Story Installment
Prologue
After Saberlane and Orvin Wallace rediscovered limited quantities of the Herman Pins in boxes from the old Ackerly Green Publishing warehouse, they were sold to readers, with the suggestion that even in the Book of Kings, they may still hold some magiqal properties. Later, once Woolie the ghost arrived at the offices of the current Ackerly Green, it was realized that readers who purchased the pins could, by using clues provided by Woolie in the form of poems, be led to historically significant locations near their homes. Once they arrived at their respective locations, while simultaneously wearing the Herman pins, they received fragments of Woolie’s memories in the form of notifications from the Ackerly Green App.
Saberlane was the first one to successfully unlock one of Woolie’s memories. After traveling to the former warehouse of Ackerly Green Publishing while wearing a Herman pin (and in the process finding a letter written to readers who participated in The Ackerly Green Secret Society during the Book of the Wild), he received a mysterious notification from the Ackerly Green App, stating the following:
I looked across the cold and silver swirling sea.
Woolie had been trying to remember this phrase, and as soon as Saberlane showed him the notification, the lights went out, the everything grew cold and silent, and Saberlane felt that he was no longer in the office but rather a cold, black void. Then, Woolie began to glow in the darkness. As he glowed, he began to speak:
I remember. I looked across the cold and silver swirling sea. I was the one who first saw them coming. I was the one who knew. I saw it all begin.
After saying this, with a look of recognition, he disappeared. When he reappeared in the Ackerly Green offices once more, two weeks later, he explained the full memory that Saberlane had helped him to remember:
…finally a parley had been agreed upon. It was decided that an assembly of house leaders would await them at the eastern shore at the dawn of Assembler’s Day. But they never meant to parley. They came as night fell on Assembler’s Eve. I stood at the watch. Was trusted as the first sight. I looked across the cold and silver swirling sea. I was the one who first saw them coming. I was the one who knew. And saw it all begin. I saw them, carried by wing, and wind, and blood-black sails. I was trusted as the first sight, but I stood, watching, unable to move, unable to speak. Unable to sound the cry. I failed. Frozen there as a great black wave of water rose up, obscuring their envoy, and laying waste to the house leaders who made camp on the shores. I watched them fall from sight beneath the mouth of the sea, the ice brine reaching up to the tower, and then the final silence fell up on me. The black wave filled my chest. It drew me from the watch. There was no up or down. Only cold and dark and then… and then I cannot say. But then there was a light. And I followed it. Not swimming nor walking. I was willing myself after it. And then I was here.