The Streets of Nottingham

Copyright © 2018 Auckly Simwinga All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means – except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews – without written permission from its publisher.

The characters portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author Copyright © 2018 Auckly Simwinga All rights reserved.

Auckly Simwinga

THE STREETS OF NOTTINGHAM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE ................................................................ 1 CHAPTER 1. THE BREAKING OF THE WORLD ....... 4 CHAPTER 2. LORD OF CHAOS ............................... 51 CHAPTER 3. THE WAILING WATERS ..................... 69 CHAPTER 4. THE END OF ALL THINGS ................. 86

PROLOGUE

Excerpt: 11th scroll, verse 1-6; the great book.

The streets of Nottingham In Nottingham, there is a healer. He knows you are coming, but he is not waiting for you, for he knows something you do not; Nottingham lies embraced by one who brings light. Oh what a treacherous guide he shall prove to be. We pray you forget him, should you escape his grasp.

The healer knows you seek him, but he won’t be waiting, for he knows something you do not; if the sun did spare you, his touch strayed your mind, nobody makes it to Nottingham; this the healer knows.

Seek not a way in the rising darkness. None was made.

Instead, flee the devil at your heels, for three dark nights you will hear him singing in the wind. We beseech you, do not turn to the shadows that trail you. May the darkness be your guide.

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In Nottingham, there is indeed a healer, and he knows you are coming, but he is not waiting for you, for he remembers something you clearly do not. If your face does not bear the white paint of the mother, then still something of you was lost to the mountain. None can touch the gates of Nottingham; this the healer knows.

If you are not dead, dear traveller, proceed with caution.

The demauglers are upon you. Do not turn back; the way home no longer exists. Abandon the path of the caravans when the words on the wind lose their meaning. It is your heart that will hear this; your ears would have long since failed you. You are closer, dear stranger. This will guide you no more.

A healer walks the streets of Nottingham. Seek him out, he will not find you, for he knows something you do not.

If you are not dead, you have lost your mind; listening to the wind has brought this upon you. If the wind did spare you, the demauglers made you stranger. Nobody makes it to Nottingham; this the healer knows.

My poor fellow, I urge you to pray. Death has found you.

We warned you, we told you, nobody makes it to 2

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Nottingham. Flee as you pray, listen while you pray, oh dear god! As you pray, seek the gates of Nottingham. If you should find water, ask her where the gates lie. We pray you find the gates of Nottingham. Nobody was ever meant to come this far.

If you should find the gates, you dare not knock; there is no one home to hear you. Do not seek a key; none was made. Even we do not know what lies behind these gates. Except that, in Nottingham, there is a healer. He knows you are coming, but he is not waiting for you.

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CHAPTER 1. THE BREAKING OF THE WORLD

I remember when I was younger, which wasn't that long ago, Marika and I would sneak into her father’s hut. He was a village elder. He was the village elder. The man had no love for me, but maybe that is another story.

Marika and I were probably head over heels in love with each other ….as in love as 7-year-olds could be, I suppose.

It was a rickety old place, that hut. Surprisingly small for the man’s stature. The two of us had long since oiled the doors to keep them from creaking. I don’t think the elder ever noticed the difference. Locked in one of the smaller rooms, the elder kept his scrolls. Parchments that formed the great book. He used to hide the key under the giant ale gourd behind the front door. There were hundreds of scrolls in that dusty room, worn with age. Scrolls that told us who we were, where we came from, and maybe where we were going. My favourites were the ones that spoke of the old world, about deities that pulled this world from the air by simply speaking the word. I imagined it would be the greatest feeling in the 4

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world to meet these fathers of old, to walk among them in their city in the clouds. Not that the scrolls said Nottingham was in the clouds. It didn't say where it was at all, only that you couldn't get there. Still, I imagined myself on those stone paved streets, with narrow meandering streets that rose and fell, caressing the gentle sloping hills.

The elders say the city isn’t there anymore. That nobody lives in those houses with the white-washed stone walls that could catch the golden sun like a deity’s skin. Truth be told, I’ve never believed a word those people say. They probably make up most of their teachings, anyway.

They say all that remains of Nottingham is the temple. Somewhere at the top of the hill, it stands a ruin, eerie and haunted. A dark and desolate place, dimly lit by rays of light slipping through cracks in the sandstone.

There are engravings on its walls. Drawings that tell of a time long forgotten. Scenes so real you can hear them come alive in the silence. If you stood there in the great hall, amidst the shadowy columns, if you closed your eyes and listened, you would see it brought to life. A 5

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moment from the 400-year war etched in stone. The war that brought forth the world of men and the end of the age of the gods.

I know that temple as well as I know my own home.

I have studied its drawings since before I could talk. I see it every night in my dreams. I picture that nave, lined with black marble columns the size of oaks, running from one end to the other. Etched into the first column is a drawing of the Caelemon cast into hell, the moment he fell, cast on a bolt of fiery glory. You can see the agony in his blazing eyes, you can see the terror, and you can see the heartbreak therein. The bolt breaks off and continues on the next column on the aisle end. It breaks off again, as if suggesting it came from nowhere. But, if you look at the statue of the god-king that all but fills the aisle, if you follow his fiery gaze down the white marble staff in his hand, you will see it is he who cast the bolt of fire at the Caelemon.

Etched into the aisle wall is a picture of a woman reaching for the god-king. A beautiful ebony skinned woman, dressed in long flowing robes. She is Rain to them; she is the mother to us. She’s is reaching for the 6

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god-king, but he is just beyond her. Held back by Chaos as he pulls her back, grabbing her around the waist. Her feet in the air as he pulls her back.

I find my thoughts straying more and more to that place lately. Maybe to escape the real world around me.

Cold and desolate as the temple in my dreams. A deathly chill in the night. I close my eyes, and I’m back at the temple. But I do not find the hope I seek there. The light fades around me. The columns disappear in the dark, the aisle, the nave, all gone. It’s so dark I can barely see my own hands. In the darkness, I hear her sobbing. I can see her, the mother. I see her on her knees, broken, refusing to be comforted. Grasping her chest, a tall, slender, dark elfish looking woman, with her long flowing gowns, floral embroidery caressing the hem and sleeves. I cannot decide if her gown is green or grey.

Tears ran down her cheeks, eye kohl running. She has a chain in her hand. A silver chain around her neck with an emblem of the world at its end. She’s pulling on it; it has cut into her hand. There’s blood running from her clenched fist down her arm. There’s bruising around her

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neck from pulling on the chain. I know this moment as the breaking of the world.

My horse reels around suddenly, pulling me from my dreams. I find myself back at the foot of the black mountains. “Shadow! Calm down!” I demand as the soot grey horse twists and bucks.

Her hysterical neighs reverberate into the cold night.

I can hear howling on the wind. Wolves! They seem to answer shadows neighs. “Calm down girl. Calm down.

There’s nothing there,” I lie. Shadow isn’t having any of it. She almost throws me off. Quickly, I swing a leg over Shadow’s back and land steadily, grappling with her bridle.

“Shhh! Shhhh....”

“Come Shadow!” I command, attempting to lead the still over-excited animal. The horse refuses to move, pulling back away from me, kicking wildly. The howling sounds louder, closer. I let go of the bridle as it cuts into my hand. The horse darts away from me, running towards the howling. She stops a few feet from me,

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clearly realising her error. She twists and turns around, confused.

This is a truly desolate place we have found ourselves in. Sands the colour of ash as far as the eye can see. Touched by black mountains that rise steeply towards the sky, like razor-sharp walls of coal black stone. There is a full moon out tonight, but its light dies suddenly before it hits the ground. On the horizon, we can see fiery chasms, remnants from the breaking of the world, shooting fire into the black sky. Shadow and I have worked our way up a narrow path through the mountains. We have fallen upon an opening into the mountain. There is a warning on the entrance scratched into the black stone in a language I should not be able to read, but still, its meaning is clear to me. “Seek not in the darkness a way beyond the hills, for none was made.

May the darkness be your guide.”

“May the darkness be my guide?”

I light a torch and throw it into the mouth of the cave.

A strange gust blows out. It smells like death in there.

The ground is covered in a film of grey mist. The 9

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darkness of the cave pushes back at the flame, eating into it as if alive. Smouldering it, it goes off. I can hear a wolf growling; it can’t be more than a few feet away, though I do not think it is a wolf at all. Shadow runs back to my side. I light another torch, adding more oil than I normally would. These are my choices, either the wolves or the cave. Grabbing Shadow by the bridle, I walk into the cave, pulling her behind me.

The village. A few days ago Tucked on the sides of the greenest hills you could possibly imagine lay our village, a collection of huts splattered randomly across the hilly terrain that ran for miles and miles as far as the eye could see, hidden snugly between trees so old they had always been there.

No one ever left the village, and fewer still ever came visiting. The truth is, there was nowhere to go and nowhere to come from. If ever you dared travel far beyond the hills, just past where the trees seem to touch the heavens, you’d begin to see traces of the breaking.

Patches of scorched sky and tears in the earth so deep they touched the mountain peaks of hell. Endless 10

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stretches of land, where nothing dared to grow. It was like this in all directions, nothing but wastelands for days upon days as the crow flies. It was said that, before the breaking of the world, these desolate lands were deserts of water stretching out as far as east was from west. I imagined there were still places like that out there somewhere, where the waters hadn’t all poured out over the edges of the world.

If you climbed the tallest tree on the highest hill on a dark night, you could see fires in the distance, spewing from the tears in the earth. Far to the east, if you dared look when the sun was at its highest, just where the sky touched the earth, you would see what looked like black hills reaching toward the heavens. Most people said they couldn’t see anything. That it was just the sun playing its usual tricks, but I knew those where the fabled black mountains I saw perching on the horizon. Many stories were told of the black mountains, each one as terrifying as the next.

The nights at the village were always the best, not that I minded the days all that much. Every day would end as it began, with a gathering in the town square.

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Each morning before dawn, when the air was still thick with fog, we’d gather before the mother for prayers. She stood over ten feet tall, a statue carved out of black stone. Her face obscured by the hood over her head.

The elders always led the prayers, asking for her blessings, asking for her mercy. I never made it for prayers. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe; it was just… looking up at that statue always made me feel so small.

It was the way she looked back at me, always cold and distant, making me wonder what I’d done wrong. Maybe that was the point.

The rest of the day we’d spend in the fields, the men, that is. The women stayed behind looking after the children, fishing and preparing the night’s feast. It wasn’t hard work, or maybe we were too drunk to notice. We’d carry casks of ale with us in the morning, and by sunset, the casks were empty. The women cheered at our return, like we were coming back victorious from a long war. And so, the feast would begin.

Like every other night, the feast was at Marika’s house, a compound of huts clustered between trees that formed a courtyard laid with white coble stone. Like 12

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every other night, Marika and I weren’t there. Her father was the chief elder, so he always hosted the festivities.

In the middle of the courtyard was a roaring fire. There were women braiding hair on the steps, children play fighting, men huddled around the fire roasting meat, and the elder at the centre of it all, telling stories. He always told the same stories, always from the great book. He’d begin at the beginning with the creation, skip over the songs, and end the night with the breaking of the world.

The elder women would always usher the children to sleep when the elder got to the breaking. “The story is inappropriate for children,” they’d say. The children would protest, but protest while obeying. No story was worth getting a hiding over. They’d pretend to go to sleep, then sneak back and listen, hidden under every nook and cranny. Every night played out this way without deviation.

