Myth

by Terri Todosey

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me what to do?’ I wrote. ‘You left without giving me instructions. I have no idea what to do next or how to get you back, and you told me it’s all here in the Troth. You said page three twenty-four, but all I have is blank page!’

  It’s not blank, look.

  Startled, I pulled my hand back.

  Huh? I looked at the page, wondering if I’d just written this message to myself. I didn’t think so.

  As a test I wrote, ‘Who are you?’

  The question you should really ask is, who are you?

  ‘Who am I?’

  Yes.

  ‘I’m Tali. Is that Spiritus writing this or is that you Henry?’

  Hmm, why do you have that one shoe in your satchel?

  ‘Shoe?’

  Yes.

  ‘Because Henry gave it to me.’

  And why do you think that is?

  ‘Um... to help me remember?’

  Remember what?

  ‘I don’t know, he never told me!’

  Well then, what does the shoe remind you of?

  ‘I don’t know... This place. Henry. My night with him. The way his green eyes looked at me through his mask, and the way he danced me around the room. The stairwell, and the way he stranded me like he did tonight!’

  I’m not stranding you.

  ‘Henry? It is you!’

  Yes, we share Spiritus, do we not? And I see how the shoe causes you to remember all of those things, but the reason I gave you the shoe, is so that you would remember the truth about yourself.

  ‘I don’t understand. Where are you?’

  I’m saving you, remember?

  ‘Well you had better hurry, because I already miss you.’

  I’m afraid that you will be long gone by the time I return.

  ‘What do you mean I’ll be long gone? You save me by morning and I won’t be going home till lunch. We still have a few hours to spend together!’

  I’m sorry, but the story isn’t written that way.

  ‘The story isn’t written that way? You’re the author! Change it!’

  It’s not that simple.

  ‘Can’t you edit it? There is always editing to do!’

  It’s not that kind of a book.

  ‘How am I supposed to leave without even saying goodbye?’

  You can and you will, but you still haven’t answered the question.

  ‘What question?’

  Who are you?

  ‘I don’t know who I am. I’m frustrated! I’m angry! I’m lost without you! There, how’s that for summing it up?’

  It’s a start.

  ‘We might never see each other again, and you... you seem so calm about it!’

  I just don’t use as many exclamation marks as you do.

  ‘Ugh!’ I felt the tears streaming down my face and watched them drip down and smear the ink as they bled into the page.

  ‘I thought that maybe... maybe you liked me as much as I like you.’

  Ah yes, why do you think I gave you Spiritus?

  ‘I don’t know? It seems like I don’t know anything anymore,’ I wrote as I cried.

  I think you do, but for some reason you refuse to believe it. You trust only in your eyes; you look but you don’t see and unless you see, it will always just be a faery tale to you. A myth. Even now as I give my pen to you and it lights up your beautiful face under the water, I see it. The questioning bewilderment. The wonder as to why you suddenly no longer have a need for air.

  Why did I give you Spiritus? You’ve had plenty of time to think about it and even came close to resolving the truth when we met up with Alfred and the others. The night we arrived back from the party. The night you were too exhausted to think about it anymore.

  ‘But I... I couldn’t think straight.’

  You thought straight enough when you were too tired to fight the direction your mind was taking you. It was all there for you to see, like a mirror that you were afraid to look at. But truth did not wait for you to understand. It did not matter whether you believed it or not, for here you are regardless, writing with Spiritus, having travelled from afar, woken the fire demons, thrown the shoe and yes, adored by the Maker.

  ‘I’m the Myth?’

  Now write it again without the question mark.

  ‘I am the Myth.’

  Yes!

  I looked out at the horizon, beyond the sea, glowing by the light of the moon. It felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from me.

  ‘Had I somehow known?’ I wondered. Not always, but slowly the knowledge had crept up inside me, bursting to get out and even towards the end a desire to be the Myth, knowing how he adored her. ‘He adores me!’ I smiled through my tears. Finally I could see it.

  As I looked back down at the pages of the Troth, I noticed that Spiritus no longer glowed.

  ‘WAIT! Don’t go yet!’ I wrote quickly and then sat waiting for a response. No reply was offered to me.

  ‘Please don’t leave me! I lov...’ Spiritus had run dry before I was able to finish the sentence. I had not delivered the message I had longed for him to hear. There was nothing more I could write.

  I was the Myth without my Maker. How dreadful. Heart broken, my body screamed in pain. I looked through my tears across the moonlit waters. He was out there somewhere with the other me; the earlier me. The me that hadn’t fallen in love yet. I leaned over the bowsprit and looked down into the water. I could see my moonlit self looking back at me in the water’s reflection. ‘Me the Myth?’ I laughed through my tears as one dripped down and distorted my reflection. I knew that the Myth was supposed to know what to do, but I didn’t have a clue where to begin.

  “Hello?” a voice called out. I sat up and turned around to find a white-haired faery glowing in the light of a small lantern that she held. It was Willow.

