The fallen king stood at the edge of the coast, his toes lightly touching the sand, careful not to let the waves wash over his feet. He smiled as a wooden ship cruised from one island to another, the noise of its crew faintly audible despite the distance. Its sails were spread gloriously, embracing the wind that urged it towards whatever destination it was set for. The fallen king sighed.
He hated that name, the fallen king. A title that’s haunted and hounded him in his waking days. But not nearly as much as his given name. That name still gives him nightmares. Regardless, he recognizes that in life, and even in life after life, some things can never change. But that doesn’t mean he can’t try to change them.
Xenia moved from the shore and towards his home, a humble shack underneath two crossed palm trees. He still remembered the day he built them, thousands of years ago. He finished his daily task just short of an hour ago, which gave him enough time to cook a snack.
“Hey,” the crow called. “Are you going to eat that?”
Xenia chuckled as he weaved his way to the bonfire, avoiding the rocks that spread on the sand. “Don’t eat it for me… yet.” He reached into the fire and took a well-roasted fish with his bare hands.
The flames engulfed his fingers, but his skin had grown calloused and rugged. He was used to the fire and felt no heat.
He simply smiled.
“Can you hand over a piece?” the crow asked.
Xenia lugged the fish he’d had to the crow’s legs and claimed another one from the fire.
“Thanks,” said the crow, gnawing at her meal, smoke still seeping out the fish’s burnt scales. “You finished early today.”
Xenia rubbed his hands together and feasted too. “It’s gotten easy, when you do the same thing over and over. You know what they say about practice and perfection.” Unfortunately, though his hands were practiced at handling heat, his tongue was not. He spat the fish straight to the sand and let out some deep exhales to cool his mouth down.
Across him, the crow cackled. “Hah-hah! I guess you should burn your tongue over and over as well.”
Xenia grabbed a fistful of sand and put it in his mouth to hopefully cure the burning. No use, his tongue was still numb. “Good thing you have a beak,” he was barely able to say.
“Humans are so odd,” answered the crow. “Why do you not have beaks, hmm?”
The two sat there by their respective logs, eating and talking. The crow had become Xenia’s friend, after she had decided to visit one day and had given him a gift he’d not soon forget. Ever since, she would come and drop in for food. To Xenia’s surprise, the crow had a much bigger appetite than he imagined.
After a few minutes of silence, Xenia spoke. “So, how’s your side of the underworld?”
“My side?” the crow asked. “Ah! My request has finally been put forth and granted!” She flapped her wings in excitement.
“Oh, is that right?” Xenia smiled. “When are you leaving for the surface?”
“In two days hence,” she answered. “Three entire days above, can you imagine that?”
Xenia took a bite out of his fish. “Where do you plan to go?”
“Oh!” The crow let her fish fall to the sand. She zipped over Xenia’s shoulder and flew around him, taken by her imagination. “I would go to the meadows, above the mountains, to places where it’s cold and full of snow. Oh how I’ve missed the cold!”
“I’ve missed that too,” he said, trying to keep his eyes on the crow. “I reckon you’d explore the world, no? Lands yet explored. Seas and oceans—”
“No!” interrupted the crow. She landed on Xenia’s lap. “I hate the sea and not in forever would I go near one ever again!”
“Sorry, I forgot.” He looked beyond, to the shoreside they sat on and to the sea that stretched farther than his sight could allow. He rubbed the crow’s feathers for good measure. “You’ll visit my kingdom then, for me?”
The crow poked Xenia’s chest with her beak. “Of course I will! I’ll tell you all about it when I get back, don’t you worry.” And with that she retreated back to her log, finishing her food.
“See you tomorrow then?” the crow asked.
Xenia smiled. “See you tomorrow, friend.”
And so night came, and Xenia did what he always does. He cleaned his quarters and made sure his home was in proper order. Mainly sweeping stray rocks from his shack’s floor.
He fell to his bed and he lied there, his arms behind his head, waiting. His thoughts were of the surface, a land he, by now, would barely recognize. What had become of everything he had ever known? He wondered if the throne he used to pass judgement on still stood, or had it now rusted and been forgotten?
Xenia heard a rumble that came from a decent distance which was the signal for him to sleep. And so he did. That night, Xenia slept troubled.
The following day started unlike other days, a morning humid fog loomed and covered the island. Above, Xenia could swear he saw the sky turn dark and bloodred.
He walked along the shore and through the island’s small patch of forest land to the foot of the island’s mountain to jog his sight. There, a boulder sat.
This boulder was gigantic, several times larger than Xenia himself. Every day, he would push this boulder up the mountain. Through the thousands of years he has done this and the hundreds of thousands of days of his never-ending labor, Xenia has not once faltered.
He had to push the boulder. He had no other choice but to.
Like clockwork, Xenia placed his hands on the rock and started pushing. The boulder moved with ease. When before, it had not moved at all. Now, Xenia’s accumulated strength allowed him to do so without so much as breaking a sweat. The crow once compared his strength to that of one son of Zeus.
