The Final Days of Springborough

When Brynn of Fortis awoke on the cliffs of Quakenfalls, she noticed her arm dangling down the side of the steep, lethal ledge. If she were to have rolled in her sleep one more time, she would have plunged the five hundred or so feet down to the rocky shores below. Her first thought wasn’t of fear, as you would expect a child of fourteen to think, but rather, “Would I have woken up?” She remembered falling off her bed when she was young, but thought it was rather the landing that woke her, and not so much the fall. If she fell for ten seconds or more, would the sudden feeling of weightlessness have woken her? Or would her first act of consciousness be to feel the sharp edge of the rocks below? She would hope, in that case, to just sleep.

Brynn sat up, wiping away the blades of grass that were stuck to her arms and face, and brushing her fingers through her blonde hair which was unkempt around her head. The salty air lay dense in her nostrils, could be tasted on her tongue, and made the grogginess of waking so much more difficult to deal with. She hated waking up on the cliff, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from sleepwalking to the look-out. The last thing she remembered from the night before was washing herself with a wet towel after her run, changing her clothes into a robe that was her mother’s a long time ago, blowing out her candle and curling up on her cot with a book called The Three Kingdoms of Consequence, a book that, her father told her, was for royal children, but he somehow came across a copy in the marketplace. He traded a scarf he made out of squirrel skins and got the book for her.

When she awoke, she was two hundred feet from where she fell asleep, and one foot away from certain death.

This was a typical morning for Brynn.

She was all alone on the cliff’s edge. Her family took severance with the wooded village of Fortis. All they had left now was a one room hovel, a cylindrical hut made out of mud and stones, with a thatched roof that had a chimney opening on one side so Brynn could smoke the meat she killed, and also boil water to eventually use to wash herself. While the picture of loneliness, Brynn was not alone. Her family, before separating, constantly talked of being together in mind and spirit. Her family was very oriented and she felt that, any time she talked to them in the air, any time she thought of them, they were also thinking of her, and they were all together again. She had no proof of this, but it’s what made Brynn feel better.

She gave another look out onto the ocean, surveying the long line of waves on the horizon for a ship, her brother’s ship to be precise. Her brother, Jonathon James (or J.J. for short [or “Jage” for shorter]) had taken control of a ship in order to search the high seas for what their parents called The Lost Kingdom of Gambrille. In essence, the kingdom that Brynn and Jage’s great ancestors had once ruled and lost. Some people believed the kingdom to be a myth, and therefore it wasn’t written about in any of the history books (and definitely not a “Kingdom of Consequence“). But, once their parents decided to leave the protection of Fortis to come to the cliff’s edge, the family decided to either believe in the myth themselves and believe in their family’s legacy, or live and die like vagabonds where the waves break.

So, Brynn kept the property safe and warm for when her parents returned from searching the lands, and for when her brother returned from searching the seas. It was an emotional day when they all separated, a big family hug of tears and mumbled thoughts. Her father, a soft spoken man of tentative strength, was the first to break the circle, and venture South down the coast, armed only with a staff and small blade. Her mother, a traditionally beautiful woman of short stature, went North armed with a blowpipe and a velvet bag filled with poisoned darts. J.J., having to get himself a ship, took the rest of the family’s money and went to the docks to acquaint himself with the workers in hopes of working out a deal. He was apparently successful, because Brynn hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him in three weeks.

This left Brynn alone, armed only with a bow and arrow and no money, to look after the family’s dwelling, and wait on their return for word of what they found. Every second of every day, Brynn had to consciously try and not to think of her family and what they might be up to. She spent most of her time honing her bow skills, and fashioning arrows out of the bountiful supply of sticks the forest gave her. She fashioned quills from eagle feathers she found all over, as the Quakenfalls was a popular spot for birds of prey.

Brynn was a pretty good shot for a girl of fourteen years old who had never taken an archery course, and why would she? In the village of Fortis, girls were only supposed to learn the essentials of keeping house: sewing, cooking, washing, and first aid. By the age of sixteen, a girl in the village was either married and on her way to starting a family, or she was a servant helping the girls who were on their way to start a family. Neither lifestyles were satisfactory for Brynn, and her insistence to not be this type of person was the main reason her family decided to flee the village and start their own path. Her parents made the decision to not fight their daughter. They chose to help her become who she thought she was, even though Brynn didn‘t necessarily know herself who she was to become. But, regardless, this is how Brynn knew her parents loved her very much.

In truth, living on the edge of the cliff wasn’t that bad. Sure, there was nobody alive around her to talk to, but that wasn’t necessarily too torturous for a girl of few words. It meant that she could live in peace without having to pretend to listen to anyone. She didn’t have to play in the streets with other children when all she wanted to do was read books beyond her level in a damp room made of mud and sticks. She didn’t have to act as if she was listening to the adults tell her about things she didn’t care about. It was quite nice actually. And as she honed her bow-and-arrow skills from being able to hit the trunk of a tree, to the knot of a tree trunk, to the middle of an X written on the knot of that tree trunk, Brynn had no problem hunting her own food anymore.

So, with that in mind and her tummy rumbling, Brynn stood up on the cliff’s edge, gave one last look out onto the water for her brother, looked left to right for her parents, and, upon seeing no sign of any of them, headed back into her hut for her bow and a quiver of arrows to go hunting. She mostly ate rodents like squirrels and chipmunks, an occasional groundhog, prairie dogs, and once, she was fortunate enough to down a hawk and eat something resembling the chickens back in the village. Occasionally, she thought about dashing through the forest in order to go back in town and pilfer some food, but always, she had a sinking feeling that as soon as she left these grounds, her family would return and, upon not finding her, assume the worst.

She never ventured far, and therefore ate only the things that wandered into her area.

“Ooo-oh, you’re ss-still alive…” A voice from the wall of the hut, by the fire pit where a cauldron of cooling water stood. A familiar voice to Brynn of Fortis.

“Yes, no thanks to you,” Brynn responded.

“I thought… maybe…”

Brynn rolled her eyes at the voice. Upon first hearing this particular voice a week after her family left her, Brynn thought that she might have begun to go crazy from being alone with her thoughts for so long. It was known that some people mainly spoke to themselves, shooing away invisible flies, avoiding anything resembling bathing, heard strange voices in their heads, telling them to do obscene things. These people could be found on the outskirts of town, and usually had no family. So, Brynn had to wonder if being separated from her family was turning her into a crazy woman. But, the voice in the hut then began to talk to her of things she never knew, or would have never known, making it seem less likely that it manifested from her own imagination.

“I could have slept-walked right off the cliff, you know. You should wake me when you see me wandering off.”

“I walked off the cliff once you know…”

“Yes, I know. Late at night. Didn’t even see it. Whoosh! Down you went, and now you’re here to haunt me forever. I got it. I’m hungry. I’m going hunting.”

“You see your parents?”

“Nope. Neither dead nor alive.”

Sometimes, when Brynn shot dead a squirrel, she’d see its spirit continue to dart away, not realizing it had died, leaving its body behind. To her it would appear like a patch of fog in the shape of the animal. Spirits are friendlier than beasts that are alive, but that could just be a survival thing. When alive, animals fear everything, and attack what they don’t know. When dead, they fear nothing, and make friends with everything.

When Brynn kills an animal for food, often times the spirit would come up to her, and she’d be able to crouch down and talk with it, apologize for taking its life, explain how hungry she is. Brynn would thank the animal for the food, and pretend the animal forgave her. Oftentimes, the spirit of the animal would keep Brynn company as she ate, having one last moment with its cooking body before Brynn eventually fell asleep with a full stomach and the spirit would vanish in the air.

This new ability to commune with the dead was the only thing nowadays that gave Brynn peace. That, and the gentle sound of the bow string quivering next to her ear as she released an arrow. Brynn called it her one-stringed harp. The spirit in the hut named Jimmy, a soldier who died several months ago, and Brynn’s only friend, appreciated her poetic imagery.