Journey's End

Journey’s End


         No journey has an end, just as no story has a beginning. For at the very end, one suddenly realizes that it is only the end of the beginning. There is no end of the end, but everything is a new adventure. I realized this the very moment I stepped over the highest peak of Skelderstone Tor, for this was my journey’s end, and yet it would become the beginning of another journey.
         Skelderstone Tor is a rocky crag in the land of Uthror, a desolate place filled with ash, death and stone. From far away I would hear the bellows of the mighty Dormandi, or the piercing shrieks of the deadly Urksor, and I would know to take cover somewhere, anywhere, before I was found. I came to Skelderstone Tor and thought that I was at my journey’s end. Oh, how wrong I was.
         Many, many years ago, at least a million, so it seemed, I was a wealthy merchant called Brightstone in the land of Mapledon. In the town of Lowerport I would sell my wares: goods of nutmeg, paprika and cumin imported from far-away lands. I once had a whole range of thyme from Wildewynne across the Alderborough Sea. But those days were over now, over long ago. What happened? I met Jezelda.
         As my first foot went over the highest point of Skelderstone, Jezelda’s face floated to the surface of my mind, smiling and laughing the way it used to when she danced. I remembered that first day in the square, as I was unpacking my wares to sell, and she came into the market with an engraved wooden dish in her hand. Her hair was black as the night sky that day, and her brightly colored skirts flounced around her as she pranced to the center of the square. Her red lips broke out into a mischievous smile and her black eyes twinkled as she began to dance. Right then and there, the crowd forgot my wares (and filled her wooden dish with coins) and I lost my voice, my breath, my heart as I became lost in the swirling magic of a gypsy girl’s dance. My heart was adrift in Jezelda’s lovely eyes.
         Those two years were a struggle. Her gypsy band called her traitor and my closest friends abandoned me. But we didn’t care. For nothing could tear us apart, and we met in secret on the outskirts of town where she used to dance to the sound of the minstrels playing their sweet songs. But on that fateful night, by the sea at Lowerport, she was taken from me. Upon seeing us walking along the seashore, her drunken brother-in-law shot her in an intoxicated rage from the topmost cliff, and the arrow lodged in her chest. And so my dearest treasure lay dead in my arms.
         Oh, how I wept that night. How I pleaded with Death to bring her back, but to no avail. It was your fault, I told myself. All your fault, Brightstone, for staying with her. For if she had never met me (oh, how dearly I wished) she would still be alive. Her gypsy band had grown so hostile toward us that her sister’s husband would shoot her without a second thought, and it was my fault. Of course, I knew deep down that it was not entirely my fault, it was her wretched brother-in-law, but I had to blame someone other than him, for he had thrown himself off the cliff once he realized what he had done. There was no comfort in blaming a dead man. The whole ordeal was full of pain and sadness.
         And so I had set off, through blizzards in Highhurst, where the cold mountain air burned my raw skin. The road to Uthror was not a pleasant one, and Highhurst was not the highlight of the journey. Next to the country of Mapledon but different in the extreme, Highhurst consisted entirely of snow-capped, steep mountains that seemed as if they had erupted from the ground to tower over each other and make an impossible journey for a weary traveler. But Jezelda was in my mind and in my heart, and when the nights became so cold that I couldn’t feel my legs, the sound of the bells on her skirts and in her hair would jingle in my ears, and somehow I would make it through.
Those mazelike forests in Faedown may very well have been the ruin of me. Faedown was covered in either dense forests that were impossible to navigate or never-ending knolls that were the same. Both seemed designed to drive a man crazy, but worst of all, both were haunted. Faedown was populated only by the Wandering, spirits of those driven by madness in the god-forsaken land. The Wandering would be visible only by night, but they were always there. You could feel their presence in the shiver up your spine, in the hopelessness in the air. They would come to you while you slept and stare at you, hoping that you could lead them out of the awful maze, but they would only lead you astray in the end. I was lost many times, but I struggled on with a driving perseverance, and made my way out.
