The Totem-Maker (part eighty-five)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Nine

The Recalcitrant One

(part eighty-five)

 I wanted that loneliness I hadn’t yet found; I wanted to escape a hailing exchange. Hospitality required that strangers keep the road together, until all had been said of who, where, and what. I would be persuaded to abandon my plan.

Or given a companion to guide me.

With what sort of fame, I wondered, did the name of Nur-Elom ring in Balbaec? Was I well-described? Would they disbelieve, be disappointed, that I could be the Totem-Maker?

The tiny figures made a mixed company: two riders at the head, several on foot following. Carts, pulled by no beast, only at each shaft a man. These riders making themselves so unhelpful must be persons of wealth, or hired guards. I watched them pause at a tree—an olive, planted at intervals, always, along roadways. Each tree was its own small deity and furnished familiar comforts. The oil of the fruits was healing to the foot-weary. It could burn for a light, cure and flavor meat; the fruits in season were taken in a jar of brine. But the priest would bless only one. The goddess would double the blessing upon only fruits to fill a single jar.

Greed was then a curse on one’s journey.

Practical thoughts. And a reminder…to honor the gods as I passed their dwellings. Long ago they had given humans these benefits; that if, by faith, we make our roads friendly to others, we make them friendly to ourselves.

If we are not grasping beyond our deserts; if we are not jealous…

Ask. What is it you would like?

I said to the Totem: “To fling you to the road and let the travelers find you. But the strength of my arm falls short. You are not a god yourself, you are some mischief of the Opeheri, which the traders are wiser than to touch.”

For those who read my words, I will explain. The Opeheri were the First Children of the Earth; no legend could tell of their origin. They had power to cause magic…or they had found and made use of magic in a lawless time…

But their powers were an evil to all life. One created and the next destroyed. A third, having no part in the feud, might create again, for the joy of spoiling another’s plan. A fourth would create in mockery: a vessel with no bottom, a thousand such vessels filling the house from floor to ceiling.

The gods and goddesses, when they had learned their strength, seized magic from the Opeheri, and commanded the earth to swallow them. Yet the Opeheri are not dead, even today. They emerge, and their discord and chaos emerge.

We do not know them when we see them.

A sharp stone in a horse’s hoof, a gnarled log that bursts into sparks, and sets a traveler’s tent aflame…?

Let us have a story as we wait, the Totem said. I will suggest one.

89

The Recalcitrant One

The Totem-Maker (part eighty-six)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)