Storytime: Marcus’s Room.

May 1st, 2013

Marcus’s room was a complicated place, up there on the third floor above all the others, on its own. It was wood-walled and filled with creaks, dark-seamed and shadowed. Someone had tried to carpet the floor once, but had given up and left it at a small, threadbare rug that had once been an oval. The walls were crammed with old furniture from desks to chests-of-drawers, all wooden, all missing at least one leg, and mostly empty. A selected few held Marcus’s clothing, which he regularly forgot. And on the north wall of the room was Marcus’s bed, where he spent his nights.
Those were the unimportant parts of Marcus’s room, and they were all that mattered during the daytime.
At night, Marcus laid underneath his covers, underneath the groaning, whispering, mumbling beams of the house’s skull, and he looked east. Sometimes he looked west instead, it made no real difference. And as he waited, he would close his eyes and count with his pulse until he heard the sound of marching feet overlay the noises of his heartbeat.
The armies of the east would always be the first to arrive, eager to the field atop their golden crows. Their shining helms contained no holes for the eyes they did not have, and their long-bladed triple-forked spears were the most beautiful weapons in the world, as slender as the legs of ballerinas. Short sharp flutes played as they flowed into his room, brought in on a warm breeze from the silvery-orange dawnlands at their backs, beyond the sill of the window on Marcus’s east wall.
The armies of the west would set foot to floorboard exactly three beats behind those of the east, without exception or presumption and with a great creaking shudder. Each man was an iceberg of strange metals that seemed part-copper, part-iron, and all-rusted with greys, reds, and greens of fuzzy debris. Their helms were open and their faces were indistinct with paints and tattoos, smeared into muddiness apart from their beautiful brown eyes. The soft-sweet vapors they used as weapons were the most wonderful thing anyone had ever smelled, and they played around their feet like puppies in the dim purple sigh of twilight that beamed from the place beyond their western window-frame.

