The staff told me that they were having trouble with one patient-a woman who continued to hallucinate despite high doses of Spencerzine. I decided to see her. Maybe I could reawaken my love of mankind by seeing the state she was in.

She had strawberry blonde hair which could have been pretty if washed and combed. Her light brown eyes could have sparkled if she knew happiness. Her thin pale pink lips could have been beautiful if they found the way to smile. I looked at her and knew that I would continue my quest against madness even if the forces of disease took my Susan from me.

"What's your story?" I asked.

"Oh, Dr. Spencer, I thought I was getting better. But the other night I sneaked into your wife's private garden. Oh, I know it's not for us patients, but it was a beautiful night and I was so happy, so very happy, at the return of my mind to me. Then I found out that I was still crazy."

"How did you find out?"

"A duck swam across the pond to me and then it talked," she said, her voice cracking on the final verb. "What did it say?"

"It asked me in your wife's voice if I thought everyone was asleep. I said yes and then it said it wanted to look in on its baby, and it flew up to a window and looked in. I just sat and cried because I knew I had lost my mind forever."

"Is that all?"

"No. It flew back down and told me not to be sad, that I wasn't crazy. Then it said you should get a sword and swing it over the duck three times."

I did something I had never done before. I hugged my patient and told her she wasn't crazy. At least I didn't think she was crazy. We would visit the pond together that night.

I drove into town and bought a sword. It cost a pretty penny-it had belonged to an obscure Confederate general.

When the moon silvered the lake, I went out followed by my patient.

One duck swam over to us.

I swung my sword three times over its head.

And its white feathers became her white flesh, and the black of the night coalesced into her hair, and my wife stood beside me.

I called my most senior and trusted staff.

"Today is a very special day. You have all been faithful to me and we have accomplished great things. We have nearly ended madness on this planet, and we have all become wealthier than any of us have ever hoped. I love and respect each of you, and I will ask of you my friends to do some very unusual things for me. Firstly, I want you to isolate the head day nurse and give her this personality test. Mainly, I want to keep her busy, but I am very interested in her answer to the last question. Secondly, I want my sick wife to get a healthy injection of sodium pentothal. You needn't worry, her condition isn't contagious. Thirdly, I want an outdoor picnic prepared for the truly hard-core patients-those we've never been able to stimulate enough with the gore films. Fourthly, I want to introduce my new chief of operations, Ms. Rebecca Wayne. Many of you remember Ms. Wayne as a patient from just days ago. Rebecca has one patient to care for now, but she will be chief of operations beginning tomorrow."

Rebecca Wayne smiled, her strawberry blonde hair shining and beautiful, and her eyes burning with a mixture of intelligence and joy that told me she would go far. Beside her in a cowled white robe sat the mystery patient.

My staff began their jobs.

I waited for the drug to take effect, then I went to confront my "wife."

The thing on the bed had at one time been human. The fibrous tumors, warts, and scales that had replaced the skin were not as noticeable as the clear elongation of certain bone structures. No wonder she had scared the kids on lovers' lane.

"Bertha," I asked, "what did the dwarves do to you?"

Its voice was liquid and slurred. With each new opening of the thick blubbery lips of its fetid mouth, a brown toad fell out.

"I went to their house and the three little men came out. They asked what I wanted, and I said platinum since they'd given gold to Susan. They invited me inside and I told them how filthy and cold it was. They asked me what I had brought to feed them and I told them I only had enough for me. Then they told me to sweep their porch, and I told them I was not a slave. Then they said that I would get uglier each day, that each time I spoke a toad would fall from my mouth-and I would have a horrible death."

"Bertha," I asked, "how did you come to be here?"

"Mom said that if she could keep me close to you long enough, the dwarves' doom would be broken. Your concern directed toward me would do it."

"Bertha," I asked, "why didn't you kill Susan?"

"It is better for her to suffer. All of our power comes from her suffering."

"Ms. Wayne," I said, "you have read the test and consulted with the carpenters?"

