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DIMITRIJE IGNJATOVIC
A Compilation of Fantasy
Dimitrije Ignjatovic
5 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
DIMITRIJE IGNJATOVIC
Preface
This story is the journal of the brave girl called Helmi, as
she goes towards danger until she faces herself. Hopefully
it will expose my taste towards matters gothic, perhaps
sinister, as long as they have no expression of faith or any
kind of religion.
The anonymous author unquestionably has a wide vo-
cabulary, meaning having a wide scope of words to use, yet
in his/her words I found words not known by many, that
even transcend my own comprehension, and he or she
originally used less known or obsolete spellings such as
compleat for ‘complete’, lanthorn for ‘lantern’, and thorght for
‘through’, some of which I have elided, except when crucial
to the pronunciation or to give one the true feel of the lan-
guage he/she had used. The grammar is modern, but there
are still some words that use archaic spellings, now obso-
lete. The archaic pronoun thou is often used in songs, but
somewhere misused.
The anonymous Author can be presumed to be Helmi
herself, but that is never proven anywhere, nor is there any
hint of that anywhere in the book, however, many authors
these days write as if they were someone else, or change
names, tamper with dates, dabble in who-knows-what; but
seeing that there is not a trace of a town such as this
‘Wigeonbridge’ mentioned by ‘Helmi’ early in the book, I
presume the Author wrote sheer fancy, sheer myth, and in
a very emotional way relates Helmi’s adventures through
this enticing, immersive world of fantasy, full of mythical
beings and where nothing is what it seems, where Antoine
de Saint-Exupéry’s words from Le Petit Prince are a prov-
erb:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eye.
7 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
E.
8 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
A Fateful Chance-Meeting
Is that where it all began? No ... I think it all began with
a little chance-meeting, again, with Tarmo, somewhere
near Rummerston. I was then a grown girl of fifteen, and he
was fourteen.
I was wandering across a road called the ‘Lobscouse
Road’ that led to the city’s inn part. Next to the road I saw
a soldier in a cadet uniform that consisted of a green cape
and a grey garment over a white tunic. He had a shock of
bright brown, almost blondish hair and vivid blue eyes. He
was relaxing under a tree. He has also changed during the
four years, but there was no mistaking him.
‘Tarmo?’ I recognised him.
‘Helmi?’ he recognised me, too.
‘I couldn’t wait to find you! After all those years ... it
would be almost impossible to tell it was you.’
‘Look, I now have to train for the soldiers’ bow-and-
arrow training.’
‘Aw, just a second ... ’
‘OK, you can come with me, and watch. I bet I can shove
more than fifty arrows into the bull’s-eye!’
‘Can I just – ’ Before he could answer, I kissed him.
He looked somewhat shy, he blushed, but his eyes spar-
kled. ‘Huh?’ he said confusedly, but there is no confusion in
that gesture.
‘Silly,’ I giggled, ‘I mean it!’
‘Oh. I understand.’ There was a note of sarcasm in his ‘Oh.
I understand.’
While we went to the archers’ training camp which was
across the field, we saw children dancing and singing
‘Ring-a-Ring o’ Roses’:
‘Ring-a-ring o’ roses,
Pocket full of posies,
Atishoo! Atishoo!
We all fall down.’
13 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
After the first drop of rain fell on her, she began regain-
ing her eidolon’s glow, which was now an odd chartreuse,
but soon became pink and her wings jerked as more and
more raindrops fell on her. Her wings flapped faster and
faster as she regained consciousness, and her usual pink
glow was fully regained within minutes. She sprang up
into the air.
‘She’s alive!’ I said in wonder.
‘Wonderful stuff, faeries,’ said a voice behind us. ‘Rain
heals them, and they change children – ’
‘I’m not a changeling!’ shouted Tarmo, and we turned to
find a man in green that stood at the cliff. He went slowly
towards us and knelt before the rejoicing faerie.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘my name’s Ahti.’
22 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
Autumnsdale
‘What, er, who was that tree in that forest, that nearly got
me killed?!’ Pink asked Ahti.
‘That forest,’ Ahti told Pink and us, ‘you have just passed,
was no ordinary forest, but a forest by Sorrow cursed. I am
one of the many guardians of the city below, that is called
Autumnsdale, whose inhabitants have been rendered un-
witting by their sorrow and they’ve locked themselves in-
side their houses and one can’t extract anything useful
from their minds. One has to go past this wit plague that
will last for one hundred years that has begun for their sor-
rowful remembrance of the late hero named Ensio, that
died in fire fighting the dragon in the gorge of Hyacinthia;
they have lost their wits till the plague ends. I will guide
you up Autumnsdale.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
As we passed down the smooth side of the cliff-cut
mountain, and through the deserted streets of Au-
tumnsdale, Ahti guiding us, the rain grew stronger and
stronger still. We heard a thunder and a rush of wind.
