The Long Road Home

[To be read grimly, after the reading (and possibly re-reading) of the Places Beyond the Maps.]

The man walked. 

He walked, and as he walked, he thought. 

He remembered.

He had been healed. He had been healed and had thus effectively unchosen what he once half-chose.

But the last question remained. 

The man who had captured him in the wilderness beyond the maps and forced him to remember the painful memories had asked him the questions, and although he had considered the answers at the time he had realized later that the man had also been asking himself the same thing. 

And yet, for himself, the question remained to be answered. When he returned home again in his present condition, would they even know him? Would they even want him back?

He had traveled the lands for many turns of the seasons, each year bringing more frailty and more gray hair and more shame on coming home to a place that he had abandoned so many years ago.

How old would she be when he saw her? Would she have children of her own?

What about his wife? Would she even be alive?

What would they think? Did they even want him to return?

It had taken him twenty some years to figure out where it had been, and that was after the healing.

He had searched the island, the Island where he had been healed, walking and traveling for a year trying to find the familiar hill that the house was on. He hadn’t found it, or anything else that matched the few memories that he had, and so had moved on. He had searched the islands between, the ones south of the bay, taking another few months on each of them, but still found nothing. 

Thus began his search of the continent. He began in the north, slowly working his way south, wandering to and fro between villages, occasionally finding something similar but yet not quite the same, and being disappointed at not finding it yet glad at not having to face his shame, would continue on to whatever next lay ahead of him.

The journey had been long, and he had grown despondent about seeking his home again. 

But it was the small, faint possibility that, just maybe, he could find it — and the nagging hope that, when he did, they might not reject him — that drove him forward. He thought to himself many a time that it could never happen, that he would never find it, and that they would rightfully dismiss him when he arrived.

But it was that tiny, incessant sliver of hope, like a thorn in his side, that forced him to keep looking.

He remembered how they had taken his children. They had left the one to be used as a threat. He had been told not to do anything lest they take his precious Little Sweets.

He had told his wife that he would protect the family, but felt that doing so was not enough to make up for the loss of their children.

And so he had sworn to find them, and come back once he did.

But they found him first.

He had been beaten and tortured in ways so cruel that he could not understand how one could even think up the ideas to do such things. He had been told to sing the song, and the suffering would stop. He would be made new, and he would be strong, and he would be a better thing.

And so he had sung the song, but remembered halfway through. He had remembered, and kept singing until with a sudden realization he regretted what he was doing, and so stopped and knelt and covered his face. They had called out a name — "Your name is Beadsy!" — and the memories had become painful. They pulled him up and saw his feet — still human — and threatened him and yelled at him and made him promise that he would be one of them.

And he had been — although, like one with some defect, he had been mocked and made fun of for his odd ways.

But that was before he met the man.

It was the man who had made him realize. He had proven himself strong in front of the other Fangs, but the things the man had said stuck in his mind so that when the King wolf-boy told them about a way to be healed, he knew he had been given another chance.

And so he had taken it, unknowingly promising to himself that he would find his home again.

===

He considered what he could say. Something to beg for forgiveness. Perhaps he could at least ask to see where he had once lived, so as to satisfy the longing memories that he had and put to rest the thorn of hope that he had.

But the shame and the regret weighed heavy on him, and his mind could not bear to even consider receiving forgiveness.

He had left them.

And so he decided to let the moment come of itself, and then perhaps he could find something to say that would at least be granted a response.

But it was only in his wildest and most haunting dreams — those same dreams that drove him to find the place — that he could have known that not only were his wife and daughter alive, and his daughter married and with his grandchildren, but they were joyful and excited to see him and they would celebrate because he came back and that he had already been forgiven and would be eagerly accepted and have a family again.

He could not have known that, all those years, they had been watching and waiting and hoping for him to return.

Notes:

This was written in the spur of the moment. I literally had the idea and then sat and wrote for about 3 hours straight. (ADHD hyperfocus go brrr)

I did my research for this, including figuring out that

• the man probably lived somewhere near Ban Rugan - considering the fact that the house was on a hill in a hilly area, and that he found it after traveling from the Field of Finley (p.350, Tales)

• his search for the right place probably took just over 20 years - he was from the Hollows, which did not fall to the Fangs, so he was probably captured early in the War. This means that it was about 9 years until the events in the series, plus another year during the series, in which he was healed: 10 years. The epilogue mentions his wife (she calls their daughter "Sweetness") is still alive, and that it had been more than 30 years. (p.351, Tales)

• he had two other, older children which don't seem to be mentioned in the epilogue, so he probably lost them; the most likely explanation is to Fangs, considering his response to the man (p.319-323)

• it mentions him searching the continent and several islands, so most likely he searched Anniera and the islands just south of it, and then continued on to the continent of Dang.

I also put references to something else in there as well... can you guess what that is?