Chapter 10: Day 10

Day 10,

When I woke up this morning, there was a crab the size of my head blocking the door out of my bedroom.  I blame the nature sprite.  Took me at least half an hour to herd it into a bucket with a broom and then take it out to the river behind the house.  I hope fresh water doesn’t bother it.  I don’t want to hurt the poor thing, but I value my fingers too much to try carrying it all the way to the beach.

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To my pleasant surprise a few people had actually used the request box I’d set up the day before last.  One looking to borrow a particular book and a couple just looking for specific pieces of information.  For the latter I was able to look up and copy down the info so that I could leave the source material in the archive.  Tracking that all down and then the people to deliver it to took just about the whole day so no reorganizing progress or chance to research anything we found yesterday beyond what was incidental to the requested lookups.  But one of them fed me lunch and another one of them paid me in coin for once, so that was nice.

While I was out I also took the time to look for Pat to talk to him about that strange script and the box left by the past outsider.  Turns out that box must have been there a long time.  Pat had some memories of when he was a kid, one of the outsiders in the Village (it wasn’t uncommon to have half a dozen or more at once back in those days) who had a ring like the one I was wearing now and would often wear a mask like the one Cass now had.  As for if there was anything magical about the items we found (and it still feels silly to write that despite the things I’ve these the past week and a half), he said he couldn’t say for those specifically but there have always been “artifacts” - as he called them – that whether through age, strong emotional connections, or both took on “subtle peculiarities.”  The old outsider in question, Simon (Seymour? Sadao? It was long enough ago Pat was no longer sure), had been known as a great explorer of the wilderness and to have an uncanny knack for knowing what was bothering people.

As to the excerpts of writing Cass and I transcribed, Pat couldn’t read it and doubted anyone alive could.  He then waxed nostalgic and went on to tell the tale of how in his youth he and his friends – one of them an outsider – took a boat out to explore the old castle across the water.  It turns out the towers visible over the cliff’s edge are just the barest tip and taken as a whole the edifice is larger than the Village itself.  One of their group got separated and it took days to find her again among the branching halls and secret rooms.  But during all that searching they came across more than a few objects with that same script – or at least a similar one – on their surfaces.  There should even be some old transcripts that the archivist at the time took down in the library somewhere, not to mention a few souvenirs that they brought back in the homes of Villagers having been passed down and around since then.

Eventually, I couldn’t keep avoiding that dreadful question that had been gnawing on me since reading that note in the box.  What was the “Endless Abyss?”

The elder’s gaze darkened as it had when I asked about the villagers’ beliefs about death, but the answer he gave was far more foreboding than quickly changing the topic as he had then.  The old archivist, he began, was unusual among outsiders in dying peacefully of old age.  Then again, he was also older than usual for outsiders when he first arrived.  Most of them, even the ones that settle down, start families, have children, or even grandchildren, becoming so integrated with the community of the Village that they can’t truly be called outsiders anymore, eventually wander off and never return.  Some attempt to take a boat out and try to find what lies beyond this chain of islands (“Go far enough and there is only an endless expanse of nothing”).  Others try to ascend to the top of Cloud Tower or delve into the Catacomb Depths.  But the greatest portion find themselves drawn to the Endless Abyss.  It is a hole, a font of seeping darkness that appears in the wilderness, almost never the same place twice.  If I ever find myself away from the Village and hear beckoning voices, I am to turn around and run.  Run as far and fast as I can, and sing a song to drown them to silence lest they take root in my mind.  For if they do, I will never truly be rid of that call to the Abyss.

As he spoke I felt a chill settle over me not unlike that from the cathedral.  But then he finished, paused, and returned to his usual squinting-eyed smile like the sun coming out from behind a cloud as he told me not to worry too much about such things.  I know of them now and forewarned is forearmed.  Before I could think of anything to say to that a bespectacled young man in a dapper coat dropped in seeking the elder’s counsel on matters of his own and I took that as my cue to stammer out a thanks and make my exit.

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