

### Elm of False Dreams

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Coming Soon

God of the 4th Sun

Text copyright© 2015 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Thank you for your support.

# Chapter 1

The leaf came in on a wind, landed softly by her feet: so innocent in its appearance, so malicious in its intentions.

As any young girl might have done, she bent down, picked it up – twirled it curiously in her hand, taking in its strange beauty, the way its veins pumped its green blood through to its soft skin.

As no other girl would have done, she saw in this beauty the fluttering of a bird's wings, the beating of its relatively powerful breast.

She wanted to fly.

She sat down on the bare ground, careless of the way the earth dirtied her skirt, the sharp stones scuffing her legs.

She curled the leaf between her fingers. Her sharp eyes sought out another leaf, and another.

She spun them swiftly, deftly, in her hands. Tearing slightly here, bending the remains of a stalk there. Adding twigs she picked up from the ground with other leaves.

For the eyes, of course, she used small, glistening globules of spit, sparkling like polished horn.

For a brief moment, she admired her creation.

Then she let it fly off into the night.

*

Unfortunately for Cerissa, this time she had been seen. (For, of course, she had done this _many_ times.)

If the young person watching that night had caught her performing her marvellous skills on previous occasions, he would have marvelled too at her creation of sparkling fish from reeds. Fish that would eagerly swim away from between her flicking fingers.

He would also have been astounded by the coming together of a frog from mainly frogspawn, a chicken chiefly from feathers, a mouse from the discarded food pouch of an owl.

Was she a witch?

Naturally, that's what the watching boy could only wonder.

She didn't seem like a witch.

She seemed like a normal girl.

A girl he had known for most of his own young life.

That was why he was here, of course. He'd followed her out into the dark woods, because he was curious.

Why did she always head off this way when they had finished playing?

Why did she always pretend to head for home – then, once she believed everyone had left, slip off onto the path leading between the trees?

This was why; because she knew that she would be either killed or exiled if anyone became aware of her abilities. Abilities she had so far kept hidden from everyone.

It was a profound responsibility, he knew, to be suddenly granted such power over her. The power of life and death.

He wondered what he should do.

He should tell the village elders, obviously. They would know what to do. How to treat Cerissa fairly, without allowing her own powers to bring distress to the villagers.

And yet – he was worried that the elders might not come to the right, fair decision.

He didn't want Cerissa harmed in any way.

He liked her.

He liked her very, very much.

That was why he had followed her.

Why he had been so curious about where she slipped off to on an evening. Why he had noticed in the first place that she didn't immediately head back to the village with all the other children.

He had suspected worse, in fact; that she had a boy she met secretly, one from another village. An older boy.

He was glad that that was not the case.

He wouldn't tell anyone just yet.

He would think carefully first about what he must do.

He turned to leave: and then a leaf, full of malicious intent, drifted and fell across his forehead.

*

# Chapter 2

It was indeed a profound responsibility, a dreadful choice he faced.

Cerissa was far too beautiful to die. Such beauty could not be wasted. It should be cherished. Cared for.

It was a beauty that should be his.

_Could_ be his.

All he had to do was let Cerissa know that he had spared her.

That he cared for her so much, he would never reveal her dangerous secret.

As long as, of course, she was promised to him. As long as she remained faithful to him, he would ignore the fact that she was a witch.

He stepped out from his veiling covering of small bushes, long grasses and ferns.

'Cerissa,' he began – the name instantly dying on his dried tongue, in his gawping mouth, as a huge bear of nightmarish form loomed out of the encroaching darkness.

He couldn't scream. For a moment he seemed frozen, expecting the bear's huge claws to strike him dead. And yet – or rather _because_ of this – he was unable to flee.

'Aestus!' Cerissa cried worriedly, calling out his name. 'Don't be afra–'

Cerissa's cry was enough to drag him out of his stupor. He turned, ran back into the bushes, hurtling headlong and carelessly through the dark wood.

The bear looked down on Cerissa, its eyes of spit and chewed berries sad and questioning; he realised he had made a mistake.

'Wait here!' Cerissa ordered, rushing after Aestus.

The wood wasn't the place to be this late in the evening, unless you had someone like Breni there to protect you.

She chased after Aestus as fast as she dared. It wasn't just wild animals you had to be beware of; in the dark, everything beneath your feet became a potential trap that could send you flying, perhaps even break a few of your bones.

She was used to running though the woods and keeping as silent as she possibly could. Avoiding the overhanging branches of the bushes that would make the most noise. Skipping lightly over the undergrowth, landing on the firmest ground you could make out in the darkness.

Ahead of her, however, it sounded as if Aestus was wildly crashing through everything barring his way.

It was a sure way to bring down on you every beast around.

Even as Cerissa thought this, the chaotic crashing of branches and stems changed from being one that constantly spurted ahead of her to being one that instead had settled in a particular place, a thrashing of the same bushes over and over.

There were shrieking screams, quickly muted, infuriated growls.

Cerissa was too late.

One of the wood's countless ravenous creatures had reached Aestus before she had.

*

Cerissa was running so swiftly she almost became the mountain lion's second meal. She stumbled into the terrible scene as the beast prepared to feast on the boy's now stilled and bloodied body.

Fortunately, Breni was almost instantly beside her, having ignored her command to wait as soon as he had heard the screams. He growled even more ferociously than the surprised lion, his looming presence, his slashing claws, enough to scare it away from the prey it had been looking forward to devouring only seconds before.

The lion whirled around on its hind legs, bounding off into the surrounding bushes. It was bewildered by the lack of bear scent, yet fearful enough to realise this wasn't the time to try and work out the cause of his confusion.

It left behind Aestus's badly mauled body, his small tunic shredded and bloodied, his drawn yet ultimately useless knife lying by his side. At least, Cerissa thought, he hasn't ended up as the lion's meal. There will still be something for his parents to mourn, to bury.

Resurrecting him was beyond even her skills. Besides, even if it were possible, would Aestus really appreciate being brought back to life inhabiting a gruesomely shredded body?

Now she was faced with a dilemma, however.

If she left the body here, some other wild beast would come and drag it away.

Yet if she headed back to the village and warned everyone what had happened out here, questions would start to be asked about why she had been out here in the first place. And even then, by the time everyone had made their way out here, Aestus's body might still have been spirited away.

'Breni, I need you to carry him,' she said, having made her decision. 'Treat him carefully; he was a good friend to me.'

Bending low, Breni picked up the crumpled remains of the boy in his arms of thick, strong branches. He obediently followed on behind Cerissa, who lead the way along the path heading back towards the village.

Reaching the outskirts of the village, Cerissa realised she didn't dare travel any farther with Breni purposely striding beside her. She told him to gently lower Aestus down onto the rocky ground.

'I'll try and be back tomorrow,' she promised Breni, reaching for the plain shawl he was mainly made up off.

She jerked the shawl free of the thick branches that had served as Breni's arms and legs. The branches toppled to the ground, along with the claws of split reeds. With a shake of the shawl, Cerissa discarded the eyes, the teeth of white blossom on brambles.

Slipping the shawl about her shoulders, Cerissa ran towards the quiet village, screaming out her cries for help.

*

# Chapter 3

Even in the poor light of their blazing torches, some of the villagers could make out signs on the ground that didn't seem to fit Cerissa's tale of dragging poor Aestus's body back through the wood.

She claimed to have used a stretcher made of her shawl and thick branches. And yes, the branches were there. She also had a shawl.

But the tracks they found farther back from the rocky ground, where the hillside became the earthy boundaries that themselves soon transformed into the woods, weren't of branches being dragged.

They were those of branches striding out; as if _walking_.

Such tracks made no sense, of course.

They searched deeper in the woods, warily letting Cerissa lead the way to where she claimed the mountain lion had attacked them. Once again, in the light of their torches they saw signs of an attack taking place here.

Yet once again, the signs of struggle failed to make any real sense.

Why were Cerissa's footprints so clearly defined, rather than the confused, chaotic scrabbling you'd expect of a girl suffering a beast's attack?

What were these strange marks of branches, branches that seemed to have been regularly spaced out as opposed to being dragged along the ground, as Cerissa claimed?

Some of the villagers gathered together in an increasingly terrified huddle.

The girl was out here every night!

How did she survive?

Wasn't her mother unmarried?

Wasn't it said that the passing stranger who had entranced her mother had been a wizard, of sorts?

Hadn't they all heard tales of people who became wolves, bears – maybe even lions too!

They silently unsheathed their knives. Quietly and very carefully, they began to surround Cerissa.

Not quietly enough.

Cerissa heard them.

She saw their malicious intent.

In an instant, she was flying; but not in the way she had dreamt of earlier.

*

# Chapter 4

Mima was exhausted, filthy.

No one liked going within a ship's length of the evil smelling mess left by dragons. Yet someone had to clear it away: and that, unfortunately for Mima, was her job.

It could take a whole day to shovel a particularly large (and incredibly _hot_ , too, which made it smell _so_ bad!) pile into her donkey cart. Then when she got to the old quarry, she had to shovel it all out again.

Blast her brother Aestus, getting himself killed while out dallying with that wizard's girl!

It had been ten years now since he had been attacked by the were-lion. A time when Mima had been too young to appreciate what his death would ultimately mean for her.

On the death of her heartbroken mother, her drink-soaked father, their small holding had passed to a cousin, the nearest male heir. It had been expected of the cousin that he would arrange an early marriage for her, but this had never materialised.

And now who would look at her?

Even the beggars stayed downwind of her!

Today, unfortunately, that wind wasn't strong enough to carry the stench of the dragon dung away from her. It did possess enough strength, however, to unwittingly aid an innocent looking leaf to drift towards her, to help it land and stick to her sweat-sheened back.

Mima was used to large flies and insects constantly landing on her. That didn't mean she liked it anyway. Reaching behind her, she swatted away from her back what she supposed must be a large insect.

The leaf dropped onto the top of the huge pile of wet dung Mima was standing on. And, as Mima diligently worked on removing the heap still blocking the road, the leaf was soon trodden deeply into the dragon waste.

*

Amongst the dark waste Mima was digging into, she spotted a sparkle of white.

Not purest white; it was covered in a sheen of dung, after all. Yet it was so much whiter than anything else around it, and therefore shone out like a star amidst the blackness of night.

She excitedly yet carefully began to use her spade to remove the waste surrounding the glistening object, hoping it was something she could clean up and sell (without ever admitting where she had found it, of course!).

Every now and again, something turned up in a pile of waste that someone, somewhere, could make further use of. Often it was a piece of armour, even a sword blade, but its state depended on how long it had remained in the dragon's stomach before being ejected.

This was a horn, one of surprisingly good quality. One carefully hollowed out and polished until it shone almost like ivory.

Mima pulled elatedly at the top she had already uncovered, expecting the tapered mouthpiece to easily slip clear of its clinging dung: yet it held fast, perfectly immoveable.

She dug a little more around the horn, seeking the reason for its steadfastness.

It was still being tightly grasped by a hand.

Mima briefly recalled in horror.

It was thankfully rare that she came across the body parts of the people a dragon had eaten. Its stomach acids would eventually burn through anything, even the armour their victims had worn. Even so, it wasn't unknown for a dragon who had overeaten to divest itself of unwanted material before it had been completely digested.

Bending, Mima began to prise the fingers from the horn – only for them to grasp all the tighter around it.

The horn's owner was still alive!

Mima began to dig as quickly as she could.

She didn't have long: anyone buried in a pile of waste would either suffocate or overheat.

She was surprised that the man had survived such a huge pile falling directly on him. She had known of houses being crushed under smaller piles, of horse and riders being so swiftly engulfed they had died instantly.

At last she had uncovered enough of the poor man to help drag him clear of any remaining dung. He slipped from its embrace with a sickening sucking motion, a grunt and gasp of relief.

He rolled exhaustedly against Mima, covering her in his own slimy sheen. He coughed, spluttered, fighting for air.

He was a dwarf. It was his overlarge helmet that had obviously saved him from suffocating, the metallic chin guards having held enough air for him to breath up until now. It wouldn't have lasted much longer however.

'You should have more control over your dragons!' he complained hoarsely as soon as he was capable of speaking.

'They're not _my_ dragons!' Mima retorted irately. 'I only clean up after them!'

What an ungrateful little man, she thought!

'Then why weren't you quicker cleaning this pile up? I wouldn't have had to suffer that dreadful stench for so long if you'd gone about your job properly!'

With that, he leapt down from the top of the pile of waste and began to irately storm off.

'Well don't say thank you!' Mima shouted after him.

The dwarf turned, looked back towards her.

'I _didn't_ say thank you,' he said curiously. 'Why would I say thank you to someone who was trying to steal my horn?'

'I wasn't trying to _steal_ it! I didn't think it belonged to anyone anymore!'

'So my hand grasping it wasn't a _clue_ that it still belonged to someone?'

'Oh yes, yes; of course, I should've _known_ that there'd be a man still alive under three cartloads of dragon dung!'

'Oh, all right, all right!' the dwarf responded stroppily, holding out his filthy horn towards her. 'Here; you can blow on my horn for a moment!'

'Blow on _that_?' Mima looked at the proffered horn with disgust. ' _That's_ your idea of a reward for saving your life?'

