The Forgotten Land of Myria

Angus

My mouth watered--not from the food, but from the hunger-as Ada handed me a bowl of consommé. The warm blue light from the Razorgate overruled the need of a fire, thankfully. However, we still had to sheet ourselves with animal fur--Tanya and Zeff had some spare patches--due to the sheer briskness of the cave. We ate part of the meal in silence. The wildlings took their food and retreated with Isabelle still in the miniature cot that Ada had made. Everyone was in low spirits, anxious about what would happen the next day and no one made an effort to lighten the mood.

Nevertheless, Ada eventually grew weary of fighting off the discomfort of silence and decided to nudge on an interesting subject.

“You know,” she began, clearing her throat. “You two have never told us your stories.”

“Stories? About what exactly?” Roy asked, glancing at me for approval.

“I don’t know, about where you came from! What’s life like in the Commonland? You surely have so much to talk about. Let’s start with where you’re from. Both of you!”

Roy nodded pointedly, suggesting I go first.

“First of all, err, I’m from London.”

“London?” came a choir from Safira and Ada.

“Yes. It’s the capital of England.” I tried to sound cheerful, like when talking to preschoolers.

“What’s a capital?” Ada’s thin eyebrows perked up.

“It’s the--the main city--the main village.”

“Like what Musgrave Pen is, to Musgrave Island?”

“Precisely!”

Ada smiled. “And, where does this England stand?”

“Oh, it’s one of the many...dwellings”--I thought better than to say “countries”—

“In Europe!” Roy cut in.

“That’s a common error,” I pointed out and turned back to Safira, “England, in fact, is its own island, off the coast off Europe.”

“So it’s Disappointment Island?” Ada guessed. Roy cracked up, obviously. Once again, his malicious guffaws punctured Ada’s perfectly mesmerizing innocence.

“You’re two for two, Ada! Go on,” Roy smirked, and gave her a reassuring nod.

“London,” Ada repeated. “London...sounds like a word Ez would use to describe himself. ‘Huh, I’m having a bit of a London day. How about you?’”

Everyone burst into laughter at her impression of Eleazar--even Eulisses managed a chuckle.

“Tell us more,” Ada beamed with enthusiasm, and Safira sat up, suddenly interested.

It was quite amusing--not so different from teaching preschoolers at all. Roy was quickly inspirited by it and decided to jump in and talk about all the different guilds.

“Supreme Court is the guild of lawyers and judges...there’re also guilds of doctors--err, healers--and politicians, and bankers, and athletes--”

“I don’t really consider sports a profession.”

“Profession? We’re talking guilds here?” Roy winked at me, with an attempt to escape an argument and keep the fun going.

“Which guilds were you two in?” Ada asked, her blue eyes glittering wide in interest.

“Oh, well, technically I’m still an apprentice, but Roy dropped out of his guil--” Roy interrupted me with an urgent nudge. I just had to say it.

“And your Chairmen?” Safira asked.

“Mine is a man called David Cameron, his is Tony Abbott,” I answered on the spot, getting another loud wheeze of laughter out of Roy.

We kept the thing going for quite a while until Ada asked the question that left both of us without answers: “What about your families?” Truly, I’d been looking for an answer to that question for over a decade. Apparently, Roy had too, though he didn’t look too bothered about it. I noticed Safira’s expression had gone glum--it looked like she really wanted to say something.

“I--I have no idea where my parents are,” he chuckled nervously. “Could be dead. So, my sister...she’s all I have. Which kind of explains why I’m here.”

Suddenly, Ada looked concerned.

“And...A-you, Angus?” she croaked.

Part of me wanted to give a full response on the subject, and why I was here but I just found myself saying “Same,” as blankly as I could.

No one responded. Now all that could be heard again were the wildlings’ chants and Banebee’s hoots. The low-spirited atmosphere was taking over again...

“My father,” Safira finally spoke. “My father died in battle. At least that’s what people say. Anyway, I never got to see him,” she muttered sternly, as though trying to make Roy and I feel better. “A--and my mother,” her voice was shaky. “She was one of the victims of the pandemic. She’s alive, but can’t speak, hear, or move any muscles. She’s as good as dead.” She spoke in a cold, hateful voice. Her hand clutched her chest and slid up, like there was something caught in her throat. And she looked like she was dying to get it out.

I figured she resented her mother for having been a victim of the plague. I turned to Ada, who looked more emotional than ever, her large blue eyes a bit watered up. She cleared her throat.

