Osbert Withers
“Son of an ealdorman, born to write history as it is made.”
The written word is Power, so say the monks in their monasteries. The written word is Doom, so says Ælfrid and his Book of Codes. The written word is Legend, so says Beowulf.
Osbert’s father was an ambitious man. For many, excess breeds fetid stagnation and dazed gluttony. For Cyneberht, excess bred opportunity. He recognized the value of the written word, and wanted to utilize such a rare and valuable resource. Rather than leave his legacy to the monks, Cyneberht turned to his son.
When other boys his age were learning to lead a fyrd, Ostbert was learning to read. When other boys his age were working the land, Osbert was learning to write. Countless hours spent hunched over parchment, perusing poems and prose; legends and battles alongside math and rhetoric.
It was not until many years later, after his father had died and Osbert had become a man, that he found some of his late patriarch’s ambition. No longer content to scribe the comings and goings around him, the ealdorman’s son set out to experience some of the myths he had been reading so often about.
“Never wander the weald and willows, where time holds no dominion.”
It was sound advice, borne from the wisdom of a dozen generations. Some claim elves make their court there, bargaining away the mortal lives of those who stumble upon their happenings. Others claim the disappearances to be the work of ettin, whose fiercely defended ruins dot the countryside.
Whether it be elves, ettin, or some other strange creature or being, one thread of truth links the branching theories: All those who wander there are indeed lost.
Osbert was lost. Like any man he scoffed at the wisdom of those smarter and more experienced than him. Like any man he believed that where others had failed he would succeed. Like any man he was wrong. However, he did not find ettin in the weald. He did not find elves quite yet. He found twisted trees caressing and constricting the broken stonework of a ruin long abandoned. Branches and vines snaked their way through cracked stone, undoing the order imposed by the original builders. Roots sapped the foundations of walls long crumbled, as if to tear out competing roots of an invasive species.
Despite this an archway remained, held up by the same flora that had consumed any sign of civilization around it. The slow clash of an unstoppable force and a seemingly immovable object.
“Deals are made with hand and mouth; both deed and word can damn you.”
It was as if the archway were whispering; a quiet cracking emanating from the very foundation of the world, as if this struggle of stone and vine continued downward into the bones of the earth. As he approached, the hairs on the back of Osbert’s neck heralded the arrival of a force unseen yet not unfelt. It beckoned him with the invisible hands of wyrd, the piper’s tune leading yet another child of this world into the wilds of another.
Osbert awoke on his back, the sun breaking through the treetops to splatter the ground with both light and warmth. He found himself no longer near a ruin reclaimed by nature, but a structure well maintained and blessedly devoid of the beckoning hands of wyrd. He was somewhere else. The earth here did not reject this stone arch. It was not attempting to remove the intrusion. He had walked through a doorway. He was on the other side. He could not go back.
And so, he went onward.
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“Son of an ealdorman, born to write history as it is made.”
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