/lit/ - Literature

Beginning Framgent: The Lord of the Aldermen

The aldermen settled into their seats and rested their countless hands in their laps. All around, you could feel that they were waiting for someone, for the foremost among them to step forward and announce what this hastily-organized meeting was all about, anyway.

But presently they noticed that their master was absent. Whispers became quiet chatter which in time transformed again, first into raucous conversation, then into impossibly festive Dionysian revelry.

When their master finally arrived he found them in no state conducive to the general reputation of Aldermen in general. And his stern, stony looks and heavy tread everywhere froze the riotous assembly as if they had all simultaneously seen the medusa.

It was only a single somewhat boorish alderman who had failed to notice that the party was over. He continued carousing, poking fun at his paralyzed fellows and waving a spilling wine bottle in his hand as if it was already empty.

He did not notice their urgent, aggrieved expressions, and he shook off the many hands that grasped at his shoulders like men trying to save important papers from a fire—if my friends will not celebrate this wonderful, joyous, life, he seemed to be thinking, then I will take their burden onto my own powerful shoulders and caper and party with this Alderman’s body what would otherwise take the combined power of all the rest!

He did not see the foremost among the aldermen gradually prowling towards him like a cat towards a sparrow. Turning and turning, lost in his revery, his final moments must have been full of supreme joy.

For the master had lay a hand on the fool’s shoulder and, in accordance with an ancient custom, the boorish alderman had evaporated in a cloud of thick white smoke. His brown robe fluttered to the floor, shuffling as the various municipal documents stowed within it fluttered out around it like huge white butterflies.

The master of the aldermen looked at the remains with the inscrutable expression of an artisan who has judged his own work inadequate.

Then he went to the lectern and began the meeting.