Chapter 43

 

As they gaped into the new morn. Momentarily the party were fooled into assuming it was the moon goddess.

 

Yet, as the firmament of their eyes readjusted, they plainly perceived the figure of Grozette looking back at them from the bow of the ship. Her image subsided like a theophany that was merely observed for the duration of three breaths.

 

And then was expired.

 

 

Their attentions gently yielded to themselves, and their own shortcomings as they were aware that another person was standing in their midst.

 

And This time, it was the Moon Goddess.

 

Elkie looked at her and broke down. The grief for her was yet too fresh.

Shaking, she threw herself at her feet and wept uncontrollably.

“Absolve me, please… I, I am sorreee” she stammered. Yeva looked down upon the mop of wine-coloured ringlets.

“arise my child and fret no more,” she said in a voice as tender as a newly plucked rose petal.

The moon goddess’ appealed to her, but her blessings fell onto the Pale ground.

 

The hungry ghost felt depleted for her experiences.

And sick from the heave of the pure sea.

 

It was the steadfast arms of Jn Joro that retrieved her and slowly, assuredly helped her to stand as the maitre’d. Looked at her red cheeks and puffy eyes that stood out like sore thumbs.

 

Joro wondered how so much could go so very wrong for one person. “what’s wrong with you?!?!” she said scolding the Silk Faerie as if her frostiness was unappealing, she clicked softly .

“We need to confess everything.” As she directed her remarks toward the little sprite and the moon goddess explicitly.

“can it be explained?” asked the Brownie with a glassy look in her eyes. “it can -perhaps, but not by you… by a mortal, like me! with a flawed conception of time,”

It seemed unusual that the spider was the one most capable of consulting with, but then things were getting more peculiar by the minute.

 

“Residual echoes!” declared the moon goddess in her authority as she searched the heavens as Eulin wavered around her head.

“what just transpired?”

Brownie looked at Elkie as her eyes outlined in a more profound language.

“Jn’s right, I’m sorry… I can’t do this anymore,” she swallowed hard “do what?” asked Elkie with eyes that were cried out and dispirited.

“Play by these rules. DAMMIT!!!!,” she swore “well,” said the moon’s princess “in that case I surmise you’ll have to break one or two of them,”

 

Her heart was heavier than the dense ocean air. Heavier than the anchor that lay jumbled on its side upon the lily-white decking. “It was invariably her intention to die!” said Brownie sheepishly, with a whiff of shame that hung in the air.

As Elkie sensed that she seemed familiar to her once again.

 

No inscriptions were scrawled on her skin. That part of her persona had vanished. “Elkie I’m so so sorry,” she said apologetically as she yearned to throw her arms around her once more.

“for everything you’ve been through I… I can’t stand it no more, watching and doing nothing!”

As they hugged one another. “tell me everything?” Elkie whispered

 

They began to tell the tale as the barge gently drifted beneath the autumn sunlight.

Amongst sunbeams that danced on the waves.

 

“There is a corridor that passes through all things that exist in all things, and the corridor is? Well, now I guess you’d imagine it. Time.

 

The Knightmare wasn’t literally a man at all, but the personification of an event so heinous, generations sought to expunge it from memory. But it did happen. the original murder, a force of Evil that absconded from this corridor sent by Tiamat to corrupt martiankind.”

“A Demon!” Said Joro

“Yes, if you like, in simple-minded terms!”

“This ah’… Demon corrupted the first Martians to slaughter their Brethren, they had a fetish for winette coloured hair. Not just once but many, as bloodlust nourished his hunger,”

“he corrupted and turned their hearts away from Leer, and Tiamat couldn’t be happier. Leer along with the original Pa’minas. Thwarted, the Demon destroyed his host and remanded his spirit in a shadowy tower on a remote, deserted archipelago, called Hy-Byzantia.”

 

“during the turning. The men that were for him were altered into pale shapeless freaks that were hailed as the Shae, thereafter.”

 

“more than 500 seasons passed, and the story vanished into obscurity. Until

hearsay has it that a youthful professor of magic was conducting experiments into fields, some would suppose to be unethical, Zayn was his name, his own bureau, of course, repudiated him.

They claim he was insane, conducting experiments into sacred geometry.

The Sacred Magic of Nhilus the Mage. In the grand grimoire A well-known ritual for opening doorways into time… that’s when he made the Ascension keys and a royal key that was commissioned by someone unknown… But in the codices of Nhilus, written in an indecipherable language, there was a ritual for summoning the agents of causality,”

“a bit like your Guardian Angel.” interjected joro.”

“Yes, some more naïve people may assert that! but Angel implies righteousness and preferring a moral position.”

“People claim he found a Rosetta stone in a far-off country with a dark tower… the whole point of the ritual is to solicit something you passionately desire, but a price must be extolled sooner or later,”

“The bigger the wish, the higher the price,”

 

Elkie interrupted. “Grozette wished Tallulah to be healthy didn’t she,” Deducing her motives.

The moon princess nodded in acknowledgement.

