I buried my reservations of following a stranger. I needed help, and because of his handicap, I felt secure that even in my weakened state I could outrun him if need be. We didn’t walk long until we reached what looked like a strange house, although on second glance it was more like a leaning shed, the materials on the bottom part were sticks plastered with mud. The higher parts were made of woven patches of yellowed grass. It was leaning on a tree, the kind of tree that had more frequently begun to appear. It wouldn’t have kept anything out or in, the door being only an opening.
Around the house, as I politely named it, was a little man-made clearing with two logs and a ring of stones where there had clearly been a fire. He headed into the house and immediately came back out with a small rock the size of his hand. As he sat down on one of the logs, I stood awkwardly.
“Don’t you want to sit?” he said.
“Yes, thank you.” Manners kicking in, I sat on the second log with my legs neatly folded.
I could safely say that this had been the longest period I had ever gone without any food in my life. The reminder of food made me impatient. Now that I had found my voice again, what I most desperately wanted was to ask if he had a phone, or knew where I could get access to one. If only I could call my family, then I would be able to find my way home. The thought of family, of my sister, stabbed at my heart. Looking around, I knew it was a futile question, this place was too isolated for any such hope.
“It is not much, but you are welcome to it.” He handed me the rock in his hand. I stared down at it. It was not a rock, but a loaf of extremely dark bread. I tried to rip off a piece, but the surface was too hard and smooth and the past few days had weakened me more than I had thought.
“Give it here.” He said, noticing my attempts. He ripped off around half of it for himself. With the opening he had made, I was able to continue ripping and eating. The bread was quite good. What I thought had been nuts was badly ground flour. Despite the small size, after a mere few bites, I was full. Unused to the food, it sat heavy in my stomach. He saw, and finished eating my half for me.
“Thank you,” I said again. Eating something had made me feel more like myself. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Inparem.”
Trying to be friendly, I introduced myself. “I’m Marin.” He didn’t answer, there was no polite nice-to-meet-you. I wanted more information, and continued speaking.
“Is there a city or town somewhere nearby?”
“Yes, a village.”
“Which way?”
“That direction,” he said, indicating with his right hand. “It is around a three hour walk.”
“Will I get there if I follow the river?” I continued questioning him, trying to understand how to get there.
“No, this side of the river leads to the Walker’s Forest”
An unusual name, possibly a local nickname, I thought to myself, but not what I wanted to know.
“Can you please give me directions to the village?” My voice must have sounded my impatience, because he sighed, looking down. Now, it was my turn to wait for his response. When none came I repeated myself. I was frustrated and a little suspicious. Why would he give me food and be kind to me, but then not help me reach other people? I had read too many newspaper clippings, to stop the alarm bells from ringing.
“What is a foreigner like you really doing here?” Our features were not so different as to suggest that I had come from far away, we were both brown haired and eyed, but whereas his skin was tanned dark from the sun, mine was pale. The last week walking in the sun was not enough to change years of a reclusive life.
“It is not difficult to notice, your clothes and the way you hold yourself are foreign.”
His reluctance to speak and my suspicion was making this conversation difficult. It felt like there was a wall building between us.
“I fell into the river, and was swept far away. I want to find a way to get home.”
“Why do you want to go to the village then?”
“To find my way back.” This was beginning to feel like an interrogation. In an effort to break it, I fired back with a question of my own.
“Why did you give me food?” The question came out wrong, I was trying to understand if he had any ulterior motives, but wasn’t sure how to phrase it.
“Have you come from so far away that there is no God’s Hospitality?”
“God’s Hospitality? What is that?”
“It means giving food to travelers, for good luck and fortune.” He must have picked up on the reasons for my suspicion, because he continued. “I am not trying to be unhelpful. Tomorrow I anyways need to head to the village, if you want to, you can join me then. Otherwise you can follow the Bear’s star until you see three hills aligned, it is the middle one.”
“Is that offer also part of God's hospitality?” I wryly inquired. Finally something I said brought a smile to his face. For a moment the shadow he had on his face lifted.
“No that is my own.” Inparem finally looked up.
***
After agreeing to head to the village together the next day, Inparem had offered me to sleep in a hammock, high up a few trees away. I couldn’t see it until he pointed it out to me, as I looked up from directly under the tree. He said that it was safer than sleeping on the ground. I would have asked him why he had a small shelter, but I didn’t want to prolong the conversation.
Instead I turned him down, partly because I was afraid that I would move in my sleep and tumble down, but mostly because I didn’t know how to climb as high as that. The tree had no low hanging branches. He had then clambered up the trunk quickly and practiced. Climbing up, his movements were graceful and unhindered by his twisted leg. I curled up tightly under a different tree to sleep. It was warm and humid during the day, but the nights could still get cold. As the nights before, I stayed awake, looking up at the sky until the second moon rose. Only then did I turn over to sleep.
I woke up to the uneven sound of Inparem walking, a step and a slight drag. We ate no breakfast and I had nothing to pack. It took no more than a few moments to prepare to leave. Inparem had only taken his hammock, folding and tying it into a makeshift bag that was slung over his shoulder and he was ready to go.
He had said it was a three hours walk away, but the silence we walked in made it seem longer. I couldn’t get a read on him. Still, I felt lucky to have met him. Now that we were underways, I trusted him more, and it was a relief to no longer be alone. My fears of starving to death or of getting lost in the wilderness were alleviated.
“Is it much further?” I felt childish asking, but we had walked for a while now without a break. Eating yesterday had reawakened my appetite, I was hungry and thirsty. The landscape was beautiful, heading away from the river, it had changed quickly from a relatively tropical flatland spotted with trees to rolling green hills with trees.
“There they are.” Inparem pointed. As we continued walking a bit, they aligned perfectly into a line, as he had said. Where before trees had been dotted around the hills, the crown of the middle hill was thick with them. As we hiked up and passed the line of trees, I could see the first signs of civilization, houses - real houses - were built there. The trees cleared away with the village at the center. The hill had a tabletop for a head, making everything at the top flat. It was very small, with around ten houses, built simply from stone and wood. They were cottages, not houses, I corrected myself.
“We’re here!” I almost shouted, jubilant. A rush of energy and joy shot through me, as I walked faster. Soon, I would call my parents, and I could head home. Already I could imagine retelling my little sister this story, as an adventure of survival, sitting all together at dinner. My steps slowed. For a blissful moment, I had forgotten her death.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice betraying none of my inner turmoil.
“Hello.” A man's voice answered me a few houses away. I heard his steps coming towards me. He came from around the bend of one of the houses. The rush of joy I had felt, that was already disapperating, instantly changed into an icy grip of fear, a physical hand that I could feel squeezing in my chest. It took every ounce of self control I had to keep the smile on my face.
I blinked once. His features didn’t change. I blinked twice, again no change. He was coming closer now. Third blink, it was useless. His face was still that of a pig, lightly furred with a snout.
“Hello Porco.” Inparem commented behind me, having caught up. “We are headed to see Matre, is she home?”
“Hello Inparem. Yes, she is. She rarely goes far anymore.” With that answer from Porco, Inparem nodded to him, and walked towards one of the houses on the other side.
“Well, I will go catch up then. It was nice meeting you,” I was grateful for an excuse to get away. The sudden reminder that I was seeing things was a slap in the face. Porco may have been the nicest man on Earth, but I didn't want to be a second longer in his presence.
I walked quickly to Inparem. “Who is that?” I asked.
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“Aren’t you going to ask why he looks like a pig?” Inparem asked back, eyes sliding to me. “It is a first, seeing a reaction like yours. People outside the village are not usually as calm.”
I almost stopped in my tracks and ended up stumbling a bit instead. “You saw that too?”
“Yes, of course. That’s why we call him Porco.”
I stayed silent for a moment, with a vulnerability I tried not to reflect in my voice. I asked, “Do you also see two moons at night?”
“My eyes are not handicapped, only a leg.” He said it with a defensive voice.
“I didn’t mean it that way, please just answer. Do you see two moons at night?”
“Yes, like everybody else I see the Mirroring Moons.” We stopped in front of one of the houses. Inparem went in without knocking.
“Matre?” He called out. It was rather dark inside, with no windows and only one room. The light inside came from the open doorway and a badly thatched roof.
“My Dolor,” a dark shape in the corner said, “my darling child.” Once my eyes adjusted to the different lighting, I could see an old thinly built woman sitting on a pile of furs. Her hair was a beautiful pure white, long and braided back. Beside her she had what I had only seen in fairytale books of my childhood, a spinning wheel. “And who is this?” She asked.
“This is Marin. A lost traveler. She fell into the Dual River and was swept away from her home.”
“Hello,” I put aside for now what Inparem had said before. “I was hoping you could tell me where this is.”
“You are in the Hilled Outlands, close to the Walker’s Forest.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me. What country is this?”
“My, you must have been swept far. This is the Empire of Ulvile,” My blank face seemed to prompt her to add, “now ruling is The Age of the Golden Unity.”
