Chronicon

Chapter 5

The Nistarim

"He who does not love the organ-man has no bowels for humanity, no taste for music, no soul for poetry. The man himself is a man and a brother; and as to his instrument, what sings the poet, the same who bade the Nine descend?
'When the full organ joins the tuneful quire,
Th' immortal pow'rs incline their ear,
Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,
While solemn airs improve the sacred fire,
And angels lean from Heaven to hear.' "
-Charles Dickens: All the Years Round, June 11, 1864

In a world the shape of enormous endings and beginnings, rises many stories high a skyscraper of a Tale
whose depths lie in an unfathomed dark Almandal, where history's handmaid beheld its reflection.
The angels of these altitudes have differing offices, offices such as the will to be taught, the delight in that which is wanted, the pursuit of that in which delight is found, the ability to grasp what was pursued, the ability to remember what was grasped, the act of finding similarities to that which is remembered, the ability to judge that which was found, to select that which was judged and, finally, the eloquent presentation of that which was selected. These offices are not numbered, their officiants know where they're needed.

In a world the size of a bottomless handmirror, Madimi sat in a chamber before her own speculum,
sporadically channel-surfing on a black roundtop notebook resembling a modified Revo-Round, glimmerswitching from one nodal point to another in time, flitting across the dial of historical vignettes in an ever watching vigil, listening to Atlantis, by Sun Ra and his Arkestra; an unedited graphic novel lay neglected on her lap featuring Spider Jerusalem doing a Ulysses on a looming cyclopean GeoEye. Max Headroom screensaver set on endless improv, mourning; dormant like an urgent tulip, green fuse lit for Spring.

Rising to light the room with candles, she was expecting company. And darkness.

Epochs surged by leaving strange whispering tracers, dust devils caught in her flatlined book of hours.
Screen readout:

Year: 1882
November 18, Transit of Venus Solar Storm

Year: 1903
November 1, Solar Storm

Year: 1921
May 13, New York Railroad Solar Storm

Year: 1940
March 25, Easter Solar Storm

Year: 1956
February 24, Acheron submarine Solar storm

Year: 1989
March 13: solar storm collapsing the Hydro-Québec power grid. Millions of people in darkness; areas in the northeast U.S. and Sweden lose power, aurorae visible as far south as Texas.
In the middle of a magical supply warehouse, huddled on the floor, holding one another as wisps of smoke escape upwards, Eiderdown and Cricket cry, shuddering over the prostrate form of Aldina.

October 9: concert- Warlocks performing a song, Dark Star at Hampton Coliseum in
Hampton, Virginia. Cricket and Aldina, arms around a prominently pregnant Eiderdown dancing a Woodstock sungrope neath a mirrorball explosion of galaxies.

December 23: Eiderdown in labour, keening and howling; sweat pouring from her face as the bitter weather pummeled the window outside, tiny white mittens gone berserk like winter moths drawn to unearthly light. Cricket and Aldina held her and coaxed her with soothing encouragements. The moment came. Triplets. Identical triskelion blue eyes that do not cry. The infants seemed instead to be singing to one another.

Year: 1789
Furtwangen Germany
An aged Uhrenträger, veering from discourse with a gaggle of motley minstrels concerning the design of their certainly singular Schwarzwälder uhr, slapped his forehead in epiphany.
"Die Mädchen waren fortgesprungen, aber der Bär rief ihnen nach:
weisse rose für schneeweisschenWeihnachtssternrote Rose ür Rosenrot"Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot
fürchtet euch nicht, wartet, ich will mit euch gehen."
Da erkannten sie seine Stimme und blieben stehen
und als der Bär bei ihnen war, fiel plötzlich die Bärenhaut ab
und er stand da als ein schöner Mann und war ganz in Gold gekleidet.

