The story always began slowly enough, but when he reached the frightening bits, the ears of his audience would prick up, like attentive dogs.

“Once upon a time, there was a King who ruled over many kingdoms with no common history. But each kingdom looked up to him as a figurehead, nay, a god. At the several frontiers, there were no gates - fruit groves would merge from culture to culture - high-flying transport systems from each kingdom would criss-cross the free skies - But then the King died.”

The storyteller surveyed the sea of upturned faces, trying to spot an inattentive one. The eyes blinked in the sunshine, as they took their handkerchiefs to their runny noses. But they all seemed to listen; except, of course, the boy who always fidgetted as if he hed blood on hyperdrive in his veins: the storyteller often felt like getting that kid’s neck between his two hands and:

“That King had owned a special inborn power to unite. Merely the whisper of his name would bring pub-loads of drunken men to their knees. Even the hint of his possible presence would fill the enormous cathedrals with the heady smell of prayer. Nevertheless, the King had to die. We all have to die. At the frontiers, they built gates. They segregated the groves. The skies, they stretched vast nets from ground to sky top or as far as they could go within reason.”

A hand was up. The boy with ants in his pants shouted: “What held the nets up?”

“Faith, my son, a new faith in division and sky hooks.”

The audience was momentarily non-plussed. When a misunderstanding threaded his tale, he knew he had to bring in a frightening bit to tease back their attention.

“It turned out there was not much faith in sky hooks worth the candle. They sent men up there to hold the nets tight. They were made to teeter on the edges of aeroplane wings, grappling with the nets like birdermen.”

The faces grew rounder and wider. The noses ran, Unconcerned. The eyes failed to blink and reddened with sunset’s iritis.

“A new King had to be crowned. To be King, one must first become a Prince. And there were three Princes, born from rumour if not from the wrong side of the deceased King’s blanket. There was Torfil. There was Deen. There was Cussins. Each was handsome as Princes go, but they all lacked a certain character and ‘joi de vivre’.”

“What’s ‘character’, storyteller?”

The boy had begun fidgetting again, the taste of untended snot awaking him from his brown study.

“Character, my son? Well, it’s Charisma, It’s what the Weirdmonger calls an Aura. You remember the deceased King had a name the least whisper of which would evoke the deepest, direst, Awe? All three Princes lacked such a powerful name.”

“What was the dead King’s name, then?” asked the fidgetter.

“If I said it now, I would cause you to block yours ears in fright!”

“Say it, say it!”

“It is too long to say. If I begun now to say his name, it would take me till dawn to finish it. It’s like another story all in itself.”

Another frightening bit was called for, to get him out of this narrative predicament. He usually bypassed such cul-de-sacs of plot. How could a name be a whole story? He forged on, ignoring the signs of renewed inattention in his audience.

“The Princes had to see who could bear the vilest pain. One offered another an elbow fight without the elbows. The third offered the first one an exercise in skull trimmings. The second offered the third a game of Bobapples upon the fiery seas of Hell. They ended up tussling in a three-sided wrestling match, with no quarter taken or given, no backhanded treaties nor side bets nor clandestine alliances. The object was to tear limb from limb the opponent the others most feared. The most feared opponent, however, was a moving feast. As the game took its tumbles and its accidents of fate, the compass-point of victory spun, juddered and eventually halted...”

“Who won? Who won? Was it Torfil? Was it Deen? Or was it Cussins?” The fidgetter shrieked. The storyteller couldn’t think of the answer, his mind having momentarily blanked out. After a natural break, the urchin skedaddled to the toilet. The rest of the audience was comparatively patient.

The storyteller was still non-plussed. The plot would now take unexpected turns. Strange how the actual composition of one’s audience can alter the material one is presenting to them. Even pre-written scripts have been known to jump pages, swap words, insert unknown sub-plots. With the fidgetter gone, there was no telling...

“The deceased King was to be the judge as to the winner of his heirdom! He returned from death to choose his own successor. He was evidently dismayed by the divisions caused by his passing away and wanted to have a hand in the necessary restoration of the various kingdoms’ interdependence. His eyes were bloodied from staring too hard into the fires of Hell from a hill in Heaven. His hair was little better than blackened hope-strings. His mouth was weltering in ghostly slime...”

The audience shuffled their feet. Most of it was going over their heads.

“‘I choose none of these three nincompoops,’ he roared. ‘I choose myself to be my own successor... I disliked all of their mothers, anyway.’ So, the kingdoms renewed their bartering cartels, the frontier gates became funfair rides, the sky was full of footballers on hang-gliders bouncing from net to net. Torfil, Deen and Cussins were given jobs as basketball referees (when they were not up there stretching hard from near-miss aircraft to keep the dicky-birds clear of the nets)...”

The audience had disappeared because of the sheer ludicrosity to which the story had stooped. The despondent storyteller could not think of a good ending, anyway. He wondered what on earth the King’s name could have been. At the same moment, the fidgetter returned from the toilet expecting the story still to be in full flood with lots of good frightening bits yet to be unveiled. So, he was rather bemused by the empty auditorium, empty except for the storyteller on the podium who had his head in his hands.

Which, at least, solved one thing - where he had left it.
* * *

‘The art of storytelling is to let the plot out gently, rather than to yell it fitfully to the fleeing audience, in the hope that they’ll come back with their tails between their legs, like dogs being called by their master.’ -- THE NOVEL AS CALLING CARD, Rachel Mildeyes.


Published 'Mystique' 1992