To Find a God

by Mary Hamilton

  “Kharla! Stop that, this instant.” The mother whirled to face her daughter. “He is showing respect and kindness. This is not his blame.”

  “I don’t need his kindness or his respect. It is nothing. It will not bring back Papaw.” Tears flowed freely down her cheeks as she clenched her fists.

  Klunk put his hand on Tovi’s shoulder and let it rest there gently but said nothing.

  Tovi stuttered, “I’m sorry. Really.” He wanted to say more. He knew he needed to, but he also knew that anything else he uttered would make things worse. He hung his head and nodded.

  The mother turned once again to Tovi. “I thank you for bringing me this news and for the respect you show.” She paused and stared at the floor. “Please, I need to be alone with my children.”

  ◆◆◆

  “You did well, Tovi.” Klunk sat beside the young Azyrean outside the stricken family’s hut. “They are hurting, and they must think on it. Myhrren was right to send you. He would be proud of you today.”

  Tovi kicked at the pieces of dirt on the steps. “Thanks. But I don’t feel very proud. I didn’t bring them any joy and I didn’t make their lives better.”

  “The sadness and grief that have entered their lives came not from you but from others. You did what you could to ease their pain. In the end, they must find their own peace.” He paused and then continued with a less certain tone. “Your account of the conflict—I don’t remember the story being that way. I thought that the dog saved you and that the ones who perished were already gone or nearly so when you arrived. How did he save your life?”

  Tovi smiled and shook his head. “They died saving all of us, sort of. And it seems to me that it’s a good way to think about it. Anyway, it’s the only gift I could give them. Maybe it will mean something.”

  Klunk chuckled. “Are you sure that you are really a child on your home world? You talk like an elder.”

  The swishing of the leather door covering interrupted their conversation as the young girl shoved her way past them. Once down the steps, she whirled to face the two. “I’m not sorry for what I said back there.”

  Tovi nodded and Klunk shrugged. Neither spoke.

  “Why are you here? Did you come just to bring us this evil news?” She stood, hands on her hips glaring at them.

  Klunk spoke, his voice soft and steady. “We bring these tidings because it is the right thing to do. Myhrren guides us. After, we must travel to all of the kraals with warnings. This will happen again, and we must be ready. To do that, we—all ogres—must band together.”

  “So, you intend to fight them, these humans, you call them?”

  Klunk gazed out across the desert beyond the huts. “I don’t know the future. Myhrren commands us to spread the word. But what will come, I cannot say.”

  Kharla’s arms slowly dropped to her side. “And what will you tell these other kraals? How will you get them to listen to you?”

  Tovi, emboldened by her relaxed stance, spoke, “I don’t know the words yet. Just as I didn’t know the words to talk to you. And maybe I will do just as bad then. But I will do my best.”

  “And you will bring all the ogres together to fight?”

  Klunk shook his head. “We do not seek violence. That is not what Myhrren teaches.”

  “Then why does Myhrren tell you to organize if not to fight?”

  Klunk didn’t answer and Tovi started to respond when Kharla continued, “I’m going with you. And we will convince all the kraals and we will be ready and we will destroy the humans just as they destroyed my father.”

  Klunk stood and moved closer to her. “You cannot accompany us. We will be gone for several journeys of the moon.”

  “So? You think because I’m a girl, I can’t do it? I’m as fierce as you. I can track and trap animals. I can find my way in the desert. I can fight if I need to.”

  “But this is not your burden.”

  “It is mine now. They killed Papaw and that made it my burden.”

  Tovi tried to intervene. “But doesn’t your mother need you here?”

  Kharla turned and stared daggers at the young Azyrean. “What my mother needs is my father. And since you cannot give her that, I will give her the next best thing—justice.”

  Chapter 7: Tovi

  Kharla’s kraal was not that different from Klunk’s. The huts were arranged in a broad circle with the chief’s dwelling slightly larger than the others. The sun had made half the journey to its zenith and a warm wind had picked up, blowing small swirls of dust through the compound. Tovi and Klunk sat on the steps of a small storage structure set off behind the other huts.

  Activity, which had seemed characteristically hurried earlier in the day, had eased and the kraal was huddled in silence except for the gentle whistle of the wind coursing through the structures. It carried a rich smell of smoking meat from across the compound.

  “Is she really going to go with us?” Tovi had been willing to endure Kharla’s verbal abuse when he delivered the bad news. He figured it was all part of an unpleasant but necessary task. But faced with the possibility of having to hear it all day every day, he felt less charitable.

  “She is her own master. I have no control over what she does. I hope that she comes to her senses, but if she chooses to accompany us, I cannot stop her. We can ignore her and not share our food and water, but that is not Myhrren’s way.” Klunk sighed and shook his head. “So our only hope is that her mother will talk her out of it.”

  Whatever hope Tovi harbored was shattered as he watched Kharla stride across the center of the kraal toward them. She had a large leather satchel on her back and had donned lace-up leather boots suitable for hiking. The young Azyrean groaned.

  Klunk stood, stretched, and walked toward her. “From your appearance, I guess you haven’t changed your mind.”

