17 Stones

by Paul Telegdi

  Chaiko was a whirlwind that passed through the camp. He arrived at Tomakon’s campsite, forced himself into Tomakon’s circle and grabbed the older man, drawing him aside. Chaiko’s eyes were fierce, blazing with emotion. “Why did you not tell me that... Bogan was my father??!”

  Chapter 25

  Tomakon blinked and took a step back from an angry Chaiko. “Because I did not know. Not for certain. He never told us. Though I was sure it might be you.”

  “But... but why?!” Chaiko could hardly take a breath for he felt as if his whole comfortable world had fallen on him and was crushing him. “Why did he disown me??!” There was so much pain in this voice that the elder shaman winced as if he had been struck. “Why did he cast me away like some unwanted thing?”

  “He did not cast you away!” Tomakon said, stung. “He loved you so! He did it because he loved you and wanted above else to protect you!”

  “Love? You call that love?” Chaiko staggered back, his wooden leg very unsteady under him.

  “Oh yes! I would call it love,” said Tomakon. “He yearned to be a father. To hold his son, just like any normal man. To teach you. To watch you grow. To see you smile at him. To laugh. Or just to play with you and talk with you. He wanted that very badly.”

  “But then why??”

  “He sacrificed all that to protect you and your mother,” Tomakon said, his voice growing husky defending his friend, remembering Bogan’s dreams and fears.

  “To protect me? From what?”

  “From the burden of his name and reputation. From the great load he shouldered. From all the expectations placed on him.” Tomakon reached out an arm, grabbed Chaiko’s shoulder, drew him aside to a small tree and sat him down. Tomakon’s voice became soft and comforting; he was performing a last service for his friend. A service that he had despaired over, the last few years, afraid he would die before he could do it.

  “Your father was a selfless man, I think you know that by now. He was asked and he gave without questions or reservations. He had very little time for himself, most of which he spent thinking about things, much like you. Sometimes he lay with a woman but rarely, very rarely. As he grew older, he grew lonelier even in the crowds around him, reaching out for him, always wanting something from him. He longed for a family and he grew to envy the common man who could mate and have children without any other consideration. For who gave to him? Really. Who?” Tomakon looked into the distance, across time, filled with great sadness for the man who had been his friend, who had given his life in the service of others. Heartbeat by heartbeat, day upon day, year after year. A whole lifetime spent denying oneself the comfort of a mate and a growing family. His eyes misted with longing for Bogan.

  Tomakon pulled himself back into the present. “He knew your mother as a young woman. I remember her well myself. Pretty, vibrant, full of life. Now I can understand why he chose her to carry his seed. Because of her heart, her vitality and intelligence. They must have stolen a few moments together. I was never sure for he never said it outright. He implied that a son would come someday to claim his heritage and that I must help him then. I thought it might be you when I first met you, but I wasn’t sure. You know, you look nothing like him except for that glow you get in your eyes. The way you look behind the words and behind things at their shadows, searching for meaning. And you had Bogan’s stone. That, too, testified of you.”

  “But still that does not explain why,” Chaiko lamented, so anxious to hear a reason to connect to his pain over such discovery. Bogan his father??!

  “You had to be there to understand. Wherever he went people followed, begged him for things, to bring some comfort to their darkness, answers to life’s many questions. There is such a great, yawning need out there! And he did his best to find them answers. Solve problems. Teach. Lead by example. He struggled against injustice. He taught compassion. Demonstrated love and caring for one another. To find answers he could not find for himself. He was expected to be all things and people demanded this of him.” Tomakon himself had always been bowed by the weight of all these demands and responsibilities.

  “He was selfless and denied people nothing. But he could not ask the same of his family. He was filled with a sense of mission, to bring unity and a sense of humanity to all these people he called his own but... but it was his zeal that carried the weight of such a burden that would have crushed any other man.” Tomakon paused and peered somewhat anxiously in Chaiko’s face; was he reaching him, through the shock of this revelation? What answer could satisfy the hunger that had grown through years of wondering?

