In His Father’s Place

By Lars Schwed Nygård

Had Pollonius Ambrose been a man to take the Lord's name in vain, now would have been the time. Even at this distance, sharp moonlight revealed the neglect that Blackpond House had continued to suffer. The past forty-odd years had crumbled one of its chimneys, smashed and boarded up two of its second storey windows, and peeled off nearly half its turquoise coat of paint.

“Thank Christ for small mercies,” Pollonius muttered.

He resumed his ascent of the hill, fighting off thorny branches and cursing the attempts of nasty, little roots to trip him up. He slipped in mud and a moist chill seeped through the seat of his trousers. Pollonius cursed himself. He should have brought boots for this terrain, and more appropriate attire than a business suit.

At the top of the hill, he paused to regain his breath and survey the estate. The garden was a jungle of weeds, the boat shed a collapse of rotten timber.

And there, the lake itself. Black as sleep.

It seemed even larger, now, than Pollonius remembered it. This struck him as odd: Upon revisiting the landscapes of their childhood, most people seemed to describe the opposite effect. But then again, most people's childhoods had little in common with Pollonius's. Would most people ever consider a course of action such as the one he had now embarked upon? The moon and the stars declined to answer.

A wet slop broke the lake's surface, leaving an echo of ripples. Pollonius shuddered, and began his descent.

*

Standing before the mansion's heavy front door, Pollonius felt his cheeks boiling with shame. Two faux-Egyptian columns flanked the entrance, covered in hieroglyphics. A knocker in the shape of some Chinese demon's head bit down on a ring imitating a serpent eating its own tail. Sigils, runes, and other nonsense scarred the ancient oak boards. Had his father intended them to ward off ghosts or evil spirits? If so, he should have carved them into his own deranged head.

Pollonius slid the keys out of the solicitor's envelope and began searching for the rusty lock's right fit. He found it, the bolt creaked back, and Pollonius pulled the door open. He crossed the threshold into a dank, still darkness, then fished a match from one of the boxes in his coat pocket. The flame did little to illuminate the main hall, but enough for Pollonius to seek out a gas lantern, light it, and regard the interior of his inheritance.

The solicitor had shown up at Pollonius's City chambers two days prior, asking to meet with “Mr Pollonius Grim”. The barristers' clerk was of course unfamiliar with the name, and had been in the process of showing the solicitor the door when Pollonius had returned from a particularly successful High Court litigation. The day's achievements had solidified Pollonius's candidacy for appointment as judge, and he had been contemplating champagne to accompany the evening's dinner. Upon hearing the name of the solicitor's intended contact, however, Pollonius's elation had turned to apprehension. He had made discrete plans to meet the solicitor at one of the quieter restaurants, where he had expected to find himself the subject of an extortion scheme.

Instead, this. Aldus Grim had neglected his son in life, but not in death.

Underfoot: Twenty feet of moldy Persian rug. Along the side walls: A thousand souvenirs from seedy ports of dark continents. Above, suspended from a cracked stucco: The gaudy Chandelier of Crystallomancy. Ahead: The mansion's once majestic staircase. As a child, Pollonius had often imagined himself a mountaineer, and these stairs the face of some virgin peak. But he was a child no more, and the stairs now merely stairs. Pollonius plodded on toward them.

Then, in the corner of his eye, a bright burst of colour. His lantern had reflected from something up on the wall. He turned.

Nailed to a wooden placard above the drawing room door hung the Fish, golden and black-speckled like a leopard. Unlike the rest of the hall's debris, the Fish's scales were undimmed by dust. Pollonius stepped towards it. Beneath his weight, the floorboards gave a startling creak.

The Fish was, if Pollonius's memory served, a rainbow trout. His father had once claimed that Pollonius himself, at the age of three, had hooked the thing during a boating excursion the two had allegedly enjoyed on the Black Lake. The truth of this was hard to determine. Pollonius had only murky recollections of the event.

He spat up at the trophy and all it signified, but his gob fell to the floor in an impotent splat. Pollonius shuddered, and began climbing the stairs.

*

As Pollonius crossed the landing halfway to the first storey, his footfalls provoked a response from above: A squawk, and several bursts of flapping. As he continued ascending, another squawk. The noises came from the direction of Aldus's old study. In Pollonius's memory, that door was always shut. Now, for the first time, he saw it wide open. A shaft of moonlight fell through onto the floor like a ghostly welcome mat. More squawks. Pollonius stepped through the doorway.

His dinner with the solicitor had turned out a frightening, hopeful, and ultimately confusing affair. Frightening in that the man had wielded Pollonius's old name like a clumsy axe, as if to chop away at his reputation and all his prospects. Hopeful in that it informed Pollonius of his father's demise, which meant no more Verities of the Deep or similar disgraceful pageants with which Pollonius might find his name associated. Confusing in that his father's will named Pollonius sole inheritor of Blackpond House and its attendant furniture and other belongings – which, apparently, included two parrots.

And here they were. One a clownish blue-and-yellow macaw, the other a parakeet in discrete green plumage. Each bird was locked up in a cage with old Aldus Grim's ebony desk between them, like some sad parody of Odin's ravens.

“Kwa hena kwa hena shobbosh,” screamed the macaw.

“SQUAWK now sing it the words sing them round sing them nice,” cried the parakeet.

Pollonius blushed.

The full moon through the window revealed his father's study to be everything Pollonius had dreaded it would be. A barnacle-ridden ship's wheel chandelier dangled from the ceiling. A crystal ball sat on the windowsill alongside a brazier upon which was piled a pyramid of incense. Bookcases lined the walls, overflowing with occult volumes boasting names such as The Divine Pymander, De Harptica Mystica, and Liber Razielis Archangeli.

