CHAPTER XXXVII. ONCE UPON A TIME

      Once upon a time there was a beggar who was born in a golden cradle, because the spirits of the universe, many times indomitable and often indecipherable, wanted to confuse his birth and in the bed of fortune, an orphan, they laid him. It is well known that they do as they please, but it has to be believed that they know what they are doing; and wrote that he should start his life as a king. And thus was born the Beggar King, not knowing who he really was, in his golden cradle. –You can see, Nike, that beggars are born wherever they want; and they do not remain at any time or in any space, for from all of them they are expelled.

   But just as worthy is the abode of the poor, in the first hour of tears, as that of the powerful, because it is given to no one to choose the name or the street. And they had to locate somewhere the threshold of his road, which they had decided it had to be long, and painful. Therefore they preferred to conceal his identity, so one day, when he saw himself, he had to accept himself or get frightened. And the true protagonists of the stories, whether they are noble or villains, are always given ordeals to stand, and ninety-five out of a hundred heroes fail. And if this is to be the story of a beggar born in the cradle of a king, you have to tell the stages he has lived until he found out who he is. -All stages, Nike, although some of the most revered codes must be sullied, or you have to violate even the one which says that there are things you should not say, that must be deduced with your eyes, without speaking, or the greater indignity appears: the offense of not understanding the feelings of a beggar. If they are mentioned here, it is because once the king did not catch the calling of the Earth; and his horror does not let him see what his wisdom did understand; and you have to take away cold from his heart, with words to overwhelm it, but not to break it. And, however, you have to take the man who listens one shock after another, as there are many certainties that nobody ever revealed to him; some truths that if he had a story teller, should be told him, because he is not aware of his greatness, his dignity and his beauty. He doesn’t know that he has more than one traitor and that his important secrets often have been stripped naked and exposed. That is why the narrator is almost omniscient. But it is difficult to follow the chronological order because in every fable narrative threads intersect and are sewn or comes undone whenever a character, in chronological order, enters the plot. Perhaps that is the reason why all stories should be told twice at least: someone who knew it should tell it to a second person and that person to a third; and perhaps on occasions it is narrated with the knots of the skein clear and tidy. And so, in the central chapter of every story, the main events are seen again and the story is rewritten.

- But I'm losing the thread. I don't know if I'm going to tell it. And you are still cold, My Mate.

-It is true that I am increasingly cold, Luke, but your words are beautiful and I want to hear your story. Continue, please! 

-I'll try.

                                                                                

   So Mother Universe and Father Earth located his birth where they wished; but they were mother and father; and from them he learned to listen to their calls – More than once, Nike. It could not be otherwise-. Poorly the narrator can discern what for him it is mist about his early years, but he imagines him disoriented, lost in an oppressive country that he felt it was not his country. But the exiled kings do not hate the fictitious homeland where they have been enthroned. The kings that are great never betray; neither the homeland where they were born nor, once they have found it, the true one. That’s why much later, when he arrived to his motif by Verôme, he understood that there were places, people and loyalties he could not betray. And if he abhorred of fortunes and whims, if he felt repentance because of his origins, the king should understand, as he has understood each one of the codes of beggars without asking them, and without anyone explaining him, because they were in his blood, that dignity and beauty are everywhere: -also in wealth, Nike, they may also be found in wealth, as in dirt, hunger, disease and poverty.

   In his first steps in life the Beggar King was surrounded by a court of false wise men, who taught him very soon to accumulate solitudes in the form of treasures, although they never explained to him what for (perhaps neither did they know what for). And if he behaved with vileness - if he did-, it was inevitable, because there is no dignity without indignity and from a real beggar both are treasured. And we have to expose naked his miseries, because without them he would not have been able to merge later with greatness. And years later, when someone who loved the king -but this character will enter into the story without stridency, without false pride or false modesty; he will get into the plot when it is necessary to respect the chronological order - made him understand the hardness of each course and that he should not suffer for not taking an instant decision as the beggars he knew, he wanted to make him see that all paths, even if they seem alike in the essential things, differ; and I hope the narrator is able to explain them, how losing everything, they won it all, and they found a fire which sheltered them but the king had more pain and a longer exile, because he could lose it all after losing it all; and with a cold in his soul more rodent than the weather. And yet, what courage there is on the chest of this real man! And how he knew how to place himself before his fate looking at it in the face not knowing whether he was going to be loved or destroyed! But this is going too far in the story.

–You are trembling, Nike, get a little closer to me, so that you can feel my heart.

   You have to put all your heart– continues the narrator throbbing - to describe the life of the king trying not to overwhelm him, so that overwhelming is not breaking, although there is nothing wrong in moving. Because a beggar knows the difference between compassion and commotion. You do not pity he who moves along his path with dignity; and those we meet in ours and we do not know, we lack wisdom to judge how he lives his greatness or his vileness. It is a problem of lack of information. And those we meet we love or we don’t love, without pitying them. If it is the former, you come to recognition of acceptance; if it is the latter, the beggar gets away of his path without stridency. But you must not leave commotion, the favorite daughter of tenderness, knock with its knuckles on the door; you must let it in. And those he loves most, even if the king does not know, are also those who love him most. But they doubt whether in his learning of begging his beloved fellow mates must accompany him quietly, to avoid him horrors and sorrows, or speak to take him out of his exile; and help him make his decision - if he has not decided yet - making him understand that there is no reason for any exile. But perhaps that way they would push him to an irrevocable situation which can be bitter -very hard and bitter, Nike!-, or somewhat sweet. Bitter or sweet as freedom. –Thus the Street, my beggar, the mother and the whore! If it is true that they did not know what to do, a grey dusk of October they saw the arrival of a bloody spear of cold air that sank its poisoned tip in the heart of the king; a wind of mortal terror that also struck, as a gob of spit, the faces of a woman and a man who were getting warm next to him, because they felt how he shook before a new fear of infinite loss for an event that he had not caused, for everything was due to a rectification of the universe. Evil wind that could bring a second and more painful exile... or much worse! And that the narrator, who may have also been a beggar, cannot permit it: that thorn they have to extract to the crown of the king’s pain forever.

-My God! I'm tearing you up! I'm biting as a new basilisk and my heart is gonna burst with yours! I can't see you like that. I look you in the eyes and I cannot find their light and, however, they return me so much cold! But nobody is going to take you what you love most, My Mate; and I have to make you understand that what you are given belongs to you by right; but to do this it is necessary to see the facts with the good sense of the chronological order, following step by step what the laws of the universe have been dictating. That’s why I invented this story, remember: monsters of my imagination, nothing else, although the characters are fancied tender and known. And I had to do so, do you understand? So you know that it's over: that I won't allow any damaging wind to freeze you. But how many times we have taught you not to be afraid of your heart? And in mine you are and you will be, my beggar, and it and the universe are beating at the same time to express to you that both love you, we love you. Do not cry that way, Nike, I can't stand it! You have always shown me that you're a man, and if you have to cry, do it, but with your head on my chest, that smells of Earth. Dear mate! I don't know what to do: how to tell this story or I had better leave it here.

-Luke, if I'm afraid, your sweet words are giving me courage to hear your story just as you have imagined it. And I promised you. I will try to resist the hardness or tenderness - and both of them kill – of what you have to tell. You've said more than once that I've behaved like a worthy man. I will seek my strength to hear it until the end because you have put your beauty in the tale, and I owe it to you, My Mate; so I'll try. But I really will cry. You are making me see in your king dignity in his unworthiness and I need to know what happened to him. You seem to appreciate him so much that I do not believe that you have reserved him a bad outcome; but what ever you have decided I will listen to you. And if you are biting me as a basilisk, it's because I am looking at you and I cannot stand the clarity that I know your eyes are sending me, which can almost pierce this cursed darkness. Give me time, Luke! Or perhaps, as you yourself say, give me chronological order. I'm going to lie in your heart, since you have taught me not to despise what is given to you; I will feel your smell of Earth and thus I will not distinguish your eyes; and that way the catoblepas will not kill me. Go on, please!

-Nike, your words give me the confidence I need. I want to make you get some heat, my beggar, I have to do it! I'll see if I can push aside commotion for a second. I will try to continue without any more shocks.

   It is true that the king amassed riches without purpose. But it is also true that he did not follow the path of his parents and chose a different vocation, a different adventure. And he put his heart in what he was doing, even his blood. Because there is no work more worthy than others, nor is it either unworthy the alms of the beggar. Each one is in their place with dignity and therefore ever their paths intersect. So, one day he was working among sharks, people without a soul; and yet, capable of unexpected flashes, because among his coworkers there was already a beggar in essence. Beggars!... If the protagonist of this story, down the roads that led him to maturity, ever ran into one, he would possibly be disoriented, without information; his star did not guide him about appropriate behavior. -But it is not known that he ever insulted a beggar, Nike, that cannot be-. Although later... time will tell. But there are no reasons for horror: the king of this story never insulted a beggar; rather the universe would have shrunk. But that is another story, already told.

   And if in those years he did not show his beauty, we have to go back to his first teachings, hard and dry. What they had of despicable is thar his teachers (ill advised by those who have been called wise and do not deserve that beautiful name), always taught him that passions must be hidden. His first lesson learned with fire was that a king should look for a queen. They did not explain to him that there are kings whose hearts have been created by the universe to warm up in the home of another king's heart. -Everything in chronological order, Nike, do not shudder; feelings cannot be hidden because then a hero finds himself surrounded by traitors-. And in his total helplessness, he came to believe the precepts he was taught, so that for a long time he was in Shade, a sign that has to be placed opposite Liberty, until it was necessary to open his heart through the bite of a basilisk or catoblepas. Of both. –The two of them were, Nike, in their correct chronological order-. So hard they had made his heart that he even believed that he had lost it, so deeply they had buried it. And meekly he was deluded; and it could not be otherwise, a lot of ladies from the court started to come to his sumptuous bedrooms. But you should not think that he treated them badly: actually, he never knew them. And thus, he continued looking in women what he could not find: an image as a mirror of himself. Also in those years the wise men of the court taught him, like a mirage, the delights of the poisonous concoctions they used to brew. They had the power of lying and making you numb; and with just one sip, it burned your throat and clouded your pain. And the Beggar King, who didn't know what he was, needed to lose the suffering. It was a time of darkness. Darkness... Shade. And, however, he was in his Star, the needle which pointed his north among the constellations, and the first star which would lead him to Regulus. But perhaps he could then perceive its pristine glares. Because the narrator believes that the king had already found his prince. He worked with him and he would end up being the sixth motif by Verôme: Clarity, The Luminous Beggar – it is the name which the tale gives to this character, Nike, because this new beggar has come more than once with luminous moments into the story-: a wise man, a tamer of snakes and African moons, first bite in the deep of his vulnerable flesh. But the king could not believe that he had fallen in love with Clarity; he remained in the shadows. And when something is not accepted, the best of men is lost and cracks. And thus, denying the direction of his love, not considering it worthy, his hatred was a dart thrown to a noble gentleman. - But it did not reach him, Nike, it could not hit him. Because you cannot injure a beggar who has already found Recognition of Acceptance.

   In this new pain of the king the narrator does not want to be long. The tamer of snakes, on the other hand, had another kind of darkness; but he was bathed by the rain of January when he could have lost more than the light of his reason. Because it was an infuriated rainy night, when The Luminous Beggar met The Beggar Master (or Beggar Sorcerer), an amazing man who had faced fate or the laws of the universe before him, and who, tested in his motif by Verôme, had the courage of the heroes of the great epopees and left everything to stay naked, hugging the ground with what this would bring: wealth or misery, freedom or slavery, vileness or dignity. Perhaps the abruptness of his decision, the Greatness of his heroism, the Horror in his early days of Hunger - opposite signs, if they are not understood-, made him look at himself with pride and he measured the three men who came after him according to his own scale of courage. Poor heart that always feared rats and the bites of temptation and betrayal! Poor heart that loved two queens and had no throne because he failed to choose between the two! Poor heart that bathed in the same waters of January as his Luminous Beggar! And what jealousy he felt, what cold, in the days after the rain, when he had to wait to see if he could see the bravery of his mate! Jealousies and fears that explain many things. Because with him he had found the beauty of another man tested at the same moment that he was put to the test. It was like a bonfire that warmed him, a fire which had a repetition when, long time later, Verôme would again be defeated by his beloved Dirty Beggar – do not frown, Nike, it is not pejorative. Nothing happens by chance (so you have been taught), and all the names have been assigned. Because of this, the Beggar Master's spirit was inflamed, seeing how each motif by Verôme after his was played with tune notes. But he was cheated in the eighth, because the three traitors of the king - they were three, Nike - never gave him any information. And that explains that his fire, lit by the arrival to his homeland of the last beggar, was put out with his departure. He did not know that the king actually was exiled; He did not know the music that was to accompany the eighth motif by Verôme, which would still have the hardness and extension of an epic poem.

   But sometime it has to be told the greatest indignity of the Beggar King, penultimate milestone on his long path of stateless person, before he found himself. When he saw his prince with a sorcerer, fierce poisoned snakes came out of his mouth towards them. He insulted them. It could not be otherwise, because a snake for a snake, an eye for an eye, the eyes of The Luminous Beggar years later would bite him; and with the most unexpected venom: understanding. It was his first vileness. Required to accompany his painful learning; so when at last he found his heart he did not reject it. - But he never insulted them for beggars, Nike. Let this be clear in the story! He could not: the king needed to know himself and there came the first flash of who he was, who he would be. Using his words, he then received a powerful slap. As a beggar, he never insulted his reflection; he only did so as a man.

   So far has been told the hard stages that the beginning of his road had: ephemeral queens in his bedroom, sharks without a soul, a fleeting prince he had lost forever, mists and obscurations. Then... three and a half years of eclipse. Too long for the celestial cycles! And he no longer had anything. But he still had to be rocked by the arcana of rot: despair, degradation, descent into hell. The king forgot himself and found that his feet took him to places that he would have never dreamed to arrive: unhealthy clubs, infected slums where the excrement of his kingdom took refuge: pimps, whores, criminals, bastards... (All individuals that the wise of the court had never wanted to introduce to him, whose existence hid from him). But he never met them; he simply shared with them the stinking drinks, until drop by drop, blood by blood, he was poisoned. He needed an antidote, and rarities of the spirits, rectifications, it had to come from a snake. His steps had brought him close to poverty, close to where those who had nothing were, or perhaps they had it all or both things at the same time: near beggars, close to his homeland. And on a night of a July whatever, in a bleak field, the Prince and the King met again. But the former, now a beggar, no longer conveyed him any Clarity to his heart, which he had almost lost complete. But the laws of the universe act at the edge of the abyss and will rectify whenever they wish if they want one of their own people to be saved: the universe shrank; it began to sound the eighth motif by Verôme. It was the time to inform him of the truth of his birth; the time to confront the king with the beggar, to know himself or get frightened. One other vileness - the last one, Nike, again in the same direction, and finally he heard the unappealable judgment: it had to be a bite. The harmful animal was stalking him, waiting to bite his blood so that it was spilled gushing and, once spilled and empty, to blow some new blood into his heart; it was waiting for him to kill him and resurrect him. It was a basilisk because he never saw its eyes; the catoblepas would come later. That was a signal that left its luminous message: basilisk, little king, the second star indicating him the path of Regulus. The universe decided that he should remain in that outskirt when the arrival of the little king, was heralded, who also had to bite him.

-I can hardly go on. My god! How it hurts me that inconsolable crying! Damn it: there are things that should not be said!; I'm being unworthy in front of the most worthy mate that a man can have; because I know that there is a star that you love more than your life: the one which is shining most brightly in my heart. And if a character reminds you of someone very dear, cry, My Beggar; let your pain overflow so you never again have to suffer. Forgive me for what I'm doing. But do not cry in that way. Hold my hand, strong! And tell me something quickly, please; I want to know that you are ok.

-Luke, I am not going to say anything; I can't say anything. I am fine. Go on, but let me hear you tearfully: I cannot do anything else.

-You can hardly speak, My Mate! And neither can I. We can’t name him without tears until our hearts are broken. Both of us. But what beauty there is in you, even when you don't have any strength to keep on! Courage, Nike! Not everything will be tears. Now there come the most beautiful chapters of the tale. And if you cannot resist it, burst into tears, like you've always done, without shame. But if you think I'm going to kill you, stop me soon, I beg you!

-No, Luke. Now it will only kill me not to hear your tale until the end. I am shaken, but I don't know if I am hot or cold. I cannot decide because I can't think. Continue, please.

-Also I need strength. I will continue, but do not let go of my hand, Nike!

   It could not be otherwise: the universe, with its legion of eternal spirits and a superb combination of improbable signs turned into a plan, had led him there to give him eleven days among his own people, days with its eleven nights in which he should learn, doubt everything, wonder; which would test him before himself and his countrymen. Therefore we have to analyse with severity, and with infinite tenderness! his behavior. But if for the King it was a gift from the universe, it was also, and especially for beggars, who thus had the opportunity to meet one of themselves, although he walked wandering and wrapped in strange and magnificent attire: one who was to move them.

   After the bite of the harmful animal he was taken to a miserable tent, where The Luminous Beggar and The Beggar Master saved him from more than one death. And if it is true that he spoke again and believed that he offended, he actually raved: he was doubly intoxicated. From The Luminous Beggar he was going to receive his second bite, because when the eyes of the former met his, the king saw in those lagoons, in its depth pearls, what few mortals have ever had the chance to see: a radiant, touchingly crystal tenderness that had drunk from the springs of true understanding. And that flash came from the eyes of him who he had believed to be his enemy! -That was the real catoblepas, Nike, that strange animal, because its eyes, which are lethal, should not be seen-. And lethal they were for the Beggar King, from whose ashes would end up being born the King Beggar. Yes, it was a slap in the face, an explosion, a jolt. At that moment he grasped the calling of the Earth and he knew how to act. His following words already announced what that new bite had done to him: he called free the only two beggars that so far he had had the opportunity to meet; and thus, an eye for an eye, Liberty was the first gift that the universe gave him; and the other seven came with it. In fact, the eight gifts came to him in chronological order, one after the other, but all at once. Because after Liberty, or next to it, came Horror. The King Beggar felt repulsion to remind his words, those of that day and those of previous years, never forgotten, and apologised. And then... sometimes the simplest things are the most touching, and any narrator can go crazy trying to find inside the expressions that describe greatness. But the effort is required, because there must be a story teller who specifies where, when and why this man was great, indisputably great. He knows that he has heard more than once, from those who loved him most, that he had been; and he also knows that he does not believe it: he assumes that they are only tender words, immovable faith, but only faith. –It is more than faith, My Beggar, or else see what happened next-: the king, like many heroes of famous stories, was tempted. They offered him to be healed by the clean hands of the healers of the Court, but he refused. –He refused, Nike! At that time he understood that he should renounce the homeland which he had believed his own and knew in a luminous way which country he belonged to. To stay where he was and to wait to see what he could learn was his first choice, brave and wise. He had just been touched by Wisdom. And very soon, although no one had explained to him the rules, he respected the place in which he was and the people who lived there and there was no need for anybody to clarify any code. His behavior that night, already a son of Dignity, so would demonstrate it. Because only thus you can understand that he accepted with no rebellion - because it does not protest he who agrees- the cracks of the poor tent, the smell of the humble, scarcity, the little food, cold... the hard stone as a pillow. The man that for all these things we will continue calling king achieved Greatness when he recognized as equal to his fellow mates and decided not only not to question anything (nothing seemed to him out of place), but to adopt the resolution to strive to understand it, as a traveller newcomer to a world new and different but to which, however, he feels that he loves; and precisely there where ninety-five out of a hundred would have succumbed. The king glowed; the heralds of Clarity were being seen; and this flooded him when knowing that he was among beggars, he assumed that he should live as a beggar. And, in his words and gestures began to be shown the simplicity of Beauty. It moves to see his first short sentences, his first babbling; they betrayed his way of feeling what he had before him in order to make it his and love it. And all with fear of offending! He never objected to what he was given nor did he protest for the many things he lacked, because everything was in the right place. He never tried to alter the lives of these women and men who he loved unreservedly when he met them, because they were all on their right places. He never judged any of the seven with nothing that was not justice, or tenderness (another name for the same thing); he was always a surprisingly lucid impartial judge. There was no compassion; there was no need: everyone wanted to live as they lived. Everything was on its right place! It is no wonder the deep love they felt for him. Yes, he had brought with him Commotion, the sign whose coming was expected: it was already with them the eighth motif by Verôme. Liberty, Horror, Wisdom, Dignity, Greatness, Clarity, Beauty, Commotion! The eight gifts came to him and in him they remained. That place had pleased the king and he thought that as long as he was there he would try to be one more of them. No, it never existed the shadow of that ghost named the gentleman of beggars; not even at the beginning of those dazzling eleven days.

   If you think that this behavior is the most used in any who visit the outskirts or reside a time with beggars; if you can’t see its greatness for uncommon, note that they had hosted again and again various types of people: relatives, friends, fellow mates in misery, occasional acquaintances, and in general passengers circulating through different paths, but all guests of this same great inn. And among those passers-by were many Christians of different churches, in which compassion was obvious. They wrongly read the bottom of the hearts, because they are used to read little more than their sacred texts - those who do, not everyone-, where there already comes predetermined how you should recite from the first word of the Word to the last, with no free or ambiguous interpretations. Blessed be the Word, who thus is read in the book of books to teach men the straight line! They read wrongly and they followed the exact chronological order of their demonized Trinity: Compassion, Charity, and Sin. They pitied beggars because they weren't able to see beyond their dirty clothes, their hunger and scarcity; and did not observe that they had succeeded in getting from the universe part of its beauty. They aimed at them with the loaded gun of charity to transform them, or to not transform them: they were not sick and they visited them; they had no thirst and they gave them to drink; they lived blissfully naked and they were dressed; but they never understood them. And, in a mean way, they tried to explain their poverty with the clumsy excuse of the need for atonement of their sins. They told them that God loved them but that He was making them go with pain through this world, because it is a valley of tears and life is made to cross it without sticking to the ground. They lied to them telling them that only next to Him they could be happy; and their blindness prevented them to see that they already were. They spoke of redemption, a beautiful word! But they forgot that redemption had been discovered long before the great religions sought to reveal the near gods. And the seven beggars knew well the motifs by Verôme: each, in their turn, had had a loving dialogue with the universe mother and had been redeemed.

   Those were the evangelists who were only passing; and although they also possess dignity, as every son of God-Fate, it shudders to see that they will never be able to understand Him. But there were others who stayed awhile and it is more difficult to find reasons to love them. They were made of a more dangerous matter, and we could identify them by the name, empty in them of so much using it, of martyrs. They are distinguished by the rare quality of feeling happy in misfortune. They thought, perhaps, that thus they would climb faster the tower which leads to heaven. For this climb, however, they needed ropes and they wanted beggars to be the ones who provided them, allowing themselves to be evangelized. They were looking for misery and believed they had found it there where there was only wealth. Their faces were illuminated when they showed at every step, at every piece of hard bread or every day of dirt and fog -this damn city of fog! The cross of martyrdom. They never asked, they never hesitated, they never learned. They were suffering hardship so they could live the splendor of the sacrifice (that light of blinding stupidity), and they became mystical. With so much indignity beggars only could return them the same coin: they spat them their own compassion. The Christians left those places being pitied. And they were never called friends; they were called servants, for the servant does not know what his master does.

   But it is about time the tale returns to the king. See how and how much he moved and how different was his behavior. After the days of his intoxication, in the midst of fevers, delirium and other shocks, he could finally meet the rest of the beggars. He heard their stories with interest, with the mood of one who has all the time ahead to understand and love; and so their voices accompanied him forever, friendly voices which stayed inside, whispering to him. He distinguished them as if he had known them from the cradle and so much did he identify with them that he acquired a new quality: to name them accurately, as if he could perceive their true and secret names. And that’s why the Beggar King will also be called The Beggar of Spirits, because these were not only his makers, but they live next to him; and that is the reason why he can catch the hidden parts of their souls with such perfection.

   And he would be introduced first to the woman that the king would call the Lady of Shade. And in the dialogue they had he was deducing that apparent weakness, these traces of old age and need hid the solid pillar that held all the beggars; he knew that she was made of solid iron, that she had traveled almost all her road with the dignity of having won her first place in the chronological order, proud of her Liberty, with which she decided to stay on the street. He could perceive that under her wretched clothing he was able to discover a true lady, who would one day face the end of her road with courage, struggling up to her last breath for the beauty of life; and she was both tender and awfully wise, and therefore it was necessary for her to cover her clairvoyance with a veil of darkness. And spirits like to dwell at times in the dark; and The Beggar of Spirits understood well this Lady of Shade and he was moved. So much that he held her in his arms and kissed her. And the sublimity of that hug grew in both hearts up to the dimensions of the universe.

   And he showed his royalty again when he met the second beggar, for whom he also had a beautiful name: The Servant of the Wind. Because the spirits that inhabit The Beggar of the Spirits kept the same direction as the winds of this new woman; and spirits and winds danced together and entangled. It was his first encounter with the beauty of despair, with the positive sense of the second gift. He saw that the frame of this lady was largely a fragile glass, but he learned that glass does not break easily with the wind and that it reaches its peak if it is selected for mounting on splendid stained-glass windows. Therefore the king contacted Horror as through the calm light of greens, reds and blues of the stained glass windows, through which you can see horizons of prodigy and sensuality. He sensed that this lady was seduced, and occasionally outraged by the four winds, to which she served since once she was defeated by the four horrors. And we all know that winds are demons that bring the eight negative signs: when it is windy there is Shade, and the road is not always perceived with clarity; they generate Hunger, because there are destructive gales that devastate crops and cause Scarcity; they get Cold into the body; they remove the dust and mud and bring Dirt; they can lift your clothes or undress you and make you stumble and fall, and they place you in situations of Shame; when they are fierce, you cannot move forward, you get to nowhere and they cause Exclusion; and with so much disappointment a walker feels the Temptation to abandon his road. -They are not in chronological order, Nike, but the demons do not respect it-. Demons, yes, but that woman is more than winds. She was saved by another terrible force of nature: motherhood. With the tears that she had poured because of the Empress (or Venus Verticordia, for she transformed the hearts); with the dagger of Hunger through her hours, she was brave, however, to become Venus Genetrix; and with that power at times she became the Mistress of the Wind and defeated it. Oh, glass of a stained glass window, Spica of Virgo, Fomalhaut, priestess of Horror, Venus Erycina, compass rose! And she still had to be the grandmother of the little king. The newcomer was in search for some intimate corner of his landscape for her; and both surrounded in a new embrace of commotion.

