NEW. BOOK 2. Young Arthur: Part 2. Chapters 7–12. Chapter 7: Arthur Finds & Enters Annwyn.

“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will” — Baudelaire.

Chapter 7. Aged 5, 1975.

“Leaves are falling all around, its time I was on my way. Thanks to you, I’m much obliged, For such a pleasant stay” — (Ramble on, Led Zeppelin).

A Spell of Concealment

Arthur was at a new school, and although he and his mother had just moved into the neighborhood, the fact was, and Arthur did not know it, they were of very ancient local stock and this place was connected by Ley lines all the way to North Wales where, unbeknownst to him, and probably forgotten if ever known by his mother, his ancestors had originally come from.

In fact his Grandma’s house, or rather not so much the house but the property attached to it, with its hidden forest and lake, took up such a large parcel of land in that area that in a way it might justly be said that Grandma’s house was the neighborhood, or at least it was most of that part stretching North and East from Frankston, all the way to Carrum along the beach.

The land that made up Grandma’s property was bordered on the seaward side with a rim of sand-dunes bound together by strong and dense brush-land, with layers of different species of trees to both protect the land and conceal it. Banksias, Sheoaks and Swamp Gums formed the front row, and just like Gwydion’s army they formed stubborn lines of entrenched soldiers, awaiting an attack.

Then in the second row, the middle layer on the hillocky-dunes, sprouted the nettlesome Tea-Trees, protruding here and there, though inextricably tangled with their surrounding foliage, like machine-gun nests, wrapped in bushels of razor wire, facing out to sea, and warding travelers to aver any plans to find a haven here, like the ghosts of shipwrecked mariners calling a warning to passing ships on the icy morning wind —

“Avast! Thou art not welcome here!”

Those Tea-trees too it was that masked the interior from the road, and the undulating hillocks behind the first row of brackish and resilient bushes gave the warning to those passengers in passing cars and men on horseback that the dunes and jagged bushes they could see in front would be repeated and continue unchanged if a man were foolish enough to try to penetrate into their domain. It was a lot easier looking from the inside outward.

The mirage worked in such a way, that should anyone who turned their back to the bay, and in glancing, attempt to penetrate the interior beyond the roadside, they would only see a few hundred yards, or quarter mile, of uninviting and brushy hillocks, that rise slightly above sea level, sufficient to offer nothing enticing, but only to limit the distance of the prospect inland to naught but a couple of hundred-yards of landscape that might furnish temptation for a pleasant walk for a reptile or some other member of the family of cold-blooded serpents, but its repetitive harshness certainly offered no enticement for the human passer-by, to suspect that the landscape was any different further in, than what was shown of it by the foreboding prospect on display for anyone standing out there with his back to the sea —

“So drive-on modern devil, and ride-on caitiff knight. You’ll find nothing to serve you here!”

the rugged bush seemed to shout.

This was the protective spell that kept harm from the interior.

A Sign for those with Eyes to See

It is the premise of many fairy tales, that they begin with a child wandering off the beaten path, and Arthur knew this, so he didn’t panic at all when it happened to him, as it so often did to kids of his age in the fairy stories he read, and it often happened to them when they were a relative newcomer to a place that is destined to play a major role in their lives and adventures, so on this occasion, rather than ignore some already notable spooky anomalies completely, like a frightened and inexperienced idiot, and one easily intimidated by things beyond the ken of normal understanding, he decided instead to concentrate for a second, to watch silently and listen for a while, and to consciously make a mental note of his surroundings and progress —

“There’s a great big pine tree that’s taller than its neighbors…”

was Arthur’s first intentionally recorded observation —

“It has an unusual mark down the side, like it was branded with a hot iron and then sap leaked out…”

he thus observed, and in observing, observed more closely the second time, and in doing so he was naturally compelled to take more time to do it, which when he realized, he saw that his depth-perception had the potential to improve its vision not by increments, but by multiples…with a little concentration, and so he observed that the tree-sap acted for the tree —

“…like white blood does on our skin, to form a scab over the wound. There can’t be two trees like that, not along my path to Grandma’s anyway…

“In any case, I feel strangely at home here!”

He said the last sentence out loud and cheerfully, and he meant it specifically, whereas he had only said the part before that in his head.

There was something about this place in the wilderness specifically, between the village school and his grandma’s house, that made him feel like a returned exile more than a child on a strange road to a new home.

Despite this being only his third week of school, Arthur had bravely chosen to walk home by himself, and something odd was already happening, which he welcomed —

“I might as well get lost at the beginning of my journey as at the end!”

thought he, with a level of fatalistic curiosity beyond his years.

Wanderlust to the point of distraction, and losing track of time and place, is not uncommon in six year old boys in general, and Arthur immediately drifted away on a mental tide again, and his head was quite somewhere else in time and space, as he strode on, one minute kicking stones and trying to do so with accuracy and precision, and imagining that the two bushes he was fast approaching were goal posts, as he dribbled a stone through the centre, executing small, delicate nudges and strikes with the inside of his foot.

The next minute Arthur might be brandishing a stick with his right, off-hand hanging inward towards his neck, from an elbow raised slightly above shoulder-height as it is in this way that the non-wielding arm offers itself as a counter-balance to the arm wielding the weapon, be it foil or rapier, that was extended from his left hand. He was not frantically swishing it around at an invisible foe, but preferred to act out the entire ritual, and so effected to loosen, one at a time the fingers of the glove of his left hand, which he then paused, and affected to glare at his opponent, standing there and facing him, three paces away, with unmitigated malice.

He then made out to slap the offender across the face with the glove, and challenged him as follows —

“Do not look so surprised, rascal, dog, villain!”

He then paused as if giving time for his foe to respond —

“Yes, you are correct. I did take a vow never to raise my sword in anger again, after I accidently killed my best friend Donatello in a foolish duel, but now I realize that if I had not made that vow then you never would have dared to cross even the least of my men, and today I might have left behind my sister Angelita, only dressed all in white lace for her wedding, instead of all in black for the funeral of her fiancee, who died at your miserable hands!”

After this long-winded tribute to the thousands of tales of chivalry that for the previous year had filled his brain, he turned his body diagonally, raising his hand with the sword pointing upward, his fist level with his left breast, though a hand’s length out from the body, and the grip turned palm-inward, or ‘half-supine’, knees bent, chin raised in arrogant defiance, in the ‘En Guard’, position, before he yells —

“En Guard!”

Then with a parry, reposte, and a lunge, the scoundrel is clutching at the black suede of Don Arturo’s boots, and begging for a glass of water so that he may confess before he dies, but Don Arturo was compelled to correct him on this point —

“No, my friend. The man who would have shown you mercy, who would have given you at least the water to confess, is the one you killed yesterday, leaving only me in his place. That is not good for you I think vato!”

All of the above death scene without mercy was delivered in a fairly convincing Spanish accent for having issued from the throat and vocal chords of a six year old gringo from Australia.

Arthur dropped the stick, whether or not it was an actual stick or a Toledo Salamanca sword of the finest craftsmanship, forged with the hardest steel in a thousand years of sword smithing. Either way the victim was dead, and his soul going to a place of purgation of his wickedness, that is, if it wasn’t damned utterly.

When Arthur finally noticed the passage of time it was nothing serious. Only he suddenly felt as though he had been walking for hours, and yet without seeming to have made any progress on the path. This was an unusual sensation for Arthur, as daydreaming was second nature to him, and he rarely found himself so deeply and protractedly distracted that it seemed weird or struck a concerned chord for him when he lost track of time, so for him to suddenly feel the weight of the passage of an unmarked passage of time was an uncanny sensation.

He had been mindful to always keep the dark waters of the bay to his left, and in this way he wandered aimlessly, slowly but generally forward, another ten or twenty minutes, and began to feel how lonely it must have been for a hero or knight-errant, always homeless, always travelling, mostly alone, and he suddenly found himself stuck, trying to think of a word he was certain he knew, which described perfectly how he felt in that moment, but knew he was going to have to dig it out of a book, and so Arthur suddenly stopped.

The scenery seemed to cry in antipathy, a cold welcome on the chill wind, despite that it blew incessantly on-shore, not from the English Channel, but from the grey-black waters of Port Phillip Bay, so that any wayward mariner thus cast here would sooner turn around and face the sea again…but not young Arthur, for whom this bitter gatekeeper masked a secret that none could have expected.

Arthur felt somehow like a prodigal-son returned, like some kind of fairy-gentry, a landlord or warden of some sort, and as the feeling tried to find identity in words in his logical mind, he suddenly recalled that there is a word to describe what he was thinking, and he certainly knew what it was, only he could not think of it immediately, so the need to recall it became a matter of life and death, so he stopped on the spot and stooped down, in an effort to find a reference book to help him locate the fugitive in his mind.

Searching for meaning, at first in books — A Serendipitous Epiphany

The sudden need for a dictionary caused him to stop in a particular place, a place of all places. He had not yet seen his surroundings as he squatted down to find some book that might give him the word for how he felt.

If he had looked up he would have firstly been astonished to see the same scarred tree that he had passed by and noted more than forty minutes hence, before having his questions quieted by the Spirit of the Earth, that was in truth preparing the boy for wonders, and far greater than those reserved solely for the gatekeeper of the forest of Anwynn.

I say —

“Spirit of the Earth”

because that which spoke to him was not of the logos, but rather an old feeling from his guts, a Chthonic voice that made the suggestion, and on an unconscious level, so that if you said to him-

“Why did you stop?”

He would possibly be able to remember it was for getting a book out of his bag, but if you were to probe further and say-

“Well, what made you stop and reach for the book at just that moment?”

He knew he had heard a word that meant royalty in exile, or something like that —

“How do I call myself, who is a long lost son of a place, but has been taken away against his will?”

He was not only unable to think of the word he sought for, but was uncertain whether the reference book that held it should be called a dictionary or a Thesaurus! He suddenly paused, reached into his school bag and pulled out a Thesaurus, then squatted and began to search for synonyms for ‘displaced’ —

“Is it ‘Cavalier’?”

After a few moments flipping pages he paused again, still squatting, and completely attentive to what was written on the page before his eyes, then spoke out loud —

“‘Cavalier. Adjective. Haughty. Disdainful.’ No that’s not it. How about the noun? Cavalier. Noun. a horseman, especially a mounted soldier; knight. One having the spirit or bearing of a knight; a courtly gentleman; gallant, a man escorting a woman or acting as her partner in dancing.”

His eyebrows raised as he uttered with the tone of relief that all people intone when they experience that very particular relief of finally capturing that thing that sat so cheekily, and for so long on the tip of one’s tongue —

“This is it!

“An adherent of Charles I of England, in his contest with Parliament. I remember now.

“The Cavaliers were Charles’ nobles after they had been sent into exile after the killing of that king!”

“Except I feel like I’m returning from exile and yet no one knows me. I feel like a stranger in a strange place.”

He reflected that it was a sort of onomatopaic feeling, where you lose touch with your identity whilst trying to think of the word for that very feeling —

“Oh that’s right”

he spluttered, remembering he was trying to remember the name of the home for someone in his position. He then paused, squatted to retrieve and consult his Thesaurus again, whilst doing up a loose lace. He fingered the leaves of the book and looked up the word —

“Grave”

eventually finding the name of a certain type of dead man’s house. The word he was after-

‘Mausoleum’.

