LITERATURE FEATURE SERIES

Log 01: The Long Voyage

I have been running for so long that I have lost track of where I am. Battered and beaten, as the old man that I have become, the chains rattling along my legs are the only reminder of the past I have lived.

A raid I made on that fateful day, a damned search of some scraps of bread to feed the little one’s mouth saw me thrown in jail for half the time of my life. Condemned and marked like a criminal of the Most High God. Torn from my family’s side. Torn from my little girl’s eyes.

For years and years, I waited and prayed. Hoping for my chance to overcome this trial, to repent for my sins and be reunited with my little one once again. But one day, something changed. In one day, I finally understood…there was no redemption waiting for me, a forgotten soul.

I felt the rebellion, long dead and buried in that hellhole of human’s disgust and tragedy I had served, returned with fervour as the days passed me by. Now closer to death’s door, I realised that this was the will of God. And I was never in the wrong. I deserved more.

Slowly but surely the desire grew. The desire for a new start. The thought of freedom draped across my back, the lost years have spent in regret, stolen from me, I intended to get it back. I needed it back.

Now I stumble upon rocky slops and high mountain devoid of life, devoid of breath, away from my shackled bars and imminent death. Blistered soles, hunger ravished body with nothing but this tattered cloak across my back. All to escape the hand that fate has dealt me. But I have found a way, a way to cheat fate.

Stories of a paradise place, a holy land where wishes come true. I fear this lust of mine awakened with the birth of that word. It was the rumours, tales they whispered on the nights we prison folk bounded away from the monsters that haunted us. It was the place we could only dream of in our steel cages but could never reach. But I, Valjohn, a forgotten soldier of God, a crusader of the cursed age of 68, found a way.

Betraying the friends and brothers I have bounded with all these years, I chipped away at the locks when no one was looking. I dug long and hard at the rocks till they gave way. A long time of planning and looking over my shoulders. But no one suspected the aging man. When the stars align on that rare moment and rare luck, I made my getaway and shot up north. Abandoning everyone and everything I built with these two hands. Putting everything up to gamble and pure chance, I could only push forward for as long as I could.

Now I lay at the end of my road, amidst the twilight-dusk with nothing but my fading memories of my only jewel in life, my humble child, to keep me company at the very end. For a life lived such as mine, I can only wish for a chance to relieve those painful but fortunate days. When I finally close my eyes, I wish with all my heart for all the luck of the world upon that child.

With one last attempt, I look up at the flooding light across my eyes. There I saw it. The beacon in sight. The light house pass.