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Tyzania Chapter 1
By The Host
I'm going to try this out. If people read and like it I'll keep going. If not, what the hell; no big deal. It's a story that I very broadly outlined back in high school. I did nothing with it because, well, I've kind of lost interest in it. But it's easily adapted to episodic storytelling so if people like it here I can keep it going. I'm not sure how regularly I'll release episodes; hoepfully a couple a week. We'll see.
Anyway, I don't know exactly where this is going. For somebody who plans his stories meticulously in advance, this is pretty freaky. Like tight-rope walking without a safety net. It could be good or it could be terrible, I make no promises. Just promise, dear reader, that if you read this you'll tell me what you think. It's the only way to keep it going.
Incidentally, I'm still working on Prisoner of Zenda, Sirens of Titan, and Second Triumvirate.
Two adaptations and a sequel. I feel like Warner Bros.
-H
TYZANIA
Chapter One
Child of the Sea
Lightning.
The ship.
Waves overwhelming.
Tumbling.
Tumbling.
The sea, the sea. Through my dreams always the sea. I cannot get it out of mind. Wherever I go, and now far have I gone, I hear always the wretched pulsing, the ceaseless pounding, of the sea. Sisyphus’s rock tumbles once again and I wake up drenched with sweat but there it is again always: the sea, the sea.
The first time I woke up the sound didn’t go away. I was not drenched with sweat but waterlogged and caked with mud. I felt a sudden wretching and felt a searing pain that brough me to my knees. The light dazzled me and I fell forward onto my palms, my fingers digging in the sand, and I vomited sea water once, twice, three times. The sea then swallowed me up once again, or tried to; and I could barely weakly fight against the monstrous wave that clawed at me and tried to pull me back to sea. I prevailed, I conquered this one time, but already conquered was I. Not to be again I faintly resolved. I pulled myself trembling further on shore. I lifted my weary head to glimpse my surroundings: cliff ahead and sky above, water all around. I felt dizzy, I felt nauseous. My head fell back down.
I awoke again to the sea. The sun had now disappeared behind the cliff; so I was on the east side of whatever land I had come upon. But what land was this? And who was I? Questions to be answered but first food and water and something to ease my pain. Alcohol? I could remember that; I quite liked it. I could not remember my name, but I could remember whiskey. I groaned and rolled over onto my back.
Weakly I propped myself onto my shoulders. Breathing was difficult. I took a moment to catch my wind and calm my swimming head before getting a good look at myself. My clothes were ragged and still caked with mud, now dry in the heat – suddenly I realized it was blisteringly hot – and hard. I might have been wearing paper armour. There was a great gash against my left leg, the blood brown and dry. I touched myself: my every bone seemed to ache, and especially my leg (I was delicate about that). My face was whiskered, my hair scraggly and muddy. Blood too was on my forehead, although it was not my own. How did I get here? Shipwreck? There was driftwood along the small beach – maybe thirty yards length and no more than ten yards from the cliff at its widest point – but nothing that would suggest shipwreck. Granted, there were rocks poking above Poseidon’s mien here and there, death to sailing vessels. Maybe I was shipwrecked, a waif on a desert isle. What to do? What, indeed!
First: food. Food and water. But there was nothing along this beach. I must somehow get atop the cliff behind me.
I gave myself some long moments before finally, slowly, pushing myself up on trembling legs. I will admit to you that I fell twice before finally standing straight and proper. My head hurt like the devil. Still, I forced myself to move about, fighting off nausea. I came to the water and found it quite cool and pleasant. It felt so clean.
I saw that the cliff lifted up about two or three hundred feet above me and curled about away from the beach. Obviously I had washed up on some rocky point of land and who could say what lay beyond? I could see only rock, but perhaps the cliff ended somewhere near. I knew my future lay upwards but the thought of clambering up the cliff in my condition made me dizzy, and my condition would get only worse as long as I stayed upon this lonely beach. If only there were a way around!
I dipped my toe again in the sea. I didn’t trust myself yet to swim but I knew I had to get a good look around that point of land. I considered sleeping first, as it was getting on to evening now, but I feared that should I sleep I would not wake again: I would waste to nothing or be swept away by the ruthless sea. I vowed never to let that happen again (supposing, as it seemed logical, that that is what happened to me somehow in the first place). I moved off, then, to my left, hugging the shoreline, leaving the beach behind. The water grew deep very swiftly; there was no ground underfoot save the jutting rocks of the cliff side. To these I clung as best as my feeble arms could allow, and I found myself forced to rest often. Many tiresome moments passed before I had moved a dozen yards along the cliff from the beach and already the moon was high.