“Here it is…”

he mumbled, looking through the book, and began to read out loud-

“‘Mausoleum’ — Def. a stately and magnificent tomb; a burial place for the bodies or remains of many individuals, often of a single family”

“That’s right!”

he thought,

“It’s where the dead are interred above ground!”

“Righto then”

he continued to sort of half think, his mind bubbling away in the certainty that he had found the name for the identity he was looking for, but not yet all of the significations behind it, nor was he satisfied that at the age of six he should find his natural home to be one meant for the dead, and as he replaced the Thesaurus in the school bag, he was still sniffing, with an air of dissatisfaction, for more ideas, perhaps around ‘Mausoleum’, but more complex, when instead of an abstract idea he was confronted with a sight, a vision that presented itself as normal, and yet strange to his blinking eyes.

As his eyes turned away from the book and glanced upwards, his pupils alternately dilating and narrowing, in an attempt to focus away from the tiny ink-glyphs on the page before his nose, and adjust his lenses to take in the wider surroundings, that contained, Arthur noticed — even from the angle of his squatting position — what appeared to be an anomaly in the trimming of the foliage on the hedge that bordered the footpath, which was otherwise seemingly impenetrable, and at least ten feet high for a mile in both North and South directions, on this landward side of the beach-road. It was hardly anything at first glance, but he was fixated.

It was the gap in the hedge bordering the property opposite the beach — the property that he did not yet know was actually a part of Terrappee, his grandma’s property, and that it stretched from within the bounds on the other side of that seemingly impenetrable hedge and all the way up to the house, still unseen in the distance.

Mercifully brief was the time that the child pictured his home to be a Mausoleum, as Arthur was about to discover a life much larger than any he had known, behind an entrance to what would turn out to be his new, secret home, in a real fairyland, and it was just there — concealed in the hedge right in front of where he had crouched, on a piece of white concrete footpath, between the asphalt of the road and whatever lay behind the thick green hedge, there was something missing, he was certain.

The hedge itself was almost three metres high and the thick and shiny leaves were so neatly maintained that despite the green colour the thing had the appearance of impenetrability, like a chrome or other inorganic metal sheen — it was reflective and looked impenetrable.

Later on, when he had tried to ask himself what were the order of events that prompted him to pause at that very spot, he was more impressed with its mystery. Even though he remembered why he had stopped to squat down at just that moment, that is, to look up words —

“Surely”

he thought

“…the magic is in the pointless meanderings of the mind that preceded the search for the Thesaurus, or is it another case of 200 monkeys baging away eternally on typewriters until they produce every possible variation of events until, in similar fashion to the ultimate production of the complete Works of William Shakespeare, they produce evry potential variable in a quantum entanglement of infinite universes!?”

Either way, and whether by a random concatenation of random events, absurdities, or if it was written, directed, produced and edited by Phanes, Ziz, Metis and Sophia, with an executive producer credit given to Was Anderson, one thing is certain — he tarried no more in the road, but cast his eyes to the point along the hedge that he had found himself so specifically opposite, grabbed his school bag and books, and made his way across the road to investigate what at first glance appearared to be nothing much, but on closer inspection more was soon revealed.

There, overlapping the leaves, from top to bottom, were at first what appeared to be just that — more leaves, and nothing more, and up and down it appeared just the same…but when the boy brought his face up to have a closer look he saw that those leaves all up and down, to the RIGHT of his nose, were set more than one hundred centimeters in, as though that side of the hedge was intentionally set-back or indented —as opposed to those visible from the LEFT of his nose, and such that anyone driving down the road heading South would have seen nothing, nothing but a seamless hedge, whereas anyone heading North, on the other side of the road, would also have seen nothing, as the distance was too great to spot the entrance.

As he began to internalise these observations Arthur dropped his school bag, and in a tone that couldn’t make up its mind if it was questioning or excited, he spoke, quite audibly as one does when one forgets oneself and vocalises one’s thoughts in qhat is called ‘Thinking out loud’ —

“It’s a puzzle! I’m certain of it!”

and after saying the above, he commenced to silently deduce the below…

“It is an entrance, and of that I’m sure! The genius is that only a person walking in the wrong direction, and also on the wrong side of the road, could see it—and then only if they happened to be looking at the right place…”

and as he leaned forward between fifty and one hundred centimetres, there it was, revealed —

“…a hidden pathway, or secret entrance, or whatever you want to call it!”

that bit was said aloud again, like when he noted it was a puzzle, and so was this —

“If they look in the right place it is easy to see, but the odds of someone walking on this side of the road in this direction, especially as there are no turn-offs or driveways, or anything else for miles, plus, if someone happens to be walking…which is the only way you can see it, they would also choose the beach side of the road to walk along, as it provides shade in the direct Sunlight as well as shelter from the rain!”

It made sense and he knew it. What Arthur saw was an inviting, mysterious entrance, that once inside a meter or two, veered to the right and its path angled downward, as it turned and disappeared into the bush behind the hedge. His final comment before picking up his school bag again and taking his first step into the opening in the hedge was —

“Sometimes I don’t know if I’m mad or not, but “Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day””

What had previously appeared to be no entrance at all, but just a dark patch in the hedge, had a hole cut in it, coincidentally just high enough for him to walk through. He hesitated no longer. Tucking his little school bag under one arm, he rose to his feet…

The Secret Entrance to Annwyn

“Life is a mystery,

Everyone must stand alone,

I hear you call my name,

and it feels like home” — (Like a prayer, Madonna, 1989).

The boy, with open mouth and wide open eyes, slowly began to approach on tiptoe, closer and closer to the anomaly, which he navigated like a thief who had been there a thousand times, as he slipped through the opening and subsequent turns that formed the concealed entrance, and without needing to stoop, but for the last meter he had to turn side-on, and the path widened as it dropped down rapidly.

For a while the path was dim and narrow. Arthur walked for what seemed over a mile, silently peering through the dense bunched foliage of what was a hedge no more — but a forest! No other sound disturbed his passage except for the light clicking and clacking made by his steel-capped toes kicking little stones, that paved the pathway before him.

The door is open. You’re standing there. You ask me in!

For the final section the path narrowed again, and Arthur had to push through, as it got denser, and he experience a fleeting moment of fear, where his heart beat faster and he felt dizzy and faint. This worsened as he felt the forest reacting to him like a mirror — and the more anxious Arthur became, the tighter became the branches over the path, and darker the way before him.

Then, as if from a source distinct from both Arthur and the natural world he had just abandoned, there came a light breeze, that carried on it a fairy melody, with echoes of gentle laughter, faint little bells tinkled and jingled, and a whistle of pipes of many tones seemed to add a sense of order to the wild-sounding background of chattering, like the sounds of his classmates making a racket before the teacher could settle them down, or of imps, their voices dancing on the melody of those pipes and the pipes jangled around by a breeze, gentle and calm, that wound its way through the outstretched arms of the living forest, and in a moment the anxiety and fear left both Arthur and the forest, as quickly as those feelings had arisen, leaving only the excitement and a growing feeling of a long-awaited home coming.

Now when the branches of the hedge tried to grab his school bag, it felt more like curiosity than malevolence, as the comforting fairy music began to reveal itself as a consciousness.

It beckoned him-

“That’s it little man. Just one more gateway and you’ll be in Annwyn with your mother’s ancestors from Cymru”

It was the gatekeeper, or spirit of the place, like the ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’, who, with little to no delay began to draw him in, as though almost impatiently, to the right and then downward to the clear meadow by the creek, beyond the bush that guarded the hedge.

“The door is open. You’re standing there. You ask me in. Gloria!” — (Gloria, U2,

As Arthur entered the clearing he felt the penetrating glance of thousands of eyes, like those of friends from long ago, long lost in time, and he felt tears rush, beyond his ability to prevent their flow, to all corners of his eyes.

Antipodean Katabasis!

Were these the eyes of the souls of all the animals he had known in other lives? This conspicuous, though felicitous aberration, was not only to be found in the animals, but even the birds in the trees were watching and listening with a heightened awareness, and even the trees themselves, but they were awaiting him to see them as their queue to perform their dance — not before.

Annwyn expanded inside the skin of the real world. It was a section of land set back a few hundred metres from the beach, stretching 10km longways from Long Island at the North end of Frankston up to Kananook Creek on the South end of Carrum.

It felt as though he had just fallen from the sky and been caught in his mother’s arms, and whereas these dreams of falling never normally seem to end, in this waking dream the fall was broken by the softest and strongest of arms, in a spiritual relief that he couldn’t nor did he attempt to describe apart from the words “True Love”.

It was not until Arthur was twelve that he finally encountered poetry which adequately summed up his first feeling upon entering Annwyn —

“I try to sing this song

I, I try to get in

But I can’t find the door

The door is open

You’re standing there

You let me in

Gloria, in te domine

Gloria, exultate

Oh Lord, if I had anything

Anything at all

I’d give it to you

I’d, I’d give it to you

Gloria, in te domine

Gloria, exultate

Gloria, gloria

Oh Lord, loosen my lips” — (Gloria, October, U2, 1982).

Thus did that guardian angel, the spirit of the hedge, beckoned him like a lost child, and thus did Arthur, who had felt like a cavalier, a zombie in a mausoleum, or changeling, who was raised without his true name, such that his little heart would have broken were it made of weaker stuff, he had feared and wept, and stepped through.

He remembered every step and all that he saw. Behind the trees, long grass, and the creek, and the further he entered, other things appeared and disappeared, and everything changed proportions, especially him, depending on whom he was dealing with, like Alice, in her adventures in Wonderland. He got smaller, and the inner-world became bigger, and the creek expanded into a great lake, bordered at the far end by a vast, snow-capped mountain range.

Then that disappeared into the horizon but on some angles it appeared just flat, like a theatre backdrop, and Arthur understood that things only took on depth and complexity when you stared at them long enough.

“Why fill a space with life when the life is present elsewhere?”

he understood. In fact his visits to this place soon proved themselves to be profoundly educational, as though he had been blessed with his own private school for self-reflection.

He later understood the principle more scientifically, when he was taught that it would be more efficient to magnetize the wheels of each carriage of a train than the entire track, that way the force of repulsion coming from the top would only activate the potential in the steel of the rails beneath, as the carriages float by! At least he thought he got it.

Each day after school Arthur would sneak through the secret gate in the hedge, for what was only an hour of normal time, but that expanded into months of days and nights in Annwyn-time, then he would sneak through the forest, ascend a short distance, before popping out through a narrow gap in the hedge, and be home in time for dinner, leaving behind a world where everything seemed to be alive and looking back at him, such that even those expanded times in Anwynn came to be never enough, and were it not for his love for his Mother, he would have disappeared for good ages ago.

Arthur’s magical fairyland was a place where perspective was flexible, and just as he had squeezed a whole world into a few square miles, and months into an hour per day, he also felt as though he was only just scratching the surface of a deeper knowledge which concerned him personally, and which would require all of the wisdom he could derive from spending as much time here as he could.

Annwyn was to Arthur what Terrappee had been to Emma, although she had built a haven for others too — not just herself. Thus it was a boarding house in The Great War as well, and it was between those two wars that she met the wounded soldier, took him in and nurtured him like a sick bunny, then married him and would not let him leave this world until she had delivered what he had promised he would do before leaving her all alone in the world when he died — which was to give her a baby — and that baby would eventually be a grandpa for Arthur and his mother’s Dad, John, of whom we shall see him in both life and death in the next few chapters.

