《Chapter-long essays》


 The Lith, or the tale of the Crawling Stone

    Alright children. Close your mouths and sit down. Grandpa D3trois is going to tell you a story tonight, if you promise to stay silent. Now don¡¯t stay up too late after dark, for the story I am about to tell will leave you trembling and shaking.


    This is a story my grandpa told me when I was a kid, a story that he learned from his own grandpa. These are words from countless generations I am going to pass onto you tonight.


    The name of that tale is ¡°Crawling Stone¡±.


    Hold on to your blankets and let me remember how the story starts.


    *clears throat*


    ***


    The first people to notice something was off were probably the fishermen. The rumors spoke of a strange period of nearly ten years during which fishermen thought they were cursed.


    They say that nets always came up nearly empty, something that had never happened in the coastal area for as long as folks were around.


    If the fishermen were the first to notice something, it wasn¡¯t one of them who spotted it first though.


    It was an old man who used to walk the beach behind the village, past the forest, every day in the morning, even in winter times. He had walked along the shore every day for dozens and dozens of years. And never had he noticed it protruding out of the surface of the water before.


    The Lith.


    The old man was certain there wasn¡¯t any rock on this part of the beach, especially that close to the sandy slope he used to bathe in when he was younger.


    Incredulous but casual about it, the man went back to the village to tell the folk over there.


    Only the man was old and his claims were instantly dismissed, like the day he had supposedly seen a dozen mermaids leaping out the sea at sunset.


    Days later, the old man was nowhere to be found. People then didn¡¯t link two and two. Maybe his half mind had taken to make him jump off the cliff. You have to understand, in that era old folk like him were a thing of rarity. Winters were rough, as were summers and the other two seasons. Maybe winter had gotten the best of him, if it weren¡¯t his senility.


    Past a few weeks, winter turned to spring, the season where young couples frolick on the beach and kids pester them by splashing around. However that year, only one couple ever stepped on the sandy shore.


    It was a young couple. The girl was beautiful and pure, the boy was simple but warm. They walked along the beach the first day the sun shone with heat when the boy saw a stone peeking out the waters.


    ¡°The old man was right, there is a stone there I¡¯ve never noticed¡± said the boy, or something along those lines. However the couple remembered the old man saying the stone was almost level with the water, whereas in front of them stood a rock that seemed tall as a person, only slightly less than halfway under the waves.


    ¡°If I stand on it, would I become the king of the ocean¡± the boy joked in order to bemuse his lady.


    He went in the water, enjoying the first bath of the season and was about to take a grip on the rock¡¯s surface when it happened.


    As soon as the boy¡¯s hand touched the rough surface of the Lith, he was gone.


    That was the description the poor girl gave at the tavern later that day when her shocked sobs turned into an uncontrollable panic attack. After a night of crying, when the folk came to check on her, they found her dead body in her room. After the events of the previous day, the girl had preferred to take her own life.


    That was the first time the Lith struck people with its curse.


    ***


    The very same day of the poor girl¡¯s tragedy, three men went to investigate the matter. They had brought fishing spears to defend themselves because none of them truly believed that a rock could have caused such a commotion.


    The girl had never been stupid but due to the shock, the events might have jumbled her mind.


    When the three men arrived to the beach, the rock was exactly where the girl had said it would.


    The waters were clear with no trace of sharks or other sea creatures.


    With water half way up their thighs, the men circled the large boulder.


    The first one used his spear to probe the Lith. He had expected to feel the grainy texture of the rock against the metal tip but to his surprise, the rock offered no resistance at all. As if it weren¡¯t there at all, the tip of the spear disappeared under the surface and reappeared when he pulled it back by reflex.


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    To the three confused men, the rock looked like any other, although they agreed to have never seen it on the beach before. And yet to the touch of the spear it didn¡¯t seem like the rock was there at all.


    With caution but mostly disbelief for the girl¡¯s tale and their own experience, one of the men extended his hand towards the Lith.


    His finger hadn¡¯t yet pushed against the surface when without a sound, the man disappeared.


    The disappearance was so sudden that the two other men almost didn¡¯t react for half a breath. Then they both fell backwards in the water, scrambling to find a hold in the sand to get away from the Lith as fast as possible, forgetting their spears in the process.


    Out of the three men that had left the village, only two came back, scared for their life and with a horrifying tale to share.


    That night, all the folks united in the tavern to listen to them, waiting until they both had their fair share of ale in order to loose their tongues.


    The men were pale like never before as they recounted every detail. How the spear had disappeared through the rock and then reappeared. How the water had swashed to fill the gap left by their friend.


    If ever people had doubts about the whole story, no one was now brave enough to tempt their fate. After the second incident, nobody from the village dared to go to the beach for the better part of an entire year. Nobody except one boy whose name I don¡¯t know.


    If was around the eighth month of the beach being empty that he mustered the courage to face what was now called the Devil Stone.


    The boy had at first been terrified by the story of the stone, like all the impressionable folks at the village, but as time went by, a morbid curiosity overtook him until he had to go and look for himself.