   And it was smoke that anyone could breathe in the tent where he was recovering, and its usual inhabitant was the next to go to see him. We know that the spirits are smoke and The Beggar of Spirits breathed in the smell of smoke the essence of another soul. And he would find the key to his secret name: The Selective Sharer. The King understood that he was in the presence of a worthy gentleman, virile and tender, who used to protect his heart with the mask of shyness; because he had shared it many times and many times they had hurt him, and since then he was careful in the selection of new recipients. But he was wise, and Dignity was his sign, and he was certain that it was better to bet your card and being wrong sometimes if you want your blood to circulate in good condition. It is the wisdom of choosing which stone you can trip over again; and understanding that there is ugliness in not loving some of your own mistakes, the most beautiful ones; and greatness even in pain, sometimes he kept on sharing it, risking they returned it to him in shatters. Not even now he was frightened and he chose to gamble his heart before one he thought deserving to receive his delivery. And he was making a deck of cards with pieces of the beauty of his heart. And he was sharing it little by little with the king, as he would know him. He gambled and won, because his confidence was never betrayed. The King Beggar did not break his beats; he preferred to caress them. Also... on the Selective Sharer hung the spectrum of a terrible threat, which is still hot: a prophecy whose final outcome is unknown. –In essence the fate that awaits us all, Nike. Is it not the same sharp blade hanging over each neck, even if we ignore when it is going to fall? But this beggar does not show any fear and if the memory comes to him of what may happen, he shrugs his shoulders, looks toward the ground and spits it; thus he takes it off his mind and he goes on with determination. His sputum does not disdain fate; it is just his manly way to await it. The beggar and the king became one in that first hug. In the second hug, which would come later, they spilled. 

-Let me take breath, Nike. I need to breathe. I hope I am not tiring you with my story.

-No, I'm not tired. I cannot be seeing how you have sought that the new characters - the real protagonists - are referred in all their beauty. And some sorrows go away thanks to the efforts you have made in creating them and the heat that you have put in each syllable that you dedicate them, or each syllable that you use for the beggar of the golden cradle. Let me call him thus, Luke! So much heat that to be cold now would be ingratitude. But anyway, if it returned, let it stay; I will shrug my shoulders, will look towards the ground and spit it. As you can see, I'm still learning from you, always learning from you, My Mate! Do not worry. I will not scorn my fate. Even if the winds become ice, I would go on with determination.

-I don't know who learns from whom, My Beggar. You go on surprising me, over and over again. Well, Nike! That has always been your manly way of looking at life. You don't know Shame, My Mate, and there is no reason for you to feel it soon, or for cold. Soon I will need your help in the tale, but I see with pleasure that you had already come into it. And how am I going to object if your first word was love, the love addressed to three of the characters in this tale, not true and, however, so similar to three beggars who have bitten both our hearts? Finally, in the midst of so many bites, let me, if I can, cradle you with my poor lines. And promise me that you will keep that virile attitude!

-I promise you. I will be loyal to you, Luke. I will respond to your effort with mine. I don't know whether I will have pain, or cold, because I do not know what is to come; but I fear not, no longer! You won’t see me as a coward. Nor will I feel shame. I've not talked about your king and I won't until you ask me my opinion about him or his behavior. But I'm still drinking from your words and your narrative style... So I will tell you it does not protest he who agrees. If at some point you have seen me shaking... I was feeling no shame; it has been a very different shock: call it surprise.

-Nike... the story will continue with two new characters that were very dear to the protagonist, and the story of the Royal Road will eclipse some time to tell their stories in detail. You're right: it is best to advance your literary advice and that you freely opine on everything from the King Beggar that has been said so far.

-I will try to be concise, Luke, because yours is the fable. I don't want to be long in a literary criticism, as you call it, which is not necessary. I don't know if the beggar of the golden cradle was as beautiful as you describe him, but it is your way of looking at him and it is a beautiful way of looking at him, and before that, I cannot protest. Mostly because I think that you've captured his heart, and you like him and...

- And I shall never stop liking him. You were going to say that, were you not?

-I don't know what I was going to say... Well, I will make a new effort to express myself. I think that you have reflected the most important thing: how much he values the beloved voices that inhabit him (those of his fellow mates). And you have shown both his dignity and his indignity – you are making me like your king and I like both -. All that is fine with me, but maybe you cover him with more beauty than he has. Let me follow, Luke! I've learned enough from you as to accept, and not reluctantly, that it is true that he has some beauty, but not more than the others. There is nothing in his path that the feet of the other beggars have not traveled before. All the characters that you have been drawing should be kings.

-Kings of the Earth... They all are in my thoughts. But I don't want to change their names, although all of them are, because those beautiful nicknames, or some of them at least, the King Beggar invented them. And there are many reasons to call them thus. But about him, Nike, or about his steps, would you like to say anything else? Taking for granted that he is a creature of my imagination.

-Yes, Luke, because so you prefer. I would say that everything you have described about his road is true: his teachings of vain ambition, his days of poisoning concoctions, his bites, and... I think he would be better understood if he is a king whose heart has been created by the universe to warm up in the home of another king’s heart. So... other parts of your history acquire coherence, because there it follows that he put his love in the light transmitted by The Luminous Beggar, then a prince in his Star. Yes, first needle that pointed north in the dark sidewalk of the king. Surely that is the reason why cowardly to receive that clarity, he offended him.

 -Thus speak men, Nike! They are the words of a real man, or if you will allow me, they are the words of a king. I accept the criticism, not severe, which you have done, except for one thing: it is not exaggerated to give him that name. God! I'm going to cry and I do not wish to do so at this moment, when there is so much to tell and there has to get into the story the beggar who he loved most. To prevent this, I beg you let me continue calling you My Mate, making sure that nothing is going to prevent that you call me so; we still have many days together in the streets, My Beggar. 

-Thanks, My Mate! And I have nothing else to add at this time. Continue whenever you want, Luke.

   One by one the man who was recovering got to know the seven beggars. But there are still two to pass. And one of them was very important to him, and much loved. He is not distinguished by any quality of the others, there's nothing that makes him stand out, but he had relevance in the story of the king. Just for this reason the story is going to be longer with him, because every human being, in its individual insignificance, becomes transcendent in relation to the life of someone else. And this is beautiful, because if it is a fantasy the false modesty of believing oneself to be designated by the universe, it also is the false pride or despair, thinking that we walk our time as in a vast uninhabited wilderness. At some point in each route at a junction where two travelers meet, someone will give us value; and the path becomes the much more fruitful the many more crosses you have walked, having left a mark of our beauty. Thus, the importance or irrelevance of this new character is like that of any other traveller. But if the hero had a story teller, he would like to hear all about this beggar. Therefore he will be told things he is unaware of, and will be told again what he knows, trying to fill it all with beautiful words, because the king so would like it. Let there be room then for a small tale within the tale and let the tale start again:

   "Once upon a time there was a beggar who was born in a wooden cradle, because the spirits of the universe, always indecipherable but always fair and wise, wanted to confuse his birth and wrote that he should travel his lane as a tree. Because its roots feed from the water of the Earth. And those who created him anticipated that he would only be a real man when he recognized himself as a beggar and he fell in love with the earth. That’s why the arcana of the mother created him like the image of a tree; and in a solid, warm and fertile ground they planted him. And that's how this beggar also began without knowing who he was, in his wooden cradle. And it was good the mud of his childhood; and he was the offspring of two trees of rooted foundations. He should have grown strong and beautiful, upright and pointing to the sky. It is true that he looked like a beautiful promise of strength and that it was springing up in its trunk, lazily, sketches of future branches. But the growth of the more solid of the trees can be spoilt if from the beginning it is not strengthened against the swaying of the treacherous winds - again the winds, Nike! It is inevitable to mention them once and again-. His progression was cut short and it was slowly drying up: his sap got rotten because his faith got rotten and this Tree-Beggar needed a faith. He had looked for it in God-Fate; he had tried in the army. All in vain. Or perhaps not, because staying in the army, in the most unexpected way, one day would be good to him to be saved. They were times of disorientation for this poor devil, who not knowing he was a beggar, desperately longed for a certainty that came to rescue him: he was unaware that it existed and that it was awaiting him with loving patience. But in his darkness... Shade, he did not know how to discern, and in a hard moment in his life - very hard, Nike!-, believing that it was faith, he found idolatry. Thus he ended up with the bald people, bending his arm about thirty degrees - sexagesimal system-, but from the vertical and with the palm facing the ground: starting error for a beggar. During a time he was with his head bald. The top had then no branches, buds or leaves; it looked like the renunciation of a sky to point to and a horizon to watch, just vacant land on the top of his skull. His growth had slowed and he had lost almost all of the wood from which he was made from the cradle; and in these conditions it is impossible to find out if something like a heart continues to beat between its hollows. The time he was with the bald people only taught him to become withered, without any beauty. And the hate was his only creed. He learned to hate any wood that was not of the same kind that the one he was dressed of: that of the trees of different species and color, rich in hues; that of those equal in gender which have no shame in touching and approaching their crowns and interlacing their knotty fingers to give one another shelter and protect themselves together against the blizzard; or those others who decide to move away from the shady and fragrant forest refuge, and get planted in valleys less inhabited and safe, but more beautiful, because there they win Liberty with the outstretched hand of their branches waving in the wind."

   "But his worst indignity still awaited him among the shadows. It was written that this would be the only one of the eight who would offend the beggars, before he himself was also one of them. And his offense could have gone much further; because these bald trees, so rootless and dry, can be certainly dangerous and you have to move away to avoid them. That’s why the narrator has always wondered why the universe did not shrink for him. Perhaps because the offense came almost from the hand of Recognition of Acceptance; perhaps because he had the fortune of encountering the Beggar Master, who also knew of facts of weapons, and that made that two beings so dissimilar could understand. And this Sorcerer would make a spell so that the sound of the score of the seventh motif by Verôme began. The laws of the universe are enigmatic and not even the Lady of Shade can decrypt why did not happen what never happened. Either way, the universe did not shrink. But his future fellow mates did give him a slap in the face, at the time he needed it most. He needed a “Lazarus, come forth” and they shouted it. - And he also had his catoblepas, Nike, or his many catoblepas, because they were six-. In their eyes he could see the eye for an eye of beggars. A braggart bald man, violent and reckless, who had insulted them and had more evil intentions, they answered with clarity, warmth and beauty. Because they were able to see that the old tree preserved some remains of good wood, and that it could start a second growth, and this time decidedly upwards. They were able to get his hair grow on his head again; and with it all its arboreal machinery stood again in motion. The Tree-Beggar got rid of the rotten wood and stood nearly naked, in front of everyone... and at that moment he began to get dirty of earth. And yet he did not know who he was, but at least he knew who he was not. His nakedness, his disorientation, his anguish, his desperation, everything was exposed in the eyes that were looking at him. A tender scene - and why not say it, Nike?, also somewhat erotic - of that poor devil, which was recorded in five stunned looks and would later be remembered and would be confused and misled. For a long time it was difficult for them to tell the difference between a man who behaves like a child and a real man. -A tender scene, Nike, which the Tree-Beggar well lived despite the subsequent bitterness. He only regrets that the King Beggar has lost that fundamental day of his mate; he knows that he would have been moved before his tender, and tormented, motif by Verôme. From that moment the tree always hated the bald people and did not take long to recognize himself as a beggar. He had been transplanted to a good ground - very good, Nike!-, and saw that it was fertile and his arborescent soul knew that he wanted to take root in the soil. He knew it... even before meeting The Daughter of the Earth. She would be the final push that would make him revere Father Earth and all that came of it. But he would have stayed even if he had not come to know her: because of the beggars who lived there and because of the magic of their environment, their universe, their codes, and their chronological order. -None of the eight, Nike, none, took their decision only for love, even if it was important. In any case, love to all the aforementioned and the street, either because it is the mother or because it is the whore. Yes, this man wanted only to be stained by it, and already a dirty beggar, learned enough in a white and breathtaking twilight. He saw the dignity of the lives that he could have crushed; the beauty which dwelt, hidden until then for him, in the twin branches of The Luminous Beggar and the Beggar Sorcerer; (his beloved master!) he bathed in the Greatness of the latter and that of those who surrounded him; and to join The Daughter of the Earth, he also had the moving acquiescence of a beggar who, that night also, was The Mistress of the Wind. -Yes, Nike, he learned again the most beautiful laws of existence, which he had forgotten. And he remembered them on the street when he began to raise his forearm about thirty degrees, from a horizontal position and with the palm facing the sky: in its correct position. And, as later would do the King Beggar, he was assimilating without asking, being overwhelmed, allowing emotions leak through his skin as light breaks through the crystals of a stained glass window. And all that learning, which has never been interrupted, was in progression with the inseparable company of his beloved Daughter of the Earth.

-Give me a minute to feel you, My Mate. I want to breathe a while the beauty of the universe to begin to tell another story of beauty: her story, that of The Daughter of the Earth.

-I can't wait to hear it. It must be the most beautiful story you've told so far. And what a beautiful name you searched for her, Luke: The Daughter of the Earth.

-Only I have named her thus so far, Nike...

-Forgive me then, I...

-At all. You have not let me go on. I also want you to call her by that name. And she also wants it. It will be something just for us three. And don't shudder! If you are not exhausted when I finish my story, we will have many things to talk about, My Beggar. But do not fear anything. Any word I have with you or coming from you must necessarily be a word of beauty. Allow me the whim of the strange chronological order that I'm following, and when I finish, you will understand the lines that the universe is writing with blazing fire, so we know how to read them, in terms of the lives of three of the beggars. That is why it is inevitable to now start for the third time the tale. Forgive my incoherent way of telling it with so many jumps. And forgive the exhaustion that I am giving to you, Nike.

-Luke, I'm not exhausted; I would be hours or nights listening to you. And the way that you have chosen is consistent for me and beautiful... you would not know how to do it another way. And I also wish that the beauty of your words better reflects her beauty. Mainly take time with her. I want to hear of your beautiful Daughter of the Earth. Thanks for letting me call her so. And you know... how much I love her. But, though it is true that I am not tired, I am concerned that it is getting late. You should go back with her. You can tell me the rest later. Don't get away of her for the urgency I guess in your gestures. Have no fear for me: I ain’t gonna do anything desperate. 

-Your voice quavered when you were saying how much you love her. And still you have to love her more, much more, My Beggar. I love you more for loving her. But, Nike... Lucy is not waiting for me tonight. She knows what I'm doing and approves of it. But I don't want to see you uneasy and again you are. I can only say you must keep trusting, her and me. Both of us love you, My Mate. And we know that is important for you. 

-It is important, very important! Forgive me. You must have already seen that it is long since I'm living my days shivering, or as you would say, one shock after another. That’s why I cannot help that my words and my voice are still coming so: choked with emotion. But if you and the most beautiful woman on Earth - with your permission, Luke - are in agreement, I have nothing to oppose. I want to stay. And I cannot deny that you're transmitting me heat. If something has to happen next... This is the best time to say thank you, Luke; thank you, both of you. Say thanks for me also to The Daughter of the Earth. I also love you, my mates.

-Maybe I have to bite myself to be able to continue without tears. But I have to follow. So that your beauty is complete perhaps it is only necessary that you forget the fear that the people you love most can harm you. But it doesn't matter if I go on with tears. You won't mind. I will continue anyway, My Mate. Let's go! There is still room for another short tale within the tale and for the third time the story will start again.

   "Once upon a time there was a beggar who was born in an earthen cradle, because there is no wiser cradle; and to be born on the earth is a gift that the spirits of the universe give only to a few fortunate people, aware that the gift has got the double nature, beautiful and poisoned, of the Sphinx. And those who are gifted must know how to decrypt an Oracle, to get scared and stay to live in the Horror that there is before Wisdom; or recognize themselves, solve the riddle and jump from Horror to reach the Wisdom of the Earth. The universe gives this type of apparent shenanigans only to those who She loves most, because more She loves them. And the narrator shudders at the thought of how much She had to love her, to make it available for her, from her earliest time, the chance to win the most beautiful of the eight gifts. I am moved by how they were able to foresee that she would be, of the eight beggars, the one who soonest recognized herself. That’s why her mother had to give her birth thus, dropping her in a wild path of mud and weeds. And thus was born this beggar, a dawn of fire, in her earthen cradle."

   » She had to be beautiful, because she was the daughter of The Servant of the Wind, of whom she inherited all her beautiful rosary appellations. And much more. Her mother bequeathed her the wind and put her on the earth, and she was fire and water by name. Oh, Daughter of the Earth, rivers of clarity, light of the rivers, the bearer of light, salt of the Earth, splendour of a stained-glass window, glow in the water, direction of the wind rose, descendant from Venus, triumphant in Verôme, victorious in wood, captain of the four elements, source of beauty, Algieba, shaking of the ground, Wisdom, a lighthouse for the King Beggar, owner of the Tree Beggar, the mother of the little king! Many have been the given names, but her name continues to grow with the Earth. Do not forget that she is the daughter of father Earth. She had then a well-known father, who has always been there to hold her tenderly in his arms and remove the habitual cold, while whispering to her stories that spoke of the secrets from the depths so that she could learn the ins and outs of the arcane that inhabit the center of the Earth. And he will always be there, because her father is immortal. Yes, she had to be beautiful... beautiful and wise, because thus was her cradle. Only she could have a cradle without bars and huge dimensions so she had fun with a whole world to play. Only she could have a planet as home. And it was a palatial house! Because it had no walls and ceiling and her will was enough to move along hallways, stairs, rooms, following the rhythm of her games. A house without doors, but filled with beautiful windows. And only she could move her address and always live in the same house. And in the most fragrant corner of the courtyard there was a playful river, who stroked her feet and... trees! Many trees so they gave her shelter and wrapped her up. Around her the universe put them so she grew up loving their smell, because they foresaw that one day she would give her heart to a nearly dry tree, who had lost almost everything, but its smell of wood. Yes, she had to be beautiful! And twice wise. As her Wisdom proceeds from the earth and from having been born a woman. If you learn to observe with the sleepless eye of the beggar, it is not difficult to conclude that she, in her palatial home, had also met the welfare and comfort of a golden cradle.

   » And it was thus that her story started on a rocky ground, a quagmire whereby she began to explore the well delimited path that had been assigned for her; seeing in both shores the roughness of a world seemingly bleak, dusty and thorny. But neither the wrinkled edges, dirty and miserable; nor the devastated environment, petty and soulless; nor the tortuous threshold, emerged from the same unhealthy decrepitude of the nebulous city where she was born; none of this got her firm feet to hesitate and the Daughter of the Earth was in the center of the narrow sidewalk and started walking. Walking in her childhood, with the resolution of he who is clear that a road is a trip and a journey is discovery, she learned how, shortly after starting to walk, everything is changing: the color of the earth is not the same, only a few meters ahead; light gives it different tones as it is turning from cold to intense yellow in the dawn - indigos in the west; which then are shades of purple and mauve in the east of sunset, when day turns around, dyed of new yellow, now bloody, in the west of the sun. If you advance some steps more on the roads of adolescence, without abandoning the sidewalk, you instantly begin to glimpse the shy ghost of an intricate thicket, then several, which slowly strip the landscape of dryness. Later, the first trees slowly become thick vegetation and the lips of the traveler are savoring in advance the sweetness of the water promised, good water that awaits her in the near river, the reward that gives meaning to the entire road. And her path, as any other path, sometimes changes direction and sometimes starts a new trip. But the Daughter of the Earth knows well that to know thirst helps to look for the spring, and enjoy best the soul of the newly found water. And her life is a hymn to the teaching of the contrasts, praise to the Wisdom of opposites: a palatial house and a rocky ground, a disdainful father and a real father. Some nights, very few, sleeping in the pleasant refuge of a house with good walls and comfortable and clean bed linen; others, in the dubious security offered by the eyes of the river bridges, the desolate parks, the cash machines halls, a tent anchored in the grove. Sometimes fullness and sometimes hunger - hungrier than the sum of your hunger and mine, My Beggar!-. Not loved by the places from where power comes, the temptation of wealth reached her, however, on numerous occasions, until in Verôme she chased it away with a solemn get thee behind me; and she would exorcise it again on a bare hill, when turning a corner she was face to face with a tree of an unknown species, which seems to have arisen from the same surrounding fog; a tree... which, however, was crying; a trembling and dirty man who was frightened: she was so beautiful and he could have split her head! But the absence of fear in her was good for him to expel the demons of fear that possessed him, because he knew then that the edge of violence may be the end of violence, and there are things that cannot happen again. With that light, a tree-man was beginning to believe in a faith; and he no longer hesitated whether to stay to live there, because he believed that faith to be wise and true.

   » The faith of beggars shone strongly in that magical sunset when The Daughter of the Earth and The Tree-Beggar met. But a blanket of fog prevented to see what constellations were shining after dusk, that eighteenth of November. By someone who knows it best, the narrator begins to learn that it was shining Orion, the magnificent Hunter, with his belt, his mallet and his sidereal shield, in tireless battle with Taurus; and Aldebaran in the eye of the bull, in a bend of the path that leads to the seven daughters of Atlas; Perhaps Gemini accompanied him, with Pollux, son of Zeus, keeping his willingness to enter into Hades to rescue Castor, his twin, and return him to life; surely Leo was not completely visible yet, but it was already more than a celestial purpose: Regulus was beginning to be created in the great womb of the universe; and no need to look in the sky searching for Spica or Antares: they were that night on the hill. They were the first two lights that were transformed into sparks and lit the forge where the faith of beggars was shaping, with which the protagonists of the two recent stories began a new story, already walking in parallel. Together they resolved to retain their respective smells of earth and wood, to not forget where they came from, to be distinguished even in the darkness, so the word beggar could be read in the distance - and there are many other reasons, Nike, that the king has not discovered yet-; together they started a new faith, free and without any dogmas, you could say it was an agnostic faith: the simple awe of the female and the male and the son to come, of the beloved homeland where to rest after a long day on the street, of the customarily scarce piece of bread, of the small or large philosophy of the five wise people surrounding them. You need little more for a faith to be true and deserve love - not all faiths deserve it-, but this faith is really good water; together they decided to be one and they united, without belonging to each other: they were always one, and they were always two; and the lurking of the disturbing idea of eternal love was not necessary to be sure of what is essential: they didn't know how long they would remain together in the same story, because both wanted to extend from the blood of the other to create a new blood; there was no wait even to a rotation of the Earth: two flows of blood that shared the same river overflowed; and at some point in their course emerged a waterfall from which it escaped thin sheets of glass, which months later would be the best work, the most beautiful stained-glass window of a couple that someone would call sacred – do not say anything, Nike. If a king is betrayed, only the maturity of time can clarify whether it was necessary, and there are traitors who can move you-. In a single night of fires and faith, two hitherto separate beggars joined their flames and drew the first lines of a humble constellation, which yet has to expand. Because you cannot prevent that a nebula continues to give birth to stars and there could be a second explosion, or a third sacred couple.

 -Keep silence, My Beggar, just a few hours more. I know that it would be fair to let you talk now, but you are trembling; and both your head and your heart would like to usurp your voice to express themselves, and you wouldn't know what to say. And if I let you answer at this time, I'll never get that the cold that covers you is lost forever. We will talk about everything, My Mate, but trust me and remember your promise. Now more than ever it is necessary the chronological order.

-I will keep silence, Luke. Follow as you want.

   "You cannot prevent that a nebula continues to give birth to stars. And Mother Universe prepared the two beggars to await the arrival of the brightest star of the constellation. They were months of an eager wait; and before the little king arrived, love breathed every day in the thirst of the lips, in the sweat of love effort, in the rhythmic beat of the open hearts, in the faith that lives without promise. They became sacred the first night they shared hunger, the first days of cold without fire, when, to get warm, they made use of words released in the tremor of understood indignities, of laughter or crying, of desire... It took months to learn how to evolve together without belonging to each other, to understand how love roots both in the luxurious source of newly explored senses as in the heart which is given nude and no matter if it is vulnerable. With no oath of eternal fidelity, but with loyalty as a link of beauty, the love of these two beggars has become eternal, and the sacred couple will never break. And the story teller knows that the king does not want it to break, and that embellishes him more before the look of The Daughter of the Earth and the Tree-Beggar, whom he met in the days of the advent of Regulus, in a tent that smelled of smoke and amid endless bites."

