Regolith

That Was Then

It is hard to think what the consequences might be if word got out that the Witch-finder General did not believe in witches. 

Miriam Lyons, who had begged to have her skirts bound at her ankles to stop the shit from escaping, was a bad bitch, but no conjuror of spells. They ask, always, why he doesn’t burn them as they do in the kingdoms and palatinates of Europe. Blessed always quips that firewood is expensive and that hanging is cheaper. If they want a spectacle, he is obliged to disappoint. 

There has never been a single shitting hag, condemned by Blessed’s own auspices, who did not deserve to swing. But we must all abase ourselves before the zeitgeist, and in these times, there is an appetite for witches and warlocks. It is an era where supernatural beliefs lock horns with the forces of reason: where the old meets the new: where spite is disguised as virtue. Reason will win the day, but not at this moment of the witch-finder’s supremacy. Here, and now, he must use what is to hand. 

Blessed condemns almost as many men to the gallows as women. Bad men are not easily removed if they are wealthy or influential, but pin a charge of witchcraft on them, and the objections disappear. He does what he can with these child murderers, rapists and despoilers. He exonerates those falsely accused by covetous neighbours and jealous witness. No innocent person has ever been condemned by Blessed. And by this judicious application of retribution, no one is alerted to the Witch-finder General’s most personal motives.

Back at his temporary lodgings, he looks at the moon. The telescope does not need adjusting because the moon is all he looks at. And the moon looks back at him. 

Blessed knows things that others don’t, and the knowledge requires no tutelage. He knows a dowser who can find any lost thing using nothing but two sticks. It is merely a gift as natural as breath. He knows that all things possess particles, (which will later be identified as atoms), and that they cannot be dispersed. Even in death, they do not die. Distasteful as it may seem, each living soul has the revenant matter of dead strangers within them. Tonight, when Miriam Lyons’ body is dissected by the ghoulish anatomists, her atoms will begin another journey. Within the myriad options between the sky and the water and the soil, someone will be unfortunate enough to breathe in a stinking particle of her.

There is as much water now as when the earth was new. If there is drought, elsewhere there is flood. There is as much good and as much evil as there ever was. And he knows that the moon is the anchor to the earth. Without it, the globe would tilt alarmingly, by 40 degrees or more, and then it will drown. All will be drowned. By all that water that never went away. Blessed knows these things, long before others will. He is a good man, and that is just as well, for it is a heavy load to carry.

Blessed knows that the earth does not make magic and that the people of the earth cannot make magic and yet there is magic all the same. 

And it is dangerous. 

Women with child have cravings. Most cannot afford to assuage them. But when Blessed’s mother was carrying him, a rock fell from the sky and landed in a fallow field just yards from their home. It was old news soon enough. Strange things happen. They removed the rock, filled the hole with water and planted cress, which sprinkles well on the morning eggs. 

That was his mother’s craving. 

And This is Now

Now and then, a meteoroid hits the moon and forms the craters which describe the benevolent face. If not these, then sonic flares will play their part in the moonscape. Now and then, in time immeasurable and odds incalculable, a meteoroid strikes a glancing blow and falls to earth as a meteor. Moon dust is magnetic and will strive to cling. This dust, which is called regolith, will not succeed if it has been gathered from the near side. It does have the necessary power. But regolith from the far side, which dances and forms its own lunar nebulas unseen by human eyes, is negatively charged, and does not quit so easily.

If it isn’t shaken off before it hits the earth’s atmosphere, it lands magic. All the magic you dream of comes from the dark side of the moon and nowhere else at all. 

They say that regolith tastes and smells like gunpowder. It also tastes like cress. These are the fine details which make the world a curious place indeed.

This moon, this regular object in the sky, its aspect not restricted to the wealthiest or the wisest, this winking man in the dark void, whose phases we are all so familiar with, whose light we cherish when we’ve missed the last ride home, whose majesty is undermined by familiarity - is not smiling at us. He is warning us. 