"Ich bin eines Königs Sohn" sprach er, "und war von dem gottlosen Zwerg
der mir meine Schätze gestohlen hatte, verwünscht
als ein wilder Bär in dem Walde zu laufen, bis ich durch seinen Tod erlöst würde.
Jetzt hat er seine wohlverdiente Strafe empfangen."

Year: 1942
June 2:
"The world is just a barrel-organ which the Lord God turns Himself. We
all have to dance to the tune which is already on the drum."
-Reinhard Heydrich, SS Obergruppenfuehrer (Party Number 544916)
Reich "Protector" of Bohemia and Moravia.

Beside her, a bear bereaved with one trap-maimed foot explained: "that machine kills fascists."

The bear had left a crooked corridor of wreckage and destruction as it sought the boy,
looming in his knowledge before Aidan ever saw it. Primordial phantom, it spread through his dreams, apotheosis of an indomitable anachronism; epitome of the abyss. It cast a gargantuan shadow all the way to the edge, too big for the dogs to drag it over, chthonic; monstrous as apocalypse.

Repousse mistletoe's rune-lit embers smoldered on the lid as he replaced his gold mirror-locket safely within the pocket hidden in fur.
She had reached across dimensions for him, defying the veil. Now he came to her, without weapon, watch, or compass; their mirrors drew them, the attraction magnetizing their souls.

Her voice rough with worn lament, Madimi looked at him.
"Science dwelleth in me, the heavens and depths oppress me,
for they covet and desire it with infinite appetite.
Few or none that are earthly have embraced me
for shadowed am I with the circle of your sun."

"Madimi, your company's a harmony of many cymbals and
the honeytrap of your tongue sweeter than health itself."

While his head lay in her lap, Madimi's fingers curled in his thick tangled fur.

Year: 1564
"Terrestre quoddam corpus, Monas haec nostra Hieroglyphica, in Centro Centri, Latens, possidet: Quod Qua sit ACTUANDUM divina Potentia, sine Verbis, Ipsa docet: Cui jam ACTUATO, Lunaris & Solaris est (Matrimonio perpetuo)COPULANDA, Influentia Gonetica:Licet, ante, in Caelo vel alibi, fuere ab EODEM Corpore SEPARATISSMae. Hac (Dei Nutu) facta Gamaaea, (Quam, Parisienibus, sum ... interpretatus: id est, Matrimonii Terram: sive Influentialis Conjugii, Terrestre Signum)Super suam Nativam Terram, Eadem, ulterius Nutriri non potest, vel Irrigari, quam ad QUARTAM magnam vereque Metaphysicam Revolutionem Completam. Quo finito Progresso: qui aluit, in METAMORPHOSIM Primus Ipse abibit: Rarissimeque, post, Mortalium conspicietur oculis. Haec, O Rex Optime, Vera est, toties decantata (& sine Scelere) MAGORUM INVISIBILITAS: Qua (ut Posteri omnes satebuntur Magi)nostra est MONADIS concessa Theoriis."
- John Dee: Monas Hieroglyphica
['This our hieroglyphic monad possesses, hidden away in its innermost centre, a corporeal body. The Monad teaches without words, by what divine force that corporeal body should be actualized and united to the generative lunar and solar currents... At the conclusion of this mandala's initiation, the adept will undergo a metamorphosis and afterward very rarely be held my mortal eye.']

Year: 1604
October 9
A very large and bight twinkling star ignited for the first time in the 'constellation serpentari'. It appeared in the highest heaven and firmament, among other fixed stars, and not like other comets, low among the planets, and much less below the moon or in the element of the air...
Jupiter was in conjunction with Saturn, this conjunction took place in the same part of the sky every 800 years. In December 1603 there was to be a conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn in Sagittarius, which to astrologers was one of the points of the Fiery Trigon. In the autumn of 1604, when Jupiter and Saturn were still in the Fiery Trigon, and not far apart, Mars was to come, and be in conjunction with Saturn on September 26, and with Jupiter on Oct. 9. Thus in early October 1604 Mars, Jupiter and Saturn would be at the vertices of a triangle, forming a fiery triangle in the Fiery Trigon. A conjunction in the Fiery Trigon presaged great things; a fiery triangle there was surpassed, as an omen, only by a comet..."
-Johannes Kepler : Bericht von einem ungewöhnlichen Neuen Stern, 1604

