January 21, 2003 - 5:36 p.m.
I am not sure how long I was walking above the ground, and cannot pinpoint when I was lowered to the surface, since I never paused, and was always looking up, looking for just one rain cloud to add just the little bit of poetry to such an auspicious day. I held great stock in omens at the time, and had taken it as a great sign the moon had risen and set as usual the night before, and it looked as though the sun would do the same. I knew signs from the ether world when I saw them. I began to ponder what it could possibly mean if the sun and moon did their same little act the following day. There might be no end to the wonders contained in such celestially average days, and my mind soared even higher with idea after idea.
About an hour before sunset nothing had shown up to justify my premonitions about something BIG happening that day. I went off the beaten path enough to find an old latrine, and relieved myself. After that I felt much renewed, and came to the realization that perhaps the pressure and sense of something needing to happen had simply been me once again forgetting to have a good dump in the morning. I curled up in a nice apple tree, and had a small dinner of oranges before sleep caught up with me, as always with such a wonderful story to tell me.
The morning gave me such a wonderful gift I almost fell out of my tree. During the night thunderclouds had rolled in from the west and a mist now covered the entire horizon, and dampened my face and exposed legs. The thunder laughed joyfully in the background to my jokes for the entire day while I walked on. In turn the lightening danced for me across my path, and I must admit that she had a move or two I hadn’t seen before. We made a merry little traveling party, and enjoyed each other’s company for four more days without interruption.
Upon the fifth day I felt another premonition coming on, so I excused myself and took care of that right away. But the sense that something more then a walk was in store would not leave my head. I shared my thoughts with T and L, and they decided they might as well walk a few days more with me, just to make sure I would be all right. I had no idea what they thought would happen to me, but agreed readily to their continued company, since I was sure I was very close to accomplishing one of the dance moves Lightening had been showing me for the past few days. I began to recognize the scenery around me as that from my childhood memories, and began to wonder who could have possibly brought it out all this way.
As far as the ear could hear there were rolling hills filled with perfect lines of fruit trees. Apples, Oranges, Pears, Purples, and a small grove of plaids checkered the countryside. Much like the land around where I grew up. As ever the cautious traveler, I asked if my friends could go rain on the groves, just to make sure they weren’t a painting. They were delighted to be of service, and waited a good half an hour just to make sure I was satisfied. I was, no paint could have lasted that long in direct rain and wind without running and dissolving into the ground. I seemed to remember that if the countryside around here were like where I had come from, and continued that way, then over the next will would be the old family castle. I started towards the castle, or at least where mine would have been, and was followed by thunder and lightening singing a bawdy song about cannibals and their bad table manners.
As I crested the hill I saw my old family castle just how I had remembered it. Wait a sec, not just, since I didn’t seem to remember a few thousand men camping outside closed gates and a filled moat. Odd, maybe I had gotten the wrong castle after all. I considered this as I walk back towards the hill, but my concentration was broken by the sounds of the soldiers clanging pots together for breakfast. I looked in their direction, and noted that their knifes were about as tall as I was, and the seemed to be using then to carve big initials in the walls of the castle, where they could wade across the moat. Now that wouldn’t do at all, I thought. Good sturdy castle had never hurt anyone, and they go and mutilate it.
I had already decided to have a word with the first important looking person I saw about this when I saw the soldiers begin to shoot arrows tipped with fire at the castle, and inside the gates. I heard horses whiney from inside, and heard in their voices that something was not as it should be. Woman topped the battlements to gesture at the attackers and yell suggestions about how they should contort themselves, none of which sounded the least bit physically possible without three more joints added to the legs and 8 or 9 more orifices, and even then I am sure they would have had scars. I was coming down the hill towards the castle at a pretty good clip by this point, and would reach it within five or six minutes. The woman continued their jaunts and name calling, and the soldiers kept abusing the poor castle. Soon the entire top section would be alight, and then it would only be a matter of time before the whole thing went the way of the honest clergyman.
I remembered at some point that my sister should be behind those walls. If that were so, I didn’t understand how all these men were still attacking her castle. She must not have wanted them dead, which was all right by me, senseless though their battle seemed to him. Didn’t they know that tomorrow was Thursday? I stopped being mad at them right before I got there, and had decided to just play with them until they ran away. I had forgotten in all of this my friends behind me, and only remembered as I reached the foot of the hill. At that moment my friends sprang from behind the hill and rushed up from behind to silhouette me against a storm worthy of any Odyssey. The soldiers looked in my direction and sat down is surprise and fright. Lightening had chosen this point in the advance to play with my hair and make it dance around my head. I laughed, and saw some men just a few yards away. They had dropped their weapons and were starring at me. They were about to run when I grabbed their arms and threw them into the wind. The wind took his charges and had them dancing up and down the hills surrounding the castle. I in turn decided to show off my new dance move.
I saw where the officers and royal tents were, and danced the whole way there, my hips swaying in time to Thunder above and Lightening running here and there laughing. I called her attention to me with a whistle, sprang from my feet to my hands, pushed myself up into the air and came down with a twist to slam my feet into the ground at the entrance to the royal tents. Alone the force of the dance move would have taken down the tent no problem. But the twist in the air while my friend L was around generated a charge that detonated on impact. After the steam cleared I stood in the center of a blast mark the spread out from me 100 feet in every direction. Tents had been torn out of the ground by the force, and the remaining cloth had disintegrated while still in the air. Luckily none but royalty had been around. None were dead, and I was just starting to get in the dancing mood for real. I let T and L stop the fires and scare away the rest of the soldiers, and wind followed along to make sure no one got hurt.
I strode up to the castle drawbridge as it was being let down for me, so I jumped up to reach it before it was halfway and walked down the bridge to the smiling but tired face of my sister. She started to go into some story about rival Royal brothers fighting over her hand in marriage. I kissed her hand and walked away mid sentence, not caring one wit what had been happening. I had saved an old friend from scaring, the castle, and I was happy to have done so. Politics didn’t concern me, and was the reason I stayed away from it all and went on walks all the time. People no longer concerned me, always fighting and telling each other what to do and how to exist. Made no sense to me. Let them have it. I had a full night of dancing ahead to enjoy, once T and L got back to the castle, as well as a long night of watching people react to a thunderstorm in the great hall, and a slip of Lightening dancing with me like they had always done so. Maybe even sneaking out to a few farmers’ houses I knew nearby for other things a little less vertical.
Then the morning would come, and I would leave again on another walk, like all the other Thursdays since I was 26, eons or decades ago, who knew anymore. Thursday was the day of birth, hope, renewal, and startings of adventure. I’d set out to see the world with fresh eyes, and it would show me a good time, and help me forget the Wednesdays of my life, the ends of journeys. I would slowly loose myself over the week, to feelings and sensations, only to find myself inexplicably back here every Wednesday night. I would run away from the truth I found upon coming back that first Wednesday night. The first Thursday had been the beginning of the hunt for Certain Doom. I hadn’t believed it existed, and indeed, in my adventures that week I found no trace. Upon coming back that Wednesday night, upon seeing my family and the other people of the kingdom, how they acted towards each other, when compared to how my new friends just excepted everyone for what they were and gloried in it, he understood that Certain Doom had been here all along, and they would lead themselves to it.
The next morning, a Thursday, found me on the road again, reborn to forget what I was leaving behind. But Wednesdays always found me back there; making sure the Doom I saw in them hadn’t yet taken them away. The weakness of Wednesday nights burned away and forgotten by Thursday morning. And my last thought before going to sleep was always the same: Why can’t every day be Thursday?
The End
By John DiMase
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