SHORT KNIGHTLY STORY

SHORT KNIGHTLY STORY
(13-08-06) Diego Asensio Sánchez
It was a dark cloudy night and the rain was falling continuosly on the area, when the story that I’m going to tell you took place. But... if you want to know what happened, you will have to move back to the Medieval Period in England, well, even before that time in England, in a phamtom place which name was the Warwick Castle.
It was a period of darkness and people still believed in old superstitions such as dragons and strange criatures that would attack their cities and destroy their few personal belongings creating the chaos, and also in other criatures such as goblins, fairies... that controlled the nature causing different reactions depending on their feelings of every single day. If they were happy, the birds would sing the most beautiful songs ever heard and the animals would go to the streams to drink the fresh water that run from the top of the mountains but if they were angry the behaviour of the nature could be completely different and they could cause a big amount of problems like earthquakes andbig storms.
Pitifully, this daysweren’t very nice and people were afraid of the nature and they were very respectful with HER.
We know now, that all this stories were based in nothing but the fears that people had to the unknown things, but that isn’t really important for my story.
A group of people that had been working hard during a whole day, (as they were used to do since a long time ago, due to they were farmers and they had to work the lands of their Lord), were in train of going home when something, I wouldn’t know how to discribe it, maybe a strange light or a ghost or something like that, shocked them and forced them to stop but the most affected one, ws the main head of the family, the husband and father of his children.
They were so shocked that they didn’t know what was going to happen, they started to pray, thinking that their gods would help them and wherever this criature come from, they will force her to go away.
A long time passed until the family thought they were saved and could enter home. Once inside, the man of the house made a fire with some dry wood that he and his son had taken from the forest. Things seemed to be in peace by now, but as you all know sometimes things doesn’t take place in the way we think they do and what we can consider peace, can be just a break to become stronger and attack again in a more furious way than before.
Some time after, the whole family went to sleep because they would have to get up again very early next morning and they thought that this had been a sort of aluzination, due to they were very tired. But we know; you, the readers of this story if anyone would read it and me, that this devil creature wil appear again and that they had been chosen to make understand the rest of the humanity some kind of occult message.
The main head of the family started to think what could be the reason of that threaten to him and his family and he already knew why, but he had tried to forget it, but... the nature doesn’t forget anything and is like a huge memory that sometimes proyect a film in our minds to remember us where we come from and where we are. He knew that this day day would arrive some time and he was afraid of it because he didn’t know when he would be ready to face this hidden problem that even his family didn’t know what was about.
I will try to explain you how it happened if my memory allowes me, due to I’m getting old and I sometimes forget things that all of us should remember and everybody should learn about them in order to not to make the same mistake again.
So, here comes the story that I was in train to tell you, since I started to write but as it happens sometimes, I’ve told you a lot of things and nothing at the same time.
All started when Fred, as he was named, after finishing his work in the farm, decided to go to the river to take a bath and relax himself after a hard day working. First, I should describe you that character due to it was his appeariance what caused him some problems.
He was a fair, tall, heavily-built handsome man even though you could notice the heavy work he was used to do in his skin.
There in the river, he met some girls that were bathing themselves too and playing some kind of games in the water. He didn’t know why, but he noticed that one of those girls was catching his attention and at the end he was lost, cause he was married as you already know, and being with other girls was already a sin. The name of that girl was if I remember well the story, Marie Anne.
She was an adolescent, really cheerful and sweet girl. Her hair was quite wild but with some kind of order. Her eyes were brown and she had a penetrating gaze that would paralise to anybody that would try to look her directly to her eyes. Her skin was smooth although she was a peasant that work hard to bring some food to her family.
Some time had to pass for them to be out of the view of the rest of the group. As a result, Marie Anne had a baby that they hid to his family and to the society in general cause he was a well-known person in the village. This situation made that the child grow up without knowing who was his father and with a mother that didn’t know how to explain to him who was his father. This was a really bad situation, the worse she could imagine cause he, the child, Tom was his name, was asking questions to her mother in order to try to understand who was he and what make him different from the rest of the children of his same age.
That seems to be a nonsense for adult people but for him it was the only way to fine his own identity.
His mother used to tell him that his father was a knight like the ones that work for king Arthur and were sitting in the round table with him, and that seems to be enough when he was just a child, but he was quite mature nowadays and he didn’t believe in this fantasy stories that his mum told him.
