‘Well that was unexpected.’
Long ago a fretful king watched as his borders diminished with the frailty of a waxless candle.
Dreading the eventual destruction of his capital, the king panicked and chose to form a small group of mounted scouts, in hopes that a system of quickly delivered correspondence could allow him enough time to flee to a friendly border.
He decreed that for 20 copper coins any person within his kingdom may post a letter through these scouts and it will be guaranteed delivery no matter the danger or weather at the time.
Despite his early intentions of only letters addressed to himself being delivered, his people’s instant accptance and frequent use of this new postal service made the king choose to leave his error uncorrected–lest there be a regicide.
Money from his mail delivering light cavalry began to cascade into the royal vaults and, in time, other nations grew fearful of Stallinger, for a land of such wealth must have truly a terrifying army. With borders now no longer hemmed by the advancing forces of neighbouring kingdoms, joyous celebration fell across the embattled nation, celebration that eventually depeleted the stocks of every vinyard and brewery in the entire kingdom; in honor of this post offercerial success, the king named these his brave knights of letter and parcel Postmen, and that from that day, legend bloomed into folklore.
Bolstered by his profoundly accidental fortune, King Leomand Sturgeon managed to peacefully rule over his kingdom for nearly thirty years, and through administrative error alone had managed to create the most powerful letter delivery system within the history of the world–Eclipsing even the noble carrier pidegons of Dorrily river.
With Leomand’s empire built upon correspondence it was truly an ironic gift of the fates that he, the Eighth king of Stallinger, could not read.
[—]
Panic bloomed as a wellspring of thoughts flooded past the bucket and into the mind of a young Postman.
Disoriented from the explosion, Sunny swore fire and shook away the lingering symphonic concussion of light and sound she had mistakenly just brought into existence.
Sudden cascades of thought often seem to rush outward in moments such as this, snapping with a fleetness that beats worry into terror and pushes reason into a corner so it can be ignored for the present moment.
The Postman, realising that she was still swearing at the top of her lungs, took a breath and calmed down, now ready to consider just how trapped by a cave-in she actually was.
‘Shit!’ Sunny muttered while kicking at the wall of earth that had presumably just buried her new horse, ‘I still owed money on that’.
A Troll, struck blind from the mote of radiant daylight that Sunny had accidently set off, thrashed about behind her, slamming into the walls of its cave with a feckless rage and angrily grasping for the strange human who had just handed him a rectangle of neatly folded paper–It’s not often that a Troll is given a peice mail and in many ways the ancient race was still angered by the very concept of it, but as a Postman’s sworn duty was to deliver the mail, by hand or by blade it must be done.
Mentally checking this series of events off as a successful delivery, Sunny doffed her cap and absconded deeper into the cave, hoping to find a miraculous second exit or, in failing that, just a quiet place to have a really good cry.
Nerves now beginning to settle, she walked with quiet step through the darkness, slowly inching forward in the dusted trail of shadows, attempting to move with the quiet patter of a mouse.
The dark of the cave was encompassing, roars of the blinded troll behind her now echoed less and less as Sunny stalked onwards, each noise amplified by tension, unseen crags holding the present threat of lurking danger; her heart raced within the darkness, each step splintering into fractured sound as if she walked upon glass with boots of iron.
Ahead a faint light wavered from within the budding darkness.
Drawing closer, the glow appeared to be radiating from perhaps a wicking flame, one hidden behind the knitted stone that was consumed by the darkness of the cavern. Posturing herself to appear as though she was wielding a sword, Sunny coughed and then bundled around the corner, hoping to startle whatever demonic horror lurked ahead.
But there was only stillness.
A room bathed within the soft glow of a dying brazier stood before her; dull stone hewn with interlocked carvings stretched outward and converged sharply towards the far wall. A scrawled web of crooked lines and angles, formed an ancient mural almost indescribable in its realism. A mural depicting one gigantic hand, easily crushing the earth within its impossible grip: all life destroyed with but a simple gesture.
A small man, one almost withered into ash, sat inside this room and stirred as Sunny approached. In a hollow rasp he lifted his frail shoulders, regarding her with pale sightless eyes. ‘Young one, I am the oracle of the mountain, I am the burning flame and I am the ashen dust. You have questions no doubt; please, come sit by my side.
Steeling herself Sunny held still her trembling hands and strode forward.
‘Wait, watch your–’
…
..
.
It was a step of lightness, a rushing feeling of all the world lifting upward with unexpected ferocity.
Drawing a line under what was the most simple of mental leaps, Sunny realised that she had stepped into and was now falling down a rather deep hole.
Considering most pitfalls to be beyond the circle of her control Sunny had come to the belief, in her short time delivering the mail, that even with the best intentions there will always going to be some downsides to every action. These days she had been trying to just accept all these little misfortunes that she found herself falling into–or more often onto.
A past colleague–well past as in the sense that he had passed away under tragic circumstances quite recently–came to Sunny’s mind as she fell. Adrian from finance was one of those bookish type of men who pride themselves on tawdry things such as paperwork or refusing to have any fun. Adrian was working back on the night of his 30th birthday attempting to alphabetise the very last of the office’s duplicate files. He was just about to finish for the night when, alas, the filing cabinet broke and buried the poor man under a personally assembled folio of tragic irony.
The town cabinetmaker, a drunk and miserable man, was to be put in the stocks for his gross negligence in making the cabinet, but as he was the man who had also built the stocks, they fell apart and he was able to easily escape.
Life, Sunny decided in this reflection, was often lived without justice–cruel really.
Thudding against a slope, and knocking the wind from an unexpecting mushroom, the world exploded into daylight.
Time slowed, as a magnificent vista revealed itself, it’s beauty seemingly just to be making sure that Sunny was aware exactly how far from the bottom of the mountain she still was.
The moment paused as sky stretched off into eternity beyond her; a fleeting moment of peace that was welcomed by Sunny as she closed her eyes and muttered the word Bugger, refusing to watch as the road below rose to meet her–making a mockery of her father’s favourite saying.
The world was a turning blur of panic and tree stumps, intercut with moments of blackness that were growing all the more frequent.
Momentum waning and finally slumping the bruised Postman against a piece of flat ground, Sunny squinted at the foggy world still spinning around her. Almost ready to try unconsciousness for a while, Sunny noticed a quaint wooden sign that read ye auld Woodbrush Tavern 1km.
This, currently, was not helpful information.
J. McCray
2020
Sunday Short Stories 