Welcome to my seemingly endless journey.
A trip that will take you to places I might have visited many moons ago.
It´s a tale that came back to me when I meditated on one of my past lives. A life I told you about in my unbelievable true story.
As promised in that story I will now share this story with you.
Chapter 72
“We are a few days away from the city you are looking for, but I think it would be wise to take a detour. Even if they will never believe that we are going to the city, the risk is still too great. There will be extra guard posts everywhere and possibly ambushes.
I am very familiar with this area, so I would like to ask you to follow me for the time being. If you have any very urgent questions, ask them now, otherwise mount the horses, because we have no time to lose. In the Sikh Empire, bad news travels faster than the fastest horse, they say. I would like to stay ahead of that bad news.”
We looked at each other and almost simultaneously our heads turned towards Cabilah. Six questioning eyes looked at her: “Follow my brother, he knows what he's talking about.”
No more words were needed, despite the stiff legs and the tiredness that had to play tricks on us all after this nocturnal adventure, everyone got moving. We headed west.
The moisture that had fallen in large quantities last night began to evaporate in the warm sun. It caused an oppressive heat to rise from the earth. A damp, warm blanket wrapped around our tired bodies made it difficult to breathe and think. It was as if everything was being suffocated, but none of us showed any signs of being bothered by her. I hoped that our pursuers would also be bothered by it and possibly worse than us, although it seemed illusory to me. But everything was allowed to encourage you to continue the journey.
Retsj and Cabilah rode side by side, seemingly unaffected by the long wet night and now this suffocating oppression. Despite the pace we kept, she had heated conversations and during the few moments that I could look into Retsj's eyes, I saw a soul that had found its light.
The disappointment he had undergone gave him a certain realization. Now that the truth is visible and it turns out that Cabilah never had the intention to disappoint him, a new person has been born in that enormous body.
Numico is in the lead together with Reiko, he seems very impressed by the man. Something that seems healthy to me for a normal boy his age, but Numico is wiser. It is not the soldier he sees in Reiko, but something else.
We drive towards a ridge again, not as immense as the previous one. This stretched along the entire horizon, but unlike the lifeless gray mass we encountered earlier, we are now greeted by a lush, rising landscape.
It has hardly any points or peaks but shows a gradual increase. Its vegetation is versatile, low shrubs with green ovaries, and strange exotic plants here and there.
Trees that reach enormous heights and have trunks that, judging by their thickness, are thousands of years old.
Now that I look at it, I notice that the flowers and plants are all larger than you would expect. Strange that such beauty can arise here again so soon after the dark year. Would it be a magical place, where distant ancestors cast spells to protect nature? To be able to make a better living from what she has to offer? Where have they gone, chased away by Sikh forces? Possibly, but nothing points to housing or man-made phenomena.
The higher we go, the more special nature becomes. Although the trees are decreasing in size, they are being replaced by lower-scaled trees with extremely long leaves. Others have leaves that you could roll a child in and flowers that sprout from the trunk.
Large shrubs with fist-thick spines and long tendrils that creep along the ground. Something starts to play in my mind, but the fatigue prevents me from grasping it. It's a memory, something from long ago. I close my eyes to concentrate better.
There is the dragon, the huge red monster in all her glory turns into a little girl before my closed eyes. My sister, it is night, we are at home by the campfire, I hear a man talking, I am looking for the man. I look around at the faces lit by the flames. Then I see the man speaking. Deep grooves, the few hairs thin and hanging along his face ends in his beard. The bent back, curved by age, his skin, full of spots.
I remember the fear I felt for this hideous human being, the fear was unconscious, but certainly there. The fear of ever losing my youth and growing old the same way. A fear that I was not aware of, but which was in my soul. At the same time, there was admiration.
Martuk, that was Martuk, an unusual name. They said it dates back to the time when we were a sea people. Martuk descended from a line of healers. His blood had the gift or curse of not being susceptible to disease or deterioration of the organs. Instead of sudden death, as was common, his bloodline generally died by their own hand.
Old age eventually drove them to a strange state of madness in which reality, faith, and fear continuously alternated. Which made their owner a plaything of the dark side of their knowledge and thoughts.
Not much later this must have happened to Martuk, eventually, two young men found him a day or two's walk from the village. His hand and feet were a little further away. In his remaining hand, he held a stone axe.
This was something I should never have heard. I cannot testify that it was true, but this was what I heard when I slipped out of our house at night to listen to the men's stories. I sat there, hidden behind the nearest buildings, a few meters away from the campfire.
The cold that crept through my skin to the marrow of my bones did little to me, as the fire of my curiosity kept me warm. Martuk's strange death had left a huge impression on me. The image of the loose feet and hand had haunted me in dreams and thoughts for a long time.