On the desktop lay another large volume, seemingly bound in fish scales, emblazoned with the title Subaquaneam Sapientam. Next to it: a heavy, skull-shaped inkpot holding a peacock quill pen, and a manuscript apparently aborted by Aldus's sudden demise. A glance confirmed Pollonius's suspicion: Yet another instalment of the Verities of the Deep: The Wise Trout Dialogues. Despite his revulsion, his father's words reeled him in.

A: But if, as you say, the Kingdom's creatures are all seen to be but aspects of the same Neptunian Dream, liberated, as you say, from the need for names, how does your society approach such matters as division of labour, maintenance of identity, and recording of lineage?

T: By what, you ask, we signify each subdivided consciousness? From Starfish Lord to plankton pawn, to Prince who reigns in old Loch Ness? For this we know, and always have: That truth is one that words do wrong. My brother whales as bards of deep relate our lives within their song.

Pollonius swallowed bile, and looked up from the pages of the mercifully unfinished play. His gaze landed on a photograph hung next to the door, taken at one of Aldus's performances. The old man stood posed in front of a seashell-shaped plywood stage decoration alongside a younger fellow who likely looked an idiot even when stripped of his silk cape and papier-mâché fish head. But it was the sight of Aldus himself that properly set bellows to Pollonius's shame. In the picture, his father wore some manner of robe to which was stitched a patchwork of sigils. Around his neck hung a murky crystal, and a turban wound itself around his head like a snake. Aldus's mouth was smiling, but his eyes held nothing but utter and manic conviction.

His father had set off this relentless cycle of humiliations nigh on four decades back. Pollonius had been thirteen, still surnamed Grim, and boarding at a far away prep school when one of his fellow students – a City boy named Hastings – had gathered a dozen lads for an impromptu reading from one of the day's broadsheets. He had arranged the boys in a circle and instructed Pollonius to step into its center. Pollonius had feared a beating, but what had followed had been far worse.

“Ahem,” Hastings had begun, calling the circle to silence and establishing his command of its attention. He had proceeded to recite from the newspaper's pages: “'Our Invisible Origins: A Wise Trout Dialogue. From this day on, let not a single enthusiast of the thespian arts live in ignorance of the name Aldus Grim. Knowing the name should serve as inoculation against suffering the pox of absurdist infantilisms that bleed from this undeservedly self-proclaimed playwright's pen. His production takes the form of a confused dialogue between a madman played by Grim himself and a fish played by Dapper Danny Dolan, who has most recently performed the part of panhandler, mercilessly accosting the respectable citizens of our fair city. Our suggestion would be for him to return to this practice, as it would lessen his own embarassment as well as that of his audiences. The performance occasionally reveals a vague narrative that suggests at the existence of some mythical submarine kingdom from which mankind supposedly hails. Such transgression should rightfully be punished at the stake, but in lieu of the justice of olden times, the pages of the present publication must make do.'”

The review went on to butcher the very first production of a Wise Trout Dialogue, and ran replete with damning characterisations of its author and chief player. Even in Hastings's lispy voice every word lashed at Pollonius's pride like a whip, and each mention of his father's name singed his heart like a chain of fire.

For a moment, young Pollonius had pondered Hastings's motivations for subjecting him to such humiliation. Envy? Hardly; Hastings had everything, Pollonius nothing. A schoolyard powerplay? Even less likely; Hastings commanded the loyalties of a dozen boys, Pollonius – as evidenced by the warm, wet sting spreading down the inside of his thigh – not even his own bladder. No. The truth was this: Hastings had swung this social scythe simply because it existed and was in his possession. With it, he had neatly and effectively amputated Pollonius from the rest of the student body.

From that day on, for five years, young Pollonius Grim had prayed that his father's theatrics would cease. For five years, they had not.

Pollonius Ambrose grabbed the skull inkpot from the desktop and hurled it across the room. It impacted with the picture in a black explosion.

“Douse it with water SQUAWK once twice and then thrice,” cried the parakeet.

“SQUAWK noa shaiia noa shaiia shobbosh,” screamed the macaw.

Pollonius drew a deep breath, willing his hand to stop trembling. He looked at the wretched birds in their cages. “All right, let's get the two of you out of here,” he said. He unlatched the window and swung it open, repeating the procedure with each of the cage doors.

The parrots hesitated for a moment, then wobbled out of their cages, heads bopping like frightened beggars'. Once liberated, however, they did not so much as glance towards the window and the night outside. Pollonius met their gazes, one after the other.

“Go on, then. Fly,” he said.

The parrots stared at him in silence.

“Go on, shoo,” he attempted, waving his arms and moving towards the birds so as to leave them no escape but the window. They fluttered their wings and took flight, only to alight on the ship's wheel chandelier.

“Hmph. Well, as you like,” said Pollonius. He had left the window open, and could not be expected to do more. The birds would soon realise where their best interests lay.

As Pollonius exited the study and returned to the stairs, he heard wings flapping behind him. He turned. The macaw sat perched atop the open study door, the parakeet on the back of a hallway chair. They stared at him, their eyes betraying neither purpose nor intelligence.

“Eloqua eloqua im mara eloqua,” screamed the macaw.

“Up with the boards and feet inside SQUAWK,” cried the parakeet.

*

Midway to the third storey, Pollonius paused for breath. As a child he would have scaled these steps with ease and exuberance. Now age, experience, and the odd well-earned business lunch weighted him down. The parrots flew past as if in mockery.

