seen calligraphy like this once on an astrolabe that had come from Persia and now the thought was growing stronger and stronger that perhaps this machine was designed to manipulate time. Wild rumors abounded about special machines that were said to control time. His mind focused on a single thought . . .they have found it; they have found the magic key of Hermes Trismegistus.
The King backed away slowly as the realization drew him away in horror. He would go no closer to the instrument. “Why should this come to me?” he wondered. “What have I done?” One final thought erupted from his mind before he fled the chamber. “I shall never turn it on, never! I am cursed.”
He ran from his castle to the stables and mounted his horse. Then he rode away, kicking up dust and dirt, without talking to anyone and he rode until he reached the Crossag Bridge. Dismounting, he lashed his reigns to a tree and ran onto the bridge. In the middle of the bridge he stopped and leaned over the side so that he could see the water beneath. Running water always calmed his nerves. The river flowed gently to the sea, carrying away from the island remnants of the disintegrated hills and valleys and memories of those for which this tiny island was the world and the world outside was another universe. The King looked at the water, the continuous stream that had no beginning and no end but was at once a part and a complete system. The water flowed around and over and through the reedy river and there was no part that was not whole and the river had no parts but was a continuous thing. “Such is life”, thought the King. “Is one day not the continuation of the day before and the day before that? Does a single day have a beginning or an end but for the stately course of the wandering stars and our ability to predict their motion? And if our calculations wander, does that change the heavens? That this tiny watercourse should bring life to the myriad creatures that inhabit the grasses and weeds beneath, is life, for the river is life itself. One day I will be gone,” thought the King. “And on that day, I will forget that I am a part and I will flow through the heavens past those that I have known and my joy will be the joy of being one with God.”
Looking up from his muse, the King scanned the country and took in all that was for him to see. The trees, the rolling hills, the meandering roads that brought travelers to and from, the blazing sun and the good earth beneath his feet. It was good. The good people of Man lived for the day, and for them the day was as long as it was good. And he was their King. Yes, though he sought to distance himself from those that would confine him to a single day, and though he searched the stars for answers to questions never contemplated by his very people, he was their King and he was loved despite his folly.
Ahead on the road coming to the bridge he could see a group of Manxman coming. Shabby in appearance, they were good people in all their superstition and peasantry. The island had endowed them with the substance of wonder and joy and for that the King was grateful, for he loved his people in truth. When they recognized him, they began to run and the King could tell that something was wrong.
Iona looked up from her reading in time to see the King galloping away in haste, his tunic flapping behind him catching the afternoon sun. She wondered what could have caused him to leave in such a hurry without first giving her instructions and consulting her about the evening meal. “The package,” she thought. “It was something about that package.” Still, she was concerned because he never left his home in such a hurry and he almost never traveled alone, unless he was off to visit that awful astronomer again. Iona always knew when he would visit the astronomer because for days before and sometimes days after he would become sullen, secretive, quick to anger, and would lock himself away with his confounded charts and astrolabes. Then, when he would emerge again from his seclusion, he would be better and would not need to be avoided or spoken to with such caution. The more she thought about it the more convinced she became: “He has gone to see the astronomer!”
The thought of the astronomer made her uneasy. She was frightened of him, not for the things that he had done, but for the things that he could do. Everyone knew that the astronomer was a sorcerer. No one needed to be convinced of his power, and if no one had actually witnessed his power, so much the better for all. Not much was known of the astronomer. He lived alone on a far corner of the island on a steep precipice overlooking the sea. He was granted the land by the Second Earl of Brunswick and his rights could never be taken away. His business was not something that the Manx liked to talk about, and it was not many that wanted to know what the astronomer was doing all by himself, alone without a friend or even a chicken to talk to. Some said that he only ate from the sea, some said that he summoned his prey from the world, and some said that he didn’t eat at all because he wasn’t a man, but something no one could, or would ever say. Only the King knew they said, for the King was the only person that ever dared go to that strange house on the cliff where the eerie spectral light could be seen sometimes emanating from his upper window. In the night could sometimes be seen phosphorescent green swamp-light or some form of creeping phantasm of glowing iridescence flowing out his high arched window overlooking the sea like a sentinel. Some said that he was communicating with creatures from the moon, but mostly the people pretended that nothing happened in that terrible house at night.
