Quin and the Magical Parchment
In the sleepy village of Catheire a hundred miles away from the castles of Aeterall in the great country Maedrelladaen, during the Age of Magic, lived a young boy, his mother, father, and his three siblings. The young boy’s name was Quin and his siblings ruthlessly picked on him for being the youngest. His mother favored him with the largest plate at dinner because he was the smallest, and he got the lightest work to do because he was the weakest. Of course, being the youngest, smallest, or weakest meant little to him because he still pitched in with the hardest tasks, never over-ate, and had a big heart.
One day, a traveling merchant arrived in Catheire riding atop of a covered wagon pulled by two mules. The locals knew him well because he came twice a year. He bore news of the outside world from his travels, gifts for friends, and much merchandise to sell the town’s folk. Children loved to hear his tales of far away lands, great battles, and the discovery of lost and hidden treasure. He performed magic tricks for the children as well — many people thought he was a wizard, but the traveler never acknowledged nor denied the fact. He didn’t dress as a wizard either.
When he arrived in town Quin and his siblings greeted the traveling merchant. They had been saving their coins for the entire half-year in the hopes that they might be able to purchase exotic toys and trinkets from the merchant. Quin’s sister fawned over a small doll and handed over her coins to purchase it.
“Ah yes,” said the merchant. “That doll I procured from a far away land called the Kingdom of Lorentia. A slave girl I befriended gave it to me.” Quin’s sister paid and took it gleefully back to the house.
Quin’s elder brothers found a package of seeds. “A very good purchase, if indeed you were to make it!” exclaimed the merchant. “These are Heaven Sprouts. Plant them, water them, and let them grow and they could bring riches beyond belief to you and your family!” The elder siblings eagerly paid and hurried off to plant their new Heaven Sprouts.
Quin lingered back and studied all of the merchandise. “And what is it that you desire?” The traveling merchant asked Quin, who above all was his favorite friend in the entire world.
“I don’t have much money, but I wish for something to help my family,” Quin explained. He held out his hand and jingled the few coins he had in his hand. Both his sister and his brothers had borrowed money from him over the year and failed to return it back to him, despite their promises.
“Ah,” the merchant said after some deliberation. He pulled out a roll of parchment and handed it to Quin. “Draw upon this and your creations will manifest true.” Quin unrolled the parchment and studied the blank surface. It was all he could afford and paid for it. “Quin, be careful how you use the parchment for both good and ill can come of it, and be wary of your siblings and their new possessions. Though they bring great joy, they can also spell certain doom.”
Quin returned home with his roll of parchment. His siblings laughed at him for such a wasteful purchase, but Quin ignored them and stowed the roll away in his small cubbyhole. That day his elder brothers planted the seeds, his sister played with the doll and forgot all of her chores – she said the doll talked and they had become fast friends. Once Quin completed his chores and ate his dinner he sat down alone with the parchment. Using his quill and ink from school, he drew a line on the parchment. After a moment the line soaked into the parchment and disappeared. In the same room his parents were despairing over the loss of a calf, and Quin knew that it would mean less food at the table for the entire family. Morosely, he drew a cow on the parchment, but it faded into the parchment as if it were blotted out bit by bit. Tired, Quin rolled his new possession away and tucked it into his cubbyhole.
The next day, an excited, jubilant cry woke him from his slumber. He found his mother standing by the pen with his father and siblings. Neighbors arrived to look inside the pen. Everyone looked happy. Quin joined them to find a new, healthy cow chewing grass in the pen with the other animals. From then on whenever Quin heard his parents argue over things that the household needed, he would draw them on his parchment, and the next day it would become real. The Lord was really shining upon them, exclaimed his unknowing mother.
Meanwhile, Quin’s brothers tended to their Heaven Sprouts. They watered it every day and it grew fast and tall into the heavens just as the name suggested. It was so tall that they could no longer see where the end of the stalk was. Once it finished growing the elder brothers decided to climb the stalk and see where it would take them. Up and up they climbed until they were no longer visible. Days and nights passed by and the duo finally returned. They each returned with a sack of gold nuggets and told amazing stories of the world above the clouds. They spoke of seeing entire continents and they even glimpsed of a city hovering over the clouds with wooden buildings, arched roofs, and crisscrossing bridges moving by the winds with the help of sails. When they found the end of the stalk, there stood a castle, and on the ground were nuggets of gold. Unable to resist the boys plucked the gold. Or so their story went.
A day had not passed when the clouds above Catheire trembled and ballooned. A scream like the sound of thunder crackled across the lands, the angered voice said, “My gold! My gold! Little filthy creatures have stolen my gold!” From the Heaven Sprout, Quin and his siblings could see a tiny dot emerge in the upward distance. The dot soon became the size of a man at full height even though the man was still high up on the vine. He was a giant and his thunderous screams of rage canvassed the land. Animals ran away, people prayed and hid in their homes. The brothers tried to chop then saw the stalk down, but their ax could not chip away the flesh of the vine and the saw’s teeth were filed off from the thick skin of the heavenward plant.
“We’re doomed!” The brothers of Quin cried.
Quin ran back to his cubbyhole, unrolled his parchment and sat at the table. He drew the tall stalk outside of their house as if it had collapsed and fallen against the Earth. As more wails of doom reached Quin’s ears, the parchment soaked in the image. A thunderous cry came from outside.
