My Decision Is Made For Me

Thoreau is cultivating his pigs, to prepare a large to-go lunch.

Diligent Reader, may I address you casually, do you recall the last time I fled a place? Do you remember what was going on when I finally decided it was time to pack up and leave? Let me remind you.

I had been on Ellery Island, you will no doubt remember, when I had been tergiversating over this exact same situation. I was growing weary of the one location and needed to expand and challenge myself, so better to invigorate my faculty with new air and revitalized blood. While I entertained these discussions, the monsters on that patch of land began manifesting an alarming new strategy, taking me completely unawares and nearly terminating my existence once again. (When will be the last time, I wonder?)

The obvious conclusion to be drawn, thus, is that the monsters are somehow attuned to my thoughts. Just as the critters and small birds of Concord had sensed my good nature and befriended me in displays of unity and support to guests, so too do these aberrations of nightmare sniff the changed breeze when my thoughts drift and shift. For no sooner had I merely begun to entertain the possibility of leaving the villagers' cabin than they stepped up their offense. This morning I spotted no fewer than three witches milling about behind my quarters. I pounced upon them easily enough, only to be flanked by Explodicons that emerged from I know not where. While I could knock these back to a safer, more manageable distance, abruptly my vision began to jar and rattle, as a gale of arrows lodged violently into my armor. For as I had descended into the depression behind my cabin to wrangle the Explodicons, no less than a squad of archer-skeletons crested the ridge to pepper me with their volleys.

The Roads Not Taken

Thoreau is engaged in lots and lots of this.
Most of the time it yields nothing, yet still he persists.

Not much new to add in this department. I'm back to mining, sorry to say. I'm no longer carving out a complete railway to my island of origin; I am, however, hewing through stone several meters above that track, fanning at exactly the same intervals until I've created parallel rills of perilously deep free-falls in the rock. Should I misstep and tumble down these, there would only be smooth granite and andesite for me to grasp at, and as my tender fingernails are not up to biting into volcanic mineral, my fleshy corpore would accelerate until it struck bedrock, which as I've stated before is wholly indestructible.

So I'll watch my step, and I'll continue to mine away in search of minerals. I did find a few veins of iron and gold, a little more ante for my furnace's pot. Not that I was ever a card-fancier, I merely know these terms. Lately I find myself scraping the recesses of my musty skull for all the old axioms and... what's the word... colloquialisms which spiced the dialogue of my former community. As I lack any suitable company for conversation, I can only practice my faculty of speech by reading aloud these journal entries, and then only less than half of each day, as the sun rapidly streaks across the sky and plunges the terrain into darkness, when my sonorous voice should attract the usual variety of malefic supernatural entities.

"Listen Very Carefully to Me."

He makes himself right at home.

I was very startled to see another person, after Selidon and Voessi slipped away under cover of night so long ago. That is, I assume they fled. They could easily have been devoured by night creatures, but that would have had to have been a very thorough job, as I've been over this territory dozens of times and haven't found so much as a blood stain or a fingertip left behind.

The stranger walked right into my little house, and immediately I had a flashback of days gone by. Back in Massachusetts, that is: it was known among my acquaintances that they had but to walk right through my door and make themselves at home. If I were not in, they would leave a little note saying they'd missed me, or would entwine a small grass ring they'd crafted while waiting for me. It saddened me to recall these suddenly, for at the time I acted very haughty and cool about it, though inwardly I was rather delighted and charmed by their thoughtfulness. Now, of course, I'm exceedingly famished for friendly social discourse and I miss those past interactions with a keen longing.

Thoreau's Crazy Train

The fanning method of mining.

Many days have been spent on the back-breaking labor of digging the underground railway. While the activity itself is entirely uninteresting, affording me a liberal week of neglecting my journal (for what is there to update? Pontificating upon the blisters of my hands? The unchanging scenery of a one-meter-by-two-meter corridor in stone?), there are in fact a few aspects and discoveries I would like to record here for my own benefit.

Mind you, this is intensely boring work. To create a railway, I carve out just enough room to run a minecart down, plus headroom for myself. This has been a trial-and-error process: I stand two meters tall in this realm, and when I sit in the minecart, I still require two meters height and one meter in width. This is the barest necessity for a gangway. While digging this out, of course, it is advantageous to start "fanning", that is, mining large side passages as far as I may reach in all directions, at intervals of two meters, to advance my odds of finding mineral deposits. While this triples my work time, it is essential for personal development and acquisition of resources, so for the present time I see no alternate route about this.

The Beginning of a Plan

I have sighed many times over this article which now I write. My spine has cramped with my scribe's position, sitting on the oaken floorboards in the cabin which once Selidon and Voessi inhabited. I did not sleep last night but paced the floor, attempting to sort in my head the various thoughts and dreams and half-baked notions which ramble about in there like a pack of feral children. There is no tea to be had, nor pipe to be smoked, none of the usual distractions or vices, even if I should break with convention and take one up. Because why not, in this world where nothing makes sense?

The author entertains himself by
mocking the skeleton for 15 minutes.

When I press my cheek against the coarse glass of the cabin's windows, it is cold. The sky is dark, though I see the pink hues beginning to form on the horizon. An archer-skeleton ambles past the window, bow at the ready, sounding for all the world like someone has kicked a xylophone down a staircase; soon he will burst into flames, if he does not find a sheltering tree. I watch the back of his bleached skull round the corner of the cabin as he stalks off, and I have no emotional attachment to his presence. Not fear, not revulsion, even my academic curiosity wanes.

Oh. He has fallen into the well, in a misguided attempt at self-preservation. Surely, there is enough shade in there to guard him from the sun, and should he catch fire, he is perpetually bathed in cool water. But now he can't climb out nor operate his bow to pluck out the eyes of casual observers.

I could draw an analogy between us, but honestly, it would take too much out of me.

Cartography

The vale behind the cabin: poppies, tulips, no huckleberries

This rainy, overcast morning finds me more withdrawn and taciturn than normal. I'm tired of "the fresh woods and pastures new" just now, though I trust I will not always be so. It surprises me to discover within myself an emptiness for other people, when so often in Concord the abundance of them drove me into the woods.

It is no surprise, of course, to miss the chirp of birds in conversation, as this world has none. And as I walk about the former villagers demesne, a random memory has burst into my mind: there are no huckleberries here. Why should there be, of course, when Providence has populated this bizarre realm with plants and animals in a manner conforming to no sensible pattern or system. There are horses and cows but no dogs or cats; there are potatoes without cabbage.

I am a little surprised at myself for this nostalgia for things I once took for granted, for people I sought to escape. I confess to feeling a bit childish at this moment.

The Heart of a Pig

The map will have to wait! The most exciting development has occurred!

When that it happened I took a moment's whim to settle down to while an hour by fishing, I did this in my usual fashion (lacking pipe or cup of tea, of course): I found a nice slope by the house, I carved a serviceable pole from a stripling and some spider's silk, then seated myself comfortably to cast into the lagoon.

Yet another dreaded sea-temple, uncomfortably near the cabin.

Now, one troubling thing about this atoll is that it is frightfully near another of those underwater temples that blister up occasionally throughout the Sewall Sea. To overreach and strain the analogy, it was not unlike the woman I thought I loved, where at first I took in her comport and façade at face value, believing her to represent herself as I saw her. Call me naïve, yes, but no moral crime was committed by yours truly in assuming people to be representing their truest selves. When in the course of time, as must naturally transpire, one becomes aware of greater depth and dimension to another person—and certainly, no human has ever laid out all their cards upon the table, at first meeting—this manifested in a certain turbulence beneath the placid surface, shall we say. And this is reasonable and acceptable in a beautiful young woman, as it is in any human being; on this I am confident we all may agree. All of us, we have our undercurrents, our riptides, our ebbs and flows. How churlish would it be to permit these within us but little tolerate them in others?

Learning the Language

The homestead, as the author has come to consider it. For now.

