"Kren": Part Three (A Short Interlude)

 

Kren sat there for nearly half an hour, simply breathing, taking a sip now and then, cooling off. A thin line of sunlight intruding through the shuttered western window crept along the floor. He watched it with dull eyes until it reached the edge of the flagstone undergirding the threshold. It looked like a long pointing finger. He shook his head angrily and stood up.

“Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,” he began. “The gold day is ending …”  

His voice tapered away into silence. He shook his head again, as if to clear it from cobwebs, and looked around the room wildly. The walls seemed to be pressing in around him like the sides of a grave. The Unrest, which had been growing inside him with the lengthening of autumn, and which he had sought to quell with the hard work of the fields, was still a stifling weight in his gut, right under his heart.

He stood a moment, wagging his heavy head like a stymied goat, beard sweeping to and fro across his chest, eyes squeezed shut. Then with a coughing snarl he sprang forward, seized his still half-drenched shirt where it hung, and slung it over his head as he stomped forward. He slammed the door after him with a bang that shook the dust from the rafters. In the empty room, the line of sunlight crept forward a little more.

[I apologize; I meant to write more, and I know where I'm headed, but the past few days have been draining. I don't know if it's my blood sugar or having the Rottweilers in the house or the change in weather or the ennui that sets in at the end of a month, but my energy has been really low. I didn't even have the power to truly express my admiration for the figure my brother John had made of Roth, a Morg from Goldfire. Above is a picture of the sculpt at an earlier stage. I hope he will not mind me showing it.] 

The Revenge of The Shadow Library

 

Last night (or, to put it another way, early this morning), waking up and finding myself unable to sleep, I decided to move out the couple of very heavy trunks where I keep family memorabilia, in preparation to giving them a good going over at last. After I finally struggled them over to the couch, I opened the trunks to cast a prefatory eye over the contents before trying to go to bed again.

After looking at some blank notebooks and ancient report cards and so forth, I ran across another one of those little diaries which I kept buying once upon a time. I thought to myself, “Hullo! What’s this?”, because I thought that I had all my journals in my other files. Opening it, I found myself looking at the beginning of yet another Book List! Dating from the very early 1980’s (my college years) and stopping just at the early “C”’s, I began to scan its inky, cursive pages.

Imagine my surprise at discovering a whole TWENTY-FOUR forgotten volumes for the Shadow Library in such a little span! And once their titles had been brought to my memory, I recognized them all (with the possible exception of the Bierce; I must not have had it very long). I immediately began compulsively tracking down covers and making a list.

Seeing them brings back very visceral and vivid recollections of what that period was like. It was very much my “searching” and even “pretentious” time, while I was looking at everything and trying to figure out what I would be, as all the classical, religious, and philosophical works indicate – most of which, I must honestly state, I never got very far with.

Of course, the incomplete catalog begs the burning question: what other books might there have been in the unrecorded D-Z that I have since forgotten, as I forgot these twenty-four? I shall probably never know, but, though the question tantalizes me, I must also ask myself: can it really be of any great importance?

      Aldair in Albion, by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Anywhen, by James Blish

The Complete Plays of Aristophanes (A Bantam Book)

Ethics, by Aristotle (A Penguin Book)

It All Started with Columbus, by Richard Armour

The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce Vol. II (Ballantine)

Tales from The Decameron of Giovanni Bocaccio

Buddhist Scriptures (A Penguin Book)

The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Modern Library)

Creatures of the Dark, by R. G. Austin

Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury

Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited by Samuel Butler (Modern Library)

Erewhon, by Samuel Butler (Magnum Easy Eye)

Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, by Roland H. Bainton

Illusions, by Richard Bach

The World’s Greatest Monster Quiz, by Dan Carlinsky and Edwin Goodgold

Necronomicon, by ‘Simon’

The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan (Spire Books)

Satyrday, by Steven Bauer

Science and Human Values, by J. Bronowski

Sea Monsters, by Walter Buehr

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

Summa Theologiae: Volume I, by Thomas Aquinas (Image Books)

Wieland, by Charles Brockden Brown

Please, No

 

"Our hearts, even bigger than our feet."