   This is how the story returns to the king, among bites. Because we see that although he had been attacked by several fangs, of tenderness and other basilisks, none of them could defeat him. But he still had to get his deepest wound, because he was surrounded by vampires, beggars in the evening, and even the trees in his outskirt could sink their teeth into and go through the flesh. But beware, you vampire! Alert! because the blood of the heart that you bite can overflow in yours... and tear it. And so it happened that when the Tree-Beggar and the king finally met, so much hunger they felt for each other that they could not help the mutual bite. They were two bites with which they exchanged their bloods and made the first pact of alliance between fellow mates, initiated both of the same Lodge. So great was the force of those two bites that the story wants this meeting to be referred with the looks of the two gentlemen, one by one. Let us tell first how the king’s eyes saw it:

   From some startle he woke up when a beggar unknown entered the door of his tent, preceded by a wake, if not disturbing, at least perceptible, of old mixed scents of sweat, earth and wood. And, however, the king found him young and beautiful, but he understood that it would not be easy to decipher the tracks that had led this man to be what he was. He felt comfortable in his presence, however, and chose to postpone his judgment in order to disentangle the soul of him who came. And whether it was that his smile suggested peace and rest; or that something in him spoke of himself as a mirror with the dirty glass, but with clear reflection, his desire to know more about him increased. And thus, the seventh beggar became a storyteller for the king. It was his first attempt to tell a story, his first chance to fabulate true facts, with which he was trying Beauty. Because if that was the gift they had given him, it was probably nothing but an entelechy that would hold the religion of the chronological order; and until then he had only done honor to the Dirt they place opposite. But the king did see beauty in his story; or it may be that his way of listening, or his interest, made it come true. He was moved at each stage of the former bald man who finally chose the street; his amazement was transparent when he saw projected the same indignities, uncertainties and insecurities, his worst moment of Shade. Those reflections, of the light of the Aquarius glass of the eyes of the beggar, returned him his own image – a Narcissus looking at himself in the water, which is muddy, and despises the horror that brings him the mirror and does not love himself - and he found himself dirty, and very tired, and terribly stripped and needed. Thus, between reflections of dismissive Narcissus, two weary men who at one time had been dirty met, two twins met. Sure that he was seeing his own reflection, he did not doubt that the link between them was identical and was carried away by the story, and started to enter it. -I mean, Nike, he entered what the beggar was telling, and suffered and enjoyed with his experiences; and that, since no ending had yet been written, the king got into that heart (I mean story), forever, and the tale continued with him. And in that tent, which was the first cavern of revelations, his wise spirit, led by the music of the narration, began to guess, at first in a whisper, then loud murmur, and finally a racket, that life is more than disgust or weariness; that resurrection is not only an unlikely chance; that redemption does not require more passwords than doubt that you have a heart to let you in, and gives some ears to whoever wants them to be attentive to the prodigious pulsation of heartbeat. There's a heart because the pain is the first symptom that something inside is calling, with strength; -There is a heart because there is some need, My Beggar. Need and love are almost the same word and the king began to love his story teller because he needed him-. It could not be otherwise. The narrator does no longer have any doubt that the protagonist fell in love with the beggar. And his royalty is seen in the many and various ways in which that love was multiplied.

-Do not feel any fear, My Mate, or any cold. You still do not know when and how the king was betrayed. And if you could see my heart now, you would see it burning, but it is not enough. It has to burst. It must be an erupting volcano, My Beggar, because craters it does already have. Long ago it is since many bites have opened it to let it escape the fire in the center of the Earth. And if I can’t get you some heat at this time to take away your first terror, I would have to throw myself into the icy ocean wherever you are and die of cold with you. Take my fire, and never mind if you cry. Now less than ever I will ask you not to cry. You cannot help it and there are tears which wash the soul so that it puts on clean clothes of Beauty. But do not cry with fear, My Beggar: no wind or devil will take you away from my heart. Or rather I would tear my hands.

-I cannot find my voice, Luke, but suffice it to say that your fire is coming to me, in large flames. And listen! Now only silence is heard. Increasingly less wind is blowing now and I start to feel that I am not going to die of cold, My Mate.

-I won't let you die of cold, Nike. I am not going to allow the king to die of cold – the story teller would add-, because we have not reached it yet, but there will come a night when also the hero of this story almost dies of cold. It seems that the tales are mixing, My Mate, but that is the magic of telling a story. This supposed fiction is mine, but your intervention can alter it. Will you help me to wrap the king up, Nike? Perhaps only an answer is necessary, with the heat of your blood in your voice.

-And how often have they taught the king that feelings cannot be hidden? I think that’s how your narrator talked. Ok, Luke, let it be! What is the question?

-Indeed you still cannot perceive the consequences that there would be for both gentlemen because of their countless bites or how their eternal friendship evolved- and I say eternal, Nike!-, but you already know enough the two characters and you can tell me if it is true what could get through the heart of the king. I am confident enough in your demonstrated integrity to trust the future of the rest of my story to your answer. Well... This is the question: do you think he put his heart, and even his blood, in that of that poor devil who barely knew who he was but was already beginning to like him?: in that poor Dirty Beggar? Sorry that my voice trembled.

-He fell in love with him, Luke. For better or for worse. It could not be otherwise. And... You follow, please...! My heartbeats go very quickly.

-Let me recover my breath, My Mate... Mine are also accelerated, but I will try to speak. Well, life, such as the street - sometimes the whore- occasionally becomes splendid, and to contemplate the courage of a beggar and mate showing his dignity and I am sure that looking me in the eyes... God! My ideas are trembling. I don't know what I was going to say. I am a lucky man, Nike. You are my mate and come to the street with me. You've rocked me in the street, and you've rocked me on this cold night, dying of cold. And you will move me a thousand times, as we will continue walking together, My Beggar, until the end of the road, as long as you want to walk with me. Say what you want, My Mate, or rather... not yet. You will find words more easily if the rest of the story cradles you, and it is difficult that you can clearly define emotions that you have never before been able to express, or others that you've never before experienced. And I... I love you, My Beggar! If I am making you cry, understand that this is to overwhelm... so as not to break, and...

- And my heart is overwhelmed, but not broken. Not any more, My Beggar, now it won’t break! God! If you consider yourself lucky, I don't know what to say about me. I can only add that I'd like to read the tale of the king, but someone should write that of his story teller. Because it is true he has become worthy of Beauty and the eight gifts are in him and in him they remain... and, forgive me, Luke, because it is inevitable that your king now loves him even more. But, I'm sorry, you have not asked me that question; I'm not keeping my promise.

-Promises can be kept changing the words and respecting the spirit, Nike, and I am not going to censor your words, less at this moment that you need so much to say them. And nothing will happen because you say them, except that you may find that you will be given more love for them. But let me follow, My Mate. There is still a long story ahead and after it we will have all the time we want to talk, because there is no longer any reason to hurry, or to remain silent.

-You're right, Luke, you can continue.

   The love of the king was multiplied in many and various ways. Because his vital organ was beating, and filled with blood, and was placed in its right place, and its pace adjusted by hearing the story of the Dirty Beggar. And when a heart is believed dead, it is joy of the soul to listen how it is throbbing; and rejoice knowing it is made of flesh, even if it hurts while beating. And that is why it showed new and multiple facets; and a stream flooded him with love, and became need and like, and showed itself in floods in the brotherhood, and was a gigantic waterfall in friendship. A king from an arrogant lineage - so it was told to The Tree-Beggar - was falling in love with one of the most humble inhabitants of this nebulous city. It is better to say so: that he was falling in love... Because to believe he had fallen in love was not something that could be done suddenly, having fought all his life against the direction of his feelings; and it was not a decision, but a slow learning. But in the meantime, while he looked at the beggar and listened to him, he was being permeated by the landscapes of his mind. He postponed thinking, but certain flashes of the sometimes gentle beauty of living were touching him. He was aware that he was beginning to feel something not habitual, but he refused to defend himself, because at last he understood that the heat that was taking control of his limbs was well, that love has many modes, that the love that invaded him only could be beauty. A king from an arrogant lineage - so it was told to The Tree-Beggar - showed the double greatness of falling in love with a beggar and moving away from that which had been the fiercest battle of his life: violence against his own feelings, the denial of his heart. But great was his need, and although heartbeats hurt, he could not say no to his heart when he was finding it. He allowed himself to be defeated, learning that sometimes the most heroic victory comes when you are able to give in to defeat. A king from an arrogant lineage - or so, anyway, it was told to The Tree-Beggar-, who still was to show a more difficult to define dignity. It has already been seen how he had recognized himself as equal to anyone who in the outskirt he was getting to know, but he ended up surpassing his own greatness, because he even considered that they were better than he. The story that told him The Dirty Beggar impressed him. It showed him how a broken man can live again and he had another luminous moment when he was aware that he wanted to be better, and that he was going to have to deal in a new internal struggle. If he could not, in that first meeting, admit yet his love for the beggar, he could desire to be at his level; and he made a decision never revoked, not even in the darkest hours of the exile. He had to give a second life to the king beggar who had emerged from the basilisk and the catoblepas and had to give up forever the poisonous concoctions of the court. The new beggar was breaking into the heart of the king with the strength of a vampire, and his insatiable fangs, biting on the hot ulcer of new love, threw a wisp of an antidote to his blood with which he started expelling all poisons. But it was the man who bit who was most unsuccessful, since he would never heal of the wound caused by the attitude of the man who was bitten: rather than downcast, he was heroic; fighting in two distressing combats, but decided to come out victorious of the battle he had with his life. With the mark still on his skin from the vampire teeth, he won the stinging elixirs combat; and he would soon beat himself in the second, letting into his heart the blood that came to him from the beggar.

   And he loved him, but he liked him. Love and like do not necessarily mean the same thing. In love you put the tremor and the passion, the obsession to own, the vertigo that join loving and being loved, the pulsating vibrations of biting in desire, the aroma of the flavor, the promise of light when being looked at, the deep shiver of your skin touched, the overwhelming yearning for unity of matter and energy; you put your body, you give your soul. Like, on the other hand, is different. It is not so intense; however, it rewards you and comforts you. It is love without the hands and the saliva. It is the full acceptance of the other and the whim to accompany him, the anxiety to explain the one you love and to explain yourself in him. It may reach you without the union in the flesh and the spirit. Or it is love plus a shoulder to lean on, able to stand the tension of your soul. The king, days later, when he knew that he loved the beggar, when he knew himself in that feeling and did not fret for it, and as he thought that he was not going to be allowed to love him, had enough with liking him. Because that liking him was enough, despite the latent suspicion, that would no longer abandon him, that to the great achievement of his rediscovered heart he could be answered with the slap of hatred or contempt. There he began a fear that would lead to his future exile and would lengthen his motif by Verôme. In the same joy of loving his pain began, but he did not give up either enjoyment or pain, and if he could not love him, he was going to continue liking him.

   And he liked him, but he needed him. He was rediscovering the universe in the hands of the heartbreaking story of the beggar, by the hand of his smile and his tenderness: gifts all these that are not given to anyone, but just to whom deserve them, and the king deserved them. He needed him, because he was being caressed, understood in his indignity - a substance which the story teller also had-, accepted and loved; because The Dirty Beggar made him see things in another way; because he gave him, for nothing in return, all he had lived; and made him know that his learning was not over and he was now willing to learn from him. He made him see besides that truth and beauty come from rocks of most unchanging appearance, as the so-called insensitivity he claimed to have inherited. In fact they needed each other, because they were brothers. They were, since they had been destined to meet and love each other, but that day they began to feel it. Because there is nothing in the heart of a brother which does not hurt us, which may seem alien to us. That’s why the brother beggar vibrated with the nobleness that was calling from the inside of the rich robes, already somewhat worn, of his brother king: he heard the voice that was screaming for help out of the struggles where he had enlisted, or to not stop fighting; he saw his urgency and was touched: they really were so equal! That brother king noticed the different needs of his brother beggar: to enjoy conversing with a similar heart, to be loved as a brother, to be felt as a man, to be respected as a beggar, to be comprehended in his incessant pursuit of faith without being mistaken with a worshipper of false gods, to be forgiven and loved in his dirt, to be understood as the husband of a woman of earth and countless lights, to accept him as a male who, in his natural desire to expand, wants to give life to a little queen, to a little king.

   They were twins, and brothers, however. And by dint of needing, they loved each other. And love possessed the king, but failed to drown him, because the need, master of the beggar, taught him to take shelter in the fraternity and other manifestations of the spirit. Well you can see that love is a beggar, asking with no certainty in hope, but friendship is urgency. Love is the bread that is not always shared, but friendship is hunger, indispensable for survival. Friendship of the breath on the side and stick to the road, friendship: wings for flight! Friend who drives away the loneliness and the horrors, friend: a lantern in the darkness! An hour had passed since he met The Dirty Beggar and he touched greatness again. In a shy question he revealed what urged him: he wanted to know if they could be friends. It is not easy to describe Greatness, it has been said. Because love hurts, but it is not decided: it arrives. But friendship can be chosen. Ninety-five out of a hundred kings before beggars would have hesitated, but the king did not hesitate. Friendship that creeps inside looking for a temple, friendship: sacred heat! Friend who moves in palatial corners as he wanders through outskirts, friend: word of a gentleman! The king had never had a heart that he could properly call a friend. But when he knew where he was, there was no differences between the millionaire and the beggar. However difficult it could be, the friendship born that day had to be fed and it was; so it was until today. Friendship that always shines and does never set, friendship: circumpolar star! A man friend that with a man friend grows, friends: open arms! Friendship telepathy which made him shout I'm home! As the king exclaimed when he knew his countrymen: profession of faith which two beggars before him had already spoken. Friendship, root of steel that arises from discouragement, friendship: salty light of tears! Days without their darkness and time without the running of days, friendship: unconditional and unreserved, summary and top of love, need and like! The new beggar was breaking into the heart of the king with the strength of a vampire. But they were two bites, it was said. See below with the eyes of the Tree-Beggar.

   When he entered the tent he saw a man who woke up, with the appearance of being dejected; only the appearance, because nothing can defeat a resurrected man. The first thing he noticed was how he was debating between the anguish of not liking himself  and the challenge of making possible to love and live everything that he had not lived yet. His story, as that of the other seven beggars, has something of delirium, of fever, of nervous systems in extreme stress, on the verge of rupture, but also a perennial calm, which, however, surrounds everything. The story is full of contradictions like this and everything contradicts everything the same way that everything is in everything. Their stories have been repeating since the fifth motif by Verôme, but they are all unique. The king's story had certainly the vicissitudes of those of the three previous beggars, and, however, he knew how to build his own threads without stridency, but with a loud noise. The beggar who entered did not see what he expected to see, because he had been informed of some facts of the life of the king: those which were known; but he ran into the unexplored side of the moon and at the same time into a mirror without hidden face. The beggar who entered did not see what he expected to see, because he thought he was going to find an arrogant messenger of power and he found himself in the claws of a tender vampire, from whom he could never have imagined he was going to drink his sobriety in blood vessels, sipping his heart drop by drop, day by day. And it had been supposed that the former bald man and the former shark would not understand each other! The beggar who entered did not see what he expected to see, because he was received by that shock that appears often in the worst nightmares: to see yourself in two different places at the same time. Because he saw himself standing, entering; and he also found himself lying on a bed without a pillow, looking. It was a second chill which went through his spine, until he had the brilliance to understand that he was before his twin. It was like being in a mirror that went back in time and showed him what he might have seen if he had been looking at himself nine months ago: identical pain, identical need, the same poor devil. This was, without compassion, the first name that the beggar gave to the king. And he could judge him without pitying him, because he had before his eyes the information, seeing how he was going through what he had already gone through. And when something is known and understood you do not feel compassion, but tenderness. The tenderness is a bridge between ignorance and insight; it is the transitional state between Shade and Clarity, and its route extends to Recognition of Acceptance. Compassion, on the other hand, mistakes the bridge and chooses to cross the path of prejudice, which does not ford the river. Tenderness gives you some bread and then lengthens one’s arms; compassion gives bread to be able to forget the one who you are looking. The beggar who entered, after seeing what he had not expected to see, knew how to do what he never had imagined to do, and told his twin that he wanted to tell him the story of his life. And as he spoke and watched him, he had a shock, because he guessed that together with the king, at his side and in him, his traitor had come.

   Thus, the time has come to introduce the Beggar King to the first of his three traitors; that not will surprise him, as it is an old enemy that always goes with him; and furthermore, it is the same deceiver that has often betrayed The Dirty Beggar. It could not be otherwise: they are so alike that they even have the same traitor, but let us hope that it has been for good. Although it is an inveterate bastard, unfair and informer: the first traitor of the king was his face. And in it, as if it had been marked by fire, the allies of the conspirator: the neatness of his gestures, the frankness of his eyes, and the honesty of his features. But in his constant betrayal he makes him also its greatest service, because it strips his integrity and shows his Beauty, Dignity and Greatness, in view of anyone who is next to him. That’s why he moves everybody; why everyone loves him. Let his informer then be praised. Because of it, he would never be hurt by those he loves most, for if they love him, it is because they already know and appreciate what his heart transmits, each one of his threads of blood, betrayed by his transparent look, that traitor. The beggar was telling his story; the king, who watched him, unconsciously was telling his, and the two read each other in the clean lines of their eloquent looks. There is no better ground to start a friendship, because each knew the other. The king liked and loved the beggar; the beggar did not love the king, but so much he liked him that only to like him was not a weaker strike. What to do to understand him better? This tale is burning due to the absence of a voice. It was necessary to wait until now, but the time has come. One of the beggars is crying out vehemently for the first person, and so the tale is going to take such liberty. He will be allowed to speak, so that he can express his urgency. The narrator and he will accompany each other from now on to describe the shock that the king was dropping in the seventh beggar. Here is his voice, free for the first time, and this is his sound: Hail, my king! Congratulations! At this time, I want to make a toast for your heart and make you an offering of my own: of what you did not know, because my heart you have always had it. Because my traitor oh, my king! had to strive to hide what he showed, for the sake of you. But now it starts to clear the fog that covered it, so that of all you are informed. Congratulations, my king! Hail!

-I wonder... If you might find all of this unnecessary, Nike.

-I don't know if it is, Luke, but you should not excuse yourself. Half an hour ago I cannot keep my ears from your beautiful words. I start to understand that everything you tell has a sense, and also why you are doing it that way, putting your heart in the tale. Because a story can be told in many ways, but if you let me choose, I prefer you to continue like that, with your beauty, My Mate, and your effort. Thus, your heat is gradually calming me and ghosts are scared away. But so big your beauty is and so great your effort that I will have an eternal debt with you. Ask for my help when you want it, if you really think that it is necessary, but I want to talk less and less and continue listening to you. I'm discovering you again, Luke. It is not true then the king read the beggar well, although he knew of his beauty, but there are things he was never able to read. Or it may be because, in fact, he had met a tree which does not stop growing.

-There are things that he could not read, Nike, because the information was not offered. But all of that will be seen. As for everything else, this story not only has a sense, but several, because the king had, and still has, more than one fear. So the story continues. And that’s why the tale must go on, with love to him in every word. Because until he is able to see the dignity of his entire behavior - from his eleven days until today-, you cannot understand the other senses of this tale, and how it was his beauty which earned him the love of those who loved him most. Not only that of The Dirty Beggar, Nike, as in everything he says there is at least another voice that always accompanies him and takes advantage of his voice to also express love through his throat. But it encourages me to know that you feel comfortable listening to me. And with that encouragement that you give me, I will continue.

   The beggar who told the story could read without difficulty the different tremors of the heart of the king that his traitor insisted on displaying. Thus, from the initial placidity he was moving to a stirring boiling from need to like. And soon he noted how calm was changing into a storm and love arrived unannounced and broke with fast beats that shook the door of his sobriety as a violent hand. He noted his inner ocean surges, sometimes raging to unbearable pain. But also he saw that however strong was the pain, the king never lost his serenity or tenderness, and learned to make of his need Wisdom, putting off the inevitable by the urgent, and progressing as a true man in friendship. Poor devil? It is only he who is licking his own wounds and refuses to grow, but the beggar was in the presence of a man, a heart of a gentleman, who called him; a man, who facing the deterioration of his beliefs, disoriented before the loss of his values that were breaking for him into pieces, and with the feet near the abyss, however he squirms, he defends himself and manages to reach safety. -Oh, my king, and I saw all this, all this I watched...! Your face told me about your need, your battles. Your face revealed the man of integrity that was forging where according to you there was only emptiness and arrogance. And nothing could conceal what you so strongly strove to hide. Forgive me, my king, to have seen so much. Me, who has never been one that wastes his leisure time in looking in order to, with a bit of fortune, steal a slight glimpse of nudity, or perhaps because I have lacked the intention of spying, always I have seen, of your feelings and you, too much. But consider if in the first thing that I saw your traitor did not make you a great service. Because I knew it then, when your sincere face betrayed it to me. And with the passage of time, I had little doubt, because your fierce enemy, that miserable one! followed betraying you; and I loved you more, my king, and regretted the pain that caused you, which would take you into exile and the deadly cold of despair. That’s why... at this time you must have understood that I... always knew of your love, from the first moment. But judge with this new light if ever this was important; see how our friendship was the same as if it had come alone, or if it is not true that even my affection was increased for this reason. Later you will know, Sir, why I never talked. But in the beginning, it is at least clear that I should not, because we had to wait for you to be certain about what your heart was telling you and you made a pact with it, and love the fact that you loved. You needed time. But in my heart, my king, there could only enter tenderness, and very soon friendship, and they both stayed. I could not object to your love, since the violence of my motif by Verôme had been so brutal that I learned from the strikes that it had left, mainly on my conscience. Oh, my king, when you have been on the verge of becoming a murderer, to survive and so that terrifying possibility does not become present, one must have a brake and starts by hoisting a barrier against prejudice! I started doing what you would do later and I observed without speaking; and by dint of observing, with the eyes of the body and the soul wide open, you learn to look better and you can see virtues of those who accompany us, or you can perceive some new truths which until then had been hidden and that, suddenly, dazzle. And one is surprised with unthinkable reasoning and wonders about the different ways in which beauty glows. And one day I was surprised wondering whether I might not be an incomplete man, because I was lacking something, I needed to know the taste of masculinity. With The Daughter of the Earth by my side that thought did not go further, but it began to germinate then and was about to become mature. For all this, my king, when your love arrived, and seeing how you struggled to take control of your own identity, I was invaded by shudder, which was turning into Commotion. Because I was touched when I saw you in battle against the toxic waters which had shape, color and flavor of elixir, and are nothing more than poison and fire which had failed to burn your pains, but almost had scorched your heart; I was moved when I saw the gentleness with which you allowed to stay next to your bed of recovering a man whose odor could have offended you; I was impressed when I saw your love for the beggars and how you began to identify with them, and without fear, you were getting used to the idea of considering who you were and whether you weren’t an exiled tramp that was returning home, as only a real beggar can know of those of his condition and speak of them as you spoke, and engage in what they lived, endorsing his misfortunes and hopes, as if already the first flash of your class consciousness was lighting; and I was shuddered when I noticed that you knew yourself in the mirror that I lent you and you were not daunted to see your twin, nor to look at yourself again; I was softened when you nodded to my claim that we were brothers; and I was overwhelmed when you wanted me to stay and continue talking to you about me, when I was no more than a man still in process of reconstruction, disinherited and dirty, without anything to offer but the warmth of his chest, where there was beating a heart with so much need. Oh, my king! Your arrogant lineage, the cold breath of your living among sharks and the impassivity you spoke to me about, where are they? Where are the empty words, the conceited expressions and the insensitive gestures of your dynasty? What happened to the mighty man who lived with you? What happened to the king? Nothing of this is true: none of that ever existed. I just saw what I had before me: a man with hot blood, a friend with open arms, a brother in the heart, a twin in pain, a false king needed as beggars, a beggar.

   And the narrator has already spoken of need and like, but something more has to be said, because we lack a perspective. Certainly The Dirty Beggar, after that twilight of November which brought his redemption, was a man that you could say that had gotten a piece, maybe a hunk, of real happiness. With the love of his wife and a grain of his own being, a small immortality, in the son he expected; with the Wisdom and teachings that his fellow mates were giving him carelessly as precious stones; and with the street: sordid and violent, teacher and mother, his bed and dining room, he had everything he wanted, and yet... It was true that beggars loved him, but only The Daughter of the Earth understood him. He felt that he still needed something, but did not know what it was until he met the King Beggar: he needed someone who could read his heart without stridency, who was his brother, his friend in need, the shoulder to lean on. Again the king is remarkable, because love, which blinds so many people, far from filling his eyes of sand, gave him Clarity. The Dirty Beggar had been understood, and never before, or never better, it was a man who did. He loved every day a bit more his new brother because he was able to decipher his whole oracle, and his words prove it. When he meets a beggar that smells of earth, he has nothing to object - because it does not protest he who agrees-, and explains his smell as something that is part of him just as wood covers trees. When he knows that this man has spent half of his life looking for a faith, he understands that that creed, more human than divine, is firm and will no longer falter, although the search, as in all beggars on Earth, will go on; and that, however, he will not kneel before any totem or will carry offerings to the first God who comes claiming an altar. And the most shocking thing of the vast clarity that always goes with him is that he never doubted that a woman and a man living in the outskirt of misery could provide for their little king, because - and still my tears have to do homage to your words, Sir - knows that the little king will never lack anything, that his parents will wear away their miserable shoes begging in the streets or will do anything so that he always has everything he needs. That Beggar of the Golden Cradle - and now I'm really crying, Sir, as you are also crying – who only a few days later would give his blessing to the little king. Calm! The time will come; but after all this flood of unexpected understanding, no one can be surprised that also The Dirty Beggar began to love the king because he needed him.