There was a path leading from Marika’s compound cluster to another cluster. Then another then another, each cluster made of stone huts complete with circular doorways, too low to walk through without bending your head, with flat roofs of large circular timber overhangs 13

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laid with thatch. The courtyards were the living and cooking spaces. Between huts stood black stone statues of deities and monsters forever on guard. In the trees, lanterns would glow long into the night, lighting our little mountainside village.

Marika and I had broken into the grain store that night. It was probably the largest structure in the village, with giant timbers holding the reed roof in place. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t help but stare at her. I swear I remember the first time I saw her. I couldn’t have been a day older than two, but I remember looking up into those big blue eyes when they found me in the woods. I was transfixed, forever bewitched by her.

She was messing around as usual, always trying to make me laugh. People used to say she bore the image of the mother. She was short and plump, with ebony black skin and short white hair that never used to grow.

I had always been fascinated by how short she was. And except for the fact that the statue in the village square was of a tall slender woman, it could easily have been a

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statue of Marika, which, seeing as how the statue was at least a hundred years old, was a curious thing indeed.

Every time I caught myself staring at her, I’d feel my heart breaking inside me, knowing her father would never allow us to be together. He’d kill me if he knew how much time we spent together. I was a lesser being to him. An outsider. Maybe he suspected, maybe that’s why

his

teachings

always

lingered

around

the

banishment of the Caelemon whenever I was present for night festival. This always made me wonder…. if the god-king knew about the Caelemon and the mother. He must have seen it. Lingering stares, hushed laughs in the corridors, it was all there in the book. The 17th scroll; “have you ever wondered how we came to be,” it reads.

“What?” Marika asked, pulling me from my trance.

“Nothing,” I lied, turning away from her, realising I’d spoken the words from the passage out loud.

“I was just thinking about …the breaking.”

“You mean you where sulking about you and me,” she teased, moving closer. Hugging me so tight I could barely breathe. Obviously, when I was in her arms, 15

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breathing lost its importance. I would quite happily have stayed there forever. She had this power over me; whenever she held me, the world around me would quite simply fade away.

“It’s the saddest story. Could there be love more doomed?” I muttered, pulling away from her.

“Maybe it’s not about doomed love,” she said.

“Maybe it’s about enduring love.” She recited the rest of the passage as if to make her point. “…she ran to her quarters that first time it happened, her face beaming with guilt like a child caught red-handed. Somewhere in those great hallways, there was and had been for a while now, undeniably, a fluttering in the air. Like a thousand butterflies of blue light that burned fiery orange on the breeze. A strange thing indeed had come upon Rain and Caelemon. A longing for each other that the god-king had chosen to ignore. Their essences had reached one for the other like souls entwining. The god-king has seen this, and there was a deep look of concern in his eyes that could not be denied.”

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The verse pulled my thoughts from the grain store. I found myself in Nottingham. In the great hall, for a moment, I was there at the breaking. I saw the mother on her knees, right there before me, grasping her chest.

Her heart breaking inside her. Her tearful eyes haunted by a memory she couldn’t shake. For a moment, I was there, then I was in a library, with shelves so high you couldn’t see the top. I had strayed into the mother’s nightmares. I saw wooden shelves, with dark scorch marks in place where the books of light touched the wood. I could see forms from behind the bookshelf. Two human forms made of fire that burned a fiery orange and a cold blue, mingled, pressed against each other, pushing against the sizzling shelves, passionately, violently. Burning into the hard wood. Somehow, I knew who they were… Caelemon and Rain. The lanterns began to flicker with orgasmic delight, letting out streams of fiery light that echoed Caelemon’s essence along the walls. I could hear moaning coming out of the air.

Outside, far in the distance, on an open field, almost lost in the tall grass, the god-king lay on his back, a piece of straw in his mouth, sound asleep. He must have 17

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known. He knew everything; if he did, then he let it happen. If he did, he must not have seen what it meant.

Yet still, the thought was there, stuck inside his head. A sense of unease. A storm was brewing above, fiery orange and blue light raging in the clouds, pulsating rhythmically to the tune of the flickering stars. The godking woke with a start. He’d seen it, the end that was to come. The end of all things, born out of rain. Instantly, he was in the library. Rain lay on the floor on her back, alone in the room, glowing fiery orange instead of the usual blue. Her knees pressed together, pointed to the ceiling. She was swaying in place, in a state of ecstasy, a light storm in her eyes.

The god-king grabbed Rain, violently flinging her across the room. The moment played out so slowly, like a dream, like the world had decided to delay what was to come. You could almost see her frozen mid-air. The strange thing was, she was still on the floor. A ‘her’ was still on the floor, still out of breath, still swaying with ecstasy. Meanwhile, the other ‘her’ was flying across the room. But the second ‘her’ wasn’t her at all; it was Caelemon.

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Time was frozen; time was accelerated. A thousand years’ worth of time could have passed in that one moment. All of time, forever and always in that moment.

Caelemon flew through the stone wall, even as it shattered like glass. He fell hard on his side in the street, rolling over as the stone pavement broke under him like he was made of solid iron. He tumbled over and hit into the wall across the street, coming to a stop with a thunderous crash. The street was deserted, with the sun burning high and bright.

Caelemon staggered to his feet; failing to go all the way up, he fell back on his knees, all the strength gone from him. He tried to catch his breath. In Caelemon’s face, in his eyes, you could see Rain’s reflection through the opening in the wall. She was screaming, arching her back, suddenly pregnant and already in labour. The godking stepped out through the opening in the broken wall, obscuring Rain. “What have you done?” he bellowed.

Rain’s screams where deafening. Unable to contain the pain, grasping her stomach, reaching out to the air.

The world around her faded to blackness. You could see her floating there, mid-air in the nothingness. She could 19

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see the god-king through the hole in the wall. There he stood, a silhouette menacing towards Caelemon.

A market place began to form around Caelemon.

Suddenly bustling with life, there it was, a marketplace of beings that hadn’t been there before now. The air was suddenly torn apart with the sound of Caelemon’s name.

The mother was calling to him. Cities continued to form around them, around the world, breaking out from the ground. There where men rising from the dust. Men that had not been until now. As she turned and twisted in the air, she clasped her ears with her hands, trying to drown out the sound of thousands of children crying out to her.

Thousands of voices calling out to her, praying to her.

The mangled prayers of all the peoples that had just come into being were deafening. She had given birth to civilisation.

The god-king was in a mad furore. He grabbed Caelemon by the throat, lifting him up into the air, while conjuring fire through his staff with his other hand. He turned violently, flinging Caelemon through a store, while disseminating the market place with the fire in his other hand. Hundreds of men turned to ash in the fire 20

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and flame as hundreds still scampered in terror.

Caelemon staggered to his feet, standing upright with all the strength he could muster in the middle of the burning store.

Rain rose to her feet inside the library, sweaty, but no longer pregnant. The marble floor began to crack under her weight with every gentle step she took. Her feet were swollen, leaving water marks with every step.

The sun no longer burned bright in the sky. Replaced by dark clouds swelling viciously up above and around the library. The blackness in the library was gone. Rain looked weak, barely standing straight. She began to twist her wrist in a circular motion, summoning a lightning charge from the air as the god-king raised his staff of white marble, charging towards Caelemon to deliver his final blow. Rain was about to shoot lightning straight through the god-king, but Chaos grabbed her by the waist.

“Rain, don’t!” he screamed, pulling her back, lifting her feet clear off the ground.

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The lightning bolt flew off towards the black sky, setting it on fire. There was a rumbling in the heavens as pieces of burning sky began to rain down on the world below. Some of the lighting charge had caught onto Chaos. It burned right through him. He fell back onto the ground as Rain tumbled over him. He lay there still as water, unconscious, maybe dead even. His garments singed as if by fire.

I saw the mother on her knees. Back in the temple.

Back in my vision. With the story I had just seen etched into the walls. In the silence, I could hear her screams echo from deep inside the walls, begging her father to stop. I could hear her struggling to get free of Chaos, even as Caelemon was cast out of Nottingham. Through the ground, through an eternity of space on a fiery bolt of light. Cast down from the heavens into the depths of hell. I saw the emblem of the world in Rain’s hands break. In the darkness of space, I could see the world breaking too. Leaving fiery chasms in the earth that spewed lava into the dark sky above as it crumbled.

A scream pulled me from my daze, a shrill, screeching scream I hoped against hope was coming 22

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from my vision. But it wasn’t. I heard it again, a spine chilling cry from just outside the grain store. Marika jumped to my side, clutching my arm. We listened, wideeyed.

“What was that?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

Dead silence followed. I edged toward the door.

“Adam, wait,” Marika whimpered, her hands digging into my arm.

Another scream rang through the night sky. A terrible sound I had never heard before. I prayed to the mother I would never have to meet whatever was crying out. I heard a woman in the neighbouring hut sobbing, wailing.

I grabbed a lantern from the wall, noting my trembling hands. I hoped Marika hadn’t noticed. I peered through the door, trying to look as brave as I possibly could.

Marika followed behind timidly, hiding her face in my back.

We felt our way through the darkness, past a hut that had singed cracks running along its length. I noticed a peculiar looking mist, clinging to the ground and drifting towards us. I glanced at Marika. She too had frozen in 23

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her steps. I felt a sudden burn into my sandaled feet that made me let out a yelp of shock and pain. I pulled back quickly. The mist reached toward me. I dashed into the hut, pulling Marika behind me. She climbed frantically onto a table. I followed hastily, all traces of bravery lost.

Within moments, the floor was covered with mist. Its ends reaching up the table legs like it had fingers on its end. Instinctively, I thrust my lamp at the smoke, as if the fog were some kind of animal. It pulled back, reacting as if it were alive. We sat there, crouched awkwardly like children, trembling in fear. It felt eerily silent outside. The silence only broken by the occasional scream. Our eyes were transfixed on the doorway.

Just as I was beginning to hope it might be over, a bony hand emerged in the doorway, clasping the wooden doorframe. The wood crackled like cinders on fire upon its touch. I could hear whispers, thousands of whispers coming from all around. Speaking some evil I dared not decipher. A dark form filled the doorway. A wraith, shrouded in a black cloak. Behind the fabric there was only darkness. I gasped in tandem with Marika’s shriek.

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Frozen for a moment, I remembered the fog. I threw the flaming torch at the faceless being, hoping it would have the same effect. It did. The wraith let out a shrill cry as it caught fire. The cloak disintegrated instantly, revealing the nothingness under the cloak.

I felt the table tumbling over from under me. Marika let out a cry. I saw her falling over. I was having some sort of out of body experience. I saw myself reach out to grab her, barely grazing her hand. I heard her ankle snap as she fell on the hard floor, instantly enveloped by the mist. Like a dream, I saw her open her mouth to scream, but the mist rushed into her open mouth, choking her. Stinging her, she let out a muffled cry, writhing on the floor. I saw myself throw the lantern into the mist. The floor burst into flames. The mist let out a shriek as it disappeared in the fire. I jumped beside her.

Holding her in my arms, she coughed violently, tears filling her eyes, trying to catch her breath. The walls were on fire. The flames spreading into the roof.

“Are you ok?” I asked. Her breath less laboured, she slipped in a nod as I led her out from the smoke-filled hut, continuing to cough.

