Wisdom's Kiss (70 page)
Authors: Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Also known as "the sleeping double," the Doppelschläferin is yet another now-disregarded shred of magical lore from the Kingdom of Montagne. That the name is feminine—the standard, masculine phrase should be Doppelschläfer—reiterates the kingdom's long association with female witchcraft. The Doppelschläferin is part of the legend of Queen Virtue, founder of Montagne, who was said to have devised it while held prisoner by the Pots de Crème Giants; the spell (she claimed) allowed her to split into two identical bodies—one unrousably asleep, the other conscious and cogent—that could be reunited at will, often many years later. Several of her heirs professed, when it was yet acceptable to invent such tales, to have improved upon the spell by employing pets, most often cats, to operate as their doubles, viewing the world through the animal's eyes while their human body remained "asleep." As false as this myth most patently is, the legend had strategic advantages: the Montagne army once feigned sleep en masse, and the sight so terrified the approaching Drachensbett forces that the soldiers broke ranks and fled. The fairy tale "Cat Whiskers" contains the last published reference to a Doppelschläferin, and it concludes with both the witch and her Doppelschläferin feline burnt at the stake.
DRACHENSBETT CLOUD WARS
To understand the destruction wrought by ignorant folktales, one need look no further than the Drachensbett Cloud Wars. To this day, foolish souls in the illiterate backwaters of Lax whisper of this legendary siege, when—so it is muttered—the occult rulers of Montagne magicked an
ensorcelled
cloud that dissolved their attacking enemies. Yet the truth, however mundane it may sound to the simple-minded, is completely explicable within the laws of science and nature. Aware of the great age of King Henri I of Montagne and the tension between his twin sons (their birth order having been confused in a nursery mishap), King Fred "the Fierce" of Drachensbett assembled a massive army, with mercenaries from twenty lands, to besiege the smaller country. For eight months the siege proceeded, the Kingdom of Montagne sealed from all traffic and trade. Finally, the wool merchants of Montagne, fearful of the upcoming moth season, begged their king for resolution, even for surrender. Before negotiations could commence, however, a great bank of fog settled on the lower cliffs of the kingdom's entrance and the besieging forces there encamped. So thick was this fog that—countless soldiers later reported—a man could not see his hand before his face. While mist is by no means an uncommon occurrence in the mountains of Lax, it customarily dissipates within hours or days; this fog, however, lingered a month or more, and such was its density that sound traveled in unique and unpredictable manners: two men standing abreast could not hear each other shout, while another discerned far-off murmurs. Such was their disorientation that stolid men reported the voices of distant loved ones, and otherwise dauntless warriors fled the camp, fearing madness. Desertion eroded King Fred's great army into a scant handful of supporters, plus a deaf cook; the rest dispersed throughout the empire, and once returned to their homelands embellished the misadventure into haunting myth. Without doubt this brief freakish weather safeguarded Montagne far more effectively than any cannon or walls, for rumors of the horror dissuaded would-be conquerors for decades hence. Indeed, even the tax collectors of Lax avoided the mountainous kingdom until the reign of Gustav 1½, thus denying the empire valuable revenue while validating the superstitions of those too dim or stubborn to accept reason.
Chemistry, meteorology, mineralogy, hydraulics: these and myriad other natural and applied sciences grew from mankind's understandable curiosity about the four natural elements. This same impulse, unfortunately, has also led to distasteful shortcuts and outright chicanery. Into this latter class fall the Elemental Spells. First cataloged by itinerant storytellers during the reign of Gustav I, this alleged magic purportedly gives its wielder the ability to create elements supernaturally via the spells of Elemental Fire, Elemental Water, Elemental Earth, and Elemental Air. The Kingdom of Montagne, sullied for many generations by association with witchcraft, was the initial locus of this myth, though similar tales emerged in other corners of the empire; raconteurs in the Sultanate of Ahmb describe a flaming-haired demoness who draws water from the sky, an understandable illusion for that arid country. In the last century two separate and respected imperial committees devoted to the eradication of fantastical thought proved the impossibility of the Elemental Spells, which subsequently faded from popular consciousness and today serve as little more than an amusing anecdote, when they are remembered at all.
ELEPHANTINE STILTDANCERS
>
This renowned circus act—one of the best-known routines of the Circus Primus, and possibly the most beloved—originated in the dismissal of the Swinging Stilt Sisters from the competing Circus Magnifico on the grounds of their persistent corpulence. Emperor Rüdiger IV, founder and director of the Circus Primus, happened to encounter the three penniless sisters, and at once envisioned their potential. Believing that the circus world contained too many sylphs and far too few "ladies of substance," as he tactfully phrased it, he encouraged the three women to indulge themselves utterly in what came to be known as the Cake and Bacon Diet, while augmenting their training in dance, acrobatics, and stilt walking. The resulting performance, when unveiled at the Rigor of Lax annual festivities, produced such an outpouring of enthusiasm that Circus Primus sold out performances for the next several years. The act began with the three obese women lumbering onstage. After much comic struggling and audience disbelief, they succeeded in mounting stilts, and their wobbled shuffling evolved into walking, then dancing, then pirouettes, their drab garb falling aside to reveal brazen costumes. The contrast between their weighty mass and sprightly exuberance was both hilarious and uplifting, and the trio enraptured audiences throughout the empire. Leona, the middle sister, eventually married the Baronet of Feldspar, achieving great acclaim as a hostess and ambassador, while Lucrezia and Nancy retired to a manor in
Pamplemousse
, where they entertained guests in a gilded ballroom built expressly for that purpose.
Author commentary on Elephantine Stiltdancers
>The concept of Elephantine Stiltdancers began as ingloriously as the sisters themselves. I was writing up
Circus Primus
for
The Imperial Encyclopedia of Lax
and doing my best to fabricate other interesting-sounding acts as a buildup to the Globe d'Or. "Elephantine" seemed to epitomize that frantic hyperbole of circus prose—you know, "death defying," "gargantuan," "jaw dropping," that sort of thing. ("Elephantine," by the way, means characteristic of elephants, not necessarily elephants themselves. You could, for example, have elephantine toenails. Barf.) Combining this word with stilts and dancing—neither of which goes with elephants
at all
—made the circus act sound that much more notable and hilarious. A complete "say what?" moment buried in the middle of a sentence in the middle of a paragraph in the middle of an obscure digression. I loved it. I didn't know anything else about this act, but I loved the name.