“All a front all a front for the truth to hide,” cried the parakeet.

“Eloqua shobbosh abazhalam shobbosh,” screamed the macaw.

The words grated Pollonius's ears and weary mind, for they were obvious echoes of his father's. Dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief, Pollonius set to speculating what purpose the birds would have served, caged there in Aldus's study. But even this cursory attempt at putting himself in his father's place sickened his stomach and shivered his spine. Stupid! The old buffoon had lived and died in lunacy. Retracing his steps through that mad labyrinth would leave Pollonius nothing but prospects to match those of his progenitor.

Pollonius jammed the handkerchief back in his pocket, raised his head, and resumed the climb.

His knees felt wobbly as he stepped into the third storey corridor. A brisk draft stood from a broken window opposite the stairway and the air was far less stale than below. Pollonius could draw breath without feeling as though mold and fungus was taking up residence in his lungs.

Still, time had not fared well with the hallway. Paint flaked off the ceiling, and the once rich carpet had suffered fading and stains. Discolored rectangles and ovals spoiled the wallpapers, pale memories of family portraits long since pawned off.

Pollonius hesitated before the door to his old bedroom. Much as it might have decayed in the course of the last four decades, Blackpond House had still proved itself capable of pushing Pollonius down many a path of memory that he would rather have avoided. What lay in wait beyond this threshold? Had his father stripped the chamber of Pollonius's old belongings, traded them for even more supposedly magical manuscripts and knick-knacks? Or had he kept ignoring the room and everything in it, just like he had throughout Pollonius's childhood? Upon entering the room, would Pollonius find each item of furniture and play exactly where his twelve year old self had left them?

It seemed an unlikely scenario, but Pollonius said a prayer for it to be true. Was it within the Lord's power to rearrange events after they had already occurred? If so . . .

Pollonius said another prayer, then turned the knob.

The door swung outward, revealing a tableau that flooded Pollonius with memory, then assaulted him with confusion. A canopied bed stood against the far wall, but a quick inspection revealed that it was in fact not Pollonius's old canopied bed. A small sailor suit hung from a cabinet door, but it was not Pollonius's old sailor suit. A stuffed lion sat atop a sky blue dresser, but it was not Pollonius's old sky blue dresser – and it certainly was not Fabulous Doctor MacLeo. His father (a fleeting thought: Which one?) had taken great pains to recreate the room in detail, but every detail was ever so slightly wrong.

For what purpose? Aldus must have intended for Pollonius to discover the room. Was the reconstruction an attempt at reconciliation with his son, an olive branch from beyond the grave? Or – as Pollonius held more likely – had Aldus wagered that these imitations would fool Pollonius into believing the old man had kept the room a shrine to his son's memory?

All in all, Pollonius did not care one way or the other. Regardless of his father's motivations, he had included in his display the one piece of the inheritance that Pollonius was determined not to leave behind. It sat atop a bedside table similar to the one that had once held little Pollonius's story books and warm milk glasses. Among all the room's ersatz paraphernalia, this was the lone original: a framed photograph that had wished little Pollonius a thousand goodnights. Now, through a sudden blur of tears, he could again behold the composed, angelic smile of Lucretia Grim, née Ambrosio. In his hands, Pollonius held the only photograph he had ever seen of his mother.

Pollonius's memories of her spanned only ten years, but as he looked back upon them with adult eye, the trials she had endured were obvious. His earliest recollections – from the age of three, perhaps – consisted of nothing but her doting smile, framed by a halo of auburn hair. A later memory presented her from the same angle, but weeping now, frightened and brave. Aldus was also there, impassive, capturing her tears . . . with a pipette? No, that couldn't be accurate. Could it?

From then on he remembered her aging rapidly. Her tears had grown more bitter and Lucretia less . . . predictable. Her breath had taken on a sharp, chemical tang, and a nanny had started taking care of Pollonius in the mornings. And on one such morning, chilled by late October, the same nanny had insisted to him that everything would be all right, yes everything would be all right, as the groundskeeper had pulled Lucretia's bloated, nightgown-clad body up onto the lake shore, auburn hair tangled across her face like seaweed.

Like his father, Pollonius's mother had abandoned her son. Unlike his father, she had loved him to the last.

Pollonius broke open the frame and liberated the photograph. He slipped it into the protective envelope, which he in turn slipped into his coat pocket. He patted the pocket three times, then stepped back out into the hallway. The parrots perched on opposite kerosene lamp fixtures, eyeing him still.

“Abzhalam abzhalam shobbosh,” screamed the macaw.

“But verity lives on the cross is not dead,” cried the parakeet.

Lantern in hand, parrots at his heels, and the nightly draft at his back, Pollonius strode along the hallway back towards the stairs.

*

The mansion's basement was impossibly humid, and a ghostly mist danced in the feeble light of Pollonius's lantern. Still, he managed to stumble his way through its low-ceilinged chambers until he came upon a room stacked with a dozen large glass bottles of kerosene. Two by two he carried them up into the main hall, where he lined them up next to the stairway.

He then set off into the overgrown mess of the mansion's grounds. The parrots followed him out and he expected them to take to the sky and disappear. Instead, they remained flapping about him as he went in search of the toolshed. His father had let nature run wild, turning the garden into a confusing and unnavigable jungle. A decade of lonely outdoors play, however, had thoroughly imprinted its geography upon Pollonius's mind. His invisible map still served him well, and he found what he was looking for with ease.

The toolshed's walls and ceiling were soft and brittle from moisture, but had nonetheless performed their simple protective duty to Pollonius's satisfaction. He exited the structure carrying a forest axe of solid wood and unrusted steel.

