This May Become a Novel–or It May Be Just The Remains of the Day

Once upon a tike there was a piece of the world that was different from now.

It was different from now because it occupied a segment of time five thousand years ago.

That is five thousand years ago from now.

That goes back to times that none of us of the internet generation can even begin to really comprehend.

We, after all,  have 140 characters of comprehension span.

That doesn’t encompass much time.

But that distant time was also different because of the people that were part of that world at that time.

They had come in droves from somewhere, but no one knew where that somewhere might have been.

There were, of course, theories as to where that somewhere might have been, but those theories never attained the status of certainty.

They remained theories.

“They came from upriver.”

“They came from downriver.”

“They came from the Sea.”

No one knew.

But everyone had a theory, even those about whom the theories had been spun.

“The Lady of the Lake sent us here” could be heard among those.

“When Arthur died we left” was another common refrain.

Or, “Adrianna was once Morganna” was another commonly heard murmur around the campfires that were the center of the homes of the clans so murmuring.

It all went to little or nothing, but it added fiber to the cloth of the mystique of those people who were from somewhere other than where they currently existed.

In any event, those stories persisted.

And there was one other story.

It was known around the campfires, and even in the adjacent villages, as “The Tale of the Boatman”.

It was a sort of glue that was used to hold the other disparate stories, in all their variety, into a common starting point.

And that is where this tale, about to be told, commences.