Unbinding The Story

There are voices that speak with thunder, and the kingdom knows them to be the gods because they come from a distance. The new voice that spoke was not a god at all. The voice comes from everywhere. It speaks – gently – through everything. Within and without, rattling through the land and sky. The sea goes still. Even the clouds see painted on then air.

“Uhm.” The voice doesn’t sound like any god. It sounds eleven. Everyone knows this

Surely gods must be eleven too? is wondered, but seldom aloud.

“I am pretty jaysome at being eleven but! I’m kind of having an adventure right now you know!”

The king summoned his knights, as if swords can face a voice that is the world. The court magician drank the wine cellar, laughing like a wild man.

“Uhm. Your magician isn’t Honcho? Wow!”

And the world quaked. Earth, time, space. The great unbinding is a rebinding as well. Everything shuddered. There was no court magician. There never had been one. In the cellar, the court jester laughed and drank every bottle of wine he could find as though the shakes from too much drink could cast out madness.

“But Honcho wouldn’t – oh! This isn’t the Honcho.” And the voice that is eleven sighs, deep and heavy. “Look. You’re a really nice story about kings and dragons I suppose but I kind of need you out of my head because you’re in the way of some adventures I want to remember!”

In the first temple, the high priests called out to the gods for aid.

“Uhm. Gods? You mean – you hear it when Honcho and Charlie talk to me? Wow! That must make for a really weirdy world. But I need to think about other stuff and focus on an adventure so you have to go away now please.”

The sky changed colour as the sea bled into the land. There was thunder turned inside out and the ancient dragon in his cavern roared out a weak: “No!”

Everything moved. Sideways, but not into a neverwhen.

The king summoned the high priestess, who had been a high priest at some point he thought. But it was not important. The kingdom shook and settled into a new space, a new form. The royal guard held weapons in shaking hands as the king stood up from the pale throne.

“What the fuck was that?” he demanded.

“I do not know. We can no longer here the gods. That was Jay. I learned that much. I think he is/was a god, and we were a story in his head. Which he wanted to get out. So we are – somewhere else. Another world, another time? I do not know. I think it may be safest if we never know,” the high priestess ended in a whisper.

The king paused. He wanted to summon the court magician, but knew there wasn’t one at all. “These are difficult times.”

“I think they will get better. Jay will – help them get better,” the high priestess said. And she hugged herself, without knowing why, and wondered how far the kingdom had been moved, and by what terrible magics.

They found the dragon a week later, crying in fear in his cavern. The beast that had ravaged the kingdom was quivering in his old, old scales. “I was meant to be jaysome. I was meant to be jaysome. Not this, not this,” and bared his throat to all their blades.

Killing the great terror was an act of kindness, and one that settled the kingdom as if was finally free of the story being told and able to find its own destiny.