Argument: Two openings – from light to neon, from neon to dark – allow Lathynarn to enter the underground and its rattle-more-so, up-metal noise.I saw a cat come from behind the church – black, looking – it disappeared as I stepped down to the station, reappearing on the platform – looking left, right, black – the train light shone behind it – its eyes lit at me and it jump-stepped down to those two perspective-driven tracks – clacks, cracks as the train arrived – it crossed and jump-stepped four foot to the other side, moved under the fence and sauntered up the cutting.
Obstacles need not be so, we are suggesting.
A slicing light, a wall could not hold us – Lathy stepped forward and smashed – up to the oche and aim Sir Lathynarn, your dart your self! your sharp right hand – crash lights and glass – a shattering, a dimming, a squealing sunshower – like gazing on the surface of the hot, demented fireball – some square meters of the light-outgiving tall, infected wall fell at the touch of his metalised hand.
Quixana clapped at the rags around his metalised arms:
“Bravo, Sir Midget Dwarf!
what a dwarf this knight is!
what a night to be a dwarf –
some glory as glass and light fall down
at your eyes a-gazing,
your mouth a-sterning,
your feet a-standing
secure a-sured
leaping not out the way.”
When noise and riot finished – a crystal choir calmed and silenced – the car crash at his feet revealed an opening ahead – glass hung, the shattering, the dimming, the shimmering surround – the rim of the opening showed the wall to be made of lightbulbs, not bricks – and no electrical tricks to electrocute us – what luck that Lathy had…
“Sir Dwarf
[…quoth Quixana…]
will you enter?
If you do, I refuse to pass
through, instead I’ll wander
the plain alone
and hunt
for my sancho
and the armour he stole in glee
with a gnawing and crunch
of his bare bones.
and then
for the limelight
where I’ll stand displayed in spotlight
and gleam a metal grin
at gathered crowds.”
Lathy harrumphed.
“Later,
I will meet you
again at some point, just later
from today and from now.
And I should bow.”
So, respecting etiquette, both bowed to the other – Quixana exeunted.
***
We stepped through the dwarf-made doorway, enough height for me in this wall of light, crunching the new ground glass of the ground – we saw the tower shone light inwards as much as outwards – we saw a chamber within and before us, we saw…
“Lathy…
ruminating
on where we are, I’d hazard this:
a tower of dreamings
where all is true.
“Reading
books can help you
calculate these things correctly
and logically show
the truth around.
“We stand
in a tower
of light emitting filaments
surrounding one further
there – of neon.”
A second lighthouse in front of us formed of neon tubes – green twistings on red, blue waves crashing on the poor yellow sun – a pulsing, a vegas of light animating before our eyes – a form of a knight chopping the dragon’s head again and again – and once more the king mounting a horse and charging to appear at the start – a queen’s heart breaking at the death of a favoured – a game of chess, the knight always taking the pawn or the pawn giving up to the knight – scenes covering a tower and televising in five frames a simple tale.
Lathy spoke:
“Look, squire,
a new tower.
But we do not need to break this –
there’s an open trapdoor
near the centre.”
He was right – beneath the scene in white, blue and yellow of a joust and falling from a horse, a trapdoor stood open, resting on the neon-lit and light-emitted field of play.
I climbed down the ladder first; he led second, best for knights in armour.
Tunnels – are they sewers? are they bunker? who owns these shapes they make beneath the earth? what for? wherefore the twisted roofedness? the light is one of always-around-corners carting shadows and puppets to the walls – what walls! a time for exclaiming… some ground metal, carved iron, some scraped and screed with filings on the floor.
These tunnels – it is clear – are places for finding; less a labyrinth than the plain above – less ways to be lost, just follow and fifty-fifty.
“Which way
now, Lathynarn?
We can follow it, sir, and lose
our way, our path outwith
the ways we go…”
We walked on, then left, drew right and forward, twist and bend and always two choices – left or right? here or there? opposites forcing a decision onto us.
But Lathy’s sword stuck to the walls – its magnet forcing halts now and then to disconnect itself from the outside to hang again by his side.
A smile from him:
“Show us
the right turnings
and deliver us to the end
of these places and show
the terminus.
“This way,
now there, go here,
upwards, no – leftwards and through there
and there, climb over it
up left, right, through.”
The sword was our guide – he held its charisma out and felt its pull to the decision to be made.
“Amen.
For saving’s sake
deliver us from evil turns,
from clownly turns, lions
and tigers and__”
Then the noise began.
A rumbling groan, a scrape screeched off the echoes that rattled bones, black as dark, around the corners – a dark town seemed ahead, a cackle, a thudder and jud – a junkyard was heard to explode, throwing metal around and landing on itself – some danger zone promised, some promised land of noise and noise and NOISE all around – there’s a world going on somewhere near – a mining, a drill of fearing-too-quiet-to-be-heard above the shouts and screams and cackles that rattled jokes like the bones at walls to resound – clash, crack, wrack and smash it - a tractor eruption, a digger malfunction – a joke being told as hilarious as dynamite on the zimmer frames of the old who cannot hear – speak up! hurry up please its time…
“It’s time
to see, Lathy,
what’s making noise ahead of us.
Turn this one last corner,
the sword says so.”
prev - 2.4 Lighthouse
next - 2.6 Camp Clown
