The Ankulen

by Kendra E. Ardnek

  “Eight years ago, there was an Anku, Anku Jared, whose imagination was attacked by the same Polystoikhedron you are about to fight,” said the Giver. I tilted my head to the side, intrigued by his decision to illustrate with a story. “He was twenty-nine years old – beyond the age that the Polystoikhedra usual target. His wife had died of cancer two years before, and between trying to raise their six-year-old daughter and paying the hospital bills, he was neglecting his world a lot – and such neglect is what Polystoikhedra seek in their victims.

  “He still faithfully told his daughter a bedtime story from his world every night, and only because of those did he at last notice the Polystoikhedron's presence. He chose to fight, but he was not one of the ones who succeeded, leaving his young daughter to be adopted by the very family of the Polystoikhedron's next victim.”

  “Megan …” I breathed.

  “Precisely. Had Anku Jared not chosen to fight, had he not met with failure and death, you would have been attacked by a different Polystoikhedron, and your parents would have adopted a different girl.”

  “But would that have changed anything? For me? Now?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. But, answer me this – where is the happily ever after ending best put? In the middle or at the end?”

  “At the end,” I answered, automatically.

  “We are not yet at the end of History,” said The Giver, solemnly. “There are small victories, yes, but all will not be right until we reach that End. Until then, everyone will play his part, big or small, for or against, and the LORD does not make a move without the intention of that End. So, Anka Jenifer, will you play the part he has set for you?”

  “Of course,” I replied, then a sigh escaped me. “It would just be so much easier if I knew the good that each of the three outcomes might bring.”

  “Only one will bring true good, and that is the one that He has already planned to happen. Now however …” He was suddenly standing. “It is time for me to combine your dreams with your brother's.”

  The land around me shimmered for a moment, then changed. There were fewer flowers now, instead a tall tree took up residence every few yards or so. Tall mountains loomed in the distance.

  Against the tree nearest me leaned Derek, whose eyebrows were up again. “You're sitting on the ground?”

  I shrugged. “There weren't any trees handy to lean against until you got here. Besides, I like the ground.”

  Derek rolled his eyes. “So when are we going to fight this monster?”

  “All too soon.”

  “Yes, the battle is at hand,” confirmed The Giver. “And you are both as ready to fight as you can possibly be, yet you cannot fight unarmed.”

  “I was wondering when you'd think of that,” said Derek.

  “Soldier Derek and Anka Jenifer, hold out your hands.”

  Obediently, I did so. A bolt of light shot across my outstretched hands, solidifying into a sword almost too bright to look at. Blinking, I looked up at The Giver and whispered, “Thank-you.”

  “These are not the ordinary blades of the world, for they are not made of corruptible iron and steel, but of incorruptible light and truth – two things that the Polystoikhedra cannot stand.”

  “Impressive,” Derek admitted. I instinctively ducked, for I suspected that he was trying his out over my head.

  “You will find that, as long as you hold them in your hands, you cannot be destroyed. And yet, it is in letting go that they might do the worst damage.” In conclusion to this speech, he rested his hand first on Derek's head and then my own, giving us a quick order to, “Fight well,” and then he disappeared from sight.

  “That was The Giver,” I said, to break the silence.

  “Was it? He told me to call him The General.”

  “Perhaps, to you that's what he is. He called you a Soldier. A soldier needs a general. I'm an Anka, I call him The Giver because he gave me my Ankulen,” I explained.

  “I thought he said he would help us fight.”

  “He gave us these swords, without which we would never win. Besides, it's God Whose help we need, not The Giver's.”

  I expected some sort of snappy reply, but Derek only nodded and said, “Yeah, I guess you're right.” We lapsed into silence for several seconds before he added, “You'd never believe it, but that General guy tried to steal my memories.”

  Tensing, I asked, “I take it you turned the offer down?”

  Derek snorted. “Of course I did. Who in their right mind would give up half of their life's worth of memories?”

