The First Storyteller

by Varun Gwalani

  I took a deep breath so that I was ready to make a heroic speech. I was the conquering knight returning to the adoration of the townspeople. I was the master orator ready to change the course of a nation. I was the ruler rallying the troops. It was with this voice that I looked myself in the eye in my reflection and spoke:

  “You look like shit.”

  I pocketed the knife and kept walking into the setting sun.

  16

  Last Hope

  The light was fading, I was running.

  I had a flaming torch in my hand. I wasn’t running very fast. I periodically checked the sun’s position in the sky. It was setting, although I couldn’t tell how fast. I was trying to figure out how to stop it. Maybe it meant the end was close. The only thing I knew was that I was taking too many rests. I needed to move faster.

  I picked up the pace, which was also helpful in keeping the cold away. It was a cold atmosphere in every sense, really, because there was the idea of something dangerous close-something forbidding. It made me sleepy.

  One cycle I saw a bright light shining ahead of me as I was running. “Finally, some progress,” I muttered as I ran towards it. I pushed through the final trees (At this point, it felt like they were the same trees in different places) and entered the light.

  I was in a field of grass that stretched in either direction endlessly, obviously, and everything on the other side of the field was coated in a thick, viscous mist. Halfway through the field was a pool and standing, not floating, next to that pool was...the Guide, bathed in only the glow of the sunlight around him and smiling at me.

  “You again!” I yelled, marching towards him, “Are you contractually obligated to appear every time I enter the light? Are you going to be the one to greet me in the afterlife? Oh, dammit, I hope not!”

  Its smile disappeared and it rolled its eyes. “Nice to see you again, too!”

  It was only then that I realized how I knew it was the Guide. The weary features that I had seen earlier were more visible now and they were the ones I had seen in my reflection. I decided that I wouldn’t mention it.

  “You figured it out, huh?” It asked with a smirk on its face.

  I decided to ignore it. “What are you here for now? I’m guessing it’s not to give me anything useful or practical. More one-word advice then?”

  “No,” it said, suddenly sombre. “My advice will be significantly longer now. And you must not joke about the afterlife, because you are very close to it.”

  “Ooo. Ominous,” I waved a hand. “Get on with it then. I had a thought recently about what to do to the next face that looked like mine. I’m revisiting it now.”

  It was confused, but seeing the glint in my eyes, it started, “I am here to tell you,” it said, using its deep, booming voice. I groaned. It ignored me. “That this is your last chance to turn back.” It indicated a long- forgotten road twisting back to home. “The darkness lies ahead.” The mist didn’t part dramatically to reveal dark trees, but it was close.

  “I’m terrified. Do tell me more.”

  “There is a prophecy-”

  “NO!” I screamed. “There isn’t a prophecy, no! I don’t need rhyming couplets or riddles that I have to remember till the end, and base my life on, and the only reason I end up doing what is prophesised is because you told me to! No!”

  The Guide raised its eyes wide and staggered back a little. “What don’t you feel strongly about?” It asked.

  “Just,” I took a deep breath, “Just give me the gist, okay? I’m sure you can do that this once.”

  “You have to choose whether to go into the dark or not,” it continued quickly, in the hope of finishing before I started to talk again, “Before you choose, however, you must look into the Rirrom of-”

  Once again I burst out, “Ree-rom? Rirrom? What in the bloody name of all that is dark is a Rirrom?”

  The Guide faltered. “It means ‘Mirror’-”

  “Then goddamned say mirror!” I yelled. “Why do you have to go and complicate it?”

  “Hey, I don’t make the names!” It shot back. “It was actually supposed to have a different flipped word that was taken in a parallel land-”

  “Parallel land?!” I shouted, incredulous. “There are parallel lands now? What does that even mean? That these long bloody fields do end, and that if you go too far you’ll fall into some other place?”

  “It’s like an allegory when one land is used as a substitute for another!”

  “Everything can be used for an allegory for something else! We could be in a land that’s parallel to some other one now!”

  “Enough!” The Guide thundered, its voice echoing. “Take this seriously! The prophecy says that there is only one way out of the darkness and that is to die!” I couldn’t deny that my blood chilled. Only a little, though. “So you’ll look into that pool, you’ll see your heart’s truest desire there, and you’ll make a decision! Knock yourself out!”

  With that, it disappeared.

  “I still didn’t hear any advice,” I muttered.

  I walked up cautiously to the pool. My heart’s truest desire? That could just mean the end of this journey but with the Forest, it was never that simple.

  I reached the pool. It was shallow and clear. I slowly stuck my head forward and looked into it. A jumble of letters passed along the top of the pool before vanishing. I gasped when I found that my face wasn’t reflected. That gasp seemed to travel to the pool’s surface and fogged it up. Despite myself, I leaned in for a closer look.

  The image cleared to reveal an overhead view of a paisley-coloured room. The view moved in closer, revealing a family sitting around a table, holding hands and praying. They started eating the delicious food in front of them with a lively enthusiasm. There was no hidden violence; there was not a trace of antagonism or irony in their actions.

