The Farthest Christmas Tree
Out on the gray Northern waves stands an island named for the Farthest Christmas Tree, sole tree of that island, the Island of the Tree Tonunbou.
The tree Tonunbou, hung with glittery stands about its piny limbs, and perfumed by cinnamon and nutmeg dust upon its needles, and turned silver and shadow at midnight by the angel which perches at its tiptop; a patient moonfaced thing holding a trumpet and looking out towards the North for the sign that shall cause it to blow.
The Island Tonunbou is nothing but a finger of rock..
The Island Tonunbou is nothing but a finger of rock pointing up from the sea at the tree which surmounts it, as if the tree had been there before, floating serenely in the stillness of the North, bearing its patient angel. Until some stony god of the deep to win an argument had pointed straight up, saying “There.. There it is, deny me this tree now!” And then had lost interest, the argument being won, even so far as forgetting to retract its craggy finger.
So there stand Island and Tree and Angel, one on top of the other, with the island itself standing on the shifting sea.
The Angel, whose name is also Tonunbou, is not the lone consciousness upon this island, although it never talks with the knight which stands by the base of the tree Tonunbou, ever-vigilant, sword unsheathed and thick bladed like a stalactite growing longer and deadlier from even before the First Christmas.
The name of this knight is Unknown — Knight Defender of the Farthest Christmas Tree. He is a silent one, his surroundings grow clangorous by compare. He is enarmoured like a cuttlefish, all cap-a-pie and the snow which falls regularly in this clime has glaciated upon him so that he moves with a ponderous, icy majesty. His cheeks are red like a bellows and he entertains himself in his guardianship by blowing different designs of mist upon the air.
Below, far below, among the gray waves that break into whiteness upon the knuckled rocks surrounding the Island Tonunbou, frost crocodiles writhe and snap and turn their scaly albino tails to and fro like a strongman’s arm showing muscle.
And that is the way it is for the Knight Unknown, Knight Defender of The Farthest Christmas Tree — the Tree Tonunbou.
The Story was written by IG Agent 71 and is part of soon to be published Chronicalia Of Phantaz.