My Travels Through Imaginary Lands, Pt.7

I'm pleased to say that sobriety arrived before breakfast, but then breakfast came later in the day than usual, merging seamlessly into lunch in a most agreeable manner.  Both Taly and her late father, safely ensconced in his glass prism, attended, and they retained their genial good humour from the day before.

'Tell the world,' Taly said when I approached the table.  'Even when nursing a hangover, it's possible to be quite the dapper gentleman.'

She was being kind.  This was my third day in this particular day-suit, and while it was impeccably tailored, I was nonetheless keen to take it to be cleaned.  First though, I wanted an opportunity to sit and reflect.  I had returned to my room yesterday to a message from the Ministry informing me of Hernan's passing.  While I had of course been aware of this for several hours, it was still enough to cause me to sink into melancholia.  I had lain awake in bed while the room spun around me, thinking of the language projects we had worked on together.  True polymaths were rare in Ondia, and finding one who shared my passion for literary nuance had been a rare thing.

Secondary to that concern but still prominent had been the knowledge that the Ministry was clearly watching my movements.  This was of no particular surprise, and could be viewed in some ways as a compliment; I was clearly important enough in their eyes to be worth watching.  What I found to be discomfiting was the thought that anybody I met - the casual conversationalist in the bar, the fruit-seller in the market, the peasant woman with the empty eyes - any or all of them might be a person reporting on me.  In the same way that I was trading Ondian bonds for local currency as I travelled, so eyes and ears were the Ministry's currency on the ground.  It was inevitable that eyes would end up watching ears, and that ears would be listening to eyes.

And yet, one can only spend so much time reflecting on nostalgia or mindful of benevolent surveillance.  I was on holiday, keen only to stretch my legs, broaden my horizons and have a tasty lunch.  What better companion for that task than Taly, who charmed the waiter with her amazing smile and arranged us fresh fish fillets?

'What are your plans?' I asked when we had eaten.

'I'm hoping I can charter a boat that will take me to the northern coast.'

'It's a dubious strategy.  When the gunboats see you, they'll turn you back.  Just go south and take the train.'

She sighed.  'If I do that, I'll have to travel through Kassium to get home.  I have lots of memories of spending time with him there.  I'm not ready to deal with that just yet.'

It was a sentiment I could appreciate.  Here I was on the road, entirely free to travel as I wished, but not yet ready to commit to a route, to decide how to get where I was going.  Instead, I became the eternal wanderer, my simple cloth bag my home away from home.

I walked Taly to the docks and wished her farewell.  She gave me an enthusiastic hug.  When she had disappeared into one of the dockside taverns in search of her captain, I felt a wholly unaccountable sense of loss.  It took several deep breaths of the sea air before I felt fortified enough to head wearily back towards the centre of town.

I hadn't been walking long when I came across a small square, tucked back from the road, that I hadn't seen coming the other way.  In no particular hurry, I wandered over.  The paving was dark and even, very different to the roughly-hewn yellow sandstone so prevalent elsewhere.  Neatly-trimmed bushes lined the edges, and a number of dark wooden benches were arranged in a circle around a bronze statue.  The benches were occupied by children, some sitting quietly with parents, others seemingly devoid of adult company and instead grouping with their peers.  All of them were listening intently to the tall thin man who was standing in front of the statue, reading a story from a book.

The story was about a bird who stole a magic plum from the Gods, and was seeking to flee their wrath.  Such was the ingenuity of the text, evocative and yet deceptively simple, that both children and adults were rapt.  Even I became one with the tale, and felt a secret satisfaction when the bird grew magnificent red-gold plumage, and fled to safety disguised as a candle flame.  I sat down as others around reluctantly got up and left, and in a few minutes, I and the reader were the only two left in the square.  He smiled at me as he packed books away in his bag.

'That was quite excellent,' I said.  'Is it your work?'

'I wish.  Have you heard of Doregun?'

I had heard of Bernird Doregun, and so had every other boy who had spent part of their childhood outside of Ondia.  He had come to Vairin a hundred years ago, the youngest son of a farming family somewhere up in the nameless villages that made up the Sholl of Grains, and he had travelled to the coast in hopes of escaping that life and earning passage as a sailor.  However, he quickly realised that sea travel left him hopelessly seasick, meaning that a life on the waves was not for him.  Crestfallen and faced with a humiliating return to his homeland, Doregun instead tried to make his way as a musician.  In that regard too he was terribly unlucky, and at the point that he first began to attract attention, his threadbugle was stolen. 

