#eurofantasy

Though the ceremony is supposed to be a solemn occasion, there is an irrepressable atmosphere of frivolity which the elders have come to tolerate. Someone usually bakes, with the justification of 'provisions'- as if sweet lemmas bread and honeyed kur-loaf is suitable for a trek to the Old Forest. Still, it is welcomed, and shared with much joy, before the signal is given to begin the walk. The Elders ensure we are properly supplied.

As one, our village departs, and takes first the easy trail everyone knows, the flat, flinty track through the open fields of Lannerstrom, our part of the world, and for a time nothing unusual occurs. But then, about a half-mile along, where usually a walker would continue blithley on toward the neighbouring towns of Haig and Quatorze, we veer left, toward the snaking trail that winds toward the distant mountains.

It takes a full morning's walk to reach them, and by the time we are in view of our goal, it is usually time for a short rest. Here, prayers are spoken for the departed, and for each of them a stone is found, to add to the cairns when we reach them.

Then, the ascent. The Old Forest has survived both because of the trees, and the path it takes to reach them. It is no easy walk, and it is a parent's responsibility to guide their children well. Those who do not must turn back, and bear the shame until the next year. There are not many, but there are always some, and they are always known. I would not go so far as to say that we shun them; but we always know them, and it may be said that they are treated differently.

The path narrows, chicanes in a complicated zigzag, filled with increasing numbers of thickening tree-roots. You can and will stumble if you're not careful. Adding to that, there are places where the path is steep, almost vertical, and though in the worst places steps have been constructed to permit the less sure-footed access, it is still challenging. But we endure. We aid one another, as we have always done. For in these trees, lies our future.

We enter the forest just as the midday sun is piercing the canopy, shafts of marvellous light visible all around. With our breath held, our eyes scrabble over the enormous trunks, searching for the first one to show the marks this year.

Whomever is first is gets a cheer and a cry, and they are given the right of first trade; if trades are to be done after the harvest is done, they have the right to bargain first.

In these trees are graven around, we estimate, eight hundred and eighty names; more than enough to supply a small community. Every year, they are different, and every year, we harvest them, paring them from the living bark and affixing them to the waiting plates beside our homes. But each tree affords more than a name. It offers portents, hints, meanings, appearing as words, runes, and symbols in the bark. These we cannot remove, so we must merely recall them in any way we can. Some take rubbings. Some copy. Some simply recall what they can. Either way, in these trees is foretold the name's fate- what it will mean for the coming year.

The concepts are sometimes vague- 'excess' may mean alcoholism or a bountiful harvest, for example- but on the whole it is usually plain which names mean fortune for a farmer and which mean more to a seeker of romance.

Some names offer no great boon, but no curses either; these names usually end in "sen," and signal a peaceful year. The riskier names tend to be favoured by the young, the "mund"s and "marr"s.

There are, however, some names that are uniformly ill-fated. Those trees grow few leaves, their bark is seared an ashy grey as if touched by some forest fire, and the portents in their bark glow an eerie red. They fortell death, disease, insanity, loss. It is considered a badge of great honour to take one of these names, and the village will pledge support to the person who claims such a name.

You may ask, why take these names at all, and I will answer, that when the first generation to walk in these woods discovered such a name, they let it be. The next year, they found there were fully five trees like it, surrounding the untouched first; that year proved especially hard to weather, and ever since then they, and later we, were diligent in removing the pestilent trees wherever they appeared.

The story goes that Maximilian was conducting a study of the Three Bridges of the historic town of Crenell, and had finished the preliminary sketches when the Battallions D'Enfys launched their attack on the town. During the occupation, the Three Bridges were set ablaze, and Maximilian stayed put, adding detail to the sketches as he watched.

He risked a lot to preserve his vision for the world. He later fled Crenell during the Unionist Purges, and as a result his painting became one of the iconic images of the Uprising.

Its title, of course, forms a not-so-subtle pun; while he depicts a literal trio of bridges ablaze, it came to represent the role the Sack of Krenell ultimately played in the wider conflict. It destroyed any lasting hope of a peaceful resolution to the disagreement between the Comte and the King, and would set the stage for a prolonged battle between the King's sitting forces and those of the Unionists.

