Toro Tokuda

# An unfinished fantasy tale in the rare first person POV, circa 2014.

There was a legend about the well in the courtyard.

And now, I stood in front of it, running fingers over the ancient, worn, moss-eaten stone. There was a power here, deep within the well, maybe, and it called to the very threads of my being, tugging and urging me to make that leap. I looked from the stone to around the courtyard, but I was alone. There was no one else here, at least not within these walls, so there was no one to see.

There were the tugs again, and this time I found it nearly irresistable. I checked my bag on my back, full of essential supplies, the weapons at my hip and under my jacket, knives and powders. Everything was ready, and I was ready, and yet I hedged. I sat on the edge of the well, and dropped a small stone down. There wasn’t a sound. There was never a sound.

The well pulled me in again, and I found my breath harder to catch. I had to go. I had to. It was all that I could think about, all I could see. 

I took the plunge, pushing myself over the edge and diving like I would into the lake, despite the fact that I knew there was no water at the bottom of this pool. Hands out in front of me, body streamlined, a deep breath in that I held even as I was engulfed in deep, heavy darkness. It threatened to knock the wind out of me, threatened to drown me, but I held my metaphorical ground.

My eyes were open, but there was nothing to see. I let the momentum bring me down until there was no more, and then I stopped in the void, turning myself with my hands, looking for something, anything. I was starting to panic when I saw a glimmer far off in the distance. Without hesitation, I made my way towards it.

My muscles began to burn with every stroke, my chest on fire, my eyes trained on the prize but my head starting to blur. There was nothing else but that circle of light, white and clear and beautiful. When I got closer, it was filtering down through the void ever so gently, and I raced towards it, bursting up through it and into it with every ounce of my remaining strength. Screams inside my head, panicking and shouting, fire throughout my limbs and then—

Air.

I drank it in like I had been in a desert and it was a never-ending jug of water, ice cold and delicious. Even while treading the water, eyes closed, just loving the taste, I knew it wouldn’t last. I slowly blinked my eyes open, but it was blinding, this light. It was a while before they had adjusted enough that I could see I had emerged in a pool of clear water in a field, encircled by trees.

I swam over to the shore and dragged myself onto it, turning to my back and just lying there for a time. I had to catch my breath. The void seemed to take it all from me. I knew it would, but this isn’t what I expected.

Something else unexpected: I could feel the threads like from the well in the air here. My hand rose to entwine a few through my fingers, feeling the power that charged the very air here, not just a single place, like back in my home. And this— this confirmed it. The well wasn’t just a passage from the castle to another, or outside the walls. This was a passage to an entirely new realm. A magical realm.

I laughed, and it washed over me in a release I didn’t even know that I needed, hands down over my face with a smile to accompany it. And when I calmed myself, I stood up, shaking out my hair, even though it was still very wet. I looked around this new landscape and tried to decide which direction to go.

The decision was made for me.

A figure dropped out of the encircling trees, and though I knew not what he was, I recognised the aggression of the bow. My hands went up to show that I meant no harm, and the figure approached slowly, arrow still trained on me. The figure was probably male, cloaked in a hood and leather armour that hugged his body, a cluster of fletching visible over his shoulder. From what was visible, his skin had a green tint to it, his hair, also green, though only wisps were visible outside of his hood. He stood a few paces away, bow not wavering.

‘Who are you? This is a sacred place.’

A deep, commanding, voice.

‘Fera,’ I said in my most calm voice.

‘That is not one of our names.’

‘No.’ I gestured back to the pool with a hand. ‘I emerged from that pool.’

‘The Waters of Giving and Taking.’

‘An apt name, yes. I mean no harm.’

‘You’re a traveler.’

‘If your world will accept me, yes. If nothing else, I need a rest.’

His bow slowly lowered, the arrow loose against the shaft, and he gazed at me with golden eyes that reminded me of a feline’s.

‘You came through the Waters. Some have gone, but none have come back. That is remarkable.’ His eyes turned from mine to look around the clearing, before they came back to my own. ‘Yes. Come. Home is not far.’

He bid that I follow, and so I followed. He walked through the tall grass of the fields before the trees, and it grazed my knees, same as his. It was a bright green of the first leaves of spring, and it smelled of fresh rain. I shook the threads in the air to ripple the grass, and my guide turned quickly to watch, and then to me.

‘Don’t do that.’

‘I like the smell.’

‘Don’t use your magic here. This is a sacred place.’

‘Will you tell me when I can use it?’

‘Yes.’

He continued through the grass, and I watched his back curiously as I followed. He still had his bow and an arrow in his hands, but his back featured other weapons strapped over his cloak. There was his quiver full of arrows, of course, the fletching well-worn but well-made with white feathers. Underneath that was a long knife, perhaps a sword, that curved gracefully so that it never left his back. The pull of cloth suggested at least one other blade, probably strapped to the back of his breeches.

When they reached the trees, he seemed to relax, and after a hundred paces or so he stopped, turning in a circle and then stopping to look at me.

‘Now you may use your magic. Do you feel it?’

I took in a deep breath, both hands up to feel the threads in the air. They seemed to send whispers through my skin, and my eyes closed as I listened to the songs of a thousand years, the breath of the trees, the scent of the leaves under our feet. And then my eyes opened, because he was tugging at the same threads, fingers up to twirl them into a loop, an invisible encircling of his hand.

‘You can feel it, too.’

