The Trickster's Truth
They called him the liar; his lies kept turning out true
They named me the Liar, and the name has stuck to me for a thousand tellings.
But examine, if you dare, what I actually said, and to whom, and when.
I told the king that his war would ruin him, and he called that a lie.
The war ruined him, precisely as I had said, and still the name Liar clung to me.
To speak comfort is to be trusted; to speak truth is, too often, to be accused.
The honest men around the throne told beautiful, useful, entirely false things.
They were rewarded with land, and I was rewarded with the of a snake.
I have learned that a lie the powerful enjoy is renamed wisdom by the morning.
And a truth the powerful is renamed a trick before the speaker can blink.
So I wear the mask they gave me, and I have made an art of the wearing.
If I am to be called whatever I say, then let me at least say the truth.
I hid a warning inside a joke, because a joke is the only truth a will swallow.
I dressed a prophecy as a , because a slips past the guards of pride.
The fool at court and the prophet in exile are frequently the same inconvenient person.
Consider how neatly the story sorts us: the flatterers wise, the truth-teller wicked.
Consider who benefits from that sorting, and how carefully it has been preserved.
I am not innocent; I have stolen, and lied, and laughed while doing both.
But the lies I am most remembered for are the ones that turned out to be facts.
History, I have noticed, forgives a comfortable far sooner than an truth.
It builds statues to the men who told the crowd exactly what the crowd desired.
And it carves a warning label onto anyone who said the necessary, unwelcome thing.
So read my legend again, and this time, the labels as you go.
Where it says , try honest; where it says deceit, try inconvenient clarity.
You may find that the trickster kept the truth alive when the honest men had sold it.
You may begin to wonder which of your own liars has been telling you the truth.
The mask was never the lie; the smiling faces around it were.