THE FORGOTTEN CITY
The Forgotten City
by Vincent C. Sales
Chapter One
If you wish to find the woman who sells dreams, go to the most rundown part of the city. In the common market, down a crowded alleyway, you will find her selling dreams in glass bottles. She is a witch, she says, who remembers what no one else does. If you ask her about the past, she will tell you stories and lies. They are never the same stories twice.
“Sun Girna Ginar was a great city on the greatest of the islands of the Pacific,” she might begin her tale, or maybe she might say, “Only the sea remembers Sun Girna Ginar.” Sometimes she will not use the name Sun Girna Ginar, but a different name that will not stay in your memory.
She will tell you stories of the inhabitants of the city: of its soldiers, its beggars, its great Sultan, its priests, its magicians, its lovers. She will tell you of their lives and of their dreams, and how the two met or did not meet. Other times she does not remember their names.
Go down to the market, past the fruit vendors, past the vendors of old clothes, past the vendors of trinkets and baubles, she is there, dressed in rags, a mouth full of empty teeth, selling bottles which she says contain dreams that you can own. If you ask her, she will tell you of a city that no one else remembers but her, a city she swears existed hundreds of years ago—the city where she was born.
No one believes her. Not even the children.
Chapter Two
Once, this story begins as many others have, but no longer.
The old woman hacks and coughs, spits, begins again.
Once, in a time which may or may not have passed, there was a city which may or may not have been. It was a great city, unlike any other, whose name may or may not have been Sun Girna Ginar, an ancient name in no remembered tongue. The city was founded by gods.
We do not remember this city because it was before the coming of the Christians, and we remember little or nothing from that time. We remember none of our past greatness, none of the achievements of our ancestors. We do not even remember their names. Yet somehow the stories of this city live on from telling to telling, never written, nothing more than the whisperings of ghosts.
It is said that a river passed through Sun Girna Ginar, and that this river led to the land of the dead, who have since and at the time of these events closed their doors to the living. On either side of this land was the sea.
It was a time after the volcano threw ash into the sky, blocking out the sun for an entire year. When the ash came down, it choked the fields, transforming them into a vast, gray desert ruled by a tyrant sun.
Demons, beasts, djinns, and angels walked the streets of Sun Girna Ginar, along with men and gods and ghosts. They lived, and some died. Others passed from living to dying and back to living with the ease of breathing. They fought, they loved. They dreamed; their dreams were broken.
In this city, they speak of gods who traveled in mortal shape, in disguises both fantastic and grotesque. They speak of men, protected and guided by their ancestors. They speak of efrits, great spirits of fire who roamed the land granting mortals wishes or death, depending on their whim. They speak of angels who kept silent watch over the city and of their fallen brethren, the demons, who traded in lies and seduction and bore a pleasing shape.
They speak of the angel who was said to have lived in the city, in a tower made of ivory. The tower had no doors. Inside the tower was the angel’s harem, women he had kidnapped as children and raised on the nectar of heaven. He was known to love humans, which was strange for his kind, who were always distant and aloof.
They speak of Sun Girna Ginar’s general, Lumawig, who was protected by powerful ancestors. He had never lost a battle and was most famed for his victory against a thousand men—he slaughtered them all with only forty juramentados on his side. He was a cruel and ruthless man, hated by as many as those who loved him, and though there were many attempts on his life, it was said that no one could kill him.
They speak of the djinn Sulayman who was the djinn of the Sultan. He was imprisoned in a sapphire for a thousand years and was freed by the Sultan’s magic. Sulayman was the most powerful of all djinns and became the Sultan’s assassin for a hundred years until he was imprisoned again by the Sultan’s enemies.
They speak of the six-headed giant, Gawigawen, from the mountains of the north, who declared war upon Sun Girna Ginar.
They speak of the Sultan who ruled over all in a palace with eighty-eight towers. In his palace in the center of Sun Girna Ginar, there were eleven great domes, hundreds of feet high, and enough stables to hold twelve armies. There were hanging gardens, marvelous stone fountains, and in the center of it all was the eighty-eighth tower where the Sultan lived. From here, he surveyed the stars, which told him of Sun Girna Ginar’s destiny.
They speak also of a woman born from the union of a demon and a witch. When the woman was young, her beauty was unrivaled by any. Men came from distant lands to love her, and in return, she devoured their souls one by one. When she was old, she sold dreams in the marketplace, they say. By luring the city into dreams, she destroyed the city, bringing it to its knees with hope.
This is the story I will tell you, the old woman says, but it begins not with sultans, or generals or giants, or in palaces or battlefields. It begins in the stink of the marketplace, with simple men with unremarkable ancestors, best forgotten.
Chapter Three
He remembers. It has been years now since she left, but still he stops sometimes and thinks of her. It is not a conscious act of remembering, and he barely realizes it each time he begins to think of her again. She weaves in and out of his waking hours, and she is in every dream.
He sits by the window, smoking silently. They would sit by the window on warm afternoons like this, he remembers. Sometimes they would make love in the precise spot where he sat, overlooking the street. Afterwards, they would lie in each other’s arms as the light flooded the room, and they would watch the dust particles turned to gold in their eternal descent.
He remembers her silence. Her beauty was a silent hymn. Wordlessly, she would reach out to him, kiss him sensually on the lips, bury her face in his shoulder and bite the flesh there. The only sound she would make would be a small playful laugh.
He remembers whispered promises and unmade vows. He remembers staring into her eyes and her staring back, unafraid, completely open. He thought that moment was forever.
He remembers Tamisa and all the reasons she gave for leaving.
He remembers her with moonlight in her hair.
In his hand he holds a small glass vial the shape of a woman’s body. He had bought it from an old woman the day before. “A trinket,” she had said. “A trinket with the power of dreams.” He thought the woman was beautiful, could see through the years so cruelly etched on her face. He knew the woman was beautiful in her youth.
“How much is it?” he asked, and she replied, “Thirty silver pieces.”
“A bargain for the power of dreams,” he said. He bought the vial because Tamisa loved glass.
As the old woman handed him the vial he had chosen, she said, “Dreams come in through closed eyes. A drop in each eye closes the eyes and opens the dreaming eye to set your dream free. Now tell me what your dream is.”
He smiled and said without thinking, “Just to see her again. Just once. Up close. Without her knowing.” The old woman looked at him with a mix of admiration and sadness, and held his hand tightly. He thanked her and walked away.
He remembers when Tamisa left. She wept like a child with too many tears to cry. Her tears could have watered the dry fields, he had joked, and she cried even harder and held him close. Then she kissed him, and he tasted salt. Their tongues danced in a final farewell. When he opened his eyes, she had pulled away and had begun walking away from him, with one last apologetic look over her shoulder before she was gone forever.
Alone now, he remembers without tears, for the tears don’t come anymore. He opens the glass vial shaped like a woman’s body, and the dusty room is filled with the fragrance of Tamisa’s perfume. He smiles at the memory. With the cover of the vial, which is shaped like a knife, he puts a drop of the dream liquid into each eye, hoping it is a drug that will make him forget.
The liquid burns, and he is on fire. He closes his eyes and falls to the floor, for the pain is intense. The fire reaches from his eyes into the back of his head and down his spine. He thrashes on the floor and kicks over a chair, knocks the contents of a table onto the floor. He thinks of tearing out his eyes and instead tears at the skin on his face. He bites his tongue and tastes blood. He throws himself against a wall, hitting his head over and over to take his mind away from the terrible burning of his eyes. Inside, the fire gnaws at his spine, searing his flesh from the inside outwards. His brain feels as if it will explode from the pressure, and his eyes continue to burn an itching fire to which there is no rest.
In an eternity, the burning is gone, and he opens his eyes to wake in a dream. In his vision, everything is burning with a holy light, full of magical blues and reds, and the most pure of whites. It is as if every object shone with the light of its soul. How bright would Tamisa burn?
From the depths of the dream, from the street below, he hears fanfare, and he looks outside the burning window to see what miracles there are to behold.
It is a caravan from the distant West. Great burning banners are unfurled in the wind, carried by standard bearers whose skin is the color of coal. In the front of the caravan are proud soldiers with burning swords and spears. Their armor is full of designs of fire. The captains are on great white fire mares impatient in their slow march towards the palace of the Sultan. And then there are creatures he has heard of but never seen until now, great gray beasts as large as houses with snakes protruding from their faces and burning eyes filled with the wisdom of ages. On one of these beasts rides their sultan, or their prince, a boy, no older than ten years.
He goes down to the street to get a closer look and curses the old woman, for everything he sees is full of fire. A crowd has gathered along the sides of the streets. Everywhere, the people point at the burning wonders.
Behind the boy-king comes the harem, each of the women upon a golden carriage carried by more of the coal-colored men (eunuchs, some in the crowd say). Each carriage is heaped with silk of the finest craftsmanship. Hidden somewhere within, the beautiful, untouched wives of the boy-sultan shelter themselves from the afternoon sun.
Carriage upon carriage passes, each one anonymous until one carriage stops in front of the house he once shared with Tamisa. A slender white hand reaches out and pulls aside one of the silk curtains. She is beautiful, the crowd murmurs, but imperially, she pays no attention to them. She pulls the curtains aside completely for all to see her, a simple motion so full of grace. She moves forward slightly to look outside the carriage, and the sunlight falls upon her face.
It is Tamisa burning brightly in his vision. She looks no older than he remembers her, but her eyes show the passage of the years. Still, she is beautiful, more so now than ever.
Her body partly outside the carriage, Tamisa looks up. She looks up at the window that overlooks the street, almost hoping to see someone there, a ghost perhaps, but not expecting anyone. She smiles to herself, looks down almost sadly, and pulls the curtain back into its place in that same slow graceful movement. And he almost calls out, “Tamisa!” but he stops himself.
Slowly, the caravan passes in front of him, and it is night when the last camel enters the Sultan’s palace. He beholds many wonders that day, but remembers none. In his mind, there is only one memory that burns one silent name.
Slowly, the fire in his eyes passes away. Less than embers are left. He feels the stinging pain of the self-inflicted wounds on his head. Slowly, he climbs the steps of his house to the room with the window overlooking the street. Moonlight filters in, softly this time, silver, unlike the golden sun. Painfully, he sets the chair aright and sits down at the table. The wind still carries faint traces of her perfume. He remembers. He remembers Tamisa as the fire goes out.