The Untold Story
There is a story I’ve been trying to tell my whole life. It’s the reason I tell stories.
Sometimes I come very near to it, either in writing or in reading, but the note is never quite perfect, never quite completed, the taste never quite right. Or else I find it to be too apologetic, or else too sarcastic.
The Story
As far as I can tell, from the pieces I have put together thus far, it involves a graveyard and a garden. It features a heroic, magnificent knight who is utterly broken, and a broken heroine who is also utterly magnificent. There lurks in the shadows of the tale the ultimate evil of a dragon, and the ultimate innocence of a unicorn. It involves in the forefront a lion and a doorway, and the journey consists of a descent to the underworld and a rising to the afterworld. In its very fabric it communicates final suffering, and ultimate joy.
I cannot tell this story yet, for as yet I do not know it, but like Susan’s conversion, or Trinian’s kingship,* I know it will reveal itself if the pieces are given enough time to blend, like simmering stock on a stove. But though I do not know the story, I wish to explore the pieces, and so I will inhale deeply, and give myself a sip, of that great tale which I hope, one day, will come.
The Graveyard
As for the graveyard, I have most nearly encountered it in Yorick’s plot of ground, and the nettle patch of the Seven Swans. For in the first, you have the unique combination of utter despair effacing the possibility of almost glorious goodness; namely, Hamlet’s potential for greatness disappearing beneath his despairing grasp after justice. And in the second, utter evil of the god-annointed archbishop meeting complete and perfect innocence in the queen. Despair and goodness, evil and innocence. In Yorick, salvation meets its greatest enemy, for even God cannot save the man of despair; and in the weaving princess, evil meets its ultimate victor, for no cunning can overcome the plainest, mutest, most diligent innocence.
The Garden
The garden, I know, is secret, and thus the first peek I ever gained of it was as a child, when I encountered Mary Craven’s garden, which she tended with Colin and Dick. Also Hestor Gray’s garden, wherein Gilbert proposed to Anne, and she finally accepted him, and their love was crowned. Surely, this garden which I am trying to write about is both small and necessarily intimate - my intimations of it confirm this supposition; and yet it is unending, infinite in size, and epic in scope, so that it’s actual makeup and dimensions are very difficult to grasp, for it seems to be a contradiction of terms. Yet, would not a garden that is small to a full-grown man be an unending wonderland to a little girl? The hanging gardens of Babylon may have been one of the seven wonders of the world, yet could it have compared with my half-dead childhood greenhouse, which sat beside the vacation farm, full of sunflowers and prickly coneflowers? There, I was transported into a deep quiet and a world apart from the ‘real’. Alice knows the truth of this. If we are large enough, everything is nothing more than a pack of cards; but if we are small enough, we can talk to the flowers.
Outside the garden, it is necessary that there be a wilderness, which is its innate enemy. Not a wildness, but a wilderness: a wandering, unknown world, predictable in its fruitlessness, wherein no life can thrive to any benefit. Wildness in a garden is good - it is an admission on the part of the gardener that every plant is fruitful; but a wilderness is uncultivated, so that even the healthy plants cannot bear fruit to real purpose.
Wildness there ought to and should be in this garden. There is no wildness is a modern garden. Modern gardens are mere travesties: manicured, apologetic mimicries of this real garden, which I have personally never found in real life, though I have visited many gardens in many cities. I do not like modern gardens. There is something far too tame about them. And the garden of my story, like the Lion, is completely untame.
But more about the Lion later. For now we pass to the hero.
The Knight
Ah, my poor knight (for of course he must be a knight. Every true hero is), you must begin by being strong, vigorous, and full of mighty deeds. You must be a man of valour, aflame with a desire to accomplish manly ends. And yet, I see you torn to shreds. I see you run straight forward and impale yourself on the edge of a blade. I see you face the impossible, and have to bend your mind to accept it. I see you render and tear apart the heart of a woman, and have to mourn for yourself, because you knew not what you did. You will begin strong, and that strength will be in vain, for it will lead you into darkness, but yet you shall conquer all these trials on the foundation of your desire for goodness until, in the end, you surrender to your greatest enemy, submitting to the greatest and noblest end.
