Essay: The Roamers

The Roamers is set in a world of the mind, far from the concept of realism. It begins with a vague economical description of the city of Naramunz where a toymaker named Darzutash, owns a toy shop near the merchant’s gate. The protagonist, Darzutash is a ‘humble’ yet mysterious character who presents himself merely as an ordinary crafter of toys and tells stories of faraway lands. However, Darzutash has a hidden secret, he is a sorcerer of woodcraft. By night he crafts and brings to life the inanimate objects that he creates, revealing another side to Darzutash, a side which is hidden behind sealed doors, away from the evil eyes of those who possess the traits of greed. With every good there is bound to be evil; the antagonist is a cruel traveller who is visualised as the man who wears a black cloak with a raw scar across his face. The traveller, having heard of this power laying in the hands of another, slaughters away in his relentless obsession to find the man who possesses such ability. Darzutash becomes aware of the traveller when one of his own creations, a paper bird, returns from its travels and warns him of the traveller but Darzutash simply takes the bird’s warning as an opportunity to retell the story of the traveller in the Red Quill tavern – a place where stories come to life if not told with a careful tongue. This eventually leads to the toymaker’s death and the cliff-hanger of the traveller gaining the powers and the toymaker being carried away by his toys.
The history of a story like The Roamers emerged from recollective scenes of dreams, readings of ancient mythologies and imaginations of a child. These three ingredients scrambled together to create a unique mythical world.  The story touches on the themes of folklore where the world and characters created goes beyond the familiarised western category of fairy-tale and fantasy fiction and leaps to an unfamiliar era of storytelling in taverns and violence. By intentionally employing an alienated setting with alienated names such as ‘Naramunz’ and ‘Darzutash’ the reader becomes a foreigner within the story – stuck in a world that goes beyond their imagination, and the only way to find their way out of this labyrinth is by fully immersing themselves in the story and getting to the end.  The idea behind the name of Darzutash came from the word Dartash, which in the Kurdish language interprets as a ‘woodcarver’. Because I was going for a more consistent and coherent setting I found by adding the letter ‘z’ it contributed to this mythical feel.
Writing ‘The Roamers’ was a moment of escapism from the listlessness of the trappings of every day life. I wanted to also snatch the reader away from such burdens and place them in a world where time, responsibilities and problems were forgettably far and distant. This manipulation and control of the mind were achieved using visual and vivid imagery. The cathartic element is also helped by developing the humorous, yet still serious, tone of the scenes through the narration and the dialogue between characters— the theme of good versus evil is knit into the story and progressed through the characters creating tension. However, revisiting the piece as an author and digging deep at the core of my brain, the use of anthropomorphic wood and paper did not purely serve as an object to the plot but it also illustrated a moral point by giving the inanimate human characteristics and flaws. An episode of this is when Darzutash chants ‘bring yourselves to life and light the hearth of night’ and the logs began to move to where their creator has commanded them; the idea of the baby log falling behind the others gives the log limitations akin to a living toddler or cub. The ashes weeping for their brothers could be interpreted as a symbol of conflict between the ashes that were once logs and the logs themselves. The logs being murdered by their ashen brothers reveals emotions and corruption within inanimate objects. Relating it to this modernised era where the human race could also be said to live in a world of conflict which only leads to the fall of humanity.
Using Linda Anderson’s workbook as my guide to writing my first scene with the correct show/tell balance, I thought it best to begin the scene with the paper bird returning from its travels and speaks to Darzutash in the same way animals speak to humans in fictional books such as ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ by C. S. Lewis when Aslan spoke with the characters. Bearing in mind the constant occurrence of this idea being overly used in many fantasy books and films, I wanted my piece to have originality so I attempted to introduce a new idea in how the paper bird communicate with its creator. Instead of the paper bird having direct dialogue with Darzutash ‘the mute paper bird flew over to the desk and unfolded itself back into the form of a sheet of paper, writing began to ink the blank creased paper that was once the bird.’ By shining light onto the paper bird, it adds to the peculiarity of this mythological world and it embroiders the mind of the reader with strong imagery of this event. The existence of this scene was crucial as it foreshadowed what would come forth through the structural time lapse when the story skipped forward to a month later where the toymaker finds himself gagging on his own blood for not heeding the bird’s words. The fact that the bird appears to be wiser than the toymaker, its own creator, speaks loudly of the power involved in its creation, and how, despite that power, the wielder still has limitations. The end paragraph was purposely left short, to make it seem incomplete and leave the reader wanting more.