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Chapter 1


“Once upon a time there was a future very much as ours but still very much not," the storyteller started who stared intense on the audience, only consisting of kids in the age of six. They stared at him with exciting eyes for they knew they were going to hear a story of magnificence.

This is the future. It’s not the future you imagined with highly developed technology, flying cars, the most amazing way to travel, weird clothing that no one really liked but wore because it was fashion, and flying screens that you could move around and all the other things you thought were to be better. Really it was the opposite, there were no such thing as electricity, no transportation that was comfortable, the clothes are made of the skins of the animals we kill and our lives are dependent on the crops we farm.

But, there are some things that might agree with your thinking of the future. Apocalypse, man eating humans and no natural resources like oil and natural gas. When the economy crashed (all different values suddenly had no price) the apocalypse started. People wanted to have all their refunds taken out but the banks wouldn’t allow it. So people started to steal from the shops and after a year, when no one longer farmed, the stores had nothing left so the people, who had no knowledge about how to survive, lived like beasts. They tore down the buildings and cities leaving nothing to live in. Destruction was their feed and as the ignorance of survival was there the people started to die and eat from each other. And when that happened, everything stopped. People started to understand they wouldn’t survive without eachother. Cities started to build up but as the real apocalypse was more than a hundred years ago, people didn’t remember how to get the world back. So they were dependent on their natural instincts.

But there was this cannibal problem. Cannibals lived on their own in the woods, mostly eating animals that passed by. But sometimes they were into human flesh so they, in groups, attacked cities. The cities were prepared and killed or took prisoners of the cannibals. The prisoners were experimented on. Although, no one could really know why they had come or why they infected others or how to exterminate them. They were pale and didn’t care if their arms were torn of their torso. They had red eyes and saliva running down the corner of their mouths. They were extremely aggressive and died after just a couple of weeks from cramping attacks. So one would think they would die out but some of the cannibals succeeded in surpassing the cramping stage.

Some of the cannibals had worked out a way to live on the fear of humans so they made up this company called The Death Granters. They told people they would infect them for a price if they so wanted to. Some depressed people wanted to forget everything that had happened to them before or they were simply scared of being turned to cannibals against their will, or they liked the taste of human but didn’t want to be ashamed of it. They were called Death Wishers. So the Death Wishers went to The Death Granters and asked to be turned. The payment usually consisted of a piece of human flesh from the death wisher or another human.

Now, three centuries later, we have built our world into seven countries; Catarracta, the biggest of the seven, Equinus, the second biggest, Summa, Fertilem, Omnia and Scilicet. The seventh country is what many calls the Unknown, and it is what it’s called. No one who had wandered there has come out alive, at least that’s what the sprinkle warns said.

I live in Equinus, outside a city called Albino. I live on a farm with six cows, three horses, enough lands to farm on and smaller closer ones that is for my family only. The cabin we live in is with but two rooms. The two rooms are a kitchen and a bedroom. My father and I farmed the earth that was in fact useless to farm on and my mother sold the few crops that were good enough to sell. She had a small stall on the market place down in Albino. She rode there every morning, with the crops tightly bound around the saddle. She cleaned the boxes she put the crops in and lay them there. She gave the horse hay to chew on; it was bound just beside her. And when the people started to come, she was out of crops in a few hours. That was when she’d brush the area around her stall from hay and then lead the horse around while she took a round through the market in search for something useful. Then after an hour or two she leaves and comes home to help me and father with the farm.

Equinus was covered with a dark green forest. Pines and firs were the only things that grew there. It went on for miles and miles and never seemed to end until it abruptly interrupted and turned into birches, oaks and other leaf trees. This was when it had reached Catarracta.

