The Mathematical Box
by S.V. Wolfland

They stalk through the endless passage, one following behind the other—

“But my Lady!”

“Just be quiet for a moment, Janet, will you?” her mistress asks.

The palace is decorated as if for feast and carnival combined. There is an air of expectancy, of waiting. The butler’s living room is passed through—there are six enormous cushions in the fireplace, pallets and throws everywhere, it looks a model of Roman style comfort, if incongruous against the unplastered stone. Rugs have been laid on the floor. They pass out of the room off the passage, and on through what you might call a corridor, except that it’s far too big, and corridors usually belong to a very different order of building. Offices, and prisons, and MI5 HQ.

The ceiling gets more outrageous as they get farther. It is embellished with feathers and tassels, festooned with hanging bits of coloured glass. My Lady walks quickly, but she does notice them. A wall opens up on the right—they see a huge room also done up in this style—the ceiling (“Why do they always pay such attention to the ceiling?” wonders My Lady)—is ornate incarnate. Pure white silk, cold as snow, covers the whole roof, and is gathered, at points in each interlocking square, and pinned back up to the ceiling—it looks like the lushest, most fantastical tent, crossed with a vast embroidery sampler. “Or a great pincushion,” thinks My Lady. But she is impressed, nonetheless. From each gathering point hangs a large bauble, frosted like a giant pearl. “Oh!” says her companion, longing for a pair of earrings like them.

The worst place in the whole palace. More like a gambling den than anything else, and a bad one at that—cheap, dangerous, but the new box of tricks had come, so she must have it, must get it—like having to go to the rough end of the city for a parcel that hasn’t been delivered.

“Here it is,” he smiles at her, with the same smile that has got him out of all kinds of tight situations. It makes some men want to smash his face with a brick. But not many. His blonde hair is dirty, brushed back over his head anyhow. She knows not to trust him, she has heard the stories, but she must have the box. He opens it for her—which is a liberty, really, but she wasn’t sure how to open it anyway. The box itself is a cube, but inside—inside, it is sectioned in the strangest compartments, all are symmetrical, but the shapes are ones they have never seen before. Many sided—diamond-shaped boxes, fitting together, shapes that are tall and angular, yet when four of them are put together at the corners of a square, they fit, and fill up the space, making four little mountains, into which the other shapes fit. No one has ever seen anything like it. The Mathematical Box.

Sent to her, from a man who calls himself a Mathematician. (Whatever one of those was, some of the Court thought, skeptically.) The Priest, however, assured everyone whom he met or addressed, that this was merely a more refined way of saying Magician. That the man was a mad blasphemous Satanist, and not to be trusted, or given patronage under any circumstances.

The Box was unspeakably beautiful—but not in a way that any of them were used to. Each panel of each shape was like glass—perhaps it was glass, but glass without flaws, without circles and unevenness, or stains from other colours. Some of the boxes appeared to be sealed, so that their contents could only be turned to the left or right, or upside down, but not touched. Which seemed strange. And there were more shapes inside—smooth swirls made of wood, spirals of twisted flax, embedded with copper so that it glinted, like chain mail when it was new, before it went all bloody and rusted. She had never ever seen anything like it. Nor had any of them. It looked, it felt, it even smelt, like Magic. Some of the boxes opened. Inside were the oddest things—little things like jigsaws, but in three dimensions, divided shapes, that one had to make up into something bigger. She knew what it was for, only because, in the boxes that did open, there was a tiny strip of parchment, with clever little diagrams, so accurate, that you could see instantly (if you had any wits, anyway, thought My Lady, or had been taught how to read) that the tiny pictures were meant to relate to the shapes in front of you. And some even had a bit of writing on them, she found as she opened one box, and saw a die cut like a bead—it was a long bead, but faceted, so that it had six sides, and then another six, off from the widest point, and two more sawn off at the ends. A fourteen-sided die in the shape of a bullet. He looked at it attentively—he had a sixth sense when it came it anything that could be misused. As she took it out, and read the instructions, at first he thought it was a gambling trick, as she laughed at the result.

“What is it, My Lady?” he asked, his eyes curious, and shifty.

