The woman was unwelcome wherever she went. She was not dirty, nor was she diseased. She was not malicious nor angry. She was pretty and well dressed. She was polite and generous.
Yet everywhere she went, she was driven out. Everyone she met was short and curt with her. She was never granted a room in any town, nor was she offered anything more than the bare essentials. Her money, such as it was, was never welcomed and no one gave her directions or aid of any kind. Every single town that she visited reacted to her presence in the same way.
And it drove her.
There are places that draw people that arent locations. A location is somewhere you aim to go. A destination. The location is the point of your journey. These other places are never that. But people always end up there. Whether its something in the place itself or something within the person – maybe a bit of both – is unknown.
You do not choose these places, not consciously. You probably do not even know they exist until you, from your perspective, stumble onto one. When that happens, the place is all you can think about. It is all you want to know.
Some people have tried to index these places. To make a list of them. Theyve travelled the world, searching for people who have publicly talked about it. But such lists are nearly empty. Often discredited. Some are simply made up wholesale.
There is one list, though. Its a small list. It has five locations on it. Just names. Names like ‘Three Days Walk From The Last Red Sun of Winter’ and ‘Three Dogs Bathe in the Lake in its Shelter.’
For those who seek these places – actively and desperately – the names mean very little. But for those who know how to be patient. For those who know how to read the messages that arent being said, these names are all that is needed.
A week ago, in a museum in the heartland of the most powerful nation in the world, a rock stood. It was a simple grey rock, common to the area. The plaque that sat before this rock said as much and claimed, falsely, that this rock was also from this general area.
The rock looked as if it had been shorn off a cliff face. One side of it was perfectly flat; without a blemish. The other sides looked just an ordinary weathered rock. With the sole exception of the intricate carvings and soft yellow colouring that filled them. These non-natural additions to the rock face were set on the left hand side of the rock, with the perfectly flat side cutting them off from what should be the rest of them.
Experts often argued about the rest of the carvings. That more archaeological work needed to be done in the area this rock was found in. That more work needed to be done on this specific rock. Historical groups in this part of the nation would not hear of it. This rock was theirs and theirs alone. If those experts wanted to go back and dig in the ground for the rest of it, they were welcome to. They werent touching this one.
Today the rock is gone. There was no CCTV footage. No sign of a break in, but the display case where the rock had stood for nearly 50 years was now empty.
If you know the stories, history can reveal itself to you. You can see the great events unfold in the written word of those who were there. You can visit the consequential moments throughout history – so long as there are stories there to paint the scene for you. And if youre very lucky, then perhaps it is your words which will paint the history of the future.
But what if something happened and there is no one to provide the words? What happens if a group, an entire class, of people were killed, or removed and those who did the deed didnt record any of it? What then? Is it still possible, somehow, to revisit these events? To learn from them. Perhaps, even, to fix them?
What happens if not everyone was killed in such a purge?
She has been driven out of every town she has tried to stay in. For almost five years now she has pushed herself through these tribulations in her attempts to learn what she can.
“You dont get something for nothing,” she had been told when she was a girl. “You earn something by giving up something of equal value. If you arent willing to sacrifice, how can you be willing to learn?”
Those words, and others, echoed through her head. Ahead of her lay a city. She didnt know which one, but she had not intended on making it this far. Still she persisted. If she was driven out of this city, the same as the other places, then it was time. She checked the small page of paper that she kept tucked safely in her pocket. She read the only name that was not yet crossed out.
Perpetually Rebuked and Then to the Horizon.
She had a fair understanding of how this poetry worked. Her family was one of its creators, and she considered herself lucky that she had been able to study from the original scripts.
She was also intimately familiar with the code in play as well. More than metaphor and simple word tricks, the code here warned her. This was the last place on the list. She should only go further with extreme caution.
Sometimes a place becomes important because something happened there. A wedding, a birth. Something that blessed the land.
Sometimes a place is important because something happens to the land. A ritual, a mockery of faith. A genocide.
