Fable

by Alicia McKenzie

From En Sabah Nur's introduction to Chapter Six ('Legends and Stories') of 'A History of Oasis', by Nathan Dayspring.

Given Nathan Dayspring's often-fragile state of mind and the demands on his time and energy as the chief hunter and salvager of the Oasis and the gatherer of the new Twelve, it is a constant wonder to me that he managed to record as much as he did of the small details of life in the Oasis. His 'annals' cover a dazzling variety of topics, few as fascinating as what may be called the popular culture of the Oasis.

I myself spent several weeks there before I became aware of its thriving oral tradition. Stories for both children and adults were told throughout the day, seemingly at any opportunity. A desire for escapism, perhaps? Yet the stories were not idyllic, but carried within them a strong undercurrent of mourning for the 'world that was', as the phrase went. Just as often, they were cautionary or moralistic tales--an understandable penchant of the storytellers, given the situation.

This first example, which Nathan recorded in his journals claiming it was a tale he heard the creche mistress telling the children one night, is macabre, to be certain. Through it, however, we see something of how the children of the Oasis were raised, how they were taught to regard the world around them. The story is unsettling, and must have been terrifying to the children who heard it. Yet one must admire its ruthless practicality, if nothing else.

*

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. As little girls went, she was lucky. See, she lived in a world where something very bad had happened. There were no more cities, or countries, and very few people. The world had gotten broken, and everything had fallen between the cracks. You could walk out your door and wind up someplace else entirely, never able to find your way home.

Sounds scary, doesn't it? But like I said, this little girl was lucky. She lived in a castle with strong walls, a castle where the world hadn't cracked.

There was this prince, you see--a golden-haired prince who had more willpower and stubbornness than a hundred normal people put together. He loved his people, and he was determined that he was going to keep them safe, no matter what. His determination made the walls strong, and they held, even as the world outside got stranger and stranger by the day.

It wasn't an easy life, inside the castle. The prince was kind, maybe too kind for his own good, and whenever people washed up on the shores of the castle, he took them in from the storm and made them part of his family. So the castle was a crowded place. There weren't many places to play, and sometimes there wasn't enough to eat. The little girl didn't like going to bed hungry, or being told not to play in the gardens.

She didn't know how lucky she was. The walls kept out nightmares she couldn't even imagine, but she didn't know that. She'd been only a baby when she'd come to the castle, too young to remember the world the prince's knights had rescued her from.

And as she got older, she got curious. In the world that was, they used to say curiosity killed the cat. It's a funny saying, but it's one you all should remember. Maybe it's normal to be curious about what's around the corner, or outside the walls of your castle, but in the world that is, if you let your curiosity get carried away, you usually die.

The little girl had been told that, just like all the children in the castle, but she hadn't really listened. She often laid awake at night in the creche where all the children slept and listened to the world-winds outside the walls, and wondered.

Were there flowers, out in the world? Ones you could pick, and wear in your hair like a crown? Were there places to run where no silly grown-ups shouted at you if you got too close to the walls? Would there be fruit on the trees that you could eat when you wanted, and no lessons or chores you had to do before you could play?

She'd tried to ask the grown-ups, but no one had answered her. Most looked sad, or cried, and the prince's knights, the ones who went out into the world to bring back what the castle needed, had frowned at her and told her it was no place for little girls.

The scariest of the knights, the one who'd claimed the place of the prince's Champion, had gotten angry and picked her right up off the ground, shouting at her until she'd cried and promised to stay inside the walls where she belonged.

But she didn't keep her promise. She snuck out of the creche one night, and went to the walls. They were magical walls, remember, walls the prince had made out of love and devotion to his people. They were meant to keep the world out, not to keep little girls or anyone else in.

As foolish as she was, the girl was still very, very lucky. She might have stepped through the walls into part of the world that was missing, or where there was air that you couldn't breathe.

Instead, she stepped out into a desert with blue velvet sand and a sky with a broken moon. It was the strangest place the little girl had ever seen, and so she ran back towards the castle as fast as she could.

Only the castle wasn't there anymore.

What the little girl hadn't understood was that nothing stays in the same place, in the world that is. Back can turn into forward, left can turn into right, and unless you are very wise or very strong, you will always, always get lost.

When the desert ended, the little girl found herself in a forest, deep and dark and frightening, with trees so thick that no light got through. There were strange creatures in the trees, shrieking at her in voices that didn't sound human. They told her to get out of their forest, or they'd come down there and pull her hair and bite her with their tiny sharp teeth until she bled.

All the little girl knew to do was run. She hadn't paid much attention to what she'd been taught, but she had heard the prince's knights talking once about getting into trouble, out in the world, and having to try and outrun the cracks in the world as they spread. The little girl's legs were short, and she was tired, but fear gives you strength - remember that! - so she kept running.

When the forest ended, the little girl found herself in an old city where all the buildings were in ruins and there were skeletons everywhere, lying there as if they'd fallen asleep and a hundred years had passed them by in the blink of an eye. The city was old and cold, and the air was so full of dust that the little girl choked. Still, she kept running, because she was afraid that if she stopped to rest she'd wake up a skeleton, just like the others.