‘Oh great ... ’ said Tarmo.
When we approached the palace at the far end, we
couldn’t bear anymore the storm.
‘Go on, hurry,’ Ahti hurried us, ‘we have no time to
waste.’
The city’s palace was a towering, ominous-looking
building; in front of it lay the corpse of a boy, and the city’s
King, a crowned man in red, with long grey hair, seemed to
be mourning the boy.
‘He’s – he’s killed the Prince – he’s killed my son Manne
– ’ he stammered ‘ – for Sorrow!’ he screamed. ‘That foul
villain – the enemy of Autumnsdale – ’ he stammered, mad
with sorrow. ‘Finnur, the Dragon of the Gorge – he – he – ’
He broke into tears and uttered some unintelligible words,
much like ‘over Draughtsdale he abideth,’ then ‘Manne
coming after you,’ then he collapsed, then cried, ‘Revenge!’
23 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
That one word and he died. O, how can I forget this agony,
this plague?
‘There goes the King of Autumnsdale. He couldn’t handle
the wit-plague,’ Ahti told us with a strange expression I
haven’t forgotten until now, on his face about fifty years of
age. It was an ironical, yet calm expression; he seemed to
be smiling hypocritically, but he wasn’t at all.
Uneasily, we went and reached the mountain wall we
couldn’t avoid save for climbing it. We climbed the moun-
tain wall and found a cave. Then the storm stopped, and
we realised it was early morning.
The cave stretched like a corridor to the opposite of the
mountains, from whence we saw a city.
The city was, luckily, very populated. The top part of
this city was a triangle-based tower on its castle that had a
huge icosahedral roof-ornament whose one side was at-
tached to the otherwise triangular rooftop.
The castle was whole in regular shapes – the King that
founded the city was of a scholarly class.
The city was divided into five parts – the main part with
the castle, the inn part of the city, the market square, the
library and the arable fields with small forests.
24 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
The Rummer
‘This city,’ Ahti said all of a sudden, ‘is Draughtsdale.’
‘Most famous for its inns, I deduce from its name,’ Tarmo
said.
‘Tarmo!’ I squealed chidingly.
‘This city is my home,’ Ahti said, ‘and I, though guarding
another city, am familiar with it. I will get you a drink as
gratitude to you for finding me a way to get home quick.’
‘Well, not really quick,’ claimed Kalevi the pickpocket.
We descended the mountain and found ourselves in the
main part of the city. As we went through the crowded
streets we saw we were going up ‘Sawyer Avenue’, then up
‘Shelterwood Lane’, and then ‘Swingletree Street’, then we
ended up in the inn part of the city.
We entered an inn whose sign had a picture with sixty-
four eight-point stars and a sun-in-splendour with thirty-
two rays.
It was a poets’ inn – there were poets inside that recited
their poems, but also there were ordinary barflies there
that hearkened to the poets reciting.
‘What do you want, Ahti, and what do the strangers
want?’ roared the innkeeper.
‘Can you get us three beers for forty pence?’ said Ahti.
The innkeeper shook his head, ‘Nah.’ ‘Fifty?’ ‘Nah.’ ‘Sixty?’
‘Nah. Listen. Three beers cost one mark and twenty pence!’
‘Boy, how prices have risen since I’ve last been here!’ said
Ahti, paying exactly a mark coin, and two smaller coins,
each smaller coin of ten pence. The innkeeper took the
money and gave us three rummers full of beer.
‘Yuck,’ I said, ‘I’ve never drunk such a – ’
‘What do I get?’
‘Apple juice for the boy, please.’ said Ahti.
‘Er,’ said the innkeeper with the most sarcastic expres-
sion I’ve ever seen, ‘that will be twenty pence.’
Ahti paid two more coins, each of ten pence, and Kalevi
got a rummer full of apple juice. I wished I was to drink
25 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
tinued happily, ‘and I’m not yet bored. You children may
not remmember me. My name is Pasi. I was the local sage
back then, they came to me for wise advice. Modern sages,
they are usually young and they peddle some easy rhymes
that sound wise, the word sage has lost its true meaning!’