Year: 1615
Confessio Fraternitatis:
"Thus, we, oh mortals, must make it known that God hath concluded to send the World before its end, which preferently thereupon shall ensue, such a Truth, Light and Glory as Adam had, and which was expelled along with him from Paradise for the purpose of alleviating human misery.

In the future, when (as we trust they will) all these things will have been removed, we will be presented with a perpetual unchanging directive; and although we owe this to those who worked on it, the Great Work, in its fullness, will be the product of this blessed crucial time.

With a view to His Will, God has already sent ahead his Messengers, Stars appearing in Serpentarius and Cygnus. In their capacity of truely great Tokens of His mighty Will these can teach us how He would subjugate human intelligence to His secret law once everything that is to be discovered will have been combined; the Book of Nature will then be open to all and unveiled, although but few can read it in full, let alone understand it.

Just as in the human head there are two organs for hearing and seeing, two for smelling and one for speaking and just as it would have been in vain to demand speaking of the ears or hearing of the eyes, so have there been times that have seen, others that have heard and yet others that have smelled. What remains is that soon, in a time that is coming rapidly nearer, the tongue too will be given due honour, so that what has once been seen, heard and smelled, can be brought into words at last when the World will have slept off the flush from drinking of its toxic, stupefying beaker, and early in the morning it can meet the rising Sun, with an open heart, bareheaded and barefooted, happily and jubilating. In the same way as God has put about Characters and His Alphabet through the Holy Scripures, so has He carved these distinctly in Heaven, Earth and Animals when the miraculous work of Creation was done, so that just as the astronomer foresees eclipses, we can predict the obfuscations of the church and the duration thereof long in advance. From such characters we derive all of our Magic and based on these we have formed us a new language which at the same time expresses the essence of things; therefore it would be no wonder if we could express ourselves only less refinedly in other languages and in this Latin. For we do know of these languages that they are not familiar to the language of Adam and Enoch, but have been desecrated by Babel's confusion of tongues."

year: 1616
Virga Aurea of James Bonaventure Hepburn published at Rome.
A garland of seventy-two praises in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, Etruscan, Assyrian, Armenian, Gothic, Scythian, Scottish, Hibernian, Coptic and Chaldaic, Mystical, the Noachic, the Adamean, the Solomonic, the Mosaic, the Seraphic, the Angelical, and the Supercelestial its mandorla surrounded by flowers and symbols, adorned with an inscribed ribbon:

'Humbly I place and fasten this votive picture at the feet of the Most Blessed Virgin. After much midnight striving, may I make pledge of my soul, yearning and striving long years after the Blessed Virgin, to the success of the Rule in which we are blessed, and to its long and eternal fruitfulness.'

Her severed bough knew the appearance of truth, subdued serpents, crosses hell, either bars or opens, and drew essence forth from the stone.


Year: 1994
June 22:
Listening with Eiderdown and Aldina to the novelty of a live in the studio radio station's broadcast emanating from Tweezerville, Indiana via the internet featuring the sky-grazing music of the Octave Doctors; Cricket began accompanying their two aethereal vocalists with overtone harmonic singing she had learned as a child. Three towheaded children who should have been in bed appeared before the startled Cricket.
Iridi looked up at her with enormous eyes and said: "teach us that".

Year: 1995
May 14th: Cerberus traces the location of Eiderdown et al. deploying an assault unit which ambushes and attempts their abduction. From out of nowhere a warrior circus of Skomorkhi intervene, with their unicorn and guns; vanishing with Eiderdown, her two friends and her three five-year old daughters. Very Tarantino, thinks Madimi. Outrageous weapons.
Porlock business. Same old shillelagh, blood and thunders.

