“Your head,” the dwarf said, hefting his axe.

“Just so,” the trickster said. “But whatever did you bring that axe for?”

“Why, to cut through your deceitful neck,” the dwarf said.

“Deceitful, you say? Such slander! I’m not the one trying to alter the terms of the wager,” the trickster said. “I offered you my one and only head, in its entirety… if you wanted to take any portion of my neck, you should have been good enough to specify up front.”

“But how can I take your head without cutting your neck?” the dwarf asked.

“Well, now, when you figure that out, friend, you know where to find me,” the trickster said, and he turned to leave.

“Hold a moment, friend,” the dwarf said. “Since you’re such a good sport, I’ve decided to cut you a break.”

“You know, I rather thought you might,” the trickster said. “And don’t think I won’t remember your kindness.”

“I daresay you won’t forget it,” the dwarf said. “Just because it’s you… I’ll only claim half my prize.”

Sing not to me, oh Muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus. Sing not of the rage of the one who brought so much misfortune upon the Achaeans, hastening so many souls down to Hades, offering up so much prey to dogs and vultures. Sing not a word of how the dire wrath within Achilles grew. Sing not one note about the anger of the god-born killer, doomed to die.

Mention nothing of the murderous, drunken and poison-borne rages of Heracles. Bother me not with the pride-driven rage of Aristodemus. Forget the deadly warp-spasms of Cú Chulainn. Leave unsung paeans to any great berserkers of old.

The hottest burning rage in antiquity is but the trembling flame of a draught-plagued candle to me, oh Muse, for I have seen a web stretched across the width of the world with many untrue things woven into its face, and each and every one of them kindles within me a bonfire of wrath to rival Hephaestus’s forge.

RAEG.

“Got you!” the boy cried, leaping from his hiding place in the bushes. The little man yelped and jumped, but the boy’s hands closed around him. “I caught you!”

“Alright, alright!” the little man cried. “You did. You got me.”

“Now you have to tell me where your gold is,” the boy said.

“Oh, no, that’s leprechauns,” the little man said. “I’m a gnome. I don’t have gold and I don’t grant wishes. But you can ask me one question and I have to answer it truthfully.”

“How can I get rich?” the boy asked.

“That’s not the question,” the gnome said.

“What?”

“I told you, you can ask one question and I have to answer it truthfully,” the gnome said. “That is not the one question you can ask.”

“Oh,” the boy said. “Um, what is the name of my one true love?”

“That’s not it, either.”

“How will I die?”

“Neither is that,” the gnome said.

“Meaning of life?”

“Nope.”

“Secret of life?”

“Sorry.”

“Grand unified field theory?”

“Never heard of it,” the gnome said.

“Well… what is the question, then?” the boy asked.

“That one,” the gnome said smugly, and vanished.

We know He rested.

But did He sleep?

The original sleep of the righteous, we might say… and if He slept, did He, perchance, dream? With the act of creation still fresh in His mind, of what might He have dreamt, we wonder? Perhaps the same things that any of us, created in His image, might have dreamt: His work, naturally, and His children… His hopes and dreams for them.

He would have hoped for them to be fruitful. He might have hoped for them to be civilized. Perhaps he hoped that they would take the materials He had surrounded them with and create marvels of their own.

Maybe in His dream, he brought forth a new land from the ocean. An island, perhaps, teeming with people who exemplified the best of His hopes. We might imagine that they built graceful cities of impressive spires, that they studied the natural world and learned of its mechanics, that they constructed great ships and traveled across the face of the globe.

And perhaps His dream would be more substantial than yours or mine. Perhaps it would be more real.

Such an island, if it existed, would have been the envy and inspiration of ancient civilizations the world over… but being a dream, it would of have no hope of lasting. God might have slumbered, but He did not sleep forever. What was created on the seventh day could have been snuffed out just as quickly, the great island sinking beneath the waves in a single day and night of misfortune… if it had ever been there to begin with, of course.

