The First Storyteller

by Varun Gwalani

  “The daughter stopped and turned to her mother as well, her quiet eyes inquisitive.

  “Her mother looked at both of them, and then at the happy couples all around. The question could not be avoided any longer. She knelt down and pulled both her children close before she started,

  “‘Children, I want to tell you that your father’s gone to a better place. But I don’t know. All I know is he’s gone,’ Here she hesitated, ‘But before he died, he stood outside the entrance to our cave for days and days, barely eating food and water, because he wanted to make sure that you, the first children of this land, were safe. He safeguarded you because he believed that you would one day make a difference to our home. And I often dream that he comes to watch over you, to make sure that you’re still safe.’

  “Nobody knows whether the story that mother told her children was true. There are several that claim that the story was a lie, that her husband had done nothing of the sort. But those who were tied up in the truth of the story missed its meaning, because those children worked hard and grew up to become two of the greatest leaders of that land. That was because that story carried them through, and gave them hope; hope that they could be something better than what they were; that they could be more. And they did. The First Mother was the First Storyteller, and they had both done their job.”

  The girl jumped to her feet and started clapping wildly, even though she had not understood the implications of everything I had said. The elder had, though. He walked up to me, eyes narrowed, lip trembling in all the uncontained disapproval he was capable of.

  “Telling stories with words that we don’t use, talking about things we don’t talk about; claiming that stories can be contested? What utter poppycock. This young girl is never listening to your filth again and you shall be punished thoroughly.”

  Saying so, he turned and grabbed the girl’s arm roughly and led her away. I didn’t have time to react because soon the air was pierced with a sharp cry that came from the village. There was nothing particularly painful scheduled at this moment, so I ran towards the source of the noise, as did everyone else.

  The cry sounded again, and I ran into the hut as the same time several others did.

  A very surprised woman was currently giving birth. This particular birth was not scheduled for at least a few hours now, and everyone was agape. The baby soon came out, a healthy, beautiful girl that nobody wanted to hold. An unscheduled birth into a world where every minute of her life would be planned; the irony was almost too much to bear in a room where nobody would know the meaning of the word. I edged my way out of the hut and stood, gasping on the cliff once more, unable to understand this hand clawing at my throat, suffocating me.

  What stories would that baby grow up with? What would she learn? I could not teach her anything anymore. I could do nothing here anymore. My eyes alighted on the Forest, and everything came together once more. I knew what I had to do. I needed to leave. I needed to dream. I was going to be a revolutionary, simply now because I had that eternal currency that all revolutions deal in: Hope.

  I turned around as my soul finally caught fire, which blazed through my eyes, and reflected itself in the fiery red bird that was circling the sky. The bird plunged downwards and my eyes moved downwards with it. It plunged into the water and did not come out, my eyes became fixed on the rocks right below; reminding me that all stories, one way or another, must end.

  2

  Zero

  I was awake. I was awake, full of vitality and burning with desire while the rest of the known world, small as it was, slept. I had always been an early riser, ready to see the dawn before anyone else.

  Now, I rose up from my bed and snuck out of the hut. I could say that it was the crack of dawn, but here on the Coast, that was always the case.

  I stood in front of Skiros and stared at the Forest, as I had for many dawns now; my resolve slowly building. Time slithered on, inducing drowsiness, which I fought off. My eyes were wide open.

  The Forest did not seem to me a mass of brown and green anymore. Instead, it was a spreading pure white canvas, one on which I could make my mark, words made into images that would transform into something more.

  I was routinely chastened for awakening earlier, and I routinely listened and carried on. Soon, I would be gone, and this would not matter. I would not be their concern and they would not be mine. It was time to start preparations in earnest.

  Gathering knowledge was important, and the easiest, so I decided to start with that. Over the next few dawns, I remembered all the details of every single story I had ever been told.

  “The people of the Coast are not the first people, but in some senses, we have become the first people,” he would say, his voice full of power and an understanding I could never possess. “We came by boat from a dying land, but nobody knows where that boat landed, and as you can imagine, no one has ever attempted to find out.”

  After I had been working with him for some time, he revealed to me that he knew more than he let on. His mind was full of stories that had been passed down to him from the old days; stories which he could never hope to fully understand or explain. I begged him to tell me, and he did slowly. He told me of empires, books, music, wars; filling my mind with vivid images of things that I had never seen and believed I would never see.

  His stories of the Forest had always sent a secret thrill through my body, and now I was beginning to understand why.

  “It is said that Skiros was made deep in the Forest. The very first traveller brought it back from the Forest, though she would never talk about her experiences in the Forest or how she found it. Nobody knows for sure what lies at the end of the Forest, because I do not yet recall a story of one besides the first who reached the end and came back. It is supposed to be something extraordinary, something that was rare even in the old days. Getting to the end isn’t easy. The Forest is full of magic and danger, and those who walk the Path through the Forest are often unprepared.”