This is said by a 'Harfoot' (they refuse to call them Hobbits, though they certainly are) in a trailer for Amazon's "The Rings of Power". Canonically speaking, unless one is a Proudfoot, Hobbits do not have particularly large feet. This is a concept brought over from the Peter Jackson films, where the Hobbit character actors had from necessity to wear large prosthetic feet over their own. Even if this is accepted as a cinematic feature, I'm not sure if Hobbits would refer to their own (to them) normal features as big, rather than other races as having proportionally small feet. But maybe that's just me picking nits one week before the series starts.

"Kren": Part Two ('Old Man Mosshide')

Kren was last in line for his pay and lingered near the end of the straggling line of workers heading back to Far Reach. As they entered the village many turned into The Guesthouse, a ramshackle building called for courtesy’s sake an inn, but which was mostly an alehouse with a few stalls of straw for drinkers who accidentally overstayed their visit. Others passed it and went into their own homes. Kren trudged on after them all until he came to the end of town and Old Man Mosshide’s place.

Everyone still called it that, even though Mosshide had been dead for fifty years now. He had already been Old Man Mosshide when Kren’s mother had passed away and he had taken the young Morg into his care. Even now Kren couldn’t quite figure out why he’d done it, unless it were a mixture of pity and loneliness. The old carpenter had been a bit of a recluse, and mostly treated him like a combination of a dog and a pet parrot in the early years.

As Kren grew up and Mosshide grew ever older, the aging man taught him more and more of his business, pegging boards and setting stone, cutting shingles and thatch, mixing mortar and placing struts. At first, he felt like another tool in Mosshide’s apron, then an assistant, and finally an apprentice, but never like a son. He finally accepted that such a family feeling couldn’t be between them, though he believed that the old man loved him in his own way.

Still, it was a surprise to him and the whole village to find that when Old Man Mosshide finally passed away he had left the house to Kren. It had always been assumed that when the crotchety hermit was dead the Hetman (after the nominal fees and rites) would subsume the place into his multiple holdings. But the will was found to be indisputable and binding, burned into a board with a hot iron and surrounded by the usual oaths and curses which even the Hetman could not set aside.

In the end it was deemed just as well. They still needed a village carpenter and there was no-one else with the skills. Mosshide’s place was small, and, by the usual paradox that governs many occupations, was the least cared for in Far Reach. The Hetman consoled himself with the thought that Kren might leave, or, failing that, die himself someday, and then the property would be his. The Hetman had grown grey waiting until he was even older than Old Man Mosshide had ever been. The village had forgotten, or perhaps never knew, about the fabled long life of the Morgs. Kren himself remained inhumanly hale for his age; another point of resentment.

The first thing he had done when the house was his was to patch up all the things that Mosshide had let go, and in the fifty years he had lived there he’d made constant improvements. He had little else to do with his spare time. The building Kren returned to now was small but one of the sturdiest and neatest in town. He ran an appraising eye over things before he went in; it seemed untouched. He nodded, grimly satisfied, then went in.

The first thing he did was slide out of his sweat-soaked leather tunic, hanging it over a chair to dry. Then he took his day’s pennies over to a workbench covered with pots of paints and glue. Selecting a clay jar marked by a skull in relief and half-full of black-colored water, he unstoppered the wax lid and plunked the money in. That jar had helped him over many a dry spell when jobs were thin. He set it back among the paint, turned to the nearby water barrel, and drew himself a large tin cupful. He walked over stiffly to the dead fireplace and sat down in the squat chair there. He took a long sip of water, some of which trickled down into his trailing beard, and finally allowed himself to breathe. 

Circle Cities

 

Cryslandon, from Urshurak (1979), by The Brothers Hildebrandt

Pre-Cataclysm Atlantis, from Walt Disney's Atlantis (2001)

Still working on the next bit of "Kren"; in the meanwhile, enjoy this similarity I noticed this morning.

