which was a pity as it playfully
delineated an answer to the great conflict that lay ahead. But even
if he could get it competently performed on stage it would never be
engaging enough to captivate the Dowser and Gnomon themselves,
whose personalities were by all accounts as formidable as his own.
He had never met either of the other judges in person and could
only conjecture about their inevitable confrontation.
The Merkin sighed , lanced his needle
into the open page with an irritated
flick and leaned back on the soft contour
of fabric things mounded behind him. Closing his eyes, he let
himself be lulled by the faint sounds of
the Tent for a while as twilight was
ushered onto gnome-lit darkness in the unseen metropolis
beyond.
Closing his script he rose, straightened his
suit and left.
Not long after he was moodily treading the
labyrinthine neighborhoods of his laundry, reflexively hewing to
the stealthiest route available through folded and stacked clothes,
lingerie and bath things and blankets fashioned from every
conceivable sort of fabric and piled on hammocks suspended from the
ropy undergirding of the theater level above.
He was far from anywhere important at the
moment, deliberately lost. The wares of the laundry towered well
overhead, often limiting sightlines to a few paces, and the
many-layered canvas floor he traversed changed elevation
constantly, generating endless veering horizons to further confound
navigation. It was almost impossible to negotiate the mysteries of
the laundry without patient exploration and memorization.
Everything in his immediate view was imbued
with a reddish tint by a lonely glow-gnome hanging far off to his
right. It was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, the nearest
garments that would fit its compact body. Its eyes cast steep
shadows through winding drifts of lingerie, once neatly organized,
now randomly tumbled to disheveled mounds and slopes the Merkin
clambered over almost without notice. No one came here but himself
according to his long-practiced skill at tracking; he could read
much from the imprint of hand and foot on laundry, especially where
it was littered all over. As in the present locale, which hadn’t
been maintained for longer than he cared to remember.
That was due to the unfashionable nature of
the apparel archived there, which belonged to an age long past,
when color and cut and texture were outlandish by the present
reckoning. Even the soap was different then, and the redolence
wafting from the abandoned habiliments in his vicinity filled him
with a soft nostalgia for lilac and daffodil…
Where had the time gone?
He began a long descent through a barely lit
tract of skirts that wound and switched about so obtusely as to
baffle even the Merkin’s orientation; a place that could only be
fathomed by estimating factors like slope and illumination. There
were many such territories in the laundry, and the Merkin used them
to exclude potential intruders onto his privacy. When he wanted to
be truly alone, utterly certain of his isolation, only physical
impediments such as these would guarantee it.
He backtracked from a clogged elevation of
toppled blouses, electing not to attempt an excavation to their far
side, then tacked left to assay another route. The light had grown
warmer, yellowish, and a soapy odor reminiscent of sunlight and
fresh air washed his nostrils. He could barely remember the natural
world, grass under his feet and trees vaulting high into the sky,
so long ago when the City was young…
He crawled through a long tunnel twisting
under low-slung quantities of pleated petticoats, taking the time
in one place to shove some of them aside where they almost closed
the passage. It was a rite of maintenance he might never profit
from, but his fastidious nature had a stubborn lower limit that
capriciously intruded from time to time. Fatigued by the effort, he
leaned back in the cramped cross-section of the passage to catch
his breath. It was
delineated an answer to the great conflict that lay ahead. But even
if he could get it competently performed on stage it would never be
engaging enough to captivate the Dowser and Gnomon themselves,
whose personalities were by all accounts as formidable as his own.
He had never met either of the other judges in person and could
only conjecture about their inevitable confrontation.
The Merkin sighed , lanced his needle
into the open page with an irritated
flick and leaned back on the soft contour
of fabric things mounded behind him. Closing his eyes, he let
himself be lulled by the faint sounds of
the Tent for a while as twilight was
ushered onto gnome-lit darkness in the unseen metropolis
beyond.
Closing his script he rose, straightened his
suit and left.
Not long after he was moodily treading the
labyrinthine neighborhoods of his laundry, reflexively hewing to
the stealthiest route available through folded and stacked clothes,
lingerie and bath things and blankets fashioned from every
conceivable sort of fabric and piled on hammocks suspended from the
ropy undergirding of the theater level above.
He was far from anywhere important at the
moment, deliberately lost. The wares of the laundry towered well
overhead, often limiting sightlines to a few paces, and the
many-layered canvas floor he traversed changed elevation
constantly, generating endless veering horizons to further confound
navigation. It was almost impossible to negotiate the mysteries of
the laundry without patient exploration and memorization.
Everything in his immediate view was imbued
with a reddish tint by a lonely glow-gnome hanging far off to his
right. It was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, the nearest
garments that would fit its compact body. Its eyes cast steep
shadows through winding drifts of lingerie, once neatly organized,
now randomly tumbled to disheveled mounds and slopes the Merkin
clambered over almost without notice. No one came here but himself
according to his long-practiced skill at tracking; he could read
much from the imprint of hand and foot on laundry, especially where
it was littered all over. As in the present locale, which hadn’t
been maintained for longer than he cared to remember.
That was due to the unfashionable nature of
the apparel archived there, which belonged to an age long past,
when color and cut and texture were outlandish by the present
reckoning. Even the soap was different then, and the redolence
wafting from the abandoned habiliments in his vicinity filled him
with a soft nostalgia for lilac and daffodil…
Where had the time gone?
He began a long descent through a barely lit
tract of skirts that wound and switched about so obtusely as to
baffle even the Merkin’s orientation; a place that could only be
fathomed by estimating factors like slope and illumination. There
were many such territories in the laundry, and the Merkin used them
to exclude potential intruders onto his privacy. When he wanted to
be truly alone, utterly certain of his isolation, only physical
impediments such as these would guarantee it.
He backtracked from a clogged elevation of
toppled blouses, electing not to attempt an excavation to their far
side, then tacked left to assay another route. The light had grown
warmer, yellowish, and a soapy odor reminiscent of sunlight and
fresh air washed his nostrils. He could barely remember the natural
world, grass under his feet and trees vaulting high into the sky,
so long ago when the City was young…
He crawled through a long tunnel twisting
under low-slung quantities of pleated petticoats, taking the time
in one place to shove some of them aside where they almost closed
the passage. It was a rite of maintenance he might never profit
from, but his fastidious nature had a stubborn lower limit that
capriciously intruded from time to time. Fatigued by the effort, he
leaned back in the cramped cross-section of the passage to catch
his breath. It was
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