Paper (3 page)

“
YOU FOOLS HAVE SEALED YOUR
OWN FATE!” are his last words amidst his dark, ear–splitting
laughter.

She hears a banging on the locked
doors, and her husband calls out.

“
Tenay! Something’s wrong!”
Ralic says.

She reaches for the knob and then
stops. “Oh? What’s that?”

“
Open the door, Tenay! The
castle’s burning!”

“…
Really? I don’t hear any
fire. What if this is some trick?”

“
Of all the times for you to
be stubborn. I swear!”

Tenay smirks. “Just have to be sure.
What’s my favorite frui–”

“
Bananas, can we go
now?”

She scoffs, pleased with the answer,
and opens the door. There’s a fire creeping along the castle rock,
an impossible sight for stone, but this is not stone, it’s
paper–everything that was fake is being undone by the sword’s
destruction. The three rush to the main entrance, meet up with the
group of men, most of them unconscious and piled out of the burning
keep or severely beaten, and they all get a safe distance away from
the castle.

Turning to the castle, they can still
hear the laughing of the Overlord as its body melts away with the
sword. Tenay takes a moment to catch her breath, but before she
speaks, she sees the singing fire burn away not just the castle,
but the ground around it, and then the grass, and then the trees,
and then right to them–revealing nothing but the deep, dark ocean
beneath. Her father points the way to town.

“
This way!” he shouts,
carrying two men in his great arms.

They run all the way to town, a great
toll on everyone carrying people, and get to the gates.

“
Open up!” Ralic shouts to
the guards. They get through to the town square in the early
morning, everyone’s faces of joy tarnished to fear the moment they
see the returning group’s expressions.

“
What’s the matter?” a
prominent farmer asks.

“
The Overlord’s dead, but
its magic is destroying the island!” Ralic sputters, “It’s going to
sink!”

Everyone roars into a panic. The
thought of the mysterious Overlord, a nasty troublemaker that is
said to trick young children into the forest and make them work on
its paper crafts forever, has had one last trick up its sleeve.
Some of the townspeople begin to tear down the village to make
boats, but realize that the fire would burn this away as well as it
was fake trees that made these fake houses–all that is fake will be
burnt away. Time counts down as they try one failed idea after
another; each time the looming flames of the Overlord’s fury
burning closer and closer. The blacksmith is the only one not
running about in a panic, as he reflects on all that he’s seen and
heard over his years from the fake mayor and his miserable wife .
It is then that the blacksmith comes to a conclusion.

“
Tenay!” he shouts across
the chaos of people rushing from the town to get to the island’s
edge with their crude makeshift vessels. She doesn’t hear him. He
draws more into his old lungs. “Tenay!” She hears him this time,
and he meets her across the square as the two Ralics flail about
leading the people to evacuate.

“
Han?” Tenay says, her eyes
wide with fear.

“
Come with me. I know what
to do. We must go to the only place with books!”

The two smiths turn to the mayor’s home
and dive in. As the colors of autumn through flame approach the
windows, the two find the library. Han grasps a book, shoves it out
the window, and sees it repel the flame, like magic. He grins,
seeing his hunch was right, and the two go from the library and
start shouting.

Han and Tenay call out to the others.
“It’s safe in here!” They don’t believe them until Han displays the
properties of the book in his hands–when he runs into the flames
and the townspeople see them wrap near, but not around the
blacksmith.

Just in time, every soul is turned
around and huddled into the large library. The flames pass, as the
wood, metal, and everything else in their town burns away. After
the passing, the entire town is sitting in the library, even the
ground around it protected by the book’s magic. They are now
floating out on the ocean, and far, very far off, they see the
great, verdant landmass that their ancestors were moved from by the
Overlord–something they will only discover once they’ve reached it.
Everyone takes a few moments of silence to realize their new,
rather ridiculous, situation and then some of them start crafting
survival essentials–hopefully something to row and catch fish with
as well.

Tenay just stares out at the island in
thought as she sits in exhaustion and picks up one of the library’s
books.

“
Ralic?” She asks, turning
to her husband.

“
Yeah?” he says, peeling off
his hero’s garb.

“
Why was it paper, the very
thing that the Overlord used to device us, that saved us in the
end?”

Ralic moves his head from side to side
as his father greets his wife after all this time. “How should I
know? That’s not my job,” he says with a smile.

Tenay kisses his cheek just as Han sits
next to them. “Well, kids, I think it’s because the Overlord used
ignorance to fool us.” The two youths turn to the great–bearded
man. “Words and learning is repulsive to deceptions, because what
is fake cannot also be true. The Overlord’s last trick was to make
us hate paper, and see it as something made for crafting lies. Once
we killed the Overlord, it would make sure that everything on the
island, including the boats we made and the metal we wrought, would
burn away from its magic. As its illusions burned away, the books
were the only real thing on the island, and thus the only thing
that could save us. It was not the paper that saved us, but the
words upon the paper,” Han smiles and embraces the two
kids.

“
So, how will we prevent
this from happening again?” Ralic says, staring into the
distance.

Han frowns. “If only we could read,
perhaps the books might hold the answer.”

“
Um, excuse me,” a weak
voice calls from the side of the library, stepping over. It is the
wife of Ralic the Eleventh–she looks much happier now, Tenay
thinks. “I can read,” she says, “The paper Ralic did his best to
keep me from the library, but he had to leave the house sometime,”
she says with a laugh. “I’d love to teach you how to
read!”

…
There you have it, kid,
that’s why the pen is mightier than the sword, how we rediscovered
our island, and how the four heroes brought us here. Now get to
bed. You have a day filled with reading tomorrow…Yeah, and for the
record, don’t hold books up to fire, the Overlord’s illusionary
fire’s different from the kind we use now in case it wasn’t
obvious–it actually burns real things.

~Fin~ (But please, read on; I need your
help!)

Hi,

It’s me, Kell! I hope you enjoyed this
quick read. That said, if you really enjoyed it and would like to
help me out a huge, huge amount, I’d like to ask you to leave an
honest review on the site you found this on.

Reviews are a vital part to an indie
author’s success, increasing notoriety, algorithm placing, and
reputation–so please, if you liked this, a review would literally
make my day, no joke; if you did it, and I met you, I’d shake your
hand.

Also, if you enjoyed this story,
there’s a good chance you’d like some of my others as well, all of
which you can find on my website linked below.

Thanks again so much for
reading my fiction. It really does mean a lot–every time I get a
review or piece of fan mail (especially those with honest
criticism) I jump out of the window in joy, just barely avoiding my
cactus patch, and land in my pool–every single time. So that said,
I’d also adore an email from you; it can be about anything, your
day, my day, stuff you like, stuff I like–you know, just typical,
normal things people talk about…oh, or books; of course we could
talk about those! You can email me over at
[email protected]
,
just tap and email me anything you’d like. Or if you want more
consistent updates, check out my website at
Kellinkston.com
.

All in all, I hope you have a wonderful
rest of your day, and that you’ll keep me in mind next time you
want something to read.

Love,

Kell Inkston