The Totem-Maker (part eighty-four)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Nine

The Recalcitrant One

(part eighty-four)

The road to Balbaec followed a watercourse; and what, looking down from my mountain, I’d taken for hedgerows, were grown trees, the stream cutting a jagged way under their branches.

Pines grew in thickets here, and nowhere else within my sight. They and their gulley would be to my left…were I to give up and return home. But I kept them right, veered closer even, avoided the rocks of the high slopes, that as I rode tumbled towards me like flocks of sheep running to their fodder. Along the verge were built baffles to catch them, of boulders, small stones, packed clay, enemies made allies by the patient traders.

The stream found an escape underground and the forest ended. I saw the spreading plain below, rich in purple-seeded grasses, the movements of animals wagging a trail…

Cattle—a bearded, short-horned breed—mingled with deer, and I could not guess if the Balbaecans owned one herd, both, or none. Whatever place I rested, I dragged stones aside, feeling I owed this respect to all who passed this way. Yet laying camp from night to night, I feared to have such mountains overhead.

Three nights, and on the fourth day, the hills fell low and broad. Tablet-sized shingles of rock, a giant’s roof thrown down by wind, covered a vale, and to my right a fresh runlet again hugged the road. I came to a row of shelters. I called, and climbed to them, having tethered Cuerpha…for my pony, the way seemed impossible. But I felt a path for beasts must be fashioned among the rocks; that at the shelters its end would be discovered.

Each dugout cave had a stone roof laid over stacked walls, and the ash of fires in stone rings. The path was plain to see, but I must lay marks along the way or lose it. Or do you have that power, might you grace me with your guidance, I said to my totem. Do I dare merely ask?

I filled my hat with ashes, dropped them in a thin trail…

Until I looked up, looked closely at the boulder I bent next to, and saw the traders had carved three lines at a low mid-level. Each line was a hand’s length. I walked on in caution, dropping a bit of ash as I went.

I felt sported by the totem and was reluctant to play along. But soon came a boulder with two lines, lower, longer and curved. Simple directions, easy to intuit, whatever your language, or whether you had writing or did not.

Knowing my purpose, climbing again, I would find a set of four, perhaps a set of five.

I gave Cuerpha his feedbag and moved higher than the shelters. The road carried through the sea-plain of the Alëenon, to the city of Balbaec. I could see travelers, far distant, a small company. If they had dogs, Cuerpha’s scent (and my own) would carry a warning.

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The Recalcitrant One

The Totem-Maker (part eighty-five)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)