But the original Man-of-the-house at Terrappee was one-eyed Walter, who was blessed to survive long enough to hold his baby son John in his arms for about a year, before the Good Lord finally took him, which was a mercy in itself, for that brave man had only clung to life in order to hold that baby and to give that life to his love, who would have to spend the subsequent decades alone — just like queen Victoria, who had so strong a cultural influence over Australia, just as she did over all the Commonwealth countries, right up until a hundred years after her death.

The school, as we have said, is a mile and a half south of the property line. This school was somehow a necessary part of Arthur’s destiny — although it was, like Terrappee, torn down and re-developed by the time Arthur was an adult. It was a relic of the declining Catholic education system, just as Terrappee was a listing barque, that would sink with the death of Arthur’s grandma, when all of her children, all daughters, would also be scattered to the four winds.

Young Arthur Chapter 8. (13 min read)

Aged 5, 1975. Second Visit to Anwynn, this time With Imaginary Friends.

We will protect you.

The Children of another Creator.

Arthur explains to Owl and Eeyore, and others of A.A. Milne’s creations, how they can live independently of that original creator, and be with him and Doggy, and others outside that “pantheon” of characters, and indeed the series of events that the six or seven books that contain their complete adventures limits them to — both without prejudice to A.A. Milne — their original Father, as well as by Necessity, because they MUST exist in this way, since they do, and undoubtedly in the imaginations of millions of 6–9 year olds. May we in good conscience bring them out to play — provided our playmates are decent children and imaginary friends? Of course the second condition is that we bring out the real Person — not some misshapen version of the character, that would go unrecognized, and rejected by true friends of the originals of those characters.

Rejoice! Perhaps this diversity of animals last danced together in the same spot in the Garden of Eden, when we all ate honey and no meat?

Arthur drew the heroic Doggy from the bag and placed him down on the jumper where they sat, on a small hillock of such roundness that it reminded him of a pagan funeral barrow. But there was no way he was going to let his thoughts meander into dark speculations as to what lies under the blessed ground of Annwyn, not while they were safely sitting on its surface, but he made a mental note to beware holes!

“Doggy…”

asked a sentimental Arthur —

“…are not the beauties of the world so much more abundant here than they ever were at home?

Doggy nodded emphatically, and added an anecdote regarding the absence of equity and equal rites for individuals, regardless of their age, colour, species, dimension —

“Here, if we have any external enemies at all, at least they are less bold about it! In the real world, such as us — I mean children and imaginary friends — are treated as though we are invisible, or even non-existant, just because we are small and kind to All!”

With this said he barked —

“Woof, woof!”

and followed it with a back-flip, as if to give evidence that being a product of imagination doesn’t, nor should it ever, render an individual as less deserving of acknowledgement and respect as a creation and an individual. Arthur picked him up and gave him a big cuddle, saying —

“But our relative smallness and comparative weakness, in the overcrowded “real world” does not only attract distain from the grownups, but also contempt, because we have no money or power, as though those things are the only ways of measuring value in the universe!”

Doggy stared into the distance, perhaps he saw the past, perhaps some memory of mistreatment at cruel hands, and growled with a combined tone that carried in its vibration, a mixture of wounded pride and impotent rage, the type that is associated with a bad memory of something, a thing that still haunts a person, long after any physical pain had gone, and only scars remain to signal that there was a wound—

“We are not so small and weak as some people might think Arthur, especially when we have each other, and are together!”

and with these words the painful memory turned to defiance and courage, when Doggy realized that he could not afford to be weak, since Arthur relied upon him for protection, and so he added —

“I should add, that the kind of person that we seem to have garnered as enemies, may seem strong to us, because they present an arrogant front, and their cruelty makes them seem even bigger and stronger when they sense that it makes us afraid…”

“It is as though they feed off our fear!”

interrupted Arthur —

“Quite so…”

Doggy concurred —

“…but I feel that if we can practice being strong with the help of each other, then the next time such a monster as Godzilla rises, and by the time his dreadful enormity emerges from the sea, and with great and terrible strides reaches the shore, he stands a full thirty five feet in height, dauntless, terrifying, and as tall as a building in the city…”

Arthur began to tremble a little at this description, and thought it might be wise to curtail the terrifying description…perhaps cut the monster down to size a little so that they could practice on local types of monsters before fearlessly taking on the Godzillas and King Kongs of the world, so before it got away from them he interrupted Doggy and just quietly cut the monster, and with it the terror-level itself, down from a 10 on the scary-metre to a much less apocalyptic 2.5, as Arthur interrupted —

“…and we just thought he was as tall as a skyscraper because we were so far away when we first saw him, plus he was standing on a big rock…, remember?”

Doggy nodded his head, nervously, and uncertain now what he remembered, as Arthur added—

“…and by the time we chased him up to where the sand met the bottom of the rock he was standing on he showed himself to be no bigger than our neighbor’s grandma’s dog. The one that lives in her handbag, whose eyes wobble and entire body trembles when he gets scared, and Granny has to put him down on the grass so he doesn’t piddle in her handbag…”

Doggy looked really altered from before. On the one hand his fear was replaced by what Arthur determined to be that same word “Cavalier”, only used in a different sense — the one where a person is not bothered by anything scary, and also he was a little confused as he still had some left-over terrifying images in his mind. There was actually just one more left, which had something to do with the terrifying roar that this Jabberwock that was their enemy used to make, which sounded a lot scarier than what Arthur had been describing , but in an instant the boy leapt to his feet and explained—

“That’s because of the acoustics in the letterbox! Whenever granny’s dog escaped her handbag he would jump up on top of the water meter and then climb into the letterbox and bark through the slat where the mailman puts all the letters, which sounds like it came out of a dog a lot bigger and scarier than Cosmo, yes that’s the dog’s name, remember? She used to have a little bitch of the same breed called Cleo…remember?”

Arthur demanded again, and this time Doggy nodded like a person who didn’t know what they remembered anymore —

“And there certainly was a nice sensation, Remember?”

Eyes looking left and right —

“As of a weight having been lifted off both of our shoulders, the day Cosmo ran away, and we thought he had gone forever, but it turned out that granny had passed away in the night, and so they put poor old Cosmo to sleep. Ah yes, it’s all coming back to me now.”

Doggy solemnly nodded, his heart at peace and full of gratitude and temporary relief, but soon his heart sank once more, as he remembered that sooner or later they would have to return home to Terrappee again, where Arthur’s awful aunties could show up at any time, like The Spanish Inquisition.

It was as though his eyes were now open and he could never again unsee all the beauties he had seen, touched, smelled and heard, here in this place where his senses were attuned.

Nor could he imagine any other place with air that held the best fragrances of all four seasons, only at different times of the day — as though the journey of the world through the four seasons was conducted in those days, and if you condensed the weather into four quadrants of a single day, from sunrise to sunset, and began the day with the first hints of dawn light, when Arthur smelled and tasted Wintery stillness, whose fragrance was born upon the morning dew, hanging heavily there in languid drops, before falling with deadly accuracy on the powdered wings of moths, caught stunned and unawares in the metallic, frozen air of dawn.

Next came Spring, with ladybugs, whose wings looked like tiny plastic umbrellas, shiny they were, and dotted red and white, like girls in Spanish dresses at a Spring Carnival, and diminutive, these bugs of children and especially little girls most beloved.

In the mid-day Summer Sun all the chthonic denizens of the undergrowth trembled and scuttled into motion, and their wings commenced to activate with furious buzzing, so that movement then did shatter the last of the morning dew, and the smell of mint is carried on Summer breezes between the trees.

Like springtime in the Northern foothills of Scotland’s Cairngorms was the light of morning in Anwynn, and so clear in your lungs that you could just climb a hill and take a deep breath and it was refreshing — like drinking water from a stream, and if air can be said to be fresh, or tired, or in any other way more like the density of water then the lightness of air, well it was just like the wind itself had been filled with chlorophyll and snow, and in Anwynn it was doubly powerful, and on this day, it felt to Arthur as he drank it from a leaf, to be blessed, pure, enriched, filtered and consecrated to the true Gods of nature, and in particular it was like the breath of the guardian spirit of Anwynn —

“What is it about this place Doggy? Why do I love it here so much?”

“Hang on…”

said Doggy. He looked all around them for a quiet minute, taking in the exact place they were sitting.

They were in a meadow on the near side of the lake and the far side of the hedge, between the entrance and the copse of trees, that seemed to be welcoming Arthur in tree-language. Doggy gathered his thoughts, while Arthur gazed at his mongrelly scruffiness, noting that it did not detract from the gravitas of his honesty one bit, but rather, like Diogenes in his tub, this raggedy appearance merely added to his aura of non-materialism and honesty, and the boy’s throat choked up with love, as he reflected sadly that no-one seemed to see that within that shaggy, raggy, hand-made, one-eyed doll, resided an unpretentious loyalty that did not need the trappings that other friends used or even needed to rely on, to show such feelings.

Unlike certain fancy people in the world, whose characters do not live up to the fineness of their garb — Doggy neither wore, nor needed to wear a badge or uniform to tell the world what he believed in, nor to proselytize and hand out pamphlets on the corner, whilst ramming his own politics down the throats of people who couldn’t even afford the luxury of caring which cheek out of two from the same arse he would have to kiss.

Doggy waited, watched, represented, but he preferred to remain incognito, and thereby an enigma — at least on the surface. If someone ever wanted to know more, then all they had to do was ask him. Doggy’s strength was his humility, which has two other sub-powers called — invisibility and anonymity.

No one else in Arthur’s family recognized this subtle anonymity. No one saw him, and so how could they trace him or remember him? If any of them had taken the time to ask him —

“Hey Doggy, what gives?”

he might have replied —

“Ok, I will tell you my secret…”

and then, quietly laughing to himself, might beckon the curious inquisitor into sitting opposite him in a comfortable chair, before recounting —

“Imagine Arthur is the President. Well, I’m like the Secret Service. I hang back. I don’t say much. I don’t look like much. But when the ‘bad guys’ think it’s safe to try something, it’s like “Bam!”

“You know what I mean? And they never see me coming”.

That is what he would probably have said, had anyone ever asked, and Arthur would have just nodded with confidence, and said —

“Listen up y’all, to my more-Wise-than imaginary friend — Doggy. Keepin’ it real”

In the ‘real’ world it was not so, and the world does not change overnight.

They all thought Doggy was rubbish, as Arthur suddenly recalled, and despite the calming power of his fairy grove, some of the slights heaped upon, and tolerated by Doggy, who unlike Arthur did not care in the slightest, particularly given the source — naughty children unworthy to muck out his kennel, but Arthur, like most young boys, was vulnerable to that emotion which is normally connected with status, position, authority, chivalry, and not so much anymore — defending the honour of the weak against the violence of ruffians or sticking up for your friends or family.

Such behaviour is normally considered courageous, but it is the motivation that is most import, and many so-called “Defenders”, who purport to defend the weak and downtrodden, are really indulging their own sense of slighted pride, the thought behind it being quickly detached from the original situation, as the false hero chimes in with an enraged tirade of disbelief, not that someone innocent like Doggy had been ill-used, but because anyone would have the audacity to treat someone who was connected to that powerful person connected with you who are friends with Doggy, with disrespect — and thus the affront as well as the heroic defiance of the affront is misappropriated by someone who doesn’t care a hoot about the true victim.

