The House on the Rock is an ill place, perhaps, to speak of illusion, but some things can be said. For you yourself could walk through its doors and labyrinths of oddities and forgeries and see-- with as many eyes as you currently happen to be in possession of-- that there is indeed a great red dragon with a flame drunk on hrafnvín, a band drumming endlessly to the delight of a crimson queen as she spins without traveling, and-- getting back to that 'possession' business-- a hospitable raven guarding a precious stone of Yggr's skull.
What follows, however, I cannot promise you will see, nor can I promise that it was ever seen at all, and unlike the above I must say that the entire operation rather requires belief suspended... for some definition of the term.
However, what I can promise-- in fact, am somewhat bound to promise you-- is that it is a story about a sword.
So. If you would know yet more:
"...when reason's gone mad, there is but one elixir to combat it: no reason at all." He waved a hand holding a garish hat in an arc around the room, the millinery seeming to be three or nine stacked atop the other, or merely one of a puzzling shape depending on the angles and the lights. "It's not just the carousel; it's the entire house. But of course, to plant a well-rooted tree-"
"You would have to go tremendously fast, keeping something in place like that." Ellis finished the thought, remaining focused upon the carousel so similarly hued to herself, a crimson curiosity dancing in the reflections of her pupils. "It's bad form to abhor a vacuum, but to some a hole is not a ladder."
The Mad Hatter nodded, seemingly pleased enough with the endorsement to endure the interruption. "More's the pity."
"Quite. But proper bloodletting has always been the domain of the Red," responded the Red Queen, tone now barbed with a terrible and restrained indignation. "The horror vacui is not exempt from the rule."
"True and convenient. A rare combination these days." "But while holes may so often be the domain of wizards--" He glanced at the two fists of clenched vermilion leather perched upon either hip side of her hips with a sliver of a smile, widening the snarl as a smaller, deeper voice began to interrupt.
"You're bad at making them, comparatively. Though I do seem to recall you cracking my head like a Swedish log a few years back."
The speaker's jacket matched the gloves in question, though it carried more evidence of the forgotten violence of tears, no salve to soothe them save motor oil and ochre. The silver scythe of hair was tipped in the same shade of venom, deeper now in this place where all was red and gold.
"Oh? We've decided finally that I was responsible for that?" he replied, twisting his features into a caricature of remorse.
The sword just smiled, a blade of jagged teeth. "Sir. My commitment to the bit is unparallelled."
"Verulfr, Vitnir, Vargr. Vörðr, Víðarr... Vegtamr. Mmm." The Hatter dropped the mask and began to ponder out loud. "And curses of threes or not, I would imagine Dvalinn's child has been waiting a long time to be so sated? Well! This does demand a biting narrative; luckily our jaw-dropping hero--"
He was interrupted, then, by a shorter blade pointed at him by another, and a long shadow standing over him, allowing Nóttkeyrandi hefnir's signing hands to be seen in the gold of the carousel's fire.
"Heroes aren't real. And they're your man, but they're my sword."
Before the Hatter could break into another tangent of narration, he bent down, coming eye to eye with his father before finishing.
"Also. It's my day."
"Your night, for some time." Ellis had no hesitation in entering the gap, even as he rose back to his full height. "And a knight may be the last piece we need."
"I'm not-"
"I know as much!" She snorted, and the entire frame of the room seemed to shake, a videotape for a moment without its tracking. "Nothing like the not-night for burning a hole in things-- though I expect I won't have to resort to throwing you?"
He looked at her as if such madness had come up endlessly before with another, took a large breath, then shook his head.
"...No. Best on my feet."
The Hatter stabbed his way back into the conversation. "You know, I seem to recall your brother being a little more... festive."
"I'm bad at parties." The motions of this speech appeared just as familiar to his fingers. "Heard that runs in the family."
"She would know." The words were neither nostalgic nor nettled; merely certain. "But of course do send my regards to the eager battle-axe. Lovely woman with many virtues; alas propriety demands I not reveal trade secrets."
"Ever the patron of virtuous women. I know." The Red Queen's tone and smile was sharp enough to cut even the Hatter to silence. "But," she continued, clapping her hands, "well timed indeed, for our trade secrets are in place, save one which we will soon provide and plant."
With that, she unfolded her left palm, a delicate white teacup lined with gold and a hand painted band of hunters atop wolves eternally circling its gilded lip. "Have a last sip, dear Hatter! For now it's time-- to shut your mouth, and open your eyes."
"May my crys-eye chip and shatter. Hrm. Yes." He rummaged in his coat's tattered lining before pulling out a tiny metal vial with rust creeping out from the screw-top. After a moment of contemplation the Hatter tapped the vial against his eye with a clink. "Ah, there. Got to have the right notes--" His voice trailed off. The vial's crusted top had been unscrewed, and he was now busying himself with dosing the teacup ex machina that Ellis now had in hand.
A viscous, shimmering liquid poured from it initially. Quickly, however, it was obvious the bled sunlight was quite reactive: tendrils of scorched clay smoke explored the air around the stream, and as it mixed with the offered brew the golds merged, blushed deeply, and then spiraled into an impenetrable darkness of swamp. With a familiar flourish, he removed the pulsing, ribboned hat as he bowed, crowning the sword's tip with it as he fell to his knees.
The Hatter no longer, he looked up at the Red Queen, the revolving fire just enough to inflame his glass eye into an ember. "May I?"
