Archive for the ‘Rudi Dornemann’ Category
Of Millinery and Magic(s)
Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
The system had worked perfectly for years. Illusionists wore top hats, neat and shiny black. Wizards and witches wore tall peaked caps, of course, and embroidered them with whatever arcane symbols they fancied. We mundanes wore our bowlers, rarely adorned with anything more flamboyant than a bit of feather or sprig of seasonal greenery. And it all worked well; we all knew each other’s nature by our hats. And then he came to town, the stranger.
In his fez.
A crowd began to form from the moment he stepped through the east gate, and only grew as he made his way to city hall square. All our leading citizens were there.
The wizards claimed him for one of their own.
“It’s truncated, this is true,” said the chief Wizard. “But it’s clearly conical.”
“I’m afraid I must disagree,” said the Grand Houdin. “It may lack a brim, but it’s as flat on top as any top hat. He is clearly of the prestidigitator persuasion.”
“Hurrumph,” said the Mayor of the Mundanes as the noon sun gleamed from his gold-brimmed bowler. “He looks to me like some kind of hybrid of both your ilk — a trader in both flim-flam and miracles.
The stranger only smiled.
With a flourish as practiced as any matinee magician, he raised one hand. With the gravity of the most learned mage, he shifted his hat’s tassel from one side to the other.
From that day forward, the meaning of the hats changed. The illusionists found themselves pulling real rabbits from hats. They knew the identity of every hidden card, and the economy of our city collapsed under the deflationary pressure of all those coins pulled from behind ears. The wizards found themselves unable to levitate without the aid of nearly invisible threads and unable to transmute lead to gold without a false-bottomed cauldron. Their oracles spouted vague pronouncements that might mean anything and their grimoires were full of diagrams of fake thumbs and boxes holding hidden mirrors.
As for the rest of us, we found that our comfortable bowlers were gone and, in their place, we too wore fezzes that were always sliding askew, and tassels that swung like pendulums, whether we wanted them to or not.
Ghost Dancing the Cemetery Mile
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
It was your idea, your concept that started it all. I saw your face as you watched the historical footage. I saw the moment the plan came to you. I didn’t know what it was until you drove us out there, beyond all the walls and shields, the abandoned strip malls and the checkpoints.
You tapped the pad you’d glued to the dash and the old-time music started, so loud and so low our ribs throbbed with the beat and we couldn’t hear the screeching of the harpies. You’d slipped the restraints and slid out the window before we could stop you.
There, under the light of the hololoops of the dearly departed, you danced. And the hover, controlled by that patch pad on the dash, moving in time to the math you’d programmed, danced with you. You leapt and slid and spun, ran or slow-walked, while the hover surged and stopped, fishtailed, hopped up and drifted down. You spun on the roof; you tumbled through the underside jets and came up again, road dust unfolding spookily around you in the holo-light. The mausoleum blocks echoed with laughter and voices singing along to century-old slang.
“Ghost dancing,” you said.
The next week, we cruised the tombs again, and we all took a turn. Under the flickering gaze of beloved husband of, cherished daughter, much-missed brother, we danced. The hover, danced with us; you’d taught us the method of your math, and we’d each programmed our own choreography.
Your math was always the best; your choreography the most perfect. That was why things went wrong — your movements were too true to the beat. The harpies knew exactly when to swoop. They had you off the ground by the time we reached you. You were still twitching to the bass; they knew how to move to hold you tight in their claws.
Now you stay locked indoors, won’t talk to any of us who still go out into the night and the music.
We dance to new tunes, stochastic syncopation that bewilders the harpies, too many rhythms shifting too quickly. We dance for you, much-missed brother, and hope that you’ll join us again, to leap and twist by the light of the dead.