The Feral Swan

Contents

Prologue

In The World

Prelude To Dreaming

SECTION A

CHAPTER 1

Sadak And The King

CHAPTER 2

The King’s Spirit Describes His Own Character

CHAPTER 3

The Sweet Wife Gone

CHAPTER 4

Millie Finds Out

CHAPTER 5

SECTION B

CHAPTER 6

Agony And The Garden

CHAPTER 7

The Palace

CHAPTER 8

The King’s Spirit Speaks His Mind

CHAPTER 9

Invasion Of The Seraglio

CHAPTER 10

The Developing Scheme

CHAPTER 11

How Sadak Was Chosen

SECTION C

CHAPTER 12

Embarkation For Cytherion: The Spirit Of Kalesrade Speaks About Her Life

CHAPTER 13

The Battle for the Castle at Inbal

CHAPTER 14

The City By The Sea

CHAPTER 15

Bardo, The Obese Dancer

CHAPTER 16

Advice From Gleb

CHAPTER 17

The Twin Castle Boat

CHAPTER 18

North To The Orientation

CHAPTER 19

The Guardians Of The Sampo

SECTION D

CHAPTER 20

A Place For Millie

CHAPTER 21

Journey To The Island Of Fire: Storms And Tragedies

CHAPTER 22

Breaching Nature’s Wall

CHAPTER 23

The Waters Of Oblivion

CHAPTER 24

The Voyage Home

CHAPTER 25

Meanwhile At The Castle

CHAPTER 26

The Teeth Of The Swan

CHAPTER 27

The Final Interviews

The Spirit Of Amurath Reflects On The

Fate Of The Character He Played

Sadak’s Spirit Shares His Thoughts

About The King’s Death

Epilogue:

17 Years Later, Carl Reflects

Priviledged And Confidental

Sources

Closing Note:

Dedication: to Caroline

"Stranger, pause and look;

From the dust of ages,

Lift this little book,

Turn the tattered pages.

Read me, do not let me die!

Search the fading letters, finding

Steadfast in the broken binding

All that once was I! …

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Prologue

In The World

Once there was a dragon. Call him Fate. His scales were armor: toxic, sharp and dark. In his claws were lariats: used to tie men to unforgiving destinies. Red flashes, bursting from his shoulder seam, warned that it would be fatally unwise to strike him there. The touch of his shadow meant death.

Once there was a boy. Call him Hope. His shoulders bore swan’s wings. He soared about the dragon’s sunlit side. In his hand he carried a pen-like lance. Through a strike at the dragon, he hoped to halt fate’s reign.

This was the daydream of a boy; soon to be shattered by a familiar roar, not unlike a dragon’s cry. It commanded, Carl, You had better get your pen to working. Get your mind off dreams and mind your test. There are only twenty minutes left! When the roar came into better focus, the boy recognized in it the voice of Mrs. Libelle von Drache, his English teacher. She drew his wandering attention to the booklet on his desk. He wrote his name on its cover page, Carl Revere.

Mrs. von Drache thought she had the measure of the boy. She was not shy to say so. Other teachers in his grade singled him out as a source of joy. They bragged to others about him; their wonderful product. A talent for science, they proclaimed, was his strongest skill. They even went so far as to spread this message to his father’s ears.

As Carl turned his attention from his fantasy to the test, he thought, all the teachers speak of me as talented except Mrs. Von Drache. Is she right? She says of me, Carl Revere spends too much time lost in dreams and fantasy. Then she unkindly adds, All you’ll find, underneath all the tinsel, is more tinsel.

In a search for something in his own defense, Carl thought, the other teachers have another view of my capacity for fantasy. They see it as a sign of creative strength, and suggest that I be prepared for the best of colleges. They offered this plan as possible. After all my dad was at the time the proprietor of REVERE’S, the finest men’s clothing store in the five counties that lay like scattered leaves about our Rocky Mountain valley home.

The suggestion seemed plausible, even to Carl’s father. When the time came to prepare for college, the money was gone. Carl thought to himself, Who could have predicted that the wealth the teachers thought to be my father’s would be lost to the demands of mother’s illness?

Carl’s mother died when he was eleven. For many months, his father and he traced her hopeless way down an ever-narrowing defile. At its end, gates of iron stood between them and her spirit, which had taken its place beyond the margin of life, where silence reigns. Her vicious disease drained the resources of the family. Mr. Revere, ever unwise, carried little insurance, and introduced to Carl future planning based on borrowing from empty barrels. By the end, he had to sell the store, and without his son knowing why, descended to the position of manager. Carl’s role changed too. He was sent to work in the store. He knew nothing of the cause of these changes until a strange event, involving Julia Clemens in the store at evening, wrung the facts from his father. In the valley home of his childhood, the shadow of the nearby peaks deprived the days of half their light, often bringing an early twilight to Carl’s workplace. Adding to that, storms happened often, forcing the local children including Julia to seek the comfort of the store.

