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The Temple of Ah^Garicah
The Temple of Ah^Garicah
Polkadot and Thug find themselves aboard a hybrid crawling vehicle - half mechanical and half alive - on a 5 day voyage across frozen lakes, white woods, and glaciers. Their only source of warmth against the biting cold is Ink: the very resource they were on this boat to harvest.
Written: June 2023
Number of Pages: 34
First published in: The Polkadot Files Vol I
Setting
Mellowcrest is a sombre grey town situated in the freezing cold country of Winterwell, with below zero temperatures being the norm everyday of the year. The town’s dirt roads and paths wind around snow capped mountains and glaciers, inside which some of the residents even live. There is a poor quality of life. Residents mostly wear tattered clothes and rags, uncombed hair, little to no hygiene. However, it used to be a prettier sight before it got colonized by a monopoly company called the Ink Legion, led by a greed hungry goblin who had set it’s red eye on the most valuable substance found only in Mellowcrest: Ink.
Map of Winterwell - Illustrated in Watercolor by Kiara Maharaj
Excerpt:
Thug had never fixated on a nose before. But the one he stared at now had a mesmerizing factor about it, even if he could only see the half of it. The crooked bridge, no doubt broken in a brawl, the wart on the curve of the nostril, the texture like sandpaper. When she inhaled, the nostril flared outwards like a blooming flower. It allured him.
“You look like a fancy fellow,” said the woman with the nose. “Haven’t seen your kind about. What are you?”
Thug didn’t reply. He was trained not to respond to any question about his identity. Firstly because he was supposed to be something extremely rare. And secondly because he hadn’t a clue of who he was.
“Quiet one, eh?” She was chewing something; her bottom jaw moved in an arc, the way a cow’s or a goat’s did. “Let me take some guesses then, eh? You can’t take any offense if I do. You don’t speak anyway, so I wouldn’t know if I described your likeness to the nether regions of a gargoyle in your language. Let me see. Brown fur and those large bunny ears. But your eyes are like an owl’s. That don’t make sense, does it? And then you have wings. Do them bunnies have wings? Maybe where you come from. Where do you come from?”
Thug wanted to tell her that sneaking a question in after a series of statements wasn’t more effective in coaxing an answer out of him.
“Aren’t you a proper thing,” she went on. Her mouth twisted in a sneer, raising part of her cheek and nostril slightly, which Thug watched with the same fascination. “No more questions from me, then. You’ll just have to hear my story about you. You’re some kind of hybrid traveller. Skies know what you have to do here in this biting cold country. It’s like hell frozen over here. Nobody comes here for a vacation, is what I mean. Oh wait – I got it. You’re here because you’re on the run. You saw the vacancy on some desperate advert. And you – equally, if not more, desperate – struck while the iron was hot.”
She paused to let that settle, gazing at him with narrowed eyes as if still expecting a response from him.
“Clever, though, I must admit. Rest assured, nobody is going to come looking for you here. You might as well have locked yourself up in a dungeon somewhere. A dungeon within a pit within a basement. So, tell me, who’s after you? Come now, there’s no need to be modest. We’re all here for something or the other. Myself, I’ve been –”
“Here we go, Thug. I brought just enough to keep us both warm for another few hours.”
Thug almost melted with relief when his boss returned. She sat next to him, and Thug resisted the urge to snuggle inside her navy blue coat as he always did when he was frightened. Admittedly, he was frightened of this old lady who was starting to look at him too closely. He knew that look well – a look shared by witches, monster hunters, greedy warlocks. Even common folk could sense something powerful and valuable about him. Desire and other vices took over from there.
“Thank you, mam.” He took the vial from his boss. The contents was an extremely unreflective black liquid, warm to the touch. Ink.
The very resource they were on this boat to harvest.
The lady with the nose leaned back in her seat. “So it speaks, eh? A duo?”
“Indeed,” said Polkadot reflexively.
“Odd pair, I must say.” She unveiled her ration of ink from a wrinkly old bag, dipped a kind of rolled up blunt in it, lit it, and took a deep drag out of it. The resulting smoke covered her face. “Don’t dress like you’re from around here. First time at Winterwell?”