Many people followed the only road that went from Albino, through Equinus and into Catarracta and to the small town called Pulvia where it always rained. I know this because the road goes just outside my house and I used to watch the many carriages role through the mud, filled with barrels, planks, chests, sacks and other crickets when I was young. People leading donkeys, horses and stubborn pigs or such looked always so grey. Lonely riders that trotted along the saucy, brown road either had big sacks tied around the saddles and their backs or were only carrying a small knapsack. I thought it was very exciting because some sprinkle warns that were new to the land or had lost their maps knocked on our little door and asked if it was far to Albino from here or if they could stay the night and then have a nice good breakfast in the morning. My dad had always been so nice to them and said of course and lead them into the kitchen where he pulled out a chair and let them tell the many adventures they had been in. Though if mother opened the door to them she just slammed the door closed. We asked her then who it was and she said it was “one of them, sprinkle warns”. And then we asked how she could know when she hadn’t even talked to him she just said; “I have a nose for that”. And then we used to giggle.

Sprinkle warns were people that just strolled around in the seven different countries and mostly they didn’t even follow the roads. They went into the deep, dark forests and guided their way through it, of course they bumped into wolves, bears, pumas, bandits and cannibals but that was part of the fun they used to say. I had wanted to be like them when I was young but mother didn’t like the thought of me running around in the woods when I should be home and raising children. Now I hated the bare thought of children. That someone would be put into this world without a choice wasn’t fair in any way.

Albino was quite big with almost ten thousand habitants, this including the hundreds of farms around it. Albino had no one to control them; in fact the whole world had no one to control them. We only had a few “rules” that wasn’t even rules. They were called the Honorary Suggestions. It was three suggestions that we were suggested to keep, though if we didn’t, there were several different ways to give this person a personal hell.


1 – We suggest that burglary and trespassing is highly banned. If this suggestion may not have been kept by you, you should be ready to either suffer torture but keeping of the things you thieved. Or you could give back the things you stole and no torture will take place. This only applies to thievery. If though trespassing has occurred you are to pay 1000 grey stone plates to the person who the trespassing is touching.


2 – We suggest that murder is strictly forbidden. If this suggestion may not have been kept by you, you should be ready to be killed and only killed.


3 – We suggest that abduction, rape and beating is forbidden. If this suggestion may not have been kept by you, you should be ready to pay 30 000 white stone plates to the person whom it may touch. Or you should be ready to be abducted, raped or beaten yourself and left with one of The Death Granters.


You maybe notice that they say “we”. “We” is a few people that year two hundred and sixty four of the second age, sat down and decided to write three suggestions to the people around them so that peace would be kept. The Honorary Suggestions was actually followed quite strictly and there were only a few who cowardly didn’t follow the Honorary Suggestions, for as you’ve noticed, “we” were clever enough to call them The Honorary Suggestions.

Also you may have noticed that there were a talk of “1000 grey stone plates” and “30 000 white stone plates”. Stone plates is our money and as I’ve said, all natural resources are gone, gold, silver, copper anything that would suit as money, doesn’t exist. So we simply use stones. Grey stone plates are the least valuable, black is second, brown third and white the most valuable. The plates them self is flat, small coin like things with your countries emblem on them. Equinus has a prancing horse, Catarracta has a huge waterfall.

Anyway, Albino is huge. In the middle of the town there is the Urbem. The Urbem is the market place where all the stalls are. The stalls are in all kind of shapes, some are rigid on the ground and some can easily be moved around and some is just a table with the crickets spread out on them. My mother has a rigid one. The boxes she put the crops in are placed on a sort of shelf like thing. You can pull out some boxes and some are tilted up so you can see what’s in them and some are put on the top of the shelf, the ones that is most valuable. All around it she has clothed it with a tight fabric that keeps all kinds of weather outside. The horse is even able to stand inside it as it’s bound to one of the poles that hold the fabric up.

In the middle of the Urbem, a huge horn upon a white stone pillar has been placed. The horn is made of the bones of a wolf and the small flowers painted on it are painted with the blood of the wolf it is said. The horn is placed there for us. If any of the habitants feared for the cities life, they are to blow in the horn and call the people to them. That way we can gather ourselves pretty quick.