I abandoned all pretense of climbing along the rocks. I was exhausted. I let go of the rocks and allowed, just this once, for the sea to take control. I floated there for several moments before resolving to move forward again, and when I looked up, I realized to my surprise that the sea had carried me some distance in the direction I had wanted to go. I hoped now more than ever that it was the correct direction: I doubted the sea would so kindly carry me back!
I turned myself about and weakly treaded water. I was now a few yards from the cliff side and I intended to make my way back. Before I got much closer to the shore I found myself swept (a mite faster now) around a great jutting rock. There, now, was the land spread before me, nestled under the twinkling starlight: ahead some great distance a large town, or a small city, thousands of lights winking like clustered stars on land! Beyond that low mountains blotted out the celestial background.
My wonder soon changed to fear, however, as I realized that I was being swept faster and faster toward the rocks of the cliff. The shore had swept back here into a narrow cove clove into the plateau above and the heights ahead were still some distance away. Still, the current here was strong, and flung me headlong toward the spray of crashing wave against rock. In a moment I was in the middle of the cove, the quick view of that glorious town hidden from me, and all the world seemed to train my vision like my fate on the deadly breakers ahead.
I should never have allowed that vengeful sea control again! How it had toyed with me, vengeful Sea, as it swept me pleasantly toward rescue only now to sweep me dead against the rocks! I struggled weakly against the strong arm of the sea, struggled weakly but desperately, seeing only my death flash before my eyes. The cliffs loomed nearer, ever nearer, hiding even the sky. I clenched my eyes and held my breath. A moment passed and I came ever closer, I could feel it . . . Any moment now.
I dared a peek.
Sure enough the cliffs loomed perilously near, almost, it seemed, directly above me, black as night. But ahead even blacker. And I could see no breakers anymore. What had happened?
Suddenly my leg was grabbed by the angry current and I was pulled under. My lungs exploded with rage and I fought, I fought, but in vain. I was pulled ever deeper and tossed about in the watery tumult. My body ached and I finally gave up. Like a ragdoll, its wastrel possession, the sea took me. I was dead.
I was alive again. I felt a crushing pain and suddenly I was springing up again, and with a great gasp I burst above the frothy wave and scraped against the rocks. I felt the skin tear in my side but was nonetheless amazed to be still alive to feel the pain. I coughed up water and rubbed my eyes even as the water grew calm about me. I was seated now on rock, in a few feet of water, and surrounded by rock. I was somehow nestled, I could feel, in a tiny outcropping. A few feet away ran the current, beckoning, teasing, but daring not play with me again.
I rubbed my eyes once more and then opened them. Blackness still. I was blind! But no, slowly things came into focus: first the light and scattered reflection of stars on the water, then the darker black of rocks around them, then my body beaten and mashed. My side was warm with blood. All in a day’s work. I pulled myself back – there seemed to be a sort of rocky seat here a few inches above the water – and drifted fitfully off to sleep.
I awoke with a great stiffness in every joint. I had slept even as a pretzel, and my body seemed reluctant to bend out of that most unnatural shape. Slowly I sat up and looked about me: I was in some sort of cave! It was wide and lofty, and a swift narrow underground river ran through it. To my left the sun peeked its nosy head in. I was maybe thirty feet away from its opening into the cove. Beyond that, the sea.
Slowly and carefully I stood, but the ceiling here was high above me and the water some feet below: so it was now at low tide, I mused. I turned slowly around and thought slowly to myself: so here I am, saved for another day, but all the more hungry and thirsty and beaten for it, and no closer, it seems, to civilization. But then I remembered the tantalizing glance I had had the night before. A city! But how to get to it? I could not make my way out of the cove, that was clear. I would be forced to follow fate, follow water, follow the river.
I had picked my way along for barely fifteen minutes when I came to a path, smooth and bare, and four steps chiseled into the rock, and, at the highest step, a great wooden door set into the side of the cave. I smiled.
So, yeah, please comment. You know the deal.
-The Host
5/26/2003 1:36:37 AM
Comment on this fan fiction!
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