'It's not just _any_ old horn!' the dwarf irately responded. 'Haven't you heard of the magical Mourning Horn?'

*

# Chapter 5

The Mourning Horn

When a son loses a father, it is undoubtedly one of the worst experiences he will suffer in his life.

This is particularly true, however, when a father's death results in the responsibility of kingship being suddenly thrust upon young shoulders.

The new King of Hestia found himself in this very position.

One dreadful day, he found himself surrounded by nothing but the articles of kingship to remind him how well and effortlessly his father had managed to rule their kingdom.

There was the Sword of Irrepressible Fire his father wielded against their enemies, expanding their lands and the reach of their power.

There was the Shield of Iron Walls, used to defend against any foe who foolishly sought to threaten the kingdom's independence and bring it under another sphere of influence.

There was the Helm of True Dreams, a reminder that brilliance of mind and strategy, even alliances rather than war, provided the real route to power and prosperity.

The new king was well aware of all these attributes of wise kingship.

Given pride of place amongst these articles, however, was a simple box.

A box the new king had never seen before. And this was despite the many times his father had eagerly displayed and explained all the other objects associated with the role that would one day be his.

The new king opened the box; and was more surprised than ever when he saw it contained nothing but a simple drinking horn, made from the hollowed-out horn of a great bull.

Fortunately, his father had left him a piece of parchment setting out the reasons why the drinking horn was of such supreme importance to the new king.

The horn hadn't been taken from just any bull, but from a truly magical one.

Indeed, as remarkable as it sounds, the bull himself had at one time being a great leader of men; an impressive warrior of stature who had proved himself time and time again on the battlefield.

This warrior's emblem had been that of the bull, carried on his shield whenever he went to war: and in the midst of a ferocious battle, he would become as one with that emblematic bull, looming over his foes, his towering presence alone enough to strike fear into them. So suddenly did this transformation take effect that many of the enemy mistakenly believed that it was the emblem itself that had sprung into life.

Unfortunately, one fateful day even this fearsome warrior met his match, an obviously flawless warrior possessing the necessary skills to defeat even a magical bull. It was a cruel, unforgiving war, however; and so the dead lay out on the field of battle uncollected for days, sometimes even weeks. By the time the warrior's men could search for his body, it had mainly rotted away, leaving little but his skeleton and the great horns to show where he had died.

Horn, of course, is rumoured to possess its own magical qualities. And so, somehow, the two horns of the magical bull were spirited away, ensuring they weren't lost to the grave.

One was sold at great cost to a great king, who had it hollowed out and polished until it was one of the finest drinking horns around.

At first, of course, he was unsure of the powers it would grant him when he drank from it. And when he did finally drink from it, he was gravely disappointed.

It seemed to have no powers at all, until he used it one night to toast the memory and heroic actions of a dead ancestor. The ancient warrior appeared beside him, recounting a brave deed in his own past that cast new light on a problem the present king was mulling over at the time.

And so this is how the horn works: whenever you toast the brave exploits of an ancestor, that ancestor will appear before you and grant you the wisdom of his own experiences.

But, the old king specifically warned his son the new king, such an important device must never be misused. It must, rather, be used sparingly and wisely.

The dead don't like being interrupted to pronounce on trivialities. Neither do they like being called one after the other, as if you are seeking only the advice of someone who agrees with you.

Naturally, the new king was soon dreaming endlessly of the amazing potentialities of such a wondrous object, a horn that could call up your dead ancestors.

He was amazed, too, that his father had kept its existence secret for so long from both him and his beloved mother.

Why, here was the perfect device for recalling his father to life once again, if only briefly. His heartbroken mother would be overjoyed to see and hold him once more.

She had taken to her rooms in mourning, refusing to celebrate even her forthcoming birthday. But the new king insisted that there _should_ be a celebration.

For he intended to surprise her with the most amazing present anyone could possibly imagine.

*

Dressed entirely in black, and thickly veiled, the mourning queen mother presented a morose sight in an otherwise raucous celebration of her birthday.

Indeed, the only other person there unable to join in the celebrations sat at her side, Lord Ferus having been not only the old king's right-hand man but also his oldest friend.

Aware of their unshakeable sadness at the old king's loss, no one dared bring up mention of his past exploits, as was usual at such events. Everyone feared it would only remind them of a wisdom and skills no longer in existence.

At last, however, the new king rose to his feet, quieted the noisy hall, and proposed a toast to his father.

As he raised his drinking horn to his lips, everyone else in the hall raised their horns too, even the mourning queen, who briefly lifted her veil to bring the drink to her own mouth.

Seeing this, the new king smiled in anticipation, already imagining how surprised and overjoyed she would be when the old king himself appeared in the hall.

She would weep, but in joy, as she threw her arms about him once more. And he too, naturally, would warmly embrace his father. He would speak to him once more, this time of all those things he wished he had spoken of while his father had been alive.

Yet there was no sign of the old king, as the new king had intended.

He was puzzled: how was the magical horn supposed to work?

Was it, perhaps, that he had conducted the toast improperly?

He decided to try again, but this time by proposing a toast to the renowned exploits of the old king's own father.

Again, everyone followed him in toasting the great man's achievements.

And again, there was no sign of the old man.

The horn wasn't magical at all!

Had it all been a trick, a cruel joke played upon him by his own father?

Lord Ferus must have seen the new king's bewildered frown. For the lord spoke next, flattering the new king's wisdom in realising that we must always celebrate the heroic ancestors of our kingdom. It is their brave deeds, after all, that have ensured the safety and wealth of the kingdom's many citizens.

He went on to express his hopes that the new king would also appreciate the role he and his own heroic ancestors had played in ensuring the stability and success of the kingdom.

Naturally, the new king graciously accepted what was effectively Lord Ferus's promise of allegiance, proposing a toast to the lord's own father.

And as the magical horn touched his lips, the lord's father appeared in front of the king, asking him how he could help a man of his own blood.

*

Fortunately, the king's own sons and their sons after them always used the Mourning Horn far more wisely than he had.

And they never found any need to seek out the advice of a king who had inexplicably slain his own mother at her own birthday celebrations.

*

# Chapter 6

Mima now looked at the horn with both awe and a desperate hunger to use it.

'And this is the horn? The Morning Horn?'

'Weren't you listening at all to what I've been saying?' the dwarf snapped back at her. 'The Mourning Horn belongs to the Kings of Hestia!'

'Then why tell me the tale?' Mima snapped back.

'Because bulls have two horns, of course! _This_ is the _other_ horn!'

He proudly raised the horn.

'It has the same powers?' Mima asked eagerly.

'Of course _not_! If it _did_ , I'd have told a tale about _this_ horn, wouldn't I?

'Then it _is_ just a useless piece of horn!'

The dwarf sighed, as if exasperated that he was having to explain so many things to such a foolish girl.

'It's one that you _blow_ to call up the dead!' he explained slowly, as if talking to an idiot. 'And _then_ it allows them to speak with you _through_ the horn!'

*

As Mima continued to stare doubtfully at the proffered horn, the dwarf moved closer to her, raised the horn to his lips: and blew into its narrow mouthpiece as hard as he possibly could.

No sound came from the horn. Mima wondered if it were still blocked with dung.

'I didn't hear anything,' she pointed out.

'Then be thankful for that,' the dwarf sneered, 'otherwise it would mean you were _dead_!'

He handed the horn to her, indicating that she should place the mouthpiece in her ear.

She did as she was told, hearing instantly the sound of waves crashing on the seashore, as she had similarly heard when placing a large shell gathered from the oceans against her ear.

It was hardly the dead speaking to her, as the dwarf had promised.

'Mima, when you hear me, I _know_ you'll try and find me – but it's Cerissa you need to find! Find Cerissa before you come looking for me!'

Mima gasped. It was a man's voice: a _boy's_ voice!

Aestus! Who else could it be?

She had been too young when he had died to remember what his voice sounded like – but he had also mentioned Cerissa, the girl responsible for his death!

The girl who every villager also thought was dead, as she had been exiled all those years ago and never heard from again

No one could survive on their own in the wilderness.

And yet, according to her brother Aestus, she _was_ still alive.

The were-lion had survived, while her own brother lay dead!

Yet maybe, just maybe; it seemed Aestus believed this Cerissa might be able to lead Mima to her brother!

*

# Chapter 7

The dwarf snatched the horn off Mima.

'That's long enough; you only dug me out of a pile of dung you should have cleaned up earlier! You didn't really save my life!'

'Please, please! Can't I just listen a little longer? It's so important!'

'Of course it's important! _Anyone_ hearing messages from the dead think what they're hearing is _the_ most important message in their lives, don't they?'

'I suppose so,' Mima admitted. 'But my _brother_ was telling me how to reach him and hel–'

The dwarf was holding out his hand for money.

'We all have to live, don't we?'

'I can't afford it!'

'You can't afford to hear _the_ most important message in your life?' he shook his head in mock disbelief. 'Tut tut: what would your poor brother think?'

Mima bit her lip in frustration: what _could_ she do?

*

The dwarf wouldn't accept her donkey and cart as payment for another use of the horn.

He was wise enough to realise they weren't hers to give away.

And so he had gone on his way, leaving Mima behind to ponder her options.

She could continue shovelling dragon dung for a living.

Or she could set off on a quest to find this Cerissa. And, eventually she hoped, her dead brother Aestus.

She threw her shovel away.

She uncoupled the donkey from the cart.

She climbed up onto the donkey's back.

And she set out upon her quest. With every beggar she passed complaining of the stench she made.

*

# Chapter 8

Of course, it would have been both far swifter and more glamorous to have pinched a dragon rather than a donkey.

But as she had quite honestly confessed to the disbelieving dwarf, she rarely came into contact with any dragons. Her job was purely to clean up after them.

Besides, stealing a dragon usually ended up with the thief being securely tied between two full grown dragons and being slowly and torturously torn apart.

Whereas stealing a donkey resulted in a slightly less painful death.

There was another 'besides' too: as she really wasn't sure where she was heading, what was the point in getting there quicker anyway?

*

In the heat of the day, as she travelled along the road, the dung baked hard upon Mima's skin.

Even the donkey seemed to be getting a little perturbed by the worsening stench, especially as people tended to stare at _her_ as if _she_ were the one to blame.

Naturally, Mima was constantly on the lookout for a river she could bathe in, yet every time she had found one the women washing their clothes in the streaming waters would chase her away in disgust. By the time the sun had finally set, even the camps of beggars were refusing her room to bed down for the night.

Of course, it wasn't safe to sleep amongst beggars. Yet it was even more unsafe not to, for you left yourself open to attack from opportunistic brigands or hungry animals.

At last, she found someone who was prepared to sleep close by her, an old warrior with neither nose nor a full set of either eyes or arms.

'Friends call me Detritus; not that I have many friends.'

He was huge, bear-like; he blundered around, intoxicated and unsteady on over-used feet. His remaining hand was like the blade of the spade Mima had used to clean up the edges of her cart whenever she had to wash it down.

He offered her a sip of his drink, which she refused. He offered her some of his mouldy, filthy bread, which she had no choice but to accept; she was hungry, having brought no food with her.

As they ate and prepared their beds of straw and grasses, he told her how he had come by his injuries during ten years of war against the Trojans.

He told her, too, how their enemies had resorted to using magic; a charm on the emblem of each shield that caused it to spring into life in the midst of the very fiercest battles. Thus they had had to fight not just soldiers, but also serpents, boars, multi-headed hydra.

Eventually, he explained, they had been left with no choice but to use magic to their own ends.

And so one of their wiliest commanders, Odysseus, had sought out the great witch Cerissa.

*

# Chapter 9

Up until the mention of Cerissa, Mima had hardly been paying any attention to the old man's tales of wars.

She had heard of the recently fought Trojan wars, of course, yet had never heard any mention of Cerissa in any of the countless tales told about it.

'I never knew she was involved in the war,' she admitted.

'It was only towards the end that she became involved; yet, of course, it is precisely _because_ of her involvement that the war came to an end.'

'But I thought that Odysseus's great horse had brought about Troy's fall?'

'Hah, that old rogue, he likes to take all the credit, certainly. But how do you think the horse came to life other than through Cerissa's magic?'

'Alive? I've never heard of the horse coming to _life_!'

'What foolish tales have you been listening to, girl? Not the one were the Trojan's are such fools that they drag a gift left by us into their city?'

He guffawed so loudly that Mima worried he would wake everyone around them, even though they had all pitched their own beds as far from her as they could manage.

'If only our enemy really _had_ been such fools! Maybe then we wouldn't have taken ten years to beat them!'

He drank thirstily from his vase of wine.

'But how could such a huge horse – it _was_ a _wooden_ horse, as I've heard, surely? – spring into life? That's not possible – surely?'

'Aye, it's not _supposed_ to be possible, I'll grant you that girl. But, see, it wasn't _just_ of wood; just _mainly_ of wood. And this was wood we collected from everywhere we could; driftwood, wrecked ships, fallen tress in the woods. It was not a pretty sight, this horse, but one, I think, that was _deliberately_ crudely constructed.'

'Deliberately?'