That night, there was a bedtime tale bonanza in order to settle the children's terrors.
In order to put their ordeal in perspective, Eiderdown chose from her great grimoire of magic's inexplicable deeds that stupendous account of wonder surpassing all others amongst the uncanny savants of enchantment. Nestling her girls in an oasis of fat, irresistable pillows she began to unravel for them the tale that told of the Theft of the Peach. What? You do not know of the most fabled feat whispered of among wizards, deliberated between thaumaturge and fakir, sorceress and sage?
Listen my downy ducklings, I will tell all.

It was winter in the great valley and the fields beneath the towering mountains were covered in snow. A flock of cranes had refused their last chance to fly to warmer grounds before the cold, cold season settled upon them. A shepherdess and her daughter were returning their herd to their village some distance further, when they came upon the graceful flock. The great birds, when they saw them, rejoiced for they were sure the woman would share something to eat. But the mother and daughter were poor, and quite hungry themselves.

One magnificent crane stepped forward and stretching her wings in greeting, spoke.

"My people will not survive the winter on gifts from the small pockets of hungry folk. I will make you a proposition.
The Queen of Heaven has an immortal peach tree. The nectar of a single of its peaches will keep us all alive til Spring.
Take your longest rope and put its end in my beak. I will fly with it up until I reach the cloud palace orchard of the Queen of Heaven. Your daughter is strong and small enough to climb to the top. She must climb into the tree and whisper her name to the peach or it will not detach from the bough. Then must she toss below the peach before she slides back down. In exchange for this great favor, I will teach you the secrets of our magic."

Her mother was uneasy, sensing unknown danger, but the brave little girl was willing to help the elegant crane people.

The way she flew up the rope after the crane led the way seemed as effortless as thread flying from the spindle of Necessity herself.
Soon, she disappeared among the clouds. Anxious moments passed. The remaining flock fidgeted restless around the tense mother.

Eventually, a whistling in the sky grew louder and louder and an enormous peach, glistening with crystalline cold juices landed plop! atop a tussock. Relieved, the flock circled around and around admiring this amazing treasure and feasted upon it ceremoniously taking turns until all that was left was a shimmering peach pit!

Suddenly, another sound came through the air towards them. At first, they thought it another peach as it landed with a sickening thud. But no! In absolute horror the mother realized it was her daughter's head! She shreiked, the cranes shrieked and the earth itself shuddered. Arms and legs and the bloody rest of her followed.

Taking off her cloak, the mother's mind went numb as she gathered and wrapped her daughter's limbs together in the large thick cloak.

She wept. The flock mourned. The earth grieved.

A speck appeared in the sky and gradually floating larger, fluttering its way from a very great distance down, down to land next them in the field. It was the speaking crane returned from her voyage to Heaven.
The woman, looking up from her remorse, met the eyes of the crane.

"You have helped our flock in our dire need, now I will help you." It took the shimmering peach pit from the ground in the scissors of its beak and placing it in the palm of the mother's hand, told her, "this kernel holds the name you gave her at birth, plant it with care at home and it will bring you great wealth. The Queen of Heaven gives her now a new name. And whispering into the bundle, the crane stepped back. Movement stirred beneath the travelworn cloak as it slipped away to reveal the daughter yawning, stretching her arms, and with a puzzled look she said "I have just had the strangest dream..."

From that time to this, Lady Cloud Walker has come on glorious wings to their descendants to teach these daughters the magical ways of Heaven.


Year: 2012
December, the Koreion
With their strong arms surrounding the beast, the Foolproof skomorokhi then, gate-wrecking unconquerable sons of thunder-thrashing bolts, descended one final time into the antarala realm of Cerberus, umbilicus maris according to the old geographers, 'gurges mirabilis omnium totius orbis terrarum celeberrimus et maximus' and brought the remaining captives back to the upper world after freeing them from their bonds. Wrapping the hounds in chains they carried them away in exhibition for inscrutable heaven.