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I looked up and saw the once strong, emeraldcoloured trees had now withered and died, letting out constant cracking sounds that were alien to me. I heard Marika’s muffled sobs. Following her gaze, I glanced around the courtyard and saw the bodies. People touched by death littered everywhere, men, women, and children. All withered and grey. The huts were all on fire.

The village was on fire. Like a dream, I saw forms running haphazardly around me in terror. I noticed a man fighting a wraith. I knew the man, but in that moment, I couldn’t remember his name.

A sudden movement caught my eye. “Marika, get behind me!” I shouted, seeing more wraiths in the courtyard gliding towards us. A wraith reached for me. I let out an embarrassingly loud cry of fright while swinging the torch wildly in front of me. The wraith swung around me, and I spun around just as swiftly, keeping the fire between us. I heard the sky growl and saw the clouds swirling above me. I kept one eye on the wraith as I looked upward, my mind swirled with images of the possible horrors that would come next. To my surprise, the wraith seemed equally concerned.

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With a sudden rush, the cloud swirled down to the ground behind the wraith, a hand forming out of it, reaching for the wraith’s neck and then revealing a man with fiery white eyes. His long robes blowing in the wind like the masters of the oriental east. The wraith let out a short shriek as the man pulled it into the sky.

“Who …was that?” Marika gasped. “What was that?”

I realised I was still staring up at the sky, where the man and the wraith had disappeared. “I think …. I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head, frowning in disbelief.

“I think it was…..the god-king?”

I became so engrossed by the skirmish in the clouds that I did not see the horde of wraiths descending upon us. This distraction came to a swift end when I felt a bony hand clasp my arm, sending a cold chill up my spine.

Panic overtook me. All was lost. Black clocks obscured my view, smouldering me as I fell to the ground. I could not see a thing. Marika screamed my name as her hands slipped through my fingers. I struggled to get free. For a moment, I caught a glimpse of her. A wraith had her in what would otherwise have been a lover’s embrace, its 27

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black face melding into hers. The life began to fade from her. I watched helplessly as her skin began to wrinkle.

Then I heard a rustling like that of a thousand winds. I knew it had to be the god-king coming back down to save us. Oh, how I prayed he wasn’t too late. I saw him ram his staff into the wraith, twisting around as if performing some sort of elegant swanlike dance. He sent the wraith clear into the air then rammed it hard back into the ground, sending dust clouds into the air and then, in a single motion that seemed a continuation of the dance, he grabbed Marika’s arm with his free hand, catching her as she fell. The life returned to her.

The wrinkles on her skin began to fade as I watched in awe.

The horde instantly descended upon the god-king like a swarm of bees, circling around him, knocking him down, as I fought to catch my breath. As he fell to the ground, he gracefully twisted himself up onto one of them, holding it down on its back, glaring into its face, his eyes flaming white even as the other wraiths swarmed on top of him. The wraith under the god-king caught fire and began to twist and squeal desperately, 28

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but the god-king held the thing steadily in place. The fire in his eyes began to spread across his entire body. The wraiths burst into flames all around him, burning away into nothing until all that remained was that one being of light. Burning white, his fiery clock blowing in the wind.

I turned and saw a child crying in the middle of the courtyard, alone, hugging his knees and rocking himself as a cloaked figure floated towards him. Instinctively, I ran straight between them, flaming branch in hand. I pulled the boy behind me as I faced the wraith, thrusting the branch forward, threatening the ghostly being with the flame. It jerked forward menacingly, threatening as it edged closer and closer. We stumbled backward, now unconfident in the abilities of the fire. Another wraith appeared behind us, blocking our escape. I twisted and thrust the torch in both directions, while shielding the boy with my own body. The wraiths dodged the flame, attempting to close in. A third wraith appeared.

Suddenly, I was overrun with fear. My heart beating so loud in my ears I could barely hear myself think. I was all out of ideas.

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I saw Marika rush to my side with a broken branch from a dried-out tree in her hand. She lit it on my torch. I felt like I was having another out of body experience. I saw her charge at the nearest ghoul and shove the branch inside its empty hood. It shrieked and burnt instantly to the ground.

Distracted, I smiled, even as I felt myself suddenly tugged backward. I was being pulled away and upward into the sky, shrouded by two cloaked spirits. I clawed violent at their ghostly hands as I realised what was happening. I called out for help. I watched my torch falling to the ground below. I was a done for. All hope faded. I felt one wraith caress my face with its cold bony hand as it leaned into my face. I tried to turn away, but my body was frozen. I felt it kiss my lips. I felt my soul being drawn out of me, sucked out by the wraith. My desperate hands began to turn wrinkled and grey. The world was fading away.

Then I felt a strange warmth. Suddenly jerked back into the world. The god-king was between us, glowing white as he pried the ghoul from my face. It shrieked as it caught fire. I felt his heat radiate onto my skin.

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As the ghostly figures burned, I began to fall, tumbling through the air.

Falling, falling towards my death.

Mid-air, I felt strong arms around me. The sky seemed to stand still. He had caught me, gently setting me down on the ground. I coughed violently. Ruby blood splattered onto the ground. I had almost died!

In the corner of my eye, I saw a wraith apart from the rest, standing there, watching. It was the same as the other ghouls, but different. Then it hit me, the thing had a face. And I knew that face. I had seen that face a thousand times before. Every day of my life. In the square. The statue I prayed to every morning. The wraith was ….Rain. The mother!!!

It inched forward, she inched forward, threatening. I watched the god-king raise his staff, threatening back, standing between me and the wraith. She hissed sharply, bearing her teeth as she inched closer. There was a look in her black eyes. I couldn’t quite tell what it was… Fear? Anger? Hate? Maybe even mercy? She took a step backwards, letting out a short threatening 31

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hiss before turning away and disappearing into the darkness of the night.

I didn’t understand what had just happened. I had seen it, but I just didn’t understand…what did this mean?

The mother was trying to kill us. She was our mother.

The mother of all life, how could this be?

The god-king stood there for the longest time. Staring into the night. He was a sight to behold. I’d never seen a human stand taller. As tall as the statue in the square.

We should have turned to him, but we were not sure how we were supposed to feel about him. It was all quite overwhelming. No one had ever seen an actual god before…. not in recorded history. And now, here they were, two of them, and they were trying to kill us all. To be fair, it was the one who was supposed to be our mother that was trying to kill us. Meanwhile, the one that brought on the breaking of the world had just saved us.

Growing up, we had always been told, “Fear the godking, for he is quick to anger. Pray to the mother, for she is merciful and just.” And so we did. The only thing more terrifying than the thought of the god-king was the 32

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thought of the devil that lurked beneath our feet.

Somewhere deep underground, a monster of brimstone and fire. No one had ever seen this ‘demon of the deep.’

I had always felt that the grownups just made him up to scare us. But now, I wasn’t so sure.

So, how where we supposed to feel about these deities of old? Who really broke the world? It was hard to say who was to blame. The mother broke the world, but it wasn’t her fault. She was the world, and her father broke her, though I don’t think he meant to do that either.

Who was to blame? Who started it? It was all a matter of perspective.

The air was still stifled with ash. The sky black with smoke. I sat there watching him. He turned to me, nodding my way. I waved back. A half-wave that turned quickly awkward.

Then I heard a scream. A boy. Nioni, the boy Marika and I had…. Where was Marika? I felt my heart sink.

Somehow, I knew what that scream meant. I ran toward the scream. And then I saw the thing I had dreaded the most. My whole world stopped spinning. I froze in my 33

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steps. The strength left me; my knees gave way as I fell to the ground. There lay my beloved on the ground, motionless. Her skin wrinkled and pale. Tears began streaming from my eyes. I tried to move towards her, falling back onto my knees with the first step. I felt the world around me fade. I saw myself crawling towards her. I saw myself take her in my arms. She felt cold and limp. I hugged her tightly, begging her to wake up. The god-king looked at me helplessly, with a look in his eyes that spoke volumes. Dead was dead. He couldn’t bring back the dead. My heart filled with an emptiness I had never felt before. The emptiness began to fill with darkness. A sense of loathing replaced the sense of wonder and awe I had felt towards the god-king just moments before. I was no longer confused about how I felt about him. I hated him so much in that moment. It was all his fault. He started all this. I didn’t care that he seemed to be trying to make amends. I heard myself let out a stomach churning cry that echoed long into the night.

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The black mountains. A few days later

Day one It’s dark and lonely on the mountain pass. The mountainscape is a fairly odd one. Caves open up into mountains that suddenly turn back into pitch black caves. The place is devoid of all life. I have not seen even one insect or weed breaking out of the ground. There is a full moon out, casting beams of white light onto the mountainside.

Shadow whinnies and stamps her hooves, nervous from the constant howling that simply will not cease.

“It’s okay, girl,” I whisper. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

As terrifying as it is, I can’t help but chuckle at the howling. It’s not that I find the thought of death by strange wolf creature amusing. It’s the reference to the verse in the poem, “For three black nights flee the devil at your heels, you will hear him singing in the wind, may the darkness be your guide.”

“Singing in the wind,” I mutter to myself, laughing out loud. My laugh echoes back at me. Shadow looks 35

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blankly at me, clearly not amused. The warning on the entrance worries me still, “seek not a way.” It said, “…none was made.” The same line from the poem. I’ve never been good with riddles. But I’m sure of what the second line meant. “For three black nights flee the devil…” I’d always heard stories about the mountains.

The one thing that always stood out was this; you must spend no more than three days in the mountains, or you’ll never leave. “Three days in the mountain and it owns you,” the elder always used to say. “Three days and you can’t ever leave.”

Looking around, I notice something strange; it’s brighter now than it was in the daytime. It begins to rain, and I wrap myself up in my coat, though sudden gusts of wind try their best to rip it away from me.

“What?” I shout, perplexed, bringing Shadow to a halt as I examine the black wall of rock in front of me. The path simply dies into the wall. “How is this another dead end?”

I look to Shadow for council, but she only glances back at me sheepishly.

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Another howl breaks the silence. Shadow’s eyes widen.

“C’mon” I sigh, pulling her away. “We must’ve missed a turn or something...”

Day two I wave my flaming torch around, but it has no effect on the darkness; the light seems to die within inches of the flame. This is not the first time I’ve done this. I simply can’t believe it still. I wave it around some more. It is as though I were in a space filled with nothing. In the sky, I see the full moon is still as bright as ever, but its glow refuses to make it all the way down to us. How I miss yesterday’s bright night, rain and all.

Another moon appears in the sky, also basking in its own radiance. That’s certainly new. I catch myself frowning. And then I realise a third. Now, this is getting ridiculous. The thick, inky darkness consumes the third moon. Then the second, then the first, spreading across the sky and down towards me. My heart begins to pound in my chest. The world is pitch black now. I wave my 37

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hands in front of my face just to make sure they are still there. I can’t see them. I cannot feel them when I touch my face. I cannot feel my face!! My heart is about to burst from my chest. I discern a growl right behind me...

I wake with a start, grabbing a burning log from the camp fire beside me as I jump to my feet. Swinging the flame around, I breathe a sigh of relief. Thank the mother that was just a dream. Maybe not “the mother.”

I hear a growl behind me. My stomach churns. I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I swing the log around wildly, unable to pin-point the growling. I am completely blind in the dark. I grab Shadow’s bridle, uneasily glancing around me. Where is that growling coming from? Shadow tugs me in one direction, her ears turning at the sound. I climb onto her back, terrified. She breaks into a gallop as soon as I land on the saddle. The wolf must be close, maybe right on our heels. Shadow turns sharply, grazing my forearm on the sharp rock of the mountain side. She’s running faster than she ever has before, madly bobbing her head to the ridiculously loud rhythm of her hooves.

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She’s running close to the sides of the wall of rock, too close, scraping against it and sending sections of rock tumbling behind us. I hear a yelp. I think a flying stone may have just injured the animal. Shadow doesn’t stop running; she runs down a strange track with oddly coloured rocks. Odd in that they are not black. She is completely in control at this point, and I dare not challenge her resolve.

Day three Shadow drags her hooves against the rocky ground, her head hung low. I’m still on her back, arched forward, also exhausted and tired. She slows and stops in front of the remains of the camp from the day before. I drearily slip off the saddle and land on my feet. Exasperated and low, I yell out in frustration. “‘May the darkness be your guide?’ I’m going around in circles! Three days and I’m back where I started!”

I furiously kick a blackened log from the burnt-out fire.

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“‘The darkness will be your guide’... How can it be my guide when I can’t see a thing? ‘Seek not in the darkness’...” Maybe I should just sit down and not seek anything!

I glimpse one or two especially dark openings in the mountain side and exchange a knowing look with Shadow.

Picking up my abandoned provisions, I accept that riddles aren’t supposed to be easy.

“Girl, I guess we’re going into the darkness!”

Day five Thirsty, I open my pack to get my water skin. It seems as light as I expected it to be. Placing it to my lips, I tilt it upward.

Nothing comes out. I look down the neck of the water skin hopefully, tipping it upside-down to get every last drop. Nothing comes out.

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Day eighteen We are both weary with hunger and thirst. I drop my empty pack. Shadow is just about crawling along at this point. We hear a howl. Neither of us cares. I begin to slip off the saddle, leaning more and more to the right. I fall, twisting my leg as it gets stuck in the stirrup. Shadow continues, dragging me along the rocky ground.

The village. A few days ago The air was still thick with smoke, the night sky barely visible behind its dark grey mass. The silence was deafening, broken every now and then by the sound of a woman breaking out in tears. The crying was infectious, spilling out to the next person and then next, until what began with one person quietly sobbing would suddenly turn into heart wrenching weeping from scores of women, children, and even the occasional man. It would die down just the way it started. One person breaking off into silence, then the next then the next.

Until the village was depressingly silent again.

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The elders had been trying to remove Marika’s body from my grasp for a while now. I wasn’t having any of it.

I hadn’t even noticed that a large crowd had gathered around me, trying to pry her from my hands, trying to reason with me. I couldn’t hear a word they were saying.

In hindsight, I think the whole thing may have gotten out of hand. Maybe I got a little agitated. There was, undeniably, a wildness in my eyes that night. A madness in my soul. Maybe the elder’s actions were justified.

He’d been standing at a distance, watching me and the other elders fight over his daughter’s body. He walked over casually, cold and collected, like this was a day like any other. Like we were children fighting over a doll. I did not notice him towering over me. There was a club lying on the ground right next to me. Left over from the night’s attack. The elder picked it up and hit me over the head with it. The world turned to blackness.

I remember a field, with hundreds of wood piles littered all over. There were dead bodies laid on the piles, bodies with their faces painted white. I remember the elders chanting incantations. I heard weeping. I saw mothers mourning their sons, children mourning their 42

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mothers. It was all so dreamy. The light in the air looked a strange dark yellow light spliced with what could best be described as silver-white shimmers. I was clearly hallucinating. There was a dirty child in a torn dress, her face smudged and tear stained, holding onto her mother’s hand. Her mother was in a state of shock, so lost in a daze she didn’t even know her child was next to her. She was staring at her husband’s corpse burning in the flames on one of the piles of wood. Marika’s corpse was laid on the pile next to the woman’s husband. She too was burning in the flames. Suddenly, her eyes opened, with a look of shock in them. She lay there for a second, perhaps not yet aware she was on fire. Then she felt it. She let out a heart-wrenching scream, trying to get off the flames in a state of sheer panic.

I woke with a start, attempting to jump to my feet, which led to me falling face first onto the floor, eating dirt.

I realised my hands and feet were bound. I coughed violently. My ears were ringing, my view was hazy, and my head hurt in ways I could not describe. I was in a hut.

Not mine, it looked like… Mera’s.

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A form knelt beside me, sitting me upright. I could barely see her, but I knew it could only be Mera. She was a kind old lady with beady eyes. Maybe a little eccentric. She pressed a bowl of soup to my lips. I took a large gulp. I was starving.

Shafts of light through the half-open window drew long shadows on the mud floor. “It must be morning,” I thought. I remembered my vision… morning meant cremation!! I pulled away from the bowl, struggling violently to break free. The bowl shattered as it hit the floor.

“Calm down child; it’s just me,” the form whispered.

I regarded her for a second, but my focus was on the ropes. The woman moved closer, attempting to wipe soup from my chin. I struggled to get free, bumping into her, causing her to stumble backwards.

“If you don’t stop that nonsense, I’m leaving,” she screamed.

I looked around wildly, agitated, looking for a way out.

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“They’re going to burn her,” I begged. “They’re going to send her back to the mother.”

Mera stood at the window, her gaze far off, looking onto a field laid with hundreds of woodpiles, ready to receive the corpses.

“The cremation is at noon; obviously, you can’t come,” Mera responded flatly.

I tried with all my might to break free from the ropes that had me bound so tightly. It was useless. I banged my head on the wall in frustration. Tears formed in my eyes. I couldn’t say why I was crying.

“Mera please,” I begged, almost bursting out in tears. “‘There is a healer in Nottingham,’ the book says so. He can fix everything. I just need to find him.”

Mera wasn’t interested in a word I was saying. “It’s just a song child; there is no healer. There is no Nottingham,” she said as she walked towards the door.

I was being irrational, I know. And all this kicking and screaming wasn’t going to help. A plan had been forming in my head. And it started with Mera setting me free.

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Kicking her in the face was not the way to get her to do this. The song was a riddle; the song was a map, and I was going to follow it to the healers’ home in Nottingham, and he was going to wake up Marika.

Traditions made the future predictable. There was going to be a procession to bring the corpses to the cremation field. Marika’s body was going to be at the tail end of the procession. On a horse, with her face painted white, just like all the other bodies. The elder would lead the horse by the reins on the left side. So, I would be on the right side, with my face obscured, hidden in the crowd. I would come out of nowhere, rush at him with a rock in my hands. He wouldn’t see me coming. I would hit the elder on the head while prying the reins from his grasp. He would fall over into the crowd, blood gushing from his forehead as I leaped onto the horse. I would jab my knees into the horse’s side, bringing it to a gallop, navigating my way through the confused crowd. The warriors would draw their arrows. In the chaos, they wouldn’t dare let loose an arrow. They wouldn’t dare shoot me. Or maybe they would, but then it wouldn’t matter. I’d rather be dead than live without her, anyway.

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But I know I’d get away with it. I’m sure of it. If a warrior had me in his crosshairs, if he meant to shoot me, someone would likely jump between me and him.

Screaming reason into his ear. Waving his arms wildly in the air. That someone would save my life. Then it would be too late, then they would watch me ride off into the hills.

The elder would get up, bloodied face and all. He’d wipe off the blood with his hand the way you would sweat, irritated, shouting in a flat tone something to the tune of, “after him!”

This is the story I was going to tell Mera. She would stop in her footsteps, turn around, and walk back towards me. And I know exactly what she would say. “So now you have her. Now what? You can’t carry a dead girl all the way to the city at the edge of the world.”

I would chuckle to myself. Knowing she was hooked.

Knowing she was intrigued. Noticing her beady eyes were beginning to twinkle with excitement. “I don’t have to get her to Nottingham,” I would reply. Then I would lay down the rest of my plan; I would lead the horse up the 47

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narrow path into the hills, by the reins, walking in front of it. The terrain would be rough and steep. Down below, not too far off, the elders and warriors would be trailing me. I imagine the horse may slip a couple of times, perhaps almost falling to its death. At this point, I would realise it couldn’t make it up any longer. The path would have become too narrow. But if my horse can’t make it up, then neither can theirs. I would remove Marika from the horse’s back, lift her up in my arms, and let the horse go back down, which would cause a little bit of an obstruction for my friends below.

By the time they caught up with me, I would be at the sacred cave. Their stomachs would churn as they watched me enter the cave, holding Marika’s limp pale body in my arms. Inside the cave, beyond the light well in the roof of the cave, beyond the waterfall of trickling waters that glow like moonlight, I would find the sacred pool.

At this point, Mera would cut me off, out of disbelief, realising what I was thinking. “The sacred pool!” she would exclaim.

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I would continue my story, a large grin on my face.

“Yes, the sacred pool. The men would run after me, with the elder leading the way. I would jump into the pool with my Marika. The elder would reach for me, but it will be too late. The elders would let out screams of sheer horror. I imagine a supernatural gust of wind blowing through the cave at this point. The men would all stand at the edge of the water. Not one would dare set foot in the pool. They would fall to their knees and begin to pray, a look of terror in their eyes.

“I would swim to the middle of the pool, pulling Marika behind me. The pool is shallow in the middle. Knee high.

I would wade through and lay Marika in the shallows at the centre. I would kiss her goodbye on forehead. The elder would be glowering fiercely at me at this point. But he would be on his knees. Glowering and praying. I just have to leave her where they can’t go.”

I knew Mera. I knew what she would say. She would scratch her head. Thinking. Wrestling with the decision.

“It’s not a map, dear child. It’s a warning. Nobody makes it to Nottingham.”

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So I would respond; “We can’t accept what happened. It’s too terrible.

The gods have to take it back.”

Mera would kneel beside me, a knife in her hand.

Almost convinced.

“Promise me you won’t die on that treacherous road,” she would say as she cut the cords. And I would utter the words; “I won’t die on that treacherous road.”

So I laid down my plan, and the conversation went as planned. Except she asked me a question I did now know the answer to. “What do you think happens should you succeed? Are you hoping he will welcome you back with open arms?” Her words cut deep, though I pretended to brush them off. She threw in one final jab just before she cut the cords, “You are not one of us, child, and that is ok. One day, you will realise you don’t have to be.”

50

CHAPTER 2. LORD OF CHAOS

The black mountains Shadow whinnies and bucks as I struggle to keep her under control. I feel faint, barely holding her down by the bridle. She almost pulls me off my feet.

“Shadow!” I yell.

She rears up on her hind legs, her hooves fighting the air. I fall on my back as the reins slip from my sweaty palm.

She gallops away, disappearing into the night.

“Shadow!” I call after her. She does not heed my call.

I can hear the sound of her trotting hooves becoming fainter and fainter as she trots further and further away.

I hear a spine-chilling growl from somewhere disturbingly close. I turn suddenly, looking around for this howling devil in the night. I swing my torch around, hearing the growls grow louder, but I still can’t see the vile creature.

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I stop, frozen on the spot. I’m holding the torch with both hands in front of me. They’re shaking.

“Stay away!” I yell into the darkness. “Stay away!

Come any closer and you’re dead!”

