Someone Else's Kingdom, BOOK I - Chapter 73

Essen awoke to find the face of a strange little primate staring down at him. As it swung casually from the beams of the wooden hut his eyes struggled to make sense of the unfamiliar vision. His head ached and his throat felt dry and groggy. His mind, lumbering slowly back into consciousness, struggling to place the surroundings he now found himself in. Or to recall how he'd ended up there. As this somnolent haze from his eyes fell, and the palmy branches of the shelter above broke sharply into view, the small monkey's cute, but looming features came with sharpness into focus. At first he was wary in his waking state, but he quickly calmed himself. As if trying to rouse from a nightmarish sleep. He then heard voices to his right hand side. He strained his head up from the leafy pillow and looked around to see two figures. One, reassuringly, was the younger crew member from the ship, who looked bright and sprightly. The other, a complete stranger.

"This is Gelkin," spoke the younger crew member, immediately answering Essen's obvious confusion and curiosity. "When we wrecked upon the shore he found us and brought us here. Helping us back to health. I was exhausted, but still conscious when I hit the beach, but you've been out for days." The young boy then attentively brought over a drink, which Essen sipped thirstily, the sweet watery taste whetting his dry mouth.

"What about the others?"

"There's no sign of them, ..they must have perished in the wreck. We looked again this morning, as we have every morning, just in case, but nothing."

"It was quite a storm," chipped in Gelkin, introducing himself, his ragged clothes and castaway look giving the appearance of someone even more shipwrecked than they were. The little monkey, now playfully hanging upside down above his head, adding to the picture.

"Pieces of your ship keep washing ashore each day. It must have been completely obliterated. It's a miracle that you survived."

"Where are we?" asked Essen, his senses beginning to fully restore.

"Here, nowhere, my island," replied Gelkin, nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders, as if to amplify the exotic remoteness. "We're far away. Far beyond the realms of man. Out in wild nameless nature."

"Are there more people here?"

"Just me."

"I don't understand, where are we?"

As Essen said this he pushed himself up off the ground and to his feet, then struggled to the door of the small shelter to take a better look outside. The beach front looked quite different to the land they'd left before the storm. The land where they'd been soaked to the skin - where his crisp arrow had pierced the royal skull of Prince Aralak, in the now blood-wet poppies. Still, his logical instinct was that they'd been washed back there, only to a remoter part. Disorientated he tried to locate a familiar clue on the landscape, but it all looked as fresh as the lush vegetation that surrounded him.

"This is an island, apparently," intervened the young boy, "..an island opposite the land we've just left, and a fair far distance out to sea at that. Supposedly as distant from that land as that land was distant from the inner seas."

"Where no men have ever been before," aided Gelkin, again trying to impress the sheer distant nature.

"So how did you get here?" quizzed Essen, still confused.

"That's a long story." Gelkin then poured himself a drink of the sweet-tasting water, and took a long swig. The little monkey now following his footsteps as he ambled around upon the sandy ground.

"If you sit back down I'll tell you.."

"I lived on the inside, like you. I was born on the island of Erba. My family were traders, but as a young man I found myself disillusioned with the chaos, and the constant politics and strife, so I left, looking for something better. First, I headed to the mainland, but that was worse. Much worse. Nothing but misery and debt. So I drifted home again, then headed out to the Upper Desert, but even there the endless toil just brought me dejection. The constant struggle. The burdens and demands of other people. There was nowhere I could just stop and be. Nowhere I could lie down for the night without having to owe someone else for it. Or pay a healthy sum for the privilege. How can men live like that? How can they raise a family - knowing that their children will be forever beholden to the whims of others? Where there is no peace, and you must work and battle for every moment of rest.

"I felt despair, but worse than that I had no hope. So I just left. I packed some things and headed out into the desert. I knew that eventually I would burn, or simply dehydrate from the heat, but I didn't mind. I'd reached my limit, and I knew there could never be a life for me back there - in that world. So that was it. I'd decided. I was always told not to go into the desert, not to head out that way. Not to go too far - "The heat will get you." So I took a morbid pleasure in doing the opposite. It would give my death at least some final satisfaction. Plus, I'd always been curious. What was it really like? I began fantasising and fixating on what lay at the edge. Maybe I would see the true world's edge before I died. Perhaps no one else had ever seen it. Would there be fire in the skies? What did it look like? What if it just kept going. Perhaps it wouldn't even be so bad. What if it wasn't? I had to know. Either way, I made my decision and left.

"But the journey was long and lonely and deadly. As I made my way further out the heat became overbearing. My body struggled to cope. I'd prepared well. I brought water - lots of it - and had studied all the ingenious methods of finding water in arid places, but still water was the major problem. The thirst sapping the energy from my aching body more and more with every step. Sleep was near impossible. Eventually the only thing stopping me from turning back was the knowledge that I'd travelled so far I would die anyway, whichever way I headed. So I kept eking my way onward. To my continuing surprise however little changed, and though the brutal heat was truly unbearable, it plateaued. There was no fiery sky. No flames, no edge. No blinding light. Just endless desert. Going on and on and on.

"I lost track of the days. Even now I have no idea how long it took me. I would struggle to hazard a guess at the number of days or weeks. Such was the endless and delirious monotony. Finally though, one night, I noticed it was slightly cooler. Just ever so slightly. I wondered if perhaps I was beginning to acclimatise to the heat in my languid state, but no. My exhausted senses were correct. The following days the trend continued. Even in my deathly state the joy this brought was overwhelming. It occurred to me at first that perhaps I'd just circled round in my calenture, and that somehow I'd found my way back to the Upper Desert. Something that wouldn't have been at all unwelcome given how hungry I was to live. That was not the case however.

"Bits of green and signs of life slowly began to meet my tired wandering. At last I reached the land that you have just come from. A land for a time that I made my home. Having survived so long in the desert it was easy to survive there - in such bounteous nature. The strange animals and fruits, not entirely dissimilar to those back in the mainland, but somehow better. I thought I'd found paradise. Unfortunately, my state of peace was not to last for long. Large ships would occasionally pass by, scouting out the area. Not wanting to be found by these strange vessels I had to hide out in the interior. I had no idea where they were coming from, but chanced it better not to make contact. What could I, one man, do against an entire ship of men if their intentions were malicious? So I made a small boat and started exploring further out. Out into the stormy oceans even further beyond where I'd travelled before. Eventually, and with a degree of joy, I reached here.

"To my comfort I discovered that the ships never sail this far. It lies beyond the reach of all other men it seems. A pristine, unspoiled realm. So here I am, in perfect peace. In a calm and timeless utopia. Had I the sense and fortune to bring a woman along with me on this strange journey it would be true paradise. It really is the only thing missing. There is even greater land beyond this small island too, which I haven't even begun to explore. Though this little patch is more than enough for me. So I've been happily building my one-man civilisation here. A civilisation more free and tranquil than the last.

"Then finally, when you washed up, the world re-found me.."