"Of course, Dr. Spencer."

The dying sun had turned the clouds all lemons and oranges, and a sweet breeze swept up from Pleasant Valley. Birdsong and lunatic laughter filled the twilight. The patients kept looking at the high outdoor movie screen and the four coffin-length objects draped in white sheets before it.

There was potato salad, barbecued chicken, pickles and relishes, cheeses of a dozen nations. In fact it was a picnic that only the richest man in the town could afford to put on.

Toward the end of the picnic I went up to the podium and addressed my beloved maniacs.

"My friends, tonight we are here to honor the head day nurse. Now many of you know her as Sharon Stone, but her real name is Rachel Jackdawe."

Nurse Jackdawe jumped up, but three orderlies grabbed her. She struggled manfully during the rest of my speech. I shan't reproduce her foul language because I am a gentleman.

"Rachel Jackdawe took the standardized Spencer Appreciation Test-the same SAT you all remember taking. And she had the most extreme scores for cruelty of anybody, anytime. But there was a trick question on the test-involving this woman."

Two orderlies pulled the sheet away from a box my wife lay in. They helped her to her feet, and the crowd gasped and screamed at the most beautiful woman in the world.

"The question was, 'What should be done to someone who throws an innocent woman out of bed and into cold, cold water just to see her suffer?' Now Rachel threw my wife"-I pointed at the incomparable Susan-"into our little pond-" Boos and hisses.

"-with the help of this creature."

The orderlies pulled the sheets away and forced Bertha Jackdawe to stand.

The maniacs screamed and laughed at the ugliest woman in the world.

"Do you want to hear Rachel's answer?"

Two thousand screams of "Yes!"

"'They should be taken and put in a barrel lined with sharp nails-and the barrel rolled down a hill.'"

The orderlies pulled away the last two sheets-showing long barrels filled with glisteningly sharp nails. The orderlies thrust the struggling Jackdawes into the barrels-the nails already beginning to cut and redden them. Then they carefully carried the barrels to the edge of the hill.

Then they kicked them down the hill.

As the barrels spun ever faster, rains of blood struck the hillside. The screams of the madmen and madwomen drowned out the tortured cries of the Jackdawes.

I knew that this was enough excitement for the last group of the mad in the world to be cured.

When the barrels had rolled to a stop on the base of the hill, I took the hand of the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, and we watched the last movie ever to be shown at the Institute.

Wizard of Gore.

The world is a beautiful place.

BRUCE GLASSCO.

Bruce Glassco, like several others in this anthology, is a graduate of Clarion East 1995. Before that he took shelter as a student at the University of Virginia during the twelve years of Republican administrations, ending up to his surprise with a Ph.D. in Romantic literature. He currently teaches at a small college in Wisconsin, land of cheese.

According to the author, "True Thomas" was inspired partly by the famous ballad, and partly by an article by Carl Sagan which describes a thirteenth-century girl's description of how she was taken by fairies into "a city up in the clouds." Sagan uses the story as an example of why a certain type of experience is a fundamental part of human psychology, and thus not necessarily founded in reality. What Sagan conveniently ignores, though, is that the tale could just as easily be used as evidence for the opposite viewpoint: namely, that we aren't alone, and, furthermore, we never have been. Incidentally, Thomas of Erceldoune was a real person who lived in Scotland in the late thirteenth century, a time of tremendous upheaval. He wrote a number of famous prophecies, and a long version of the love story "Tristram and Isolde." No one knows who wrote the ballad that tells the story of his abduction.

TRUE THOMAS.

by Bruce Glassco.

True Thomas lay on Huntlie Bank; A ferlie he spied wi' his e'e; And there he saw a lady bright Come riding down by the Eildon Tree.

