Echolalia

Elene

ELENE

(“When on a mission of revenge
dig two graves.” Confucius.)

Prologue

Til all the stars are one and the mountains get worn
away in time, til the skins of the waters recede and
the mountains get worn away in time ever will there
be the passing of the shadows, from life to unlife then
back to where they first began.

Til the worlds are taken apart and put back together
again and a new strand of logic has made shape to
Creation different than it was before the shadows will
come and linger, and the shadows will fall away again.

For the monsters that we’ve become we are and we
never notice the harms we are doing because we would
be doing no harm, even as we become the monsters that
we are.

The dead and all their jealousies return, lost empires
and peoples all uncovered are, and so no action
becomes unwritten and no sin uncommited, and the
narrative illusion is wrought that this single day is
greater than all others and this one pain worthy of
a billion tears, which is true even as it’s false.

Shimmering in the heat of the black midnight sun
I serve my needs and my needs serve me til eventually
I am only able to see daylight and darkness, which
never comes.

East of nowhere I hear a hierarchy of voices knotted
wickedly in my throat, for as I am their audience I am
likewise the only performer left in this tragedy of
inconveniences, this tragedy of voices lost, never to
be heard again.

There is a woman waiting for me somewhere til the
terror is taken from off her throat like a spider’s bright
venom from a septic wound, and she need love me
no more.

And the ships that sail the sands are boarded by the
damned who damned themselves by seeking an end of
things, and no matter the times that the wheels have run,
no matter the times the stories are told we take from
them what we had, what we are, and imprint on the words
of others the thoughts and recollections of ourselves.

Thru the gates of our skin the briar-men, the briar-women
pierce the recognitions of past atrocities upon us, til
we are compelled to act for the scales unbalanced are;
thus revenge is first made.

But no matter the vengeance upon them they all feel
satisfied to inflict vengeance upon another and soon
enough are they returned in time to the nothingness they
once were, til only their shadows remain.

1) The Story of Thampton Marsh

A lyrical arrangement runs thru all things, save death only.
Swifter than lions, swifter than eagles, swifter than thunder
the world moves, creates, but when a thing is destroyed
God Himself must weep, for I surely weep when a thing,
anything is destroyed.

And yet every system in existence is imperfectly run,
and everything has its flaws. Born in corruptions, born to
die, and yet before death all things rot, collapse, or they
altogether cease to be as they were before.

She was the jewel in the crown of mankind; then she
was taken from me, for her final fatal knowledge has taken her
away, her final fatal knowledge has swallowed her whole
when Caenus, the tyrant Caenus, destroyed her soul.
Let me tell you how it happened thus.

The woman I speak of was my wife you see, and I am
Thampton Marsh; you have not heard of me? No I imagine
not, for I have been to other places and seen vastly other
things. My wife; ah yes, her name was Elene, and she was
very beautiful and we lived in a nice part of the world and
never bothered anyone.

Of course there were always wars and problems and disasters
but we never got involved, though I always wept to hear
when something was destroyed.

I was a scientist of sorts, as was my wife, investigating the
other places, the other hidden depths of spaces, trying to find
the means and ways of making everything right.

And when I say I wanted to make everything right
I mean I wanted to find the way to prevent all things from
falling apart, to save all things as they are now, without the
chance of ruin or decay.

On our street, on Trinzade Street, in our basement we worked,
she and I. The brownstone was solid but never solid enough
for my tastes, but Elene thought nothing of that in time,
for everything seemed well, and the disaster had not yet struck.
Still I worried, I always worried that things would not last.

We worked on the gate between the worlds. It is a strange thing
to tell now I imagine, the thought of two scientists working in
the dark, fashioning a gate to other worlds. I wish we had been
wrong, but I never was.

On the twelfth of August the door was finished, and on that
night the door was opened. There was a flash of perfect light
and then Caenus wandered thru.

I can still imagine what the tyrant looked like; rough and dark
and covered all in scars that had too long healed. He wore, or
rather she but I will explain that detail later, leather worn smooth,
and carried a strangely runic blade. He screamed and without
warning cut my wife in two, cut her down the middle
without a second’s thought.

I screamed, I cried, I lunged, and I was bludgeoned til everything
went dark. When I woke the man, woman, creature was gone,
and the lights as well. I ran upstairs, ran out into the streets
crying and screaming but Caenus was not there, and I was alone.

Then I quieted myself as I had done when I was a child and my
father locked me in the closet and I heard my mother screaming
from the blows that he inflicted; I quieted myself and the cold
thoughts, the clean thoughts without taint of emotion ran thru me
again.

I was alone and it was night. The stars looked down as they always
had but I knew that in another trillion years they would be no stars,
no worlds, no anything, and I had to prevent such an apocalypse of time.
My wife was dead, the killer either here or had somehow returned
from whence he came.

