David:        Our previous two visits, Karen, it’s been fun kind of reflecting on how some of the stories in our Kingdom Tale books came into being.

Karen:        And so, we’ve been sharing some of the back stories, if you please, and we’re going to do this one last time on this podcast, and I hope we pick tales that were favorites to some of our listeners.

David:        I’m sure they will be.

Intro:         Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:        Karen, there are certain stories that are obvious if people have followed our ministry over the years. For example, Sighting Day in one of the books is about going on a God hunt. We’ve talked about going on a God hunt, written books and it’s just in our DNA. I did it last night at dinner. I shared “had a great God hunt sighting today.” Yeah.

Carnival Daughter, that’s a tough story in the second book. The second book has not had as many sales as the first or the third books and I think that’s because we’re trying to move into the dark side of the Gospels when we’re talking about the death of Christ. That’s not an easy thing to write about.

Karen:        Well, I need for his redemptive work in our lives. If you need redemption, there’s a place where the enchanter has ruled. The enchanter is the Satan figure in these books and there’s a battle royal that’s going on. But books have had a powerful impact in the lives of different people. We’ve had letters all through the years. The first book, Tales of the Kingdom, was written 40 years ago.

David:        This is kind of an interesting backstory because it’s after they were released, then we began to hear from people. Some said it was too dark. Some say, “Thank you, you have helped immensely.”

I’ll read one of those letters in just a little while. But I want to start with the story first, Karen. I don’t want you to read the whole story but I’m going to set it up. Okay.

Karen:        Give it a little taste of what it’s about. Each story has a little prologue. So, I’ll read the prologue and then a couple pages.

“If the enchanter looked into a child’s eyes, his gaze could burn a scar in the soul. Some children became ill and malformed at his evil glance and were outcast from Enchanted City. These were the lucky ones. Others went away forever into a country that was only in their mind.

Karnie lived in a huge mansion on the edge of the mountain that rose up behind Enchanted City. Mount Hill lifted its grand peak to the sky and proudly displayed a vast array of large estates and palatial homes. The child’s father was a wealthy merchant who traveled far to purchase costly goods for sale in the city bazzar. Karnie had everything a girl could want. She never went hungry or shivered in the cold. Her father was rich enough to hire servants and her mother was beautiful and kind. She had no brothers or sisters demanding to share her toys. But something was wrong. Something was so wrong with Karnie that her mother wept quietly in the day when everyone else was sleeping. Her father walked around with a worried frown, creasing a deep line between his eyes and the servants huddled in groups discussing the girl’s sorry condition.

Karnie stayed in her room. She refused to look out her windows at the lovely starry nights. The shutters were locked, the blinds were shut, and the heavy winter tapestries were always drawn. The only persons allowed in the room were nurse who left carrying silver trays of half-eaten food and Karnie’s mother who stayed only for short visits but never her father. He unfortunately reminded his daughter of the Enchanter. All the old-time servants remembered that the girl had once been a happy, beautiful little pixie with sparkling brown eyes and lustrous curly black hair. Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled and she was always smiling, dancing about full of embraces for everyone. “She was a love,” they’d whisper to one another. There were starched headpieces bobbing in a tight circle. “Such a love. So sad.”

But five terrible years ago it had happened. The Enchanter’s Ball, held yearly at a mansion of the Wizard’s own choosing, took place that year at the marble and cedar palace of Karnie’s father. The house had been filled with fire priests and the evil Enchanter’s minions stood guard around all the revelers who laughed and danced and acted as if they were having a good time. Though some admitted it was hard to have fun on command.

That night Karnie had been safely tucked in bed. Mothers hid their children out of sight when the Enchanter was nearby but not because he didn’t like children. No, no. The problem was he liked them too much in all the wrong ways.

Orphans of course belonged to the Enchanter. They became his forced labor to do the dirty work of Enchanted City. But the children of the wealthy were not beyond his conscription. Many a beautiful child had been drafted to serve as a pampered attendant in the Dagoda and few parents considered this a privilege.

Downstairs the music played bell sung to the hymns of fire priests robed, jangled. Laughter and merriment called the little child from her deep sleep. She crept from bed and tipped over to the circular railing that guarded the bedroom corridor from the vast space that arched to the great ceiling above and to the grand ballroom below. She went to find her mother, she thought. Thumb in her mouth, dressed in snug pajamas, she descended the stairs, step by step, her hand gripping the banister.

