Bally the Fool: The End

Bally walked all the way through the castle to the other side. He had to turn around several times because the settling stonework had begun to sag into the doorways, jamming the solid wooden doors shut. It was becoming a process to work through the winding maze of hallways.

At last he reached a door to the outside walls. Clamering his way through the stonework, he slipped out of the castle and across the lumpy hills back to the cliff overlooking the sea. Was it a shorter walk than before? Had a large part of the cliff fallen away into the blood-dark waters? He didn’t know. He didn’t much care, either, come to that. He’d rather just sit back and watch as the Spot grew imperceptibly larger.

The smell of rotting meat and flowers had faded slightly, replaced with a pungunt fermentation, like the dusty grass had given way to fungus and lichen. Something somewhere cried out, a seabird perhaps, or a wounded beast.

He looked up at the ruddy sky, he looked down at the bloody water. He looked back at the crumbling castle. It was allways the same.

After a moment of thought, he wondered if it was time for a change.

He looked out at the horizon.

Where the burning sky met the darkened waters, there was a thin line of white. Light from the normally absent sun, perhaps, breaking through the impossible clouds. Maybe a distant shore that had been hiden by crusty sholes and errant fogs.

Bally had never really thought about how far away the horizon was. After a point, it was just ’too far.’ His eyes could only see so far, and everything beyond that was lost in the impossible distances. There could be whole lands out there where everything was fine. After all, the Spot hadn’t reached across the sea, yet, had it?

Perhaps it had. Perhaps it was higher up and larger than the Good Sage had first calculated. Perhaps it was widening at a rate of twenty paces a day. Maybe thirty. Maybe a hundred leagues, but it sat so high up that we couldn’t tell.

No, the Good Sage knew better than to be tricked by something like that, didn’t he? He wasn’t a fool.

No one was, save Bally.

“Here you are,” the grating voice of Illowen drifted from behind him. “I thought you might be out here.”

“Where else would I go?” Bally muttered to himself as she approached. “What else would I do?”

“You used to go to the tavern all the time,” Illowen answered as she sat down next to him. “At least, I think I remember you going to the tavern. When I was younger.”

“Not much of a tavern left,” Bally sighed. “Nothing but three tables and two stools that don’t stand straight when you sit on them. A bunch of crusty old men whining about things and a barkeep who won’t extend any credit. Besides, the Duke has all the best wine and ale.”

“Come on then, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, daughter,” Bally rolled his head. “Is this what we’ve become? Will you soothe my troubled brow with balming words, tell me everything is going to be alright?”

“I don’t know,” Illowen paused for a moment. “Will it?”

Bally looked back to the horizon, looking as far as he dared. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows.”

“Do you think it will?”

Bally shook his head. “I am a fool. I don’t think much, and when I do it doesn’t come to much.”

“Then do you hope it will?”

Bally opened his mouth, and then closed it with a snort. “My beloved daughter! You should have told me you had a talent for the priesthood. Are you considering joining the clothed order? Wrapping yourself in strips of canvas in the hopes the gods have neither forsaken the land nor ourselves?”

“You’re avoiding the question.” Illowen huffed. “Honestly. I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you.”

“Ah?” Bally grinned. “A foolish thing to do. In any conversation between a wisened one and a fool, the fool will always come out ahead, for the fool can understand the wise, but the wise cannot understand the fool.”

“Then we’re both fools, I guess,” Illowen said, leaning back onto her hands. “What do you say about that?”

Bally blinked. “Forgive me, daughter, but you seem much more…introspective since last we spoke. Are you feeling alright?”

“I was going to ask you the same question,” Illowen smiled before sighing gently. “Actually, I spoke with father.”

“Ah,” Bally said.

“I see,” he said again.

“How do you fare?” he asked at last.

“Fine,” Illowen lied quite poorly. After a moment she looked to Bally again. “I heard there was a riot at the gate. Did you stop them?”