Pubs, restaurants and inns were around the Urbem and all of them were popular. The most popular pub was Green Marple’s. Green Marple’s is owned by a grumpy old lady called Marple Rom. Before, her husband owned it and he had given it the name because he loved his wife so much. On his deathbed he had told her that she in no conditions could sell it. Marple was quite mad about it, but she got used to the thought and after a few months she reopened it. She kept the name because it reminded her of him.

However, Marple ran the pub too. She served the ale, mead, wine or scotch that you wanted and talked gossip about the former customer. She stood and leaned over the desk and talked to the customer she was now serving ale and told her that he who left was one weird sprinkle warn, he hadn’t even said anything! How rude, the woman she was talking to would answer. In fact, the sprinkle warns that came here never sat at the five bar stools at the desk, they sat in the shadowy corner where no one else went. There they drank their mead and observed us who sat at the two tables instead.

The favourite restaurant was Iron Folder. This one Plyor owned, he is fifty years old and he lives in it. Everyone came there, anyone that wanted a good bite. It was a long – house and the tables were spread out on the floor. In the north was an enormous fire place, over it, a deer head hung and its glass eyes stared at the customers. Plyor always stood on a balcony over the whole party, underneath the kitchen was. He has employed some young workers to cook the magnificent food that he has combined. His bed is placed on the balcony and when all the people has gone he went to bed with the light from the fire place shining on his eyelids.

And so there is the inn. The inn called The Fair Maiden Inn was a two floor house with only rooms of high quality. The owner, Loretta May, was not fair as the inn says. She is ugly as a rainy morning and lonely as a mountain peak. But the inn is loved by many and all the travellers stay there.

The rest of Albino is first houses where the civilians lived and then some other production houses where they make such things like stone plates or planks. The whole city is surrounded by a great wall that is six meters high and two meters wide. Bricked with stones and dried mud it keeps the people safe from wolves, cannibals or bears or anything your mind will make up. Then there is the forever going forest that starts to spread and then becomes a whole forest and inside that forest, the farms struggled.

“It was an upside down world where you were positive if you were ill and you were negative if you weren’t…” I didn’t listen anymore because I have heard that story eight times. It is the only “education” we get. From that we are six to fourteen you are called to a class where a more and more serious storyteller appears and tells you a more and more serious story. It is there we get our information about the first age and how the world has changed. It was interesting but not interesting enough for me to keep the study up as some souls decided to. They used to study why there was no religion in this second age and some of them even decided to start their own religion or follow the direction of one from the first age. I’ve heard that gives them comfort.

I’m on my way to my part – time job. I work there every third day to get some extra plates for the family. The work is what you would call a tollgate. You had to pay 100 grey stone plates to enter the city and sometimes, if we felt the need, we could check what they had in their carriage or knapsacks. If there was something suspicious like homebrewed mead, we could confiscate the goods and they would have to pay an extra “fine”. Our boss, Rammi Melissa, lived in Milvus, the nearest town to Albino, was very strict with not having to come to Albino herself for some reason but sent a courier our money so we are satisfied.

It is probably a dream job for me, sprinkle warns pass it and they always have something suspicious in their pockets and some of them even told us that they were hunted by something and needed to get into the city as quick as possible without paying the “fine”. If they played really good, we would write up their name and they would be let into the city boarders but they would have to pay on their way out.

Sometimes mother had to stay home and take care of either Barmi or father had to leave and do business with someone in Pisces and then I had to go to the stall instead. People were used to my mother standing there smiling and I was very much not smiling and my many blond hairs on my head wasn’t any like my mother’s auburn hair. Her eyes were also green and mine were grey – blue and as my mother’s smiling eye lines around her eyes were well known around Albino, I was not famous for my hospitality around the stall. That was why no one really dared to trespass on my territorial when I ran the stall.