She, Marie Anne always got up with the idea of telling her son, Tom, the truth about his father, tell him that he was a farmer as she was, but she didn’t find the correct moment to do it. She wasn’t brave enough for that, maybe she believed that lie and she thought that the fantasy dream she told to his son ws ot a dream but something real.
Marie Anne decided to send Tom, his son to a noble family to be well educated and able to have more oportunities to live a life that surely would be much better and easier than that of the farm.. But he hadn’t forgotten what was his main wish andhe would try to find the truth by anyway, so one day, Tom left the house with the excuse of going to church but instead of that, hetook some of his possessions, what he thought ir would be useful and some food, mainly bread, cheese and all this stuff put them in a bag, took a horse, the one he used to ride, Storm was his name and went away in what would be the adventure of his life. While he was trying to find his own way, his family, both, the real one and the noble family that had been taking care of him for some years got really involved in trying to find him, but he had taken a really important decision, he had promised to himself that he wouldn’t have any family until he find the truth.
As you can imagine, that would take him a long time, but he didn’t care cause he has made his mind and was really determined to do whatever he had to in order to solve this matter and give some sense to his life.
He had been riden his horse Storm for a long time and both of them need to relax themselves and had something to eat, but he started to run out of food so he decided to go to the forest to see if he could hunt something. He left his horse in the shadow of a tree and started to walk and as he was penetrating the forest, a new world appeared to his eyes. He was quite afraid and heldhis weapons near himself just in case he had to use them and paid attention to any sound that could mean some kind of danger. It was very difficult to walk on the forest, the vegetation was very dense and that was quite a big problem. After a long walk, he arrived to a spring where he could drink fresh water. Near there, he saw a deer that he was able to hunt. It was getting dark, but nevertheless he decided to start walking back to the area where he had camped and had left his horse. He thought that the stars would be his eyes in the noght but that night, the sky was really really dark and he got lost, instead of going towards the meadow he was walking some miles in the wrong direction and he went far out to the forest where he had to face some dangerous situations with bears, wolves...
As a result of this unexpective troubles and battles, he got into a kind of dream. Hopefully, someone that was in train to go hunting found him unconscious and after he woke up, the man asked him why he was there and he told him all the story while he was helping Tom to find his way.
At the end, he was in the right way, he rode his horse Storm that he had almost forgotten and continued his adventures, cause that one wouldn’t be the last surprise. Another day had gone by now, and a new one was coming but this time as he had enough food, he didn’t take any risks and he went to sleep. That night he had a feeling, he knew that he was getting closer to his purpose.
At daybreak it was shining cause spring had just started and his search was approching an end although some things had to take place before everything were up.
As you know his mother and his other family were looking for him and he arrived to a neightbour village where the news about him had been spread all over the town. A middle age man saw him and thought that if he would be able to keep him in the village for some days and go to the town where Tom lived to say to his family that he knew where was the boy, he would get some kind of beneffict, so he took his cart and a couple of quite old mares and run to the next village. Once he arrived there, he talked with Fred, although he didn’t know who was this person and told him what was happening. Fred left his job in the farm and run to talk with Marie Anne to let her know that the son that they had in common was quite near and maybe would arrive to the town in a couple of days. At the end, it seems like if she was ready to tell her son all the truth and beg for his pardon if he could ever forget that and stay with his true family. At the same time, Fred was ready to tell to his family what was the cause of that threaten although he knew that it could be a risk but he had decided that he had to face his errors and the consequences that they could carry. At last, it seemed that everything was in order but Tom had the last word in order to solve this problem and what he would do would have repercusions in the lives of this people. Finally, he arrived and everyboby was expecting his reaction when Fred and Marie Anne tell him the truth and the story of his life. He was sort of surprise in some way and he didn’t react immediately after they told him the whole story and why they had decided to hide him in a certain way. He understood that behaviour or that was the impresion I had, but his reaction was to keep silent and ride again his horse Storm and leave that place and that people that had caused him so many problems and start a new life alone, going from one place to another. Maybe in somehow it would have been better for him not to know the truth of his life and believe in the stories that her mother used to tell him, but in that moment he thought he had made the right decission. The rest, is up to you.