   But there is something else, a new greatness that he may not have any consciousness of. The two beggars met again, two days later. - And I say two beggars, Sir, because certainly you can call beggar now to the King Beggar without hiding the truth. But king he was, and in my heart he will always be, and so will follow (beggar sometimes, sometimes king), his names in the story. His sincere eyes showed joy about the reunion. Friendship was flowing in his words and perspired in his gestures. A sober calm, in addition, surrounded as a reassuring aura the bed of the beggar who was lying, who began to find himself a winner in his first battle. But as the last breath of his former adversaries, he could not prevent a small stain to dirty the rags of he who stood at his side, what made it necessary for the beggar to take off his shirt. And, naked to his waist, his eyes looking at the face of the king, he saw how he stared at his chest. -Oh, my Lord! You can't understand with which strange ways you have earned your throne, or what signs of nobility made that your kingdom came to extend its borders and were for you those of my country, my heart. Because of any king in love who does no longer defends himself for being, before the first sign of nudity of a man who seems beautiful to him, one might expect, without it being possible that anybody objects to it, a look of desire. But your Greatness, my Lord, has unknown regions and unusual laws governing only in your homeland, because your eyes did not look at me with desire. And your traitor made me know why they looked, and what they saw. They looked at me because you loved me, and love being tenderness, they became explorers in search of information. And in my chest you found a short treatise of history and an eloquent geography of misery that told the facts of my biography that my words would have failed to tell; a map with simple conventional signs that many had browsed and, however, only you knew how to read. The clear lines of your face moved as on the pages of a book: from left to right, from west to east, studying the letters dirt was shaping, creating words with them and with the words messages with sense, investigating, deciphering, and solving the hieroglyphs. And, as you had done with all the beggars whom you had been introduced, you guessed the key to another secret name, my name this time. Because you gave me a new name, my king, one that only you gave me and that you will immediately know. Resting your look on the chest you walked along a plateau with some mountains, almost unreadable by erosion, and long valleys with rivers of sweat that seem to have been trodden by careless passengers who had left their traces there: strikes in senseless crusades, scars of war, injuries and cuts of a violent path that could be abandoned, without mercy, to the demon of oblivion. But the king did not have enough with a single glance and, sharpening his eyes, he discovered that from the landscape had sprouted (with the strength of the new things, always claiming the life that belongs to them) other mountains and other trees by the river. There you could read his months in poverty, the soot gathered in transit and days outdoors; the traces of hunger, which otherwise sculpted contours, transforming the surface; and the wounds that time had chiseled him, time as a venerable old man, who as a naughty boy, sometimes becomes a street artist and idles drawing the walls of the chest with graffiti, outlining blisters, weariness, traces of fires, pollution, shreds of mist, nights of insomnia, weeds, mud and splash, bone pain, marks of the furrows in the floor, vestiges of the wake that tears are leaving, nausea, endless tiredness... all the stigmata of the street. The contrast of two such different landscapes would have disoriented anyone not having his magnetic compass towards the Pole Star, but the king always knows where the north is. And he understood that the beggar he was watching would not change the plaintive milestones of his new horizon for the equivocal pleasures of a pleasant life that he could earn with his own hands. The thoughts of the King Beggar could be read, as usual, without difficulty, and could be almost literally transcribed word by word. If you would now write them in third person, they would say that he understood how the beggar had hardened to become a man who prided himself, with the forgivable pride of tears shed in Verôme, to be now what inevitably he was. That man - still thought the king - felt satisfied of the rust covering him and how it meant redemption and fight, to stick out the tongue to fate to rewrite it. A man who shrugs strongly his shoulders and decides to stay to live in toughness, but in the peace of the faith rediscovered, forever on the edge of the river, where beggars fight every hour, each with the forces available, for survival. The king had read the entire story without words that the dirty nudity of the chest had just narrated him; and in that mute testimony he had drawn the right conclusions. –History is thus, my Lord: in the beginning it was the eyes; someone who came later invented writing, and the eyes wanted to read. And for those who can read storytellers were born. That is why the king has one. Because he read two names that were in me, so beautiful as a brother and a friend, but you gave me the beautiful name that no one had given me, and where everybody saw a child, or at most a restless, but impertinent, teenager who doesn't grow, you wrote a man with capital letters and I had a new life with that noun. Never wanted the king to modify any bend in the landscape he saw - because it does not protest he who agrees-, and knew how to explain his twin, and started to explain himself in him and wanted to accompany him. And he went beyond the myth and did not agree that the beggar was adorable. Because you should not adore the friend or the man: he is simply known. -Oh, my king, Recognition of Acceptance is, as everyone knows, the sum of all the gifts, which in all of them is and from all of them is born, but mainly from Commotion: your sign, my king!

-Forgive me, Nike. Before continuing, I want to seek your help, to confirm if I've read correctly what happened. 

-You have read it as happened, Luke, but let me add something: there is a faith different from the faith of the street (which I believe without reservation), which you have handed me, a beautiful tale about the laws of the universe, of which although I can't say that it is completely my faith, some things I've learned and have them for certain including that the sixth and the seventh sign are interchangeable. It is true, at least in your case, because besides Beauty you have also been given Clarity. And this is reassuring, because you can read some situations that could have led to misunderstandings. But no fear, because I think that you can see the king just as he was. It seems that his traitor did really a great service for him, but only because he knew how to select, as if he obeyed a call from Earth, whom he might deliver, without loss of his integrity, the secrets stolen from the betrayal. So, Luke, everything is so clear and so clean! That I don't think you need my help. You've read the heart of the king without stridency. Let me steal your language, which I find so beautiful that I would like to snatch you some words to make them mine from now on.

-You can keep them, of course. Thanks Nike! I am struggling to describe him with justice, but the narrator, unfortunately, is only almost omniscient; and so he continues searching for help and confirmation.

-I am not sure he is not omniscient, Luke, but you'll know better than me. Please continue! I want to keep looking with your eyes to that beggar who you are calling king, and the other beggar who is with him.

   When The Dirty Beggar saw the tenderness with which he had been read, or justice (another name for the same thing), he knew that he only had an alternative. Because if all the king’s thoughts are seen, with no possibility to hide them; and if those thoughts always speak well of him, it can be concluded that he makes himself be loved by what one sees, but also by what one does not. And though love sometimes escaped him by his mirror crystals, they are the same crystals that might have reflected a desire, but if they did, the beggar never saw it. And despite the fact that he would have never been censored for showing it, if it was not seen, it is because he had battled so it slept, in the warm dawn of friendship. In this way, both in what the beggar saw and in what he didn't see, shudder was gaining ground and started to look for a place to stay. Therefore, when the king unintentionally stained the beggar, there was only one thing that could be done: to clean himself and then clean him tenderly. And if the king has ever wondered about the love with which he was cleaned, surely now he will understand that, as it was seen, it was inevitable. The beggar had to touch the king, so that tenderness for tenderness, his hands showed him, better than any other sign, that everything was as it should be, that not only his love did not disturb, but that the warmth he claimed was not going to be denied to him. After this gesture his eyes betrayed that he had lost his second fight and that, precisely for this reason, he had won. From that moment he stopped fighting and loved who he wanted to love; and he grew up in his manhood when he understood the beauty of putting his heart in the man and the beggar. And with all the pain that has always seized him; he will never repent of loving him. -Finally, my king, it had been a tough battle, that only you had to fight. Because the universe wanted to put you, once again, to test, so from all that stress you learned a lesson that would make you unique among your fellow mates and would write your own way as a beggar. Thus, before reaching the street, you had already learned that a man who knows what he is, and is with dignity, does not feel shame. And if he sought that his emotions were not seen, it is not because he needed to change for friendship the love which he was denied, but because really friendship mattered more and you struggled for it for all it has of warm and essential. And although I know, my Lord, you have always intensely loved the man, I also know that always, and above all, you have loved the friend and you could not live without his friendship. But I can assure you, my king, I could not live without yours either. Because you have the strength (I now know) that I'm not sure to have. And your pain on this night was not greater than mine. For this reason, and for other reasons, this is first and foremost the story of a friendship. And as I don't want to cry yet, let it sound again the voice of the narrator-. Who claims to speak to deny his former words, as he has not many paragraphs before said that the love of the king was a slow learning. And he does not err by mistake, for anyone who has followed his movements from the cradle would have deducted when seeing him on the bed where he was lying in that first meeting with the beggar, he would require a long time to decide that it was well what could not be otherwise. And learning it was, certainly, but not slow, because he just had needed two days to defeat himself. And he who watched him only could stare at him stunned, stunned by his Greatness.

   For this reason, and for other reasons, this is first and foremost the story of a friendship. But The Dirty Beggar also wanted the friendship the other beggar offered him, as he was in front of a brother whose hands burned with the desire to surround him in a perennial embrace, one who had read man in his geography; a friend who had kept a clear mind and clear eyes, because friendship is a city without fog. Friendship, the geography, the city that emerges from the burned hills and has got two rivers, friendship: crowned ridge! Friend of the rich river, descendant of heath with its waters flowing into the river of misery and fires in the centre of the heart, friend: the arrows of a hunter! Friend of the poor river, killer of pain that lives in the outskirts and in defense of the beggars pours its rage, friend: falls of wrath! -Oh, my king, the years were passing, indolent and terrible, and friends who one day were began to move away, and are now only a point in the distance! Friends that I lost by neglect, and those that I let out by the clumsiness. I'll never know what blind misunderstandings separated me from others forever. Some fell on the road and never could stand up again. And my useless and miserable time with the bald people, who were never friends, separated me from the few who had resisted, who I no longer will recover. Friendship, luminous basilica where the miracle becomes flesh in the stained glass windows, friendship: street without walls! Some hearts I found among the beggars, some hearts of friends; with a few stridencies, but who does not have any? Real friends. Friendship, the seductress, which walks the shadow and the blood and lives among the outcasts, friendship: bridge of the arcades! A man friend who with a man friend grows, friends: Templar males! Warriors and monks in the crusade if the battle is on the road of the temple or in the narrowness of the street of calvary, friends: bridge of the knights! Friendship which has no cemetery and is light of the stars that no will-o'-the-wisp can defeat, friendship: meeting of two rivers! The king was there to cover the wounds of his loneliness; there was the king to cure him. Long time had passed and, since then, he had never had a heart that he could properly call a friend, but when he knew where he was, there was no differences between the millionaire and the beggar. Friendship, star at its zenith which would dare to shine on the city of fog, friendship: sun with no west!

   And we had to wait until the seventh day so that The King Beggar finally met the Daughter of the Earth. They couldn’t meet before because she also was convalescent, febrile heats burning her skin and a star in her womb. But the story was talking about something else. Or perhaps not, as it has to continue speaking of friendship. -Oh, my king, your greatness, which began by snatching the borders of my country, ended up taking over my whole country! And how not to yield to the next Commotion, if when you meet the one who should have been your enemy, or so they would have called her ninety-five out of a hundred kings in love, you prefer to let her steal your heart and almost loved her as much as you love him? What should I do, my Lord, seeing how you appreciated her and understood her, but to shed my blood on your friendship? What should she do, whose ancient intuition told her of your love for me, making my explanations unnecessary? The Daughter of the Earth knew how much we needed each other, you and I, my king, and how, however, your friendship went towards her for what she was. Thus wrote, you and her, the first lines of a new legend of need and like and everything was repeated. And if she had had the temptation to become a story teller, the words and facts would have been the same, with love, however, at the end of the chronological order. But that day you won both of us, my Lord, and had our hearts forever. As The Beggar of Spirits, ever alert, you had located the point of power in the outskirt and as those who came before, you wanted to feel the warmth that she gave. But what irony, my king, when you no longer looked for a woman, the wisest of them came to you to make you doubt your new faith and show you the beauty of the abandoned faith! Thus are examined the hearts like yours, weighed on the scale of doubts, so they never get old. And that often happens when you believe you have found a balance of the universe: a place where to place certainty. In addition, my king, you also managed to decipher the secret of her name, because your sentences meant you had just seen her as the daughter of the Earth, and that’s why now you deserve to share that beautiful name with me. And they talked about true love and unlikely fidelity; about new furrows in the soul and the laws of the universe. With her you learned part of the uncertain and the occult and distinguished the call of the Earth: you heard clearly its tremors, captured the cadence with which it pumps incandescent substances through its veins of ore and you smelled the scent of its emanations. Thus it shakes you its calling the first time you hear it, but from that day it was always with you, and only extreme pain has obscured it at times in your reason. All this telluric force explains the intensity with which you felt the heartbeats of the little king. But it also explains that boy felt, as a shock, the tenderness of your hand, my king, on his small heart, from which you will never get away. Oh, my Lord, nothing happens without reason, and only children, who are born blind, follow the calling of the Earth and a fierce instinct guides them in the dark and they always know who is worthy! But calm, my king, the time for both of us to cry for him has not arrived yet.

   The Daughter of the Earth became necessary to you, and since then she has been in your heart, my Lord, because the woman is the Universe. They came first and we are their creation. It is them who gave name to all things, and that’s why the things they didn’t give a name to do not have any existence. But they keep secret the name of many other certainties that only they are able to reach, because they have the words to invoke them. For this reason, because whatever has no name does not exist, if a man disrespects them, may a woman come to remove their names, and without the name he will be naked, fallen on the ground, the mere corpse of cowardice. In a woman you can find the whole cosmic matter, an atom of each substance that fell from the world after its big bang. Thus, since everything is on them and all they know and love, they always move with resolution. They resist storms and can walk on the waters where a man sinks. But they won’t take happily their boats to the sea, because their Wisdom will have warned them when it is not reasonable because of the force of the wind and the anger of the waves. And many times when a man cries, something is sinking inside that he will never recover. But if a woman cries, a creation is near. That’s why the Universe is a woman. And one day a woman will conceive with another woman and we men will no longer be necessary, but also there is dignity in not being necessary. However, they will continue to call us next to them, because they love all creation and nothing is without its contrast. And among the beggars of the outskirt, three women hold us, as Atlas held the firmament, the five men. And you, my king, never questioned this, and know yourself in my story because you share this with me. And in those days, yet your integrity was to give a new sample of your beauty, because it was your conviction and not only the voice of friendship which made you say that the Daughter of the Earth and the Tree-Beggar deserved each other. And the fact of seeing that they love each other does not only not overshadow your nights, but it increases your happiness, because you want it to be thus. The king needs a story teller because he doesn't know his Beauty, his Dignity and his Greatness. Thus began the story. But as it progresses, it will be understood why they always kept faith in you. The Daughter of the Earth had only needed one morning to find out, as I learned, you have no room for dirt or betrayal on your chest. Hence the words that so much moved you, which were, however, only a premonition of the inevitable: when thou seest us, thou shalt know us! It was never a challenge, my Lord, because only uncertain hearts will be challenged and yours is not. It was a prophecy. Because it could not be otherwise.

   Seven days had needed the king to meet the seven beggars who were then. In just seven days he had left his print in the furrows of the land where they inhabited and had been heated by the fires that everyone approached. And, burning hearts, flames among flames, the first time that the eight beggars were together was at the end of the eighth day, a beautiful night of lights and fires. Clear was the night to which fog granted a truce, opening up suddenly. And so it was that the king came out of his tent, took a deep breath, and felt that the harmony of the cosmos struck him in the face. Because at least in that moment the universe was beautiful, or maybe it was that when She heard how he uttered Her name, She did not have enough with showing herself dressed and She undressed for him, and night invited to bite it, delicate and tender. Night of fires, of motifs by Verôme and gifts of the universe; of basilisks and catoblepas and a great white whale. Fires surrounding a magical pagan ceremony amid the splendor of a summer night: a beautiful black mass which would not offend the gods, because it was a ritual of harmony, of hearts in unison and forgiven pains. And it was not a night to reject God-Fate; it was rather of acceptance and admiration of His universe. But in addition, for the new beggar, the twilight was revealing as a mirror of two crystals and four decisions. And, already winner in two battles, the false gods which he consciously rejected were the god money and the demon of oblivion. And everything was burning around him and there were fires in the sky and on Earth. And sitting among his fellow mates, one more beggar, he noticed how their hearts were much bigger in his, small beings-gods, and wanted to belong as they to the mountain and the river, as he felt that he had always been there, living in the exclamatory. So absorbed, he started to ponder his place in this world and to consider the option of staying, while his fellow mates began to mention, irresponsibly, that possibility. - But you must excuse them, my king, because beggars recognize their peers and, in the cold, they need to add their fires. And when eight needy souls are heated at a time, the universe shrinks and rectifies and there is nothing that may not happen, and it is even fair and harmonious to distribute the stars. And it does not even matter that in the sky they are never seen together; because they decided to cheat the sky and recreate it. This is how they stole the sky Antares and Aldebaran, Castor and Pollux. But that was a night of Venus in its glory, and the Servant of the Wind was the mother of the Earth and seemed His interpreter, or His medium; so radiant and seductive that hers were from then on the flashes of Spica and Fomalhaut. And they also stole four stars to the Lion, who from that day do not belong Zosma and Regulus, Denebola and Algieba. But then they didn't know if they were awaiting Elased, the star of the south of the head of the lion, or the little king, and either of them was already very close to the ground. Oh, Elased, which never arrived! Elased, you tender star, you are still awaited! The eighth beggar had two stars, because his are the north and the Zodiac. And so, his was Zosma, the back of the lion, because in the back of the king are his strength and his fortune. But his traitor reflected a little pain and a mild protest, and it was the first time that this beggar protested. Because Zosma is between Denebola and Algieba, and his sense of geographical fairness shook, and he considered inappropriate to stand in the middle of the sacred couple. But the universe knows very well where every star should be placed and the king will end up understanding where his place really is, although it is never known where his inexhaustible beauty comes from. -Because since that time, my Lord, you had a new fear that has made you, once again, enormous in your Greatness. And sometimes bites you the thought that might be fulfilled the desire of your heart, if the beggar gives you his, and nothing you fear more than that fortune, because that possibility would break the harmony and the beauty of the sacred couple-. For this reason, and for other reasons, the north is the cardinal point of the king, and the beggars also had to look in that direction to steal a star: Northern needle, from thousands of years ago a guide of the sky, daughter of the precession of the equinoxes that chose it to make it the new light or beacon that designated the north, compass of the sky until the cycles of the Earth take it away from the celestial pole and impose a new one, Polaris, alpha of the Lesser Bear, The Polar Star. This was the star of the north that beggars gave the king and the night had bonfires in the sky and fires on Earth. A night like that must have watched God-Cause, at the beginning of the beginning. And who knows if this time He might not be looking down to Earth, the second room (because we live in Horror, but we come from Liberty) of the children of His heir God-Fate, rational principle of the universe. The king had had a fire in the fire and was already prepared for vertigo; and that night had begun what would end the morning after, when, alone with the Lady of Shade, he would be told the tale of the universe.

   Contrasts. In days ninth and tenth The King Beggar knew that he was approaching the time of a decision that could no longer be deferred. Meanwhile, and while he was looking for an opportune time to face the inevitable, and, small and alone, he was considering what to do with the rest of his life, he was still enjoying the new flavor of the world, wishing that the eleven days were everlasting, because he sensed that whatever his decision was, a pain and a loss would come with it that would leave him a bitter taste and the nagging uncertainty of not knowing if it had been successful. But as his meeting with fate arrived, he wanted to take advantage of all the lights that the following two days would bring him. And he began to know the surroundings, in short and frequent walks; and the beggars saw him walk calmly from the lake to the alder grove, from the alley to the river, as if the energy of his recovered health were calling him to the opening of his senses, to bathing in the lights and marvel at the whimsical shadows they were drawing around the grove; sometimes holding the hands of The Daughter of the Earth and The Tree-Beggar, looking at dawn as they did in their day, as if there had never before been one and they had to knead it in the large ovens of the horizon and it was still hot and tender, so that he could bite it. In this way, wandering around aimlessly, his feet took him also to places where society threw away their waste, the dirty stores from which poverty is dressed and fed. But, moving among his fellow mates, the beggar who so well read all the names, felt, however, a new desire to grow when he saw them reading, and talked about books with The Servant of the Wind, learning what realms of wonder the more blessed ones threw away to landfills. But the king had also wonders to give, and showing how one must breathe to stay afloat, he learned to swim in the heart of The Selective Sharer. They were days of light in paradise, and the eighth beggar savoured the lust of its last flashes. But venomous snakes have a triangular head; and in the midst of Eden they keep on biting; and they attacked the king with three fangs. Because he saw The Luminous Beggar coming from the street, the lines of hunger and exhaustion written on his face, slightly softened, perhaps, by custom. And the king had no choice but to look at himself in that mirror, which showed him a future vision of what his own image could be. And so it was as he saw himself returning from the street, sore feet, clothes stuck to the body by intense heat, solitary and dirty, with his stomach cursing his hands which returned empty. But he answered with one of his most oft-repeated gestures, and gritting his teeth and tightening his jaw, Acceptance escaped him again on the strength of an interjection syllable. Whenever he pronounces it, his clean eyes alert he has just learned, startled, a new hardness of the life of beggars he was unaware of. But you can also see how the teaching is written down in the book of which cannot be otherwise; and since it cannot be otherwise, he makes it his own teaching. Each ah of the king is, therefore, an interjection belligerent with power at the time it is a solemn vindication of his fellow mates. Well you can see that he was getting to know his homeland with shocks. Because the second sting was going to be stabbed by The Beggar Master, who compared the feelings that the king was experiencing with the inversion of values of Carnival, those days in which it is allowed to subvert the stable cycles of civilization and one can get into the skin of imagined characters and dramatize situations that do not correspond with the everyday reality; where you can dress the rags of a beggar, because at night you go again, comforted, to the comfort of the bed linen and the pantry, and the dirty faces of real beggars are dissolved in the dawn. The king doubted, but did not know himself in that specter. He had the certainty that Hunger and Beauty hurt and had nothing to do with Carnival, because whether he stayed with them or not, either in the avenue of fortune or in the street of misery, the image of the need of his fellow mates would no longer leave him; and a false beggar does not later approach the table of the beggars and eat from their dishes. -Therefore, my king, you could not dodge the third sting. It was inevitable. Your generosity could not take off your mind a black idea which, however, never became indignity, since you never came to mentioning it. Your intuition of beggar saved you, but we had to help you with our hints; with severity, if needed. Because what had happened in those days, all those tales of warmth and friendship, could have lost their value-: it is one of the indignities of poverty that the beggar dares not to go near the heart of he who has most, even if he loves him, because the gestures may be confused. And it is the same indignity of wealth, which will never be sure of the reasons for the love they give someone. But enough, because this is the tale of the king, and although there might be room for indignity, ugliness has no place. Long the storyteller has been meditating on the advisability of including this small section, but he had to mention it, albeit in passing, because it also sheds light on the doubts of the king, who, once more, found the only solution of the riddle: the beggars had been excluded from this cancer in the world, and preferred to stay in the need because they know well that there are thousand intermediate steps from the glare of the first coin to the obscenity of extreme ambition, and the degradation is growing with the height. That’s why its damn name will not be again pronounced in this tale.

-Nike. It seems that you startle. You might need to say something.

-Forgive me, Luke. It was just a new glow of this fleeting idea that sometimes crosses my mind and I cannot grasp. But I have lost it again. And I feel that it is something as simple as adding two ideas together, and it is important.

-Surely it is. But it will return when you're not expecting it. Anyway, speak if you wish, Nike

-It may not be necessary. But I put myself in the place of the king and I think that it must have been a very difficult time for him, since all options seemed wrong. If he was right, it is because he had to choose between two vile acts and chose the one which seemed to him to be less shameful. It is not easy to see poverty and being forced to do nothing, but in the end he understood that it could not be otherwise, because an aid not required would have never been accepted. Don't worry, if you do not want to pronounce its damn name, I will not do it either. It is enough, because this is your story, Luke, and it is the tale of Beauty. Let us not add anything else.

-Amen.

   While all this was going through the mind of the king, the beggars, who understood what he was feeling, respected his shyness and moved aside to leave him alone in his privacy, or spoke to him about something else. Maybe they know well what loneliness seize a beggar in that twilight hour, cold and painful, in which one sees himself in front of misery, watching tiredness and hunger as horizons and disoriented, looks around and it is then when the lights of the nearby homes hurt your eyes and you do not want to look at them because loneliness and cold spit in your face and Exclusion comes as a blow against a wall of concrete, a blow whose burn marks you forever. Some of the beggars, the oldest, had also got used to observe that there are those who prefer to stay away from paradise, because many are the snakes, and leave everything so as to not live in a golden exile. And they were no longer surprised that the same cycle was repeated over and over again. But they could do nothing to help him and were silent together to avoid falling into the indignity of words, small in the memory of their own motifs by Verôme. Finally, the twilight of the tenth day had lost its last light, and night had fallen, quickly and unexpectedly cold, like an eclipse of the sun in the summer. The eyes of the king had the wet brightness of goodbyes, his head turned towards the stars, watching them in the void of not knowing whether he was watching them on the last night of the outskirt, or in the first one. On the threshold of fate at the time crack where farewells may be final, no wonder that misery may transfigure and even hunger surprises with its beauty. Shivering, looking again at the faces of his seven fellow mates with the light that was dying, so their photographs did not blur in the following critical hours and he could remove them from the album and hold them before his eyes when he would need them to not allowing himself to forget everything that he had lived with them, The King Beggar went into his tent, a solitary figure, to meet his fate.