Queen Cora comes, bringing the Cailleach girls a flask holding the hieroglyph of water from the tabernacle nave centered in the primeval grinding mill-wheel of Corryvreckan's walls.

River run round the circuit placid opacity of the almandal inaudible sizzle of hourglass sands shifting endless across the vast empty void, dark as the desert between stars. Tsunami.

To think they could lay him in cold ground
sing 'a-down a-down,' and call you him 'a-down-a'.
They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain'd many a tear-
Fared you well, my dove?

Who can Kore from those lips now divide,
Whose kisses tell of Adonis died?
To Kore, e'en now his breath is fled,
Their kisses read reawake the dead.

Intimate communion in the mass of the cataracts, consultation with the noise of many waters.
Assistence, elation and a taste of redemption.


...He sung, and hell consented
To hear the Poet's pray'r;
Stern Proserpine relented,
And gave him back the fair.
Thus song could prevail
O'er death and o'er hell,
A conquest how hard and how glorious?
Tho' fate had fast bound her
With Styx nine times round her,
Yet music and love were victorious.
-Alexander Pope: Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, 1713

Chronicon

Chapter 4.5

St. Columba

"And, of course, Kalachakra? Yes.
And Aryavarsha, from where the Kalki Avatar is expected? Yes.
And Agharti with its subterranean cities? Yes.
And Ming-ste? And the Great Yarkhas? And the Great Dwellers of
Mongolia? And the dwellers of Kalapa? And the Belovodye of Altai? And
the Grail—Lapis Exilis? And Chud, the subterranean? And the White
Island? And the underground passages of Turfan? And the hidden cities of
Cherchen? And the submerged Kitezh? And the Suburgan of Khotan? And the
White Mountain? And the sacred valley of Buddha’s Initiation? And Agni
Yoga? And Dejung? And the book of Wu-tai-shan? And the Tashi Lamas? And
the Place of the “Three Secrets”? And the White Burkhan?
Yes! Yes! Yes! All these have assembled round the Great Name of
Shambhala in the conception of many nations and many ages."
-Nicholas Roerich: Heart of Asia

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Hinba, isle of the blessed was perhaps that same Thrinacia, the three
pronged isle that Odysseus once visited. An island filled with congregations
of red deer, highland cows, colonies of seals, and otter trysts along its coastline.
Sacrosanct mountains, tawny gorse where graze the unicorn, and heather
dancing down to the sea. Sheiling beehive looking shelters pollinate the land.
It is a hidden land, a 'beyul' inaccessible or elusive to most. This
land is said to be inhabited by certain of 'those who know how to play hide-and-seek'.
Not a nation observed by orbiting spy satellites or sighted from
reconnaissance aircraft (though hunt they must); of this world and perhaps
another dimension as well. At the end of an aeon, should civilizations topple,
consumed by fire and ice, it is said the realm will ascend again into the sky
merging with its celestial archetype in the heavens, an imperishable
sacred land girt by the oroboric Milky Way above, waiting.
Here, a ring of standing stones remain sentinnel from the Bronze Age,
vertical rock outcroppings with twenty-eight cups carved in their surfaces
to pour offerings to local spirits.
Here, a historical circuit of the world's parks and plazas is completed;
from beneath the marquee moon of entertainment spots, lots, restaurants, cafes,
bars, pubs and theaters, from the shadow of the subway and twilight zone of bus stops.
Here, a performance occurs quite unlike any other.