I imagined, but how can I describe it, the cold certainty of my anger
at the injustice done to me. Yes, to me, for my wife was dead
and I was alone again, without company, without companion.
Nothing of her was left now for me.

Think, and so I thought, and realized I was a fool; the killer must
have returned from whence he came. I turned my steps back to
where I had been before, walked down the steps to the basement
and focused all my energies upon the gate.

I knew Elene’s body was there behind me but she was dead and
I was not. You might think me heartless, but I was called worse,
called monster and coward, and when the bombs fell
I know they called me much worse when I hid in the muck
and mire while so-called good men went off and died; but I
was here and they were not.

Yes, the gate still worked, the shimmering metal, the razor-sharp
metal still was warm to the touch, and I knew that my quarry
had passed back to whence he came.
I opened the door myself and I followed him of course.

Part II.

On the other side of time there was a world. Later I would be
told it was called Thanalia, but there and then it was just a golden
place, all things tinged bronze and gold, from the grass to the sky
to the very rivers and oceans. But the sun was black.

In fact the light came not from the sun but from the world it
seemed, and I learned much later there was no such thing as night
here. I had expected my foe to be there waiting for me, but there
was no one, no one at all.

So I walked. You may well wonder why I just choose a path
and placed step before step in that direction, but I had nothing to
lose you see, for the gate had closed behind me and there was
no going back. So if this way was wrong I’d have
a lifetime to correct that singular mistake.

I found myself cast against a city, surrounded by grey walls which
scaled upwards forever, and there seemed to be no door, no gate thru
which to enter. And downward swept the wind, and a woman
was riding on the wind, and smiling spoke, but I knew not what
she said.

She was dressed in slender veils and seemed always to be
smiling, and her skin was luminescent and translucent as the air.
Her eyes were the eyes of cats too long sated on the wealth of
mice, and her hair was brown and black mingling into white.

Without warning I was carried upward, up past walls, over them,
and downward we fell to the city below. Then was I carried
over streets and towers which hung suspended upon the very air
itself, carried to the center, to the palace I later learned, of
Baalis, the King of Spring.

It is such an odd thing to relate, but all this is true I promise;
I saw a man slender as a reed tending to flowers that hung upon
nothing, and upward cast his gaze as I fell before him. He
wore no crown, seemed a jester or a fool, but his eyes were
her eyes, and his clothes, although bright and garish,
seemed tailored for royalty somehow.

My clothes were brown like a banker’s and my eyes darker
than the world was gold, and my hair did not shake across my
shoulders as Baalis’ did. He spoke, in perfect English, though
later I learned that beings such as him knew all languages in turn.

“Mmmmm. Human. Odd to be here. Where did you find him?”
She spoke in her language which I did not understand.
“See.” He rubbed his fingers against a nonexistent beard
than grinned ear to ear as if I were a joke, or some perverse
mockery of sorts.

“You’ve known loss.” He said finally.
“My wife was killed.”
“Ahhh.” The open balcony upon which we three stood seemed
almost to lean outwards farther across the cacophony of space,
as the towers, spine-like towers moved back,
giving the impression of the world receding away.

“Mmmm. Nothing. Not even the slightest tremor?” He asked
himself, and I realized he had made the buildings move and
had expected some reaction out of me.
“Who killed her?” He asked finally.

I described the being to him and he seemed more and more
pleased the further I went on. “Caenus.” He said finally.

“Who is Caenus?” I asked.
“Mmmm. I’ll tell you her story . . .”
“Her story?” I asked.
“As I said, I’ll tell you her story if you do a favour for me.”
“What favour is that?”
“Kill the bitch.” He said.

Part III.

I didn’t need prompting, but I did need help. I was given
a sword, (these people seemed to love swords too much I
thought,) not nearly as nice as hers but nice enough.

Baalis lent his knights to me, knights of the air they were,
and I later learned each thousand knights were normally
governed by a single air-lord, a single prince of the air.

We rode across skies without measure and I never questioned
not once the reason Baalis would give all of this to me.
We found Caenus amid his armies, great lumbering beasts
without number and into the fray we fell, I fell, clutching
my sword I attacked the one who had taken my wife.

He had been watching all of the time, Baalis had been.
It had amused him to see a lone man fight against Caenus,
amused him to see a few of his knights, but only a few, die
on a mission so righteous, so pure, so banal.

Caenus did not feel the blade, could not for he was invulnerable,
and the sword did nothing and screaming his curses at me
attacked, and the knights all fled, and I closed my eyes, and
I thought of nothing but that I had failed.

