The Totem-Maker (part one hundred thirty-six)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Twelve

A Land So Perilous

(part one hundred thirty-six)

Chance, in the fullness of time, might have come to the Kale Kale. They might, for grasping at freedom, have found they could feel entitled to freedom. They might have sought it, in the steady way of small works and small footholds, and in the passing centuries have gained it. Yet through all human effort is the race against tragedy; in despite of our plans and gains, our wanton destruction by the gods.

I have spoken to you of thoughtful things. I have raised the question of a God, an all-powerful divinity, who rules over nations and ages unknown to us; or of a minor god, whose power lives in our fears and ignorance. I have spoken of legends, miracles of great ages past, the diminished magic of our present days.

Stones that hatch crystals; yes, at times I had seen them. And what the bauble-makers of Monsecchers did with such was to crush the pretty gems—then with a glue made from boiled skins, fix the shards into recesses of metalwork, shaped as flowers or heavenly stars. The gems were of no better worth, lovelier left alone to enchant a child.

In the desolate place of my early years, I had gathered stones to build small fortresses; or pebbles, speckled and striped, to caress in my fingers. I was taught the usefulness of those airy and sulphur-scented rocks that polish wood, or lighten clay. Far later, I dug my totems…which I came to believe were seeds.

While stones, in our mythology, also are seeds, from which the gods grow mountains.

This tale of poisoned green gems that brought a plague, had left me no awestruck believer. Bani wrote in the language of symbol and puzzle. He called the sickness a punishment for meddling with the holy, for greed unbecoming to the Kale fathers.

I will tell one more tale of my own. Of a terrible time, when the earth shook, and the seas departed. The people, frightened by night auras that danced at the farthest horizon, made a caravan, they and their beasts, and all their possessions. The caravan after many months’ travel crossed the barren place where the sea had been. The people arrived (though the story is a long one, full of sorrows and strangeness, and I tell the least of it) at the ruins of a submerged city, where idols peered dumbly through their crusts of shells, and the bleached trunks of trees, grown centuries old, braced staircases rising to empty air. Myriad columns carved with the history of these unknowns, lay like a felled forest.

And the mightiest of noises rent the air, and the sea returned.

The story is invented; else, some lived to tell it. I accept that this may have been. The drowned city held coffers of treasures, never after to be seen on earth, and the people who had dared—so the story says—to loot the shining gems, were struck with fire.

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Lore and Lessons

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)