With no money to replace his instrument, he was forced to fall back upon the spoken word as a means of entertainment.  Here, finally, he struck gold.  He told bawdy tales of maidens and knights in the taverns in the evenings which were always well-received, but it was writing for children that was his calling.  His stories combined thaumaturgy, miraculous events and a string of heroes who resisted the will of the divine.  In time, he became an international sensation and readings of his stories packed out market squares across the land. 

Given that the Gods were frequently characters in his stories, Doregun's work had never achieved the acclaim in Ondia that it received elsewhere, but the fact that it had not been banned outright was a reflection of its power and influence.  Some things transcended rules.

The man tapped the statue's leg, which echoed dully.  'Doregun is Vairin's favourite adopted son,' the man said.

The man in the statue was short and stood with a stoop.  He wore a baggy cap and other clothes that seemed to be two sizes too big for him.  Over one shoulder, he carried a bag that stretched down to his knees, giving him the appearance of a child carrying a man's possessions.

'I know what you're thinking,' the man said, finishing his packing and lifting his own bag up.  'But not all things are as they seem.'

'Surely,' I replied.  In my head, I was thinking: this one is definitely Ministry.

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My Travels Through Imaginary Lands, Pt.6

Upon arrival in Vairin, I realised quickly that the send-off Taly had planned for her father was not going to be a slow or sombre affair.  Furthermore, by the time she finished her third shot of danxo before we had spent half an hour in the small dockside bar, I realised that if I tried to match her tin for tin, she was going to drink me under the table.

At this point, I should perhaps apologise, dear reader, for assuming that you are Ondian, or otherwise familiar with our death customs.  Unlike the countries on the mainland (and as every true-hearted Ondian patriot would remind you, the narrow strip of land that chains us to the continent does not make us part of the mainland, any more than falling off a cliff means that you can fly), we have no links to gods or afterlife.  None whatsoever.  We are not secular, but rather actively atheist.  It surely seems obvious that your primary goal in life should be success and self-improvement within your allotted timescale.  In accordance with those nihilist principles, the Ministry rejects all applications to build places of worship.  You are here, it says, you are now.  Every day you get closer to the abyss, so do your best before you go.

Also, given that we are the most densely populated country in all of Nebra, we cannot simply allot land for burial purposes.  Not for us, the brutish Rzermis funeral pyre, or the simple Rhigan burial somewhere beneath the countless miles of dust.  No, we chose a process that was sophisticated, elegant, and in keeping with our place as world-leading innovators.

Okay, perhaps it's the danxo.  Perhaps.

So anyway, actually, we stole it.  But don't tell the people back home.

Once, a long, long time ago, before Ondia ruled half of Nebra, before the nation of Camir rose from the flaming ruins of Yzyrobia, before Gresia and Merin split into separate fiefdoms, the southern end of the Kolkas was part of a wider territory called Selii.  The mountains in those days contained a number of active volcanoes, and on one particularly portentous day, a superheated cloud of ash descended onto a village at the base of the mountains, instantly smothering all the residents.

The remains of those individuals was subjected to intense vibration under certain thaumic conditions that flushed out any remaining liquids and caused them to break down into powder.  The residents of the area knew of glass already, from the frequent lightning strikes on the sandy beaches.  All that remained was to move the dust to containers sculpted from the lightning glass.  They were placed on display and honoured.

That might have been the end of it, except that the first Ondian emperor chose a place in lightning glass in the same manner after his death.  The Empire collapsed, but the ideas at the heart of it fled back to our tiny southwestern peninsula.  Our own active volcano was used for centuries, and glass procured from the continent at great expense.  Now we can reproduce many of the conditions scientifically, with freeze-drying via chemically-induced cold being a popular choice instead. 

I stared at the pale blue cube as it sat forlornly on the table.  One day, I too would be placed inside one, and my remains transported back to my homeland, where I would be bricked into a wall, a ceiling or a floor in some important civic building; both a stepping stone and a curio for a future generation.  Not for the first time, I wondered who would carry me home when my time came.

'Are you going to stare at him all night?' Taly asked.

'No,' I said, immediately proving myself a liar by being unable to look away.  She rolled those beautiful violet eyes in an easy manner and placed my cloth bag between it and me.

'There.'

'It seems strange to be here,' I said, looking at her flushed features, 'celebrating someone I met on the other side of the bay who did all his best work on the other side of the continent.'