    Only when he showed up on the beach, past the barriers that the folk had erected between the forest and the cursed shore, there wasn¡¯t any trace of the Devil Stone.


    That day when the boy came home, the punishment his parents inflicted on him ensured he would never seek the Lith ever again. But besides that, the curiosity of the village folks was once more aroused by the Lith.


    It didn¡¯t take more than a day for them to find the stone. Past the beach, the stone had somehow moved until the edge of the forest. What was even more confusing was that the stone seemed to have gone through the barrier without moving it at all.


    That day, people cursed, spoke of the devil and of ancient payan creatures. They accused the Lith of being a demon instead of a rock; of being a sign of the end of the world.


    A strange stone that had no substance was one thing, but the same stone able to make people disappear and which could also move by itself was another. The following days, all men worked in unison to build a stone wall around the Lith, an unbreakable wall adorned with charms and old talismans. They worked every hour for three days and three nights.


    The third recorded disappearance took place when one of the men stumbled and accidentally touched the Lith while constructing the stone wall. To the terrified eyes of his fellows, the man was gone like a candle flame is extinguished.


    The mourning of the man was still ongoing when the village folk noticed that even stone could not stop the Lith from moving.


    Over a period of a couple weeks, the grainy surface of the Lith slowly crossed through the solid wall until it was completely free from the construction, to the despair of all people.


    What was even more terrifying to them was that the Devil Stone was moving in a perfectly straight line, a line which was headed from the beach where it was first spotted, to their village, their home.


    That was when, for the first time, the people of the small coastal village decided to make the matter public and warn everybody of the demon that had come from the sea.


    The village had always lived separated from other places for as long as people could remember. In that era communities were small and independent.


    However, other places soon heard about the Lith and its horrifying tale.


    And such began the legends and the spread of the Lith¡¯s dark influence.


    ***


    I could speak of the fear the people held for the Lith for hours. I could also recount all the names the Lith was called for the following hundreds of years. Devil Stone, Stone From the Sea, Cursed Rock, Crawling Stone, Bringer of Despair¡­ As for me I will call it the Lith, a name it had gained about a hundred years after the townsfolk fled their coastal village.


    Generations of priests and cultists had come and gone, all trying to exorcise the Lith with their religion and culture. Hundreds of barriers were erected from all sorts of materials, none of them being able to stop the slow crawl of the Lith.


    Fires were burnt around the stone, and even inside of it, to no avail.


    The legend says that, once, a rich man even ordered an expedition to the north and built a small castle entirely made of ice around the Lith, confident that freezing it would stop the cursed stone from advancing tirelessly.


    Over the years, probably thousands of people disappeared. By mistake, doubt, defiance, misplaced bravery. Kings and aristocrats tried their golden swords, not proving more effective than farmer¡¯s pitchforks and monk''s prayers.


    Experiments were made by the most daring. Fire and ice went through the Lith. Water, rock and metal were ineffective as well. Wood was a different matter.


    Some green wood went through, some disappeared instantly. It took years before folk understood that everything that had an ounce of life in it disappeared, where the dead things remained there untouched.


    Fish, cattle, birds, wolves, and of course people would disappear without fail whenever in contact with the terrifying object.


    In any case, from the very beginning of the Lith¡¯s appearance, not once had anything ever managed to change its path. Through mountains and lakes, cities and churches, the Lith was unstoppable.


    Countless houses and cities were abandoned, to be repopulated weeks, months or years later after the Lith was long gone and the land was deemed un-cursed again by the local priest.


    Even this very village we are in was once on the Lith¡¯s straight path. But you need not worry, for it is long gone now.


    In fact, as the Lith came from the sea by the west, the Lith has returned to the sea in the east.


    ***


    It has been dozens of years since the Lith was last seen disappearing through the salty waters where the sun rises.


    Was the Lith a creature from another world? A terrifying omen? A demon? An artifact of foreign magic?


    More importantly, will we ever again see the Lith, its dreaded crawl out of the ocean floor? Probably not in this generation, but as to what the future holds... your guess is as good as mine.

 Memories of a Stone Door

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    Rocky and irregular walls whose shape I only discern, barely. Enough to see the difference when they get taken over by smooth and carved stones.


    P


    What were the Ruins before they became the Ruins? I never knew. A castle? A village? This is too large to have been the home of only a handful of people.


    I scrape the tip of my fingers on the walls, ignoring the prickling sensation of the centuries old cement and the dust I stain my shirt with.


    Had I ever found what was originally the purpose of the Corridor?


    The dampness is such that my eyes are damp too. Goddamn spring


    You will be free

 The Wind Eater

    The Wind Eater has always been my home. I was born in the sun room below the first deck and since then I¡¯ve always lived and slept in its three decks, fourteen rooms, five masts and hundreds of lengths of rope and tethers.


    Nevermind what people in the suburbs of cloud city might say, the Wind Eater isn¡¯t the decrepit old ship they think it is. It is a beauty and a proud float-ship, that has sailed further away than they can ever imagine in en entire life.


    I am sure that when we set sail sunwards, they look up at the thin shadow passing over their head and hope they could board the ship too.


    But they¡¯re not sailors. I am a sailor.