  “Oh Willow! Is that you?” Wiping the tears off my face, I picked myself up and jumped down off the bowsprit to the main deck to greet her.

  “Is my lady okay?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” I lied. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you here.”

  “Oh and it is good to see you!” she smiled back. “Of course I wasn’t certain that you were the Myth, but when I saw the way Henry fancied you...” she giggled. “Well, if I was a gambler, I’d have bet on you.”

  Her cheery countenance was a warm and welcoming exchange for the lonely night I had been marooned in. Turning, she whistled a short trill and a few dozen faeries flew out of hiding. Some slid down from the upper sails and some flew up from the lower deck. They were diverse in age and appearance; both male and female. Some as old as the world itself, and some barely old enough to be considered warriors, but each one had come prepared for combat with battle fatigue and thorn swords sheathed around their waists. Many were also equipped with crafted bows and thorn arrows neatly snug into birch quivers that slung over their backs.

  “How’d you know that I would be here?” I asked.

  “It was in the written instructions that Henry gave me many moons ago,” she said. “I was to find the Myth alone in a ship over Lily Palus at exactly this time and night. He told me never to tell anyone, but to select a small group of warriors to serve as guardians of the Troth. I was to bring them with me and to stay with the Myth until she was hidden safely away from Ludo. Then I was to take the Troth and hide it well.”

  My thoughts flashed back to the visions I had seen when Willow had first touched me in the field at the temple when I had carried her to the grass. It was the vision of her receiving those instructions from Henry. I was there at his estate when he had given them to her, not knowing at the time what the letter had said, and not knowing that I was the Myth he was sending her to find. I looked down at the Troth in my hands. The book she was to take when I was gone.


  I thought back to the other visions she had shown me. The one of her flying over the sails of a ship, when the red sun burned low over the waters. I turned backwards to see that the stars on the horizon had already begun to fade against the warm red glow of dawn. ‘Could it have been this day she was showing me?’ I wondered. And then there was that last vision. My heart sank as I realized what was yet to come: the vision of where Willow would soon be headed, after I was gone and she was to hide the Troth. The vision of when my earlier self found her broken on that fateful day, too late to protect her.

  It was all part of the story. A story I hadn’t understood at the time, but was now able to see through the many connections, like dots combine to form a picture. A story that the Maker could tell before any of us had lived it. I felt sad as I surveyed the group of faeries that had come to help me. They were the guardians that would soon hide the Troth at the temple and strive to protect it, even at the cost of their own lives. Their faces appeared hopeful by the light of Willow’s lantern, because they did not know what I knew.

  “What is it?” Willow asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Their silent eyes pleaded with me, as a row of flowers hungry for the sun, but it was good news they were hungry for, and I had none to share. All I had to offer was a horrible secret that weighed heavily on me. It felt too heavy to bear, the knowledge that Ludo would find the book that they were here to protect.

  “What is it Myth? What would have you crying so?”

  “You will suffer,” I mumbled and looked up into her violet eyes. Then I remembered what Prospexi had said. How she warned me against despair; that despair is the weed that would choke out life.

  “Just know that when you are hurt, I will carry you and your feet will root, steadfast and strong. You have a strength that Ludo will neither be aware of, nor be able to extinguish. I reached out my hand to touch hers, and instantly my thoughts raced towards the field of red flowers where the smell of death hovered closely. She pulled away and I opened my eyes to see that she too carried the weight of my tears.

  “What is it Willow? What do you see?” asked one of the young faeries who could see her sadness.

  “I see only part, but you...” Willow looked eagerly at me for relief of better news. “You see the whole. What will happen to us?”

  It was as though I was her mythical hero, with a magic wand that could wave her sorrow away, but I had no wand, and I could not save them from the suffering that lay ahead. It made me feel like I was already a miserable failure for not being able to fill the shoes I found myself in.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what happens.”

  “You must know if we survive?” she asked.

  ‘But I didn’t know,’ I thought. I didn’t know anymore than the suffering she would face, when the faeries fell in the field that day. Only Henry knew what would happen. What would he have said to comfort them? And then I remembered. “I know the story ends well!” I said, smiling with confidence at the diverse group of faeries that had come. It seemed enough for them because they smiled back at me, not asking for more yet not wanting less. They were simply content in the good news of the greater end.

  A high-pitched sound pierced the silence of the dark night; a warble across the wind.

  “What was that?” I asked Willow, jumping up into the rat lines to get a better look at the sea around me.

  The faeries were instantly alert, their thorns ready for action. Some of the male faeries scaled the ropes of the sails and had readied quivers in their bows for action.

  We heard the noise again; a sure sounding note that called out through the moist sea air.

  “It sounds like a tacere flute,” hollered one of the elders from the crow’s nest.

  ‘Oh no!’ I exclaimed, suddenly realizing as the third sharp trill echoed across the water towards me that the noise was a call for help from Justin and Emily. I hopped up onto the raised helm and looked out across the sea. “My friends are in trouble!”

  “We must go and help them!” announced Willow with the confidence of a better leader than I.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “But we have to be on our guard, as they wouldn’t sound that flute unless they had good reason to be afraid.”