- + -

Ladies and Gentlemen... Step up! Step up!
Behold the simulacrum of singularity itself! See the roving warrior
minstrels of the Skomorokhi band: Foolproof, unfold the dromenon of the
New Titurel!!
Witness the enigma, marvel at the mystery, captured at great peril from
the terrible Wilds of Time at long last. Hear with your very own ears
the unbelievable whispering wail of the Contes Fantastiques. These Good
Shepherds caught in the bright sheep-glazed headlights of Elsewhere's
Otherwhen wonders, delved undaunted that deep sepulchre of Musae to
meddle with the echoes of those Cerberean sons of nothing; synchronized
with Jupiter above and the infine beyond to fetch forth the wretched
spirits of mortals, trapped like leaves buffeted by the wind and aching
at the gates of Acheron.
Noble exiles from the four corners, intimates of seven seas and tangent
to no time nor place but Hinba, this our isle of the blessed.
Introducing Eumolpus Flintwort master of circular breathing on musical
reed instruments and fire eating; Aidan Afterthought organ-grinder and
warden of the 777 pound dancing Carpathian black Bear Kolbjorn, Take a
bow, Kolbjorn! And presenting Strannik, miraculous puppeteer and
hurdy-gurdy churner; Hercule Poncelot, virtuoso on his shimmering, ethereal
gadulka fiddle and sculptor Air Balon Extraordinaire modelling
shapeshifting balloon creatures from thin air smoking caterpillaie which
morph into moth and be-fluttered bye-byes; Ullamh O'Corn juggler
formidable and drummer indefatiguable on the gaelic bodhran.
Join the queue! Only five quid a go!
No better bargain while the Baktun lasts!

-+-

Ullamh O'Corn, assuming the pose astride the churlish dishwater daylight
declamed:
"Must we stopper the backwash, seal the sucking coriolus's yawning maw
of sorry demise? Must we sup on the curdled regurgitate of Winagain's
Fake and slip on the slaver of mad Lapdog's yelp?
Seize I say, seize that ungentle song befell silence and shake loose
the time signature! The piping shreik of commerce and terror entangled
to the end cavils to the drum and iniquitous din from seige engines of
chaos and disorder, lurching like a lemming ambulance service downhill.
Doom's cathexis of commodity purchased faulty fallback, busted
safeguard, stripped nightwatch, broke failsafe, ripped stopgap. Lost.
Lost to the flotsam of ephemera, efluvium requisitioned for the
trajectory of our own dire diaspora.
No afficianados of sepia tinted historical jaundice we, clicking out the
barbells of time mockspeed.

"This here merry-go-round brokedown giddyup gone spannered in'er corset"
muttered Aidan absently, probing with obstetric care the interior naos
of his travelworn barrel-organ.

Regarding Ullamh disdainfully, Kolbjorn the bear turned his head,
snorting in gaelic: "Is fheàrr deagh chainnt na h-asail na droch fhacal
fàidh." (The good speech of an ass is better than the bad word of a prophet.)

"I'd call ya my sweet little dove but yer as black as the Earl of Hell's
waistcoat, bottler!"

A tin cup in the hand of the bear rattled coins defiantly.

Eumolpus, cleaning his duduk heaved a sigh.
"Bletherskite, Ullamh. Yer bum's oot the windae."

"Tell me, are ye one of them barny mad nibble squibbits, Eumolpus,
chuffin' up in the trees that sound like a wee Pekinese with a head-cold?"

Ignoring the reply, Ullamh turned his annoyance on Aidan.

"That intergalactic hot dog of yours Aidan,
you treat that thing like its bleedin' Sleeping Beauty"

Aidan paused, staring intent in the innards. "Ullamh, it IS the very
herald of Spring. Just the thing needed to chant new paeans to the sun."

Having the appearance of the Sun it did, with gleaming brass fittings on
the spectacular apparatus. The huge barrel-organ weighed well over a
hundred pounds with rows of pipes mounted on a cart that was pulled by
the bear. The elaborate organ had mechanical figures, automata mounted
on the front of the case and surmounting it was a unique variation of a
'cuckoo' clock; a Phoenix's jack-in-the-box aerie crested a
nine-storyed mountain, at the base of which sprang four rivers, flowing
towards the four cardinal directions.