    I am a sailor just like my father and mother are, like my mother¡¯s father was and like his own father was.


    Even when these people I never met were alive, they had forgotten for how long their family had been sailors.


    The fundamentalist sage that we took on our last trip says that the word sailor has been the same for almost an eternity. He says that a long time ago the floatships were called boatships or something and used to roam large expanses of downward water. It makes no sense.


    He also says that the sun used to constantly move around the world. This is stupid, because if the sun did that, we would have no use for the rooms below the first deck. The sun room is to get light when we sail moonwards, and the moon room is for darkness when we go sunwards.


    Even the people from the city of Night, who are used to the darkness of being moonwards use sunrooms once a day.


    That fundamentalist sage was a weirdo.


    He said he studied in the Cloud-City Academy, though, which even I know is impressive. Only the best fundamentalist sages come from there. My father says they study the world we live in and they understand it better than most, but that doesn¡¯t make sense to me. How could they understand the world without ever having set sail in a float-ship to see it?


    When I asked the sage about it, he just laughed and said I should go to the Academy to tell the sages that.


    I thought he was making fun of me, but in the end he was a good person who told me a lot of great stories. Now that he isn¡¯t traveling with my family anymore, I consider him like a friend and a teacher, even though he has only ever taught me one thing.


    After countless stories he told, the sage taught me that stories are the best way to learn.


    After that I got confused. Did he teach me one thing? Or a lot of things. I don¡¯t know. Most of the stories were strange but in my head I kinda want some of them to be true.


    Then, as we departed the floating port of Cloud City, having returned him to the docks, the fundamentalist sage asked me once more to seek him at the academy in the future. This time he looked serious. I haven¡¯t talked to my parents about it, I don¡¯t know what I will do.


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    He must have been a good sage because he recognized that the Wind Eater was the best float-ship in port. The fastest ship, and the one who could go downwards the most, because it¡¯s a relatively small float-ship.


    When we go downwards, the ship slows down because the temperature drops a lot.


    One thing I never understood is why we sweat so much when it¡¯s so cold. Drops of water get everywhere on my skin and I don¡¯t like that.


    At these times, when my mother sailed the ship and my father made sure we could see amidst the large clouds, the sage would always attach himself to the low mast and observe the surroundings.


    Maybe he was looking for traces of the Iron Giant.


    From all the stories he told me, the one about the giant called Iron and his sister was always my favorite.


    I can¡¯t use words as good as he did but I¡¯m gonna try to tell the story.


    A long long time ago, an eternity before our time, there was a giant called Iron who lived in the center of the world. He lived in the very center with his sister called Gravity. He was always sleeping under a large blanket of water so big it covered the entire world. This is during the time when floatships were called boatships and could not go down or up. The boatship sailors, my ancestors, used hair from Iron¡¯s head to direct themselves on the water. It was said that Iron¡¯s hair always wanted to go back to Iron¡¯s head, which was a place called North.


    Only one day, the Iron Giant left, convincing his sister to leave with him.


    I think the sage wanted to find traces of the Giant to understand where he went and why the world changed since he left.


    It is said that when he left is when the water stopped defining up and down, when the sun stopped roaming around the world, and when the numerous floating cities were born, like Night, or Cloud City, or Hanging Town.


    I really like this story. I wish I could tell it with the same words as he did.


    The fundamentalist sage said that stories are knowledge and teaching lessons disguised but I really can¡¯t believe this one. Only, if I had to choose one story to believe, it would be this one. It seems like a nice story, one that makes me want to look for the Giant called Iron too.


    Maybe this is also why my parents agreed to take him with us on the Wind Eater just so he could look. Maybe they too want it to be real. Or maybe this is due to the large pouch of leather that sounded like wooden coins clinking together. It¡¯s probably that.


    The academy sure pays well their sages. Or at least him, since he seemed to be a good fundamentalist sage. I hope he found at least part of what he was looking for.


    During our third sailing downwards, he once became really excited, to the point that father hurried his tether up to the main deck, only to hear his disappointment and asking to be let down again.


    After that the sage stayed in his room for five entire cycles. His excitement must have died then, when he studied his results, because he seemed a bit sad when he finally got out.


    I tried to ask him what had happened, but the sage simply shrugged and gave me a dark pebble the size of a coin, telling me to chuck if off the floatship if I felt like it.


    I didn¡¯t.


    I kept the material, which seemed dense and strong. It also felt strangely cold to the touch, unlike the wood all around me.


    I spent my next entire cycle in the moon room just holding it close to me, feeling its surface warm up against my skin, until I left it alone long enough.


    It was only when the fundamentalist sage left us, on the docks of Cloud City, that I saw a similar pebble attached to a chain on his neck. As he asked me to find him at the academy, I could swear I saw him point to the pebble, right as my own hand gripped the similar one in my pocket.


    I had so many questions that day. And yet I know the only way to find answers would be to find the sage in the academy. Maybe next time the Wind Eater rests in Cloud City I can talk to my parents and find the time to meet him again.


    Maybe this way I can learn more about why the giant iron and his sister gravity left