“SQUAWK kwa hena kwa hena shobbosh!”

“Lies fill his eyes fill his heart SQUAWK and his head!”

Pollonius made his way back to the house proper, the parrots following him still.

As he stomped towards the drawing room, the loud creak of the floorboards once again startled him. Stepping through the door, he imagined quiet mockery dripping from the Fish on its placard above. He took solace in knowing that the scaly monstrosity would soon have its comeuppance.

The drawing room, however, turned out a disappointment. The air was cold and clammy, the walls hideously water-damaged. Curtains and upholstery stank of mildew, and a few exploratory hacks of the axe exposed the soggy wooden innards of cupboard walls and tabletops. Pollonius had imagined that a room on the ground floor would best suit his needs, but this pit of moist and rot would simply not do.

However . . .

Pollonius plodded back up the stairs and into his father's study. Despite the open window, the air was still stale. Dry wood bookcases held dusty volumes and rolls of crisp parchment. Best of all: Here was his father's desk of ebony, upon which the old man had penned scores of his lunatic dialogues. How appropriate, how just that the balancing of the scales begin here, at the heart of Aldus Grim's shameful creations.

Pollonius stepped up to one of the bookcases, heaved the axe, and let it fall. The shelves cracked, and their contents spilled to the floor. The parrots squawked in terror, but flew no farther than the ship's wheel chandelier, where they found purchase and a vantage from which to observe Pollonius' axe-work.

Tearing the shelves from the walls, smashing them to kindling, chopping tens of thousands of mad, un-christian pages into blessedly unreadable reams . . . The effort cricked his neck and blistered the skin of his palms, but the pain's reward urged him on. Every swing and cut of the axe-head severed another paternal tentacle, each chop a victory against the dark legacy that threatened to drown Pollonius's name in ridicule and infamy.

At last, only the desk remained. Pollonius raised the axe above his head, held it there for a few seconds, then let it crash down through the ebony and the hateful, abandoned manuscript. Again and again it fell, reducing the desk to splinters and a black memory.

Like snow on an extinct volcano, white confetti fell on the heap before Pollonius's feet: his father's final, unfinished play, now consigned to oblivion. Pollonius's body shivered as he drew breath.

“Therefore my heralds take wing lead him on SQUAWK,” cried the parakeet.

“Noa shaiia SQUAWK noa shaiia shobbosh,” screamed the macaw.

Aldus's words, posthumously reverberating from beaks as bent as the old man's brains. The moment was ruined. For a dark second Pollonius considered taking the axe to the birds as well, but the thought made him queasy with guilt. Instead he returned his attention to the mountain of wood, paper, and parchment on the study floor. It would no doubt blaze with grand ferocity once set alight, but Pollonius needed to ensure that the flames would also feast upon the rest of Blackpond House.

One by one he set to hauling the kerosene bottles up the stairs, each climb taxing his body like an alpine ascent. After depositing the first two bottles in garrets above his father's third storey bedroom, Pollonius felt sweat gluing his shirt to his back. He removed his coat to reveal large, moist patches around his armpits. He resumed his arduous task with sleeves rolled up like some common craftsman. Halfway through, Pollonius found himself sat on the second storey landing, struggling to catch his breath and contain his tears of exhaustion. He felt repulsive and undignified, and his back muscles screamed with pain. Were he alive to see Pollonius now, Aldus would no doubt judge his son a pathetic specimen. Or, as was perhaps more likely, he would not care at all.

Distant thunder rolled in through the study's window and door. Pollonius stood his aching body up, and limped down the stairs to continue his Sisyphean undertaking.

A half hour later, Pollonius lay supine on his old bedroom floor, gasping like a landed flounder. He was, miraculously, done. He had positioned three bottles in every storey, each placed where Pollonius imagined it would best contribute to igniting and maintaining a mansion-wide inferno.

Again he heard thunder, and the whisper of drizzle on tree leaves. Pollonius rolled to his side and stood himself up. One of the bottles rested against the canopied bed's headboard. Pollonius uncorked the bottle and kicked it over, dousing the mattress and the yellow carpet in the acrid, oily liquid. The smell burned in his nostrils, but the sensation's sole effect was to invigorate him.

He repeated the process in his father's bedroom, in the garrets, in the moldy downstairs drawing room, and in the kitchen and dining room. The remaining bottles he tipped over in hallways and stairways, save for one.

Seeing it there, guarding the study's grand mound of kindling, Pollonius was put in mind of some reverse firewatch, one he could trust to cleanse the world of this room, this house, and his own pathetic legacy. With careful reverence, Pollonius uncorked the bottle, hoisted it to his chest, and balanced it on his knee as he shifted his grip. Then, expending the last of his strength, he poured its contents onto the towering mass of firewood.

Pollonius stood back from the kerosene-doused pile. Again he donned his coat. From its pocket he produced a matchbox, from the matchbox a match. He stared at the little sulphur head, pregnant with promise and combustible potential.

A sliver of doubt. Setting fire to one's own property did not constitute arson. Why, then, did it feel as though it did?

Pollonius reminded himself of a vacant High Court judge's seat, and the scrutiny that was its price. He reminded himself of standing in a circle of laughing boys as words of glowing iron branded his soul with shame.

“Eloqua eloqua im mara eloqua SQUAWK,” screamed the macaw.

Pollonius lit the match.

“SQUAWK Pollonius Grim was never my son,” cried the parakeet.

Pollonius froze and his pulse quickened.

He turned to look through the open door. The parrots looked back, perched on the handrail like witnesses in a box.

