I recently heard the most marvelous story from a harlot. She heard it from a monk who was not terribly enthusiastic about his vows, and that monk heard it from a vintner. The vintner heard it from a poet, which leads me to believe that it is entirely true. You can always trust a story from a poet, at least as long as he claims to have heard it from somebody else. They never lie about those things, for they all know that they could write something a thousand times more interesting than the truth it they put their mind to it. Of course, no poet would ever pass off his own creation as that of somebody else, since there's nothing a poet loves more than praise. Thus when I say that I heard this story from a harlot who heard it from a monk who heard it from a vintner who heard it from a poet, you can be perfectly confident that every word of it is true.

Our story begins with a rather charming young man by the name of Yilbo. He loved wine, but he did not love wine nearly so much as he loved women, and he did not love women even half as much as he loved idleness. He hated work, and he hated as deeply as a man can hate anything. No paladin has ever hated the Taint with such a passion. There were a thousand men like him in Gaudiguch, but none hated work quite so much as him.

Yilbo soon ran into the disease that takes most young men who love wine and women and idleness. He ran up quite a large debt, and he soon found himself hiding from large men with larger sticks and absolutely no sense of humor. Most people in that position give into the disease and seek out employment, but Yilbo was not the sort of man who would sacrifice the integrity of his laziness to preserve the integrity of his kneecaps. He was far too wise a man for that.

Our charming young man meditated on the problem for a few moments and hit upon a rather excellent plan. He snuck out onto the streets and found a monk who was deeply meditating on the merits of cactus weed. He loosened the monk's belt and pulled the robe off of his body. Yilbo ran for cover, but the monk did not do the same. He thought that he had meditated so deeply that he transcended the paradigm of clothing, and therefore he thought that he had attained a rather public sort of enlightenment. The monk soon attracted a swarm of students, and thus began another school of philosophy.

Yilbo did not give any thought to philosophy or anything of the kind. He put those robes on as quickly as he could and he ran for the city gates. He had resolved to pay his debt with distance rather than gold, and so he called himself a pilgrim.

He set off for Avechna's Peak right away. He was simply one pilgrim in a legion, and so his disguise was nearly flawless. What man who was so pious as to go on a pilgrimage could be in debt? What man of faith could be fleeing from his creditors? The vast majority of them, in fact, but it's rude to press the issue and most people hate being rude just as much as they hate losing money.

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Yilbo went on his pilgrimage without bringing any money, but that was not a terribly large problem for him. The beautiful thing about being a pilgrim is that nobody expects them to stay in one place, so they can always flee the scene of a crime before anyone gets suspicious. Even pilgrims who are too slow to be thieves can do quite well for themselves by looking holy and giving an occasional look to their begging bowl. People love to look pious, and pilgrims always beg in public. It was the first job that Yilbo had ever had, and it suited him wonderfully.

Yilbo's purse swelled like a rich man's belly, but he still had to keep moving. A pilgrim who stays in one place is simply a beggar, and beggars tend not to be terribly popular. They are especially unpopular in a certain city that has an unhealthy obsession with corpses, and so Yilbo decided that he should try his hand at sailing. He soon found his way to a little village by the sea in the hope of finding a boat.

He soon found exactly what he was looking for, but he also found a little old man at the same time. He was the sort of old man who had skin like a dried date and a smell to match. He had a tired look on his face. He probably loved work, or at least had done so much of it that he would refuse to admit anything to the contrary. Yilbo hated him on sight, but he probably owned the boat.

This was no for subtlety. Yilbo went up to him and started weeping and wailing and rending his robes.

"Oh! Oh! Alas! Woe and calamity!"

The man said nothing and began to eat his lunch.

"Am I doomed to die without ever setting foot on the sacred mountain? Could fate be so cruel? I am lost! Lost!"

The man continued to say nothing. Evidently his apple was more interesting than a weeping pilgrim.

"What would I not give to leave this place and continue my journey?"

The man threw his apple core in Yilbo's face and made a rather rude gesture with one of his fingers. Yilbo thought that he must have a heart of stone, or at least a head full of good sense. He decided to try something else.

"I'd wager my life on a single hand of cards if it could win me passage! It is better to die than to fail!"

That was a blatant lie, but it did get the man's attention. Sailors, as everybody knows, love to gamble. It is practically a law of nature. Ask any Hallifaxian and they'll cite a dozen studies that say so. They're probably lies that they made up to make themselves look clever, but at least they sound authoritative.

They set up their game right away. It would be a lie to say that Yilbo played the game. It would be much more honest for me to say that he cheated so outrageously that to call it a game would be an insult to the very concept of games. He was very good at that sort of thing. It's a useful skill for every young man that wants to avoid working for a living.

It did not take long for Yilbo to cheat his way onto the boat. He was very proud of himself for managing it, but as it happened it was not his wisest decision. Men from the desert tend not to be very good at judging if a ship is seaworthy or not. Men who are too pretty to work tend not know the difference between a solid piece of wood and a home for termites that are on the edge of a famine. Yilbo was both of the things, and the old man did not see any reason to educate him.

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The trouble with old men is that they have had decades to perfect their treachery. No young man can ever hope to plot a better plot than an old man, simply because no young man will ever have as much practice as an old one. That is the reason that old people tend to run things, and that is the reason that Yilbo found himself in a bit of trouble.

