Getting messy, getting out!

Leslie was born out of wedlock. Her father was the King of Murberg, and no one really knows who her mother was. She was tired of the politics in her father’s court, and did not want to be married to his treasurer. The King said it was customary for him to decide upon the affairs of his children, and that their destiny was as much entwined with that of Murberg, as his own. Leslie wouldn’t hear any of that, and decided she was going to escape.

1. The Escape

The kingdom of Murberg wasn’t very big. It was more the size of modern day Monaco, without the money and wealthy people in it. One could walk out of Murberg in one day if all the roads were fine. But that was where the hurdle lied, and it was precisely that enigmatic hurdle that helped maintain the sovereignty of Murberg against all fear of invasion. The beautiful castle of Murberg was surrounded by an inpenetrable moor, and a legend that no one could cross that moor alive. How the Murbergians managed to live without trade and commerce with neighbouring nations was a matter of great speculation all around the world.

Leslie was a born navigator, but she knew that even for her, crossing the moor would be a very difficult challenge, maybe impossible. But she had to plan it, because her life depended on it, and because she knew marrying the treasurer would be as good as death for her. The adventurer in her appealed to her, and she made up her mind that she had had enough of the King of Murberg, her father.

She started off in the middle of the night, hoping to make the escape from the gates of the castle unseen, and arrive at the foot of the moors just at the break of dawn. She knew a tentative path which would lead her to a mound about halfway through. All her childhood experience had to be called upon and all her courage gathered.

Things were going as planned, and she got the first sight of the bog with the help of the first rays of the Sun. Revising the route in her head, she tentatively stepped on the first bit of hard ground, surrounded by quagmire. She knew that if she made a false step, and the ground started to give way beneath one of her feet, she could only survive by holding on to the solid ground with her other foot. The rule was to keep at least one foot on solid ground at all times. But that was the plan, and it worked only in the ideal situation. Often in the moor were solid islands surrounded by sinking mud, and the only way to move ahead would be to jump towards a spot which ‘looked’ solid, because, if it wasn’t, then it was the end. Many people have tried to make that jump, and failed, meeting their end miserably and without glory. She was determined not to allow it to happen to her. The Sun kept rising, and she kept progressing steadily towards the mound. It was very skilfully done.

2. The Mound on the Moor

It was not much to look at. If observed from space, it would resemble a mole on the face of the earth. It was covered with dense vegetation. The grass was thick and long. It was velvety, and walking through it was as difficult as walking through a shallow weed-ridden pond. Leslie climbed the mound, slowly. She could see the jagged rocks, where she had often sat hiding, or sat lonely, whole nights, contemplating her future.

As she reached the pier, to her surprise, she was met by three men! She was doomed! All her plans would be nullified. The men weren’t wearing any uniform, so she couldn’t identify whether they were from the army or police, on some official duty, and though she remembered having seen them somewhere, she had no idea who they were or what were their names.

The men, on the other hand were surprised to see her, a lonely girl, in the middle of the moor, with no habitat or fun places within miles. One of them broke the silence and said, “Hello, I am Imogen, and these are my friends Herbert and Narendra. Nice to see you here, though I must say that I am taken aback by what you are doing all alone up here, in the middle of nowhere!”

3. The Wise Men

“I could ask the same thing to you guys, though I presume it would not do much help to me,” replied Leslie, “I am Mary, and I am not interested in making your acquaintances, so if you don’t mind, please stay out of my way.”

With this, Leslie chose a nice spot on one of the rocks and faced a direction so that she didn’t have to look at the boys. She thought, what the hell were the boys doing up here? I cannot forfeit my plans at this stage, and I am running the risk of discovery, which will make the second and more demanding leg of my journey very difficult to complete without being chased by a pack of father’s hounds that will not hesitate in tearing me to pieces, leaving only my weak bones to slowly sink into the bottomless pits of this quagmire!

Imogen, the gregarious one approached her, “You shouldn’t be here you know? This place is dangerous. Me and my friends have been navigating these bogs for years, and this place is a mess. After all, there is no mortal reason why anyone would want to be here. Of course, if one wanted to escape, it would be a whole different scenario ...”

Leslie was trying to control her anger. Taking a pause, she replied politely, “I don’t remember ever seeing you guys here. I have been coming here for years myself, ever since I was five years old. I almost own this place, and I know that I have never met any group of college chums like you around the place. I therefore beseech you to leave me alone, and I will pretend that I never saw you!”

This time Herbert came up to her, and identifying the nervousness in her voice, he said, “But, you shouldn’t be here. This moor is the only thing that has kept us isolated for centuries. It is the only form of protection that we have from the rest of the dehumanising world.”

“Do you know that?” retorted Leslie, “that the rest of the world is de-humanising?”

“I am certain,” replied Herbert with confidence.

The quiet guy Narendra didn’t comment to any of the things that Leslie or his friends were talking about. But now he spoke, “Leave her alone, for God’s sake, we have other more important things to do, like finishing this bottle of muddy water!”

What he meant was finishing the bottle of alcohol, while studying the properties of the mud. He was the most serious of the three, having a thin sense of humour, and sat huddled in a corner between three adjacent rocks, peering over some roughly made instruments and a spirit lamp, while constantly taking notes on a piece of paper.

4. The Diversion

It’s going to be a long night, thought Leslie. Imogen wasn’t able to remain patient anymore. He went up to Leslie and asked, “You can join us. We have a fire, and you can keep yourself warm, and probably, if you want, engage in chit chat with us, which I assure you, will pass the time quite fruitfully for you.”

This is going to be a long, long night, and my plans are going to get messy, thought Leslie, but she agreed, “Ok, but don’t expect me to participate.”

Thus, gathering all her possessions, she moved camp and joined the three wise men.

Leslie tried to join in their conversation, but Imogen, Herbert and Narendra were speaking of things she did not understand. They spoke of viscosity and wind velocity, and biological composition of the mud in the moor. They spoke of trying to demystify the unique properties of the bog where all weight kept sinking, even the lightest feather, until it reached the bottom. No one could even be sure how far the bottom was from the surface of the earth. Then they discussed statistics of the number of people who were lost in the moor, and tried to figure out where their bodies might be lying, and whether finding them might provide more clues about the nature of the soil there.

Leslie was naturally skilled at crossing the bog, stepping lightly on the firm patches, and dancing over the heavy pools of weed and danger. But listening to the guys, she started to get interested automatically, and without having to force herself into it. Her immense curiosity coupled with her adventurous nature and supreme ability to survive against all odds helped her find patterns in their conversation, and made her realise that, whether or not they were sent by some interested agent, they were here to solve the problem of the moor and probably build bridges to the outside world. She felt nice. It was the first instance that she felt like something good was being done in the kingdom of her deranged father.

5. Destiny

Leslie wanted to say something. She was running out of patience. She wanted to say something intelligent so that the guys didn’t think that she didn’t understand most of what they were talking about.

“Hey, guys! So how are you planning to map a route out of here?” she burst out.

Stunned silence. Narendra stopped working, and the rest of the guys stopped short, and everyone turned to look at her, all at the same moment. Leslie was taken aback.

“What do you mean, planning a route out of here?” retorted Imogen, a little irritated, though the very next moment he realised that there was no reason to be irritated. It might actually be a perfectly innocent question.

“Well, seems like ever since the beginning of time, you have been only talking about soil viscosity and temperature and blah blah, and it seems like you seriously want to find out what is going on in this death trap, and escape?” replied Leslie.

Silence prevailed and Herbert felt strange in his stomach. He felt confused. He started thinking that maybe the girl was some kind of agent sent to follow them. But he did not want such conspiracy theories cloud his judgement, and so he asked politely, “Why do you think we would want to escape?” and added, “we are curious, just like you I guess, and want to know for the sake of science, what is going on here.”

Leslie shrugged her shoulders. The other guys were strangely silent on the subject. The topic was dropped, and they kept on working silently while Leslie got up to have a walk.

The sky was clear, and the moon shone brightly with the light of the Sun. The plains were flooded with a silky splendour. Over the rocks, she could see a long way away. All the landscape seemed plain and easy. There were tuffs of dense undergrowth, and there were some stumps of rotting trees, which once ruled the scene. The place looked exceptionally lifeless, like a place of death, where nothing ever came to live, but with heavy burdens and chronic pains, to die and end unbearable pain. The place was both cruel and excessively kind.

Leslie’s mental peregrinations continued till dawn. She did not sleep. She was far too excited to sleep. The boys were in deep slumber though. When they dosed off, she didn’t notice. Imogen was the first to wake up.

He walked slowly up to Leslie and told her a tale of great adventure that his brothers had shared over the last few days, which had led them to where they were that night.

“So you see ... we are fleeing from the King, because we are from the outside world. It may sound confusing at first, but we are adventurers from the neighbouring country of Tourville, and we accidently crossed this bog, which isolates your country from every other place on the earth! When we reached here and made one of two friends, we realised how difficult it is actually to cross the moor. We had done it, almost playfully. But, then you may ask us, why we couldn’t go back in the same way? That’s because, we had left no trace of which path we took, and after several attempts, all that we reached were with big pools and small pools of sinking ground. Soon, the King caught drift of the presence of us three strangers, and thought we had come to destroy his precious kingdom and steal all the women.

“We hid for two days, not doing anything, but planning and plotting on how to get out, but were unsuccessful. Then Narendra came up with the idea of studying the moor and making the journey in a ‘scientific’ manner. We had no options, so we followed and thus we fixed ourselves some equipment and came here, hoping that our college education might bail us through this unusual problem.”

Leslie was listening intently. Now she spoke, “But you are doing it all wrong. You don’t need college level calculations to cross this bog. You need some imagination, and a little bit of luck. I’ll show you how it is done. Just watch the magic unfold! By the way, my name is Leslie.”

Imogen smiled. Confidence was restored in her voice as she realised that the three guys were not enemies, and that she could potentially share a long and fruitful friendship with them on the other side, that is, if all of them managed to cross the moor with her.

The End

Dwaipayan Adhya