The painting's composition has ignited a fierce debate about Maximilian's loyalties. The majority take the highly literalist persepctive that he was outraged at the attack and meant the work as a condemnation of the barbarity of the act. Historians following this reading state that Maximilian could not possibly have known that it was the Crenell Citizen's Militia that started the fires, in an effort to deny the occupying force an easy route to the civic districts.

However, some few have noted the colours of paint Maximilian used to depict the flames are a close match to the red, gold and cerulean colours of the Union's forces, and so argue that his work was a celebration of what he saw as the opening shot in a just war. The fact that no human suffering is depicted in the painting is used to shore up this interpretation.

Still others point to the clouds of smoke that are shown in the sky, as foreshadowing the conflict; some have claimed that the large plume on the left side depicts the king falling from his throne, his crown shattered. Others say they see an upraised sword-arm, a rallying cry for the King's forces to rise up and counter-attack the Unionists. This debate rages to this day.

At 2.35 pm, André's unit advanced. They had taken the Jardin Arbol, the Promenade De Roi, and were advancing now toward Crenell's Left Bank. They had faced only token resistance, and they were full of revolutionary fire.

Ahead, the street broadened out where it met the river, becoming a wide, open space, perfect for sniper fire. Andre signalled to the men to advance, low and slow.

They were being far too cautious. The milita's sniper rifles were rusting in a warehouse somewhere in Pottsdam, and would not fire a shot in anger during the entire conflict. But as they advanced, the men discerned a thick, heavy reek in the air, a mixture of a crackling log fire and boiling tar, and as they crested the hill and attained the view, they stopped short.

"Bastards!" Andre spat.

'Cor, they'll see that for hundreds of miles!" gawped the man on his right, whose name history declined to record.

Andre surveyed the scene before him. The roaring flames seemed to turn the waters of the Flüss to liquid gold, glinting and glistening before him. The sparks drifting skyward were a legion rushing toward the skies.

He stepped forward, and to his shock, picked out the outlines of a person standing by the riverfront. An extraordinarily long-limbed, skinny person, in such tattered rags that he initially took it to be a practice dummy or scarecrow of some sort. But the waving of the arms was too precise to be a mere reaction to the wind, and he realised, to his surprise, that the figure was swiping repeatedly at something that lay before it, its arms describing long, sinous arcs in the air.

He drew his service pistol, and called out, "Praise the Comte!"

This shibboleth had generally been enough to identify friend from foe for now. But the ragged man went on swiping away as if nothing had happened. Confused, Andre advanced, holding out his hand to his men to warn them off from approaching.

"Excuse me? Citizen?"

Still no reply. Andre was close enough now to make out what the figure was working on. A large white canvas, upon which a detailed sketch of the inferno before them was taking shape, swimming together as if emerging from deep water. Andre watched, mesmerised.

The bridges were there, but also here. The loose pencil had created a version that looked somehow realler than the nightmare unfolding before them. It looked like you could reach out and touch it. Take it home. Own it.

A rattle of small-arms fire- somewhere in the distance- snapped him out of it. He raised his pistol, and stepped behind the ragged figure.

"This is your last-"

"For goodness' sake!" snapped the artist. "You're in my light- can't you step back a bit?"

Despite his gun, his command, and his authority, Andre felt himself comply. The picture was coming out too well to ruin. He could appreciate that. A million schoolboy drawings, that he was inordinately proud of, reared their poorly-shaded, wonkily composed heads, and convinced him to hold his fire.

"Thank you," the artist said. He licked the end of his pencil. "Just a little more…"

'Uhm,' said Andre. "We…ah…that is to say- my comrades and I mean to keep on this way."

"Over the bridge?" came the reply. "Somehow I think you might need to find a different route."

"Be that as it may," Andre said, "orders are orders. I must ask you to move along."

"Please, sirrah," the artist begged. "I am almost done with the sketches. I beg of you…but thirty more minutes."

Andre considered his pistol, and the artist's plea. Earlier that morning, it had taken a man's life. The man had been innocent of no crime. He had merely wished to warn his son that soldiers were approaching. He had thrown up his hands and called out, and Andre had fired. He had thought he saw steel in the man's hands. It had been a broom with a metal handle. He had fired and the man had fallen, dead. His son called to him to wake up, and would not move away, so he had been shot by one of the others.

