Myths & Legends From Ahoy by Chloe Ma

Myth 1: The History of the Misty Isles (Note: the magic is allowed because the myth itself happened in the Age of Magic)

“Tell me a story, mummy,” requested the little girl, “The one about the giant.”

“Okay,” replied the mother, settling into an armchair beside the hammock, the armchair rocking and swaying with the movement of the waves of the Misty Isles.

“Once, there was a giant. His name was Yore. He threw Stjarnagard into the sky when the Vikings slew the other giants. The bits of land separated into floating islands, where the Vikings now live today. But one large chunk still remained, filling what was to be the Pit. In his rage, he yanked it out of the ground and flung it like a frisbee across the Forgotten Woods. It reached what now is the Misty Isles, but before it was a long stretch of clear water. What Yore didn’t know was that trapped inside the piece of earth was a spirit – Yonitiure. As the slab of land hit the shore, it shattered, releasing Yonitiure. The flying debris formed the Misty Isles, however the air stayed as clear as ever. Yonitiure invisibly blanketing the haunted stretch. And for the longest time, it stayed that way. Yonitiure peacefully watched over the sailors as they passed in and out of Ahoy. But one day, all that changed…

Something happened that changed Yonitiure’s personality. Perhaps it was the seas, stirring up a storm of emotion inside him. Maybe his isolation, stuck as a spirit floating forever. Nobody knows. But he changed. He was angry. His anger strengthened, nudging his presence ever closer to mortal consciousness. Eventually, this fury was channeled into making the seafarers know he was there. His unseen body thickened, fueled with rage until it became almost tangible. The fog he created would hang over the Misty Isles for eternity, making the Isles what it is today. But eliminating the sailors’ vision wasn’t enough. Yonitiure wanted to punish them, make them pay for his endless anger. So he left his body to seek a way to inflict his wrath on the innocent seafarers.

He entered a sailor’s mind. It was a neat array of orderly thoughts. Yonitiure looked at the thoughts, spick and span. He took the thoughts and bent them, twisted them, mixed them together and broke them apart. He made new thoughts and replayed them over and over, memories of things that didn’t happen. Once he was finished, the poor man’s brain would be unrecognizable- a mess of emotions and images and memories. He would never recover, forcing him into insanity. He thought no one saw him. But the Water Sprites did. They wrote down, on a scroll, the cure to this mental jumble of thoughts. They hid the scroll where they thought nobody would find it, then performed an unknown spell on it.

This spell made a young girl, Mist, the chosen one to clear the Misty Isles of Yonitiure. And hundreds of eons later, long after the Age of Magic, a little girl was born. She slept in this hammock and sat in this armchair. Her mother told her a story about the Misty Isles and her destiny,” the mother finished.

“Goodnight, Mist.”