Our Origin

Wiltensberg was best known for its wineries (and by association, it’s grapes), the Kissing Bridge (bit of a re-brand, given all the suicides) and the Hall of Emory. There wasn’t much to the place as a building, give it that: a round, grey brick hall centered with a round grey marble table circled with a bench that was, as always, grey and of course, round. The old hatter said it looked like his templates, top and bottom, but he said a lot of crazy things and no story was ever about him.

Ten somber men sat around the table, flanked by eleven equally somber women. A mixed twenty or so much less somber attendants, assistants, children, animals, and heaven-knows-whoms wandered, leapt, ran, tripped over and bounced off of eachother in a shadow-play about the walls. Someone stepped on a dog, and it yelped. Someone else stepped on a child, and it yelled.

“This meeting is called to order,” someone said. But there was no order to be had. At least until Janus appeared from a hole high in the wall, standing on a balcony you wouldn’t have seen but couldn’t have missed, once it was flooded with gilded silken robes and glittering jewels and a flashy crown. They say the very sight of Janus, on each occasion he appears, makes at least one person go blind.

The Vice Chancellor, already twice-blind, couldn’t care about that.

“The ruler has made his decree!” Janus announced, speaking in the third person of himself. The Vice Chancellor nodded as if he had said it. The Chancellor, who had very little idea what a Chancellor did or was except that he had argued his way into it and was a very rich man, used a branch to clean out his nails.

“There will be a declaration of war!”

Those present cheered, jeered, cried out, laughed, for this was the moment! The once vast Kingdom of Janus had been whittled down to the castle Wiltensburg, inside whose walls they found themselves currently, for lack of a better word, stuffed. Janus had put most of the furniture in storage to avoid breakages, and it was a sparse lifestyle indeed. Far too many rear ends and never remotely enough privvies. There was reason in staying upwind of the moat, needless to say, and their enemies would not cross it.

Janus launched into a speech that began with “the entire history of humanity is the history of human conflict” and ended with “who will stand with me and fight!?!?” Like every Great War speech ever made. Honestly you could take a relatively long nap, wake up at the ending and still guess at the center, as long as the nap didn’t run over dinner.

The hatter sighed. Their entire predicament was entirely due to their leader’s stubborn insistence upon refusing to cut his hair.

In that part of the world, there was a long-standing tradition never to cut the ruler’s hair except in a time of war. If war befell the United Kingdoms, the rulers would shave their heads as a tribute to their people and a sign of their shame and sadness, having broken the once well-struck peace. The longer the rulers’ hair, the greater the righteousness of that ruler and of their people.

Janus was vain. When the alliance broke between the Kingdoms he was brushing out fifteen years’ growth of pale and silky locks, struck through with finely ground jewels so that it sparkled and shone in every light, damn the expense. It had been so long since war-time that, when presented with the jet black hair from the shaved head of Amon Rul and the Red curls of Locksley King in their respective gift-boxes, he had at first assumed them to be wigs and tried them on. He had himself portraitized in each and sent the likenesses, signed of course, to the respective donors. Above the signature, his sentiment was written “Thank you, my friend. I shall be much warmer in the winter.”

In such a way, what was meant to be a notification of war between two nations became an insult to both, and five others, who came pounding on the gates surrounding the Kingdom demanding to know the meaning of this.

There was none. Other than a voters’ courtyard full of idiots ticking the box next to the person they found most comely.

Maria Flagranza, Lordship of Defence and Munitions, Keeper of Keys and Building Analyst, had been Janus’ opponent. She let out a fart that rumbled along the circular bench and up the walls, tearing the eyes of those closest to her. She’d done it several times in speeches during the election, and gave her usual excuse: “Sorry. Nervous”

Janus winked at the hatter, hidden from view, and pulled from the back of his shoulder a long and solid ponytail with glittering strands and florals all throughout, which blinded the Magistrate in his good eye and hit the ground below with a resounding thud. The dust it kicked up was gathered into pouches to be sold later at the auction-house, as soon as they won back the auction-house.

With gilt scissors, he snip-snipped, dragged at, and finally hacked upon the heavy lock until it came loose, blinded two more people and wounded three others on its way to the floor.

Those present cheered and screamed and shrilled and upon hearing them, a cry rose through the castle-kingdom in waves. The enemy could not help but hear it. Could not avoid quaking in fear. The hair was thrown from a conspicuous balustrade, the longest after fifteen-more-years that the warriors had ever seen. The most magnificent. The most full of jewels.

It was conspicuous. Brilliant. Unapologetic. The gathered warriors would take to their graves the true terror they felt on viewing it for Janus, the calmest of them all, quietest, the most patient in the United Kingdoms and possibly in all the world, had finally LOST IT.

Most of them retreated before the castle rung its warning bell. The rest, when the castle gate fell from its moorings and over the moat, sending the bouquet of 15 years of people packed cheek-by-jowl wafting into each delicate nose. The final few were dispatched, taken, or made use of, as it is in war. One of them still works the cotton candy winch in the newly opened square.

In Janus’ closed chambers, the hatter gathered up his own spoils of this long and harrowing conflict. A rather sizeable fee encompassing the creation and purchase of one hat, and the hatter’s continued silence.

The hatter rubbed at his bald head, looking tired.

“Was it so horrible? You had the longest hair in the place, other than me.”

“No, Sire,” rallied the hatter. “I quite like being ball-headed, if I’m being honest. Feels lighter than it has in years.”

“Quite. I wonder how long you’d been growing it out. Only tresses in the Kingdom longer than mine.”

Rubbing his head with increased vigor, the Hatter said, “I only worry for you, Sire.”

The flagrant lord grinned a Cheshire Cat grin and shook his own, still-attached tresses out. “Worry? For me?”

“Yes. You have hair, yourself. How can you go out?”

“That’s what this is for.” With a speed belying his age, Janus whipped the hair into a coiled plait atop his pate and fastened the custom-made hat upon his head, covering all trace of his hair.

He found a looking-glass, for such objects were many to be found in his chamber, and amused himself turning this way and that.

“It will be the latest fashion. I’ll have it made in every colour. Perhaps even black. You’ll be a rich man, hatter, and your fantastic work will be the talk of the century.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

“No law is enforceable against your ruler.”

“Too true,” the hatter mock-laughed, thinking of his neck.

“This marvellous creation…what do we call it?”

“The Stovepipe.”

“Horrid. Goodbye.” Janus led the trusted hatter out his chamber door where less than trusted guards stood ready to see him out of the palace. And then the cleaning could begin. The replacement of furniture. The mucking out of privies. The eviction of cattle. And animals.

“Stovepipe” he scoffed, to the looking glass. The creation of pale silk and sparkle and jewels, lined in the purple and pink and purple of sunset, could have only one name upon his own royal and utterly perfect head.

“Topper Hat,” he winked, and spun on a heel to give news of this new fashion to his kingdom, send likenesses to the others inscribed with speeches uniting them in unity, and congratulate the soldiers for their immense bravery in the face of running men.

A few years hence, much of it forgotten, there were those who might question how quickly our leader’s hair had grown. But Sirs, as gentlemanly as I tip my “top” hat to you on this day, we preferred our lives to the answering of such trivial questions.