Taly crossed her feet over the table.  Away, behind her, a group of sailors were singing songs at the bar.  'I get the feeling that he wouldn't have cared much to be remembered as a glass brick in a wall back home.  He was a problem solver, a brilliant mind.  Plus, he was my father.'

'I expect he shared much wisdom with you.'

'Honestly, I think his opinion was that people should find their own way and make their own mistakes getting there.  It amused him no end when I followed him into cultural anthropology.'

'Really, if we're to celebrate him in style, we should send out for cruorweed tobacco,' I said.

She regarded me carefully.  'I didn't have you pegged as a smoker.'

'I'm not really, but it would be fitting.  Food is here.'  The last comment was accompanied with a nod past her shoulder, where the waiter was carrying a steaming plate of the ubiquitous spear peppers.  He laid it before us, placed two more glasses of danxo next to it, bowed and left.

A shanty kicked off at the bar, and one or two in beards and bandannas tried to dance.  It wasn't the most elegant show.  Taly seemed less amused by their antics than I.

'Well,' she said, 'will you go first, or will I?'


'Ladies first,' I said, settling back.  The chairs here were well upholstered, fat and luxurious.  I could certainly think of less agreeable ways to kill a hot afternoon.

We had already discussed the circumstances of her father's passing.  Perhaps predictably, Hernan had been found at his breakfast table immediately after repast, newspaper folded across his lap, sunbeam illuminating his restful face.  'The earliest memories I have of my father were of him reading the newspaper at the table.'

'Every morning, regular as clockwork,' I said.  Hernan had been a great believer in breakfast.  You could have set your watch by his morning routine.

'So, what's your story, Patrick?'  The girl relaxed, dangled a pepper between her fingers, allowing it to cool.

'My story?'

'Yes.  You've talked lots about my father, but said hardly anything about what you're doing here in Nebra.  It seems inevitable that you're here on Ministry business, but you're allowing me to distract you with alcohol and idle chitchat.  That's not the behaviour of a man keen to get where he's going.'

'Oh, I am keen,' I said.  'Just not in a hurry.'

'Where are you going?'

'To visit a friend who's been assigned to a diplomatic post in Camir.  I am to meet the Rum, talk to him about matters of state.'

'So should I feel honoured,' she said, stretching in her seat, 'that a man who associates with kings in his professional capacity chooses to spend time with me in a personal one?'

I reached for a pepper myself and blew on it to cool it.  It dripped translucent oil into the bowl.

I said, 'I don't believe you feel that way for a minute.  Kings are just men, after all.  Fellows like the sailors at the bar.  Just better dressed.'

She bit into her pepper and giggled as green juice dribbled down her chin.  'Hopefully he'll be a better singer than those sailors at the bar.'

'Oh, I don't know.  They aren't so bad.'

Her eyes sparkled.  'Why don't you sing with them?  I bet you have a great voice.'

'I don't sing.'

'You could!'  She turned, waved to the sailors and called out in Rhigan, 'Hey, gentlemen!  This man here wants to sing with you!  Play him a tune!'

The sailors laughed and one of them pulled out a tin whistle.  He picked out a cheery tune and they broke into an eye-watering harmony, gesturing to me to sing along.  Instead, I bit into the pepper, intending to claim that my mouth was full.  This was a mistake.

The one pepper in a batch was hot, they said, but in truth even the hot ones could be manageable and a man could go many batches without even encountering one.  This time, I had picked one hot enough to sear my soul.  It slipped down my throat before I could stop it, causing me to cough and then to inhale deeply, trying to get cool air into my mouth.

'He's found a hot one!'  'Ondians shouldn't be trusted with real food, see what it does to them!'  'The danxo, quickly!'

After a delay I can only put down to heat-induced panic, I found the danxo and downed it in one.  It lessened, but not ended, the pain.  Quickly, Taly passed me her glass too and I duly drank that one as well.  All the time, she was doubled over with laughter, and when the inferno within me was quelled, I started to laugh too.

More peppers followed, and then hot zur soup with croutons, and much, much more danxo.  Needless to say, I did get involved in the sailing ditties that followed, and Taly duly congratulated me on my acapella.  'See?  I told you you would be excellent!'