   Shade is the first name of Verôme, and when it comes, it comes hand in hand with pain and night becomes insomniac; and the king could not sleep. He had some crucial hours ahead when he had to measure the strength of his heart and be alert to the signs; and although few would have accepted the challenge of looking at Verôme at its face, sleeping among beggars, this was not a man who hesitated. And no matter what happened later; just let us follow the chronological order, as loyal as the traitors of the king, who, like them, doesn't lie and will not allow calling into question his story teller. As the story wants to do justice to The King Beggar, and as justice only with the truth shines, say that the only truth, impressive and naked, is that his first decision was to stay. It must be clearly seen he had the courage that heroes have to make the toughest decisions, and he decided to live the rest of his days as a beggar, dwelling among his fellow mates either in beauty or in poverty. -Oh, my king. Once upon a time there was a beggar who was born in a golden cradle. A King Beggar, who arrived at the time of his virility, and tired of being cradled in the solitude and the eclipse, preferred to go to sleep in the mud! Because if from that clay come pain and hunger, but also the burning matter of resurrection and beauty, and for being substances all of his fellow mates, they were also, indisputably, his own. He had dared to look at Verôme’s scorching lights, which did not burn his eyes; he had won in the challenge of the dirty glass; he spoke without fear with Recognition of Acceptance and knew himself a free man, free to be a beggar of the Earth, and in the narrow alley of misery, free. And dreams, comfort or ambitions of his former life could not stop him, because he considered them black ghosts lurking in a dark and lonely road where he did not want to return-. The Shade of Verôme shudders because the light of Liberty surrounds it first as a halo surrounds the new moon, but soon it explodes, expands and floods everything the eye can see and ninety-five out of a hundred can't stand its blinding radiation. True freedom is a frightening idea. To know that one can be free, the owner of the own path and the own identity, that our ideas are valid and belong to us, you have to pay the price of undressing of the alien slavery with which they have dressed us from the cradle, and leave the burden of all that really has never been ours, all useless things that they have sold us as fundamental things; and you have to watch it all again as if your eyes had been temporarily blinded and regain vision, and stay in your bones and skin and create yourself hourly, as beggars create every morning a new world which is good only for that day, with almost nothing and from nothing. No more bitter decision in reality, but no sweeter one. How can we understand, if not, that once and again men and women in the fullness of their strength leave it all and jump, apparently, that inexplicable leap into the void? - But it must be that the sky is clear, My Beggar, and here below is the Earth, look at it!, so small and so distant; the breeze is pushing us to gain momentum and we feel like jumping; and in a flight at ground level near the river, catch Liberty with one’s hand and continue gliding with it, delaying the time to put your feet firmly back on the ground-. It could not be otherwise. However strongly the next day's events seem to deny it; however strongly the king strived in maintaining the painful reminder that he had to go and blamed himself for this; with all that with his fellow mates he had learned, about life and himself, it was inevitable that he decided to stay, as inevitable as it was to decide later that he had to leave. Because his bed of beggar, finally calm after the brave decision, also hid a harmful animal: an intense pain that overpowered the king as a shadow. - But let it stand, until it should take its place in the chronological order, on the morning that followed! In those slow hours of the morning of the tenth day, you were taken, once again, by Dignity and Beauty; and your Greatness, my Lord, is not less because of exile-. From that night the beggars have always been eight, but for sixty days, seven remained in the heat and one in the cold. 

   It was of the eighth month the sixth day, eleventh of the king among the beggars. Sleepless night had transfigured in a warm dawn, a sign of a long summer day's scorching sun, vivid and painful heat as the day that was to come: day of birth and farewells. The sun, lion of August, which had managed to stab, merciless, the cold of the night before, wanted to be noticed in the sky but also on Earth; and its multiple beams of light immersed the miserable environment of the beggars in a gold varnish, and even shimmered in the crystals of a bottle, broken that same morning, scattered on the bare ground. Its golden hues touched the fading leaves, burnt stones and wood, the dirty canvas of the tents, as if they meant to illuminate misery and embellish it with a luminous framework which, however, could not hide the millennia-old thirst of the land, the hunger of the eight beggars, the hunger mainly of a beggar who when he had just begun to be had to cease to be, and who couldn't, didn't know how to say goodbye. But he gathered his last forces to summon his fellow mates, and with his voice taken by a pain that he could not hide and flooded by a few tears that belied his words, when it came the time to speak, the king lied. He had to lie, because he believed his shadow was not seen; and wrong but very understandably, he understood that his heart would not be understood; and when he had lost it all he had to convince them that he went back to where he had it all, where custom took him because he did not know, perhaps, how to live otherwise. He promised to come and see them, feeling sick from the sun on his face and obscurities in his blood, on the verge of collapse; and he promised not to forget them, sensing that he could never recover what he was losing. But he never knew that two beggars knew the truth of the reason for his departure, the truth that was hidden behind the shadow. -Soon you will meet your second traitor, my king, the only one that will surprise you. But do not torment yourself making suppositions, because he does not even have a face and you cannot get to intuit him. But you must know that because of his betrayal they ended up being two, and not one as you have always thought, the beggars who knew the solid reasons which forced you to leave, and that’s why your departure was never called return, but exile. Although, in fact, my king, you never left us. So much you had bled in eleven days, bit in criminal bites, that your heart was still here, and here we caressed it; so also in the hard months that followed your gaze returned again and again to this place, where you had lost it, blood almost lost-. The ignition of the car engine coming to take you away sounded like a funeral drum at noon: a new ill-timed darkness; but none of the shadows of that morning was stronger than the light of the sun, a star after all, already almost at the Zenith, which wanted to enlighten with its powerful light bulb to the star that was coming, at the time it was expected. And it was just then when it was heard the scream of a woman who was bleeding and the king realized that he could not leave yet; and he turned around because something more urgent that the voice of his blood was calling him, inviting him to see the miracle of the cyclical renewal of the Earth, the wonder of a universe that is widening as had been doing throughout millions of aeons, the stupor and the beauty of the water of life. -Oh, my king, you could not leave the outskirt but the way you had arrived, with a new bite: the most tender one and yet the most incurable! You had come with marked blood and signs on the skin of the teeth of a basilisk; and you had to say goodbye bearing the indelible imprint, the undying fire signature of the little king.

   It really was of the eighth month the sixth day, eleventh of the king among the beggars. It happened when the sun reached its maximum height, on the solstice of the day. A woman and a man, already forever with the beautiful words of mother and father renamed were reborn in a male who, since he came crying and naked, appeared to claim the ownership of the land as his parents had done, the only libertarian way they knew. On the solstice of the day, in the same hot earth in which his mother was born, near the wood that his father smelled like, with rays of golden light as golden was the cradle of the beggar who so much was to love him, the little king arrived with all his fury, determined to claim the three hearts that belonged to him. It was already here: the star Regulus, the most beautiful in the sky, gem among the gems of Leo, royal star, light of spring that had preferred, however, to shine in August, had just fallen to the ground. Oh, Regulus, infinite and brilliant light, star in the midst of the darkness of the beggars, a blazing fire in the heart of your parents, petty king who usurped as a tyrant the love of the eighth beggar, bright star of the night that came in the solstice of the day, you little giant, dethroned king of the skies, you little king! It was never before heard of any star that shone so much in the middle of the day. But there were eight faces bathed in its clarity, eight beggars who wanted to tenderly hold him, so he was lovingly handed from hand to hand. And it came to the arms of the King Beggar, whose heart burst in the most beautiful moment of his life, because then his Greatness took the shape of a blessing and his Beauty was transfigured in words. It was so unexpected, even for him, that it cannot be explained only as the calling of the Earth, as impressive as his need to spill into rain of blood, the blood of the love that filled him. With the music of his verses he caused a chain reaction that made the hearts of the little king’s parents burst, cause they will never forget - never, as long as they live! - those minutes full of eternity, where they tried, but they couldn’t, to return the beauty that was given to them. With the downpour that fell from their eyes, they wanted to give back cries and hugs to overwhelm the heart that overpowered them... and bleed with him in eternal gratitude.

   "Welcome to the world, you little king!"… It was the solstice of the sixth day, at the dawn of the eighth month, wet with reflections of shining light; and as the rhythmic verses of a prayer or a book of psalms, as the chords of a tuned instrument, there began to sound a sweet music invading the soul as a harmony: "Welcome to the world, you little king! You come to an Earth full of beauty... for those who are able to see it." You may love a child that comes to life with the heat that comes from the calling of the blood; you can love him with the tenderness with which you love the children of your best friends; you may love him cause he is helpless, by instinct. You may love the son of the man you love, the son you will never have with him, loving that from him he has come. You may love him as the son of the woman you don’t love, but you are fond of as much as of the bread on the table, of the light of your eyes, because from her he was born. The king loved him for none of these reasons, or perhaps for all of them and some more. He also loved him because he had arrived at the last moment of the most beautiful week of his existence, because that little child continued the beauty which in those days he had been able to extract to the dirty face of the world..., and culminated it. He loved him as much as his life, as his redemption, as a father loves a son. He loved him, in short, for being who he was: the small Regulus and no more reasons are needed. -Let me continue, my king, although I am hardly able. If you feel, my Lord, that suffering overwhelms you as an unbearable torture, pour your heart in these crystals of luminous tears that are just one more bead in the huge rosary that you are making for him with your unnecessary pain. Let my words for the last time bite you like a scorpion, so that tears end and calm finally invades you-. "Welcome to the world, you little king! You come with the wisdom and the beauty of your parents, and the dignity of all their fellow mates." With these final verses the soft music emanating from his soul was bound to sound sweet, nice, and perennial in their ears; and not only for the beauty they transmitted but also for what they omitted. -Oh, my king, I am breaking your heart and poking around in the sacred chalice of your privacy, and I just hope that when a few minutes pass I deserve to earn your forgiveness! Because not everything has been said yet. This story began with a commotion and later evolved into a chain of reasons. But your story teller wrote the first lines that day. Because he always believed that he would see you again, my king, and for then he should have something written that could explain the shock that you caused me in that sublime moment, the most heroic hour of your beauty. And you think you know what I'm talking about, my Lord, because you are still unaware of your own greatness. And you still cannot see that in the glorious seconds of the blessing there was something else, something even more beautiful than your words, my king: your magnificent silence. Close your eyes and bear in mind the scene. Note your fellow mates and remember their frayed rags and their malnourished faces. Set your look anywhere on the stage and everywhere you will see the same traces of scarcity. Do you realize, my king, everything that could have been said, everything that would have been said by ninety-five out of a hundred, and you never said? Armed with the foul-smelling flowers of compassion, many would have looked around us feeling the sticky smell of misery and would have spoken (some did, may God forgive them!) of uncertain future, of growing up without horizons, of a life of deprivation and need. Many would have ensured that an unhappy fate awaited him stubbornly from the hour of his birth. But your mouth, my king, only issued what in your heart was security, the simple assertion of evidence: "And thou shalt be happy". It could not be otherwise: from the apparent sterility of the outskirt you selected the best wheat ears to offer as gifts to the little king. And these were, from that day, Happiness, Wisdom, Dignity and Beauty. With these four flowers he was blessed at birth, and with them he will grow; and you will walk with him, my king, because you have earned the right to accompany him -. Welcome to the world, Regulus! Welcome you are, you little king!

-Now it is the time to cry both for him, my friend, although I know that you can't talk. We are both broken. And if the darkness of this damn new moon would not prevent you to see my eyes, you would see them flooded and reddened. But you would also see that their latest tears are no longer of pain, because I can hear in the rhythm of your heartbeat that calm is starting to reach you. And I wish that cry that now does not let you speak was only the portico of a happier stage in your way, My Mate! We will dialogue again when tears allow us, when surprises that still await us in the chronological order finish. And yet I know that you'll need time, and I respect your need. But do not cry for him with that pain! Now you should not feel pain, can you hear me, My Beggar? Hold me strong, My Mate! And when he cries so that you go to him, go: he is saying that he needs you.

-Phew! So many emotions overwhelm me that I do not know if I will be able to answer. But I have to try, because I have to accompany you with my voice, and not only with my tears, so that your effort is not in vain, My Mate. Thank you for this hug that warms me; and thanks also for adding that I need time to ponder what there may be of truth in your words and stop crying. God bless you, Luke! And God bless you also for letting me love who I love more than life, more than my redemption, as a father loves a son! As you can see, just by repeating your tender expressions I can try to be strong and not to cry. And I must seek my strength wherever if it is true, as you say, he needs me. You know well that I could not love him more if he were my own son and that I can do nothing to prevent it. And my heart was about to explode - the king's heart was about to explode, I'm sorry, Luke- of despair.

-I believe that little one loves you so much because he also knows you need him. And, anyway, even in the times when we feel strong, we cannot help crying, all three of us, because life is that, My Beggar: crying because of our children and constant fear for their well-being. But there are things you still don’t know, which will help you see that all that has happened, Nike, is completely natural. Forgive me for omitting them until they appear clearly in the chronological order. You acknowledge that it is the best way for ghosts to go away and heat invades your heart as you make a place for it with the cold you're expelling. And also forgive me for all the things that the tale is saying that maybe it should not say. I don't know if I am allowed to go beyond your modesty revealing the pain and feelings of the king. I should have started by asking you for permission. And although I know it now may be late, anyway, I now ask you. And do not be afraid to tell me to stop the story here, if that is your wish.

-Luke, if you ask me, I would say that your King Beggar is shy, but as any good beggar, he would be willing to sacrifice his modesty for a moment of understanding. And in the story comprehension is a legion. You like your characters, My Mate, I really believe you like them! So, please, tell me your story to the end. And do not spare me even a single thought.

-Thanks, Nike. But if I love my characters, of them is all the credit, because alone they have grown. The only thing that an author can do is to try to transmit them as he sees them, without betraying them. And forgive me because now, however, I have to keep talking about pain and different degrees of treason. And about traitors.

   Crouching like a harmful animal, intense pain seized the king as a shadow. Until that time, and watched as through a curtain of clouds, he has managed to keep it hidden. But after the greatness of the blessing, the persistent shadow returned with his whole evil and the eighth beggar was suddenly attacked by his second traitor. –Because the time has come, my Lord, to let you know its identity. But you should know that it is not long since it has been deliberately named, in the hope that you have been able to discover the ugly face that hides behind its mask and it is thus rightly disgraced. But as I suspect that you are still in the dark and still do not perceive its name, or has an erroneous suspicion, unfairly addressed, it will be immediately revealed-: the second traitor of the king was the crystal of a bottle. A conspirator broken into a thousand pieces whose treachery was the most infamous, but ultimately, a circumstantial traitor, since he was born and died on the same day and the secrets of its betrayal were handed over to a single beggar, who now returns them to his rightful owner. Because the eyes of the former who wandered lost and still clouded by a humidity of gratitude that wouldn’t dry out, rested a second in those broken glasses and watched how the first traitor of the king was reflected in the second: glass in the glass. And next it will be seen that the three traitors were in fact glasses. –Oh, my king. In that mirror I could see an excruciating ray of bitterness that pierced your countenance and turned it into a rictus of unbearable pain, and how from that spear in your heart came the blood which your eyes cried, bitter tears for the love that was lost that explained me one of the two halves of your shadow and confirmed me the reasons that led you to exile! And I… with a single word could have healed you, my king, but I hesitated. Perhaps I should have taken you away from here to speak to you alone. But I thought that I had no right to do so when I felt that the words that came from me would be, certainly, those that most could influence you and could overwhelm you before a decision that you only had to take, because there can be only one king in every road. And all advices have a double size: sweet and poisoned, and can get away or lead to without it being you who really decides. The words I never said could have brought you a calm with which perhaps you would have decided to stay on the street, but I could not take you to the edge of a precipice which may be the threshold of an initiatory path or a deadly fall into the abyss. Or who knows if with the words I never said I could have opened a wound in your heart that would never heal, because the sudden revelation of the pain that your modesty kept silent could have taken you forever away from me… and away from the street, that harsh and dusty path that you had already decided, anyway, to travel. Miseries, my king, because that was a day of countless losses when you had to see all the acquired wealth was turned into ruins, one by one, and I didn’t know how to relieve your bitterness. In earlier days, I had tried to make you see that you should never fear your heart: the only way I found –and The Daughter of the Earth with me-, to tell you that everything was right and you were loved. But we never knew if our clumsy remarks found their destination; and had no right to go beyond, anyway. Forgive me, my king, for not being able to find the blanket to put on the shoulders of your loneliness, like a beggar should do with another beggar. But the time was not ripe. And perhaps time was needed for your path to be extended with pain, that root from which comes the bitter trunk of Wisdom.

   But the second traitor of the king hid a second disloyalty. Because he could have left him helpless and his heart bare, if his most intimate pain would have been revealed. And if it didn’t, it was because a beggar, in the most luminous of his luminous moments, took him away from all looks, taking him away from there. -A noble action, my king, for which I will always be in debt with that beggar-. So obvious was the pain reflected in this bottle glass that perhaps the third betrayal would not have been necessary. And perhaps that mirror was there for that purpose: to avoid it. Because your third traitor never wanted to betray you. - And you should know that he never did, until the night of winds when this story ends when in the state in which you were the greatest of betrayals would have been not to reveal what he knew. But we will return once again to his motives: the third traitor of the king was The Luminous Beggar – He was, my Lord, as you have already guessed. But his eyes, which were light of stained glass windows where you could once watch the splendor of that mythical being: the catoblepas, are crystals that always hid their reflection and took care not to betray you. Oh, my king! Here are finally revealed the names of your three traitors, so that you can decide whether they deserve punishment or indulgence: an evil-doer that always accompanies you, an infamous one who has already received its punishment, and a loyal beggar who, in reality, never betrayed you. Think if they deserve the pardon of absolution; and perhaps, in your magnanimity, you are willing to forgive the first and the third. Three traitors, my king, and different degrees of betrayal. But judge if, in fact, there has been damage. Or if the benefit has not been greater.

   The Luminous Beggar and the king got away from that place. And in the unexpected freshness of a shady tent, which was to be second cavern of the revelations, they said never before spoken words. A man who has been trained to repress his emotions understands that the time has come to overcome the shame and opens his heart to one who could understand him; a beggar who is beginning to know the shameful truth that once you have lost everything you can still lose everything, risks his future in the name of Beauty and gains momentum for a brave confession. He acknowledges he loves the Tree-Beggar and welcomes pain - because he had always accepted what from beggars came to him - if with it he can further integrate the community of those who are in this world beating. His discarnate words revealed the second half of the shadow. He explained that he had to go because he was not sure that his heart did not betray him, and feared that his mere presence could stand as blackness in the sunlight of a woman and a man to whom he worshipped. It was an unnecessary fear, perhaps, because he only had to look inside to know that it was unfounded; but they were decent words. It was at that moment, to explain the high esteem in which he had them, when it was made the first mention of the Sacred Couple. -Oh, my king, in the boiling altar of friendship, sacred is that friend who loves me and wants my fortune to continue in the company of the woman who has my heart! Sacred is the friend that loves her and defends us!- Because in his intense pain still he has forces for a last greatness. With no benefit or advantage, because he believes them inexorably lost, he fights against the fate that delays a justice which never arrives and opens the eyes of The Luminous Beggar to a forgotten truth: that of two beggars that, far from showing childish behavior, have grown to become a real woman and man. His words were a clarity that did not see he who said them: a king who was going to Shade; but which illuminated the darkness of that couple and spread as a prodigy by a camp that slowly was bathing in the sun of that light. And he even had time to be honest with The Luminous Beggar and acknowledge the fire that he had received from him, when, in the dark times he had believed his heart dead, set, however, as on burning firewood to warm him up. The words they exchanged were of pain, but never of mourning or bewilderment. The king, who knew he was leaving, wanted to drink to the very dregs the cup of knowledge; and this is how they went to talk about ways of eating: a trip around the periphery of charity and its homeless shelters which continued in the shocking perception, virgin for the king, of containers and it is no time to eat, concepts which he wrote down in his notebook of the inevitable and remembered when the time came to prove his courage. This cavern had revealed shining stars from which emerged a confidence and a friendship everlasting: those of two loyal men who shared the same fraternity and had had the same initiation.

   He who had come as a king was about to leave as a beggar; he who arrived with pain, walked slowly to Shade. He had arrived there following the orders of the Universe and had exhausted his first eleven days with dignity. Because eleven days were enough to understand himself and comprehend, to know of metamorphosis and delirium. If his body was touched by Dirt and Hunger, his soul was by the gales of vertigo and prodigy. His feet learned to walk in the mud and his eyes the way of looking at things with Beauty. Eleven nights had passed from the temptation of the hospital and it is not known if he was cured of old injuries but perhaps sick of new solitude. But if a beggar has to go, he should not leave with empty hands. If he didn't take back any coins or hopes, he was leaving full of learning and the paid debt of his worthy behavior. Because he had responded to love with loyalty and left in friendship the signature of his Beauty. And he would not leave without a last sign. -Oh, my king. In a world that is full of obscurities you must give value to symbols! And all, even the smallest ones, illuminate. We always allowed you your freedom and you were often faced with difficult choices. See it with a new example: in the early days, my Lord, we did not wash you. All your gestures had been those of a beggar and we tacitly decided to leave the decision in your hands, because we saw that you were so identified with our scarcity that you could have the fear that your being clean offended our dirt. But you succeeded in your dignity when in the dilemma of washing thoroughly or not to wash, you chose to swim in the river. In the same way, you could have chosen, without offense, to wear the clean clothes that they had brought you, but you despised them and preferred to leave in your rags. If it is true that it was only one gesture, it is a symbol that you left as you wanted to leave, in the clothes of a beggar. Finally, my king, we were at the bitter moment of farewell. And in the embrace with which we were separated, my broken words were no more than a stammer with which I wanted to remind you that you should always bet on Beauty, any road you should walk. But you hardly had started to leave, my king, we already felt your absence: one of us was leaving, a beggar who had lived the experiences that many men live in years, in 11 days. Hail, my King. Now that you walk into Shade, remember that the light always returns in the morning twilight! Hail! Till the happy hour we meet again!

   The exile was for the king a time of alienation and misfortune, but also of maturation. With the old threads which until then had been good to tie his plot, he had to continue his life from the point where he had left it; but he did not know what to do with them because his story had just been reinvented. Between the walls of the ochre living space which he no longer felt like home, he had to struggle to maintain the difficult balance; always looking for a window that faced east, in the remote hope of seeing rise the dead fire of his homeland. Solitude burning among the embers, grey flag of a man in exile! Great is your wilderness, solitude. And angelic beings with goat horns tempt vulnerable souls! Because temptations are always strong and if you cannot return to fetch your blood, you feel the desire to poison it. In the first hours of the exile he felt so unworthy that he was on the verge of insanity, and vanquished habits flew over with its dark power on the fragility of his exposed heart. But sober you also have delusions. And a fleeting fantasy returned him to the awareness of his responsibility and the king knew what he must do. The temptation of poisons moved away, but for those who have known their spell always return. It was an early entrance in the dark corridors of exile; but a hero who has walked over the hot embers of pain doesn't forget how much blood he has spilled in battle and does never come back. And nothing could snatch him the conquests of having accepted his heart and rejected the waters that are swallowed like fire. With some serenity at last, he was able to sleep the first night. At that time nobody had spoken to him about the false beggar, who inhabited a time with his fellow mates and, when he was smiled by fortune, decided to abandon them, at the time he turned his face with derision and contempt. And, however, nothing they had in common, because that traitor didn't feel any remorse; and the king, who had nothing to reproach himself came to feel like a traitor. But see how a beggar who doubts about his loyalty does not wait, however, for the new day to dawn before meeting the sharks to explain to them with whom he has been and where he comes from; to warn them that he will not permit any offenses towards them who he loves or the honor of their memory to be besmirched. A king who no longer knows if he is a beggar, then returns to his home of wealth and cannot stand the idea of being served; he wants the only company of his thoughts, surrounded by no one, to find the letters of his name, which he is already unable to remember, hidden somewhere in this desert; to stop to mourn the absence of his lost fellow mates. He ended up preferring the teeth of a solitude which came to him, however, as a shelter. From the outskirt he had brought the pleasure of discovery and when he recalled, happy hours, the stories and the books, he found refuge in his library, a safe harbor from which he embarked on new initiatory journeys, accompanying the fairies in their forest or the harpooners following the course of the white whale. Decidedly, to that ancient promise land was approaching a walker with tired feet; a traveller returned, exhausted and hungry, begging for a sip of water his servants did not give him. Finally he preferred to stay alone and live with the essential things: a blanket at night and a hasty snack; a chair placed against a window that opens to the east. He had in his bones a cold that no fire could heal and, however, his heart gave off fire. In the home of his flames the humble warmed up, among whom he made new friendships, the stained glass windows of his Star spilling in kaleidoscopic lights. The King Beggar was finding the eyes of the bridge where to take shelter of his loneliness; but did not find a shelter that would protect him from his worst enemy, his uncertainty. Every morning he began a new soliloquy in which he considered the possibility of return, but he was always defeated by the certainty that it was impossible. Because he was concerned, moreover, about how to return. In those eleven days the king had learned almost everything about how their fellow mates lived and rejected the simple idea to visit them, because it does not visit the beggars he who is made of the same clay: either you live with them or you beg alone, a cul-de-sac which crazed him. Thus, the days passed but each day brought the same battle; and he who had to fight it was weakening. As indecision consumed him, it increased his bitterness. He wondered, for example, if when December came, he would be able to return to Regulus. He had to go, at least once, to learn how to locate its golden glow in the night sky and be guided by its light in the darkness, because that would be his only lighthouse, if the exile went on, to the despair of the absence of the little king. So much uncovering, so much unnecessary cold! He did not trust his heart, which would have comforted him; had he looked better, he could have seen that if chance had not led him to meet one of his fellow mates, sooner than later and by his own determination, his feet would have guided him up the steep slope of his homeland. But the King Beggar, meanwhile, was freezing. He became too severe with himself, without considering the extenuating circumstances, because if the shadow prevents you from travelling the way back, you must continue along the only permitted road and regain your life; and if there is no alternative, you will resume it with the mendacious threads of the false homeland; because, as a beggar, he had already acquired the ability to adapt to the environment and had learned to sometimes eat and sleep anywhere. It was hard to accept that he should continue without them; but he began to breathe when he made the decision that he would not allow himself the weakness of oblivion. He had already rejected before that demon; and a loyal king, whether he knows that he is or not, keeps his loyalty even in an environment of suffocating darkness, and twice came to ask people to slap him if his memory was unfair to them. But how to forget them! How was the cold tongue of oblivion going to be stronger than the nights in which the tongues were shivering bonfires... the tale of the universe... the wise voice of The Daughter of the Earth... the shine in the eyes of his fellow mates... that friend who was the same man who owned his heart... the first cry of the little king! So much unnecessary cold, so much uncovering! The winds that were merciless with his defenselessness later became storm; and a night of September the city was tormented with the same cruelty. Whipped by devils, the clouds showered their falls of wrath, while the arms of the storm swept the city as titans enraged, taking souls and properties. The king, whom the gale had surprised in the safety of his room, believed to go mad. Each bite of the wind to the trees he felt it like a sting in the helpless and barely dressed flesh of his fellow mates. He felt the danger that they were drowned in a sea of uprooting trees and a river of mud and flooded lands; and not being able to stay still, he ran delirious down impassable streets, about to lose his reason and his life. He never found them, but he never knew that they were always sheltered. The next day the battle returned with all its fury, but the soldier was closer to surrender. Because after the night that had just died, a new gust of wind would have been enough and October would have arrived before October. Each day was more difficult to accept that he could keep living like that, feeling in his flesh the blood of the children of the street. But he was unaware that the weavers of time had foreseen that the exile was a short transit; he did not know that the autumn had come out in his quest and that, after much looking around, found his silhouette of beggar behind a window, his elbows on the sill, scanning the same horizon of grey roofs and dirty chimneys which he had tried to cross uselessly in the last sixty days, his look watching, nostalgic and lost, the direction of the east.

