“He is of a large fishing family. They not only fish, they make, and have made, for as long as can be remembered, a specialized lure called a spinner. They worship Sister Sea, but their son is gifted by Brother Air. It can never be explained, sometimes a family that worships one god is blessed by another.”
“So our behavior is almost without consequence?”
“Yes. It is better to err on the side of heedfulness, but they are not punishing deities. Let us take luncheon in the hall. We can continue later. It has been hours!”
I stood as he did. “It has been, but I confess, this is fascinating to me.”
38. Axe
He put his robe on, came around the desk, passed me, and pushed his hand into a small nook in the back of the wooden carving of the face, which was rippled with grooves but nothing in a set pattern. The reverse side of Mother Earth’s face was not nearly as intricate. The double doors swung open and we exited his office, the temple, the antechamber and made our way to the corridor that would take us to the dining hall, which was already full.
My eyes sought out my friends, but Cian took me by the elbow and guided me to a table of people clad in the browns of Mother Earth. They all also had the shortened hatchets and belts like Cian. He introduced me to several other priests and younger earth Tintarians who acted as acolytes and scribes in the temple.
We ate a meal of warm bread, smoked meats, vegetables and plums and I was asked many questions about Eccleston and my lineage as they wanted to know how I had magic. They were inquisitive and friendly and I felt, while still apprehensive, welcomed. I looked around and saw other tables like us but dedicated to the other deities. There were many tables of the cerulean-dressed Sister Sea temple staff, many tables of the light green for Brother Air and a handful of tables in red and orange for Father Fire. Ours was the only Mother Earth table.
“I am so excited to learn what your penchant is,” a woman next to me said. She seemed to be in her fifties, her hair still a light brown without gray. Her face was heavily lined by the sun and her laugh lines were deep.
“Well, so am I,” I said, swallowing a mouthful of bread that had some kind of herbs in it. “I did not know I was even magical until three days past.”
“This must be like a never-ending dream to you,” she said. “I’m Hazel. I’m Cian’s right hand as it were. If you need help, ask. We are so grateful to have more earth magic.”
I chatted with Hazel for the rest of the meal until everyone began to stand and stack their cutlery and plates and Cian ushered us all back to the temple.
Once back inside the inner chamber, behind the goddess’s face, he continued his lessons for several hours, educating me of Tintarian magic and law, specifically earth.
“And now, I will bestow upon you,” he said, as the afternoon began to draw to a close, “your sagaris.” He pulled the long package wrapped in leather towards him and unfolded the leather. Inside lay a belt, perforated like his own and an axe about the length of my forearm. The shaft was made of a knobby, black wood. The head of the axe was flat and curved, as any hatchet, on the one side and the other was almost claw-shaped and pointed. At the bottom of the shaft, the end was wrapped in the same iron as the head. On each side of the flat part of the head, the sign of the goddess was branded, that downward triangle with the line through the bottom point.
“This is mine?” I asked.
“And the belt,” he said. “For safety, there is a little pocket on the side where the sharpened end rests and a small scabbard that hangs from the belt for the flat end.”
“And… what is the significance?”
“You will read this in the books, but there is an old myth that Nyossa, a place you are now familiar with, probably more so than you would like, was once afflicted by poisoned trees and the goddess bade her people cut them down so she could regrow her forest. The story differs per telling. It is, in truth, quite handy. We will travel to farms together as you shadow me. And to divine exactly what a farmer’s complaint is, I have used it to drive a divot into the ground or into a tree branch. I have even read the inside of dead horse’s bones this way. So as to ascertain why they died, if it is pestilence. It is ceremonial, but it is also a symbol of who you are now. The sagaris will show you are to be respected as an acolyte of our goddess.”
With Cian’s help, I put on the belt and pushed the weapon through a perforation on the right side, looping the small pocket over the pointed end and the flatter, wider pocket over the flat end. It was heavy, but not cumbersome.
“This is of course, a ceremonial-sized sagaris, no longer than half your arm,” Cian was saying as I took practice steps around his desk. “A battle sagaris is twice the size.”