'The witch, see? She _insisted_ that this was how it should look. You _saw_ it as a horse, but it most surely _wasn't_ a horse, if you took the time to observe it closely. It was more a nightmare; the horse you feared, that appears in your dreams snorting and whining, like it's a harbinger of your death! See, the way I reckon, having given it much thought – it was the _spirit_ of a horse, not a _physical_ one!'

'And the men? The brave soldiers who waited inside to open the city gates while the Trojan's slept?'

'Brave? Aye, you could call them that. Foolish, more like – aye, those'd be _my_ words! They knew they would die: that was their role!'

'How could they _die_? How could dead men open the gates?'

'Haven't I already said the Trojan's weren't fools? They'd have sooner set our horse on fire than let it into their city. They prodded it time and time again with great spears, until the blood of our men ran freely though the structure's many holes.'

'Holes?' Mima was shocked. 'Then the men would be spotted _through_ the holes!'

'As, indeed, was the intent of the witch – hence the horse's _crudeness_! The Trojans saw our men through the holes: they stabbed them through the holes; they made sure that everyone was dead by peering at their lifeless bodies through the holes!'

'A waste of good men!'

'But don't you see? The Trojans now had no reason to suspect any _further_ trickery! This great horse, built by the Greeks supposedly to fool the Trojans; why, now it showed only that the Greeks were the fools, the Trojans the wise ones! _Now_ they freely chose to display this example of Greek foolhardiness throughout their city!'

'And then the horse came alive, once it was in the city?'

'Not at first; as the tales truly tell, it waited until it was dark, until most of the populace was either drunk or asleep. And then, at last, it awoke; this nightmare, this fearsome beast that inhabits only your very worst dreams!'

'But how – how could it bring about the downfall of an entire city?'

'It trampled men underfoot: it resisted all attacks, as if made not of wood, but the strongest flesh, such as we see upon the rhino. It rampaged throughout the city. It kicked out with its hind feet at the city walls, the great gates, bringing down towers, splintering the oak of the doors. Yet the worst thing of all, as I heard it from the terrified survivors – for yes, we poured into the city to lay waste to it once its walls were breached – was the fear it instilled within you; petrifying you, as if you were witnessing death itself coming to take you away.'

He shook his head, as if wishing to forget the horrors he had seen that day.

'Do you...do you think this witch could restore life to the dead?'

Mima asked her question hesitantly, wondering if it was a fair question to ask this tortured man. Fearing, too, that he might answer in a way that destroyed her hopes.

He thought about the answer only for the briefest moment.

'If anybody could...yes, it _would_ be her!'

*

# Chapter 10

Detritus sadly informed Mima that, no, he didn't know where the great witch could be found.

But he did know of a man, another ex-soldier badly disfigured in the wars, who had once had contact with her; indeed, had even received her help.

They both set off looking for Detritus's friend early next morning. Detritus had persuaded Mima to take a long, wallowing bath in the stream before the washerwomen turned up.

No, he couldn't smell her, he explained; but he could tell by the way everyone preferred to sleep by the donkey rather than her that there must be _something_ wrong!

They climbed up into the hills and through the densest parts of the woods, where the daylight fought to penetrate through the massed branches. Eventually it was so dark it was hard to tell when the sun had begun to set once more, and Detritus had to construct and light a firebrand to light the way.

For quite a while now, Mima had been wondering what could be making the odd noises she had been hearing coming from somewhere off the path they were following: like the striking of gongs, the ringing of dull bells, the rattle of sticks, and whistling of wind through metal.

Ironically, she could at last see the cause of this weird musical accompaniment to their journey – for the blaze of the flames was reflected back in the darkness as it struck the armour that had been strung up from trees. As the armour turned in the wind, Mima saw to her horror that the skeletons of the dead warriors were still encased inside, their looser bones tinkling as if transformed into gruesome instruments.

Detritus suggested that they light a fire, eat and make-up their rough beds of grasses once more. He had killed a few pieces of game as they had travelled, being an excellent shot with the sling despite him lacking one eye. He also knew which herbs and mushrooms were edible rather than to be avoided. He cut and roasted the meat expertly.

Just as Mima began to tell herself that she would sleep well tonight after all, however, the donkey began to skitter nervously, a sure sign that it had picked up the scent of a prowling beast. Soon even she could hear the steady crushing of the undergrowth, the low growling of a stalking animal.

'Don't worry,' Detritus said, calmly continuing to eat his meal. 'I recognise that noise. It's my friend.'

*

It wasn't until morning, as they were finishing breakfast, that Detritus's friend revealed himself to them.

He stepped into the area where they had made their makeshift camp.

The panicked donkey threw itself about in a frenzy as it tried to wrench itself free of the branch Detritus had thankfully securely tied it to.

Perhaps even Mima would have risen to her feet and run if Detritus hadn't placed a consoling, calming hand on her knee. Yet she doubted that she would have been capable of running at all, for her legs had locked, her back had rigidly frozen, her mouth had fallen open, gawping in terror.

The man approaching them had the head of a huge bull, his bared torso being a mix of both human and the more exaggerated undulations of an animal's throbbing muscles. He was immense, towering over even Detritus as the latter stood up to greet the newcomer.

He seemed in someway to soak up the light around him, leaving him darker, more foreboding than he would otherwise appear – which was terrify enough! He was a nightmare come to life, everything about him strangely unfocused, a hazy remembrance and mingling of all the beasts who had ever chased you in your dreams.

'Detritus my friend,' he growled harshly, proffering a hand.

The two old warriors shook hands, embraced each other warmly, jovially.

'I have someone who wants to meet you!' Detritus said.

'Someone who _wants_ to meet me?' He turned to glower curiously at Mima. 'Then she must indeed be a very _strange_ person, Detritus!'

*

# Chapter 11

The bull-headed man led them farther into the darkest parts of the wood.

They passed evermore hanging skeletons, their bones rattling inside their armour whenever they were twisted or turned by a breeze.

'These woods are far worse than any labyrinth,' Detritus said to Mima. 'It's so easy to get lost unless you know the paths to follow.'

As they rose up higher through the woods, the trees began at last to thin out a little, the ground becoming too rocky to support them. Soon they neared a cave that had been made as close as possible into something resembling a home, with timbers used to construct an outside wall, long grasses for a makeshift roof.

A woman was there, her back turned to them as she bent over a cooking pot. She turned around as she heard them draw close.

She attempted to smile, yet the effect was strangely even more horrendous.

Rather than teeth, she had the sharpest stones. Rather than hair, she had a writhing nest of serpents.

Mima was even more petrified that when she had first spotted the bull-headed man.

'She won't harm you,' the bull-man told her, seeing and perhaps expecting her distress. 'She's my wife.'

*

In the cave, they were made as comfortable as possible, every piece of furniture imaginable being there, but constructed crudely of wood and stone.

They were even presented with stone goblets of a sour yet refreshing wine.

Once she had finished making her guests welcome, the serpent-haired woman looked as if she were about to try and remove her head; but instead, she was lifting what turned out to be a complex mask clear of her real head.

She was old, yet still had a great many of the signs that said to anyone who recognised them that she had once been a great beauty.

The serpents of the mask she carefully laid aside continued to writhe and hiss, as if a little irritated that they had been discarded.

'To scare people away,' the woman explained, noting Mima's shocked stare. 'That way, only the most valiant warriors remain to take on my husband in combat.'

Her husband sighed.

'We would prefer it, of course, if they were _all_ scared away. But thankfully, I have to face far fewer these days than I once had to!'

That would explain the dead warriors hanging in the woods, Mima realised. Another ploy, too, to scare away anyone foolish enough to challenge the bull-man.

As the man slumped down almost with relief into a makeshift chair, he began to lift off his own mask.

This time, however, the removal of the mask didn't reveal an old yet still handsome face.

It revealed a man with a bull's head.

*

# Chapter 12

The Flawless Wine

There was once a king of a small yet remarkably wealthy state who preferred to tend his vines rather than go off to war, seeking glory.

He measured his success by the quality of the wines his kingdom produced, not by the number of men he killed.

He grafted his vines endlessly in his search for the perfect grape, the perfect wine. And one day, he announced that he had at last achieved his goal: a wine that easily surpassed all others in taste, texture and colour.

It was undoubtedly the most perfect wine ever produced, anyone fortunate to taste it instantly agreed.

It was the drink of the gods! The drink the gods _would_ drink, if only it were possible for them to make it!

It was universally acclaimed to be the ultimate, Flawless Wine.

It wasn't long, of course, before such a perfect wine became a term of comparison when judging the quality of everything from cloth to a woman's beauty.

For instance, any dressmaker wishing to boast of his wares would claim that his creations were the Flawless Wine of clothing.

Naturally, any such claims were met with the scorn they so rightfully deserved.

No one could _really_ claim that their products were the equivalent of the Flawless Wine. At best, you might be able to reasonably argue that you had come as close as possible to achieving such perfection within your own particular field of expertise.

Even women previously regarded as being great beauties found themselves suffering the indignity of being honestly informed that even their renowned looks didn't come close to achieving that measure of true perfection, the _Flawless_ Wine.

Even the king's queen, it had to be admitted by all, wasn't the true, _Flawless_ Wine they had once assumed her to be.

In fact, of course, everything suffered in comparison to the Flawless Wine.

The gorgeous rose gardens the king had once delighted in now became nothing but a vexation to him, for he could no longer ignore the pests that blighted his blooms, the diseases that yellowed their leaves.

The palace he had once enjoyed for its delicate beauty rather than any attempt at grandeur had sections of a displeasing lack of proportion. Rooms felt too confining for him to remain comfortable in.

Even the vines producing his Flawless Wine were disfigured by the manure that had to be strewn around and dug into their roots.

*

The king had become dissatisfied with everything save his Flawless Wine.

Nothing gave him any sense of enjoyment anymore.

He was inconsolably miserable even as he drank his Flawless Wine, unnerved by the imperfection he saw everywhere about him.

He felt annoyed – how could his search for perfection have resulted in him drowning in imperfection?

He felt betrayed – yet by whom, he couldn't be sure.

He felt a rage growing inside him – but whom he could take it all out on, he didn't know.

And so when he and his state were called upon to take part in a great war against a powerful enemy, he embraced this opportunity to direct his previously unfocused fury onto others.

Unfortunately for the king, in terms of martial skills the men he fought against were far closer to being a Flawless Wine than he was.

He and his men suffered badly in every battle, much to the anger of his brother. For his brother increasingly saw himself as the true leader of warriors, rather than this worthless grower of vines.

Worse still, their enemy had embraced magic in their aim to repel these invaders to their shores. The emblems painted on their shields, the roaring beasts topping their decorative helms, would spring into life in the very midst of battle. Instead of simply facing the slashing of swords, the pressing weight of massed, armoured men, the king's warriors would suddenly find themselves up against eagles, serpents, elephants and dragons.

They fled the field many times, such that they came to be known as The Flawed.

The king's brother seethed at the ignominy.

'Tomorrow, we do _not_ run like scared women!' he stormed in the royal pavilion one night as they drank too much of the Flawless Wine. 'We die like _men_!'

*

The enemy had come to recognise that the king's men were a weak point in the Greek's line of battle.

As such, the next day the king's warriors faced the fiercest onslaught yet, the enemy expecting them to once again offer little resistance and eventually break.

Stung by his brother's disrespectful comments the night before, however, the king was for once determined that his men would hold fast to their position.

The heavy waves of the enemy surged against them. Neither side was expecting such fierceness of fighting, the enemy as determined as the king's men to prove their worth that day.

Even when the emblematic creatures and beasts blossomed into life, The Flawed continued to hack and harry, to barge with massed shields, to bring down great, terrifying creatures by severing tendons, by lassoing necks with whips and ropes.

The king found himself facing a massive bull. They fought each other as if in a private dual amidst the sweeping battle lines, the king's men refusing to aid him, the enemy believing the bull was fearsome enough to take out this Flawed King.

They gored and mauled each other relentlessly, the king refusing to give ground, the bull thinking only in terms of killing this angry little pest.

With a swipe of its great head, a slash of its ferociously sharp horns, the bull took away half of the king's face, a large part of his skull, a smattering of his brains.

Realising he was dying, the king swung low beneath the raging bull, brought up his great sword into its great belly – and they both crumpled to the ground as if lifeless.

'The king is dead! Long live the new king!' one of the king's men cried out elatedly, hailing the brother as their new leader.

So, that's it, is it? the old king thought as he was left to die.

Far from mourning my loss, being unnerved by it, despairing of it, they rejoice.

As he lay amongst the dead, he watched his brother take his jubilant men onto victory against the enemy.

Truly, he realised, amongst my entire kingdom, _I_ was the most flawed.

*

It was a war in which the belligerence between the foes had risen to a point where little quarter was given.

Neither side allowed a period of truce when the dead could be collected from the field of battle.

The wounded were expected to crawl back to their own side. The more badly wounded, of course, would be swiftly put to death by the marauders who descended under the cover of night, cutting off fingers to steal rings, even heads to retrieve an expensive necklace,

Even so, it was the intense cold that took most lives. The king used what little strength he had remaining to completely split open the belly of the magical bull, to spill out some of its guts and climb inside the warm carcass.