An impossible hope.

“What did you say?”

No reply.

With trembling thumb and forefinger he extinguished the flame.

“What did you say?”

Silly, of course, attempting to take testimony from a pair of birds. What escaped their beaks was nothing but mindless repetition. He knew that. But in all their mindlessness these were, after all, the words of Aldus Grim. Of that he had no doubt.

Pollonius recalled his silent prayer on the threshold of his old upstairs room. Could it be that–

“Now sing it the words sing them round sing them nice,” cried the parakeet.

“Eloqua shobbosh abazhalam shobbosh,” screamed the macaw.

A shock of recognition. Were the parrots repeating themselves? Pollonius rifled through recent memory. Had not the parakeet squawked something concerning verity, a hidden truth? The exact words escaped him, but if the birds were in fact repeating themselves . . .

Pollonius rushed to the kindling pile and scrambled to salvage a piece of parchment untouched by kerosene. From the debris surrounding the pile he recovered the old man's quill pen and a small bottle of ink. He scribbled down the parakeet's words to the best of his recollection. Quill in hand, he then took up position before the birds, and he waited.

Through the window he heard a loud crack of thunder and the rain picking up a heavier beat. He glanced back at the mound of chopped-up furniture and literature. He smelled the kerosene. He resumed his wait.

*

By the time Pollonius had recorded all of the parakeet's phrases, the drizzle had grown to a deluge. For nigh on an hour he had stood before the parrots, who were still perched on the handrail with patience to far outmatch his own. Now, at last, the parakeet's recitation had come full circle. Pollonius looked at his transcript, punctuated according to his best ability.

Now sing it the words, sing them round, sing them nice
Douse it with water once, twice, and then thrice
Up with the boards and feet inside
All a front, all a front for the truth to hide
But verity lives on the cross, is not dead
Lies fill his eyes, fill his heart and his head
Therefore, my heralds: Take wing, lead him on
Pollonius Grim was never my son

The hamfisted attempt at poetry grated at Pollonius's sensibilities, but the oddness of its meter and structure failed to surprise him. His fa– . . . Aldus had always been more fond of obfuscation and convenience than of clarity and tradition.

Apart from its defining last line, the verse's meaning danced just beyond reach of Pollonius's faculties like a cat's maddening yarn ball. He shook the parchment as if to dislodge from it a secret message.

“Blast it all, what are you supposed to mean?”

“SQUAWK!”

He looked up.

The macaw was still sat on its handrail spot, but the parakeet was not. The green bird now hung upside down from the low structure, suspended by its feet. The maneuver somehow struck Pollonius as clownish, and he found himself surprised that the comparatively somber-looking parakeet had performed it instead of the garishly plumed macaw. He must have had it the wrong way arou–

A sudden revelation blazed across Pollonius's brain. The parakeet, his expectations, the verse . . . He reread the lines, this time in reverse order.

Pollonius Grim was never my son
Therefore, my heralds: Take wing, lead him on
Lies fill his eyes, fill his heart and his head
But verity lives on the cross, is not dead
All a front, all a front for the truth to hide
Up with the boards and feet inside
Douse it with water once, twice, and then thrice
Now sing it the words, sing them round, sing them nice

The secret of Pollonius's heritage was not the poem's final revelation, but its initial premise, and from it followed at last some measure of clarity. The eight lines constituted more than an attempt at poetry. They were a map. Once deciphered, that map would lead Pollonius to evidence of – he hardly dared think it – his true ancestry. His certificate of birth, perhaps some lost missive detailing his extraction, or some other piece of incontrovertible proof that he, Pollonius Ambrose, had never been the fruit of Aldus Grim's loins. His mouth watered with the taste of impending vindication, and his eyes with the gratitude of a man who has been heard by God.

The parrots followed as Pollonius made his way down to the ground floor dining room, where he rolled out the parchment upon the mildewed tablecloth. He surveyed it as a general would the map of a battlefield, seeking out features of its landscape from which to find his bearings. The most prominent point of interest jutted from the poem's fourth line: But verity lives on the cross, is not dead.

Pollonius ransacked his memory of the past hours, but found no recollection of having seen a crucifix in any of the mansion's rooms. He extended his mental search to his first thirteen years of life, but it remained unfruitful. What cross, then, did the line refer to? Perhaps one located somewhere far away from Blackpond House? In the village? In the City? Somewhere else in the country, or perhaps in the world? Finding it would be an impossible task. And why would old pagan Aldus choose a Christian symbol as the place to secrete his evidence?

All a front, all a front for the truth to hide.

The cross, wherever it was to be found, no doubt served to set up some elaborate joke in Aldus's mind. But where in the name of Almighty God was it?

Pollonius's eyes found the poem's next line. Up with the boards and feet inside. Up with the boards . . . Up with the boards?

The memory of a sound, fresh and sharp.

Between the window's grimy curtains Pollonius could see rain hammering the Black Lake.

“Bastard,” he breathed.

*

Somehow hostile even in its lifelessness, the Fish's eye mocked him from its wall-mounted vantage. Here, Aldus Grim had concocted a perfect admixture of profanity and buffoonery, and served it up as a perverse visual pun. The Fish, an ancient Christian symbol, nailed to a wooden board. Crucified upon it. The sacrilege stoked in Pollonius a burning feeling, not of shame this time, but of anger. Pollonius glared back up at the slick creature, tempted to smash it with the pry bar that rested upon his shoulder. Instead he took a step towards the Fish, deliberate and probing. The floorboards creaked. He moved his foot a little and reapplied his weight, repeating the process until he had mapped out the extent of the floor's creaky area.

