Disclaimer: I do not own Labyrinth or the poem A Margarita Debayle. I do, however, own Mortimer and the Border Realms.
I want to tell you a story, then it will be your turn to tell me one. Is that fair? Others have thought it was. But hear my story first and then decide for yourself how much of a story you owe me. Wait though! Let me tell who I am. My name is Mortimer, the Wandering Scholar; though I have no credentials beyond my own experience to give me such a name. I have traveled across the known parts of the Border Realms and into many of the various Shadowlands collecting stories and adventures like some people collect ancient weaponry or magic spells.
I think I'll start this story with a poem. It is a particular favorite of mine and I do like to spread fine poetry to as many people as I can.
A Margarita Debayle
Rubén Darío, Nicaragua, 1910
Margarita, está linda la mar,
y el viento
lleva esencia sutil de azahar;
yo siento
en el alma una alondra cantar:
tu acento.
Margarita, te voy a contar
un cuento.
I did not write this poem, though I wish I had. Perhaps later I will share some of my own poetry with you. This poem, however, came from the World, accompanied by a little girl who made her way into the Border Realms through a dark marsh near her home town. I met her in a small fishing village among the Cities on the Water. She was a beautiful girl, with the sweetest brown eyes and a quick gap-toothed smile…I can't remember her name but I'm sure it was as lovely as she was. I think I will call her Margarita like the girl in the poem, for she was a girl well worth writing poetry for.
She gave me the poem as a gift one day as we sat on a pier watching the water horses race across the surf. The horses are a magnificent sight and if you ever travel to any of the Cities on the Water, I encourage you to go see them. They mostly only drown people who harass them so don't worry. They were racing on the sea, surging forward and then falling back a bit, and the setting sun was lighting a gleam of golden lining around them. Margarita and I had spent the day wandering through the market and were letting our tired feet cool in the water when she suddenly recited the poem to me.
It was a very pretty poem.
Margarita, the sea is pretty,
and the wind
carries a faint essence of orange blossom,
I sense
in the soul a lark's song:
your accent.
Margarita, I'm going to tell you
a story.
Este era un rey que tenía
un palacio de diamantes,
una tienda hecha del día
y un rebaño de elefantes.
This story is not about Margarita though, but another girl; a girl with many dreams and fantasies. She was also from the World and had traveled from there to the Central Kingdom of the Border Realms where I met her. By that time, she was a woman well grown and not a girl at all. But she has given me permission to tell some of her story which started when she was a girl. A dreamy, whimsical, stubborn girl living in the World.
She did something foolish, as young girls tend to, and her foolishness sent her on a grand adventure where she met many friends and won a fierce battle against a powerful king. People will say that she was lucky--that foolish people are not supposed to have their lives turn out so well. I, on the other hand, have often found that making mistakes and careless comments tend to send me on adventures where I meet many new people, some of whom are friends. Foolishness is, I believe, vastly underrated.
This is also a story about a king, although it is mostly about the girl.
This was a King that had
a palace of diamonds,
a pavilion made of day
and a herd of elephants.
Un quiosco de malaquita,
un gran manto de tisú,
y una gentil princesita,
tan bonita,
Margarita,
tan bonita como tú.
On her adventure, as I said, she made new friends. She is one of those people that others tend to like, kind and teasing by turns, so it is not really a surprise. As many before her have and many after her will, I'm sure, she found that having friends made an adventure much easier. Friends have all sorts of useful talents, knowledge, and odds and ends that don't seem like they should be of any help at all until suddenly you are dangling over a horrible swamp with nothing but a creaking branch between you and certain humiliation. That's when friends truly come in handy.
She helped her friends out too, of course. That's part of the deal. They help you, you help them, and no one is left alone to face horrible chittering things full of teeth and claws and pure evil…
Anyway, it works and it worked for her. Her kindness and cleverness got her friends who helped her get where she needed to be. Of course, in the end she had to face battle by herself. Her friends were subjects of the king she was fighting and she didn't want to leave them to face that kind of trouble later. She was brave and determined (others tell me that the proper word is stubborn, but this is her story, not theirs) and she won her prize and her freedom.