Realization dawned on me. I wanted to claw at my throat, and cry. Instead I laughed. I laughed long and loud. Neither Inparem nor Matre moved at first. Then Inparem put an arm around me, trying to comfort me. I didn’t notice how much time passed. When I started to calm down, I was on the floor, Inparem’s arm still around, and I was sitting next to Matre. She had pressed a cup of water in my hands. That familiar action and the hiccups that had begun is what helped me stop.
“I have lost my mind. This isn’t real. There is no Empire of Ulvile. Nor Mirroring Moons. I am not really here” I tried to explain.
“What are you talking about? You are here.” Inparem said.
“But where I come from there are no empires, at least not anymore.”
“You should be careful who you say that to.” She cautioned. She took both my hands in hers. “Where do you come from?”
That question opened a floodgate in me. I spoke to them of my home. My parents, and my sister. Of there being one moon, of technology and phones and how I had hoped there would be one here, to contact my family. My fear that this was all a hallucination, or that my life before had been. That I was really dead or lying in a coma somewhere. I had never heard of Ulvile and doubted it was anywhere on Earth.
When I finally puttered out, Inparem was the first to speak.
“I believe you,” he said.
“How, why?” Despite my doubts of this reality and of his even being real, his affirmation comforted me.
It was Matre who answered now. “Your clothing for one. Never had I seen weaving or material like it, and I used to wear all manners of materials. Wool woven so finely, you could pull it through a ring, or silk so light it never stopped moving.”
“When I first saw you, Marin, I thought you were like Matre,” Inparem said.
She explained. “I came from a wealthy nobility.”
“I see,” I wanted to ask what happened, but refrained. It must have been a great and difficult change for her to be living in this one room cottage now. I didn’t want to be the one to bring up bad memories. It was interesting to see Inparem and her interact. It was easy to tell that they were close, from the way they spoke and understood what the other meant without explanation.
My hands were still in hers, and she squeezed them. “Those are stories of the past. What is more important is the here and the now. Can you feel your hands in mine? Is that not real to you?”
“Is that not exactly what a figment of a dream would say to convince me that this is real?”
“I am no dream and neither is Inparem. This moment is as real to you as it is to us. I do not know how we can convince you. But how do we know whether anything is reality or not? Such questioning only leads to madness.” Seeing that I was unconvinced she continued pragmatically, “either you are mad or you are not. Either way, for your peace of mind and current sanity, if it looks and feels real, why not treat it as though it is?”
“Accepting this as my reality would mean accepting that I can’t go home.” If The River incident had brought me here, then I would have no way back. I wasn’t going to gamble my life away by randomly jumping into the river that had nearly killed me in the hopes of finding some portal back. This thought was strangely another comfort to me. If I was crazy, at least I still had a sense of self preservation. That means I still had some vestiges of stability, right?
“Maybe, but there are many more things in this world that we don’t know about than the things that we do. Perhaps one day you will learn of some other way.”
By now, I had calmed down, more tired than anything else. What she said made sense. A string of questions were on my mind, as I opened my mouth to speak, a different voice made itself heard, the growl of my stomach.
We all laughed, and the somber mood of before was lifted. Outside her cottage was a ring of stones, where a pot could be cooked over. Together, we prepared a meal of cooked grain and a few herbs. Sitting around the fire, we ate. It was a simple porridge, but the best tasting meal I had in a long time. Definitely since I arrived here. It seemed to be a good moment to ask the many questions on my mind.
“I have many questions.”
“Speak” Matre said in a regal way, and with a soft smile added, “I would have many too in your place.”
“Is Matre your real name?”
“No, it is a title that everyone calls me because I am the village’s oldest woman.”
That answer derailed my thoughts for the next question. I wanted to then ask if that was a common practice. But if it wasn’t, then that could mean she might still be in hiding, for whatever reason she was no longer living as a noble. Therefore again, I abstained from asking about that.
“Well,” I tried phrasing another question, searching for a way to say it politely. “Why does Porco look the way he does?”
“He crossed an Esoteric One,” Inparem answered. “We don’t know more because he won’t say more.”
“An Esoteric One?”
“They would like you to believe that they are gods, but truly they are only men with powers.” Matre answered this time.
“So he used to be human?”
“Yes, he was from one of the neighboring villages and left in search of a better fortune in the city of Lascus, a city on the other side of the Walker’s Forest. He came back a few years later as a half pig. He tried living back home again, but eventually moved here. The village of outcasts. Even the closest of the neighboring villages keep a far off distance from us.”
We had finished eating by now and the fire was getting low. As if reflecting my thoughts, Inparem stood.
“Matre, I will start cutting grass for your roof before it gets dark.”
After he left, Matre turned to me.
“Until you have decided what you want to do, you are welcome to stay with me. An old woman like me could always use an extra pair of hands and eyes.”
I could have asked where the city of Lascus was, and headed there for myself. But for the first time since I had gotten here, I was full from a warm meal. I felt secure and safe. Both Matre and Inparem had made me feel welcome. The idea of another long and lonely journey was not what I wanted. I chose to stay. I donned the simple sandals and clothing Matre gave me, a shift-like dress as well as a smock over it, and lovingly packed my old clothes away in a corner of the cottage.
I knew I was being selfish. But as day by day the summer passed, I felt something heal. At home, every step I took reminded me of my sister. Every street was one we had walked together. Every neighbor, one who had known her. It was such a stupid accident. Why did it have to be her? That was the question echoing in my mother’s face, my father barely home. There was a pain there, that I didn’t have here. A twisting, moving pain that we reflected on one another, until it grew larger and more than before. Here, I could mourn her with a space to myself.
When guilt would hit me, thinking of my parents, I would reassure myself that there was no safe way that I knew of to go back. That my parents would want me to stay safe. That is what I was doing. I was staying safe, I was taking care of myself.
In that summer with Matre, I learned many things. One thing obvious in hindsight. That day Inparem had brought me to the village, he hadn’t really needed to go to the village and his more frequent visits since then were also built on flimsy excuses. I learned that Inparems's first name had been Dolor, named after the difficult birth that had killed his mother. After his father had died in an accident, he took the name his father had bitterly been calling him. He moved away from the village he had come from and lived with Matre for a time.
Magic was real here. At first, I was excited. Perhaps this was my ticket home. I tried asking how it worked. She had no straight answer, repeating to me different tidbits of what different people believed. It was agreed on by all, that you must be nobility to have the ability. Most said that you had to pass a great trial to receive it in the notoriously particular school of the Esoterics, a place only for the cream of nobility or the extravagantly wealthy. A few whispered that you could gain it through great feats. No one but the very wealthy and connected truly knew. Any thoughts I had of using magic to get back home quickly disapperated. I didn’t believe that only nobility had the ability, but it was clearly something only for the very privileged. The information guarded by the Esorterics. And even then, there were no legends or stories whatsoever of opening portals to another world.
Moreover, in the coming months I got to know Porco better through his wife, Ava. I came to know them both as a loving couple, and him as a kind man, tireless worker and patient father. I could not imagine a scenario where Porco had deserved to be punished in this way, and was not curious to meet any of the Esoteric Ones with their godlike status.
On my first evening in the village, I met the others who lived there. They were all kind people, but detached, with little interest to make friends. In this village of outcasts, that was farthest away from the other villages and the closest of all of them to the Walker’s forest, everyone had reasons that they wanted to live isolated and away from other villages. I understood now, that is why Inparem had been reluctant to bring me here. In a way, it was a hidden village.
Despite this, there was a spirit of communal living, supporting and helping one another. Except for Matre and Inparem, the villagers were all farmers, living off the land. No one had much. Matre relied on the goodwill of the villagers, helping and doing what she could as a midwife, healer, teacher, babysitter and general helper, much of which had to do with spinning and taking care of the village’s wool. After some lumps and bumps, I too learned quickly how to spin wool. I enjoyed the peace of mind the monotony of it brought me and had a gift for it.
Surprisingly, the person who had the most lucrative and dangerous trade was Inparem. He would kill animals for their fur in the winter, and Matre would sell them to a passing peddler who came by every spring. He in turn sold them to fur traders. The pile of furs I had seen her first sitting on were those that had not been bought for one reason or another.
Even that was not a lot of money. Rather than save it up, the money was used to purchase sheep from farther and richer villages. Inparem continued to purchase each year, building up to a well-sized flock. The flock was communally taken care of, the wool and meat was also shared. It was unspoken, but I understood that was one of Inparems ways to look out for the future.
My life in the village was not easy. I thought that I had worked hard in my life before, but now I was working harder. There was never an hour of idleness. My multitasking skills were honed to a knife. When talking and relaxing, we would peel beans, spin wool, or clean and repair what was needed. When walking for errands or shepherding, I always had a basket to gather wild herbs, or edible roots that Inparem and Matre taught me to recognize. I had carved out a place for myself and was content.