On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (27 page)

The Legend of the Sunken Mountains

Traditional
(from Fencher's
Comprehensive History of Sad, Sad Songs
)

A
uthor Andrew Peterson is a natural-born storyteller, being a preacher's kid from the South (mostly).

He wrote and produced the acclaimed epic song cycle
Behold the Lamb of God: The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ
(awarded the 2004 Best Album of the Year, World Christian Music Editors Choice), part of which inspired his children's book
The Ballad of Matthew's Begats: An Unlikely Royal Family Tree.

A singer-songwriter and recording artist, he has just released a new album,
Resurrection Letters, Vol. II,
having written and recorded seven others over the last ten years, including:

Slugs & Bugs & Lullabies (with Randall Goodgame)

Behold the Lamb of God: The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ

The Far Country

Love and Thunder

Clear to Venus

Carried Along

Andrew and his wife, Jamie, have two sons, Aedan and Jesse, and one daughter, Skye. They live in the Nashville, Tennessee, area on a wooded hill in a little house they call the Warren—where they're generally safe from bumpy digtoads and toothy cows.

You can find Andrew online at his Web site
www.andrew-peterson.com
or visit The Rabbit Room (
www.rabbitroom.com
), an online writer's collective inspired by the Inklings (C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and other friends), for more fun facts and delicious details.

I
llustrator Justin Gerard spent most of his childhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, drawing imaginative characters informed by comic books, science fiction, and Disney films. As his art developed, Justin found inspiration in N. C. Wyeth, Caravaggio, Peter de Sève, and Carter Goodrich. He's illustrated several children's books, including
The Lightlings
storybooks for young readers by R. C. Sproul (Reformation Trust/Liggonier Publishing), as well as numerous short stories published in elementary reading texts. He lives in Greenville, South Carolina, and works as the chief creative officer for Portland Studios. He holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in studio art.

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2

1. Zibzy gained wide popularity in Skree in the year 356. A lawn game played with giant darts (hurled high into the air by the offensive team), a whacker (a flat board with a handle), and three rocks. Injuries abounded, however, and because of the public outcry the game was banned. In 372, it was discovered that a passable version of the game could be played by replacing the giant darts with brooms. For complete rules, and a deeper look into Zibzy's fascinating and bloody history, see
We Played, We Bled, We Swept
by Vintch Trizbeck (Three Forks Publishing, Valberg, 3/423).
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3

1. Bip Thwainbly,
The Chomping of the Skonk
(Publisher and date unknown).
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2. From “The Legend of the Sunken Mountains,” a traditional Skreean rhyme. A later version of the tale was printed in Eezak Fencher's
Comprehensive History of Sad, Sad Songs.
in Appendices.
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5

1. Glipwood had prospered greatly over the years and was now a slightly larger cluster of buildings, thanks in part to the tourism generated by the Dragon Day Festival. Willibur Smalls,
It Happened in Skree
(Torrboro, Skree: Blapp River Press, 3/402).
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2. Ridgerunners are a reclusive race that dwell primarily in the mountains of Dang. Their great weakness is fruit of any kind, in any form, whether plucked from the tree or baked in a crispy pie. Because of this, ridgerunners are the chief enemy of the people of the Green Hollows, who grow fruit of many kinds. Each year, swarms of ridgerunners descend the northern slopes of the Killridges and steal fruit from the Hollows. It's said that as long as you are not a fruit, a ridgerunner won't eat you. Since there was no fruit directly involved in the Great War, the ridgerunners of course remained neutral. Padovan A'Mally,
The Scourge of the Hollows
(Ban Rona, Green Hollows: The Iphreny Group, 3/111).
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3. In order for Podo to hoe the garden, he had to fill out the Permission to Hoe Garden Form, then the Permission to Use Hoe Form to borrow the hoe. If the tool wasn't returned by sundown, the penalty was much too severe to be mentioned in this happy part of the story. See pages 285–286 in Appendices.
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6

