The Urn Read online

  I carried the urn to where the ground began to rise at the clearing’s edge and where a tree grew of a kind that I had never seen before. It had a strange, tapered bottle-shaped trunk, and held its long thin branches outward four feet above my head where broad green leaves grew and thin seed pods as long as my forearm dangled.

  But like the search for the falling “star” that marked the passing of a soul into death, it was a Transylvanian tradition to place a fir tree at the head of my master’s coffin. As I had neither fir tree nor coffin, I thought the curious but wholesome-looking plant would do as well as a manifestation of the tree of life.

  I had decided to leave the master’s sad remains within the urn, and deemed it a fitting place, but a wave of sorrow washed over me again. We had come so close!

  As I knelt by his urn, my eyes roved tenderly over it as tears spilled out. Well, enough then. Instead of a vessel for resurrection, the urn would take him to his eternal rest.

  I turned to the unusual tree and started digging by its roots with my shovel, easily cutting into the black earth. I fell back on my knees to weep from time to time, looking up through tears to see the master’s tree was ringed in by a group of taller trees of a different kind that grew up the slope away from the clearing to where they formed part of the green girdle for the closest jungle giants that cast their leafy boughs high overhead.

  I could not help but be cheered to see this as a suitable honor guard, and so I continued digging in the fertile soil and dug until I found a flat, rectangular stone, and then another. Turning them over in my hands, I saw that these had not been shaped by luck but by craft, and I decided they must have marked some ancient structure, long forgotten now, and gone.

  There was no time to give it much thought, for whatever civilization might have laid the stones was no longer in evidence, and had disappeared into the history of the Dark Continent.

  So, I flung the stones aside for later use in my own building and dug the grave as the tropical heat soaked me through my shirt and pants, until the hole was deep enough that I could set the urn upon its side within.

  Then, I retreated to where I had left my coat by the yurt, and from its pocket I drew the master’s book. I paged through nostalgically before taking out his secret map. This, I kissed, re-folded and placed inside the cover before carrying the book to the grave where I knelt to slip it into the urn. It was fitting that he take his secrets with him.

  The violence of the shipwreck had damaged one of the hinges that held the vented lid to the urn, and this had given me the idea of removing the flat piece of armored metal altogether and using its surface as a grave marker for upon it to either side of the opening were etched the stylized symbols of my master’s order.

  I saw no purpose to hiding his presence in such a savage wilderness, and I took some solace from the fact that though I also seemed fated to disappear here on this foreign shore, to be an unnamed set of bleaching bones, at least someone might chance upon the headstone and emblem and tremble at the sight of my master’s sigil.

  And they’d remember him.

  But not as I remembered him, as a generous master, and I liked to think at times that he might have thought of me as a loving servant—or a friend perhaps? He was misunderstood by all who judged him for his history. I had listened to him when he cared to speak, and he did from time to time over my many decades of service.

  I remembered him drunk on his favorite drink, for so he could become after feasting, but he would speak to me then of his dreams and fantasies and his past. It was at such a time that I learned of his ancient battles with the Turks, and the dreaded Muslims; and he had spoken of the terrible vengeance he would carry out upon all traitors.

  And at those times or other, often I thought it was the isolation of his life in the dark that had him musing, for he had yearned at those times to be someone new.

  This was perhaps because his great and terrible deeds would forever precede him, and had been distorted by time and enemies into great and terrible lies. In those times that he had thought this, he had expressed a wish that he might have been instead reborn like a wolf free in the wild, owing loyalty only to his nature and to the world beneath his feet.

  How he wished that he might run the earth’s rolling green miles without the weight of responsibility like a chain around his neck. That he might be free to live his life.

  All his power and his ambition had rewarded him with nothing but hatred and isolation. He was forever alone. While that thought did assuage my sorrow for having lost him from my life to his restful peace, it did nothing to comfort me about his death.

  “You are free now, Master,” I wept as I folded earth over his grave. “You are free.”

  CHAPTER 8

  FROM THE GYPSY HORVAT’S JOURNAL

  3rd January, 1894. Orphan

  I no longer accurately measure the days and weeks but if my calculations are correct, I am into a new year but I have no time to celebrate. At least I am warm and have food and water, which is something for which I feel fortunate. The dangerous life around the yurt has kept me in, and left me much time to write. Creatures are in the bushes and trees that edge the clearing, so I will update my journal to pass the time and avoid being eaten.

  In the days and weeks that followed the sad burial, I continued to work on my jungle home; unsure of how long I might survive, but certain I would never see my master or my homeland again. While I would always admit to having a heavy heart at this time, I was pleased to be busy with the realities of life in this dangerous place.

  My daily searches along the beach were rewarded more often than they were not. I found sheets of painted wood panel that I recognized as coming from the Westerner’s main companionway. These were damaged but with careful applications of my churi knife and axe, I could whittle them into the shapes I required to decorate and fortify my yurt’s canvas walls.

