A pair of figures entered the darkened Coliseum. They ascended the white marble stage and stepped into the circular spotlight.

The first figure was a middle-aged man with keen eyes and a tall quiff of silver hair. He strutted toward one of two very different chairs behind the podium and took a seat. The chair was a hard, angular, high-backed throne, covered in baroque scrollwork. Tendrils made of precious metals, encrusted with gemstones, branched from the throne. He fidgeted in it.

The second figure, a mousy young woman, slouched inside the spotlight’s perimeter. Shading her eyes, she ventured into the blinding spotlight and took a seat in the remaining chair. It was a brown leather club chair with plush cushions and an ottoman for her feet. She sank into the chair with a sigh, crossed her legs on the ottoman, and dozed off.

The Oligarchs, dressed in rich brocade robes, stepped onto the balcony atop the Coliseum’s watchtower. Peering out over the rabble thronging in the darkened stands below, they nodded at the man.

He arose and marched to the podium. He cleared his throat, paused. Then, after a long, grave silence, he launched into his telling.

It was the account of a man facing the creeping ennui of contemporary life. The speaker detailed the minutiae of the man’s morning toilet and his speculations about how he might seduce each passing beauty. He listed the mundanities, strung together in stilted fragments, using short words and simple sentences.

During interior musings, he flew into a frenzy. He cried out, explaining abstract concepts— spiraling from one topic to the next. His red-rimmed eyes bulged, and saliva gathered at the corners of his mouth. He spat into the ether. If his gymnastic language wasn’t awesome during these passages, his constant shifts in place, time, and perspective truly mystified.

Characters entered and exited, were raped or killed without warning, all which he cooed with fervent detail. These impressionistic, tangential threads he braided together into a great Gordian knot. He spared no device, no technique, no formal extravagance.

At the moment of the protagonist’s dreadful epiphany, counterpointed by the image of roiling ocean waves… he ceased. As abruptly as it had begun, the telling ended.

He wiped his pasty, glistening brow, and bowed with a cold grace, then resumed his seat, panting.

In the meantime, the silent audience, still obscured by darkness, had fallen into a fitful slumber. Fever dreams beset them, invading them with the phantasmagoric images the speaker evoked. They had twitched and winced and whined throughout the telling.

Slow clapping emanated from the watchtower’s peak. The audience members jerked awake, shivering and drenched with sweat.

A wave of whispers rolled through the congregation. The Oligarch’s disciples, stationed around the stage’s border, raised their weapons and pointed them at the stands. Intermittent applause rose and died in the darkness.

At the sound of applause, the young woman’s heavily lidded eyes fluttered open. She stretched luxuriously as she yawned and scratched at her mane of dark hair. She shuffled, unbidden, to center stage and sat cross-legged on the floor facing the audience and rested her back against the podium.

“Once upon a time, not long ago, nor very far from here, there lived a village girl.”

The man behind her, stiff-backed on his throne, rolled his eyes. “Oh, come now,” he muttered.

But the young woman didn’t seem to notice this interruption. She pressed on.

“The girl spent her days poring over books filled with tales of magic. Magic that allowed anyone it touched to share in fantastic waking dreams.”

“One day, the town’s shaman, an old priestess, visited the girl. The shaman smiled at the book resting on a chair by the hearth. ‘The magic described therein is real,’ she said, her eyes alight. ‘But it’s been lost for a very long time. It is the same magic used to create us— through the stories Father Sky and Mother Earth tell each other. And we are preserved each night in their dreams.’”

“Much to the village girl’s astonishment, the shaman insisted she venture out in search of that magic. She was to find it the ancient woods where Faeries dwell and bring it back to share with her people.”

The young woman continued in this manner for a while. She spoke in a way neither flowery nor plain, but in a style precisely suited for her tale.

As she went, a small opalescent sphere bubbled up before her and rose into the air. It expanded with every passing moment. A rainbow of light emanated from it, illuminating the entire Coliseum until each person became visible.

