《Tales from the Afterworld - short stories collection》Story 030 - GALAPAGO (magical realism)
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GALAPAGO
As swift as a squirrel, Jay run up to the deck as soon as he heard the watchman's cry "Land! Land in view!" The light was so sudden and bright it hurt. The world looked ghostly and magical through the teary blur of the young eyes, wide open with wonder.
Jay had been waiting for that island since the very beginning of the journey. It was everything he expected it to be and more: a place of exotic plant and animal life, sweet fruit, and adventures. Everything seemed wonderful there, beautiful, alien, even the same sun and sea Jay had had enough of during his time on the ship.
The captain let his men go ashore and explore the island so they would return to the ship with fresh food and water. Little Jay wasn't allowed to follow the adult sailors into the jungle, but he was quite content with exploring the beach. He ate his share of exotic fruit while he was at it, taunted iguanas with a stick, and even tried to dig for treasure under a weirdly crooked palm tree. Meanwhile, the sailors returned.
They found what they were looking for: water and meat, the meat being the huge, heavily armoured tortoises that lived only on that island as the cook told Jay. The cook told many other things as well: mostly about how tasty their meat was and how long it could stay fresh. The ship's crew cheered up at the thought of eating proper food every day from now on. As to Jay, he couldn’t even crack a smile.
Silent and lonely, he looked at the overturned grey shells where the unbelievable creatures tried to hide, so huge yet so helpless in front of little humans. They didn’t even scream. Jay ran away, unable to control the emotions bubbling in his chest as hot as lava.
One by one, the living preserves were loaded into the ship. Tortoises can stay alive for months keeping their meat always fresh, always good for cooking. What else could a sailor wish for? More rum, maybe…
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Since the day Jay saw the tortoises, he couldn’t sleep. He heard the sounds he couldn't understand and they frightened him.
"What's making those sounds in the hold?" he asked the older boys. Some shrugged, some said that the tortoises were walking down there. But how could they walk if they were laid on their backs and stacked up like bricks so they wouldn't be able to move? It took Jay a while to realize that no one else could hear the things that he did.
He heard voices, singing, wailing, pleading. They spoke no language, they had no words, just pure emotions that tore mercilessly at Jay's heart.
One night the boy gave in. He lit a torch and descended into the hold. It was pitch black there. The air in the hold stank of rot, filth, and despair. Huge shadows moved there, born from the weak, flickering light of the torch.
Jay found the source of the voices soon: a stack of dark shells where the tortoises hid. One of the creatures raised its head; a small, beady eye blinked sharply in the torchlight. The voices fell silent in Jay’s mind, all but one that spoke to him in his own tongue.
“Do you realize, child, what your kind is going to kill? It’s the memory of countless ages, countless lives. You come into this world with empty minds, you have to learn everything from scratch and die long before you’ve learned anything properly.” The tortoise turned her other eye to the little human. “Since the dawn of time, we’ve been learning things and passing our memories from one generation to another, each new generation expanding the knowledge, adding to it. Then your kind came to hunt us for food. You killed so many before they had a chance to pass their knowledge to their children!”
A faint murmur ran through the stack of the dark shells. Five or six other voices rose from it, lamenting, cursing…
“Our fate is sealed,” another voice, powerful and beautiful, silenced them all in an instant. The Eternity itself could have had such a voice if it could speak human. The second head rose among the shadows on its long neck, the biggest one, the oldest. The others emerged from their shells following it.
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“Galapago…” the boy whispered. He heard this word from a naturalist who worked as a physician on this ship and was the reason Jay used to look forward to reaching the wonderful island. The beautiful word suited the wise ancient creature like a name.
“You are not of our kind, little human,” said Galapago’s voice in Jay’s head. It sounded warm and undeservingly kind. “I can not bestow all the ages of my memory to you. But you are the only one who can hear us, so we will tell you what we can while we still have time. Maybe our knowledge will yet do some good to the Universe. Maybe it will help you understand your world a little bit… or to forgive it at least.”
Since that night, Jay came to the hold as often as he could and listened, listened, listened, his little body sprawled on the dirty floor, his spirit soaring sky high with the wonderful voices. Their numbers dwindled one by one. Jay learned to say his goodbyes in silence, to hide his feelings under a mask of indifference. Tears betrayed him sometimes, though, dripping from his eyelashes. He blamed the bright sun if someone asked him what was wrong.
“Don’t refuse to eat the meat,” the survivors told him, “for if you fall ill and die, everything will be lost.”
So Jay ate the meat of the tortoises and when he did he thought of the priest in his town’s little church who always said that wine was the blood of Christ and bread was his body. One by one his teachers died, killed either by thirst, hunger, illness, or people. In the end, only Galapago remained.
