The Totem-Maker (part eighty-two)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Nine

The Recalcitrant One

(part eighty-two)

I had heard the story of the Grandmother Oak, but I had not seen this proof.

“The seed may sprout one day,” he said.

I don’t know why, when he looked at me, I foresaw my own death in this word.

He moved to his wagon, and I followed. He drew out a cap. In the manner of the kind trader’s wife, he placed this on my head. “Now that’s no use, you not having a mirror. But see!”

Next (very readily found), a round of polished silver—and I saw a thing I scarcely had. For the old woman had shamed me from studying my reflection; lifelong, I had turned my face from a pool of water, when dipping my cup.

The cap was red, fine embroidery trimming its folded flaps. The face beneath was strained and dirty. “It’s what you lack, and why you collect your tolls from pity, not authority. A proper cap of office.”

He went to tug the yokings of his beast, faced me and said: “No one knows at parting, if there will be another meeting, and so I bid you, go with the gods.”

I began go, echoing him, and he turned his heel, despicable man. Advice he tossed over his shoulder, mounting, to make clothes that fit and wear them.

I strode to my house. Moth as I approached edged back, for having seen us point and talk, for noticing himself the tree forged on the cliffside…

And as though any magic could be in my carriage, that my head bore a new hat…

“You have always lived under the eye of the goddess,” I told him. “She has always budded her twigs in the waiting land between our time and theirs. Each human act, yours and mine, the Prince’s and the Alëenon king’s, she has recorded for ill or good. And when the world ends, and when the thousand last years pass from the time of the Grandmother’s awakening, each leaf shall unfold, all of our lives and years be known. Then, Moth, the quality of us each, the gods’ final judgment, will be by no dark art we haven’t minds to fathom, but a simple totting up.”

Priestly talk again, but quieting to Moth’s superstitions.

Together we watched the peddler vanishing in the mist, his beast drawing his wagon far beyond the Tollhouse gate.

The last of the Seeds kept its eyes closed. I knew them now, and knew this one contrary. I decided to leave it outdoors.

You dislike the damp, perhaps. Cold dew may be your death, for all I know.

For all I knew, since nothing I’d done yet angered or troubled them.

86

Use for Use

The Totem-Maker (part eighty-three)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)