In the mountains’ favor, shadow was not nature’s only offering to one such as Carl: alone and isolated from the open sky. For one immersed in dry goods, the view of the mountains through the front door added beauty to the day. Even the lowest peaks were dressed in stylish hues to fit the season. Springtime gave the hills the flowers they bore. Summer covered them with green. The sun’s retreat in fall caught them in its rusty wake, and winter storms added white to their wardrobe.

Each, of these garment hues, drizzled on the peaks by the passing season’s weather, suggested things for children that would engage their minds. One such recreation involved visiting the stores of the town to explore each season’s latest fashions. Carl said in later years that the children of the town had leisure, while he himself was held back from play. His yearly round danced to a private rhythm. Having been assigned to serve as a stock boy and salesman at the store, endless hours of his time were spent making space on the shelves for the newest styles. His time was filled so much with work and dreaming that there was no room for anything more, such as asking why he must work long hours in the store, while others played.

Alone many hours at a time, he filled his days with conjured fantasy as a comfort, and found adventure in the labyrinths it opened to the yearnings of his hopeful heart. His childhood time for play was brief indeed. School vacations were spent serving the seasonally enhanced whims of customers. In winter days, his job made him servant to the ebb and flow of customers, who pursued fashion’s latest twists. In summer, his longings for the warmth of the sun, were countered by the time given to shopper’s tastes in clothing. The dimness of the store enhanced his longing for the freedom to play and dream in the promised warmth of the sun.

As soon as he grew in size, his skills were recruited for other chores. He was pressed into standing guard over dry goods. Carl, sole sentry over the entire store, was also frequently elevated to the role of store manager. This stratagem freed his father to pursue the world beyond its doors.

These newer tasks did not suit him well. The haberdashery was too large to fall completely within one lad’s field of view, and was too barren of new events to hold in focus a mind such as his. Carl much preferred to follow thoughts beyond the far horizons of the earth. There he explored his mind’s imaginings. He comforted himself by weaving eldritch fantasies into tattered warps in the fabric of his days, after customers’ vagrant interests had cut the textures of his time to shreds.

So it was, that often while others played in his adored sunlight, he watched the store, and folded and set into their places errant mounds of ties and socks that had been spun into a heap by customers. Though their curiosity called them to look, they were hardly set to buy. Rarely, except for one image that caught his eye, did Carl himself find much entertainment in a tie’s design. That image portrayed a dragon and a swan walking in fond embrace. If one looked closely, one could see a silver ring around the swan’s neck, from which there hung a braided golden lariat. Its handle was firmly held in the dragon’s claw. Carl’s encounter with this particular symbol was the first of many yet to come.

Delight in an image was rare for him. His attention typically wandered inward away from the boredom of the day and from the task of folding ties and socks. It pursued a wayward path instead, in his search for excitement and solace. His thoughts, which wandered far from the ways of daily commerce, turned to planning that would enhance his potentials. Paltry puerile visions transformed the painted walls and old pressed metal ceilings of the hope-forsaken box of clothes that was the store into a stony walled magic cave filled with troves and treasures.

The private visions that held his attention were images of molecules that joined others of their ilk in jumping dances. They joined, broke apart and even gave rise to small new chemicals, which grew in size till they too could dance. The lad dreamed of the fortunes to be earned by a youth of little means, if only he could understand the dance. Wealth, thus acquired, would, he dreamed, open the door to the ownership of land, of boats, of castles, and a life away from his mountain home. Dreams of women, peeping from an awareness that was soon to grow with the dawn of yearnings, hovered about the edges of his daydreams.

Once, when his mind had been dressed for masquerade by the clever hands of dreaming, a strong rain, the great equalizer in matters of summer sport, began to fall. It sent Julia Clements, dressed for tennis, to the store. She caught Carl’s attention. He hoped in vain that she would spend some time with him.

Julia was a year or two older than Carl. She was the daughter of a friend of his father. She served as a secret source of dreams for his fellows, who were, as was he, still frightened fledglings on the very brink of life. Cutely carved in form and ethereally lovely of face, her relationship to him was usually kindly; unless she were with a college boy, in which case there was nothing but distain.

Julia looked about the store for a bit, then hurriedly headed for the door. She carried with her, without paying, the tie that depicted a dragon and a swan walking in apparent fond embrace. Carl tried to stop her. She walked on, responding to his protestations with a wink. She was soon lost to the storm.

