Great Gatsby Dialectical Journal

Scene1:
Scene 1 takes place in a small town. It is nighttime, very dark and very silent.
Inside the Way-stone Inn there are five men drinking beer and listening to Old Cob telling stories.
Old Cob is a very old man with a scratchy high voice. The men are in their early twenties. One, the apprentice that is always addressed as boy, is a hand taller than the others.
Off to the end of the bar a young inn keeper is listening to the story being told. You can tell it is familiar to him.
The Innkeeper has dull red hair and dull eyes very average build and height.

Old Cob: When he awoke, Taborlin the Great found himself locked in a high tower. They had taken his sword and stripped him of his tools: (lean closer to the four men making
a serious face) key, coin and candle were all gone. But that weren’t even the worst of it, you see... (take a long pause creating a cliffhanger effect) …cause the lamps on the wall were burning blue!
(Graham, Jake, and Shep nod to each other already hearing several different versions the Smith’s prentice was excluded from the exchange of nods) (Talking directly to the young apprentice) Do you know what that means boy?
Apprentice: (slowly nodding) The Chandrian. (Saying their name in awe.)
Cob: That’s right. (Giving the boy a pat on the head) The Chandrian! Everyone knows that blue fire is one of their signs. Now he was—
Apprentice: But how’d they find him? And why didn’t they kill him when they had the chance?
Jake: Hush now, you’ll get all the answers before the end. Just let him tell it
Graham: No need for all that, Jake. Boy’s just curious. Drink you drink.
Jake: I drank me already! I need t’nother but the innkeep’s still skinning rats in the back room (banging his mug on the counter and raising his voice) Hoy! Where thirsty men in here!
(The inn keeper comes in with five bowls of stew and two warm loaves of bread, also grabbing some more bear.) (He moves with much efficiency.)
(The men stop the story and eat their stew. Cob quickly gulps his down and continues the story.)
Cob: Now Taborlin needed to escape, but when he looked around, he saw his cell had no door.
No windows. All around him was nothin but smooth, hard stone. It was a cell no man had ever escaped. But Taborlin knew the names of all things…..

The scene goes from the inn to a clearing. At the base of a tower the sky is black and a fierce storm can be seen all around. The camera moves up the enormous tower all the way to the top. (all this happens while Cob continues his story) (Cob becomes the narrator)

….and so all things were his to command. He said to the stone: “Break!” (The stone at the top of the tower explodes and out comes Taborlin.) He stepped to the edge and jumped.
Apprentice: (as the camera goes back to the inn you can see the apprentice’s eyes grow large as he gasps) He didn’t!
Cob: (nodes to the boy seriously) So Taborlin fell, but he did not despair. For he knew the name of the wind, and so the wind obeyed him. (Flashing back to the clearing you can see Taborlin floating gently down to the ground and the storm leaving as the sun came out.) (Camera still on Taborlin with Cob narrating) And he felt his side where the Chandrian had stabbed him and there weren’t hardily a scratch.
Apprentice: But how could it be
gone?
Cob: Maybe it were luck or maybe it were the amulet he was wearing round his neck!
Apprentice: What amulet?
Cob: The one the tinker gave him after Taborlin gave him some of his dinner.
Graham: Good thing to do, everyone knows: A tinker pays for kindness twice.
Jake: No no. Get it right: A tinker’s advice pays kindness twice.
Innkeeper (Kote): Actually, you’re missing more than half. (Moving out of the doorway at the end of the bar walking up to the group.)
A tinker’s debt is always paid:
Once for any simple trade.
Twice for freely-given aid.
Thrice for any insult made.
(All five men turn to look at Kote. They are very surprised to hear Kote speak.) (Noticing everyone’s surprised expression Kote shies up) Just something I heard.
—Suddenly the front door banged open Carter, around the same age as the younger men at the bar, stumbles in. Carter is very bloody and had a bundle raped up in his shirt he has scratches all over him and his pants are torn to smithereens.
Jake: (not looking at Carter) It’s about time you got in, Carter. We were just— (stops mid-sentence as he turns to see Carter collapse.) (Everyone rushes over to him) God’s body, what happened to you?
(They help him into a seat leaving the bundle of what appears to be sticks on the ground.)
Carter: I’m fine. (pushing everyone away) I’m fine, I’m fine.
Graham: How many were there? Where did they mug you at?
Cob: The roads are gettin worse by the day.
Carter: It’s not what you think. Don’t worry about be its not that bad. The blood’s mostly Nelly’s. It jumped her to… Past the old stone bridge…
Apprentice: She was a da*n good horse. I just don’t… Da*n.
(Kote moved through the five men with his arms full of sheets shears bottles gut and needles.)
Cob: This would of never happened if you would listen to me. Them da*n scoundrels….
Carter: (Wincing with each poke of the needle and gut.) It wasn’t no man. (Reaches for the bundled up shirt, tugs on the edge and a black ball with legs tumbles out.) (All the men except Kote jump back in surprise even carter has a nervous twitch.) (It looks like a spider as large as a wagon wheel, very black.)
Kote: (with a slight look of worry) They can’t of made it this far west yet.
(All the men’s eyes peel away from the beast to look a Kote with astonishment.)
Jake: Ya, ya, ya know what that is?!?
Kote: Scrael. I’d though the mountains­­­­—
Jake: Scrael? Blackened body of God, Kote. You’ve seen these things before?
Kote: (his eyes are now bright green and his hair is bright red. No one notices) (Stirred out of his trance) What? Oh, No… No of course not. (noticing that he is the only in arm’s length of the scrael he takes a step back.) Just heard of them, that’s all. (all the men stair at him)
Cob: Remember the trader that came through about two span ago? (everyone nodded already hearing this complaint a hundred times.) “Ba**ard tried to sell me half a pound of salt for ten pennies.
Jake: Wish I would have bought some…
Cob: Would of paid two pennies. But ten was a robbery.
Shep: Not if there are more of the one the road. (Said in a dark tone)
Kote: (Watching everyone’s eyes study the scrael) He told me he saw them up near Melcombe. I thought he was just trying to drive up his prices.
Carter: What else did he
say?
Kote: I didn’t get the whole story. He was only in town for a few hours.
Apprentice: I don’t like spiders. (he stands on the far side of the room) Cover it up.
Jake: That’s no spider. It’s got no eyes.
Carter: Got no mouth either. How does it eat?
Shep: What does it eat? (Said in a dark tone.)
(Kote began to probe the scrael noting that it had no organs.)
Apprentice: Great Tehlu, just leave it alone. Sometimes spiders twitch after their dead.
Cob: That’s no spider that’s a demon.
Kote: Only one way to tell. (he pulls out his purse finds an iron shim and presses it into the scrael. The room filled with the smell of rotten flowers and burning hair.)
Cob: It is a daemon! (With that everyone makes up excuses and leaves the inn, leaving the scrael and the inn keeper alone.)
Kote: Bast! (a young boy with dark brown eyes and black hair comes out of the cellar carrying a book one would read at the university.)
Bast: Yes Kvothe?
Kote: Grab a shovel and some fire starter. We’ll need to bury the scrael before the rest of the pack finds them. ~End Scene 1~