Quin thought: But now this giant man is falling to his death! I must do something! He dipped his quill in the ink and drew the giant falling and underneath of it he drew the largest pillow he could muster. The image was absorbed into the parchment. A distant explosion and earthquake announced that the giant had fallen into the Earth. Quin hurried outside and found the Heavenly Sprout lying along the length of the ground crushing all in its path and splintering a mountain in half. A giant puff of dirt and ash mushroomed skyward. A day later cotton balls started to float down from the heavens. The people of Catheire and Quin’s siblings praised the ancient gods for their good fortune. They collected the cotton and sold it for profit. Quin did not tell them that he had done all of this, nor did he show anyone the parchment.
The King of Aeterall saw the mushroom cloud of dirt and soot rising into the air. He set off with is best knights and crossed the valleys and through the newly splintered mountains and found a crater where the dazed giant now sat. The giant attacked the King and his men, and though they fired hundreds of arrows and pinched him with even more spears, the giant did not fall and only grew angrier. He began to roam the land committing violence amongst the towns and villages that stood before him. Once the giant was off of Maedrelladaen’s borders, the King no longer pursed the beast and only sent a knight or two to give the neighboring sovereignties warning of its coming. The King followed the long stalk of the Heavenly Sprout and followed it back to the Village of Catheire.
As all this occurred far away from Quin’s humble and now wealthy village of Catheire, a neighboring village that existed across the border in the nation of Cephrenti was becoming envious of Catheire’s new found fortune. A knight from the neighboring nation of Cephrenti stationed in a fortress notified his Lordship of Maedrelladaen’s fortunes. The Cephrentian King was a noble man and would not fall into the trap of envy and ruin the thousand year truce he had with Maedrelladaen.
The Cephrentian King though had a new wizard in his employ as a court advisor. This wizard had come from a very far away land called Lorentia. In his old land he bewitched the Queen to enslave the poorest of people and stole all the riches from under her nose. The only reason he had left was because a magical talisman in which he had stored his immortal soul into was stolen from his bedchamber. He traveled the land frantically searching for it. At times he could feel the power of his talisman, but it would continue to move. Eventually the wizard ran out of the wealth he pilfered from the Queen and decided to take residence in the Cephrentian Court. The power from the talisman no longer moved and he felt that he could very well rebuild his fortune and search for his soul from the safety of the castle.
When he found the notice concerning Catheire’s fortune, he bewitched the King to form an army and lead it across the border. It would allow him to enter Maedrelladaen and possibly reclaim his talisman. The Cephrentian Army crossed into Maedrelladaen heading north for Catheire just as the King of Maedrelladaen approached from the east. As they both reached the borders of the village, the King found his land being invaded by the Cephrentian Army.
The villagers found themselves besieged by the two armies. Cries of despair and misfortune overtook the people and they found that even with all their wealth, it would not comfort them in this time of hardship. Quin thought very quickly to save his village. Should he kill the soldiers? No, they were people with families as well, Quin thought. He needed to protect the people of his village from the outsiders. He unrolled his parchment and pulled out a map of the village. He drew the map on the parchment as fast and carefully as he could. Around the town he drew a circle and called it a stone wall and said that the wall was twenty feet tall. The ground trembled; Quin ran out of his cottage and saw a wall rising out of the ground to seal off the village.
The evil Cephrentian wizard blasted apart a section of the wall with ease and the Cephrentian Army burst through into the village. Quin watched from his window as the soldiers cut down people he knew. Quin quickly drew a picture of a Cephrentian soldier. As it faded into the parchment, Quin put a great, broad slash through it and let a tear out. Outside a great number of screams echoed in the air. Quin peered out to see a sea of blood and headless and shoulderless bodies dropping off of horses here and there.
The door to Quin’s house flung open and the wizard entered. He immediately went for Quin’s sister screaming, “Give me back that doll or I shall kill you!”
To save his sister, Quin drew the doll falling into his pocket. When the drawing was consumed by the ink-hungry parchment, he glanced up to find that his sister was no longer holding the doll. Quin pulled a lumpy mass of stuffing from his pocket and held the small stuffed animal in his hand. “Is this what you’re looking for?” He cried.
The wizard encroached upon him, his eyes narrow as slits and his teeth clenched. The staff he carried began to glow a bright red. Quin was trapped now behind his desk. His life was about to be expired and it frightened him. Consumed by fear and with no one to comfort him, Quin squeezed the stuffed animal with all his might. To his surprise the wizard began to choke. He sputtered, “My soul! My soul!” His bony arm reached for the doll in Quin’s hand. Quin wrapped his fingers over the doll’s arm and tore it from the socket and the wizard cried as his arm was rent from his body. The wizard prepared to fire his staff, but Quin pulled the other arm out of the doll. Still the wizard crawled forward. “Boy, I am powerful wizard, give me back that talisman and I will give you all the riches and power in the world, whatever you desire!” Quin huddled in the corner of his cottage. He saw the death and despair outside that all the magic had caused; his fellow villagers were slain and so were the soldiers of the Cephrenti Army. Was this doll worth all those lives?
Quin twisted the head off the doll. The wizard’s head spun around and flew off his body.
Quin had heard a story from the traveling merchant once that the blood of a wizard, whether good or bad, held incredible magical powers. Quin dipped his quill into the dead wizards blood and he drew a Cephrenti soldier with his head and shoulders back on. Outside the blood and gore vanished and in its stead the soldiers reappeared. Quin drew the villages that he saw dead and they too became whole again. Things that were destroyed, Quin put back together with his drawings.
The spell cast over the King of Cephrenti was undone and he told the King of Maedrelladaen the story of the wizard and his greed. He and his army left and the truce remained unbroken. The King of Maedrelladaen approached Quin and congratulated him on destroying the evil wizard and he learned of the magical parchment, the doll, and the Heavenly Sprouts. The King wasn’t angry but he asked that the gold be returned to the giant, and he rewarded Quin for being the bravest artist the world could have ever known.