Pollonius jammed the pry bar into the floor. The parrots watched from the Chandelier of Crystallomancy like distant animal angels as he pushed down on the bar and began breaking up floorboards.

Bit by bit, the boards cracked apart in screams and splinters to reveal the joists that supported them, and below the joists the planks of a subfloor streaked with odd lines of white paint. This little space had no doubt served Aldus as hiding place for the evidence that would exonerate Pollonius from the shame of his alleged heritage, but he could not yet see it. Again and again he pried the bar between boards, broke them apart, and flung them aside, but no sealed envelope or stack of documents revealed itself. Pain shot through his back like a garter of thorns.

Pollonius cursed between shallow breaths. Had he misread the verse? Was it, perhaps, a lie? If so . . . was all of it? The clammy hand of a fear he had thought dispelled gripped Pollonius's innards and urged him on in his task. Pry, push, break, fling, pry, push, break, fling, pry, push, break, fling, until every creaky board was gone, and the floor revealed to Pollonius its true secret.

Nothing was there. No secret birth certificate, no passionate poem by honourable paramour, no sworn testimony from long-dead midwife's hand. Instead, outlined in white on the subfloor and across the joists, was a large circle, some nine feet wide. What Pollonius had believed to be random streaks of paint now stood forth as the wavy glyphs of some hideous alphabet, the likes of which had never before offended his eyes. Somehow, their fluid language struck Pollonius as something not quite human. The symbols flowed in complex patterns in and around the circle's outline, as if with some dread, chaotic purpose.

Was this what Aldus had intended for him to discover? Where, then, was the evidence of Pollonius's ancestry?

From far above, a voice: “SQUAWK feet inside!”

The parakeet and the macaw stared at him from their lofty perch. Thus far, and despite the inclinations and eccentricities of their former master, the two birds had proven themselves reliable guides. For a moment, however, this last instruction seemed to present a puzzle: Feet inside what? Pollonius lowered his gaze, and it fell upon the obvious solution. He stepped into the circle.

He had seen it already while prying away the floorboards: a small disk of earth spread on the subfloor like butter on toast, approximately a foot across. Now, with the entirety of the design revealed, he saw that the dirt heap occupied the circle's very center. Pollonius felt his cheeks flush as he planted his feet upon the patch of soil and stood as if at attention. His eyes met the single, dead eye of the Fish, which returned his gaze with one of lifeless yet triumphant ridicule.

“Oh, save your mockery, abominable creature,” said Pollonius. “Which of us stands firmly upon the earth, and which hangs nailed to a piece of ancient wood?”

Pollonius stepped forward.

“Feet inside!”

The violent squawk startled him to the bone. He turned around to see the parakeet and macaw closer now, perched on the marble shoulders of a statue of Pan.

He returned his feet to the disk of dirt. What now?

Aldus had led Pollonius to this point, stood like a schoolboy in a circle of shame. The Fish's oily glare fell upon him, positively satanic in its jeering.

Pollonius's forehead furrowed, narrowing his vision under curtains of heavy anger. From the Fish's dead gape his ears fancied a guttural “Ahem!”

Pollonius bent back like a catapult's arm as he hawked forth a mouthful of phlegm. He threw his upper body forward and let fly. The gob hit the Fish's tail with a satisfying sklat.

“That's for you, abomination. This next's for my f–” Damn and blast. “For Aldus, that slimey old cur.”

Another wet projectile shot from Pollonius's lips to impact with the Fish, this time getting it right in the gills.

“And this . . . this is for every sorry bugger born to the name Grim, and every wanton father forcing its curse upon his kin.”

Like a mighty spring wound tight with shame, Pollonius let loose again, releasing a majestic discharge of sputum that arched through the air in a proud trajectory and sklat – terminated directly in the Fish's eye.

As his spittle dripped from its scaly skin, a calm sense of vindication rose within Pollonius. But what had he in fact accomplished? Though in itself purgative, the excercise had contributed nothing towards his objective.

Unbidden, the poem's penultimate line resurfaced to his consciousness: Douse it with water, once, twice, and then thrice.

The hidden circle, the opaque glyphs, the mound of dirt, the Fish on sacrilegious display, the three dousings . . . It all ran rank with the stink of obscure symbolism and irrational ritual. Pollonius's stomach grew heavy as he began to entertain the possibility that Aldus had, in unsurprising fact, duped him.

A sudden, horrific fancy jerked his head to face the front door: any second now, reporters and their photographers would come barging into the hall, invited by Aldus himself to witness his son's social, financial, and moral suicide.

The door remained shut, however, and Pollonius alone.

“SQUAWK!”

Save for the birds.

“Sing it the words,” the parakeet screamed.

Ah, yes. The verse's punchline. The parrot – Aldus, rather – would have Pollonius perform something, presumably the poem itself, in musical form. Oh, that would indeed be a spectacle, would it not? Pollonius, muddied and sweating through his frock suit, at ankle-deep attention in a dismantled floor, spending the last of his squandered breath serenading a dead fish. Would his voice then serve as the cue for the newspapermen to make their entrance? Perhaps Aldus had invited even a clerk of the Lord Chancellor himself, thus ensuring beyond doubt the annihilation of Pollonius's future? Or perhaps, as was more likely, Aldus had orchestrated it all simply to afford himself a posthumous chuckle. Pollonius prayed that no windows marred the walls of Hell.

“Sing them round SQUAWK sing them nice!”