This was what he thought about as he considered, as the men looked to him in puzzlement, and the artist continued at his work.

They waited, unsure of what to do precisely, while Maxilimian Dejardin completed what was to be his masterwork, muttering under his breath matters of light, shade, and shadow. Andre radioed command, and received his orders, but chose, that day, to disobey them. He waited until the sketch was completed, to the artist's satisfaction. Then he gave Maximilian a decent head start, and ensured that his path was clear by recalling and redirecting as many units as he could raise. The picture deserved a chance to flee, and the artist had been doing no harm, after all.

"What's the damned point?" Jean snapped. He gestured to the picture window, embossed with a graphic of a teapot blooming with flowers.

"Better to be safe," Carlito grunted. His work done, he knelt behind his barricade, rifle aimed at the street outside.

"My feet are killing me," Earnest complained. He began to fiddle with his boot, massaging at his ankle.

"You take that shoe off and they really will," Jean said. He was attempting to roll a cigarette, but getting no-where- the cheap army surplus tobacco puddling in greasy lumps on the tabletop. "We have to be ready to move the second we see them."

Earnest shrugged. "I don't see the point in running. Might as well surrender, no? See if the Comte offers a better benefits package."

Jean and Carlito let the silence swallow the statement there, as was deserved. Earnest shuffled his boot off, flexed his toes with a yearning sigh. "Thank Heavens above."

Jean had managed to scrape enough tobacco into a filter, and was now attempting to convince a spark from his lighter. He spoke around the thing in his mouth. "The city's going to fall. We need to find some way out."

"You think it's impossible, then?" Carlito said. "It all looks pretty quiet."

"Because we've been recalled. They're giving up on Crenell, clearly." Click, click, click.

Earnest pulled his rifle toward him, and inspected it. Nocked the bolt. Fidgeted with the release. "Did…did the Captain…?"

Jean nodded. "I heard the order come in, just before they got him. Why else do you think I ran?"

Carlito's shoulders hung slack. He turned away from his improvised firing-post. "So that's it. We're just giving up."

Earnest tried his radio, covered in dust from where the fusillades had peppered the walls of the guard-post. It emitted a low, pointless crackling sound. "Broken," he moaned.

Carlito laughed. "You're surprised? Perhaps you really are one of the Comte's boys. Say what you like, but he clearly has money. Enough to send motherfuckers without number against a city with no real garrison, just us."

Click. Click. Jean cursed. "It sounds like piss-poor management to me. Why not the capital, if he commands these legions? I think, gentlemen, we were unlucky enough to be part of a Demonstrasse de furze. Our friend the Comte wants the King and his supporters to know he's serious about his ambitions."

"These supporters you mention- are you quite sure they exist?" Earnest teased.

"After today, the king will be lucky if he and his court aren't arrested," Carlito grinned. "That'd be a sight to see, eh? His Royal Highness, frogmarched in chains!"

Hiss! Finally, a flame flared from Jean's lighter, and triumphantly he brought it to the cigarette at his lips. His face flared with weird shadows in the three-o-clock twilight, and a thin strand of smoke coiled gently toward the roof.

The world exploded outward in a puzzle of glass, noise, and light. Jean's features were swallowed in an expanding cloud of red. Then he was gone.

Earnest was behind the counter. Shards of glass were everywhere, and he barely felt them sink into his knees, the sock-clad sole of his foot. The gun had clattered hopelessly to the floor.

"HANDS UP!" blared a voice from the square. "SURRENDER!"

The sound of splintering wood came from the doorway: someone was forcing their way inside. Carlito was presumably dead, too.

If there had been any time to fight back, to prove his loyalty to his King and his city, it was now.

He lunged for the rifle, and managed to knock it further away clumsily. Useless. Useless. There was a click as weapons were levelled at his head.

He looked up, thinking the only thing he could achieve now was to die looking his executioner in the eyes.

He blinked.

He began to laugh. What a cruel joke this was!

Behind the barrel of the gun, a fierce face, lean, thin, intelligent, with an aquiline nose and brilliant, seafoam eyes.

"What's funny?" snapped the soldier. He wore the blood-red cuirass of the Comte's Free Unionists, and the tam o'shanter atop his head shone with a burnished brass badge- a shattered star.