“Not at all,” Bally sighed. “It wasn’t a riot. It was just a bunch of poor men and women living the same way they had always lived.”

“I heard it was a riot, that they were going to kill someone.”

“Oh, they will. That’s been their whole lives, having things taken from them. Their food, their children, their land, their lives…they’ll smile and say its for King and Country, but always…always there comes a time when they can’t bear to have any more taken from them, so they all get together and decide…let’s give one more big thing. Bigger than anything we’ve given before, and maybe, maybe the world will stop taking for a bit. Just a bit.”

“And you told them they were wrong?”

“I told them it never works. Well, I tried, anyway. I was barely able to get them to shut up for a moment so I could talk. I don’t think they listened.”

“Of course not. You’re a fool.”

“You think I should have told them lies? If I told them lies, told them nothing was wrong…do you think they would have…do you think I made a mistake? What do you think they would have said, if I had told them everything was fine?”

“I think…I think they would have called you bad at your job.”

Bally the fool burst out laughing. “By all that is still holy, I think you’re right. They would say that, wouldn’t they?”

Illowen smiled at Bally’s laughter. A moment more, and she was laughing as well, haltingly and sporadically, uncertain in the humor. “They’d get a new fool, that’s for sure.”

“A new fool!” Bally slapped his knee. “Please, stop, I beg you, my sides ache!”

The poor girl fell silent, lest her accidental humor prove his death. At last he caught his breath, and the two giggled their last. The air smelled as sour as ever, but the dark red skies had brightened, somehow. Perhaps the burning flames that lit the clouds had been stirred from their embers. Bally took a slow breath. Well, perhaps the ancient sages knew for sure.

The waters of the sea were a dark blue, darker than the skies. They were as rich as ink, churning below like a lake full of thick glittering trout. When was the last time I ate a trout?

“I give up.”

Bally looked up. “You do? At long last? Am I no longer alone? Have I found, at the end of it all, a true soul-mate? Dare I say it…a companion?”

Illowen blinked. “What are you talking about?”

Bally sighed and dropped his chin back into his palm. “No, I didn’t think so. Never mind. What do you ‘give up?’”

“The riddle,” Illowen said, flopping down next to the flopping fool. “What I own that everyone else will use more than me. I give up. I don’t know the answer, and I’m not smart enough to figure it out.”

“It’s not about smart,” Bally spoke through a jaw pressed tight between his palm and his skull. “Fools aren’t smart. They aren’t well learned, they aren’t educated, they’re not genius sages or clever tricksters. They’re just…” he sighed. “They just look around and see what’s there.”

“Not like anyone else,” Illowen answered. “No one sees the things you see.”

“That makes me mad, not smart,” Bally sniffed. “You want the answer? Fine. It’s your name. Everyone else uses your name more than you ever will. Your name isn’t for you. You know who and what you are…but it doesn’t matter. You are your name, and that’s what everyone else gets to use.”

The rain began to fall. After a moment looking up at the water and trying to catch the black drops on her tongue and spitting them out again, Illowen nodded. “It’s a good riddle.”

“It’s a great riddle,” Bally muttered. “One of my best.”

“I prefer the one about artichokes. You know, ‘I stand on my head and a heart on my leg?’”

Bally sighed. Some people just weren’t cut out for it. “I stand on one leg with my heart in my head.”

“Yeah, that one. Your heart is in your head, isn’t it?”

Bally blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Well, not literally, but…you know. Yours is.”

Non-plussed, Bally opened his mouth. “Is that a metaphor?”

“I learned it from poetry lessons,” Illowen nodded. “What do you think? Any good?”

Bally let out a breath he had been holding for some time. “Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

Bally grinned. He wouldn’t answer her just yet. It would annoy her to no end, and he could get a good five minutes out of that.

He stared up at the red sky, watching the churning clouds spill out of the unseen above. They boiled and spun and spat black oil onto the ground, but they were beautiful in their way. It was all beautiful, when you found the right way to look at it.