Pollonius had no intention whatsoever of obeying. He had endured enough disgrace by far, and would now, in fact–

A rustle of flapping wings cut short his resolve. The blue-and-yellow macaw came to rest on Pollonius's shoulder, its claws gentle against the damp fabric of his coat. Pollonius stared at it. The macaw's lone visible eye stared back.

“SQUAWK,” it said.

Pollonius hesitated. “Now . . . now hang on a minute . . .”

“Kwa hena kwa hena shobbosh,” screamed the macaw.

“No. No, this–”

“Noa shaiia noa shaiia shobbosh,” interrupted the macaw and charged on: “Eloqua eloqua im mara eloqua! Eloqua shobbosh! Abazhalam shobbosh! Abzhalam abzhalam shobbosh! Kwa hena kwa hena SHOBBOSH!”

At this, the front door flew open with a bang and a lightning strike bathed the hall in pale, heartless light. Its attendant thunderclap drowned out even Pollonius's startled yelp as he whirled to face the door.

No one there but the lashing gusts of the rainstorm. Pollonius turned his head back to look at the hateful Fish. A knot of cold shock tightened his gut.

“That . . . is quite impossible,” he whispered. His glare had landed only on the cracked wood of the placard. The Fish was no longer there.

Some manner of trickery, clearly, but how was it devised? And why would . . .

“Hhhhohohohoho! Thar were a close one, don't you know!”

The voice was an absurd falsetto strained with the vibrato of a drowning man's bubbles. It came from the floor below the empty placard: a soft, metallic heap hidden in shadow. The heap stirred. Pollonius attempted to speak, but choked on silence. The heap rose.

“Me fins, me bones, me tired, old face! Been nailed to the wall here too many a days!”

It erected itself in a slow, fluid motion, like a drooping flower waking to the sun. Pollonius saw, now, that it was the size of a man, and clothed in a cape of silvery scales that swirled like mercury. Upon the cape danced shimmers of color from every point on the rainbow's spectrum. As the thing grew in height, so also in width, for it seemed that hidden arms began to extend beneath its metallic cloak, teasing the garment open like a stage curtain. Water trickled from the cape's hem as the figure rose, and up from its torso jutted a protrusion which Pollonius knew must be its head, but which every fibre of his sanity fought against recognising as such. For if the rest of the creature were a man, its head was that of a fish, and if the rest were a fish, then its head was that of a man. It was both and it was neither, and its aspects shifted while somehow also remaining constant. As he struggled to interpret the testimony of his eyes, Pollonius's brain seemed to liquify in his skull. It was as if he were looking at the thing from angles of utter impossibility and mutual exclusivity. The word “man-fish” jutted as a steady reef in the tempest of Pollonius's mind, and with all his reason he clung to it.

“But hour 'pon hour the days will devour, and now at the last you are here – putting to rest our fear,” said the thing.

Madness nipped at Pollonius's heels, certain to swallow him whole. But as the man-fish flapped the ends of its cloak apart, thus revealing its body, the infinite impossible angles coalesced into one. The creature's form now stable and singular, it appeared both angelic, grotesque, and . . . somewhat laughable. Its tailfins seemed to serve as feet, ballerina-like with its bulk balanced upon them. The arms with which it had flourished open its cloak stood revealed as skinny protuberances from which were suspended delicate translucent sails reminiscent of insect's wings. The hands consisted only of long, elegant claws that to Pollonius's mind caricatured a flamboyant manicure. The sleek curves of the man-fish's body echoed the human form, but its skin of rainbow scales shifted and flowed, giving lie to the notion that this thing could be a man, nor indeed anything of this world.

Yet when Pollonius's gaze met the creature's, it did so with recognition. The line of its brow might now advertise more intelligence, and its mouth might have metamorphosed from eternal trout's pout to near-human animation, but its eye remained the same: oozing with mockery and jeer.

Oh yes. Pollonius did indeed recognise the Fish, and the Fish did indeed recognise him. With a flourish, it bowed. “Pollonius Grim, yer humble servant am I! Pray tell, why not Aldus, but his offspring comes by?”

“Y-you are not here,” Pollonius exclaimed. “A mere figment of my exertion, you are, conjured by shortness of breath and outlandishness of circumstance!”

Pollonius's words seemed to strike the man-fish like a glove to the cheek. “Conjured I am, but solely by ritual! Your exhaustion is fleeting, my existence perpetual!”

“You have no existence! You are a blatant impossibility, explainable only as a trick of my eyes.”

“And of your nose, and of your ears! And to the illusion now your touch, too, adheres,” the man-fish said, flinging its cloak in such a manner that its hem grazed Pollonius's hand. It felt alive.

“Pah, flimsy evidence indeed! My senses would report as much were I asleep and dreaming.”

“Then the same does hold true for all you perceive! So what to discount, what choose to believe?”

“That is – I have never . . ,” Pollonius began, then stopped. He stared at the creature, subjected it to the full force of his disbelief. Under this scrutiny it seemed, if anything, even more real. Could he possibly allow himself to entertain the notion that Aldus's dialogues were not fictions, but in fact . . . transcripts?

A breath, deep and calming. “You submit, then, that you are real?”

“As real as the dirt upon which you stand. As real as Lord Aldus, who brought me to land.”

“Am I right, then, in recognising you as the fish that for half a century has been nailed to yonder board?”

“Quite right.”

“So then, creature: How do you account for your present appearance, your command of language, and the very fact that you are still alive?”

The man-fish stared at Pollonius, its alien countenance failing to mask profound disbelief. “I gather, young sir, you've not read, heard, nor seen the verities shared, nor yet gleaned what they mean.”

“I have thus far not been so inclined, no.”