‘So ... what would one do if he was born as an illegitimate
child, has lived with a cruel family for eleven years where
he has been treated as a slave, and still cannot stand mock-
ing by children and called a bastard?’
‘You should find someone who truly understands what
sufferings you’re in.’
‘Someone poorer than me?’
‘Yes. The one who told you that said it well. But I am still
very unhappy. People don’t come here often, as I’ve said
before. That is because of a dragon, named Finnur, that
lives here, and that no wise man would risk his life to de-
scend into this gorge because of him.’
‘Er ... ’ I said, the picture of Tarmo fighting Finnur flitting
like fire through my mind, ‘we defeated Finnur.’
‘Verily?’ he asked.
‘Verily,’ I answered. ‘We’ll tell everyone who has been
avoiding the dragon that they may freely enter the gorge for
advice from Pasi, the One and Only Sage.’
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘Er, goodbye,’ Tarmo said.
‘Goodbye.’
We went out from the cave and down the gorge. The air
was pleasantly cold. It seemed that even our footsteps were
ecchoing through the gorge.
At length, the gorge opened up and before us there was a
city. It was more marvellous than any city I ever saw; espe-
cially the palace stood out. It was made of bricks of various
colours, the highest tower was a bit higher than the gorge
was, and each several brick was comprised of four equal
cubes, in different formations, and the market-square was
the next more impressive – it had a podium where travel-
ling actors could play – the famous Playhouse described in
The Playhouse.
‘Look,’ said Kalevi, ‘this place looks familiar!’
28 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
A mischief as he mak’th.
Such easy ways, to act in plays,
As his role he forsak’th.
‘And play, my love, the play’s alive,
O such a rite play we,
Not until the break of day,
We’ll part this company.’
I’ve loved plays since I was adopted by the Silvens, and
now I saw a play, or rather, a part of a play, with Tarmo.
‘This way to the forest,’ the peasant said, and I snapped
back to attention.
The forest was a nice lilac forest. The peasant led us half-
way through, where the path began to rise.
‘I’ll leave you here. This is the path out of Starvelingham.’
He went back to Starvelingham, leaving us there.
Halfway up and out of the gorge, we met the proverbial
Four Faeries, the Faerie Queens.
They also were very small, and had wings, and could fly,
like Pink, but these were in different colours. Unlike Pink,
they wore small crowns.
I didn’t recognise them at first, but Pink pointed out,
‘There’s my Queen!’
The first was a bright chartreuse-green; the second was a
shiny, silvery blue; the third was Pink’s shade of a pale mix
between pink and magenta; and the fourth was a shiny,
pure yellow that almost had an orange-yellow tint about it.
The yellow one said,
‘We are the four Faerie-queens, as many of you would say,
Whom many would disdain, but we will help today.
We are just spirits of no common rate,
Whom our people hath forsaken, to this date.’
‘Peaseblossom!’ said the green one.
‘Cobweb!’ said the blue one.
‘Moth!’ the pink one.
‘And Mustardseed!’
said the yellow one. The yellow faerie continued.
31 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
‘We are connected, Pink,’ said Moth, and her voice ech-
oed around Pink.
Pink flew up and we went up, out of the gorge, and end-
ing at the opposite end of Lobscouse Road in Rueingham.
33 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
Conclusion
Since my achievement, life started getting better for me –
I was enjoying it. I enjoyed everything round myself, even
wrote verse about idyllic vistas throughout the regions of
Fianchia that were easily accessible from Oxendale. At
those poems Tarmo would laugh, at some I would laugh,
too, for I was ill at verse.
Since then, when I got cured, my love for Tarmo became
increasingly natural, as I was more wont to it, as Tarmo
was more wont to it – even, methought, some of his scorn
disappeared. However, Mrs Silven never thought me wont
to love until the next full moon.
The full moon was also shining on that night two years
later, when I was seventeen and Tarmo was sixteen. It was
then that we got married. There was a feast at the Silvens’
house that I will never forget – Pink called faeries in to sing
and dance in the house.
Our adventures I will never forget, even though they
now seem like a distant, long, but pleasant, faerie dream;
thus I want to set them down, to have them leave a trace. It
is an instinct that one can never suppress – something
grown into everyone’s nature.
Four years after mine and Tarmo’s marriage, Kalevi was
fifteen, and he has grown into a responsible man who never
thought of a crime since I got cured. He grew into a good
soldier cadet, though his dishevelled, strikingly blond hair
showed his adventurous nature, despite his quietude.