A figure steps forward from the shadows. It has the form of a hunched man, his head bowed and cloaked in black. He slowly lifts his head, revealing a grin of razorsharp teeth hidden behind a wolf-like snout, with red eyes that glow bright in the darkness of the cave. I gasp, my hands trembling. He is standing upright, even though he has wolf-like legs. The creature’s arms are of rotting skin and flesh, with the bones peeping through.

Dropping my torch in terror, I begin to crawl backwards, unable to break away from his gaze.

The creature pounces onto me like a wolf, grinning and growling. I clench my eyes shut, feeling its hot moist breath on my cheek. I try pushing it away, but my efforts are in vain. Death is upon. My last and dying thought, “Demauglers are real!”

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The village Mera and the god-king are sitting together on a rock in the sacred cave, sharing a weathered smoking pipe, passing it back and forth casually.

“Not too shabby,” the god-king remarks as he passes the pipe back to Mera.

“It’s my best batch yet,” she replies.

They watch over Marika’s body, lying there in the middle of the Sacred Pool. The silence of the cave broken by the dripping water falling onto Marika’s pale skin.

“So... you can’t get her out either?” Mera asks, raising an eyebrow as she leans toward the god-king.

He ignores her comment.

“I just thought you were the creator... ‘All powerful and all knowing,’ that’s all.” Mera shrugs her shoulders, taunting the god-king. She purses her lips.

The god-king continues ignoring her. An uneasy silence falls upon them. “Would you mind if I tried?” she

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asks, gesturing a motion that suggests pulling Marika out.

“I do not know what would happen to you if you entered the pool,” he replies. “…I could not undo it.”

“The idiot boy came out okay, though.”

“He did, maybe... but still, the waters are sacred. I did not make them that way.”

Mera, chokes on smoke. She coughs while passing the pipe back to the god-king, but the god-king gestures no. Mera nods. She takes another puff and starts coughing some more before continuing with her testy interrogation.

“The mother, then? Whoa, is she angry! Never before have I stood in the presence of rage that burned so bright it singed the air…. but then, I saw something else in her eyes, a sadness so deep it would put out the sun. Maybe that is why she came. I’ve heard of mothers who were so sad they’d smoulder their children in their sleep. I’ve never looked in the eyes of such a mother, but I’d imagine they have the same look I saw in the m…. in Rain’s eyes.”

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“I haven’t heard that name spoken out loud since before the breaking. I suppose it’s fitting. She isn’t the mother anymore. I have pushed my daughter into darkness, and now she has become death …a destroyer of worlds.”

Mera carefully weighs her response. After a long pause, she asks the question that has been haunting her, “Could you defeat her…If it came to it?”

The god-king stands to his feet, clearly agitated. “She is like a child throwing a tantrum,” he mutters under his breath with noted irritation. He paces back and forth between the rock and the pool. Coming to a halt in front of the pool, his gaze disappears into the waters.

“She cannot be beaten. Unless she chooses it to be so.”

A long silence falls between them.

“And what of Adam?” Mera asks, “Can he find him? ...can he find the healer?”

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The god-king walks back to his seat. “Have you heard the story of the man from Nalolo?” he asks in reply as he sits beside her.

“I have heard all the stories! There is no such man.”

“His story isn’t much different from Adam’s. He too sought us out in Nottingham. He found us at war with each other and caused us quite a bit of trouble.”

“He made it then? How can that be? Nobody makes it to Nottingham... it is known.”

“He came before the breaking of the world,” the godking replies.

The black mountains I awaken with a start, feeling disoriented. There is a fire crackling beside me. I notice a curious looking man tending to the fire and instinctively withdraw into a corner. He ignores my presence, chuckling to himself.

He seems familiar, but then again, not really, like a man I met in a dream. His hair is messy and visibly dirty. He looks …unwell.

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“Soup?” he asks in a low, gravelly voice, pointing to a bowl of soup next to the fire. He has a surprisingly casual manner about him. Surprising in that he appears almost sleepy. His movements slow and purposeful. And yet, there is something scary about him. A wild look in his eyes, perhaps. As if he may lose his mind at any moment.

I offer the only response I can master, “Who... Who are you?”

The man coughs and smiles. He seems to disintegrate a little as he does, fading. Obviously that cannot be. I must still be disoriented. I rub my eyes and watch the familiar man. He coughs again, more violently this time, bending over and turned away from me. The room appears to fade and reconstitute in tandem with the cough.

My eyes widen for a split-second. I thought I witnessed an explosion and felt the whole world come apart. Its fragments flew away from us, bursting out and disappearing, but then everything seems normal. I

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realised I have a huge frown across my face. I must be losing my mind.

“Me?” The strange man chuckles. “I am ….not me.”

He coughs again, a hacking cough that turns into loud, cackling laughter. The man composes himself. He leans over and refills his bowl of soup from a large pot beside the fire. He then attempts to inspect me closer, and I curl back in response, feeling uneasy. He then sniffs me, causing me to lean away, almost cowering.

“And

what

madness

brings

you

here?”

He

interrogates, apparently convinced his answer was satisfactory. I decide to play along.

“Nottingham!” I reply. “I’m going to Nottingham. Do you know it ….do you know the way? They say there is a healer in Nottingham. I need to find him.”

“Nottingham,” he says before going quiet for the longest time. The silence breaks when the stranger pokes the fire, animating the flames. They take the form of a rolling storm, the clouds folding onto themselves.

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“Have you ever wondered how this world came to be? Have you ever wondered about the things that come from nothing? ….Once, nothing is all that there was. But even nothing falls apart eventually...”

I see thunder and lightning in the flames amidst thick clouds violently turning in onto themselves. In there, the sky is a violent rush of colour, brewing and bubbling.

“The nothingness was at war with itself. It wrestled itself, came apart, and formed chaos.” He laughs subtly.

“Not me Chaos, though that is my name. I mean chaos, chaos …insanity, you know,” he says gesturing wildly, “uncontrollable things.”

Chaos! I remember him from the drawings in the book. The other half of the god-king entity. That’s where I recognised him from. Chaos isn’t paying any attention to me. He continues his narration.

“Inside the chaos, there was a will. A will to be... something. The will fought the chaos; it fought itself...”

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Animated in the flames, inside the violent storm, entangled within itself, is a human form, barely visible, wrestling with the elements. It fights the elements, even as they simultaneously form him. He becomes more distinctly something that could easily be mistaken for a wizard or a master from the east.

“The god-king,” I shout out, louder than intended. My voice echoes in the mountains. Chaos continues talking without pause.

“The will became god-king, or maybe he always was it, a will to be. He was all that is; he became all that is and Chaos, myself,” he whispers wide eyed, pointing to himself. “I became all that he wasn't.”

He grins widely. I hear a voice coming from the fire. I can tell it is the god-king screaming incantations into the wind.

The wind in the flame forms into a ball in the darkness, splitting into worlds that fly apart into what looks like sky. They crush into each other, sending sparks of stars scattering all around. Inside the first ball of wind and fire, a form that looks like Chaos is visible 60

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but only made of fire and air. Black smoke billows out of the orb in all directions as a hand grabs him from within the swirling ball. It grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls him back in, holding him in a stronghold. The godking form climbs over chaos, forcing him away from himself.

As he emerges, the winds turn into waters, sizzling in the fires. The two beings wrestle in the waters. The god-king hits Chaos forcefully in the chest, sending him into the air and causing him to crash into the water. The impact sends a cascade of sand into the air, forming a mould of land that is distinctly some kind of continental landmass with islands scattered around it. Chaos rises onto his knees, the waters almost waist high.

The god-king grabs him at the shoulders as Chaos grabs the god-king by the hair. He pulls god-king facefirst into the water, creating a wave that breaks apart the continent mass. Chaos’ foot bores deep into the sand, pushing against and compressing the sands, forming another landmass.

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I watch Chaos as he tells the story, the storm swirling in his eyes. He stares off into the distance with an empty gaze.

He suddenly snaps out of his daze, shifting his attention back to me. The animation dies as suddenly as it started.

“So, you survived a demauglar attack!” he mocks.

“The stories must have been false then?” “...What?” I ask, frowning again.

Chaos waves his hands in the air to demonstrate, his eyes widening as he does. “‘Do not look a demaugler in the eyes. You will not survive it.’ But here you are. Alive and well.”

I remember the demaugler coming at me. I can almost see it on top of me. I can smell its breath. My eyes widen in fear as I edge away from Chaos.

“You are the Lord Chaos…. right?” I ask, just to make sure. Or maybe it’s just a feeble attempt to steer the conversation away from demauglers.

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Chaos pokes me with the stick he used to tend the fire.

“Focus, boy! Why didn’t your spirit freeze inside you?

That is the question...”

I refuse to let him off the hook so easily. He knows the way to Nottingham. This strange god is my only hope. “Tell me the way to Nottingham,” I demand. “You lived there. You must know how to find it.”

Chaos can barely contain his amusement. “So do you. You know the song; the song is the map.”

He chuckles again.

“Tell me, boy. How many days have you been lost in these hills? Do you even remember the number?”

He draws on the ground as he speaks. He draws a map in the sand. He illustrates a dune. The sands turn, for a moment, into Caelemon, swinging a blow. A sand form that looks like me dodges the blow. “‘Nottingham lies embraced by one who brings light,’ Is that not what the song says? ‘Oh what a treacherous guide he shall prove to be.’ Sounds like the sun to me.

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Suns in the sky most of the time, except when it’s in the east or west.”

Chaos shrugs his shoulders.

“I’d go with east. East into the black mountains. That is how you came to be here, is it not? You already know the way to Nottingham. But you were not listening, were you?” he says condescendingly.

Chaos begins to cough uncontrollably. He tries to continue his story but instead completely disintegrates with the coughing, disappearing into the air. I can still hear his voice, though he’s nowhere around. I jump to my feet, waving the torch around, looking for the strange god.

“Three dark nights it said.” His gravelly voice booms, echoing all around the cave. “You have been here too long. You’re a part of the mountain now. Nobody makes it to Nottingham. You were not listening.”

I put the burning stick close to where Chaos had been drawing. On the ground, the map is fully drawn.

He's drawn a path through the mountains to a bridge labelled, "Caravans Pass."

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I trace a route on the sketch map, backwards, through the dark mountains, through the plains and back to the village.

Excerpt: 5th scroll, verse 7-9; the great book In those days, they shall kneel before the mother. Their faces to the ground, they will chant and sing before her image, but she will not hear them.

Her black stone skin will turn to dust before their very eyes. She will crumble upon them, spreading like ash into the wind.

And they shall remember the words of the poet, “Behold, I saw the hands of the mother falling to the ground. They shattered into a thousand pieces. I saw a sickness spread into the air, and all who were caught in the fragments of her shattered as she did.”

Without a home to go back to, they shall press their foreheads to the scorched earth, but no one will answer them. The trees will long have withered, their temples lost to fires in the night. Women shall mourn for their children. Children will mourn their mothers.

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On that day, a man will lift his head to gaze upon her, but shall behold only ash in the air. He will break as she did. They will all shatter as she did. They will flee in terror, scurrying like rats before their doom

The black mountains I hear a scream coming from somewhere in the mountains. It echoes back and forth through the hollow passageways, so I cannot tell from where it is coming.

But I recognise the voice. And somehow, I know what it means. I can feel the confusion in that voice, in Chaos’ heart. I can see him, wide-eyed and frozen. The world around him is frozen and turning distorted; like a child’s drawing it’s all so unreal. It feels unreal. I can’t help but feel sorry for him. He tries to move, breaking apart the air in his path, like frozen waters, creating black chasms of nothingness in the cracks. The chasm begin to suck the fragments of air and stone into themselves. The mountains begin to break apart, sending cracking lines through the air toward me.