   October 4. Boom!... boom!... boom . Open up with a salvo of cannon shots in praise to the day of the king, at the time when his strides would resonate with epic to shake the surface and make the Earth quake. Boom!... boom!... boom! It is also the rhythm of an overwhelmed heart, the sound of a few frantic beats: those of a mate who was honored to go out with him. The story that remains to tell could begin to be written thus: from the penultimate awakening of the king on his bed of prosperity to the miserable hut of the hungry night... Once upon a time there was a beggar who was born in a golden cradle; a King Beggar, who poisoned with liquid and gold, on the lips the bitterness of the unbearable absence, caught his cradle and put it on his shoulders; He undressed it of sheets, nightmares and lullabies... and broke it with fury on the hollow.

   October 4! The latest stars were setting and dawn heated up at its bakery; and the king, in order to bite it, asked for it be baked as a brioche, and while he swallowed it with his coffee, he tasted the cold of that quiet time. He could not know next dawn would find him ragged and frosted, or that the heat of that coffee, the food and bread, would be the last in wealth; and that his stomach would claim it. Boom!... boom!... boom! Resound like a volley of lights in the sky; let it be the beats of a shooting heart. Because that day, however, had been prepared so that the king conquered the dream of his ambition and he was proclaimed sovereign among the sharks; and they had filled with carpets the stairs of the throne, but he who was a beggar hesitated to go up. He knew that one foot on a highest step and it would no longer be easy for him to get down; two steps, three steps, and he would see the orbits without flesh of the skull of ruin; four steps, five, six... the outrageous staircase! And that servile wind that inhabits the top would be spitting him contempt. The solitude, the vertigo of the heights, the fatigue! And if with his own feet he ended up sitting under the canopy, it would be his very voice which would return him the worst of names: betrayal. He knew that if he took what they called to win, he lost. For this reason he never accepted that it was insanity the cry of his reason that encouraged him to give up. The first angel brought the temptation of fortune on the wings, but with all its beauty it was... passing by; the king was not decided and an ancient fate, remote as the morning twilight, looked at him.

   The long exile road ended in a curve; because the last avenues of fate turned into the dark alleys of calamity or victory, and the time had come. Near one of its threads and suddenly in front of him, the dirty figure of The Tree-Beggar met him, facing him the ragged hand of destitution to the soapy face of ambition, in the dawn that cannot be put off of recognition or contempt. The king, who saw that he had been seen, looked at the beggar and was shot with arrows, and was, during a single endless second, a prisoner of three uncertainties: he knew that if he advanced a step towards his eyes and he was received with hostility, his strength would crack; but discovering that the archer fired him, actually, with a smile, he moved his feet forward. If he advanced the next step towards his hands and shaking them dirt took him, he would no more put them on the gold of that infamous stairway they laid him. But understanding that if he didn’t he would have to break his mirrors to not watching himself disfigured; unconcerned that behind him still awaited an answer the angel of wealth (and ignoring then that the ears of the beggar had been reached by the words with which he was tempted), he embraced without hesitation the glimpsed misery and misfortune that the future could hide him; and advanced. And if he continued, and gave the final step towards the beloved heart that returned he would be exposed to the severities of anger or enmity of he who now opened it for him; as being undeniable that before any of the seven he would have remembered the predicted words, the challenge of recognition was, among all his fellow mates, the most dangerous; and to get rid of everything could be only the first loss, because after staying with nothing he still would lose the most valuable things. And, however, he knew he was a beggar and no longer had any more doubts; and though he should know that Shame is permitted to beggars, he chose to disregard it, and in the street, and with the astonishment of the angel of temptation, he poured his blood on that dirty man exposing his begging before the eyes of the world; and then his feet were not enough to run towards the air he brought from his homeland, and he became arms to surround him and sunlight to illuminate; and at last, transfigured into a grin, betraying the pride he felt, inevitably, of being of the same flesh of those he loved most, he finally knew him. And that way, the loyalty with love he gave with love was returned him:-Hail, my king. Welcome be the breeze that has brought you back! Hail, My Beggar and My Lord, your home is waiting for you! And you will find that the windows, those of the people of the house, are all open. For if we were of your root the depth and of your trunk the sap, how did you get to thinking that in the time when you would be tested you would faint? The faith of those who had faith in you was unshaken because you had allowed us to touch your heart, my Lord, and we understood that at the end of your latest crossroads, you would remember Hunger, the teacher, and in order to avoid death by starvation, you would lend us your hand. Hail, Beggar of Quake, glad tidings! You returned in time and willing to be fair, you chose to die for us. Thou shalt know us, my king! Thou hast known us! And with this embrace of friendship I want to cover your whole heart, with the beauty of the love you feel, my Lord, with the pain that is burning you. As if once you had to leave because of Shade, now you return flooded with the clarity with which the evening has smiled, and the joy of the reunion has opened in your eyes the sun of light. 

   The following minutes wanted to perpetuate, resplendent. The steps of both walkers met again; friendship was a hug. The uttered words were an exchange of hearts choked with emotion, of hasty questions about the health of everyone. Behind the king, a forgotten angel. But he who returned, already an undefeated wrestler in rough battles, showed again that he had become The Beggar who never Knew Shame; and with the pride of one who shows his most precious treasures, he approached the golden hands to the dirty hands and both the Tree-Beggar and the angel were introduced. In the sweaty nights of delusions, with no books or lips that wanted to explain to him, he had come to assume the whole Wisdom which could be found in our codes; and taking advantage of the peace of the seventh law, knowing that it prevents the needy man from accepting the coins coming from the friend, he invited his twin brother to eat. The air of that first temptation went away as a breeze not seen and the angel turned away to his paradise, without anger. But the golden staircase fell down and the steps would never again take him to the top. Finally the king chose not to know ambition and descend the steps, to gain some height. 

   Two hungry beggars sat down together to eat; and they watched each other avidly as you look at the blood of the sunsets in a debauchery of vampires, desiring a different heart to fill themselves up. To make his heart more stable inside his chest, to immortalize it in union of the figures which were already in and make a radiant shared landscape, to hold the painting on the wall, the king spoke about nails. The learning of his identity had come as a tongue of light that does not destroy, as flames sculptors; and it was time to be who he was, to explain himself before the eyes that were looking at him like allies on the other side of the table. In those crystal water the thirsty image of the King Beggar was reflected; and the language of his own mirrors was a pebble thrown to the watercolour of the other heart, whose waves stroked a second the surface and spread. Boom!... Boom!... Boom! Shooting of arrows to an overwhelmed heart, nails. And meanwhile his dried lips made the inventory of his misfortunes; and he began to tell of absences and deserts, of empty shadows on his window, of the wind that did not take the voices close, of feelings of insanity and treason, of hunger in opulence, of the longing of the sporadic cold in August, of his icy sheets. But when he realized that to recreate his fate was now in his hands, he looked to the street as a wise man who smells the damp air and foresees the sea beyond the horizon and undresses so that finally the fish and the salt can soak him, the fertile sand of poor lands, the water of taking what they call losing, victory. He had to explore it thoroughly, learn its secrets slowly, gently surrender to the love rhythm of it which could be the desired one, which rises at daybreak and has a moon roof, the seductive and the infamous, the mother and the whore, the icy blanket in the eye of the bridge, misery. And as he spoke and did not eat, his feet which were determined to walk it already seemed placed in that mud. He longed to jump and sink the basins of his hands in that clay, to sculpt himself again, to exist starting from the beginning; because although to jump into the emptiness wasn't going to change the landscape of his fellow mates, he knew that going deep into the barren earth was the only way to survive to the figures of hunger on the screen, to the nightmare of the weather forecast; and Dirt and Scarcity were welcome in exchange for the death of an absence, the inevitable price of loyalty; but it does not protest he who agrees or does he curse helplessness if it is a part of the shared heritage. At his side, The Dirty Beggar answered and stimulated him, but he knew that now more than ever he should keep his dumbness, for he was with a man that was the old infinite picture of a beggar beside Verôme; and one who already spoke with him should not stand in that conversation, scheduled to communicate alone the new learners and the spirits of the universe. –I ask you to excuse me, my king, as it was not yet the moment of removing the gag from my mouth! But, through the thin fabric, from my throat escaped winds to encourage you. For if I could not bring the balm to the open wound in your heart, because as long as you bleed, my Lord, you would be experiencing passions, and that day you were going to need every heartbeat... At least I could illuminate the path stones to help you in stability and balance, so that you could watch the ground, thus illuminated, whereby the beggars that came before you traveled, and to assure you that no one obliged you to dodge the stones and move forward; if it is true that you decided to walk to where your weary legs led you, you had the choice of continuing the road or stop, if you wanted, to sleep in any bridge, as well as slow down your progress or advance; because the street is a wired road of thorns with travelers back and forth that both can progress with variable fortune and go on a pilgrimage to the limit of their strength... and often burst. And your decision, whatever it was, was as worthy as that of those who came before. A road may be the same, however, and be rewritten at every step of every new traveller and who can say that the straight line is not sometimes the shortest distance between two commas? Remember, my king, that in our path never appeared the shadow that in your path hid the street with its jaundiced malevolence and, yet, your feet never faltered, my Lord, when the time came to crossing the threshold of this dark path, whose route, you knew it, could be irrevocable. Boom!... boom!... boom! Every word addressed to me was a spear and every reason a nail; my heart had been shot and was dissolved in your watercolor, my king, and my blood in yours.

   The untouched dishes were getting cold because hunger was on other things. The passion of the words they said got ignited, silences were on fire. And every word they said to each other was a new trunk thrown into the flames. In this haven where glances hurt as the western slope hurts the stars, the skin was the only border; but the voices were the common homeland and sounded like mud. It was the afternoon of the beautiful names. So much they loved each other that, careless for a second, they were abandoned to the need and called themselves beggar; and that was another nail to be together in the landscape, it was a new volley of lightning; and as it could not be otherwise, he who was both a beggar and a tree was reached and began to burn. Afternoon of the beautiful names!: not in vain it was then when he heard that his smell was wood, a scent of nearby forest. -Oh, my king. And how not to be surprised that my hectic beats awaited their turn to inflame, if Tree-Beggar was also a given name, a gift from you? My words I left them crackling in my throat and to not be consumed they burst. And at the end they had to bring you to the memory the lights which you had left scattered, my Lord, before your departure; and how your speech had become rain over the furrows, a seed of respect that moved the drift and rescued us. Thus, The Daughter of the Earth was called a woman again, a figure of veneration that was consulted, known as she had always been known, ancient as the Earth her father, so great and so fruitful; and the sacred couple man was considered no more an idolater at the time that, slowly, the bitter hangover of his somber silhouette of a child dissipated and no longer clouded the light of almost all eyes. His fellow mates felt the discharge that disintegrated the cloud that covered them and turned to look at us, and we were again female and male; and also rediscovered as parents, we were redeemed of the sin of having a child in misery; they then approached the little king with a new tenderness, and everything was a bunch of kisses to kiss him goodnight and a garland of arms to cradle him. And although the days ran toward the equinox and grass dried, there was the smell of the beautiful flowers that you left behind one remote day, my king, when you believed that you touched the ruin with the closed door of the heart of a friend, for whom, paradoxically, the faith that your warm friendship left behind had been more healing than the hands of time, indolent and useless. That’s why Algieba and Denebola needed you, my Lord, and waited for Zosma, of the timid light, to resemble something more than the skeleton of an inverted number two looking west.

   Already back in the miserable time of the eclipses, your chin moved forward towards the new station of fate, return was for the king the only perspective. But it is not possible to come to that bridge and not to be afraid to cross it when suddenly arises a doubt whether all waters have a shore, whether from the fountain in its cavity to the ocean in its continent it might be true that all the channels of life end in a border; or if, on the other hand, the bridge will not end as an appendage over the abyss, if the goal is no other than getting exhausted in an eternal swim in a pond without end. But when the king realised that winning and losing were predicted on the route, he went, on a shore pain, in the opposite shore Shade, to dive into his horizon. -Never has to dodge the water, my king, he who looks at it with thirst. He must not fear contempt who has weighed his dignity in the heart he is offering. Never, never again, my Lord, you have to apologize for loving me! Welcome to the future, my king, life awaits you. Autumn perhaps... perhaps the harvest time. But yours is the property of the furrows, your part in our land! And a beggar I name you, my Lord, wherever you spend your days. To embed in our wood only it is necessary to long for the nails and have them. And I am sorry if I neglect the lamb, my king, but in you is the bread that I need. Do not fear misunderstanding, my Lord, because you can't explain these days you have to swim, necessarily, from one shore to the other: you can without concern drink the last rays of your Star because in the setting of the stars you return to sleep in our mud. If a beggar is in the end he who nods naked in the rags of the river, it is also he who drops his clothes when he does no longer need them. That’s why nobody will steal your name now, my Lord, because your heart asks you to earn the light and work to get some bread, and the house radiates dignity through the stained-glass window that you have brought us, the latest of your gifts.

   The king did not want his return to the homeland to last the same time as the west. He had sunk his roots in the alder grove by the river and could only return to seeking his own space between the sheet and the earth. And he now couldn’t stand the privilege of a loaf of bread that he had not earned, or participate in the common dinner without providing his own bread from the street. And seeing a single future, he decided to leave his steps wandering up to the road. But he preferred to do so without the aid of expert hands that guided him, letting his pristine feelings rectify or confirm his intuitions, allowing emotion, whatever it was, to surface without hindrance to help him measure his strength, finally determined to find his place among the innumerable particles that pierce the bodies of the world. Thus, woven in Recognition of Acceptance his immutable will, he understood that it was the time to be understood without adding anything unnecessary, and only required the help of the shivering eyes that were looking at him. -Follow them then, my king, if that is your wish; and come with me to the window. Are you able to distinguish the lines of a threshold, a dusty path?: there in the background, beyond, where sidewalks end. Here walks every morning an army of shadows. Centuries has this bustle of lacerated feet, of backs which can hardly bear the burden, but the night that comes and does not defeat them dies without observing that they have bowed. Daybreak will see them again, the same endless caravan, and passers-by will have declines and new dawns. There is no freedom without pain, my Lord, but what am I going to tell you? If in the fleeting vision of their nudity there is nothing which could cow you, pick up your knapsack and continue forward; you will not be lost in this labyrinth, but just in case, let me explain to you what is necessary: sometimes it is the morning that gives its currency, sometimes the afternoon which turns its face in order not to look at us, and there are days of exhaustion when it is necessary to sweat the morning and swallow the dust of the evening until the last lights; most people walk it alone, but there are those who prefer to rely on the society of the partner, in the encouragement of the mate. This is the face of the loving one, which feeds us; the same abjurer, my king, who will then require the effort and the sweat of those who love and devote themselves; but if you still want to know it, if your decision is firm, it is not necessary to go alone. Let me accompany you anywhere the street takes you. There is a single time to be born, my Lord, and life is urgent. They went out of there... a figure of a novice before mystery and a silhouette of shaken devil, hand in hand towards sunset; and the chairs they sat on will testify that the food was not touched. They had the voracious jaws of the werewolves and they were vampires; and who would say that in the time of the banquet they would prefer to reject meat by devouring their hearts. And they were satiated.

   How could the King Beggar not fear a cold welcome if he had always suspected that the fellow mates lived, divided between trust and suspicion, the hollow of an absence which had had sixty days? And, however, it should be assumed that in the night slumber they would remember the integrity of a man who was with them among the flames, whose odor was also of earth and bonfire, who looked hungry to the viewpoint out in the open to be astonished at the same stars. So if ever faith wavered, memory, most incorruptible, had done him justice; but his name was always pronounced with shudder. So you can forgive them if doubts obscured the Commotion left, because they loved you so much that the day of your departure they all spent in cursing, heck!, that cold that when you got away emitted the folds of your shadow; so much they loved you that in the first twilight without your presence at the bonfire... two men wept. Thus it came to happen that they suddenly wounded the veil of night the woes of a beggar, whose tears, luminous, betrayed that he thought he had lost the king, as he was the only one who knew better that his eighth fellow mate went into exile and was not going to return; and everyone was moved by the explosion of the second, who, when crying, had no shame to allow his selective heart to show who he had chosen to mourn. But that’s also why The Tree-Beggar, who had just seen how the king spilled his blood onto a tray of fullness that had not been touched, had to use a ploy so that nothing of that was forgotten, and thus leveling out for him the steep slope, change the stones into a carpet where he was received with the dignity that had earned. It was expected that his beloved face emerged at any moment by the arid hill, and when afternoon turned the first bend, at last they saw him climb with difficulty - the print of the first basilisk in its lameness, facing everywhere as if he still expected new bites and he had come determined to receive them, because they clung in the deep and made him no evil. And however strong the fears written in his nervous breathing, his doubts softened with the desire to kiss the ground. His homeland dazzled! How beautiful the new hues were with which autumn dressed it! He stopped a second to watch its walls and finally he saw them: the beggars from inside, those who tilled his new furrows and in his dark night came with lamps; and then he saw them as lights of the Earth, beacons that a world in darkness disdains for the fear of approaching the cliff, sentry glass bells, guardians of the last clarity, shy fires; beggars from inside, those of his hunger and his north, those of the beloved names... there they all were. And it didn't matter if their mirrors were wet as he watched their figures of dignity and saw them coming towards him with smiles in the windows, with the bonfire and the river for a welcome; and overwhelmed he sighed: so he remembered his home! He had returned! Looking for a spring in their eyes, he read in the knowing flash  of The Dirty Beggar that the hour was come to open the presents; and it had confirmation on the wise nod of the Lady of Shade, entrusting him again the custody of Liberty, the blue of the eight flames; The Beggar Master brought him the vessel of prudence, but by his side was the man of his life, The Luminous Beggar, who filled it with shaken water, so that the king knew that the clarity that he had left behind had refracted as the light waves in the last fluid of the afternoon, while the secret continued hidden; then came The Servant of the Wind with a branch of the sobs of ancient virgin-goddesses who grieve for their children, and the king was left with the impression that he had been touched again by some beautiful woman-tree and that there were still unknown essences that continued calling him to wonder; when he saw The Selective Sharer appear, The King Beggar came to him to embrace him, and noble gentleman, started to cry and broke, moved by the fidelity that the tears of his fellow mate were still showing; but the other gentleman also cried, perhaps because to him that had taught him to swim he wished to offer a river. There came with the crystals of dawn The Daughter of the Earth and the king felt that he could already say that she had brought him what is hidden on the reverse of a star; and he cried because he felt that she knew that that evening he had just triumphed and everything happened just as she predicted. The beggar woman then reminded him that if a heart is only tested once, thereafter he should not doubt of the beauty with which it beat. You can well see that the absence was not stronger than they were and they still liked and loved each other; but he did not know that for either of them, love, that beggar, perhaps stretched already under some bridge, attentive to the first clarity, to go to the road. After the warm tears that welcomed him, the King Beggar felt he had recovered his place in harmony, and all, that dignity was written again with eight letters. They sat to exchange the inconsequential news and the great pains of the sixty days, and upon contact with the ground he took root again. But why did the king suddenly have that feeling that the light of the afternoon did not have one wheat ear? Until at last they brought him to his side. At last the little king! How little he still was in his two months! He was crying as he had done in his eight weeks of life, as if he were still lacking the exhalation of earth of a heart that once cradled him among beautiful words - because maybe it will never be known which of the two kings had felt the separation most- but suddenly he must have touched the happiness that he should no longer have fears and calmed; and finally he fell asleep in the cradle of his arms. The King Beggar began beating to the rhythm of the heart of Regulus and exhausted, he cried. The tenderness of the time and the infinite beauty of the moment did not hide the clouds threatening to downpour all their somber terror on his new conquests, and he was aware of how much he could lose. But since there was only a path forward, and even if it was a path of sores, nothing could make him change his mind. And to follow it, he walked away looking for a roof that separated his bed from the tremor of the icy moon, and a cloth to put on his sheet of weed. And finding at last a miserable pillow and very poor housing, with his own hands he built a cradle, a cradle without gold, one of ornaments of earth and body of wood where he could snooze the childhood of his new nights, under the blanket of an old sheep skin, on one side Liberty and on the other side the beggars of the beloved names, in the permanent, intimate contact, of the fertile soil of his homeland.

−Excuse me, Nike, but sometimes it happens to me that suddenly... I don't know how to follow.  

−Never mind, Luke, those things happen. But as I will not believe that you have lost the bundle of the beautiful words, I understand that you are undecided as to how you have to take the next steps. I don't know if a little light, without metaphor, might help you to know how to continue: I was waiting for a pause to ask you if you want a cigarette. Recently I remembered that I have tobacco this evening, at least for a few hours.

−It would not be bad to smoke one now... thanks, Nike. But wait... don’t put out your lighter yet, let it enlighten us half a minute more... Yes, at last the light of your eyes in this murkiness, My Mate! I am glad to see that they are losing the red of bitterness and that your river carries less water. Sorry to not be able to still depart from the poor poetry of my words, but I do not ask forgiveness, because I know that you will not claim me. As for my indecision... it could be said that all story tellers get to perplexity once, or to that uncertainty of having to think which right he has to go forward with the fable if he senses that the consequence can be a tidal wave in the heart of the listener. And although he has been saying it throughout the whole story, it remains an impasse, My Beggar, because if he continues, the man who listens to him can think that he is being influenced in a particular direction; and that wouldn't be fair, because certain decisions can only be personal and well meditated. But the narrator is also confronted with the agonizing doubt of not knowing whether he has the right to shut up the valuable information he has, being aware that a king who must choose a path, regardless of which, can never select it in complete freedom if they hide him what he is going to find in each branch of a certain crossroads. And somehow we must let him know that the beggars who most he has loved have not been or will ever be an obstacle in any way, so that, starting from there, any destination chosen is just in his hands. But if the fable follows and the narrator gives voice again to a man who is longing for narrating his shocks when he accompanied the King Beggar on his first day on the street, what words will be of use for, without pushing him to any sidewalk, telling what then he could not explain? I don't know if you understand, Nike, but at this critical moment, it is very difficult to interpret what the right direction is.

−I will try to help you, My Beggar. Not in vain I've been attentive to every word and could remember the intuitive force that some of them have... these ones, for example: "Finally the king preferred not to know ambition and descend the steps." How can the story teller know that, Luke? How can he be sure he has rejected forever that infamous stairway and he will not have again the golden temptation and wants to climb it again?

−He cannot know, Nike, that’s why the narrator is only almost omniscient.

−But the story teller knows, Luke, you have read the entire book of the king, both the written and the hidden lines. I don't know the end of your fable, but if I may go forward and guess what will happen, I would think that the story teller and The Beggar of the Golden Cradle end up meeting on a night in which eyes are no good and they have to learn to read with their fingers, as the blind, with the sense of touch in their beats; and this is how the former must have certainly perceived that the one he calls king had already taken a decision before he found him and heard his story, and that’s why the narrator has deciphered the feelings with the security with which he distinguishes among all sounds the urgent call of the Earth. Every storyteller, Luke, should have the right to illuminate the path stones to aid in stability and balance; and that's what you've been doing, nothing more; the storyteller cannot decide for the eighth beggar, but no one should deny him his freedom to be a lighthouse watching. I understand your scruples, My Mate, but you can go ahead: the king no longer fears to get closer to the cliff.

−You have illuminated me again, and I don't know how many times they have been, My Beggar. Very well: you can put out your lighter; I will continue in the dark and if necessary, I will learn to read with my fingers. Thanks Nike!      