No one noticed her. Not the laughing adults, not the servants hurrying by with trays of drinks and aperitifs. But her little eyes cut sight of the tallest man in the hall. She stopped, one foot in mid-air and stared. He was wearing the most beautiful robe. It flashed as he turned and shimmered as he swayed. His dark hair was brilliant and soft. It was the Enchanter, at his most attractive and in rare party form.

Suddenly he turned in place as though he felt her eyes on him. He fixed his look at her, capturing her eyes with his own. Oh, it was too late to turn. Oh, oh, it was too late to look away, too late, too late.

She was a beautiful child. He waved his hands in the air casting an enchantment. Sparks flew from his fingertips. And though the music played on, everyone in the room stood stone still.

The man left the party and walked across the room to the grand staircase. And the child, he climbed each step slowly, one at a time, his gaze burning with intensity. Mesmerized as she was.

Child, though she was, she sensed danger. She backed up a stare, her thumb still in her mouth. His look was hot, and she was afraid. He looked at her for a long, a long time and she felt his stare pierced to her very soul. “Mama,” she finally cried, and the spell was broken. People finished the laugh that had been interrupted in the thought in mid-sentence and the incomplete dance step.

Though the music played, and the room was suddenly filled with merriment again, her beautiful mother came running, her long, silken dress rustling. She lifted her daughter in her arms. “What are you doing out of bed?”

The enchanter spoke. “You have a very lovely child there.” Karnie could feel her mother shiver. Karnie was taken back to her room and tucked her into her feather-quilt bed. But when she woke in the morning, she couldn’t bear for anyone to look at her or to look into her eyes.

So, the curtains were drawn because she was afraid someone was peering in at her. And the doctors, her father called, frightened her more and when they looked at her, she slipped far away from them, far away through a small door to a place where she could hide and where no one could find her. She slipped onto a roller coaster car and rode it swooping up and down, away from the eyes. The eyes, up far, far up slowly, slowly, then a rush, then a running ride, then a rushing down, down, down into carnival land she went.

And when her mother came calling her name, “Karnie, Karnie,” she had gone far, far away into the tilting cages of the ferries wheel. Up and around and high, staying high at the apex, slower then faster, then faster, then slower. Looking down, she could see her mother, her beautiful mother far down. She could see her mother’s tears swell and drop, becoming frozen crystals that grew large cubes of ice, catching shafts of light, shards of hard brilliance, sparkling, flittering, then exploding into fireworks. “Batchewa, Batchewa.”

Nurse always crept quietly in the shadow of the hushed closed room, casting down her eyes. She held the girl until the carnival music had quieted and the vendors had stopped calling. “This way, this way, get your ticket here, get your ticket here.”

David:        I’m going to stop you there.

Again, listeners who don’t know the books pick up that these are heavy tales that are being shared. It’s not a happy story. You know, you’re talking about darkness.

Karen, going into the backstory. There’s a little bit odd way to get to it, but I want to read a letter. This was written in 1990, so this second book had just come out.

“Dear Mr. and Mrs. Mains, your books, Tales of the Kingdom and Tales of the Resistance had meant a great deal to me and the people I help. I am a psychologist working with satanic abuse survivors, most of whom were raised in multi-generational cults. One of the ways I have found to reach into their shattered lives is to read to them out of your books. Now, reading stories may not seem like your vision of psychotherapy, but since I encounter many cases of multiple personality disorder, it’s necessary to do quite a bit of re-parenting and teaching. Your moving stories provide a deeply stirring way to reach this need.”

Now, he gives illustrations and first, I’m not going to name these people. But this is a woman. Her name is little life of terror in isolation. She eventually developed a fantasy world of her own. Sounds like the story of Karnie.

“Her idea of God and mine were very different. God touched her soul when the king entered the world of the carnival, even if I had trouble making sound effects like fireworks. Then he names a man. His wife and two children were all raised in a satanic cult. The first good bond that was established between him and his wife occurred when Jim got copies of your stories and read them to his wife each night. They began to grow within them in the hope of a great part, unlike the city they had known. It was in part your appreciation for the horrors of the city life that let them believe about Rangers, Mercy, Taxis. For this man it was the boys in the sewer that helped him understand that his leaders lied and tricked him into unnecessary sacrifice of children.”

He’s giving numerous illustrations. You just say thank you Lord for being informed of this. We were very naive when we went into the city, and these are hard lessons to learn because it’s a world you’re not accustomed to. But not only learn, Karen, as you travel the country speaking to your groups and people came up and unfolded their stories.

