Chapter Text
In my earliest memories, I sit next to the blurred shape I know to be my sister, on the porch of our house beneath the night sky, as she tells me stories she learned from a traditional book of tales, the one that sits on the table in the study. I am not old enough even to walk without help—she holds my hands when we go inside—but she, like many in our city, thinks it is important that children learn the stories early.
This is the seventh edition of this book of tales, and just as a great story is passed from father to son through generations, so that the son may one day read to his own, I grew up on most of the tales herein, and am honored to have been granted the opportunity to edit a new edition for a new generation.
This book originates out of the Radiant Garden and the traditions and stories of this world. With each new edition, tales are slightly updated to reflect the modern world, although at their core the stories remain the same. Most of the tales contained within this, and all the tales contained within previous publications, are products of this world. However, unlike previous editions, this edition is the first of the Compiled Stories of the Waters to contain tales which come from other worlds—and to be published in worlds other than the Radiant Garden.
Publication of this new edition falls in an extraordinary time in the history of the Radiant Garden, and indeed all the worlds. The walls between the worlds which have once kept us separate are broken down, and there is between the worlds a free exchange of ideas, of history, and of stories.
Readers from the Radiant Garden, and those who are familiar with the history of that world, will recall the Fall which occurred over a decade prior to publication. The world is only just beginning to recover its population, restoring itself to its former glory. But the people of the Garden have never let adversity overcome us.
The publication of this edition of our book of tales marks as well a milestone in our recovery. Such stories have always been a guiding light for the people of this world; from the earliest days of hardship we have used these tales as a way of preserving those we lost, a way of life we abandoned, a warning of dangers that we came to believe were no longer present, instructions for generations to come. In every myth, there is a seed of truth and a chain of memory.
Many believe that fairy tales must all end in the same way: They lived happily ever after. This statement, they say, makes these stories appropriate for children. Readers will notice, however, that few of the tales held in this volume will end that way. That is the seed of truth we sow in the Radiant Garden, for better or for worse. That is our memoir of hardship and adversity; our recording of a history that is not always kind, but it is always present.
Perhaps it is gentle to spill ink across the pages of history, and censor all of that which is difficult to swallow; it is gentle, but it is not kind. For what sort of people would we be if we had no memory of the hardship? We would surely bring ourselves once again to face it.
I am a writer of memoirs, a recorder of history, and now an editor of tales. They are not always gentle, these tales, nor are they always kind, but they are our history, our traditions, and our heritage, and I, at least, am firmly of the belief that it is always better to have these things uncensored—not glorified, certainly, but truthful—than it is to pretend that all is, and always was, well, especially as we present ourselves for the first time to those outside our world, and as we turn inwards and say that we have returned from the brink of destruction upon which we lingered for a decade.
I grew up on these tales, as I grew up in a Radiant Garden yet untouched by such devastation. I am honored indeed to be chosen to present the first post-Fall edition of our stories to those who have returned at long last, to those who have never seen their home, and to those from far abroad.
May you read what the Waters warn, and take solemn note.
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, Editor.