  I knew the one who had likely arrived, possibly having chased the carriage that Alfred had raced away in, only to find it empty. Ludo would be furious, and if she discovered us here, all of our plans could be in jeopardy.

  The sun was just about to rise and the sky burned red in anticipation of the day ahead.

  “Red sky in the morning is a sailor’s warning,” I mumbled, remembering what Henry had said.

  “Pardon?” said Willow.

  “Hoist the sails!” I called and ran over to the anchor wheel to raise the anchor.

  “Alright Narina, time to wake up,” I said. The sails were up and I could feel her eager to move. I climbed back up on the helm and took the ship’s wheel.

  “Ready about?” I called out.

  “Ready!” my crew responded.

  “Helms alee!” I sang out, and with Willow as my guide and the sun pushing up through the red sky behind us, we sailed towards them, catching the morning breeze in our sails.

  ‘I need to find ink!’ I thought and put Willow in charge before I descended into the Captain’s quarters below. Henry had only given me a quick tour of the rooms on the lower deck, so when I entered the cedar lined room I had to hope that I could find what I was looking for. I began at a small writing desk snuggly fit inside the cozy room. Opening the top drawer, I shuffled through the papers and maps for something that resembled a bottle of ink.

  ‘Nothing,’ I muttered, and fear began to swell inside me. Had I used up all of the ink? Was home now farther away than it was suppose to be? I threw open the drawer to my right and two drawers below it, I but there was no ink.

  “Where is it Henry?” I whispered. “Where do you keep the ink?”

  Looking behind me, I noticed a built-in credenza type unit with maps sprawled out over its large counter surface and books filling the upper shelves, but it was the several drawers below the counter that called my attention. I searched each drawer systematically and found more maps, sketches, a compass, several charcoal pencils, and brass instruments. In the third drawer down I spotted a small box labelled, ‘Black Ink’.

  ‘Please be full,’ I said to myself as I fumbled to open the thick paper box. I placed the glass container down on the desk and smiled seeing it was full of ink. I carefully opened its lid and took Spiritus from around my neck. Dipping the end of the pen into the dark well, I pushed against the plunger and the ink filled the pen’s body. Its silver cylindrical shell instantly brightened. I opened the Troth to the first blank page, held Spiritus over the paper and allowed my hand to slowly drop to the paper’s surface.

  The snake strikes. With seething anger for being sent off course, Ludo has taken the two captive, but it is the third she desires.

  “Where is the Myth?” She slithers towards the boy, but his eyes tell her nothing, as he himself does not know.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in her?” he says thick with sarcasm. “I thought she was only a Myth?”

  Ludo’s forked tongue flicks out as she smiles. “You will ssserve me well with that clever sssavy,” she hisses and then turns to the girl who cowers in her presence. “And what do you believe?” she asks with a sickly sweet voice that quickly turns to sour venom.

  “The Myth will come for us, just as the Maker says.” The girl cautiously looks up and points out towards the sea. “From there in the east where the red sun rises.”

  The door opened and a female faery fluttered in the room. “Smoke on the horizon!” she announced. “We think it may be fire demons.”

  “Set a course directly for the smoke. We must intercept Ludo and her army! She has captured my friends.” I said. “When you see t
hem, come and get me.”

  “As you wish,” she bowed and fluttered off.

  Her reverence towards me felt awkward, as I neither deserved nor desired it.

  I looked back down on the desk where the Troth remained open and Spiritus waited in my hand, glowing and determined to write.

  The wolf hunts. With eyes full of heinous hunger Ludo catches sight of white sails shining over the red waters. Narina Caravel has come with the precious cargo and she smiles a cursed grin, for her wicked plan is unfolding.

  “Towards the ship!” her voice barks the command and her pack of demons instantly direct their course for the boat.

  “The Myth will save us!” shouts the girl who is held against her will by the large dark bird.

  “SILENCE!” Ludo snarls. “Or I will silence your tongue for you.”

  Racing over the water, Ludo pulls back to let her pack make the first attack.

  “Take any faery you’d like, but save the Myth for me,” she howls a wretched laughter.

  “They are here!” I look up to find the young faery in the doorway.

  “Her demons will attack first, so don’t hesitate with your arrows and sword,” I said. “Leave the hellkites, that carry my friends. Do all you can to protect them, and yourselves.”

  “What about Ludo?” her small voice asked.

  “She is here for me, so let her come.”

  She bowed and took her leave and I was alone again with Spiritus, determined to finish.

  The shark attacks. With many teeth, Ludo is hungry to commence a feeding frenzy.

  “Fire!” shouts the white haired faery.

  I glanced up towards the door, having heard Willow’s command outside on deck, but Spiritus still glowed, urging me to write. Its shining light whitened the room with its glory and I could see the battle through the page.

  The air teems with stinging thorns that bite the invading enemy and a school of demons burst instantly into flames. They fall like napalm into the sea, but the faeries are still out-numbered, three to one.