Anyway, as I crossed my way through the Urbem I faintly saw Mica, my best friend stand at his sisters’ stall and eating a red apple. Mica is very tall and has that sun kissed hair that my mother has fallen in love with. Mica was also sun tanned and has big arms that had memories of lifting many barrels and chests and sacks from carriages. He was very clever and very much thinking about his behaviour around people, he always wanted to make a good impression on everyone. Simply said, he was a lamb, but around me he was more like a lion that said the most khaki things and it was that I liked about him.

“Good morning!” he yelled politely when he could see me. I smiled to answer gave him a friendly poke in the side. His sisters, Molly and Erbez came forth and hugged me around the waist. Molly is eight years old and has the same blond hair as her brother and Erbez is eleven years old and has black, long hair. “Rufin!” they called and I slightly lifted my arms but then realized they wouldn’t let go until I hugged them back.

“How are you?” I asked them and crouched so that I could see them in their eyes.

“We’re very good,” Molly said and Erbez nodded. I smiled to them and rose to Mica.

“And how are you?” I asked and he smiled.

“I’m fine,” he said and crouched beside his sister. “I have to go now, but I’ll be home at six. Okay?” They nodded and hugged him around his neck. Then they went back to the stall and waved to me. Mica raised and took another bite from his apple. Mica’s mother is blind, that’s why his sisters have to work the stall. His father died six years ago so he and his sisters are the only ones working. Mica said he was okay with it but I doubted that he wanted to stay all his life with his mother and work till she died.

Mica lives inside the safe walls of Albino. They have a bigger house than we have. He and his sisters have their own rooms and they have a bathroom inside their house.

We walked slowly to the tollgate and when we got there we crawled into the small booths we had and started our shift with seven black stone plates and one white stone plate an hour. The shift was from ten o’clock to half past five and it was always a great deal of fun.

Today (Tuesday) it was very calm. About ten people an hour and Mica and I had time to talk about the cannibals that had been killed last night. Another group of them had decided to kill the whole city but the men and women that worked as guards had killed them in an hour. Unfortunately or fortunately we have the very good guns left from the first age that was the only things that were good enough to keep. Father and I liked to hunt with bow and arrow but we had a few other guns at home, safe in a chest with a lock. Also in the tollgate we have a pistol each that we can threat unwilling people who doesn’t want to pay the fine. Guards also have a keep of guns in their basement. Guards have to leave everything behind and live in the guard house and there is also the torture chamber with all different kinds of supplies that you can hire if you want to torture someone if there have been a burglar in your house.

“I wish so badly I was there, I heard Plyor was there and he told Raun that told Lagsi that told my mother that Ölingur became a Death Wisher then and walked directly to The Death Granters! Can you believe that young, fat Ölingur wanted to become one!?” Mica said excited and leaned against the desktop.

“But I have heard that Ölingur ate from his friend Ulfur’s dead goat. And it was raw! I think he’s always been into raw meat and now felt the chance to eat it without shame,” I answered and looked down the road where I saw a carriage come along.

“But what is he going to pay with; maybe he brings Ulfur to the company as pay, or that dead goat!” I laughed so hard that I started to cry and I looked as Mica took the grey stone plates from the carriage and barely could stop laughing. The man sitting on the carriage looked at us like we were very rude.

As the clock became half past five I left the booth and said good bye to Mica and good luck to Gáta who was going to take over after me. I strolled to the Iron Folder and ate mashed potatoes with horse beef and apple sauce which tasted magnificent. I ate alone at the end of a long table near the fire place. Plyor saw me from his balcony and decided to go down and talk a bit with me. Plyor and I had been good friends since he taught me how to play the flute. I had played here at nights and had got a pretty good pay for it.

“Does it taste good, my dear girl?” he asked and sat down in front of me. I nodded and wiped away some apple sauce from my chin. Plyor has aged very quickly and some don’t believe that he is only fifty, his hair has turned grey and thin, his face is wrinkled with worries and memories, his teeth yellow and so his eyes.

“How are your pears?” He asked.

“They do okay,” I answered a bit too tired to talk.