  When the evening without fog was already in a hurry to dress the hat of the night, and the full moon fit without permission as a feather, the pupils of the Tree-Beggar and those of the king converged at the end in the same radius; and in that voltage they understood each other and from that light came the sign they had agreed to stand up. Beside him were his fellow mates, who had been trained in the secret, opened a way for them and did not say anything. Upright on the quagmire of the hill as a fighter before the acre horizon of the battle, the King Beggar deciphered of the afternoon the signals: the heavy atmosphere heralded its onslaught of black bull; the moisture advertised the birth of clouds for 10 o’clock. The new pupil of Verôme moved his forehead forward, examined for the last time the causes to open the window of the consequences and walked towards them undaunted and serene, as the lover in the preamble of the sheets, without stridency. The light gave him full, his trembling face that of the hero in classical tragedy, his hands training for the indignity, his feet for exhaustion, his teeth for a meal that would not have the taste of that of every day; but he has preserved Beauty in his eyes so when they pointed to his mate they crackled, and so, perhaps preferring to overwhelm so as not to break, without hurting it, hardly touched him, hardly bit him. Both beggars went finally down the slope and lumps in their throats, the first words were born and trembled without producing any sound, diluted as autumn sugar in the vibrant mist of the streets. The Tree-Beggar kept silence to help the king at his initiation, to help the milestones of his experience not to be put before his eyes as a handkerchief that prevents to let them open and free; and that’s why he chose, instead, to accompany him with the staff of the riddles and the trivial words, delicate like the whisper of a lullaby, which seems to be heard again: − Oh, my king, once upon a time there was the story of two men in a solemn evening of October. Follow them with me and look at them now in the distance, affectionately! Do they not seem to be turning towards the same vortex, towards the same border? Let's see if you with me can be a torch to illuminate them. But don't be surprised if its light falters one episode after another, because once again I will have to take you one shock after another. And the tongue I had to bite will talk through its ulcers to say the things that could not be said then. Two men in a solemn evening of October!: a tree-man, on the edge of the nakedness with which soon autumn would scare him, sought the leaves to dress in spring and had them at his side, on the dignity of the mate who tread the stones like needles of the road to Calvary, and walked determined to meet his reconstruction, the mother; misery, the whore, on the porch of the fourteen stations that would have his via crucis:  

   Many streets are called nowhere. They are, like the beloved body which you have for the first time, reward and labyrinth. The King Beggar toured them filling the new maps of x, untangling them. He trusted the imperfect guide of his mate, but he was learning the dirty cobblestones and the streetlamps, here a corner with a filthy, ramshackle bow; there an old oaken door surprising with any mark of knife; memorizing the cracks of the poor city while his feet got used to soot and walking. He hoped to reach some evident place to be what he had come to be. He has been called already The Beggar of Quake. And he has not been inadvertently named thus; because that was another name he won that afternoon. Because only they had advanced the time steam needs to cover a mirror when intuition told him that in a couple of streets he would be somewhere very far away from the commotion of the world; he stopped suddenly, rebelled at the suspicion that his mate was trying to take him away from the crowd, and a shocking appeal shone in his eloquent eyes: for the love of God, don't try to spare me anything! And above all, do not rescue me from shame! Let it be, My Beggar, and let me swallow the honey with the thorns! I'm not the first, nor will be the last that has had to learn it; and all of you have already been here. −But how to explain, my king, you can err without unforgivable malice? Because here November brought me from the hand of The Daughter of Earth, plotting, perhaps, so that the inevitable shock reached me as to the life of the man his snows, slowly and without disorder. And I didn't intend to take you away from the estuaries of the River, My Beggar, my Lord; perhaps I wanted to teach you how to wade them so that later you were prepared before the impending uneasiness of the cascade where we were headed. Slowly, my king, I just tried that your apprenticeship walked through shifting lands slowly, gently along the line which yourself had intended, your own resolution which moved you from unwanted return, which you would have not stood but which never, my Lord, would have been a failure. But the devil doesn’t know that there are many exhausted souls that he cannot buy, because there are beings that follow pain and found in it a compass and victory; and you moved through that maze hand in hand with painful truths; and with that Ariadne, you always found the way out−. Two beggars corrected their course to tempt the alms from the rich river. It was there a sacred place that was accessible to the devotee by an exaggeration of steps, because where there is a temple there must be a staircase, in which the contemplation of the excluded people outside is a thanksgiving for those who come in peace with their God, fervent of compassion, distance and height. The ceremony had begun and the stands were crowded of begging hands. The king understood that the beginner must look for a place between the residues that the initiate have left him and moved away from the staircase. A few more steps until they looked askance the windows of the west and the Tree-Beggar and the King Beggar, last in the row of indigence, sat on the floor. −We were then at that point, my Lord, where if ever you regretted having come, we could return but you could never get rid of the reality of your own snapshot, sitting on the threshold of nowhere. And if those thoughts haunted you, you always clung to the image that your seven fellow mates had gone through each of these indignities; and that memory was all the time your bread and your stained glass window. This city has no cathedral, my king, but it does not lack any altars−. The evening languished, but the light that was faltering could find its skylights.

   Feet had fulfilled their mission and handed over the baton to hands, those members which disturb you when you outstretch them to the charity because they acquire a skill which, however, only can be exercised with a blushed face and a heavy heart; that maybe lead to a long downward slope where they have possibly found ruin and degradation, but always the need. The Tree-Beggar would not have been able to explain to the king how it torments to open them, accompanied by the plea and the plangent gesture, where there are eyes that can see them, to beg for the currency that the lady or the lord may be willing to give, to thank later the ungrateful transaction; but he could instruct him about the opening and the inclination, about how to raise your forearm about thirty degrees and place it in a way that it draws in the air a hemisphere opened in the equator, fingers pointing to the sky, at the mercy of those who pass and observe from their elevated position. The king had no doubts that the desired name of beggar can’t be won unless they bleed through the stretch marks, and making a hemisphere of his right hand, he prepared his blisters and his grooves to become worthy of a few rags, of the poor soup of dinner with the price, he imagined, of dishonor and shame. The man he loved shook by his side watching the fierce resolution and the impulse that moved him to aspire to become story of the legend of the seven; to throw as ballast comfort, good food and clean clothing, blessing without protest misfortune and indignities, deep in a chilling silence with which he showed meditation of the soul and harmony. He had been taken there by the rich rivers of friendship and beauty; and although in the eight roads sometimes love intended to have had its importance, vain is its glory, because the King Beggar did not come to the street for love either. −My hand is a river basin, my Lord, of the valley where come to die your tributaries. And raised next to yours is a tremor, ignorant of how I can give you back your dignity and express to you my loyalty and my respect. Because if so close to my side you can hear vibrate the heart you yearn; If you feel me but today I'm only your mate, how I won't be stuck to your senses by the needles of your limpid eyes, which want to know if my eyes watch them approving your worthy walking? Those crossbows also reflect that you forgot desire, but why cannot friendship come with desire? The moons of your transparent traitor made me know that you had decided that day you should educate yourself in hunger, because that day love didn’t matter, it was not the important thing. And so, my hand next to your hand was the emblem that I was also begging, that I was also needed; the currency would fall, the indignity would be the shared fruit; and it would be for you the communion with begging and its startle; and for me the commitment to put my hand over your hand to comfort you and assure you the approval of the Earth; and the evening would not die without it being written for me also the law which must urge me to accommodate one day, my king, my hands between your hands.

   The first coin always hurts as a burn, for it burns the knuckles and the palm and it erodes the reliefs; and the weight of the fall makes that fingers lean as in a humiliating sign of bow. The beggar who had been eleven months on the street, also neophyte and still sometimes an undisciplined student, was burned by the first ones and continued to be burned by the recent ones. That October 4 the first alms fell on his hand, while the two beggars were reached by an echo cushioned of the murmurs from the temple and the distant notes of a sermon which was an indoctrination on the virtue of charity, o you sons of God-Fate, help your brothers who have not become beloved in the eyes of the father!; and the king −before thinking of his own sustenance, scorning the hunger which at that time was already beginning to take possession of his weak senses−, looked at the man who was on his left with drawn hope, with the joy that his mate could start the sum necessary to earn the bread that could feed that night his son and his wife. – They always were my king, you Beggar of the Quake of the Earth, at every moment of that day in your thinking! And in the inexpressible afternoon, which was already evening, there was no shadows for the man who watched which could not be reached by a flame of your beacons, my Lord−. Cold they would eat at dinner began to be perceptible and the east was already a mauve blanket when as a burn fell on the hand of the king the first coin. Within seconds, in the chill of the eternally already inevitable, surely he should be thinking how his silhouette would be seen in the reflection, with what expressions he would be portrayed, in the pupils of the person who walked by, who in the initial chapter of his new story was a woman, a woman of an unassuming aspect who came from the street and did not come from the temple. He looked at her slowly and reverent to record her physiognomy, because he knew as if he had been for years in the trade that the face of the first alms giver leaves a scar on your memory and a big tear in the soul. But if that lady could have developed the photograph of the beggar in her eyes, she would have observed only gratitude and assent, and a respect which she, as freely as she had decided to give the currency, seemed to return. The King Beggar had a traitor so that they were not lost in space any of the stamens of his beauty, and so he betrayed, in the minute of breaking with his past and his distant dreams, the security that there would be no place for grief but just the satisfaction of being finally where he wanted. − When, my Lord, do you have to say that this which you perceive is no longer the afternoon and this is the shadow announcing certainly that here begins the night? On what day and what hour ends the teenager and emerges the man? Enigmas that maybe you could not decrypt if you didn’t give existence to the transition, to the border; but it is necessary to establish arbitrarily a point for the subsequent reality. And if you still wondered, my King, how many stages would be necessary for the word beggar to be as part of you as the surname, the last occurrence wouldn't leave any doubt of your jump to the hour of later, to our country; and starting from there your opinions on the street would be on as respectable as ours−. So the man who began his life as a king had confirmed the fate of the prophets and was already called a beggar. But if when misery reaches you know how to get the feathers of beauty, then the gifts never come alone; and that’s why that October evening was the evening of the beautiful names. The beggar who was by his side could have uttered it before for him, but he kept it like a caress for the wonderful moment when everything was accomplished. But finally he gave it to him: My Mate, his new vocative; and he thanked him and made honor, the rest of the night, to the given name. –And when with your shaken voice, after a few minutes, my king, you gifted me with the same word, my walls vibrated from the foundations, and I trembled as if I had always lived without identity and finally I knew who I was: such is the force, and thus pierce the perception of reality, of the name and the words−. The King Beggar was feeling the death of his transit on exile without crosses but with nails, and in the eternity of three minutes he had been pierced by the burning needles of a coin and a name, which fell and left their marks, like two burns.

   In the exhausting minutes of the street fingers hurt and the endless waiting tires. My Mate the king feared to show fatigue when he had barely begun and lived the hours with the suspicion that at any time he could reach the indignity, and did not know that this is no disgrace but a skin cover of the beggar just as sweat or rags. And he still did not know that very afternoon he had shown himself as unworthy as he was a human; but his small transgression will be revealed at the slow deployment of the chronological order. The ceremony had finished and the first faithful people descended comforted the steps. The beggars of the staircase could verify, perhaps, on the surface of their open hands, if the charity preached was thereafter practiced, if it made the devotees feel that they could rise above the ground, thus postponing the joy of receiving the divine word; but the beggars below did not get a single crumb. The last breaths of the afternoon presaged that the night would be long and sterile and cold would not invite people to gather in the vicinity of the temple, a wide square crossed by the river. The King Beggar learned how alike they were the one who gave alms and he who did not want to give it because both gave you their morals and their advice; and by the same procedure as many times their wrath and scorn. They came to reprimand them that which they understood as idleness and laziness, and it may believed that the homeless had found a perfect formula to continue living idle without having to go to work every morning. And that was said by those who best should know that everything in life has its price; those who never knew, on the other hand, the dignity of the poor, at which cost are purchased redemption or freedom. The eighth beggar was learning; he started to learn of social classes and the proportion that separates the sublime things of tiny things; he was learning and remained silent, because it was not in his hand to change the state of things. But the anger surprised him. −This is an expression of enmity that comes from centuries, my king. Since ancient times they have dared to instruct us about the absurdity of our actions and omissions, about the inconvenience of finding us suddenly on their way begging them a piece of the cake of their prosperity. That very evening we were called rabble and, always, slack people with no desire of transformation, the weak of spirit, the parasites of the populace; and they still see us outside when they need us so much, because they have always wanted us to be exactly where we are and they have boasted of the distance they have travelled to differentiate themselves. Whence, then, the black bird of anger, the fury of the privileged people? Their anger might betray their displeasure because we remind them that man is an unhappy and mortal being, and they feel the astonishment of so much working so that one day the Grim Reaper measures them by the same standard, the certainty that they are not so different. But their anger is not our anger. Ours is a wrath of insubordination due to centuries of condemnation and customary injustice, those who lack everything until the sun bursts and we are not able to see again its light at the corners of the east. You looked at me, my king, noting the anger that covered my face as a cold sweat, and I saw how you understood and got angry and almost asked for apologies; but it could not be that you apologized when you had shown me that you despised the risk of jumping off the wheel around which the world turns; and you had moved to the side of those of the mud and deprivation, to stay, to live our outrage and our dangers; with beauty when it arrived; and when it was the turn of the injustice of hunger, with silence at times, sometimes with protest and wrath.  

   The people on the other side were leaving the perfume of their distance and their insolence; but the King Beggar, who had just known their stench, still had to sniff the aura of the unknown people who live on this side of the trench. It came to happen that came down the staircase a couple of beggars, husband and wife, old hands, in the direction of the two mates. She was the most shocking image of misery, he was one of vileness. In her you could see a cloudy mind and hematomas, in him the marks of drink and violence; she was tender... and he was a son of a bitch. −I knew them, my King, of other days of begging; and the same as you, it was never necessary that anyone gave me any explanations; she made herself be loved, and although he was a rat, I couldn't help his approach or hide my disgust for the life he has given her. But I had to silence my mouth again to allow you freedom to respond to this view of the flowers and insects that are also in the street, your first contact, my Lord, with the beggars from outside. And I could see how you were moved to look at her and you were eaten by the worms of despair and impotence; and also how when you looked at him it came to you unexpectedly, as a clicking sound, the nauseating reflex of the landscapes to which you and I never arrived, but where we could have been: you in the time of poisons, me in the time of violence. But you never doubted that there are things that simply can’t be forgiven, that not all men have earned respect, that mean people are in all trades; but you thought that living is a common indignity and for her, who no longer any aid could reach, decided to hear her troubles and bite your tongue. And in the end, my king, you were there where I was before, for what else could we do? So many times I wondered if prior to coming to this bright day, which you made a basilica of, you already suspected who you were going to meet; but I figured that at least you imagined it, that when you saw the beggars from outside you would find the same range of mirrors that you could discover on the other side; and that you would be prepared to meet them and blend in, perhaps because you had had time to look at them, to observe them, from your painful balcony in exile, and you had already foreseen it. In what was left of the night and the days after, the beggars from outside continued to come. But it was me that was not prepared to see your way of seeking communion with the tender ones and the scoundrels, in the middle of the hardened people and the inexperienced, the sleepless and the bitter, the drinkers and the suicide victims, the optimists and the misguided. And so the night shook me, My Mate, my king, seeing how at the gates of your heart they were coming and lived; and gates open wide, the beggars from outside were also entering.

   The page of the afternoon could only be read now with some difficulty and until that time the harvest was poor; hardly any coins fell and the King Beggar began to work out in the difficult work of the calculations with the small change: they would need much more to put into the mouth a crust of bread or something and the gadfly of hunger already was flying over as a scavenger with the unmistakable smell of its victims. And it was then, with the first scratch on an empty stomach and hurting the absence in his saliva, when he saw that somebody was approaching, a laggard of the temple - a male, vain and well dressed−, leaving him in the hand the remedy for his need, the silver of the most valuable coin. But the traitor was lost by this metal, and the one who gave it had poisoned it with derision. And unexpectedly, at the time of vespers, the minute hand moved to mark with blood: you are here for your sins. The beggar who was starting looked up and scrutinized the face of that individual, a scowling man with the eyes of a hawk and hands of a predator, whose words had just whipped him with lie; and though that afternoon he had already stood the arrows of wrath and humiliation he could not stand, however, that stigma; and looking at the man with contempt, to him who had just broken the most sacred precepts, he threw with fury that coin, because he wasn't there to redeem the sins of man. –And only you will decide if you can forgive him, my Lord, because he knows not what he does. Woe to him who doesn't think what he says and confuses the need of mortals with the choices of a capricious God, created in the image and likeness of those of his kind. You thought then about the eight, my king, and about the eighty million that in the world we are; in the hazards that have moved us to walk along this wire; in the bodies and souls that have made survival and fate of chance or cause, all innocent, immaculate beings with nothing to expiate on the altar of ignorance. You could not tolerate, My Beggar, my Lord, the fact that they stained our beauty and our pain with the silt of the evil word that doesn't mean anything. And you still believed that to throw away the damn coin, as there was hunger and deprivation, could be indignity. But any beggar, and you already were, has the right to be the master of his own judgment; and he who behaves according to the dictates of his conscience, in addition, never errs, my Lord; and putting myself in your place, when already your teeth caressed the food, it shook me your decision to follow hungry, My Mate!, my king, to wash us all of that offense.

   The sixth of the negative signs was not invisibility, it had a secret name. −Just then you were knowing, My Beggar, that he who does not want to watch us does not learn to see us; that the spears of their eyes pass through our bodies as it passes light, but without harming us (as it does not touch us), and continue towards the horizon because in their course we have no place and we are not. We are invisible, objects with weight in space, which do not give any reflection or shadow; signs of the air, of what cannot be seen although you know that it is there; or signs of the sun, because you look at it from afar and with caution, lest the near fire blinds our pupils. But for men without faith what you can't see does not exist and that which you do not want to exist is rejected; and the sixth gift changes its name then−. An hour had passed when the King Beggar was thirsty and walked away; but they did not give him any water in the first fountain. They did not let him go through the door. −I still wonder, My Mate, if I should not first have stopped you, talk to you of what you would find. But intuition told me that you no longer needed my staff, that you preferred feeling your way, risking losing balance and fall, without a guide which, in addition, you would have reproached me. You were thirsty, my Lord, and they offered you instead the hyssop soaked in vinegar with which you knew the secret name of invisibility: Exclusion, the secret sign that is not taught in advance, that you only learn after the blow in your stomach that leaves you breathless, the encounter with reality when you suddenly understand that you are not allowed the entrance to places that five minutes ago you could enter− However, the King Beggar seemed to stand the blow and, without surrender, he tried his fortune in a second fountain, where a good samaritan gave him to drink. He learned then the hard teaching that though the universe would sometimes have a balance, it never had a point of certainty. –Then you returned to me, my Lord, you looked at me and words were not necessary; and from your lips came out just one syllable, which was progressively taking you to wisdom; you nodded and I said no more, but the subsequent silence came pregnant of words, where there flowed, tacit, the river of bitter losses. You had assimilated the Exclusion as the ruffian it was and you did not know if the day would not steal you also what little remained of the white half of grey. But at last you sat silent in your figure of dignity, to continue waiting and knowing, in your slow walk through passion.

   When you put a hat on the ground, you look forward to the fall of any substance that breaks the disharmony of empty spaces; but that evening the elements were an insignificant drizzle of cigarettes and a desert dryness of coins. The King Beggar could not know of the rhythms of the street, of the countless days of depopulated hands, and was concerned about the role that his presence might play in the failure. He had stood all the stingers, but time passed and he began growing restive about his mate. He did not want either return or rest and, however, for the first time, he had the temptation to abandon. –That was, my Lord, your only indignity. But not because you wanted to leave. You had come out, due to you own light, of Shade; the Cold you already lived with us was turning frost in your fingers; you crossed Scarcity and Hunger with stoic heroism; you had survived Exclusion, deadly dagger; and before Dirt and Shame arrived, you were almost annihilated by the paws of Temptation. But do not see, my king, any reproach in my words, but one more time, a trembling gratitude. Because you did so on my behalf. Because you wanted to leave so that my family could eat. I read in your clear silence the fear that your look might be too refined and did not invite confidence; and you had to feel embarrassed, risking that I could reproach you (and I never would have done) that you wanted to leave, since you felt that the only thing left to do was to move away from me so that with your absence the sustenance could reach out to my family. Your mistake, My Mate, bit me as hard as your accurate steps had. It was indignity because you never must have thought, my king, I was going to admit you thought you were to blame; you should never have believed that I would let you go if the reasons that drove you out of there were not your tiredness or a determined will to go back; for you, my Lord, never for my own responsibilities, I was not going to load on your shoulders. And, however, my Lord, how beautiful once again the stanzas of your heart! But if my face has also always hidden a traitor, in that hour that I could utter no word, I had to make my traitor work so that, eloquent in informing of my feelings, transmitted you telepathically, loud and clear, with severity: stay where you are, my king, if you are determined that this is your place, and may the night come and see us with whatever it brings; for whatever it is, my wife, you and me will eat it together−. The eyes of my mate said, challenging common fate, that he was not going to move from there. They had understood each other once again without speaking, the man of the eleven months muted by the strength of his fellow beggar, Beggar of the Quake of the Earth. The night lazily opened its windows and, blue pebbles, let the stars get in.

   He does not look for his clothing correctly who is suddenly pushed to the gallows of the street. The King Beggar had dressed with the anxiety of not having found any rags in his wardrobe, and it has already been said that as the evening was passing he was wary of his refined look and he blamed the drought of coins for making it possible to still see the bottom of the hat. The restlessness about the hunger of his mate almost made him abandon, but the discomfort should be working in his machinery, boiling his fluids. Because in spite of his contact with the icy ground, bordering on the humidity of the air, there came down his forehead, and began to fall to his cheek, salt of his crystals, a drop of sweat. −Now that grime, my Lord, smeared your face, and soon the antics of the time would stain your clothes: the universe was rectified five minutes so that a little girl came who was still in summer, so that a spot of ice cream dirtied your immaculate shirt. Dirt is a scourge, my king, reputed infamous of our diminishing and our dishonour; but you needed the rags: you knew that you were who you were, but you wanted to resemble it. And you can see it now, My Mate: so far from the finery and ornament, and at this point in the endless day, what did you still preserve of a king, my sovereign? The first drop of sweat was followed by others, and new soot and new ashes would contribute to the deterioration of your clothes; but from those colors will come the ink which will sign your name, My Beggar, my king, who runs since then clean through my blood.

   In the apocalypse of the street, eight riders ride on the backs of eight bay horses. But impassive before the death riding the eighth beast, one of the mates looked at it challenging it and with the mind, seized the bridles and stopped it, and the horse went away not having touched him. The cold of the night led the two men to move the settlement and look for one place to shelter, but they continued to be too conspicuous. For The Beggar of the Quake to find known people was something more than a chance: somebody could see him, in the paradox of his usual appearance, that of the previous day and that of the next days –Because it was his intention to know in the afternoons the street and return to the Star every morning−, but his hand in the air, like a tatterdemalion, calling misery in the alley of despair. In the slow passing of hours he never lost awareness of this risk, and it was touching his way to always look forward, to face any contingency with the bravery of accepting that whatever it would be would be, if his fortune was already sealed. And then came greatness. It came when the goblins designing sardonic the script of his fate wrote that he was to come up with a figure of his adolescence, with the irony that to overcome the challenge of the pale beast, or to succumb into it, he had to introduce himself, for he was not recognized, to the former guardian of his horses. One who had been king, fully aware of his figure of beggar, saw him through the sidewalks of the night and called him towards him and spoke to him; and, as you might expect, he obtained bewilderment as an answer. But, not getting scared, he looked in the lines of his interior book to find the right words, explain himself and convince. And if all this weren't enough, The Beggar who Never Knew Shame did it again, and at what price!: he exhibited again the happiness of being accompanied by his mate and, with pride in his broken voice, put his gallantry in introducing him. − What good were they for me, my king, the experiences of my virginity if I got frightened before the first familiar face, until the merciful hand of memory rescued me from failure when I looked at the splendid woman who stood by my side? All this you already know, My Beggar, but it is never too much to repeat what you know if, otherwise, you'll never get to understand with what nails you have been piercing, with the patience of water in the stone, my rough wood. With this gesture you possibly lost forever your master of horses, but you earned another heart, who kept your photographs of that night as unforgettable films. Shame is a mastiff that awaits the unwary to tear them apart with the ferocity of its unrelenting fangs; a rider on the back of a dirty beast, thirsty for blood. But at the gate of your house monsters stopped and could not find the cowardice that provides them the meat they devour; as loyal to the thorns, my Lord, you had decided not to know Shame.

   It was not the two men, but that October evening with its full moon, that was to blame for the defeat. The stars that a few minutes earlier twinkled pale in that jet canvas were starting to be swallowed by an arm of clouds under which an icy wind was blowing. Two beggars whosoever would have acknowledged that it was time to sleep hungry in their dens. But the King Beggar would have spent the night wearying his knuckles because he was moved by a hunger that was stronger than his hunger. And so, when he was suggested the chance of return, he asked for another half an hour. And then he spoke: they could not return empty handed without securing the food for the little king. He had almost nothing to contribute, but he wanted to be allowed. −Never you will hear that he asks you, my Lord, why have you forsaken me? If due to so much love, together with his mother and me, he has chosen you among the angels who guard him. But in your search for the truth, My Beggar, I followed you with my mute tongue because I didn't see that there are things that I should have explained. And I had not told you that at that time he must have already eaten and he will lack no food once he is no longer breastfed by his mother's breasts. But if today it is me who has not eaten, I'll be back with my hunger to his cradle and will give him a kiss and a lullaby; and say: my son, this is your father. You don’t have to cry if they bring you a few nights the bread and others the appetite, nothing but the air; cause for you your parents have saved the best thing that they have been able to find in the events of their days. So more or less are the verses, my king, of the lullaby I sing to him every night. And you should not suffer if still with your sweat you have not been able to bring him anything other than crying or the laughter that accompanies his games; take care, for God’s sake, of your own stomach, which is asking you to be looked after, and trust in the future. Rest of your anguish, my king, for three will be the hands that will feed him; and our time is miserable, but he is not hungry.

