Myth

Chapter 13: Fight

I woke in a warm and cosy bed beside a dim fire that left a toasted feeling in the blankets. I slipped out from beneath the covers and walked out the bedroom door. "Good morning sleepy head, did you have a good sleep?" Mary asked merrily from the wooden stove top. "Sure did, thanks for letting me stay," I replied, clearly waking up on the right side of the bed. Mary gave me a nice toothy smile and continued with her old fashioned way of cooking. I went and sat in the room beside the kitchen.

Books filled up every free space. Piled high and twisting like in what reminded me of a sorcerer's library. I walked to the single shelf that seemed to have no order to which the books belonged. I lightly traced my fingers over the spines of each book, all of which were old looking, until I noticed an author's name that was familiar. I carefully pulled the book off of the shelf and turned it over in my hands so that the tarnished cover faced me. Chalky poppies were etched into the tan leather and the title was barely visible because of the wear.

Many Coloured Poppies By William Shakespeare

I furrowed my brow and stared at the title and the author. William Shakespeare? How was that possible? Did he not only write plays and had something to do with the creation of dictionaries? I felt a hand on my side and looked up to find Ethelios standing beside me. "Good morning," he said with a smile. "Good morning," I responded cheerfully, then reasserting my attention back to the weathered book I was holding.

"I guess you have found our stash of William Shakespeare novels," Ethelios notified, "Marcus on his first visit believed that they were all fake, but most of these are the originals and almost all of them are handwritten prints."

"How did you get it?"

"William Shakespeare... was a satyr."

"What?"

"He was a satyr like me, which also explains all of the references to Greek mythology. He had a gift for writing and inventing so he decided to spread his gift amongst the humans because they lacked appreciation of fine arts, at the time. At first he wrote books, but when they were turned down from the print 'factories', he begun to write plays. He realized after that most of the world at the time could not read, and his intellectual abilities surpassed even the most learned human. So he gave up writing novels and continued with his destined path towards the stage.

"Some time later Shakespeare decided to give away his written work to those who would understand what he had written, the satyrs, but somehow my family ended up with the entire collection of his rarest of works." he concluded.

"Wow, then is William Shakespeare still alive?"

"Sadly no, he got so attached to the humans he had begun to age as fast as them, and lived till he was somewhere in his fifties or forties I believe."

I was holding a book that one of the most famous men in history created with his very hands. It felt like I was holding a piece of history. Ethelios' house now seemed like a museum full of interactive objects, and no cranky supervisors telling you to keep your hands off of the glass or that the objects are on display only and you are not allowed to touch them.

I timidly flipped the cover over to see what was inside. Yellow singed pages that were soft, and thin enough to see through to the slick black ink from the other side. It smelled of mildew, freshly cut grass and smidgen of rotted food. A slender loopy scrawl covered the pages and the occasional crossed out word that may have been spelled incorrectly or a new and more appropriate term was found.

I continued flipping until I randomly decided to stop. The same unknown thing that made me look out the window in November had made me stop on that certain page. I glanced at the script and was instantly dumbfounded. This is what I read: