The Amber Coffins of Avalon
“Hello, sir? Mister Avalon, sir?”
I was polishing my collection when I heard her. The amber coffins could become gross and misshapen if not cared for rigorously, so I duffed them with a spider-silk cloth every day. I kept them so clean that you could see their contents clearly: rows upon rows of warriors, wise-men, and rulers, wearing fine regalia and placid expressions. My sap kept them perfectly preserved in the state in which they had come to me, but in many cases they had come to me damaged. Some detached limbs floated in the amber next to their owners.
I made one last pass with the spider-silk cloth before turning to look down at her.
She was a young woman, barely into adulthood, wearing a homespun dress and a bonnet. Beside her was a great hairy hog that snuffled at my emerald tiles. I had no idea how she had found this place.
“Hello, daughter,” I said, bending my long, spindly legs to get a better look at her, “Who are you? Why have you come to my chambers?”
“My name is Sarah Nail,” she said. “This here is Henry.” She patted the hog. “We hail from the mountains of Holler Poke, which are currently being terrorized by a family of rapacious giants.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. I noticed a smudge on the amber coffin of a courageous khan. I moved to rub it out.
“My memaw used to tell me stories before she died,” Sarah Nail said, rushing through her words at top speed. I paused to listen to her. “She told me about a legendary hero called Jack Giant-Killer, who could trick giants into chopping each other up with nothing more than a few clever words. He used to roam up and down the mountains with his fire-breathing pipe and dancing sword, chopping up any giant he came across.
“My memaw said that he was such a great hero that, on his deathbed, he promised to come back and fight for Holler Poke in its time of greatest need. We’re in pretty great need right now, sir, and I started to wonder where he was. I asked around, and after a while I found out that you’re the one who keeps great heroes while they’re waiting to come back. So I figured…” he rubbed her heel against the tile, “…I would come down here and see if he knows what kind of trouble we’re really in.”
I scanned the heroic forms of my collection until I found the piece she was looking for. He was a rarity among my prizes, in that he was both elderly and intact. Instead of the neutral expression worn by most of my heroes, a frustrating smirk twisted his lips. His beard and the little hair he had left atop his head was a shocking white, but his mustaches remained dark. He was short and slight, with a hunched back and liver spotted hands. He wore plain wool clothes. Floating beside him in the amber were a large dark smoking pipe and a well-used sword.
I studied his face. His eyes were closed and showed little sign of opening. He would not be returning today, or any day soon.
“I’m sorry child,” I said. “I don’t tell my prizes when to wake up, and they don’t need to be informed of when their lands are in danger. When they are needed, they open their eyes and claw their way out of the amber as if it were made of wet paper.” I pointed. “He’s still fast asleep.”
“Well, doesn’t he care?” she said. “Did he forget his promise?”
I shook my head. “No, my heroes never do that. He hasn’t woken up yet because there will be a time of even greater need in the future, a struggle that will require his presence even more. They only get one chance to come back, you know.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said, stomping towards the amber coffin of Jack Giant-Killer, “Maybe once I take him back upstairs, he’ll see that things can’t get any worse than they are now.”
In a flash, I reached down and heaved the Giant-Killer up to a high shelf. She was left staring at the empty space where it once was. “You will do no such thing!” I barked. “If you so much as touch that coffin without the proper gloves, the oils on your skin will irrevocably degrade the sheen. These heroes are in mint condition, and I intend to keep them that way!”
She stared up at the shelf where I had placed her hero. She glanced around at the rest of my collection. “All these folks are old dead heroes?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, puffing out my chest, “The bravest and best in the history of the–”
“Then any of them will make do,” she said, dashing for the nearest coffin, which contained a beautiful woman with a flute.
I managed to heave the coffin out of the way, but she was already sprinting towards the next one. Her hog trampled off in the opposite direction, squealing as his hooves skated over the tiles.
“If my fingerprints will degrade the sheen,” she said, “think of what Henry’s slobber will do!” She reached out to touch a coffin. Her hog was doing the same on the other end of the room. I couldn’t possibly stop both of them.
“Stop that!” I said, rising up to my full height. My eyes darkened and my voice rumbled like an earthquake. “Do you really think you can challenge Avalon in the heart of his domain?”
She slid to a halt and the hog began to cower. She looked up at me and set her jaw. “I was fixin’ to, yeah.”
She wore an expression I rarely saw cross open eyes. Her hog slinked over to her side, whimpering with its head low to the ground.
I tapped my foot against the tile and rubbed my brow in contemplation. “Jack can truly not save you now,” I said, “none of my heroes can. You will have to save yourself. However, there’s no reason he cannot aid you along your path.”
I slipped my hand into a spider-silk glove and reached into Jack’s coffin. The amber parted for me like it was honey. I drew out the Giant-Killer’s dancing sword and his fire-breathing pipe, then dropped them at the girl’s feet.
Her eyes went wide as she picked up the treasure. “Thank you kindly, mister,” she said, scurrying towards the door.
“You will return them to me someday,” I boomed to her as she left.
After she was gone, I went back to polishing my trophies. I prided myself on the size and diversity of my collection. I had heroes from all corners of the earth, and most ages of history. My glistening white shelves stretched so high that even I, with all my great stature, needed a stepladder to reach those closest to the earthen ceiling. Hundreds upon hundreds of stoic faces stared down at me, prizes I had acquired over a long and storied career. And yet, there were some alcoves near the top, nestled among the roots and fungi, that remained empty. Not enough heroes had yet died to fill every corner of my show-room.
I turned to the coffin of Jack Giant-Killer and went about smoothing over the unsightly hole my hand had left in the amber. The old man’s presentation seemed lopsided without his magic toys, and of course he would miss them if he woke up without them, but I couldn’t help but feel that I had made the right decision in giving them away. It was, after all, important to preserve the future of the hobby.
Noah Hoyle is a junior at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC. He is pursuing a major in Creative Writing and a minor in History. His stories and essays have appeared in The Peal and in Nat 1 LLC’s Weird Weird West anthology. He has strong interests in mythology, history, and taking hikes.
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