There is one place which has both markers. A place of great blessing. A place for celebration and the coming and going of seasons. A place where the young people find love. But its also a place of immense sorrow. A place where the dead cannot rest.
There are places that draw people. Places of great blessing draw those who would find comfort in that blessing. Who would understand and revere it. Places of great sorrow draw those who would commit sorrowful acts. Who would create more cursed places and relish the chance to do so.
This one place that straddles the border of both blessing and curse draws only a singular person. The only one of her kind left. The last witch.
The flat side of the rock, where it had been torn from its other half, was the result of a multitude of lightning strikes, all hitting three inch long metal pins that had been driven into the top of the whole rock.
The lightning, and the accompanying ritual, had an immediate effect of the rock and this large chunk of it had been torn off quickly. All that mattered was the circle be broken. The shattering of the rest of the rock had been petty. Only this one piece, shaved off so it could be put on display and never brought back to its origin, was bigger than a fist.
On that day, when the lightning struck, one of the people tied underneath it, destined to be crushed by their own symbol, muttered a prophecy that only the soon to be dead heard.
“When people forget, and the signs are rendered without reverence, shall this rock be restored.”
She knew the stories. She had grown up with them. On each of her birthdays, starting when she was three years old and not ending until the year before she started on this arduous task, she had been told a new one. As each piece of the larger narrative unfolded, her resolve hardened. As she slowly began to understand the completeness that had been taken from her, forcefully ripped and left asunder on their most holy of sites, she started to make her plans.
She had heard the stories of the golden age, where her family sat atop an ivory throne. Her family extended far across this nation and many others. They were always connected and forever linked. They would gather together in times of need and protect those who needed protecting, even those who werent from the family.
And they would gather in celebration with each successful passing year.
None of them were wealthy in the traditional sense. None of them lived particularly lavish lives. But that was never the purpose of living. They lived to live. To learn, to explore and to revere.
But there are some who cannot abide that. Some who see a simple, clean life as abhorrent. They came for her family. In each and every nation they were in. All at the same time in a carefully coordinated act. Such was the final story of her family.
The place was forgotten. The stories left unwritten. The objects destroyed. But a little something remained.
The place wasnt forgotten; it was visited many times since the slaughter. The stories may have been unwritten, but they were still told. The objects were not destroyed, merely disassembled.
She knew this too. And it drove her.
She turned back and saw the small mob standing on the freeway. It would be comical if it wasnt so dangerous. Some of them actually had pitchforks.
Ahead of her lay the open road at dawn. She could see the horizon, the sun peeking out over the edge of it. She had no idea what was down this road, but she knew it was the right road to follow.
No one joined her. She expected as much, but couldnt help but feel a little let down that other survivors werent here. She felt as if her journey was a microcosm of a larger event happening elsewhere.
The horizon, so they say, is only a few miles away from where you are. So she walked. She ignored the yelling from behind her. If it had been more than just yelling, she might have started to run, but, as always, these people had only wanted her to leave.
The freeway veered off to the right suddenly and she was left with the remains of an old forest straight ahead of her. She slid down the embankment, easily keeping her footing as she reached the bottom and entered the treeline. Signs were plastered everywhere advertising that this was private property and that anyone who was found in here would be shot, if they were lucky. She knew she was lucky, so she took the risk.
It wasnt long before she stood in the clearing. She knew this was the place instinctively. On the far side of the gap in the trees was a rock face. It was maybe 50 feet tall and just from looking at it, she could tell it was incomplete. It was missing.
As she stood there, picturing the rock she had taken from the museum, the ground shook slightly. She could feel the circle in her head, yellow and carved in a language no one but her could understand. She felt the small pieces of shattered rock that lived slightly under the topsoil try to shake free of their dirt prison and retake their rightful place. She felt the museum exhibit force its way back into reality just in time to merge with the rest of the pieces as they all, seemingly at once, emerged from the ground, and in a giant crack, reformed themselves against the existing rock face.
She sighed and sat on the ground, the exertion getting to her. She looked up and saw, restored, her families symbol. A perfectly carved circle in common grey rock. Step one to bringing them back had been accomplished.