Medar

Freya skidded under a particularly dense bush into a well-concealed hiding place. Her homespun leggings and leather tunic protected her from the thorny spikes above and the rough gravelly surface she was now lying on. This was familiar territory for her, and she knew that they wouldn't follow her here. Most people didn't dare come this close to the edge of the Chasm: a vertical drop to the depths of the land. But Freya had been here many times before and she was sure-footed and confident of her location.

She lay absolutely still, slowed her breathing, and listened for her pursuers. They moved through the bushes, only half-heartedly searching now, and their voices were uncertain as they approached the shadow. She concentrated on making as little noise as possible. They were just some of the village boys, a few years older than her, chasing her for sport. She was used to it; at nearly fourteen years old, she had never had any friends, due to her deformity. Her mother told her it had happened when she was about nine months old and was just learning to crawl.

Her mother, Martha, had been doing the weekly clothes wash. It was a laborious and sweaty job, plunging the clothing in the pot full of water, boiling above the hearth. She would use a stick to scoop the steaming clothes out of the pot and swing them at arms' length into the scrubbing tub. Martha said she could've sworn Freya was sitting in the far corner of the room, playing with pine cones and yet, somehow, as she swung the streaming clothes from the boiling water, there was Freya pulling herself up by the edge of the tub. She’d had no time to stop the motion and had struck the baby fully on the left side of her face with the scalding clothes.

Martha had immediately dropped the clothes and rushed the screaming Freya to the nearest cold water, which happened to be in a bucket beside the door. She couldn't immerse the scalded area under water for fear of drowning her, so she'd splashed handfuls of water onto the baby's face as best she could, at the same time trying to console the screaming infant who writhed in her grip. It was lucky she had been able to cool the area so quickly, for although the skin was terribly blistered, it did heal and eventually faded to almost the same shade as the rest of her skin. But her left eye could not be saved: the iris had turned a milky green and the eyelid drooped, causing it to appear half shut. It had not taken long to realise that the child had lost all sight from the eye.

Despite the loss of one eye, Freya had grown normally in every other respect, and her mother had encouraged her to leave her fringe long, to conceal the abnormal eye as best she could. Nevertheless, it had been the source of much teasing and ridicule from the other children in the village. From a young age, Freya had learned to avoid them as much as possible and was quite content roaming around by herself.

When she was old enough, her parents gave her responsibility for looking after their goat, Nan. She got up early each morning to milk her. The warm liquid was delicious on their gruel, but barely enough for a family of four. Her older brother, Jack, was already seventeen and helped her parents to tend their crops—he had no time for his annoying younger sister. After she had completed her morning chores, Freya would release the goat out to the scrublands to graze at will on the sparse, tough grasses that grew at the village outskirts. Then it was off to school for the morning. She liked learning, but as none of the other children wanted to play with her, it was hardly a time she enjoyed. After lunch at home with her mother, and some quick chores, she was free to do as she liked, as long as she kept watch over the goat and herded it each evening into the lean-to adjacent to their home.

And so, Freya had become accustomed to solitude and, with the freedom to wander far and wide, she had explored the scrublands. At the village outskirts were the fields where the farmers grew their meagre crops. Beyond the fields, scruffy grasses grew in the poor soils, with gnarled, scrawny bushes dotted irregularly over the landscape—except for behind the village, to the west. In that direction, the bushes and scrub became thicker and denser, for in that direction lay the Chasm, and few people had any reason to go there.

As its name suggested, the Chasm was a rift in the earth that varied from less than one to more than five kilometres wide. It encircled the whole land of Medar, so that it was like an island. The Chasm was impossibly deep and, with nearly vertical sides, nobody ventured close to the edge—nobody who valued their life, anyhow. Once she'd thrown a rock the size of her fist over the edge—lobbed it as far into the Chasm as she could—and she'd never heard it hit anything, even though she'd strained her ears for a full ten minutes.

Beyond the Chasm was the Wall.

The grey mass of the Wall rose vertically from the top of the cliff on the opposite side of the Chasm until it disappeared into a pall of dirty, grey clouds. It was said that it never ended. Freya knew from stories that the Wall encircled the whole Land and that it was impenetrable. The Wall was always there and had always been a part of their lives. Its shadow reduced the sunlight available and this, in addition to living in a part of the Land that was less fertile than most, often meant that their crops were poor. What they did grow was barely enough to keep the family fed, and they hardly had any left to trade for other items they might need. Freya had never thought too much about the Wall. It was just a fact of life, like rain and clouds and the Master.

The boys weren't giving up this time, and Freya could hear them getting closer to her hiding place. Carefully, silently, she withdrew deeper into the depths of the thorny bush. Suddenly she froze and gasped as she realised that her feet were no longer resting on the ground but were dangling in mid-air! Luckily, the sound of her gasp was drowned out for, at that very moment, there was a thunder of galloping hooves.

One of the boys shouted, “Guards!”

“Quick, let’s go!” yelled another.

The apprehension was clear in their voices, as they raced off, back towards the safety of the village, their prey instantly forgotten. For just as everyone knew to stay away from the Chasm, so too they knew to steer clear of the Guards.

The Guards' sole purpose was to conduct the Master's business, and the Master's business was to prosper from Medar. When it came to the Guards, it was best to keep a low profile and draw as little attention to oneself as possible. There were rumours that bad things happened to people who got in the way of them.