"Kren" : Part One

 

          It was a hot, blue sky. The few clouds there were looked like a white scrim on the horizon, determined neither to rain nor to interpose themselves as shade between those toiling in the bronzing fields and the beating sun. Kren paused to wipe his brow for a moment, dashed the sweat away, then swung the scythe again with a grunt. He began grumbling the Fiddle-dee-Fiddle-da song in his throat to give his stroke rhythm.

“Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,” he rumbled.

“Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,

I had a fine house once.

Its rooms were a solace come winter or spring.

Fiddle-dee, Fiddle-da, fiddle-da-a-ah,

One day I was careless

while frying some fish up,

And now I am homeless and go wandering.

Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,

Nothing is certain;

Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,

All things fly away;

Fiddle-dee, fiddle-da,

The world is a curtain

And what lies behind must await the reveal.”

It was an old song, the oldest song he knew, and it could be adapted a hundred ways depending on his mood: comic, philosophic, angry, or grim. The only thing that never changed was the chorus. He had learned the tune from his mother, one of the only things he had from her, and the chorus was the one truly true thing he knew. She had taught him that with her death.

Not that Kren was thinking about that now, not anyway any more than he usually thought about his life and situation. Right now, he was only thinking about getting the harvest in. He did not particularly care about the crop; he was only one of a dozen or so that the Hetman had hired to reap his fields. But the sooner he was done the sooner he would get paid and could retreat to his home at the edge of town. As a manner of honor, though, he meant to be faster, neater, and more industrious than any of his fellows. And that was because of them all he was the only Morg, the one Morg in a village of Men.

There were stories about Morgs, of course, about how the squat, hairy, muzzled folk had come from over the sea in their ships, lost and wandering, and settled plop in the middle of the richest lands in the south. They built cities bigger than the divided human peoples had ever made, ‘elbowing’ Men further to the East and Western Coasts. It was darkly murmured that it was the Morgs who had brought the wrath of Bharek upon the land, and that they, at least, somehow deserved it.

Kren had learned long ago that if he was even to have the tolerance of the village folk, if not their acceptance, he would have to be twice as good as the best of them, and humble about it to boot. The paradox of it, he knew, was that it made them begrudge him all the more, as it left no obvious hook to hang their resentment on. He swung his scythe with grim satisfaction as he drew ever more ahead of the other reapers.  His Stain glowed red in the sun under his exertions.

The Stain, a mottled cranberry blotch that covered half his face, was proof to the villagers that he, the Morg, lay under the wrath of Bharek. He and his mother had come to them with a batch of six or seven others, fleeing Bharek’s Breath, a plague from the North, before finally succumbing there in Far Reach. The Breath had also killed three of the villagers, which made them curse Morgs all the more. The fugitives were dropped hugger-mugger in a mass grave outside the burying ground, marked with a rough stone. Kren was the only survivor of the group, hardly old enough then to toddle but somehow tough enough to live, stamped with Bharek’s wrath by the Stain.

“Hey, Morg! Hey, you! You, Morg!”

Kren paused and turned blinking, sweat streaming down his head. It was Kegs, the next nearest reaper to him, a man with a body like a lumpy bag, his face contorted with anger and annoyance. For a brief second Kren imagined slicing through that solid body with a single swing, just a follow-up stroke from his work, as it were. He wiped away the image with the sweat from his eyes.

“What?” he panted.

“Didn’t you hear the Hetman? He’s called it a day. Time to turn in your scythe!” The man scowled. “I for one want to get to the inn and throw some ale in me.  But maybe you want to hang out with the ladies when they come to gather in the evening? The pay’s the same either way. Hah!” He turned and tramped off in the direction of the spreading oak tree where the workers were already collecting to put aside their tools and get their day’s pennies.

Kren said nothing, but sighing quietly so as not to be heard, shouldered his scythe, and headed in. 

And What is a Morg?

