Medieval Mars: The Anthology (Terraformed Interplanetary Book 1)

by Travis Perry

  Surprise—that was my weapon. I crept up, pressed my knife blade to her throat, and then gagged her with a handkerchief at the mouth before she could shout. In no time, I had her arms and legs bound securely. I planned to carry her slung over my shoulder as though she were a beet sack.

  She twisted and turned and fought against the cords, but I was far too practiced at tying suitable knots for her to make headway.

  “I mean to carry you off and make you my bride,” I explained.

  Her pale gray eyes looked up at me wide with—horror? I wasn’t sure.

  “You’re strong, but I have tensile strength,” I reassured her. “And God has given me the duty to pull you along with me without disturbing the natural order of things.”

  A few tears crept from her eyes, and this concerned me a little. It gave me pause. In the romantic stories of old, the womenfolk had enjoyed being spirited off by men. Ah, but those were military heroes, of which I was not one. I hadn’t forgotten about that. It simply hadn’t mattered to me. I planned to give her something no military hero could.

  “I’m going to carry you up Elysium Mons, to the Fountain of Youth. You’ll be restored there. I’ll be restored there. And then we can be married. I’m very good with books and accounts, so I daresay I’ll be useful to you, even though Father has to force me to do his books. I read very well when I’m not blind.”

  But, I reminded myself, blindness would no longer be a problem once I’d dipped myself in the Fountain of Youth. A few more tears slipped down her cheeks. The tears combined with the gag gave her a pathetic look.

  “If you promise not to shout, I’ll remove the gag.”

  She nodded emphatically. Reluctantly, I pulled it off. I wasn’t sure if the nod could be construed as a promise, but it was difficult to swear to anything when one’s hands were tied and one’s mouth was gagged.

  “You idiot!” she shouted. “You invented the Fountain of Youth. It was one of your many lies.”

  “In order to speak truth, one must speak the right kind of lie,” I said. “You’ll see once we’re up there. The truth will reveal itself.”

  “Oh, certainly, if we don’t die of the frostbite first.”

  “I’ll wrap you in a blanket before I carry you off.”

  “How thoughtful of you. Do you know what would be even more thoughtful, Master Simon? If you untied me and put an end to this foolish game. You’ll finish your days in the govnor’s prison, and that’s only if you don’t kill us both instead.”

  “Don’t speak that way, Luana. I want both our lives to be better. My only desires are to cure your loneliness and to live outside my Father’s home. There’s no room for me in a rope maker’s trade. I was meant to finish my masterwork, my encyclopaedia.”

  “Master Simon, I do believe you would have been an intelligent and sweet boy if you hadn’t been ruined by the Great Fever.”

  “Those whose stories are meant to pass into history must always travel a complex journey to arrive at greatness. And that’s wherefore—” I paused to brace myself, and then threw her over my shoulder in readiness for the journey, with an oomph— “That’s the reason I’ve suffered the way I have.”

  Her head hung down, but she still managed to shout as best she could: “I’m not meant for greatness, Simon! I don’t need this journey. I’m a lonely spinster woman, rejected by the one man I thought I loved, and destined to be nothing but a gentlewoman farmer.”

  “You’re wrong. You were meant for so much more. Your life has been leading you to this moment.”

  She started to protest again, but stopped and fell silent. Either she was resigned to her fate, or the effort of shouting upside down was too great for her. I therefore began the trek up the main trail of Elysium Mons in beautiful silence that allowed me to contemplate the future.

  For hours, I trudged under her weight, stopping every so often to ease her down and allow her head to prop upright again.

  On one such rest, she asked in a weary tone of voice, “When you find there’s no Fountain of Youth, will you set me free?”

  “But I will find the Fountain of Youth. I know where it lies. I’ve seen the map in my head.” If I’d actually stolen from the library, and I’m not admitting that I have, I might have gazed on a map I’d discovered in a book about early religious pilgrimages on Elysium Mons. Still, the map was in my head either way; I spoke the truth.