I want to run, but I cannot. I stand there, as wideeyed as Chaos, unable to move. I feel a spine tingling 66

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chill as I too begin to turn distorted. The sound of a hundred-thousand scurrying insects fills my skull, though I am sure there are none, only cubes of broken world spilling over the hills, coming at me. I begin to fall to the ground. Slowly, like a feather caught in the wind.

The air breaks apart around me. I can feel myself cracking.

I see some distorted being that I know is Chaos walk through a void in the rock wall beside me. His movements are fractured. The air continues to break as he forces his way through. He leans over and grabs me by the neck, choking me.

“C-Chaos.” I cough, unable to defend myself.

It’s all so surreal. The mountain disintegrates around me as its fragments are pulled into the black voids. I force my palm into his face and stiffly attempt to push Chaos away.

Suddenly, I stumble onto the ground. My hand almost breaks with the force of me pushing so hard against nothing. Chaos is gone. The Mountain is gone.

The whole world is back to normal. Better than normal in 67

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fact. Without warning, the day has turned cheerful and sunny.

I seem to have stumbled into some kind of rocky desert plain. I jump to my feet and check myself for holes or something, sighing in relief when I find I’m quite intact.

Spluttering and coughing, I glance around the plain and notice what remains of the black mountain disappearing into itself just over the horizon.

Shadow stands tied to a rock beside me and looks at me sheepishly.

“I’m okay.” I tell her reassuringly. “Are you okay?”

She whinnies a reply.

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CHAPTER 3. THE WAILING WATERS

The wasteland. A long time ago I remember a passage from the great book that speaks of a lone rider, who, not far from here, saw the old world come crashing down upon the new. It was a cold and lonely night, and the wind was blowing hard over the sandy dunes. The passage describes the rider as ‘being sat on his steed, a silhouette painted across the black sky, with the full moon behind him just beyond the horizon.’

As the rider hugged his coat about him to keep out the chill, with his scarf wrapped tightly around his mouth and nose, he saw a star fall from the heavens. A star wrapped in what appeared to be ‘greyish green smoke.’

If this accounting of events is to be believed, ‘the earth was filled with a shrill ringing as of the ears when the star fell.’ It fell not more than a stone’s throw from where he stood, with a loud crush that sent large dust clouds into the air. The moon and the stars in the sky went black in that moment. As if they were candles someone had simply blown out. And so the world was covered in 69

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darkness. The rider notes in his account that he heard what could have been hundreds of wolves howling in the darkness, though he adds with questionable conviction that he does not think they were wolves at all.

The rider scurried down the sand dune to where the star had fallen and saw a deep crater had formed, with its sides sizzling like embers. Inside the fiery crater, he saw a woman unconscious, the most beautiful being he had ever seen. Ten feet tall with skin as black as coal.

Her garments were the colour of the smoke that clung to the star he had seen. Lying next to the woman, struggling to get up, was another being. An old man with silvery grey hair, flowing robes not different to those the masters of the east would wear. Though the rider did not know this at the time, the great book says the woman was Rain, the mother of all things, and the man was the god-king, creator of the world and steward of this earth.

Peering down the crater, the rider saw Rain come awake. He could hear her gasping for air even as he pulled back in fear. He took another cautious look and saw her crawling across the ground, seemingly

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disoriented. The god-king grabbed her by the heel. He too appeared disoriented.

Deep inside the crater, far below where the god-king and Rain were, the rider saw that the crater opened up into a kind of underground cave with what could best be described as a lake of molten rock. In the middle of the lake of fire, he saw a fiery monster hunched over what looked like a horse mill of black iron red hot from the fires. The monster, bound in iron chains, was turning the mill as horses normally did, oblivious to the skirmish above him. The rider also did not know this at the time, but this monster was the Caelemon from all the stories.

Though thousands of years locked inside the depths of hell had burned away the handsome rogue who once stole the mother’s heart, he was a sight to behold, standing taller than either Rain or the god-king, with his soul ablaze with fire. His soul was all that remained of him, burning brighter than any furnace the rider had ever seen, coated with chunks of rock like a layer of broken skin reminiscent of armour.

Without warning, dark grey smoke came shooting from above onto the chains, forming a hand, at the end 71

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of which a figure formed, becoming Rain. As suddenly as she had appeared, the god-king came flying right into her. She was flung into the cave wall, the chains in her hand shattering into a thousand pieces as she pulled them with her. She fell into a pool of molten rock, but the fires did not burn her. Though her garments were singed, the larva might as well have been cold water to her skin.

The monster stood up straight, towering frightfully above Rain and the god-king. The rider watched in dismay as the monster, knee-high in magma, flung the chains from his back into the fires and let out a deafening roar.

Rain stumbled to her feet. She could barely stay up, clearly still weak from her scuffle with the god-king. The god-king staggered towards her. He grabbed her by the shoulder, demonstrating as much strength as Rain did.

She shrugged him off, causing him to fall back on his knees. Still he grabbed onto her garment, gasping for air, trying to speak.

“Daughter, don’t,” he managed to let out.

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With lighting speed, the monster rushed at Rain. He grabbed her by the throat, lifting her up into the air, choking her.

She did not resist; in her hand she was still holding her end of the broken chains, twisting her hand in a circular motion, wrapping it around her hand, causing it to tighten. Maybe contemplating fighting back. But she could not do it. Her grasp began to weaken. She let the chains slip slowly from her hand.

The monster roared loudly in her face. Threatening her. Tears began to form in her eyes. The Caelemon did not recognise her.

“Cael,” she sobbed, searching his eyes for her longlost love.

The monster would not relent. He was a terrifying sight. Larger than life. There was not a trace of the Caelemon that used to be on this fateful night. All that remained in his place was a rage so pure you could smell it. He truly did not know her. He did not know the god-king. He did not know himself. By all appearances, he did not even know what he was angry about. But still, 73

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he had held on to that one thing through all the ages that had since passed.

Distracted by the god-king, the monster cast Rain into the lake of fire, rushing at the god-king. Stopping just short of him, he let out a threatening roar. Beating the ground with the strands of iron still on his giant arms.

The god-king stared back at him defiantly. The monster paused there for a moment as they stared down at each other.

Losing interest, he defiantly turned his back on the god-king.

He

lumbered

past

Rain,

throwing

a

condescending glance down at her before beginning to climb out of the crater. The rider did not waste a moment.

As if this was the cue he had been waiting for, he leaped upon his horse and rode into the night like his life depended on it.

Rain was so still you could swear she was dead. She sat there on her knees, on the ground with magma flowing at her feet, leaning into the wall of rock, hugging herself. You could hear her sobbing quietly.

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The god-king stumbled over to her, reaching to pull her up, but she would not let him. She pushed him away violently.

“I hate you,” she screamed.

The god-king reached towards her again. Her eyes full of tears, she pulled away from him. Then moved back towards him, pushing him away in the chest.

“I hate you,” she screamed again, louder than before.

As if trying to make sure he’d heard her.

She grabbed her garment at the chest, bending over like her heart was hurting. She pounded on it. A darkness was forming in her eyes. Her garments seemed to be getting darker too. She was turning into death.

“I hate you,” she whispered to herself.

Caravans pass I have been standing at the edge of the bridge for quite some time now, considering my options. Of course, there is but one option. I cannot turn back. But still, I find 75

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comfort in standing here considering my options. To say I do not have faith in the strength of this bridge would be putting things lightly. I am not afraid. Fear is the least of my problems. The problem is I am sure this bridge will come apart the moment I set foot on it.

Indeed, Caravans Pass is exactly as described in the songs. I should probably start with the mountains.

Shadow and I are so high up into the mountains that we left most of the air some two days’ ride below us. I should thank the mother regardless, for this is certainly an improvement over the black mountains. What the black mountains lacked in sunshine or light, these make up for and then some. I am half-blind from the glare. Razor sharp rocks have cut into Shadow’s feet, so I can ride her no longer. I cannot leave her here, so I have been dragging her along by the bridle for half a day now. My feet are not any better. We have left a convincing trail of blood-soaked footprints behind us. I can smell the blood burning on the rocky ground, and I swear I can hear it burn. There is no discernible reason for the shrubs that litter the hills to survive in this harsh place, for there is not a grain of sand to be found here, and by all 76

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appearances, this place has not seen a drop of rain in a very long time. The path, wide enough for a dozen warriors to march through side by side and boasting thirty foot high precipices on both sides, is not hard to follow. That is if you don’t mind the heat and the shredding of your feet. We are so high up into the mountains that we are now shoulder to shoulder with the clouds. I can literally reach out and touch them.

And so the path has led to this bridge. It is a rickety old thing, creaking as it sways gently in the wind, with its wooden treads tied together with camel hair rope. The bridge is missing quite a few treads. And the ones that remain are suffering from dry rot. The bridge crosses a ravine. This is where my eyes fail me, for I cannot tell where it leads. It stretches out as far as the eye can see, the end of it shrouded by the clouds.

Finally garnering enough courage, I take a cautious step forward. The wood beneath me creaks but stays in place. I breathe a sigh of relief and take another step.

With a loud rattle, the tread gives way, and for a second, I’m falling through the air. I cry out in pain as I come to a stop. That certainly feels like a dislocated shoulder.

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Shadow whinnies as I hang from her bridle, holding on tightly. She instinctively walks backward, dragging me onto the firm ground. I catch myself laughing out loud.

“That went better than expected,” I blurt out, halftrembling, clearly more shaken than I’m willing to admit.

Shadow looks back at me disapprovingly; she is not impressed.

Gathering all the courage I have left, I try it again, this time placing my foot on top of the ropey supports. The bridge creaks as it stretches but does not give way. I take another step. Cautiously. Then another, this time pulling Shadow behind me, making sure she steps right where I had. The bridge rattles. I shut my eyes tightly, waiting to fall to my death, but I do not. The bridge is holding. We continue on, cautiously. One step at a time.

We must be halfway across the bridge by now. I really cannot tell. I hope we are at least halfway across by now. The bridge appears to disappear into the clouds on both sides.

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I come to a sudden halt. Did I hear something? I look to Shadow. She looks back at me with a blank stare. I shake my head at her disapprovingly. All is quiet; maybe it was just my imagination. It sounded like….

I hear it again! ….Whispers!!!

I look around, I cannot see further than a few feet in either direction. The whispers are getting louder. More intense, chattering in a language I cannot understand.

Chattering in a language I cannot understand! I’m having an epiphany. The line from the song. Mothers blessing, this is what the song was talking about!

“Abandon the path of the caravans when the words on the wind lose their meaning.”

The words I’m hearing, they don’t have meaning! I hear wheels in the fog. Sounds like a caravan of maybe half a dozen carts. I hear what sounds like a battle cry.

The smog suddenly parts before me to reveal a wildlooking man dressed as the desert dwellers do and brandishing a curved sword over his head. But that is not the strangest thing happening at this moment. The strangest thing is he is moving very slowly. Leaping 79

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through the air, floating there longer than should be possible; even his screams are coming out of his mouth slowly. I cannot believe what I’m seeing. The man should have been on top of me by now but … I swear…I look to Shadow for confirmation. Her jaw has literally dropped as she stares wide-eyed at the assailant in disbelief. A second man appears out of the smog behind him, also wielding a curved sword. Also moving slowly.