"Pumpin' circumstance again mate? With those princely good looks, a
right regular bodice-ripping Lochinvar you; some Sheila needs wreathing
ribbons o' pyrite in a crown for them furious notions doggin' your distresses."

Aidan put a screwdriver down, pondering. Resting an elbow on his knee,
he cupped his chin and looked at Ullamh.

"There are stout wooden doors that thwart the axe of wicked witches,
hammered copper doors admitting wizard and queen and books that open
Time's unbound vestments of poetry like smoke from Her lips.
By making a vast detour we've arrived already in that other world no
passage only portal can take us.
The transition exists solely for the sake of the Tale. No passport, no
visa; transition as trauma.
We are those who traverse the displacement."

Ullamh squinting his eyes, stalked off to ravage another ear, impatient
with Aidan's theosophy of illumination.

"Hey, come showtime Oy been takin' the piss, old Walleye & Frightwig
slippin me the evil eye. Gowk tattyboggles both of them.

Strannik looked at him askance.
"My son, my son; we must not ply at other's afflictions."

"Fair 'nuff Rabbi, but these two bettys was mad as fumigatin' bats
snortin' champa. Wallies rattlin' with every word. VERY special, indeed.
Called us 'guardians of the temple' protectin some clishmaclaiver 'book
of hours'. An that's when yer arse fell aff, I says. Pure dead brilliant rubbish."

Strannik frowned.
"By the power of the ineffable Name which stems from the three verses
originating out of hesed by which was the world created:
Roly poly, roly poly, roly poly, poly singing songs of love. We sing the
psaltery of ten strings, Ullamh;
comprehend the comprehension that is worthwhile to be comprehended in
potentia, and it will turn to be in actuality."

"Ah, mambo jambo sugar & jam slippin it sideways to the Queen of Siam.
Phoar, look at this heap o' mollycoddled pollyglot.
Its one infernal pecadillo after another, chasing old Smokey to smother..."

Shaking sudden like an elf-shot terrier and gesturing upward at the kaleidescopic Aurora
flickering across the sky Hercule barked out:
"Good Sharkey, Colonel God!"

Strannik gave him a glare of the red eye.
"What's that you say? What's that?"

"O, it is nothing, nothing. Just a nagging little clouseau I picked up
last time the Cerberus took a wee bite. Reflex reaction, you know.
Passes quick as bozo shackles."
He coughed into his hand, embarassed at the uncontrollable tic.

Ullamh slapped him on the shoulder blades.
"Right, then old Bampot. O, I might seem coarse as kipper on the outside
Strannik; its insides wots sens'tive. Zat empath Keef the Riff, he an
Mad Moon taught me to improvise while unconscious. Studied their every
moves, I did."

"Zat where you nicked lovely byliny starina everyone must copy?"

"Nah, that were one of old Macca's tunes, what was it , ... Scrambled
Eggs...?
Anyway, workin' up this right now:
'Hy women be layzy and low be lowd,
fair be sluttish, and fowll be proud.
were ye long, lazy, little or loud; fat or fulsome,
Hy women be ye pretty and proud.' "

"Its been fifteen years now since Aldina, Cricket, Eiderdown and her daughters
graced our Isle."

"Our nursery of Adepts, the Cailleach girls then, hath nigh fled the nest to launch their
own perambulations. Is this the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton, then?"

"When Luna's Æolipylæ have ridden the low moon out of the sky..."

Aidan glanced skyward at the lightshow.
"Well, that's the signal there then, innit? Come along then, skinny malinky longlegs
and stick your nose in the kennel! Time ta see a man about a dog!"

