Dragon Quest - I - Chapter 1, Part 4

A brief history... (pp32-39)

4 - The Secret of His Birth

“You’ve got to be joking!”

After hearing what happened at the castle, Aleph’s mother Jessica stood in shock.

“Aleph, a descendant of Loto?” she asked Gaul, tears in her eyes. “How is such a thing possible? How!?”

But Gaul could say nothing. He merely sat unmoving with a scary look on his face.

Gaul heard about how Aleph had extinguished the light of the Sun Stone immediately after he was arrested. A guard that he was friends with had rushed to the smithy, face flushed, and told him what had occurred.

“Why do we have to let our son fight that awful Dragonlord? Isn’t that just sending him to his death!?”

“Don’t worry, mom. I can beat him, you’ll see.”

“Aleph!”

Jessica glared at him with a frightening look.

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“No! I won’t allow it! You’re no match for the Dragonlord! Besides, an army of monsters will be waiting for you as soon as you take one step outside the village! Why? Why must we send you on such a dangerous task? Why should we send our precious child off when we know he’ll only be killed!? There isn’t a mother in the land that would do something like that!”

“But if I don’t, then the Dragonlord will stay in power forever. Are you okay with that?”

“There’s nothing we can do!”

“There is something we can do! There’s something I can do!”

“It’s better than dying! I just couldn’t bear…” she began, and wiped her tears with the corner of her apron.

Aleph’s favorite meal, lamb stew, which Jessica had spent long hours during the day preparing as a birthday present, was slowly getting cold on the kitchen table. The candles burned nearby in their candlesticks, letting off a quiet fizzle.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t fight against fate,” rumbled Gaul at length, staring into the flames.

“Gaul!” Jessica cried, staring at her husband.

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“Aleph… I always thought that, no, your mother too, that you would one day take up my blacksmith’s hammer. We figured it was just a matter of course. For us, it was the happiest thing in the world, the thing we were most looking forward to. I still remember what happened when you were about nine years old. You said that you wanted to go and fight the Dragonlord, and I got so angry, and I hit you.”

“I remember.”

“I figured that one day you would understand why. But about three years later, you started to go to the cathedral tower every morning.”

“What? You knew!?” Aleph asked in surprise.

“I know everything about you. Even that you started to go to old man Mercer’s place. I’m your father, after all.”

Mercer was an old shaman in his eighties whom Aleph would go see in his spare time, secretly from his parents, to learn spells. In a short time he had managed to master simple incantations.

“Every time I heard you leave for the tower, every time I heard you pick up that silly oak sword… It hurt. It really did. I felt like maybe we really couldn’t fight against fate. The truth is, Aleph...”

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Gaul paused, gathering up his resolve. “There’s something we’ve been keeping from you. Something we should have told you long ago.”

“Gaul, stop!” Jessica, face blanched, grabbed Gaul’s arm and shook her head hard.

“No. We need to tell him eventually, for his own sake.” Gaul took Jessica’s hand in his own and squeezed it gently.

“The truth is, Aleph… You aren’t our real child.”

“What!?”

It seemed for Aleph that time had stopped for a brief moment and he began to feel faintly dizzy. He didn’t comprehend immediately what he was just told. Perhaps he misheard. But no, Gaul was staring straight at him with a serious face.

“It’s not true!” Aleph yelled, standing up.

“It is.”

“Mom...!”

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Aleph, seeking help, looked to Jessica. He wanted her to confirm it was a lie. Jessica was looking at him, tears streaming down her face. She stayed silent.

A gust of wind rattled the shutters with a clatter.

Standing agape, Aleph stared down into the flickering candle flames. He eventually slid back down into his chair, weak.

“Then where are my real parents? What happened to them?” he managed to ask with a voice on the verge of crying.

Gaul shook his head. “It happened fifteen years ago today…”

After finishing up some work at the southern town of Melkid, Gaul had joined up with a caravan headed back to Radatome.

The caravan was armed and ready in case of monster attack. A large number of travelers would often travel together in caravans. It was far safer and far more reassuring than traveling alone.

When they were about a day’s journey out from arriving at Radatome, the caravan made camp in the shadow between some rocky mountains. It was a starless night, and the midwinter wind blew hard. Several men were stationed guard, and the rest of the troupe had already fallen into a deep sleep.

But Gaul couldn’t sleep. They would be at Radatome tomorrow, and the excitement of the journey had kept him awake.

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It had been nearly six months since he had been back, so it was to be expected.

Suddenly, he heard a sound, like that of a small animal crying. He straightened and turned his head. The wind picked up, and sure enough carried the faint sound to him again. Crying. Like something needed help. Gaul left his tent and headed for the sound.

It was coming from a small cave within a crag a mere two hundred paces away. Cautiously, Gaul peered inside.

“Agh!”

Gaul covered his mouth with his hand and turned away.

There was a woman, hunched over on the ground as if she were protecting something. He knew she was dead with one glance. Her clothing was burnt and torn, and her back and lower body were violently charred. Gaul could tell she was in her early twenties, and a week to ten days had likely passed since she died. Beneath her, held to her chest, was a wailing baby, still wrapped in his birthing cloth. A newborn.

Gaul stared at Aleph. That baby was you, he said without words.

“Then that woman… That woman was my real mother?”

“Probably. I couldn’t say. But I can’t deny it either. There was nothing there that would have proven who she was. However…”

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Gaul went into the neighboring bedroom and rummaged around in a set of drawers where they kept their valuables. He pulled out a small cloth sack and returned.

“The babe was clutching this stone in his hand, and this was pinned to his birth cloth.” He pulled out a small blue stone and an old map drawn on a folded bit of leather parchment from the bag and placed them down in front of Aleph.

“It must have been a miracle. It had been a week, possibly even ten days. You managed to survive in the mountains in midwinter, with no water or milk, all alone. Your will to live must have been strong. Maybe it was strength given by the gods. This was no ordinary babe, I thought. Perhaps he was born for some greater purpose. Perhaps he was a child born into some great fate. So I believed. Coincidentally, there was a priest traveling with our caravan. The next morning, I had him give the woman a proper funeral, and I took you with me as we returned to Radatome. I named you Aleph, which means wind and earth in Alefgaardian. I guess I hoped that it would be like a charm to help bring the beauty of the land back to our country…”

Aleph looked down at the small blue stone and took it in his palm. It was beautiful, and shone divinely.

“Your mother was ecstatic. We had already been married five years at the time, but we hadn’t yet been blessed with our own child. So we raised you, even more preciously than we would have our own.”

Jessica wiped away her falling tears with the corner of her apron.

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She was likely recalling the joy she felt the last fifteen years of raising her son.

“Hearing today that you were a descendant of Loto certainly took me by surprise. But I guess I finally realize now that it was all fated…”

“But Aleph, you are our child. No matter what anyone says!” Jessica insisted, hands shaking slightly on her apron.

“That’s right. You’re our son,” replied Gaul, placing his hands gently on top of Jessica’s.

“And we’re so proud of you.”

“Yes… Yes,” said Jessica, nodding.

Something warm burned deep within Aleph’s chest. Great tears began to fall down his face.

“Aleph,” began Gaul again, showing his white teeth for the first time, smiling wide, “Go. Defeat the Dragonlord.”

“What?”

“Go, defeat the Dragonlord, and bring peace back to Alefgaard. Like the hero Loto once did. That’s your destiny. It’s why you were born. It’s your purpose.”

Aleph looked to Jessica. She was fighting back her tears, gazing at Aleph, staying silent.

Eventually, she nodded. And from the bottom of his heart, Aleph was thankful.