Wizard of the Crow

The floor of the Ruler’s sanctuary was littered with newspapers, the Ruler not apparently present. Tajirika looked up at the ceiling and his jaw fell; he took a step back for a clearer view. He could not believe his eyes. The Ruler’s legs hung in the air, his head touching the ceiling and his whole body gently swaying.

“Don’t just stand there with your mouth open-get me down,” the Ruler told him.

Tajirika felt weak in the knees and tried hard not to faint.

“Should I call the guards for help?”

“Of course not, you fool. Get me down.”

Tajirika could not reach the dangling feet, even on tiptoes. The Ruler’s body, now more passive than ever, seemed impossibly light; only the ceiling prevented it from floating away. Tajirika stood on a chair and grasped at the Ruler’s feet, but no matter how often he did, the Ruler would again rise like a balloon.

“What shall we do now?” asked Tajirika.

“That’s why I had you summoned,” replied the Ruler, looking down from the ceiling.

Tajirika thought that the Ruler was talking about his floating body.

“Yes, this matter is truly amazing,” Tajirika said, vaguely, sympathetically.

“There must be forces working against me at the Global Bank,” the Ruler said.

No, the Ruler is talking about the news, and I was about to suggest I chain him to the ground, Tajirika said to himself. He now sat on a chair with his head leaning back, the better to hear and see.

The Global Bank news had hit the Ruler hard, especially because the Bank had not seen fit to grant him the courtesy of first informing him through diplomatic channels or a special envoy but had released their communication to the media in New York.

“Look around you. Look at those papers. Look at all the headlines. Is there a soul in the whole wide world who is not reading this?

Where have diplomatic niceties gone? Imagine how my enemies must be rejoicing, believing that their agitation was responsible for halting our plans for Marching to Heaven!”

“Racists,” said Tajirika, putting as much hatred as he could into his voice. “Exactly what I myself said,” the Ruler said. “But we shall show the Bank that we were not born yesterday. What do you say, Titus?”

“You have spoken the truth, Your Mighty Excellency. We will fight back,” Tajirika said, noting that the Ruler had called him Titus as if they were the closest of friends.

“That’s why I made you the governor of money. Yes, fight back. Good words. You know that Gemstone is behind all this. He is the source of this undiluted hatred of me.”

“Racist,” Tajirika said again.

“You have spoken the truth, as always,” the Ruler said again, before he started complaining of a stomachache and demanding that his personal doctor be called.

Tajirika went to the telephone, feeling relieved that someone else would soon be joining him to help him cope with the astonishment he was witnessing.

5

In response to Dr. Kaboca’s “How are you?” a seated Tajirika simply pointed at the ceiling. The doctor did not understand the meaning of Tajirika’s gesture, and for a moment he thought that maybe Tajirika was mentally unbalanced and that it was because of him that he had been summoned to the State House. Where is the Ruler? Dr. Kaboca asked. “Can’t you see that the Ruler has conquered gravity!” Tajirika said impatiently.

Dr. Kaboca looked up, and soon Tajirika found himself bent over the doctor’s prostrate body, fanning him with a handkerchief, trying to revive him.

“It looks as if the doctor himself is in need of a doctor!” came a voice from the ceiling.

“It is the heat,” Dr. Kaboca said after he had regained consciousness. “Now, Mr. Tajirika, please leave the room.”

“No,” said the Ruler. “Tajirika is my special adviser. In all matters. Feel free to treat me in his presence.”

The Ruler was quite candid with the doctor. He explained that when he read the news from the Global Bank, he had become so angry that his body started to expand even more. He had called his special adviser to have somebody to talk to in the hope that this would ease the anger within. While waiting for Tajirika, he had read some more newspapers, only to feel his anger mount until it almost choked him, and that was when he felt himself lifted uncontrollably. He could not tell exactly when it started, but it was definitely when he was already in the air that his tummy began to ache. At first the pain was manageable, but now it had become unbearable.

With the help of some carpenters who rigged a platform of sorts, Dr. Kaboca and Tajirika were able to pull the Ruler down and secure him with straps for a medical exam.

They did such a good job that it now looked as if the Ruler was actually seated on a high chair of authority, his voice reaching those seated below his feet as if it were God’s voice from above. The men were made permanent state carpenters and they would leave the State House only when the Ruler willed it.

Dr. Kaboca climbed onto the platform, examined the Ruler’s tonsils, and took his temperature and blood pressure. Nothing seemed amiss. He felt the Ruler’s stomach and, recalling prevalent rumors in the country that he might be in a certain way, thought it best to prescribe the need for a team of medical doctors. He reminded the Ruler that when they left America it had been decided that Dr. Clarkwell and Professor Furyk would be invited to Aburlria to look further into his condition. Now was the time, he suggested, to confer with them on this new complication of symptoms: further bodily expansion, lightness of the body, and bellyache.

6

“What? His legs dangling in the air?” Vinjinia asked Tajirika.

The image of a Ruler suspended in the air with only the soles of his shoes visible from the floor made her laugh until her ribs ached.

It was the same day, late at night. Tajirika did not always tell Vinjinia about the goings-on in the State House, but this story he could not keep to himself. Yet he took the precaution of swearing Vinjinia to secrecy.

“Do you think this is the work of the Wizard of the Crow? Or the Limping Witch?” Vinjinia whispered.

“With the wizard you cannot rule out anything.”

“What if the house did not have a ceiling and a roof?” she wondered loudly.

“He would have reached Heaven before Marching to Heaven,” Tajirika responded, but Vinjinia was the one who saw the fun in the quip and laughed again.

When Vinjinia next met with Maritha and Mariko she took Maritha aside, made her also swear not to tell anybody, and whispered the Ruler’s story. But of course Maritha told Mariko, and he did not see any harm in telling Dove, and Dove did not see any harm…

And so on, until the story reached the People’s Assembly, which meant that soon all of Aburlria was talking about it.

7

“His SIE has hypertrophied beyond our wildest imagination,” Dr. Wilfred Kaboca wrote to Clarkwell and Furyk, urging them to come to Aburlria at once, all costs, of course, to be picked up by the Aburlrian State. Uppermost in Kaboca’s mind was the note the Wizard of the Crow had once written and the rumors of the Ruler’s pregnancy circulating in the country. A sonogram was definitely in order, he added.