The Totem-Maker (part ten)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Two

Jealousy

(part ten)

My plan was to make a memory story to suit each figure. Through Lom, to satisfy my curiosity, without his knowing of my other purpose. I would use a hex, an arrangement of triangles that tellers call houses, and have him draw a tile to fill each room.

Petitioners here were dwarfed under the porches of the four manors, connected by a running colonnade that changed from style to style. The tiling underfoot, for those invited to mount the steps, was at first a plain black marble, with columns crimson (a pairing that thrilled me, though I knew nothing of the owner); the next was glazed terra-cotta, each tile stamped with a smiling sun, a sun in bronze above the entry hall, columns all trained with vines. Then came the house of Oc’Marasas, carved on every surface with stories of the general’s great battles, in stern bone-colored marble.

Next, Sente’s house, aloof in unadornment, mere fieldstone and painted wood.

Sente’s servants idled on the porch above, fanning themselves. A fountain bubbled at the courtyard’s center, its waters spouting from birds’ heads and falling to a gutter that fed the lower streets.

We topped our canteens. We drank and wiped our faces in the shade of Sente’s olive. I bent, then, to etch six triangles that formed a larger, with many others traced within. Any fortune matched to a base-up triangle was taken reversed.

Other games could be played on this template, and I will never know…

But I had chosen this.

The four directions of the wind were the houses into which one’s spirit might be born. North, of the intellect; east, of love; south, of concealment; west, of the flesh.

“Which house is yours?”

“I can’t say, Kire. My birth was not marked by the seers.”

“You are very dry, Lom. Are you innocent, or teasing? Have you never been cast at all? Ah!” I said, drawing tiles. “I choose east, may the gods set me right.”

I put that sign we call fish before Lom, to explain the nature of the telling. “You see, a thing under water symbolizes wealth. If the water is still, your wealth is safe. If it flows to sea, you will be bankrupted storm by storm. If it flows inland, you will gain steady riches. If the fish falls here, under dark of night, which we read left, though it sits right… Then, my Lom, it will not be luck for you to have a water sign fall on the right above. You will pray, if you turn that one, that it falls in the center.”

“Where water pools and does not flow.”

I smiled. “You have got ahead admirably. You may well be a spirit of the north, and I may be the fool! I will put the fish away, and have you draw another.”

I shook the bag of tiles, gave it to Lom; Lom drew with no eagerness. But with some flair in placing them, I laid out his fortune. I meant to tell it truly. The tiles could not lie, but the teller, by omission, could allow the light to glance here or there. I would give Lom a future of burdens eased, of hopes for rest and pleasure.

11

Jealousy

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)