When his father returned to close the store, Carl reported the incident. He protested, Can you imagine? She stole a tie. She should be confronted or in the least her father should be told and have to pay for it. Carl’s feelings were a mixture of anger and jealousy. He splattered out a word salad: a mixture of frustration, fatigue and rage, She humiliated me., said he. She is so free compared to me. She can play. I have to do things that are better left to men. Children should be left to use their time for sunlight and play. Mr. Revere’s face turned sad. Not waiting for his Carl to become quiet, he sang a counterpoint to his son’s complaints.

There began a hideous duet. His father’s part began with, One cannot force someone to pay for that which she already owns. This abruptly stopped the full flow of expression of Carl’s feelings. I don’t understand, said he quietly.

Sit down and listen, said Mr. Revere. You have to know this sometime. He spoke uncertainly. Mr. Clements owns the store. I sold it to him and now I work as his manager.

But, said Carl, He’s a high school teacher. Where would he get the money to buy the store? Where was your money? Why did you have to sell?"

The father’s answer was swift and clear. Mom’s illness took all we had. We never had much anyway. Long before you were born, Mr. Clements, who was tired of being poor, married a much older widow, thinking he could travel and live well on her money. It turned out that she did not like to travel and did not trust him with her money. He was imprisoned by the marriage. When she died, she put her money into a trust for a niece. That placed the money beyond Mr. Clements’ reach as long as the niece lived. He remarried and with his new wife had Julia. A few years ago, the niece died. Suddenly he was quite rich. In my need I sold him the store. So now Julia has the tie. Mr. Clements has the store, and I have next to nothing. Mr. Revere paused. Then he said, If you go to that college out East, which your teachers talk about, you will have to get a job to help me pay for it. There will be little time for fun. His somber words sprinkled despair into Carl’s sadness. When he saw the boy’s face drop, Mr. Revere apologized, saying I don’t handle money right. I always trust people to do the right thing. Somehow, the ones I trust are never there when things go wrong and I need them.

Carl was stunned. He had never thought of college as anywhere other than a place to study and grow. He had dreamed that he would have leisure there to learn chemistry and make molecules dance. There he would learn enough to become a good earner. It was not to be done so easily.

When Carl came to college, he came alone. In later years as he told the story, I knew no one there. I’m certain that I stammered a bit when I told the lady at the desk my name. She smiled, gave me forms to fill out and my room key. As I turned away, I heard her say, Take care. I spotted a desk, which I approached as quickly as I could. Too late, by the time I got there, someone else had taken it. This desk is mine., said she. I was uncertain about what I should do. I looked up at her, ready to speak. Somehow my resolve faded when I realized that there stood before me a tall young woman with long black hair that framed a face, which seemed to me to be quite lovely. Distracted, I found that my angry thoughts had turned to treacle, which froze on my tongue. Sorry.", said I. I quickly moved on.

Another student, seeing that I had no place to work, signaled to me that he was done and I could have his seat. As I took his place he half whispered to me, You know her? Wow.

My next stop was the dormitory. As I entered the hall, seeking my room, I heard a noise. I looked up and thought I saw her back as she left the hall to enter the garden. That was not the last of her. Later from a dining room table, my alerted attention caused the mass of humanity, congregated about the buffet, to part like the red sea: revealing her presence to me from well across the room. My helpful new friend from the registration desk took a place beside me at the table. He nudged me, then whispered, as he pointed to the girl, There she is again. Wow! then he added, I’m Andy. Hi.

The next day, I attended my first chemistry lab. As I entered the large room filled with rows of stone tables bearing sinks and Bunsen burners, I was greeted by the instructor, who told me to pick up my name tag. On it, I found written my table assignment. Next to the tag was another tag with the same table number. The name of my lab partner was there to see. Millie Latanzi I read the name aloud, and softly added, I shall be doomed to share my table with you all this year. Someone moving with subtle grace had slipped behind me. I had not noticed her approach. She was close enough to have heard my words. I can’t be that bad. said she. Horrified, I turned to her with lowered eyes and began to apologize. My words became blurred as my attention was drawn from my faux pas to the sight before me. I wondered how such a narrow waist could be. My eyes went to her face. It was she. That’s how I learned her name was Millie.

The instructor called the class to attention. He said, You will do experiments with your table partner, prepare reports with your partner as homework, and submit the report at the next lab. That’s how I came to spend afternoons and evenings with Millie. We set up space for preparation of the reports in my room which was bigger than hers. Over the months, we got to know each other well. She was a psych major taking a chemistry course to get experience with what she called the pragmatic imperative of hard science. I told her of my plans to be a scientist or an MD. Millie was pleased.