“It’s a trick!” she said, delighted. “Listen—pick a number between one and a hundred—any number.” Cautiously, he chose one. Like most people, he could only remember the names of a few. Which was odd, because about groats and sovereigns, and when someone was trying to rip him off, and how to rip off other people, he was completely canny. But he didn’t often deal with the little Arabic pictograms that were the numeral system.

“And now!” she threw the die. It came up with the number he had chosen.

“Now that’s worth knowing, that is!” he said, the greed lighting up his eyes, like excitement. He, made bold by the treasure, dared to reach out onto the table, and roll it toward himself, to look at it. A queer thing—and worth something in its own right, he reckoned—that was sheer cut obsidian, or he was a fool. A gemstone with etchings on it so fine…the fanciest gambler’s piece he’d ever seen.

“I thought you’d like that one,” she said, delight with the box making her recklessly artless, unthinking what she was saying, to whom she was saying it. It turned out that for all its impression of a thousand faced thing, with endless little boxes, fitting together like a puzzle itself, that there were only eight. Four toward the top, and another four toward the bottom. They were all in pairs, so that there are two boxes of each...game? trick? puzzle? toy? spell? No one was sure what they were. Four different ones. He looked greedily at it, had already spun her a tale about collecting it, riding back with it, the long journey, the danger of the Priest having him excommunicated (actually he has already been excommunicated, but by another Priest some distance off). And anyway, the orthodoxy (like so many big institutions, the Palace for instance) didn’t exactly update its records and circulate its long-winded briefings, with the deft accuracy of thieves. She was already hesitantly offering him one of two which had a little perfect sphere inside, of—silver? some lovely metal, which seemed to roll about in a deep and crafty cut channel like a tiny serpent, ending up as the pupil in the eye. 

“Take one of these as well then—if you like...” she said, of the box with the fourteen-sided die. The old retainer at her side is horror struck, and can no longer hold out— “No My Lady! No! The Box! You mustn’t! The look of the Box will be destroyed, if you do—look!” he said with dreadful urgency, trying to appeal to her sense of what was aesthetically right, even if he felt it was pointless trying to argue about what was morally right. She looked, and he was right—with two boxes missing, duplicates or not, the box would no longer fit together in the perfect way it had done. The blonde man was already making his excuses.

“Oh no! Look it’s flooded!” We had all been larking about—I don’t know what possessed us. The fact it was feast night I suppose. And what a feast! The biggest day of the whole sequence of celebration—the crowning moment. We were being so reckless… In the channel—at the back of the guardrooms beyond the “Den” (what else could you call a place like that? I still never understood how an otherwise well-run establishment like the Palace could have such an evil-smelling tavern in its bowels.) I don’t know why the weather wasn’t freezing cold either—it was a freak, I suppose. (God! Don’t talk to me about freak shows! all they showed was that some of the gentry were no better than the shit who hung out in the cellars, you could say.) Anyway—it had flooded, and I’d hidden something in there, something in the water barrel—the bag was floating on the top—with some papers—I was trying to get myself learned, but I just hadn’t got used to how easy it was to kill off parchment in our climate. I suppose it was all right for the Romans, maybe even for the Gauls in the south—but not for us. Oh God—all my appropriated scratchings, my own attempts—all dripping wet. The hides, I judged, fishing them out dripping, might dry, but the ink would have run so much I’d have to clean it all off and start again.

“Ah—fuck,” I said, feeling like an idiot. I had thought it was so cold when the feasting began—cold or rain, one or t’other, never both. Well you can see snow coming a mile off—the light changes. Pestilential yellow-orange, or judgement-day purple. Plenty of warning. It was the runes I was really worried about though. I’d met a man in the north—miles and miles it was, and he claimed he was descended from old invaders, from Vikings, or something. And we got talking—he wasn’t like most lonely madmen you meet in the middle of nowhere, take my word for it. And he had this letter system—said if I was interested in getting learned, these would stand me in good stead. That they could be made with marks on wood, stone, anything, he said. Teach it to others and you’ve got a secret letter system, but each rune can mean a whole word, and that saves time. And then he told he—you don’t have to use them for Magic. And he wasn’t trying to impress. I mean I could see out here, he didn’t need to be learned—or had all the learning he wanted. But he did use them for—that sort of thing. Magic, I mean. And he looked fed, clean-watered, sealed-roofed. I reckon he wasn’t as mad as he looked. But that’s as may be, he gave me a bag of runes. We all have our treasures, and this was one of mine. I fished out the sopping bag, wondering how come a bag of stone runes was floating, but grateful that they were.