A kiosk of malachite,
a great lame cloak,
and a kind little princess,
so pretty,
Margarita,
as pretty as you.
-
-
Una tarde la princesa
vio una estrella aparecer;
la princesa era traviesa
y la quiso ir a coger.
Having won the battle, the girl was returned to her own home in the World. Unfortunately, she found herself very dissatisfied there. I have heard many stories of the World from various travelers who have made their way into the Border Realms or deeper into the Shadowlands. It sounds like a wondrous place and I would very much like to travel there someday. But all of these travelers express some discontent there that caused them to leave and make their way to our own lands, and this girl was no different.
She wanted magic, grandeur, and adventure. Somehow, she found the World quite lacking in all of these essentials.
She told me that she did try to fit in. She went to her village school and then to a university, which I am given to understand is something like the Lost Academy but less prestigious and without any magic being involved. Still, even such an adventure as that must have been was not enough for her.
One evening the princess
saw a star appear:
the princess was mischievous
and she wanted to go get it.
-
-
La quería para hacerla
decorar un prendedor,
con un verso y una perla,
una pluma y una flor.
So the girl started looking for a way back into the Shadowlands. She didn't know them by that name and she knew nothing about the Border Realms that lie between them and the World. I've always found that strange. Even though they might not believe in them, people in the World still tell stories of the many Shadowlands and the people that inhabit them. Yet even though the Border Realms are so much closer to the World and are, of course, the way by which most people travel between the two places, people still know so little about them. They think of them as part of the Shadowlands, almost completely separate from the World, or as lost or fantastical pieces of the World itself. There is little mention of them as their own separate place.
In any case, despite not truly knowing what it was she was looking for, the girl started to search for a doorway into the Border Realms. She was a smart girl and she knew a little bit of what she was dealing with, so she started looking into missing person cases. Most of the people who come into the Border Realms don't mean to do so. They simply have enough wonder and magic within them that when they wander into the wrong (or right, as most of them insist) place, they come across and find these realms. They settle here or move deeper into the Shadowlands. Some that go that way make marvelous fortunes, some return poorer but usually wiser, and some are never heard from again. Such is the way of adventure.
She wanted to make it
into a brooch,
with a song and a pearl,
a feather and a flower.
-
-
Las princesas primorosas
se parecen mucho a ti.
Cortan lirios, cortan rosas,
cortan astros. Son así.
This girl did manage to find some evidence that there were doors into our lands other than the one she had come through as a child, but she could never find the doors themselves. She wandered the world looking for one, under the auspices of study at her university. Rather like one of the Lost students that are occasionally cast out of that institution to learn something more practical than books can teach, I imagine. The lost Lost students are well-known among many of the lands of the Border Realms. I met one in the middle of the Burning Desert once, searching desperately for the Library of Alexandria. He asked me for help when he saw how well prepared and comfortable I was in that land; I thought that water would do him much better than more books, so I directed him on to the Fountain of the Eternal Beauty. The side effects of the water wouldn't hurt him nearly as much as those of the Fountain of Knowledge. I've found scholars at that oasis stop to debate over how much is safe to drink until they're too weak to crawl over and make use of it. I confess not to understand them at all.
But, back to our story, I do apologize. The girl was wandering like a Lost scholar looking at stone circles and ancient temples across the World. Places of deep magic that have some connection to the Shadowlands, powerful enough that anyone with the least bit of belief in their blood can feel it. Of course, those places are all carefully sealed and she had no way of knowing how to open the gates contained there. I rather mourn the days when the Shadowlands themselves touched up against the World frequently and both places were the stronger for it. Still what is, is. Not much I can do about it. Not much she could either, especially without any knowledge of the Shadowlands beyond half-remembered and half-made-up stories.
Exquisite princesses
are very much like you.
They cut lilies, they cut roses,
They cut stars. It is how they are.
-
-
Pues se fue la niña bella;
bajo el cielo y sobre el mar,
a cortar la blanca estrella
que la hacía suspirar.
