THE TALE OF LORD GOLDEN TONGUE: THE SUMMER GATHERING

Being a Faithful Account of the Summer Gathering, the Unexpected Lesson in Electricity, and the Children Who Refused to Sign.

Once upon a time, in the ancient land of Serbianna, word spread of the yearly Summer Gathering, where the children of the realm went each summer to learn the old songs, the old faith, and the old ways — or so it had always been.

Before and After

In years past, when the scrolls of registration were unfurled, parents camped at their windows overnight, quills sharpened, elbowing one another for the chance to enroll their little ones before the spaces vanished. Such was the Gathering's renown.

This year, a curious reversal took hold. Lord Golden Tongue himself dispatched urgent messengers to every village priest, commanding them to knock on doors, to beg, to plead — "Please, won't you send your children this year?" — as though the Gathering were a struggling market stall rather than a beloved tradition. The very parents who once fought for a place in line now required a second letter, a phone call, and occasionally what amounted to gentle groveling before they agreed to send their children at all.

The elders of Clevelandia observed this reversal with great interest, and asked one another, quite reasonably, what exactly had happened to make a once-beloved Gathering suddenly need a marketing campaign.

The Lesson That Wasn't, Featuring a Serbian-American Inventor Who, As Far As Anyone Knows, Is Not a Saint

When the appointed hour for the children's lesson on the Holy Faith arrived, the children settled in, hymnals at the ready. Lord Golden Tongue instead treated them to a lengthy discourse on the electrical genius of Nikola Tesla — his coils, his towers, his rivalry with Edison.

Marvelous man, Tesla. Wrong classroom.

The children, ever polite but not stupid, raised their hands. "We love Tesla too, Lord Golden Tongue, but this was meant to be our lesson on the Faith. What have we learned today of God?"

"Now is not the time for that," Lord Golden Tongue replied, and continued, undeterred, expounding on alternating current.

The Flag That Refused to Lower Itself

Each evening, the children stood in formation for the lowering of the flag, awaiting only their lord's signal. Lord Golden Tongue instead stood with his back to the entire assembly, chatting amiably with whoever stood nearest, seemingly forgetting that dozens of children were standing at attention behind him in the evening heat.

After a solid fifteen minutes of this — long enough, one imagines, for the flag itself to have contemplated lowering on its own — he finally turned, threw his arms wide, and inquired, wounded, "Well? Where's my applause?"

The children exchanged glances, unsure whether they were meant to clap for the flag ceremony or for the fifteen minutes they'd just spent watching a man converse with the horizon.

The Cards Nobody Wished to Sign

Counselors instructed the children that each of them must compose a heartfelt card congratulating Lord Golden Tongue on twenty glorious years of lordship.

The children of Clevelandia — displaying rather more integrity than the adults who assigned this task — declined en masse. "You want us to congratulate him?" they asked. "For what, exactly? For everything he has broken? Shall we thank him too, while the quill is out?"

The Question of the Front-of-the-Carriage Seat

One bold child asked, without ceremony, whether he had stolen their money to ride first class while everyone else sat in the back.

Lord Golden Tongue, a man rarely at a loss for words, found himself entirely without one. The cards remained as blank as the accounting ledgers, and far more honest.

The Question of the Banished Priest

Another child asked why their beloved village priest had been sent away.

"He'll be a better priest somewhere else," Lord Golden Tongue answered smoothly — the same silver tongue, apparently, that once assured everyone the Grand Pavilion was under construction — as if a shepherd’s worth were measured by how far from his flock he could be sent.

The Question That Was Never the Right Time, Until a Child Pointed Out It Obviously Was

More than one child asked when he intended to finally resolve the troubles plaguing the village of Clevelandia.

"Now is neither the time nor the place for such questions," he told each of them in turn, as he has told everyone, always, for quite some time now.

One small voice was not having it. "But it is exactly the time," she said. "And it is exactly the place."

To this, Lord Golden Tongue — usually so quick with an answer for everything except where the money went — had nothing whatsoever to say.

~ Some lessons, it seems, are learned by the children whether their elders intend to teach them or not. ~

P.S. When adults choose silence, the truth simply finds younger voices to speak it.