Its blood, its savagely gored flesh, was surprisingly warm. Its warmth, its softly fluid comfort, soothed his own massive injuries. It all slipped so easily into the deep gashes of his own body, reminding the king of his own remarkable skills of grafting one branch to another.

He lay out amongst the field of the dead for days, drinking the bull's blood, eating its raw flesh.

He also utilised the wondrous clotting abilities of the bull's blood to stem his own bleeding wounds, the strangely malleable flesh to plug gaps and make repairs that began at last to heal.

One night, he heard what he had feared for so long; the scuffling of an approaching thief.

A thief who will take his life simply to take his royal rings.

*

He hears the approaching thief hesitantly call out his name.

Perhaps it's not a thief at all!

Perhaps one of his men has come to save him at last!

He hoarsely calls out to the searching man, leading them ever closer towards him.

But it's not a man.

It his wife.

It's the queen.

She bends down to tend him, relieved that he is still alive, aghast at his fearful condition.

She has been searching every night for him out here, refusing to believe his brother's claim that he had died.

Helped to his feet by his wife, the king is surprised to find that he is by no means as badly injured as he had first thought. He can move, he can walk, if not yet steadily.

They stumble off the battlefield together, taking the path leading up into the hills, knowing it is now too dangerous to head for their own royal pavilions. The new king will not rejoice at the return of the old one.

In the hills they settle down to a simple life within a cave, their food caught by the one-time king as he takes on the muscles and power of the magical bull he has become grafted to. His sorely damaged head recovers too, but only by taking on the attributes of the by-far stronger bull, his skull enlarging, horns sprouting above his bovine ears.

He is a monster, he recognises this.

Yet his wife, the woman he had foolishly and unfairly declared as being far from perfect, doesn't see the monster.

She sees the man he once was.

The man he could be again. If only he would stop seeking perfection.

And so, of course, they could have lived happily ever after.

Unfortunately, just as the one-time king once did, many men throughout the world continue to seek perfection.

The perfection of their valour, of their skills at war.

Hearing tales of this powerful monster, living in cave in the hills, they seek him out.

They challenge him to mortal combat.

They measure their own prowess by this most arduous and dangerous of tests.

For you see, the king has at last become the Flawless Wine.

*

# Chapter 13

'Yet this cave...' Mima began doubtfully, having listened to the man's tale, 'it's far across the sea, surely, from where those famous battles took place?'

The man gave a nod of his bull's head.

'We sought to leave our unwanted fame behind us. Cerissa had heard of my plight while building the great horse. She provided a ship to bring us here, the masks to scare off all but the very bravest: the bull mask,' he added, aware of Mima's doubtful narrowing of eyes as she stared once more at the discarded mask, ' _is_ more fearsome than my own head. Something about the magic used, it seems; it bleeds with our universal fear of nightmares, of death, I believe.'

He looked towards his wife's mask, the serpents still hissing, writhing.

'I have seen warriors struck dead by the simple appearance of my wife; their hearts give out, leaving them frozen rigid, petrified.'

'I am seeking Cerissa,' Mima admitted.

'I don't know where she lives, I'm afraid. I'm not sure anyone does.'

As he spoke, he stretched out an arm into the empty air beside him. There was a crisp fluttering of wings as a raven flew out of the cave's more solid darkness and perched itself on his wrist.

'But we _can_ send word to the captain of the ship that brought us here.'

*

The raven was not a real bird.

Like the masks, it was a construct of waste or otherwise redundant materials.

Its wings, for sure, were of dark feathers. Yet there were also creased leaves there. Its legs were twigs. For eyes, it had globules of spit, and maybe chewed berries.

Even so, it cocked its head curiously as the man talked to it. Then it flew off, as if it had clearly understood every instruction given it.

'We need to get you to the harbour where the ship will meet you,' the man said to Mima and Detritus as they watched the raven get ever smaller in the sky, until it was nothing more than a dark speck.

While he had talked, his wife had been preparing what had appeared to Mima as nothing more than a pile of large branches, old hides and torn blankets. As she had opened up these supposedly chaotic piles of waste, however, they had taken on the shape of horses; yet curiously incomplete horses. Indeed, they formed only the rear of a horse – there were neither forelegs, nor heads and necks.

'These will swiftly take you there,' the woman said with a pleasant smile, inviting Mima to be the first to see how these strange horses would carry them.

*

# Chapter 14

Mima thrilled to the incredible speed they were managing as they galloped along the meandering paths running through the woods.

It was fortunate that they had left the donkey behind with the man and woman – she would not have been able to attain this ferocious pace even for a minute, let alone keep up as they ran for mile after mile, rushing towards the far off harbour.

The sound of pounding hooves echoed around them; which was indeed most strange, for neither the legs of the horses nor indeed their own – of course – had been shoed in any way.

If anyone had caught sight of them as they hurtled though the densely packed trees, they would have stared in disbelief. For it was Mima and Detritus themselves who had to fulfil the role of forelegs and head of the mounts they had expected to be riding.

The constructs of hind legs had been securely strapped around their waists by the woman, even as she had assured them with a knowing chuckle that she wasn't crazy; they would take on the grace and agility of a horse, she added. And she knew this for sure, as she and her husband had used them long ago to ride into the hills.

Mima had glanced down at her legs; and gawped in a mix of horror and disbelief as they transformed into those of a horse, albeit one seen only in a hazy dream. Yet now those legs pounded the ground as effectively and rapidly as any well-bred stallion.

In the trees spreading out to either side of them, there were no longer any signs of the hanging armour, tinkling musically to the drumming beat of the bones they encased. There were ever more signs, however, of stilled warriors, men who appeared alive yet frozen rigidly in place. They had been suddenly stilled like this in the very midst of a sword strike, or the violent thrust of a spear.

Were these the heroes, Mima wondered, who had been petrified by the angry glare of the serpent-haired woman?

They seemed to lie too far too far away to be her victims. Yet the woods were filled with more and more of them, until their ranks began to include stranger creatures, hybrids of man and animal or animal and beast.

They arrived in a clearing where they came across yet another petrified warrior; only for the man to angrily spring into life, threatening them with raised sword and shield.

*

'Sorry, sorry! You _startled_ me!' the warrior apologised, seeing their own startled reactions to his unexpected attack.

Recoiling and rearing on their hind legs, both Mima and Detritus had briefly believed they would die from a deep slash of the warrior's sweeping sword. Fortunately, his skill with his weapon was such that he stopped his blade in mid-strike.

'Such remarkable creatures!' the warrior gasped, gawping in awe as he took in their strange form. 'Here's something else for you to capture, eh, sculptor?'

He looked back over his shoulder, towards where a man in craftsman's garb was carefully studying a boulder that lay on the ground before him.

'What?' The man looked up, as if at last made aware of Mima and Detritus's presence. 'Oh yes, yes! Indeed, indeed!'

Like the warrior, the sculptor stared at Mima and Detritus in wonder. He approached them, his admiring eyes lingering over every aspect of their powerfully undulating forms.

'Please, please,' he pleaded with them, 'I _must_ capture your likeness in stone!'

'We don't have time to wait around for you to carve us, I'm afraid,' Detritus replied firmly yet politely enough not to cause offence. 'We have another three day's journey ahead of us at least!'

'You must be travelling far, to the coast at least, for it to take such magnificent beasts so long!'

Detritus bridled at the sculptor's description of them as 'beasts'.

'The sculptor works miraculously swiftly,' the warrior assured them. 'You may watch, if you wish, as he preserves me so I might be remembered by all those who follow me; whether I am successful against the beast – sorry, _monster_ – or not!'

Mima observed the young man with a sorrowful frown.

'Please, I would advise you to turn around now, or you will only end up dead, like so many other warriors we have seen on our way here.'

'All the more reason, then, why the sculptor must complete his work!' the young warrior grinned nonchalantly.

'You can stay tonight with me,' the sculptor offered, indicating with a wave of his hand that it was already getting dark. 'I have food, a pool to bathe in, and fresh bedding.'

As he added this, he looked doubtfully at them both, obviously wondering what type of bedding they would prefer. He saw, too, the hesitation in their eyes; they had almost been swayed by his offer of a comfortable night.

'I could carve you quickly in the morning. It will be too dark to do it now, as I have to finish my sculpture of this brave young man.'

Mima looked at the boulder the sculptor had been contemplating. He hadn't even made a start on carving the young warrior. Moreover, it was far too small to be used to carve anything but the poor man's feet!

The sculptor hadn't even prepared his tools. There were none in clear sight, at any rate.

'As my friend has already explained,' Mima answered kindly, 'we have no time to waste.'

'Then I can help you there too,' the sculptor promised, 'for I can show you a much quicker route to the coast!'

'We were told to head this way,' Detritus insisted, remembering his friend's care in describing the route they should take.

'And so you shall – yet I can make it even _quicker_ for you!'

*

# Chapter 15

The young warrior struck up his heroic pose once more.

The sculptor bent over the large yet still obviously inadequate boulder.

And still he had no tools about him.

He _talked_ to the boulder.

It was a series of whisperings, of suggestions.

They were accompanied with a careful caressing of the stone, like some men will care for a favoured dog, or potters will bring their clay into a chosen form.

And the boulder began to move, to grow, beneath his hands.

The sculptor teased the stone into new shapes, with tender strokes, with flattery, with admonishments. What had been hard before was now malleable, almost viscously fluid.

And still it continued to grow, vigorously, more plant-like rather than of rock and earth.

And as it grew, the sculptor bent it to his will, into the shape he required it to take on.

In the time it took for the sun to finally set, he had created this remarkable simulacrum of the young warrior. Full of colour. Full of life.

A life the young man will soon no longer possess, Mima thought sadly, when he bravely insisted he must be on his way.

*

They slept remarkably comfortably on bedding of fresh straw and tender vines.

Detritus awoke with a start, wondering what had disturbed his sleep.

Pah! It was nothing more than a leaf, which had landed on his brow!

Now that he was awake, however, he sensed an urge (as all old men are want to do, late in the night) to vanish for a moment into the nearby bushes.

As he put the finishing touches to readjusting his garb, having finished his most natural of tasks, he jumped slightly in surprise as he heard a rustling of bushes and undergrowth. There was a flash of white, of brighter colours – and a small hybrid creature of goat and boy stood before him, as startled as he was.

The boy, however, remained rigidly still, as if one of the statues.

In fact, he now looked so much like one of the statues that Detritus peered at him curiously – wondering if he hadn't, in fact, been there all along. Just one more of the sculptor's creations littering the woods.

He drew closer to this statue, close enough to observe every detail. He especially peered intently at the boy's face, so close now that the breath from his nose rippled against what would have been the statue's skin.

The boy's eyes were frozen wide – and then they moved ever so slightly, ever so fearfully.

'Hah!' Detritus exclaimed triumphantly.

The boy made to run off –but was abruptly held firmly in place by the hand of Detritus clamping down hard on his shoulder.

'What's going on here?' Detritus demanded.

'Oh please please let me go!' the boy wailed. 'I thought you were the evil sculpto–'

' _Evil_ sculptor?' Detritus repeated suspiciously.

'Yes, yes! He takes the souls of the people he carves! We live forever, while they age and die!'

'Hah!' Detritus exclaimed triumphantly once more. He had suspected as much!

'But,' he said doubtfully, still keeping a firm grip on the struggling boy, 'how come _you've_ come to life; if you _were_ a statue, I mean?'

'Yes, I was a statue! But my real self is aging so quickly, he realises he's been tricked. He plays the magical pan pipes, calling me to save him!'

With a growl of satisfaction, Detritus let the boy go – and the boy thankfully vanished as quickly and silently as he could into the dark undergrowth.

*

# Chapter 16

The sculptor awoke the next morning to find that his two new and most marvellous subjects had already risen and left.

He was surprised. What on earth could have made them change their minds?

As he had promised them, he could have helped them cut down their long journey to less than a day!

Even though they had left him without a word of explanation, he felt no rancour against them. He decided he would help them on their way anyway.

Carefully, he began to rearrange the small boulders around him, forming them into a more pleasing pattern.

He also took up finely contoured pieces of wood, and placed these too into his miniature landscape.

He included some woven vines, some intertwined stems.

Yes, he nodded in satisfaction: it was all a very pleasing pattern indeed.

*

After such an unexpectedly early start to their day, and in combination with a broken sleep too, Mima felt a little exhausted by the furious pace they had been maintaining all morning.

Sweat ran down her brow, stinging her eyes, making her vison hazy.

In this semi-dazed state, she saw what appeared to be the hills around them momentarily shifting, flattening here, rising there.

A valley appeared before them, when she had been sure she had seen only a despairingly high rising of the mountains only a moment ago. The woods stretching out ahead now thankfully seemed far less dense than she had previously imagined.

They passed easily through the valley, slaking their thirst in the sweetly trickling streams that had gradually carved this vale through the mountains eons ago. The valley opened up onto a clear view of the coast, which now lay only a short ride from them.

'How did we arrive here so quickly?'

With his one good arm, Detritus stroked his head in bewilderment. Mima merely shrugged, thankful that the bull-headed man had underestimated the speed they could attain as these horse-like hybrids.

When they reached the harbour, however, perhaps it was all her earlier experiences of Cerissa's magic that prepared her for the strange sight awaiting them there.

For the ship wasn't of wood and canvas, as she might have expected.

It was, rather, of bone and flesh.

*

# Chapter 17

With the oars of the rapidly approaching galley rhythmically dipping into the blue sea to the steady beat of a drum, the ship glided across the smooth waters of the natural harbour.

The sail of skin was lowered to the deck. The oars rose upright together as if by one, sole commanding hand.

The ship slowed as it approached the sandy beach where, with a sigh, it's hard keel bit into the edge where shore met gently lapping waves.

There it waited silently, with no visible movement on board.

Mima and Detritus galloped joyously along the beach, relishing their sense of effortless power, in many ways regretting that they would soon be jettisoning their new-found powers.

Before boarding the still silent, still patiently waiting ship, they un-strapped and removed the constructs of Cerissa. As requested by the man and woman, they stored the horse constructs in a small alcove amongst the rocks, where they would be collected later.

They covered the rest of the distance towards the ship on foot, feeling strangely ungainly and slow.

The ship was yet another apparently crude structure, unrefined in all its detailing, as if put together by a madman.

There were bones of every kind of animal involved in its construction, including those of the whale, its jawbone and ribs.

There were also a great many of what could only be parts of human skeletons, the hip bones forming the blocks that controlled the rigging, the rib cages lanterns that hung from prow and stern.

Flesh, hide and furs formed the skin of the hull, the covering of shields running along either side, the now furled sail.

And yet the only sign of life Mima could make out was the raven, who eyed their approach with glints of suspicion in its orbs of spit.

*

Mima sensed that other eyes were watching them.

Or, rather, _another_ eye.

For, she realised, the eye painted onto the ship's side was flickering slightly, following their every move with obvious interest as they drew nearer.

A rope ladder made of hair, of bones, was thrown over the hull's side by unseen hands, there for them to climb up and mount the deck.

There was no one but the curiously eyed raven on board. No one was seated in the rows controlling the whalebone oars. And yet the oars began to move once more, as if first lowered then levered by a ghostly crew.

The oar ends pushed against the sand of the beach, pushing the ship back out into the deeper water.

As soon as there was room, the oars on either side took up opposing strokes, swinging the ship around until it pointed out to sea once more.

The oars bit deep into the sea. The mast and sail of flesh rose and unfurled, as if of its own accord.

The ship sped across the bay, cleared the enclosing headlands – then set out across the darker ocean.

*

Even an exploration of the ship came up with no signs of life.

The only signs, in fact, were of death.

The deaths of the creatures whose bones and skins formed this strange ship.

The deaths of the invisible crew whose spirits seemed to continue to power it.

'What kind of ship is this, that needs no crew?' she asked Detritus warily.

'A ship, maybe, like the great horse that came to life,' he answered sagely, voicing her own fears. 'It was the sacrifice of the men inside who gave it life; their deaths for its life.'

The only thing aboard that could be said to have some form of a more natural life was the raven of leaves and feathers. It flittered about the rigging, soared a while on the wind; always eyed them curiously, suspiciously.

Then it took of, rose into the sky – and as once before, it was soon nothing more than a small, dark speck in the sky.

It returned later, landing on the ship's prow, where it bent down towards one of the painted eyes, seemingly talking to it, whispering through its lightly clacking beak.

Mima drew closer, expecting the raven to fly off. Instead, it simply clamped its beak shut. And, yet again, observed her warily.

Bending over the side of the ship, she looked towards the painted eye that graced the ship's hull. It moved slightly, as it did before, as if aware of her presence.

Then the eye focused once more on the way they were heading.

The raven basked in the sun, appeared to grin in satisfaction as it was lightly doused every now and again by the cooling spray of the waves the prow was powering its way through.

Mima wondered; would the raven talk to her, the way it had talked to or at least listened to the bull-headed man?

'Where is the captain?' she asked the raven. 'The captain you were sent to pass a message onto?'

The raven cocked its head towards her, as if listening with interest.

As Mima finished speaking, it raised his head, opened its beak as if to speak; but only cawed.

Mima shrugged in disappointment and frustration.

' _I_ am the captain,' the raven suddenly announced, its beak moving with each word it ever so carefully spoke.

'You? The raven? But–'

'No, no; I'm only speaking _through_ the raven, as he has graciously allowed me to. _I'm_ the captain of this ship; I _am_ the ship.'

*

# Chapter 18

The Chart of the Unknown

What is a captain without his charts?

He is nothing. He is lost.

And yet so much of the world remains uncharted.

Oh yes, we may fool ourselves into thinking we have mapped out everything we need to know – and the rest, therefore, is of no importance.

We have enough to get by on, after all, in our day to day lives.

We have enough maps that suffice to take us safely from here to here, from there to there.

What more could we possibly need?

What we need, the more adventurous amongst us would reply, is a chart that can at least _lead_ us into the unknown – and thereby, at last, we can make it _known_!

And the _known_ can be placed upon a new chart.

One that leads us even farther into areas previously unexplored.

Is it possible, however, that a chart can be produced that _predicts_ what you may find in the unknown?

That maps out lands that have yet to be discovered?

Impossible?

Yet the currents of the seas, the waves of the air, all follow certain proscribed patterns.

The air tangibly changes as it flows overland, rather than the sea.

The directions of currents are visibly altered by landmasses otherwise out of our sight.

The heat of both is dependent upon whatever obstacles they encounter in their courses.

And a captain who had long flattered himself that he had charted every inlet, every rocky island, recognised one day that all the winds and all the currents that he had also successfully registered just didn't make any sense.

They just _shouldn't_ be flowing in that way!

There shouldn't be a _warm_ wind here, but a _cold_ one!

He checked his calculations time and time again – and always came up with the very same, very strange answer.

There should be a large island lying out in the great ocean to account for these otherwise unexpected effects.

An island that no one had ever seen. Let alone charted.

*

Even when he showed his usual financial backers the results of his calculations, his carefully rendered map of this mysteriously invisible island, no one believed him enough to provide him with the money required to mount an expedition to discover it.

It was his own money, his own ancient and barely seaworthy ship, that he had to resort to using. His crew had to be the dregs of the ports.

They sailed for days. Then weeks.

And still there had been no sign of the land he had ever so painstakingly mapped out on his chart.

Why, at this very moment, they should be in the very centre of the island!

Like those who had previously been his most ardent financial backers, his crew now began to believe that the captain was possibly just a little crazy. Yet it wasn't their money that was at stake, but their lives.

They threw him overboard, and set sail for home.

*

There would be no other passing ships out here, in the middle of the vast ocean.

He himself, after all, had only been out here on his fool's errand to discover an island that quite clearly had never existed.

He would drown. There was no doubt about it in his mind.

There was nothing to help him stay afloat. His legs and arms were already tiring.

He let the waves take him, slipping beneath the waters, accepting its cold embrace, its bizarrely comforting darkness.

Far beneath him, there was a flash of lighter colours, colours that were surging towards him, rapidly ascending from the depths. One of the denizens of the deep, no doubt, awaking, seeking him out as a tasty morsel.

Here be monsters!

It was a whale, huge beyond belief.

It rose towards him ever faster.

It opened its great maw.

And it effortlessly swallowed him whole.

*

It was a cavernous interior, mostly as dark as the depths the creature itself had undoubtedly risen from.

And yet, there were a multiple of strange lights amongst that darkness.

Lights that were like flames, lanterns, their flickering reflected on the water he found himself once again exhaustedly attempting to keep afloat in.

One such light was slowly making its way towards him, the odd splash of water gradually growing more audible.

'Hi there,' a voice called from the darkness, 'need any help?'

The man on the crude raft drew up alongside him and pulled him aboard. The captain gratefully spluttered his thanks, asking as soon as he felt capable where they were and what chances of escape they had.

'I've been here what must be months,' the man admitted. 'There are sides to this great beast for sure, but they curl in above you, and are covered in either the slipperiest seaweed or the sharpest barnacles. We live on the water.'

'We?'

There are others out there; but beware them – _shush_!'

He swiftly covered his lantern with a dark cloth, hiding its flame. He also brought in the small paddle he used to propel his raft, every move as silent as could be.

He tapped the captain on his shoulder, pointed out into the darkness.

There were other lights out there, closer now. There was also a frantic splashing of paddles.

The flames were drawing closer to each other. At last, in their combined light, the captain saw armed men leaping from one driftwood raft to another.

There was a ferocious, bloody scuffle, men on either side falling.

The wounded were finished off with a quick slash to the throat, even the wounded of the victors screeching in horror as they too were instantly killed.

The conquered raft was lashed to the other, and piled with the dead. There was a quick rummaging of artefacts, the discarding of unwanted materials. Then the victorious group of men began to thankfully slip away into the darkness once more.

The captain and his new companion remained silent until the raft had long gone, despite the former's eagerness to ask why they hadn't tipped the bodies into the water.

'Why didn't they–'

It was the flash of the suddenly accidently uncovered flame that alerted the captain to the man reaching towards him with knife drawn.

He swung aside, the swinging knife only clipping his forehead.

He reached out in the darkness, his hands gratefully clasping around something that would serve as a club. He raised it quickly, swung it violently.

He caved in the man's head with this new, handy cudgel.

It was a thigh bone.

A man's thigh bone.

*

He was aghast that he had killed a man.

Aghast that his fellow man had resorted to cannibalism.

He glanced at the surrounding water. There were no signs of life in it.

No fish.

It seemed this whale only ever ate humans.

He made a quick yet thorough search of the raft, wondering what he had inherited from his killing of its previous owner.

There was a mast and yardarm there that could be raised. A large, ragged sail. There were other sheets of canvas, used as bedding, as a tent, as the covering for the lantern. Ropes, leather ties, knives.

There was also fat and oil for the lamp.

The captain shivered as he touched it, knowing there would be only one source of animal fat down here.

There was nothing here that could save him from degenerating into the cannibal his companion had become.

He stared forlornly at the imprisoning waters. They moved beneath him, as if alive.

A current.

This inner sea had currents, just like the oceans he regularly crossed.

He bared an arm, raised it into the air.

Yes, there was a slight breeze there too.

That meant hot air, cold air.

He looked at the objects around him with renewed interest.

*

There had been many occasions when he had seen men struggling with a loosened sail lifted high off their feet by even a light wind.

Single men with smaller pieces of canvas had been lifted even higher, the rising hot air taking them higher and higher as they slipped from one current into another.

No one who had flown so high had ever survived their brief experience, of course.

But he wasn't intending to come back down.

Once he had carefully constructed his contraption of large, billowing sails and wooden supports, he strapped knives to his feet and wrists.

With these – once he had attained sufficient height to quickly ram home a spear into the (hopefully) soft inner flesh of the whale's stomach – he would crawl towards the hole for the waterspout.

Here, his knowledge of what might be possible deserted him.

He knew hardly anything of the living mechanisms of a whale. He had seen, however, that a thick water spout rose every now and again from a part of the great lake, heading ever upwards into the all-consuming darkness.

The gushing spout was also a sure sign, of course, that the whale must now be on the sea's surface.

Strapping himself into his elaborate construction, he paddled close to the area where he knew the spout arose from; then patiently waited.

When the water abruptly gushed upwards, it took him by surprise. The spear was wrenched from his hands as he was flung up into the air, as if from a sling shot.

The spray was also drenching him, making both him and his sails heavier by the second.

Before he could avoid it, he was dragged into the surging waterspout itself; and within a brief moment, was being pummelled viciously from side to side as he was forced through the narrow spout hole.

*

The spouting water projected him high into the air.

He could only hope that the force of his ejection hadn't damaged his flying contraption so much that it wouldn't support him any longer. He had to hope, too, that it wasn't too heavy, too soaked.

He sighed with a grateful sigh to the gods as the sails billowed open above him. He felt, too, the rising hot air currents he knew he could make use of to glide a good distance.

Daring to glance down at last, he was surprised to see that he was already soaring over land. It was like no land he had even seen before, however.

It consisted mainly of a series of spiralling canals, down which whale after whale was headed.

Some whales were heading in the opposite direction to the others, without actually passing each other on the water. It dawned on the captain that there were in fact two canals, each spiralling inside the other.

Some of the whales were gliding towards the banks, where they opened their mouths to disgorge the men caught inside. Before these men knew what was happening, they were dragged off by whip-wielding guards and immediately set to work constructing the huge buildings dotting this strange landscape.

He would have liked to see more, of course. But he was wise enough to recognise that he had to use the height he had gained to set out to sea.

Otherwise, he would end up as just one more of the island's countless slaves.

*

There was still the odd ascending current for him to make use of as he serenely glided over the rich fields of corn, the plaza-strewn cities, the huge encampments of massed ranks of soldiers.

When he finally reached the edges of the vast island, however, the much colder sea afford him less opportunities to continue his flight. He dropped ever lower.

He soon had to face up to the dreadful thought that he might soon be back in the sea where he had started from.

One of the whales was passing just beneath him. He landed surprisingly softly upon its back, discarding his contraption before another wind dragged him unwillingly back into the sea.

The whale was every much a construct of man's mind as his flying machine had been. It wasn't of flesh and bone, but of wood, iron, leather.

He wondered if there was some way of descending inside the whale once more, but this time into the crew's quarters as opposed to that of its captives.

He didn't have time to find it.