Karen:        Well, I was mostly speaking in women’s ministries. I would have a book table, and someone would help me sell books and I would stand around and be available to talk. And it was then I began to be aware that there was such a thing as child sexual abuse. I mean that was not a vocabulary at all. And then we have taken various women into our home.

David:        Very positive results and others that we eventually had to say we don’t know how to help.

Karen:        But they were victims of this thing. Now since that time I’ve learned a great deal about child sexual abuse and how satanic cults often are part of this. It’s part of their evil worship. And then you begin to say, “Well Lord, can we help?”

And so that’s where this writing came from. Yes, we can help. And we have seen people delivered from that impact. But it can be a long journey. One of the gals who lived with us, lived with us for six years, she thinks that we provided safety and sanctuary for her, and we did. But I learned about things like this from her. That these existed since that time.

Research has shown me when this book was written they estimated that one out of four women had child sexual abuse in her background. It’s much higher than that. And I did not know that there were satanic cults, the occult that existed in the United States. And David, how prevalent they are.

David:        This psychiatrist writes, he lists three women’s names and says they were all quote brides of Satan. They, like everyone else on the list cried and cried for the girl in the balcony, which is another of the story, the forbidden princes.

One woman’s husband had a very hard time with what his in-law had done to his wife throughout her childhood. Yet he was able to read the story to her and together receive the hope that the king’s entrance always brings into our lives. So, I wanted you to know, to be encouraged and build up in your faith, grace and peace be with you. What a beautiful, beautiful letter.

Karen:        Yeah, it just did. And we’ve had a lot of trouble putting this particular podcast together. I mean, even having to start again, but I know that it’s because there’s something dark that does not want this information to go out. I forbid him in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and through the powers of heaven that are available to us. We have angelic entities who are often assigned to us. You don’t hear about this much in the churches that we come from until you begin to get working on people’s levels. So, I call the angels to come and be with us as we’re doing things that are difficult.

David:        In fact, I would want you to skip part of this story that you’re reading and just go more toward the end because in the midst of that darkness of the story, the king is introduced and all of his beauty. I want you to come to that part now, okay?

Karen:        Okay. For five years, Karnie went away in her mind, afraid that he would come and see her again with a glance. Any looks of love or only of casual interest reminded her of that night when he had captured her with his burning eyes. “Don’t look, don’t look,” she would cry and go away. Each time she returned, she was thinner, more worn as though the journey was too difficult for a child to make by herself and all who loved her suffered. But most of all her father who mourned deeply in his exile from his own daughter in his own house.

One midday, she was awakened by her mother’s whisper. “Can you help her.” Karnie kept her eyes closed. “Not another doctor.” They were all Enchanter’s men who sent her far away. “If she just didn’t look, if she just wouldn’t remember,” a man’s voice answered quietly, “Yes, I can help her.”

“Not another,” she mourned. Fear noted, it’s fist in her chest. And she began scrambling toward the keyhole entrance in her mind to escape. “She’s awake,” said her mother. “She’s going Karnie, don’t go, don’t go. Someone is here who can help you.”

In a hurry Karnie found the little door that opened from here to there. But before she slipped through, she heard the man say, “Don’t worry, I’ll go with her.” Then the carnival music hid the sounds. Carnival fireworks exploded. “Batchewa, Batchewa!”  Carnival barkers shouted, “Peanuts, popcorn, cotton candy.” “The merry go round,” thought Karnie. “No one can find me there.”

The merry go round goes round and round and the painted horses go up and down. “I can run and hide and stay there forever and ever.” “Batchewa” rounding up and rounding down. “Peanuts, popcorn. Get your tickets here.” Rounding up and rounding down. “Batchewa!”

The longer she rode, the more Karnie thought she heard someone calling her name. She rode and rode on the painted pony until she was out of breath. It was a man’s voice. If she could only drown it in the carnival music.

But she still heard him calling, “Karnie, Karnie.” The Enchanter. She knew what his evil eye had spoken when she was just a little girl still sucking her thumb and cuddled in warm pajamas. “You are mine. All mine.”

She had always known that one day when she was grown, the fire wizard would come together with one look he would capture her eyes and she would be helpless but to follow. This time, she would stay here in carnival land and ride the carousel round and round and up and down forever and forever.

“Karnie, Karnie!” With a sigh, Karnie gave up. She dismounted the painted pony she had been riding. It was no use. He was here. The enchanter. She might as well look into his hot eyes. How could she resist one who could follow her through the secret keyhole into this boom, pa, da boom, pa, da madness round and up and round and down.

With a sigh the girl looked toward the place from where the call had come. Yes, a man was standing in the middle of the carousel under the arch of the turning roof. She could go round and round forever but he would always be in the center of her turning.

