To the Castle of Flame, a warrior came, not so long ago. His aura, easy to discern, was the color of the opalescent sky, and it was impossible to look upon him for too long. He challenged the Fire King in combat. And the Fire King was devoured. The Stranger laughed and said, “I am Fire King, now.” His gifts of power were as the fires of the sky, and others strange and numerous.
And the Warriors of Flame saluted their new leader. They asked, “What shall we call you, lord?”
Whereupon the Warrior of Many Fires said, “Do you not know me? Have you not called me to you in one voice?” And the Warriors of Flame gazed at each other to discover who it was that summoned this strange warrior who was now Fire King. No one stepped forward. The new Fire King’s aura, plain to see, began to fluctuate in the colors of red, as his rage mounted. And the Warriors of Flame, brave as they were, trembled at his coming wrath.
But a young woman, barely an apprentice warrior, threw herself at the stranger’s feet and said, “Oh Fire King! We are blameless in this. Only one warrior could have summoned you, but he no longer lives among us.”
The Fire King smiled down at the young girl. His aura changed from deepest crimson to powder-blue in the blink of an eye. He said, “How brave you are to speak, little one, while those who would be your betters, huddle against one another like sparrows in the winter night.”
And the warrior maiden said, “The one you seek lives upon the Isle of Nothingness. He is the Count of that domain, and it is said that he has forbidden all warriors to enter his land, lest he should return to the castle and seize the Fire Kingship, for himself and roast us all alive!”
Sky-fires lit in the stranger’s eyes, opalescent infernos, and he mildly said, “Indeed?” His aura ran white as a goat’s milk, or the chalk in the cliffs of above the castle. He said, “I must go and pay my respects to the Count of Nothingness. But you, my young one, must claim your reward.” And he became a pillar of fire, like a piece of the sun, and he devoured the maiden even as she knelt at his feet.
As a blazing comet, the new Fire King traveled in an arc across the Sea of Illusion to the Isle of Nothingness. And the common folk of that land ran for cover, thinking that a star was surely falling upon their island. As the blazing Fire King drew nigh to the western shore, he spied the tiny figure of a naked man, wandering unafraid along the tossing surf. A little ways from the lone figure was a single, turreted tower, the kind that wards ships in the night from running aground upon treacherous rocks.
“Welcome,” said the naked man, as the Fire King approached. He spread his hands in a gesture of openness, and they appeared to shimmer and glide before the Fire King’s eyes when he looked directly at them. The flaming warrior fancied that the naked man’s hands were transparent and that he barely saw them through a sense other than eye-sight. Indeed, it suddenly appeared to the interloper that the naked man’s entire body wavered in the daylight, like smoke-filled glass, or the finest gossamer.
The Fire King doused his flame and donned a human figure of slate gray, the color of ash in a dead hearth. His voice was terrible and his words grated upon each other, and his tongue, a stone in a cave of ice. “I come seeking your lord.”
And the man – that – shimmered – like – glass – filled – with – smoke seemed unconcerned, and said, “The claws of the eagles are guarding their aeries, even as we speak, the warrens of the dragons follow the convolutions of a very old mind, and the dolphins twitter and shrill for they are blameless and slippery to touch,” and the naked man looked intently out to sea as if he were reporting that which occurred on the horizon. Compelled, the Fire King looked where the naked man gazed; but he only saw the sky meeting the sea and cloudless air between.
But then the Fire King fancied that he, too, could barely discern what the naked man described and he was caught as if in a stupor or trance as he struggled to see clearly the vision that just escaped him, yet spurred him on to greater concentration, until he burst into flame anew because of the strain. And so he determined to master this new trick. Many days passed and the Fire King remained, fixed fast to the sand, staring out at the horizon. The naked man stood beside him barely visible. And then the warrior’s flame flickered out in exhaustion, and he became a living pillar of schist, standing on the sand and glaring at the naked – man – wavering – like – mist – above – the – mountains – in – the – morning.
“You have deceived me,” grated the Fire King to the naked man, and his voice was an avalanche of ice and rock upon the air. “You will take me to your lord.”
The naked man sang, “Gaia, oh Gaia, terrible mistress and loving mother, many are your masks but none so beautiful as a flock of birds singing your name.” The naked man cocked his head to the left, as if listening to a flock of singing gulls over the waves.
Again, the Fire King, standing like a bone of the earth thrust through her flesh, was entranced, fixed to the beach, and he could not think in a normal way, and time changed its nature for him and he counted the heartbeat of the world and of the spineless animals in the sea on the same scale, though he understood not what he heard except in the beat of his blood, that felt heavy with the weight of the stars. Beneath him and inside him the underground river of the Mother’s pulse was a terrible caress, stroking his flesh-and-bone mind with oblivion and inescapable awareness.
And so the Fire King who was a stranger-no-more stood on the beach until the waves rose to his knees and still he did not move. And the naked man touched him on his head and heart with the crystal vessels of swirling light, his hands. And the Fire King awoke. The memory of what he heard sang in his bones. But the subterranean song-shot-through-with-light had left him listless and sorrowful because it was gone from his mind. Then the Fire King took the form of flesh and blood. Arms heavy, he could barely stand.
And the Fire King asked, “Who am I? What is my name? Please kind sir, show me the way home.”
The naked man said “You are home, my friend.” and, then his body became sand blown away on the wind and the surf.
The Fire King was Fire King no longer, but a man, naked and nameless, walking upon the Isle of Nothingness.
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-dennis landi © 1991; excerpted from unplublished novel; and modified to stand-alone as a poem in 2008
