Occasional Wit

Here is a rough draft of the first chapter of the backstory of my latest Ars Magica character.  If that isn't enough of a run-on sentence for you, don't worry, I've plenty more. The story begins in Constantinople during the early 1200s.  The city has been torn by war again and again as different factions vie for power, particularly among the various Orthodoxies of the Dominion (the Church, what we now call Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) Please keep in mind that this is a very rough draft, intended to help me organize my character's backstory and to see if the story has momentum enough to be filled out.

Chapter 1: Leyla

The busy cobbled street teemed with life such as young Leyla had never seen.  There were so many people moving in a colorful pandemonium, carefully choreographed by the unspoken instruction of custom and habit; a bright whirling contrast to the still and serene beauty of her father’s marble manse.

“Come child, we are not far yet.”

Leyla swallowed back her astonishment and clutched the thin bony hand of the scholar as he gently navigated them a twisting route through the chaotic streets.  As the minutes passed and the turns and twists of the city became a blur of storefronts and bright facades, the ever present salt piquancy of the sea became sharp in her nose, the bells and shouts of sailors began to overcome the din of market and patter of stall-keepers.  The cobbles had stealthily changed under their feet, from the smooth, rounded stones no larger than a man’s fist to awkward shapes haphazardly pushed together however they would fit, or in some cases, not fitting at all, but made to lie together all the same.  The scholar noticed Leyla’s attention drifting to the ground.

“They were ballast, child: weights to keep the bottoms of the ships under water, until cargo replaced them and they were discarded.  At least they are of some use, even if that use is discouraging carriage rides,” he chuckled.  “Ah, we are here.  Stay here while I see if the master is in.”

They had stopped at a small stall squeezed between two tall buildings, so innocuous Leyla almost didn’t notice it.  The stall was attached to a shack that did not look like it housed the master of anything.  As the scholar gently pushed his way through the white patterned curtain in the doorway, the other buildings began to loom around Leyla, crowding ever closer together, squeezing the street to a ribbon so narrow she thought she would surely fall off had she room to move a single muscle.  Squeezing her eyes shut she thought back to that empty place, so full of space and maze-like patterns of clean white light.  Suddenly the pressure eased and she opened her eyes again, looking around the alley as if for the first time.

A pair of grizzled nautical types sitting in a rope maker’s stall across the way watched her with benign curiosity between pulls of a hookah.  Determined not to show her discomfort, Leyla examined the stall entrance the scholar had left her in.  The wooden supports and tables were, she was surprised to realize, quite clean, smooth and discolored from use.  On the table was laid an array of ivory carved extremely finely with patterns of waves and ships, and symbols that seemed vaguely nautical in origin.  She picked up a striking necklace made of fine chain links of ivory that had no seams.  Leyla realized that they must all have once been a single piece, the excess material cleaned away to reveal the chain inside.  The necklace clattered loudly against the table and she started, nearly dropping it.  Blushing as the old salts across the street chuckled at her disconcert, she set down the necklace and squared her shoulders as if she had no time for lowly types such as they.

Edging closer to the curtain covering the doorway to the stall interior, she could hear the scholar talking animatedly to a lower, quieter voice.

“…to enter Twilight and come out so unscathed at such an age, it’s unheard of since Anatoliy Noctis!  And remember how much he contributed to our understanding of Vim?”

“I also remember how he lost his mind and had to be put down like a mad dog.  What makes you think I want to inflict another Anatoliy Noctis on the Order?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Anatoliy didn’t have you to guide him!  Besides...” his voice lowered, “…she really can’t go back, too many saw, or think they saw, what she did.  If she conveniently disappears now, a certain lord’s younger brother will have simply wandered off like landless younger brothers do.  If she goes back, powerful people will have to think about the Order of Hermes, and now is not a good time for us to be in center stage in Constantinople, what with the Dominion politics as they are.  Take her in, or at least get her to someone who can, and you’ll have the endless gratitude of a well-placed First Concubine.  Send her back, and you risk endangering the Order.”

