Lagon

By Mary Nelux

Lagon, a parallel world where you will find yourself!.

Johnny Pull is a fatherless Scottish teenager who loves comics and tales. He goes on an excursion with his classmates to an emblematic castle in Scotland. There he finds the grave of Sir Light, the protagonist of a legend his grandfather once told him about. Johnny has a fascinating vision in front of the grave that will change his life forever.

Along with his two best friends, Michael and Vicky, he finds a very special and strange book, the Scottish Legends, an invisible book that holds the key (the prophecy and the rite of passage) to fulfill the feat that Sir Light did not finish. Eventually, Johnny and his two friends enter the land of Lagon, a diabolical parallel world where the spirit of the dead knight, trapped between two different universes, still wanders trying to finish the task he was unable to complete: defeating the unmentionable one. They may well succeed... anything can be possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caligrama
• Release date: May 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9788418787997

Mary Nelux

Mary Nelux is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education at the University of Almeria (UAL), a writer and a filmmaker (Website under construction). She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Hispanic Philology for which she studied two years in Navarra and three years in Granada. She completed her Doctorate Degree in the UNED (Madrid). Specialized in the field of oral tradition literature, film and education, she has published thirteen research books and several articles and book chapters. She manages the CPIAF center (Centro de Patrimonio Inmaterial) at the UAL, where she is also head of the HUM 863 “education, film and oral culture” research group. As a writer, she has published a short novel called El misterio de La Tiñosa, which is to be made into a film, and several books of legends including Leyendas que gritan de miedo. Her facet as a filmmaker began in 2008 as an organizer and head of cinematography courses for different audiovisual departments. In 2016, together with film director Alberto Rodríguez and Canal Sur TV channel director in Córdoba, Mar Arteaga, she directed the first Master’s Degree in Cinematography and Television offered in Andalusia. As a scriptwriter and audiovisual projects director, Mary Nelux started with some music videos based on some of the tracks in the music album Amor bajo tierra. She also wrote the lyrics for the songs in this album. Her awareness of and commitment to functional diversity due to personal and family reasons, in addition to her passion for the world of legends, led her to start producing, scriptwriting and directing short films. These short films (for which she has won some awards) are focused on raising social awareness of inclusion and, at the same time, on the legends that are such an interesting literary and film field. She has collaborated as a production assistant in some audiovisual projects and in a full-length film. Besides, she workedas an assistant directorin the full-length film El hilo dorado in July and August 2020. She is now going to direct her first full-length film called Licantropía, which is in pre-production stage, and the full-length film La montaña negra. Mary Nelux has created the film production company CINEMEGAGUAY PRODUCCIONES and is the director of the Festival Internacional Infatil y Juvenil. She is a member of the following Spanish associations: ANCINE (Asociación andaluza de productoras de cine), ASECAN (Asociación de escritoras y escritores cinematográficos de Andalucía) and CIMA (Asociación de Mujeres Cineastas y de Medios Audiovisuales). She has worked as a background performer in the Black Mirror series (Season 6, episode 4 “Black Mueum”) and in Booking.com advertising.

Book preview

Lagon

Mary Nelux

Lagon

Primera edición: 2021

ISBN: 9788417813093

ISBN eBook:

© del texto:

Mary Nelux

© de las ilustraciones:

Juan Andrés Amaya

© del diseño de esta edición:

Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial

(Caligrama, 2021

www.caligramaeditorial.com

[e-mail])

Impreso en España – Printed in Spain

Quedan prohibidos, dentro de los límites establecidos en la ley y bajo los apercibimientos legalmente previstos, la reproducción total o parcial de esta obra por cualquier medio o procedimiento, ya sea electrónico o mecánico, el tratamiento informático, el alquiler o cualquier otra forma de cesión de la obra sin la autorización previa y por escrito de los titulares del copyright. Diríjase a [e-mail] si necesita fotocopiar o escanear algún fragmento de esta obra.

To my children and my husband:

Never stop dreaming, life is a dream and dreams come true.

Prologue

Come, get closer, don’t be afraid… Close your eyes. Imagine a row of identical houses, built with gable roofs, which crop up from the sea. Behind, several four-storey blocks of buildings stand out in the middle of the fog of a small city lost in the map of Scotland. In that place, everything happened. I have not been there, but my imagination has…

Johnny Pull

Johnny Pull was watching from the hermetically closed double glazed windows of his house, the fourth floor of a Scottish building at Dornie, the satellite dishes, the shapeless, heterogeneous and rickety roofs of the buildings that formed that urban scenery.