  “Remember the teaching of the small tree growing in the shadow of the big tree?” Tomakon tried a different tack. “The small tree was well protected by the big tree, living in its weather shadow till the day the big tree died but the young tree could not survive for it had not grown hard and strong. Your father... Bogan was afraid that living in the shadow of his reputation would likewise spoil you, so that once he was gone you would not prosper and prevail. Like the man living with the great hunter would find no reason to hunt. Like the man living with the wise man would not learn to hunger and quest for knowledge. For such was the curse of his bright reputation, it would burn someone who got too close or searched intensively after it.”

  “But... but...” Chaiko wanted to protest, his emotions at war with his reason. His intelligence had to agree with Tomakon’s arguments but his feelings never would.

  “Bogan trusted in his heritage that was in your blood, inside of you. He trusted that you would find yourself if given your own space and your own time... not his. He gave you room to grow and not be suffocated by his reputation. He did not want you to give up, paralyzed by what he was, and he did not want you to run after the fame that claimed him. As much as he wanted to be a mate to your mother and a father to you, he gave that all up to give you an honest chance at an independent life. That is what I call love, my friend!” Chaiko just shook his head, denying these facts. A child needs parents!

  “You cannot understand the crushing weight of expectation that was focused on your father. He did not want that for you or your mother. That is why, I think, they decided to do what they did. She had Baer and then you, off in the quiet of Standing-Rock, with a mate who could not have any children.”

  Baer?!! Yes, what about Baer? He had to be Bogan’s son as well, of course! Chaiko had been so overwhelmed by the discovery that he had forgotten about his own brother. After all Baer did not have a tell-mark from Bogan. With great difficulty he focused his mind on what the old shaman was saying.

  “...They saw each other only at Gatherings, I guess, though Bogan travelled across the whole of the land. There was an eight years’ difference between you and Baer. They must have met secretly at Gatherings. But I knew nothing of that. There were always people around Bogan. Men, women and children. Always. That was how it was.”

  “But did he not say anything to you about... children?” Chaiko’s voice was trembling.

  “No. Not directly. He said that somebody might come forth with a claim, and I... we were to ease you into a knowledge of him... I think he deliberately kept it vague for us, so we could not go and find you. Trusting that you would find us. That is why he gave us teachings to give to you. To explain why he had not revealed himself to you or Baer. He said it was up to you to claim him but he could not claim you without changing you, transforming both of you. He wanted you two to be your own men, not just sons of Bogan...”

  “Near the end of his life he found Leah’s mother and seeing all her admirable qualities, he chose Leah for you as mate if your paths would cross. He gave Leah the stone he carried around his neck in the hope it would get back to you.” Tomakon then shut his mouth, his eyes anxiously searching Chaiko’s face.

  Chaiko was quiet, very still. No thoughts, no emotions swirled to the surface. He forced each of the words into his awareness, understood them, but stunned as he was he could not react to them. He returned the old shaman’s inquiring gaze
blankly. Finally, sighing, Chaiko stood up, compelled into movement by the emptiness he felt. As always, if answers eluded him, he would go in search of them.

  “Chaiko,” Tomakon called after him. Chaiko turned back to look. “You know a snail was a favorite symbol of his. Being so perfect and self contained. I think he thought of your mother and the two of you as his home. I think that is why he named you Chaiko.” Tomakon was guessing. It was a reasonable and a kind guess.

  Chaiko still felt empty when he arrived back at his campsite. He went to Baer, sat down and just looked at his brother. Baer grew uncomfortable at his intensity. “What?” the Chief of all the clans asked, expecting from his brother’s demeanor something uncomfortable and unusual. That impression deepened when Chaiko still did not respond to him. How was Chaiko going to tell him about what he had just learned?

