The entire education of David Able Saul, serf child of much intelligence—which is to say quite rare—consisted of vulgar alphabetics, numbers and the memorization of Father Schyl’s Seven Sermons, which were not his at all, but read from a book elegantly written in calligraphy script, in a distant study, by a long dead hand, in the language of Latin, which belonged only to the dead ghosts of a long ago evil empire and to the priests, monks, abbots, priors, inquisitors, cardinals and pontiffs who ruled over men’s souls as knights, lords and kings ruled, in their unlettered way, over the gross bodies of their earthly subjects.
Father Schyl’s Sermons were:
-1. Of the Moons
-2. God’s Holy Decree
-3. Of Just Christendom
-4. Of Vile Barbary
-5. Of Ocean and Sea
-6. Of Sacred Calvary
-7. Of Most Vile Delviltry
The Sermons will be placed, by mention, deed or reed in the narrative of David’s life at which point there content becomes relevant.
These seven sermons represent the entirety of common knowledge. Nothing more—other than the earthly details of the duty implicit in one’s station—is to be known by Man, unless one is elevated to the religious, literary classes, and then such knowledge as befits one’s station—from priest to Pontiff, shall be made known.
To know a thing out of place—for a potter, for instance, to know of angelic interdiction—is a sin that must be purged, absolved or punished. Hence, David Able Saul’s clockwork mind, shockingly evidenced in the equations he submitted to Father Schyl—which traveled at the speed of a whipped horse from Angelsey to the Holy See in Italy—would normally require a trip to the Dungeons of Perdition. But David had been born to a time of tumult that shivered the Pontiff’s own soul—a Pontiff who grasped at the promise of a clockwork mind to mend the very fabric of a demon-haunted world.
…
Father Schyl’s First Sermon—Illuminating the Calendar for Those Whom Holy Posterity Has Assigned the Lot of Toil
Sustained by the bleeding heart of Our Savior, the thirteen moons wax and wane according to God’s vary-hued will.
Beyond the Holy bounds of Christendom, beyond salvation’s flow, the moons wax white and wane pale, those cursed to live beyond forsaken of God, bereft of salvation.
Within Christendom wax and wane the purposefully hued moons reflective of God’s Will.
Moons of Spring
The Somber Moon, a time for monastic reflection, busies the serf with tilling.
The Violaceous Moon, a time for teaching, busies the serf with sowing.
The Verdant Moon, a time of binding, busies the serf with weeding.
Moons of Summer
The Ember Moon, a time of christening, busies the serf with first reaping.
The Cerulean Moon, a time of hymns, busies the serf with second sowing.
The Fuchsian Moon, a time for Crusading, busies the serf with irrigation.
Moons of Autumn
The Amber Moon, a time for composing, busies the serf with the fruiting harvest.
The Umber Moon, a time for prayer, busies the serf with root planting.
The Carmine Moon, a time for pilgrimage, busies the serf with second reaping.
Moons of Winter
The Frost Moon, a time for dedications, busies the serf with thatching.
The Argent Moon, a time of reclusion, busies the serf with crafts.
The Alabaster Moon, a time for godly petition, busies the serf with suffering, in blessed emulation of Our Agonized Lord.
The Hueless Moon, a time of uplifted praise, busies the serf with uprooting.
-From Abbot Rougert’s Waxicon of the Pale, a Treatise on the paling of Salvation, to Christendom’s, Nature as a Geographic Sanctuary Bounded by the Limits of Christ’s Blood, with Suppositions Upon the Colorless Cruelty of Moons Risen from the Halls of Hell to Beam God’s Glaring Displeasure Upon Heathenkind.
Author's Notes
[Comments from the final writing of Beyond the Pale in September 2021, are in brackets.]
A Man Question from Mouse
“James, Mouse here—it’s what they call me. Been following you. Noticed kind of late you have a lot of fiction, but nothing really recent. Reverent Chandler was baaaaadass, bro. Like the weirdly brutal edge you have. Don’t tell me you stopped fiction?
Of course not—you’re like addicted to writing. Right, am I right?
