The Tale of Sir Ramics

The Voice of the River

Tap-tap-tap.

The sound echoes, every note a gong.

Tap-tap-tap.

The knight cringes slowly.  A heavy grating of metal accompanies the movement, worsening the discordant din.  A thunderous flurry and an awful squawk add to it all.  The knight curls smaller.

"Freedom," whisper the waves.  "Freedom..."

The knight doesn't move until well after the sun has set.  The seabirds have gone to roost, and all that remains is the whispering surf.  With all the speed of a garden snail, the knight sits up, wincing at the noise.  The beach is vacant.  The knight sits on a floe of ice, nearly grounded, still nudged by the sea.

"Freedom."

Carefully, the knight tugs armored legs from the frozen embrace.  There's a flinch at every crack.  Every joint is stiff.  Every step feels heavy.  Slow.  The world is dim, yet far too vibrant.

The knight walks—away from the sea, toward...the knight doesn't know.

The sand catches the rolling whisper of the waves.

Freedom, the knight supposes.

The sun is on the horizon.  The sun, and a forest.  The sun is too bright, but the knight goes all the same.  The forest is the strangest one the knight has ever seen.  The trees stretch toward the skies, but they have stars instead of leaves, and their trunks glint with armor.  There's a river somewhere within the maze of their trunks.  The knight can hear the rushing waters, and continues with a hurried step—and at every step, the knight's awe grows, for the trees are bigger than any the knight has seen, and still, they're distant—and there is no sun on the horizon, but the glow of the forest itself, where the stars have fallen to earth.

The screeching wail of a creature halts the knight's progress.  It careens through the night, wild and anxious, and fades away without warning, and the knight is reminded of caution.

Slowly again, the knight approaches.  The river does not sound like the sea.  It is loud, and angry, or maybe it's frightened.  The trees are larger than the knight imagined, armored trunks bursting from the ground and shearing toward the sky.  The river's voice is many, all overlapping, a whispering dissonance that swells and roars and never quiets, never softens.  The knight's joints ache.

The trees are not trees at all, but palaces (like the one at Eretel, with its wall of stained glass)—but these are not stained anything but dark.  It's the lanterns that are colored, pink and green and blue.

The river rushes on with its hundred voices, though still the knight has not seen it.  A palace door opens—and why was the knight thinking of palaces at all?  The palace at Eretel.  The stained glass.  The Celestial Bloom, rendered in stained glass.  Someone stumbles into the knight, and the knight startles back.  (It's Siv.)  It's a child, in a dress with a skirt like rose petals.

"You—"  She hiccups, swaying forward, then dancing back with a giggle.  "You look funny."

"Look funny," echoes the river.  "Funny, funny..."  The river laughs.  The knight backs away.

"Oh, you're leaving?"  The child pouts.  (Who's Siv?)

She's too loud; the river is too loud—the knight backs away, around a corner (an alley full of noise—an alley, hiding from the noise).  The child begins to sing—too loud; it's grating; the river sings with her (sailors)—the knight cowers.  (Sailors singing—drunken shanties—shadowed alley—Siv.)  The knight looks up abruptly.  It must find Siv.  It?  He.  He?  The knight must find Siv.  Siv...Siv, in the sea.  Which way is the sea?