Hennings Short Story

The Reed Garden. By the way it's a first draft.

A few centuries ago the kingdom of Tillsyn was flourishing. The sun shined in the sky, sheep bleated in the grass, and the Philosophers and bards wrote in their houses. But most importantly the wall stood tall, protecting all the people of the kingdom from the wild lands to the east.

Bandits had snuck into the land and had stolen 7 kegs of gunpowder and had used it to blow out a section of the wall. Somehow they had gathered what seemed to be all the bandits from their side of the continent and informed them of the soon to be hole in the wall. Once it was open they came flooding through, hammers swinging. In seconds what had once been a ten-foot hole was transformed into a seventy-foot gap. Mayhem ensued.

For its 31^st anniversary celebration the town of Overlevnad had decided to open a reed garden, for we the citizens were very strong thinkers and good philosophical writings were getting increasingly rare what with all the illiterate book-burning bandits around.

The garden was to be built around the thought provoking Whisper Stone in the center of my town. There were three things amiss about the Whisper Stone. The Whisper Stone had appeared about two years ago but for some strange reason nobody could remember when, and it seemed like it had always been there. It gave off faint whispering noises in what seemed to be a foreign language from across the sea. And lastly the town always seemed to have good supply of luck. All the blizzards and white outs mellowed around us, all the diseases never quite managed to reach our herds and taxis were relatively low.

I ran a tea-shop in that town. It was quite profitable since it was well known that a good cup of tea (or two) did wonders for the mind.

The reed garden was made up of four concentric circles of water. In between two were strips of land covered in reeds. Connecting all those circles were quaint little wood bridges. The third piece of land like the others had its edges covered with reeds, but the center was paved with cobblestone and in the midst of all this sat the Whisper Stone.

For a long time my village had been ignored by parties of bandits, partially because of our almost complete absence of riches and partially because of our strange luck. Well, as one of my customers once said to me “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

Our luck rubber-banded the night before the reed garden was set to open. I was wakened by a loud crash from downstairs in the shop. I opened my eyes, pulled on my robe, and realized the building across the street was burning. I stood there wondering what was happening until several crashes followed by a smash shook me out of my train of though just in time to see a looter peal away from my shop, carrying away the remains of my money drawer.

I ran down stairs in close pursuit and skidded to a stop as I observed the world of fire and death my town had become. I turned around to see my house go up in roaring flames. I heard an insane laugh and saw something silver blur past my head, heard a thunk sort of noise, and saw a knife handle protruding from my door frame. I threw myself left as another throwing knife thunked into the space where my right eye had been occupying only a moment ago. I picked myself up and turned to face my attacker. He was a youngish bandit, about 23 year of age and he was wearing a smile that seemed too big to be able to fit on a human face. I knew instantly that that was the smile of a mad man.

I ran into the ally way on my left and made a break for it. As he ran after me I heard the sound of a sword being unsheathed. I turned onto Thorn Street and saw that most of the buildings were missing one and a half floors; there would be no hiding here. The two other streets I tried had no good hiding places either.

My feet eventually took me too the reed garden. Why not? I thought. So I ran in. my pursuer was still only about fifteen feet behind me. So I ran to the most accessible hiding spot: behind the Whisper Stone. I slid behind it as the young man pulled up in front of the entrance. He immediately started searching. I pushed closer and closer to the rock until something immensely strange happened: I fell inside the Whisper Stone.

And now all I can do is to repeat this, and hope and pray that someone will listen.