“What gave it away?”
“An aura. You’re handling the cold quite well, though. For a tourist. It gets worse. See those trees there?”
Polkadot and Thug followed to where the woman was pointing, far up in the distance where the green-grey treetops met the misty grey sky. Everything was shrouded by ice in some form here, making it uninhabitable to most species. Thug dreaded to think of the creatures that did evolve to survive in these blizzards. Polar bears? White dragons? Yetis?
Snow fell in tiny flakes around them, settling on Thug’s snout. He brushed it away quickly, fearful of catching a cold.
“That’s where we’re heading. The White Woods.” She took another gulp out of her cigarette. The smoke was black, like the ink she burned.
Polkadot tossed the rest of their own ration into the fire. Instantly, the fire kindled brighter as if she had added more firewood to it. The crimson embers rose upwards, mingling with white snowfall. Elsewhere on the ship, someone coughed hoarsely.
“Them ink is sacred around these parts, you see.”
Polkadot nodded. “I take it you’ve done this before?”
“Few times. The trick is to not expect to live another day of harvest. Now, I’ve asked your pet, and I’ll ask you. Why are you here?”
“We’re just passing by.”
“Passing by? Passing by? The cold must have frozen your important brain bits already. Look around you, Miss. Notice any passers-by?”
Thug watched his boss humour the other woman by actually turning her head around to the area. They were sailing – or otherwise crawling – on a ship of sorts, designed by the Legion for traversing over ice. Because the temperature was well below the mark for water to exist, citizens of Winterwell adapted to live without it. Hence, the Ink. The only source of energy. The only means by which to live.
Unfortunately, there was only one place to harvest it from. The Ink Towers.
“There are crowds, actually,” Polkadot replied.
“What?”
“I see children and their parents of various species. There’s a little boy right there. I see them through their ghostly ultramarine outlines. All dead from frostbite, of course.”
“I knew you lot were out of your minds.”
“Are you getting this, Thug? If there ever was a more opportune moment to bring out the quill, it would be now.”
Thug obeyed.
“Do you know what else I see?” Polkadot raised her voice now, catching the attention of the other members on board. “I see priestesses in white robes, whose only business was prayer. They were groped, strangled, left in the ice to die.”
“Missy,” said another man nearby. He had a wiry brown beard resting on his chest, blotched with snowflakes. “I suggest you keep your inside thoughts to yourself. Parts around here don’t take lightly to those ideas.”
“Very good. Thug, write that down. Word for word.”
“He’s not lying,” said the smoking old woman. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Rest assured the crew of this ship are listening. Keeping tabs. They hear a peep about any of that talk and they’re not gonna tolerate it.”
Thug would have taken that as a cue to shut up entirely, but his boss had a different temperament.
“And tell me,” said Polkadot, “are you not sick of these trips? Any sign of the ice overwhelming this crawler, and they wouldn’t hesitate to throw you overboard. Because workers come easily. Tell me – how much do they pay you? Is it enough for gambling your life? Do any of you have a conscience or not? Or are you really this willing to get slaughtered like those priestesses?”
“That’s enough,” said another man, a little further away from the gathered group. He wore a wide brimmed hat over his face. “We don’t talk like that around here. You’d be wise to know.”
Polkadot stood. “Is that a threat?”
The man clenched his fists, not taking any care to hide his impatience. “Take it as you will, missy.”
“Hey!” a voice called from the upper deck. “What’s going on down there?”
The people around Polkadot and Thug scattered.
“That’s what I thought!” It was an official crew member, a sentinel wearing the stark white uniform of the oppressors. He hit his spear against the wooden railing several times. The sound thrummed across the crawler loudly. Menacingly.
The woman with the nose blew out a cloud of smoke which covered her head, her beady eyes narrowed into her layered eyelids. She observed Thug. Thug observed the sizzling vermillion embers on the end of her cigar.
“Trouble causers,” she mumbled from behind the smoke, “the lot of you.”
END OF EXCERPT
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