  She glared at him and then over at Tovi. “When you have lost your father to an end such as this, you can talk to me about changing my mind. Until then, I am going with you. We will unite the ogres and we will crush the humans, killing every one of them.” Her eyes blazed with anger and hatred.

  “We are simply going to talk to the kraal chiefs and convince them to ready themselves in case trouble comes. We are not marching off to war.”

  Kharla moved in closer to him so that her face was only centimeters from his. “War has arrived. We need not march off to meet it. My father found it, and he wasn’t even looking.”

  Klunk stood his ground but did not allow his anger to rise to her level. “I cannot stop you from following us. And Myhrren teaches that we must respect and share. But it is Tovi’s responsibility to speak with the chiefs. I must ask that you honor that.”

  She stared in silence for a moment before nodding. “Which way?”

  ◆◆◆

  Growl stood and stretched. Klik emerged from his hiding place and hopped up to his perch on Tovi’s shoulder. As the party adjusted their packs and made final preparations, Kharla stood back, assessing the large dog. “You have an impressive pet.”

  Tovi waited for Klunk to launch into his explanation about how Growl wasn’t really his pet. Instead, the ogre nodded and turned toward the retreating sun. “We must travel to the next kraal. We will spend tonight at an oasis between here and there. We go.”

  Once out of the kraal, Klunk set a brisk pace. Kharla kept up with him but remained several meters to the side. She seemed to take no notice of her two companions. From the beginning, Tovi felt a sense of discomfort—a not-so-subtle hostility. Under more pleasant circumstances, this would have been the perfect time for one of Klunk’s songs. But he trudged forward with little notice that anyone else was around.

  Growl remained with the party for about five minutes and then bounded ahead and remained out in front for the rest of the afternoon. Klik perched atop Tovi’s shoulder and kept quiet.

  Tovi pondered as he walked. How had things gotten so twisted around? He and Klunk had always managed to get along, even though they were very dif
ferent. And here was Kharla, another ogre, and she acted as if she could barely stand to be around them. Yet she insisted on going with them. It seemed really stupid. And why is she angry at me? I didn’t do anything wrong. If he had been alone with Klunk, he would have asked. But with Kharla keeping pace with them, Tovi felt it better to remain quiet.

  The sun hovered just above the horizon as they spotted the tops of the trees at the oasis. Klunk pointed ahead as he continued to march. “There, maybe one-hour walk.”

  If Kharla heard, she gave no evidence of it.

  ◆◆◆

  Tovi withdrew a package of dried hare meat wrapped in cloth. Opening it, he offered some to Kharla. She stared at the meat and then opened her own pack without even responding.

  Meanwhile, Klunk gathered twigs, sticks, and a few larger pieces of dead wood from around the pool of water. Within a half-hour, he had a fire going. As it flared and caught, the smoke diminished and the heat increased. “That should keep the beasts away if we make sure it burns all night.”

  Kharla looked up from the dried meat she was eating. “The beasts scare you?”

  Klunk clenched his jaw. “I respect the beasts enough to take care. I do not invite a battle with them by keeping a dark camp.”

  “It seems you do not want to invite any battles. Are you afraid?”

  “I will fight when I must fight. But until then, I take no joy in defeating and killing other living things. It is not the way of Myhrren.”

  “Myhrren didn’t save my father.”

  “And Myhrren didn’t kill your father.”

  Kharla smirked but didn’t respond. The look on her face, though, said that her side of the argument was far from over. The sounds of the crackling fire and crickets chirping replaced the harsh sound of ogre voices in conflict.

  When she spoke again, she changed the subject, although bitterness remained in her voice. “What did you say he is, again?” She looked at Klunk while nodding toward Tovi.

  He stood, brushed off his clothes, and strode over to where she was sitting. He stood over her, glaring down. “Tovi is my friend. That’s what he is. What are you, other than an angry voice that won’t be still?”

  Kharla glanced over at Tovi and then up at Klunk. She spoke in a slightly softer tone. “I meant no offense. I was just asking. I’ve never seen one like him before.”

  Uncomfortable being the subject of a discussion while he was present, Tovi spoke for himself, “I am Azyrean. I am from a place called Pangrove. It’s on another world. I ended up in your world by accident. I was riding moonbeams.” He had, of course, told the story to her and her family back in the kraal, but he figured that this might be an opportunity to make friends with her.

  “Why here? Why did you come to our world? Why not someplace else?” What she seemed to leave unsaid was the notion that his coming was somehow connected to her father’s death.

  Tovi shrugged. “I didn’t choose. I jumped on a beam and ended up here. And honestly, I don’t even know where here is. I don’t know where Pangrove is or how to get back there.” He felt the loneliness and anger building in him again. “And if I could, I would leave today, right now, and go back to my family.”

  “You have a family?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know for sure what happened to my sister. She was riding beams too and I think she went someplace else. And my parents don’t know where I am. I’m stuck here and I’m supposed to be helping the ogres but nobody told me they would be so mean.” He wasn’t sure where that last part came from. It was certainly how he felt, but up until this point, he’d been pretty good at holding his words.

  “You might be mean, too, if someone murdered your father.” She hurled the words at him, fire in her eyes.