*****

Beau Blessed is sitting at a bar. The barmaid cannot take her eyes away, and other guys in the bar don’t like it. Beau has a fine instinct for knowing when it’s time to leave. 

He has plenty of money and drops her a big tip. She asks him what he does. With this question, so often asked, he is forced to dissemble, and describes himself as a businessman, a description both vague and dismissive. In reality, he belongs to the government. Many governments have someone like him. If your forebears ingested moon dust, whether by cress or a wide-mouthed yawn, it’s in the DNA. Some are better at the game than others. You have to adapt, like the regolith adapted to oxygen.

A wise guy pushes him back on the barstool. Calls Beau a fucking fairy. Beau looks at him and smiles. ‘I’m not a fairy,’ he says. ‘I’m fey.’ 

The knuckle-head says ‘eh?’

‘Fairies don’t exist,’ says Beau. ‘Back before the radio, when folks lay awake at night with a flickering candle, they would see these tiny winged figures and spin a yarn around them. Of course, they were just mo —’

‘You taking the piss?’

‘What else can I do?’ 

The knuckle-head grabs him by his lapel. Beau doesn’t twitch. He just tells the guy not to touch him. And the guy does just that: takes Beau’s face between his stinking sausage fingers as if to kiss him on the lips. 

That’s when Beau saw what he saw. A woman at home with a black eye and a split lip, sifting through a new pile of novel excuses for work tomorrow. 

‘Oh dear,’ he says. ‘That’s done it.’

Knuckle-head is confused. He takes his hands away. Beau brushes down his lapel and takes his leave. 

In the morning, the wife will wake up to a dead knuckle-head. Nothing traumatic, peaceful as you like, went in his sleep. Beau hopes there is a life insurance policy. 

Feys exercise caution in all the ways of living. They cannot make the world a better place by making others happy. They can only eliminate those who consistently don’t. A rogue fey is more dangerous than a war head, but they die like humans and sometimes they are made to. 

Feys cannot afford to love too much. They must take their sensual pleasures from fine materials and honest whores. They do not immerse themselves in politics, for if they did, heads of state would die. They have a great fondness for animals, who do not speak or calculate. When Beau pets a dog, he sees evidence of savagery overwhelmed by a gormless good nature. Everything else is food and rabbits. 

He is staying in a hotel in a port town on the south coast. He takes another drink at the bar before turning in. The barman is young and emulative. He watches Beau; how people gather around him, losing themselves in his eyes, the colour of an earth shot horizon. The kid thinks it’s discouraging when such men walk amongst them, but his thoughts aren’t curdled, and Beau rewards him with another large tip. He pats his hand when he takes his leave, and all is level and reasonable. He’s a good kid, and Beau privately wishes him well with the pretty, plump blonde who is currently filling every corner of the boy’s mind. 

In his room he takes out his portable telescope. The moon is waxing crescent, jumping cow and fiddling cat. The moon that kids draw to distinguish it from the sun. 

Tomorrow he has a briefing in the war rooms of the castle on the hill. The prime minister is not invited. He doesn’t know about feys. Few of them ever have. In fact, the last had been Churchill, whose presence could still be felt in those underground chambers, where the WRAFs pushed their toy aeroplanes with shunting sticks. By the time the government had found a fluent German-speaking fey, Hitler had shot himself. Since then, in the torpor of peacetime, no other leader has merited the honour or the necessity. If such a person was tempted to write a memoir, they may not live to finish it. And so the temptation is removed. 

A tech giant, and certain superstates, are talking of a base on the moon; flashing advertising and worse to the world. It is imperative that they do not. The near side is always watching and the far side is always listening, and as any ugly guy will tell you, you really should stay away from beautiful things. 

Beau is scheduled to travel to one such advocate that afternoon. If he (or they) will not be persuaded to cease and desist, then he (or they) will wake up in the land of ghosts. 

Nothing traumatic, peaceful as you like, went in their sleep. Because when you are fey, all it takes is a handshake.