1. A delightful sport in which each team tries to get the ball into a goal without using their feet in any capacity, even to move. B'funerous Hwerq,
Ready, Set, Chube! A Life in Gamery
(Three Forks, Skree: Vanntz-Delue Publishers, 3/400).
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2. Blaggus's duties as mayor included running the town press, which now printed Commander Gnorm's various permission forms for tool usage. Being a person obsessed with paperwork and rules of order, this suited Blaggus well. He also organized which Glipfolk would prepare meals for the Fangs each week, who would clean the barracks, and made formal requests to Commander Gnorm on behalf of Glipfolk who wished to travel to Torrboro. Blaggus had lost his youngest daughter to the Black Carriage six years earlier, and Gnorm kept him in his employ under the threat of taking his two remaining sons as well. Understandably, because of this the people of Glipwood bore the mayor no ill will.
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3. Many Skreeans doubted that the legendary Isle of Anniera existed at all. It is a sad truth that some people only believe something exists if they can see it with their own eyes. Bandy Impstead, for example, had argued for hours in Shaggy's Tavern one evening that there was no such thing as Wind for this very reason. His roof was torn off in a storm that very winter. Bandy's mind, however, remained unchanged.
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4. The Legends of Aerwiar are a collection of stories about the Maker and the Beginnings of Things. The greeting of Dwayne and Gladys, the First Fellows, for example, is well known in all the lands of Aerwiar. The legends also include the tragedy of “Will and the Lost Recipe,” “The Deep Holoré” (healing stones the Maker buried in the earth), and an early version of “The Fall of Yurgen.” The legends were once contained in old books said to have been written by the Maker himself and given to Dwayne for safekeeping, but the old books—along with the Holoré, Will's famous cream of hen soup recipe, and Yurgen's mountains—are lost.
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5. It is unclear where the whistleharp originated. Each culture on Aerwiar claims to have invented the instrument, and each culture has good evidence to support its claims. Whistleharp tunes are referenced in the writings of Hzyknah, which date to the end of the First Epoch.
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9

1. The Glipper Trail had been there since long before Podo was born. Edd Helmer, Podo's great-great-great-great-grandfather had planned to take advantage of the cottage's nearness to the cliffs by doing his fishing from there. After carving out a path, he purchased a crate of fishing line from a merchant in Lamendron (later to become Fort Lamendron), tied a hook to the line, placed a horrified worm on the hook, and lowered the string down into the Dark Sea of Darkness. Just getting the hook down to the water took the better part of the morning, and, of course, Edd had no way of knowing from that great height whether or not the bait and hook were indeed submerged. Near dusk that evening, Edd felt a tug on his line and began hauling in his catch. Sometime after midnight Edd finally reeled in a small glipper fish. Yamsa wasn't happy about being awakened by Edd's cry of victory, or that in the dead of night he cleaned, cooked, and ate his little fish. Edd decided the next day that for all the trouble he had gone through for that one fish, he may as well have caught several. So he purchased a spool of rope from the same merchant in Lamendron, fastened it to a net, and once again spent all morning lowering the net into the sea. This time he fastened the line to a team of oxen and had them haul in the catch. By sundown the oxen were exhausted and the catch was only halfway up the face of the cliff. Edd tied off the rope and let it hang for the night. Early the next morning he set the oxen to work again. By noon, the net full of glippers, small sharks, pinchers, and squid was pulled over the edge and onto solid ground. Even Yamsa had to admit that it was a good catch, and they ate nothing but fish for the next three weeks. Fish and biscuits for breakfast, fish sandwiches for lunch, fried fish for dinner. They ate so many fish, in fact, that both Edd and Yamsa got sick, and they were never again able to eat fish without gagging. Edd never again fished from the cliffs, but the path by which his oxen pulled the heavy net remains.
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10

1. Mayor Blaggus broke his vow on the walk back to town.
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2. Though it is impossible to be sure, most scholars agree that this is likely the song that Leeli Igiby sang at the cliffs that evening.
Holoré
is an ancient word with several meanings. Its most common definition is “the feeling of forgetting to do something without knowing what that thing is.” For example:
Foom was overcome with holoré for the whole journey, but when he returned home to find his wife still waiting on the front steps, he realized what he had forgotten.
The word
holoré
is also used to describe the scent of burned cookies, and is often applied to any potentially good thing that has turned unexpectedly sour. For example:
When Foom realized he had forgotten to bring his wife on the three-day vacation, the holiday was holoré.
The ancient meaning of the word, which is how it is likely being used in the song, refers to the stones laid deep within the earth by the Maker at the creation of Aerwiar. The stones, according to
The Legends of Aerwiar
, are imbued with power to keep the world alive and growing, functioning much the same, it is assumed, as Water from the First Well. The meaning of
holoél
is uncertain, but very likely has to do with cookies as well.
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11

1. When townspeople broke the law or were singled out for no reason by the Fangs, they were sometimes brought to jail where they were beaten by Gnorm and his soldiers. If this happened, it was considered by the Glipfolk to be a wonderful fortune, and upon a prisoner's release (if he was conscious), his family and friends congratulated him and carried on as if he'd just won a major award. If one wasn't lucky enough to receive jail and torture, Gnorm sent a messenger crow to summon the Black Carriage.
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12

1. Ships and Sharks is a yard game introduced to Skreeans by merchants from the Green Hollows. Typically, the children play the role of Ships, and the adults are the Sharks. The game begins when the Shark says to the Ships, “Gwaaaaah!” which is generally agreed to be the sound a shark would make if it weren't a Sea Creature. The Ships then run like mad to escape the Shark. If a Ship is overcome by a Shark, the Ship is rolled in the dirt and tickled severely. This brutal simplicity is typical of games invented by the Hollowsfolk. Another popular game from the Green Hollows is called simply Trounce.
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13