Johnny was always drawing. His genetics was art, the pictorial world… His mind sailed from his earliest age in constellations of images, lights and shadows that used to land on unknown planets, there, where the most childish fantasy dwells. Monsters, beautiful women, mysteries, brave and coward characters, inhospitable beasts filtered, through the pencil and the crayons, onto the blank pages of his inseparable friendly folder.

He changed tales into urban legends and vice-versa, although his good moral education was always reflected in the messages of the text, making victory and the final reward of his tales to match up with the success of goodness, honesty, justice and love.

It was eleven o’clock in the evening and his caster chair was dancing on the laminate flooring. The light of the lamp attachedto the beech coloured table could be seen under the half-open door. His mother, a thirty-eight year old, tall, blonde and lemon green eyed lady got closer stealthily up to Johnny Pull’s room and almost gave him a fright.

Once again with comics? Have you done your homework? Johnny, you are in you second year at high school and you should start to think about your future now.

Mum, I always study before drawing, don’t worry.

You know…

Yes, mum, business before pleasure.

Johnny’s mother was English by birth, although she settled down in Scotland. She brought up her only son on her own; Johnny did not have a father since he was three years old. She also worked at the local library near her house and devoted her life to the care of her child and books.

­Well, will you show me your pictures?

Yes, have a look; I think they went off well! Let’s see if you like them!

Johnny picked up the folder with his long fingers, pale like his face, held it up with the palms of his hands and explained to his mother the characters of good andevil, who faced up to one another to save some children from the violence, wrath and revenge of a wicked being. One of them was looking for his father…

You are really good, Johnny. You draw and write very well.I like the texts in your cartoons.

Thank you, mum.

You will be a wonderful writer or cartoonist.

We’ll see, said Johnny.

Now we should rest. Tomorrow you have to go to school and I have to go to work.

Yes, of course, good night mum.

Good night Johnny, I love you.

Sarah, Johnny’s mother, caressed her son’s straight blond hair and kissed it. Afterwards the door closed. Johnny was alone; he lowered the blind overlooking the ramshackle city, put on his Hulk pyjamas and dived under the sheets and eiderdown. A mixture of green and black colours, reflection of his nightclothes, wrapped up his tired body. On the soft, scarcely stuffed, almost flat pillow his head rested, which, on the contrary, was packed with fantasy and desire for adventure.

That night, the comic characters he had set up two years ago played a dirty trick on him while sleeping: Boro, the power of evil who put so many obstacles in the wayto Leios, a noble and generous hero from the land of Sadness who was looking for his father, had transformed into a giant snake. Its sliding body surrounded the slope of Hopehill, where Leios was. The latter had no choice but to fight against that imaginary monster. Johnny’s neurons were struggling in this fight when he felt the fear in his throat. He was Leios. Only he really knew what was going through the veins of his literary creation… And the dream became a nightmare difficult to digest. Everything finished when his brain warned him he had to wake up so as not to suffer anymore. He sat up on the spot and remained seated listening to the sound of his own anguish:

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah! He breathed excited.

Gradually, calm arrived. Once relaxed, he breathed deeply inhaling air through his nose and exhaling it through his mouth. He turned on the small lamp, took a sip from the glass of water that his mother left him at night on his bedside table and was happy to have moved away from that imaginary land.

Tomorrow, he thought, I am going to write and draw this dream, I will turn it into an episode of the comic.

Johnny collapsed from exhaustion thinking about it. Night drew on.

Ring, ring, ring… the doorbell rang.

Yaaawn! Johnny was drowsy. My God, how fast the night has gone through! He tried to turn off the alarm clock without looking at it, but the doorbell rang again. He opened his eyes, turned on the light and saw it was three minutes to seven in the morning, the time when Johnny got up every day.

In the distance, Johnny heard the voice of a messenger who had got up early to bring a parcel home. Johnny sprang up, put hiswoollen cloth slippers on his still warm feet, stretched out again, pulled up the blind and saw the pane soaked by loads of countless raindrops.

Whew, I’ll have to take my raincoat! What foul weather! He thought.

