By G. Connor Salter

Translated from the Old Occitan, circa 1232. Some sections have been abridged for brevity.

The sailors say that there is a man on the world’s edge. He lives on an iron bar, high as the tallest building and wide around as a Grecian column. At John Lackland’s court, they will tell you the iron bar is the mast of a long-sunken Atlantean ship, still lying on the ocean’s floor. Even they do not know how the man arrived at the world’s edge nor how he landed on the iron bar. All they know is he stays there, his arms clenched ever tightly around the post, his legs resting on a shaky crossbar, his cloak and his trousers bleached gray from the constant sea spray.

One day, a young fisherman with walnut skin and stained teeth, who lived one hundred leagues from the world’s edge, sailed his coracle to the very edge. He anchored his ship by the iron bar and looked at the man.

“The sailors and shipbuilders in my homeland call you a Young One, yet you have sat here since before my grandfather’s time,” the fishermen said. “Why is this so?”

The man turned his hairy head slowly, appraising the fisherman.

“The Young Ones were my people, the last generation before Atlantis fell,” he replied. “Once the Pillars of Hercules collapsed, we scattered to whatever land or wind would have us. The Old Ones, our fathers and father’s fathers, mostly sailed to the North. They hoped to find an inlet from which men say Atlanteans migrated many a millennium ago.”

“Why did you not journey with the Old Ones?” the fisherman asked.

“I prefer this abode,” the man replied.

“How do you eat?” the fisherman asked.

“I live on the herons that fly along the east winds,” the man replied.

“How do you catch them?” the fisherman asked.

“I sing the old funeral songs of my homeland. The sound draws sea creatures to comfort me. Then I can catch them.”

“What do you drink?” the fisherman asked.

“The tears that adorn my face,” the man replied.

The fisherman was taken aback by this statement. He watched the water ripple around the iron bar’s base for a moment before he raised his face again.

“Wise man, if I asked you for one of the old funeral songs, would it serve me well?” the fisherman asked.

“The man who can master an Atlantean funeral song can draw even the mighty sand shark onto the shores and make it eat from his palms,” the man answered.

“What must I do to master such songs?” the fisherman asked, leaning out of his coracle.

The man stared at his visitor for a long time. The wind blew his worn cloak and rust-red hair around and around. Then he reached into his cloak and took out an arm ring. It sailed through the air, and the fisherman dove into the water. The fisherman returned to the surface and beheld the arm ring, made of gold, words writ around the edge in silver.

“When you can return and tell me what those words say, you may ask me that question again,” the man said.

The fisherman returned to his home. The next morning, he showed the arm ring to his village priest. The priest searched the scrolls on his shelf and shook his head.

“This is not our language, and it is not the Latin or French I was taught from my master. You must travel to find someone to translate it for you.”

The priest sent him off the next morning with a copy of the Gospels to teach himself French. The fisherman took the only ship in the harbor and sailed for Palestine. When he arrived in the holy city, he asked any learned person he could find anyone he could find what the arm ring said. None could help him, but they advised him to ask the bankers who called themselves Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. Only gold could buy an introduction.

The fisherman joined the Lionheart’s forces as a mercenary, fighting wherever he was told and gaining valor for his feats. By the time the fisherman had fought and traded and gained enough gold, the Lionheart was gone and most of the fisherman’s comrades-in-arms slain. The fisherman knew the Saladin’s forces would not let a man of his reputation live for long. He arranged to meet the Knights Templar at their offices during the night, knowing he would be gone from the land by sunrise.

The bankers inspected the arm ring and then passed it along to their most senior member. He fingered the inscription for some time and said, “It is Greek. It is a very old Greek, and we do not know it very well. But the first part says, ‘he who will enter the gates of the gods.’”

“Who would know the old Greek well enough to complete the translation?” the fisherman asked.

“The Grecian monks or their superiors,” the senior banker answered.

The next morning, the fisherman left the holy city and made his way to the coast. He spent the last of his gold on a ship leaving for Athens. The captain learned he had fought in Palestine and brought a young sailor to the fisherman.

“This is my son, and it is his first voyage,” the captain said. “Will you teach him the sword?”