The audience stared, enraptured— not at the young woman— but at the sphere. In it, they saw the tale’s events unfolding before them. Most mysterious was that, for each viewer, the images they beheld were slightly different. Whatever details she left out, they filled in the gaps, filtering it through the lens of their own experiences. The story belonged to them all at once— universal, yet deeply personal.

They gasped at dangers, wept at sorrows, and murmured to one another at revelations. They were the village girl. They were themselves. They would carry her journey with them as they would their own memories.

But before she finished her tale, the man, who had been writhing on his throne, leaped to his feet.

“Witch!” He cried.

He charged forward and knocked her to the ground and placed his foot upon her throat.

The bubble exploded overhead, showering everything with kaleidoscopic droplets like diamonds.

The audience was thrust back into darkness. They erupted from their seats and rushed the stage, but the disciples brandished their weapons, keeping them at bay. The audience fell silent again, fearing for their lives.

“My Lords and Ladies,” the man said. “She has brought back the forbidden magic! She must be disqualified by forfeit!”

The Oligarchs nodded from their balcony.

“You, sir, are the clear winner,” said the Elder Oligarch. “As punishment for her blasphemy and as a reward for your victory, you may do with her as you wish.”

The audience held their breath.

The man turned to the young woman under his heel, glowering at her. But then his face softened. He shook his head and removed his foot from her throat. He squatted next to her as she gasped for air.

“You know… I pity you. I do. You spend all your time fleeing reality into make-believe worlds rather than diving headlong into this one. That’s the secret of my art. I simply live— live with abandon— gathering information. Do you think me a heathen, then? A mere materialist? Oh, no… Not at all. I worship at the temple of those goddesses, the Muses. I provide for them the pure, uncut marble of my life, and from it, they carve me into their mouthpiece! They speak through me. When I begin a telling, I know not whence it comes nor where it’s going. I let them guide me, as a man possessed. But you? You are bound by artificial machinations— the predictable dominoes of cause and effect. You live in a world of fearful escapism. The Democracy of Story is over and gone, my dear— long live the Republic of Letters!”

“Hear-hear!” roared the Oligarchs.

He turned to a nearby disciple. “Cast this witch into the outer darkness. Her punishment is exile. She can live among her precious Faeries if she wishes. Nevermore will she deceive others with her sorcery.”

 Grasping her roughly by the elbows, the disciples dragged her, limp, from the stage.

“Out with the rabble,” cried the Elder Oligarch.

The audience was forced from the Coliseum, weapons prodding their backs, pockmarking them with dripping red spots.

When the Coliseum was empty except for the Oligarchs and the victor, they bade him step up again to the podium. The ground around it split off into a smaller platform and lifted him to the tower’s peak with a low hum. He stepped onto the balcony.

The Elder Oligarch held out his mottled hand to the victor.

“You are among equals now.”

The victor kissed the proffered hand, smirking.

“So,” began the Elder, turning to address the whole host. “Before we start, remember…” He cast off his robe, exposing his pale, shriveled form, and the other Oligarchs followed suit. “Whoever fails to please during the festivities will be identified by a secret vote afterward. But take heart! If you fail then, you are guaranteed to please come time for the feast.”

 With a flick of his tongue, he wetted his dry, cracked lips.

*

The young woman trudged away from the Coliseum into the pin-pricked blue-black of the desert night. The audience filtered out of the Coliseum slowly back of her. All the while, she collected sticks and tumbleweeds. She came to a craggy orange mesa and, in the cliff-side, she discovered a small cave. Here, outside the cave’s mouth, she set up camp and built a fire, which crackled and popped merrily.

Soon silhouettes in the distance approached. They were men and women and children— the audience— all bearing kindling of their own. Without a word, they joined her, tossing their branches into the fire. It sprang up into a roaring pillar of flame, taller than the mesa, taller even than the Coliseum’s watchtower. It created a circle of light in which every face was visible.

They stared at her expectantly, waiting.

*

Even from the watchtower’s balcony, far away back at the Coliseum, the newest Oligarch noticed the bonfire. As impressive as it was, something more magnificent was happening.

Above the pillar of fire was a luminescent sphere. It rose ever higher, and grew so massive it became a second, brighter moon, enveloping all in its joyous, playful light.

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