His face contorting as he attacks in what he probably believes to be a ferocious manner. I hear another cry behind me in the foreign tongue. Definitely a battle cry.

By this time, the first assailant is upon us. Shadow and I step aside and watch the man miss us with his weapon.

He slowly falls to the ground, elegantly flipping around as he rolls over the wooden treads. They give way beneath him, but he is unaffected, floating on like nothing happened. He raises his weapon and begins to come at us again. By now, the third man I had heard has appeared behind him, wielding a spear. If these men could move as normal men do, they would be ferocious adversaries. I can tell by the grimaces and scars on their

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face, by their clothes, by the sharpness of their swords.

I can tell.

A strange vision comes to me. I see myself beaten up and bruised, tied up on a kind of caravan led by the assailants. I’m tied up with some other people. The assailants are slave traders. We are crossing the rickety bridge when a wheel comes loose. The caravan comes apart, dropping down the ravine, dragging the horses down with it. The horses struggle to stay on the bridge.

Frantic and wild-eyed, but the carriage is too heavy. I can feel my heart pounding loudly in my chest.

Suddenly, I’m back on the bridge. The three assailants are almost upon me. A fourth and fifth appear behind them out of the mist. I know what the passage meant. I can hear the words ringing in my head.

“Abandon the path of the caravans.”

It is a mad idea, but it is clear to me as day. I pull on Shadow’s reins; the horse reels around. I jump on to her back, taking a quick peak over the edge of the bridge. I cannot see a thing beyond the foggy white. I dig my heel into the side of the horse as the second man slowly 81

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swings his sword at my head. The horse turns around and jumps off the bridge into the mist.

We are falling through the air. The horse lands on a floating boulder the size of a hut. She tumbles over, throwing me over as she is flung just over me. I tumble off the edge of the boulder. The horse comes to a halt just at the edge. I grab onto the horse’s reins, hanging off the edge of the bolder.

The sky is lined with a trail of floating boulders leading off the edge of the bridge, floating in mid-air.

They are like small mountains in the air.

The force of the landing causes the boulder to float towards the next boulder. I realise I am about to get crushed between them. I pull myself up off the side just as the two boulders come crashing into each other with a thud. My arm hurts. I breathe in hard, trying to catch my breath.

The next boulder begins to float away. Instinctively, I jump back onto Shadow’s back. The boulder is getting further away. I dig my heels into the side of the horse. It leaps into the air. Onto the next boulder with a perfect 82

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landing. I race Shadow on the floating trail. Jumping from boulder to boulder. Just as I am getting into the stride of things, I hear shrill ringing. The air is filled with it. The sound is deafening. Shadow comes to a gentle stop. She reels around. Standing on two feet, she lets out a neigh even as I hold on to her with all the strength I can master. The ringing is continuous, like air blown over a thousand hollow gourds. I get down from Shadow’s back to investigate the shrill ringing sound.

Off to the side of the boulder is a thin film of water. A film of water that starts as just droplets at the edges, turning into a paper-thin film that gets thicker and thicker.

The film of water leads to a beach in the air. A beach lined randomly with boulders of rock.

I take off my sandal and throw it onto the beach. It lands ok, staying in place. I cautiously step into the water, testing it before putting all my weight onto my foot.

It is solid ground. I lead the horse behind me. I can see my reflection in the water. I pick up my sandal and put it back on. The underside of the beach is a reflection of the top. But it is more than a reflection. It is as real as the top. I feel vertigo; my head is spinning. I feel myself 83

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spinning from the top to the bottom of these two worlds and back again over and over. Both sides are the same.

I cannot tell which is real. Both sides are the same, except for one thing, we are not on the other side.

Shadow and I are only on this side. Then I notice another thing. There is a city on the other side. It begins where the sands touch the water, with small wooden huts built on stilts lining the beach as far as the eye can see. The huts

look

abandoned.

The

whole

place

looks

abandoned. And yet, they’re surprisingly sturdy. I could swear people lived in them not more than 2 years ago.

The land rises steeply from there, giving way to a hilly terrain on which the cityscape sits. The houses get bigger and bigger the higher you go. The larger houses are built out of white washed stone that glows in the sun.

The streets are narrow, paved in stone, and there is a castle….

“Nottingham!”

Suddenly, it hits me. This is Nottingham. The castle isn’t a castle at all. It is a temple. It’s the temple! Seated at the top of the highest peak. It is not made of white stone as described in the book. The stone is mostly red.

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Faded red. The columns are white, with hints of white around the doors and windows. But none of that is on my side of the world. On my side, the beach gives way to hills matching the terrain of the other side. Even the peak on which the temple sits is here. But not one structure in sight.

I fall to my knees, finally allowing myself to feel tired.

I can’t believe I’ve made it this far. Nottingham is on an island. An island in the air where the underside is a reflection of the top side. I can still hear the shrill sound.

Continuously ringing. It’s the water. The wailing waters.

I take a drink of the water. It tastes better than expected.

I lie down on the sand in the shallows, the waters caressing my back. The boulders scattered randomly around the beach bear witness to my triumph. I’ve decided to ignore the small problem of how I’m going to get to the underside of this world. I close my eyes, breathing in the cool fresh air. I hear Shadow’s breathing, his shadow blocking the sun as he licks my face. I decide to ignore him.

“Nobody makes it to Nottingham,” I laugh. “Nobody that is, except me!”

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CHAPTER 4. THE END OF ALL THINGS

”If you should find water, ask her where the gates lie. We pray you find the gates of Nottingham. Nobody was ever meant to come this far….”

Ask her…. where the gates lie.

I keep saying the words, hoping to find the answer to the riddle. I have found the waters. The wailing waters.

But how do I ask them? Truth is, I did ask. I spoke the words, out loud, sounding as earnest as possible. I waited for an awkward moment, too embarrassed to look Shadow in the eye. I felt my face turn red as I caught Shadow shaking her head out of the corner of my eye.

I have ridden up the mountains a couple of times.

The scenery is to die for. Lush greens as far as the eye can see. In the distance, the mountains appear a dreamy blue as the sunlight dances playfully with the fog that turns thicker as you go up. The hillsides that stand closest appear darkened by their own shadow. There are streams flowing from the highest peak, one breaking

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into two, two breaking into four, four into eight, all the way down into the sea.

I was hoping Nottingham would appear around me if I had the faith to ride up, but it did not. So I came down and went back up again, convinced I did not have enough faith the first time. And then again ….and again.

The third time I came down, I ran down into the icy waters, a little frustrated, I must admit. I barely noticed the waves dancing playfully between my toes. I dived into the water, trying to swim to the underside of this island. I swam and swam until I ran out of breath, never seeming to get any closer. I could not help but breathe in. Immediately, I felt the pain of the water going to my head. It felt like dying. Swimming back up didn’t take more than a moment. It was like I had gone down less than 4 feet. If it was so, I didn’t want to imagine what that must have looked like. I lay there in the sand with my eyes watering, trying to catch my breath.

I then tried digging to the other side. This, I did with very little vigour, knowing full well it wasn’t going to work.

I gave up when the depth of the hole was decidedly more than the discernible distance to the other side. So, I rode 87

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back up the mountain one more time. Right up to the peak. I screamed at the mother in anger. I screamed at whoever wrote that oh so sacred book. I screamed at Shadow, who took it all in stride. I screamed at the rocks.

I screamed until the words would come out of me no longer. I was so exhausted by the end, I must have passed out sometime in the night. I was awakened by the warmth of the morning sun on my face.

I remember, when I was younger, which as you know wasn’t that long ago, I’d pray to the mother whenever I got into trouble. I don’t remember her ever coming to my rescue. But still, I’ve always believed that if I ever needed her… if I ever really needed her, she would come. It’s a lonely feeling, knowing now that I need her, she will not come. Knowing that she is the villain in my story. The darkness in all my nightmares. It occurs to me now that the one person who can fix my world is the same person who broke it in the first place. Without hope, I now find myself down on my knees in these shallow waters, face down on the ground. For the first time in my life, I do not know what to do.

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I wish I could go back. I wish could abandon all hope and ride back home to my village. But what if I did? What would I do with the rest of my life? Let them cremate Marika, get over the pain in my heart, grow older? I’m afraid that is a fate I cannot accept. It is a tomorrow that simply will not do.

I must pray to mother again as I once did as a child, though I fear I will not find the words to say. My eyes stay closed as the waves caress my face. I do not know the words to say, but I feel my heart calling out to her in the language of the gods. I refuse to heed the words playing at the back of my head as if spoken by some taunting devil, “Do not seek a key, none was made. ….we do not know what lies beyond here.”

I begin to feel a strange wind blowing around me. I hear Shadow getting restless or agitated. I dare not raise my head. Specks of dust caress my skin, flying up past me. The waters begin to rise. Suddenly, my head is submerged under water. Still, I dare not rise. The waters flow over my curved back. Before I know it, I’m out of air.

I can feel the mother coming at me. Filled with anger, she wades violently through the water. Instantly, she is 89

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on top of me, about to kill me. I jump to my feet in fear, my heart pounding loudly in my chest. The mother isn’t there. I turn around, searching for my assailant, but there is no one there. I gasp for air. My eyes hurt. My head hurts. My heart still thinks I’m about to die. I bend over, placing my hands on my knees for support as I catch my breath. The waters run down my leg, rescinding until level with my ankles. The waves dance around my feet as if pretending nothing happened.

Finally catching my bearings, I realise the reflection in the water has changed. My eyes widen. On the beach, there lies a gigantic 50-foot head of black marble stone that was not there before. The moss growing around it suggests it has been lying there for a very long time. I recognise the face. I have looked upon it a thousand times before. It is the face of the mother. The rest of her body is nowhere in sight. I turn around and stare in amazement at the mountain peak. The lush green landscape has been replaced by the city that, just a moment ago, was lost to me on the backside of this island. Right there before me is the great city of Nottingham. I can smell the aged wood from the huts on 90

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the beach. I can hear the sound of sea gulls echoing off the gleaming white stone walls. I notice for the first time that not one house still has a roof standing. And yet, great oak beams still run across the eaves, telling a story of what once was. At the top, the most glorious sight I have ever seen…. THE TEMPLE! Having made my way past the huts on the beach, I still cannot get over how empty the city is. Every step I take echoes through the streets, reverberating on and on eerily. And yet, it doesn’t feel as lifeless as the black mountains did. I peer down an alleyway, walking through unafraid. A lone rat scurries away.

I’ve been walking around for the longest time. Up and down the meandering streets that rise more often than they fall. The stonework is gorgeous. Human hands could not have built this place. I cannot help but feel the intricate detailing with my hands. Shadow is gawking as much as I am.

I can feel the whole city when I close my eyes. For a moment, I know every corner, every turn. This place feels like…Home? My head begins to spin. The vertigo 91

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is overwhelming. I feel like I slipped and fell into a dream.

Trying

to

wake

up,

unable

to

wake

up.

My

consciousness is jumping from street to street. House to house. I can feel Shadow back on the corner where I left him. I’m trying to get back to him, but I can’t. I keep losing and finding him. I’ve lost my bearings.

Suddenly, I am back at the village. It is falling apart.

Pieces of it are missing. Entire chunks of homes and fields gone, replaced by black voids of nothingness. I’m in the square. There is a deep fissure that has split it in half, with liquid fire spewing out of it towards the grey sky. I see Mera, agitated, walking towards me. Excited to see her. I reach out towards her, but she walks right through me. RIGHT THROUGH ME! And that’s not the worst of it. In that moment, I realise I’m not really there; I’m watching myself there. Like I’ve strayed right out of my body. No one can see me, and that is still not the worst of it. I am translucent. I feel nauseous. I fail to stop the gag reflex that follows as I throw up all over the… I’m back in Nottingham. I throw up all over the cobblestone street. I check myself, sighing in relief when I discover I’m not translucent anymore.

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I feel bad for messing up the street. It was so pristine before I got here. I led Shadow up through a grand courtyard, up the front steps, into the temple, all the while haunted by something the lord of chaos said to me.

There is a truth in those words I have known for a while now but have chosen not to understand. I can hear the words echoing in my head.

“You survived a demauglar attack…. The stories must have been false then?”

The stories….

I know what the stories said, “Do not look a demaugler in the eyes. You will not survive it.”

I remember the demaugler coming at me. I can almost see it on top of me as I crawl on my back. I can smell its breath. I’m about to perish between those snarling teeth. I try to push it away with my right arm as my left arm covers my face. I steal a glance through my fingers, peering into its flaming eyes. The world goes black. In the darkness, I can hear a voice reciting a poem familiar to me.

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“In Nottingham, there is a healer. He knows you are coming, but he is not waiting for you.”

I can see the cave again. Cold and silent. The demaugler is gone. The place is almost empty, except for one thing. There is a body on the ground. A man frozen in place. His skin black and crumpled. Clasping a torch in his arm whose flame has long since died out.

The body appears to have been crawling backwards. His left arm covering his face as he tries to push something away with his other arm. I know who the man is. In truth, I have felt myself lost to that mountain since I left it. The man is me.

The words sink in, taking on a new meaning. “For he knows something you do not. Nobody makes it to Nottingham.”

I want to break down and cry. How can this be…?

“He knew something I did not.”

I’m back in Nottingham. Seated on the floor.

Hugging my knees. My skin is a ghostly pale colour. I am not taking this well at all. I died in the mountains. The passage was right. Everyone was right. Nobody makes 94

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it to Nottingham. But I would not listen. My gaze is far from here as I stare at the wall into space. Feeling lost.

The village I know how this world ends. I have seen it. I have seen death on the horizon. I have seen a man in his home, but it isn’t his home anymore. Half of it isn’t there, lost to the nothingness that is eating away his world. I know the man. I know that home. I broke into that place a thousand times, seeking the same adventure that would one day come crushing through my door.

The man is Marika’s father. The village elder. His face is painted white. The man stands tall, towering over his wife as she whimpers in the corner. In her hands is their youngest daughter, her eyes full of tears. The woman has a streak of white on her face.

“Have we not lived proud lives?” the elder bellows, pounding his chest. “Do we fear death?”

The child begins to cry, hiding her face in her mother’s chest.

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“Do we fear death?” he asks insistently.

“We do not fear death,” the woman mutters under her breath. Lines forming across her face, for she cannot hide the anguish in her heart.

The elder paces proudly around the room, with white paint smudged on his hand. He draws across his chest.

“Do we fear her cold embrace?”

The woman is silent. He turns to her. Waiting….

“We do not fear death,” she replies. The man stands in front of his window, looking to the hills. The hills are swarming with wraiths. They look like shadows on the horizon. Hundreds of them. The mother stands at the head of the swarm. She has become death. The elder looks her dead in the eye.

“We shall dine with the mother this night,” he bellows with determination.

“We are ready; in fact, we look

forward to it.”

I have seen the god-king in the village. The steward has come to his people’s aid. He watches over them in the mother’s stead. But he is not well. He too is coming 96

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apart as the word disintegrates into the nothingness that once was. He can feel fragments of himself being pulled towards the black mountains. He struggles up the hill, leaning on his staff, trying to keep himself together. This is not the god-king we know. This is a frail old man.

The mother watches him walking towards her. Her wraiths floating ominously around her. She stared down at him as he stands a few feet from her.

“Child, you must stop this madness,” he begs, the words barely coming out. She floats there for a moment in silence. The air is thick with the hate inside her soul.

The darkness in her eyes cannot be ignored. And yet, there are tears there also. She seems tormented. Torn.

The wraiths begin to fade away in the wind, leaving only the mother. The god-king walks right up to her.

“I don’t think I can stop this,” she sobs. “I don’t know how.”

The God-king wipes the tears from her cheek. She leans into his hand, hugging him. She begins to sob uncontrollably.

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“Why did you have to ruin everything ….We were so happy.”

He holds her in silence. Looking around him, taking in the destruction around him.

“Now that we’ve come to it,” he mutters, “to the end of all things, I wish I could take it all back.”

The darkness takes her over. She grabs hold of the god-king and kisses him. The kiss of death. The indecision has faded from her eyes. She’s pure evil now.

Pure rage, pure anger. She is death. The life begins to fade from the god-king. He holds onto her as his body goes limp with frailty. He is dying.

But then his hold becomes stronger. Squeezing her.

Fiery glory returns to his eyes. He looks forcefully into her eyes as she struggles desperately to break free. The glory is burning through her. Her skin sizzling where his hands are clasping her arms. For the first time, I see terror fill her eyes. Anger in his. Resolution. Inevitability.

He burns the life right out of her. Her body goes limp as he holds her in his hands.

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I see him lay her down on the ground, his eyes filling with tears. He begins to disintegrate, no longer able to keep himself together. His constitution being pulled ever more strongly towards the black mountain. The air is also breaking apart. Disintegrating into black voids fragmented about. Particles of white float in the air with shafts of light shining between voids. The trees are choking. I can hear them dying. They begin to shatter.

The ground breaks, splitting a road in half across the length. One side rises while the other falls. The fissure runs down the road, pulling everything in. Chunks of ground. Pieces of shattered trees. I can see the god-king fighting to stay together.

This is how the world ends. I have seen it. But this is a tomorrow that simply will not do. For in Nottingham, there is a healer. He was not here before, but he is here now. I have seen his image etched on the temple walls.

And I recognise that face. I have seen it in my mirror a thousand times. In his arms, there is a woman with skin the colour of coal. He stands knee deep in a pool of water. I know the woman. A woman with short white hair that refuses to grow. With eyes the colour of a sunny 99

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sky. I know the woman, but also I know the man. He is the healer. And he wears my face.

And so, I find myself back where the black mountains once stood, standing at the edge of a precipice, looking down at the world below me as it eats itself into oblivion.

The physicality of everything is blurred. Undefined.

Everything is blending into everything. The world appears indistinct. An idea of itself.

Chaos is still in there, in what remains of the mountains. He and the god-king are pulled towards each other, even as the world around them is pulled into them and they into each other. Everything from the dark mountains and between comes crushing in.

Chaos holds onto the ground, ripping it asunder.

There isn’t a trace of panic in him. In fact, he appears rather delighted by events. He's laughing uncontrollably.

The god-king wrestles with Chaos amidst a perfect storm of debris, trying to push him away from him. Chaos grabs a carrot from the debris in the air and chomps down loudly. He is not taking things seriously at all, chewing and laughing uncontrollably. He chocks on the 100

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carrot then begins to hit god-king with his elbow repeatedly. He pulls him to himself. Going for an embrace. A hug. Mocking the god-king’s efforts.

I watch as liquid fire from the sun up above begins to seep towards the storm’s core. Forming a stream in the air trailing into the storm. The wind catches my coat as I watch the two gladiators in the storm below. Chaos is toying with the god-king. He knows the god-king is too frail to win this fight. The world will end as it began. But not if I can help it. I do not feel that sense of loathing toward the god-king anymore. Truth is, I never really did.

I know that, for all the things he did, the good and the bad, he always had the best of intentions. There isn’t much left of the world, but still, I take one last look before I dive into the black storm below.

I try to peel Chaos off the god-king as debris flies all around me, cutting into my skin. I cannot see a thing, but I can hear the god-king chanting incantations into the wind. The world explodes…. blinding me. Forcing my eyes shut. There is a stillness in the air. A sense of peace I don’t want to leave. But I must. I open my eyes and find I am engulfed by darkness. My ears are ringing.

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I am floating in space. I realised the darkness around me is that of the space between worlds. There are fragments of my world floating all around me, liquid fire mixed with streams of water and particles of dust. I feel so big and powerful. Planet sized. A large chunk of the world floats past my face, its edges crumbling away as its core leaks liquid fire. It must be at least one fourth of what used to be the world. I notice two other chunks of the world about the same size as the first, with streaks, night sky being pulled into them. All the stars around are turning into dust as they are pulled into what remains of my world. I see, at the end of one streak, wrapped around his arm like the reins of a war horse, the godking, also planet-sized. He is holding the chunk of world by its streak of stardust, while with the same hand, trying to push Chaos away from him by the chin. Chaos has a large grin painted across his face. The god-kings other hand is holding onto me, pulling on my tunic.

The world has been broken into four large pieces.

And they are slowly floating apart. I manoeuvre to grab hold of the piece of the world that had, just moments ago, passed across my face then twist into position to 102

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reach for the second chunk with my foot, while trying to grab hold of the third with my other hand.

I realise this third piece is floating away far beyond my reach, just behind the god-king, who has his hands full. He reaches for Chaos’ throat. Choking him. His grip getting tighter and tighter. I feel my skin crawl as I imagine the sound of his neck breaking. And then I hear it. A spine chilling crack. The grin does not dissipate from Chaos’ face even as the life fades from his eyes. The god-king lets go of Chaos, watching him float away with a surprisingly heart-wrenching sadness in his eyes.

I turn in space, manoeuvring my foot to bring the third piece of the world crushing into the first, while looking to the god-king, determined to put this world back together.

He looks back at me then grabs the fourth piece in his hand. He twists around, pulling himself towards me.

The village. A few days later There is a rumour going around. I know you have heard it. Someone saw me in the village, bloodied and bruised, staggering up the hill towards the sacred cave. I know 103

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you want to believe this. I know you want to hear that everyone in the village is ok. That they are rebuilding their homes, that their fields are green again. You are dying to hear me say the words, “We fixed the world.”

Well, I am not going to say it. I am not going to tell about how I ran into the elder somewhere in the woods at the edge of the village a few days after the second breaking of the world. That he nodded in approval to me, acknowledging my existence for possibly the third time in his life. I am not going to tell you about that because it doesn’t matter. Because the truth is, Mera was right; I am not one of them, and that is ok.

I will tell you something about the sacred cave, though. I will tell you that, even as I held pieces of the world in my hand, it was all I could think about. With all the might I could summon, I pulled the four corners of the world together, just so I could walk back up that hill.

I saw myself walking through the opening. I saw myself dive into those sacred waters. I imagined the cold chill on my skin. I saw myself wade through to the shallow end right up to where I left Marika. I saw her lying there, ebony skin all but gone from her, with the short white 104

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hair that refuses to grow sticking out of her skull. I grabbed her in my arms and heard a loud rattling sound as the cave was filled with a thousand winds. Tendons and flesh began to form over the bony frame in my arms.

Her skin came alive, but still, there was no life in her. So, I called out to her. I breathed life into her and heard her cough as she came back to life.

THE END

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