  “Even if we find this fountain you claim exists, what do you think will happen when we return from the pilgrimage? The kidnapping of brides is illegal. It has been for at least a hundred years. They’ll arrest you. The govnor won’t hesitate. He’ll have your head.”

  “Would you let that happen, Luana? You have no father; it is only your consent that matters.”

  “Master Simon, wherefore do you want to marry me? I’m old, undesirable by anyone’s standards. You’re a strapping lad of eighteen. What could you possibly want with an old crone?”

  “You aren’t an old crone. You’re independent. You control a vast fortune of land and crops.”

  “Is that it, then? You desire me for my wealth? The govnor himself did until he found himself a fairer bride.”

  “No.” I said, but feared it came out a little too curt. “You’ve misjudged me.”

  With that, I threw her over my shoulder again and continued up the trail. Long after sunrise, about midday to be exact, I finally arrived at the springs depicted on my mental map. The pool of water was off the main trail by a good ways; it was surrounded by a dense cluster of shrubby pines. It was no wonder the spring’s existence was no longer common knowledge in these modern days when the phlegmatic types dwelling in the Elysium fields couldn’t be bothered with pilgrimages. They could rarely be inspired to climb the mountain at all, let alone wander from the main trail.

  It was my turn for tears of joy as I gently laid her by the water. I knelt down at the water’s edge and discovered it was hot to the touch. I peered down into its depth and could see that the water surged and bubbled up from the volcanic rock as though it were being pressed out by giants. The water was clear and beautiful—the bottom visible.

  “If I unbind you, you won’t run away, will you? Not since I’ve found the Fountain of Youth.”

  “Verily, Master Simon, I wouldn’t be able to. My legs have been bound so long I can’t feel them.”

  “The water will restore them.”

  “Yes, perchance you’re right.”

  And so I unbound my bride-to-be, as I was a saint and not an evil man at heart. I unbound her, and then the unthinkable happened. It was the great wear of the journey that finished me off; I was plunged into near blindness.

  “No, no!” I wailed, scratching my fingers down my eyelids as if that would be of service to me.

  “Whatever’s the matter? Can’t you see? You’d better not go for a swim in the water, then, as it looks unfathomably deep.”

  “It’s shallow. My eyes just peered into it and saw the bottom.”

  “How does a blind man see and know he is seeing a true picture?”

  “I’m not always blind. I’m blind only after too much duress.”

  I could still make out a blur of shapes, of course, but the dimness disconcerted me such that I was unable to give satisfactory answers later. I saw the blur of her figure, and heard the splashing of water. Then a series of shrill screams suddenly split through the quiet of the Mons terrain. And then I saw nothing and heard nothing but the gentle bubbling of the water. I shouted her name, but my own voice echoed back at me.

  I was alone. Dreadfully alone. And I was exhausted. I lay down by the water’s edge and slept until the day had crept into shadow and my sight had returned. Like a man drunk on spirits, I stumbled to the trail, once again shouting Luana’s name.

  She was gone, and it was my fault. This was not how the pilgrimage was meant to end. This was not it. I’d never meant any harm to come to her, my beautiful bride who now would never be. Contemplating what had happened to her was terrible, too. N
obody had seen a dragon in these regions for decades; perchance one had veered off course from the area around Olympus Mons, where they favored the harsher climate. Perchance she had been snatched by a dragon. It was altogether more likely she had slipped to her death and been drowned. I’d heard her splashing in the fountain of youth. It was she who had claimed the pool contained unfathomable depths.

  How? How could a fountain of youth contain unfathomable depths?

  I cried until my eyes were nearly blind from the swelling alone, and when I entered the village, it was with wailing and a gnashing of teeth. I tried to tell them about the accident; I tried. They didn’t understand.

  But I was a liar—who would believe my story? Alas, Mother had been witness to Luana’s challenge, and for this they condemned me to the gallows for kidnapping and murder. And now I must bid you adieu before the guards come to fetch me. By my troth, I am St. Simon Albrecht of Elysium, and may my story be left forever to posterity and to the new history of the people of Mars. Soy yo.