Afterwards, he had a shower with warm water and put on the grey trousers of the uniform (a cotton woolen vest, a white T-shirt, a navy blue sweater with the school shield and a light blue tie with oblique white stripes). He left his bedroom, said good morning to his mother, who was heating a large bowl of milk, and sat down on a chair next to the kitchen table. He drank a glass of just squeezed orange juice; put some cereals in the bowl of milk, which he eagerly gobbled up.

Your hair is a mess Johnny!said Sarah.

I’m going to brush my teeth and then I’ll comb my hair, mum.

The strawberry flavoured toothpaste helped him to create a look between punk and funk. This hairstyle was achieved thanks to a sufficient amount of hair gel of an unknown brand pressured tube. The closeness of his birthday was making him change: Johnny felt old. Afterwards he stared at the huge mirror thatdominatedthe bathroom and he thought of Boro and Leios, the rival and the hero of his comics respectively. Then, the lamp light of the ceiling sparkled in his eyes and returned him to reality.

I must go to school. I’m late, he said to himself.

Punctuality was a virtue that Johnny looked after very carefully through his English pocket watch. It was an Olswang model that was over one hundredand fifty years old and that he had inherited from his great grandfather.

Sarah often told him: ‘Unpunctuality is a fault because it means not to respect the others.’ His mother really wanted to educate him well; although sometimes it became an obsession similar to that of the philosopher Kant. (Books assure that he was such a methodical and punctual man, even for his evening walks, that hewas useful for his neighbours toset their clocks.)

Well, the fact is that Johnny rushed off with his rucksack on his back. Before,he had put away a butter, cucumber, ham, and cheese sandwich; a bag of crisps and a can of coke in it. He had to carry some food supplies to hold on until dinnertime. He said goodbye to his mother and closed the door with a sharp blow.

Two blocks of houses away from his was Saltire school, which was also called Saint Andrew’s Cross (name that also gives identity to the Scottish flag, from the IX century). This school was of an old gothic style with starry vaults along its wide corridors and sturdy stones that divided the schoolroomsdistributed between the ground floor and the two floors above. The oval stairs with wide semicircular steps had several intermediate landings with comfortable measures, which did not interrupt the normal flowof the six hundred pupils who used to come and go across that educational space, mainly in between classes.

Johnny was studying secondary education. He had many subjects. The compulsoryones were English language, Maths, and Science;the foundational ones were Technology, History, Geography, Music, Art, Physical Education and Foreign language (he had chosen Spanish because he wanted to travel to Spain some day in order to visit part of his family that lived there). He also had optional subjects such as Religion.

In Saltire, sports were promoted: rugby, football, tennis, volleyball, cricket and swimming were the most requested ones among the pupils. Johnny was enthusiastic about cricket and football; and his favourite subjects were English language, History and Art.

A sharp and dry bell rang pointing out the entry to class. It was half past eight on a rainy and grey morning. Johnny’s rucksack fell heavily next to one of the dark wooden desk’s legsworn out by the years. He opened it and took out the History book. The teacher went into through a heavy door with a porthole.

Creaak, it squeaked in the absence of greasing the iron hinges.

Good morning everyone! Today we are going to learn about the Scots.

Johnny wide opened his eyes and ears and wondered with curiosity:

The Scots! It sounds like comic characters. Who will they be?

Cameron, that was the teacher’s name, showed some slides. They showed a man and a woman with a spear on their hands and at the foot of the picture could be read:

‘First inhabitants of Scotland.’

Cameron did not ask anything, but began her speech by saying that:

"…the Scots were Celt settlers that attacked the Hebrides Isles and the west area of Scotland ruled by the Picts. They were nomadic hunters and shepherds. Afterwards, they settled down in the western Highlands, in Caledonia, the present Scotland, in the IV century. They came from Ireland and spoke Gaelic.

Kenneth II, king of the Scots, from the year 834 to 854, gathered both kingdoms, Picts and Scots, under his control and…"

Johnny, engrossed, speechless, and absent, heard Cameron’s voice and personified her in his comic cartoons. He pictured her as a Celtic goddess, patron of the Scottish woods. In his imagination, Cameron fought against evil creatures that arose at dusk from the gloomy thick fog. Johnny dressed the soft and melodious voiced warrior Cameron in shining steel wristbands and silver armour, which reflected a sky packed with cold stars, donated by the goddess Moon. Hybrid beasts, oxen with wild cats faces, dark and diabolic shadows that hid in leafy woods were devoted to the spectacular image of Cameron, the gentle and pleasant voiced goddess.

