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“What is that?” I ask.
“A journal, your late companion’s.”
“And you’re giving it to me?”
He hesitates, glancing at it and then into my eyes.
“Not everyone who does the dirty work of this kingdom is callous. I know what you must endure tomorrow. The journal is addressed to you, a last sentiment of some sort. My captain read through it and thinks it will soften you, maybe get you to accept your end and give up what you know without the need of… persuasion… before you meet the executioner.”
The thought makes me shutter, and I break eye contact and quickly take the journal from him. He doesn’t say anything more, nor do I acknowledge him leaving. Who knows what I can trust in this mess I’ve found myself in?
Once I open the journal, however, I immediately recognize that its message must be authentic.
“Wanderer,” its introduction reads, a nickname only Karsa called me by.
“There is no record of my life other than the contents of this book, and I think that you will soon realize why. I hope you will forgive me for leaving you as I did, but there was no other way. This should help calm your nerves as your imprisonment draws to a close. You’ll need to collect your mind to get through tomorrow.”
Despite the inescapable condemnation that hangs over me, I feel a rush of excitement. Karsa’s history has always been a great mystery to me. Although we were together for years, I have always felt very disconnected from the story of his life an
d am left to wonder what part I really played in it. I appreciate this last gesture from him.
As I return to the bed, journal in hand, I am reminded of how my mother used to tell me stories at night when I was a young child. She started doing it after I began having terrible nightmares, ones so bad that they made me afraid of going to sleep. Her stories would calm me down and help me ease into a peaceful rest.
That is what this journal from Karsa will do for me. It will help me get through this night so that I can more calmly ease myself into the grasp of death tomorrow.
An Orphan of the Plains
When I was young, my father taught me that actions are the true power behind words. Eloquence, he said, does not change how the world is, only how we perceive it to be. He did not like a man who could speak well, and as I grew older, I came to understand why.
The Plains of Munza, or the Open Plains, are filled with tribal elders who speak of tradition but ignore it as well. It is little wonder my father preferred the company of a falcon to that of his fellow tribesmen. He raised falcons, feeling a kinship with them that he never felt with people.
I have always wondered why our tribal elder gave him charge over me. I was an orphan, a child found wandering among the fields. No one could figure out where I came from, so the elder had to decide who would raise me. Despite the outcry that came from the rest of the tribe, the task was given to
my father.
He taught me everything he knew, of men, of fowl, and of craft. He was learned and understood the art of swords and politics, but he had given up on the tribes, tiring of the hypocrisy he saw among their leaders. This didn’t go unnoticed, ultimately resulting in him being forced from his home at the center of the village to a hovel on its western border long before I came along.
The tribes are very strange. Having spent most of my life in the Northern Kingdom, it is clear to me why my father never fit in. Privacy is valued in the north, but among the tribes, it is considered immoral, though it was ironically used as a way to punish my father for being different. It seems just that our tribe’s own hypocrisy led to its demise.
It was on a day filled with thunder and hail. Some members of the tribe had been trading with a town on the southern border of the Kingdom of Neir, an arrangement so tiny and insignificant that it should have gone unnoticed and simply been let go. It was against the unwritten law of the tribes, but such commerce had existed among many of the border tribes for centuries, so our elder thought it would be fine for us to do the same.
Unfortunately, he had an enemy among a distant tribe, one whose leaders wanted to bring the border tribes back into line. The elder of that tribe invoked an old decree, one said to have come from the original founders of the plains, allowing for an elder to take absolute control of tribes that have strayed from the principles of the plains.
Our elder contested the claim, and a battle was fought, one we lost. Those who persisted in defending our rights were executed shortly thereafter. I was barely a teenager at the time, grateful that my father had chosen to remain silent. Tragically, his fate ended up being no different from those who stood up to our enemies.
Rather than take over the affairs of our village, the elder of the belligerent tribe decided to simply harvest the spoils of war and leave those of us who had survived to fend for ourselves. His men went from house to house, taking what they wanted, people included as they so deemed, while he went alone to visit my father.
Although somewhat of an outcast, my father had gained renown for his falcons, and the elder came to him demanding that he give all of them up as a peace offering. My father was willing to comply, with the exception that he keep one, his own falcon, for himself. The elder refused, spilling my father’s blood without hesitation.
I beheld the horrific scene from a hiding place. I did not make a noise, but I screamed on the inside. At that instant, the lessons from my father about the power of action came back to me, and I emerged from my place in the shadows and stabbed my father’s killer in the back.
Knowing that I had to run, I took the elder’s horse and fled to a neighboring village. I was followed there and had to sneak away, only to be discovered again. It soon became obvious that I had to leave the plains entirely.
Second Life on the River
I fled north, both from my crime and my heartache, not stopping until so exhausted I lacked the strength to weep. I stole when I needed to eat, and hid when I needed to sleep. The weeks came and went in a haze I can hardly remember. What I do remember is that I could not stop going. That is, of course, until the North Sea kept me from getting any further away from my past.
That moment remains vivid in my memory, my view standing on the beach as I contemplated swimming as far as I could until my muscles became so weak that I would be hopeless to return to shore. With nowhere more to run, I cried for a long while, collapsing to the white sand beneath me and wishing that the water would consume me then and there and blot out the sun.
