Макс Фрай - The Stranger

“Gosh, Shurf! Can this really be true?”

I realized that our Sir Lonli-Lokli wasn’t the cleverest liar in the Unified Kingdom—but all the same I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Call me Glamma. You forgot again, Marilyn,” the stern tone of my companion put an end to my doubts.

“People change, don’t they?” I asked quietly.

“Not all of them. But sometimes it happens. Actually, that’s not the whole story.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I wanted even more power, more than the famous Magicians about whose blood I dreamed back then. One day the Mad Fishmonger arrived at the Residence of the Order of the Icy Hand to seize for himself one of the mightiest of all hands.”

“Your gloves!”

“Yes. My left glove, to be exact. The right one I received when I fought with a Junior Magician of this Order. The fellow tried to stop me, so I bit off his right hand.”

“You bit it off!”

“Of course. What’s so strange about that? It was far less eccentric than most of my other escapades at the time.”

“Juffin told me that there was a tremendous amount of powerful magic in the Order of the Icy Hand. Did they really—”

“You see, after I had drunk dry all the twenty dozen aquariums, I received the power meant for the six hundred members of my Order. So it was very difficult to stop me, and when I got the gloves that you are familiar with, I became even more dangerous. But they finally did stop me.”

“Who? Was it Juffin?”

“No, Sir Juffin Hully came into my life a bit later. Two dead men stopped the Mad Fishmonger. They were the owners of the hands I took for my own. On one night they came to me in my dream. At that time, I became defenseless when I slept. Not completely, but almost. They wanted to take me away to somewhere between life and death in a place of endless tormented dying. I’m not very adept at describing things, so it would be better if your imagination would tell you what I was threatened with.”

“Never mind my imagination,” I murmured. “I’m hanging on to your every word. I won’t be able to get to sleep.”

“Well your words assure me that you’re close to understanding the problem I’m trying to describe, Marilyn,” said Lonli-Lokli. “I was very lucky that night. I awoke suddenly in great pain, as the old house where I was sleeping began crashing down. One of the stones hit me on the forehead. You may be wondering why the house started falling down; Sir Juffin Hully can tell you the details of his unsuccessful hunt for the Mad Fishmonger. There was no Secret Investigative Force at that time, but Sir Juffin was already entrusted with special missions by the King and the Seven-Leaf Clover. He was terribly renowned—and he deserved it, I suppose. But the Kettarian Hunter, as Sir Venerable Head was called back then, saved my life purely by chance. I managed to get out of the collapsing house in time, without even realizing what was happening. Meanwhile I was worried about something completely different. It was clear that the next dream would be my last. So I decided to live life to the hilt, mustering all my resources for that purpose, and then to kill myself before suffering the wrath of the dead Magicians. I succeeded in living without sleep for almost two years.”

“What?!”

Lonli-Lokli shocked me more with every word he uttered.

“Yes, it was around two years,” Sir Shurf insisted. “Just so. Of course, it couldn’t go on indefinitely. It is no exaggeration to say that I was already mad with that extra strain, and two years of insomnia turned me into something utterly unspeakable. Sir Juffin Hully followed every move I made, as I later came to understand. He was waiting for the right moment.”

“So that he could—”

“No, Marilyn. Not to kill me. You see, that night when he destroyed my house and saved my life, the life he was going to extinguish, it was a serendipitous event. The Kettarian rarely made a fool of himself, and he concluded that fate was showing him the way to me. So instead of capturing the Mad Fishmonger, Sir Juffin decided to save Shurf Lonli-Lokli, who had become entangled in his own marvels.”

“It’s all so romantic,” I said.

“Yes, quite. Of course, Sir Juffin has an unimpeachable sense of timing. He arrived at my side just at the moment when I realized that the period of insomnia was coming to an end—and with it, the end of my life was nigh. I was glad to die. Death seemed to me an appropriate way of avoiding a much worse fate. Then when the famous Kettarian Hunter caught up with me, I experienced an incomparable joy, for I was going to die in battle, and that was much more fun than suicide.”

“What did you say? ‘More fun’?” I was sure my ears had deceived me.

“Yes, of course. Contrary to the Lonli-Lokli of the present, the Mad Fishmonger loved to joke around and have fun. But Juffin and I never came to blows: instead of trying to kill me, Sir Juffin put me to sleep. I don’t suppose it was too hard for him at that point, as I was obsessed with the thought of sleeping. Juffin shoved me into the embrace of the dead men, who were obsessed with revenge. That began a whole eternity of weakness and pain. Oh, you shouldn’t grieve for me Marilyn. It happened long ago; and not to me, you may believe. And then the Kettarian pulled me out of the nightmare. He just woke me up, brought me to my senses, and explained that there was only one way out.”

“What was the way out, Glamma?”

I didn’t know very much about the local miracles, but I had experienced for myself the monstrous power of the nightmares of this World.

“It was all quite simple. Those two were seeking the Mad Fishmonger, so, I had to become someone else. Of course, an ordinary masquerade, like the one you and I performed before beginning this journey, wouldn’t have helped. It’s not that easy to deceive dead Magicians. Some people, yes; but not them. Sir Juffin transported me to some strange place, gave me a few words of advice, and left me there.”

“What kind of ‘strange place’ was it?” I asked, my heart at a standstill.

“I don’t know. Or, rather, I don’t remember. It’s impossible to preserve in your memory things that happen beyond the boundaries of your comprehension.”

“What kind of advice did he give you? Excuse me for pressing the matter, but I want to understand. What kind of advice can you give a person who has been struck by such misfortune?”

“It was nothing, really. He explained what I had to do, and why. He showed me some breathing exercises like the ones I showed you. Don’t forget that at the time I possessed enormous strength, enough to perform any wondrous feat. Juffin simply created the ideal conditions for it to manifest itself. I remember that in that strange place I couldn’t do anything but these breathing exercises. It was impossible to eat, sleep, and think. Time, as we ordinarily perceive it, didn’t exist. My personal eternity fit into a single moment, that’s the only way to describe it. I didn’t even notice when the Mad Fishmonger died. The young man I had once been died, too. After that, the me you know by the name of Shurf Lonli-Lokli emerged. I have no complaints about my new personality—it doesn’t prevent me from concentrating on the things that are really important. And, all in all, it doesn’t get in the way.”

“It’s simply unbelievable. Who would have thought?” I whispered.

“Yes, it is fairly improbable,” Sir Shurf agreed phlegmatically. “Then I was able to leave the strange empty place and return to Echo. Sir Juffin Hully found decent work for me. By the end of the Troubled Times a person with hands like mine didn’t have to worry about finding something to do. So in the end I did learn to taste the blood of the Grand Magicians; but by then it was a question of duty, not desire. In fact, for my new self it is a matter of complete indifference. I don’t think a single murder I’ve had to commit has had any meaning for me, or for anyone else.” He paused. “Excuse me, Marilyn. I’m not a very good philosopher.”