The Voyager: Jaq's Story

[Vespyr]

The world existed for eternity before humans knew of it. Without our knowing, it was already there, and it will be there still forever after we cease to experience it. Winter waxed and waned upon the empty land and the sea, and the world was silent. No creatures stirred. For eternity before we awoke it was this way: the land had always been; the ice had always been; the sea and the wind had always been; the sky and its light had always been, and though sometimes the light sank into the sea, it always rose out again. The weather was always changing, as it still is, and will always be. These changes are the result of a perpetually shifting imbalance of the opposing powers, Zelra'hel and Fenhelrah, which govern the state of the world by arbitrary fluctuations in their presence.

The presence of Zelra'hel and Fenhelrah together are like a pulse that ebbs through all things. The two powers pulse to different rhythms, and together the rhythms clash and flow through the world irregularly. Because of the flawless cadence of Zelra'hel and Fenhelrah separately, however, the pulse follows a long, loose cycle that is predictable enough to bring us assurance that if the light disappears, it will rise again eventually; if the ice grows thick on the ground, it will also thaw eventually; if the white fog obscures the sky and shadows, it will fade away eventually. We have inferred this much from observing the fluctuations of the two powers over long periods of time. The seasons are not exact, but the cycle abides.

The power of Zelra'hel is cold and dark and consumes everything. Its presence is always felt or seen; in the ice, in the cold wind, in the night.

Fenhelrah is warm and light and consists of nothingness; it exists in the body of humans and makes them seek refuge from the forces of Zelra'hel. At times when the rhythm of the Fenhelrah is strong, a white fog obscures the sky and erases everything from the land and sea, even one's own shadow. Zelra'hel drives the fog away when its rhythm is strong, and the world is once again full of things.

Although the two powers oppose each other, they cannot exist without each other. Without Fenhelrah, the world would be frozen and black and uninhabitable. Without Zelra'hel, the world would be white and empty. That is why humans are impermanent; they are full of emptiness.

The world was like this. Then, after an immeasurable length of eternity, people awoke. No one knew how long they had been asleep, or when they had gone to sleep. Although it seemed like they had never been awake before, the people could only believe that they had always been there on the land. As gradually as they all had awakened, after a time they all began to die, ceasing to exist just as, they realized, they had not existed before they were born. But others were born as the old began to die, and this established the endless cycle of nonexistence, birth, existence, death, and nonexistence again, just as the cycles of ice and thaw, dark and light, all things and no things, had always been, and will always be.

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I.

Ten years ago...[/font]

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Snow drifted indifferently outside the entrance of the cave like a speckled white veil against a backdrop of slate grey. The mouth of the cave was deceptively small, just wide and tall enough for one or two men to pass through with ease. Inside, however, it widened into a comfortably large cavern with stone walls smoothed by generations of human erosion; the Kae'hen, enduring and elusive, found shelter from the pitiless Arctic winter an undocumented number of centuries past and over time the cavern adapted to their lifestyle as naturally as the people adapted to the cold conditions. A frigid draft thawed as it flowed into the fire lit antechamber, thin flecks of snow drifting in from the outside and melting to moisture in the air. It was the warm season in Kae'en and the cave dwellers allowed the chilly draft to sweep gently through their dwelling like summer breeze through an open window.

Jaqei'aer sat cross-legged by the cave entrance, naked but for his uni, a kilt-like garment of animal hide that was the most comfortable thing to wear in the season of Frenhalm. Even then, with the heat of the fire pressing on his bare back, the boy felt uncomfortably warm. He gazed through the temperate snowdrift at the grey and endless sea, a far-off look in his golden yellow eyes, reflecting the unknown.

Another young male emerged from one of many hallways in the stone foyer. He brushed long yellow hair away from his face and padded over to Jaq, sitting down beside him.

"Want to go out?" he suggested, eagerly.
"There is nowhere to go."
The other boy was quiet for a moment, confused. Then he smiled.
"What do you mean?” he demanded, giving his friend a playfully incredulous look. “We could go to the cliff, or we could go hunting."

Jaq did not respond, but only stared far away at the clouded slate-blue horizon.
"Nesi. What do you think is out there?" he asked, finally. The lighthearted smile faded from Nesi’s face as he followed Jaq’s wistful gaze toward the ocean.
"There is nothing out there, only the sea, you know that," he answered. Jaq shook his head and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, skeptical.
"I do not think so. I am going beyond the sea."

Nesi stared quizzically at his friend, but Jaq's determined gaze did not waver from its distant fixation.
"How?" Nesi finally stammered. Jaq’s answer waited on the tip of his tongue; he had been eager for someone to tell, although he found Nesi’s leeriness to be somewhat of a disappointment.

