The Burning Tower

The Burning Tower

Graham Swanson

 

Severe ulcers of regret channel tragic outcomes to the fortune teller under the distant tent. Her smoke is in the

air, but no one dares cross the creeks and old roads covered in thorny branches coveted by the badgers and

nighthawks. The prince of sorrow stood petrified with his lance still in hand, the chipped blade covered in moss

and spider webs. He sent a mean text message, then another, and another, completely vindicated,  because right

before sunset over the horizon of his earliest lovedreams, the ire of poisonous rats infected the brains of the once

wise wizards in the castles of victimhood, and bred the greed of the vaultkeeper to enlist his rioters to loot the

secret catacombs for the lost master manuals. The prince offered warnings to his witches after these rioters

appeared in the night to demand ransom for the safety of the manuals, and he paid with blood, his lust, and by

taking on a curse never to sleep again. The rioters didn’t know that the naive prince knew nothing of these

manuals. 

Other elites rode stallions up mountain slopes past the peasants hauling barrows of filth, called themselves warriors because they witnessed some battle or another and knew an armbar or two, or they stayed in their estates practicing harpsichord and studying the poetry of the elder warriors who conquered the world 10000 moon cycles ago. This prince maintained an unspoken romance with the young nuns of the old convent, and the ancient witches of the blackwood coven while practicing his honor of lighting all 10000 candles of the glass cathedral.  The nuns listened to him chop wood from the other side of wooden doors, and the witches summon demons to bow before him. Orphans hidden under black hoods followed him through the trees to witness his cruel betrayal. The insane wizards rewarded them with droplets from the essence of smoking elixers.

Despite the falling leaves and brief daylight, the clouds scattered and kiddie pools evaporated. Wasps built cities within the doors of broken-down trucks. Limping garbage rodents fled the gunfire of blind old men on the higher porches of ghetto homes. Neon vested and protected in heavy boots, the oppressed peasants of the land sipped hot coffee and battled to move their dying vehicles from the bare patch on the lawn. It's all gone, the good things, the young beautiful witches masquerading with fruit in their laps, and the saintly maidens soon heard the war horn blow, and they went off to battle in the desert. Yet the prince took his impunity when the forbidden tomes fell into his lap to take the crumbling pages to the moonlight, and he stayed there until the peasant vehicle erupted in the morning sunrise and finally left. Fugitives from the alleyways reeking of crystal meth and propane peeked into windows and looked under a neighbor’s boat. 

Once he learned all that he thought he knew belonged to the minds of good lords who died back when paper money earned enough people a house to call their own, and how they created races of carnivorous monstrosities to roam the world on the book, how they rendered the civilization of the elves to smoldering ruins, and how they grew mighty speaking forests, and how the drug addict and the alcoholic created a spectrum between a depressed doomer who gets stabbed to death in an alley and dies huddled in trash, promiscuous ladies who travel all over the world but always end up either going back to their vineyards or being strangled with telephone wire in a motel, power hungry, resentful men who understand psychology and the weaknesses of power, and the hermit living in solitude on a mountain sanctuary. All those faerie tales about true love and defeating the dragon fell mute because the peasants received the benefits of association in relation to their lords, but few maintained the charms and splendors illustrated by warrior sainthoods. 

Books existed to help the peasant, but the peasants used visual language not written to communicate, so without alcohol the information interested too few, and most came away believing that any talk of helping peasants overthrow their lords came from the mouths of assholes who just wanted to strip religion from the land and let foreigners invade. They gladly worked in their lord’s field but grumbled every springtime when they had to give the lord an egg for the fertility festival. When gold rained from the sky, the smart peasants left for the college while the others birthed more children and beat each other over the heads with clubs. 

This made them fun sport for the knighthoods with no battles to claim for their ancestors. On misty mornings they hurled lances through the chests of peasants armed with wooden forks and butter knives. Those peasants were no match for the full suits of armor and storm bridled horses. The peasants wondered why the knights didn’t chase after the giants who stole their pigs, but their foolish fathers just made things worse every single time they tried to get the knights to stop attacking them and maybe do something about the monsters. Peasants really just need to work harder, because this land belongs to the honored ancestors of the conquered legions unrivaled to all the malcontents created by war and neglect. 

The prince closed the books, and called the witches to tell them what he read, but despite ancient wisdom of the zodiac, the information changed nothing to them, because they lived in the woods, and so what if they lived under the spell of relief from a turbulent home, they remained in their swamp covens. And since he read forbidden words, on the day the zodiac restarted all the knights died in the armor, and their castles crumbled. Prisoners trapped in the dungeons went free because rats carried keys to them from under the cages. The prince slowly, painfully turned to wood, then stone, and the saints still visited him to give the idol whiskey and kisses for good luck in the coming harvest.