  I committed all these words, all these images deep into memory, and I watched them spreading out on that blank white canvas of the Forest. I would be prepared, I told myself. I would experience the impossible; I would give life and memory to those forgotten words. Anticipation blossomed and spread, beginning in my chest and slowly vibrating its way to the rest of the body. A primordial fear, which made me shudder and break the vibrations, arose at the same time.

  I needed to know more. I needed to do what was considered unthinkable for anyone from the Coast: Talk to travellers outright about their journey. Rumour had it that down the Coast, in the more privileged sections, there were some who regularly went into the Forest and came out unscathed; an idea incomprehensible in our more conservative village. These faux travellers came out unscathed merely because they did not intend to stay in there for very long. Our village still had those who went into the Forest with the intention of making it through to the end, but not always the fortitude. Few who went in came back. The ones who never came back were assumed did. The ones who did come back did so at varying levels of insanity. Since there was a chance I was to join that blighted number, I decided to glean from them what I could.

  The Returned were alternatively scorned and pitied, but for the most part, they were left alone. Most of their families pretended that they didn’t exist anymore, that they had been lost forever when they had walked into the Forest. These survivors jumped off the cliffs soon after their arrival, either unable to readjust to life on the Coast, or too haunted by their experiences to carry on.

  It wasn’t easy to communicate with any of them. I had to try and make sense of the raving and ranting of the woman muttering frantically to herself, examining every bit of food carefully as if looking for something; the man who was literally terrified of his own shadow; another who spent most of his time gazing into the water, muttering over and over about expecting something different; and the woman who kept examining the same flowers as if she expected them to transform. Most of their ans
wers were insensible, but the terror in their eyes and the tremble of their voice made their message clear: Don’t leave.

  As I lay in bed, I ruminated on the possible horrors that awaited me, and it dampened the fire whenever I slept, only to have me coax it back up whenever I awoke. Exultation was tempered by fear, anticipation by caution.

  I decided that I should leave no stone unturned, no matter how badly I wanted to step on the stone and crush it instead. With that thought in my mind, I went to the intellectuals and philosophers to see what they had to say. Dry mouths with powerful voices and waving hands claimed to have many theories, theories of time, of God, life, the interconnectedness of all; but none of it was of any value, they were just pretty words that served to throw more mud on, rather than dig up, the truest secrets.

  Doubts grew in my mind.

  More concerns began to plague me. What if I was unable to understand what I found in the Forest, what if I made the wrong choices because I couldn’t comprehend the decisions I would have to make? Every time I slept, the fire dropped lower, and with every awakening, I coaxed it higher.

  All the while I was making practical arrangements for the journey. I had been forbidden for doing the next few story sessions, and that was fine with me. I used the time to build up my strength, to test my endurance, which was surprisingly good. It seemed taking repeated beatings was good for something. I also practiced important skills, such as the identification of different varieties of wildlife and learning how to treat injuries and prevent infection. I surreptitiously gathered supplies and packed them in a bag that I had learned to craft. I did as much as I could while avoiding detection, but the fear was mounting that none of it would be enough. The fire was almost burned out; the fire was reaching higher than ever before.

  The villagers tried to avoid saying anything for as long as they could, hoping that my fire would burn out; but they had seen enough flaming madness to recognise it. A lot of them claimed that they had known that this was inevitable for me, that I had been doomed to this a long time ago. The people living with me were also of this opinion and they were not shy to express it. Wide eyes, upturned mouths and slamming hands missed no opportunity to chastise me and taunt me for crimes not yet committed. I did not say anything.

  My abrasive peers were the most vocal in their scorn for me, alternatively scared and scornful of me; their sneers proclaiming me to be insane, attention- seeking and idiotic. They chose how to ornament their demure bodies rather than augment their minds. The ones who had once claimed to love me denounced me most strongly with the fickle lips I had once kissed.

  Every time I woke up, I pushed the fire to a height where it burned bright, all the way to twenty-four, but by the time I went to bed, it had diminished to zero, and every dream after that was of me passing through that fire, rekindling it over and over. Many dawns passed like that, with me simply staring at the Forest, waking up to the idea that I would leave then, but spending the entire time till bed worrying about what might go wrong, how might my journey fail. My mind was both the ecstasy of dreaming and the agony of living, and my impatience grew, yet I just stood there, staring at the blank canvas and imagining all that it could hold.

  The beginning of a story was always the longest stretch, and the hardest. Every dawn, though, I had to rededicate myself to the idea of leaving, to the idea of taking that first step. I had to trust that I would be able to continue facing that blank canvas every day; that the eternal spectator would also have enough faith in me in to stay with me on my journey.

  The turmoil of indecision raged on, until one dawn when the fire burned the highest, engulfing my soul, I grabbed everything I had prepared and ran towards the Forest. The fire burned my heels like hot coals, adding a spring to every step. There was no thinking; there was no worrying, no stopping. There was simply doing, there was simply running. I was going to be the teller of new stories. I was going to learn the secrets of the ages and find true love. I was going to be free.