In any case, our girl kept searching. She traveled all over the World, over oceans and deserts, jungles and high mountains, searching further and further. She studied those half-forgotten stories and dug up stories that were entirely forgotten by most people. It was a life of adventure and magic just as she had dreamed of but somehow it was not enough for her. Obsession made it so that she could not see what was around her, only what she wanted to be there that was not. Well, that's my opinion anyways. People I've met who have come from the World tell me that the Shadowlands feel more real to them then their own homes ever did; it is more immediate and true in someway that the World is not. Even the Border Realms, which are full of more strangeness and less logic than any place should be able to withstand, somehow feel more substantial to them. Perhaps it is simply because they are finally where they really belong. Perhaps it is just their imagination.
Whatever it was, the girl could not forget her time in the Shadowlands. The friends she made, the wonders she saw, and even the king she fought against; she yearned for them all and dismissed what she might have had in her own World.
So the beautiful girl went;
beneath the sky and across the sea,
to cut the white star
that made her sigh with longing.
Y siguió camino arriba,
por la luna y más allá;
mas lo malo es que ella iba
sin permiso del papa.
Finally, she found a way. The Border Realms mostly draw in people who are aimless, who have no idea what they are searching for. Still, there are some secret ways in; the four Lords and Ladies who rule the corners of the Border Realms have their own roads to the World. It is said that they came from there originally and that once, before they began their reign, they returned there to complete what Destiny had set out for them in their home lands. Very demanding, Destiny is, especially for those people powerful enough to snag her attention. Us lesser folk can sneak by her occasionally, but it gets progressively harder the more noteworthy you are.
Perhaps it was she who led the girl to the path she took into the Border Realms. It was not one of the roads often traveled, but a secret hidden road, long-forgotten by even the longest-lived of draconic scholars. It was a hard road for the girl, not least because of the anguish she knew it would cause her family. They were tolerant of her gallivanting across the World, but they loved her dearly and missed her even when she was close enough to them to use a communication spell called a telephone and speak to them daily. The road was one of those ones that can only be found when certain astronomical improbabilities line up. She knew she might never see them again and even taking the time to say farewell to them might cause her to miss her opportunity.
And she followed the road up,
by the moon and further;
but the worst thing is that she left
without her father's permission.
Cuando estuvo ya de vuelta
de los parques del Señor,
se miraba toda envuelta
en un dulce resplandor.
She will not tell me much of her travels on that road. That she saw wonders and horrors beyond imagination must be assumed. As any who live within the Border Realms can tell you, the places in between, especially in between realities, are stranger than mortals can comprehend. All possibility meets in them. I cannot say how long she spent traveling between. Most likely, she's not sure herself. Time is irrevocably linked to space and where one is confused, the other is lost.
When she emerged from the road, she was not the same person who stepped on it. She was older, wiser, and somewhere within her journey she had been filled with a powerful magic. The land she entered was not the World she had left. Instead, she found herself in the Central Kingdom, the very place where she had once fought her king and won. The very place that had haunted her dreams since she had left it.
When she finally returned
from the gardens of the Lord,
everything seemed to be enveloped
in a sweet radiance.
-
Y el rey dijo: "¿Qué te has hecho?
Te he buscado y no te hallé;
¿y qué tienes en el pecho
que encendido se te ve?"
The king was not at all happy to find her there. Since she left him, defeated with his castle falling down around his ears, he had kept an eye on her. He claimed it was to make sure she didn't cause any more trouble for him or any other denizen of his realm. Who can argue with a king when he makes a statement like that? I'm certainly not brave enough to.
He had not, however, been watching when she found the secret road and set foot upon it. Once she was there, of course, she was gone from his vision. His subjects remember unhappily that he was in quite a rage when he turned again to her and found her missing. He did as much damage to his kingdom and guards as she had done when she fought against him years before.
Finding her in his own garden, filled with an inexplicable magic that no human should have been able to contain, must have confused him greatly.
And the King said: "What have you done?
I searched for you and did not find you;
and what is on your chest
that I can see is giving you such a glow?"
La princesa no mentía.