One evening I moved to correct something she had written. My hand brushed her breast, inadvertently, I thought. Before I could finish words that said I was sorry, she interrupted me, saying, I was wondering why you waited so long.

Once classes had begun, I found the fulfillment of my hopes mired in too much to do and too little time to do it. Hope for a scientific career soon dwin-died to a lost dream. The schoolwork was hard. The labs took too much time. Through every second of the lab, there could be no drifting of attention. A missed moment during a chemical process could lead to failure of an experiment. Should that happen, new labs were required till one could get the process right. That left little leisure for daydreaming. More and more the work was assumed by Millie.

My job, which was pumping gas at a filling station down the street from the school, seemed more sympathetic to my needs. My work hours were flexible. There was even time for dreaming, while I worked. If I lost attention, the worst that could happen was that I might spill some gas. Some days in fantasy, I turned the curve-tipped nozzle of the pipe that delivered the gas into a downward bent Saracen blade, damasquined in black and gold. The car I serviced became a battle-tested charger. When thrust into the gas tank, the down curved tip of the sword could not slip upward and away from its target. It bit with each thrust deeper into the body of the warhorse. She fell. So did the nobleman who rode her. I became the hero of the field in a crusade that ended, when the driver of the car I was servicing wished to pay for the gas.

The mutual impingements on my time of job, lab, and fantasy made it impossible for me to hold my job and study science too. My poor performance was noted. Toward the end of the year, the instructor called the two of us to the chemistry center’s office. He addressed Millie first, saying Young lady, I think you are carrying the whole lab. Then he turned to me and said Carl, you don’t belong in Chemistry. What could I have said? I was bored, overwhelmed by the gray walls of reality that support scientific endeavor. I spent time in dreaming that was needed for the scientific work. The instructor thought it best that I discuss changing my major with my adviser. There was silence. A faint tapping of her foot was the sole sign that Millie was not pleased.

In my search for a new direction, I was guided by an observation that I had made about myself. While studying in the school library, I was often drawn away from my chemistry assignments to a casual reading of epic poems. The Iliad, the Odyssey, Don Quixote, Aucusan and Nicolette, Raul de Cambrai, «The Song of Roland», El Cid, Ogier the Dane, Lazarillo de Tormes, Beowolf, the Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, The Nibelungenlied, Gil-gamesh, Gargantua, Pantagruel and the Kalavela meant more to me than molecules. These epics stirred a hungry devotion in me. I was swept into a river of joyous fantasy and no little magic. The stern sequential ladders of science could not match this joy for me. Why not, thought I, study fantastic tales?

Of course, as always, there was a problem. There was no course that covered such tales. An advisor, to whom I had described the situation, resolved it by recommending that I Major in English. Said he, You can immerse yourself in fantasy and chose some epic tale to study. By producing a concentrated form of the story you can fulfill the thesis requirement for graduation. I jumped at the chance, without reflecting on the fact that Epic Poetry is frequently stored far from sunlight in the dark bowels of library cellars. I was assigned to a preceptor to help me select my thesis topic. He was a true student, thin and pale with no appreciation for my devotion to sunlight. As could have been predicted, the study of epic poems required that I work endless hours in the starless, artificial twilight of the university library basement. The illumination there was dimmer than I recalled in the store on those late afternoons.

My first task was to select one book from all the books whose titles reached out to me from the dark shelves. My advisor expected me to find plot twists propelled by changes in the character of the hero. I was instructed to explore the story for influential factors that had led to changes in the behavior of the protagonists.

Factors and events, unsung or unappreciated by the original author, were my quarry. The important thing to look for was that the objects of my search had induced changes in the hero’s character, altered his behavior, and had modified the course of his story. It was expected that I would tune the tale to the psychological sensibilities of the modern novel, and elaborate on the effect of the influences that I had discovered, on the hero’s tale.

From the available unread tales that had dwindled in darkness, unsung and beyond the reach of modern scholars, the story I chose for my thesis was a 1760 mock epic written by a British clergyman, James Ridley, called Sadak and Kalestrade. The original story contained some of the elements required by my advisor. In the course of the tale, the hero was transformed from a loyal soldier into an apparently bold assassin. But in describing this change in the hero’s life, the original author showed nary a shred of care for exploring influences that might have shaped the course of the plot or of the story. Plot twists seemed to fall from the sky. The presence of this typical approach to motivation, in mid-eighteenth century epic narration, made the tale an imperfect choice for my purpose. What was required was that I bring influences to light that were only hinted at in the original text.

I, followed the command of this quest, like a good scholar—soldier, I left the light to search for insight. I fearfully descended into the dimness of the