00 - nicomachean ethics
whose mission was not to escape his cage in triumph and return to his family in relief? What did history make of men with no land to call home, not a soul to share their story with and not a morsel of divine greatness flowing in their veins? Could someone be a hero when no one knew of their heroism? Could someone remain a hero when they had no more heroism to showcase?
Philosophies had turned out to be my trusted friends, ever since that summer night my right to freedom had been stripped away from me. I used to call home a kingdom floating in the space between Heaven and Hell; a kingdom named the Gap World, a land of dead people bathing in their sweet immortality; a land of people who had faced their deaths and while they had been deemed unworthy of Heaven, they hadn't been considered crooked enough to spend their eternity in Hell either. Gap World, a kingdom of immortals still wearing their mortal bodies like fine jewelry since they did not age, did not wither. Eternal life was considered a miracle for many. For me, it was a fate worse than death.
I'd been taken away from this kingdom a long time ago, ripped apart from my childhood friend and the few people I'd come to appreciate their company along the way. Yes, it was a long time ago. No, I did not know exactly how long. The specific amount of time I'd spent in exile, on Kastri, this windswept island where wild oceans met and kissed each other at midnight still remained a sour mystery—and it probably always would. It might have been years, even decades, since the day I lost the privacy of my own mind, and the woman—the monster—who had sneaked into my thoughts had brought me here.
Climbing the steps to the rooftop of the chateau I'd spent all this time locked in, I walked through the iron door out to the rooftop. I was greeted by the howling wind. It seemed to echo my name.
Normant Lumensky. The name I would have to discard in a few tormenting minutes from now.
The sun had sunk down. The torches hanging on the walls gave off a harrowing glow. If I were still a child, I would have jolted awake from bed, almost sure that this was a nightmare, the figment of me taking to heart the magic-riddled tales of my grandmother. But I wasn't a child. And this wasn't folklore. This was real. This was my life. Madness had a name, and she was standing right in front of me in a night-blue gown, pearls adorning the sleeves and neckline. Her name was Amanda Livernal, her mission was arcane, and I had the cruel honor of being her most valued pawn, her most beloved soldier. That's how she called me. But I had this suspicion that slave would be more fitting of a noun. Someone would say that it was of little value what she thought of me, who she thought I was. But in my experience, most troubles began when the energy you were made of was misunderstood by the ones around you.
I took a deep breath and stopped midway, my stare lost in the dark clouds that didn't let the crescent moon illuminate the sky, like it had done last night. I'd caught a glimpse of it through the skylight in my room, and I still carried it with me, the cue for me to forge ahead with my plan. Unafraid, as if I hadn't shaken hands with failure before.
The dark-haired guard who followed my every movement stood next to me, using her magic to strengthen both the grip of the handcuffs and the chains on my feet. I almost gasped. To swallow down a whimper, I focused on the crimson flag that stood at the center of the rooftop, swaying in the wind. I braced my feet on the ground, steadying myself. I had to. Otherwise, I would jump off this ledge, knowing that I would end up in Hell, but not really caring about that either.
"Stop wasting my time, handsome idiot," Amanda said and offered me her most alluring smile. It was this smile I could not stand looking at for more than a second, for the joy was never mirrored in her eyes as well, and I was always left wondering if she were a human or a marionette forgotten in a haunted house.
Nevertheless I did keep my eyes on her face, because I didn't want to look timid, afraid, or weak—the things I had come dangerously close to believing I was; the same things I was trying with all my willpower to deny. I took a step closer, then another, until I was only a breath away from her and I could smell the stench of incense lingering around her, like stale food mixed with rotten bodies.
Jersen Arrowheart, the innovative healer she'd also abducted from the Gap World and brought here, stood with his head hung low behind her. She needed him, of course she did. He was the only person who had mastered the art of opening portals to Earth. And since Amanda had been exiled from this blue planet, Jersen would open the portal for her and I would be the one walk through it. In her sweetest dreams and greatest plans, this was the moment everything would start falling into place. But abusers tended to make this mistake of overestimating their powers, and in times like these such mistakes were lethal.
I kept my eyes on Jersen, who was perched in a dark corner, his eyes closed. He must have been ordered to summon his power, all his magic, for the moment we'd all been waiting for was near. Yet I still needed our stares to meet; I needed know that he wouldn't bail out when I needed him the most. Still, he didn't open his eyes. He didn't even seem to be aware of my presence here.
"If I didn't know your preferences, I would assume you were partial to the healer," Amanda commented, bringing me out of this spiral of trying to mystically make Jersen open his eyes. I kept my face empty of emotions as I looked up at her instead. She looked pleased. "Tell me your full name," she commamded, her bright red hair glinting off a sense of unearned superiority.
"Normant Lumensky," I replied, straightening my shoulders, refusing to surrender.
"Not that one!" she shouted, and before I could even open my mouth to take the words back, electrifying pain sliced through my skin. I didn't bother looking at the brown-haired guard next to me. I knew the things she was capable of doing; the things she was more than happy to do each time her partner in crime commanded her to do so.
"Abel," I muttered, hoping that the iron chains would somehow lose their electrifying itch. They only grew tighter, burning the blood in my veins. "Abel Starkey," I repeated.
The guard didn't let me go even when my knees had started wobbling and I was so close to fainting that I could see stars.