About more than halfway up the mountain, the crow appeared. The fog had gone, and the sky was blue after all. She landed on Xenia’s shoulder.
“You’re early,” he said.
The crow looked at him with her beady eyes. “Do you want to go with me?”
Xenia looked back at the crow, before laughing. He almost lost his grip on the boulder, but he managed to place a finger on it before it rolled back down again, as it tends to do. “You are joking of course?”
“I’m asking you a genuine question.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really,” the crow said firmly.
Xenia stopped smiling and leaned his back on the rock. “And how do you plan to do that?”
The crow flew and faced Xenia. “I’ll ask the gods to make an exception.”
“You’ll ask the gods to make an exemption…” he repeated. “You do know it’s me you’re talking about here, right? Besides, they gave me an ultimatum, you know that.”
The crow pecked at his chest mournfully. “Fine, but don’t say I didn’t invite you,” she said before flying away until she was nowhere in sight.
Xenia continued pushing. Before, it used to take him the entire day to push the rock to the summit of the mountain. Often, he’d be crushed when it rolled back. Countless scars on his legs and arms detailed the years upon years of pain the rock and his labor has given him.
Funnily enough, his deepest and most painful wound by far came not from the rock, but from his friend. His only friend.
Thousands of years have passed, and Xenia still so vividly remembers the moment that the crow came bolting through the clouds like an arrow. The speeds she reached that day was nothing any normal bird could ever dream of going at.
He still heard her faint cry churning louder and louder, until she came crashing into Xenia, beak first into his eye. She was the first and only visitor he would ever have.
Feeling guilty, the crow flew and crafted a ragged eyepatch made of leaves. Since then, she decided to visit Xenia on his island to check on his eye’s recovery, until eventually the wound healed. The crow never stopped visiting since.
Now, nothing was left of the incident except for a deep scar that ran across his right eye. Nothing but the scar and their memories of it.
He continued rolling the boulder to the top. Now, it only took him a handful of hours to do the deed. Nothing to scoff at. A handful of hours pushing a rock over a steep slope was still arduous work.
He finished an hour after noon. When he reached the top, the boulder would just magically stop and stay there, lingering in the space between the mountain’s slope and the mountain’s peak. It was like there was an invisible barrier that prevented Xenia from placing the boulder on the flat surface above.
He didn’t mind. It was annoying the first few years, when the push to the top was a marked struggle and a fatal endeavor. But death was nothing to a man with purpose.
The gods promised Xenia freedom if he placed the rock at the summit. If he cleared his task. It was no surprise that the gods rigged their own game. He would have expected nothing less from prideful immortals.
Before sleeping, Xenia once again heard the boulder tumble down to the base of the mountain. The only constant in his eternal life. Well, that and the crow’s visits. She’ll be coming tomorrow, he thought. That made him smile.
The following day, he was sitting by the mountain’s summit, just finished with his labor, when the crow came.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said. “Why don’t you just not do it?” she asked, pointing at the boulder.
It was a foolish proposition. “They promise me everything, if or when I push this boulder from here…” He pointed to the ground where the boulder was, then moving it a single inch to the left. “… to here. I can’t not try it, not even for a day.”
The crow pecked at the rock. “Okay,” she said. “But what if you just break it?”
“Break it?” Xenia asked, confused. The crow always had a peculiar way of thinking, one of the things he admired of her. One of the things he used to have. “How can you imagine I can break it?”
“Have you ever tried to?”
“I’ve punched it a countless number of times, more than I can even recollect. And my punches did nothing. I am just a man. I cannot break stone.”
The crow was not convinced. “Let me rephrase the question. Have you ever tried to, recently?”
“No—” he muttered. “I haven’t.”
Then the crow flew from the boulder, and hovered above, urging him. “Go on, then.”
Xenia shook his head but readied himself all the same. There was no way he could smash the boulder, but he would have to try. He would have to try.
He focused on his breath and raised his fist to the sky, before bringing it down to the boulder with such ferocity that made the land itself shake. KRRA-BOOM.
When the smoke from the impact cleared, rocks were scattered across the dirt trail on the mountain slope. The boulder was broken.
Xenia couldn’t help but smile.
“You did it!” exclaimed the crow. “You broke the boulder!”
“I guess I did,” said Xenia, rubbing his knuckles where the boulder’s dust coated it. “It didn’t even hurt.”
Instinctively, Xenia took a piece of the boulder and threw it across the boundary line, to the summit. But the rock shard simply bounced on thin air and changed direction, repelled by an invisible force.
“Can’t say I didn’t expect that.”
The crow continued to flap her wings. “Well, still progress! I’ll be back tomorrow before I leave.” And the crow left.
Night came, Xenia cleaned his shack and lay on his bed. Before going to sleep, he heard a familiar rumbling. That night, he slept satisfied.
The next day, Xenia found the boulder at the foot of the mountain, rebuilt and reorganized. It looked exactly as it did before he crushed it to a hundred different pieces. “Persistent, are you, Bouldy?”
