[GCFL-discuss] Castles and fruitcakes

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

Sorry John, I baked my own fruitcake right after Halloween, according to
my mother's recipe, and if nobody else wants to share it, I'm going to
eat it all myself, just like I did when I was a kid. (If a whole
fruitcake was untouched a few days after Christmas, my mother would put
it up on the shelf by the cereal, wrapped in celophane, and forbid anyone
to touch it until next year, when it was still perfectly good. And she
didn't even use wine in that one.)

Siarlys

Here is my oddball note on Christmas, if anyone has the stamina to read
it:

I've gotten an occasional family letter this Christmas, and even an
emailed jpeg image of an inspirational message. Just for fun, I'm sending
out excerpts from "The Last Castle of Christmas." I think since Dec 2000
I am the only one who has checked out Isaac Asimov's Christmas from the
Milwaukee Public Library -- and I've checked it out every year except
2001, when I was in DC for Christmas. Like many science fiction stories,
the background scene is more inspiring than the details of the plot. So I
have distilled a bit of Christmas on a world thousands of years in the
future, on a planet far away:

The castle-cake smelled vividly of spice. Still warm from the ovens, it
steamed slitghtly in the fading light of afternoon. Its upper towers were
higher than Tessa was tall. When she paused in her work, she could hear
the faint popping of carwa seeds within the walls. They were always baked
into the cake. The heat of the oven and the acid of the stabilizers in
the dough cracked the tough shells of the off-world seeds so that, next
spring, they would sprout all over the fields, where the animals had
carried them. 

Kevin guiltily snatched the sugar-crystal window from his mouth and stuck
it in the appropriate opening. Tessa picked one up herself and
tentatively touched her tongue to it, feeling a guilty pleasure: cloying
sweetness, just cut by the tartness of the binder. Despite herself, she
found herself licking it. It was an unacknowledged privilege of the
labor, the bits and pieces of the construction snuck into eager mouths.
Perin wore the cylinder of the sprayer strapped to his right wrist. He
moved his lower arm delicately, manipulating the nozzle controls with his
fingers. Precise ornaments appeared, garlands, swags, the skulls of
unknown horned animals. With his left hand, Perin trailed glowing stars
and spheres into the setting sugar. The cake castle, always elaborate,
took on another layer of fantasy. Tessa, as always, had no doubt that it
was the finest cake castle in  all of upper Cooperset Canyon.

The castle glowed in the night, a candle in each of its many windows.
Families had strolled through Calrick Bend, to look at the castles in the
night, as was traditional. The castles were ostensibly built as a
stopping place, a caravanserai, for the Traveling Kings, as they searched
the endless stars for their Messiah, born but not yet found. Each family
had one, some small and simple, some ridiculously elaborate, so that the
Kings could freely choose. Perin's was a fine demonstration of his
architectural skill, and was one of the most popular every year. A steady
procession had come through the yard to examine the high ramparts, the
soaring towers, the elaborately decorated screening walls. Children ran
up and peered through the sugar windows at the interior passages, then
ran back to their parents, who offered Perin their congratulations.

Even as it was finished, it began to vanish. Animals came from beneath
the fields to devour the highly edible thing: the long elaborate
spike-scaled legged snakes that dug through the soil and lived in the
tulap tree roots, the field mice, the lumering, hard-shelled land crabs,
all of them in some way necessary to the functioning of the farm ecology.
The castles provided them with food during the coldest and harshest
months of winter, food without which they could not have survived in
adquate numbers to do their work during the growing season. The castle
would slowly slump down into the ground until by the warm days of spring,
when it was completely gone, the shoots of the carwa plants came up
through the earth in all the fields, marking the start of planting.

Next morning's landscape was frosted and silent. The mountains loomed
overhead, the white dusting on their shoulders giving them extra dignity.
Castles stood by their houses, proud battlements, towers, flags and
arches gaily proclaiming the holiday. Children were gathered in their
front rooms eyeing the presents left by the Traveling Kings in gratitude
for assistance on their journey.