There soon began to be heard more muffled voices, in the same way that Doggy excitedly began to pipe up from within Arthur’s school bag, so it was in similar fashion, and given that there were several voices this time and they felt as though they might be engaged in friendly disagreement or debate, that had the sound of a football team slowly making its way up through the players-only section that opened up into the boundaries of the arena or football ground, but then they emerged and began to jog around the rest of the boys and men in a circle, until they took a seat around the edges of the blanket, on the grass where Arthur expressed his welcome, and encouraged them all to sit together with him in a circle.

“Tell me again Arthur, how I can be created by A.A. Milne and you too?”

said Eeyore.

“Well, Eeyore, It is called — ‘Conjuration’. When you remember someone, who is not physically in the room with you, you ‘Conjure’ them into your presence by nothing more than the power of your mind and its great and mysterious imagination — which is the most powerful, boundless tool in the Universe — although we know little of how to use it to its capabilities.

“When I Conjured you, Eeyore,”

said the child to the stuffed donkey, which stood with Doggy, Kanga, and a raft of characters from Winnie The Pooh, but who could blame him from continuing to call out his imaginary friends to socialize and take part in new narratives, never dreamed of before by A.A. Milne, by sheer fact of their materializing, at first in the mind of Arthur, then, involuntarily in the mind of the present writer — but it is the strong suspicion on the part of the present writer that if Mr. Milne, were alive, and he knew that his beloved children in literature might be given a few new friends, provided that they did not poach any of his original ones or potential new ones in his peer group, nor disgrace the decency inherent in the characters of their originals, nor does the present writer seek to profit from the portrayal of their characters, except to the extent that a six or seven year old profits, and that is in a pow-wow without grown-ups in a mushroom circle in a magic forest. Also by those ageless qualities of generosity, honesty, loyal friendship, good counsel, and trust.

“I did not create you from scratch…”

confessed Arthur to a perplexed Eeyore.

“I already knew there was a cute donkey in the Pooh books named Eeyore — a Gray donkey with sad eyes and stitching down his nose, who doesn’t feel like he deserves to be loved, then drop him into a place where everyone loves and accepts him for being just the way he is. I thought perhaps it is unethical to try to reproduce a character without giving the truth as to its creator and then provenance, and so I took the classic qualities of Eeyore- and just tried to pay homage to them rather than paying, and I made him you…and here you are! I do feel a bit presumptuous just conjuring you up like that.

“Your ‘Ideal’ or original soul was fashioned by A.A. Milne, and he bound you, Rabbit, Roo, Pooh, Christopher Robin and Owl together in a very magical bond. Even the 100 Acre Wood is a character.

“Even the font that “A.A. Milne” is printed on any of the 5 ‘Pooh’ Books is like a child of his mind.

There’s also the drawings —

“By Me… and Mr Shepherd helpd”

in the front of the books.

Up until this point Arthur was explaining to the best of his ability as the sub-creator of these beings, that just because they had a previous parent, it does not mean that he should not love and admire those other-man’s children, nor be prohibited from befriending them, as there are few characters in literature that are accessible to a six year old boy who spends a lot of time alone and in forests reading.

Here Owl interrupted-

“As in Plato, I don’t want to get bogged down in anything except to say that I live In Heaven in my perfect Owl form, and this Owl that is ME, Owl, who you see before you, well this one is I.

“I am an Owl who is related to the original owl, but I’m different, like in Darwin’s book — you start off with an Owl but his beak might not have been sharp enough to kill a rat, but he thought of a way to trick it, so his brain got bigger and each time the imaginary Owl becomes more wise or a better friend to Pooh, or in my case to Arthur, then he is more likely to be read and embraced by a contemporary kid.”

“What about James Bond?”

asked Doggy.

“He’s a bit like me! “I’ll have a Womka Markini”…Arthur what IS a Womka Markini??”

Arthur —

“I don’t know mate. Remember, if I don’t know then you don’t either, if it’s a matter of fact. But if I was to guess, I don’t think that anyone else but you could do it buddy without the rugged good looks.

Doggy —

“Well I can speak. Does that make me real? No I don’t think so either. Lots of objects can sing and play but are not Doggys, nor Piglets.”

“I don’t think the issue that Arthur’s Mum has is with whether we are real or not but that he is spending too much time with us.”

Arthur said —

“Actually I think you are right, but that’s because her friends, in this case my aunties, were forcing me to lock myself up exclusively with you guys.

“But listen, it doesn’t matter if there is an eternal “Idea” of Doggy or Eeyore of any of us, including non-imaginary friends like me…”

at which moment he was interrupted by a brusque clearing of the throat and an —

“Ahem!”

coming from a few imaginary quarters.

Owl then added —

“To be fair Arthur, you know that you too are an imaginary friend, and you’ve been made up by a person named Juy, whom none of us has ever met”

At this point Arthur began to look around furtively and scratch uncomfortably, when Owl continued-

“By all accounts a very gentle boy himself. One of us! One of Us! Goober Gober!”

and he hooted and asked then —

“So, there’s a boy making up stories about another boy, and he’s making up stories about God? Which then turn out to be true!”

“Look!”

said Piglet

“I think, imaginary or real, it doesn’t matter. If Arthur makes a real friend, a little boy or girl in the real world, then the only value of that kid in my eyes is how they make our Arthur feel.”

“Hear, hear!”

shouted the triumphant-muffled sound from inside Arthur’s school bag, as they all started singing and dancing in the Disco style, waving their arms like chicken wings, strutting like turkeys, etc.

Of course, the only actual observable person doing anything at all was Arthur, who was having a grand old time jabbering away to his buddies, and singing a little louder since he thought that Doggy had a terrible voice, plus he always sang too loud, which made it quite easy to mask your singing-

“You make me feel, mi-high-tee- real!”

At which moment he pretended he was wearing a puffy-sleeved shirt, a Panama hat, tap shoes, and shaking maracas in each hand — somehow he needed to pretend that there was a diamond in his front tooth so he could raise his top lip and make it sparkle in tune with the mirror ball on the dance floor, right when the singer sings the third “real” out of three “mighty real’s”, only this time when he hits the “L” at the end of the word ‘REAL’, Arthur flaps his tongue like a lizard or a snake, and flaps his eyebrows like a laughing old man.

Young Arthur Chapter 9. (10 min read)

Aged 5, 1975. Aunties disrespect Doggie, and try to Poison his Mum against him.

Arthur had a safe place where he would hide.

After the long walk back from Arthur’s school to home Arthur wanted to tell Victoria what happened to him the previous week in Annwyn, and indeed he might have, had not they both been wiped out after only a few seconds after they sat down. Fatigue and pain overwhelmed the feet of both mother and son, and depleted energy prevented them from discussing anything at all.

After Arthur and Victoria went inside, they passed through the ground-floor lobby to the downstairs dining hall on the left of the big staircase, and then went inside the dining room adjacent to that and sat down.

In a brief moment of peace both mother and son sat and placed their feet, each up on the chair next to him and herself respectively, at the dining table, too weary to find something more appropriate.

After only about 30 seconds of Victoria and Arthur winding down from their exertions both of them suddenly heard a noise break the silence — a strange and unusual sound that immediately gave Arthur a bad feeling and set Victoria on her guard. Victoria, like many mothers, was more instinctively protective when her child was around, although for all that, she appeared to be blind or oblivious to whatever malicious intent that Arthur perceived as coming from her sisters, though it was right in front of her nose.

“Perhaps the closeness of them to her, emotionally, makes her blind to even considering such a possibility”

were the words that Arthur thought, hopefully, when he found himself despairing of her protection when they were around. He would find that things were about to get exponentially worse, right after the funeral of Grandma Billie, the following year.

First the two residents both heard a noise announcing a foreign presence, after hearing which they turned around and retreated to the sitting room with the smaller narrow staircase, the one to the side, steeply leading up to the third floor. It’s bottom was just outside the kitchen in the front lobby that they had just passed through.

It was the weekend after the first week of school, and having all met without him on the previous weekend for the baby shower at auntie Sue’s, two of Arthur’s aunties turned up at Terrappee to surprise the grandparents and his mother. Both grandparents were accompanying each other to medical appointments and were due back together at about 6:30, which would allow the sisters to easily come to the house and find a hiding spot to surprise them as a group when they got home.

For Arthur their coming was a big surprise, like the surprise you feel when you find a suspicious lump that you have a bad feeling about, but regardless if it turns out malignant or benign, the best case scenario is an overwhelming sense of the anticlimactic, mixed with waves of disappointment and paranoia.

Swiftly, but without panicking, the mother and son whizzed up the smaller stairs and Victoria yelled out to see if there was anyone there, when out of nowhere they popped, spreading simultaneous joy and horror —

“Surprise!” they cackled,

two little grim women who looked like witches, and they surprised the mother and son alike, by converging on the top of the staircase from the shadows of a darkened hall with musty bedrooms on either side.

How much greater than that of his mother was Arthur’s surprise, mixed as it was with shock and horror, as Victoria’s older and younger sisters respectively — Jan and Jen — together rushed, or rather flapped, into the open arms of Victoria, whose wings stretched out wide to embrace, or rather enfold the two of them, like baby bats.

Aunties mean to Doggie

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“I’ll get you, and your little dog too!”

In any case Arthur had not been expecting to see them arrive unannounced at Terrappee, where they seldom visited and by the extent of his mother’s surprise — never unannounced. The surprise felt by Victoria had the effect of eliciting the exact opposite emotional response from Arthur. His was the very cold and involuntary sensation of someone walking over one’s grave, a bad kind of goosebumps, such as was arising in his bones and skin that very moment — as he realised they were there.

Whilst standing behind her, crouching down slowly, and cringing as hard as he could, Arthur tried to become invisible, and he very gingerly retreated down the open staircase, and quickly disappeared downstairs. Then, making no further attempt at subterfuge, finally turned his back and fled, looking at the floor like a criminal on the lam, as he shuffled away, hoping to avoid being noticed.

Arthur then nimbly flew under the table in the dining room, and disappeared under a large and heavy wooden chair, also under said table, with his school bag, and protruding from it the head of the most loyal imaginary and stuffed friend in the world — Doggy. Arthur was just as shocked and put off, as Victoria was comforted and even thrilled, at the “wonderful surprise” as she saw it, of seeing her sisters.

“I see ‘shit’ where you see champagne!”

thought Arthur, bitterly.

The aunties did not appear to notice Arthur’s discreet flight at first, and they commenced to engage his mother in conversation, until, in an unfortunate turn of events, this plan was scuttled, by causing Arthur’s presence to be thrown into the limelight by the sudden exit of his mother and auntie Jan, who for some reason to do with their conversation went into some room full of grandma’s stuff, with the terrifying effect of leaving Arthur alone, and at the mercy of Jen, whom he prayed in vain couldn’t see him where he skulked under the large dining table, but his prayers did not stop the sprightly sound of her shoes clicking rapidly on the boards as she made haste to skip down the stairs and locate Arthur.

The aunties were small, and all their lives they had been able to move around beneath that very table that covered the chair under which Arthur hid, but recent childbirth and grief at their loss, had slowed them down a lot, stymying Jen’s attempt to look for Arthur under there. Not to mention the relative speed of a little boy being pursued, as he saw it, by witches! Jen’s growing frustration turned to rage and she started throwing and kicking things out of the way, and raising her voice, but with a kindly tone —

Thornfield Hall

“Arthur? Oh Arthur, dear? Where are you my boy?”

