"Knights of Ys: Chapter One" by Laura Beth Levinson

            I always knew I was different.

            I have silver hair for one thing. Not grey, not pale blonde...actual silver hair. This was quite disconcerting as I grew up and attended school. After all, outside of video game villains, no one under the age of fifty had my hair color. Though my parents always told me that it was beautiful, they dyed it for me as a kindness once other kids started to pick on me. When I became a college student I stopped for awhile and found that many guys were attracted by it. Especially Drew, he found it quite arousing. He loved running his hands through it, telling me how much he loved it when I wore it down and how well it complimented my deep blue eyes. I think it was when I found myself dying it again just to spite him that I knew our relationship was over.

            My parents though...it was them who provided the main reason I always felt a bit isolated from everyone else. Ever since I can remember, they’ve been telling me stories of the lost city of Ys. If you look Ys up in an encyclopedia, you’ll get the same set of stories that everyone has been told for generations. The stories vary as to the reasons why, but the core of the story is that the city, located off the coast of Brittany, lay below sea level, protected from the water by a gated dam, the key to which was held by a king named Gradlon. His daughter, Dahut, stole the key from him to let her lover into the city, though some say she was tricked by Satan, and after opening the gate, the city was flooded and destroyed, only the king escaping to safety. Supposedly, Paris is named for the sunken city, as the name means in Breton, “Similar to Ys.” However, the story I learned, though containing some similarities, is different.

            Ys, I was told, was one of the most beautiful and prosperous cities in the ancient world. It was renown for the magical abilities of its people though they guarded their secrets well. Rumor also spoke of a source of great power, one that could affect the entire world, and it was up to the royal family to protect this power from ever being released. The guardianship was passed down through the female line, from princess to princess. There were four treasures that were needed to unlock the power, all containing unique magical abilities of their own. Each princess would be born with the inherent ability to use the gifts of the treasures, as well as being the only living soul to have the ability to use them to unlock the greater power. This was a closely guarded family secret, though like most secrets, someone learned of this. A malicious, evil stranger named Malik, came into the city with the intent of gaining the power for himself. He seduced the princess in his attempt to garner the key to unlocking Ys’ secrets. However, when he tried to unleash the power, the result was catastrophic destruction. The entire city was destroyed. The king escaped with his daughter and it is said that Malik somehow escaped the destruction as well. The four treasures were scattered to the winds in order to prevent the events from repeating themselves.

            This all made a splendid bedtime tale for a young girl growing up, and imagine my excitement when my mother would tell me that I was actually a princess, a long lost descendent of those who ruled Ys. Only I had the ability to rejoin the artifacts and unlock the great power that still lay within the now ruined city. This all made me feel very important and special and I never tired of hearing the tales of the ill fated city of my ancestors, imagining myself rebuilding the city and ruling it as its princess. Not all of the stories had me playing dress up, however. I recall bragging about my importance once in class at the age of seven, wanting to share the wonderful tales I had heard and let everyone know that I was really a princess. I was scolded for that, told never to tell another person about Ys. It was then that my father started to show me two pictures every night, one of a silver and gold wyvern in flight and the other, a blood red sword on a black background. He explained to me that if I ever saw someone with either symbol, I was to flee as fast as I could. I never quite understood why, but his tone was always so urgent and serious that I took it to heart, always keeping my eyes open for those markings.

            As I got older, I started to dismiss the tales, considering them mere bedtime stories of fancy that were told to amuse a little girl. I found it quaint and endearing that my parents would still tell me them despite my age and expected them to stop once I hit my upper teenage years. However, they didn’t. Every night my father would still show me the symbols with increasing urgency while my mother would always find time to retell some part of the Ys narrative. Their insistence that I was the princess of Ys always cast a bit of doubt in my mind whenever I tried to dismiss the stories outright. My parents weren’t the fanciful type and were quite grounded in reality. It was only Ys that they seemed adamant on which seemed to lend the story a little more credence, but I was still reluctant to believe.

            In retrospect, I wish I listened to them more, perhaps paid closer attention to the smaller details. I laugh at how fascinated I was by all of this, when now, the thought of my being keeper of a magical city fills me with sickening dread. If I truly believed in it as they did, perhaps things might have ended up a bit differently and they might still be alive today. Part of me knows, however, that what has happened since a fateful evening a month before my graduation from college, could never be changed.