When the city ended, the little girl found herself on a rocky shore. The wind smelled like salt, and the sky was blue and clear, but there was something lying bleeding on the beach, a huge grey creature that looked up at her with great sad eyes and asked her to help him. He'd been lying here alone for seven days and seven nights, the great beast said mournfully, and if he didn't get back into the water, he'd die. But the little girl screamed and ran away, because the beast was so much bigger than she was. Don't forget that by leaving him, she broke one of the prince's most cherished rules, and made herself a coward, as well as a fool.

When the beach ended, the little girl found herself in a meadow full of flowers, just like she'd imagined. Beautiful flowers, all the colors of the rainbow, warm and alive and sweet-smelling. By then, she was so tired and so scared that she curled up beside a rock and fell sound asleep.

When someone grabbed her and shook her, she woke up with a scream, thinking it was the great beast come to punish her for leaving him to die, or the strange little creatures from the forest come to punish her for invading their trees.

It wasn't either. It was the prince's Champion, come to save her from her own foolishness.

But just in case you think this story has a happy ending, there's something else you should know. The prince's Champion could walk in the world and bend it to his will, but every time he left the castle, he would hear voices on the wind. They whispered in his ear and told him it was his fault the world was broken, whisper it over and over again until he started to go mad. This happened every time.

And he'd been following the girl for a while by the time he found her, and had been using his powers to keep the cracks in the world from swallowing either of them up. Protecting her, even though she was a foolish, stupid little girl. But the voices on the wind had gotten louder, like they always did, and by the time the Champion found the little girl, he wasn't quite himself.

He lost his temper and shouted at her, shaking her hard. The little girl cried and screamed and told her she was sorry for breaking her promise. But the Champion told her that sorry had no meaning, and that if any of the other knights who'd gone out to search for her got hurt, or died, that it would be her fault.

Then the world cracked, and the Champion had to use his powers to turn the crack away, to keep it from swallowing them up. But he had been out in the world too long, and trying not to listen to the voices had taken all the strength he had. He managed to make the crack turn away, but then he fell down onto the ground and didn't move.

Oh, no, he wasn't dead. The prince's Champion won't die until he's done his duty and the world's put back the way it is. Believe that, if you don't believe anything else in this story.

But the little girl thought the Champion was dead. He laid there, still and pale, and she thought it was her fault. She imagined what it would be like if she ever found her way back to the castle and told the folk there what she'd done. The prince would look at her sadly, and she couldn't bear the thought of that.

So the little girl ran again. She ran down empty roads and across barren wastelands, through fog that burned and alongside sunless seas, until she found a little house with a strange man in it.

He was like a lion, she thought, a lion like she'd seen in the storybooks back in the castle. Big and strong with a man of golden hair and hard golden eyes.

Can you help me? the little girl asked the lion. I'm lost, and I can't find my way home.

Of course I can help you, little girl, the lion said with a smile that showed all his sharp teeth. Come a little closer and tell me where home is, and we can find a way to get you back.

So the foolish little girl came closer. And the man that looked like a lion grabbed her, laughing, and told her that it had been a long time since he'd had such a pretty little girl to play with. He started his fire, and then did many terrible things to her to pass the time while the flames grew.

And then he killed her, and cooked her. And ate her.

Stories don't often have happy endings, not in the world that is. If the Champion had woken up sooner, maybe he would have gotten there in time to save her, but instead, what he found was the lion sitting by his fire, picking at the little girl's bones and chuckling.

The Champion did what Champions do, and punished the lion for a long time before he killed him. But all that was left of the little girl was her red cloak. The Champion gathered up her bones and carried them back to the castle, so that the people who loved her could have something to bury. They were lucky, to have that, but the little girl's luck had run out.

So there are a lot of morals to the story. Curiosity kills, and lions can't be trusted.

Most of all, though, little girls need to do as they're told.

*

The story is still chilling, even after all the times I have reread it. In my long life, I have seen how fables grow and evolve, developing a gentle veneer over the darker, more violent core of the original story. The legends and stories of the Oasis are too young to have such a veneer, but perhaps in a hundred years, they will change, grow innocuous as did their predecessors of the 'world that was'.

I cannot help but wonder about this particular tale. The cohesiveness of the story is striking, and though its tone is sometimes stylized, more often it sounds like Nathan's wording, his voice speaking through the story. Was the origin of this story as recorded in his journals the truth, or a convenient fiction to cover up his own authorship?

And how much other truth is there in this tale of a child's curiosity and the sorry end to which it led her? The castle is clearly the Oasis, the prince Franklin, and his haunted Champion is obviously none other than the man who recorded this dark fairy tale.

The anguish here is palpable. Was there such a child in the Oasis, some time before I arrived?

Perhaps the most disturbing thing is how the man-lion, as he is described, evokes Victor Creed. Did the child meet such an end, or was she merely lost, and the gruesome details of her death an invention of Nathan's, to serve as a cautionary tale to other children of the Oasis? To cast Creed as the villain, in that case, is understandable, if it was Nathan who did it.

But I wonder most about the child. I did make a point of asking Nathan about the story, one night in the World's End Bar--not long after he first permitted me to read his journal. I was gentle, as it was always necessary to be with him, and asked merely if the tale was true.

He did not lose his temper, or curse at me as he so often did when I transgressed the careful boundaries of our relationship. He merely went very pale, and bade Patrick fetch him another drink.

I felt reasonably secure in taking that as a yes.

--En Sabah Nur

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