Under the Pendulum Sun

by Jeannette Ng

rather, of the instinctive feeling that there is still something absent, without which even regal splendour would fail to satisfy.

the spirit of love.

The absence of that mysterious bond of loving oneness, which links together indissolubly the hearts of Christian homes, is distressingly apparent in almost every heathen family that one visits.

well, aren't y'all dicks

had once thought them like a birdcage, but now I could only think of the heaving ribcage of a great beast that had swallowed me whole.

I had waited so long to see him, endured the confinement of his home, and here he was, denying me even my own self.

Everything is about to happen

“I had to ride on ahead to make preparations. Queen Mab is coming.”

mysterious Queen and her court. I wondered which of the Paracelsian elements she was aligned to.

She smiled a flame-red, lipless smile and her features lit up. For a moment she had eyebrows and hair of fire before it rippled down her being, from her bald head to her coiled tail. Her skin blackened under the flames before being scabbed over again by her white scales.

“I have had quite enough of the Pale Queen’s orders, quite enough of her court. I do what I must, what I owe her, but that is all.”

“Roche had ambitions. He thought this a mirror, and he was right, in a way. He thought this a garden, and he was right, in a different way. But he also thought this a parable.” “Was he wrong?” “No. But he wanted knowledge and he wanted to prove what should not be proven.” “What did he want to know?”

the one of dust and crawling may be the first but it is not the last.”

is she the serpent from eden?

examining the known unknowns,

One always began with the familiar and worked outwards.

Tineola arcanofera (Semiotic Moth) 2”-2” 7”’

to feed off the written word. It allegedly consumes secrets and digests them into less informative fragmentary whispers.

The “dust” of the moth’s wings possesses hallucinogenic properties when breathed into human lungs, explaining the whispering heard amid the clouds of moths and dust in old libraries.

this place as a parable?

along a gallery of ethereal landscapes.

“Realness is a strange, strange thing in these parts,

“Is it possible, then, for me to go there?” “At a price.”

He somehow seemed more real.

“There is a sort of old power to names,

“They say the Howling Duke and the Chief of Winds are more cruel. They say He Who Commands Fear is stronger, more powerful. The Keeper of the Markets is more calculating. The Colourful King, She Who Sleeps For The Mountains and the Lost Emperors are more unpredictable, more changeable… This is all true, you have to understand.” He swallowed, visibly. “But I daresay I fear the Pale Queen the most.”

“Because she is most human.”

“They sometimes like to pretend it can be measured in miles or hours travelled, but it’s far less predictable than that. I’ve had distances given to me in numbers of daydreams and revelations, as though I’d only arrive somewhere after I’ve had an epiphany or–”

beyond the puppetry of the fae.

She wears a face, after all.”

We are merely an afterthought in that process. To the merchants with their weights, to the politicians with their lies and to the cartographers with their lines.”

“I am a missionary in name alone,” said Laon. “We are surrounded by empty, formless mists not for our own protection.”

“So,” my brother began. “I would talk to the undines of how the Lord Above is the Fountain of Living Waters and how He is the one who divided the Red Sea?” “Yes, and to the gnomes, you could speak of how He is the Rock of Our Salvation. The sylphs, perhaps, could be swayed by the thought of his command over the heavens.” “It has a certain rhetorical simplicity, but I confess I am not convinced by the Paracelsian argument about the nature of fae.”

“The model is practically medieval, more shaped by superstition than reason,” he said. “And it is more than just various groupings of fae can be understood through their elements. It is an understanding of Arcadia as much as its inhabitants. And underpinning it all is the idea that Arcadia is constantly separating its elements, that they are unbalanced here, that as we push to the edges of our known map the cohesion of the world is collapsing.” “And as certain elements come to the fore, this affects the climate and temperaments of Arcadia?”

“It’s different, it’s not the alchemical composition of the world that makes it so. Mr Benjamin is not more closely aligned to earth than you or me.”

“This place isn’t just strange because of it having strange people,” I snapped, frustrated with his explanations. “There is something deeper.”

You cannot limit my knowledge and then reprimand me for ignorance.”

I had taken more than eighty grains of mercury and a great quantity of opium, to be delivered from it.

how are you alive?

his navigator is truly terrible and it would be no time before we are sufficiently lost as to be within sight of the Faelands.

you have to be lost in order to find

a number of fae, many of whom had extravagant titles such as the Astrologer of Blood and the Duchess of Time.

It is the strength of all infidels, to begin their arguments with the question, Why? And the question shows at once that they know nothing, with all their learning and wisdom; for if they knew anything, they would not begin to state their argument with the question, Why? For Why? indicates that we do not know the reason for a thing – that we are ignorant; and ignorance proves nothing – it proves only that you are ignorant.

yeah, no

leaving behind a very literal word-shaped lacuna.

He was willing himself to believe.

It rounded out the portrait of an uncertain man, grasping for reassurance. Another lacuna.

A slender quotation-riddled volume argued that fae were a lost tribe of Israel and that Arcadia was the desert to which they were cursed. A rebuttal to Paracelsus argued that Arcadia was the land of wandering east of Eden to which Cain was banished and his children by his sister were the fae, forever cursed for having been born of that sinful union. A screed denounced the mission to Arcadia as futile as the fae, as fallen angels, were soulless.

It was unclear if Cesare was a true person, but it sparked a great fear that wandering priests were secretly soulless changelings who were tricking villagers into a parody of the rite that bound them to Arcadia.

In the wake of such paranoia sprang the theology that it was the rite and receiver that mattered, not the priest who performed it. The rite itself was sacred. Thus false priests gave true communion.

These the Queen of Spells drew in,

When fancy, at a glance, combines The wondrous and the beautiful,— So bright, so fair, so wild a shape

And poured the magic of her gaze Upon the maiden's sleep.

Percy Shelley, Queen Mab

I saw that the lands that surrounded the castle were ablaze. The mists had been burnt away. Each slivered pane of glass shattered the image of the endless fire into a broken sea. Livid, vivid red, like the stained glass images of Risen Christ and His blood-red robes.