Y así, dijo la verdad:
"Fui a cortar la estrella mía
a la azul inmensidad."
Accounts of the interaction between girl--now indisputably a woman--and king vary. His servants, still terrified by his rampages and not very comfortable with her either, stayed far away from the garden they were in. Even the bravest of them stayed out of earshot, though they found vantage points around the castle where they could see a little of what happened. They have elaborate stories to tell of what they think occurred, of course. It was gripping romantic interlude or a fierce power struggle by most accounts.
Neither party there will say much of what happened. I can reconstruct something of the shape of it, but no one but them will ever know the truth. She told him about her desperate search and he admitted, either then or later, that he had been watching her. She was furious that he had been spying on her. He was simply furious at her in general.
The princess didn't lie.
And so, she told the truth:
"I went to cut my star
in the blue immensity."
Y el rey clama: "¿No te he dicho
que el azul no hay que tocar?
¡Qué locura! ¡Que capricho!
El Señor se va a enojar."
Eventually they both calmed down, or calmed each other down in some way, enough that she could continue her story. So she told him about finding the road and stepping upon it. At this point, he lost any sense of calm he might have gained. As I said earlier, the places between are strange and unfathomable. They are also very, very dangerous. Things can happen in those places that defy any rules of science or magic that might hold sway in more real places. Beings live there that surpass any limits of power that even the most legendary of creatures in the Shadowlands or beyond might lay claim to.
It was one such Being that gave her the magic that filled her.
Thinking about it, it may well have been that Being that led her to find the road as she did, just when conditions would allow her to use it.
And the King cried out: "Did I not say
not to touch the blue?
What folly! What caprice!
The Lord will be angry."
-
-
Y dice ella: "No hubo intento;
yo me fui, no sé por qué,
por las olas y en el viento
fui a la estrella y la corté."
Realizing something of the full extent of what she was saying, the king--powerful and cold as any monarch might aspire to be--fainted. He denies it and I would not say such within his own realm. Even here, in a realm ruled by his kin, I say it softly.
She is kind, though she dearly loves to tease and heckle and her stubbornness is legendary, and it was her compassion that led her to take him to his rooms that he might recover in more comfort and privacy than afforded by a garden. Before her journey, she would not have been able to move him so nor find his chambers without help, but the magic she had been gifted with served her well.
It was the first time she deliberately called her magic and it leapt to answer her. She confided in me that it was the most glorious feeling she could ever have imagined. She finally felt right in herself.
And said she: "I did not intend that;
I went, I don't know why,
through the waves and in the wind
I went to the star and I took it."
-
-
Y el rey dice enojado:
"Un castigo has de tener:
vuelve al cielo, y lo robado
vas ahora a devolver."
When the king recovered, he was lying in his own bed and faced with an ecstatic, magic-drunk, beautiful woman. This part was also skipped over when the tale was told to me, and for the sake of their privacy I refrain from speculating on it.
At some point the attention of the pair was again directed to her journey through the lands in between and the magic she gained there. The king insisted that she had to get rid of it. He was concerned for her safety. Humans were not made to carry such powerful and instinctive magic. Moreover, there was no predicting why the Being had given it to her or how other Beings might react to such. They had to find a way to get rid if it immediately.
That was his story. Her tales says that while concern for her might have been part of his rationale, he was also jealous of her power. After all, she had beaten him once before with no magic but her own human will. What would she be able to do with magic as powerful as his, especially once she had some training on how to use it?
The argument that followed this part of the story-telling was long and detailed. A particular focus of it was whether or not the king had let her win their first battle. I tend to believe that the king may indeed have let her win, for the her adventures as related from that time were childish and not nearly as dangerous as most within the Border Realms. The number of his majesty's enemies who end up dead leads me to think that he went easy on the girl who defied him. However, I also find it easy to believe that his insistence was motivated by more than concern for her wellbeing. Most people rarely have only one reason for doing something and kings even less so. They simply cannot afford to have anything less than complicated lives. After all, their lives are tied in to their entire kingdom.
And the angry King said:
"You must be punished:
go back to the sky, and what you have stolen
go now to return."