The whale was beginning to slip beneath the waves once more.

And with a flip of its great tail, it was gone.

He was alone in the seemingly endless sea once more.

*

Then he saw the sail of a ship.

He couldn't believe it!

He shouted. He cried out.

He feared he wouldn't be seen. That the ship – so close, so very, very close – would pass him by.

Fortunately, it was heading his way. As if it had miraculously set course in his very direction.

And as it drew ever closer, he realised with surprise that it was his very own ship.

The men threw a line over the sides to haul him on board, greeting him joyously. As if it were a miracle that he'd survived. As if they'd been searching for him all along, after he'd unfortunately fallen overboard.

They were glad to see him.

They were lost too.

*

With his charts, his navigation instruments, laid out before him, the captain was sure he could set a course for home.

Yet the winds weren't as he remembered them. Neither were the currents of the sea.

On a night, even the stars were different, as if they had somehow ended up on the other side of the world.

On _another_ world.

Their expedition to find the missing island had resulted only in the regular patterns of his own mind becoming confused, unreliable.

Eventually land was sighted, land indeed that he recognised as having visited numerous times in his past. Yet it was a land that wasn't supposed to be here, not so close to where he reckoned they would be after their many days of travelling.

Of course, they landed anyway.

The captain talked to the people in authority he knew here, excitedly telling them of the new land he had discovered in the great sea. He proudly unfurled his old chart, upon which he had carefully rendered the position of the new land – and they laughed.

They asked him if all this was some strange joke of his.

He was confused.

What on earth could they mean?

Well, they explained, they all knew no such land could possibly exist where he claimed it should lie, for they regularly sailed through that part of the ocean.

Besides, they each added with an amused chuckle, even his mapping of the lands they already knew of was incredibly inept. And with that, they would show him the great charts on the walls of their offices.

The captain stared at every chart they showed him with dismay – for every one would show him a whole new world, a completely different world to the one he believed existed.

*

Naturally, he would always take the new charts with him.

But they never made any sense in the real world he encountered.

Every chart turned out, for him and his crew at least, to be wrong.

Moreover, wherever they sailed, everything would be different the very next time they sailed there.

Even if it were only an hour later.

The inlets, the harbours, the shorelines: all would be different.

They would end up in a port that only a day ago was hundreds of miles away.

And the next day, it would be hundreds of miles away again.

They could never find their way home. They could never settle elsewhere, neither.

For after a night, they would awake in a different bay, in a different anchorage. Or even in the middle of a storm-tossed ocean.

Eventually, they found they could no longer step ashore, their feet or arms or pony tails having someone become welded to and now an essential part of the ship.

Unable to make repairs of wood or tar, they increasingly used the bones and skin of the sea creatures they feasted upon. As they aged, too, more and more of their own bodies were blended into and were subsumed into the build of the ship.

And so when they died, their own bones and flesh became as one with the ship.

In this way, the ship sales forever on.

Forever searching for a home they can never find; for now home is where they already are.

*

# Chapter 19

'Then if you're lost,' Detritus asked grimly, having come across the deck to listen to the captain's tale, 'how can you take us where we need to be?'

'The ravens, they know the way, if we're granting a lift to someone,' the captain said, still speaking through the crudely made raven. 'They were given us by Cerissa, to fly ahead a few miles, and ensure our course stays briefly stable rather than changing before we get there.'

'Why does this witch help people?' Mima asked curiously. 'If she's so helpful, why is she hated and despised?'

'If you help someone, isn't there always someone else, somewhere else, who will resent the aid you've granted them? Won't there sometimes be those who also suffer? The warriors who face the bull-headed man; the Trojans. Few good deeds result in goodness to all.'

With his one good eye, Detritus glared darkly at the raven. The raven glowered back.

'A ship powered by the spirits of the dead; just as we suspected.'

With a disgruntled caw, the raven flapped its wings and leapt into the air. Catching a rising current, it soared up across the waves, soared ever higher, and was gone.

And it was a great shame that the raven had left them.

For had it been there, as Mima and Detritus retired for the night, it would have had the good sense and natural instinct to immediately pick up and spit into the ocean the malevolent leaf that silently drifted towards and landed upon the ship's prow.

*

Although every one of Cerissa's ravens had flown on ahead to warn of incoming storms, a raven suddenly appeared on the ship's prow, as if from a dream.

Unlike the crude constructs of Cerissa, this was more real, more natural in its appearance. Even though, of course, it was far more a false construct than anything of Cerissa's.

The ship's eyes were painted too low to notice this distinction, however. He listened intently to the raven's instructions.

The ship sailed on, its great sail of flesh powering it forwards through the highest, most turbulent waves. The massed oars struggled to gain purchase in the increasingly choppy seas. Fortunately, the oarsmen never tired, never lost hope.

The waves beat fiercely, angrily, against the hull of bones and skin. The wind shrieked at the sails of flesh.

Down in the depths, it was quiet, dark, a place where the raging of the storm could never reach. An underworld of the seas.

The great white, many-tentacled beast stirred, however. Its huge, balefully globular eyes saw and resented this unwarranted imposition, this intrusion into its domain.

It rose rapidly, as an avenging angel rushes to fight demons making an incursion into heavenly realms.

Its tentacles lashed out at the ship's underside before it had even reached the surface. Each one was a thunderous barging of whale-thick flesh and muscle against bone and skin.

The ship rattled, rose high on the tossing tentacles, the gripping, grasping tentacles. Tentacles that wrapped tightly about the hull, the mast, seeking to crush and break and rind.

The bone held fast, however, stronger than wood.

The flesh refused to give way, more alive, more self-repairable, than any canvas.

The oars struck out at sea and monster, each one seemingly little different from the other to oarsmen who are already dead, and fear death no longer.

*

# Chapter 20

Mima and Detritus were thrown from their beds, drenched by the waves crashing unstoppably across the deck.

Looking about themselves in a panic, they saw not a kraken but the towering white spume of far reaching, curling, coiling, crushing waves.

They saw not great, unforgivingly baleful eyes, but boulders and rocks, ones now and again uncovered by the waves, now and again swamped and vanishing once more.

Yet they were no less forgiving, no less evilly glowering, than a monster's eyes.

As if abruptly caught in that monster's embrace, the ship unexpectedly jolted violently, throwing both Mima and Detritus to the sea-strewn deck.

The ship viciously jerked once more, dashed upon another rock. A rock that at last hungrily tore at and shredded and broke the hull of bone and flesh.

Now Detritus did see baleful eyes.

They weren't those of the monster, however; they were those of the raven on the prow.

It wasn't one of the regular ravens, Detritus realised, not one of Cerissa's constructs.

Before he had time to completely register this, or ponder why it might be so, or what it might mean, the raven spread out its dark wings.

It took advantage of an updraft of a brutally crashing wave.

It soared up and off into the forbiddingly stormy air.

*

The fearsome waves relentlessly pounded the trapped ship until morning, forcing it evermore onto the sharp, eagerly awaiting rocks.

Had it been a normal ship, it wouldn't have survived.

Had it been of wood, of canvas, everything would have splinted and torn.

Yet flesh, thank god, is ultimately more resilient. Given time, and the right circumstances, it is often self-repairable.

Bone can regrow too.

It _would_ take time, the captain admitted miserably, one of Cerissa's ravens having at last returned; but they would sail again as soon as everything was seaworthy once more.

Despite its gave injuries, the ship tore itself free of the rocks and headed closer inshore. It beached itself with a relieved yet also painful groan.

Here it could rest. Could mend.

Here, too, Mima and Detritus could safely climb ashore.

They were in the farthest realm of Oceanus, the captain told them, but not in the bay near the Grove of Persephone, where he had hoped to set them down.

They should head south, down the coast, he added. Eventually, they would find themselves walking alongside the Phlegethon, a river of fire.

Even so, when they came to a fork in the road, they should take the left one, leading them away from the coast.

Walking on human feet, rather than running with the powerful hooves of Cerissa's constructs, now seemed surprisingly slow and arduous, particularly in the hot sun. When Mima and Detritus came to a building on the coast, they gratefully rested for a while in the shade of its great portico.

'It's a library,' Detritus noted with surprise when he saw the inscription carved above the door. 'It seems rather small to be a library, don't you think?'

Mima had to agree.

Although the portico, with its soaring columns, was indeed impressive, and maybe even worthy of a famous library, the building lying beyond it was ridiculously small, no bigger than an average building in a small town.

Curious, she opened the door and stepped inside.

The interior was even smaller than she had expected.

There was room only for a cramped reception desk, behind which a tall, sour-faced man stood.

Only slightly beyond him, there was a narrow wall of shelving, but it contained just one book.

She was about to turn around and exit this strange library when the man glowered at her for her rude interruption of his peace.

'Can I help you?' he asked imperiously.

'Oh, I, er...I had hoped I might find a book in here that would help me...'

With a nonchalant wave of his hand, the librarian indicated the book.

'Then you _are_ in luck, young lady.'

'But I don't think...'

She didn't wish to appear impolite, but Mima was fully aware that one book wasn't going to provide her with any helpful information.

'Is there another room?' she asked, even though she couldn't see any other doors leading off to hidden rooms.

The librarian looked about him, about the small room.

'Not that I have ever been made aware of,' he said.

'Then there are no more books?'

'How many do you need?'

'I was hoping I would find a book telling me how I might enter the underworld.'

The librarian's face at last shone with understanding.

'Then I have _just_ the book for you!' he declared.

Moving from behind his small desk, he approached the shelves and took down the book.

As he handed the book to Mima with a satisfied smile, he also showed her to a small seat and plinth that made up the lower part of the shelving.

'There you are,' he said happily. 'Take your time, and enjoy your read.'

Mima looked at the title embossed on the book she had been handed.

It was called The Book of Different Stories

*

# Chapter 21

The Book of Different Stories

One day, a famous scribe who had penned many books of great renown was relaxing on his veranda with a glass of particularly fine wine.

Indeed, it was a _perfect_ wine. A _flawless_ wine.

As he mulled over its amazing qualities, the skill that must have gone into its creation, he realised with a pang of distress that his own works were far inferior by comparison.

He had never, ever created the _perfect_ book.

But what would the perfect book _be_?

It would have to supply the reader with whatever information he or she was seeking.

Was such a book even _possible_?

Such a book would be enormous, of course. For everyone's search for information is unique to them.

And yet, and yet...

Don't our dreams give us the information we need?

(Provided, of course, that it isn't a false dream, but a true one.)

Each one is unique to us, _because_ we ourselves are unique!

Like our dreams, then, the book would have to be _changeable_.

It would have to be a different book that each reader picked up and pored over.

It would have to be The Book of Different Stories!

*

Fortunately, the famous scribe lived only a shout away from the Grove of Persephone, which served as a gate to the underworld.

Now naturally, he wasn't a fool. He was well aware that anyone who set foot in the underworld was unlikely to return.

Yet he had reasoned that the only materials that would help him achieve his goal of creating the perfect book were those in the underworld.

He required a unique form of ink. He would need a unique type of quill. He would have to write on uniquely formed leaves.

Amongst the dark poplars and sterile willows of the grove, he met with Hades and his wife Persephone, and told them of his plan to produce this most perfect of books.

Of course, they listened with interest. Of course, too, he was perfectly free to descend into underworld.

He was even free to seek out the materials he required, provided each realm freely gave them to him.

Indeed, they even allowed him to take wood from their trees, which he insisted he needed for the leaves of his book, the casks in which his ink would be brewed and matured.

However, they warned him, returning to the world of the living was a different matter.

If anyone he came across decided he must stay, then he would be compelled to remain within the confines of the underworld.

'Then I shall tell each of them one of the tales that will appear in my book,' he replied, 'and if anyone declares themselves unsatisfied by my tale, I will willingly remain within the underworld – having failed in my task!'

*

He walked on towards the nearby mountains.

The cavern that would take him deep into the dark underworld was easy to spot even from here, for cloudy vapours continually rose up from it.

Picking out sprigs from the lush poppies and countless herbs surrounding the cavern's entrance, he descend into the swiftly enveloping darkness: ignoring the wailing of Old Age, Fear, Grief, Anxiety, Agony, Hunger, Death, and Diseases; ignoring even the calling of Guilty Joys.

Amidst it all was Hypnos's Elm of False Dreams, an Oneiroi clinging to each leaf.

These were the leaves he would need for the paper of his book. Pulped and shredded along with wood from the grove, their ill effects would be tempered with slivers taken from the Gate of Horn.

He asked Morpheus and his brothers, Icelus and Phantasos, for permission to take these items, telling them of his goal to produce the perfect book.

Morpheus appeared human enough, being able to take on the form of man or woman.

'This sounds like a wonderful idea,' he gushed, relishing the thought of all the extra confusion a book of false dreams would cause in the world.

(For, of course, the scribe had taken the slivers of horn in secret, and had refrained from explaining his intention of including them in his brew.)

'Not too many leaves, of course,' added the slightly more disquieted Icelos who, being capable of taking on the appearance of any animal, had chosen to be a disgruntled bear.

Phantasos was undoubtedly the strangest of the three, remaining almost perfectly silent in his guise as a spring of trickling water: although whether this was because he disagreed with his brothers, the scribe couldn't be sure.

