Maxwellianistics

Far Off Unhappy Things

Chapter 24: Maxwellianistics

By Maxwell

This is an absence-story. A story defined by absences. A story about an empty house on Fisher’s Lane that ought to have had a father, brothers, servants and maids.

Today, there are no such things in the house on Fisher’s Lane. Today I live there alone. Today, which is no longer every day the same day but now relentlessly gets replaced by one day after the other. Every day the yesterday of before gets further away from me, further out of reach. You, ephemeral you, you who I have probably made up- do you remember me taking you by the hand to show you the Twin Cities from my eyes?

It’s all gone now. I don’t know if you’re gone too. I don’t know how far the damage reaches.

Today I sit next to the river under the willows with a princess with blue hair and a blue dress. A princess of blue.

I’ve forgotten her name. I know she had a name, I know she was someone else before. The paint is getting to me too- filling my eyes and my lungs. My name vanished too. To save my ego I have coated it in pigments. I am the Maxwellianist now, though I don’t know for how long this cloak will last me.

“Once in another life, we met in the Palace. My father had a job for you. ”

“What do you mean?” The princess asks me.

“I don’t quite remember. I have to fight the Poet-King by telling stories so that I can get back what I lost.”

“I see,” the princess says.

“He’s not very original, you know,” I tell her.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t tell.”

“I see,” she says again as she throws a rock into the river. “Can I tell you something weird?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“I think you’re telling the truth. Before my recent turn of good fortune I was bereaved and beriddled in the forests, and there I had this exact same feeling- like I knew someone from a past life, that they were acting all wrong.”

“Beriddled?” I ask, on purpose. You, if you are still with me, understand what I’m doing.

“You know, bed riddled.”

I force a laugh. The scene doesn’t quite work.

“Best we do is follow the original story along, see what Tinten throws our way.”

“Follow the original story?”

“He’s not very creative, I can tell you that. We should continue on our way, see what you will run into.”

“You’re very strange,” the princess says. She smiles at me in a way that’s almost right. Almost the way she’s supposed to smile. It tears my heart to ribbons. “There’s Ceremony later today, at the court of the Poet-King. You should come along.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I suppose.”

Ceremony is as it always was, I think to myself. On the stage before us Tintenzunge is flaying a dissenter. He’s doing his utmost best to ignore me and the princess in the audience, and I have to repress the urge to wave at him.

Next to us sits a girl in a miller’s garments. “Help?” She says. “Help?” She yells, louder. “This is wrong,” she screams. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she says as she starts to hyperventilate. The illusion breaks, and Tintenzunge can no longer ignore us.

“What- you damnable cur, what is it now? Do you have to do it like this?”

“Hey,” I say, holding up my hands in an ‘innocent’ gesture. I can work with this, I realize. I can really work with this. “Hey, I was just trying to join for Ceremony, it’s a good part of the story. This girl randomly starts screaming- that’s not my doing.” I’m right and he knows it. Spin a tale to get yourself out of this one, Tinten.

“That’s,” Tintenzunge starts, then stops. “That’s not right. That’s not her. Who is that? Where is my princess of black?”

“I want to go home,” the girl yammers. “It’s so cold.”

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” I tell her, putting my hands on her shoulders. I shiver. She’s really, really cold. “We can help you figure this out. What’s your name?”

“I’m- I’m an ordinary miller’s daughter. I don’t understand what’s happening I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home.”

“Maxwellianist,” Tintenzunge swears as abandons his victim to rush over and crawl down his stage. The disdain in his voice is palpable. “Your antics are getting disruptive.”

“Tinten I swear I wasn’t up to anything postmodernist,” I say. Let him worry about the meaning of words. Let him once again worry if there’s things he doesn’t know, if perhaps he’s out of his depth. If maybe he, too, should be scared of strangers.

The princess of blue does her best to comfort the miller’s daughter. “Pleased to meet you,” she says while doing a curtsy. “I’m the princess of blue, who might you be?”

“I’m Morana,” Morana answers. A chill goes down my spine.

“Tinten,” I whisper to the Poet-King as blue and black clasp hands together. “Morana- do you mean the lampade?”

“What? What do you want?” The Poet-King shoots back.

“Tinten, the lampade might not have been in the world when you tried to weave her into the story. Your spell’s caught a random stray instead.”

Tintenzunge sinks his face into his hands. “Autumn,” he swears, then jolts, as if he just unwittingly caught himself in some heinous act. “You win this one, Maxwellianist.”

“I’m not happy with that, Tinten. I’m not happy at all.”

“Get out of my palace,” he screams. I oblige him, dragging the princess of blue and girl of black after me. I think of taking them somewhere, just outside the walls of the city- and then the thought fades. Wherever I could once go, I can no longer. Instead we return to the empty house on Fisher’s Lane.

I find it emptier than it had ever been.