In the early years of the 1980's, John and I worked in conjunction on the creation of Ortha, the world of Morgs and Men, Woses and Ghamen, Ogres and Wolfshades, and of Yorn, both dark and light. While he produced by far the most work on the actual novel Goldfire, I (deeply under the influence of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion) provided a light skeleton of lore to underlie the main action. For a long time I feared the 'mythology' I had devised was unretrievable after the Great Termite Devastation, but on closer examination of the spiral notebook in which it lay (and which I had feared to look at closely), I found that, except for a word or two at the outer edges, it was completely readable and that even lost words could be easily guessed and restored. I happily set about doing so, in the September of 2016.

          In May of 2017 (while working on A Grave on Deacon’s Peak) I also started transcribing John's work on Goldfire, which had lain dormant since January 1, 1983. After another hiatus, as I brought the new novel to completion, I took Goldfire up again and worked on it through the middle of September until the first of December. Near the end of this period of activity and beyond I began writing new short stories about the Morgs, which has produced by this time a dozen or so tales. As of today (8/22/2022) I have started a new tale, which I may post here in parts as it is written. In the meantime, here is some background to note.

A PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE MORGISH RACE

 

          On Ortha, the Morgs are one of the four or five races (depending on how you count) called the Children of Aman. They are an intelligent, long-lived, and earthy species.

They are bi-pedal and stand on an average about five feet tall. Their skin color is a light to deep brown. Their hair is rather coarse and, in color, mostly black, brown and ginger. Eyes are amber to brown to black, with coronas larger than human in proportion to the whites, which can yellow with age or become red with anger is some specimens.

There is a rare coloration in ‘albino’ Morgs, where the skin is pink, the hair is blonde and fine, and the eyes are what is described as a light ‘buttermilk’ yellow. Because of the oddity of this condition, such Morgs face some prejudice.

The Morg head is rather round and the skull thick, deep-browed, with a protruding muzzle that comes to a rounded point. This muzzle extends approximately as far forward as the length of the skull. The nostrils are pugged, resembling an ape’s, and are close to the eyes. The upper lip comes to a flexible point and somewhat overhangs the lower lip; with age the upper lip may shrivel somewhat and the lower lip become more prominent. The muzzle is lined with pointed canine teeth, which are modified as they travel back into the grinders in the skull.

The hair on the head tends not to be particularly luxuriant, and most male Morgs prefer to wear it short. They do, however, grow a rather extravagant beard, that changes as they age, and which is never cut. The female equivalent is called ‘the underdown’, which is usually short and somewhat finer than the hair on their head. Females prefer to wear the hair on their heads long, if possible, as their own particular status symbol.

The rest of the Morg body is covered with a sparse fur, not a complete pelt, but resembling the rather hairier specimens of human. Exceptions to this fur are the palms and the soles of their feet.

The Morg neck is short and thick, and only somewhat longer in the female; Morg voices tend to be deep and gruff. Morgs are, in general, powerfully built, stocky in the shoulders, and broad in the beam, with legs and arms burly in proportion.

Morg hands (‘paws’) are tipped with black nails (‘claws’), thicker and more firmly fixed than human nails. They taper to natural points. The toenails are black and pointed as well, but curve downward as if to protect the toes.

"An Abode of Dragons"

 "If our folk had been exiled long and far from Lothlórien, who of the Galadhrim, even Celeborn the Wise, would pass nigh and would not wish to look upon their ancient home, though it had become an abode of dragons?" -- Galadriel in "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J. R. R. Tolkien.

August

 

“He had named him [August] for that month when the year stands still and blue day follows blue day, when for a while he stopped looking at the sky. He looked at the sky now. The white clouds were being edged with somber gray, sagging like old men’s sad eyes. Yet still before him his shadow lay amid the shadows of leaves.” – John Crowley, Little, Big. 

How to Make Morgs

 

Shadowplay: Another DVD in The Shadow Library

 

Man-Thing (2005)

Possibly the turd in the punch bowl for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is a shame. I quite liked the Man-Thing comic books I read as a child. But I had a rather unique experience there: I was introduced to Man-Thing first through some pretty fantastic episodes in the comic books, where the muck monster goes on a quest with Dakimh the Enchanter, Korreck the barbarian, Jennifer Kale the witch-girl, and even Howard the Duck as they go on a dimension hopping mission to save the Nexus of Realities. 