“I suspect you heard about Ölingur. Tragic really, he used to come here every night and eat the salted pork and drink my honey – mead. And afterwards he would eat a whole cake for himself, often the one with sugar jam and butter touched cream. I guess that’s why he became so fat.” Plyor laughed and I think I saw a tear in his eye.

“Well, well,” he said after a while, “I see you have company rolling in, good talk,” he tapped my arm, “say hello to your ma and pa from me.” At the words “company rolling in” I raised my head and saw Mica walk towards me.

“Hello there friend,” said Mica and sat down beside me.

“Can I get you something?” I asked him. “Perhaps ale or mead would suit you?”

“Two special – Plyor ale wouldn’t be bad,” Mica said

I raised and went to the kitchen where I ordered ale from some young lad that stood sweating on the other side of the counter. I gave him three black stone plates and walked back with the ale in my hand. I sat down and took a sip from the glass. Mica and I talked for a long time, like we did sometimes. Some of our other friends, or rather, Mica’s other friends came to us and joked around for a while. We ate and mocked the other customers for basically existing. This was one of those things that when you walked away from it you wondered what it was you actually had been talking about because it had always been about nothing and everything. Simple minded conversations that in the blink of an eye could turn into the deepest and darkest place of your very being.

It was past twelve when we got outside the Iron Folder. I followed Mica home. We said that we were going to hunt at the break of dawn the upcoming morning. I gave him a hug then slowly walked back home. It was a two hour long way to walk and I had been riding on a carriage to Albino this morning so I had no other choice than to walk home.

Mica and I met by a coincident. I had followed my mother to the stall and I was lonely. Then I had seen Mica, he was only ten and I was eight so he was running around with another boy and played. I ran up to him and said hello. He had looked at me and smiled and like that we were best friends. We did everything together then, we played together, ran away together, hunted together, applied for that tollgate job together.

When I came home the lights were out and mother, father and Barmi were sleeping. I sneaked into my bed and stared at the roof. There were always two guards around our house, there were around every farm around Albino. It felt safe having them there but also I would’ve liked to stand out there and keep track of the very many enemies we could have.


The next day it started to rain. It was heavy and the drops, big as potatoes, made the muddy road impossible to travel on. Also we couldn’t do much more than give the animals’ food and then help the carriages that was stuck. I had early in the morning rode to Albino and told Mica there wouldn’t be any hunting. He agreed and the wind had shut his door so I galloped home again. All day – dressed in my hood and leather jacket – I helped father dig up carriages. Mother couldn’t go to the Urbem as it was closed because of the heavy rain so she stayed home and took care of Barmi.

Father is a small man, he is shorter than me and he barely has anything else than bones and skin. Although he is strong as an ox and stubborn as a donkey and his head is probably one of the cleverest in Albino. Father has grey hair though it now looks black in the rain. Father is not handsome nor does he love, though father loves his wife Ástael who is also my mother.

When the dark begun to crawl in on us we left the road and walked inside. Mother had made a potato and corn soup for us and when we had taken off our muddy and wet clothes we ate it and let it warm us from inside.

“Plyor says hi by the way,” I said to father and he nodded.

“How is the old rascal, it was such a long time since,” father said and took another spoon of soup.

“He seems fine; the Iron Folder is doing really good.”

“Maybe I should go into town and visit my old friends at their home for a change,” father said to himself and rubbed his chin. Suddenly Barmi started to scream, his cry went deep into the spine and I looked surprised at him. He sat on the floor in his diaper and wasn’t satisfied with the situation at all. Barmi is one year old and he wants all the attention he can get. So when father and I were talking but not with him, his only way to get our attention was to scream and father did as told and picked him up.

They talked to each other for a long while, or dad talked to him and he listened. At half past eight I crawled into bed for hunting next morning. Mother came in at nine and laid Barmi in his bed. Then she quietly sang a song known all over Equinus.


Next Chapter: Chapter 2