Sleeping Buffoon

Ron Koppelberger

Sleeping Buffoon

The pause in their routine was prefaced by the rueful blend cruelty and composed group ethic. The cage was suspended by a short length of chain. Two by two, the floor was barbed and covered in blood, the blood of the buffoon and all of the predecessors of the buffoon. The cage door was latched with a heavy bolt and clasp.
The crowd of taunt expressionless onlookers milled and culled the experience, “A sleeping buffoon!” one of them called out.
“Tis a fare will-o-the-way.” the man shouted as he pressed his fingers against the gold crucifix about his neck, “Sleeping buffoon!” he said again as the crowd began to disperse.
The trial has lasted a few brief moments and in that time the chief magistrate had screamed and reasoned in pitch and balanced savagery. “His sin unto our town, be denied!” the buffoon had mistaken the princess Alarues for a common seamstress. He had asked her to sew a rend in his sash, and in further insult had offered her a pittance in exchange. She had screamed and menaced the buffoon from afar; he was indeed a traveler and a fierce Sheppard of communion from a land afar, gilded in glass and smoke, in emerald visions of greener pastures and fertile wheat. The princess had condemned him calling him a buffoon.
The royal guard had shackled him and in conviction they had delivered him to the head magistrate.
The buffoon slept in silent display and in the way of fate a passing companion unlatched his cage and tended to the buffoons wounds. Later they would return with an army, the buffoon no longer sleeping in sufferance, the prince and future king of Flurry Array, the circle, the knot of kingdoms, would seize the reigns and rule the whole.
In shifting ways of allegiance he would sleep each evening, dreaming only of fire and burning wheat, in the sleep of enchantment and dire futures in sovereign interval unto the turn of the tide.
He dreamed and grew dark in silhouette and stature finally feared by most, no longer a sleeping buffoon.