QUESTIONS FROM STRANGERS

The Koncava stared at him in shock as my grandfather got to his feet. “This is exactly the reason I have chosen to help fund this expedition,” he called out in a loud voice. Mr. Stephens made an urgent motion for my grandfather to join them. As he climbed up the stairs and walked to the lectern, Mr. Stephens gently pulled Catherwood away and began speaking to him in soft tones.

My grandfather reached the lectern and faced the audience. “For those who do not know me, I am Shabaka Goldspear, descended from the rulers of the great Nubian kingdom before its fall. Now, I am merely a man who gambled that the race of the Orku would do well working in factories and invested in both, growing rich in the process.

“When a group of young Koncava males came to me with the idea of mass producing Terramagica devices in the same manner as the non-magical items we were producing, I gambled that their idea was sound and grew richer still. I believed then, and still believe now, that what I did benefited society, both high and low, and if given the chance to go back and change my actions, I would still make the same choices.”

His eyes seemed to meet those of every Eldarion in the large room. “However, I did not realize the cost of those actions until I sat down with Mr. Stephens and Catherwood in Londinium’s Explorer’s Club, several months ago, and had the butcher’s bill delivered…that the products my company created may well spell the doom of the Eldarion race.

He sighed. “I owe a debt to each and every Eldarion living wherever my company’s products have been sold, and rather than just offer a cheap apology to you, I decided to do something about it.”

The Koncava, who was still standing, called out, “I was intemperate in my comments to Master Catherwood and should apologize, yet why should you? After all, the Eldarion were everyone’s master for untold years before you humans rebelled.”

My grandfather made a wide-open gesture with his arms. “They were, yet they taught us lessons we might never have understood without them.” He held out his hand. “For example, my skin is darker than anyone else’s in the room, except my grandson’s. Does that make me a lesser person?”

A sea of puzzled faces stared back at him as the Koncava asked, “Why would it?”

“Exactly my point. Humans, for example, recognize that we are no different than any other human because Eldarions made no distinction about what we looked like. Instead, it was ability and drive that got us favored status, not appearance. I maintain that the Eldarions alive today should not be held accountable for the sins of their ancestors, and that their race not only should be, but must be preserved, no matter what.”

Much of the audience applauded, some shouting ‘Hear, hear’. When the noise died down, the Koncava called out, “I agree that the Eldarion race should be preserved as well, though I believe as we make advances in shielding-”

The Koncava sitting next to him tugged on the male’s suit coat sleeve, and after a sharp exchange too low to hear, the Koncava raised his voice again. “Anyway, I will be contributing a fair sum of gold at the end of this lecture to your expedition. My word of honor.” The Koncava raised his right hand and made a stubby fist. My grandfather did the same, sealing the agreement, and the Koncava sat back down again.

Mr. Stephens took charge of the lectern. “Now, before we get to watch Shabaka’s grandson perform the Lion Dance, are there any questions about the upcoming expedition we can answer?”

A matronly human woman in a green dress raised her hand and stood up. “Mr. Stephens, in your book you described several Mayan legends, such as the giant as tall as a tree with feet that point backwards. You wrote that this monster is so dangerous, that the best way to defeat it is to make it laugh so hard it falls over and cannot immediately stand back up-”

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Laughter rippled around the hall, and the woman frowned before plunging ahead again. “Along with other legends, like the Guardians of the Four Winds, monstrous insects with heads like Medusa, and headless vampires. Are you going to investigate any of these legends to see if they are true?”

Mr. Stephens hesitated. “Madam, are you of a delicate constitution?” The woman shook her head no and he said, “One of the images Catherwood normally does not show is the aftermath of an attack upon our party, as we were leaving the area near Totil Zotz-Na, by bat-like creatures that came at dusk.” Catherwood was already moving towards the Artifact device as Mr. Stephens added, “Some of the ladies may wish to look away.”

Catherwood reached it and brought up a drawn image of a base camp with canvas tents knocked down and gear strewn about. Two figures lay side by side with a blanket pulled over their faces. An Eldarion male in loose clothing treated a bare-chested Mr. Stephens for several deep puncture wounds on his back, while behind them a slender creature, resembling a cross between an orangutan and a bat with large wings, hung head down from a rope. The creature’s body had deep wounds as if hacked apart with swords.

The audience gasped and Mr. Stephens gave them a grim smile. “Should anyone doubt the authenticity of this image, I will be happy to show any male, who is contributing to the expedition, the scars this attack left upon me. And should your name be Thomas, you are more than welcome to stick your finger in the holes.”

There was a ripple of nervous laughter at the joke as he looked at the woman, who had not turned away. “Madam, if you remember from the book, I wrote down the legend of the bat creatures known as the Zotz.”

“I remember, yet you never mentioned this attack.”

Mr. Stephens seemed to sigh. “I wanted the book to be taken seriously and not dismissed as a Penny Dreadful, as I feared it would be if I began speaking of encounters with legendary creatures. Besides… it was too soon after the attack for me to answer questions about it. The puncture wounds took months to fully heal, while the fevers that came and went lasted for almost a year.”

He drew himself up. “However, I am now in the peak of health, ready to brave the wild lands once again.”

Catherwood changed the image back to the building on the edge of the great bowl as my grandfather chuckled. “I just finished rereading the book and if I remember correctly, whenever you meet one of these legendary creatures, it never ends well.”

Mr. Stephens smiled. “You usually get eaten. So, forgive me, madam, but I think I will leave the discovery of these creatures to braver souls than I.” There was another ripple of laughter as the woman sat down and he said, “Any other questions?”

“I have one for Shabaka,” a female voice said from behind me. I turned around in my seat to look. The person stood alone in one of the theater boxes, dressed in a blue cloak with the hood over her head, leaving her face in shadow. She had to be Eldarion, for a blue webbing hung in the air in front of her, with a mouth in the center projecting her words. “Are you going along with them to the Yucatan?”

My grandfather shook his head. “I fear not, much as I might like to. While my son has officially taken over the business, there are still a host of details only I-”

“Shabaka, you need to go.” She gripped the wooden rail in front of her with both hands, one brown while the other was shiny black, as if she had an Artifact hand. “You need to go and you need to take your grandson with you.”

I turned back around to look at my grandfather. He stared up at the box with a peculiar expression on his face, his brows furrowed as he did when he was trying to remember something. “Madam, do I know you? Your voice-”

“Leave soon, Shabaka; you and your grandson both. Or you will have no grandson at all.” I turned in my seat to see the Eldarion exiting her box through the doorway opening into the hallway beyond.

A couple of the legends (out of many) that Mr. Stephens wrote about is first, the Walampach, a ghost tall as a lamp post, who will stand in the middle of a road at night and steal the soul of anyone who becomes frightened and runs away. However, the ghost can only possess one soul at a time, so when it captures the soul of another person, the first goes free. Fortunately, the ghost hates the light, and now that the villages all have street lights, the ghost seems to have given up and gone away... or perhaps it merely haunts the dark roads late at night, instead.

The second is a creature known as X'tabay or 'The deceiver', the Mayan version of a succubus. As the legend goes, a young man traveling the woods late at night comes upon a beautiful young maiden combing her hair beneath a tree. She flees, but not too fast, giving the young man 'come follow me' looks, and if he chases after her, she leads him deep into the forest. But when he finally catches up to her, the creature's body instantly grows thorns, while her feet become claws that tear him to pieces.