  St. Simon’s corpse swung from a rope he was forced to fashion himself. It neither helped nor harmed his situation when the govnor’s soldiers discovered the stolen library texts he’d hidden beneath his mattress.

  They left his body to sway in the wind as a lesson to any other young men who arrived at the notion that bride kidnapping was an honorable pastime.

  Three days later, Luana stumbled down from the mons, wrapped up in an afghan of goat hair and carrying a pile of ropes. If she was startled by the sight of Simon hanging from his own rope, she didn’t reveal it.

  What of her screams, the splashing of water, the dread silence? How could she have survived the ordeal, and the subsequent three days alone on Elysium Mons? The answer was as simple as Simon’s end. Nobody could die from a visit to the Fountain of Youth, and certainly nobody could drown in it. It would be not be possible.

  It would, in fact, be a paradox better left alone and out of the final version of the Encyclopaedia Elysium, which is the true account of a liar who suffered from blindness.

  Jill Domschot is a writer consumed with ideas. Although these ideas often spawn absurd and/or dark and twisted stories, they are just as likely to compel her to create collations and catalogs—very much like her character Simon in Liar’s Paradox.

  She’s a wife, a mom of four, and currently the author of two books: a collection of fantasy, sci fi and magical realist shorts, The Jaybird’s Nest and other Stories; and a metaphysical tale about a woman, a man, a dragon and a child, Anna and the Dragon. For work that actually pays, she edits and formats books for a wide variety of authors.

  For more, go to her website, jdomschot@msn.com.

  [1] St. Jerome, Homily on Psalm 115 (116B), translated by Sr. Marie Liguori Ewald, IHM, in The Homilies of Saint Jerome, Volume I (1-59 On the Psalms), The Fathers of the Church 48 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1964), 294.

  Search for Eden

  by Mark Venturini

  The messenger bird arrived from New San Diego and the word wasn’t good. Brother Lucus’s lungs burned as he ran the note to the great hall. Sweat covered his face and stained his heavy cuculla. “Blast them! Blast all the high and mighty of New San Diego!” Weren’t they all servants of the Lord Jesu?

  Only the fifth hour of the day, the sun already pressed hard against the small city of Paradisus. Tightly packed houses and storefronts trapped the heat. Fine brown dust from hundreds of hooves and feet tramping through the narrow flagstone streets choked the air.

  Merchants called from booths lining the streets, hawking everything from clothes and baked goods to smithy services. Some still hawked amulets guaranteed to bring rain, despite living beneath a bone-dry sky for five cycles.

  A guard in boiled leather casually leaned next to the arched door of the great hall, cleaning his fingernails with the tip of his knife. “Working up a sweat, Lucas?” He snickered. “Life as a brother of the Sanctus Ordo fattening you up?”

  Shut it, Ronald, Brother Lucas thought. He stopped and lowered his head. “The Lord Jesu bless you, Ronald,” he muttered through gritted teeth. Then louder, “I have a note for Lady Lynette, come all the way from New San Diego.”

  Ronald raised an eyebrow and sheathed his knife. “In you go, then.” He pushed open the door and chuckled. “And Lucas, cut back on the meals.”

  Embarrassment torched Brother Lucas’s face as he stepped into what the citizens of Paradisus called the great hall. Truly, it was nothing more than a small whitewashed room with little furnishings compared to the fancy halls of New San Diego, Mons Olympus, and even Ulysses Patera that Brother Lucas had read about. He actually heard that water flowed within those halls with a simple turn of a valve. He prayed to some day witness such a device from the Time of Magic.

  Candles flickered from a long wooden table in the center of the room. Lady Lynette looked up from a pile of papers. “Ah, my old friend. Good to see you.”

  Brother Lucas bowed. “Forgive the interruption, m’lady.”

  Lady Lynette cringed. “M’lady? Why so formal among friends?”

  Brother Lucas shifted his feet nervously. They had been friends as children, but now Lady Lynette was the govness of Paradisus and all Mons Elysium. “Uh, m’lady, a messenger bird just arrived.”

  Lady Lynette straightened. “From New San Diego?” Brother Lucas nodded and handed her the rolled note.

  Lady Lynette’s eyes narrowed as she read. “My crops are failing, my people grow hungry, and those fools refuse my plea for help! They have all the rain they need!” The sparkle in Lady Lynette’s face that Brother Lucas had secretly loved from a distance had vanished, buried beneath the weight of her office.

  “Bad news, m’lady?”

  Lady Lynette rubbed her eyes. “You tell me. I know you’ve read the note.”

  Brother Lucas stiffened despite the truth of the accusation. Forgive my sin, Lord Jesu. He licked his lips and muttered, “The West refuses to help.”

  Lady Lynette offered a strained smile. “See, I know you too well, Lucas.” She crumpled the note and threw it to the floor. “The trek from New San Diego to Mons Elysium is too long and fraught with danger. Soldiers to protect any emergency grain shipments cannot be spared while skirmishes with the heretic king of Olympus Mons continue.”

  She brushed a finger against her lips. “So, Lucas, what can we do now that our brethren in the West refuse to help?”

  A strange chill touched Brother Lucas. The govness of Paradisus asked him, a lowly brother, for advice. He tugged at the hemp cord tied around his ample waist. “Perhaps you ought to ask advice from your council.”

  “I’ll seek their advice soon enough.” She stepped around the table, straightening her blue violet gown. “The drought grows more severe each day that passes without rain. What do you advise?”

  “Continued prayer and faith will see us through. The ancients called the hot dry wind sirocco. They said it comes straight from the pit of hell.”

  “Spoken like a true brother of the Sanctus Ordo,” Lady Lynette said. “But I wouldn’t be so quick to blame demons.”

  “We’ve redoubled our effort on the irrigation canals from Hyblaeus Fossae.”

  “A noble effort and much needed, but we must do something to try and end this drought. We will receive no aid from the West.”

  She rang a small bell on the table. A young pimply faced squire entered through a side door. “Summon the council, William. We have matters to discuss.”

  “My lady.” William bowed and exited through the same door.

  Lady Lynette tapped her fingernails against the table and glanced back at Brother Lucas. “Tell Grandmaster Justin that I will meet him at the Grove tomorrow morning after we break our fast.”

  • • •

  After Brother Lucas attended morning Lauds, he broke his fast in his room at the rear of the small chapel. He stared at the meager bowl of watery gruel made from chestnut flower. With barley so scarce, he couldn’t even make edi
ble gruel. Despite his rumbling stomach, he pushed away from the table and thought of Ronald. Looks like you’ll get your wish with meals like this.

  He met Lady Lynette at the great hall and started down the crowded street. Ronald walked alongside.

  “I don’t need you, Ronald,” Lady Lynette said.

  Ronald’s hand went to his sword hilt. “Then why did your lord father hire me to protect you before he passed?”

  Lady Lynette motioned to encompass the entire city. “Who do I have to fear?”

  Ronald snickered. “Maybe Brother Piggy here.”

  Brother Lucas spun, his fists instantly clenched. “Shut it, Ronald!”

  “That was uncalled for, Ronald,” Lady Lynette snapped. “I’ll be safe with Brother Lucas.”

  Ronald gave a halfhearted salute. “Don’t make no nevermind to me. I’ll still get my coin.” He sauntered back toward the great hall.

  Brother Lucas felt fire in his cheeks. “No need to defend me.”

  “Ignore him. He’s just full of his own self-importance,” Lady Lynette replied. She started walking. “We have more important matters to deal with.”

  She had donned a simple kirtle and smock worn by most commoners. Still many recognized her and stepped aside with a bow. “It makes me uncomfortable when they do that,” she said so only Brother Lucas could hear.

  “They only show the deference due your office.” He glanced nervously at her. “Pardon for being so bold, m’lady. You should show some deference too. Your attire is beneath your station as govness.”

  Lady Lynette chuckled and patted his arm. “And I hate the trappings just as much as I hate the deference. My attire never bothered you when we played in the dirt as children.”