"I have made a boat. It will take me to the end of the sea. I will see what is there for myself."
"And if there is still only nothing? How will you come back?"
"I might not. But I have to go. Nesi, the other day I saw a strange light—"
"Jaq, please, stop this. The things you say are frightening."
Hearing the despair in his friend's voice, Jaq turned and placed his hand on Nesi's bare knee. His gold eyes suddenly filled with compelling emotion.

"Nesi, you know I have the most affection for you. I would not leave unless it was very important."
Nesi stared at him with pleading yellow eyes and brushed a long lock of flaxen hair away from his face. "People will forget you. It will be like you are dead."
"I know. Kehrgahteg happens to everyone."
"But you will be alive. I won't forget about you."

The two adolescents sat in silence for a long time, staring at each other and then the flecks of ice that fell listlessly down from the grey sky. A melancholy look hung on Nesi's face, but Jaq's hand on his knee was earnest, and despite his unsettling revelation, comforting. It is said that a warm hand can assuage all sadness if the warmth is from the heart.


A day later, Nesi hurried down the craggy bluff with a hide sack strapped to his bare back. His spry, calloused feet pounded lightly against the cold permafrost as he ran toward the shore, where Jaq was pushing his small wooden craft into the dark grey water. When Jaq turned and saw him, a genuine smile played across his lips. Nesi jogged over to him and leaned over, resting his palms on his knees.

"You were only going to take your uni and cloak but I brought you some furs in case Zelhalm returns while you are gone. And there is more food and ice," he said, out of breath. The way Nesi's eyes dropped to the ground, Jaq could tell he was upset, so he reached down and gingerly lifted the long golden veil of hair out of his friend’s face.

"Thank you, Nesi. You are a good friend. I won't forget you before I die."
"I won't forget about you either, Jaqei’aer. Your name will live in my memory if no one else’s. I will see you again someday."
Jaq smiled wanly, for deep inside him twisted an uncomfortable coil of doubtful fear. He leaned over to loosen the hide sack from Nesi's back, tossed it into his little boat, and then wrapped his lean arms around his friend and littermate for the last time. His warm hand slid gently up to the back of Nesi's neck and Nesi did the same. Then they backed away from each other and Jaq stepped into his boat. With the short paddle he carved, he pushed away from the rocky shore, his little craft swaying and bobbing. The cold water lapping at the sides of his boat turned a deeper, darker grey as the land disappeared from beneath him and he drifted precariously out into the open ocean. Nesi watched his friend closely, in awe of the seriousness in Jaq's visage, as he paddled further away into the void of the sea.

“Fenhelrah nut Zelra’hel vah aervae’in or kem,” the young man mumbled, pulling woefully on a long lock of his blonde hair. Soon after, Jaq and his boat drifted into a thick fog and Nesi never saw him again.

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[Vespyr]

II.

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As Jaq's boat drifted into the pallid fog, somehow he knew he would lay eyes on neither Nesi nor his homeland ever after that. Trepidation throbbed in his chest and he gripped the edges of the swaying wooden craft suddenly, wary of being extinguished by the misty void which the Kae’hens anxiously named kilvae’akas. In the dangerous ‘white weather’, one could easily step too close to the edge of a cliff or into an ice crevasse because the inexistent fog diffused light and dissolved all shapes and shadows. Jaq could only see as far as the end of his boat. Beyond that, nothing existed anymore; reality evaporated under the nullifying power of Fenhelrah. The boy floated on a sea of nothingness, his existence fleeting, slowly disappearing into the vacuum. His frantic thoughts returned to Nesi: was he still standing on the faraway shore or had he, as well the solid ground beneath his bare feet, vanished from the bounds of permanence?

Time passes immeasurably, prolonging itself like a dull ache of which the end is never certain, when one travels on the ocean of oblivion. With nothing else for his yellow eyes to focus on, Jaq’s pensive gaze settled on the inner walls of his little wooden boat and after awhile he curled up on the floor with the hide sack hugged to his chest. He did not feel tired, rather anxious, but the gentle rocking of the boat soon lulled him to sleep.


The boy awoke hungry, sat up, and peered curiously into the impenetrable mist. He could not recall his dreams because a white nebula consumed them all. Upon awaking he only saw that nothing had changed, but miraculously, he had not yet disappeared. He opened the hide sack Nesi gave him and found, amid a bundle of furs, some strips of smoked meat, cooked marrow-paste in an animal's skull, and the thick root of a kernak plant which must have been difficult to procure. Jaq mumbled his friend's name out of appreciation and took two strips of meat, repackaging the rest of the food for later. Along with the portion he brought himself, it would, he hoped, keep him alive until he reached the end of the sea. The problem, however, was that neither he nor any Kae'hen knew how far the sea stretched. Jaq had been raised to believe that it could stretch out in every direction without an end. The origin of his skepticism was as unknown to him as the world that existed—or did not exist—beyond Kae'en. Only his intense curiosity despite the odds saved his sanity from dissipating into the kilvae’akas.

