One in the Temple
The Town sat on the side of an alpine valley. This Town was not particularly close to any famous peaks or passes. It was near summits that cartographers named ‘Lower Agrada P6’ or ‘Marked 54/H8’, so the Town didn’t get climbers. It also didn’t get tourists, religious proselytizers, or spiritual retreatists. It was truly remote and not just conveniently remote. However, a certain kind of young man, or woman, was drawn there. Like the hopeful to multilevel marketing companies or lemmings to exponential population growth.
A sense of guilt always settled over the Town when the residents saw one of these young people wind their way up the steps and through the two bronze posts that served as the Town gate. The Butcher noticed their little movements. Those tiny things that make a person a person. How they leant on one foot when thinking or how they laughed, with their eyes closed and one hand on their chest. The Leatherworker knew that somewhere there was a person who was terrified of forgetting these small things. Those memories eroding, small pieces being rubbed away, like exactly how a smile curled or those small noises someone makes when waking.
The Townspeople could have all left and taken no part in what was to happen. Back down the ten thousand steps, and over the Bridge. But they didn’t. Why? Well the same reason people everywhere stay where they are, it was slightly easier.
Today a new, fresh-faced, callow Youth strode up the steps, through the gate and into the Square. His hand covered his eyes as they slowly rose up the thick, oaken pole, and stopped when they found The Monk on top. The Monk, of indeterminable age, sat cross legged, bald and serene. The Youth confidently rapped his knuckles on the base of the post and stepped back. One serene eye cracked open and peered down the thirty feet to the boy below.
“Hello Monk! I have come for the Test.”
The Monk had once loved the theatre of it all. The mystical hermit role. But now he was just counting down the days when his Novice would take over. It was cold up on his pole. He had a lot of contemporary pole sitters, pole sitting being one of your more standard esoteric pursuits, but he had noticed very few of his colleagues did it halfway up a mountain.
“Which test?”
“I’m sorry Monk, I don’t understand?”
“We’ve two tests. You’ve got your standard ‘Prophecy Fulfilled’ test. Then we have the slightly different “‘Mage With The Power To Shape The World’ test.”
“I am the prophesied hero, The One that has been chosen. The One the Druids of Dhindren said would come from a distant land. The One that Foardall the Benevolent spoke of on his deathbed. A thousand prophets have seen me and told of my arrival and a thousand more have died with my names on their lips. A warrior, a King, a leader.”
‘“So, you’ve no magic then?”
“Well, no.”
“Standard test so.”
“Monk, I fear that you don’t understand what I tell you. I have followed the signs. Mages and knights have sought me out. Guided me to my destiny here. I am him, The Chosen One.”
“Yes, I get it!” snapped the Monk, “Which means the standard test, as you’ve no magic. Not even a magic sword, or you’d be after mentioning that by now.”
“I have crossed mountains, and seas to get here. This tiny Village on the edge of nowhere, I am the sole reason for your existence here. I am the one your ancestors were told to wait for.”
“It's a Town.”
“What?”
“It's a Town, you’re in a Town. Not a Village. It's a Town. It's a mid-sized Town even.”
“Come on Monk, pull it together!” shouted the Smith, who at 6’5” and 300 pounds had a very performance motivating persona. The Monk gathered himself, shrugged his robe further up his shoulders, and took a deep breath.
“I’m just an old man, sitting on a hard pole. I have seen pretenders before, and I am weary of hope. The Test you speak of is here. But first I must ask you who you met on your travels and what you did.”
The Smith seemed happier at least.
“I have heard that first you must write my tale?” asked the Youth.
The Monk nodded and gestured to his Novice who had appeared at the base of his pillar. The Novice flamboyantly produced a jet-black quill. This was laid carefully on his small desk. Next, he reached into a dark leather satchel and pulled out a thick bound book. He opened it, found a clean page about halfway in and looked up expectantly.
“You can begin, Chosen One.” The Monk's voice echoed across the quickly filling square.
In many ways this was the highlight for the Townspeople. The Youth was right when he said that this was a town on the edge of nowhere. It definitely wasn't in the middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere implies that there is somewhere either side of it. If you got to this Town and didn’t like it, there was only one option. Back. Sometimes, depending on the weather, back turned out to be more a figurative direction than a literal one. So, the people who called this place home were the last to know.
“Know what?” you might ask.
Everything.
There were benefits living in the mountains, fresh spring water for one, bracing mountain air, yodelling. But you accepted being 3 years behind current events, and at least 5 years behind popular music.
“First I must tell you where I come from.”
“Honestly Chosen One, you can skip right through that part, it’s more about what happened here.”
“But I am not from this world.”, announced the Youth dramatically, “I am from another world known as Earth. I was transported here by a book of magic.”
The Monk, operating on muscle memory more than anything else, left out a loud exclamation. The Novice made a show of half rising from his stool.
“I will tell you about my world.”
“No! You cannot!”, shouted the Monk, “It is forbidden to us. The Gathering Darkness would use such knowledge against us!”
The Townspeople muttered appreciatively. He had started incorporating this into his act a few years ago. It was very effective at getting them to move onto the good stuff. But what was new was the use of ‘Gathering Darkness’. That was good. It really fit the theme.
“Would you be in peril, Monk?”
“Maybe. I might stand some chance. Even my Novice might. With our… mind training? But the Townspeople would not. They would be driven insane. Orphaned children and overgrown fields are all that would be left.”
Mind training. Wow. That was a stretch.
“Well then Monk I won’t tell you of my world. I cannot suffer such thoughts.”