She simultaneously sang and yelled, in a mock sweet voice, and clearly it was made deliberately loud enough for Victoria and Jan to hear upstairs, and then, even louder —

“Where are you my darling? We haven’t seen you for ages. Lord you must be growing up big and strong!”

she cried as though in pure curiosity and genuine concern, but then she moved away from the open doorway that carried her voice to the upstairs area she began to call out again, but in a very different manner, this time wanting to make her true feelings known as soon as possible, lest Arthur mistake those honeyed words meant for his mother’s naive ears to be directed at himself in earnest, she then hissed —

“You come out of there right now you little brat! You think you can escape us? Don’t think Victoria will help you. She can’t stand you either. She was trapped…stuck with you!”

which Arthur heard loud and clear, and it terrified him.

She found him, but he was not alone, and when she saw in whose company he was, she turned her menacing gaze upon that innocent creature. Then, staring at Doggy, and cooking up some scheme in her mind, but one that required assistance, she squawked to the other auntie, Jan, who flew through the door like a bat out of Hell, while Arthur’s mother was way behind her descending the large staircase, and thus conveniently unaware of the machinations of her sisters with relation to Arthur, and presumably unable to hear the following —

“What is that disgusting thing he’s hugging?”

said one, scowling.

“It looks filthy!”

said the other, with her face screwed up and pinched.

Straight away the evil ones began circling around the dining table, each taking the opposite side, with a view to catching Arthur in a pincer movement —

“Grab it off him dear!”

barked again the first, and —

“Throw it in the bin!”

was the next, the last shout, made by Jan, as Doggy was snatched up in the loving arms of Arthur, and carried away to safety. The aunties knew he was called “Doggy”, and that he was Arthur’s best friend, but that did not stop them. No!

On previous occasions when Arthur had worked up the courage to actually challenge the aunties with a question as to why they treated him that way, the auntie in question would snap back a nasty reply, and frequently it made no sense except to let the hearer know that it meant exactly what it sounded like in tone, regardless of the sense or eloquence of the words —

“You’re just trying to be a smartass!”

he recalled Jen replying to him once when he dared to ask her why she didn’t like his father. Then after, she added —

“He’s just like you! He thinks he’s something special’”

always pointing the gnarled finger of accusation —

“But you are worse than him because you’re just weird! Look at you, dragging around crap in your life like that unnecessary piece of shit, just to make life harder for your poor mother!”

which was what his life’s mission was, according to them-

“Trying to make life harder for your poor Mother!”

Arthur wondered if comments like that were the equivalent of working overtime? She might as well have said —

“I don’t have time to keep emotionally tormenting you all day, so I’ll just say the most horrible thing you can imagine right now, just so that you can beat yourself up after I’m gone.”

In any case, he had always managed to escape up to that point, and they had never managed to kidnap Doggy yet. Arthur prided himself on his loyalty to Doggy, that it was not so tepid that he would brook such vile transgressions from anyone, be they the Queen’s Auntie’s, let alone his own, and so he shouted defiantly —

“He’s MY DOGGY!”

and he dove under the dining table and then shot out between Auntie Jan’s legs, who upon seeing his shadowy form flit up the stairs, then dart around the top of the staircase like a will ‘o the wisp, she could do no more than shout a half-baked warning and cast a slightly flummoxed look after him —

“I’ll get you Arthur! And your little dog too!”

It was not half-baked because she didn’t really mean it. It was only half-baked because she was too weak to carry it out. Arthur was left in no doubt as to their maleficence, but for the time-being his mind was relieved. He escaped them and found himself safe again in his magic place, away from wickedness, yet a shiver went down his spine as the thought of what he would do if they had actually managed to get Doggy darkened his mind, even as Arthur drew the heroic and fluffy shape from his school bag, and placed him down on his soft jumper as always, despite his mum asking him where all the hairs came from.

The following week they returned to Annwyn and then Arthur drew Doggy forth and let him bask side by side with the boy, on the sand at the base of one of the beautiful sand dunes that characterized the first section or seaward side of the property.

“I’ll never let anyone hurt you Doggy, and I’ll NEVER let you go. I know that we are all supposed to grow up and leave behind our imaginary friends, but Doggy if they ever do separate us I swear to you…,”

and he spat on his hand and Doggy’s paw and shook hands —

“I swear I will return and bring you back here with me where they can’t harm us my friend!”

He was immediately reminded of his snotty nose blowing bubbles to render absurd any tragic beauty that his tears wept in the darkness below the stairs might otherwise have had.

Here too was a link to a description of two such places as there and here, and how they were eternally held apart for all the children of Eve by divine Justice, and a part of him was immediately deflated, unable to forget for very long stretches that this visit could not last and he must always return — even if only for his mother, whose absence would have the same poisonous effect on any Eldorado.

“I’ll never leave her completely!”

he promised out loud for all minds in the universe to hear, including her, himself, God and the rest of the world, and in that he saw no wrong, only an earnest wish to not breach the sacred thing he had in life, NOT to defile the Holy Sacrament, like his Daddy had done by breaking her heart, and NOT, though he felt he should trust God because God is Good, but NOT to do like Him and let his dearest love fall into the path of destruction. And it was with a silent compassion that all the life there in his enchanted forest looked upon the fragile little boy, and pitied his dream to rescue his mother from the World’s everlasting sorrow.

Young Arthur Chapter 10. (12 min read)

Aged 5, 1975. Aunties Second Assault Before The Arrival of Death.

Finally realizing, since their last failed attempt to get him to submit to their terror, they finally resort to his mother as a target.

Part 1: An attempted intervention.

Home life runs in parallel to school life, and the broader family life is its shadow, and rears its head only once every couple of months or less — but that is when things are going along without any special event to cause disruption. It is disruption in the superstructure of the family that changes the weather, and before you know it grey clouds forebode a rain of ill-wishing aunties.

“You know you’re killing your mother, don’t you?”

After having missed him at the baby shower at the beginning of this chapter, then when the two most bloodthirsty witches — Jan and Jen — materialised without warning the following week yet again to no avail as we have told in the tale of his flight from under the table in the kitchen, one more time in that year spent by the mother and son at Terrappee did those harpies launch another assault, and this time with even deeper subterfuge, as they hoped to sway the mother to their thinking and thereby twist her mind, and recruit her to their plan.

Arthur would escape that final sortie as well, by virtue of the combination of his diminutive size and fleetness-of-foot, he managed once again to slip through their clutches, but not before he silently witnessed the gist of their plan being unfolded to his mother, when they ‘dropped over to have a mini-intervention’, with she whom they had taken to privately refering to as —

“poor old Victoria”

whom they felt obliged to —

“confide”

in her that what they were witnessing was not healthy or good, and that they were worried about both hers and her child’s mental status —

“You know, with those awful stuffed toys he’s always whispering to, and then I’ll spot him, although he doesn’t notice that I’ve seen him, and he’s just staring in a really weird way — shooting queer, sideways-glances at us, as though placing some kind of spell or curse upon us, and it is so unnerving my love! Have you not noticed?”

asked Jan —

“It’s unnerving!”

reiterated Jen —

“And really creepy!”

added the smaller and more furtive of the two sisters, who had gone from keeping very still while the other spoke, and just giving off a hint of the impression of an apparently unsettled person — her character could best be described as — a silent-but-wobbling jelly of nerves.

When Jan had evidently spoken her piece, and there was naught left to be said or done but to have at it, yes, and to take Victoria in hand, though the sixth sense that lived in the corner of her eye told her that her twin was as yet still more surprised than convinced, of these horrific assertions her and her accomplice had just made, and would thus need a little more work, so in the spirit of Broadway she turned into a positively flamboyant and theatrical thespian — drawing from her sleeve a handkerchief, and frantically waving it in front of her fluttering eyes, as though she was feeling faint and these actions were an effort in trying to prevent herself from passing out in shock!

With that, and all the rest, eventually performed to a perfection of disingenuity, Arthur’s mother began to become affected, as though genuinely entranced in the same way as her two sisters were, and her mind began to sway like a tall tree in the wind, and in her moment of vertigo she reached out with her heart in prayer for this simply to not be true. She was drifting into that parallel dimension which still has one foot in the mundane reality, yet begins to see everything as surreal and moving out of time, called ‘shock’…yes, not quite but almost in a state of shock, much easier to induce with some physical calamity, such as the patient witnessing a murder, or being present but unable to help at the scene of a horrible accident, yet still possible to be induced by sheer theatricality and vivid description, so long as the subject is taken utterly by surprise, as well as having been involved in something potentially psychologically damaging in the past. Indeed Victoria was surprised to be feeling much at all, let alone a form of hypnotic shock, whilst unbeknownst to her and the other women there was a witness observing all, or almost all, from his secret hiding place.

Arthur was upset, if not actually shocked to the same debilitating degree of his mother, yet a bitter scowl in the shadows could have told anyone who might have seen it, that he was not-at-all surprised by this conduct — and he feared that they were, for some reason, truly unknown to him, actually determined to see him removed from the picture, and this frightened the boy.

Thus it was in tense silence that Arthur and Doggy hid in the shadowy bower at the top of the stairs, and wondered what Victoria would make of the accusations, as he did not hear everything in its entirety. He did not have to wait long, and was himself experiencing an increase in his own nervous tension as he heard the muffled tone of his mother’s voice, the audible echo of her naturally trusting soul, thanking the witches profusely, and promising to go along with their advice —

“Try to get the lad some help”,

said one, and —

“Don’t be afraid of tough love!”

said the other, and followed this admonition with further advice, whispered gently in Victoria’s ear, to —

“Rip off the bandaid without mercy, and swiftly!”

then in unison, like a war cry they shrieked —

“Soon we will have you back to your old self before any of this nastiness ever happened!”

they cried gleefully, psychotically and reassuringly, and in a dreadful off-key unison — more cacophony than harmony — the way weird twins finish off each other’s sentences, and showing the world that they are proud of sharing only one mind between them — but it sure would get crowded in there sometimes, and require a lot of patients.

Evil eyes began to search around the shadows near the stairs, and the two young but budding crones held tight to either side of the mother, in order to “assist” her in taking the boy in hand, only of course “if the need arises”, and so to hold him down firmly, whilst his beloved mother was induced to shame him into betraying his imaginary friends. Arthur realised at some point in the short ensuing moments that his strength and nimbleness would be less helpful if his mother were actually of the evil party, and he was to find himself in the clutches of three sets of offending hands rather then two…

The terrible thoughts were products he knew of very accurate imaginings on his part, and a profound shiver ran up Arthur’s spine even as a teardrop welled in his eye — he didn’t have time to think, he ‘minded himself, but if he had that luxury —

“Oh Lord, where would I begin…?”

and so practicality took the place of adventure for a moment, for indeed there was no time to lose at all, as with the slow and synchronized movements of three witches from an old, black and white horror movie, ther two aunties, led by their sister, began with outstretched arms that cast even longer and warped versions of themselves in shadow on the walls beside the stairs, as they climbed, searching for Arthur.

The boy first pressed himself back into a shadowy cranny, and the women stopped and then his mother called out his name in a kind of fell tone, that was nevertheless her voice, and he had not yet learnt to disobey it, and so with a head hanging low like a dog, he delivered himself to the bottom of the stairs and for a moment was paralysed with fear.

Victoria herself did not mark the terror that had possessed her son, as she was too busy misjudging herself, and thinking (erroneously) that her weakness was responsible for allowing harm to come to her little boy!