  Bracing and reinforcing those with wire, woven branches and pieces of sheet metal from the steamship’s ventilation had allowed me to add windows that faced each other in walls to either side of the west wall where I had made my entrance.

  I would eventually need heating and cooking fires within the shelter, and so required access to fresh air without opening my home to the dangers that surrounded the clearing. Once I’d designed and framed in these windows, I used stout green branches from the surrounding jungle to weave a protective and secure screen for each that would allow a breeze in and keep predators out. I used simple flaps of canvas to cover them at night when the insects were at their worst.

  The entrance? Well that had presented me with a problem, as I’d left a low gap in the initial sailcloth wall that was inefficient and awkward, but that was easy to defend.

  Then I had a piece of luck one day while beachcombing and came upon a solid mahogany door still in its wooden frame, weathered, but little damaged from its time in the sea. Again, I had to attribute it to the destroyed steamer that had sunk and marooned me.

  While it presented a difficult task for me to haul it from the distant location where I discovered it to the clearing, and then lifting it into place; it allowed me to extend and fortify the western wall of my home while creating an efficient and secure portal.

  Its locking mechanism was broken, but I resolved that issue by fashioning a simple latch of hardwood that I hung on the inside of the door and affixed to the frame. This latch would fall into place whenever I shut the door and was opened again by pulling on a woven rawhide drawstring that I had threaded from inside and through a small hole in the wall to where I’d hidden it in the rafters overhead.

  Later, I found and dragged back several sheets of metal that I assumed came from the Westerner’s lower decks or engine room. Once these were installed they gave my yurt’s inner walls another armored layer.

  Following another storm, I set out early one morning armed with sword and pistol to search the beach and some twist of luck led me to a stretch of sand covered with a great wedge of small black rocks that I
quickly identified as remnants of the stores of coal that would have powered the sunken Westerner.

  The seas the previous night must have been raging indeed to have driven this heavy material to the shore. Realizing the value of this, I quickly flung it as far up the beach as I could to guard against waves, vowing to return and collect it for my home.

  Days later, my beachcombing produced a set of cupboards and a chest of drawers that I recognized as coming from Joe’s kitchen aboard the steamship. These had washed up a mile to the south but were worth the extreme effort to get them back to the clearing since they helped organize my new home while providing a solid bulwark against the claws, fangs and horns that I knew lurked in the jungle around me. Parts of the ship’s inner architecture continued to wash ashore also, and I carried back anything I could knock into pieces small enough to carry.

  It was four weeks before the yurt was completed, and in that time I continued collecting furnishings and other useful items that had previously washed up along the shore, or were stranded by some new violence of sea and storm.

  Because the steamship had exploded after striking the rocks, its contents had been cast onto the waves at every point of the compass, and that which did not sink was washed ashore: two wooden chairs and a small writing table, a broom, and carpenter’s tools—a hammer and chisel—turned up much later that I put to use refining my home’s construction; also wooden utensils for cooking, bowls and plates, several articles of clothing: a warm sailor’s tunic, a sweater and two shirts, pants and canvas jumper. A coal shovel and a rake turned up too—anything with wood attached washed ashore, or was later beached.

  I was blessed to find a pair of lamps. One was almost buried in sand, and clearly belonged in a more refined environment. It was a miracle that its fluted glass chimney had only been chipped along the edge during its landing; and the other lamp turned up after a windy and wavy night. That one was wrapped in a metal housing that gave it a more sturdy appearance and character, suggesting that it had been in use by the steamship’s crew.

  Inexplicably also considering their weight, in time I found a half-gallon tin of lamp oil, an oil can for lubricating machinery, candles, several tins of meat, a cooking pot and some rope. Additionally, I’d found an empty keg, and I refilled this daily from my little spring to keep a supply of fresh water close to the yurt.

  Many were the times I’d think of these treasures as I stood on the sand and looked out at the sea before my home. There I’d watch the waves thrash against, expose and cover by degrees the uneven line of black rocks upon which we’d run aground, and I’d think of how the bulk of the Westerner’s material and cargo would be lying there at the bottom beyond reach.

  Regardless, a treasure trove of floating wreckage allowed me to refine my jungle yurt, and in some way pay homage to my master.

  I was delighted by a prize that washed up one windy night. I did not recognize the great chair from my time aboard the Westerner but such a fine piece must have been intended for the captain’s use. I wondered also if either of the other two more utilitarian chairs was familiar in any way, and I had some moments of consternation, thinking that perhaps I’d seen the cook tied to one.

  The furnishings I arranged in a fashion that reminded me of the castle with the great wooden chair very much like one he favored. It had a tall, narrow back and widely spaced armrests that from certain angles produced an alarming silhouette—invoking a palpable phantom as if he were sitting there.

  This effect was only increased when I set the chair in place before one wall that I’d re-modeled with my carpenter’s tools to emulate the fireplace in the castle’s great hall.

  Mine was a quarter the actual size with part of the Westerner’s fireproof ductwork adapted for use as its firebox, flue and chimney that I vented through the top of the yurt.