I find this village pleasant... well, it is inaccurate to call this a village, as it really is only one solitary house on a hillock, standing above an atoll. One cabin and its garden: I'm sure I don't know what could be as pleasant.

Except, of course, for another couple of houses somewhere nearish. I must wonder what has happened to the other houses, if others there were. What is it about the area that retains these two villagers to this house? Are they the keepers of a disappeared tradition? Are they defenseless to travel across great stretches of land, just the two of them? Are they waiting for the others to return?

I cannot answer any of these, but the truth is that I have picked up a few words in their tongue. I am not fluent, but it was a stroke of that particular genius/obviousness that we seemed to hit upon recently, which compelled us to share the names we have for various objects. Promptly we traded our words for, of course, the crops: wheat, carrots, potatoes, and then water and then soil. When we established the pattern of education, that is, isolating an object and then naming it, we were able to properly introduce ourselves. They know me as "Henry"; they are Selidon and Voessi. While they appear identical, they nonetheless manifest subtle traits that distinguish them from each other, not the least of these being their occupations. Selidon is a shepherd (we have amassed many other words through drawings and rather superior pantomime on my part) and Voessi is a fisherman. As soon as we established this, they wanted to begin trading.

Storming the Village

The witch spotted me when I drew within a few meters of her: an inopportune bolt of lightning illuminated my craft and caught her eye. As soon as I was detected, I leapt from the boat and scrambled for stable footing on shore. She knocked back a potion and lights began to swirl around her person, the effect of whatever she had used to empower herself, I know not what. Her hand darted under her robes and withdrew another potion; I nocked an arrow and envisioned a golden line from my bow to her core, despite rivulets of the storm blurring my vision. When she drew back to hurl her vessel, I released the arrow, and it flew true to bury itself into her throat. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, she dropped the bottle and clawed at her throat, sinking to her knees. With a second arrow loaded I cautiously approached her. Her lips pulled back in a terrifying sneer and her jaw worked, but then the life drained from her face and she collapsed upon the sand.

The A.C.M.s groaned and pounded at the cabin's door.

I released the breath I was not aware I'd been holding. Some savage instinct within me overrode my faculties: I searched the wretched body for useful items, then planted my boot to her shoulder and rolled her into the ocean, her purple robes swiftly vanishing within the depths of the Sewall Sea. I am surprised at myself for the callousness of my behavior, it is not something I would have imagined myself capable of. And yet this is the fact of it, as I record it without waiver or apology.

This accomplished, I turned my attention toward the large stone house, only to witness two A.C.M.s battering at the oak door. I sprang into action: two arrows pierced the back of one animated corpse, and it collapsed. The other seemed not to notice, so I carefully lined up two more shots and dispatched it as well.

The Journey Worsens

Vast stretch of desert, entirely unfamiliar to the author.

It should surprise no one that I have found the great continent which was my destination. I cannot determine what was my intent to deceive the reader of this journal, in pretending that I was abandoning Ellery island with no specific designs to land. I suppose it was more romantic to sound as though I'd trundled up my essentials into a small wooden tub and flung myself once more into the vagaries of the Great Sewall. No reader can be more disappointed by the mundanity of my itinerary than I am by my flimsy deceit; I think that I do not mistake in this.

That behind us, I have found the southern coast to the lands I knew full well to exist. Where I have gone awry, to the reader's delight, is that I recognize nothing of these lands. According to my map, I should have found enormous, savage snow-capped mountains, down which fearsome rivers of lava ran to most dramatic effect. Spruce carpeted the sides and caves enticed the adventuresome eye, both for ready-made shelter and allure of what prizes they contained.

Nope, couldn't find a shred of this. No mountains, no lava, no spruce. Just a vast desert covered in sand and more sand, with traces of cactus and sugar canes, plus a low and miserly scrub-brush about which there seems no magnificent promise. I skirted the coast, scanning for anything remotely familiar, as disappointment filled up my vessel before catalyzing into dread: if I couldn't recognize the land I expected, flying due north across Sewall Sea, what were my odds of turning southward and drifting to the familiar lands?