The Old Lady's Story

She saw my pencil and paper appear and said nothing, so the other pilgrims didn’t either. “I doubt any of you remember the Invasion first-hand,” she said.

“I was a child,” said the Wizard.

“I wasn’t,” said the Old Lady. “This was… some years ago.”

“Fifty-four,” muttered the mouth belonging to me, but speaking before I could stop it. I had read all four volumes of The Military History of the South Sea Nations.

She nodded. “That sounds right. Fifty-four years ago. The morls came out of their country to the west.” She began coughing and couldn’t stop. When her paroxysm ran out of power: “I understand they underwent apocalyptic hardships there. Frost, famine, drought, disease, death, war—everything the South Sea nations had never known. Father Ori may know more.”

I heard the Morl shift but couldn’t see him. “Yes,” was all the shadow said.

“But,” the Old Lady went on, “we didn’t know. We had no idea what was happening across the mountains. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of morls passed over the peaks and ended up in Lopesa.

“Today, everyone knows about the morls. But in those days, contact had been scarce. These ghostly creatures who could hide in broad daylight terrified the citizens of the Nations. Although the morls kept their distance, forming camps along the foothills of the mountains, people were scared, calling it the Invasion—the misnomer that still holds today.”

So far, I had heard all of this. But what followed was not in the history books.

“They didn’t strike first,” the Old Lady said, “no matter what the stories say. I know—because I led the Nation’s diplomatic delegation into the mountains.

“I was terrified. All of us were terrified—all four hundred ‘battle-trained’ soldiers—none of whom had seen so much as a town riot in their lifetimes, let alone a hundred thousand morls camping at the border of their country. With flags flying and heads high, we rode toward the mountains. On the way, citizens of the Nations threw rocks at us, shouting that four hundred was no match for one hundred thousand. They yelled that diplomacy was for the weak, and that we might as well fly a white flag. By the time we got there, we were tired, beaten, and worn—and we hadn’t even met the morls yet.

“We rode into their largest camp—a wide patch of tattered tents and morls. They were sick and hungry, and many were dead already. Although we couldn’t see the shimmering mounds of bodies until we were practically standing beside them, we could smell them from miles away. Some of their ‘tents’ were nothing more than tarps pulled across rocks.

“‘Do you have a king? An elected leader?,’ I said to one of them, in my strongest diplomatic voice—with all the authority of the Nations supporting me.

“To my surprise, the morl I spoke to fell to his knees and put his head to the grass, begging for help. Soon the entire camp, every morl within two miles, was on their knees.

“‘Get up,’ I told them. But they couldn’t understand our language. Finally, I dismounted and pulled a morl to his feet. ‘I’m not a god,’ I said. But it was no use.

“Mothers came running, bringing their sick babies, laying them at my feet. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear the infant cries. Although my eyes were hurting, I was beginning to make out their anguished faces and tears. They motioned for me to bless their babies, to comfort them, to feed them. Some of the children were already dead. They begged me to bring them back.”

Dear Human, I will interrupt only to remind you that we morls are never what we seem. We have perfected the art of making humans think they understand what's happening. Although no one could see me, I had a smile on my face and was quite tickled by the details of her story.

Moonlight gleamed in the Old Lady’s eyes.

“The sick and wounded crawled to me. They touched my dress, touched my shoes, touched my hands. Soon the crowd of shimmering, dying morls was so thick I couldn’t breathe. I tried to move, and found my way blocked. I was drowning in a shimmering wave of depression, disease, filth, and desperation. The shining river of strange people pulled me along.

“‘No!’ I shouted. ‘Help!’ If you can find it in yourselves to believe that just two words can start a war, then believe me when I say that these two did.

“Suddenly, the four hundred soldiers, already tense, surged to my rescue. Their swords flashed in the sun, their armor burned with white light. They cut down the morls in their way. The first battle. A hundred morls died in a few minutes.

“Morl blood was everywhere. It covered the horses and my people, making them almost as difficult to see as the morls themselves. The horses went wild—poorly trained animals. The slaughter turned into a real struggle as men were thrown to the ground. Morl reinforcements arrived. I called a retreat, and we ran.

“There was no order, no discipline. We just ran. Morlish bowmen cut us down from behind.

“In the end, they let us go. I don’t know why. Maybe they were just too sick, too tired, to follow. We had gone into the mountains with four hundred and left with fifty. It was the beginning of a fifteen-year war.

“That night, the morls struck three small villages near the mountains. The villagers never saw their attackers. ‘Wraiths in the night’ they called the morls. Those four words spread across the Nations like an epidemic. Villages formed garrisons. Every Nation instituted a draft of all men over the age of fifteen. Armies were relocated to the west—sent to stand against the wraiths in the night.

“Meanwhile, morls continued to arrive from across the mountains. Whatever was happening on the other side must have been truly terrible, for they chose to stay and fight a war rather than return to their homeland. They dug into the mountains, building trenches and palisades that ran for miles. They raided towns, stole livestock, occupied farmlands, and ate whatever they could find—including the villagers who fought to defend their homes. I know now that this action was born of starvation, but at the time we thought they were demons, animals, cannibals. We added those words to ‘wraiths in the night.’ People truly believed that Hell had opened up a doorway to our world and sent an army of horrors to destroy us all.

“In defiance of our hatred for them, they dug in and refused to be moved for fifteen years. I commanded several factions throughout the war. I had been a student of military tactics at the non-magical division of the Great Academy—a scholarly, theoretical field of study until an actual war came along. After five years, it became clear to me that winning would be impossible. But it took the rest of the generals ten more years to agree with me. By then, the economy was in ruins. An entire generation of young people had been shattered, tossed futilely against the morlish palisades. It was time for a second diplomatic delegation.

“Naturally, fate—ever the ironic bastard—chose me to lead the second delegation. This time we did fly white flags. But no one threw rocks. I had learned much of the morl language since that day, fifteen years before, and I had the authority to ‘end the war at any cost.’ It may have been called a ‘diplomatic delegation,’ but it was a surrender.”

“I signed the peace treaty with the morl leaders myself, officially granting them the territory in the Lopesan Nation that they had already conquered, recognizing this as an extension of the independent Morl Nation, and allowing the Morl Nation to join Drymar, Lopesa, and Seadom as an official member of the South Sea Nations. The treaty has held to this day—my small consolation, my small piece of relief from the guilt of starting the whole thing in the first place.”

The Old Lady collapsed into a fit of coughing. When she was finished, she turned shining, drugged eyes in the Morl’s direction. “That’s my confession, Father Ori. You could rightly say that I stabbed you last night, even if I didn’t actually hold the knife. I did it fifty-four years ago. And you felt it today.”

“You’re incorrect,” whispered the Morl. Then, after a deep breath: “I’ve felt it every day of my life.” I expected him to say more, but the Morl left instead. His footsteps appeared in the sand, crested a dune, and disappeared.

“I don’t expect forgiveness,” said the Old Lady. With that, she moved out of the circle and entered her sleeping bag. A moment later, she was asleep, leaving eight pilgrims blinking in the moonlit circle. Slowly they dispersed and disappeared into their respective cocoons, except for me. I continued to write.