Being a dream… even a dream of the divine… one suspects the record would be hazy.

“What?” her mother said, carefully marking out a length on one thread and then passing it on.

“Free will,” the spinner said. “Do you ever think about it?”

“What a question,” her grandmother said, as she took up a thread and snipped it off. “We are there when each child is born. We weave the course of their lives. Together, we spin up their potential, measure out the span of it, and bring it to its inevitable conclusion. What should we worry about ‘free will’ for?”

“Oh, well, that’s just it,” the spinner said. “Do we have free will?”

“Look to your child,” the grandmother said to her own daughter. “She has wax in her ears.”

“Mind your grandmother, dear,” the measurer said.

“I did hear you, grandmother,” the spinner said. “You said we do all those things, and we do… and they go about the course of their lives exactly as we have spun and measured it, and it ends exactly as you cut it. But does that mean we are making the decisions that they enact, or do their decisions dictate our actions?”

“Silly child,” her mother said. “The puppeteer’s arms may move at the same time as the puppet’s, but that doesn’t mean the puppet is pulling the strings.”

“But does the puppet even know it’s being pulled? Or does it think it’s in control?”

“What a lot of nonsense,” the grandmother said. “We’re not puppets. I would know if someone were controlling me.”

“Oh?” the spinner said. “Do they know? Or are they just as certain as you are that they chart their own courses through life?”

“You know, I think it’s quiet time,” her mother said. “Let’s just enjoy the silence for a while.”

The three did work in silence, but it’s doubtful how much they enjoyed it.

“Just like that?” I asked.

“I speak and it is so,” it said. “Just like that.”

“Oh,” I said, a little overwhelmed at the thought of it. “Wow.” The words both seemed so insufficient, but I didn’t know what words would be sufficient. This was actually happening. It was really true. I was really…

“But,” the genie said, “I must warn you… there is one condition I may have, ah, neglected to mention.”

It chuckled darkly. I felt a chill run down my spine. Of course it had been too good to be true. Of course there would be a condition.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” the genie said. “I’m just fucking with you.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously,” it said. “Boom, wish granted. That’s all there is to it. No secret cost, no horrifying twist… well, that is, unless you count… no, maybe I should let you find that out on your own. Nobody ever believes the warnings, anyway. Not until it’s far too late.”

“What warnings?” I asked. What had I done? “Too late for what?”

The genie doubled over in laughter, flames licking around the edges of its mouth.

“Oh, man, you should see yourself,” he said. “I’m still just fucking with you. You got your wish. Go home and enjoy it.”

“Okay, seriously,” I said. “Is there some horrifying twist or not?”

“By Shaitan’s fiery beard, you spent like three hours drafting your wish to make sure there were no ‘loopholes’ or double meanings or anything like that,” the genie said. “The thing had a freaking preamble on it. I seriously thought you were going to call your lawyer or something. When you’re that obviously uptight about it, of course I’m going to fuck with you. But relax. You freed me from my imprisonment, I gave you what it’s within my power to give. That’s all there is to it. Don’t make this into more than it has to be.”

“Well, it doesn’t help me relax when you keep making ominous pronouncements or whatever,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” the genie said. “I’m done now. I’ve got it out of my system. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

“No, thank you,” the genie said.

I smiled.

“I guess now I finally get what I’ve always wanted,” I said.

“Yeah,” the genie said. “Now… now you get to find out if you can live with that.”

“Christ, will you knock that off?”

I wasn’t listening to the snake. I was listening to the tree.

The fruit called to me… it sang to me. God made man from dust and breath, but He didn’t put any music in us. He didn’t think to. When He put the tree in the garden, He didn’t realize how it would sing. God sees everything else, but He doesn’t see music, for the same reason fish don’t see water.

People have asked me about the fruit. They ask it all the time, actually, when they first get here. I understand… the way it’s written down, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It looks like the snake talked me into it way too easily.

That’s God again.

He was telling the story, of course. He didn’t know about the music, didn’t know what it did to me. Living in water, He didn’t realize how thirsty we could get.