It was thus with a newfound (albeit misguided) determination that she snapped out of that funk and into another, different one — one of self-possession, and seeing him standing there before her quickly reached out and grabbed Arthur by his skinny arm, perhaps more roughly than was strictly called for, and sat him down, frankly stating it was because she was concerned that since they left Arthur’s father he was spending more and more time in his inner-world with imaginary friends, and she was very worried that it was unhealthy and also her fault.

Aunties Jan and Jen had followed Victoria into the little dining area by the kitchen slowly, triumphantly, and they sat down next to Victoria, the three of them, facing Arthur accusatorially, like Clerks of the Court assisting the judge at the Long Table in front of the Bench, so as to represent later on to Victoria that they appeared only as supporters or councillors, but soon one of their poisonous tongues, tongues that with every word formed sought always to divide Arthur from Victoria, through falsehood and suspicion-born-of-misrepresentation-accepted-and-believed. As opposed to the tongues of friends who like the honey bees unite through truth and good faith, spreading only sweetness and light.

Arthur stared at his auntie, silently accusing her of tampering with his mother’s mind, and the woman became enraged at his, as she counted it, hubris! That a creature like him would dare to cross her in defiance of her authority was unthinkable, scandalous, and so she decided to lead with an insult to his father.

She spoke at a pitch that made it impossible for Arthur to ignore or miss the words —

“So Victoria. Have you got any child support money today, or has that…

“That…

“Ef You See Kay Eye En Gee…

she was getting puffed and couldn’t manage many more letters in that old-fashioned ridiculous spelling game, and so shouted -

“CUNT”…He’s a Fucking Cunt!”

Arthur almost laughed out loud at this madness, and even his Mum, now suddenly shocked again — this time shocked out of her shock, and as her eyes cleared she had to force herself to suppress a little smile at the terror that had instantaneously exploded into farce, and just like that, the menace of his aunties, Jen in particular it was who had screwed up and inadvertently broken the spell herself, were once again neutralised and once more reduced from their collective personality of Hecate or something like that, to just three little bitter women, whose bitterness stemmed from frustration at their powerlessness and irrelevance in the world.

It was very funny indeed but Arthur was not certain that his mother had a true understanding of the maleficence of her sisters. It seemed to him that not only did she think she could manage them, but she also thought that they ‘meant well’, and all of the other platitudes that mothers and sisters use to apologise for their nasty siblings. Arthur had seen more — too much! He was not going to hang around and hope to get another reprieve later on.

The journey of the second-hand, across that abyss that exists between each of the 60 marks that surround the edge of the clock-face — marks both beginning and ending at 12 — begins with its launch, which is marked by a sudden but partial movement, accompanied by the sound “Ti…”.

So it was again and as always, in the tiny nano-space between the launch of the second-hand on its short but oft-repeated journey, including the beginning of its journey, and now it goes on the rest of the way to its mark, all the way, until with a thumping “ck…”, which is the second part of the sound —

“Tick”

it lands on the following mark in the sequence, a sequence highlighted as it is divided, into perfect caches of five marks, and it is only on the last of these that the clock displays the number again, only as it has progressed in the procession, numbered at intervals of 5, in order of a sequence from the numbers 1 through to 12, which lies at the top again, until the second hands returns again, only to stay for half a second and move on to the mark which must be logically identified as being 1 minute past 12! Then it moves, an again and always in a clockwise direction, that is, it moves to the right of its previous location.

So well it then went, that as the hand of Time landed so confidently on it’s next mark, Arthur too moved with an unusual degree of alacrity — so quick was he that he made the second hand move with so relative a sluggishness that it seemed like the hour-hand! But that is quite a boast, and something of a jump, so is probably untrue…it really depends on whose ear one asks.

In any case Arthur leapt away from his mother’s normally loving, but lately slightly brutal hands, that had (although unintended) recently transformed from dainty porcelain things into clawed, mire-besmirched fore-paws of a wolf, whose clutches were greater and more dire, but otherwise not unlike those of the two wretches that flanked Victoria — and all three of them blessed with crooked and bony fingers, and each of those crowned by a gnarly claw at the end.

So swift did Arthur beat his retreat, and then make good his escape, that his mother and aunties were dumbfounded-one-and-all, but Victoria was more surprised than actually convinced of her own poor judgement, as she glanced right and left at her two normally serene-looking siblings (one was even her twin), who both took what seemed like a very long and drawn out eight seconds on a bucking bull before they raised the alarm, which was a banshee-like shriek that followed the retreating form of the boy in flight, until he finally flung himself over a low hedge that was the gateway to Annwyn closest to the Terrappee house.

The thought that his mother was, and even if not completely, it would seem to be inevitable at this point that she too would be converted to evil, and then become the instrument of his capture…it was, like so many thoughts and fancies that alternately threaten or tantalise…just sitting there, floating, not so deeply concealed beneath the fabric of society, or our surface consciousness — anathema — yet there it was nonetheless, the prospect of a mother becoming a vampire and the very act that would turn her once and for all featured her own son as the sacrifice…well? How else do we call this evil of evils than anathema?

For a mother to travel such a road would be no different to those predatory priests that Mother Maria was planning to warn Sister John to beware (not because of her own vulnerability of course), and start to keep a weather eye on the vulnerable, and become a wise old salt, for tricky those ones were — perhaps the trickiest of them all, as all the while whilst wearing the trappings of Holiness, vestments that are designed to signal to the public that —

“This man is a man of God, and no matter your troubles you can come to him, lay your head on his shoulder, and be at peace, in the faith that he will be your shepherd and you his vulnerable yet safe and sound little sheep.”

those crooked ones instead use the Holy items for an unholy purpose, and that is mainly to seduce young boys.

The role of the priest is the most sanctified role in society because it is a public and general responsibility on the part of the wearer of the vestments — the frock, the mitre and stole, etc. The next one down from him is the Teacher and the Policeman — both of those have a duty of care, even if only a moral and not legal position, to protect the vulnerable from unscrupulous and opportunistic adventurers who, like Faust, care not about the mess they leave behind them in the lives of others.

Later on, from the security and safety of his secret garden in Anwynn, Arthur dared to face such frightening questions that he felt forced to ask himself, such as —

“Why was she so susceptible to their influence? She was a single mum and a divorcee — shouldn’t she be naturally sympathetic to the outcasts?!”

But then he tried to be objective for a moment, which can sometimes work extremely productively for a child when he puts his mind to it, and attempting to imagine how his mother must feel herself, he realised that —

“More and more since we have been alone in the world, after Victoria and Da separated, her self-confidence has been rattled. Of course I did not know her before I was born, but I know her very well now, and for the first time in my short life she has begun to lose confidence and to actually question her own judgement, adjuring that —

“If I was so deluded as to fall into that terrible marriage, then who knows what other madness is in my head? Maybe I don’t know what’s best for Arthur, nor how to properly take care of him anymore?!”

“God I hope she doesn’t feel that way….damn those aunties!”

he muttered, momentarily terrified at the prospect, and then getting angrier with the aunties he swore he would be the voice of reason and break that spell they had just woven around her

Young Arthur Chapter 11. (14 min read)

Aged 6, 1975. Third Sojourn to Annwyn with Friends, Imaginary & Real, sitting in a circle Arthur calls The Flowery Bower.

“There is a happy land, where only children live, they don’t have the time to learn the ways of you Sir, Mr Grownup, go away Sir!” — David Bowie.

Around the circle where they sat — and this was their place for today — that Arthur would name — “The Flowery Bower”, stood what appeared to the children to be thousands of green stalks, and crowning them, one head for each skinny body, was a great, top-heavy Sunflower, which was among what in reality amounted to over five hundred of them, that were planted by Angus, the erstwhile grounds keeper, planted in the shape of a circle or clock-face, and with a grassy section in the middle for children to sit together in groups on the grass and enjoy the feeling of being in what to them must have seemed like a veritable forest of flowers.

The sunflowers sometimes grew so tall that, depending on the group, the light, and what they were wearing, they children seemed to be sometimes transformed into sunflowers or else be completely swallowed up by the garden.

Black and yellow like bees they were, and each stalk crowned by a bud, itself top-heavy from the excess of its spray of yellow petals, fanning out in a great circle like the reptilian iris of some herbivorous dinosaur of the Pliocene epoch, and in the center — heaviest part of all — the black tender pistils that filled the monster’s pupil, were so full of sticky, glistening pollen, that they seemed to fuse into a liquid-obsidian surface, and so overcrowded with individual black filaments that they fused and pushed themselves out, into the shape of a convex lens, its curvature protruding in a semi-circle or half-sphere —

“They have,”

agreed Doggy —

“…a deep pool of shadow behind them to be sure, but their inability to dilate, nor to move within their yellow iris, causes…”

Doggy, more than Arthur, liked to think of them as appearing, not insincere, but sociopathic —

“Doll’s eyes!”

exclaimed Doggy.

“That’s what they look like! Like a shark that is watching some other fish swimming around while he devours you, immune to your screams”

…morbidly expanded a studious and serious-sounding Doggy on this unpleasant subject, but who, since it would be naïve to call him completely impartial about anything, was trying to suggest that, being a doll with the same kind of eyes as those he was endeavoring to describe, he was hoping to develop a little vicarious edginess to his persona, and cultivate a school playground for example, where the girls might whisper over their lunch boxes at playtime —

“Oh, there’s that Arthur!”

and their Raggedy-Ann dolls would be gossiping with the Barbie’s, who couldn’t help looking, in spite of their snobbery, at the one-eyed stuffed dog from the wrong side of the tracks, with the psycho killer eyes —

“His friend is called “Doggie” I’ve heard”

said Jemima to the others, whilst playing with one of her dark pigtails that hung in a thick plait, shiny and healthy, like her thick mane of country hair — a fitting crown for an unpretentious and brilliant student, whose studies were exemplary, as was her reputation for kindness and humility, not just in her own peer group, but even outside of the school community. Jemima was Emma’s imaginary friend, and she was almost as universally loved in the living community of little girls that formed her peer group, as was Jemima amongst the dollies —

“He’s got a missing eye and even a little straggly string dangling from it…”

At this point one of the Barbie’s barely managed to suppress a fake dry-retch, as if to show her disapproval in a most cruel manner, but knew that Jemima would teach her a lesson instantly and she would have to suck it up, as Jemima existed in an exalted place, outside and above the rest of the pecking order.

So Jemima continued, uninterrupted, whilst a bunch of girls dolls stared at Doggy, each of them trying not to look at his missing eye, and honestly trying to see what it was about him that their respected friend saw, but they could not —

“But the other one…”

she said tantalizingly, having lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone —

“…looks fascinating, like a bottomless lake in the center of an ancient volcano, that deep down conceals unknown depths, of fire!”

None of the other dolls knew how to respond. Most covered their astonished, wide-open mouths with one hand. Many shook their heads and whispered to their closest neighbor, something like —

“That Jemima is a crazy woman!”

as they all giggled, in a mixture of jocularity and admiration, for Jemima’s originality and generosity of heart, to choose so ragged a doll to heap with such praise — even if it was fake — as they half-imagined, but were still uncertain of.