This much I know, and no more. And what man is like this? Lancelot comes near to it, the ancient, the strong, the tempted. Robin Hood, indeed, but only as he appears in Prince of Thieves and even, you will laugh at me, the Disney version; for in these he is a romantic hero, as well as a national one, and romance is a necessary feature. He must be merry - this is a pre-requisite; but simultaneously, he must also be willing to die for love, and this shows how much more heroic he is, when he is even willing to lose his love to accomplish the salvation of his people, or else some other Noblest End. The Noblest End is not romantic love, but romantic love is indispensable to achieving the Noblest End. And yet, this is no tragic hero. He is the greatest, merriest, most comic of all heroes on this globe of heroic figures.
Even were he to die, still would he be merry, like St. Lawrence on the grill. McDonald’s Curdy is a hero like this, as is Jack when he climbs the beanstalk. David, in a sense, and Daniel, and the three men of the fiery furnace, praising God as they enter the deadly heat. No pagan hero is this hero, for none gain their love righteously, nor even through worthy deeds. Jason, indeed, saves the princess… but he does not unite with her. Odysseus, to be sure, fights to return to his love, but that is his only end; he does not risk his love, once gained, for anything greater.
And what about the end of my hero? Is it necessary that he live, in possession of his love, so that all comes to a happy conclusion? Or must he live and lose his love? Or must he die, and relinquish all? I know not. The end of Manalive is the nearest thing to the ending I hold in my mind, for truly, an ending where we learn that, not only was the looming, threatening loss neither looming nor threatening, but that what appeared to be sin and drama was, all along, nothing more than a marital joke, seems to me to be the fittest end to my hero. I think of the film Big Fish here, wherein the son thinks he is losing his father, but he ultimately gains a closer union in the loss. In a sense, the hero must appear, even to himself, to lose all, yet there is in the losing the ultimate gaining, so that that which seemed to be at stake was, all along, purely part of the cosmic dance. Therefore, the trial in Manalive. Therefore, the rings test at the end of the Merchant of Venice. Therefore, the veiled bride in Much Ado About Nothing. Nothing is at stake, and yet, there is Much Ado. And the Much Ado was necessary all along to strengthen, bring low, and build up again the mighty warrior Claudio, for something greater than him rules his destiny, greater even than romantic love, for that love, too, must bow to virtue, and must rejoice in righteousness, even though it deprives him of everything he has ever gained… and yet! That righteousness, like the righteous ending of the book of Job, is precisely what bequeaths him back everything he ever lost, and more.
But enough on my hero - do these truths hold fast for my heroine?
The Princess
Heroine, truly, is the wrong word. Though I used it before, it conveys the wrong idea. Hero conveys something active, something witty, something virile. My maiden is none of these. I do not dislike strong, triumphant feminine characters, but the woman of my tale is not one of them. She is not witty, though she is intelligent. Action is not her prerogative, but she is full of noble virtue. And she is not virile, but docile. Does it follow that she is tame, insipid? Do we not adore the bantering Beatrice over the blushing Hero? Do we not applaud Cleopatra, and Victoria, and Dido, our hearts moved by all those queens who displayed their tragic triumphs of femininity and fierceness? I too, love them all. I too have been moved by them. Even my very favorite of all my female characters, Lavendier Makopola,** is more fierce and triumphant than this maiden I have in mind.
And perhaps it is significant that every time I have begun a fantasy novel, I have done so by centering on a young girl, and resolving to follow her perspective, and hers alone. And yet, before the story has long progressed, this character has slipped into non-existence, and is nearly forgotten beneath the cast of larger, grander, mightier characters. Who is this shy, unassuming, escaping princess? I can not hold her in my hands; she slips away from me, and disappears between the pages. She is not coy. If she were, perhaps I could understand her. She is not shy, nor fearful, for she has, like Lucy the Valiant, the heart of a Lioness!