They wore their grudge with Cerberus like temporary tattoos in
perpetuity. Aidan had been held in a Cerberus katorga limbo as a child,
indicted by a corporate shadow government as a potential paradoxical,
his file was sealed. Awakening from a childhood virtually shut up in a
coffin, the Skomorkhi had sprung him and also an old musician acquaintence of
Strannik named Efimov Nezvanova and his young daughter Netochka, thanks to the
Bear's aspaklarya; symbiont glass to the obsidian beryllisticus of Queen
Cora, it availed them temporal displacements. Together, the two specula
constituted a sort of parallel processing Urtu-Tamitu, the twain comparative
to the sun, source of light, and the moon, which has no light of its own.
Their sheath of foretelling reflections were the perfection of imaginative power; their
locative powers that of a retro-chronal seance.

"Seeing as we're gine to the fishin' hole, better bring the toolkit along with the fiddlesticks
this time. Never know what else we'll catch."

'Toolkit' was a battered golf bag holding a halberd double-barreled
wheellock, an ax match and wheellock, a large bore, short brass barreled
blunderbuss and an espingole musketoon decorated with a carving in the
form of a dragon's head around the muzzle; the blast gave the impression
of a dragon belching magma.

Holding more than leather bellows, wood and metal pipes, Aidan's
sharmanka or barrel-organ held multiple barrels, letters looking like
3/k KTP stenciled black in cyrilic on the rear of the cabinet below the crank
and above the artisan's name: Jan van Steenken.
Aside from their regular musical repertoire, a couple
special barrels were custom repinned and retrofitted by Efimov's
daughter Netochka, following Hercule's translation from L'art du
Facteur Des Orgues by Dom François Bédos de Celles.
The hard-coding upon these barrels formed one continuous spiral, a
worm gear on the crank shaft causing a barrel to rotate slowly drawing
positrons slowed by atoms in the atmosphere from thunderstorms. The
positrons traveling in a spiral path around magnetic field lines due to
the magnetic force on moving charged particles, primed for one barrel,
an aetheric oscillator's positronic beam arming it for retrocausal
psychokinesis; deminimumizing targets to the fourth dimension, irrefragably.

-+-

Coming to the entry in the Garvellachs in the last half hour of the ebb,
the Skomorokhi waited for tide to break, as it ripped furiously through
the sea, gargling between springs and neaps with the wind nine knots in full
flood Corryvreckan.

An archway had been erected there by Cerberus corporation's
geospatial data paparazzi Cyclops overseeing the Pass of the Grey Dogs.
At this gateway, Aidan would soon plant the golden bough on the
threshold before the Underworld.

"God us keep from that single vision and Newtons sleep."

"Aww, Tanstagi: 'There Ain't No Such Thing As Government Interference',
cuz we are the gate of the friggin' Dolorous Garde."

In the middle of the passage lay an islet enabling a brief crossing
from one island to the other. The passage was negotiable at slack water,
but at the ebb took to coursing like a millrace through the Pass of the Grey Dogs
just as Corryvreckan began to boil, opening a well of raging waters.

"Yon upwelling from the boiling taps of Hades rathskeller's enough to sate an
incarnate demon-prince. I know where I'm going, but I inna'gine kowtow to
Doom's promotional brochure of shattered illusions, broken dreams and
disappointments. Anyway, always gives me the whirlypits, these wee lil jaunts..."

"Don't worry mate, I got yer Novikov self-consistency principle right
here."

-+-

Oh, ’tis fiddle-de-dum and fiddle-de-dee,

The dancing bear came back with me;
For the sugar-plum trees were stripped and bare,
And we couldn't find cookies anywhere.
And the solemn old fellow he sighed and said,
Well, he didn't say much, but he shook his head,
While I looked at him and he blinked at me
Till I shed a tear and so did he;
And both of us thought of our supper that lay
Over the hills and far away.
Then the dancing bear he took my hand,
And we hurried away through the twilight land;
And 'twas fiddle-de-dum and fiddle-de-dee
When the dancing bear came back with me.
-The Dancing Bear
Albert Bigelow Paine, 1893