by Treadwell » Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:27 am
Tuesday, the third, Jester's Holiday week, A.R. 207.
It is said that if one believes in something, then that something is real. People believe in their abilities, their gods, and their imaginations. To those suffering under duress brought on by phobias, what most would deem mere minor worries are indeed large and looming great. To those seeking comfort, a character of mischief and fun is very much an oasis in a desert of reality.
The wondrous beliefs of children and the fancy of an old man with a jolly side to his seemingly eternal grumpiness has power. There is one character already in town who is a jester in multicolored garb, and he exists, so why should this great flightless fool not? If one can see one jester, one joker, and then one can see another, what difference does that make to a child? A town councilor turned toymaker in his old, old age sees no reason for a distinction, and neither do any of the merry little rugrats playing and scurrying about with dances and songs and bright colored cloaks and little statues of a portly, brightly colored bird.
Neither, it seems, do fabled Spirits of Celebration. A wonderfully woven backstory of a ruler of a mythical Great Nest with happy hens for wives and royal chicks and cocks for children, a convincing and genuine personality, a decidedly fun and outlandish suit of clothing. . . and an unspoken, though heartfelt, wish for a certain sort of immortality from a toymaker. . . all add up to an invisible shifting in spiritual boundaries, to a rewriting of circumstances as some of the more jovial Spirits agree to assist--though in a way as to leave Mr. Treadwell completely normal, for once in his life.
While a costumed Aloisius Treadwell rocks in his toy store rocking chair, staying perfectly normal and remaining oblivious to anything unusual at all, in an ethereal realm invisible to mortals, a startled "Buckaw!" splits the air--the shock of appearing suddenly into being, with memories and life and age and weight and family. Then, all is well. Sitting in a nest for a throne, as cross-legged as those flabby thighs can be, with a silver scepter with real rubies and topazes for jewels, and a crown of the same, and with a silk red and yellow jester's outfit, a buttery-yellow-feathered chicken sits. Black, spherical eyes blink a few times, studying his surroundings, and a great orange beak widens in a smile.
Floppy orange feet streeetch their toes and find safe purchase amid the twigs and sticks and leaves and straw of the area called the Great Nest, and a now existent Fussen Feathers rises, giving his fluffy yellow wings flaps--testing them. There is life in all his limbs, from the swooshy-swishy state of his tail to the jaunty bounce in his steps to the jiggliness in his impossibly round stomach. This life is in resistance to nature; he has appeared in this state an old chicken, and there remains a stiffness in his limbs. But, nature be shoved aside a moment! This Spirit of Celebration and misrule has much to do before the week is out.
The first step is to let those black eyes lose their focus on his surroundings, his Great Nest, to take stock of an old man now snoring quietly in a rocking chair in another land--one called Myrken Wood. The beak slips into a smile; the toymaker's suit is an excellent likeness--or would that be the other way around? A wiggle of the ruler's tail feathers and a nod of his head lead to the disappearance of Fussen Feathers from his native land and, secretly, to his reappearance in a toy shop in Myrken Wood. A silent nod is given the snoring fellow--and a look of admiration, of gratitude--and then a great yellow chicken quietly toddles out of Treadwell's front door, peeking around at the wonderfully alien area that is Myrken Wood.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium