NIKOLAOS - MARK HADDON'S DISCIPULUS - AND KERIMON IN ULTIMA THULE

   It is just after dawn when they see the box. They are returning to port, exhausted and ill-tempered with yet another meagre catch in the half-empty baskets at the stern—wrasse, bream, a young tiger shark which does not look healthy. They are tempted simply to sail by. The box contains something, certainly, given how low it is riding in the water, but the gods have shunned them so doggedly over the last few months that it will doubtless turn out to be filled with rancid meat or sodden flour or shattered earthenware. It promises some small entertainment, however, and none of them can resist the faint hope of treasure which will transform their lives. So they pull alongside, slip a rope under each end and heave.

  It is very heavy indeed, doubtless full of seawater, though why someone should go to the trouble of tarring it like this is a puzzle. And if someone went to the trouble of tarring such a box why would they do it in so amateurish a manner?

  “I’m breaking my back for a piece of junk someone threw overboard.”

  “Do you really want to hear another crew bragging about how they hauled in a crate of opals?”

  “Here it comes.”

  The box bangs down hard onto the deck and rolls over. There’s water inside, certainly, but some heavier mass sloshing back and forth in the water, something big.

  “Open it, then.”

  Gaius grabs a knife and stabs it into the point where the lid meets the corner under the sticky black covering. The wood splinters. He lifts his foot and stamps on the handle of the knife to drive the point further into the gap, as if he were driving a spade into hard earth. The lid splits away and water gushes onto the deck. And with the water out flops a hand, pale, thin, unmoving. Everyone steps back.

  “Neptuno has ago gratias meo patrono,” mutters Nonus to himself, “qui salsis locis incolit piscolentis…”

  “What if it’s not human?” says Nikolaos.

  “You are a child, Nikolaos,” says Mettius. “Do all of us a favour and hold your little tongue.”

  Gaius drives the knife into the opposite corner of the box. The lid comes away in its entirety and a woman’s body is washed onto the deck by the remaining water. She is wrapped in sodden grave clothes, bruised and bloodied with a broken nose. Nikolaos makes a noise like a small, frightened boy. This scenario did not feature in any of their imaginings. Then Mettius stoops and picks up a sodden hessian bag none of them has yet noticed. He hacks it open like a rabbit’s belly. Gold coins clatter onto the wet deck. Tetradrachms? They have no idea. They have never seen currency of this value before. Mettius throws his head back and cries like a wolf and everyone feels the mood shift. They are poor men, everyone has a knife in their belt and accidents happen all the time at sea.

  “Hoist her overboard,” says Mettius. No one moves or speaks. “She’s no use to anyone now.”

  But Korax is holding a sheaf of parchment he has retrieved from the bag Mettius has dropped. “Nikolaos?”

  Nikolaos takes the parchment. There is writing on it, in Greek, which he can read after a fashion. The ink has run badly but the script is still legible. His shipmates are illiterate. If he thinks fast he might be able to invent a message which will get them all back to harbour alive.

  “Read it, philosopher,” says Mettius, who is picking up the gold coins one by one.

  The message is so extraordinary, however, that any thought of saying something different slips from Nikolaos’ mind. “…and use this money to grant her a burial befitting the daughter of a king.”

  Mettius takes the parchment from his hands, rips it into four pieces and throws them overboard. “What difference does it make who she is?” He lifts two stacks of gold coins between his forefingers and thumbs. “This is what matters.” He holds everyone’s eye in turn to make sure they understand. He drops the coins into his pockets and grips Nikolaos’ chin. “What did we find in the box?”

  “We found a woman’s body.”

  “So clever but so stupid.” He slaps Nikolaos’ face and grips his chin for a second time. “What did we find in the box, boy?”

  “She’s moving.” It is Nonus.

  Mettius lets go of Nikolaos. Everyone looks down. The woman twitches, then rolls over, coughing bile and seawater onto the deck. Mettius bends down and grabs her arm. “Let’s get her over the side before you bed-wetters start having qualms.”

  He has lifted her by the armpits when Nikolaos hits him. The boy is not strong and the playground blow lands awkwardly but it is enough to knock the bigger man off-balance so that he lets go of the woman and stumbles face down onto the washboard. Gaius takes the woman and drags her under the standing shelter. Nikolaos has no plan. He is simply no longer able to control the anger which he has stoppered up over three years of humiliation. He pulls the knife from his belt and stabs Mettius in the back of the thigh. Mettius roars. Korax and Nonus look at one another, then over at Gaius. It is obvious what they must do right now, but they need to know that they are all going to share responsibility.

  Mettius cannot stand. “Help me!”

  Nikolaos lifts the knife again but the other men move him aside. He has already done his part. They each put a hand under Mettius’ legs and hoist together so that he pivots over the transom into the water. He turns and grips the rudder. Korax raises his own knife so that Mettius has to let go before his fingers are sliced off. “Row!” shouts Korax. Nikolaos grabs an oar. Nonus grabs an oar. Mettius flails in the water. He cannot swim. Nikolaos and Nonus fit the oars into the rowlocks, sit themselves on the bench and pull hard. Gaius is wrapping a tarpaulin around the sodden woman.

  “I have the gold!” yells Mettius. He is holding up one of the coins and laughing, as if he is going to paint hell red at their expense. Korax rehoists the sail. Mettius slips under and resurfaces for one final time. Then he is gone.

  His erstwhile colleagues are an hour out of port, enough time to hone the details of the story of how their captain roped a lead weight to his own ankle before stepping overboard. It seems plausible that a man filled with so much anger should finally turn it on himself. Besides, no one is going to ask questions, least of all his widow, though they would like to have given her a gold coin or two to help her feed her children.

  Each man donates a piece of dry clothing. The woman is shaking and cannot talk but she is alive. None of them have seen royalty in the flesh before, and none expected to see royalty in so sorry a state. The wife of Pericles of Tyre, so the parchment said, though they can tell no one, lest someone comes asking for the other contents of the bag. She looks as if she has lost a long boxing match against a much stronger opponent. Was it a punishment or a mistake? Did family or enemies do this to her? The men are in a fairy tale. They fished a princess from the sea, for a whole minute they were rich beyond their wildest dreams, they killed a man and then they were poor again. The loss feels like some kind of recompense for taking a life, but those coins will glitter in their dreams for the rest of their lives.

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 When they have docked, Gaius and Nikolaos unload the baskets while Korax and Nonus take the woman up the hill to the doctor’s house. He is not a doctor as such but he owns books, which is qualification enough in this tiny town. They do not mention the gold which they found then lost but ask politely if they may hear news of the woman’s condition and old man Kerimon promises that he will leave a message with the harbourmaster in a few days’ time. He gets his house slaves to wrap her in clean, dry blankets and sends the two fishermen away with the salt-caked shirt, the waistcoat, the woollen cap, the breeches and the boots in which she was delivered.

  In truth she does not need a doctor. Her bruises will heal. Her nose will set of its own accord, if a little off-centre. But something important has broken in her mind and it will never heal completely. She will not sleep for many days and even then she will never sleep deeply, knowing that she will wake at some point during the night to find herself back inside that floating coffin. Every time she enters a small chamber or a dense crowd her heart will race, she will start to sweat profusely and feel sick and find it hard to breathe. She will always leave doors open and if one slams behind her she will weep. She will never enter a cave, a cellar or a tunnel. She will, after many years, agree to travel by sea but it will be painful and she will do it only once. She will only ever feel truly comfortable out of doors, in sunlight, away from the coast. Even then she will be struck by moments of blind panic that overtake her with neither warning nor explanation.

  She talks for the first time towards the end of the third day. She thanks Kerimon for his kindness and asks that similar thanks be given to the fishermen. She apologises for the fact that she can tell him nothing of how she came to be here. It is both a lie and not a lie. There was a king’s daughter who married a prince and they loved one another beyond measure. It happened a long time ago and far away and there is nothing to connect that woman to the woman sitting here on the terrace under the vines.

  She says, “My name is Emilia.”

  She was at sea for a couple of days at most, but it was enough to rip away the shell in which she had lived her entire life. She is ordinary now. Life is fragile and she can no longer take anything for granted. Days are all she has and they can be wasted or cherished, difficult as they sometimes are. To walk on warm dry stones is good, to eat fresh bread is good, to drink clean, cold water is good. If she met that prince now, what would she be able to offer him? What could he offer her? And her child? Thinking about this is the hardest thing of all, a hole in her belly which hurts like the labour that very nearly killed her. She does not even know whether the child survived. If they did then they will grow up cosseted and pampered and have nothing in common with Emilia, not unless they pass through a similar ring of fire which strips away the privilege and the presumption. And who would wish that on anyone, least of all on a child of their own? Better that Chloë is dead to all of them, to her child, to her husband and to herself.

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Kerimon is a generous host. He, too, found himself washed up in this coastal town, in his case after his fellow senators died in a coup in Samaria. He has been deprived of the company of social equals for many years and with the exception of this one bloody episode, about which he says nothing, the details of which Emilia later learns from Drusilla, the oldest of the house slaves, he recounts stories constantly, about his childhood and about the town news he hears via the documents he is asked to write and decipher for the illiterate or innumerate. He tells her about the early death of both his parents and the paternal uncle who beat him daily till his maternal aunt stole him away in the middle of the night, how he then grew up in his maternal uncle’s household as Allectus moved through a series of civil service postings along the Persian Gulf. He tells her about the lesser marvels of their own town—the sailor’s son with no toes who could see the future, the widow of seven years who remarried a month before her shipwrecked husband finally returned home, the man who bequeathed his small fortune to a horse.

  Kerimon is nearing sixty, a saggy man with a hangdog face and a tendency to drop objects and bump into furniture. He has no sexual interest in her. He is, however, besotted with a succession of young men whose attention is never wholly free of mockery. He has a large library—“a sad fraction of what I once possessed”—and is devoted to the garden laid out along a series of terraces descending to the river which feeds into the harbour. Every so often a grizzled traveller will arrive at the villa bearing a seedling from the world’s end and be rewarded with the kind of money other people spend on carnelian or garnet—mountain rhubarb, a bottlebrush tree, evergreen magnolia, fiercely spiked orange cacti…On occasion, instead of supervising his slaves, he gets down on his knees and digs the earth with his own hands.

 She thinks, sometimes, about her rescue. There was money in a bag. If the fishermen took it then they will have made better use of it than she could. One of them tried to throw her overboard. His fellows then threw him overboard. He will have drowned, surely. She has difficulty thinking of these acts in terms of right and wrong. What does she know of the stories which lie behind their actions? How much does one ever know of the stories which lead to the present moment? She has stepped out of life. She no longer has an investment. She can see it clearly now. Everyone inhabits a different world.

  She needs to be useful, to do something with her hands. So Drusilla is teaching her how to weave. It calms her, the way the body starts to operate without the mind’s bidding once you have learnt a skill. She is a good student this time around, she takes more care, she has more patience. She weaves a bedspread patterned with orange and blue diagonal lines. She is starting to learn how one weaves figures, landscapes, stories.

  Sometimes Kerimon finds her weeping. He seems embarrassed. He fetches a rug and places it over her as if it is cold from which she is suffering. He sits beside her and says nothing. Sometimes she looks at him and finds that he is weeping, too, though whether he is weeping for her or on his own account she never asks.

  Four or five weeks after her arrival one of the young men beats Kerimon about the head before stealing a ruby necklace and two silver cups. Emilia finds him in his chamber, sitting on the floor, a bloody gash running through his thinning hair, his right eye puffy and purpled. She cleans the wound then leads him to a stone bench in the corner of the garden where vines create a wedge of dappled shade. She lays the same unnecessary rug over his lap and sits beside him and reads from the Argonautica.

  ’Aρχόμενος σέο, Φοι˜βε, παλαιγενέων κλέα φωτω˜ν μνήσομαι…

  Beginning with you, Phoebus, I will describe the famous deeds of men of old, who, at the behest of King Pelias, drove the well-benched Argo down through the mouth of Pontus and between the Cyanean rocks, in search of the Golden Fleece…

  Autumn is turning to winter. It has been three months since her rescue and she is growing restless. She needs movement, purpose, responsibility, she needs to engage in some kind of business with other people. But none of the skills she possesses have much value at the end of this particular road where every woman weaves and Kerimon has cornered the market in the interpretation of legal documents and the writing of letters. But where else would she go, and why? She is fond of Kerimon. He welcomed her into his home when she had nothing. And as she once needed him now he needs her. Since the beating he moves like an older man who is nervous of falling. She does not like the idea of him living alone.

  One of her pleasures is walking in the hills behind the town, about which these maritime people seem largely incurious. She enjoys the quiet and her own company and likes the idea that she could simply carry on in any direction and nothing could stop her, the absolute freedom of it. She is returning to the villa one afternoon by a winding route she has not taken before when she chances upon a small deserted temple once dedicated to Artemis, but now derelict. Four columns under the portico and a single room behind the rear wall. The former priestess died years ago, Kerimon tells her later, and these are Neptune’s adherents, albeit sceptical ones, too inured to the weather’s fickleness to put anything but superficial trust in prayer.

  Her walks keep leading her back to the same spot. It is not the most beautiful of locations, a junction of five cart tracks, used enough to churn the mud but not enough to discourage weeds, two wooden byres left to rot, trees and scrub all around, a view of sorts down to the scruffier end of a scruffy town, other unremarkable hills beyond. There is a row of swallows’ nests behind the pediment. The temple must have been falling into disrepair even before the last priestess left. The wall paintings are sun-bleached and peeling, moss has made its dogged inroads, the initials of children and courting couples are scored into the plaster and builders have begun purloining the more extractable stones. But she belongs here in a way she cannot articulate. Perhaps it is the very unexceptional nature of the place which resonates.

  Kerimon no longer has anyone else to indulge and the project promises to keep Emilia in the villa for the next year at least so he is willing to pay for the work. Two men take on the roles of stonemason, builder, roofer, and plasterer. They are not craftsmen but one is hard-working and the drunkard is eventually replaced by the hard-working man’s son. The frescoes are restored by a painter of figureheads and shop signs. They are not accomplished pictures but they have a rough vigour and they are certainly eye-catching. Here is Diana hunting with her companions, a large dog at her side. Here is Artemis presiding over a childbirth. Here is the Lady of the Beasts in a forest, surrounded by a troupe of not wholly believable wild animals, one of which appears to be the offspring of a badger and a horse. Here is Lady Moon bestowing authority upon an unspecific ancient king.

  Emilia never becomes the priestess in any official sense. Rather, she realises belatedly that she has been something approaching a priestess in the eyes of the townspeople for a long time, even before she chanced upon the temple. She has possessed since her arrival an aura of the preternatural, the woman fished from the sea, dead then not dead, about whom nothing is known and who knows nothing about herself, the woman who walks alone in the hills and dwells in the villa of the wise man, casting her gaze over them all.

  She thinks they are coming to see the results of the restoration or to catch a glimpse of the crazy woman who has taken on this ridiculous job. She does not realise that the conversations these people strike up are anything beyond the ordinary, and it is this perhaps which gives them some of their power. They talk about children who have died of fevers and young men lost at sea. They talk about pregnancies and legacies, about violent husbands and unhappy wives, about wilful children, about wounds to the body and to the heart. She listens. And being listened to by someone held in such high esteem, by someone not quite of this world, makes them feel a little stronger, a little more in harmony with a discordant world, a little more able to solve their own problems without divine intercession. Most go away thinking they have been given wise advice which in truth they have told themselves. Perhaps this is what all prayer is, when the ceremony and the theology are peeled away, a serious stillness in which one talks quietly to one’s own best self.

  Marriages are consecrated. Funerals are performed. Small sacrifices are made at the little altar at the rear of the portico. Votive tablets are hung on the wall, plaster tiles bearing crudely drawn names and pictures of fishing boats and babies and naked couples and ploughs and farm animals and coins.

  Belatedly she finds herself thinking about the goddess whose intermediary she has accidentally become. Chloë gave the gods little consideration. They were a large and restive family ruling a neighbouring kingdom who demanded regular tribute and needed careful diplomatic handling. Even in her floating coffin she called out to none of them for intercession. But now? As Emilia she pictures the Huntress in the woods behind the temple, bow in hand, dogs at her side. Increasingly, at dusk, she will see flashes of something between the trees, and while she knows that it is probably the scut of a running deer, she feels…unalone, watched over.

  She returns to the story of Actaeon which had appalled her as a child—how the grandson of Cadmus is hunting in the valley of Gargaphie when he stumbles upon Artemis bathing in a clear, shaded pool in a sacred grove. Her nymphs cry out but are unable to shield the goddess on account of her height. Having no weapon to hand, she throws water at him and cries out, “Go and tell the story, if you can, of how you saw me naked.” Horns ---antlers--- spring from his forehead, his neck lengthens, his ears grow pointed, his hands become hooves, his skin a spotted hide. His hunting dogs can no longer see their master, only a frightened stag. They give chase and drag him to the ground. Forming a ring around the fallen deer so that each dog has a place at the table they fix their snouts deep into the flesh.

Terrified and suffering unbearable pain, Actaeon fills the valley with screams which are neither human nor animal. Then he screams no more.

  The story is still cruel and unfair, but she knows now that life can be cruel and unfair. There is perhaps some small justice in an innocent man, for once, being the victim of a woman’s capricious anger. But the myth hints at something else, the dangers of looking into the heart of the mystery. Questions always lead to more questions which lead to more questions. Do not seek out the sacred grove. Better to keep running with the hunt. She thinks too about those dogs. Were they, like Actaeon, human once? Did Ovid simply not have the time or the ink to tell their stories? She imagines them, sated and bloody-chopped, looking around for their master, finding themselves abandoned, their warm kennels far away and night coming down.

  She never utters the name Pericles, even in the privacy of her own mind. It edges into her field of vision sometimes. She pushes it gently away. She doesn’t know the name of Chloë’s child. It is perhaps better that way.

  Winter turns to spring. The hills smell of thyme and sage again. There is chamomile and dittany. There are heliotropes and gladioli. She sees kingfishers and, occasionally, a hoopoe. Two boats go down in a freak storm. Nine men are lost. A wife is left blind in one eye after she is punched in the head by her drunken husband. A house is destroyed by lightning. Nine couples are married. Thirteen people die, five of them babies. The body of a teenage boy is found high in the woods a month after his disappearance. A monstrous fish is caught, its weight beyond anyone’s guessing. It has to be towed back to harbour where a crowd of men haul it up the beach on log rollers. It has an ill-tempered expression, a mouth a child can climb inside and grey skin so smooth and shiny you can see your own blurred portrait in it. Opinions are divided as to whether it is a blessing or an ill omen, though everyone agrees that the meat is delicious. Only a small amount of it can be eaten, however, before the carcase starts to rot and emit a stench so strong it can be smelled leagues downwind. By this point the fish is more substance than object and must be put back into the sea over several weeks, stinking greasy shovel by stinking greasy shovel.

  Spring turns to summer. Kerimon is more frail, more easily fatigued. He takes as much interest in the garden as he ever did but he no longer clips and weeds and plants himself. The illiterate and innumerate come to the villa just as frequently, but after untangling a poorly drafted will or a long bill of lading he will sometimes sleep for an hour on the terrace. The difference in age would make them father and daughter but Emilia pictures them, instead, as two blackbirds sitting on a wall, two horses at a fence, the way animals sit so peaceably in one another’s company with neither noise nor fuss nor explanation. She asks him if they should seek the advice of a doctor from another, larger town. He believes that doctors are charlatans and that it is the quality of years which counts, not their number.

  Autumn and winter, mild as they are, take their toll. He finds it increasingly hard to breathe and is often racked with a cough that can be soothed only a little by Drusilla’s concoctions of honey, gentian and liquorice. He sometimes dozes off while Emilia is reading to him. He can no longer lie down at night but must sleep propped on a bank of pillows.

  Emilia deals with much of the paperwork that continues to arrive at the door. It blends seamlessly with her role at the temple. So much sadness flows from broken promises and monies unpaid, so many tragedies leave bureaucratic chaos in their wake.

  Both Kerimon and Emilia know, without speaking of it, that he will die in the spring. He is able to comfort her less and less when the memories ambush her during the day, but caring for him lightens her own burden. He can no longer read. His sight is milky and he cannot see much of the garden. His life has become a small thing.

  In his final month he talks about the coup in Samaria, how he watched from an attic window as one of the other senators was skinned by a mob, how he himself escaped by burying himself in a pile of dung on the back of a cart pulled by a merchant friend and how he still bears the scar left by an investigatory pitchfork thrust into the dung at the gates. She tells him in turn about Chloë and Pericles and the child whose name and gender she never knew. She tells him about the wrestling and the marriage and the birth at sea and how she woke to find herself adrift in a sealed crate.

  In his last two weeks he becomes increasingly confused. He thinks he is in Talmena. He thinks he is sailing on the Sea of Azov. He sees elephants. Woken by noises in the small hours they find him sleepwalking, moving with an ease and energy he has not possessed for years. They steer him gently back to his chamber. Come morning he is bed-bound once more. He asks repeatedly about an escaped songbird called Autonoë and cries, asking his uncle to stop beating him. He has moments of clarity. In some he is frightened. In others he seems utterly at peace with the world. One afternoon he says, “I seem to be making rather a performance of my departure. You must be exhausted.”

  He dies at night in the garden. They find him in the morning curled around an acacia. Drusilla assumes he became disoriented, went outside, could not find his way back in and died of the cold, but Emilia finds a key in the earthenware bowl from which she eats her wine-dipped bread every morning. He must have known that it was his final day. She likes the idea that death did not come to take him away but that he decided to go and meet it.

  She finds the locked box which the key opens. It contains papers which transfer ownership of the property and fortune to her. As if such things matter here in Ultima Thule, Kerimon has written in the accompanying letter. You have been my one true friend. Live well.

  His body is burnt in front of the temple. The crowd stretches into the shadows beneath the trees in every direction so that the forest seems to have grown from a field of people. One by one men and women climb the steps of the portico to share stories of his generosity. She sees none of the young men who hung about the villa in the early months of her stay. She waits long into the evening for the crowd to disperse. Dark descends and the last embers are still glowing inside the ashy pyre when a woman comes up to her and says that her mother died a year ago but that she still wakes in the night and sees the old woman standing at the end of the bed. Emilia listens. Life has started up again already.

  She gives a generous parting gift to the house slaves who wish to leave. Drusilla and Hamda, one of the younger women, choose to remain.

  Spring turns to summer. The heat is vicious. A forest fire comes close enough to the temple to leave the southernmost side of every column smoke-blackened. Many plants die in the garden. Someone breaks into the villa at night and steals a little marble bust of Eurynome and an oil lamp in the shape of a lion. The bust reappears in the garden ten days later, slightly chipped. On the same day she hears news of a young man falling to his death from a roof. It is pointless asking whether the events are connected.

  Summer turns to autumn. She reads several treatises on plants from the library. She starts to restore the garden. She has never done physical labour like this before. She is surprised to find that she likes the dirt under her fingernails that she can never wholly remove. She walks to the temple every day. She is rarely alone. She prays to the Goddess. She draws up contracts and tries hard to soften the impact of letters containing bad news.

  Autumn turns to winter. The days grow shorter. They close the shutters at sunset and put logs on the fire.

  This is her life. It is simple. It is complete.

MUKASHIBANASHI 6: THE HATTED JIZOS

MUKASHIBANASHI 6: THE HATTED JIZOS (KASA JIZO)

Since we mentioned the Japanese peasants' traditional winter occupation of making and selling those conical rice-straw hats in the last tale (Old Man Bloom), I thought that it would make a good springboard for this other story, in which the kindness of childless old people is rewarded by the gods (there's no unkind foil to this jiisan and baasan, but still, the good deed rewarded is what counts):

Mukashi mukashi, once upon a time, there lived an old childless couple in a cottage thatched with rice-straw, with a few chickens and a little rice pad of their own, on the slope of a dormant volcano (whether it was the Fuji-san or another volcano, the sources differ depending on who is telling the tale). During the winter, both to keep themselves busy and earn some money, they would make these conical hats, called "kasa" in Japanese, from the straw left after threshing the rice and mending the thatched roof, and the old man would sell the hats in the nearby market-towns.
One such winter evening, when the whole countryside round was blanketed in white and every treetop but the pines' was frosted and bared, the husband returned home at dusk with the five hats he had left, those hats he meant to sell another day, strapped to his back. A sixth kasa he wore on his own head to keep out the cold and the sleet, keeping his own head warm; for, after all, it's from there that most of the body warmth leaves the system, and he was a pretty sensible, aside from kind-hearted, good old man. 
Now on the uphill path, right outside the old country shrine, stood a half dozen Jizos in a row. And you, dear reader, may wonder what on Earth these Jizo things are, so let me explain: a Jizo is a god, or more or less of a god (actually, also a past life of Buddha) depicted as a shaven child monk, or novice, known as the patron god of children dead and alive, even stillborn and adopted infants. So he takes good care of all children, especially orphans and those who have died young, giving them all tender loving care that the latter need in the afterlife. He wears also a long wand or staff in his right hand, and in fact each of these six Jizos carried one, to alert the bugs around of his approach, and have them retreat in advance, for a Jizo is so kind he will not even step on a line of ants (That's how you can identify a Jizo if you bump across one: by the childhood, the shaved head, and the wand held in his right hand; in fact, the bug-warning staff is the most impressive thing I've heard a deity can carry; since it's not a weapon but rather a life-saver!).
Now having been childless for decades had never allowed a grudge against the god Jizo and the six Jizo statues within the pious, good-natured hearts of the old folks. In fact, seeing the storm clouds approach and sensing the blizzard ahead, the old hatter-farmer thought the poor things (though made of volcanic stone, the god Jizo dwelled within every single one of them) would surely freeze to death... what better than giving them a few gifts, without asking for anything in exchange? And so, as he trudged homeward, he hatted each of the Jizos with one of the hats he carried on his back. When he came to the sixth Jizo, the only hat the old man had left was the one on his own head... but still, he put his own hat on the last Jizo's head and hastened home, to return by a friendly wife and a warm fireside right before the snowstorm set in.
"You must be freezing!" his wife told him, looking at him with concern in her eyes and wondering what had become of his hat; had the wind knocked it off? So her hubby told about the good deed he had done by hatting all six Jizos, and then the old lady gave him a hug and a kiss, thanking the gods for having married someone so kind-hearted, no matter how humble and childless were the lives they led.
After a frugal meal of rice and vegetables, both spouses went to bed, but, in the middle of the long, cold, dire winter night, they were awakened by the sound of children singing. Surely, they thought, the village children have come to give us a New Year surprise! Yet, as the voices grew clearer and clearer, the old folks could hear distinctly that the children sang:
"When the storm was coming,
right before it came,
the hatter, with such noble aim,
gave us six good straw hats,
one for each head:
we should reward him now in bed!
Thank the hatter and his wife, very much indeed!"
Imagine the old folks' surprise when they went up to the threshold and found all six Jizos, with smiles on their stony faces, greeting them right outside! All six little gods carried their bug-warning staffs in their right hands, even though in winter there were no bugs to warn of their approach, and each and every one carried a different gift in his left hand: a bottle of distilled sake, a pair of kimonos of silk brocade, a batch of freshly made moon cakes, a little casket full of gold koban, a pair of snug and soft warm winter blankets, and decorations made from bamboo and pine branches to ring in the New Year!
The old couple warmly and sincerely thanked the Jizos and invited them into their humble home. At sunrise, the little stone gods returned to their place outside the shrine, where they still stand, yet from that day on there has never been a winter during which the locals have hatted all six of those Jizos, which has become a regional tradition.

REMARKS ON THIS TALE:

• This tale, as seen before, lacks the unkind person foil, like Kakezara or the wealthy young couple in Hanasaka Jiisan (Old Man Bloom), typical of the kind-and-unkind pattern, but still what matters is the meaning, the universal message that kindness and generosity are never wasted. Like Shakespeare's Cerimon, this hatter demonstrates the worth that charity, learned or not, aye bears.
• It also reminds me of Die Sterntaler (The Star Doubloons), gathered by the Grimms, and The Frangipani Maiden; in both of these tales, a humble homeless orphan girl gives away all of her attire, one piece of clothing at a time, to strangers in a direr need than that of herself, during a cold winter night... and is subsequently richly rewarded.
• On the Jizos' bug-warning staffs I have already spoken, and obviously praised the idea, as a Lemony narrator in the tale, as you can read above.

MUKASHIBANASHI I HAVE DONE SO FAR AND THOSE LEFT TO TELL:

Benizara and Kakezara
Kaguyahime (Princess Kaguya)
Taro Urashima
Momotaro (Peach Taro)
Grampies with Wens (Kobutori Jiisan)
Old Man Bloom (Hanasaka Jiisan)
The Hatted Jizos (Kasa Jizo)
The Tengu's Cloak
Mount Crackle (Kachikachiyama)
The Macaque Vs. the Crab (Saru Kani Gassen)

SHAKESPEAREAN CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A NEW AUTHOR

This post deals with my fave Shakespearean characters and how they have impacted me. Long story short: I explain the character in shorthand (hashtag included!), what I admire in them and/or what has impacted me, what kind of person they would be in the present-day Occidental world, and also a few songs that would be on their playlist ;)


WISE MENTORS

Gonzalo: #AlwaysSunnyPacifist
What I admire/what strikes me: He's the token optimist, and the only righteous person, at a decadent royal court, which is a hard life... as Ned Stark got to know too late. However, Gonzalo still keeps his head on his shoulders and his position as the right hand of royalty without giving up his worldview and values. And, as proof, a few words from his vision:
[...] treason, felony,
sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
would I not have; [...]
And some wise words from his section (my favourite, BTW) of The Sea and the Mirror:
A simple locus now, a bell
the Already There can lay
hands on if at any time
It should feel inclined to say
to the lonely--"Here I am",
to the anxious--"All is well".
In our days, s/he would be...: a cool flowerchild born in the 60s, who nowadays, in spite of being fiftyish and occupying one of the highest positions within a corrupt international group, still keeps his flowerchild values. A cool old(er) guy with a positive outlook on life and wise advice to dispense to the younger Shakespearean characters on this list.
Songs on his/her playlist: "Imagine," John Lennon
"Octopus's Garden", The Beatles
"Destra-Sinistra," Giorgio Gaber
Milky Way Song, Monty Python
"Alla fiera dell'est," Angelo Braduardi
"Fiorecrì," VillaZuk

Cerimon: #OthersComeFirst
What I admire/what strikes me: Let the Bard and the Lambs explain it themselves, right?
In reverend Cerimon there well appears
The worth that learned charity aye wears.
(Shakespeare)
In the worthy Cerimon, we are instructed how goodness directed by knowledge, in bestowing benefits upon (hu)mankind, approaches to the nature of the gods.
(Mary Lamb)
In our days, s/he would be...: a cool flowerchild born in the 60s, like Gonzalo, but as an eccentric healer who resorts to surprisingly good alternate therapies. Always ready to lend a helping hand, just like Gonzalo, to whom he is very close. Perchance tied with Gonzalo as the person leaning most to the left in the political spectrum of those I mention here.
Songs on his/her playlist: Meditation music
Hear the Loon Cry (or any loon song recording, for that matter)
Any quality whale song recording
"Within You Without You," The Beatles
Soothing Mozart

"Fiorecrì," VillaZuk

GIRLS IN BREECHES

Portia: #ThisIsNotAHashtag / #123Stella / #DamselOuttaDistress
What I admire/what strikes me: Her brains. Unable to attend any university due to her gender, and having never left her birthplace of Belmont, she is self-taught (just like me, btw). As an only child, an orphan, and the heir to a vast fortune, it comes as no surprise that suitors flock in throngs to her grand estate of Belmont. Yet she sees all of them as shallow opportunists, which is revealed when she puts them to the (casket) test. In the end, she finds a spouse worthy of her, a young man who loves her for her wit more than for her fortune or looks. Yet Mr. Right is broke, and his formerly loaded best friend is in a pretty shade of red, owing a pound of his own flesh to a certain Jewish loanshark. Portia is the one who saves the day, cross-dressing and appearing as the debtor's lawyer in court ("a young barrister fresh out of university"), then exploiting a loophole in the loanshark's contract (a pound of flesh... but without shedding any blood [you know, these Jews and their blood taboo]). The whole debt is cancelled as a result! Even the judge praises her, stating that he's never seen such a young body with such an old head... <3 <3 <3 Congrats, Portia!!!
In our days, s/he would be...: a Law student in her 20s, who is an ojou (heiress) kind of character like all others in this list, but also a bookish ice queen who, in spite of her cold-as-ice façade, never tolerates injustice and will do anything to set things right. Her appearance is that of the typical bifauxnen/otokoyaku character (think of Haruka Tenoh, a better-looking Brienne of Tarth, a blond Naoto Shirogane, Falsetto, Utena, or Oscar de Jarjayes). Her parents were killed by terrorists, which has largely shaped her worldview. She likes classical literature (Dickens, Voltaire, Rilke, Victorian poets...), Utena, La Rose de Versailles (and any other story with strong female characters in it), and Zexal. Oh, and she just luvs GoT (is a book and screen throny). Leans towards the left-centre when it comes to ideology. She is a popular "prince" figure at university (think Naoto Shirogane or Itsuki in Heartcatch Pretty Cure), both guys and girls in throngs want her, but she is still looking for Mr. Right: someone she can have interesting conversations with... She starts off as being cool and aloof, but gradually begins to warm up to others and welcome them into Belmont, which becomes their kinda after-school clubhouse.
Songs on his/her playlist: Game of Thrones opening theme
"Sans contrefaçon," Mylène Farmer
"Astrologen," Magnus Uggla

"Heidenröslein," Franz Schubert/¨J.W. von Goethe

"Das Karrusell," Rainer Maria Rilke

"Fiorecrì," VillaZuk
Every single Utena opening theme

SASSY GIRLS

Katherine: #DontCallMeK8
What I admire/what strikes me: Girl's got temper. Short temper. A fuse millimeters short. She is not afraid at all to speak her fricking mind. And she meets her Waterloo: she and her hubby interact at first like two zax in the prairie of Prax. In the end, he tamed her. But Kate... 'scuse me, Katherine is at heart the same old hotheaded tsundere.
In our days, s/he would be...: a hard-hitting and hard-drinking ladette, surely a biker and a hard rocker (li'l sis Bianca being a pink and prissy girly through and through). Her berserk button, as in the original TotS, is calling her Kate, or K8 (in whatsapps and other short e-messages). Her parents are divorced and she grew up with her dad, a university lecturer (while Bianca grew up with her fashionista mum in the capital of the country). Katherine is left-handed and does martial arts.
Songs on his/her playlist: "Mitt namn är Lena Philipsson"
A lot of Chenoa, in fact, all the major Chenoa songs
"Hard Rock Hallelujah", Lordi
A lot of hardcore Rammstein
The whole Carolus Rex album of Sabaton

Beatrice: #IWontSayImInLuv
What I admire/what strikes me: So Lizzie fricking Bennett. In fact, mentioning Bea as proto-Lizzie ("cool" girl with a heart of her own, who develops sexual tension with her spear counterpart) is the first thought I have. Plus the savviness of a female Mercutio or of Toph Beifong, or Astrid Kolfinnsdottir. There's a soft centre within that prickly chestnut...
In our days, s/he would be...: a Lizzie Bennett kind of girl (with Benedick for her Mr. Darcy). Ostensibly savvy yet with a soft centre, even more of a tsundere than Katherine. She puts on the façade of a tough-as-nails and witty ice queen, more feminine and far cooler than Katherine yet still tomboyish, dressed in a salopette and boater hat; something along the lines of Margaery Tyrell, Lizzie Bennett, and/or Megara in Hercules, or the aloof ally in every magical girl warrior series. Speaking of which, she likes magical girl warrior anime, especially the the mature aloof ally members of every sentai, whose persona she emulates.
Songs on his/her playlist: "Roar," Katy Perry
"I Won't Say I'm In Love!"
"Poker Face," Lady Gaga
"¿A quién le importa?", Alaska y Dinarama
"Mitt namn är Lena Philipsson"
A lot of Chenoa, in fact, all the major Chenoa songs
"Lady Marmalade", Christina Aguilera

Emilia: #DesperateArmyWife
What I admire/what strikes me: That she has survived for so long the ordeal of being married to Iago without losing her sanity. No matter how much she has to endure. And she's been through hell, to say the least. As lady in waiting to Desdemona, she's like a cool aunt or older sister, a fricking oneesama, far more sensible and realistic, the Tiana to Desi's Lottie, or the Elsa to her liege lady's Anna. And, in the end, when Desi is gone, this Desperate Army Wife snaps. And spits out all the poison and all the truths she had been holding back for, surely, decades. And she dies singing out the truth, right when Iago told her to shut the bloody hell up in the most dramatic way possible. Right. Milly, you were the only one who could stand against that dastardly, sinister plotter in faithful right-hand-man's clothing. And you went out in the most badass and shocking way possible, letting everyone alive deceived by Iago what a bloody snake he was...
In our days, s/he would be...: Iago's spouse and the show's resident Desperate Army Wife. Tough as nails, savvy, sarcastic, yet soft and broken at heart... she would look and act a lot like Catelyn Stark (actor allusion) crossed over with Tiana and Meg from Hercules, as well as a tsundere oneesama and Desi's older sister/aunt figure, perhaps even her sitter since childhood. Surely, this left-handed darkhead's got bruises and a badass look, as well as quips to give... and, when she loses her beloved ward, she will reveal every secret that she has kept inside herself out of fear... Milla, as Desdemona calls her, is also a fiery feminist and crusader for the rights of outgroups, knows martial arts, and is pretty leftish (which Desi keeps a secret from her parents): the perfect role model, idealized by her ward, for the sheltered, innocent ojou.
Songs on his/her playlist: "Roar," Katy Perry
"Nada que perder," Amistades Peligrosas
"I Will Survive," Gloria Gaynor
"Det gör ont," Lena Ph

"Malo," Bebe
"Ni tú ni nadie", Alaska y Dinarama
"Bad Romance", Lady Gaga
"Lady Marmalade", Christina Aguilera
"Rytmen av ett regn", Millas Mirakel
"Torn", Natalie Imbruglia

MALE TRAGIC CASUALTIES

Mercutio: #TheFairyFeller
What I admire/what strikes me: The mercury in his veins. As quick with his wit as with his rapier. And he manages to keep his face up even as he's dying in agony. Seriously, to die of a punctured lung is excruciating... but to keep on joking and crazy ironic while dying such a slow, painful death, and to go out with a pun and a smile, one must be either mad as a hatter or have one worldview of a kind!
In our days, s/he would be...: the ideal senpai and the eccentric class clown rolled into one. Like the Weasley or Hitachiin twins fused into one person, or a male Pinkie Pie/Ty Lee. Always the centre of attention and the life of the party. Luuuuvs classic British humour (Blackadder, 'Allo 'Allo, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers...) and Tarantino films alike. Left-handed.
Songs on his/her playlist: A lot of Monty Python: "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" would definitely come first...
...followed by the Penis Song...
...and the Milky Way Song
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", The Beatles
"For the Benefit of Mr. Kite," Eddie Izzard version
"Hakuna Matata"
"Sir Reginald's Marvellous Organ"
A lot of Queen: "I'm Going Slightly Mad," "Killer Queen," "Bohemian Rhapsody..."
"Harold the Barrel," Genesis
"A Very Merry Unbirthday"
"Dumb Ways to Die"
"Sjuttonde balladen," Evert Taube
"Forever Young," Alphaville
"Das Karrusell," Rainer Maria Rilke

Laertes: #TheGoGetter
What I admire/what strikes me: That hot blood, that big brother instinct, the fact that he's the extroverted, impulsive, and sportsy go-getter foil to emo Hamlet... The kind of oniisama that every only child, not only yours truly, would like to have got along with. Of course his short fuse gets him into hot water and leads to his untimely demise, but he remains loyal to those he loves until the end of the day, acknowledging his mistakes, and regretting that he had been too rash, in his last words.
In our days, s/he would be...: a hot-blooded tennis-playing and fencing half-French half-Scandinavian preppy, crocodile on the polo shirt and all (he would never be out of place in the anime The Prince of Tennis, which is all about hot boys with rackets)... and Ophelia's older brother of course. Don't get too close to her, or you'll get to face the end of a fleuret or (more probably) a racket. His greatest dream: to win Wimbledon. His worst nightmare: Ophelia dying dreadfully due to his own rash actions.
Songs on his/her playlist: "Gonna Fly Now"
"Eye of the Tiger"
"O Fortuna"
Every single Prince of Tennis opening
"I'm Almost There" (Tiana's song)
"Search for Your Love," ThreeLights
"Teenage Icon," The Vaccines
"Poker Face," Lady Gaga

Percy Hotspur: #INeedNoIntroduction
What I admire/what strikes me: The same as for Laertes, plus that intolerance and the far more ideological bent he gives to that youthful passion... there are things about this dapper young rebel with a short fuse that I love to hate. At first I was a bit hesitant of whether putting him here or with the villains... but at least his intentions were good yet misguided.
In our days, s/he would be...: That guy in every teen class with his head shaved like an eight-ball (and a fuse as short as his hair to match), wearing a punk jacket and presumably swastikas. Long story short, the leader of the local far-right hooligan circle, putting on that façade to cover up his own dad issues (which do not differ from those of Okonkwo or Tywin Lannister). Hates being called "Percy" by given name, obviously... for is that a name scary enough for a Führer? Also hates sissies with a passion, as well as active women.
Songs on his/her playlist: The whole Carolus Rex album, Sabaton
A lot of Rammstein, especially songs about sex, violence, and warfare, his fave being "Wollt ihr das Bett im Flammen sehen?"
"Kuruc-Labanc", Kárpátia

FEMALE TRAGIC CASUALTIES

Ophelia: #SaveOurNargles / #ABasketCase (post-snapping)
What I admire/what strikes me: How she goes from "average" eccentric girl to outright psycho yandere in response to Hamlet friendzoning her. How her sanity gradually slips and she develops from adorable quirky ingénue into the drowned maiden in the Millais picture, which leaves no one indifferent.
In our days, s/he would be...: an artistic, eccentric teenage girl like Luna Lovegood and Ty Lee. Until emo Hamlet turns his back on her. Then, she becomes a sinister emo/perky goth and goes full-on yandere mode (think of Alison, the basket case in The Breakfast Club), even taking drugs like Xanax (until she finally drowns in a lilypond trying to pick some water lilies... or to kiss a frog prince?). She is exceedingly fond of 80s fantasy films like Labyrinth and The Princess Bride.
Songs on his/her playlist: "Wuthering Heights," Kate Bush
"Neverending Story," Limahl
"Son mis cuentos," Amistades Peligrosas
"Désenchantée," Mylène Farmer
"Tristana," Mylène Farmer
"I Dreamed a Dream," Anne Hathaway version
"I'm Going Slightly Mad," Queen
"Harlequin," Genesis
"Total Eclipse of the Heart," Bonnie Tyler
"Delirium," Lena Ph
Anything by El Último de la Fila or Manolo García written in their particular lyrism
"Torn", Natalie Imbruglia


Desdemona: #FairWarrior
What I admire/what strikes me: Her death, together with Ophelia's, is one of the most heart-rending female casualties in tragedy. Accused by her no-longer-loving spouse of having an affair with her childhood friend, and then, while defending herself, violently strangled by her husband in an irrational fit of rage. And all because she wanted to heal a rift between both men... The primrose path is paved with good intentions, and her story, of innocence lost and good deeds twisted, exemplifies it.
In our days, s/he would be...: the typical sweet and demure, cultured and friendly ojou (daughter of a runway star and a right-wing MP), who can be cool and/or bold if pressure is put on her (think Mayu Miyuki, Cornelia Hale, or Minami Kaido). Sheltered as she has been, she is quite innocent and naive, though always ready to lend a helping hand. Intelligent, learned, cultured, open-minded kindred spirits with Portia, though not that fond of GoT, preferring historical shójo and magical girl warrior anime. And 80s fantasy films like Labyrinth and The Princess Bride (the latter being her favourite). Think Disney's Rapunzel crossed over with Éowyn and with one of the three ojou characters above... Or, to be more precise, with Sansa Stark. Many characters do compare her to Sansa or Éowyn, indeed.
Songs on his/her playlist: "When Will My Life Begin?"
"I See the Light"
"For the First Time in Forever"
"Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" (duet with Othello)
"Désenchantée," Mylène Farmer
"Harlequin," Genesis
Go! Princess Precure opening
DokiDoki! Precure opening
"Search for Your Love," ThreeLights
"Högt över havet," Arja Saijonmaa
"Das Karrusell," Rainer Maria Rilke
"Fiorecrì," VillaZuk
Anything by El Último de la Fila or Manolo García written in their particular lyrism

"Torn", Natalie Imbruglia

TRAGIC SURVIVORS

Cassio: #RightfulLieutenant / #INeverGaveYouCause
What I admire/what strikes me: Out of all the tragedy survivors the Bard has portrayed, IMOHO, the young lieutenant in Othello takes the cake. At the end of the play, he has lost his female childhood friend and his commanding officer (who were married to one another), the two most important people in his life, at one fell swoop, plus one of his legs (left or right, Shakespeare does not specify), which abruptly ends his military career due to disability. And he must surely be traumatized: had he resisted a little more that offer to drink liquor that night when he was on duty... That has made all the difference (to quote Robert Frost). The by-the-book young lieutenant, charming with women and insecure with men, whom we saw at the start of the story... has lost his innocence and everything that defines his life, and he must surely feel that it was all his fault. For want of a nail, a war and a kingdom were lost; for want of a sip, everyone and everything he cherished was lost. Definitely, give him a hug.
In our days, s/he would be...: a nice guy, charming, cultured young cadet or lieutenant, a ladies' man socially awkward in the company of other males and with a prominent bookish streak (think of Napoleon as a teen), who wants to rise in the military hierarchy and still become "one of the boys." After the end of the play, he's got massive PTSD, takes Xanax regularly (feeling guilty for the loss of his childhood friend and commanding officer), and turns to academia for a new future, having had to leave the military due to his disability. Likes classical literature (Dickens, Voltaire, Rilke, Victorian poets...) and beautiful women, aside from being an officer and wearing fancy attire. He's also a Throny, but he reads the books instead of watching on screen. To sum up: pre-downfall he would be like Lon Hammond; post-downfall, like Haymitch or Remus Lupin.
Songs on his/her playlist: "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables," Eddie Redmayne version
"Careless Whisper," Wham
"The Joker," Steve Miller Band
"Teenage Icon," The Vaccines
"Ingenting," Kent
Dennou Boukenki Webdriver first opening theme
"Vandrar i ett regn," Pugh Rogefeldt
"Snart kommer det en vind," Pugh Rogefeldt
"Bröllopsklockor," Pugh Rogefeldt
"Livet är en fest," Nationalteatern
"Lady Marmalade", Christina Aguilera
"Search for Your Love," ThreeLights
"Frauen dieser Welt," Die Toten Hosen
"Forever Young," Alphaville
"Shine On You Crazy Diamond," Pink Floyd (dedicated to Othello)
"Jag ville sjunga om Katarina"
Anything by El Último de la Fila or Manolo García written in their particular lyrism
"La mère de l'officier", Matthieu Côte (post-snapping)


SINISTER VILLAINS

Malvolio: #KilljoyPuritan
What I admire/what strikes me: Like Hotspur, here's another character that makes me wince, yet for whom I develop feelings as his character arc unfurls. Picture yourself a curmudgeonly and unpopular estate steward (jobsworth, of sorts) secretly in love with his mistress, a brooding young orphan countess in mourning for her brother/guardian. The other servants, to play a prank, send him a letter with handwriting very like the countess's, saying that she'd like a rendezvous in the estate gardens... if he wears what she likes: oodles of brightly coloured and thickly embroidered gold brocade, garters tied up in bows, and a Cheshire-cat grin from ear to ear. What the countess says is that Malvolio looks silly, ridiculous. And she has him locked in a dark room throughout her wedding revels!! There he got his karma for being such a Puritan!!! At the end of Twelfth Night, he is the only character who does not live happy ever after!! :D :D
In our days, s/he would be...: The typical stiff-upper-lip British butler/jobsworth, usually called James or Jeeves and always a sharply dressed, no-nonsense curmudgeon. He would do great at Belmont as Portia's retainer. He is perchance the character that leans second most to the right on the political spectrum of the ones I cover here.
Songs on his/her playlist: "The Passion According to Matthew," J.S. Bach
"Zadok the Priest," Händel
(nothing more, after all, he is a Puritan and only listens to select sacred music, preferently Bach)

Bawd & Pander: #7SeasThénardiers
What I admire/what strikes me: These are clearly the Thénardiers in a Mediterranean Pirate Greek-islands setting. A devious married couple who run an inn of ill repute and do not hesitate to oppress their adoptive daughters just for the money's sake. Clearly Hugo's inspiration for his evil innkeepers (Hugo translated Shakespeare into French!).
In our days, they would be...: A Thénardier-esque husband and wife couple who run a three-star nightclub. She (Bawd) is the one in charge (think Bonham-Carter and Baron-Cohen as the Thénardiers).
Songs on their playlist: "Masters of the House," notch. Precisely the Bonham-Carter & Baron-Cohen version.
"What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor?"
"The Drunken Scotsman"
"Lady Marmalade", Christina Aguilera

Lady M.: #IceIceQueen
What I admire/what strikes me: she's got the lust for power and the guts to reach out for it. This fiery ice ice lady (later on, ice ice queen) eschews traditional gender roles, and she is clearly the one in charge, her husband being her second-in-command. She has the idea, the strategy, carried out like clockwork. Then, having become Queen of Scots, the pangs of conscience, the blood that cannot be washed away, no matter how much soap and water and scrubbing.
In our days, s/he would be...: an ambitious, beautiful, and intelligent entrepreneuse, ready to tread on anyone to reach the topmost rung of the ladder, yet also decadent and half-insane (think of Cersei Lannister as Dolores Umbridge and/or as the owner of the magazine in The Devil Wears Prada, with just a hint of Mme. Thénardier).
Songs on his/her playlist: "Roar," Katy Perry
"I'm Almost There" (Tiana's song)
"Rainbow High"
"The Art of the Possible"
Game of Thrones opening theme

"Diamanter," Lustans Lakejer

"Ma Baker"

Iago: #IAmNotWhatIAm
What I admire/what strikes me: IMOHO, this is the most sinister villain Shakespeare has ever created. Like the mirror of truth (and its victims) in The Snow Queen: unable to feel positive emotions and see the bright side of reality (perchance envying the outpost's beautiful elite for having those warm feelings), utterly cold, calculating, and rational; if you, like most humans, have a soft spot or two, Iago will surely find out and strike them, all while maintaining an elusive façade of the perfect best friend or right-hand man, so subtly that you would not notice you have been fooled. And then, he will add more fuel to the fire by giving advice that may be helpful out of context, but merely serves to tangle things up even more, all while not looking or sounding sinister. The Bard has given us a psychopath at his finest.
In our days, s/he would be...: a badass veteran with PTSD, ostensibly an unusually reliable and efficient non-commissioned officer, actually a broken soul ravaged by the hell of war and unable to feel positive emotions, which inspires him for his psychopathic games with others. An abusive childless husband who has just discovered that he is actually gay and sweet on his commanding officer, and wonders what is this thing called "love" and why Cassio and the other officers just see him as the perfect right-hand man... Iago, who had previously only liked Hitchcock thrillers, bonded with Cassio over GoT, and, unlike his lieutenant, prefers the show on screen. Besides, he idealizes Tywin Lannister for many a good reason. Aside from Tywin, Iago also worships Blackadder, aside from Walter White and sees his kouhai, flunked cadet Roderigo, as his Jesse. They operate a secret meth lab as well (which they'll use in the kegger scene, slipping their crystal into a certain lieutenant's drink...). Oh, and they use the respective codenames "Blackadder" and "Baldrick" as a reference to Iago's favourite British comedy... (second fave is 'Allo, 'Allo: it was Leutnant Grüber's hots for René that made him realize. Oh, and the fact that Iago himself looks a tad like René and Cassio looks just like the Leutnant!)
Songs on his/her playlist: Game of Thrones opening theme
Blackadder opening theme
'Allo, 'Allo opening theme
"The Art of the Possible"
Iago's Credo from Verdi's Otello
"Loathing, Unadulterated Loathing"
"Livet är en fest," Nationalteatern
"Skenet bedrar," Kaipa
Any Rammstein song involving sex and/or sadism
"Livet är en fest," Nationalteatern
"The Drunken Scotsman"
"Lady Marmalade", Christina Aguilera
Music from the shower scene in Psycho
Music from the cropduster scene in North by Northwest


SUPERNATURAL CHARACTERS

Robin "Puck" Goodfellow: #NamesGoodfeller
What I admire/what strikes me: all the pranks and the mess-ups that this perky, plucky pixie causes dripping nectar from the love flower on sleepers' eyelids left and right. And that during the shortest night of the year! Not to mention the pranks they have previously played on people in the villages around the woodland...
In our days, s/he would be...: a non-binary Peter Pan-ish trickster who does matchmaking as a hobby and also enjoys playing pranks. Something like Austen's Emma in the 1990s film, but more of a tomboyish/ambiguous gender character. Emma mashed up with the Amazones Quartet in SuperS, to think of it.
Songs on their playlist: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
"I'm Going Slightly Mad," Queen
The Love Boat theme
anything by Wham!
"A Very Merry Unbirthday"
"For the Benefit of Mr. Kite," Eddie Izzard version
"Lady Marmalade", Christina Aguilera

The Witches/Norns: #RlyWeirdSisters
What I admire/what strikes me: These three speak always in rhyme. Their prophecy soup includes the liver of a Jew, the nose of a Turk, and a Tatar's lips. And they are most surely the Norse Norns (equivalents of the Fates in classical lore).
In our days,they would be...: three Wiccan sisters (the eldest middle-aged, the youngest still a child) who run a coven together. They also worship the old Norse gods and tell fortunes in Crowley-Harris Tarot cards, and they give séances. Their foretellings are seldom wrong and always cryptic.
Songs on their playlist: their incantation from the cauldron scene
O Conxuro da Queimada
anything Celtic-sounding by Amistades Peligrosas