  He rose to the challenge, both physically and mentally. Standing in front of her, his face came even with hers, since she was sitting. “And I didn’t murder your father. I would have given anything to save him. But I couldn’t. And if you want to hate me, go ahead, but it doesn’t change anything. Your father is still gone and I am still stuck here.” Tears streamed down his cheek.

  She waved away his argument as if it were some annoying insect and went back to her dried meat.

  Tovi started to push harder on her but the voice, which had been silent since the time of the battle, intervened. “Let it go for now. She needs time. You will not argue your way to friendship and trust. It will come.”

  The Azyrean backed up haltingly and plopped down on his pad. Where have you been? What am I supposed to be doing? Why didn’t you help me find the words to tell that family?

  “I have been with you the whole time. I didn’t need to help you with the words. You did fine. You are stronger than you think. As for what you are supposed to be doing, well, you are doing it.”

  Chapter 8: Jarek

  Jarek moped around the compound, hands shoved into the front pockets of his trousers. “Okay, I get it. We need to find this god—this Aristan.” He turned and stared at Burns. “But what I don’t understand is how. After all, I doubt that we’re going to find a special magic shop where I can wander in and say, ‘pardon me, but I’d like to speak with Aristan. Yes, that Aristan, the god’.” He rolled his eyes.

  Burns offered a hint of a smile. The corners of her mouth turned up and a light shone in her eyes. “You never can tell. Maybe there is a shop. And maybe they’ll know something about him.” She finished with a chuckle.

  “I’m trying to be serious here. We need to know about this fading or sundering or whatever you call it if we’re going to find a way around it.” He gestured around the area. “And unless I’m missing something, there’s nothing here that’s going to help us.”

  The young human stood and stretched, squinting her eyes against the midday sun. “True enough. But after your last adventure, do you really want to try your luck outside the camp?”

  Jarek started to hurl another sarcastic remark but thought better of it. First, the situation was not Burns’ fault. No need to be nasty to her. Second, she was right. The world outside the rebel compound had not been very nice to him. In particular, the ill-fated trip with CeCe had nearly cost him his life. Still, sitting around waiting for enlightenment seemed pointless. “So how do we go about it, finding this god?”

  “I’d start with Doc. He told us a good story, but I’d bet my explosives kit that he knows a lot more.”

  The Azyrean considered the idea. “Maybe, but what is it we really want to know? I doubt seriously that he knows how to find this god. Surely he would have told us if he did.”

  “I agree. So, we have to start smaller. He mentioned a bunch of priests. Maybe he knows more about them.”

  “But didn’t he say there wasn’t any proof of them, or something like that?”

  Burns shrugged. “Yes, but that’s just about whether or not they exist. It could be that he can tell us more about who they were—what they were like. That may be enough to get us started.”

  “I don’t know. Even if we find out more about them, I don’t see how that helps us.”

  “Come on, Jarek, you have to have a little faith. You have a better idea?”

  ◆◆◆

  “What do you want to know?” Doc raised the cup of steaming coffee to his lips, taking a sip before sitting down on the tree stump outside the cave.

  Jarek had decided to let Burns do the talking. The whole idea didn’t make a lot of sense to him, anyway.

  “What were these priests like?”

  The medic stared down at his cup, his nod barely perceptible. “First, you have to understand that a lot of what I know about them is really just rumor and speculation. You saw the markings up at the old monastery. As far as I know, those are things that remain of them. Everything else has just been handed down over the generations. Who knows how accurate any of it is?”

  Burns responded with impatience, “Okay. We get that. So?”

  “As the story goes, they were a group of priests whose purpose in life was to serve the god, Ar
istan. And by that, I mean that they spread his message to all the people. They helped answer questions and assist humans in times of trial and sorrow. As you saw, they also set up shrines to him. I would assume that they also facilitated some kind of worship, although, if that were the case, it died out long ago.”

  “Where did these priests live?”

  Doc idly scraped his boot across the dirt. “Don’t know for sure. The monastery was probably, at one time, a home of sorts. But that fell into ruin more than a century ago. If the priesthood survived beyond that time, they migrated elsewhere.” He looked up at his two companions. “Obviously.”

  Jarek interjected, “Where? Did they move to some secret place, like you have here?” He gestured back toward the cave.

  “That’s possible, but I doubt it. If they had gone off someplace in secret, there would still be lingering rumors or tales. You know, parents would tell their kids that the old priests lived here or there. I have a hunch, though, that the priesthood simply assimilated into the world. Maybe they still exist. Maybe not. But there’s nothing in the tales that indicate they wandered off to someplace in particular. Mind you, that doesn’t mean they didn’t. Just that there are no stories to support it.”

  “Is it possible, then, that when they melded back in, they took places as ordinary people? If so, they could be anywhere, living in towns or on farms.” The notion excited Jarek.

  “Yeah, well, except that this was a long time ago. They would all be dead by now.”

  Burns raised her finger as though to make a point. “Yes, they would. But if they had chosen to continue the priesthood, would they not have recruited new members. Maybe a new bunch of priests are out there right now. We just don’t know who they are.”