"I rather think you should! However," the Queen continued briskly, "it's hardly a party without entertainment; the calliope's something but altogether already around--"
"I could sing," offered the Sharp Hatter, and without waiting for response, began:
"To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said,
I've a spear in my hand, I've a hat on my head;
Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be,
Come and dine with the Red Queen, Vegtamr, and me!"
Satisfied by the truths within the tune, Ellis handed the gilded teacup down to the man with a hole in his head. In turn he nodded graciously, taking a vigorous swallow before handing it up to his spear-heir.
"O Looking-Glass creatures," quoth the Raven, "draw near!
'Tis an honour to host you, a favour to hear:
'Tis a privilege high to have dinner and tea,
Along with the Red Queen, Vegtamr, and me!"
He took it wordlessly and drank, and it seemed to be a horn with a strange warmth to it now. If the Sharp Hatter thought they might have heard the holey man's low, too-amused growl beneath the growing volume of the calliope music-- practice makes perfect-- they too said nothing of it, and instead took the half-empty tallboy offered from above. They paused for a moment to finish: first the draught, then the verse:
"Then fill up the glasses with rust-tea and ink,
Or anything else that is pleasant to drink:
Mix nails with the nightcap, and wood with the wine —
And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-nine!"
"Very good." Ellis stomped her tall scepter once in the right hand as her left took the can and smashed it into nothingness, before directing her attentions up towards the much taller figure. His size was now blotting out the light of the carousel save for the thin corona that danced around the edges of his silhouette. "You, now-- well! Hold your hat and your girl; mind that you watch your head at that height, assuming you intend to keep your mind! The network is not responsible for any lost items or injuries incurred in the duration of your ride. But as for those already lacking--" Her tone and attention switched back to the Sharp Hatter. "You're quite right, you know. This is a story about a sword."
It was Ellis' turn to look down now. Her glove cupped the sword's jaw, and her eyes were wide with the wonder of a child encountering their first improbably deep precipice. "That's participation."
"Is that what people want?" asked Vegtamr.
His son finished in a half-rest. "It's what we do."
"Quite." The Red Queen rose again and stared at the carousel, or rather something that seemed like it should be a very long way past it. "Now, let me see how this path goes... oh, very good! A very old game, but with a fresh hand. Would you like a bet?"
"Chess and cards were never my strong point." The sword squinted from under their hat brim. "I know it's not your usual game, but... can we meet at croquet?"
"Can we." With a sharp bang the Red Queen hit her scepter to the floor, its form glowing with a neon warmth before the light melted and reforged itself into a flamingo-shaped mallet with a remarkably pointed and spiraling end. "Help or not, you should run very fast, little rabbit, if you intend to dig your own hole."
They listened, but their focus never left the glass ember in the kneeling god's face. "The ways belong to you but they're tame to him. And I can hold a flame."
A hand reached down towards them, and they took it. Their gaze turned towards the owner as they rose, and the blade flashed the hint of an armory's smile at him.
"You mind opening that for me?"
And the defender of the silent city stepped forward with one heavy boot. His hands were quick, and found their grip on either side of his father's left eye socket. A little less than half open, but enough for leverage.
And then they began to pull, and the last thing the son hears is his father's laugh.
practice makes perfect
It's inspirational. Something sounds-- no, nothing sounds anymore, the shadows are jutting in with an emerging skyline of cobalt, deadening wedges and angles, piercing the walls of the carousel's round light to join with the impenetrable darkness now cracking and splitting out from what once was a socket. Only the blazing glass orb now anchoring the dark spiral's now self-propelled operation.
The silent god pulls back his hands and in one stroke finally draws the sword Tyrfingr, the Sharp Hatter becoming a forged sun ripping a wound of arcing light as he reared back with it, matching the motion of the now-disappeared carousel. At the same time Ellis brings back her mallet-spear in a similar arc, and as one they arc down to converge upon the eye. Ellis's mallet hits the ball, and the force cracks a familiar crosshair into the shimmering glass that begins to bleed molten iron as the blade lodges itself within and its wielder releases the hilt.
caught you.
it is what I do.
That same force sends both eye and sword forward, breaking the void like a barrow's door. The darkness cracks and crumbles into light, and suddenly everything-sound, light, speed, and far too much of all of it, is returning, gushing and flooding into tributaries and branches of poured light, the cyclone of carousel flame now a looking-glass sluice gate as the sword continued to fly through it. Past the membrane, the spiral of the fragmented worlds was stronger, and the blade moved serpentine in return, forcing their way further in against the current . From their neck trailed a spider's thread of viscera and impossibility from which tiny red blinking lights scattered off.
Time was mad here as well, but at some point the pushing began to feel more like falling. Flashes of worlds and other past meals of ravens seemed to speed in their intensity and threaten the focus of the sword's drive, its fire vaguely considering the pleasures of dissolving into the rest of the light; slipping into a million dreamscapes and realities in the great centrifuge, but bastards were all so often born stubborn, and they could feel the root ball of glass strengthening the flow of its bleed to creep out beyond the edges of the sphere.
And suddenly, they realize the tense has changed, and time halts for one last instant as the sword lurches, halts, and flips, releasing the eye into the storm just as they feel a small, almost laughable 'pop' in their hilt, and the world switches into reverse. The sword looked down as the reel sped their extraction, and in their last glimpse of the wound it looked like a great, dark pipe, and concentric rings of the tiny, red-lit spiders began to circle it in a delicate dance whose speed yet mimicked the carousel.
They laughed, hard as it was with the line still taut. "Yeah. You old fucking bastard; I guess it is an organ."
...And then the sun returned, and the carousel still turns, though if it knows more of what happened in that wild ride that day, it has so far whispered no more.
At least not to me.
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