Circuit Preacher v. Civil Servant

That night the Circuit Preacher has a dream. It's in some ways similar to the Cardinal's Dream. In other ways it's different.

Points of similarity: the dueling grounds, the oak, the forest, the hideous shack.

Points of difference: in that there is no coquettish statue of the Virgin, no Archangel Michael, no booming directive.

The Circuit Preacher's Dream:

The Circuit Preacher stands. He stands quiet. The night wind sweeps across the forest. Clouds sweep across the sky. The moon darkens, and all goes black. Then the clouds sweep past and the moon brightens. It's then that he first notices Pepple, who stands in sharp silhouette by the north border, unmoving.

Suddenly the earth shakes. The Circuit Preacher reaches back to brace himself against the oak but the oak's gone - far behind him. Pepple stands calmly as the Preacher staggers from the tremor. Fear grips him. A fissure runs through the earth before him and darkness shows beneath. Darkness - then a flash of white. White from the gap, flashes of white - delicate bones as roots clawing up from the earth.

The Circuit Preacher falls back in terror. He pushes against the grass, but all for nothing - no distance comes between him and the skeletal hands that grasp awkwardly from the grave. Ten, forty, eighty, twelve hundred - the caps of skulls, the gaping sockets of their eyes as they peer from the darkness and rise.

Still Pepple stands unmoved. Not on human feet, the Circuit Preacher sees in terror - but cloven hooves.

In mute horror, the Circuit Preacher watches as the skeletons stand and regard themselves. They look at their hands, their legs, their caged torsos. They look at each other. Their hinged jaws open and close in silent wailing. All grasp and loll, the only sound in the valley the insectile clack of bone against bone.

A shrill whine. The skeletons turn. The Circuit Preacher turns. Pepple tunes a dusty violin.

Then music.

And the skeletons, as if lifted and moved by unseen strings, begin to twitch. They twitch, then swoon, then - like newborn calves - stumble to life. Now waggling the legs, now wriggling the thighs, now waving their arms, the rattle and clatter rises like thunder - all working together, beating time to the dance.

They swirl and spin now, faster and faster, as the Circuit Preacher presses himself into a ball, grasping at the frigid grass beneath him. He looks up and sees Pepple amidst them now, dancing and playing as they are. He also, the Preacher sees, stoops to grab the bones that the skeletons drop. So that if one dances too harshly and looses a hand, Pepple rushes over, grabs it, and shoves it back in place. The same with skulls, and arms, and leg bones, and anything else - he runs and runs back and forth between the swell of unreal dancers. Yet at no time - even with his baton away from the strings - does the violin stop its playing. In fact the music swells higher, backed by an unseen symphony from the east - from within the shadows of the forest to the east.

Now the Circuit Preacher wills himself to struggle to foot and run. He staggers wildly away, up to the top of the mound to the west. Here, for the first time, looking down on the scene from above, he sees what he missed below:

That the skeletons dance is far from chaotic - rather it's a massive, fractal waltz: a waltz in miniature, one skeleton spinning alone, and then in spinning in tandem with another, and these two both spinning with another couple, and the greater could spinning with two others on each side - and the entire mass of dancers dancing as one, together: spinning all in a tremendous glowing white wheel around the oak. And with Pepple in light activity, running to attach one bone, then the other - back and forth, from inside the ring, lit by the spectral moon.

The Circuit Preacher wakes with a start to the call of a rooster. Dawn.

He's in a state of blubbering prayer when the Civil Servant arrives. The wheel within the wheel, he laughs aloud. The Civil Servant sees his manic eyes, the tears that wash his face.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.

Choreographer v. Circuit Preacher

Pepple rummages through the hole in the oak. He stands atop the table dragged next to the trunk. The Choreographer watches him showing an expression of confusion and strange annoyance.

He regards the Beader's kitsune statuette, the Bellmaker's bellmaking instructions / deck of cards, the Archivist's List of the Dead, and the Basketweaver's Ch'mekelekeske woven basket. He takes the cards, jumps down from the table, pulls the table back from the oak, then restores it of its pistols. Cards in hand, he walks off, back to the hideous shack.

The sky clears and the Circuit Preacher arrives. He's a short, unobtrusive-looking man wearing a dark green polyester suit. The bow tie around his neck is tied tightly - so tight as to seem painful. In fact, he squirms and coughs and pulls at it constantly. Sweat beads along his brow beneath a shining wave of set and molded hair.

He introduces himself. She stares.

Don't suppose you're from here, then? he asks.

She blinks.

You from Russia?

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Lituanen, echt deutsch, she says plainly.

Even in Russia I'm led to believe they have word of the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ, opens the Circuit Preacher. Even as far as the northern reaches of Russia, it's true.

She looks away, absently fingering the hem of her blouse.

Mistaking her incomprehension for atheistic snobbery, he gently recounts to her a sermon he gave to a congregation in a small town just south of the state border.

Son of man, the Lord tells him, set thy face toward the mountains of Israel and prophecy against them - and say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God: Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. In all your dwellingplaces the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolatye; and your idols may be broken and cease, and your images may be cut down, and your works may be abolished.

The Choreographer shakes her head.

They raise their guns, their guns go off.