  Chaiko started talking somewhat erratically, the words spilling out of him without much control. Of mother, of the man they thought to be their father, and finally of Bogan. Baer listened with outward interest but remained calm and detached. He said not a word until Chaiko was finished and waiting for his reaction.

  “Well that makes lot more sense then,” Baer said simply.

  “What makes more sense?” Chaiko asked, almost irritated by the calm his brother showed. Did this not matter to him?

  “Why father never really tried to teach us much of anything. Why he never was strict with us. Why mother was always watching us and searching for emerging qualities. Why she was so nervous before a Gathering, so changed during it and so subdued after it. Yes those parts all make sense now.”

  “But what do you think of Bogan being our father? Does that not mean anything?”

  Baer thought a long while, before answering. “Yes, it means a whole lot. But I think he was right. I do not think I would have liked to grow up on the road all the time, competing with all the people for his attention.”

  “He would have had to make time for us,” Chaiko stated flatly, uncompromisingly.

  “Perhaps. But he was only a man. You must not forget that,” Baer said, strangely untouched by the conflict Chaiko was experiencing.

  “Why are you not angry? That our father hid himself from us!” Chaiko exploded.

  “I had a father!” Baer reminded him. “Day after day he loved us and looked after us. That Bogan was our real father cannot overshadow that. Or have you forgotten that?”

  In a manner of speaking he had. His adoptive father had always been a quiet man, easy to be overlooked or forgotten. Chaiko felt chastised but he found the fact totally stunning that the man he struggled so hard to understand had turned out to be his real father. What he knew of his adoptive father could easily be summed up in a few words. Baer was, of course, eight years older than he and owed eight more years to the man they had called father. That explained a lot of Baer’s reaction. Chaiko’s true lineage suddenly illuminated his own complexity and that of Bogan’s.

  Chaiko son of Bogan, son of ...?!! He must learn his real lineage, the roll call of his generations, yet not disown the one he already knew. It was all too confusing and he needed time to think. He could not understand his brother’s easy acceptance of the revealed facts. Surely there were nuances of significance. Perhaps he too needed time to absorb this new awareness of what he was. He retreated to his own fire lost in thought.

  Dawn saw he was preoccupied with something large and guarded his peace. Let the thinker think things through. She did not yet know the momentous implications awaiting her and their sons! Perhaps she would not be so complacent then.

  At one point Ushi came wanting something but Chaiko peremptorily waved him away. The trader backed off; it was rare that Chaiko refused anyone’s approach. Ushi knitted his brows, wondering what was absorbing the shaman’s attention so. Chaiko had been strange ever since he returned from Tomakon. What could the old shaman have told Chaiko to sink him so deep in thought? Ushi returned to Nebu, and his mood immediately lightened at the sight of her. She was such a comfortable woman to be around, always so willing to listen, always ready with a few right words of response. To his great surprise he was finding her extremely passionate, and she spawned her own excitement, not just riding his. The boys, Ork and Ruba, treated him almost deferentially, glad to see their mother once again so alive and glowing. Ushi tried not to father them and thus awaken their resentment. Still the trader felt he had a family again. He sat down by the smoking fire, still frowning at Chaiko’s dismissal. When Nebu gave him something to drink, he sipped absently on it, ruminating that it bode no good whenever the shaman was so preoccupied with something consequential. What could that something be?

  Chaiko turned to Dawn and motioned her to sit down. She first gave the twins to her sister and left Yael in Hollow-Tree’s care before she complied. Chaiko looked at her, his face still smooth and expressionless. Dawn began to worry, as she could not penetrate his blank mask. What was this about? She saw her turtle again struggling to show himself as if carrying some great weight. What weight could that be?

  “I am Bogan’s son.” He said each word ponderously.

  “Bogan?” she blinked. “The Bogan you always talk about and quote?” Then something of what he said sank in as she tried to make sense of it. “Are we not all Bogan’s sons... and daughters?” Was not Bogan the father of a new culture?

  No!” He shook his head, “I am really Bogan’s son. And Baer is too.” Then with many laborious words he told her what he had learned. As she listened, her face changed from shock to growing disbelief and finally to utter astonishment.

  “And this is the great Bogan?” she asked yet again, hardly daring to believe her ears. She then looked at her mate; was this not good? “And this is good... no?”

  Chaiko was stunned by the question. He had been so involved in his own reactions that he had considered nothing else. Good? Good for Dawn and their three children? Was it good for them? He did not know and had to shrug in reply. Good or not good, it was now a fact; a fact that would soon be common knowledge, or could he, should he keep it quiet? He frowned at this new perplexity. Dawn watched her mate anxiously, trying to read from him whether to be sad or happy for him. She could not decipher the confusion she saw there.

  “Bogan has hid this from all of us to spare his mate and sons the burden of the weight he carried. Should I not be cautious too?” He looked toward his brother’s place to see what Baer had decided, but found only the peaceful sight of Baer with Tanya, Csama nestled in her arms.

  Dawn still had trouble comprehending. “This is Bogan the great teacher? He is your father? Every time you turn around, somebody was sure to be quoting him in some context.” Chaiko nodded. How? she asked herself, and why only now?

  “I just found out about it today,” he explained, reading her confusion. Her eyes grew bigger still. No wonder Chaiko was so intelligent, being of Bogan’s bloodline. Her children shared the same lineage! The thought coursed through her like lightning and her heart sang in sudden elation. Her face brightened with a flush of joy; her eyes blazed brilliant blue. Still she could only say, “Bogan is your father? What an illustrious lineage!” Why was Chaiko so constrained?

  But seeing her reaction, Chaiko found himself swept along by her burst of joy. Yes, most certainly, Bogan’s blood added to the value of his bloodline hugely. His children were inheritors of a great name!

  “What is it, dear?” she asked in the most tender tones, focusing all her attention on him.

  “I do not know. All the years I thought I was someone else. It is hard to find out otherwise so abruptly.”

  “But you yourself are still the very same person you were this morning. Nothing can change that.”

  She was right of course. Partly anyway, but somehow the knowledge had already changed him. It had set him apart. Before he could pretend to be part of the common herd of man, but today with a knowledge of his descent, he knew himself to be different. He understood better why he was compelled to search for answers, not settling for the easy
platitudes. Now he understood why both he and Baer were driven to serve. It was in their blood. A heritage that would give him strength but also carried an awesome responsibility. Bogan, Bogan my father.

  Tanya came over to Dawn. Her face was suffused with a sense of unreality. “Have you heard?” she whispered, not daring to voice aloud such a secret. Dawn nodded, her face shining with pride for her mate’s and children’s sake.

  “But, do you not understand...?” Tanya tried to put words to her concerns. “This will make both of them even more insufferable with their... their sense of responsibility.”

  Dawn laughed, a pleased tingling laugh. “A skin already full can’t be added to,” she quoted an Ekulan saying. That made sense, Tanya concluded, and she returned her friend’s smile.

  “Can you believe it?” Tanya marveled.

  “No. But it must be true to put such a hole in Chaiko’s composure. I thought my turtle would not come out all day and night.”

  “Turtle? What turtle?” Tanya asked somewhat confused.

  “Oh never you mind,” Dawn dismissed it, blushing at so revealing her secret name for her mate.

  The news percolated through camp. Tanya confided in Ile, Ile mentioned it to Ido, Ido to Lana who ran to her mother for confirmation. What could Tanya do but to affirm; yes, she was of the bloodline of Bogan. Crow took the news as a shock, his mate was of Bogan? He had not thought Lana could be any more priceless, but she suddenly was. And their children would be too! The thought warmed him through and through and he felt an aching urge to instigate more in that direction.

  In a short time all of Standing-Rock knew. And the principals knew that they knew, for they could feel the many eyes boring into them. But the eyes quickly averted when Chaiko and Baer looked in their direction.