The young boy quarreled each time she tried to put him abed, and would never settle between the old linen sheets until she promised to tell him a story. He did not seem to mind which story, or whether or not he had heard it a thousand times before. It mattered only that she sit at the foot of his bed and regale him as he drifted off to sleep.
“Is there a story you’d especially prefer tonight?” Alyson asked the orphan, settling on his straw mattress. Whilst all the other boys and girls slept snugly, exhausted by long days of chores and play and lulled by the sound of waves that permeated the orphanage’s wooden walls. The sea air always tired them out, but not this one.
“Any old tale will do,” Thomas said blandly, rolling about and half burying his head beneath the carefully stitched goose down pillow. “Just so long as it is true.”
Alyson took a deep breath and simply started with the first story that came to mind. She had attended mass that day and the subject of the sermon still sang in her heart.
“Have you ever heard of the Godsland, far out in God’s Domain?” She asked, putting a note of myster in her tone.
“T’isn’t a story if you ask questions,” Thomas growled irritably, voice muffled by the pillow. Alyson took another deep breath, expanding her lungs as that her laced bodice would allow.
“Well the Godlsand is where all good boys and girls, and all true men and women aye, go after they die in this life.” Alyson untangled her hands from her brown woolen skirts as she relaxed into the familiar story. “There they feast and make merry and the greatest and noblest of them are chosen as the Lord’s servants, called angels. He gives them wings and the power to become invisible and they help him in bringing the chaste souls to the Godsland to prosper in eternity.”
Thomas rolled slightly, emitting small suckling sounds around his thumb. He was not out yet; Alyson knew that the moment she rose he would come up with some question or another, and so she went on.
“God made his land first, and the land of men second, and surrounded it by the great Razor Reefs and put monsters in the sea so that not even the most skilled skipper would ever sail out of the land of men and live. Last he made two more great lands far to the north and south, invisible in the greatness of his domain. Far from where their inhabitants might ever reach the Godsland or the land of men. For only the evilest and darkest souls are sent to those isles…”
Thomas wriggled and stretched and then lay still, breathing evenly; asleep.
“But that dear boy,” Alyson whispered as she rose deftly and tucked the sheets up around his chin, “is a tale for another time, perhaps when you’re old enough to attend the church mass yourself.” She moved away on the balls of her feet, as silent as a spirit.
Lover Fighter Writer 