“The Order will be fine either way; hyperbole is unbecoming of someone so new to their robes.”  Then the deeper voice sighed, “Well, I suppose I’d better take a look at her.  Come in child, I know you’re listening.”

Leyla jumped back, embarrassed at being noticed, then embarrassed at her reaction.  She brought up her head and threw back her shoulders like she had seen her mother do at parties and when going to visit her father, and stepped through the curtain.  She was momentarily dazzled by the glow of candles coming from every surface in the small room, every surface save one, a workbench upon which lay a half-carved piece of raw ivory the size of a man’s forearm.  The scholar stood in front of the workbench and, facing the curtained doorway, an older man sat on a tall stool behind it.  This man’s face and skin were weathered and tanned from both age and sun, and faintly marked with faded tattoos that Leyla’s mother would have considered extremely uncouth.  The older man stood up and locked eyes with Leyla.

“Do me a favor, child, and extinguish the lantern behind you.”

Leyla turned to see an oil lantern hanging from the doorpost.  It was by far the smokiest and dimmest flame in the shack.  She leaned toward it and blew it out with a puff of air.  As she did, it seemed as though every candle in the room jumped and then went out.  Gasping, she whirled around to see the man covered with glowing swirls of rainbow light where his tattoos had been, and his face crowded with dozens of bright, shining eyes that seemed to shine through her as though her flesh were gauze.  Suddenly, the colors snapped away and she saw only the weather beaten face of the old man as he sighed and sat back down in the dim light.

“I haven’t had an apprentice in a very long time.  I suppose I can’t refuse you, or at least I shouldn’t.”  He gestured at the scholar who had escorted Leyla through the city; who handed the man a piece of paper, which the man scrawled on with a splotchy quill and then carefully tore in half, tucking one half inside his tunic and handing the other back.  “I’ll take her, if she proves fit, otherwise, well, we’ll see.  Give my regards to your Parens, Kralyn.  Light the lamp on your way out.”

The scholar gave a short bow and smiled at Leyla, then stepped behind her and muttered a few indecipherable words as he left through the curtain, and the candles snapped back alight as one.

“What is your name, child?  Your true name?”  The man said.

“L-Leyla, Leyla Basturk, after my mother.”

“Well, Leyla Basturk, you have just told me an important secret, one that I can use to hurt you.  I will not unless you deserve it, but there are those who would whether you deserve it or not, do you understand?”

Leyla nodded, not sure if she actually understood, but sure she was as frightened as she had ever been, and this time there was no mother to hold and comfort her, whispering lullabies as she drifted back to sleep.

“In order to keep that secret, you will have to use a new name, a false one that will become real.  A name you will use for the rest of your life.  Hmmm…  I think Ozge.  Ozge Usman.  My public name is Hakan Usman, and to the rest of the world, you will act as my daughter.  To me, you will act as my apprentice.  This means you do what I say, when I say it, to do otherwise may mean your life, or worse.”

Leyla choked back tears as her head whirled, trying to reconcile her sudden change of circumstances, from the pampered daughter of a rich man to the slave of a mad glowing scrimshaw carver.   Hakan gazed down at her, looming from his tall stool, and smiled gently.

“Don’t worry, I don’t plan to hurt you, but there are many dangers in my trade, and you must accept my authority, or your ignorance will kill you.”

Leyla looked around the shop, only now seeing the dozens of pieces of scrimshawed ivory hanging from the walls and ceiling, and lying on every exposed surface.

“I am to be a carver, then?”

“Perhaps, among other things.”

Leyla stamped her foot as tears threatened to overwhelm her.  “It’s not fair!  I’m the daughter of a lord, not you!  My mother is his First Concubine!  I’m supposed to be at home, with her!  Not here!  Not learning how to be poor!  I don’t want to be poor!  And stop calling me child!  I’m fourteen, a lady of Constantinople!”  She tilted her head back in what she hoped was a commanding expression.

Hakan’s laughter startled her, as it boomed around the room.  “You haven’t seen much of the world if you think anything is fair, child.  Although I suppose you are old enough, hence the little…problem…with your pederast uncle.  Now, enough of this nonsense.  Where is your mark?  Show it to me.”