James, you use soundtracks to your writing. Explains a lot, not all, a lot. Very fascinated in Beyond the Pale. When will you write the rest? You just have a prologue. What’s the sound track? Do you muse to your sound tracks when not writing? What’s coming next for the fiction readers?
-Mouse
…
Mouse, thanks for the kind words. You are the third reader to ask me about the fiction. My answers are below, and the soundtrack below that.
No.
Yes.
2017
[4 years later it is not yet done.]
Om—below.
[At this phase, writing in 2021, I no longer write to music, but in silence other than the constant ringing in my ears, which sounds like the interior of an ocean shell.]
Yes.
Finishing He—ASAP.
Finishing Seven Moons Deep in July. [that would take another 4 years] It will be much of what I write this month, so I will probably lose about 1,000 readers.
[Seven Moons Deep would not be completed until 2020.]
Om - Advaitic Songs (Full Album)
…
Beyond the Pale: Notes
Reworking a Buried Outline into A Fantasy Epic
The following is the long-anguishing outline of my only fantasy concept, which is too bad. As a boy all I wrote was fantasy, and accounted for most of my output as a young man. Since age 30 I have avoided fantasy as an adolescent art form. However, the fact that I have not written a fantasy marks me as defective as an author—something I wish to address.
Insisting on a science-fiction premise for a story is as much a crutch as Tolkien’s orks and dwarves and Marvel’s leftist superheroes in tights. Besides, as my friend, Mark French, just spake this past fast day [which I was heathenishly not observing at the moment], "Arthur C. Clarke did say that, 'Technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.'"
I intend to write Beyond the Pale as a “pure” fantasy, meaning that what was believed in the past shall be presented as reality, myth as fact, fantastic beliefs as actualities. The story will be written from a strictly Catholic viewpoint, inspired largely by a collection of six Novena incense packets I found in the ethnic food section of a supermarket, targeting Mexican Catholics. I have long thought that God’s permission for Aztecs and Conquistadors to crossbreed is the best evidence to date that His Omniscience has a dark sense of humor.
The map of Christendom was drawn on my lunch break last week, and the story of David Able Saul is rising in my dream space, so it must be given room here, lest I suffer the fate of Heshman Shew Mote…
[This map was redrawn in 2015 with great care and talent by a loving girlfriend who developed the color scheme for the moons. When we broke up, the map was lost among her many effects. I have revisited this story, originally conceived in 2013, in 2015, 2017, 2020 and now in 2021.]
For a discussion of the origins of the term Beyond the Pale consult the link below: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/beyond-the-pale.html
…
[Bracketed comments below were made in 2015.]
(2021 comments will be in parentheses.)
Original Outline
Mantid [former title]
The Seven Fantastic Heresies of Heshman Shew Mote [retained as the subtitle]
Fantasy novelette [expected to be a trilogy of novellas]
Premise
David Able Saul is a Recorder for His Augment of Truth, one of only 40 sophists in all of Christendom. On an inauspicious morning, as he transcribes the archives of an Inquirer of His Augment of Truth, he detects a heresy. Should he expose the heresy? David’s choice will propel him along a path that a lowly copyist could scarcely have expected to travel.
(This was changed completely as I had a hard time inserting a scholar into the setting in a compassionate way. So I chose a child with a gifted mind rather than a functionary of the System.)
Bookmarks
Journal 31 of Heshman Shew Mote
Sabbath Eve, Third Shutter of the Purple Moon
The Heresy of Heshman Shew Mote
His Augment of Truth
The Heretic Sky
The Inquiring Hand of His Augment of Truth
His Augment of Right
The Might of His Augment of Right
Under the White Moon
Beyond the Hearth of Christ
Shrove Truthday’s Battle
Blood Moon Rising
The Wells of Pallor Shorn
Ascent of the Mantid
Beyond the Pale Night Sky
Epilogue
(The original 16-scenes of the 2013 story outline, were expanded into a 19-scene narrative in 2020, and were reduced to 15 chapters for this final version in 2021. The ending for this story was set in 2013, rejected in 2015 for an open-ended story with no set ending, until 2019, when I decided on the ending presented in this book, which is in violation of my original vision of the fate of Heshman Shew Mote and was inspired by changing David Able Saul from a young adult scribe into a a child serf.)