Scene the 4^th

That night, at the Devil’s Brew.  It is pre-show time, Jack Patch and Host are sitting at a table, there are other, early comers sitting drinking coffee also.  All are being tended to by the figures in black, which no one notices.

JACK PATCH:…then Decker Powell emerged from the corpse of Lord Pwyll, totally confused.

HOST: Lady Rhiannon still has that block on her thinking?

JACK PATCH: Unfortunately for Pwyll, yes, now he’s gone forever.

HOST: Humans are strange, but you gods are even stranger.  Why would Lord Pwyll choose to die forever that way?  Why didn’t all of you try to awaken Rhiannon’s true nature?

JACK PATCH: God force only intensified the weir, Host, any greater force could have made the trap stronger.  As for Pwyll, his love for Rhiannon immediately over came any desire to continue even his immortal life with her eternal being so threatened.

HOST: Love, I always believed that it was a word humans used to justify doing what their crotches dictated.  Among the gods and immortals pretty much the same as far as I can see, they just have old and worn out humans write poetry about it to justify their lusts while damning humans for the same actions. 

JACK PATCH: You are the cynic aren’t you, Host?

HOST: Always, but look, Jack.  One thing still isn’t clear to me.

JACK PATCH: The unicorn?

HOST: Yeah, how do you all know that it isn’t the enemy?

JACK PATCH: The enemy?

HOST: Figure it out.  What if the whole thing was a trap just to sucker punch Pwyll?  It sure looks like a repeat to me.  Rhiannon trapped in a cave or a caer, if you prefer, Pwyll to the rescue.  Only this time he gets killed.  Was the unicorn really one of the old ones who had a reason to hate him?

JACK PATCH: The only old one that hated Pwyll really wanted to get Rhiannon, remember?  Llwyd was pissed off at her for dumping his brother and marrying Pwyll.  Also, no golden bowl, no chalice, not cauldron, nothing.

HOST: Wasn’t the cave cauldron enough? 

JACK PATCH: It transformed no one, as far as I can tell. 

HOST: How the heaven did they get there to begin with then, what dragged them in?

JACK PATCH: I’m hoping the ladies will be able to fill that in.  The thing I hate about the Mundane Earth is that even I’m forced to function like a mortal unless there’s a weirding place. 

HOST: What about No Name, was he really dead?  Soul dead?

JACK PATCH: Again, I don’t know.  I don’t even know if he was there when Rhiannon got home, or what she did about the empty apartment.

HOST: Sounds as though a lot depends on the unicorn, doesn’t it?

JACK PATCH: More and more it does. 

HOST: Then who or what is it?  You’ve eliminated Llwyd, who else would want Pwyll dead? 

JACK PATCH: Why do you keep assuming it was to kill Pwyll?

HOST: As you said, Llwyd would have wanted to destroy Rhiannon also.  There she was, so weak her birds couldn’t help, unconscious, near death—and no coup de grace. 

JACK PATCH: I don’t necessarily buy into the kill Pwyll idea.  The cave was adequate to keep three goddesses, and any other immortal who entered, trapped for as long as it existed.  It might have been just designed to do that.  In which case the unicorn had to kill Pwyll—and remember it was Pwyll’s idea, he asked Rhiannon and me, both to kill him first.  He knew Decker was mortal, and would dissolve the spell with disbelief.

HOST:  That still leaves the question unanswered, who or what is the unicorn?

JACK PATCH: I’d love to get it in here so I could find out.

Laural enters stage right and sits down with the two men

HOST: stands for a moment as the figures in black seat her, bows slightly.  Lady Reason, how are you ….

LAURAL: Little deserving of the name Reason, I fear.  Just call me Laural, after this day’s horror I have no reason left.

JACK PATCH: How’s Eillaine?

LAURAL: I left her sleeping, she must have cried for hours after we returned home. 

JACK PATCH: The death of Pwyll?

LAURAL: After he first fell, and before Decker woke up, as his bloody body rested there, with that hole where the heart was, for a moment, he became the form of Decker, dead and bloodied.  When we left all she could say was “My poor Decker, murdered again, because of me.”

HOST: That must have hurt horribly.  I don’t understand much of mortal or immortal thought, but even I can feel the pain that must have caused her.

JACK PATCH: It’s good she’s resting now.  Laural, I’m amazed you’re not exhausted too.

LAURAL: I was, but I’ve got an anger burning in me.  It’s the first time since my creation I’ve had an emotion, other than the sadness, then fear, from this morning.

Eillaine has always had the luxury of emotion, or so I called those feelings.  Now, I wish to hell, I’d never felt them.

HOST: Anger at the captivity?

LAURAL: Not so much that as what they or it did to No Name.  Some of the essence of Lord Pwyll will remain in Decker. What I saw when I looked in that window was poor No Name chained to the floor, his human flesh had been stripped from him, in places his bones were sticking through the muscle tissue, blood was every where, he was totally lifeless.  I could see that they had broken his legs and arms, gouged out his eyes, cut off his … it was so …. I felt such … I was struck dumb, I fainted.  Now, awake, I want something reason has never demanded, has always rejected.  I want vengeance.  I want what ever did this delivered into my hands.  I want to reward them or it with the same treatment.

JACK PATCH: Laural, for centuries you’ve seen wars and torture and death from your Heavenly Tower, with out flinching.  Why is it so different now?  Forgive me, my lady, I don’t want to seem hard, but I must know.  There is, I fear, that dread storm nearing.  Is your heart and anger real enough to sustain you in this?

LAURAL: Jack?  You didn’t know?

JACK PATCH: Know?

LAURAL: You didn’t know who he was?

JACK PATCH: No Name?  I assumed, as you had said, he was one of your Father’s angels.  The judge, the keeper of the scales.

LAURAL: Jack, think, when it was time to judge Decker, what did he do?

JACK PATCH: He refused to judge….o my!  He was….

LAURAL: Yes, Jack, our brother.

JACK PATCH: Then with His death…

LAURAL: Yes, Jack, with his death, our brother, who’s name was…

JACK PATCH: Humanity is nearly lost now, yes I know your brother’s name, he was the only one that could sustain them.

HOST: Jack, I don’t understand?

LAURAL: Faith, Host, my brother’s name was “Faith.”

JACK PATCH: And with the death of Faith, there is nothing to protect mankind from the evil that slowly makes its way towards this little city on the bay.

Customers begin to move in and the curtain falls