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