I was submerged in the water and for a moment I was resigned to death. I felt swaddled in sure doom, surrounded by the cold, violet wet, and my lungs begged to be opened and filled with air. Just as I opened my mouth to inhale the violet wet, I was jerked up and out of water. Soon I was lying on my side and gasping for air.
“What is this?” I heard a voice ask. It was a raspy, breathy voice and I could hear confusion in it.
When I regained my composure, I looked up at the source of the voice, at a hooded figure in robes that gathered to cover any sign of feet on the wooden surface of the ship, that was all in white to match the ship on which we rode. The figure wasn’t ghostly or frightful in any sense, just mysterious as I could not see it’s face.
“From where does a being like you come?” the hooded figure asked.
“I fell from the sky,” I said as I stood and tried unsuccessfully to see the face in the darkness of the hood.
“But…” the voice seemed to stammer with a confusion that made it feel less mysterious, “but
…in all the lands, there is nothing…like you. I am not sure what to do with you.”
I felt truly unique. I assumed that this being had never encountered a person with my bearing, my character that was obvious even to a stranger.
“Can you tell me where I am?” I asked. “I feel that I left the world that I was born to, and entered something like a dreamland.”
“You have indeed. You are now on the Southern Sea, and that place from which you fell is the fantastic land of Oriab. You must be of the black men…but…”
I nodded, “I am a black man…”
“But not black like the black men,” he said. “You don’t look capable of the carvings that the black men carve across the river Parg. And the black men are jet black, you are dark for sure, but not like the black men. You have the constitution of a human, but your darkness, there’s something different about it, inhuman.”
The mysterious figure was definitely impressed by me, I wasn’t a mere human to him.
“I picked you up to satisfy my curiosity,” the figure said, “and now that I have, I think it’s best that I put you back from whence you came…”
“Can you take me to the river Parg?” I asked. “I would like to see these black men. Maybe they are more kin to me than the blacks that I normally encounter.”
The figure was quiet for a moment, then said, “I guess, since I was headed that way.”
I walked around the deck of the ship, curious who piloted it. The mysterious figure never left my side, it must have been eager to give me a tour.
The white ship had no lower deck, it was only the upper deck and the large sails were constantly full of wind no matter the direction the ship sailed.
“Who is captain of this ship?” I asked the figure as I watched the violet waters alongside us.
“The white ship needs no captain,” it said. “It moves as it should, to locations that it must. Your presence on board has confounded it, I just whisper to it with no voice so that we may find the shores of Dylath-Leen. It is the coast that we will come to first and you may find aid on your quest to Parg.”
I asked many questions about the strange lands with strange names in which I found myself, and the figure described these lands and the creatures and people who dwelled them. Soon, I saw that we approached land and what looked like a very busy port where other ships loaded and unloaded things that I didn’t recognize. There were many sailors working on ships, busy in their tasks and I found myself eager to be off the ship.
The white ship pulled into a dock that was manned by sailors whose faces I could not see. As the ship came to a stop, a ladder that I hadn’t noticed was lowered to the dock and two of the sailors came aboard to speak with the figure. When they were done, the sailors grabbed me. Together, they were much stronger than me and despite my resistance, they drug me from the ship, down the ladder, and along the dock to the street.
I couldn’t appreciate the unique beauty of Dylath-Leen, I was not taken far from the docks before the sailors wrestled me to the ground and restrained me with heavy chains. I could see the strange sky-line of Dylath-Leen with its thin, angular buildings, but I would never walk it’s streets.
While I was on my knees seething with anger, a strange man in a turban stood before me and though his turban obscured any sign of eyes, I felt him looking down at me and he had a sinister smile.
“The white robe of the white ship claims you fell from the sky,” the strange man said. “You must have fallen from the moon. The masters will be glad to see you returned.”
PRL Serials 