He leaves them to their wild imaginings. Better that than the truth of what hangs swaddled in his pack.
“Of course,” the First says, holding out her hands as if she might smooth away any offense she might have caused.
The storyteller takes a noisy slurp from the cup of water he has been given. It feels like sand sliding down his old throat.
“I am grateful for what you have already offered,” he says, holding up the cup. “I don’t want to ask any more of anyone. Besides!”
He smiles, wide and mischievous. Finally, the reason he is in Twist. The reason he is at all.
“It is I who have come to offer you something.”
A joyful cry erupts at that. These people clearly have not had anything to celebrate in a long time, perhaps for some the entirety of their ragged, shadowed lives.
Between the two fires, a small dais is cobbled together from bits of buildings and a section of wood that looks achingly like a scrap from an old ship hull. Even as the storyteller slides his bare feet across it, he can feel the slight bend in the wood, echoes of voyages past traced across the panel in dents and divots.
A chair is brought for him, but he sends it away. The story he has to tell—the same he has been telling in every camp and settlement since Before turned in to After—is long, but he has not felt the quicksand pull of fatigue since. . . . well, since before.
More water is brought too, and this he accepts. Let them imagine him as impossibly powerful and full of unending stamina but still, at his core, dependent on those necessities that define human life. Let them love the object of curiosity he is for them. Let them build stories and myths on this myth of him.
Better that than the truth.
The people of Twist circumscribe two fires before him—one, two, three rings deep, faces turned expectantly toward him. Children grow still and slow their perpetually manic breathing. Adults, meanwhile, feel their hearts beat quicker, not with fear or worry, as they are used to, but with anticipation. With expectation. With wonder.
The storyteller allows the stillness to grow and draw every face toward him, until the only sound is the low, endless sighing of the wind moving through grass. He looks at the buildings barely illuminated in the darkness, old husks that once held and housed so much more. The largest of them, despite its shattered frame and stones blackened from fire, shelters both fires from the darkness beyond. It is diminished, a shadow of what it once was, but the bones of it remain in the shape of drying halls and display galleries, hallways once walked by those with few concerns and money to spend. In times of old, when such things mattered.
“Sing, memory,” he begins, giving the words weight and power and magic.
“I have come to tell you the story of Before. Before all was darkness. Before the Sea became monstrous. Before.”
Beyond the flicker of firelight and rising behind and above the remains of buildings, he can see the great stalk-like pillars holding up some celestial world far above. The world waits for him, and he speaks from memory.
“Once, the people of this world lived in a land that was bathed in light each day. They moved through their lives without fear of what the dark might hold, and one could hope to spend a full life pursuing their pleasure before dying of old age, surrounded by family and friends.”
“I thought you were telling us a story of Before, not today!” a man shouts, smiling broadly. He is met by waves of laughter.
It is good they can still joke and laugh. It offers nothing to the storyteller. But in the face of the inevitable, defiant joy is effort and reward both. It is how to survive, and it is why.
“There once was an island in this mythic, sunlit place called Arcadia. On all sides, Arcadia was surrounded by a Sea of grass, miles deep, and on this prairie Sea, boats would sail.”
He cuts one luminous hand through the air: a ship cutting across an endless field of green.
“On land, the people lived out lives full and mundane, lacking imagination and wonder. But on the Forever Sea . . .”
The storyteller trails off, lost in his own thoughts before offering a bright smile to those watching with wide eyes, already caught in the web he spins.
“Imagine it with me. A Sea so deep that none who walked above had ever seen its floor. A Sea reaching so far east that none who had set sail for its end ever returned. Well, almost none. As large as it was unknowable; that was the Forever Sea in those days, and those wild enough, or mad enough, would sail on it.
“But these were no ordinary boats, for nothing—or almost nothing—could float on the Forever Sea. In the center of each ship, set into the wood of the deck, a great fire would burn in a metal basin, a fire much like yours here, giving power and lift to the vessels.
“Some harvested the plants that grew in this Sea, and a vast system of trade grew around these harvests. Plants could be burned to release the magics trapped within their flowers or stems. They could be used for the healing of diseases or injuries. They could be eaten for nourishment or turned into clothing or fed to animals who might later be eaten or used for clothing or craft. The world of Arcadia was defined by the Forever Sea, and no one moved through their life without the gifts of the Sea.”
He has them now, he can tell. Faces rapt with wonder and imagination, caught in the litany of myth that feels at once impossible and strangely true. Not just a fantastical history, but their fantastical history.
As it is.
The storyteller lets his eyes rise to the darkness pressing in before continuing.
“For many generations, the sailors of Arcadia made their lives on the Sea, plundering the prairie of its riches, only to have it all grow back again, ready to be harvested once more. They were parasites living on the body of the world.
“And eventually, the world began to take notice.”
A child, her face showing no more than ten or twelve years, sucked in a breath.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself. This story—your story and mine—begins with a young woman on a ship. See her now, if you can. Tall and lithe, with the careless ease that only youth can offer. She is twenty-two and seeking her place in the world, a sailor wanting to make a name for herself. Dark hair cut short to stay out of her face, skin darkened by soot and grime and sun.
“She is about to lose everything, this woman, though she doesn’t know it yet. And it might be equally true to say, too, that she is on the precipice of finding everything. And more.
“Her name, the most famous this world has ever forgotten, is . . . was . . . Kindred Greyreach. And right now, as this tale begins, she is singing.”
CHAPTER ONE
Kindred threaded her hands deep into the fire and sang a quiet song.
Around her the ship was chaos: boots pounded rough tattoos over the deck as crew members rushed to secure and tie and pull and coil; shouts—panicked, angry, excited—shook the air, threatening to break Kindred’s concentration. The captain’s voice was a silver bell amid the turmoil of The Errant; Kindred couldn’t make out her orders ringing through the noise, but the toll of authority was recognizable nonetheless.