"How old are you, Abel Starkey?" Amanda asked, walking in circles around me, like a wolf examining its dead prey. I hated it. I hated that I'd been the dead prey for so long, always getting caught in the traps she set up.
I glanced at the guard and found the short woman watching me closely. My heart skipped a beat as I said, "Twenty."
I struggled to stomach the outright lie. I wasn't twenty. My name wasn't Abel. Abel Starkey was the name of the young man with the ginger hair and blue eyes who used to live in Toronto; the same young man whose story and family life was almost identical to mine; the same young man Amanda had found, had made me abduct from Earth and bring to this mystical island, so that she could morph him into a sorry copy of me. After weeks of healers working on his face, altering it with that magic of theirs and twisting it into something else, Amanda had sent poor Abel back to Earth. Not for long. But long enough for him to renew his ID card. Afterwards, Amanda had murdered him.
It had to be done this way. How would I be able to peacefully live Abel's solitary life, without raising any suspicions if everything hadn't happened the way it had? Abel had no family left, no friends, nothing. A homeless man whose death had turned out to be worse than his life.
"What about your parents?" Amanda asked, knowing that Abel and me used to share the same bad luck when it came to family matters.
The smile that bloomed over her lips as my ire ripened into terror was diabolical.
"Fostered," I spat at her, and the chains tightened once again.
"An orphan. What a shame," she said as if she'd heard it for the first time, which had me drawing in a shallow breath. I pulled my attention from her face to the wild ocean below. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore was a perfect representation of my heart beating against my chest.
She went on. "So . . . what's your mission on Earth, Abel?"
"I will be sent there in order to find a mystical deck of cards that will allow you to take back the reins of fate. That way you will be able to control the world's future as you wish."
She nodded, her dark eyes filling with menacing relish now that her dream would finally come to life. "What will you do to ensure that I succeed at taking back my throne as the leader of the Fates, the six women who used to rule the world's luck centuries ago?"
It was such an effort to hide my grin as I let the traitorous words escape my lips. "I will faithfully follow the orders you will be sending to me through the tattoo that snakes down my back. Each time you wish to tell me something or warn me about a potential danger, the thought and command will pop in my mind with ease, since the magic-cursed tattoo connects our very thoughts."
That's what Amanda wanted to listen, so that's what I'd given her. People who couldn't accept my truth should learn to live with my lies.
"And what will happen if you decide to act like the idiotic man you are and try to break free of my control?"
I tried to make my voice sound somber as I replied, "I will lose my magic; I will stay locked in that place called Earth forever with no one coming to rescue me."
"And?"
I lowered my stare to the ground, giving her the impression of the man who couldn't afford that kind of harsh punishment; the man who feared her threats. What a shame I wasn't that man. I'd never been. "I will lose my immortality."
"Why?" she pushed, besotted by the idea of having so much power over me.
"Because you have cursed the blood that runs in my veins. For if it stops flowing only for you, it will turn mortal, prone to sickness, decay and finally . . . death."
"Which means?"
"Which means that an afterlife will not be promised to me, just as it is not promised to the people of Earth."
"Good," she said and gave a sidelong glance at the guard, who started unlocking the chains. First the ones on my feet, then the handcuffs. My stomach heaved as Amanda stretched out a hand and Jersen opened his eyes. I watched him standing up from the ground slowly, his arms raised toward the sky.
Let the sick games of magic begin for one final time, I thought, and braced myself for the impending chaos. It came in a matter of a few minutes. The bluster of the storm subsided to reveal a bright orange portal, flowing in the sky, coming toward us with blistering speed. This is the end, I whispered to myself in order to regain some diminutive sense of control.
The portal moved through dark clouds, like sylvans that roamed in the woodland at nightfall. The closer it came, the harder it was for me to contain the trembling of my hands. The guard seemed to notice that because before I could stop to apologize, she lifted a hand and slapped me. My lips tightened, but they shouldn't have. After all, this was the last time I would have to face this kind of twisted humiliation.
I took a step forward, closer to the portal that now stood between Amanda and its creator.
I didn't bother glance her way as I took a deep breath and jumped in it before I could hear her voice staining my heart with poisonous hurt for one more damn time. I jumped in the portal with the kind of ferocious light shining in my eyes that would have the sorry armies of my enemies discard in the seven winds the moment I spared them a look.
I felt the blood that I'd spilled all these months turn into fuel, into the roaring wind that took me out of this minefield and carried me to my liberation. I did nothing to suppress the grin that was formed on my lips for the first time in months, as I let myself be consumed by the portal and its blue sparks.
I knew exactly wha to do the moment I landed on this foreign place called Earth. And the moment I would caress the holy ground of liberty had finally arrived. I welcomed it, cherished it, kept it in my bleeding hands so that no one could dare take it away from me again.
And what about the prisoners who escaped dark dungeons but no one noticed? Writing history in silence, winning invisible trophies. In the end, heroes did not need the world to know about them. It was the other way around. The world needed to know of heroes so that they could dream of victories and better times existing overhead. Heroes didn't need to be known by the world. The world needed to know of heroes so that their nights weren't so dark; so that they could keep on believing that their failures would be followed by tremendous success. So yes, heroes remained heroes even if there were no folk songs written about them—they didn't need mythology. Heroes remained heroes even if they bled and surrendered and faced defeat. After all, to be alive was a form of heroism on its own.