Earnest didn't reply. He couldn't. The soldier's eyes narrowed…

"Tom." The single word forced its way free from Earnest's lips- as far as he was concerned it might as well have been his last.

Tom stared. His finger quivered on the trigger- then relaxed. "Sarge!" He called out. "I'm taking these prisoner!"

"What? Hurry it up!"

The rifle twisted, and fetched itself with a clunk against Earnest's skull.

Twice a week, the coffee shop on the Rue Plaisance held informal meetings. Their official purpose was to socialise with like-minded folk. Their unoffical purpose had rapidly become to discuss the political tumoil that had overtaken the papers.

Earnest had started out coming for this purpose. He, like most students at the Collegia National, was curious to pin down the rumours that had been circulating. Was it true the King's court were pederasts and sodomites to a man? Was it true that very soon they would match to arms against Gasnost? Was it true, moreover, that the King's own son- so theatrically disinherited and cast out from the line of succession- meant to move against his father?

He did not discover any truth to these rumours, nor did he disprove them. What made him stay, however, was being in the company of so many passionate young men who spoke with such incandescent passion, such sincerity and devotion that he found himself wholly in awe.

Among those men was Tom. A student of philosophy, who spoke with a rolling Rialto accent and often wore shirt-sleeves pushed up to show off the pale curves of his forearms. He and Earnest spoke for hours one night, on the nature of predestination. Tom argued for free will, Earnest for time's flat circle, and though neither convinced the other, Earnest felt he could have gone on talking all night.

They began to meet regularly. Then arranged a drink in the evening. Then, after an agonising year, they were taking a tram to the Student Quarter, and they were arguing over relationships, could one ever truly love someone without being able to touch them, and to make a point Earnest had put a hand on Tom's knee, and had left it there, and then somehow his lips had been hot with Tom's breath and his hands had been seizing his friend's trim buttocks and it had felt so right, so perfect.

They hadn't spoken for days afterward, and Earnest had been so afraid he had ruined everything. He had been writing a letter and purchasing a ticket for the 18.50 express to Port Crest when Tom had knocked on his door, hair a mess, shirt collar askew, cheeks tracked with tears.

After that, they were almost inseperable. They spent weekends in one another's arms. They explored everything there was to know about one another, body, soul, mind, emotions, sex. They held nothing back.

It lasted another year; but the writing was on the wall long before that. Earnest was staying with family when the King signed Proclamation 124 into law, and the announcement was broadcast.

"We are assured that the land must be fruitful," came the plummy voice over the radio. "We require every subject of the Realm to produce strong, healthy offspring, so that our nation will prosper against its enemies; it is written, in the Good Book, that to be lead astray into sin mires the clear waters and ensures a weak generation."

"Hear, hear!" cried his father. "It's good to have a king who cites scripture again."

"Sssh!" cautioned his mother. "He's speaking still!"

"There are so many young men and women in deep melancholy, ruining themselves with drink, sodomy, and self-abuse." Earnest's ears pinked; he prayed his mother would not notice.

"Therefore we put forward; all unmarried subjects shall, by winter, have rectified their status. Those who have not shall be granted a wife, drawn by public lottery on the Anniversary of the Throne!"

Deafening applause. He was drawn into his mother's embrace, rigid, cold.

He supposed he would like to have a wife.

He supposed.

Tom would not hear of it. "I refuse. I will not put any woman through it. If I cannot be true to myself…I want no part of it."

"Tom. Darling. We can work this out. We can find a way…I am sure I can convince someone to marry me who wouldn't mind…'

"What? That we were committing sin together? That we were guilty of the horrible crime of being in love?"

Earnest had no satisfying answer, and though they made it up, it was plain to see that things were on the out. Tom grew distant. He no longer laughed as freely. He stopped holding Earnest's hand in public.

The end came with anger. They had been discussing the publication that had been circulating. The man history would later style as the Comte was, here, using his civilian name. He called upon all free thinkers to unite, to stand firm against a tyrant who valued little but their labour, and looked set to drag the country's fortunes through the mud.