  The header and mantel shelf I built of hardwood instead of stone, and was placed atop two pieces of decorative woodwork—a pair of pillars I had recognized as formerly gracing the steamship’s wall by the dining room.

  Also from the wreckage I had found a case of wine, and several items of glassware. I had to dive into deep water to get them, but they were a prize worth any risk.

  I had never been a drinker in my decades at the castle, but there were days in the jungle when it rained torrentially making work outside impossible. I would put on the fine sailor’s tunic, pour myself a glass of this wine and stand in the yurt before my fireplace with the warm flames against my back.

  With my home locked up tight against the savage jungle, I would sip the bitter liquid and let my mind rove over my life at the castle with my master.

  And I would mourn him bitterly.

  Yet there was something more that ate at me. True I mourned the master, but another feeling had crept into the sadness: guilt. Not because I had survived and he had not, but I felt guilty for deriving some pleasure from my solitary life in the jungle.

  These feelings came upon me unaware when I was working on the yurt, or if I was collecting meat from my traps or stretching a hide, but I would feel this overwhelming sense of freedom and excitement—even joy—that would be immediately pounced upon by my outrage.

  How dare I smile? How dare I enjoy the jungle breeze warmly waving the long leaves overhead? How dare the Gypsy Horvat relish the taste of fresh meat cooked over the hearth that he’d built with his own two hands?

  How dare Horvat? His master had died, and the worthless Gypsy had failed him!

  I had made an oath, but the day-to-day living demanded too much for any man to obsess about that which did not matter here and now.

  How dare Horvat?

  Before I knew it I’d be caught up again, smiling ear to ear as I cleaned a large fish snagged from a tidal pool along the beach, and imagining its meat spitting over the fire.

  I would be thinking of spices—only to have the depression and the guilt come upon me again.

  I had failed my master! Or so I had thought at first, for whether it was my poor character or the action upon me of this life of freedom, but I had gone over my service, and the lengths to which I’d traveled to offer him hope.

  I had served him well in life with all my heart and soul. Which soon had me wondering if I could serve him still, but not with mourning.

  The years of working for such an important and serious lord had not always been easy, and had at times lain heavy upon my Gypsy heart.

  How often had I sung since I’d been in his employ? How often had I danced, drunk wine or played at love? And these things were the lifeblood of my Szgany soul?

  So, I came to see that this sad mission, colored darkly as it was by its result, could yet offer us a welcome end. For having done all that I could for him, might not the master have relented to my good service some small reward—a reward, perhaps, as dubious as living in such a dangerous place?

  Could I not honor my oath to him by thinking back on my days of music and dance, on my dear family and friends by the fire, raising our cups and singing of the wonderful and terrible lord in the castle who had made it all possible for us?

  So it was a sad truth, but one I had to embrace if I wished to survive, for my days demanded every inch of my awareness and would not allow for pondering on a gloomy castle that seemed forever ago.

  No. I knew I would ever be saddened by the outcome of our journey, but I could make the most of what I had left and with my numbered days I could create a monument to my great and generous master.

  Such a thing will I attempt with this new year and with all the time now left to me!

  4th February, 1894

  Food was not as difficult a problem as it had at first seemed to my desperate mind. In fact, while the situation was simple to resolve, maintaining it would be the difficult part, for I would have to learn the seasons wherein these exotic fruits, vegetables and nuts came into ripeness. I would need to know the ways of the local plants and wildlife if I was to have a steady store of fresh food.

  But I was surrounded by edi
ble things. Fruit, berries and nuts there were aplenty, and I fashioned a fishing pole for myself with which I added protein to my diet.

  I also knew how to make a snare from my early days when as a boy I’d add rabbit and other meats to my family’s table. The snares were simple to make using twine and the life abundant enough in the tall grasses and plants about the yurt that I was soon enjoying miniature deer, small pigs and strange squirrel-like creatures that were so captured.

  I think they were monkeys, but I cannot be certain from the tales I’ve recollected.

  They were tasty enough little beasts, though their histrionics while still in the snare could elicit sympathy when I found them alive, since they resembled little old men, some of them right down to their long gray beards. But I was hungry for meat, and these were succulent.

  In the beginning, I built fires in a ring of stones 15 feet from the yurt entrance, which left me in a precarious position that did little to settle the half-cooked meals I hastily made there. The steaming meat sent a pungent invitation into the surrounding jungle to fanged guests that I was ill-prepared to receive, and on several occasions I had been forced to abandon my cooking meat altogether as some noise from the leafy shadows played upon my nerves.

  This tension only expedited the installation of my fireplace and its application as a hearth upon which I could roast meat using a metal rod I’d found in flotsam as a spit. The fireplace turned out to be an excellent forum for this endeavor, perfect, once I had fashioned a pan to catch the drippings and spatter.

  Of firewood, there was an inexhaustible supply to be collected from the vast jungle that surrounded my home. I found it a much more agreeable fuel than the coal I had discovered on the beach, but I still rescued some of the black substance to store beneath the yurt for later use, should some unforeseen event keep me from gathering wood.