Northward Through Darkness
Copyright 2012 Cerebellum Press
Available by special order only
Congratulations, trembling reader. You have, as you are now fully aware, stumbled across the only known volume of the collected works of the great Apollo Çtrons Vadavian. If this name is not familiar to you, dear reader, then simply place this book back upon the table where you found it, and walk away, glancing over your shoulder to make sure no one has witnessed your blunder.
If you are still here, holding this book, admiring its heft (intellectual, quite obviously, as opposed to physical), then you will no doubt be well familiar with the work of Vadavian. Nonetheless, you are in for a rare treat. This assembled body of poems and short stories is the first of its kind, and, I would venture, likely to be the last, for Vadavian, as some of you know, simply hurled his pipe one day into the looming stone fireplace that warmed his mountain dwelling, and walked away from it all.
It is rumored that the works collected herein were discovered beneath an oddly polished green stone within that looming fireplace I mentioned before. In the preceding paragraph. You know, just above this one. Yes, almost unbelievably, and yet, paradoxically in a manner characteristic of the mocking humor Vadavian was known for, they were left behind in a wooden box hewn from what is now reported to have been the world’s last jogebua tree. And we know this box was Vadavian’s because it bore, upon its masterfully carved lid, his signature icon: a hand-rendered smiley face without a smile.
So the pleasure, dear reader, is now yours, as is the weighty responsibility of enjoying and pondering the works of the brilliant one himself. Now, turn the page, and remember to breathe.
-Waltherian Sems-Chennowyth, Central Bavaria, 2012
VADAVIAN 