The old man who owned a boat soon took Yilbo out to a reef. He occasionally had to plug a hole and subtly scoop water out of his boat, and Yilbo should have taken that as a sign of the trouble to come, but he was far too busy sunning himself to do any such thing. He did not even open his eyes when he heard the boat crunch itself onto a reef and stop moving.

He only opened a single eye when the old man who owned a boat started to laugh. He opened the other when the old man started to kick him. He started to pay attention when the man asked for money.

Fools and their money are easily parted, but lazy men and their money are not. The old man who owned a boat explained the situation quite clearly, but Yilbo did not like what he heard. He scowled when he heard, he groaned when he heard it, and in the depths of his heart he cursed the whole world and the gods who made it.

The matter was really quite simple. The old man had run his old boat aground on a reef, and he had done it on purpose. He had a raft hidden nearby, one that could actually float for more than a few hours. If Yilbo graciously handed over all of his worldly goods, the old man would show him where it was. If not, Yilbo was welcome to take his chances with the old boat, or even to swim wherever he pleased. The sharks would certainly appreciate it if that was his choice.

Yilbo gave the old man both his money and a mouthful of lamentations. He followed the old man to his raft, and then he proved that old age and teachery are no match for youth and a strong body. He struck the old man once in the back of the head to knock him down, and then he kicked him twice in the belly to make sure that he didn't get any strange ideas about fighting back. Yilbo took back his money and rolled the old man into the water. The sharks appreciated his choice.

The whole affair left Yilbo quite unhappy. He had murdered a man for money, which was dangerously close to doing legitimate work for a living. It was also looking rather like he would have to do his own rowing if he wanted to get anywhere, and that was certainly too much like doing work. He needed to find a solution to that terrible problem.

Idleness always finds a way. Yilbo soon realized that he was surrounded by sharks. He reasoned that sharks are animals, and that animals are often willing to do work for people. After all, they are entirely too foolish to understand the pure beauty that is idleness. He simply had to find a way to get them to do what he wanted.

It was easy enough to motivate the sharks. All he had to do was pull the last few scraps of the old man who owned a boat out of the water and dangle them in front of the sharks. Where the old man went, the sharks were soon to follow. He could get them to go wherever he wanted. It was harder to get them to move the raft, but Yilbo soon solved that problem as well.

He took a rope and tied it into a lasso. He cast the lasso out towards a shark. He pulled it back onto the raft and tried again. He managed to touch a shark on his third attempt, and he actually caught one on his fourth. He tied the other end of the rope to his raft. He held a piece of the old man who owned a boat out in front of the shark, and he let the beast move his raft for him.

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Yilbo rode that raft for as long as he could, but he eventually found himself on a beach that was near a road. He only needed to walk a little further to reach the mountain, and then he only had to climb the mountain and claim some souvenir as proof of his piety. He set off at once, and he soon found himself at the foot of the mountain. There was a little shrine near the path where people would place a few coins in the hope of winning some luck for the climb. Yilbo saw little reason to purchase any more luck, since he seemed to have a great deal of his own, but he could not put the memory of the shrine out of his mind as he climbed.

The climb was long, tedious, and tiring. Lesser men might have found it enlightening and may have had some sort of spiritual awakening, but Yilbo was made of sterner stuff. He saw more shrines with more offerings on the way up the mountain, and as he looked upon them he felt the faintest stirrings of a more practical sort of epiphany.

The full weight of the realization struck him like a debt collector's club when he finally reached the peak. Pilgrims were meditating all around him, and they gave offerings freely in all manner of shrines and to all manner of teachers. Yilbo had seen many such teachers in Gaudiguch, but none of them had ever seemed to collect payment. The reason for that seemed obvious, now that he had made a long journey. Wisdom is more impressive if it is hard to find. Anyone can listen to an old fellow on the street as he talks about the world, but almost nobody can tell if he is enlightened or intoxicated. A person can only be certain that his teacher is truly wise if people flock to him in spite of the difficulty. After all, nobody would go to that much effort if he was a fraud.

Yilbo had that realization, and then he had another. He could teach enlightenment as easily as anyone else. After all, there are many paths to enlightenment, and he might set his students upon one by chance. It would not be lying to say that he could teach wisdom, as long as there was a chance that it might occasionally be true. Even if it was a lie, everyone would fall for it as long as he made himself inconvenient to reach without being completely unattainable.

He soon went to work with all the vigor of a man who wants to do as little work as possible. He went from one village to the next and spread word of a wise man on a mountain, and then he climbed a conveniently small mountain and waited for disciples to arrive. They came, they brought gifts, and they received Yilbo's wisdom. He told them that wealth was a trap, and that the pursuit of material things brought pain that outweighed the joy of possessions. He had learned that lesson in his youth, since the true art of idleness is in enjoying freedom for work more than any reward that work might bring. He was confident that it would seem like wisdom to people who had not realized the joy of laziness. His students thought that he was wise, and they eagerly accepted his lesson.

I am told that Yilbo still lives on his mountain, and that he stil teaches people how to avoid the pain of productivity. I am told that he seems to be quite happy up there. I have even heard that some of his students are teaching the same lesson now, and they are just as happy as he is. Some of them will even do it for free.