  They made me know that there is another way of earning a living when the itching of the hole in your stomach requires desperate measures... Perhaps (shaking) we should try. Defeated as the stars hiding crestfallen after the fruitless night clouds, the two mates had no more alternative but to get hungry home, or maybe... Claws which suddenly opened up the dark, were heard the strings of a dissenting voice which risked everything in those words. Once ensured that the little king would lack no food, The Beggar of the Quake of the Earth could fight for that of his mate and his: then he evoked the harsh images that his thinking was forced to imagine about some months back, in an exchange of tortuous words with The Luminous Beggar, coming to him now as echoes of degrading visions that were still hammering him, fleeting appearances which, however, were becoming solid; that perhaps he could only soften if putting away his nausea, he participated of this humiliation for which the seven, and many others!, had to leave behind the last dignity when extreme hunger wouldn't let another chance. Who knows what memories, what tenderness lost forever, became rain for him and fell, slices of blood on the mud, when he suggested the possibility of procuring food in containers. Before those disturbing words, it is inevitable to wonder from where he took force, so natural all afternoon and night that it might be said a part of his skin. What powerful should be the convictions of a man to pronounce them and be willing to carry out such delirium! Surely he must have been worried at the idea that others might give it the name of madness: because he had no need. But the beggar who had a fortune wanted to live the street as if he did not have any, because it might be a day his only house, because of the judicious insight that he could not go on with the cross that the people he loved carried before if he did not know what face has got torment, that of men, not that of the gods. Perhaps also because the pain of the hurtful truths and half-truths taught him to dodge the flowers that distilled any scent of privilege. −Maybe, my king, because it was long since you learned the precept that sometimes you must lose it all so as not to lose it all−. Reasons could be these to string the beads of a rosary. Night was running and what should be done should be done without delay. The Dirty Beggar was not capable of sparing that to him, because one day he also reacted in the same way and understood what his mate felt −and at the end, my Lord, Beggar of Spirits, I left it commended into your hands−, but I could at least save you from the fetid horror of the containers. They walked a bit to get to an alley where they sometimes left, at the mercy of dogs and other hungry ones, the leftovers of what customers of a multinational had eaten. −These are, my King, the back doors of the world, places where we share food with dogs, with the rats that made it impossible for us to touch the one we found, which they really ate−. A sudden start made the cheeks of The King Beggar pale when he saw at the bottom of the alley a sullen countenance who he believed to recognize. Possibly one of his workmates in the Star had just seen him among the rats, searching in the trash. −But you, my king, shrugging your shoulders, despised the price fate made you pay for being where you should be. Oh, my Lord. If it made you no harm, you would touch my breast stretch marks, in which if a harmony is heard, it is a music born with golden strands of your story. If it made you no harm... If it didn’t, I would allow you to touch the rhythm of my heart, beating in recognition of your sovereignty; I would allow you to caress my heart, My Mate; my heart, your liegeman! 

 Treacherous the burden of the first cloud that was pouring nail after nail. At 10 fell the premature threads of one which was to be a stubborn drizzle. It seemed that the night, wet and ruin, forced them to capitulate. They had no more options than follow, desperate, looking for a meal that was not secured, in new containers and end up sleeping in the shelter of anywhere; or return soaked home without the prize of bread among their teeth, slow and downcast. But The King Beggar, who hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and despite the hunger that should be tormenting him, remained busy in thinking about those he loved; and already believing food was impossible to get, clung to a last hope: that one of them could still give, triumphant, a worthy dinner to The Daughter of the Earth. In those thoughts he was when suddenly he must have had a vision, in which perhaps he understood that she only expected him to return; and it was not essential that he put in her hands the tithe of the third part of the manna or nothingness. What mattered was that he had struggled, and not whether he brought her abundance or defeat. His face lit up in a smile of recognition and understanding that so it had been written for the three, once again he knew what needed to be done; and his words then fell as swords of light in whose golden fire he had left the inscription of his own sentence: My Mate, let us go: it is no time to eat.− Boom!... boom!... boom! Oh, King who became loved by the Earth! How can I forget the clear light of your mirrors when you looked at me and you just smiled; you seemed at peace, and yet, how it must hurt, my Lord, that first hunger that always consumes; it was one that came without warning as must hurt you the constant and awaited hunger. But what my eyes were about to see was that, with all your suffering, there you were: giving up continuing the fight to savour it. And however my king, you were neither foolish nor a martyr...; just a beggar who knows the angles where time likes to bend and knows that the ups and downs have changed, a man who emerges from what he has learned and owner of his painful truths, goes to have the leading role in the new direction of his fate. And I... who so many times have slept hungry, and had not given you that afternoon any present, nodded to your words to give you now shared hunger, of all the tender things that were in my hand the one to which you would give more value, the beauty that relieves pain when two are those who shake of the same chill. And again, my Lord, I was moved by your comprehension; and about my own hunger you said nothing, because you had just read that I could leave it where it accompanied you, entertained and at its own pace, dancing with yours−. Once time was stopped, both mates looked at the puddles where the tears that the wind made the clouds pour started taking on the ground different shades, filling the pavement of small stained-glass windows. Were they delirious? The Tree-Beggar perhaps. Is it not true that only with a word I could have prevented it? In justice he should have explained to him that surely his fellow mates could cure them with a loaf and a drink, for they had the wise law that prevents that in the union of several one of them starves; that they could leave home, for there they would find something... And, however, he was silent. Because there are days when eating is a fantasy. Because there is not always a fellow mate near. Because if a man has to know where he comes to, he must live the worst before he has made his luggage. −Because maybe if you ate that night, my king, you would place on our ground your hut and your bundle; and when the street the whore would slap you one day with hunger, you would like to cry and you would be surprised shouting: damn the time, cursed be the land; blood was the only seed, only misery was its offspring−. The Tree-Beggar was silent so that the man who was by his side could find the answer to the distressing question if there was a sun in the light that the lack of food took from his strength, if it was worth being, in order to live; he was silent because his mate, throughout the afternoon, was marking the steps; because of all thorns, also of those of hunger, he was taking out learning and beauty. – It would not be hard for me to make love to you, my king!; with no hesitancy my desire would increase to walk through your hills, to measure myself in your eyes, to rock in your waves... not hard, My Mate, my sovereign; only happiness. And maybe you find me one day begging you; perhaps very soon, my Lord... If I do you no harm. 

   To the rain gods who wrote the epilogue of that haggard day of October, who guided two men on their way back between the cloud and the incense of the wet earth... to all of them praise: theirs was the laurel of fertility disguised as a defeat. They watered the ground of a street that that afternoon was not just the whore, even though she could hardly be seen as a protective mother. Mother it will be in the days of a placid shelter, of the timely coin, of laughs at the bonfire. Mother it will be and a waterfall, in a bend of the future, the one it has always been. −But what dignity and beauty, My Beggar, to have walked its sidewalks; shivering and manly, the way you did! Your day of rivers began with liquid dawn for breakfast... and to the sea where days die came the rain, my king, because those are finally the waters that do not have any shores, those which are not surrounded by borders, which are poured just to make it possible to be watched, so the miracle can go on. And if you were between two worlds, if you needed that both banks were strong, because you could lose both and get lost, that afternoon... of Beauty and Hunger (each one in its trench) you had created a lake of water to swim, to have a bath, water for your new baptism; and I did not know that you were already a master of pain, a titan of the water, a sailor who will not sink in the worlds he discovers. What Dignity, My Mate! And what Beauty it was you lived it with me! −. They returned tearing as they could the intense curtain of rain, but The King Beggar was taken by who knows what powers, because his feet could not do it. Full of sores and covered in blisters, he hardly could walk. Sluggish down the hills of a city where all of the streets were called Calvary, he searched his powerful inner strength to walk on carpets with the engine of the mystical nature of numbers, with the wings of the truths he created that day. And he ended up inventing his own ideology, adding his mantra to the common one of the greatness of the street. − Boom!... boom!... boom! How to dissent from your view that every waning morning, empty of hopes, had to be given a new meaning to find the promise of a waxing night; to reconstruct oneself every day, clay and hunger, to bend the pain, to change the horizon... what dignity, My Mate! To complete the adornment, now back in the outskirt our fellow mates pretended to be sleeping, to avoid you the pain of the questions; The Daughter of Earth was waiting for us and at last she received satisfied the hunger that we had brought, while the small Regulus slept peacefully, well fed and smiling; you prepared your few belongings to spend the night under the sheep. Now, a long morning, hungry and painful awaited you, first column of the cloister of your next few weeks. October 4! From the prosperous and dark dawn to the poor and luminous evening, with the stems of hunger and exhaustion, the day had left you on your forehead a laurel wreath, my Lord... Rain was still falling, the same one that had earlier obscured the stars, finally swept away, taking them to the sea, the last needles of your via crucis. What Dignity and What Beauty, My Beggar! But I... I didn't know how to leave; I refused to walk away from your side. I could not leave you there alone without a gesture of approval, without a caress for all that in a single day you had given me, praise to your worthy walking, my king, these foggy streets that you turned into golden. I wanted to find the air of some warm verses that brought you some peace, My Beggar, my Lord, but I was just able to write a shaken rose, which in the end, My Mate, was only a brief chant to cradle the heart of a man. 

−I was carried away, Nike, and I didn’t allow your voice to be heard. Forgive me. 

−I am not going to complain, Luke. As in everything you've told, which for me was very beautiful, I didn't want to talk. I always thought... well, that the one you call king had done well that day, judging by your subsequent reaction, but I did not understand very well why. Now everything is a bit clearer. And, having spoken, what could I have said, anyway? I think that one day you had to fight against violence, I... against shame. I cannot remember when I started this battle... but I think that day that beast, as you called it, did not come. Your King Beggar didn't feel it that afternoon, My Mate.

−It shook me just the same, Nike. That absence moved me. But I want to continue hearing you, My Beggar.

−Luke, I have no strength to discuss you other things that you have said, surely blinded by emotion... and that you cannot feel. That is why... okay... I will keep on speaking of shame. You are right on one more thing... the first words of that king, which he never uttered, were a solemn request that everything was as any other afternoon, he didn’t want to be avoided that shame...

−We will speak of what I feel. But please follow in chronological order, if you remember it...

-I remember it, My Mate. Using, again, your words, I would say that I keep every memory of that day as indelible films. It is ok. But I will not talk much, Luke. I prefer, as I have already said, to continue listening to you. Let's see... to my silent request followed soon after, according to your particular via crucis, the outstretched hand. You must understand that, My Beggar. It didn't cost me any effort. It is easy if you think that I had been there for that... but I appreciate your desire to place your hands between my hands. So, it seems not difficult to receive the first coin. And I can keep quiet because you know exactly what I thought. It is true that then I was surprised by wrath. I did not expect it. But I had assumed that there would be many things that I had not imagined. To those you call beggars from outside I love them, Luke. It is inevitable. Perhaps because we are all of the same flesh. Then came a coin thrown with fury, but you've reasoned as I reasoned, and you are wise... under these conditions one prefers hunger, My Mate. It is true that shortly after Exclusion struck me more than this city of winds. I was about to cry, but it had to be thus, I never supposed it would be easy. And thus I also knew the one you have as the secret sign. On my indignity, what can I say? I didn't know then that it was, My Beggar, until we understood ourselves with our looks. Therefore, what is so special what happened next? According to your words, I needed the rag and then it came... welcome! About shame, everything has already been said, but I will say something else. I could not, Luke, in any way, feel ashamed of the man who stood by my side, my mate. It's like pretending that fire will not burn. I felt very proud that you were next to me.

−Amen.

−Surely, My Beggar, I was wrong twice. I did not have an indignity, but two, even if you, in your magnanimity, just wanted to see one. Forgive me, Luke. I should have thought that the little king was well fed.

−You will participate in his food, Nike; we still have much to talk about. But for the moment, you don't need to add anything else, if you do not want. Continue, please.

−Later... where was the delirium, Luke? I had a good teacher, your Luminous Beggar was. And if I was seen, it was obvious it had no importance. The next morning I paid him back, that pompous son of a bitch, but this is not what you have asked me, forgive me. I continue with what little is left. You have explained it very well also when you said that that day I had to prepare for hunger. Thus, and with it in my bag, what merit does it have that “it is no time to eat”? With it I was all day and it would also caress me the next morning. It was my new life, Luke, and whatever it was, I wanted to live it and I suspected that many days I would go by that difficult situation. Therefore, I had to start already. Thank you for giving me then your shared hunger, of all the tender things that were in your hand, that which I would grant more value to. And what else do I have to say? Mother it will be and the waterfall, indeed, on other days it already has been. Forgive me for the first person. I would have failed to express myself otherwise. And are you satisfied with this poor summary?

−I am so far. But tell me the truth; would you like me to continue?

−Your story is beautiful, Luke, beautiful for me. That means yes, My Mate. Please follow. I want to hear it until the end.

   In the first poor night sleep is slow to arrive. But he who has been called The King Beggar was dead tired. And the next morning, when The Dirty Beggar, as was agreed, woke him, he found him in a fetal position, curled up and asleep. He got up, for the first time in the trumpets of the morning twilight. There was someone living the day, and the first thing his eyes saw were the stained glass windows that showed him The Servant of the Wind. Dawn would come soon as a tapestry of several colors. Cold dawn it was that Oct. 5. With a borrowed jacket, the king left to go to his destination. He still had the Star, as a scrap, as an illusion of what he used to have. He had to see if he could still keep it, for a few more moments, perhaps for one or two moons, while he decided not to have anything more than the thrilled kisses of those he loved. He had to know if the path he had walked was the definitive path or if it all would not have been more than a beautiful dream. It was a dawn luckily without fog, but with so much cold!... But there was beauty in other places. They could still be seen... and one could not do but look at them. In that cold morning serenity, the Beggar of the Earth, another name for The King Beggar, had a gaseous star wink. He was radiant looking, to the east, the dim light. Thick clouds sailed haggard that viewpoint. Some clouds hurt the east. His eyes were like sharp spears. A dark east, topped by a threat of fog for later. But meanwhile, daring stars put a hat of beauty to the cold dawn.

   The new beggar started to walk between humidity and a wind that removed your skin. The miserable morning was raw and deadly. The poorly dressed flesh suffered and bled. The impenetrable sidewalk seemed a second angel who brought on his wings the temptation to surrender. It was hard to walk along nearly deserted streets in that hour of devils. Certainly, the King Beggar was tempted. He could not help thinking about the splendors of his foam underlay and his room of abundant supplies. He didn't want to do it, but to remember the past, a few hours ago his present, was inevitable. And what is it so special that a beggar remembers better days? When hunger is strong and bloody cold stabs, everybody wants to return. The Beggar of the Earth was the only one who could and did not do so. And suddenly... in a central street, came out to him almost a silhouette. A man who beat him in passing, perhaps because it could not be otherwise, spoke just enough to save him: go away, you beggar! And then he who was a king started laughing. That individual had said his name. He was already so camouflaged that he looked what he was and felt. Just a few hours ago he had needed to be called so, and finally he got it. His memories of the previous evening or a newly aroused class consciousness made him know who he was and where he belonged and he could not doubt. The temptation left him and the narrator does not know yet what lurks in the hermetic silence of this man in this terrible night, but he believes he will not return. But back to what is known. More comforted and safe, he came near the aromas that exhaled an old bakery. The King Beggar didn't have any money in his rags and did not enter. But it came to his memory, inevitably, that just 24 hours ago he had taken pleasure in one. He was hungry for the first time in his life, but he again triumphed. He moved away from that place with a disdainful shoulder shrug and continued his road without eating. The disastrous fate of surrender was only a bad dream. He was a son of the Earth and had to continue his path.

   The Star where he came every morning was opulent, but had not yet opened its doors when the beggar came. He stopped to wait in a miserable alley, as a beggar, his hands on his shoulders, so as not to freeze. At the end he entered with the first providers and even so, for the man at the bar, his new friend and ally, it was difficult to recognize him. A few words of affection, and he was relieved in the heat of thousands of stained glass windows. He let himself invite only to a coffee because the King Beggar felt that the he had not earned the food. And in the dialogue that followed he no longer showed any uncertainty. He explained where he had been and what he had been doing in the last hours and he was received by a new understanding that touched him. From that moment he was going to fight to be who he wanted to be. And when you really are, it doesn't matter the price. The rag of the past freezing hours had given him the serenity. He hugged the man from the bar as a convicted person hugs his loved ones. He was going to the trenches where he knew he had to go. He was going to utter, as he could, his second allegation before the raiders. Disserenascit.

   How could he tell them what had happened in a single day, and expect it didn’t seem crazy? They were all there, and it was obvious that they knew, because the man who saw him last night searching among the rats had already spoken. Even so, he breathed deep and tried to convince them of who he felt he was. He told without blushing that in eleven days with the beggars he had understood many things and finally he knew who he was. He spoke of a happy time when he had cried and laughed, he had suffered and had been transformed, a time in which he had been overwhelmed. He went as he could from an age of fruits to an exile of thorns where he was forced to live because he had to get away for a feeling that he preferred not to say. He reached the previous evening with force and told how random had made him found one of them, and how his heart overflowed and he had felt the desire to jump −and again, without blushing, he said the name of his mate−. He spoke of a meal that was not touched and an unsuccessful evening on the street, where no doubt one of the now present had seen him in his most degrading hour which, anyway, he wanted to tell. Because he felt no shame, but pride. Because it was the first time, but it would certainly not be the last. Because when he was coming here in that stark morning he already knew his future identity and to which fate he would not renounce. He was first a beggar, fights or not, and he did not mean to cease to be. He wanted to just follow there every morning, with afternoons and evenings in the outskirt, which was for him a vigorous and fertile stream. Return there every day... He understood prejudices... but he was willing to lower his conditions. His speech had to be torn and sincere, as they finally agreed to a beggar on the Star. And not only because the former king was now a man they could not ignore. He had just given birth to his new days.  As dessert remained only the soup that he should have eaten the night before, and a conversation, for the first time sincere with an angel that finally showed himself more human than divine. He had crossed the Rubicon and came at last to the outskirt, his new home, the miserable, and yet, the desired one.

   A strong light seemed to shine in his eyes in the return. A return poor and hungry for hours, but is it not victory what his name means? The seven looked at him feeling they wouldn't lose him again, for he was a part of the same landscape, and feeling that in the end they were the prophesied eight. A beggar who loved him called him aside and spoke to him. They understood again with almost no needed words. But there were. We had to make him understand that Dignity also comes with temptations; that Shame had been stronger than many and everyone had felt that bite, everyone but him; that Hunger is not as dangerous when they are many, because you can always find some food near. He was hardly able to remind him all that and there was no occasion to assure him that he loved him. And of other things... what could I tell him? –If I have not spoken until today, my king, knowing what you felt for your mate, it is because perhaps my strength failed me, because your weakness could be already, from that day, also my weakness; because I could not push you to us without knowing what decisions you would take, because your jump could be into the abyss, not to the breeze that moves the treetops. But, without a doubt, you are The Beggar of the Earth and the Tree, and perhaps you do not fear any impulse or no life, and I am the only one who might have some fears−. The afternoon ended with the unexpected relief on the feet that the Servant of the Wind gave him with a home remedy. Healed of injuries in his body and his soul, the cold of the night was nothing more than a blanket of wind, where he would sleep dead tired but satisfied ready to start another day with strength.

   Fourteen were the days that he was this time among his fellow mates, perhaps the first in a long series, perhaps the last... but he would never be the same anymore. Days with all winds and cold, days of all the suns. He went to the street with his mate more than once, and almost always they returned with something in their stomachs. They returned some evenings still with the light in the eyes of the star of the day, other times with a load of rain on their shoulders. But he also wanted to accompany The Selective Sharer and with him he toured the sidewalks of this city Calvary. And he disagreed again with what was taken for granted because this beggar, which they had given Scarcity, showed himself, however, prodigal in abundances. He returned with the first stars and woke each morning to see his Star; and for this reason he was not always understood, but he was always respected because his house was still of firewood and grass, his suit of miserable despair, one more shaken voice on the bonfire, a light in the darkness of each night, so young and so old in the job as any beggar of today or before, as needy as the sky on a rainy night, no light of the stars that bring beauty to it. He had learnt so much already that never, in any return, he would be the same. A beggar in wealth or in poverty, he would be between Father Earth and Mother Universe, under the cloak of night or between the sheets of fortune, a beggar already anywhere, because he was an inhabitant of the dream or the nightmare of being alive, and in that game that was played every day the aim was always to survive.

   But he was still to live a night of winds that would bend his waist as with a knife. The chest of October froze and they were almost all together at the bonfire. The Beggar of the Earth and the Tree reigned in the heart of the little king, who was rocked in the same fatigue, on the verge of sleep, while his compass was dancing in his pupils. And then the Universe wanted to rectify and nearly caused the tragedy. With two months that are not enough to speak, and are only enough to mumble, perhaps just a babbling on his lips, Regulus called father to he who had not fathered him. And the one he had mentioned, as if he had just received another scar from a basilisk, was silent. –There have always been fates, My Mate, my king, which lead to no cause. Perhaps because the cosmos cries asking for a renewal. But how can a man walk in despair to his own abyss only by a few words? Not even the intervention of The Daughter of the Earth calmed him down because, again the catoblepas, he had now a new shameful wound. Perhaps for this reason it becomes necessary to talk privately after the tale with the King Beggar for it is not known what revelations can still bring the chronological order. But if you so wish, it will be a new story of Beauty, like all stories among beggars, of those that have no end because there are explosions that never end. In any case, you need not fear, for it is written in the sky without mists of the night that Zosma must be between Denebola and Algieba, with Regulus in some beautiful lap, accompanying them without tears, restless and dazzling. And those two stars can, if that’s your wish, join yours in the same constellation, because both like you, and like is almost never the same as love, but sometimes they are confused−. Meanwhile, The Beggar of the Earth cried, and his soul, desperate, walked into darkness.

   He was dying of cold and was not warmed enough by a new exchange of tremulous words with The Luminous Beggar. Because serenity is impossible without stridency. He just made him promise to live even in the intense suffering of all his pains. A faithful man that beggar who has made his secrets visible in the gale when The Dirty Beggar –maybe a fourth traitor, but in the excusable mistake of his good intentions− wormed the truth out of him. Unveiling what is hidden can be also a luminous moment, and he who was marked by the iron of the Exclusion makes whatever is in his hand to avoid new excommunications. –You do not betray when the heart spills its blood, when it is friendship that flows through the veins, my king, the pain of other twin and brother.

   And that's how the hero of this story almost dies of cold. He walked through the woods not being quite sure who he was, naked of love and hope, shivering in his Shade. Merciless winds drove him through Horror and the maiden Wisdom was a necessity and did not come, because she does not come if it's Cold. It saved him to have already known Dignity and indignity, and with Greatness, avoiding the Temptation of the new despair, he began to think about what would be the right thing to do. He needed Clarity and possibly it was found. The Dirt of the night didn't hide him, at least, that light. It is not known what he decided to do, but in his heart can only be Beauty and if the icy blow of the winds hurt him as a slap in the face, he would remember The Lady of Shade, first of them all, and the seven who came after her, and would decide any new Commotion, as nobody could deny him now the Liberty he had preferred to choose. In this way he would save himself on any road with Recognition of Acceptance that comes with Verôme and the spirits of the universe would be accompanying him.

   Thus it has to be told by those who come after that the storyteller and the King Beggar would meet in a curve of the evening, by the old alders, at the bottom of an ancient cave, to open their hearts in words and stories, with the singing of winds as a music of the night, customary Hunger quiet in new famines, two vampires who in blindness have left their blood, in the third cave of the revelations. All this may not be necessary, but it was the sap of a soul and therefore excusable. –I apologize also for having read some of the pages of that book of your feelings you believed unreadable. And if you have not protested, my king, it may be because it does not protest he who agrees, and it is now the turn to walk. Allow me just the moan of a plea: don't go, my Lord, anywhere I could not accompany you. Let me share your tears, if you have to cry, or your few belongings or hopes. Ninety-five out of a hundred in my place would want to flee after you, even to the abyss. So strong is my need, My Mate, my king, that you could say that the bald man has become a beggar, and now I don’t even have the ghost of what I was just the same as never was stronger than you that Shame that they say it is a part of our skin and it can be, as all the garments, only an ornament. I don't know where you are heading, my king, but if every road is a trip, let me, once again, discover it with you. Your poor mate can be a shabby cane, but you are to have in him your guide for the blind, a dim flashlight which perhaps still knows how to illuminate you. The Daughter of the Earth and I wish to continue sailing in the fragrant harbour where you swim. Regulus will accompany us, my king, on that stormy journey, and perhaps new stars will shine because the constellation is not yet complete.

   That was the voice of Urgency. –Forgive the storyteller, my Lord, a miserable narrator who does not know if he can lose you. But how to finish this story without pain? Maybe saying that, if you wish, the following chapters are not written and can be travelled in company. It might not have an end if your heart does not have it. Perhaps it is time not to add anything unnecessary and thus, respect the blemished codes, those old arcana of Wisdom or folly, to which we give value because they are ours. And now walk wherever winds take you, my king, with me or without me, as you have decided. Perhaps with a new light, perhaps with new darkness. But the Tree-Beggar loves you and will love you wherever you are. But you must know that in any place you will take the light of the little king and you will not get lost if you follow it, because it is a star which has not lost its heat and long it is since it shines for you as a wink of hope.

   If you have chosen the street, you already know that sometimes it is the mother, sometimes the whore, but always the mate; but about its old silhouette of lover there is nothing more I can tell you that you have not learned. It has been you tonight that has decided, sometimes with words, sometimes with silence, to overwhelm so as not to break, and I do not feel like ending the tale. Carry with you wherever you go a shining light, for you will find a star lit in every path; and I will follow you or stay back but with the firing of each nail, with your word and your crying, your courage, your manhood forever... but why don’t you sit back comfortably and we even give time to conversations which may be necessary? Not all revelations have room in this story and there are still things to say...

   Who knows if only a few hours ago a luminous traitor would not refer me some of the words he had exchanged with a beggar who was born in a golden cradle. Words that were almost as verses, which assumed the acceptance of any nebulous fate. A sincere prayer to the God of life, words of a man who, however, is dying on the inside. − Hail, my king! At this time where we have to keep fighting. Because you have chosen to live, and remember that there are no shadows that linger. Your star will shine in any dark path and if you prefer not to go alone, you will find me in some corner waiting for you, even if it has to be you now who illuminate me. The street the whore has made you wise and you no longer need my advice, my diffuse light, since you have been created to be a master of pain, titan of the water, a sailor that won’t sink in the worlds he discovers−. In these words could be drunk water to be born, and however, the minute hand moved to mark with blood: despair is a teacher as the street, mother of all those who walk through it, but despair is part of the beauty of life, and I still want to live. Disserenascit. Booooooom.