2) The Story of Caenus

I was a woman once. I was a servant to the four rulers, the
four who governed the world. I was the servant of Algarn,
the Winter-King, lord of all waters, ruler of a thousand lords.

Thanalia was the meeting place of the four; normally we
stayed upon our own world, a world of perpetual snow and
ice, in the palace of Cascadeum.

The world was named Edira, the world of my home.
Algarn was the master of all things and no one ever questioned
him or sought to ever question him, and the frost clung to his

beard and his eyes were the eyes of the storm. But then he
look his fancy to me and raped me upon the snows and in
mocking asked what now I wanted and I cried and said

I wanted to be hurt no more. So he changed my shape to
a man’s and made me invulnerable to pain, unable to be hurt
by any blade or weapon, and then laughing went on his way.

And in rage I sought justice and went to the courts of the
others, to the courts of air and earth and fire, and pleaded
with them for justice.

I went to the Summer Queen Eliswayla in her world of warm
bright days, went to the country of Aylindra, but she turned
me away. What did the life of one matter when so many

were left with her to play? I cried out to the grass of the
fields but the fire-knights just mocked and said, under their
breath, they couldn’t help me or else into the ovens they

would be sent. Then to the Autumn Queen Athaliah and
her gardens of flesh, for she turned those who displeased her
to stone, hardened the minerals inside their bodies to stone,

but let them live, or almost live. She seemed unimpressed at
Algarn’s attempt at destruction, she wanted to show me
the best ways to break a soul, but then I was unimpressed.

And Baalis the King of Spring seemed almost apologetic,
but what could air do against ice or fire or stone, he asked,
to which I had no answer.

Then he whispered to me half heartedly about a certain blade,
soul-ripper blade cast asunder in some other place, and if I
wanted to kill Algarn that blade I’d have to take.

I spent many years in search of the blade, passed beyond the
veils of the worlds which I had known. I never once questioned
before the tender mercies of the cruel, but now that I was

hurt I questioned so much in turn. And when the blade I found
I found with it an army, all the outcast and misshapen ones,
all the broken ones the rulers had let escape to find their own

solace in their own misery. And we came home from out
the void and the war was waged, and with the blade Aurokeis
I slew many of my kinsman, and Algarn himself appeared,

and with the blade raised aloft I drew down his life to him,
only to be swept away, thrown to some other place with a foolish
man and a foolish woman staring blankly at me.

I could have stopped the path of the blade; I did not. How many
years had I wasted only to be denied so utterly by a fool’s
incompetence. I killed her and the man screamed

and I knocked him out cold. Then I turned again to the gate
and tried my best to open it, but when I had succeeded Algarn
had escaped.

The battle ended with the blood of many warriors, and we
turned and wandered back, into Thanalia, out of the
frozen wastes of my now exiled home. Upon the

blight-lands of Thanalia we plotted and we waited
and then the day after the battle I saw the air-knights coming.
And in their lead and before them all the fool came down to

me, out of the clouds and out of the winds the fool came down
to meet me. He had a blade with him, the blade of Zuaruj,
the blade that is given to those about to be slaughtered.

He struck and struck and finally I struck back, and for the
second time I silenced him, but he did not rise again.

Then we moved on, and now without the hindrance of the
fool I turned our army back to the world of Edira. And when
we faced again Algarn the blade I held within my hand

shimmered and seemed ready, and this time the blow I struck.
But nothing happened, and seeing the blade as useless as Zuaruj
Algarn froze me to the spot, and my army he annihilated without
a second’s thought.

3) The Story of Algarn

Smiling he went on his way, smiling the ruler of time went on his
way, mocking me the King of Winter for being finite, for being
mortal, and mentioned in passing the ship that sails upon the sand,
ship of the damned, and told me I too would be seeing that ship

in time. And then to make the point come home to me he
beckoned to my manticore, the beast whose life I shared, and
snuffed the creature out, then bowed and left Cascadeum. I
turned and I ran to my brother and my sisters but found too late

in passing they had all been changed. Athaliah no longer had
her enfield with her, the beast of foxes, eagles and wolves
who was also half her soul. Eliswayla too had lost her basilisk
and suddenly the Queen of Summer seemed colder than I was.

And Baalis that old liar, that ruler of the air, he hardly seemed
changed but I knew the change was coming when his chimera
was lost. And slowly we began to change and twisted we became,
and I am becoming twisted now. Suddenly the thoughts come into

my head of the things that can be done with the power of a god.
Suddenly, all too suddenly there is nothing left to keep me from
doing all the things which I must not. Suddenly, all too
suddenly nothing stopped me anymore, and I raped a servant

and cursed her because I could and she could not stop me, and
nothing it seems can stop me anymore. So she raises up an army
and as my lords and ladies are slaughtered I feel nothing but the
joy and hope of seeing more decayed and ruined, killed and

decimated. And the blade in her hand slashes across my face
but I feel nothing and without a thought I take her life away,
eliminate her invulnerability and undo the curse I made.
But in time the winds don’t answer, nor the waters nor the

ice, and I call to my brother and my sisters but they have no
new advice. And the ruler of time is laughing at the making
of his device.