I didn't know that the Man-Thing used to be the scientist Ted Sallis, who was working with the same super-soldier serum that produced Captain America and the Red Skull. I didn't know that the combination of sabotage and an accident with the serum, interacting with the energies of the swamp where he was working, turned Sallis into the mindless but empathic half-plant creature that he is. I had very little idea then of the cultural and ecological themes that drove most of the series.

There is more of that sort of thing in the movie, but used oh-so-poorly, and the production values suck. Riddled with B-movie tropes, Man-Thing here is mostly a haunting presence, with no convincing or gripping backstory, filmed like some sort of evasive Bigfoot-like creature, mainly, I suspect, to avoid showing the poor quality of the creature effects. He is only a guest appearance in his own movie, which is mainly concerned with the heroes trying to foil a big corporation from devastating the swamp.

 

Well, the used DVD copy of Man-Thing that I bought and watched has sunk back into the bog whence it came. I have since got the two big volumes of the Marvel Essential Man-Thing, and have a better grasp of the original 'saga' as a whole than I conceived from the few errant issues I read as a boy. The movie, while unfortunate, did not taint the waters of memory there. I also have a very good action figure from 2004 in the Marvel Legends Series VIII.

According To My Best Calculations

Last Thursday (August 11) I announced I was making a Book List, to better and more accurately come up with a count of how many books I actually have. Last night (August 14) I completed that list.

 

I had previously calculated a total of 2,216 books (with a variance of -20 or +20 either way), which, as it turns out, was exactly 90 short of the true sum of the 2,306. Then I had been counting from this blog and keeping the numbers ‘in my head’ and on some shaky notes in a pad. An actual list helped me keep a better grasp of my calculations.

 

This morning I copied the List and eliminated titles I think that I might part with in the case of dire necessity. I came up with 659 books that could go if circumstances arose, or that could be put in storage if it were just a matter of room. Such an event happened when I moved from Loop Drive where, as I recall, my library was just a dozen or so volumes away from three thousand.

 

That would leave me with a core collection of 1,647. There are a few books that could be trimmed in a pinch, I suppose, but this has still been a ruthless (if purely hypothetical) winnowing, with little regard to sentiment. Some of my oldest childhood possessions were eliminated, as well as a painful selection of Tolkien books (mostly about and not by him, it is true).

 

And so, the game is over, and my library remains, for now, as it was. I have enjoyed raking over my hoard in thought; it is an entertainment that amused me for four days. Time to turn to more productive activities, I hope. For one thing, Monday (and all that entails) must be accomplished.

A Library Bookstore Haul

Yesterday, quite unexpectedly, Kelsey and Kameron came over at 10 AM and asked if I wanted to go to the Seguin Public Library bookstore with them. I hurriedly got dressed for town and off we went. There, one of the first things I found was Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, the third book in the trilogy I'm reading. Not one to ignore the prompting of the universe, I snatched it up.

Also selected by the hint of fate was Truman by David McCullough. I've always enjoyed McCullough's books, and he has just passed away recently. Even though the copy I bought lacks this cover and President Truman has not been a subject of interest for me, I figured at library bookstore prices it was worth the gamble.

I also got this nice cheap copy of The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings because of vague promptings and tenuous connections and strange associations. Full of classic black-and-white illustrations by Edward Shenton.

The fact that they had a couple of Evelyn Waugh books, and that the title of one shared a quotation from Eliot with the recent Sandman adaptation, was enough of a signal to me to try these two early 20th Century British novels. Scoop and A Handful of Dust (lacks this jacket) go on my reading list. 

And last is this 1991 reprint of the classic The Little Engine That Could (The Complete Original Edition) by Watty Piper. These are the illustrations (by George and Doris Hauman) that I remember. I probably would never have seen it if Kelsey hadn't shown me it was there. Thanks, Kelsey! And at $6, it was the most expensive book I bought, while also being the skinniest. But you know, nostalgia.