I am overdue to provide examples for my princess. Yet I falter here, for you will think my list most wearisome and insipid, except, I think, for the girl I have already mentioned: the youngest of the Pevensies. Who else? None of these are her, but they taste, as it were, of her. The elusive phantom in George McDonald’s Phantastes. The maiden with the white lion in my own tale, Death’s March.*** Dicken’s Little Dorrit. The heroine of A Tale of Two Cities, Lucy Manette. And finally, though I struggle to think of another, I feel it incumbent on me to add to this palette someone who will contrast it, and give it color… I think me, here, of the biblical Ruth.
I think it is also helpful to say who I did not write, but thought of, and chose not to say, because they were too weak, or bland, or quiet, and all of them, were the wrong taste: Buttercup (The Princess Bride), Hero (Much Ado About Nothing), Beth March (Little Women), and Juliette (Romeo and Juliet). I think the defining characteristic of my princess, which sets her apart from a tasteless, artificial personality (not that the above characters are tasteless or artificial - I love them all. But they easily could have been), is her iron mettle. Though elusive and soft, she is not weak. Strike her, and you will pierce flesh, only to bend your blade on iron underneath. There is no fear in her heart.
Does my heroine need to be broken like my hero? No. She is already broken when the story begins. I know not by what. She is in the brokenness; not wallowing, but captive, and if he hath the strength, he will set her free.
Now I will add something which will probably disappoint my readers, and most certainly, disappoints me: I am not convinced that the hero and heroine are meant for one another. One is a lover, born and bred, and be assured that he will find his lady love. The second… I do not know if she is the lady for whom he seeks, or that she is the lady any lover seeks. I know not, and perhaps I must live more of life to know the answer, for love has never found me yet.
What holds the maiden princess in the clutches of the dragon? Perhaps, I begin to see that all the story which I am attempting to tell has already been told, in the tale of St. George and the Dragon. But no! My story is as much like that tale as Lewis’ Til We Have Faces is like the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Perhaps it is the bones of the story, but it is not the story itself. There is something else, something which I do not yet understand, which is this story.
The Dragon
Of the dragon I will say little, for little need ever be said of evil. He is nothingness, and he desires, if he desires anything, to efface thingness into nothingness. You can read about him in the Book of Revelations.
The Unicorn
The unicorn is a more varied, and interesting character in my narrative. Ah, he is the incarnation of every unicorn in every story I have ever read! In The Last Battle, Jewel shines for my unicorn! In The Last Unicorn, my heart bleeds for her plight, for it is the self-same plight of my own beast. And why are they both ‘Last’? Is there an ending to the unicorn? A living that betokens dying? Yes! Say also, a virginity that betokens life, a poverty that flows into wealth, a sorrow that speaks perfectly of joy, for every good paradox is contained, perfected, in the figure of my unicorn. Unicorn is perfection, and yet, it is incomplete. It is like the ending of my story… somehow, it is purely a paradox.
The Lion
March unto the battle ground, and plant the spear into the mound, for winter passeth all away, and glory riseth at dawn of day! The Lion is king of the jungle, king of the winderness, and he hath no place in the garden, yet the Lion shall lie down with the lamb, and consecrate the enclosed land. Can I speak better of this lion than C. S. Lewis did? Yet, if it were not for him, would this figure be a lion in my tale? Yet it is not only Aslan I think of, but Mufasa rings in my mind, his deep, rolling call to “remember. Remember who you are.” No soul’s journey is complete, his story all told, until he is dead, and death becomes its own life; Mufasa shows this well. This story is not over, but lives in Simba, and Aslan lives though he is dead, and how can two such prominent, powerful figures of my childhood not dominate my imagination? This jungle beast, wild and ferocious, dominates my subconscious, stalking in and out of shadowed trees, hunched close to the ground, waiting - like the lion of Lewis Carroll’s tale - to engage in fierce combat with the unicorn! Waiting to spring upon me and bear me back to its den, helpless in its jaws. Yet such a death is sweeter than any life. I will not neglect to mention the Cowardly Lion, though let us forget entirely, if we can, the figure in the film. He is not at all what I mean. The book is only a little closer. Yet Baum communicated something vital about the nature of a lion when he paired him with courage and cowardliness, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to seek out just exactly what that was. But it has something to do with the Lion lying down with the lamb.