‘I have lived in this forest my entire life. If I couldn’t feel it, I might just die of despair.’

‘I might, too.’

‘Come,’ he urged. His bow went away over his head and shoulder so it was strapped to his back, and then he walked to a tree a couple paces over, and leaped up into its lower branches. He did it flawlessly, and I stood at the bottom of the tree, dumbfounded. He was a few branches up before he realised I hadn’t followed. He descended again, staring down at me there still on the leaf litter. ‘Come?’

‘This is a very large tree.’

‘One of many. Use the magic. It is not a difficult thing.’

I let out a heavy sigh, both hands to the trunk of the tree, which answered with a tug at the very fiber of my being. My eyes closed again, and I took in a breath to let it out slowly.

It wasn’t pretty, but with the magic from the tree and the forest I managed to follow him up the tree, and from that one, to another, and then another, like a road that he had taken countless times before. I almost fell time and time again, my legs burning from the leaping, and I think that, in hindsight, it was only the magic from the forest that kept me from falling to a very painful death.

But it wasn’t forever. Eventually we reached what could only be his village. I let out an awe-struck gasp at the spiralling spheres that were strung and a part of the ancient trees here. There was a singing in the air, and it vibrated against my skin, tendrils of the forest sneaking under my clothes to envelop me. He led me up higher, and I could see the sphere we were heading towards: it was three times larger than most of the others. A council or elders, perhaps?

The entry was underneath the sphere. He went through first, and then his hands appeared, which I grasped to let him pull me through the gap in the wooden floor into the room.

‘Arel!’ Came a sharp voice, and it was echoed by gasps around the circular room. ‘What is the meaning of this? What is—‘

‘Did you not wonder what that disturbance was? This is she— She came through the Waters of Giving and Taking from another land, and our forest has accepted her.’ Arel. I finally had a name for my guide. It suited him. I stood a step behind him, and the girth of the room overwhelmed me. There was many of his people around the sphere, sitting at tables or in chairs, browsing shelves full of what looked like scrolls. Many did not have hoods or cloaks on, and I realised what I should have already realised: these were elves. They had long, elegant ears to match their pointed faces, carved from the living wood, it seemed, beautiful and weathered to be smooth.

They all looked at me, however, as if I was some type of monster to be slayed. Arel stood with me, protective even when he didn’t have to be.

‘Filonda, accepting this?’ The same elf spoke, her voice just as sharp, just as accusatory. She stepped down from a pedestal, down steps that trailed her cloak behind her as she came to our level. ‘Don’t be preposterous, young one.’

‘I’m not,’ Arel answered in as nice a tone as he could manage. ‘Fera can feel our forest. Would our city have accepted her inside its walls otherwise? She isn’t like the round ears of our world. She is different. This is a good thing.’

‘This is a stone’s trick,’ another elf said from the shelves, crossing his arms, ‘No one comes from the Waters, not alive.’

‘I came,’ I said as clearly as I could. ‘I came because your world, your forest, called to me from my own world. It was not a song I was really able to resist.’ I took a step forward, so Arel was behind me. ‘I have brought things with me from my world. Please, if you need proof, let that be it. This isn’t Arel’s doing. He only led me here.’

‘Fine, stone, what have you brought?’

I took my bag off, and it was still wet. Luckily, I had anticipated this, and the contents I had wrapped in beeswax cloths. I dumped out the bag, where some water slid out to the wood. I drew it up with some thread from the air, and then the rest of the water from my things. Arel left for a moment to get a bowl, and when he returned, I dropped the water into it.

Some of the other elves gathered around us, and I started unwrapping the couple of books I brought. I held up one that was leatherbound and black. ‘This book holds many of our heroic tales, stories of my people’s victories against evil.’

One of the elves reached for it, and I set it in those light green outstretched hands. She held it with awe, opening the cover and examining the binding, the paper within. ‘This writing is so odd,’ she remarked, fingers flipping through the pages. ‘How do you read it?’

‘Here,’ I said quietly, hands back outstretched. She handed the book back, and then I turned to a chapter on a dragon-slayer and read a passage for the elves, who all stood raptured by the tale. ‘My land is many things, but it does not hold magic in the air like your land does. It called me here. I’d like to think it was for a purpose.’

‘I think it was,’ Arel noted, crouched beside her. ‘No one else survived the Waters. Tell us how you came to be here.’

And so I told them about the void, about the well, about the light and their pool of sacred water. Even now, I do not think that I did the tale justice, just as I have no written it here accurately enough. My description of the void, in particular, lacked substance. There were no words to truly describe the emptiness, the silence, the darkness.

And then, because more proof was required, I pulled out more artifacts from my bag. I had a rolled up map of my world, and I spread it out on the floor of their tree sphere, pointing out where the Well was, in the castle, and then the lands surrounding it, where my tribe had lived. North, there were mountains, with mountainmen that had their own legends and gods. Far to the south lay the sea, and a great many ports that I described as best I could, never actually visiting more than one of them, and that was to get things for the Well trip.

Another book was just one on the flora of my world, because I had been curious to compare and contrast, to see if maybe this world was like my world. So far, I hadn’t noticed much of a difference, but I was glad I had brought it, anyway.

And then there were baubles and trinkets and small carvings of wood and stone and metal. They gathered around them when I spread them out on the wood, the map rolled back up. They ran marbles through their fingers, examined my comb, carved so carefully from wood, talked to each other about the arrowheads I had carved myself from bone and stone alike.