The Totem-Maker (part one hundred twenty-seven)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Twelve

A Land So Perilous

(part one hundred twenty-seven)

I mention again the story of the flood.

My Totem’s deeper meaning I had no power to discern just then. It is ever the warning of the gods not to meddle with powers too great for ourselves. But in our human taking notice of things, we intuit…more so as we age and remember, that many events of legend are not possible.

In ancient times miracles had been; in foreign places, they might be still. But a horse’s hoof cannot strike a spring to inundate the land. We do not witness this occur. And Escmar, of whom I’d told you, changed to a bird and wounding the moon in her frantic flight of grief…

If the gods were greater in knowledge than those they had animated (in my first country, humans were risen from the insects; to the northerners, we were created by Chos in his image); if indeed they were foreknowledged of all things, why permit the world to suffer, or punish foolish Escmar for a vanity she had not the worldliness to master in herself?

I return to the story of Bani.

Bani’s father, and the men of the shantytown, putting skins on their feet, wrapping themselves in windings of grey cloth, dusting their faces with ash, ventured to the mountain when dawn had just lightened the sky. They knew that this, not midnight, was the hour of stealth. The strangers were not to be seen by the lake; at the other end of their tunnel, the Kale Kale believed, lay their camp.

The men saw wains piled with stone. They eased along the approach to the lake, apart from one another, crouching low to the cindered path. Spiny trees and thistles grew on Lotoq’s toothed terrain, and creatures mouselike scurried, leaving nested patterns of tiny feet. Their camouflage the men trusted; light grew steadily and still, at their distance, and behind the many teeth of the god, they could not spot their fellows.

From the tunnel mouth came a troop of laborers. Bani’s father thought they came in wariness, yet thought it was Lotoq that frightened them. They fanned, to begin a curious action of toeing rounded stones that lay near the lake’s shore. Learning a thing by this, they would bend, lift, and weigh the rocks in their hands.

From the tension of their arms, Bani’s father deemed it the heavier, not the lighter, they sought. Each Kale Kale was now islanded and helpless to confer or plan. Each had a skin of water. The sun, with the hours, poured a greater misery on the father of Bani, but not a stitch of his disguise could he remove. To take a drink must be a slow, cautious business.

Then, bringing his skin to his lips at last, he was startled by an outcry among the laborers. Their shouts to his ears were a jabber of staccato noise…

One keened and moaned, and held a hand as though he would shake it free from his body. The others said, no. No. They pointed to the bed of the cart. No, no. The man peered, and let himself be comforted. He went back to his work, but managed himself as a bewitched one, or like a prisoner set to the task of digging his own grave.

131

Lore and Lessons

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)