“Thank you Chosen One. In the past another who knew of other worlds whispered it to our ancestors. Our grandfather’s fathers spoke of the destruction that their grandfathers remembered.”
“Now Chosen One, continue with your tale.”
And he did. He told him of how he appeared in a forest in what turned out to be The Upper Farn. He was found by the third son of the Duke of Heljem. The Duke’s son took this stranger's appearance as a good omen and asked if he wanted to join him in his quest for fame and fortune. The Youth followed him and won glory as his second in command in a mercenary company. But love got between them and they became bitter enemies. Betrayal, sex, murder, etc. He told them of an old soothsayer called Yarva who found him, patched him up after he took a spell in a gaol and said that he had been searching for him, told him of the prophecy. Anyway, he had a few more adventures blah blah blah, and here he was. Well that’s the short version. He took several hours to tell it. The Town was told the description of every inn he passed through and the curve of every bosom he saw. On about this and that. Duels and his training and his innocence being ruined, some lad who he thought hated him ended up saving his life and became best friends. Every now and then he’d stop on some cliff-hanger and then ask for something to drink or eat, leaving everyone at his mercy until he decided to start up again. But at least they were spared stories about ‘Earth’, a place none of them cared about. Interesting information was sieved out of his self-indulgent crap. A new Prince ruled Halvor. The Garrlander Navy was rearming. Ann Ja’Dertatyl had quit the New Aldan Eagles. A happy day for any Porto Sagario Gulls fan that’s for sure.
“Now I find myself here, Monk, in this Town at the top of all things. I climbed your ten thousand steps, each one a different size, a different height and a different width.”
“Chosen One, the hour is late. Spend the night here. Celebrate this occasion. Tomorrow we will begin the trial.”
The Youth stayed. He spent coin in the Tavern, buying drinks. He even got rid of a little rat problem they had in the basement. He drank and laughed late into the night. The Townspeople quizzed him for more tales of the outside world, and he told them as best he could. They laughed with him when he forgot names for places, they chuckled as he told jokes he half remembered, and they looked sadly at him when he passed out on a bench.
The next morning, the Monk was on his pole, cross legged as usual. The Youth strode into the Square. He looked like a myth come to life. His weapons and armour were immaculate. His long golden hair was pulled and tugged by the high mountain wind. His muscles bunched as he drew his sword.
“I am The Chosen One. I will take my place. Take what is mine. Show me the Test.”
“Ah yes. Right, well let’s get started then.”
The monk gestured with his thumb over his shoulder towards the Temple behind him. It was snow white, 50 feet tall, with a golden dome covered in prayer flags. Hard to miss.
“You go in there.”
The Youth stuck his blade back in its dark scabbard and peered around the pole at the large double doors of the Temple.
“Then what Monk?”
“I can't really tell you to be honest, that would spoil the test.”
“Has anyone come back out?”
“Alive? Ah, no. Not really.”
The Youth took two strides pas the pole, paused, and turned.
“If I had to do that other test, the mage test, what's the difference?”
“Ah well, same thing really. You just go in walking backwards.”
“Backwards?”
“Yeah, we usually have one of the lads hold the door open for you.”
The Youth brushed a stray golden strand from his eyes, turned back and climbed the steps to the Temple. Maybe if he had been a bit less hungover, he would have noticed that the building just didn’t look right. It seemed to have no depth, like a Hollywood backlot Western saloon.
The double doors closed after him and then the screaming began.
There was only one thing that had united the four major powers of this continent. Well, I guess we’ll call the loose grouping that was the Confederation of Free Cities a major power, more like a minor nuisance? Amirite? Anyway, what bonded them all were all these Earthlings showing up. They arrived here, convinced they were something special. Just because they found some book or wandered through someone’s closet or whatever. Do you think a book or a piece of furniture or whatever has any clue about what it’s doing? Anything can come through them. Bats, air beds, one time some virulent species of moth which was frankly an environmental catastrophe in Thalria, it all but drove the Yellow Grace butterfly to extinction. But no, these Earthlings instantly thought ‘Right, I’m going to be some sort of King/Queen then.’ At best that was kind of demeaning to be honest.
How did they think that would go?
Bryan here has 25 years of public administration experience, an in-depth knowledge of the country, its people and its history. He also has a working relationship with members of the senior civil service in several countries, and mercantile contacts that span the entire known world. But no, we’re actually going to pick Desmond as the new king, because he wandered into a room, and opened a magic box he was explicitly fucking told not to open.
But what was even worse was what the Earthlings attracted. Frost Giants. They literally attracted Frost Giants. Frost Giants.
No one had any idea why, pheromones or something was the current theory.
So, everyone says “Fine, how's about we bring the Earthlings to the Giants?”. The Frost Giants, already pretty embarrassed about a few past fiascos, agreed to the plan. So, they built a little Town and made up a prophecy. In this Town they built a Slaughterhouse and called it a Temple.
The Monk gestured down to his Novice.
“Get me the ladder will you? You’re going to have to wheel me round back to have a chat with the Frost King. He says he isn’t happy with the Cooper’s new conservatory. Says it doesn’t meet the style guides we all agreed on at the last Town committee meeting.”
As the Monk and the Frost King argued over the finer points of what ‘Mountain Rustic’ meant, a woman, who lived in a small flat above a chipper, on a planet called Earth, slowly laid her face onto a shirt of her vanished son. Her fingers trembled as she tried to remember how he smelt.
Of Persil, and dried mud, she told herself again, of Persil and dried mud.
Jerry McAuliffe lives in Limerick with his wife and two year old daughter. Frozen, Frozen 2, and Moana are his current primary sources of inspiration.
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