The Door
There stands in a secret place, visible to all, but invisible also, a door. It is shut - have you the courage to try the handle? On the other side - you know not, for you have never looked - could lie all the richness and splendor of an Arabian night, a whole new world, dazzling, beautiful, and full of adventure… or it could be just another room. But what if it were the beginning of an epic tale? What if it were jealousy, riches, power, and passion? What if it were flying carpets, magic wardrobes, Mrs. Whatsits, and Stargates to other worlds? And what if, just maybe… and this is, perhaps, the secret of it all - what if one person found a wardrobe full of fur coats, and another, a land of eternal winter? What I mean is, what if the land of adventure and the mundane room were one and the same place?
How terrifying. It would mean the adventure does not happen to us, but we happen to the adventure. Like scientists in a lab, our observation changes the very nature of the experiment. No matter how small or insignificant, no matter if we are a quarter inch tall, wandering through our backyard, riding ants and drowning in rain drops - we would still cause our parents to fly across the yard. What I mean is - I keep getting distracted by the stories which hint at the story I have been searching for forever - no matter how much we thought we could just watch the story; all along, we would find that we were in it. Like Bastian’s experience of The Never Ending Story. It would mean that any door, any door you have seen at any moment of the day, even your very bedroom door, could be the invisible door for which you have yearned all your life, and which, by walking through, you will enter a completely new adventure. Wendy found it by stepping out her nursery window, Alice by following a rabbit, Lucy by looking in a closet, and Bilbo, by stepping out his front door. The world of adventure begins most often with a very natural, and very mundane, act.
The Descent and the Ascent
And where does this door lead? If we follow it correctly, it leads out of the everyday wood, and into a land of ever deepening and darkening circles, for here we find ourselves following and descending after Virgil, ourselves a new Dante, seeking the ice that will crack; then it will set us again on a path sloping ever higher, to the utmost heights, where we will face the ultimate fire. This is the descent to the underworld, and any book, or film, or show which depicts it will do here for an analogy, for I am not particular. In fact, I care little for all of those adventures, prizing them each as they deserve, but none so highly as my own journey, which takes me ever into dark places, and again, into lofty heights, and from both the pit and the mount, I have faced truth too terrible for language. If you have traveled your Dante road, you know my story already; yet, like Mufasa, we do not know the whole circle until we have died, and become the grass, and yet, we find that we live. You and I have tasted the journey, but can we ever - while we remain in this terrestrial sphere - know its limits? There is a door, yet, like in the underworld or for Edmund Pevensie, I should add here that it is possible to enter the wrong one or - which is, in a sense, the same thing - to enter the right one the wrong way.
Joy and Suffering
I think I need say nothing, now, about ultimate joy and final suffering, for can we not all see that to deal with such depths and heights of reality, we deal directly with joys and sorrows, with agonies and ecstasies? Shakespeare knew this. It is said that he dealt with the breadth of human experience, and Dante with the height and depth, but I say not entirely so, for there is no such sharp distinction between the two which make them one or the other, for they are inevitably bound to each other, and it is necessary to travel through the mundane of this world in order to enter into the outer unknown of the other - the garden of this story to enter the wilderness of the other, and the wilderness of this to enter the garden of the other. We have no choice, and yet, it is all choice, for that is the purpose of our present life. But I will give off preaching paradoxes here, for I have strayed from the meat of the matter.