Jaq pulled the edge of his fur cloak more snugly around his lean torso and then ran a hand through his messy blonde hair, sighing. The Kaehen language lacked a word meaning boredom, just as it lacked words for love and concepts of the divine. Jaq felt not bored, but empty. He felt almost like he had made a mistake. The boy could do naught but wade back through the cold salt water into the wispy memories of his life; the only confirmation that he existed, his only reassurance that he was not yet dead.

Reminiscing on the warmth of fire sent a pricking shiver down the back of Jaq's neck. Like a phantom limb, the ghostly heat pressed at his back, making him feel even colder. He wanted to believe that the hearth fire in the antechamber of his people’s cave still burned, as it had burned for as long as anyone could recall. So long as the flames were alive, so would be the people. Jaq found meager comfort in hoping that his being the first Kae'hen to leave the land did not upset the balance of the world, and that the fire in the hearth would still flicker without his presence, its warm glow still echoing against the time-polished cavern walls and through the stone corridors, reaching even into the remote chambers where the jamirae and children slept in their nests of fur.

It had been some time since Jaq left his nurturing mothers to be raised among the men and the women whose responsibilities were to feed and defend the clan. At a certain level of maturity, along with the rest of the girls and boys from his litter, Jaq ascended into adolescence under the careful guidance of hunters and fishermen, stone-carvers and cooks, and of course, the elderly, whom the clan relied on to predict the weather because they had lived long enough to trace patterns in the rhythm of the world. The vast array of survival skills passed on to the children made them tenacious and self-sufficient but the very first thing—the most imperative lesson—that Jaq learned, was how to keep the fire burning, and to never let it go out.


The boy roused after falling asleep again at some point and blinked his yellow eyes up at the passionless sun, immediately relieved that the whiteout had passed. He sat up and peered around the infinite spread of scintillating slate ocean expanding in all directions like a cold and desolate universe. Jaq’s head turned, his yellow eyes desperately scoping the horizon, searching for an irregularity in the silhouette of the sea, gaping at nothing but the same bleak flat line wherever he looked. His heart crumbled and his mind drew a blank. Kae’en had disappeared, but he had not.



Jaq passed his time awake lying on his back in the little boat, watching the Arctic sun creep across the sky without setting. The light only dimmed as it dipped by subtle degrees toward the edge of the sea, dipping lower in the sky after each slow cycle. The teeming, agile human vitality ebbed and faded gradually from Jaq’s eyes until his stare was dull and glassy yellow. He spent more time sleeping and less time eating. The days became shorter; his food, scarcer. Uncertainty dominated his waking thoughts. Which boundary would he drift across first: the ocean, or oblivion? The slow and dubious swaying of the boat offered no comfort anymore, but sleep came readily nonetheless.


Jaq roused to darkness, fearing the end of one thing or another, and realized that the sun had at last sunk beneath the glimmering edge of the world. The horizon seemed no closer still than he remembered it the last time he awoke, or the time before that, and so forth, until he once again stood on the rocky shore of his homeland, staring far-off at the grey and endless sea, wishing absurdly to be somewhere else. Cold tears streamed from his deadened eyes and his weak sobs were heartfelt for the first time; in his simple life the boy never had reason to cry. Now he wept to the stars in anguish because he was lost, but the stars could not show him the way home. The glistening drops of light gazing down from space in apathy were profoundly more distant than the boy in his boat in the middle of the sea could ever have imagined.



The boundaries of sleep and consciousness blurred. Dehydrated and deluded by hunger, Jaq could no longer tell when he was awake because the faces he called out to in the rippling water were the same ones that he dreamed about. Asleep or awake, they never responded and always disappeared when he tried to touch them. Eventually he gave up. Slumped in the corner of the boat, his sullen, abstracted yellow eyes stared fixedly at the ghosts as if he could make them real by wanting them bad enough.

Sometime during the night Jaq saw a dim beam of light on the horizon in the distance. He vaguely recalled seeing it before but couldn’t remember where, and slid down the side of the boat with his eyes closed and his mouth lifelessly ajar. Hours later, someone on the passing ship spotted his craft staggering in the icy black water with his emaciated body curled inside, and cast a net like a giant’s hand, scooping him up out of the sea.

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