So it was that with hazy, cloudy heads, we stumbled onto makeshift seats on the wharfside, and talked for hours more.  The good people of Vairin laughed and danced and sang around us as the evening progressed.  I think I had an innocent arm around Taly's shoulders when the lanterns in the bars were lowered and the night sky was suddenly pinpricked with white and blue lights.  Each colourful explosion was punctuated with a bang that sounded like the firing of a distant cannon, and behind us, the crowd murmured appreciatively.  Taly hugged her father as he rested in his ignoble cloth casing, and we smiled together in acknowledgement that we had given him a very appropriate send-off after all.

Go to Chapter 7 > > >

My Travels Through Imaginary Lands, Pt 5.

By mid-morning, the residents of Pitchek had roused themselves from their collective hangover and they all seemed to be milling aimlessly around the town while I waited at the flagpole for a carriage to take me east.  With the holiday weekend in full swing, the soldiers from yesterday's parade were already out in force, drinking openly in the square, and those same bordellos I'd been warned off before had their doors open and bead curtains pulled discreetly across the entrances.  The beads clicked merrily with the warm breeze.

Yesterday, in the dusk, I'd evidently missed the sapphire-and-alabaster bunting that had been strung across the streets and between the houses.  Some had inevitably fallen casualty to excessive frivolity and the roped triangles of cloth tied themselves into despairing knots that drooped in the dust.  Those that remained added much-needed threads of colour to the sandy visage of the town.

Unlike the peasant carts I'd already seen, the passenger carriages were far grander affairs.  Rose-coloured Vaariewood panels stretched across wide iron cages the same shape as the flaxseed pumpkins that they brought across the western border and crushed here for lamp oil.  The vertical boiler at the centre fed two twin-cylinder engines, each of which powered a pair of wheels via chain and sprocket mechanisms.  The front wheels turned about a centre that lay on the extended line of the back axle, allowing for a wide, safe turning circle and a top speed reputed to be in excess of twenty miles an hour.  Lower frictional resistance meant that the Ondian steam trains could travel far more quickly; however, they were of course restricted to their tracks.  Personal vehicles were always regarded suspiciously in Ondia, where any deviation from collective commitment to societal development was seen as vulgar and pretentious.

 

There was an evident degree of confusion in the square around which carriage was to go where; while my own countrymen would have had a rigid timetable and been tutting as they checked the seconds off on their pocket watches, here there was a delicious sense of anarchy.  The drivers called destinations out to one another, and there followed joyous negotiations and loud appeals to the crowd for customers.

I had been lingering around the fringes of the crowd for some time, when one saw me and pointed.  'You!  Ondian!  You go home?  Hamrh, or further south?'

'No,' I said.  'I'm looking to go north.  I want to soak up some sun.'

There were a few laughs and a sense of general agreement.  Out here on the plains, they probably saw hot sun most of the summer long, but there was precious little time to sit and enjoy it.  Pitchek was a worker's town.

I'd expected the coachman to move onto someone else, but he stayed with an eye on me, clearly having me pegged as someone here with a long journey in mind.  'Vairin, then,' he said.

Vairin fitted the bill; it was on the coast, but it was a proper resort town rather than one of the working ports further south.  If I chose, from Vairin I could catch a ferry around the tip of the continent, travelling around the spurs of land that formed the back legs of the Nebran Barking Dog (looking south to north, Ondia was the tail.)  If I left now, I would be there early afternoon and would have the chance to wander.  I could soak up some of the sea air and salty atmosphere that I was missing in this desolate chalky outpost.

The coachman beckoned me on, lifting my bag over the heads of the crowd members who turned in curiosity at the sight of my beard and dark creased suit.  The inside of the coach was pleasantly cool, though it would soon became apparent that the boiler in the centre of the carriage hissed incessantly throughout the journey, meaning one had to shout to make oneself heard.

I was the first passenger to board for Vairin, and I was joined in due course by two elderly tourists from somewhere to the south-west who had managed to get themselves lost looking for the coast, a pair of dark-eyed soldiers who looked like they wished they were anywhere else, and last but definitely not least, a beautiful young Ondian woman with shapely legs inside leather trousers and a fur-lined cloak clasped at the neck over a plain, Merin-cotton blouse.  She caught my eye as I caught hers and coolly held my gaze; so as she would have immediately recognised my nationality from my beard, so I could tell hers from her violet eyes and dreadlocks.

'Good morning,' I said, smiling.

