The Totem-Maker (part eighty)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Nine

The Recalcitrant One

(part eighty)

Seven of those nine days I’d felt the peddler egged the pilgrims on in their trespass. But I had never been told the meadow belonged to me. I had not hailed Moth, though knowing him from our ride together; though seeing him from my doorstone.

I had schooled myself to a just attitude, dispelled the nighttime noises by listening to them closely.

“What,” I asked Moth now, “is the calendar in your city? Are they buying for a festival, will they carry down their goods and sell again at a summer market?”

He took a stool in the corner and set his bag at his feet.

I recalled the cousinly link of the Alëenon people to my own. The question was always asked at home: “Do your parents dwell in the world, or are they your protectors?”

Moth fingered a chain at his neck, and nodded to me, yes.

“Atu. Saloabbas er to.”

Our blessing was only to say the dead are nearer the gods, and that for the living on earth, this is well. I knew I would not talk to Moth each day as a simpleton. “And so, you are sent to my house to be my helper?”

Language begins with names; names convey uses; uses bring actions. I had almost turned with a Seed in hand. I chose another thing, a candle. A candle, a light sparked from embers. A light to brighten the house (while yet it was midday and unneeded). A place that candles were kept, an evening task that Moth could assume.

He was bored now, and began volunteering his words. “Are you a great magician?”

“Well, Moth, are you? Supposing you have within you any sort of greatness…and why think otherwise? You can’t name what you will do when the hour comes, when you achieve that deed above all, that destiny. And neither can I. I do not know myself to be a magician of even small powers.”

Some of this, comprehended. He hugged his bag and tiptoed past my table, to lay his bed in the stall beside Cuerpha’s. In warm weather, I could allow it. I did not want Moth’s place to be so lowly. But if he dreaded the Seeds, neither could I force him indoors.

The peddler arrived at suppertime, to laugh that I’d put Moth to work gathering my arrows. “Know this, by the way. I will leave under tonight’s moon.”

“Will you? Take one of the Seeds.”

He didn’t, and I added: “You said they were finished in some way. Nearly finished.”

I laid the Seed on his hat, on the bench beside him, so when he left he must touch it. “You know what finished is to the eye, and I don’t. You know who most wants to have one. Take it, and if you meet the Prince by chance, ask. If his northern gods desire a totem, if his wife would be delighted by one, if…”

He returned it to its mates. “Thieves may assail me on the road. A storm may brew and in my rush to shelter, I may lose it.”

“The Prince may not believe you hadn’t stolen it. To the Balbaecan pilgrims it may look as an omen, if they find it by the roadside.”

“If they carry it back to you, to have you read the omen…” A tight smile of a moment, then: “No. None of this game. Call Moth to serve.”

84

Use for Use

The Totem-Maker (part eighty-one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)