Week 2 Story: The City of Wives

Aves Andoran stood on the deck of a warship, loaded to the brim full of fighting men. He had grown up hearing tales and whispers of Ceylon, the Island of Goblins, and had vowed that one day, he would be the one to slay the Goblins. Now, he was leading the expedition that would put an end to that ancient menace.

Rough Seas on Route to Ceylon (Source: pixabay.com)

Seemingly out of nowhere, a massive storm appeared around the ship, and the waves began crashing into the hull of the ship, drenching the men on the deck to the bone. Through the spray of the violent sea, Aves saw the rage of the storm above, as massive bolts of lightning of every shade and color danced through the clouds. Occasionally, one would race down to the surface of the sea and explode with an unimaginable force. Before his eyes, a bolt of green lightning, cackling with wicked energy embedded itself into the deck of the ship, splitting the mast down the middle before rending the ship into pieces.

When Aves opened his eyes, he expected to find himself in another life, but instead was very much still himself. What was more, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen was standing before him, treating the wounds he had received in the storm. She asked him his name, and he asked hers. It was Lindola, and she told him she had pulled him from the waters, and that other members of her village had rescued many others on the shores. She asked if he would like to see the other survivors of the wreck, and he complied. She led him to a fairly large village atop a hill, overlooking the sea. They had washed up on an island it seems, beautiful and fertile as any he had ever seen. He wanted to ask why he had never heard of such a paradise, but he couldn't seem to find the words. As he struggled to speak, Lindola showed him to where his crew members were being kept after their rescue, and his words returned. He embraced them all, asking how they had fared in the storm. He surveyed the survivors and was surprised to learn that almost all of the crew had survived.

As the days went on, Aves learned more about the island they had washed ashore on from Lindola, who seemed to have taken a liking to him. She gave him a tour of the village and the surrounding wilderness. They passed a dark cave that Lindola refused to speak about, claiming that a dark event happened there that the people do not speak about. During their travel across the island, Aves saw some of the other villagers, and was perplexed. Most of the women seemed normal enough, though the men and even some of the women seemed somewhat different, as if they were in a haze. Lindola explained that they had recently faced a similar tragedy to what had befallen Aves' ship, many of their men had embarked on a trading journey on the only vessel the people had and were lost at sea, leaving the island isolated. Aves offered his condolences to Lindola, who embraced him. Soon, they were entangled in romance. Many of the women had lost husbands and lovers to the sea, and so they fell into the arms of Aves' crew, following in Aves and Lindola's fashion.

A few weeks after their romance began, Aves awoke in the night, only to find Lindola sneaking out the door. Aves, following his instincts, immediately followed his new lover out into the night. Making sure to stay out of sight of her, he watched as she walked down into the cave they had spoken of before. Steeling himself, he walked in and saw a horrific sight. Lindola was gone, and in her place was a She-Goblin who was feasting on the rotting flesh of one of his crew members that had not survived the ship wreck...

Along with the Goblin that was Lindola, he saw others that looked vaguely like the women who had taken his crew to bed, and the horrible truth came crashing down on Aves. He and his crew had found Ceylon after all, and they had bedded the very Goblins they had come to kill. Aves raced back to the home he shared with Lindola, and took his men aside the next day on the excuse of working on a new ship. He told them what he had seen the night before, and a few others mentioned that their lovers had disappeared in the night. Others were too blinded by love to accept the truth, and turned on Aves and those who wished to escape. They returned to Ceylon and told the women what Aves was claiming, only to be overwhelmed by the women who had now transformed. They tore the men apart, making their way towards Aves and those men who had accepted the truth. Aves prayed to the skies, to every god he knew, to those whose names were lost to time, and to those whose names were yet to be known. 

When all hope seemed lost, a brilliant stallion appeared in the sky, wings sprouting from its back. Around it was a glow that evoked every color at once yet also none of them. From the stallion, a voice called out, telling them to get on her back and she would carry them to salvation. The few men who remained climbed aboard, as the horde of Goblins were fast approaching. The stallion lifted in the air and flew out over the sea. They returned the men to the port they had left from, telling them to warn others of the danger they have seen, and to avoid the island at all costs. As it left them, Aves felt utterly alone, and perplexed. Despite all that had happened, he still longed for the embrace of his dear Lindola...

Bibliography

Story source: The Giant Crab, and Other Tales from Old India by W. H. D. Rouse.

In the original story, a group of random men on a ship are wrecked on an island known as Ceylon, and are taken in by beautiful women who are really goblins that have cast illusions on themselves, changing their appearance. Additionally, they create illusory villagers to make the island seem more inhabited and less goblin-like. They claim to have lost their husbands at sea, and so they take the men from the shipwreck as their new husbands. In the middle of the night, one of the men wakes up to find his wife entering their home, feasting on the meat of another man, singing a song about how humans are delicious and that she is a goblin. He told the other men about what had happened the next day, and some of them agreed to try to escape. When all hope seemed lost, a fairy who hated the goblins sent a winged horse to rescue them from the island. The main change I made to this story was shifting the point of view to follow a single character, the man leading the ship. This was in order to add gravity to the realization that the women are goblins, rather than simply knowing it from the beginning. I also made the men be on a journey to fight the goblins before being shipwrecked, in order to create a bit of irony about their situation of being seduced by said goblins. The last major change I made was to have the main character actually follow the goblin woman to where she was eating the man to make the whole situation more gruesome, as well as peppering in the fact that the man was another member of the crew that hadn't been "rescued" with the rest of the crew.