Four laborers are drinking to pegs, sitting as far away from me as the cramped alehouse will allow. The pegs are fixed in a row down the inside of the tankard, and each man must uncover a new marker before passing the ale on around. "Wassail," they cry in the Saxon manner as they watch one another's Adam's apples bob and swallow. "Drink hail." Ninescore years ago, when I was young, the Archbishop Anselm spoke out against peg drinking, and I paid him as little heed then as these men would to their bishops of today.

Today no man or woman would dare to share my cup, but still the men have spilled enough ale for me to taste its scent in the air, warm and sour and flat. Nowadays I take my communion wherever I can find it.

My fingertips taste the red-faced alewife's scent on the goblet of mead she has handed me. Her sound name, Kate, is nothing but a short harsh bark; it is over as soon as it is begun and leaves no aftertaste in the ear. The Word that is her sweat on the blue-fired clay, though, sings whole ballads to me of her loneliness and desire. Since her husband was put below ground her skin has ached for the touch of a man's hand. I smell an egg within her as well, ready to begin its long journey to the womb. If she is ploughed tonight, she will crop.

I smell her heat rise as she stops to jest at a table-ah. The priest, then. Father Owens. I am tempted to pass his table and sniff whether he returns her heart's longing, but I remain where I am. Father Owens does not approve of my Language, or the Queen who taught it to me.

Beneath the proud belches of the workers and the exaltations of Kate's sweat and the tart disapproval of Father Owens's thin spittle, a single sour bass note lurks: the acrid taste of fear. They fear me, one and all, as I drink my solitary mead. They rarely speak to me, for fear I will answer them. Even Father Owens, who damns me regularly from the pulpit of his kirk, would hesitate to speak against me to my face. Even men of God fear the Truth.

A blast of bitter cold air comes through the narrow window, and with it the sounds of men and horses. They have evidently seen the green branch tied outside that shows this place to be what passes for Erceldoune's tavern; they are dismounting. Soon a slender, smooth-shaven man strides through the door. Using no senses but my eyes, I can tell that he comes from the court; he dresses in the French fashion, with pointed shoes and long dagged sleeves that show he is far too important to work with his hands. The flower of a purple heartsease is pinned to his tunic.

The stranger has no difficulty in singling me out as I sit alone, and I stand as he strides forward to shake my hand. It is a new custom, brought with the Crusaders from the East, and it is a great help to me in my trade. What the handshake does not tell me, my knowledge of the court fills in.

"You are Alexander Macdougall of Argyll," I say. "Yesterday morning you left Roxburgh while the dew was still on the grass, accompanied by a single servant. You rode through most of the night, stopping only to water your horse. Your highland manservant admires you greatly, but your mistreated horse fears your touch. Now tell me, what is it that you wish of True Thomas the Rhymer?"

My juggler's trick has the desired effect, and the Macdougall loses some of his cockiness. There is an awkward pause. "If you know all this," says the laird, "then you must know why I have come."

I have already told him everything I know, but Kate comes to my rescue. "Our Thomas has never claimed the power to answer every question," she tells the visitor. "All we know is, whenever he speaks, he speaks the truth." She does not look at me as she speaks. She has truths she would rather not hear spoken-which of her bairns are not of her late husband's get, to begin with.

The laird looks annoyed. "Have I ridden all this way for nothing, then?"

"We shall see," I say. "Ask your question." I seat myself, and he looks around the room carefully before taking a seat across from me. Kate brings the laird a bottle of Gascon wine-too dear for our local custom, but Macdougall is not the first nobleman who has come to me with questions. He pours off a tankard and drinks it without hesitation.

To me she brings more mead, and I lean back and take a few drops on my tongue. It is metheglyn, spiced and potent, brought by sea from distant Wales. Overland would have been easier, but these days the Border is too dangerous for traders. I taste that there was not enough rain in the spring for the flowers that fed the bees. The spices were not adequately dried, and there was mold in the hivestraw.

"Hmm." Macdougall clears his throat nervously. "Yes, well then. In a fortnight I will be married to Isabelle Stewart, granddaughter of Alexander Stewart and connected to the throne. My question is, when she comes to be delivered of a child, will it be a boy, or a girl?"

