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

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Twelve

A Land So Perilous

(part one hundred twenty-eight)

And why? Bani’s father wondered. Some stones thrown of the mountain were airy; it was said among the Kale Kale that these were birds caught in the wrath of Lotoq, diminished to a vague shape of what they had been…

But birds valued for bearing away heat when laid in embers, good when crushed to dig into the soil of one’s garden. He decided the troubled fellow a halfwit.

After long tedium, after a doze fallen into, for which Bani’s father rebuked himself, the sun left in a wink. It seemed so to the men hidden on Lotoq’s flank; the rays reached only the rim of the bowl, gilded it, leaving cold shadow and twilight within.

Noises from the workers were of scuffling and fastening, a subdued humor.

Then, the near-recognized voice of the halfwit: Aaaaaaaaaah!

Shut up! Shut up! Bani’s father knew the halfwit’s fellows said nothing other. They smacked him with their hands. He had fallen to the ashy earth and curled there like a child, his cries become incoherent speech, resolving bit by bit into a repeated phrase, and open weeping.

The workers clustered away from the wagon. Their antics had much to teach, things the company of Bani’s father would come to learn…

Now the sky had darkened, they saw that the wagon bed glowed with a line of green, glimmering as distant lightning will. A lamp to itself was this stone of evil, split down its middle, showing sinister among the rest.

The Kale Kale went to their homes for the night. Their disguises they sought to improve; they thought of hollowed reeds for their water skins, fleeces to rest their knees on, and foodstuffs their dreams had wandered to by day.

But armed they would go, and doubled in their number.

They had counselled until the stars told the hour of departure neared, and they must sleep. This violation of the god’s fortress, the frightful stones stolen from him—

The signs read thus: these thieves meant to use the god’s power towards some sorcery.

Sacred things are a gift from the gods to men. We know this, for the gods live in happiness without us, and did for uncounted time before they toyed with the creating of us. The gods allow us to breathe and touch holiness, to draw from it what we will; this is their mercy to us. They punish those who offend them, yet their powers are their own, as the garment of a giant must fall to folds around a mere man, leaving him undressed. So the bolts of the gods slay the righteous and the unrighteous alike, for they cannot temper their might to the size of humankind.

The chieftain of the Kale Kale knew this. “This is why we must act in defense of our Lotoq, to allay his wrath. The god will quiet himself if we please him. He will not wait long to rise, if we do not.”

132

Lore and Lessons

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)