Conclusion
I set out, at the outset, to describe a story that I am seeking. Lucy, on the journey to the edge of Narnia, read a story in the Magician’s book which enchanted her, but she could never again recall the details of it. Aslan told her, when she asked about it, that He would tell it to her for the rest of her life. Perhaps this is God’s story which he is telling me through my life. Or perhaps he breathed it into my soul before He fused it with my body, or perhaps it was written in the garden, and I remember because I am human. Whatever the reason, we all have our own unique story within us, which we either seek, or else flee from, with unerring perseverance. Perhaps the seeking and the fleeing are one and the same, for a lover will run simply to be chased by the one she loves. Perhaps we are daring the Creator to catch us, and like a triumphant Lion, fling us into the wide unknown of our predestined stories. I do not know. Perhaps we are more like an old grandmother, sitting beside a fire, with our knitting lying idle in our laps, as we look back and contemplate the woven fabric of our life, and there we discover that the story was not what we had thought it was while we lived it, but something else entirely, and whether better or worse, how can we be the judge? But certainly different, and not entirely of our own making.
There is one last and strange element which I wish to share before I conclude. As I have reflected on all these elements, I have found that I understand - as far as I am currently able - why the garden, the wilderness, the graveyard, the lion, the unicorn, the dragon, the door, and the journey lie in wait for me in this story. But I confess that I understand not a wit why the knight and lady are who they are, and how they enter into the narrative. Am I the lady, and he some man I lie in wait for? No. This I know for certain. I am not the lady, and he is not my knight. Are they two parts of my own soul, perhaps blended with the dragon, who must work together to break free of his influence and lead me to salvation? Are they someone I met once upon a time, who stands over me with extra-temporal power, to take charge of my heart’s story? Are they Christ and Mary? Are they, ultimately, no more than George and the Princess? Yet, if this last is true, why do they call for me? Have their stories not already been told? Why must I be their advocate? What more have they to say? I have a premonition that until I can grasp, with even the faintest glimmer of understanding, this ultimate conundrum, I will never be able to tell the tale to my satisfaction, nor to the satisfaction of its two principal players.
Yet I will never cease to strive for the attainment of the final piece of this puzzle.
The End
*References to story’s I have written and am currently writing: Trinian (2018) & Susan (unpublished)
**From my novel Trinian (2018)
***From my collection of Short Stories, Death’s March (2021)
All story references made in this article, in order referenced:
Susan - An unpublished story I wrote about Susan Pevensie
Trinian - A published novel about a man who learns he is the prophesied king of his city
Hamlet - Shakespeare’s immortal play
The Seven Swans - A Fairy Tale
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island - Lucy Maud Montgomery
Lancelot - I was making a general reference to the character, and not any specific story. For further reading, I recommend Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, White’s The Once and Future King, and Steinbeck’s The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
Prince of Thieves (Morgan Creek Productions, 1991)
Robin Hood (Walt Disney Productions, 1973)
Princess and the Goblins and Princess and Curdie - George McDonald
Biblical stories of David (1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Chronicles)
Biblical stories of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel)
Greek myths of heroes, including Jason and the Golden Fleece
The Odyssey - Homer
Manalive - Chesterton
Big Fish - (Columbia Pictures, 2003)
The Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare (I recommend Ignatius Critical Edition)
Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra - Shakespeare
Victoria (Mammoth Screen Masterpiece, 2016)
The Aeneid - Vergil
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Last Battle - C. S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (Walden Media and Walt Disney Productions, 2005)
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Walden Media and Walt Disney Productions, 2008)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Walden Media, Dune Entertainment, Fox 2000 Pictures, 2010)
Phantastes - George McDonald
Death’s March - An epic poem of my own, published in 2021 (contains an earlier version of this article)
Little Dorrit and A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Biblical story of Ruth (Ruth)
The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare
George and the Dragon - Ancient Catholic Myth
‘Til We Have Faces - C. S. Lewis
Psyche and Cupid - Ancient Greek Myth
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
Lion King (Walt Disney Productions, 1994)
Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Frank L. Baum
Aladdin (Walt Disney Productions, 1992)
A Thousand and One Nights - Various
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeliene L’Engle
Stargate (Centropolis Film Productions, Carolco Pictures, Le Studio Canal+, 1994)
Stargate: SG-1 (Showtime Channel, SyFy Channel, and Sky 1, 1997-2007)
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (Disney, 1989)
The Never Ending Story - Michael Ende
Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Peter Pan (Walt Disney Productions, 1953)
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri