A Far Country

Date unknown
The Realm of Wyn Avuqua

The wash of the Milky Way cascades across the center of night. In spite of Loche’s fear of the ocean, the idea of mariners steering by the stars has always fascinated him—that patterns of glitter suspended in the dark could direct a lonely traveler’s course—that connect the dot gods pointed the way home, or to fortune, or to doom. Loche looks up from his pocket diary and wishes he had studied the sky more often. There is a calendar up there, for those who can read it. A compass. A trillion eyes. Infinite words. The stars have always told stories—pointed the way.

Beneath a sprawling cedar tree, Edwin sleeps in Loche’s lap. His breathing is abnormal. Julia attempts to cuddle next to the child, sharing the shiny chrome emergency blanket. She is fidgeting. “The Rathinalya is easier to handle when he sleeps.” she says. There has been no more communication from the god hiding behind Edwin’s face.

A small wood fire hisses and crackles at their feet. Loche holds a half eaten energy bar. Blueberry, by the smell of it. Edwin managed a few bites before his eyes fell shut again. He packs it back into his satchel. He feels the ringed spiral of the Red Notebook buried at the bottom.

He shivers. “Must be fall,” Loche says, his voice hushed. Every sound seems to disturb the deep quiet of the woods. “But I can’t say for sure what month—or year. Judging from what I know of this place, my guess is late October or November. There are still leaves clinging to branches.” His breath steams, “Winter is coming.”

“I’m not a fan, please don’t say that,” Julia says. She shivers and points. “I’ve only been on Upper Priest twice, and both times I imagined a pyramid could have stood there, long ago.” She points to the place where they arrived, now a half a mile south, across a shallow bay. The thing is set like a jewel. “But we’re in Idaho—a pyramid, here? Who would have thought of such a thing?”

“Well,” Loche replies, “I’ve thought such things. I’ve written such things.” He senses Julia turning her face to him. “I gave Upper Priest a fictional past. In the Journal I wrote of Wyn Avuqua—not in great detail, but I thought long and hard about the city. I saw it in my mind’s eye. I even sketched it a few times.” He nods to the surreal site across the bay, “My imagination put a pyramid there. And there is another one a little farther north. I’m glad to hear you thought that the hill had a pyramidal quality—glad I wasn’t the first to imagine such things.” He thinks a moment. “It is just as I envisioned you, Julia —I only conceived pieces and parts. You made up the whole—filled in the reality. It appears that my version of Wyn Avuqua and the culture therein has done the same thing.

“I’m beginning to recall a lot of things that I couldn’t before. Elliqui, for example. I had much of the foundation for the language in some of my notebooks from years ago. The day I realized its rightful place was when I wrote the Journal. It made sense somehow. The ways of the Itonalya haunt me. I’m fascinated with the way they view the world. Life.”

Julia laughs lightly, “Your imagined culture with an imagined past that you created—and you were fascinated with them before they were real. And now it’s all…” She shakes her head, “I don’t think I have the right comeback for you.”

“I don’t think there is a proper comeback,” Loche sadly smiles.

“What made you want to create them?”

Loche feels a sudden dread. He answers, “Ultimately, I wrote the Journal to fool Marcus Rearden. I wrote it all to fool him into believing I was either crazy or enlightened. I wrote it to capture him. I used my old writings and imaginings as background. It appears that the power of well aimed delusion and fiction can fool and capture even the most brazen of intellectuals,” he laughs sadly. “Validation, I suppose, for any worthy, up and coming mythological prophet.

“However, the Itonalya were inspired mostly by talking with a client of mine, William Greenhame. At the time, before my near drowning incident, William was mentally ill. I had diagnosed him with several disorders—I worried about him—but most of all, I enjoyed listening to him. Despite his wild claims of immortality and what I believed to be a made up British background, much of his philosophy made sense.”

“How so?”

“Not to sound naive or reductive, but William would say things like, ‘Take love, dear Doctor. Imagine love that lasted not a mere lifetime, but for an age of the earth. Imagine if we loved without the fear of death.’ He believes that eventually the world would spread love to all. It is proper evolution, he would say. By removing death and fear, the world would learn that love is all. Then he had this little rhyme, ‘Love each other, love the land, the sky and the sea, love the differences we have.’”

“That doesn’t sound crazy,” Julia says. “It sounds like a John Lennon song.”

Loche laughs again. “William told me he knew John Lennon.”

“Really?” Julia says.

“Really.” Loche smiles again. “I didn’t believe him then, of course.” He adds, “William said that Lennon’s story is better than Lennon himself. I suppose that’s not an unusual thing.

A few seconds of silence pass.

“Albion knows Jimmy page,” Julia says.

“Really?” Loche asks absently.

“Yes.”

“Cool.”

The fire snaps. With his free hand, Loche throws more dead branches on the blaze.

“William’s claim of immortality was outlandish to me—And though idealistic, his logic seemed plausible. That is, if we did not die, and our bodies carried us through the centuries physically healthy, it raises the questions: would we carry on with the way things are now if we could escape old age—death? Would money still be the great motivator? Would we make war? Would we allow some parts of the world to starve while allowing others to destroy ecosystems? Eventually, as William emphasized, ‘Love is real—everything else is a dream.’”

“But isn’t that Albion Ravistelle’s utopian vision?”

Loche nods mournfully. “Well, it’s the vision I gave him. In the Journal, Albion was simply a misguided villain. But then, I began to agree with him—his desire to heal the world. He promised me my own impossible dream.”

“What is that?”

“To heal the condition of being human. To end suffering. In the Journal I even made a sort of blood brother pact with him. It wasn’t until I realized that Albion’s role was that of a catalyst, a psychically violent one, that I stopped what I had begun.”

Julia shivers. “Maybe you were the catalyst.”

Could it be? Loche wonders. His fiction has changed everything. It wasn’t Albion, William, Nicolas Cythe or Julia, or his characters that brought him to this moment. He was the prime mover. He wrote the story.

“I suppose I was,” Loche agrees. “But now I feel like I’m a character.”

Julia shivers and nuzzles closer to Loche. “Me, too,” she says. Her fingers squeeze the dangling key around her neck.

They fall silent. Julia sleeps. Woodsmoke dangles in the splayed hands of the cedar. Far off a squirrel cries. The flames are warm on Loche’s face. Eyelids are heavy. They droop shut. Orange blurs to black and back again. He sleeps.

The drowse is thick and weighs on his every limb. He dreams of vibrating coils of light like silk ribbons in the wind, tracing across a vast expanse of green woodland. Above him is Julia’s constellation, the single star blinking—watching. Basil waits beside a high stone. He is afraid.

A slight chill brings him back. A quick peek. The fire is low. Slender flames struggle to dance in the chill. Pale morning perches in the trees. A pair of high leather boots are planted just inside the circle of the firelight.

A moment later, the anomaly registers and Loche snaps awake.

Standing before him is an extraordinary looking man. His coat of ringed mail glints brighter than the fading flames. A long coat of orange cloth is draped over his shoulders and belted at the waist. A black, metal cross on a cord hangs flat upon his chest. Under his arm is a leather satchel and a sheathed broadsword. His face, bearded and framed in draping dark hair, is turned to the three figures huddled at the base of the tree.

Loche’s hand moves to his umbrella and grasps the hilt. Julia, feeling him move, flinches awake and sits up.

A flurry of words is hurled at them. The man’s expression and tone are incredulous, and the language is difficult to catch. Old English? Anglo Saxon perhaps? Loche is astonished that he remembers the sound of the words—sounds he’s not heard since boarding school in Canterbury.

“Aér gé fyr heonan, léasscéaweras, on land Itonalya.”

Loche does not draw his sword. Instead, he shakes his head and raises his hands, indicating he does not understand.

“Ne seah ic wídan feorh under heofones hwealf, sceaðona ic nát hwylc.” A confused glare surveys Loche from head to toe. “Sé moncynnes.” He cocks his head and scrutinizes Julia. His tone darkens, “Godes andsacan þé þú hér tó lócast. Godes féond, Orathom Wis!”

The anger in the man’s voice is threatening. Loche can sense Julia bristling. “Let’s move,” she whispers. “I can’t stand the chills—”

He then bows slightly and his words gentle. “Á mæg god wyrcan wunder æfter wundre. Weoroda raéswan, Géata léode, umborwesende, winedrihten.” He stares at Edwin. His gaze is both adoring and fearful.

“We do not understand you,” Loche says. “We are from far away.” He feels Julia grip his arm.

“Ah,” the man replies after a few seconds. With incredible speed he unsheathes his broadsword. It flashes in the morning air. He raises the blade and points it to the stars above the pyramid. “Sægde sé þe cúþe, frumsceaft Gode, swutol sang scopes feorran reccan.”

Loche and Julia turn to each other. The two then lower their faces to Edwin. The little boy is now sitting up. He climbs out of the chrome emergency blanket. His sneakers crackle on the pine needles as he stands. He looks into Loche’s eyes.

When Edwin begins to speak, Loche cannot believe what he hears. Stranger still, he cannot fathom how he translates the boy’s words to meaning. From his son’s mouth comes Anglo Saxon, carefully articulated. His tiny voice is gentle. As he speaks, Loche discerns—hears —somehow understands what is said.

Edwin says, “You know me, do you not?”

The man’s face pales with sudden acknowledgement. With pained reverence he lowers himself to one knee. He answers. Loche hears his words. They, too, are Anglo Saxon, and Loche understands their meaning.

“I do, Lord,” The man says, “you are Thi. You are the Creator of all. You are my Maker. I am your servant, Etheldred—Our Summoner’s High Captain.”

Edwin’s child voice replies in a calm, wholesome timbre as he turns away from his father to the stranger.

“Yes, I am Thi.” He raises his arm and gestures to Loche now rising behind him. “Behold, for this is my father. My Maker.”