  I took a deep breath. “You're looking at her.”

  “You let him take your memories?”

  “Eight years ago. I was hurt by the betrayal of my closest friends, and though I wanted to so badly, refused to let myself forgive them. I thought that forgetting would make the pain go away … but it only made it worse.”

  “And now you see my point that you have to be stupid to let that guy run off with your memories.”

  I sighed. “Running from your problem is never the answer. You have to face it. Whether it is to fight or to forgive, it doesn't matter, you just have to face it.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Derek, “when are we going to fight that Polystoikhedron?”

  As if on cue, no sooner were the words out of his mouth than the scenery shimmered again and changed. Color faded and the plants sickened. My flowers all but disappeared. At the foot of Derek's mountain, everything was gray and lifeless – with the exception of the writhing mass that was the Polystoikhedron.

  “Well,” said Derek, “let's get this over with.” He started walking towards the beast, but turned when he realized that I wasn't following. “Aren't you coming?” he asked, eyebrow raised.

  I looked up at him and a whimper escaped my lips. My white-knuckled grip on the sword's hilt was from fear, not determination.

  Chapter 23

  In Which We Put Up a Good Fight, but I Still Get Eaten

  ROLLING his eyes, he marched back over and yanked me to my feet. “Look,” he said, his tone annoyed, “you're the one who got us into this. No wimping out now.”

  My chin jerked upward as I met his eye. My mouth trembled when I tried to open it, so I didn't trust myself to speak.

  “No wimping out, you hear!” he ordered, leaning so close that his brown eyes bored into mine.

  Biting my lip, I forced myself to nod. “I – I – I won't!”

  “Good.” He let go of my arm, spun around, and started walking towards the Polystoikhedron again.

  I took a deep breath, raised my sword, and forced myself to stride after him. There wasn't enough ground between us and it, for all too soon a chorus of voices hissed, “Where is your Ankulen, Anka?”

  Swallowing, I opened my mouth to retort, but Derek beat me to it. “Where you'll never find it. She's smarter than to wear it into a battle against you. Today you die, monster.” Then he glanced over his shoulder at me. “You didn't say that this thing talked!”

  A timid smile pulled at one corner of my mouth. “The Polystoikhedra aren't mindless beasts. They just look like it.”

  Derek grunted. Frankly, I didn't blame him. To find out that the mindless beast you expected was really quite intelligent …

  “It's not human, either,” I hastily added, tightening my grip on the sword even more as the Polystoikhedron began to advance towards us

  “It just looks like it?” questioned Derek.

  “You're foolish, Anka,” said another group of heads. “You think that you can fight me. You cannot. Many have tried, many have died. Now wouldn't it be so much easier just to give me your Ankulen and live?” It was nearly upon us.

  I wanted to turn and run, but instead forced myself to take another step forward and swing the sword, effectively severing two of those scaly necks. “It's not even an option. Some have won, too. I'm planning on following in their footsteps.”

  My stomach turned as I looked down and saw the fallen heads. They were so human – yet the
necks they were attached to were so very not human. There was no blood, just heads and serpentine necks.

  I glanced up just in time to see Derek's sword take down three heads that had been headed straight towards me. “Don't take your eyes off of it!” he scolded, shooting me a disgusted look.

  I tensed, but refrained from comment. I deserved it.

  The Polystoikhedron drew back as it noticed Derek's presence for the first time. A number of heads turned towards him to examine closer. “Who are you?” they hissed. “What are you doing here?”

  Derek didn't even flinch, but whacked off the two heads that got too close. “I'm a soldier, a fighter. I've come to make sure you don't eat my little sister!”

  Frankly, I don't remember much of the ensuing fight, nor do I wish to. Derek and I sliced off head after head, and we slowly circled round the beast – to avoid stepping on the fallen heads.

  Yet we seemed to make no progress – the heads didn't seem to thin, nor did I see any headless necks. For a moment, I faltered. What if the Polystoikhedron was like the hydra of Greek mythology? What if two heads grew back for every one that we decapitated. I knew that, all too often, myth was based in fact …

  No. I banished the discouraging thought. There had to be a way to defeat the beast. It had been done before. I could do it again.

  “Jen!” Derek shouted, as he sliced off a head that had been headed straight for me. “Pay attention!”

  Derek was amazing. For every neck I mustered the courage to behead, he must have chopped through five. While the sight of all of the fallen heads made me want to throw up, he whacked off head after head without pausing to consider the piles accumulating at his feet. (Other than to avoid stepping on them.) He even had the presence of mind to make retorts to the monster's threats, hurl insults at it, and snap at me whenever I wasn't paying attention.

  I was so thankful that he had insisted on coming with me. I still am. How these words might be different had he not … I don't like to think of that prospect.

  I come now to the portion of my story that I have both anticipated and dreaded writing.

  As I whacked off the heads one (and occasionally two) at a time, I tried not to think of the morbid faces that were hurling themselves towards me. I tried to not even look.

  But one came towards me that I couldn't ignore – one I knew all too well. The smooth, dark brown hair that I had admired since childhood, the green eyes, the straight nose, the curl of her frown …

  “Mom?” I whispered, lowering my sword and relaxing my grip ever-so-slightly. The next moment, I screamed with pain, as mom's head lashed forward and bit me on the shoulder of my sword arm.

  “Pay attention, Jen!” shouted Derek, coming to my rescue and slicing through the neck.

  For the first time, his rebuke did not pull me back to my senses. Instead, I just stared down at those unblinking green eyes, my free hand gripping my shoulder. When I pulled my hand away briefly, I saw blood. I didn't know Mom's teeth were so sharp …

  “Jen!” Derek shouted again. This time panic rose in his voice. At that moment, I felt something tighten around my waist. I looked down into the eyes of an old man – who had wrapped his neck around me. A moment later, a blonde-haired girl joined him, followed by a brown-haired man.

  With sudden alarm, I hacked through the old man's neck, but he was quickly replaced by a woman with dark skin and black hair.

  “Derek! Help!” I shrieked.

  “I am helping!” he shouted back at me, as he severed the neck of the blonde-haired girl. She was instantly replaced. “This is why you were supposed to pay attention!”

  I tried to keep fighting, I really did, but with I-don't-want-to-remember-how-many heads around my waist, and the number growing, not to mention the injured sword-arm, I soon fell slack, pressing my hand against the wound in an attempt to stop the blood flow. As soon as I stopped fighting, the necks started pulling me in.

  I tried to hold my ground, but the pull was too strong. I found myself stumbling step after step into the tangle. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to block out the hideous sight. I swung the sword wildly, but since I didn't meet with any resistance, I gave up the attempt. The only reason I didn't just give up was The Giver's words.

  As long as you hold them in your hands, you cannot be destroyed.

  I hoped that he was right!

  Suddenly, I was flung to my knees and the heads withdrew – even the necks that Derek and I had severed fell away. A sense of overwhelming dread washed over me.

  I forced my eyes open, realizing that perhaps I had been given one last, dim chance to fight before my ultimate death. If I could go down fighting, I knew that I had to.

  Little light filtered down through the writhing mass of necks above, but the swords glow was as powerful as ever. What it illuminated was terrible to behold.

  Before me yawned a gaping mouth – the true mouth of the Polystoikhedron. No, the word does not convey the proper image, does not conjure the terror that it conjured within me.

  Shall I describe it? It was like a cross between a limitless cave and the beak of an octopus. No, not even that suffices, for the words pale in comparison with my memories. It was the aura that made it so terrifying, not so much the appearance. Despair clung to it, and there was no color, no life to soften it.

  It was through this hole my imagination had been consumed. I was about to follow, for every moment, it loomed nearer and nearer.

  I forced myself to my feet and held up the sword. “I'm not going down without a fight,” I told the gaping cavern. Now that I was staring it in the face, I was strangely calm. It would soon be over. My fate had been decided. Now all that remained was for me to defy the monster.

