The Totem-Maker (part seventy-eight)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Eight

Use for Use

(part seventy-eight)

His teachings were mathematical, a way I much preferred to understand things. The arrow cannot fly straight from the bow, and the creature you aim at moves also. The farther the arrow travels, the more trouble the wind gives. Each bow has its quirks, no two are alike. The archer must know the instrument.

The peddler with his knife scraped a round patch on a mossy trunk; next, two rings circling this. In the dirt he drew a circle as well, and the arc of the arrow flying this way or that, where it might hit its mark.

He started me at a close distance, twenty paces. Four of my six arrows missed the tree, one struck outside the target, and one the round.

“Fetch them and we’ll begin again.”

“Oh, you’ll take a turn, now…?”

For this, a shooing hand, languid. Camaraderie was growing, which I told myself I would not allow. My legs carried me back and forth many times that day, while the peddler watched. When six times together I’d struck the target, he moved me back. I came to learn both how I succeeded and how I failed. I made informed adjustments; in one day’s work, I had gone from talentless to capable.

And at that sun’s setting, he held a Seed under the window. Two hollows seemed to gleam aware. Aware…not frightening, because the eyes stared almost at a world apart from mine. The totem had woken itself, by charm or wickedness.

“Tell me your story.”

“Of the Seeds? I found them. You would rather have me say I dreamed of them, felt them sing through the soles of my feet?”

I was sure he wanted a Seed, and I was sure he would cheat me of the one he judged best.

“Found them…lying on the ground?”

“No, they were well buried. The earth is poor here. My duty is to make of it what I can.”

He sat, as though I would serve him his meal. “But do they sing?”

Why are you asking me, when you know more of them than I do? He was keen for this, plain on his face. Because I’d found them, because he claimed I’d set their wakening in motion, keen that I would lay mystery on the Seeds’ legend. I would prove my chosenness.

And he would gain his gift to bear, when he reached his master, Prince or Emperor.

With my story, then, I cheated him. I told how I’d used the fire ash, laid it out warm, dug my fingertip’s depth…how every day I’d done this. I bent to touch the top of my foot.

“No deeper, altogether. But a roar came, and the earth split.”

“And the Seeds glinted exposed. You saw a treasure worth having.”

“I saw pretty things, with no one’s claim branded on. I will carry them to Balbaec and have the priests tell me if they are evil, or if the gods will bless me in exchange for them.”

All this, I gave him in a measured way, with a lock on his eyes, daring him for his offenses. He did not want the Seeds lost to the Balbaecan priests.

82

Use for Use

The Totem-Maker (part seventy-nine)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)