The tree had been dying. The tree was dead.
It was a very small way for something to start happening, but when the ball bounced off its trunk – as it had every other day – it hit dry hollow husk rather than rich wet heartwood and went thunk more than thok, then veered left and left and off out of the little dirt-traced court and into the tall thick green of the imaginary audience and beyond into the broader meadow of society, where the weeds turned to trees and the trees went wild.
“I’ll get it,” said the smallest child, whose name was Qen and who knew from past experience that it was better to volunteer for the miserable than be volunteered for it and then mocked. So they waded into the sharp blades that had been a lawn and out of the lot that had been a house and under the yellowing shade of the few leaves that knew it was autumn but hadn’t given up yet, and they read the crushed red-and-gold carpeting on the door like a bus route through roots and humps and hillocks and dead stone until they found their ball.
They lifted it up out of a dead man’s hand.
Greetings, said the dead man.
Qen didn’t say anything at this, but they DID make a noise.
Be at peace, said the dead man, with deepest calm. I am your king, and I meet you in friendship, hand in open hand. Tell me, how fares the realm?
“You’re not a king,” said Qen. “You’re a dead body.”
A dead boy can be a king more easily than most living ones, said the dead man patiently. Look upon me, and if you will not trust your words, then trust your eyes. Do you believe me to be a king true?
Qen looked at the dead man, this time without jumping or making the noise. There was more to see than they’d expected: his hand had been laid bare beneath the ball, but the rest of him – tall and straight-backed, sat half-at-rest as if about to rise – had been upthrust in the slow upwards writhe of the bushes-cum-trees that breathed around them both, then slowly stripped of its dirtborne shawl by the wind and rain until it lay near-naked, almost visible. The king’s brow was grave and noble; his teeth were anachronistically white; his voice was clear and unhesitating. He looked very regal in his graveborne throne. One hand clasped a thick root tightly, as if it were the arm of a throne; the other extended palm-up, beckoning softly, now unburdened by Qen’s quarry.
“I think you look like a king could, a bit,” admitted Qen. “If he was dead.”
And I think you look like a boy does, of any time and place, said the king. The smooth bones of his jaw radiated dry warmth in the oranging evening sky, the smile carried by all skeletons edged with paternal tenderness. But I ask you once more, now that we have compared our thoughts: how fares the realm?
Qen looked at the realm, what they could see from there.
“It’s okay,” they said. “Getting colder. And we can’t play ball in the parking lot anymore, so we have to do it here and it always goes everywhere and I have to find it. That sucks.”
Your words bring ill news, and yet I feel a pang of sympathetic heartache, the king told Qen, for I too know the pain of loss.
“I lost it first, and it’s MINE,” said Qen, clasping it tight with both hands. “Find your own.”
The pain of losing my people, the king continued. Of seeing them falter and fall before the foe, of watching their bodies fill their fields, of the triumph of the enemy over that which I protected.
“Oh. I thought you meant the ball.”
That? Ah, I took it for my sceptre. How long it has been since I fell! In what idle hands must it rest, that the ancient needs of my house lie in such disorder?
“Iunno. What’d it look like?”
Golden was its head, wrought as a fierce beast noble and brave. It spanned the length of my arm to my elbow and a hand’s-breadth more, and when I held it men paid heed to me and when I raised it men bowed low before me and were glad of it. Now it is lost and I rest here among the old cinders of my reign. I ask you, boy: will you not return this new orb to my hand, that I might once more hold authority made material manifest and rebuke those who would scoff and mock and flout me?
“Iunno,” said Qen, as they turned the ball in their hands and felt all the little scars and bumps (from the tree, from the over-enthusiastic kicks of the biggest kids, from that one time it went through a window). “It’s not ALL mine. It’s some other people’s too. Don’t know if I can give it up.”
You can’t give it up, said the king somewhat sternly. It was already mine. I have rightful authority over it and you and the other peoples of all this place and the sceptre’s form in my hand merely acts as a slight reminder of that to those too weary to see without the use of their tired and mundane eyes.
“Dunno,” mumbled Qen. “Don’t see your name on it.”
My ownership of it is granted regardless of initialisms, said the king, a little more wistful now.
“Says who?”
The divine.
“The who?”
The divine, the law, the letter, the purpose, the spirit, the rule of all that is and all that must be. It ordained that I might rise to the throne, it outlined the terms and responsibilities of that rule, and when I failed to meet those terms – when I doubted in my ability to defend my realm from wickedness without and within – it watched me fall. But it is merciful and wise beyond all measure, and there is no fall from any height, to any ashes, that will refuse to admit one both humble and determined to rise aloft to the heavens once more.