The fisherman taught the sailor all he knew of swordplay for three months. The captain thanked the fisherman, promising payment when they arrived in Athens, and gave his son a sword with a gold handle. The son gave the fisherman a silver coin and thanked him.

Not long afterward, in the middle of a stormy night, the wind drove the ship aground on an isle. A falling mast struck the captain’s son on the head before he could dive off the ship. The fisherman clutched a piece of driftwood and watched the boy sink with one hand clenching the gold-hilted sword.

The driftwood took the fisherman onto dry land, and he survived for a year helping the natives build coracles before he got passage to Athens on a passing merchant ship. In Athens, he found rooms at an inn where the landlady agreed he could pay in work. After several months, he found a monk who could translate the rest of the arm ring, but only for a price. The fisherman began working as a swordplay instructor for the tradesmen. When his landlady learned that he had fought alongside the Lionheart and spoke the King’s French, she asked him to teach her daughter. He taught the daughter for a year, writing out the lessons every day as they spoke. On the first day, the fisherman learned that the daughter was learning French for her husband.

“How long have you been betrothed?”

“Since my mother took a loan from his father to buy this inn,” she answered.

“Will you be happy?”

“He is kind to me, and we have known each since we were children,” she answered. “We will learn to make each other happy.”

Eighteen months passed, and the last lesson before the wedding came. The daughter offered the fisherman a book she had written of the French instructions. He placed it back in her hands, then took her hand and kissed it. She took away her hand and put the instruction book on a table as she left. The next day, as the church bells rang to announce the wedding, the fisherman sat alone in his room. As he heard the crowd leaving the church, he took the instruction book and broke it over his knee.

The next day, the fisherman took the gold he had gained and visited the monk. The monk fingered the money, then looked at the arm ring.

“In full, it reads, ‘he who would enter the gates of the gods must learn wisdom from the stomach.’ To my ancient fathers, the stomach held knowledge and pain.”

The fisherman took the arm ring with him and booked passage on the first ship from Athens. He made his way home over five years, each new ship getting him closer to the world’s edge. At last, he arrived home in his village. Some of his neighbors marveled at his travels, while others asked why a man of his experiences had returned home. He asked them who could sell him a coracle.

The next day, the fisherman returned to the world’s edge. He found the iron mast and saw the man still hanging on to it. The years had left the man stooped and ragged, but otherwise unchanged. The fisherman raised the arm ring and declared, “I have learned your lesson. He who wants to enter the gates of gods, what your ancestors called Olympus, must enter by the stomach, the organ of pain.’ Is that the answer, sage?”

The man stared at the fisherman. Then he slowly nodded.

“I have traveled far,” the fisherman said. “There are maybe a dozen men in the world who can say they have traversed the plains of Palestine, strode the streets of Athens, sat in the halls of Templars, and attended to the teachings of both the Romans and their Eastern brothers. If any man has traveled and strived to be worthy of learning the old ways, it is I. Now tell me, what must I do to master an old funeral song of your people?”

The man stared for a moment longer. Then he ran a hand through his bleached hair and spoke.

“To master an old funeral song, the old songs of the oldest seafarers, you need three things,” he said. “First, ears that have heard the fairest maiden say you will only ever be like a brother to her. Second, eyes that have watched a woman or child perish without any way to save them. Third, arms that long to embrace companions and comrades long since dead. Only then can you truly sing and master the old funeral songs of Atlantis.”

In time, the fisherman’s village became part of a great empire, the last vestiges of a burgeoning trade route. Coracles gave way to trade ships, and no one ventured anymore to the world’s edge. The fisherman lived in a house at the village’s highest point, where he could see the coastline. To the end of his days, he wore the arm ring and taught the children languages and the young men swordplay. Whenever a new merchant came to the village or an established merchant needed advice, they sought the fisherman’s advice. Many called him master and offered him an official title on the village council, but he always said he was a fisherman. While the villagers could not think of a man or woman who didn’t love the fisherman, some nights in the spring, they would wake and hear a wailing sound from his house. The sound traveled, beautiful and yet terrible, across the coastline, and the greatest fish catches always seemed to come the next morning.