That incident had been at school on Wednesday, and it was not until Arthur had another deep and meaningful conversation again with Doggy, which was two days later, on the Friday, just Doggy and Arthur together in Anwynn, and enjoying a moment of tranquility, such as the types of moments when we finally remember the thing forgotten, or when we understand the situation that had been confusing us, and it was in such circumstances that Arthur realized that it had been a long time since he had looked into fixing Doggy’s other eye, and he felt bad that he had not noticed weeks before they sat down on that breezy Friday afternoon, and Arthur first drew Doggy from his school bag, and then, an instant later, tore off his white-collared school-shirt and threw it on the grass, before sitting Doggy on top of the shirt, and immediately noticing, to his shame, the missing eye that stuck out so conspicuously, the disheveled state of it made even worse by contrast with the other one which was missing entirely, making poor Doggy look like he had been fired out of a cannon, such that Arthur felt ashamed of his oversight and selfishness —

“Oh yeah, sorry mate, I forgot, and there’s no good excuse…God, why am I so selfish?”

With that Arthur looked as though he would blubber, in shame at forgetting his friend’s new eye, that he had been going on about fixing for ages, but then always letting it slide to the bottom of his list of priorities, which Arthur well knew was a transparent sign of narcissism, and the act of a person who doesn’t care about you at all —

“It’s nothing”

said Doggy —

“Please just let me explain about this eye…”

as he looked around at Arthur with his remaining one, which was not really the best, but was a plastic bubble with a little black bean inside, that bounced around constantly.

Doggy’s honest opinion was that such an eye is already full of character, because the bean is never perfectly circular, which apart from making the seer behind it look a little crazy, invariably doesn’t completely match the other one, which more than anything makes him look alive, and unpredictable! Now the fact is that Arthur, once again in complete sincerity, totally concurred with the above insane opinion, but knew that both he and his friend were a bit defective with these subjects. Arthur and Doggy both, had unusual tastes aesthetically —

“I love it!”

exclaimed a happy Doggy.

“When the two pupils bounce around in circles on either side, and it makes the little babies in their prams smile too — and they are the toughest crowd.”

“But, I promise…”

interjected Arthur, placing his hands together, as in a motion of sincere prayer —

“I promise I will find the same one next week, and you’ll have two matching eyes again, because no matter how I like to talk-up being radical, and out there, etc., you really don’t need any help in that department, and it might actually do you good, to get a bit of a square-look going on…just for a change?! What do you think?”

An extremely relieved imaginary friend acted nonchalantly —

“It’s no big deal you know!”

he was really trying to play it down now.

“I mean, let’s face it, it’s a plastic bouncing-bean, crazy-eye…a plastic goggle-eye. It amuses, just as it looks insane, I know that!

“What do you think I am? Just because I have one eye, doesn’t make me completely blind. It’s mostly cosmetic, right?”

“I only do eyes. Just eyes! You Nexus 6. I made your eyes” — Blade Runner.

As were the flowers, so was the Sun, staring back at them, and both staring at the two reflections on the surface of the lake where the blazing Sun, still not far diminished from its full power at the zenith of the arc of its passage through the sky, clarity shining onto glass clarity on the polished surface of the lake, and with the two hemispheres joined at an impossible to trace line on the horizon, and still showing only a vast, blue expanse of nothing in the distance above-all, and like Doggy’s eye, not only the Sun, but the entire cosmos seemed to Arthur to be strangely fabricated and cosmetic, but only in the sense that these beautiful accoutrements are, when what lies beneath is a certain vastness of spirit, and the spirit, where awake, itself concealing further depth, though hidden behind powerful eyes, remains vigilant, albeit unseen.

He felt those to be calling them, to seek and find for themselves here, in this blessed place, a depth of life so strikingly in contrast with their normal experience, that his second reflexive reaction after the expression of infinite joy and gratitude, was a deep sadness for the natural, inevitable, next realization, which was that it could not last —

“Either this paradise could not last, or we will not be able to stay here, for whatever bogus and unjust reason…”

thought the fatalistic boy.

So also were the thoughts of his inseparable imaginary friend, who had his own reasons for feeling a sense of the transitory nature of all that was good, along with the inevitability of impending doom.

Arthur sensed Doggy’s panic, and looked up focusing on his good eye, as Doggy spoke, slowly and wistfully —

“It seems that we are only given a glimpse of perfection, in that, only in order to make the rest of it all the more wounding, since now we know for sure that there is a happy place for us!”

he said, almost howling, as forlorn dogs do —

“And the worst part is…”

Arthur picked up the thread, at once in total sympathy with Doggy’s feelings and thoughts, but with something to add, as he had been thinking the same thing anyway…and the fact was that Doggy normally considered thinking a waste of time, and just took life as it came, which made it doubly surprising that he should say such words. In fact it was unheard of —

“The worst part is that no-one will be worse off if we could live in our own magical world and leave them and their plans alone!”

With that he flopped down again, in a form of sad resignation and sat there suddenly weary, in the middle of a meadow by the lakeside in Anwynn, and suddenly immobilized by a pang of fear, that even this was all an illusion, and soon would disappear.

He would wake up and Anwynn would be gone, the only difference being, that whereas he was ignorant before, now he knew how much he had to lose-

“Oh, infinitely worse condition!”

he cried-

“Would that I had tripped over that shoelace outside and cracked my head in the gutter, and never seen such beauty and felt such depth of soul, as I do here.”

Thus, with drooping jowl, slouching shoulders, and one-eyed dog, he languished in that meadow for a while, till soon his nose became snotty and blew bubbles, which made him feel so silly that he began to laugh, as did Doggy, dispelling the dread of losing something he had only just gained, and they pulled themselves together again, unwilling, yet stalwart.

Doggy, to be sure, as an imaginary friend — DID — in fact, qualify to live eternally with Arthur in Anwynn, should Arthur have chosen that path, but it has already been shown that this is a land only for children. Adults who are poisoned by the fruit of the Tree of Evil may not enter, except on short visits for the business of the well-being of Anwynn.

But we have already shown how, by virtue of his mother’s disqualification, that he refused to aspire to eternity in this Paradise of Anwynn. His mother, and other adults, were not the only ones unable to seek an eternity with the denizens of Anwynn, and with them make their home — and its because Anwynn, without a great being with vast reserves of Aqua Vita, to rain onto the body and mind of his new paradise, was fast running out of the waters of life, just like Earth, just like the Old Universe, and even so, are the Houses of the Holy in Araboth like-depleted.

Such is the outcome when a father gives his children their entire inheritance before they come of age, and fails to withhold this most precious legacy until they grow wise enough to preserve it for the future.

One thing his mother learned at the same time as Arthur, was that society is less offended by the “deviants”, who, let’s face it, are no great threat to the status quo — it having been proven over centuries that all they want to do is enjoy a particular lifestyle.

NO!

Arthur tried to tell others of Anwynn, and not even the other Children, nor even the Nuns, whom he esteemed so creative and Imaginative, would agree to come and see. Arthur tried in vain to explain to grownups the way things work in Fairyland. You had to be there.

“This…,”

he would later conclude when attempting to sum up the contrast between Kananook — as he called it, and ‘Anwynn’ — as he called the place through the secret hedge-

“…is the opposite of a mausoleum.”

He tried to explain to Sister John one day-

“The world around you changes, but YOU also change. First YOU get smaller in relation to what is outside.”

Sister John was at first afraid of Anwynn, saying-

“New knowledge is a Siren of the deep, who calls us to be drowned in her song.”

She said this to Arthur at school of course. He could not convince her to come to Anwynn. Owl commented on her fear —

“That’s like understanding”

said Owl —

“It isn’t there, and then it is. Then you know something and you’re smarter, but be wise like me and Sister John, and know your limits Arthur. To be Wise is better than to be smart”

and although Arthur could hear the truth in Owl’s words, he still frowned, because he wanted to know things. He tried to tell some kids at School about Anwynn-

“…and the world inside the garden behind the fence just gets bigger. You have to go through the magic passage first…then all is doors and keys, everything is possible and desirable…”

But no one understood and he would eventually learn that some secrets are best kept that way.

What the “Haters” are really intimidated by, is NOT the imaginary friends, nor even what they represent, but rather the ‘Arthurs’ in society who feel justified enough in their own skin to be always ready to say whatever they want, just like Don Quixote himself.

If he could at that moment he would inverted the world and extended a have to his reflection to see who would pull the other boy through the other side of the mirror, and then maybe that reflected Arthur could look down in turn at his own reflection and help him out of the water.

“I could be OK with talking to more Arthurs but I suppose then I won’t be special?!”

“Exactly” said Owl, “That’s wisdom. Better ‘eh?!”

One light that shined across his two worlds, the old and the new, was to ignite flames of desire and rage against the lies that go unaddressed.

Owl-

“Normally Ennui…”

Arthur interrupted to ask the definition of this word, to which Owl advised him to open his dictionary —

“OK, it is how I feel about the real world. It is a good definition but the word itself that you said…Ennui…itself has a self-disgusted essence that depresses me Owl”

“It is not a tragedy to be felt by a young boy! Ennui should be something that afflicts an old man or a wayward king or paladin who has deviated from the righteous path — it implies knowledge and a jaded sense of disgust at the world.

said Owl, who then shook his head and added-

“This is not the thing for a little boy to feel, but the opposite!”

“Whereas Kananook is a mausoleum, and a prison-house of the dead, Anwynn…”

he would later say, in an attempt to explain the metaphysics of his transformation —

Just as Arthur who lived in the modern world, and was a 6-year-old mortal, seemed to remember nothing that happened specifically to him as the days went by, likewise The Student seemed to retain more of principals and ideas than memories of incidents. They were uncannily similar, and like the two planets that grow together against gravity, they were compelled by the Luminiferous Ether!

Fear is a learned emotion — an unpleasant one that even heroes advocate to respect and use, to be sure they say to be brave when dealing with the object of your fear but do not discount fear as contemptible. Even the apex predator learns to cherish at least one fear although it is as distasteful to Him as it is to the weakest and most cowardly.

If the Child was alone at the beginning, then he had no fear nor suspicion and so when at first he decided to grant free will to the Angels perhaps he was not suspicious enough to be suspicious of his Creation?

“To trust is good, but to not-trust, is better!”

thought the boy-

“I have a lot to learn, but was that me in that strange place through the shimmery vision?”

So he sat there in silent concentration, watching the denizens of this plain, seeking to understand them. He hoped that eventually he would have an idea that was inspired by a combination of his own wisdom, and that of the people he was observing.

Arthur tried in vain to explain to grownups the way things work in Fairyland. You had to be there.

“This…,”

he would later conclude when attempting to sum up the contrast between Kananook — as he called it, and ‘Anwynn’ — as he called the place through the secret hedge —

“…is the opposite of a mausoleum.”

“I’ll never let anyone hurt you Doggy, and I’ll NEVER let you go. I know that we are all supposed to grow up and leave behind our imaginary friends, but Doggy if they ever do separate us I swear to you…,”

and he spat on his hand and Doggy’s paw and shook hands —

“I swear I will return and bring you back here with me where they can’t harm us my friend!”

Arthur was further surprised to note that his thoughts returned to their previous subject, that is to say his attempted recollection of their day at Terrappee the day before school started, Sunday, 2 March, 1975 — what felt now like a month before but was once again that very yesterday.

Once again he took up a switch and swatted at flies and little twigs that fell in his way as he passed, the concrete footpath breaking into sections, some of which were on the side of Kananook and Annwn, and others that ran along the dune that hid the strand on the beach-side.