“alas, her condition was stabilised, but she remained a shadow, and resented her sister thereafter for not possessing the moral fortitude to provide her with a peaceful release. Zayn wished for the power to create the foremost magical artefact on this world, and therefore the one wand was conjured into existence. But a doorway, once opened, can be a two-way portal, and once provoked time can reach in take things, take people, displace people, and even supplant them for an impostor. The Evil overwhelmed him, and the shadowy corners of his mind began to look like the dark tower of the Knightmare in Hy-Byzantia,”

“under coercion, Tallulah used the wand, and her spirit too changed in the natural world, she was nonchalantly possessing another. Little by little, one who was heartbroken with misery.

 

Whilst their true selves were bound to the wand.

And the wand with a will of its own created a place where it could keep safe its seed. If it were ever to fall victim to folly, and that place rested on the ancillary of Grozette’s original noble pact.

“So, the wand was bound to him, and Tal, but their spirits were bound to Grozette’s charitable wish, which compelled an even greater altruistic act to renege on it.”

 

“she wished to be struck down by him in poetic irony. That he would be the one to bring about his own doom. But with her body broken she had no alternative but to call for someone brave with winette hair, to help her in committing her spirit to rest,”

“and I’m sure she was a mighty help,” she smiled “and it made her feel a soupçon better, in the end,”

 

“Now I see!” said Elkie as she still felt the dreadful shame and loss of her friends’ absence.

 

She looked out to the distant horizon.

“If the wind goes where you send it so will I, If the rocks cry out in silence so will I,” she said just above a whisper it was then that she noticed Joro holding a parcel wrapped in spider silk long and thin, “I think you should have the honour of this,” she said as she handed it over to the littlest ghost to uncover. she unravelled it, merely to lay eyes on Grozette’s sword Ivry, she recoiled and looked at them in indignation “that’s not funny,”

“no child it is not meant to be, the tears of the tempest needs to find its own way home,”

 

“How did you even?” interrupted Elkie. But stopped herself short as her head hurt contemplating things.

“and in response, we will see the mariners gate, once again,” concluded Jn Joro in her fearful symmetry.

“what must I do?” queried Elkie.

“simply… give it back to the tide, little one,”

 

Elkie stood at the bow of the ship where they had a fleeting apparition of the Windwaker, she held the hilt of the reverent sword and flung it outwards away from the ship, towards the horizon. With a glug, it skimmed the surface and sank below the waves. Into obscurity, with only a few bubbles to signify, it had been there at all. Another jewel that was stolen by the deep.

 

Elkie sighed.

 

A few moments later, the water surface became choppy, as in the nearby distance, they noticed something black and sleek floating towards the surface of the water.

 

In the distance.

 

Squinting, Elkie wondered.

 

Was it some sort of cliff that had not been there before?

 

Were her eyes playing tricks on her?

 

She hugged the boat’s stem post tightly.

 

Something extraordinary was ascending from the depths.

 

The black polished arch they had discovered inside the secret chamber in the temple.

 

There it rested, ebony and reflective, with spray peeling off it, seemingly more significant and alien beneath the open sky.

With the rovings of the clouds traced upon its polished surface.

 

And again, they heard that voice. The lament in song, scarcely perceptible but captivating, nevertheless.

 

Elkie stood gazing upon the familiar arch as she remained static like a photograph, still and motionless, they heard her voice say

“sprite…. sprite,” in a mild half voice.

As the company of friends gazed at her shape from behind.

There was an incongruence about her… She almost seemed fictitious.

A voice behind a still painting.

“do you think houses remember the people that lived in them? When the people have gone out of them… and they’re empty? And places, do they recall the souls that passed through them?”

“What an odd question!” interjected Eulin

“I mean….do you think this place will remember us?”

“I think so!”

 

“you know don’t you!” announced the Brownie.

 

“she’s worked it out!” confirmed Joro in her abrasive tones.

“I’m fading, aren’t I. I’m. I’m going too!!”

The silk faerie answered truthfully,

“Yes, I’m sorry!”

 

The littlest ghost turned to look at them. She had never looked so fragile; she was, after all, a child. She sighed heavily and said:

 

“do me a favour?”

“yes! Anything” mumbled Brownie as the wind ruffled her hair.

 

“save someone! So…” she didn’t finish her comments. She had pain in her eyes, but a broad smile on her face.

 

“Li Sx Elkie. You have more than passed the test. it’s been a pleasure. but we have one further journey to make,” Said the moon goddess, as she caressed her hair fondly.

Brownie looked through the gateway.

“through there, and beyond!”

“what’s it like?”

 

There was silence.

“like heaven, and starting all over again, with just the ones you love to watch over you!”

“well, I suppose that’s good then,”

“I’m ready,”

The company looked to Jn Joro

“I’m afraid. This is where I say fare thee well!” announced the cuckoo-bee-spider, taking her bow. “Until we meet again in the future, if you need me, come and find me,”

“and remember… spiders invariably keep their promises!” she said, tapping her nose with her finger.

 

After Jn Joro had gone the remainder of the group drifted towards the arch as they noticed blue fire flower petals afloat on the water surface. They collectively held their breath as they sailed into the intense sunrise and through the Mariners gate.

 

Into the great unknown.