The Totem-Maker (part eleven)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Two

Jealousy

(part eleven)

Lord Sente called through the window. His servants were at the rail, eyes on my mysteries, ears unhearing.

Again, I turned fish…

And so the gods must demand it. And here was eda, the diminutive. Lom gave a sigh. He had nearly spoken, then stopped himself, showing me an unearned reverence. The last three up-tiles were tre, bega, and sun.

The down-tiles were fal, rain, and wev.

“Will it be bad?” Lom asked.

“It! Your fortune?”

“Kire,” he said to me, the name an endearment, “I know my fortune. I read signs also, those my grandmother knew, sold from that place behind the mountain.”

He meant that vanished city under Lotoq the traveler had spoken of, and…as did we all…kept silent a moment for having mentioned it. “She saw.” He held my eye. “That would have been the day you were born, her people carried away. At dawn was a flight of ravens, and you know…”

He made me unhappy, saying this. I would have to tell him.

Ravens were said to carry souls to the clouds, to the realm of the gods. He had got both fal and rain, and these being down, meant up. He had got bega, which was the sign of the raven. He had got it in the center, thus it touched all other signs, drove them like the hub of a wheel.

But if he had not told me his story, I would have made light going of this, for Sente’s sake. His servants’ bodies threw shadows over my work, yet their mouths were shut; they did not jeer. I sat faltering, and my lengthening muteness brought a nod from Lom.

I heard…in my betraying voice…a brokenness. “A small legacy will come to you, unexpected.”

“Interesting. You are Cime’s servant. I’ve seen you in the company of Mumas.”

Lord Sente said this.

He opened the porch gate, beckoning me to climb the stairs. Put on notice by a finger snap from his lord, one servant lifted a palm. “The seer. Not you.”

If Lom weren’t asked, I had still my duty to Cime. But Sente and his man offended me. I felt in the wrong, in a way I hadn’t the burden of guilt to relieve myself of…not then. Later, I picked at it, nightly when I might have slept, and tried to find if I had done anything excusable, anything I might forgive myself for.

“My Lord Sente, I wonder…”

“You had better not.”

“I wonder,” I said, regardless, “if it interests you…interesting was your word…to have a game, at all? If you would have a game, I must please have Lom.”

12

Jealousy

The Totem-Maker (part twelve)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)