Spelling Errors

The scream of a hundred days drew to a close and silence covered the land.

The choir of villagers were delirious with exhaustion. Some of them had been at the chant for a week without sleep in order to draw God ever closer. The last few months had been spent screaming in a foreign tongue and the sudden absence of noise felt oppressive. The choir collapsed in a tangled heap onto the threadbare ground, the last of their ululations spent in service of a higher purpose that at least half of them didn't believe in.

Osric the wizard felt the crushing weight of expectations as all eyes in the village turned on him. When he had arrived in the village all those years ago, the eternal night had only just begun. The people were desperate for a holy man to intercede and bring light back to the land. They were willing to overlook his apparent flaws; faint hope was better than none.

"Friends!" he whispered, "The great time of awaiting is now upon us. Scripture says we must be patient and our efforts to wake God shall be rewarded. Be as silent and still as you can. Our quiet meditation is all God requires from us. Peace now. All we can do is wait."

A long-haired blasphemer near the back of the crowd muttered something obscene and was roundly shushed by the devoted.

Osric cast a rune with his hands - peace and silence. The villagers bowed their heads and contemplated the eternal mysteries which would shortly be revealed to them. With their eyes off him, Osric let out a shudder. He prayed that this would work. No one remembered what the stars looked like and the crumbs of food they foraged were more scarce than ever. It felt like the end of days. If this doesn't work, he thought, it might as well be.

The villagers retreated to their huts, huddling together for warmth and muttering stories about better days to come. They glanced at the towering mountain in the distance where God was said to reside. It was impossibly tall, an unnatural cylinder in a world that was little more than an unbounded flat plane.

The Queen's Guard came for Osric while he slept. In deference to his predictions, they wore muffled boots to keep from breaking the vow of silence. A thick wad of something unidentifiable and foul smelling was shoved into his snoring mouth, and he was awoken by a series of thumps to the side of his face. Woozy and freezing, he was carried through the darkness and into what remained of the Grand Palace.

The few villagers who were still awake pretended not to notice his prone form being paraded through the streets. It didn't pay to catch the eyes of The Queen's Guard, not if you wanted your eyes to stay in their sockets. Perhaps their wizard was a fraud. Perhaps this was divine punishment. Perhaps the world would be on fire soon. Or perhaps the seer of visions was right when he promised to wake God from her eternal slumber.

The grass was thin in the courtyard. Crumbling statues loomed out of the shadows with deformed faces and decaying eyes. The dank air was greedily sniffed up Osric's bloody nose as he struggled to stay conscious. The guards tipped him on to the hard floor, stepped back, and drew their thin swords. Each wickedly thin point was directed at the wizard's neck. There was no spell he knew for post-mortem re-capitation. In truth, the spells he knew were of a more practical variety. He could teach a woman to weave the tough grass that surrounded them into various cloths. His knowledge of which beasties were edible was commendable. And, at a pinch, he could direct midwives while they did the work of bringing new life into the world. Utterly, relentlessly, practical magic.

And he could read.

The gift had been passed down to him from his father. There were only scraps of writing in the land. Fragments of a world which was forever lost to them. Bizarre science-fiction tales about how to wash clothes in mythical machines. Shopping lists which were sung as canticles. A poem for a birthday child. All charming and highly significant. But nothing which was of any particular help to the few remaining survivors in a world abandoned.

Osric was the one who found the manual. It was impossibly large - far taller than a man - and the pages were heavy with dust. It had taken a team to open the pages, enlisting animals to pry them apart to reveal their secrets. There, printed in black and white, was the spell to control the universe. From what they knew, the old ones were a race of lumbering giants; slow and terrifying. The wizard's great leap was to eke out the words of the holy book for as long as possible. What was seconds to the founders of the world, were months to those they had abandoned. And so the wizard convinced a village to spend several months singing the incantation.

And now it was over and all hope was gone.

The Queen's Guard approached, swords wavering. Osric's waved his finger in what he hoped was mystical fashion and whispered a spell of protection. The guards hesitated, which was all he really needed. Every second counted.

"God Save The Queen," one of the guards whispered. Oscric's magic was useful against the mundane villagers, but one born of royal blood was unlikely to be fooled by his cheap tricks and earnest diversion.

Her Majesty strode towards him on bare feet. Sceptical as she might be, there was no use taking the risk of making a noise and angering God. Orsic glanced up, just for a moment, before his head was roughly pushed to the floor by a guardsman. An instant was all it took. She had aged considerably since the wizard had last seen her. A dozen months ago he had been regaling her with tales of scientific discovery. She was but a girl then, all pigtails and mock solemnity. The fairest queen the village had ever seen. But today she was a raddled old crone. Withered and blistered, hair matted and faded, her voice a death rattle.

"Wizard!" she hissed, "Will this work?"

This was a surprisingly complex question. The land had been dark for decades - possibly centuries if the records were to be believed. When he had discovered the sacred manual, it opened a world of hope which had been lost for so long. The Wizard had devoted half his life to the study of its confusing runes with very little to show for it.

"Your majesty, it will work!" He didn't even convince himself.

The queen was visibly dying before his eyes. Great clumps of hair fell from her scalp and her last few teeth clattered to the ground. The guards drew close to her in anticipation of the coming rebirth. The wizard trembled as her voice coughed forth, "Liar!"

"Majesty, please! Perhaps the incantation was inexact. We can try again. God will hear us and we will bring light back to the land."

The queen's hand was shaking as it pointed to his throat. "Off with his…"

She never completed the execution order. A noise like no other rang out, deafening the village. The mountain where God lived was singing! A hazy blue glow began shining forth, growing brighter as the terrible noise grew louder. Every villager woke from their slumber and stumbled into the ethereal glow.

The queen lay forgotten on the floor. Her body withering away into dust, becoming one with the ground.

The wizard screamed with joy, his words barely heard by the guards. "Our spell worked! Alexa has awoken!"

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on this story. Did you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me 😃

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