Johnny was looking forward to going back home to capture that revelation in his comic folder, inspired by the appearance and wisdom of his favourite teacher. However, he looked at his clock and realized that he had to wait for some hours for his dream to become true. Without knowing why, one of his mother’s mottos came to his mind: ‘Business before pleasure.’ And, in this way, he woke up from his daydreamas Cameron was saying:

On Wednesday next week we are going to make a cultural visit to Eilean Donan. We are going to see its castle and surroundings.

That’s great! An excursion to Donan! I’ve heard people talking about that castle! They say that ghosts of the past dwell there, my grandfather told me about it, mentioned Johnny quietly to his friend Michael who took the adjoining desk.

Really? And what do they say? replied Michael.

I’ll tell you about it in the break, Johnny said.

After the History class, they had English language and after that a twenty-minutes break. Johnny and his mates went out to a schoolyard that a long time ago belonged to a cloister. There was a well full of ivy, covered with a huge stone that was impossible to be lifted unless it were with a big crane. Many pupils had tried to, but they had failed. Around the well, lawn and stone made up a chessboard like mosaic, although the colours were changed: green and grey stood in for the white and black ones.

The Legend of Lievant

or The Treasure Castle

Michael had not forgotten the remark that Johnny had made about the spirits in Eilean Donan castle. He reminded him to keep his promise. Johnny leaned against the cloister well, opened the bag containing the sandwich that he had brought from home and while eating, he prepared to tell his grandfather’s tale…

"They say it is true what happened in Eilean Donan castle. A noble family composed of a father, a mother, and four brothers lived there. When the couple passed away, the four brothers continued living together in Donan. One fine day, the four of them disappeared and no more was heard from them.

Years went by and Donan castle kept on hermetically closed. Locals said it was about a spellcast upon it. Whoever approached it, commented that the doors and windows were sealed with the stink of death and misery. Nobody dared to go in there.

Deafening sounds, the squawking of odd birds, chains dragging along the floor, disturbed that silent haunted castle’s peace.

Among the island’s older people, there was a legend assuring there was a treasure buried in Donan castle. They said that the treasure would be for that courageous person who entered at midnight and stayed overnight in there. Many young people from the island and others coming from the Scottish western coast, near Dornie, had tried without any success. The horror of the scenes they witnessed just as they went in that icy, foul smelling and gloomy place had made all those resolute candidates be sick in terror. Until one day, young Lievant, eager to make a fortune to marry his pretty fiancée, got into that inhospitable citadel. A rectangular door looming up to the sky opened slowly. Lievant hit it hard and confident in order to get inside the castle. Cobwebs and darkness occupied the entrance to the premises. Before him, a huge living room with a chimney in the shape of a lion’s mouth showed up.

Once he was there, Lievant sat down in a chair from the long table which went through the living room. A moonbeam was getting in through a broken pane of glass, perhaps on a confused bird having crashed into it. Lievant picked up his bundle of clothes, untied the four points and took out the meal that his mother had prepared for him. The menu consisted of a piece of cheese and another one of roast meat together with a crust of bread. Lievant got ready to have a quiet dinner. He did not feel frightened; he was fine. In the middle of the dinner, he heard a strange noise… He realized that it was the creaking of one of the wooden steps opposite him. He thought they were footsteps. In a matter of two seconds, he heard another creak and another one afterwards… And so on until he saw a dark figure. Would it be one of those spirits that lived in Donan? Lievant looked up rapidly from the piece of bread he was eating and found opposite him a noble, tall and slim warrior, with a silver sword, its hilt encrusted with gold.

‘Who are you?’asked Lievant.

‘I am Sir Moon,’said the noble warrior.

‘Good night Sir Moon,’Lievant greeted.

‘Good night. I am coming to ask you for some help: I need you to help me to sort out a problem on the top floor,’ answered the mysterious warrior.

‘Don’t worry Sir Moon, I will be delighted to help you as soon as I finish my dinner,’ answered Lievant.

It seemed that Lievant had known him for all his life, judging by the familiarity with which the warrior was answered.

‘Of course, by all means, I will wait,’ nodded the warrior.

Sir Moon sat in front of Lievant and kept still and expectant. He had a cold look that went through Lievant’s eyes. The latter, did not care and continued eating slowly what he considered a delicacy.

When he finished his dinner, he prepared to go to the room upstairs with Sir Moon. They arrived at the room. There were two more warriors in a slender and reserved appearancein it. Sir Moon introduced them to Lievant:

‘These are my brothers, Sir Tune and Sir Sand.’