“My mark?” asked Leyla, startled into obedience, “What do you mean mark?”

“You brought yourself and another into Wizard’s Twilight and then returned with your mind and body intact, at least at first glance.  This is an enormously difficult thing to do, and it leaves behind its mark, no matter how experienced you are.”  He absentmindedly fingered some of the tattoos running in asymmetrical swirls across his hands.  “It may look like an oddly shaped birthmark or a tattoo.  It may be anywhere on your body, but it is somewhere.”

Leyla hesitated, then slowly raised her right arm and pulled back the flowing fabric of her sleeve to expose her wrist.  A dark band of skin stood out in stark relief to her fair color, wrapping as though a bracelet, and joining in a pattern vaguely resembling an eye inside her wrist.

“Ah,” sighed Hakan, and he leaned back on his stool for a moment before rising abruptly to his feet.

I recently visited Israel.  I went as part of the Taglit Birthright program which, for those of you who don't know, is a sort of propaganda program aimed at getting disconnected young Jews to connect to the State of Israel by giving them what amounts to a guided tour.

I and 39 of my similarly disconnected American Jewish peers crammed onto an enormous airplane and flew halfway across the world to a region famous for its controversy and not for its friendliness to tourists.

We survived the flight without murdering each other largely thanks to the relative luxury showered on us by SwissAir.

Upon arrival we crammed into a bus and drove through some incredibly dull and not-jaw-droppingly-gorgeous-at-all scenery </s> ...

(these were taken out the window of a moving bus) ...to a small town called Arbat, where we had some fun little social tortures called "icebreakers" and then collapsed onto the beds of a terrible little hotel that would fit neatly into the set of the latest Iraq war biopic.

I slept deeply.

4am the next morning, we had a breakfast of bread smeared with some of the chocolate spread that we later learned is the national breakfast food of Israel, and then piled into the bus for a drive to Masada.

Masada is a fortress ruin in the mountains above the Dead Sea.  It was originally built by a paranoid king named Herod, who wanted it to be an assault-proof palace, complete with all the luxuries that a modern Roman-loving Judean monarch expects. Herod never used it.

Later, a bunch of Jewish zealots, in one of their interminable and extraordinarily bloody rebellions against the Romans, took it over as the last refuge of Judaism IN THE WORLD.  At least, they thought it was. Eventually the Romans managed to build a ramp up the mountain to the fortress walls, mostly with the slave labor of Jewish prisoners.  When they arrived inside the fortress, it was completely silent and empty.  No fighting, no women, no children, nothing. Finally they found the bodies in the synagogue.  Every single person was dead of suicide. It takes quite some zealotry to do something like that, especially considering that these people were convinced that they were the last Jews on the planet.  They thought that Judaism was over. Crazy stuff, eh?

Anyway, we saw the sun rise over the Red Mountains of Jordan from Masada.  It was incredible.

The distant square is the location of one of the Roman camps that besieged the zealots.

Then, we hiked down the Snake Path, so named for its difficult route, which was never successfully stormed by the Romans.

Then, we had lunch.

I have a California King Snake (Lampropeltis getula californiae Desert Phase). He is cuter than your cat.  No really, he is, just give it up.

His name is Pocket because he has an undeniable fondness for the things.

When I was a young lad, my mother stopped by a pet store to look at the reptiles (she knew I wanted one) and picked one particularly adorable snake up.  He curled all the way around her belt, loop by loop, and then lodged himself inside her hip pocket and refused to emerge.  At that point, there was no choice but to purchase the creature and drive home.  Pocket emerged from his refuge during the drive, and was then coaxed into a more secure container.

Those of you who know me know that I tend to ramble on, searching for the words and expressions that might convey those tidal emotions and murky ideas that slosh about the empty space I have where most people carry their brains.

As a courtesy to my dear readers, I warn them that I intend to use this platform to allow my mind to meander, my laundry to air, my photos to be admired, and my ego to be stroked (or perhaps crushed).