...and then, not a quietly as when he arrived, the old man sighed his way into the distance until the sun's glare made his appear to shimmer and disappear into the horizon. Shrugging, as there was little else that they could do, the boy and girl put the lids back on their containers and carefully packed their remaining lunch back into their backpacks and with few other options open to these two travellers, well, they carried on walking. They wondered when the adventure would begin but reasoned that it would unlikely be on the first day.
They were right; the really exciting sights, sounds and smells began once they had left their home so far behind that if they thought too hard the memory of their mother or father would slide out of their grip. They had to look at these memories out of the corner of their eyes if they didn't want them to disappear.
On their travels they children saw many secret and amazing sights, tasted foods they never imagined existed and heard sounds so terrible and beautiful they swooned. They saw places where millions of people went to buy cloth; places where only three people lived in a space so vast they no one knew where, or if there was indeed, a neighbour lived.
Some experiences were beautiful, others far from pleasant. They travelled over the sea - they learnt for the first time that rocking motion can you feel so very sick. They saw people with cold skin and thick hair, people with no hair and firey breaths. They travelled for a very long time. On their travels the children became young people, a young man and a young woman. And their dog? Well by now he had grown up and through adulthood and was now grey and forgetful.
And then there came a time when they decided that it was time to go back home. Suddenly waking up in the same bed and being greeted by a fat garden seemed like a pleasant thought. The only problem was that Pup was too old to walk very far. And so they decided on a fantastic idea – if they could get a bag specially built for him, they’d be able to return home. They crossed the sea again, this time is a smaller boat so that it could move quicker, and not half a day’s walk from the harbour they found The Market.
Forever it will be known as The Market as this became the end of the beginning and the beginning of the rest of time.
A young, very young woman, almost a girl, was sitting at the stall and out of her hands flowed the most exquisitely cut bags. The young people explained what they needed and the young, young woman nodded and pushing their money away said,
“I will do this for you, take the money and buy yourselves some food, I can see you are hungry and you still have a long way.”
So they bought food and sat on a low wall, watching as the shade moved over them and nearing the end of the day they returned to the stall, as the woman instructed.
At the stall they had to fight their way through a crowed of people, nine deep, all of then shouting one above the other, “I will give 20”, “me, I will give 50”, “that is worth well over 100”.
When the got to the front the young woman hastily shoved the bag at them saying,
“Stop! Stop all of you, these are the rightful owners, now do you believe that this bag has been bought already, no go all of you!”
To the young man and woman she said quickly, “go now before they start to hassle you” but too late the crowd had turned on them.
“I will give you 50 and my best cloak!”
“Pah! 50?! I will pay you two cloaks and 70!”
The crowed became quite pushy and the young man, holding the bag, tripped and rolled a fair way. But he managed to hold onto the bag. The young woman, holding Pup close felt her knees start to shake. The young man, picking himself up, failed to notice something and only saw it when a thick-necked someone called out, “you dropped your medicine.”
In the light, the bottle of tea that the funny, sad old man had given then hardly shone at all. The boy looked confused but all too suddenly, realisation dawned on the thick-necked someone’s face and they all but threw the bottle to the children.
“I know that bottle and I know that tea. Never ever drink that! Ever, it will make you fly, it will make you powerful but it will make you stupid and it will make you die!” And the thick-necked someone ran away. The spell was broken, the lust for the bag squashed and the crowed left quickly. Looking around, so had the bag woman and so the two young people, shrugging, hoisted Pup into his nag and set off home.
They travelled quickly, not stopping for long, eager to get home. On the 25th night after the bag incident, the boy and girl, now man and woman, were settling down for the night. Pup was lying tightly curled at the fire and the two young people were just about to drop off to sleep when the boy, now a man, spoke up,
“Are you not the slightest bit interested in the “magic” tea? Don’t you think we should try a bit, we are not stupid, we have travelled and we have the understanding of a thousand cities in our minds.”
The girl, now a woman, refused. She then got up to go for one last stretch before bed. It was now that the young man opened the tea and dropped half into his water cup and half into the woman’s cup. When she came back he urged her to finish the water to that he could put the cups away. He turned to slip his back into his bag and when he turned back again she had finished her water and smiling silently the man put her cup away as well. Then he suggested one, just one last walk to see the moon shining. He held the woman in the small of her back and gently directed her towards a deep canyon that he had seen that afternoon. They watched the moon, the only light in their sky.
“I want you to do something for me now”, he whispered into the girl’s ear, “I want you to fly” and he pushed her off shouting, “the tea, the magic flying tea, I put it in you water, it will make you fly!”
She hovered in the air in front of him, just long enough to reply, “the tea? I never drank it, I gave it to Pup!”
And then she fell.
The man, terrified cried out and leapt after her. He never knew how to fly, and right then he still did not. He looked up and saw a shape following him and realised it was Pup. He held out his arms and caught Pup and together they fell for a short way until it seemed that they were slowing. And maybe they flew and maybe it was the man, so disparately wanting to believe that he was not tricked into believing that some tea could make him fly, who imagined a brief gliding. But continue to fall the man and Pup did. The man, crying now, knowing that his beloved friend and his beloved dog were both going to die because of him, cried out, “Someone help me!”
And a Voice replied in his head, “We will help you, silly man, on one condition...”
And the man in desperation agreed to anything, anything.
With that the sky and ground turned on itself and the sky became the ground and the ground became the sky and not a moment too soon because the man and his dog crashed into the moon lit ground.
And they found that the sky swirled and plunged not unlike a choppy sea. The dark sky water was strong and held both man and dog a float and they both decided (they found after such a long time together, that they could understand each other quite well) that this place was the best place to be. But the man was not totally at ease, for he knew that he friend, the young woman was gone because of him. And he wept. And then he asked that Voice that he heard in his head if he could go and look for her and the Voice replied that he could no longer go free and that he owed the earth thanks for saving him.
Lying there in the sky water, arms and legs outstretched, the man decided that he had nothing left and told the Voice this and then he said,
“Your sky often seems lonely, with only a moon to light it once a month. I give myself to the sky, both myself and my dog, to light the night when the moon is resting.
And that, dear friends, was the beginning of stars.
But what about the woman, I hear you ask. Well, her story is one more mysterious. After she was pushed off the cliff, she disappeared for some years. No body was ever, to my knowledge, found and her spirit, all thoughts and memories of her, vanished from the world.
Then dear friends, a few years later, possibly three, possibly seven, a new face appeared in a little town, half a days walk from the sea; the sea that separates one continent from another. And this woman was made even more mysterious by the veil that she wore over her head and the gloves she wore on her hands. She became an apprentice to a middle-aged woman who was a genius at bag making. The mystery woman was pretty good as well and together the women became the most popular traders in the whole of the northern part of their world.
Both women had their own unique styles. On each of the bags that the mystery woman made, she would carve the same image: a girl, a hand, four wings and a tear of a dog.
(C) Lauren Kent