“Karnie,” he called again. “Don’t be afraid.” Karnie lifted her eyes to see. Not the enchanter but a most beautiful young man. She cast her eyes quickly down again.

“Karnie, look up, look up.” Something in the young man’s tone banished her fear. She lifted her eyes and for the first time in years looked full into a face. The wound within that had ached and throbbed with pain began to ease. He reached his hand to her in a moment, in wonder, she lifted hers across the painted ponies to him.

At his touch the merry-go-round music began to slow. The blasting of the fireworks faded. The carnival music grew silent boom, pa, da, pa, da.

She was in her room when she came to herself with her mother’s chocked face close. Nurse suddenly drew the draperies apart, lifting the blinds, throwing open the shutters. Light, glorious light flooded the one stark place. She was still in her bed. The adder down was ruffled and moist with sweat. She was still holding the young man’s hand. She was still looking into his eyes, but he was smiling. The gentleness of smiles and his look was full of the love that could capture you but only if you wanted it to.

“Oh mother,” she said, “I had been so far away.” Her mother was crying now but her tears were ordinary tears that glistened on her cheeks and fell on the pillow where Karnie’s head rested. Things you remember, “It had been years. Where is my father?” She asked. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen my father.”

Karnie’s mother looked up at the young man questioning. He nodded his head. And Nurse rushed from the room to wake Karnie’s father from his fitful sleep.

“How can we ever thank you,” said Karnie’s mother. Karnie thought she was so beautiful with her moist eyes shining. The young man smiled again bent and kissed the palm of Karnie’s hand which he then placed beneath the coverlet.

“Become a part of the resistance that is working for the restoration of my kingdom,” he answered, “Throw all your resources into it but only if you think it’s a cause worth living and dying for.”

At that moment, Karnie’s father rushed into the room. He knelt by her bed and looked into her eyes and the two of them embraced each other and wept aloud. Through her tears, she could see the young man shaking her mother’s hand and accepting Nurse’s grateful hug. Then the man moved through the doorway where the bevy of sleepy but curious servants were crowding and peering into her room.

“Don’t go, don’t go away” she thought. “I want to look into your eyes one more time, one more time.” But she remained silent because she now knew that one who could enter into the middle of madness in order to lead her safely out would always be at the center of her life, no matter how far she journeyed. She knew she would never again be out of the loving circle of his gaze.

David:        That’s kind of a typical story for that middle book. They’re stories of deliriousness.

Karen:        Yeah, right.

David:        You know, the Boiler Brat and the Sewer Red. I think of the forbidden princes. You know, I think of all the times that I got to go to India and see darkness along with the beauty of what was happening in the ministry of God’s people. They’re tough stories. They are very tough stories. But they are also stories of hope. And they get letters like the letters that I referred to before. Yeah.

Karen:        Absolutely extraordinary. And we’ve had that sort of response come through all of the years you just happened to travel in that you could find quickly. And David, I think what that does for me, as the writer, I mean, you develop scriptural message of Christ that have been ignored in our fundamentalist churches. I don’t know why. His major message was of the kingdom of God. That’s what these stories are about. The beauty of the kingdom of God.

David:        And the beauty of the king.

Karen:        Right.

David:        So, they’re wonderful stories. And how did they come about? They came about in ways that we wouldn’t have chosen. Because along with successes, there have been failures.

Karen:        And the people that we were ministering to, taught us all things that became foundational for these stories; that there was deliverance. That the king was powerful and alive. And that people who had been taken into the enchanter’s stronghold could be delivered from that even in their adult years, the things that were still affecting them. It’s been a great journey.

David:        Yeah, part of whether those tales are used to the Lord, you can tell because you cry. You don’t know why you cry. All of a sudden, you say this is very deep.

Karen:        Yeah, it’s very meaningful. Yeah.

David:        A lot of times, again, stories, people write and say, “I had to stop.”

Karen:        “I was crying so hard.” It was a mom who wrote, and she said, “I have to tell you this. My husband was reading your stories to a young child, and he paused, and the little girl came into the kitchen or wherever the mom was, and said, ‘Mom, why is daddy crying?’”

So, good children’s literature is for all ages. And that’s part of the classic reason so many things have lasted for centuries.

David:        You still have a list here of backstory experiences that became a part of the tales. We’ve given enough. I think so.

Karen:        I think so.

David:        We’ll stop and take on a new topic next time we get together. But it’s just good. Thank the Lord. Yeah, we’re grateful to be His servants.

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