Earnesr had made his usual point; that all politicians were equally untrustworthy, all liars, willing to say anything to seize power. He did not want to fall for this Comte's lies; he was sure that the way forward lay as it always had done, through the Citizen's Audiences that were held mid-way through the sitting king's reign. He had thought Tom above such obvious manipulation tactics.

Tom had gotten very quiet. Then he had seized a packing-case and vanished upstairs. Earnest had felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

When Tom came down, clutching the full bag, Earnest had tried to remonstrate. To reason. "I thought you loved me," he'd said, in a voice thick with tears.

"I thought you did, too," Tom replied.

And then he was gone.

Earnest signed on with the militia about two months into the breakup. He no longer worried about being killed in the line of duty; in fact, that was just fine with him.

He was in the back of a halftrack. His hands were manacled together. His head ached awfully.

Tom was standing at the rear, surveying. The radio on his belt crackled to life.

"Sir. The Militia are offically standing down, retreating. Crenell is under Union occupation."

"Acknowledged," he said with a sigh.

To Earnest's right lay Carlito. He was, it seemed, not dead. He was also a prisoner, now.

A parched tongue ran around Earnest's lips. He tasted blood. His head thumped.

"Tom," he croaked. "How…"

"Shut up," Tom hissed. "Just…shut up!"

Earnest obeyed, hanging his head, and Tom let out a disgusted groan.

"Look, you do realise I ought to have bloody well shot you and left you be? We haven't taken many prisoners."

"A demonstrasse de furze," Earnest croaked. "Your precious Comte wanted to set an example. Wanted us all shot, for the crime of trying to protect our homes…" With a violent stab, he remembered that Jean, calm, sensible Jean, was dead, and felt his gorge rising.

"You were cowards, all. Cowards are shot." Tom spat.

Earnest's face twisted. "Cowards? Cowards? Tom, what happened to you? You used to tell me that fighting for a cause you believed in was noble. How can you be so disgusted by men who put their lives on the line for their homeland?"

"They ought to have the common sense to realise the man who rules their land is corrupt," said Tom.

"What? The King repealed Proclamation 124! As he said he would! It was all going to be ok, and then your precious Comte-"

"Shut up…" Tom said through gritted teeth.

"What happened, Tom? How did all that passion lead you to his side?"

Tom's gloved fingers fussed with the radio on his belt, turning the knob into the neutral position.

"I never thought you'd wind up a two-bit butcher, Tom. I thought you were destined to be great. To achieve a great novel, or to found a party. Seeing you like this…like a gun-dog…"

"I said, shut up!"

"I just want to know why, ok?" Earnest was struggling not to cry. "Why did you kill my friend? What does that feckless liar have to offer you? Why can't you look me in the eyes-"

Suddenly, Tom grabbed Earnest, hauled him upright, and brought his lips within kissing distance.

"I know," he whispered. "I know the Comte lies."

Earnest stared at him, uncomprehending. "But…but then…"

"It is a question of principle," Tom said, louder now. "I will not sleepwalk into oblivion. Where a chance to change the world is afforded me, I want to sieze it. And if nothing else, the King's vision is not mine. He and I are strangers grown."

"My friend is dead," Earnest said. "I may be a coward, according to you, and I may be unable to appreciate the grander picture, but I know that you, and your men, are killers, all. I suppose you'll tell me it was needed?"

"It wasn't intended. It was supposed to be suppressing fire." Tom sounded almost sulky.

"Well, it killed someone. For ever. And you can't fix that."

"But when we win, and the King is deposed, we'll have made a better world! We'll have…"

"A liar on the throne instead?"

"A liar who understands what it means to be unwanted," Tom said thoughtfully. "A liar, yes, but a liar I can trust."

"So that's what it took? You feeling like you can trust someone? Why couldn't you trust me to fight for you, Tom?"

Tom blinked. "Well. Because you had made it clear you had no intention to. You knew I was upset- and you sat there and said we should do nothing. What if he'd decided to arrest people who were doing what we were, hmm? What then?"

Earnest swallowed. He wanted to say, "I'd have fought for you. I'd have stood up to them, then." But even as he thought the words, a part of him knew it was not true.

Tom's knowing smile showed he'd given the answer without meaning to.

"That is why. And look, Earnest- even on opposing sides, I am still fighting to keep you safe. You are captive, but not dead. Why do you suppose that is?"