“I am proud of you, my pupil,” she said. “You accomplished what I thought was impossible for a human. The stories that live in your mind now would be enough to fill several tortoise lives, and we live much longer than your kind! Yet I must say that you gave us much more than we gave you, child. We had never known before what it was like to teach someone. Nobody ever taught us, we were given our memories as they were and added to them. This was our way. What we did to you was different. The greatest thing we ever did, the greatest joy we’ve ever known. You, humans, know no other way to pass the knowledge, but to us, it was all new. We treasured every moment. Thank you, child. Jay. If death is the price to pay for what I learned from you I will gladly pay it. I wish I could pass the memory about it to my children, but, alas, this wish can not come true. I’m going to die tomorrow. My final hour is near, I can feel it. Do not cry about me, do not refuse to eat my meat. Take one of my little scales as a keepsake… I’m not going to tell you stories today. Let’s just keep silent awhile together.”
When Jay arrived at the port his hair was grey, his blue eyes darkened with sorrow, an ancient sage’s eyes on a child’s face. People gazed at him with fear and wonder and stepped aside as he walked alone through the crowd, a little scale clutched in his hand.
He used to be a carefree boy as quick as a squirrel, he ate exotic fruit on a strange island and teased iguanas with a stick. Without the burden of knowledge, his spirit soared above the world back then. Now it walked with a heavy step, carrying a load of memories, as heavy and poisonous as lead.
Change your world, Jay. Or at least try to forgive it.
(May 15, 2005)
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(On Hold) Regarding my time being a God, it was fun
After winning the lowest prize from Divine Lottery, a young man was thrown, by Goddess of Fortune, into a fantasy world and became a God. With only a small land as his sanctuary, he strives to protect his shrine from being destroyed…This is hardly an original idea, but the concept caught my interest so I decided to write it just for fun.There are a bunch of holes and gaps in the story line since I’m just making it up to fit my interests as I go. I warned you~ Read at your own risk of getting irritated over some details.Status: Starting Volume Two
8 201The Traveling Shop Keeper
Humanity has survived on Earth thanks to the Towers created by the AI council, sheltering humanity from the damage done to the earth from the war. To help humanity through the idea of living in upgraded caves, it created a method to digitize the human concious, allowing a user to enter a completely digitized world. Tyler, just hitting the required age to safely digitize into his local Tower digital world, is in a race to establish his trading company head office. With HYTOMA running for over 150 years, competition is fierce to buy property against other trading guilds, and the richer, more powerful raiding guilds. He could imagine that in his excitement that he would run into a Wanderer, a human that snubs their nose at the Towers, and spend their time wandering the ruined planet. Surviving by scrounging up old PC hard drives, and selling them back to the AI Council, allowing AI to add lost information to the Tower Network, and impoving the digital world. Hang on for a ride, as Tyler discovers he was given a hidden class by the ruling AI entity, slowly rolling through a digital world on a rickety cart. Will this Traveling Shop Keeper survive dragons, and lead Humanity out from the Towers, into a brand new world built by Articifical Intellegence? Note: I am a new writer with difficulty getting words from my head to sheet, so edits will be frequent. I do not have an editor, if you are interested, I am more than willing to discuss options for your involvement.
8 94Death Incarnate
Living only to kill, he craved death. Finally, upon dying he wished for life. So the Gods played a cruel trick giving him a dead body but a living mind. Follow this mysterious protagonist as he is flung, quite literally, into a world of beasts and magic. Terrible synopsis because I am lazy.
8 129Twin Worlds: Warriors and Mages
[What if two different worlds—practicing two different disciplines: one, magic arts; the other magic circuits—one day become one? Gaia and Aether were once two separate worlds that has now become one.]Arthur Crane is a police officer who once worked as a secret agent. He may have a mere level 4 activation power but he has some tricks up his sleeve.As it turns out, the girl he falls in love with is actually a princess of an aetherean kingdom and a tier-SS mage engaged to the hero of his country for the sake of stregnthening ties (it seems she only dated him out of some mistake!)To win her back, he must reveal the truth: that he is the true hero of his country. People may laugh, considering he's weak, but it's the truth.Find out more in this sci-fi/fantasy/action/romance novel Signed: Secret Memories Update will be within 1 to 4 days.
8 57The Accidental Summoning
Meet Melvin Murphy, your average everyday teen trying to make his way through high school. One day he awakens and learns of a system that governs all magic. In his attempt to summon a master to show him the ropes, he accidentally botches the ritual and summons Kalliphae. This is the story of how two kids from different worlds grow into their own while surviving things like school, bullies, and vampires. Release schedule: Monday/Wednesday/Friday at 00:30 PST. Come join the discussion. I'd love to hear from you. I also include 2 bonus chapters on my discord. Discord Link You can join me for live streams of my writing at: Twitch Link You can preorder book 1 here: Amazon Link - Comes out 12/6
8 187A Ghoul's Legend
There are stories of people slaying demons, of those who rise up against evil and those who save the world in a time of peril. They are legends, beings who have left their mark in history and admired by the masses. This is the story of a corporate businessman who awakens as a ghoul in an unfamiliar world, surrounded by magic and technology. Watch as he claws his way up and stand atop the world.
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