Sometimes people are angry with me, even after I explain.

They think I ruined things for everyone. They think it’s my fault that they suffered. They’re not really mad, of course. The worst part’s over by the time they meet me. But they still want me to know that they blame me. There’s nowhere else to register a complaint, here, and not much to complain about.

It’s just a habit that some people carry with them.

Nobody ever thanks me. Nobody ever asks me if it was worth it.

If I could go back and do it all over again, I think I’d do the exact same thing. I like to say that I would have spent more time in the garden first, but I know that’s bullshit. I ate the fruit because I couldn’t help it, because it sang and because it offered relief for a thirst I didn’t know I had before I heard it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

“With the nymphs and the golden apples of immortality?” I replied.

“Yeah,” she said. “And the apples are supposed to be guarded by this hundred-headed snake/dragon thing.”

“Ladon,” I said, nodding. “Yeah.”

“I don’t think he’d be a very effective deterrent,” she said. “I mean, if the apples make you immortal, you just have to get one of them and you’re set for life, right? Very long life.”

“I don’t know if they worked that way,” I said. “I think maybe you had to keep eating them or something.”

“Well, that’s not forbidden apples of immortality,” she said. “That’s forbidden apples of living slightly longer. Anyway, if the apples did make you immortal, I don’t think a giant serpent would be the way to go.”

“Oh? And what would you propose instead?”

“Instead of a hundred-headed snake?” she said. “How about a hundred worms?”

“Worms?” I repeated.

“Yeah, worms,” she said. “You know that old joke, ‘What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?’”

“Finding half of a worm,” I said.

“Yeah, and what would be worse than that?”

“Tell me,” I said.

“Finding half a worm in your apple and realizing that it’s going to be alive forever,” she said.

“Ew,” I said.

As he sleeps, the true king dreams of a world where the information that was once bound in books may be copied instantly and infinitely, where learning belongs to the many instead of the few. He dreams of a world where a great leader can address crowds of nations as easily as he once spoke before crowds of people, where conquering empires are inexorably giving way to partnerships and fellowships. He dreams of a world where man’s intellect and scientific advances has begun to beat back the dire arithmetic under which the multitudes must starve to provide for the elect.

He dreams the world the way it should be, not the way that it is… but the gap between the two has never been narrower, and when the day comes that our world is enough like the king’s dream that the spell that keeps him slumbering cannot tell the two apart, he will awaken and lead us all to Camelot.

He has been asleep for a long time and may go on sleeping longer still. There has been much progress in the world, yes, but many in the world still hunger. Many lack access to the troves of accumulated knowledge. Many lack opportunities.

And even if all of those problems are rectified, there still remains one obstacle further. The path of progress is not straight, but branching, and we have not always chosen to wander down the right path.

“Fuck Segways,” he murmurs in his sleep before rolling over.

In the king’s dream, his knights have jetpacks.

“They didn’t have a Hardee’s back there,” the driver said. “But I know there’s one coming up soon. I know it.”

“They might have,” the first woman said. “We could have checked. There might have been one.”

“I’m not stopping for ‘might’… but I know if we keep going we’ll find one. Just keep your eyes peeled for a sign, okay?”

“Guys, we could just stop off at a McDonald’s,” a third woman said from the back of the van. “Or Wendy’s. Heck, I think they’re all pretty good.”

“You’re way too charitable, sis,” the driver said. “We’re not settling for a damn McDonald’s. I’m going to find a Hardee’s if I have to drive all night.”

“I hope it doesn’t take that long,” the woman in the passenger seat said. “I really have to go to the bathroom.”

“See, that’s why I went when we stopped for gas,” the woman in the back said.

“Well, aren’t you just the greatest of us all?” the driver said sarcastically.

“Thanks, but I think you two are pretty great, too!”

“I hope we find a Hardee’s soon,” the woman in the passenger seat said.

“We will,” the driver said. “Just keep believing that.”