*

At the rock where the Phlegethon and Cocytus (the River of Wailing) flow into the Acheron (the River of Pain) the scribe took waters from each, mixing them in a large stoppered vase.

Naturally, he had brought a coin to pay Charon to ferry him across. He had also brought with him a cake of honey and wheat, laced with the poppies and herbs, for the three-headed dog Cerberus.

He took more water from the River of Hatred, the Styx. He also took water from the Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness, along with reeds for his quills.

Mixing some of the pulped leaves into his vase of water, he heated his concoction over the intensely hot flames of the Phlegethon. He poured this already thick, dark mixture into his casks, where it drew yet more colour and substance from the wood taken from the grove.

Satisfied he had everything he needed, he set course for home.

*

The three brothers standing by the Elm of False Dreams were surprised when they saw the scribe approaching a second time.

How had he managed to get so far? they each wondered.

Never mind, each told himself, he won't get past me.

'What are these tales you tell that got you through to here?' they asked curiously.

'It is a different tale for each, naturally,' the scribe lied.

'Then it must be a tale for _each_ of us too!' growled Icelus.

'So be it,' the scribe agreed jovially while holding aloft his cask, 'and while I tell each of you your tale, you must join me in a drink of my dark wine!'

*

On his return home, the scribe immediately set about creating and writing out his most perfect of books

And naturally, the book contained the tale that had ensured his freedom.

It was a tale of a man who was sorely misunderstood.

A man of great and amazing talents.

Talents so great, indeed, that it was impossible for any normal man to appreciate them.

Thereby the man remained forever unappreciated.

Because of the foolishness, the naivety, of others!

It was a tale that resonated with anyone it was told to.

For, of course, it could only be a tale about them, and no one else.

*

# Chapter 22

Detritus was out hunting for their lunch, Mima busily building and preparing the fire to roast it on – so no one noticed the three leaves that drifted in on the breeze, and settled on the road.

One instantly became a dwarf, carrying a magical horn.

Another, stranger still, transformed into what could have been a painted sculpture of a child-like Pan. (With it being of stone, and yet also both animal and boy, there had been arguments as to who should actually play this role.)

The third was heavily cloaked and hooded, the hood so large it almost hid the wearer's enormous, beaked-nose of bright yellow.

They strode out gaily on the dusty track, chatting amiably with each other, as if just normal travellers on the road, as if they had been walking now like this for ages.

'Why, don't I know you?' the dwarf called out in mock surprise as they passed Mima, bent over her crackling fire.

Mima glanced over her shoulder.

'Why yes, yes,' she trilled back happily. 'You're the one who helped me set off on my quest!'

'Quest? Why, this sounds _most_ interesting,' the hooded one growled.

'What sort of quest could this possibly be?' the boy asked excitedly.

All three of them stared expectantly at Mima.

'Why, to find my dead brother, of course!' she said joyously.

The three (or at least, the two of them whose faces she could see clearly) gaped at her in astonishment.

They shook their heads worriedly, tut-tutted, and pouted in grim admonishment.

'You don't think I should be trying to find my brother?' she asked concernedly. 'None of you?'

They all shook their heads.

'Yet it was your horn that set me off on this quest!'

She pointed at the horn the dwarf was clutching.

' _My_ horn?'

The dwarf sounded appalled by what he obviously took to be an accusation.

'But you _insisted_ on using it!' he insisted.

'Oh no! Perhaps I misheard him! Perhaps I misheard my brother!' Mima wailed worriedly. 'May I take another go of your horn, please?'

' _Another_ go?' The dwarf shook his head, snatched his horn farther out of Mima's reach. 'Not if it's _already_ caused you so much frankly _unwise_ trouble!'

'But what else were you expecting to happen when you let me listen to my brother on your horn?'

'You let her listen to your horn?'

The boy looked towards his friend the dwarf with the same disbelieving, admonishing stare he had used on Mima.

The dwarf shrugged.

'She insisted! Besides, _most_ people are satisfied with knowing that their loved ones are well! _They_ don't go setting off on some quest to _find_ them!'

'Especially not by calling in on the witch on the way!' the boy added with yet another sorrowful shaking of his head.

'The witch?'

Mima observed the boy curiously: how did he know she had been planning on visiting Cerissa?

He blushed a little; either that, or it could have been the strange painterly effect of his skin.

'Some people _always_ make the mistake of visiting the witch first!'

The strangely large nosed man was in such a rush to explain his friend's comment that he leant a little farther out of his hood than he had perhaps intended. He looked for all the world like a raven rather than a man, Mima thought.

'Obviously, my darling girl,' the dwarf hurriedly blurted out with a pained smile, 'you haven't heard of the tale of Princess Pure of Heart.'

'You're right,' Mima conceded, 'I haven't heard that tale.'

'It's a shame,' the boy said.

'The tale? Or the fact I haven't heard it?'

'Why, _both_ of course,' the raven growled.

'Both?'

'It's a shameful tale; giving hope when there should be none!'

'And it's a shame you have never heard of it,' the boy agreed.

'For you would realise that to continue to love the dead is pure foolishness!' the raven added.

'Bringing you even greater heartbreak!' The dwarf again, this time with a suitably miserable frown.

'So what _is_ this tale?'

'Oh, we don't have time to tell you it _now_!'

'Briefly, a princess foolishly continues to love a prince who has died in battle.'

The boy smiled, as if to show he believed he had explained the tale adequately; and so no more need be said.

'Foolishness, foolishness!' The raven shook his head sadly.

'But I don't see it that way at all!' Mima protested.

'What other way is there to see it?' the dwarf asked.

'Well, she loved him obviously...'

Her voice faded, unnerved by the way the three gawped at her expectantly once more.

'Loved someone who was now _dead_!' the dwarf added for her, emphasising the final word as if to make sure she understood its portent.

'Well, I don't suppose she would continue loving him _forever_!' Mima admitted.

'Ah, so you agree it's foolishness to continue seeking out your brother?' the dwarf asked, triumph in his voice.

'He told me the witc – Cerissa would help me find him.'

'Hahhh!'

All three of them uttered a sigh of relief and understanding all at once.

'Then...if _that's_ why you wish to call on her, then there is no reason to call at _all_!' the dwarf stated assuredly.

'No reason to _risk_ a call!' the boy added.

'Yet that is what...'

'He was wrong,' the raven interrupted.

'Why, if you take the right fork farther down this very road...'

'The _right_ fork?'

This time, Mima interrupted the dwarf. The dwarf frowned at her rudeness.

'... then it takes you _directly_ to the Grove of Persephone!'

'Directly? And yet the–'

She stopped, seeing that the dwarf was discontentedly grimacing at her once more.

If the right fork took her to the Grove of Persephone, then she didn't need Cerissa. She was almost there, almost in the underworld.

'Just don't visit the witch!' the boy said, his warning immediately backed and explained by his friends.

'She twists dreams; turns them from their original intent!'

'It was hoped, long ago, that she would simply die in the wilderness as a child!'

'Before her troublesome power could become more fully established!'

'Whereas if your real intent is to merely visit your brother, well; then where could be the harm in _that_?'

The boy smiled; the dwarf smiled; the raven probably tried to smile.

'You'll soon be passing alongside a river of fire, the Phlegethon,' the dwarf added, noticing that Mima still seemed to be have doubts about their advice, 'and you'll see for yourself that the left fork turns as if taking you farther into it.'

'And this part of the Phlegethon surrounds Tartarus,' the boy added, 'where only the very worst of humans and the Titans are contained.'

'Then the right fork it must obviously be!' Mima replied brightly, wondering why the captain had insisted they take the left.

Perhaps, of course, because his directional abilities were playing him false once more.

'Then we wish you well on your journey!' the dwarf declared equally brightly.

'And we must be on ours too!' the boy said with a pleasant grin.

Whistling happily (or at least, the raven seemed to be attempting to whistle) the trio set off along the road once more.

As soon as they had rounded a corner, and were out of sight of Mima, they became leaves once more.

And they rose on a passing wind, chuckling in delight at their own cleverness.

*

# Chapter 23

The river of fire threw off a thick haze of heat as Mima and Detritus walked alongside it.

On their other side, they still had the coast, with cool air coming off the sea.

The two sheets of air, one ferociously hot, the other cold, clashed around them. Rising above their heads, it formed into a whirling turbulence that transformed any of the surrounding trees into diffused, mirage-like patterns.

As they had been reliably informed by both the ship and the three travellers, they came to a fork in the road.

There were no signposts there, naturally; yet just as the travellers had told Mima, the left fork continued to run closely alongside the river of fire.

The right fork, on the other hand, ran along the delightfully cool and picturesque coast.

Mima chose the right-hand fork.

Detritus, as advised by the captain, took the left.

'Mima?' he said doubtfully, seeing that Mima was heading down what he presumed must be the wrong track. 'Have you already forgotten that we were advised to take this fork?'

'But _this_ is the one that takes us towards the Grove of Persephone.'

Naturally, Mima had already explained to Detritus that The Book of Different Stories had provided directions into the underworld.

'How do you know?'

Detritus observed the two roads, noticing their similarities rather than their differences, and wondering how she could have made this assumption.

'Isn't it obvious?' Mima grinned, indicating with splayed arms the river of fire on the one hand, the coastal track on the other.

Detritus scratched his head in puzzlement with his one good hand.

'But the captain–'

'Who was irredeemably lost, remember?'

'But you seem so _sure_ that _that_ one is the right path: is there something I've missed?'

And so she told him of her encounter with the three travellers.

'Wait: a child-like Pan, you say?' he briefly interrupted when she described the boy.

He recalled his own meeting with such a boy; a boy who had wisely advised them not to stay to have their features stilled for all time by being rendered in stone. The next day, too, their journey had passed remarkably quickly – a sure sign that even his friend the bull-headed man was capable of giving false directions.

'A raven?' he exclaimed when she came to the part of her tale where the hood partly slipped back from around the face of the large-nosed man.

Hadn't he seen a raven on the prow of the ship, the night it was led upon the rocks?

Yet weren't ravens Cerissa's constructs?

It had appeared to be a real raven, that's for sure: and yet, it was dark, they were in the midst of a strong wind, of heavily veiling spray and rain.

It had been nothing but chaos, where what had once being straight was now steeply angled, where what had been reasonably stable now rocked, jolted, splintered. He could have imagined _anything_.

'Then the right it must be,' he nodded in agreement as Mima finished her tale.

*

They had walked only a few steps down the right-hand path when they noticed something rather odd.

High above them, swirling in the heat haze of mingling air currents, there appeared to be a large flock of birds, coming from the direction of the left fork.

This wouldn't be too odd in itself, of course, even taking into account that it was an especially large numbers of birds, passing over them in an almost continuous stream.

In fact, they had spotted these migrating birds before, and given them scant notice.

Now they were a little farther from the diffusing effects of the fire's heat, however, Mima and Detritus at last had a clearer view of these birds – and saw, to their surprise, that they weren't birds at all.

They were leaves. Countless leaves.

And yet they swarmed together as if each one had a reason for its chosen course.

'Would they be, do you think...' Detritus said, looking Mima's way, exchanging thoughtful glances with her.

'Leaves from the Elm of False Dreams?'

'Which would mean the left fork _is_ a more direct way into the underworld, yes?'

'Yes,' Mima agreed. 'And it would mean we don't have to explain to Hades and his wife why we want to enter his realm.'

She shuddered at the mere thought of such a meeting.

And so they choose to take the left fork after all.

*

# Chapter 24

Although the fire of the Phlegethon continued to run alongside them, it never seemed at any point to be threatening to cut across their path.

The heat rising from it whirled upwards, lifting the swarming leaves ever higher as they swiftly fluttered across the sky.

The farther Mima and Detritus travelled along the path, however, the nearer they drew towards the source of the migrating leaves; and so the trail of massed leaves sank ever lower above them, until they seemed like so many innumerable locusts, noisily clattering through the air.

Like locusts, too, the leaves were here falling prey to birds of every kind.

They swooped up, forming their own whirling, massed formations. They would each grab a leaf in their beak then, dropping back, curl into yet another formation of birds, this one swooping back down to earth, rushing along the path just above Mima and Detritus's heads. The sound of so many rustling wings was like that of a torrential river.

Yet just as Mima and Detritus had falsely taken the swarming leaves to be birds, it dawned on them that these weren't birds either.

They were constructs of leaves and twigs.

Cerissa's creations.

*

The thick throng of excited birds were all swooping towards a small house.

A house crudely constructed of branches, of leaves of every description, of grasses.

Mima and Detritus were half-expecting the house to greet them; yet it remained silent, apart from the cacophonic noise of the massed birds flying in through its open windows.

They were about to knock on the door when they noticed that the birds, far from settling within the house, were continuing on their swift course, flying out through the back windows.

Mima and Detritus took a narrow path leading around the side of the house, taking them out towards the back garden.

Here the flocking of the birds was even more chaotic.

They were dropping their captured leaves into a ridiculously immense pile almost covering the back garden.

Then, with each having completed its appointed task, they whirled around tightly in the air, rushing in a graceful curve over the house's roof before rising once more to peck at and pick out yet more leaves from the swarm.

In the very midst of the pile of leaves, the whirling birds, there was a kneeling woman.

She was taking the leaves dropped before her, twisting them deftly between her fingers. She was adding twigs for legs, and a globule of saliva, glistening like polished horn, for the eyes.

With a grateful flutter of wings, the bird would rise up from her hands – and joyfully soar into the sky.

*

# Chapter 25

The incredibly busy woman at last noticed Mima and Detritus as they drew closer towards her.

She smiled warmly. Letting the last of her creations gleefully fly from her hand, she stood up to greet them, the birds never ceasing in their swirling patterns, their swooping courses.

'I can see your brother in you,' Cerissa said to Mima.

'You know me?'

'Naturally. I hoped you would come.'

She noticed Detritus's awed stare at the mass of leaves surrounding her.

'I fell a little behind in my work,' she explained. 'When I foolishly agreed to help Odysseus.'

Detritus nodded, understanding.

'Why did you help him?' he asked curiously.

'Because I saw in a dream that the Greeks must prevail.'

'Can we trust our dreams?' Mima asked wisely.

'Unfortunately not.'

She glanced forlornly at the vast pile of leaves, the countless False Dreams.

'Then my dream that I might see my brother once more...?'

Cerissa smiled warmly at Mima's doubtfully hesitant question.

She remained silent, however, simply waved a hand airily – and a robin, one of her creations, gently landed on Mima's shoulder.

*

Mima was standing on the bank of a swiftly flowing river.

On the other bank there was a boy; her brother.

Naturally, she wanted to rush towards him, to embrace him; yet she knew this would be foolish.

It would result only in her own death.

She must resist this urge to be with him once more. She still had so much to do in her own life.

She could always be with him later.

He would still be here, after all.

'Mima,' he said, smiling. 'You have been far braver than anyone I have never known. But you have travelled far enough; no farther, please. Just as you didn't want me to leave you, I don't want you to leave the world until you are truly ready.'

'And you, Aestus? Were you ready when Cerissa killed you?'

He chuckled.

'Yes, yes; I know that this is what everyone believes. They believe it because they forever see either a witch or some other malformed beast in their dreams, threatening them.'

'Then...it really was a lion that killed you?'

'That and my curiosity, and my love for Cerissa. I wanted only to see why she spent so much time in the woods: I dreamt that she could be mine.'

'You're sure it wasn't one of her constructs?'

'It was one of her constructs that scared me, made me flee into the jaws of the lion: yet the purpose of her great bear wasn't to harm. It only existed because she hoped to scare away the curious, like me.'

'And this is as far as I can get?' Mima asked disappointedly. 'After all I've been through, I don't get to be _with_ you?'

'You know you _could_ be with me: and yet wisely, naturally, you don't want to be with me if you also have to suffer what all that entails. Yet if you had followed your False Dream through to its final course, this is indeed where you would have been tricked into ending up.'

'It seems...seems like such an unfair ending to my travels; to have to leave you here.'

Aestus smiled, concerned by the hurt in his sister's face.

'You've obviously forgotten, but I used to sit you on my knee and tell you a favourite tale of mine.'

*

# Chapter 26

Princess Pure of Heart

There was once a famous fountain of magical waters that would ensure a woman would give birth to healthy child.

People from around the world would flock to this amazing fountain, drinking the waters and returning home knowing for sure that they would soon be with child.

The powerful queen of a neighbouring kingdom had been trying for years to give birth to an heir. She would have dearly loved to try these waters for herself.

Unfortunately for this queen, the two kingdoms had been almost constantly at war now for years, ironically precipitated by her desperation to own these fabulous waters.

The harder she waged war upon this rival kingdom, the more determined they were to deny her the miraculous effects of the waters. They imposed the very strictest controls around the fountain, ensuring none of its magical waters were taken away in any shape, form or size of container.

The queen realised she would have to resort to using magic on her behalf.

She sent a witch to the fountain; one who could catch the droplets of falling water in her hands and instantly freeze them into diamond-like jewels.

These she deftly hid amongst the real jewels of a necklace – pressing the droplets into the beds' of gems she had removed and dropped into the sparkling waters, where they sank and effectively vanished.

Of course, no one stopped a lady travelling with such fine jewels.

And so, at last, the queen had her magical waters.

*

Not long after, the queen gave birth to a beautiful daughter.

Yet, it seemed, the magical freezing of the magical waters had produced its own unexpected effect.

For although perfect in every other way, the child had a unique flaw; her heart was perfectly transparent, as indeed was the section of her bosom covering it.

Her emotions were on display for all to see, whether she was angry, jealous, or bitter.

She could never, ever hide her true feelings about anything that had upset or disturbed her. She could never lie without the lie being immediately obvious to everyone.

On the other hand, her perfectly transparent heart also meant that people could see when she was being kind, generous, and caring.

And when people saw her concern for them, they loved her.

When they loved her she, of course, loved them back.

As she grew older, she learned how to control her emotions, rather than letting them run wild, rather than letting them rule her.

She held at bay and discarded all those flaws that end up ruining most people in some way: those thoughts that we have been unfairly or unjustly treated, as if we ourselves bear no responsibility for the way people think of us or regard us.

She literally shone, however, with the very purest of thoughts.

Her heart sparkled, as if it were the finest, most perfect jewel anyone could possibly imagine. It was a light that, when it fell upon anyone nearby, also made them feel at peace with the world.

Handsome princes from every kingdom wanted to capture her heart. She didn't wish to hurt any of them, of course; but it was naturally obvious to all that there was only one prince that she truly loved.

Their marriage was arranged. It would, of course, be the most splendid ceremony ever seen.

A fairy-tale wedding.

Unfortunately, this wasn't a fairy tale.

The prince was briefly called away to war; a war that, he assured her, would soon be over, soon be won.

He died on the battlefield.

Bravely; but he still died.

And when the princess heard, her heart naturally broke in two.

*

The heart that had been so pure now had the most serious of flaws.

It was badly cracked, such that no one – not the finest physicians, the most accomplished healers, even truly devious wizards – dared claim they would be able to help the ailing princess.

Anyone deemed capable of offering advice was asked for their opinion on what might be done.

Jewellers renowned for their intricate craftsmanship studied the problem with interest, only to eventually pronounce themselves unable to offer a solution.

The makers of delicate glassware were asked if they could use their skills to weld the two halves together once more, yet shook their heads sadly.

The problem was, they stated, that the broken surface of each half of her heart would have be carefully melted with an incredibly hot knife, so that the molten sheen would act as it's own glue. (For any glue, of course, would form a flaw in its own right.) Yet then you would have to work so foolishly quickly, before the molten covering hardened again, that no one could possibly have time to ensure the two halves were perfectly placed together.

How could it be possibly repaired, they wondered, without the flaw still remaining?

How could her heart possibly remain pure, when such a flaw would cause an unwanted refraction, as the flaw in glass or gems misdirects the many colours of light, resulting in a most unpleasant interference?

Why, even the very purest thought emanating from deep within her heart might well come out into the world warped and twisted into emotions and deeds unrecognisable from the original intent.

Goodness could be malformed into envy.

Concern into hate.

Love into anger.

Who would take such a risk with the princess's heart?

Who would like to be held responsible for such a deep change in her character?

The answer was: the witch who had originally provided the frozen fountain droplets for the queen.

*

This witch possessed a most remarkable object.

As you can probably guess, it was a magic object.

But what magic!

For this was the famous Ring of Truth.

If anyone wearing the ring lied, the ring would instantly burst into flames – burning off the finger of the liar!

(Don't worry: no one _ever_ lied while they were wearing it.)

The witch carefully placed this ring – which was very, very slender – into the crack running through the princess's heart. Then, ever so tenderly, she made sure the two pieces of heart were perfectly matched up.

Of course, she warned the queen, if the princess ever lies once the repair is complete, then the ring will burst into flames, shattering her heart once more.

Naturally, this was hardly a problem, as the princess _never_ lied.

'Hah, but to make the repair, she obviously needs to lie just the once,' the witch pointed out, 'for it is the heat of the ring that will weld the two halves together.'

'Then your plan is flawed, fool!' the queen stormed. 'For she couldn't lie to save her soul.'

*

Although despairing of the queen's unwarranted anger, the witch took the princess aside.

'Do you know how babies are formed?' the witch quietly asked the princess.

'Of course not.'

The princess blushed at the rudeness of such a question.

Yet the ring flared, and the broken heart was at last sealed and mended.

*

Had the princes really lied?

Of course she had: otherwise, the Ring of Truth would not have burst into flame.

For the princess firmly believed that a child could only be conceived through the purity of heart, the purity of love that one has for another.

Yet to admit she knew this, she also believed, would destroy the purity of her heart.

And she herself had realised that the only true way to mend her broken heart was to bring a piece of her lost prince back into the world.

Not to have him back wholly, perhaps; but at least to have him partially back in spirit.

To have, in other words, his child.

A child who would be half him, half her.

And naturally, two halves make a whole, do they not?

Between the two halves of the heart, as the ring's abrupt burst of intolerable heat crashed against the intense cold of a pure heart so cruelly broken, the forging of the magic of truth and the magic of the birth waters, there was a mingling of every conceivable emotion, every sense known to man and woman: and a child was brought into existence.

The child was a girl; everyone could see that. For she grew within the clearly pure transparency of the princess's heart.

How though, everybody wondered, everybody feared, would the princess be able to give birth to this remarkable child?

In could only end in yet more heartbreak.

And, of course, it did.

The princess's heart ever so briefly cracked once more – this time with unhallowed joy – as her beautiful daughter came into the world.

(Even though it is not really the child who enters the world, but rather the world who enters the child.)

And do you know what that wonderful child had for a heart?

It had the Ring of Truth, of course.

And where there is truth in a wonderful story, or even just truth within someone's heart, there is also always Hope.

*

# Chapter 27

'I don't ever remember you telling me that story,' Mima admitted sadly. 'Though I wish I did.'

'Of course you wish you remember; for we keep our loved ones alive in our hearts, in our thoughts – and that is enough for us on _this_ side of the divide.'

'It can never be enough for us, though.'

'It can only ever be a False Dream to believe that we can ever return to you. You end up wasting your own lives, living with such False Hopes, or wishing hurt on those you believe responsible.'

'But there is so much we could have done together. I miss that; not having the brother whom was once mine.'

'But do you think I would wish that you miss out on so much of your life, searching for something you can never attain?'

'You sent me searching for Cressia.'

'To spare you from being tricked into ending up here before your time. Do you know how Cressia enables her creations to come to life, how she twists False Dreams into something truly wonderful?'

Mima shook her head: no, she hadn't worked that out yet.

'Forgive her, then; and find out.'

*

# Chapter 28

The robin eyed Mima curiously from his perch on her shoulder.

She glanced about her, saw a patiently waiting Detritus, a warmly smiling Cerissa.

'I'm sorry, so sorry; I didn't realise I'd be so long!' she blurted out.

Detritus rewarded her with a bewildered grin.

'But the robin has only just landed on your shoulder, Mima!'

'Has he?'

Mima glanced towards the tame robin. She ginned too, now, seeing how wonderfully alive the little bird seemed.

As she held up a hand, the robin gently hopped onto a finger.

'I realise, Cerissa,' she said, 'that you weren't responsible for Aestus's death. If I could, I'd forgive you; yet as you weren't responsible, I can only ask your forgiveness for thinking you were!'

And as she said this, she felt a great burden lift from her heart, as if it had always contained a hidden flaw, a lie that stopped it from ever healing perfectly.

Now there was warmth there in its place; a melding warmth, that felt true and real.

The vast pile of leaves was stirring, rustling vigorously, every leaf twisting.

Twigs amongst the pile stirred too.

These became legs.

The leaves became magnificently plush breasts, or wings, already spreading.

The eyes glistened as if made of purest Hope

The birds rose into the sky, the beating of so many wings all at once as thunderous as any coming storm that will cleanse and refresh the earth.

They swooped off low over the roof of the crude house.

They rose ever higher, fluttering as a great unstoppable mass through the trail of swarming leaves, moving swifter than the wind-blown leaves could ever hope to attain. Migrating into the world.

(Even though it isn't really hope that enters the world, but rather hope that enters each child.)

'We have to be true to ourselves to forgive; and all things that are true – even dreams – give us hope,' Cerissa said, watching with pleasure and joy the departing birds, the abrupt emptying of her garden of the leaves of False Dreams.

'Although on my part,' she added, looking Mima's way once more, 'there is nothing to forgive _you_ for.'

She glanced towards Detritus. It was more than just a heart that needed repairing when it came to the old soldier.

'You know,' she said to him, 'I could give you an arm, even an eye: yet I think you would only see such things as fakes – not what you truly need.'

A dove flew onto Detritus's shoulder. It locked its own beady, curious eyes on his one good eye.

Behind that strange stare, he recognised a long remembered look; one that saw him only as the handsome man he had been before he had set off for war.

'Myron? Is...is that _you_?'

He looked about him, incredibly happy yet also ashamedly apologetic.

'I'm sorry,' he said, 'so sorry: I didn't realise I'd be so long talking to Myr...'

He saw that Mia was grinning.

For, at last, she realised how life had truly been given to her robin.

End

If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Coming Soon

God of the 4th Sun

