The Book of Terrus: The Ghosts of Goran

Chapter 5 - Shattered Dreams

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Day number three thousand, six hundred and seventy-two.

Vinie slowly etched another notch onto her calendar. Three hundred and sixty-five notches for each vertical line, ten finished lines. That was a notch for every day that she had spent in the dungeons of Utunma. Twenty-two days ago, Vinie had resignedly traced out another blank year line, her eleventh.

Stepping back from the wall, Vinie took in the sum total of her last decade of life; three thousand, six hundred and seventy-two notches in rocks. Each and every one of those days was indistinguishable from the rest. Only Vinie knew the stories behind the stone lines.

Day number eighteen. Vinie brushed the worn groove with her callused fingertips. That was the day she had finally stopped crying herself to sleep every night. Day number ninety-four. That had been the day she had fallen ill with stomach flu. Pitiful as it might sound, that had actually been a highlight. For a week she had had the company of the prison doctor to break the long, empty monotony of her existence.

Then there was day number three hundred and fifty-seven; her first wedding anniversary. Vinie had celebrated by repeating every single word of the wedding ceremony back to herself, sitting with her knees drawn to her chin on her thin, mouldy cot. Then, with nothing else to do that day but sit, she had repeated the words again.

"From the sea, of the sea, to the sea."

Vinie realized she had said the words aloud. She had started talking to herself somewhere around day two thousand and twelve. It was either that or go days on end without hearing another clear human voice. Occasionally the shouting of other prisoners or the gruff commands of guards could be heard, but they were always muddled, indistinct as they echoed along the black stone corridors. Sometimes the cook would say something like "There ya are" or "Eat up girly" when he dropped off her daily meal. Vinie clung to these words as tightly as she clung to her black pearl each night.

Moving over to the ninth year line, Vinie rubbed the deep mark where the three-thousandth day began. That was the day she had begun work on her map. Today was the day she would finish it.

Inch by painstaking inch, Vinie had carved a copy of the map of Goran into the far wall of her cell. It was enormous, fully large enough to span from corner to corner and ceiling to floor. Working with only a few rusty nails as tools was difficult, and more than a few times Vinie's fingers had bled when the nail slipped. The map was exquisitely detailed though, and looking at her finished progress at the end of every day brought rare and precious flashes of happiness.

The southern peninsula and Utunma nearly touched the floor in the bottom left corner of the cell. From there the western coast dipped and stretched outward, passing the fishing village of Danitesk. North of that was Syrion, a place Vinie had heard much about as a child from traders. Closing her eyes, she could almost imagine the cliffside baths and sandstone buildings laden with ferns. Once she had dreamed of visiting Syrion, a long time ago.

Next came the inlet of the Ramida River, piercing inland straight to Aryna Lake and BlueStone. From there it wasn't far to the vast northern forests. Goran ended in the north at Paledir's Bay, somewhere so cold that water even froze and turned solid. It was at the base of Paledir's Bay that The Teeth started; the mountain range that split Goran cleanly down the center. From her lessons at the school in Utunma as a child, Vinie had learned that there was nothing much east of The Teeth, only open plains and barren deserts. Getting there was only possible by a narrow road through the midpoint of The Teeth, or by sailing around the south coast from the ports at Moaan.