Both of them nodded in silence as an expression of courtesy. Lievant was expecting events, but he was not afraid.

‘Please, come and help us. We are only three and we need a fourth one,’ Sir Moon said.

In front of Lievant there was a black coloured coffin on a table, bedecked with two big rings on both sides. Lievant remained impassive.

‘We have to carry the coffin. Our brother Sir Light, knight of the light, warrior of the peace, dead in combat, is inside,’ explained Sir Moon.

Lievant, astonished but calm, got ready to help them bury Sir Light. He held his corresponding iron ring tight and the four of them, all at once, lifted the coffin. At that very moment, a gleaming light came in through the window of the room. Lievant’s eyes were blinded. After the darkness in which he was shrouded in, everybody and everything disappeared as if by magic. Lievant was alone in that place. Next to him, an open chest, full of golden coins and valuable jewels, shone on coming into contact with the almost divine light that came in through the window.It is also said that Lievant married her beautiful fiancée and that he became an earl."

When he finished the tale, Johnny seemed to be teleported from another world and returned to Saltire, his school, next to the curb of the cloister well. Once he came round, he saw, next to his friend Michael, lots of classmates giving him a round of applause gripped by Johnny’s imagination and narrative virtues, who narrated better than a university professor (it was not unusual since Johnny had the gift of speech, a gift that the chosen ones possess). Vicky, Michael’s sister, a twelve-years-old girl who did not stop looking and gazing at him with her big dark eyes and her big heart, was standing a bit aside from that audience.

Wow, what a lot of people! Johnny, confused, said aloud.

The bell rang reminding them to go back to class. Again, the din of those who had been silent listening to Lievant’s legend for more than ten minutes restored normality.

The Excursion to

Eilean Donan

Dornie dawned sunny on that Wednesday morning, October, the twentieth. Some clouds were playing hide and seek with the sun. The sky, bluer than usual, bode well.

What good weather it is today! Johnny thought.

He sat for a while to finish drawing and writing the comic frame that he had left unfinished the night before. Leios, the kindhearted and generous hero of his dreams, could be seen in it cutting the seven tongues of fire off from the wretched snake at the foot of HopeHill. The frame showed Leio’s words shouting to the winds: ‘May the fire of hell and the evil from Earth be out on cutting your tongues!’

Johnny, Johnny! Sarah called her son.

Johnny, as usual, had a look at his Olswang pocket watch and hurried to the kitchen for breakfast.

Goodbye mum.

Take your raincoat, just in case the weather changes, said his mother.

Okay, bye, Johnny said again.

His Nike red trainers flew like Michael Jordan in the basketball court. Thanks to them, he arrived to the bus on time. He got on and sat by his friend Michael, who kept him place.

You almost didn’t turn up! Michael exclaimed.

Phew, certainly! I lingered with a frame of the comic I’m about to finish. I’ll show you then, stated Johnny.

They left Saltire and went across Dornie easily. Traffic was scarce that Wednesday. Michael took out an mp4 from his pocket; he introduced the earpiece pin in the slot and shared them with Johnny. They listened to Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Madonna, etc. At the same time, they were looking at the landscape through the bus window. The flora was varied: thousand-year-old yews, thistles, fir trees, pines and oaks. They observed with curiosity a partridge which was fluttering around the trees and two red squirrels hiding behind the branches of a pine tree. Johnny and Michael were relaxed sharingthe music and watching the typical flora and fauna of the northwest of Scotland. They were happy. You could tell just from looking at their blue eyes which reflected that unforgettable moment in their lives.

Michael looked at his watch;it was twelve minutes sharp since they had set out. He was examining the colours of the little hands of the clock when Ms. Cameron announced on the bus microphone the imminent arrival at Eilean Donan.

Oh, look at that bridge! one of her pupils said.

Before them, an astonishing bridge stood up.

We are going across Them Winds Bridge (or the bridge of Anemos), Cameron explained. "It is a four-arch, stone bridge and it is 250 metres long. Its name comes from a very old legend. The legend goes that the strongest and oldest winds in the world fought in this place: Noto, the wind of the South, which brought the late summer and autumn storms; Cefiro, the wind of the East, which brought the spring and early summer breezes; Euro, the wind of the West, ‘the good wind’, the mildest of the winds; and Boreas, the wind of the North, which brought cold and wintry air.

The