“Both my parents died in the same battle as Safira’s father,” she said, nodding virtuously.

The dusty air felt ten degrees colder now. Safira’s head sank, Roy covered his face with his hands to hide tears, and Ada massaged her hands nervously. I felt my fingers twitching, the way they do when I’m unbelievably bothered by something, so, not knowing exactly where I was going to go with this, I tried something.

“Eulisses, what about you?” I called. He had been sitting with his gangly arms wrapped around his legs, eyes transfixed on the grimstone set in his lap, for who knows how long. “W-what’s your story?”

At first, Eulisses didn’t react to my question at all. Everyone else had looked up, but almost simultaneously hung their heads again when they saw Eulisses doing what he always did. Nothing but stare at his mysterious grimstone. I was ready to sling my head forward as well, when--without moving an inch of his head--he dodged his shadowy eyes at me.

“Sho--han--na,” he muttered. Heads shot up again.

“Pardon?” I ventured, as shivers ran down my arms.

His head now lifted away from the grimstone and he slowly pulled himself up straight. He took a deep breath, and spoke in long pauses.

“I am not who you think I am. I was once...different from what I am now. I was young, spirited, and in love.”

Roy, Ada, Safira and I exchanged glances. For a moment, it was clear that we all had the same thought: Just what does he mean by young? Eulisses couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than me. In fact, his face, though weary and drained, was still quite infantine. We decided to play along and listen further.

“I had met her when I was still a child, after accidentally pushing her into the Fountain of Myrrh during our Rahiti,” he chuckled. “Coincidentally, we were both summoners. At first, we resented each other. Like cat and dog we were. But we soon came to realize that no matter how many arguments, how many skirmishes we involved each other in, we always, always, ended up together. Our destinies were interlaced. By the time I came of age, I hadn’t a single care in the world greater than this woman. Not my family, not my friends--not even Yihwa.”

By now--as incredulous as the story sounded--all of us were deeply engaged, eyes wide and ears perked, listening to Eulisses’ slow voice.

“That was my mistake,” he groused. “I lost interest in anything and everything that wasn’t this woman. And then, as a result...our destinies parted ways. We were split apart in battle, during the First Invasion. Yihwa took her life, and consequently, my happiness.”

Safira looked ready to point out the inconsistency of the story, but Eulisses raised his hands to cut her off.

“What happened?” Ada asked slowly.

“I lost the will to live. As simple as that. In fact, worse than that, I still thought our destinies were bound. I thought it was a sign. I thought it was time for my life to end as well. I tried to end it. I went down to the very place where our story had first begun--the Fountain of Myrrh.”

There was a long pause. Eulisses’ hands shook violently, bobbing the grimstone back and forth, and his sullen eyes now looked like they were throbbing, ready to release a lifetime of tears.

“Well...you survived, there is that,” I pointed out.

“As a result, I found myself awake, years later, not knowing where I was or where I had last been. Not even knowing my name or age. It seemed as though no one else knew either. Since I never had the habits of being social, no one really noticed I was gone...expect for one person. That person told me everything that had happened. How I’d tried to drown myself in the Fountain of Myrrh, and how I’d been asleep for years, and how, all of those actions, had left me cursed.”

He gestured to himself.

“This is me now. The same way I was once old, but young of spirit, I am now young, but old of spirit. Unable to age and unable to die. Unable to rejoin my lost love, until...”

“Until?” Safira whimpered, almost voicelessly. He closed his eyes, and brought his hands to his chest as if he couldn’t bring himself to finish.

“Until I have fulfilled a purpose worth dying for. That’s the curse. As for the woman, my other half...my entire memory of her was erased. Her looks, her voice, everything. Though I strain, I can only remember two things. Her name--Sho--han--na...Shohanna. Shohanna. And the fact that I still love her more than anything in this world.”

There was a split-second of, cold silence before another thought took hold of me.

“That’s why you volunteered to face the Horned Serpent,” I remarked.

He nodded grimly. “Like I said, I have nothing to lose.”

Then Roy asked the question that we all wanted to ask.

“So...exactly how old are you?”

“At the time of my incident, I was already well past middle age. I was asleep for nine years and have been living my curse for seventeen years. That means that...today I am seventy-eight-years-old.”

He put down his bowl of broth and began playing with Banebee. Shockingly, through all the melancholy emotions in what was probably the most distressing story I had ever heard, I saw a sheepish smile stretch onto his face. Roy, Ada, Safira, and I all exchanged back-and-forth glances. I noticed--by the expressions--that we all had very similar feelings at the moment. As heart-breaking as the story was, it had inspired us. I felt...encouraged by everyone’s stories. The six people-including the wildings--standing before me, had all had their share of hardships. Strangely, that made me feel safer than I had ever been. It meant that whatever was to happen in the next few hours would be nothing more than another challenge. Another obstacle.

A smile bloomed on Ada’s face once she caught sight of Eulisses. Safira, seeing this also mirrored it with a beaming smile. Then Roy, and lastly me. The next moment, we all found ourselves smirking, then chuckling, before dissolving into laughter. It turns out I wasn’t the only one who felt inspired.

I noticed that all of us--including Tanya and Zeff--had one, special quality in common. We were all...orphans, in a way. Indeed, we bore the freedom to answer to a higher calling. For that reason, I felt secure. We all spent our last precious hours sharing stories--cheerful ones now--joking, and enjoying the moment, as we ended our night in a high-spirited manner.

Before we knew it, it was nearly time to leave and we still had a few unsolved situations.

“How exactly does it work?” Safira asked a tattered-looking Isabelle, who was draped on her cot like a rag doll.

“You--you just jump in,” Isabelle moaned, hacking up glitter dust. “It’ll take you where you need to go.”

“Right,” Safira sighed, shaking her head vigorously, as she gathered her things. “But...do I need to be thinking about where I need to go, while I jump? Because I’m not even sure I know where we need to land...”

“You...just jump,” Isabelle repeated.

Safira had impatiently scooped up all her belongings and was attempting to cram them in her pouch.

“Here, I’ll pack for you,” Ada spoke in a calm voice like she was approaching a starving lioness. Safira got up and paced around. Meanwhile, Roy--who had lost most of his things to the gnomes--was nervously screwing and unscrewing his spear shaft.

“All set,” Ada called, as she closed Safira’s--now neatly packed--pouch. Safira stopped pacing and I heard her draw a loud gulp. Roy stood up boldly and approached the Razorgate without saying a word. With her last bits of energy, Isabelle summoned Tanya and Zeff, and cued them that it was time to go.

They gathered the only belonging they each had--Tanya, a wooden club, and Zeff, what looked like a saber tooth--and scampered towards Safira and Roy. They both stopped when passing by me. Tanya gave me the same fierce look she had given when we first met, and spread a loud hiss--by now, I already knew it was her definition of “friendly”. Zeff, however, did something quite remarkable.

He sheepishly approached me--like he had the first time--and I stretched out my hand, expecting the same greeting.

Instead, he shook my hand--as in an actual handshake--gave me a nod, and waved a hefty hand as he trotted on. I must have had a worried look, because Safira--who had been watching--gave a light chuckle, and said “I’ll take good care of them. I promise.”

“Items first,” Isabelle croaked. Tanya and Zeff immediately threw the club and tooth into the lake surrounding the orb. Both of the items disappeared before our eyes without leaving a ripple in the water--in the meqauntigum. After a few seconds, they reappeared--inside the large icy orb, and just as quickly, got sucked out of view. Ada gasped in awe and I heard another gulp. Safira and Roy both hesitated a bit, but did the same. The spear, pouch, bow and arrows all vanished through the lake, like they had been covered by a metallic veil, reappeared in the orb, and finally disappeared.

“Tanya and Zeff will go first,” Isabelle breathed. “Watch closely”.

Both of them trotted to the foot of the lake, gandered at the icy orb in front of them, then dove in. We watched them take the same course--vanish, reemerge, dissipate--it was even more shocking with living beings.

“Now you,” Isabelle pointed at Roy.

He turned back at Ada, Eulisses, and me, who were lined up a few feet back in anticipation and gave us all a simple salute. This time without hesitating, he dove head first into the lake and sped through the orb, out of view. Finally, Safira stood alone. She gave us each one last look and I sensed a glint of fear in her eyes--something I would never expect to come from her--so I did my best to reassure her.

“We’ll be fine,” I spoke as brazenly as I could. “I promise. Go on.”

She smiled again, Ada waved, and she finally jumped, disappeared, reappeared, and faded out of sight. Ada sighed and I turned to Eulisses who had been leaning coolly on his staff.

“We will be fine, right?”