It took no less than ten minutes for each army to fully deploy and assemble itself upon the field of battle, that being Marcus’s floor. Each eastern crow-of-gold stood taller at the shoulder than an elephant, each western metalberger two men high and six men wide, but they squeezed in with room to spare – near a football-field’s-length lay between the standards of the opposing forces, a comfortable enough space for Marcus’s bed to fit into as the two generals approached one another for talks. Each was a giant: the western general twenty feet tall, the easterner ten but mounted upon a silver raven who could swallow a lesser man whole. Their bodyguards remained a discreet ten paces behind them – little enough to cover in moments, should the need arise, but great enough so as to avoid the appearance of eavesdropping, which was so much more shameful than the actual thing.
“Duchess, of East,” rumbled the western general, with a slight bob of the helmet.
“Lady, of West,” whispered the eastern general, waving an arm in a manner that might simulate a minimalist bow.
“Adjudicator, of South,” they addressed Marcus, with a formal salute each – fists against chests, heads inclined just so, offhand fingers intertwined at precisely the right moment.
Marcus nodded.
The generals faced one another again, and the mood relaxed into the familiarity of terrible and great decisions that haunted Marcus’s room on all nights of the week, month, and year.
“I will begin with a strategic weakening of my center,” announced the eastern general, “so as to draw out your own and flank it with my cavalry. This will cut you to ribbons.”
“And I,” proclaimed the western general, “have fissured my forces into three legions. As the hardened center is taken in your grasp, mine own flanks shall march towards it. This will crush you into pieces.”
“My strategic reserve will approach from your rear at this point,” replied the eastern general. “They will assail your personal guard and your person both, disrupting your orders, sowing confusion in the ranks, and wreaking havoc on the morale of your troops.”
“Which shall touch off the signal to the traitor I have hidden in your command,” said the western general. “His hand will end the life of your most trusted marshal, and strife shall grip your command and heart equally.”
Nods were exchanged. “Adjudicator?” they inquired.
Marcus nodded, and waved a hand.
“Well enough,” said the general of the west.
“Properly prepared,” agreed the general of the east.
And so they turned and strode away. Ten long, firm, decisive steps, each made with the firmness and surety of an earthquake.
On the eleventh, they stopped.
The twelfth through twenty-second were more hesitant at first, then more hurried, then slowly more and more reluctant until both striders were returned to the bed of the adjudicator, looking unsure and awkward.
Marcus frowned.
“There is… one more thing,” admitted the western general.
“A small matter,” said the eastern general. “Speak first.”
“No, it is nothing,” said the western general. “You may proceed.”
Silence sprouted in Marcus’s room, flowered up against the sky, blossomed all the way up to the soaring vaulted heights of the beams that held fast against the world outside.
“We would like to negotiate,” said the generals, at the same time and entirely off-rhythm.
Marcus wasn’t sure what his expression was, but it was a sight to behold. The negotiations had been finished, hadn’t they?
“Not…precisely the manner of negotiations we propose,” said the eastern general.
“A settlement, to be specific,” said the western general.
Marcus wasn’t sure about a negotiated surrender but if that was what they wanted to do tonight he guessed that was –
“No. A peace settlement.”
“Mutually….respectful, perhaps,” suggested the eastern general.
“Quite possibly,” said the western general, a hint of cautious optimism shining through.
“Yes…” said the eastern general, one thin, gilded hand stroking the chin of her chinless helm. “With nonpartisan language and historically informed decisions.”
“Exactly,” agreed the western general. “And balanced concessions and compromises!”
“Cunning! Perhaps lay the foundation for some subtle guidance of the general culture-at-large of our peoples to support a less belligerent and aggressive foreign policy?”
“Devious indeed and worth consideration. Might this newfound surplus of labor lead itself to public-works projects and a new focus on ensuring the health and well-being of both our peoples as opposed to a nebulously-unreal future promised to us on the crushing of an abstracted and hated foe?”
“Yes!” said the eastern general.
They hugged.
Marcus picked at his blanket and tried to decide what he should be looking at. He failed, and settled for nothing.
“There will need to be documentation of this, of course,” managed the eastern general eventually, disentangling both herself and her raven-of-silver’s skull from the arms of her opponent.
“Of course,” replied the western general. “A treaty must be signed, and to be signed it must be drafted.”
“And for maximum neutrality and to avoid the sabotage of bloodthirsty patriots, it would help if it were ratified and approved by a respected neutral third party, besides ourselves.”
They looked at Marcus. He wasn’t sure if they had ever looked at him this way before.
“Adjudicator?” they asked.
Marcus bunched himself up small and stared out the north window, the one he didn’t look at. There was a summer moon rising in May, and a breeze blowing that brought the sounds of spring peepers.
He looked back. The generals were still there, as solid as rocks. Clearly this was important.
Marcus nodded, and took the great, heavy bronze pen of the western general in hand as it was offered. It slid across the soft eastern parchment as smooth as a honeyed salmon, and his signature fit the sheet like a glove.
“Done,” said the eastern general, rolling up her half of the parchment.
“And sealed,” agreed the western general, stamping her copy shut with the tip of her right thumb.
They shook hands over Marcus’s bed, and said their farewells as the battlefield grew darker. They turned to Marcus himself, and they spoke words, but he was already slipping out through the north window on the breeze, his attention wavering. The generals grew dark and heavy, as they always did, as they always were, and Marcus’s eyelids slid shut on those two beaming, faceless smiles.

“Mom,” asked Marcus the next morning, down in the simple, solid kitchen of their home, down on the first floor where everything was new and shiny, “how do you know when you’re a grownup?”
“Oh honey,” said Linda, as she aimlessly chased a stray dollop of jam with her flaxseed toast, “you don’t have to worry about THAT for a while yet.”
“Like, in your head.”
Linda secured the reluctant red goop at last. Her chewing was without mercy, but it paused for a moment. “Is this about girls?” she asked, succeeding at keeping suspicion from her voice but failing at crumbs.
“No. Wait yes. Wait again.”
Marcus pondered. Linda waited, and finished swallowing.
“Not really?” he managed, tentatively.
“Well,” said Linda, thinking her sentences through as she picked crumbs from her teeth, “I can answer some of your questions for you, I think. And for the rest of them, I think we can make a trip to the library. I think I remembered a few books that are helpful for people around your age.”

She was a bit puzzled when Marcus attempted to look up War and Peace, but went along with it.
The copy of Politics for Dummies was more helpful in the long run, though.

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