Week 9 Story: The Traveler

In my former life, I was what you would call a traveler – my magical abilities were that I could simply travel the world whenever I wanted to. There was just one downfall to this ability – I literally could, and would, travel whenever, and I mean whenever, I wanted to. At first, I was very new to my powers – I had no idea how to use them, let alone channel them in a safe and healthy way. 

Hi, my name is Penny, and I'm a magician and a traveler. 

As a way to harness my powers and keep me grounded to the earth to where I wouldn't travel to places unexpectedly, I was told I needed to get a few certain tattoos. They would also be used as a way to help me be identifiable to other travelers wherever I ended up at.

Well, long story short, if you didn't catch it – this story is coming from me in my past life. I got caught up in some bad situations, wasn't able to escape and ended up in the library in the underworld. Here I've been working for the library and will so forever, literally – or I thought so, until now.

The underground library is in the world of the "Neitherlands," the world that connects all of the worlds. Little did I know that there's a special, very secretive afterlife world out there for me, specifically for travelers, that I recently became aware of. I'm on a quest to find this world now.

In the Neitherlands, all of the worlds are connected by wells – specific wells have specific destinations, but the landscape of the wells changes every day, so it makes it very hard to be able to track down certain wells. I've been tracking the changing of the wells, and I think I finally have it down to the well I need to go to – it's right outside the library door now.

Okay, I'm in the well now, and I'm walking down a long road. There's actually quite a few people here and the line is pretty backed up. I wonder what's going on in front of me?

It's been a couple minutes now, and I can see a woman sitting at the end of the road, looking at people's arms and either letting them pass or turning them away. She even just pushed someone off of the road!

I asked the person in front of me, "What's she looking for?" and they replied with, "This road is only for travelers – only our kind can pass," as she looked down at my wrist. "You won't have a problem."

"What happens to the people that get pushed off the road? Do I want to know?"

She replied with, "They fall back into the underworld, never to be seen again. They are the ones trying to impersonate us travelers. And, for that, they get sent to the underworld forever."

The woman was right, as I was just able to pass by the woman to this new afterlife world. I have absolutely no idea what to expect.

This is so exciting! A world full of people like me – who would have thought? I'll coma back with an update soon, but as for now, I'm going to enjoy this new life. See you soon!

Photo of a hand with arrow tattoos

(Taken by Michael Rivera on Unsplash)

Author's Note: This story was a mash-up between the show "The Magicians" and the "Three Ghost Stories" reading I did this week. The show "The Magicians" is a show about college-aged magicians who are specially chosen to attend a magic college based off of their given magical talents. There is one character, Penny, who is a traveler in the show, just as mentioned above. In the show, he does have tattoos to keep him grounded to the earth and to be identifiable to other travelers. "The Neitherlands," the underworld and the library are all aspects of the show I brought into the story. The aspects of "Three Ghost Stories" I mixed into this story come from the long road, the woman checking people and only letting certain people pass. In the reading, only ghosts that had certain tattoos from their former life were able to pass on this certain road and able to make it to "Many Lodges." If they did not have the required tattoos, they would be pushed off of the road and fall back down to earth to restart their life. I instantly saw a connection between the reading and this show and just HAD to do a mash-up of the two. I hope you enjoy!

"Three Ghost Stories," Myths and Legends of the Great Plains by Katharine Berry Judson