Freya held her breath as the beating hooves came closer and closer ... but did not slow, and raced by. The sound faded into the distance. She breathed a sigh of relief and drew her legs quickly towards her stomach. How could she be so close to the Chasm? She must've lost her bearings. But no, she saw as she craned her neck under her arm, it wasn't the edge of the Chasm at all. She manoeuvred herself around under the bush, ducking her head so that she could have a better look, her hair catching in the thorns.

The bush's gnarled roots clung to the edge of a hole in the ground—perhaps an old well. The opening was not large, but more than big enough for Freya to fall in. She wormed her way closer so she could peer in with her good eye. No, it wasn’t a well after all, as it was not a vertical shaft. Rather the walls of the hole sloped downwards at a gentle gradient, so that this was more like a tunnel than a hole.

The fading light meant that she could not see much at all. Curious, she reached for the tinder-box in her old leather satchel. She always carried that, slung diagonally over her shoulder, and it was now resting on her back. Gathering a small pile of twigs at the lip of the hole, she struck a spark onto the dry tinder and dropped it into the kindling. Instantly, the twigs crackled with flame. Taking care not to prick herself on the thorns, she snapped a thicker branch off the bush and held it to the fire. As soon as the branch caught, she threw a handful of dirt on the pile to extinguish the last flames, then carefully poked her burning stick into the void.

Her makeshift torch did not cast its light very far, but it was enough to see that the tunnel continued to angle downwards. She slithered into the hole and wriggled carefully forwards on her belly and elbows, shielding the flame with her hand. The cavity was not large and ended a few metres farther down in an enlarged, dug out space—a cave! Freya could fit all the way in and sit down with only a small clearance above her head. If she had been much bigger, she would not even have been able to manoeuvre herself around. Whoever had made this place couldn't have been much bigger than her.

The feathery roots of the bush grew through the ceiling of the cave and brushed her head. It smelt earthy, but it was dry. Careful not to touch the flame to the roots, Freya shone her torch around the confined space. The flame flickered and her shadow danced over the walls and ceiling. But the fading daylight was still visible at the entrance of the tunnel, and her torch was not in danger of going out. What a great little hiding place! She would turn it into a proper hidey-hole, her own secret place. Yes, she would come back tomorrow and bring some candles. Maybe she could even sneak one of her mother's old blankets? She grinned, delighted with her discovery.

As she wriggled around to crawl back out of the tunnel, her foot caught in something on the floor of the cave. She tugged her ankle, but it wouldn't come loose. Carefully, she reached back under herself to free the obstruction, expecting to feel a plant root. Instead, her hand encountered leather—there was something buried in the floor of the cave! Holding her breath, she scraped away the dirt with one hand, the other holding her burning stick.

Her excavation revealed a leather-wrapped object about the size of a small book. She prised it out of the ground and unwrapped it: it was some sort of tablet, and glinted and shone in the light. It seemed to be made of glass, but the surface was cloudy. It was hard to tell what it was in this light. It looked like it should be heavy, but she was surprised to feel it weighed hardly anything. And then, as she held her flame close to the object to examine it more carefully, she gasped as writing appeared on the surface, faint at first, then clear and bright:

Tyrelia! Land of gold

A land so lovely to behold

0, land of beauty, land of light

Joyous refuge, pure delight

Tyrelia! That land so fair

Of meadows green and clean pure air

Of stately trees in forests vast

Of ancient rocks from ages past

Then she noticed, etched into the bottom of the tablet, the following numbers: 50 - 63 - 92 - 99

Suddenly, she coughed as the smoke from her torch, which had been building up in the small space, caught in her throat. Hastily, she extinguished her flame and, more by feel than sight, she wrapped the leather back around the tablet, stuffed it into her satchel, and crawled back up the tunnel. Having wormed back out from under the bush, her heart thumping with excitement as much as exertion, she realised with alarm that it was almost dark—she should have been home ages ago. Sure that her mother would be worried, she quickly surveyed the scrub so she could memorise the location, and noted a large boulder a stone's throw away. With a satisfied nod, Freya turned on her heel and set off for the village at a jog, calling to Nan as she went. It was not long before she heard the clanking of the goat’s bell. As she herded it before her, she pondered her strange discovery. She couldn't wait to get home and look at it again.

As she neared her hut, a murmur of voices reached her ears and her thoughts immediately jumped to the thundering horsemen. She'd forgotten all about them. Rounding a bend in the path, a dozen people came into view, crowded around the doorway to her home. Immediately thinking something bad must have happened, she tied Nan back in her lean-to, and ran to the front of the house. But as she got closer she saw that the people were laughing and chatting happily, not in distress at all. Relieved, she squeezed her way through the throng and into her home. Her mother was busy chattering away to two other women and hadn't noticed her enter.

She tugged on her mother's sleeve. “What's happened, Ma? I heard the horsemen …”

Her mother looked down at her with a flushed face and wide smile, her eyes sparkling. “Oh, Freya, there you are! We've been looking everywhere for you. You'll never believe it ... I can hardly believe it myself. Oh, it's our lucky day!”

Martha swept Freya into her arms and spun her around.

“Ma, calm down. You're not making any sense!” Freya laughed as Martha put her down, the jovial atmosphere contagious. “What's happened?”

Her mother cupped Freya's face with both hands and announced in a breathless voice, “We've been Selected!”

Stunned, Freya stood motionless for a second, then jabbed her fist into the air and whooped with delight.

Her father and brother came over, and her father gathered the whole family into a massive bear hug, tears of happiness streaming down his face.

“That's right, Freya,” he laughed. “Golden City, here we come!”