There is no War: Island of Evergreen Hope

This opening will probably never be expanded beyond where it is now, but it could serve as the first chapter or prologue of something bigger. I don't know where it goes from here, or I'd write it myself.

Yes. I see the similarity. Yes. It was intentional. Yes. It was done simply as set dressing.

“There is no war,” the Magister repeats in that same placating tone. “There is no conflict. There is only Lilium, and Lilium is safe, mighty, and peaceful.”

I know I’ve heard it before, the lies about the war have been told since before I was born. Everyone knows it’s not true, that there is truly a war on, but no one talks about it above a frightened whisper. People who talk about the war too much tend to vanish unceremoniously, and the story is always the same.

“Your mother is simply on a small retreat to the Island of Evergreen Hope.”

“Your friend? They are on a small retreat to the Island of Evergreen Hope.”

“Your daughter? Your aunt? Your Council Member?”

“They are all on a small retreat to the Island of Evergreen Hope.”

It’s worse than that, though. It’s not simply that I’ve heard the same garbage stories repeated about the Island of Evergreen Hope for my entire life. I’ve heard it somewhere else. “There is no war” is the constant constant drone that occupies every aspect of our existence, so it is not something that would particularly alert me as something I’ve heard somewhere before. No. I know I’ve heard it or read it or maybe seen it in some other place. Someplace removed from Lilium and the safety, might, and peace it offers.

And there’s a nagging just under my consciousness that makes me wonder why I continue putting myself in the same danger as all those who have gone before me on a small retreat to the Island of Evergreen Hope. Wherever it is that I’ve heard it before, something went terribly wrong.

So at evert chance, every opportunity, I ask again, and every time, I am told the same.

“When is this misery going to end, Magister?” I know that he is aware that I am asking about the war that is supposed to be not in Lilium. I know that his patience is limited. But I always ask when there is clear evidence I did not mention the war.

Still, in spite of my careful wording, the Magister says the one thing he seems ever able to repeat. “There is no war. There is no conflict. There is only Lilium, and Lilium is safe, mighty, and peaceful.” Unlike every other time, his eyes take on a darkness I’ve never seen in a person before, and he continues. “The peace of our home depends on one truth above all other ideas and thoughts we believe are true. And if we allow ourselves to forget that truth, then everything crumbles under the weight of what we allow to replace it. What is that truth, young one?”

“Lilium is at peace. The last threat to our safety is in captivity and has been since long before you or I walked the streets of our great city. So it was for your mother, and for her mother before her. There is no —”

I catch myself before I finish saying the words. They are wrong, and I remember just then exactly where I’ve heard the words before. I remember everything about it. And I remember why the Island of Evergreen Hope is so important for keeping the lie from getting out.

As I stand frozen mid-sentence, I see the darkness in the Magister’s gaze turn to malice. He knows that I have realised something, but he cannot speak here, for fear of allowing the truth into the world. The people here in the room with us are known gossips. All the Magister can do is wait for me to continue, to finish the line that holds the peace in Lilium so completely.

* * * * *

Before the Fall, there were strongholds of knowledge. The Histories tell us that those strongholds were watched over by sentinels called Librarians. The Librarians stood as the last bastions against the chaos of the Fall, doing all they could to protect the knowledge stored within their strongholds. The Librarians began to lose their grip during the first post-Fall war because the leaders of the new world realised that knowledge was the pathway to freedom, and the Librarians were the defenders of that knowledge.

The last of the old world Librarians was defeated within a generation, but it was too late to destroy the knowledge they had been protecting, the knowledge that lives on in the Histories. Librarians could create new Librarians, and they had done so in secret, passing their duties on to the next generations. But the world leaders discovered that the Librarians could also create another sort of knowledge keeper, one more ancient than themselves: the Historian. The Historians carried forward the knowledge of the pass in the form of oral reenactments and tales of the past. They were responsible for the Histories we’ve managed to hold from the old world.

And that brings us to my mother, many years before her retreat to the Island of Evergreen Hope, who had trained under a Historian to become one herself.

My mother was not a Historian. The Historians would have called her something else entirely because she did not simply collect the knowledge of the past and share it with those who asked. My mother actively sought out new knowledge and lost knowledge and hidden knowledge that has been kept from the people. That’s how she found the Last Library, to which she travelled with me after I could read, but before I understood the world well enough to truly appreciate the value of that place.

The Last Library’s whole building was buried in the sands of a neighbouring country’s territory, and the Books in it were well-preserved by the arid climate.

I found a Book that seemed suitable for one of my experience, and I read the words that would one day nag at my consciousness until I broke.

* * * * *

“‘There is no War’ is the greatest and most powerful lie a ruler can say to her people,” I find myself quoting the Book from the Last Library, and I resign myself to my upcoming retreat to the Island of Evergreen Hope. “For if there is a War, then ‘There is no War’ implies a measure of protection that cannot truly be given, but if there truly is no war, then the repetition of the mantra begins to beat the people into a complacency from which they will not even try to escape.”

When I was younger, I did not understand those words, but my mother told me to learn them, to internalise them, to save them for a day when they would change my life.

“There is no war,” the Magister repeats lamely, “not here, and not outside our walls. There has not been for ages. There will not be for generations to come.”

“Then why, sir,” I find the words pouring past my lips faster than I can control them, “why is there a rule opposed to travel? Why do we not have the freedom to pursue friendly engagements with our neighbouring provinces? Why does Lilium stand alone?”

“There is no war without,” I can see him struggling to find his footing, “because there are no people with whom to fight outside our walls. And there is no war within because we have the Island of Evergreen Hope to assuage the anxieties and fears of the people.”

“Then why, pray tell, must we insist there is none?” I know I cannot back down. I must continue the assault because I will not have another chance. “I have been outside the walls. I have been to a land with others. I have seen what you are keeping from the people.”

“And what,” he is seething now, “do you think it is that we are keeping?”

“Freedom.”