La princesa se entristece
por su dulce flor de luz,
cuando entonces aparece
sonriendo, el buen Jesús.
At some point amidst the fight that the followed, the fabric of time and space around the Central Kingdom was ripped apart.
The Border Realms lie between the Shadowlands and the World, as you surely know. As such, they are themselves one of the places in between, though not as much so as the place the girl traveled through. Time is already easy to confuse and even change forcibly and space has little logic to it. Consider the fact that the four Border Realms, the Mountains in the Mist, the Dark Forest, the cities on the Water, and the Burning Desert lie between the Shadowlands and the World at every boundary point and yet, at the same time, surround the Central Kingdom of the Border completely. Yes, time and space are very delicate in the Border Realms and easy to tear asunder.
It was not, I assure you, the girl or the King who fragmented the kingdom. Rather, it was a Being. The same one, of course, who had given the girl her new magic.
The princess was sad
for her sweet flower of light
when then appeared
smiling, the good Jesus.
-
-
Y así dice: "En mis campiñas
esa rosa le ofrecí:
son mis flores de las niñas
que al soñar piensan en Mí."
It told them why it had bestowed upon an obsessive human girl magic to rival a king of the Border Realms. Something dangerous was coming--when it could not say, for time has little meaning to those who cannot live within its flow. This danger would wipe out the Border Realms, leading all of the Shadowlands to crumble. Without the Shadowlands, which are the essence of the Dream Time when all things were created and which still maintains balance and keeps the universe and those that people it sane, the World would destroy itself. The Destruction of All Things was approaching and somehow this girl and her king could stand in its way.
I stopped their story here. I did not want to know what is coming or what clues there might be as to when it comes. Prophecies are dangerous things to know. There is always the temptation to try and manipulate them; or worse, to follow them to the letter and never seek for a better outcome. I have no desire to know their burden. With any luck, it has already happened and they have saved the universe and are just keeping it quiet so as not scare folks or encourage those idiots who think they want everything to end
And he said: "In my land
I offered her this rose:
they are my flowers for girls
who think of me in their dreams."
-
-
Viste el rey ropas brillantes,
y luego hace desfilar
cuatrocientos elefantes
a la orilla de la mar.
So I did stop the story there and they told me no more but simply gave me provisions and sent me on my way. It is not the end of the story, though. The rest is simply such everyday knowledge that I hesitate to repeat it.
The presence of the Being had wreaked havoc on the Central Kingdom. The king and girl did their best to restore things, but even now there are areas where time runs fast or slow or backwards, or where space suddenly warps and forms huge caverns inside of eggshells. I myself spent some time working to map these areas, with some pleasant compensation from the government.
The king dresses in brilliant clothes,
and then parades
four hundred elephants
to the shore of the sea.
-
-
La princesita está bella,
pues ya tiene el prendedor
en que lucen, con la estrella,
verso, perla, pluma y flor.
Eventually the king and girl were married. She is not quite human anymore and he is not human at all; in their long lives they have so far only had one child of their own blood and those travelers coming from the World theorize that they are different species. It takes such travelers some time to get use to the ways of magic, you see, and they don't quite realize that such things do not apply. In any case, they have adopted children (refugees from the World it is said) and it is these who rule the four realms with more or less grace and wisdom.
The princess is beautiful,
since she has the brooch
in which shines, with the star,
a song, a pearl, a feather, and a flower.
Margarita, está linda la mar,
y el viento
lleva esencia sutil de azahar:
tu aliento.
That is my story. It is short, but it has some romance and adventure in it. And I do love the poem so. It is my greatest joy that I can share the two together.
Margarita, the sea is pretty,
and the wind
carries a faint essence of orange blossom:
your breath.
-
-
Ya que lejos de mí vas a estar,
guarda, niña, un gentil pensamiento
al que un día te quiso contra
un cuento.
What say you? Will you spread the story further? And what tale will you tell me now in return? I am eager to hear it.
Soon you will go far from me,
keep, child, a kind thought
for he that one day wanted to tell you
a story.