1. The women of Skree had a similar weakness for jewelry, but they were less inclined to kill one another for it.
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2. Of the Torrboro Baimingtons, who prided themselves on having an ancestor who coined the phrase “Jouncey as a two-ton bog pie.” The Baimingtons were careful to insert the phrase into every conversation of which they were a part.
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15

1. Three Honored and Great Subjects: Word, Form, and Song. Some silly people believe that there's a fourth Honored and Great Subject, but those mathematicians are woefully mistaken.
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2. By Jonathid Choonch Brownman, the explorer known to have been the first to find passage through the Jungles of Plontst. Though no one contested that the expedition itself was successful, people questioned the truth of many of Brownman's claims about his discoveries. When his memoir of the journey was published in 421, most of it was believed to be a fabrication. This was due in part to Brownman's insistence that while in the jungle he had lived for a time among a community of flabbits. Brownman insisted that they were docile, unlike flesh-eating flabbits in Skree. Scandalized, his readers challenged him to go and fetch one of the so-called tame flabbits back from Plontst, and Brownman agreed. It was the last anyone ever saw of Jonathid Choonch Brownman, though people still enjoy saying his middle name.
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3. This was done with a shovel Podo had checked out from Mayor Blaggus early that morning by filling out the Permission to Shovel Hogpig Droppings Form. In Appendices.
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16

1. Snot wax is too repulsive a thing about which to write a proper footnote.
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17

1. According to Padovan A'Mally's
The Scourge of the Hollows
(Ban Rona, Green Hollows: The Iphreny Group, 3/111), “Ridgerunners are particularly fond of artful verse, though their subject matter is almost exclusively fruit. A free-thinking ridgerunner named Tizrak Rzt scandalized the ridgerunner culture when he composed a poem entitled ‘Love, Love, Love Hath No Endingness' and famously made no mention of fruit.”
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2. See Appendices for a sampling of Pembrick's seminal work. Bahbert Pembrick,
Pembrick's Creaturepedia
(Ban Rona, Green Hollows: Graff Publishing, 3/221).
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3. Chorkneys are large flightless birds that live mainly in cold climates. The settlement of Kimera in the Ice Prairies boasts a chorkney ranch where the large birds are saddled, bridled, and trained to function much the way of horses in southern Skree. The webbed feet of a chorkney bear a cluster of retractable barbs which allow the bird to keep its footing in ice and deep snow. On rare occasions, male chorkneys are born with wings large enough to sustain short flights, though it isn't considered prudent to be riding one when this happens.
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18

1. See Oskar's map.
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19

1. Janner is probably referring to
Between the Blapp and the Bay: A Town Called Glipwood,
by Randolt Mynerqua (Dugtown, Skree: BrookWater Press, 16/404). It was a popular read for the Glipwood Township, partly because it boasted only seventeen pages.
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25

1. Thorn the Torr, the warrior king who built the palace at the beginning of the Third Epoch, was fond of kittens. On every spire of the Palace Torr were statues of kittens in varied posture. From a bluff on the north bank of the Blapp it was plain that the palace itself was built to resemble a happy, crouching kitty. The uppermost spire was the tail, the portcullis resembled teeth, and the drawbridge was undeniably tonguelike. For ages the Torr Dynasty nursed a disturbing fondness of all things kitten. Then came the Great War, when Fangs captured King Oliman the Torr and forced him to watch as the kitten statues were pulled down and shattered, one by one. When all the kitties in the kingdom were placed on a raft and set adrift on the River Blapp, Oliman the Torr dropped dead with grief. To the citizens of Torrboro, however, it was the one good thing the Fangs ever did.
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26

1. Yakev Brrz abhorred all manner of animal abuse, most of all the habit of referring to pets as “baby” and attributing to them human characteristics. Yakev's first wife, Zaga, esteemed her two Beckitt Terriers so much that she insisted they sit at the table with them at dinner and that they sleep at the foot of their bed. Yakev, whose communication skills with all manner of animals was unmatched, failed to convince Zaga that her “babies” detested the eating practices of humans and would much rather have not worn the matching lavender lace pajamas to sleep in their human bed. Late one fateful night when Zaga was fast asleep, Yakev tiptoed to the foot of the bed, gathered Schpoontzy and Kiki carefully in his arms, carried them outside, drew from his sleeve a sharp knife, and put them out of their misery. Which is to say that he cut the lavender lace pajamas from the oppressed dogs and set them running free in the moonlight, never to return. It's said that once word of the dogs' deliverance at the hands of the mighty Yakev Brrz spread among dog-kind, wherever Yakev passed, all breeds of dogs yowled and respectfully rolled onto their backs. Nothing more is known of Zaga.
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