Clavitas: Uncle Chestnut and the Town of Lierre

By J. Deytiquez

In an abandoned train station, in the middle of the rain and nowhere, Dan met a quirky old man named "Uncle Chestnut" who is asking him to board the train with him. Will Dan go with him? And what exactly is this town of Lierre where the train is heading to?

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Deytiquez
• Release date: Feb 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005627812

J. Deytiquez

I grew up in a sleepy town in the midst of the vast expanse of rice fields in Luzon, Philippines. Though inspired mainly by the simplicity of nature of my hometown, to read and to write, I am also inspired by my experiences in the cold and rainy mountain city of Baguio.

Book preview

Foreword

Why do we read and dream about stories of people, places, and events that may not even exist? Is the reality that was given to us not suffice? These questions, the writer of the famous Chronicles of Narnia series, C.S. Lewis, once asked and answered in his book An Experiment on Criticism. He said that it is because we want to see, not only through our eyes, but also through other eyes, to escape the dark confines of our egos, and in doing so, find our true selves. This is similar to what his friend, the renowned author of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, wanted to tell us in his celebrated essay, On Fairy Stories: in reading stories, we escape from our self-induced boredom to our world in order to recover and return a fresh way of seeing it—we forget for a while in order to forget. I believe this goodness of stories is not limited in books only. During this time of pandemic, many of us (including me of course) have resorted to books, video games, Netflix stuff, and YouTube videos to cope with the restraints and bad stuff that came along with the virus.

I never looked down on video games. I think they are like those choose-you-own-adventures books out there but on steroids. In Final Fantasy VII, you experience being an ex-soldier walking along a dangerous but enchanting path in the middle of the night with a beautiful guide named Aerith. In Final Fantasy XV you cruise around amazing places on a dashing car with your friends while trying to reclaim your throne as a king. In Zelda: BOTW, you go on an adventure in a very vast world to save what was left in it, especially the princess who was fighting for you. In Kingdom Hearts games you travel different worlds with Donald Duck and Goofy. Like reading a novel, playing games transport one to places with people and events that may or may not even exist in our reality. Like reading a novel, it offers to us worlds where one can believe that he or she can accomplish something, that he or she can fight unto the end. Like reading novels, games enable us to have a glimpse of that something good, true, and beautiful that we cannot yet attain in our present state, like how the sight of faraway deep blue mountain ranges can often set us longing. We remember, for a moment, that there is still hope.

All my life I’ve been a fan of stories, whether in paper or on screens, and in this time of pandemic, I found consolation with video games in particular. And as I have received, I dared to give back, by not only writing stories, but by writing stories that can be adapted into a video game. As I have no resources to turn them into games, I can only that hope someday someone who read them can turn them into one. Believe me, it will make me extremely happy. But as in reading, as in playing, I am happy already for just witnessing and writing these stories. It gave me a sense of purpose during the dark times of my life. Thank you for choosing to read this book. It makes me believe even more the unchangeable truth that nothing is ever in vain.

P.S. Since this story was really written after Clavitas: Of Memory and Forgetfulness and Clavitas: I Just Want to See You Again, even though this can be said to be the prior to them in terms of story, I just found out recently that naming the monsters of this series as Lethes manifested a seemingly paradox: the name Lethes, of course, is connected to forgetfulness, while the word monster came from the word that means to help to remember. But I guess, in the end, the series also reflected this paradox, for while the Lethes posed to the protagonists the danger of forgetfulness, defeating them also paved the way for remembrance. But there’s more to that, the monsters of this story and even of other stories, I believe, serves as a reminder of what we fear the most, our dark side, or our side that must not exist in the first place, or our side that is less than human but still retains the human form and so is dreadful. But of course, as in many stories, what we always need are the courage and simplicity to face them and defeat them, and children often have them and maybe that’s why many of such stories’ protagonist are children, or at least have a child’s heart.

May we always have that Heart.

P.S.S.

The next section, The Game, will be a weird one if one does not really play games. If you like to read the story more, you can skip