We ate a light dinner of cold, grilled fish and tomato slices that Hazel brought us and she joined us for the meal. The two of them discussed some issue between a shepherd and a rye farm. The sheep kept getting into the rye and the rye often grew over the border of the shepherd’s lands. I tried to pay attention, but my energy for learning had dissipated. Cian noticed my lagging and dismissed me, asking me to meet him back at the temple after breaking my fast the next morning.
I gathered up my books and wearing my new belt and axe, made my way back to my new bedroom. When I got back to Alric’s room and set the books on his desk, in a stack next to his books, atop Gareth Pope’s journal, I remembered the note. I pulled it from my pocket.
‘Edith - I know not why you seek out windows, but the best in the keep are at the top of the stairwell to the right of our room. Take the stairs all the way to the top. It will take eight levels to get there. There you will find a turret that rises above the bluff. One side has a view of Pikestully; one, a view of the sea. When I return, should you like, I can take you to the watchtowers, where only infantrymen go. The views from those windows are grander. - Alric’
He was right. Despite the setting sun or because of it and despite my limbs protesting the climb after such a full day, those two windows and their views left me awestruck.
Part III. Delirium
39. Living
In this manner, days passed. In the mornings, I woke in Alric’s room and walked down across the landing on the stairwell to the second level dormitories. I bathed with Helena, Maureen, Mischa, Catrin, River and Quinn and we made our way to the dining hall. I got used to walking everywhere with the weight of the sagaris on my right hip. Then I went to the temple and met with Cian for further instruction, dining with him and the other earth temple staff for luncheon and then spending the afternoon in the temple antechamber observing the priests and their acolytes in their civil agrarian service. I would rejoin my friends for the final meal of the day and retire to Alric’s room to read the three books Cian had given me. I quickly finished the handwritten account of Tintar’s geography, covering the harsh coastal rock of the middle of the country, the northern Hintercliff ranges and the southern marshlands that were nigh inhabitable but lush with grasses, blueberries, elderberries and swamp dewberries and cattails that could be dried and ground down into flour. The inside of the country, mostly corralled in by Nyossa, was agricultural.‘The Remarkable Loaming of Our Goddess’was more stimulating and went into descriptive detail of earth penchants. None of the content stood out to me personally, but I found it interesting. Cian continued to ask me if anything felt significant, but nothing did. I was putting off the tome about Tintarian history. Usually I enjoyed histories, but this one’s author was dry.
I wanted to pry through the four books of Alric’s stacked so neatly on the desk, but they were untitled and I was, for some reason, nervous to go through them. I had lifted the cover of the top one to see a title page that read ‘The Vanishing Thunder.’ The second page showed the beginning of a ballad. I had not suspected my husband to be a lover of poetry. I had flicked through it. It was about an ancient air Tintarian who could fly and traveled the world by stepping inside of claps of thunder, which were portals to other places. I stood and read it for nearly an hour before snapping it shut and replacing it on the little stack.
Sometimes, as Alric’s letter directed, I went up eight levels to the turret to look out at Pikestully or out at the green and gray Tintarian sea, stretching endlessly, the drake rocks interrupting the horizon. At night I dreamt again, as I had in Nyossa, of those stacks of pebbles. Now I found those dreams to be calming, watching the white and gray flat rocks stack themselves. When I could not sleep, I lit a candle and read the journal of Gareth Pope and his burgeoning love affair with the Shark King, who was then a prince, as well as his desire to join the temple of Mother Earth as a priest. Often he rambled, like a youth would. I felt myself wondering if he was alive still and where he was, wanting to meet him.
‘He is more than stolen kisses in the dark. He is more than what happens in his bed. He wants me to become as powerful as I can under the blessing of the goddess. He says that is what draws me to him, both of us blessed by one of the two goddesses of The Farthest Four. And I have, with Hinnom’s help, I think, secured tutorship with Keturah. I spend an hour at dawn with her, and she is guiding me in more than just little blood sacrifices to our Mother Earth. Faster than most, I am learning to meditate and give more of myself. Then I join my unit for infantry training for the rest of the day. This takes up my time. Hence, the journal has not been updated for a moon.’