By then, Kastehelmi has grown out of her submissive
character, and thinking she’s not human in some way, and
got well educated, but as she was younger when she ran
from home than I was when I met the Silvens, she men-
tioned nothing like my sour grapes attitude, meaning she
matured quicker than I did, and she got to know the lan-
guage and the world around herself better. Both of us
passed the Life’s course the same way.
41 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
The End
42 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
DIMITRIJE IGNJATOVIC
Bonus
the alder wood had already changed into a light lilac forest.
To the left of the path, there was a batch of nettles poking
out as undergrowth. Acanthio handled the nettle stings
pretty well, but Asky got stung on the nettles and with
some scratching and attempts to suppress panicking, he
moved out.
There was a clearing in the lilac forest in which a young
woman of about thirty, apparently a maid-servant, was
kneeling on the ground looking for something.
‘Hello, visitors,’ she said, rolling the ‘r’ sound just like
Wormwood the Seric, except her voice was a bit nasal.
‘Sure yis must be wandering from another country.’
‘Yes, well, Asky here really looks like a stranger, but one
would rarely get visitors here,’ said Acanthio. ‘So what’re
you up to?’
‘I do be collecting shrooms for Master Rico.’ She got up,
wiping her dress with her hands. ‘Will yis join me? Me
hands be all dirty.’
‘No, we’re looking for Rico.’
‘Oh, I be afraid yis do be after missing him,’ she said.
‘Master Rico’s hut bes to the right of this clearing.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Bye.’
Asky and Acanthio turned back, then left. There was
more grass in this forest. The grass was almost covering the
lilacs. They walked on for half an hour, and then the path
turned left, and within twenty yards, a huge clearing
opened in front of them. In the middle of it, there was a
house with a very big horse-stable.
There was a man of about thirty-five, with dark brown
hair, in a pale red doublet with a frilled neck, burgundy-red
knickerbockers, knee-length black boots, meaning he was
apparently an Eques.
‘Ahoy Rico!’ Acanthio bellowed. ‘Can you give me an-
other horse?’
‘Well, Acanthio,’ he said, as Asky and Acanthio ap-
proached, ‘if you’re going to have another of my horses for
nothing – ’
51 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
They left.
Asky had remembered.
Although he is accustomed now to such a world as this,
and delighted by its beauties, he is still from another world.
He is only in Emoticon to find his lost sense of reasoning,
some of which is shattered and scattered throughout this
world. Known as Emoticon.
As they went to the right from where they entered, to
the gate on that side, Asky said, ‘Acanthio my friend, listen;
when we reach the gate, we will part; and I will proceed up
the mountain and quest for my Reason alone.’
He proceeded somewhat in front of Acanthio. ‘Come. Al-
though we will part now, we will forever be friends.’
‘Asky?’
Asky proceeded.
Acanthio ran with him.
‘Asky!’ he cried, and followed him.
‘You can have Horace!’
‘You need me!’ he said, panting, arriving beside Asky. ‘For
one more situation.’ He pointed at two guards. The guards
had long handled spears that had curved blades projecting
at the base of the spearheads. ‘They’ve got partisans.’ It was
clear the spears were called partisans or some such.
Asky neared the guards, who said ‘Halt!’
‘Hello,’ Asky said, ‘I want to pass. We’re friends of Stall-
worth, and we want to go into the mountains.’
‘What!’
‘What, are they dangerous?’
‘No, but behind them is another realm’s territory.’
‘I won’t go there, then.’
The guard moved. ‘See, I didn’t need you!’ Asky laughed.
Asky felt Nepenthe leading him now, and a complete fear-
lessness.
Asky and Acanthio met beside a light birch wood; the
breeze was pleasantly cold and fresh. It brought Asky back
many memories.
‘You have helped me a lot, Acanthio. You can return to
Agricia now. We may now part. I am a bit reluctant, but
55 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
his long-time love! She had exactly the same voice as Ne-
penthe ... what could this mean?
‘Oh, it seems Mr Montgomery is late again.’
‘Carolyn, my nepenthe!’
‘ ... are not synonymous to – hello, Clarence. Mad as
usual?’
‘The opposite. I’m a reasonable man now.’
The rest of his classes he passed in a grown-up, reason-
able manner.
The End
57 The Lost Past
Finishing the Unfinished
Dimitrije Ignjatovic
Dr Ivana Ribara 13
11077 Beograd
Republic of Serbia
mitai@eunet.yu