  The scene blurred and changed into a light-blue room with a group of people sitting around a table, talking, laughing, joking, sharing secrets, crying, comforting.

  The scene blurred once more into a rose-coloured room with two people sitting on a bed close to each other. They were not kissing; it quite like there was no sexual tension between them at all. And yet, they looked at each other with happiness in their eyes, as if the other’s mere presence was enough for their contentment.

  Something deep inside me, something that I was trying to suppress, bloomed once more. It was hope.

  As if sensing this, the viewpoint slowly panned, and it was me staring into my lover’s eyes, finally, completely, acknowledging my presence. The scene blurred quickly, and the group of friends were looking at me, laughing at something I had said, not laughing at me. In the blink of an eye, the scene had shifted and I was eating food with the family I had always dreamed of having.

  I dropped to my knees, irresistibly attracted to these visions. A tear or two fell out of my eyes before I chastised myself. I may have been imagining it, but I saw the tears change course before falling into the pool, as if the pool fed on the tears of all who knelt before it.

  I tried hard to look away, but my eyes were inevitably drawn back to those seductive images, those moving pictures, blurring between each scene now. A beautiful hum filled the air, relaxing me. The people had changed, their bodies and faces were of the people I knew, of the village I had lived in. They understood, and they finally accepted me. The scenes blurred faster until they melded together, until they were inviting me to join them. Hypnotised, my hand extended towards the pool and a hand from the pool broke the fourth wall and rose slowly to grasp it. Just as our fingers were about to touch, I retracted my hand. If I touched the pool, my soul would live in the happy illusion of the Forest and my body would remain kneeling there until it was stripped away by time.

  But couldn’t I have the real thing instead? I got to my feet slowly. I stepped away from the pool and looked at the way back. All this toil should have changed me at least a little, right? What if it was enough for them to accept me? Isn’t tha
t what happened at the end of the hero’s journey? They returned home, and the people celebrated them because they had succeeded. They certainly didn’t die, how heroic would that be? So couldn’t I go back and be celebrated?

  I couldn’t.

  That was why I was here.

  If I hadn’t exhausted every hope of being happy,

  I wouldn’t have entered the Forest at all. Now, I was here at what seemed to be the end, and my last hope was that those very people who never cared for me would suddenly do so. In real life, the returned are treated with envy and scorn. In real life, the returned go mad. I needed to give up hope. It was time to accept that I would never be happy with them, and that maybe I didn’t deserve it. It was time to accept that maybe I wasn’t a hero.

  I turned away from the way back and looked towards the darkness. The light faded from the field and the setting sun evoked the same sense of doom as the dawn. The mist cleared and the Path revealed itself once more, running through the dark trees.

  I picked up my torch where I had dropped it and started to walk. The beautiful hum turned into a terrible screech, as was the nature of such things. Horrible, disembodied voices filled the air, screaming discouragement, insults and vile words. The voices of my family, peers, villagers all rang loud. I ignored all of them and kept walking. Their voices, discouraged by this, scattered in the wind and went to find fresher targets.

  I stood at the edge of darkness. I said goodbye to the sun and stepped forward. The darkness engulfed me. The Path and I were now inseparable in life, and soon would be in death.

  17

  Fear Logic

  In the light, when you’re still sure of yourself, of where you’re going, it’s easy to talk about death, about dying for the right causes or your beliefs. Complacency sets in when you can still see something of the Path ahead, when you have some sense of security.

  For the first time in my life, the sun was absent in the sky, and I was surrounded by a shifting darkness the likes of which I had never experienced.

  And now that darkness surrounded me. The light from my burning torch barely provided any relief, and my fear was mounting. All around me, I heard shocking, startling sounds that foretold dangers that never came; as if those dangers were standing close by, enjoying their mockery and my terror.

  A tree branch cracked under my foot, and I jumped to the side into some thorns; as if I had been following some malignant force which had suddenly intuited my presence. I painfully and silently extracted myself from the thorn.

  I continued quietly, almost tiptoeing, unsure of what exactly I was afraid of. I was so busy looking around, I slammed headfirst into a tree, almost dropping my torch and snuffing it out. That jolted me back to my senses somewhat. Fear was turning me into a caricature of myself, something that happened all too often to humans. So I closed my eyes and when the fear arose, I pushed it down. It fought hard, and I grappled with it for a long while before I managed to suppress it. Satisfied, I walked further until my body tensed and another hard feeling started to arise within me, fear, converted to anger. I tried to block it out as well, but the emotions would keep coming, and I couldn’t afford to deal with them right now, more than any other time on this journey.

  That’s when I did it, the unthinkable action that would make all my actions only thinkable. I focused hard, and I battled against everything I was feeling, relentlessly forcing down it all down like it was bad food on a rainy day. Slowly, it felt like I was dying, like I didn’t exist anymore, and I was just narrating everything that was going on to someone else, as if now my internal narrative had an internal narrative.