Iona hurried back to the castle and questioned the servants, but the King had spoken to none of them. “The King was gone,” they answered. “Left in a hurry too.” Then she decided to go up to his chamber where he worked. Perhaps he had left her a note. When she entered, she saw that everything was in perfect order. Everything was exactly as it should be. His tray was still there with the remains of his lunch, mostly untouched. In the center of the room was a table on which the instrument had been placed. The instrument gleamed in the sunlight, beckoning her to look.
She went to the instrument and thought to herself just how beautiful it was and what a great King Bartholomew was to understand such a machine. Then she searched the rest of the chamber for a clue, but she did not expect to find anything for she seldom entered this chamber and Bartholomew would never expect that she would. She went to the door but stopped before leaving. Turning, she went back to the strange machine on the table. It was so wonderful and exotic; she had never seen anything like it before. “It must be a clock,” she thought. “Or maybe it is a music-box.”
Iona wanted to touch it to see if it was real for there were no machines like this anywhere on the Isle of Man. It felt cold and very smooth to the touch. It was polished to shimmer. Iona looked closer trying to find the hands that told the time and to see how smoothly they moved because ever since she was a small girl, she loved to see swirling, twirling machines. She thought that this would be the most wonderful clock in the world and she just wanted to see it work, if only for a moment.
She turned the machine over and found the winding gear. Iona looked around afraid that she would be caught, or that the clock would cry out, so beautiful was the clock that she was almost afraid to touch it. But at last she gave in to the urge and wound the clock, giving the turning gear just a small turn to see what would happen.
Nothing happened at first, but seconds passed and a faint hum began to fill the room as if the machine were awaking or coming back to life from a deep period of dormancy. The sound was not the sound of a clock. It was an organic sound, non-mechanical, like the sound of distant thunder or the sound of a frightened animal. Iona backed away from the machine as the fascination, the beauty, the spell, was broken. Her fascination was replaced with horror. The droning now filled the room and the sound began to pulse and swirl as the sound pushed against the walls, measuring the dimensions of the room, feeling, poking, and searching. The room was being squeezed and Iona could feel the pressure in her head until she thought it would burst. Tiny lights now flashed and pulsed with a rhythm that was the rhythm of the machine. It was coming to life!
Iona shook with fear. What had she done? She prepared to abandon the chamber but her eyesight could not focus and the outline of the room became blurred. She was getting dizzy as the room started to spin all as the droning sound searched her out, encased her in a wall of sound, and threatened to overpower her. Then her knees became too weak to support her body and she slumped to the floor. The last thing she could remember before losing consciousness was the feeling that the world was spinning above her and the weight crushed her smaller and smaller until she was pushed out of the world into the great nothing.
When she woke again, minutes, or centuries later, she saw the beautiful face of King Bartholomew looking down at her. His eyes were red, even as a smile came across his face and replaced his fear with joy. A single candle burned between them and Bartholomew stared at her beautiful face.
“Oh, Iona, you had me so frightened,” he said as he squeezed her tiny hand and kissed it. “The doctor wanted to apply leeches. . .but I would not let him. You have taught me a great deal about time, Iona.”
“I am so sorry, Bartholomew. I never should have come into your room when you were away, but I was worried about you. . .and then, when I saw this machine, I just had to touch it. Forgive me, Bartholomew,” she pleaded.
In response, the King kissed her on the forehead and smiled. But then he scolded her in his own way.
“This machine has reminded me to never let you out of my sight,” he said with fake anger. And then he reached his head down and kissed her on the lips.