  My running attracted attention, and soon, feet began chasing me, which made me run faster, laughing all the while. The fire had almost devoured me now, and I was close. I was not to paint on that canvas anymore; I was to become one with it.

  I stepped on the mound for the last time, all the tales I had told there becoming one with me. I made one final, glorious jump through Skiros, the coiled serpent alive and turning as I passed. Time itself enveloped me, passion consumed me and I entered the light.

  3

  Bridge Over Troubled Emotions

  “Welcome.”

  This single word was intoned with a deep voice that echoed around the tiny clearing I was in. But I wasn’t listening. The clearing was suffused with a light filtering through the trees that was a little more than the dim light I had been used to all my life. It fascinated me, even this little bit of brightness. I picked myself up of the ground and walked around the clearing, my head raised, trying to catch a better glimpse of this light.

  The deep voice, which had unsubtly been making noises to attract my attention, (which resulted it in sounding like the Forest had a bad case of gas) now said in a manner that wanted me to get on with it, “You won’t be able to see it right now.” It made that undignified noise again. “Now, as I was saying, stay where you are-”

  I whirled around to face the source of the voice. A white figure bathed in an unearthly glow stood there (or floated there, I could not be sure because of the glow). I could swear that if I could see its features, they would be annoyed.

  “You’re not supposed to turn around now! You’re supposed to turn around at the end, so there can be a dramatic reveal before I disappear!”

  “Whoops, sorry,” I said, barely one-quarter- heartedly. “So, are you the supernatural being that comes to support and offer assistance to the traveller on a quest?”

  “I...I...” it mumbled deeply, “I am the Guide, yes. But-”

  “Great! Does that mean I get a map?”

  “No! You have to make your own way through the Forest.”

  “So...what does that mean? Do I get a sword, or a bow or-?”

  “No!” The Guide continued angrily. “You get nothing!”

  “Not even a lousy healing potion?” I mumbled.

  “NO!” Its yell ran in my ears. “Now, listen to me. What I can offer you is guidance.”

  “Right. The name should have given it away.” I muttered before quickly adding, “Sorry.”

  I wondered if it spent all its time off in the trees somewhere, its glow faded, ready to jump out in its shining light to dole out the speeches it spent all that time preparing. I felt sorry for it, and so I listened quietly for now.

  It started off a little vehemently, but then continued in a practiced fashion:

  “Welcome to this most important journey, one which will be impossibly hard and incredibly dangerous. You might not make it; you might die on the Path. Do you understand?”

  “I understand that you portrayed yourself as someone who is supposed to help me move forward, not make me want to turn back.”

  “I’ll take that to mean you understand. You have been very brave to begin this journey, but the limits of your bravery are to be tested now. I might or might not see you again during your journey again. Your Path will be decided by you.” It indicated to the side, where I now noticed a small road curving back the way I had come. “That is the way back. It will always be present, and it is always the shortest way back, should you choose to take it. There will be no punishment or repercussions if you chose to at any point.”

  “There are repercussions beyond repercussions,” I said simply.

  “Better humans than you have tried and failed the Forest,” it said.

  I shrugged. It continued, “Now, I have said all I can. I must leave you to your journey.”

  “Wait, what?” I exclaimed. “That was no kind of guidance or advice! Change your name!”

  The Guide did not say anything before the voice arose once more, “I can only spare a
little bit of advice, the one thing you need to do to start your journey.”

  “Why only a little? Is your supply running low?”

  “My advice is this,” it said, talking over me. “Don’t panic.”

  I waited. “Come on! You can do better!” I exclaimed when it didn’t say more. I could swear it was laughing.

  “Okay,” it said. It did not respond for while, obviously relishing my impatience before it finally said, “Believe.”

  I waited for the rest. It did not say anything else. I rolled my eyes and said, “Typical.”

  It did not deign to reply. Instead, its light started fading around it, and before it disappeared, I caught sight of its features. They were old and weary features, but I could swear they were familiar. Before I could reflect further, it was gone.

  I turned around, stared at that light once more, and stepped through the trees.

  That’s when I almost fell into a gaping hole in the ground. More accurately, it was nearer to “yawning chasm” and less of “hole”. It stretched endlessly from side to side, and there was no way across or around it. I edged forward and tentatively looked down into it, after which I jumped back to safety. Not because of the enormous depth or the thick darkness, of course. Not because of the deep red glow that emerged from the bottom. It had more to do with my soul being crushed.

  It felt like someone had reached into me, grabbed my insides and twisted them. The feeling was growing and I backed off as far as possible.

  In doing so, I looked back to see a small road curving away from the chasm. It was the way back, and it was calling me, back to drudgery and despair.

  There was no way that was happening. Abandoning the venture the first problem I encountered would be a travesty. The real action would start now. There had to be a way to traverse this chasm, and I would find it. I resolved myself to the idea and turned around to survey it once again.

  And saw a bridge going down the middle.