On both sides from time to time, the section would be broken be a hillock with an abundance of tea-trees and the concrete path would resume across the road again on the inland side of the road, itself a broken path interrupted here and there by tracks leading into the scrub that brushed his right shoulder as he walked on. There were no lollipop ladies that year, not in that section of the town, as for 10 miles along it was uninhabited except for those living at Terrappee.

Young Arthur Chapter 12. (11 min read)

Aged 6, 1975. Arthur’s Last Peaceful Escape to Annwyn.

What have I done? Well don’t blame me pal!

It felt to Arthur as if the place, Annwyn, was more than just part of his subconscious, but actually his spiritual homeland. It seemed also that he had been heard, because something happened that he felt to be auspicious, as he wandered down into a glade of short grass, and flowery bushes.

Gazing around at the glowing and dreamlike beauty of the grove, Arthur’s eyes came to rest on a V-shaped trunk of a tree, and as the shape of the ‘V’ drew his eyes downward, they settled finally on a tracery of roots that immediately struck Arthur as a sign meant for him alone.

With his mind he spoke to this sentient leader of trees, and in strange fashion did it speak also to him, though not with the tongue, but rather an impressionistic and telepathic voice, which was not linguistic but a logos made from something else — a whisper on the wind!

The sacred name of this place was the word Annwyn, yet it was not traced in the roots of the trees like tendrils made to form letters, nor by any legible shape that could be translated then read, nor even in the flight path of the birds, the content of the droppings of animals, the the scrying of the leaves in the wind, such as the Druids are known to read from time to time, but rather it could only be heard, by the voices of the trees whispering in his ear, and deeper into his mind —

“Annwyn…Annwyn…”

So quiet it was above their bass voices — more vibrations than voices, and uttered without a tongue. Then, by way of reply, as when Love says —

“I love you” and you reply —

“I love you too”

until both are simply praying in unison, and with a unified breath, and the prayer has sincerity and the ring of truth — because when such is uttered truly, it has great power, and why on Earth would anyone not want to speak such words untruly, unless they are faking the prayer, but why, at what true loss(?) —

“I love you”

and after enough power is built into the pure sound, finally the two lovers emerge to become One, and the One Love extends to Life itself, through its attainment of perfection, and through unity — and a former divided pair of souls become one and a single bell, ringing a perfect note, complete, and lacking nothing.

For thousands of years there can be sometimes only few new tales about fairy land, though often do these places emerge, from shadow and fog for a little while, as long will they abide in the one place as a few years, or as brief a visit as just a season, and then they disappear, just as, in turn, they likewise disappear from all human accounts, including folklore, and especially since most of them are illiterate, and so fail to record their history, rich as it undoubtedly is with science and lore, but their learning seems to consist solely of that which is on a “need to know” basis, such as those parts of science and lore that affect their immediate lives, the wellbeing of the village, and any special abilities or fields of knowledge, that could be of value to their tribe.

Lore such as herbalism, nutrition, natural medicine, midwifery — including surgery, poisons/toxins, music and certain wind/pipe instruments, string-instruments, drums, athletics, and even combat, as they would occasionally fight alongside the men, especially if the fight were against another pagan tribe, and in particular if they were led by a witch or priestess.

In such a case it would be common for the warring tribes to have a bunch of druids and witches casting fireballs, blowing poison darts through reed pipes, and who would rally the troops like a female-femme-fatale-DJ, who would wave her wands around and shriek spells from an upraised platform, and she was frequently dressed in animistic gear — such as blood-soak eagle feathers, a headdress, made from the removed face of some apex predator such as a bear, wolf, eagle, even a gorilla or tiger, such that she could harness the power of the beast in the costume made with its teeth and claws, and by wearing it, and then going into a trance she could actually terrorise not only her enemies, or the enemies of the tribe — but all who had the bad luck to be in her way — whom she would harass, either directly, or through the agency of the beast, some other spirit, demon or witch, or anything in that culture that might serve as a maleficent demon, who would be sent after the cursed tribe or individual, and harry them or him to the ends of the Earth, even hand delivering him to the underworld which is a place he visits in his line of business.

Thus did the druids and priestesses conjure or engage by normal means, such wild folk as the priestess might require in any one of the very frequent battles and blood feuds that would arise in ancient Wales and Ireland, and by the ends of those battles would create more service providers to join the ghastly ranks of the undead, or else they would recruit from among the living of this world, or else the dead of the nether world, or even the undead, whose drab existences seek employment in order to hasten their path to oblivion, and final respite from the prison world that binds us all in adamantine chains.

Few are the number of humans, and even fairies of the misty isles, who have seen the evergreen leaves of the Apple Trees of Avalon, and the Great Oaks with their chestnuts ripe all year round, deep in a cavern below the surface of the Earth though they be — yet in Anwynn, when it be fixed beneath the Earth in Wales, the kingdom lies deep in an ancient hallowed cave underground. There, from the underground streams do they draw the waters of Life.

Indeed they draw most of their life from deep in the Earth, yet there it was that those fairies collected and stored in huge barrels, those great ewers containing the waters of life, treasured with reverence as Life should be, are those unwieldy vessels of steel, yet filled to the brim ever are they, and ever are they overflowing — like the archetype for the spirit of the Cup of Abundance —

“That Runneth Over!”

like a surfeit of moonlight shining on a lake.

It was all collected in the years after the return of Morgana, after Camlann, in 535A.D., whose boat was carried into the Apple Isle in triumph by invisible spirits of the forest, in celebration at Morgana’s wounded passenger, whom it seemed had elected to go and live in that blessed isle for a century or three, and leave by virtue of his goodwill — being as he is the Messiah and all — and it was just a portion of that divine life force of his, that rained down upon Avalon for weeks during his convalescence, before slowing down in the quiet years to follow — though never quite stopping completely.

“Every night for centuries would the water ooze into the empty ewers, and the silver light would fill one up every night, if left nearby his bed, and a drain or great net was set up over his head, where it fell, nightly from the sky, and the stars above, which it is said contributed most of it — as a sacrifice!”

Silver light was spilling for centuries, amid the sadness and silence of his solitude and regret, as the water fell without effect, into ewers always there waiting in the trembling blackness. It — the waters that filled the endlessly proffered ewers — was not gotten of the golden force of the Sun’s vibration, nor blended were they with it’s golden, honeyed music — water-music it was, that of the Earth and trees, and fire music — the music of the fire of love, that forever seemed to arise between the heroic kings of the Britons and the priestesses of this place.

Arthur began to walk down toward the edge of the lake and heard that name, just as his body and mind echoed its vibration back as though he was a bell that had been rung by the power of the place, which had become a hammer.

Anwynn which called out to him with its inaudible bell that drew him there, was now morphed into a hammer to strike the bell. Then it was Arthur who changed into a bell, and Anwynn struck him and made him ring out his tone, now somewhat synchronised and merged as it was — with Anwynns. Once he was struck to ringing as a bell himself, he too felt as though the vibration that was given off by his whole being, softly sounded when he breathed, sang, and even hummed.

In fact his most synergistic transformation was thence from bell to hammer himself, whilst Anwynn was once again a bell — though with a new tone, enriched with sub-audible notes and ancient powerful forms that were the exact replicas of these notes.

Meditated like a bird and hummed like a bell, sitting not quite silently, but with this nature song or chant, he resided for a long time — weeks on end and hardly moving — in the navel of Anwynn, and always meditating, which was the way he managed to harness all of the vast quantities of energy he was stirring up, whilst intoning the word —

“Om,” in his natural tone,

as well as chanting the name that the spirit of Anwynn had given to him in a dream, which was —

“Abbay — Ki-Kay”,

and this would attune him to the underlying subtle vibration at the heart of the life of Anwynn, and without any ego he would become a part of the place — though he be nothing special — no more than a single tree, that had grown on the side of another tree — and since had caste its strangler-tendrils, all over a potion of the forest, that began to look appropriately ancient and primeval with those unstoppable vines that wrap around every branch and even the trunk of a great big tree, then slowly, vampirically, sap all of its nutrients away, until the host-tree that it had originally encircled was simply gone, and the strangler Fig would have to fling its vines high in the air and over the tops of nearby trees in a manner mysterious and impressive, since trees don’t have muscles nor a great deal of mobility.

Arthur’s mantra could be heard every day for months in Anwynn, and had truly bound its identity to that of the ancient and otherworldly world, that by greater and secret levers it would seem, had just been parked next to, or else sidled up to this material Earth of Arthur’s domicile, as discreetly as it could for a hidden lake and forest, and his vibration, with guttural hum that sounded like Tibetan Throat-Music, had morphed with that of the place itself and was now indistinguishable from the hum of the forest and the mixed hum of water and wind, bird and beast, wind and distant wave, as they, that is each of the distinct and once separate sounds, suddenly become a tiny part of the huge world of the unknown, that has notified us of its relocation into our recollection and knowledge learned by rote. Repetition and rote! It’s the only way to earn anything in life unfortunately!

Such little achievements by an aspirant, no matter what the field of study, but in particular with things that involve pain as a part of the learning curve — like a sport — especially one like surfing or skateboarding, whereby death is common in the pursuit of big waves, the riding of which is, and I wonder if we could not show these things up close to the likes of Julius Caesar, Captain Cook, Isaac Newton, etc., would they rate the beauty and difficulty, along with the pain that is the constant companion of the acolyte for the first six years or often longer, as well as the mastery of languages, or playing music.

You must battle yourself. You must prove your mastery over pain and your own weakness, laziness, stupidity, and temptation to quit.

In much the same way as we suddenly understand a phrase often heard before in a foreign language, but that has eluded us for ages, as it suddenly appears as a complete sentence in one’s mind, in English and Chinese, and suddenly you have it, and can add it to your little list of vocabulary, so do we struggle for the most pitiful and depressing treats, at least insofar as how sad and unsatisfying they are, and they make our struggles look pointless.

Now after a while the parallel world and the insane but normal world that we are stuck in most of the time, suddenly stopped working separately — even in close harmony — but actually collapsed into each other in perfect harmony — his outbreath vibrating through his nose but also inside the minds of anyone in the house.

Mantras and breathing resounded together in harmony, and the result of the extra contribution to the whole was that it was now better, whereas it had lacked — and this admitted by the most stingy — something difficult to concisely describe except to be able to say categorically and without fear of being airy faerie — that the whole thing had become a vibration that was much stronger now than ever, as well as more complex than before, just as it was more richly fed and nourished by the food of light, and could be heard in a tone of strength that emanated some kind of power and it was a good power!

A hammer had originally struck the bell that created this paradise of Anwynn, that played its sound and also struck that perfect place at the heart of the instrument, calling forth a deeper chord from beneath the earth and the lake, one with crystal foundations that stretched upward to electrify the bottom tips of the oldest roots of the ancient trees.

Arthur’s vibration, it appeared conclusive was the right vibration to be struck into the chords of the musical score of Anwynn, and played there. It was and presumably is, though I know not just as compatible on the Island of Avalon, where they had solved their need for a god laden with power and wealth — as they took a broken King Arthur there to languish in similar such Lotus Eating as does distract us all at certain times in our lives, until we arise, and trapping on our sword, thence do that which we have too long avoided! The Siege Perilous!

Until then, such as are powerful, like King Arthur, have the right, also, to realise his alternative identity as a hammer too — not just a conductor — with a wish to harness and channel its power. It’s living vibration rises like the Sun, all the way up through the trunk, out in every direction through the branches, and culminates in the lively note that constitutes the vibration of the green verdure of the outspread canopy of leaves.