The Luck of Madonna 13

THE LUCK OF MADONNA 13 by E. T. Ellison | Chapter 1 (part 2)

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In his spacious but sparely furnished office high in the Centrisk — the central obelisk of the Holy Quincunx — Father-Mayor Gullwimple busied himself with legal necessities and other preparations for this year’s Quest. He was tall and large-boned, and his width overflowed the chair, which supported him under silent protest. A shame we have to always give up our Luckiest to the mountain, never to be seen again, he thought with little force of conviction. Thick eyebrows on a pink face flexed in an almost comical parody of a frown, fighting for facial dominance with a pencil moustache (he regularly watched Wayne Newton 5 vids) as his mind followed the subject matter to its inevitable ending point. Slightly out-of-pitch strains of Danke Schoen wobbled through the office.

His annual review of the Luckiest Situation (as he annually chose to think of these brief ruminations) always ended with an acknowledgment of the obvious: luck, even the singular luck of a Luckiest, was of little use. In St. Coriander, luck did not bring wealth, long life, victory over obstacles or any of its other traditional outcomes. And it had certainly not helped any of the 249 previous Questers survive their Quests and win their objectives. Ah well: no help for it. At this point in his musings, Father Gullwimple typically abandoned the topic and continued with the formalities.

Occasionally, there was a supplementary consideration of a more personal nature. In the present case it was to admit that he was less concerned with the loss of one more Luckiest sixteener than with the loss of a lively little tart like Glendyl Fenderwell. Far better to send off boys to wherever in the Counterindicated Zone they met their dooms. Father Gullwimple had always liked athletic females, part of the reason he had, over his long lifetime, been in regular attendance at St. Coriander bangerball games. Being Chief of the Fatherhood, while repetitive and boring in many ways, also had its privileges. And after all, such pulchritudinous resources should not, in good conscience, be wasted. Once they Elevated, their charms were lost to him — and to this Earthly plane — forever. May 30, the day required by the New Rules to be set aside for the annual selection of the Luckiest, was a lively, all day occasion. At the end, one sixteener would be named Luckiest, the person best suited to seek on Mt. Funnybone for the Key to the fabled Nevergate. The new Quester Designate would be presented with his or her only prize: a fresh-from-the fabrax, sealed QPack.(1) After 249 failed Quests from which no Quester had ever returned and presumably no Key to the Nevergate found, the good folk of St. Coriander had resigned themselves to things pretty much remaining as they had been. This was not at all bad, if one didn't mind spending one’s life confined within the comfortable, easy prison that St. Coriander had become. So rather than a rite of renewed hope, the activities of Luckiest Day had become little more than a gameshow rerun and an excuse for a party. Of course most of St. Coriander viewed the proceedings from their own homes or at the holodome at the Amphi in Central Park: only sixteeners and staff were allowed in the Holy Quincunx for this particular event.

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Jonas Mapplethorpe qualified as staff for this event. He sat high above the floor of the Sanctuary in the many-faceted gilt Music Box, which protruded from the south wall like a golden carbuncle. Due to the pending advent of his forty-eighth year and mandatory Elevation, this would be his final performance; he truly outdid himself on the day which Glendyl Fenderwell earned the Luckiest distinction. In addition to rendering the traditional musical themes for various segments of the event from early morning to the final Grand Quincunx pulloff, Mapplethorpe had fashioned a set of entertaining augmentations; sound effects ranging from celebratory artenskops, through all the acknowledged strata of cacophonic accentules, even including a number which were shockingly (to some ears, at least) similar to masterful exercises of flatulence, belching and a form of wretchedness known as the dry heaves. These effects were used to distinguish particularly unlucky efforts by the participating sixteeners.

Harriet Cheevie, music columnist for the St. Coriander Times, and only a few years from Elevation herself, rated Mapplethorpe's final effort with only two and one-half trumpets (out of five), principally for its "remarkable — almost Wagnerian — exhibition of bombastic excess (setting aside its unfettered tastelessness altogether) which indelibly marred an otherwise artful day in the Box." The sixteeners, however, loved it to a one.

Mapplethorpe was not the only artist to reach beyond the norm on this occasion. Reveta Bunsavver, the acknowledged enfant terrible of St. Coriander’s fledgling neo-Illusionist colony that had coalesced a few years back in the Majester Arts District, also made a majestic smudge on the occasion’s record books. Her magic-assisted decorative efforts, while perhaps overspare to some traditionalists, were leavened with entertaining effects, including puffs of localized aromatic green gas that seemed to be perfectly timed to certain of Mapplethorpe's grosser sonic projections. And the Dance of the Bloody Symbols — a well-choreographed sky-troupe of magical, two-meter, white-furred rabbit's feet, apparently still dripping blood from fresh severings — soared to new heights in tastelessness, although not without redeeming social commentary and hilarious antics. Altogether, Glendyl Fenderwell's Luckiest Day was one of the more original on record.
Glendyl’s winning string at the bones, the jackspinner, the heavyhandle and the Grand Quincunx pulloff itself, while not the recordbreaking skein that Jennet Wankettil had racked up nearly a century ago, was the best overall since Fhargis Shah's string a decade prior. Perhaps more remarkable was the fact that Glendyl's previous exhibitions of luck had been few and far between. While she had earned some prowess on the bangerball court by dint of talent and diligent practice, only her detractors attributed her athletic prowess to luck. But talent and luck, at least in the experience of St. Coriander, were rarely distributed to any great degree in the same individual.

Altogether, this year’s Luckiest Day had been a fine celebration: the 250th Luckiest was declared; all the other sixteeners of St. Coriander could breathe a sigh of relief; the community was roundly entertained; the mad sorcerer Exeter's whims were satisfied at the expense of only one human soul. Finally, Glendyl's semblance would be added to the Holarium, a display hall in Sublevel Three in which all the mostly forgotten Luckiests could be seen. And her name would, in all likelihood, be added to the Quest Memorial at Dunnigans Gate.

Few residents of St. Coriander, however, ever paid tribute to these lost youths, either by visiting the Holarium or by approaching the vicinity of Dunnigans Gate. The only public acknowledgment was the traditional Heroes Honorific which led off the Luckiest Day events. Deprived of the opportunity for Planar Elevation at age forty-eight, the Luckiests bore a never-discussed stigma. Best to quietly forget, rather than trouble one’s soul over bygones. Or so went the thinking in most quarters of St. Coriander. Forrbank Pitley and his Colloquium for Opening Minds in St. Coriander (COMISC) were attempting to change that, although he and the group had made little apparent progress. Pitley would doubtless go to his Elevation before he could redirect the cultural and intellectual momentum of the venerable IsoTown of St. Coriander.

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1 -- A single, sealed QPack has appeared mysteriously in the output chamber of St. Coriander’s venerable Central Fabrax at exactly 12:01 a.m. on May 30th of each of the last 250 years. It can only be opened by the Quester Designate. A message to this effect is displayed in pulsing blue letters on the surface of the transparent membrane enclosing the newborn QPack. Exactly what a QPack contains is known only to the Quester Designate. Several curious, possibly larceny-minded citizens (including one member of the Fatherhood), died particularly ugly and dramatic deaths attempting to breach the membrane before its lethality became accepted without question.

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