  You opened your eyes and looked around. It was all dark around you, yes, but the light of the torch was enough to navigate and travel by. The woods are lonely, dark and deep, but traversing them is manageable with the aid of sufficient light and adequate navigational skills.

  You continued walking, the incandescent glow of the flame lighting the path in front of you enough that you don’t trip or knock your foot against something unrelenting and risk injury. There’s a large squish under your foot, and you check to see an insect, coloured patterns rippling across its translucent wings and thin lines forming an asymmetrical design on its body. You considered. Colours could not be seen in darkness, so even capturing enough of these creatures (which were probably one-of-a-kind and hard to find here) would not help in the journey. You scraped the corpse off quickly and efficiently and continued walking.

  The noises around you had reduced, though they were not eliminated completely. You didn’t break pace or even turn towards any of them, because in your mind there was an analysis of every sound and its possible explanations, most of which seemed reasonable enough for you not to have to alter pace. Proper pacing had largely been ignored in the past, sporadically slowing down at some places and speeding up at others. If a regular focused pattern had been maintained, then the destination would have been achieved much faster without all that silly nonsense along the way. Who refuses a helpful companion? Who gets so caught up so much in someone else? Societal bonding and community benefits only extend so far, after all.

  You snorted contemptuously at the thoughts and decided to discard them. After learning everything you can from past events, remembering them is pretty much pointless. You nod to yourself, though not proudly because pride at being better than everyone else was a pointless activity that became too much of a distraction to actual prospects.

  There’s a strange emptiness spreading through your mind, which is essentially all you are now. You continued analysing the sounds you heard, but now you also started looking closer at whatever trees fell in the torchlight. You started correlating bark striations, distance between tree ringlets, distance between trees. You didn’t find any real patterns, and so set about theorising why that was so. The only concrete conclusion that you could reach was that the barks definitely were made of wood, which you filed away as a possibly useful fact.

  Once that was settled, your attention was drawn to yourself. Isn’t it strange, the way legs drop rhythmically? It’s possible that they do not fall optimally, however. There might be ways to improve length of leg raised to distance travelled. You experimented, raising your leg higher; extending it further. These simply resulted in you landing hard on your middle, your legs spread awkwardly ahead and behind you. You let yourself fall to the floor, and picked yourself up, wincing. Pain was good. It meant that nothing was broken.

  Experiments always have consequences. You became aware of a sound that had been building at regular intervals that was now right behind you. You turned sharply on the balls of your feet and saw-something.

  It took you a minute to understand what you were seeing because what you were seeing should have been impossible to see. It seemed to you a floating dark cloud that was apparently inching its way towards you. It quite possibly was radiating something, but you couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be and you obviously couldn’t feel it. (Wait, two ‘something’s? Is this dark mass possibly distorting speech patterns as well? Must be looked into at a later time).

  As it came closer, you remained frozen to the spot. Is it a perverted trick of the light? If it’s a dark mass, can it even possess light? Does it have any mass at all? These were just a few of the dozen or so utterly important thoughts that crept into your mind.

  That’s when it occurred to you that, as a general rule, dark clouds that drift towards you with slightly menacing auras (aura being just the purely commonplace term for a more scientific phenomenon that you cannot currently adequately explain, of course) should generally be avoided, if at all possible. So you did what you should have done in the first place: turn tail and run.

  Thoughts raced through your head as your feet raced ahead. Was it alone? Did it have friends? Was “friends” really the technically correct term? Wouldn’t “counterparts” or “similar beings” in fact be-

  Your highly important musings were cut short by a low whoosh of the cloud catching up after
you slowed down. You sped up, almost yelping unsavourily but managing to resist the urge. As you ran, another thought occurred to you: This cloud was made of some intangible substance, but it travelled through air. How would it not catch up with you on foot?

  This thought slowed you down and you tripped, but had enough presence of mind to keep your torch intact. You turn on your back to see the aura cloud almost on you. You consider thrusting your torch into it, but the likelihood of that actually affecting it is very low. Your time would be better spent trying to figure out how to defeat it. You think desperately of how to combat it, but nothing occurs to you. Nothing coherent or workable, of course; there’s always something in your mind. (There is it again! At least my assumptions were sound! Though I mustn’t brag.)

  As it edged closer, the aura that it radiated brought up an emotion within you, and you desperately tried to push down that frivolous emotion. Before the aura could come any closer, a bat shrieked in the distance and the aura temporarily froze as a thrill of fear ran through your body. A deep, throaty but benevolent voice that was not your own ran through your mind, How can you expect to survive without your most primal instincts, the fears and joys that push you stronger, harder, faster than anything else could? Without them, survival is neither possible nor worth anything.

  As the voice spoke, the feeling you were feeling grew stronger and stronger until it finally broke through, and I screamed and swung the torch through where the dark cloud was while jumping up and running in the other direction as fast as I could. It was only after several minutes of hard running when I turned back that I saw that the cloud wasn’t there anymore.

  I had the oddest sense that it was inside me now.

  18

  Dying of the Light