She nodded back to me and returned the smile.  I looked around for her baggage and at first saw nothing.  Only at second glance did I see a vacuum-sealed flatpack bag pressed into the space behind her.  As if reading my mind, she reached back and produced a smooth glass box, the perfect size to hold between two small hands.  It was perfectly see-through, and I noticed that the inside of the box was moulded into a shape not unlike that of a spiralling, curved bottle.  At the very bottom of the mould lay a small pile of dust, no more than an inch deep.

It was an Ondian funeral box.  'Oh.  I'm very sorry for your loss,' I said automatically.

'Thank you,' she said, her lips thin and sallow.  Beyond that point, I expected her to say no more to me, and I wouldn't have presumed to have forced further conversation upon her, particularly at a time of grief.  But quite unexpectedly, it was she who seemed to have the desire to break the silence.

'Sir,' she said, and it was the kind of sir that implied at best jokey, token respect, 'you'll forgive me, but I'm sure I've seen your face before somewhere.'

I shook my head.  'That seems unlikely.  I'm no-one particularly special.  Just a simple traveller, making my way to the coast.'

'Oh, of course...as you say.  I'm sure I must be mistaken.'  She scratched a spot on her cheek with a single fingertip, and once again, I expected conversation to end there, but she persisted.  'Still, your face really does look familiar.  It's the shape of your nose.  Wide.  Handsome.'

Immediately, she looked as though she regretted the last word and bowed her head.  I was more than a little nonplussed, not least because she was so stunning in her own right.  The soldiers glanced at me and then sulked quietly to one another, perhaps jealous that she hadn't made conversation with them instead.

More to end the lengthening sense of awkwardness than because I wished to know, I pointed to the box that she clung to tightly.  'Is it a friend, or relative?'

'My father,' she said, by way of explanation.

'His box looks quite amazing,' I said.  'The wave in the glass shows impeccable craftsmanship.  He must have been a man of some importance.'

'Hernan Sera-Stahl,' she said.  'He was a linguistic anthropologist, a man of some repute.  Perhaps you've heard of him?'

Hearing the name was a tremendous shock to me.  Not only had I heard of Sera-Stahl, I had worked with him on a number of projects, the latest of which had been a study of dying languages in central and western Nebra. He was - had been - a quiet, cultured man, fond of sports, the scented inhalant known as cerba, and cruorweed tobacco, which he had smoked relentlessly by the pipeful.

'I'm...greatly surprised.  In fact, quite shocked.  I'm sorry.  I knew your father well.  We worked together at the ministry some years ago.'  The girl looked momentarily startled, and raised a hand to me.  I had the realisation at the exact same moment.  'Of course, that would make you Taly...Taly Sera-Stahl.  We only met briefly.  At the time, you were still at the academy in Hechda.'

'I've been finished there for eighteen months now.'

'Yes, and your father had written to me to tell me that you qualified with distinction.  One of the top five in your field in the country, he said.'

She was embarrassed now, but smiled again despite herself.  'Cultural history isn't a popular subject back in Ondia.  A lot of people tend to be fairly...introspective in their inclination.'  I could tell she'd chosen her words carefully so as not to risk even the smallest chance of offending me.  For what it was worth, I couldn't have agreed with her more.  Many Ondians had a strong cultural appreciation for their military history without actually being able to tell you anything about it.  In these fearful, feverish times, this was a useful political crutch for the ministry.

'Like father, like daughter.  He was incredibly proud of you.'  The words flowed automatically and they were no less true for that, though I was still startled that my old colleague had died so recently and no-one else had thought fit to tell me.

Taly looked at me for a moment, opened her mouth as if to respond and then shut it again without doing so.  She seemed to think deeply on a matter for a second or two, as though unsure if she was asking an appropriate question, before taking the chance and doing it anyway.

'You'll forgive me - this is terribly presumptuous - but my father has had no ceremony yet to mark his passing, and as an old colleague of his, would you perhaps be interested in celebrating his life here in Rhigo?  Of course, there'll be a formal ceremony when I return him to Kassium, but he identified strongly with the continental way of life, and I can't help thinking that a Rhigan celebration might be more appropriate for him.'

She was absolutely right.  While he might have seemed typically Ondian in the stuffy style of his dress and the relentlessly formal manner of his professional bearing, the Herman Sera-Stahl that I remembered was a tenacious man, with a keen, jocular wit.  Having already gone through the process of being freeze-dried, crushed and placed in the traditional glass container, I saw no joy in a final ceremony in the cold, gray halls of his alma mater.

'I would be delighted,' I said.  At that moment, the carriage hissed like a sea-kettle and sprang into life.

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