Week 13: Storytelling -- The Land of No Death

The Land of No Death

I was just a humble barber who lived in a land where people never died. Instead, they left when they heard a voice -- though I'd never experienced it myself, I saw people get up and tell an unseen character that they would go with them. I'd never questioned it, nor thought to try and discover where they went.

That changed when, one day, I was shaving a man who suddenly started shouting at an invisible person. "Go away," he shouted. "Don't bother me, or you'll get it."

So I continued to shave him for a couple more minutes without any incident or noise, when he suddenly started to yell again. "I'll teach you a lesson!" he yelled, and, grabbing the razor in my hand, he proceeded to run after the invisible person.

Naturally, I was upset that he had stolen my razor (he hadn't even paid for my services yet) and chased after him. For an old guy, he was pretty fast, and I barely kept up with him, my attention mostly focused on getting my razor back and not where we were headed.

Only when we reached the place did I take a good look at our surroundings. We were at a dark and grayish kind of land, where little grew and the things that did were crooked and withering. A large pit stood in front of us, and before I could stop him, the man dove headfirst into the pit.

No! I thought to myself. That was my best razor! But one thing I was glad of was that I hadn't jumped as well, that I had escaped with my life intact. So, humming as I headed home, I quickly told everyone where I went and what I saw. Since people were extremely curious to visit the strange pit that the voice had led numerous people to, I proceeded to show it to them.

But when we got to the place where the voice had led my former client, there was nothing. There was no trace of the large pit; instead, I saw a flat plain of land, the place even more dry and desolate than it had been with the pit.

When we got back, days and months and years passed. Something had changed; perhaps because we had discovered the secret of the pit, it no longer existed. People started to die like they did in other countries.

Death

(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Author's Note:
This story is based off of "The Voice of Death" story in the unit Lang's European Fairy Tales I. The main character in the original story is the client of the barber, who sought out a place where no one died and tried to resist the voice of death. He couldn't, and like in this retelling, grabs the barber's razor and chases after the voice. So in this retelling I made the barber the main character and decided tell the story from a first person point of view. I kept with the original tale's plot line and ending, though I reworded some of the dialogue.

Bibliography:
The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (1890). Story Source: Project Gutenberg