  “Anka,” chorused the voices of, I suspect, every head that remained unsevered, (Derek agrees with me here) “it did not have to end this way. You should have given me your Ankulen. Then you would not be here. You would have lived a long, happy life. But no, you chose to fight. Now you die.”

  “I wouldn't have had a happy life,” I calmly replied, holding the sword with both hands and ignoring my injury. “There was no choice for me. It was either fight, or live a miserable life knowing that I should have fought, but I didn't, and therefore couldn't claim what was rightfully mine.”

  “You will now die knowing that you have lost, Anka.” The giant was now almost upon me. I raised my sword higher. Because I fought in the land of dreams, I still had as much strength and energy as when the fight began. “You will be sweet, very sweet. The taste of victory always is.”

  “We'll see about that,” I replied, just as the black hole closed over me. I closed my eyes, unwilling to watch what became of me.

  I'm not sure what I expected to happen, but I was certain that something would. Maybe I would suddenly explode, or pain would shoot through every extremity of my body, or maybe just an overwhelming numbness.

  When, after several minutes, something didn't happen, and I still felt the same as before, I opened my eyes again. There was nothing to see.

  The sword's light was strong, and I could see myself clearly, but there was nothing illuminated by the glow. Beyond, there was only darkness of the thickest variety.

  I swallowed and raised my sword higher. Still nothing to be seen. It was as if everything, beyond the sword and myself, had ceased to exist. Shuddering, I realized that it was the truth. I was within the Polystoikhedron, and nothing existed within its belly.

  Gripping my sword tighter, I realized that it was only because of my weapon that I was still alive. If I let go …

  Had I been in my imagination still, and not in a dream, the monster and I would have been on different levels. It could only eat my Ankulen. I would have survived (mentally, I would have been worse for the wear, but I'd be physically unharmed). Yet, since I could not be harmed, I could not harm, either. It was only in the dreamworld that I had a chance to win, despite the chance to fail.

  “I'm not dead yet!” I shouted, trying to cover the deathly sile
nce. “I haven't failed until I'm dead and you're not!”

  But how might I win? Swinging the sword encountered nothing. It was useless as a weapon.

  I started running, certain that there had to be an end to the nothingness. After at least an hour, I stopped, not out of fatigue, but of hopelessness. There was either no end to this void … or else I had just spent an entire hour running in place.

  Sinking to a sitting position, I laid the sword across my knees. Had The Giver said anything about what could be done if the Polystoikhedron ate me? Surely he knew if it were possible!

  Yet it is in letting go that it might do the worst damage.

  I blinked. Was that it? Was that what I was supposed to do? Should I simply let go of the sword and hope that it'd take care of the Polystoikhedron for me?

  “I would die,” I whispered with certainty. Letting go of the sword was suicide. Having it in my hand was the only thing that was keeping me alive. “I always knew that this was a possibility – a probability, even,” I reminded myself, but the thought was still bitter on my tongue.

  I knew that death would only bring me into the eternal presence of the Lord where pain would be no more, and if the sword destroyed the Polystoikhedron, then Megan would become my Len, and so many Anka and Anku would receive their imaginations back. I remembered seeing my mother's face among the heads. Had she once been an Anka? The story she had told over lunch was strong evidence of that possibility. If my death gave her back her imagination, I knew that she, at least, would understand.

  But would she want me to die just so that she could have it back? Somehow, I doubted that she would think it fair trade. As special as one's imagination is, their own children are surely ten times as precious. (I wouldn't know for certain, though. I'm still fifteen, myself.)

  Yet what else could I do? The Polystoikhedron had already eaten me. Sure, The Giver had told me that three had actually survived, but I suspected that they were the ones who had had the presence of mind to toss their sword into the Polystoikhedron's mouth before they themselves could be consumed.

  It was too late for me to think of that. I had chosen to be eaten with the sword.