“What is it?”

“Stuff I left here—wet.”

“Wet! Let’s start a fire then!” and so we did. They did, the two lads, the thief and my friend, lit with dry wood from the “tavern,” a fire—they must have been drunk as hell, because they found an awful lot of wood to burn on it. More and more, and still I thought someone must be chopping up the benches in there. I wanted my own fire, too. But I thought it should be different. I took dead dry leaves from the deep doorways which the straight down rains had missed, and piled them up. I took a flaring torch down from the walls, and soon the whole small dank courtyard was ablaze, only the water channel in the middle was safe. I found a streamer—a long flowing pennon that I’d appropriated from a hunting trip one time, and wetted it, so that it wouldn’t catch fire. The thief had run off somewhere—scared at his own mischief, I suppose. My friend had gone inside. Perhaps he thought it was a bit dangerous now. Swinging the pennon, right to left, its long streamer tails, licking the tops of the flames, and spraying water, not taking fire. Drenching. And it was hot, hot and wet too, like you hear about old Roman spa baths. I got that strange feeling you sometimes get—when you stop being a kid, but before you’ve grown to your full height—that feeling that you will do it—do what you must do—that you will get it—get what you must have; and I stripped off my clothes, and stood there, danced there, muscular, wiry, leaping among the flames with the pennon waving, like something out of the underworld, and she saw me from a window and I waved.

She sighed. They walked past a huge window alcove, also opening on the right—more enormous cushions. They must be expecting a vast number of guests...and a great deal of riotous living, too, to be taking such precautions. She wasn’t entirely sure that she approved, but still. Apart from anything else, it was necessary.

“Do keep up Janet.”

“Yes, My Lady.” Behind, but not too far behind was the norm. Through more passages, more decorations, and finally nearing the throne room. Just before it, a room, again to the right, more of another opening, really. The figure of a man, lying, broken, at the last end of exhaustion, against the cushions in this window alcove, sprawled, splattered in mud from a long journey. She bent down and ripped the ridiculous carnival mask of an expressionless ghost-pig from his face. She pulled away the material from his face.

“Is it done? How on earth did you get yourself in such a state?” she said sharply.

“My Lady” he groaned. Janet started weeping. “Oh Lord,” thought My Lady.

“Do be quiet Janet.”

“Yes My Lady,” she sobbed. The man’s face—all the sharpness weather-beaten out of it by dreadful elements and who knows what else. The eyes were blue, and the hair like straw, but that is all. She took the bag lying at his feet. The house—Carl looked pained to see his mistress touching some of the man’s things—however dressed like a gentleman, in such a state. She opened the bag—two beautiful geometric glass boxes.

“Thank Heavens for that.”

With the runes, I taught a few people I trusted, sent out messages. Caught him in a net. When she said to me that she wanted her boxes back, I didn’t want to go tramping up hill and down dale myself. But with cunning and foresight, and the gift of leaving and sending messages no one else would understand, together they got me my quarry. To think, we even thought up such a scheme, that the very thief returned them. So that bag of stone runes did me a good turn—you could call it magic. And the Mathematical Box? Was it magic? Well, I’m her chief adviser now, and how unlikely was that? My Lady was always looking for someone into learning, instead of the dumb, hawk and dog obsessed nobles she used to get introduced to. With the only other young man on offer being the thief, I suppose. Now we both get good company and good living—trustworthy company too, which means something in a place like this. Two heads thinking alike can out-think ten lone plotters any day. And she doesn’t even have to marry if she doesn’t choose to, so I’ll leave you to decide.

S.V. Wolfland is a member of the Cartwheels Collective group of artists. Their Web site showcases works including writings, performances, commissions, etc.: http://www.cartwheels-collective.co.uk

“gargoyle lion” by Steve Cartwright

See Steve Cartwright’s online gallery http://www.angelfire.com/sc2/cartoonsbycartwright