“I don’t see the divine here,” said Qen, who had been looking nervously around for much of this.
The divine is everywhere that is, said the king, but it may be more evident in some forms than others for those of us that need more proof than our glad hearts alone. Can you not behold my crown?
Qen beheld. Then stood on tiptoe and beheld harder. Then squinted. Then suffered inspiration. “The flowers? You’ve got flowers on your head.”
Really? The weight of the ages has left me wearied and made me think them a more substantial helm. Flowers? What of my crown – the bronzed circlet that wreathed me in the reminder of my power to ordain the fates of my people; the silvered crest that placed me above all others by the will of that which is beyond us all; the unbreakable diamond that glittered with its own light as a reminder that some things cannot be altered by the hands of mankind.
“I can’t see any of that, they look like dandelions?”
Even the smallest works of the will of the universe echo the greater whole, the king pondered. And though small, they are gilded golden. A simple braiding, a crest of ivy, and a gem of glass – such as I have heard break in this place before – and my brow shall go bare no longer; the law of the land shall be false no more; the question of authority shall be answered firmly and truthfully for good and for evver. I beseech you, boy: will you not recognize the authority of my crown, that I may be once more acknowledged as the rightfully-chosen ruler of all I survey?
“They’re growing out of your skull,” said Qen, nose wrinkled and lips peeling. “It’s really gross.”
If you don’t call it a crown, I’m just wearing a silly hat made of bits of things, said the king with great passion and some irritation. Nobody respects the sort of person who does that. You need to call it a crown and you need to say the crown was put there by the universe or else nobody’s impressed by the person wearing it and they’ll laugh at me instead of deferring to me!
“People laugh at everyone,” said Qen. “They laugh at me a lot too.”
It’s terrible, isn’t it? said the king in a way that did not invite a response. They show no respect. You stand before them and rally them and tell them to do their duty and they shrink and cower and whimper and side with your enemies who would defy the will of all – as expressed through my person – and then you have no choice but to take up arms against them, lest all descend into chaos and madness.
“You’ve got two arms already, why do you need more?”
As the arm is merely the extension of one’s will, so too is the tool – the weapon, the blade – merely the extension of one’s arm, pondered the king. When they no longer heed the sceptre; when they no longer place themselves below the crown; when they err, that is the sword’s duty. To restore peace and justice to a clamorous and ruined land, no matter the cost.
“I don’t see a sword either.”
A stride to your left.
Qen strode one step to their left and almost fell over.
Dig lightly. Three handfuls of soil.
It was four and a half, because Qen had small hands, and the thing they found almost snapped when handful number half exposed its cutting edge to the air – to more air; it had rusted almost through-and-through. A jagged red silhouette that hugged tight to a core of antique metal, and a red-stained pommel.
This, they always listen to in the end, the king told Qen. When their courage fails, when their reason strays, when their wickedness prevails, they always heed this, and then it all becomes right. I was so close to victory when I was struck down from behind. Traitors, conspirators, and colluders with the enemy from afar and beyond all that is good and right. The blade never fails, but the hand that grips it may slip, and long has it lain fallow, awaiting a champion.
Qen’s hands were sweaty.
I beg of you, boy: will you not be chosen in my name? Will you not take up my divine sword and lead those who would rejoice at my name in righteous and glorious battle?
Qen breathed in and out and furrowed their unwrinkled brow and shook their head.
“No,” they said. “I’ve got to bring the ball back now before it gets dark. And mom told me not to play with knives.”
It’s NOT A KNIFE, BOY, shouted the king in his belly-deep baritone, ribcage quaking with anger and the footsteps of a foraging ground squirrel. A knife is for CUTTING THINGS and a sword is for KILLING PEOPLE or REMINDING PEOPLE YOU CAN KILL THEM. They are VERY DIFFERENT.
“Gbye,” said Qen. And “not a boy.” And the last thing they didn’t say, they dropped the sword, which clang-clanged-cracked over the dead man’s knee as they turned and ran back to the lot, ball in hand.
They were late, and were mocked for it, but were too distracted to think on it because they were thinking about something else.
“Mama?” they asked. Dishes done, lights about to go out. None of the knives had looked like they were for killing people.
Mama stopped at the light, a little sagged over but knowing what that kind of tone meant: pay attention. “Yeah?”
“Can dead people hurt you?”
“Some of them can if they’re jerks, yeah. Just only one way, and it’s the same way the good ones can help you.”
“How?”
“Listening to them. But baby, nobody can give them that power except for you, you got that?”
“Okay.”
The lights went out. Their eyes went shut. And none of their dreams had swords in them.