4) The Story of the Ruler of Time

There were four rulers who governed all the seasons, Algarn
of winter with the frost clinging to his beard, Eliswayla of summer
with the fires of the sun pouring from her eyes, Athaliah of
Autumn the woman with the demon’s face, and Baalis of Spring,
sometimes called the shadow-lord.

And who am I? My name is Elene, the ruler out of time.
Yes, out of time as well as the ruler of time. You see the greatest
torture is time and the inability to use it, to spend eternity watching
eternity unfold. And no I am not the villain of the piece
and this is not some rant against immortality.

I have watched Myrrdin of Nowhere struggle
against the disease which claimed his wife, his people, his very
world as he survived. I have watched the brothers Talthus and
Vemthys, one immortal and forever, the other bounded by
a few years only, spend those years together,

til Vemthys shared half of his eternity and gave
it to his brother, so each would live in the other’s company.
And I have seen ghosts, the ghosts within and the ghosts
without, whole worlds existing in the blink
of an eye, whole worlds remembered only

by the mayflies and the souls of seconds lost in
passing. And no matter how great or how
powerful we all must face our ends, but some feel the
need forever to push off back to where they’ve been.

There were six rulers truly, not four you see, and I am one
and the other is Zyylemira, the Wood Queen. Thanalia is her
world, while I, being the ruler of time exist in all places
all at once. There are no people there, no knights,

no lords, no Kings and no Queens; they don’t
exist anymore. Only one left is Zyylemira and her
garden tended to by life itself. But the ghosts refuse to
leave, in fact they convince themselves that they are alive,

and no matter what I do it never changes. So one
time I take their counterparts anyway, to try to prove that
they are dead. Instead they just abuse each other as if the
pain’s enough to prove that they are still alive.

Other times I bring in those from other worlds, like Thampton
Marsh, hoping that another lonely ghost will prove that they
are no more real than the dreams of dust.

But instead he gets caught in the fantasy, and after he
is “killed” he will come back, find some new way to
avenge me I imagine, and I will try again and try again
to wake those lost souls up. But time is slipping away and
I haven’t time enough.

5) The Story of Zyylemira

They were all betrayed by the very treacheries they made,
by the very traitors that they were, but I remained, I remained
to watch. I wonder what it feels like to be a traitor to what
you are?

I tend to my
garden sometimes, and sometimes I go for walks, walk past
the ruined cities with walls all torn down, or walk upon the ///
frozen wastes of Edira, now reduced to just a swamp.

Sometimes I try to remember and sometimes I try to forget
and sometimes I just scream for hours on end. I make up
stories to pass the time, try to tell the stories differently
than how

they really
were. I create out of the past the halls of the goblin king
or the scorpion women of the lost moon, or try to imagine
the fluttering of vampire’s wings, soft as butterflies.

Sometimes I think about who they were before, all those
ghosts haunting their own pasts, wonder what they were like
when they were flesh, or if they even remember how they
really were.

It’s all an
anti-predatory cycle of revenge I guess, because no one
ever really gets hurts and no one ever really learns. You
can’t take the leg of the whale when it’s taken yours.

“Hello.”
Who said that? And I turn around and see a little girl staring
at me as I’m tending to my garden. “Who are you?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” She says. “Well, come along with me

then, okay?”
“Okay.” And we go along the shore by the ocean of sand
and the sand ship is waiting and she gets onboard, the
first ghost ready to go home, and live again. “Can

I give you
a name?” I ask the little girl with strangely staring eyes.
“Sure, why not?” “I think I’ll call you Elene,” I say.
“What a pretty name,” she whispers as she disappears

and the ship with her. Well at least
one was saved, I think to myself.

Epilogue

The overarching themes of jealousy and revenge are closed
for now. A simple question before you leave the page I pray;
imagine a complex course, insanely complex, paths divided
and diverged again unto infinity itself.

Now imagine a man who has run that
course time unto time, struggled and struggled and continues
on as if there is no other way. And all at once, out of the
nothingness he is given the chance to live, only to find

it such an easy, simple thing, without the complex
moves he has been taught does the man finds himself lost,
or does he find the path all the easier now? Now imagine a
god before his birth is given the same

innumerable paths, only to awaken out
into life and find a simple road. Would a god know the road
were easy if he had been taught that the road was hard?
Revenge is always harder than forgiveness my friend. June 23-24/11.

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