Sadly, the boulder did not reply. Xenia proceeded to push the rock to the top for the nth time. He was at the summit again when the crow came.
“I’m leaving today so I don’t have much time!” she said, landing on the boulder. “So, this is still here?”
“There’s no way around this,” answered Xenia. “No way the gods would let me off for the third time.”
The crow scratched herself. “Maybe not… but maybe.” She scratched the top of the boulder, making a soft white mark on its surface. “You just have to be more discreet.”
And she left Xenia as quickly as she came, alone with his thoughts and labor. The crow’s wings flapped vigorously for the surface. She disappeared into the horizon, with Xenia uncertain if his only friend would ever return.
He inspected the boulder closer, running his hand through the white scratch the crow left, leaving dust on his finger. Discreet, huh?
He placed his ear on the rock. He heard nothing, of course. It was a rock. A little warm because of the sunlight that pounded on it day after day, but it was nothing special. Nothing except for the enchantment that the gods placed. Nothing except that it must keep rolling, and it must never reach where it must.
Yesterday, he crushed the rock with his bare hands. Amounting to nothing.
It was too obvious. He had to do something that would fool the gods. At least that, he knew how to do. If he’d done it before, he can do it again.
Xenia aimed for a small nick at the side of the rock and punched that part lightly. Well, lightly for his standards. A small chunk of the boulder fell off.
His punch left a small crevice, small enough to be unnoticeable. But Xenia had to take zero chances.
He scoured the mountainside to find a rock the size of the crevice he made, which didn’t take a considerable amount of time. After all, the mountain was littered with stones and shards from a bygone era.
He went to the shore and bent to face the water, careful not to touch the waves. The waves were dangerous, and not even his endurance could stand its strength.
Xenia dipped one side of the rock he’d gotten to the surface of the sea. The water simmered and boiled, and the downturned face of the rock began to melt.
Xenia had to be swift. He dashed to the foot of the mountain and up the dirt trail, reaching the boulder before the rock went cold. As one side of the rock he held was still molten, he shoved it to the crevice, completing the boulder.
On the second day, he inspected his alteration, to see if it was still there. Present, discernable but not pronounced, was a seam where the crevice used to be. A scar, Xenia thought. Then another thought came in mind, progress.
That day, he did the same. He punched the boulder and replaced the missing piece with an identical one, casually burning his pinky in the process. And so he continued, chipping at the boulder one fragment a day. hoping the gods would not notice. That was the first day in thousands of years that the crow did not come to visit. That night, Xenia slept uncertain… but hopeful.
On the fourth day, the crow returned. “You’re up to something,” the crow greeted.
“How can you tell?” Xenia smiled.
The crow laughed. “Hah-hah! That devious smile of yours. I’ve heard of it from legend, but I didn’t think I’d ever come to see it. So, you’re back?”
He shook his head. “I will not fool others as I have. But… I will not fool myself anymore.”
Xenia opened his eyes. He opened them truly, and the land shifted. The sky turned red and dark and looming. The clouds extinguished themselves overhead. The mountain was not a mountain, but a dormant volcano. The sea was that, but not of water. It was of lava and fire and souls. Burning souls. There were no trees, only pillars of stone. No dirt nor sand, only ash and rubble.
But the boulder remained. The boulder and the crow.
The crow landed on Xenia’s shoulder. “You can do this,” she said. “I came from your kingdom, or what has become of it. Do you want to know?”
A thought lingered in his mind. Do I want to? Unsure if he was thinking of the question or of the boulder. “No,” he finally said. “I’ll see it myself.”
For days upon days upon days, he punched and chiseled on the rock, repeating the process. The crow visited him every day, as she had always done. They talked and joked and ate fish that came from lava.
Then eventually, Xenia glued the last shard into place. There, at the foot of the mountain, he felt the boulder. He placed his ear to its side and listened. He heard nothing, of course. It was a rock. He found himself hugging it, and for some reason, he hugged it tight.
“Will it work?” the crow had arrived, landing above the boulder.
“Well,” answered Xenia. “There’s only one way to find out.”
He pushed the boulder to the top of the mountain, careful not to push too hard, as his modifications have made the boulder fragile. He could feel it slowly breaking, and he cannot afford it to.
His ploy would have been for naught, and the gods would catch on to his scheme. This was his best chance for freedom.
He reached the edge of the summit by what would have been sunset if the underworld counted its days. Xenia stopped there, at the boundary line. For some reason, his heart beat rapidly. He hadn’t felt anxious for a while.
He looked to the expanse of his prison, the sea of lava. There, he saw a ship crossing from one island to another. It sailed over the flames. Xenia wondered if it were the same ship he’d seen before, shaking his head. Not that it mattered, he thought. Now, things will change.
He faced the boulder. Xenia put his hands on it and pressed himself to it tightly. There, he prayed.
He prayed, not knowing if anyone dare answer.
Then he pushed.
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