"What is this to you?" I ask him, annoyed. Put five of them in a sinking ship, and they would squabble over the cargo instead of the boats. If I could speak to them using my Language, I would tell them how thin their words are, empty sounds holding empty meanings that flicker and die in empty ears. Sometimes I marvel how it is they have ever managed to communicate anything resembling thoughts.

The laird is taken aback by my question, but still treats me with respect. He begins to talk of the death of the Princess Margaret on the sea, and the chaos in the court that her death has created.

They have reached the end of their golden age, these nobles. All of their pretty royal family gone in a few short years, and nothing ahead now but a hundred years of strife and misery. They can sense it dimly, even this young man, who seems already enmeshed in some plot to ally himself through the engagement of his unborn child to one of the rivals claiming the throne.

I can smell the gold in his purse, and I ask for my fee. Five kings ago when I was a lad, there were no coins in Scotland, but King David had them struck while I was away. They are fine things to have, for an old harper.

True Thomas 261 Metheglyn is dear this far north, and will grow dearer in the coming wars.

While the noble is distracted with his purse, I reach out and brush my fingertips against the purple heartsease he wears, for it has all the look of being pinned to his jerkin by a lady. What I find there surprises me mightily. The lady was his betrothed, that is sure enough. I recognize the bloodline of the Stewarts. But her fingers, when she pinned the flower to her lord, had the taste of true heart's longing. I have known few noble couples, very few, who have felt truelove for one another in their marriages of state. Yet there it blooms in Isabelle's heart, simple and strong, like a rose in the heather. I cannot tell whether or not he returns her love, though.

There is a darker scent beneath. A weakness of her heart, and blood leaking into her lungs-I have tasted it before.

"Was your betrothed feverish as a child?" I ask. "Do her joints sometimes swell, as with dropsy? Does she tire easily?"

"Isabelle is as healthy as any woman in Scotland!" cries Macdougall, and the sharp scent of his fear strikes me like a knife. "What are you saying, Rhymer?"

The truth forms like honey beneath my tongue, but I hesitate. Whenever I have smelled this leak of the heart's blood in a woman's body, she has not outlived her first childbed. What will he do if I tell him this? Will he leave her at the altar, blaming the abandonment on me? Or will he marry and get her with child regardless, either not believing me, or not caring as long as the midwife has a chance to save the child, and he can enjoy his wife's sweet body for a few short years? Or will he marry her and take care that no child will come, sacrificing his noble line for her own true sake, so that together they can sit before their fire in old age?

Will love endure? The question has haunted me like a knife beside the heart. I cannot stop myself from watching young lovers in the springtime, though their endearments can make my eyes smart like soured wine. Sometimes I imagine I will find my Queen in their muddled Language, like a slice of sweet apple hidden in a pot of porridge.

Will love endure? It is a question I ask myself when the rain beats on the thatch of my tower and this world seems like a prison to me. The down from the birds beneath the eaves carries in it Words speaking of family and hope. The clammy Words of the mold on the windowsill tell me that nothing lasts, that all will be eaten by the earth.

The truth is often easier to find than it is to tell. I could keep my silence. But if I do not, if I try to tell him what I know in his language, how should I go about it? What would my Queen in the stars say of this?

I ask Macdougall to wait for a moment, and open my purse. Inside is a tiny bottle, filled with the drink I prize above all others. I untie the cap and pour a single, golden drop onto my fingertips, letting it soak into my skin, breathing a scent as rich and deep as a king's treasure-house. Much of its depth has faded over the years, but when I put the drop on my tongue there is still enough to bring back the Queen's memories, like a book spread before me, written in gold.

"Light down, light down, now, true Thomas, And lean your head upon my knee; Abide and rest a little space, And I will show you ferlies three.

O see ye not yon narrow road, So thick beset with thorns and briers?

That is the path of righteousness, Though after it but few enquires.

And see ye not that braid braid road, That lies across that lily levin?