The man-fish shook its head and muttered as if seeking its own counsel. “Man's cradle lies in world below, its wisdom yet he will forego. Woe 'pon woe 'pon woe 'pon woe!”

The creature's gills emitted a flapping sigh. Again it addressed Pollonius. “The forms of beasts are our disguise, a veil 'tween us and dry land's eyes. Sea and river, lake, lagoon are but surface, worldwide strewn. The secret that they keep: All are gates to Kingdom Deep. Lord Aldus's magicks taught him this, raised me from aquatic bliss. I am here by our accord, bound to suffer yonder board, until such time as Master Grim is bound to sink and I to swim. As that time may soon be nigh, I'm forced again to query why; for I expected Aldus's face, yet here instead you're in his place.”

The garbled testimony matched what little Pollonius knew of Aldus's writings. At the edges of his consciousness he sensed staggering implications gathering like an oncoming storm. He looked down at his feet and the dirt upon which they stood.

“I suppose you've not heard. Aldus is dead. He left me certain . . . instructions that . . . have culminated in our present exchange.”

The man-fish froze as if time had smashed to a halt.

In the context of a court hearing, a witness would have some defined relationship to the accused, and the tropes of such relationships provided a framework for what to expect in cross-examination. The relationship between Aldus and this creature, however, lacked any precedent and remained to Pollonius fundamentally unfathomable. How would it react?

For several seconds, not at all. It lowered its gaze to the floor, proceeding to open and close its mouth with the same despair it must once have displayed on the deck of Aldus's dinghy.

Then, with great care and glacial deliberation: “And who will end what he's begun? Does fall that task to you, his son?”

“Oh, absolutely not. I harbour no theatrical ambitions, and have also quite recently learned that Aldus Grim was in fact not my father. Further, the circumstances lead me to believe that this knowledge is already in your possession, as well as some manner of evidence proving its veracity.”

“Confused untruths you spin in manifold! I've not such knowledge, but its antipode. His blood's immortal dance I sense in you. Have no doubt it's true: that from his seed you grew.”

“But . . . No, the very manner by which I was led to conjure yourself to life also led me to . . . That is, was premised upon . . .”

“So akin, my fate and yours. Now, like I, you taste his lures.”

That damnable old bastard. Every word he had passed on was true, save the ones that mattered most.

“So . . . I am a Grim after all.”

Outside, the rainstorm raged on. Would the house still burn?

“Why,” Pollonius continued, “why would he lead me to this? To you? To disprove his derangement, silence his detractors? To have me repeal my judgment of his character?”

“Your father's motivation matters not, only that you shoulder now his lot.”

“No, I told you: I intend no such thing!”

“I speak not of my Kingdom's wisdoms deep, nor his attempt to share them with you sheep.”

“Now, just you hang on a –”

“I speak of our arrangement's obverse clause, entered under both our people's laws. I've given mine, I'll have his now in turn, be his remains in coffin or in urn.”

“You – you want me to exhume him? Surrender his body to you?”

“No, no, you make assumptations all too rash: What use is rotting flesh or dusty ash? His house and all its chattels now are yours, as well as obligations too, of course.”

A tempest rose in Pollonius's innards, and his joints strained with a stiff chill. His tongue felt like cotton. “What . . . what obligations?”

A smirk twisted the man-fish's features. One of its claws disappeared behind its cloak, then returned gripping a roll of dark paper that gave off a faint smell of seaweed. With trembling hands Pollonius took it.

The scroll was bound with a single strand of hair. As Pollonius untied the hair, he saw that it was auburn.

Blinking away the sting in his eyes, he unrolled the paper. Bright ruby words glowed against the deep green of the finely woven sheet. Pollonius read the ironclad clauses they spelled out, and below them his father's brazen signature.

“Please,” he breathed, as the contract dropped from his hands. It zig-zagged through the air and came to rest at his feet.

“God. Please.”

“I soon will swim the kelpwood trails of youth, and raise my eyes to snailshell spires of truth! And you'll return with me to Kingdom Deep, for years impaled on urchin's spikes you'll sleep. I'll wake you every now and every then, and you will teach the lore and ways of men!

“Please. No.”

“The law you're sworn to serve demands a yes! Are you more of man than Aldus was, or less?”

A warm, wet sting spread down the inside of Pollonius's thigh. He would need a wash.

*

Even at this distance, his large, lumbering form was visible down through the darkness and the rain. At first framed against the mansion's open front door, then staggering across its grounds, stooped as if his shoulders carried some heavy, invisible torture. His hand held a wooden pail, brimful with water.

Not once did he raise his head. Not when negotiating the garden's treacherous undergrowth, not when passing below the eaves of the boat shed's roof, not when pausing by the lake's edge to empty the pail and release the Wise Trout back into the Kingdom of the Deep. A slop, and the Prophet Fish shone like gold through the water's black surface.

As he waded forward, his gait did not slow, nor did he falter. Step by sloshing step he advanced, and step by sloshing step he descended, until the only part visible was the head that had served him so well in the City, yet betrayed him so bitterly here at the end. For the true trickster was never the rogue, but always the dupe's own desire to believe.

The head disappeared under quivering bubbles and an echo of ripples. Then only the ripples remained.

“My thanks, Pollonius. You're a man of integrity. Just as I raised you to be.”

As sunrise broke the clouds, Aldus Grim took one last look at old Blackpond House, winked a good-bye, and turned on his boot heel. Póthos and Sképsi swooped towards him, then came to rest on each of his shoulders. He started off down the hill, whistling, chopping through the brush, and mulling over which alias to employ, now, from all his three score and twelve.