Little did I know that the worst was yet to come. When I came to the place where the grass of Faedown became sparse and then fell away, giving way to the grey ash that caked my boots now, I knew I had come to Uthror. No sooner had Skelderstone Tor appeared as a dot on the horizon, however, that with an almighty crash, a Dormand dropped in front of my path, bellowing like an erupting volcano. Now, if you have never seen a Dormand, count yourself lucky, for they are fearsome creatures of shadow and darkness. Pitch black with the exception of their eyes, which burned like hot embers, they took the form of towering behemoths, with vein-streaked wings and ten-foot curling horns. When they are angry, they roar, and the sound would erupt through the empty space and strike fear into the heart of anyone listening. Which of course, in this case, would be me. I only got past because the I stuck my knife deep into its clawed foot and sprinted. Dormandi are slow creatures, and by the time he turned around, I had taken cover.
And why had I come all this way, through toil and struggle and goodness knows what else? To retrieve Jezelda from the Immortal Realm, which most likely does not and never has existed, and even if it did, Jezelda most likely will not be able or want to come back with me. But I had to try. I loved her, and I had to try.
         So here I stood, with one foot indecisively on what may or may not be the Immortal Realm, and the other foot in the accursed land of Uthror. What would I find there, on the other side? Would it be, as I hoped beyond hope, the Immortal Realm, with my beautiful Jezelda waiting for me? Or would I find more of the same ashy, rocky plains, stretching on to the horizon? There was only one way to know.
         With what seemed a great effort, I heaved my right foot over the peak of Skelderstone Tor, my bright eyes shut tight against what I might find there—or what I might not find there. Then I was standing with both feet in what might be the path that would lead me to Jezelda and my eyes shut tight. I could almost hear her voice whispering my name, but it was just in my head. All in my head. I opened my eyes….
         And shut them tight again. I rubbed them hard, my dirt-caked fists digging into my eyelids. Then I squinted out in front of me.
         Brightstone, you’re not seeing this, my mind told me frantically. You’re not seeing this. But my eyes said different…oh, yes, my eyes told me something quite different.
         There, stretched out in front of me, was something that could not possibly be there. I knew (at least, I thought) that the land behind me was grey and desolate, but I didn’t dare look back, for fear that what was in front of me would disappear. But it was there, solid and true: green, rolling hills, not ashy, volcanic rock, stretched out into the distance and silhouetted themselves against the five o’ clock sky. Shimmering green lakes caught the light and twinkled at me invitingly. Forests of pine and birch clustered themselves around the lakes, sunlight filtering down through their branches and illuminating softly the forest floor, strewn with pine needles. It was as if I could see everything from a close-up point of view, as if through a magnifying glass with knife-sharp clarity. I could see every four-inch faerie, fluttering amongst the meadowsweet, every little Hornhart, tails swishing underneath the surface of the water and trumpeting their triumphant songs to the warm rippling breeze. Their horn-like mouths could emit such clear, high notes that I could hear their songs even above the water. I did not need my renewed sight to see the dragons. Twenty-foot beasts of ancient times, they tumbled across the sky, the young ones fighting in the clouds, their elders performing complicated acrobatic maneuvers through the air. White-hot flame spurted into the air as a dragon laughed out loud, catapulting itself across the bright blue sky. Griffins skimmed the grass, their golden feathers simply twitching this way or that to change their direction entirely. Brownies sat swinging their little green-clad legs on mushrooms as a gnome with a white beard stitched up a miniscule shoe, while over in the next glade merry-faced dwarves mock-battled with two-foot silver swords. In a forest far away, tall elves with red hair pranced lightly, gracefully, through the woods, bowstrings taut, arrows notched. And in the midst of it all, humans played, passed on from the known world into a happier life. I saw an old man sitting cross-legged as the cobbler gnome showed him how to measure the sole of a shoe exactly right. I saw a little girl playing tag with the faeries, who caught up with her every time, but she simply laughed. And then I saw a dancer, at the foot of the hill I was standing on, her colored skirts swaying the blades of grass as she twirled and twirled around in front of an audience of awestruck brownies. As she made to complete her last twirl, she turned her face up toward the sky—toward me. And then she saw me.
         I saw her mouth my name on her soft red lips: “Brightstone.” And then, before I knew it, I was running toward her, down the mountain with my arms already reaching for her. I called her name, “Jezelda!” with joy in my heart, and she picked up her bright skirts and ran to me with tears in her eyes. She threw herself into my arms, and it was as if the past few months had never happened, as if I were dancing with her in the market square once more. I whispered her name over and over again until it was etched on my heart, and I knew she would never leave again. Jezelda was in my arms once more, and there was nothing else in the world.