by Awert, Wolf
“What is that?” Esara asked.
“A forest.”
“I don’t see a forest in that.”
“It’s just the trunks, I left out the rest.”
“Then the forest is missing all that is important.”
“I can’t do more in so little time.”
“You can, you just didn’t try.”
On his next try Nill drew a forest, made up of three unequal-sized vertical lines. On top of these lines he drew a circle and a pointed edge, and between them a cross, two small horizontal lines and a dot.
“Good,” Esara said. “I know this forest, and I know where it lies.”
Nill’s illustrations became simpler, and soon he found that he enjoyed drawing messages in pictures that nobody except himself and his mother could understand.
“Tell nobody, under pain of death, what you’re doing here. Promise me that, and I will show you something far more powerful and dangerous than any picture.”
Esara had red spots on her cheeks, and her eyes were shining bright. Nill had never seen his mother so serious and worked-up and did not understand what she meant. More to calm her than of his own volition he swore a solemn oath.
“If you make a picture simpler and simpler, you get symbols. Some of these symbols are immensely powerful, but I cannot show them to you, and I don’t understand them myself anymore.”
A sad shadow flitted across Esara’s face and vanished as fast as it had come.
“Every symbol, strong or weak, tells a story. They tell stories the way words cannot. Words are spoken quickly and easily overheard. Words can enchant, but symbols will burn into a human forever. Symbols do not enchant, they change. Nobody can know of what I have told you.”
“And you can make these symbols?” Nill asked.
Esara nodded. “Some of them. They did not take everything from me.”
“Who took it away from you?” Nill asked angrily, for if someone took something from Esara, they had taken it from him too, and after ten harvests Nill felt old and strong enough to defend himself, Esara and Grovehall against all evil.
Esara looked upon her boy affectionately, seeing the thin arms, the skinny body, the thin blond hair. She also saw two splinters of Ironstone in Nill’s eyes, around which a mighty will began to coalesce.
“It was a long time ago. It’s alright,” she said.
Nill learned not only the symbol script, but also the runes and other scripts that looked like knotted grass. He never understood why just one script was not enough, but it pleased him to play around with the symbols and rearrange them into new orders.
“Look here,” he said one day. “This is a wonderful grass-word, and it sounds wonderful as well.”
“Yes, but that word doesn’t exist. There is no meaning behind it.”
Nill frowned. “Then I will give it one. I just need to find out what it fits with.”
It was but a small step from the runes to truth-telling, and so Nill asked one evening: “How is it that bones know the future?”
“The bones don’t know it. The one who throws the bones is the one who knows.”
Nill took the bones and tossed them across the stone slab.
“This isn’t how it works. You have to look at the oracle-bones and listen to your inner self.”
Nill listened to his inner self, but heard nothing but the blood rushing in his ears and the unsteady beating of his heart.
“There’s nothing there,” he complained, and the accusation in his voice could not be overheard.
“That is because you have no connection to the stones yet,” said Esara. “Even if body and soul know the future, neither knows that they know.”
Nill stared blankly.
“The art of truth-telling is, in essence, to touch the knowledge of the future that hides within you.”
“But I don’t know the future.”
“Yes you do,” Esara contradicted him. “The future is always preceded by messengers that show what will be tomorrow. Your spirit sees these messengers and knows what will happen. But still your spirit keeps its secrets.”
Nill stayed quiet, rather annoyed. He had a feeling that adults never gave him a clear answer when he wanted to know something.
“Do you know how the weather is going to be tomorrow?” Esara asked.
“Sure, it will be hot and dry.”
“See? You know some of the future already.”
“But everyone knows the weather of tomorrow, that isn’t important.”
Nill felt derided and his indignation showed in every line of his immature face.
“Knowing tomorrow’s weather is very important, and I did tell you that everyone knows the future.”
“But you know it better than others.”
Esara smiled. “The rune stones help me to understand myself better. Look here,” she continued. “This bone here means large-small, near-far, soon or later. This one is the Grand Regent; the sailors call it the great steersman.”
“And how does it show something that is small, far away and soon to become important?”
“It doesn’t.”
Nill shook his head.
Esara lifted a small bone slab. “This one here shows good and evil, useful and destructive. And that one there is of particular importance.” The bone Esara was pointing at had so many surfaces it looked almost like a ball. On every face there was a dark symbol, burned into the bone. “It holds your family, your friends and your enemies.”
“Well I don’t need that one then, I don’t have any family. I only have you.” Nill swallowed hard.
“Of course you have a family. The fact that you don’t know them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
“If I don’t know them and the family doesn’t know that I exist, then I don’t have a family, because they don’t care for me.”
Esara was lost for words at this, so she simply continued explaining the various bones and their properties. “This bone is home, your house, your village and all houses, buildings and squares where people live. And it’s very important which side is up, but even more important is the way the bones lie in relation to each other.”
From that evening onwards Nill played with the oracle-bones as often as he could, and Esara let him. But one evening he startled her with the words: “Your bones aren’t good. When I’m big I will get you better ones. Every bone should come from a different animal and from a different place. Good bones should have seen the world.”
It was not Nill’s words that made Esara blanch. It was the dancing rune stones on the Stone of Prophecy. Having been tossed, they no longer came to a halt. Some just quivered on the spot, others turned in circles, and the bone for Home was slowly crawling towards the Grand Regent.
Esara took the oracle-bones away from Nill. “Never play with the symbols again,” she said harshly. “It’s far too dangerous. Never tell anyone that you have ever even touched an oracle-bone.”
“Why not?” Nill asked, entirely innocently.
“Oracle-bones lie dormant until they are called upon. They awaken in the truth-teller’s hand when they are tossed, and they find rest anew on the Stone of Prophecy, where they will say what needs to be said.”
“That’s not possible,” Nill exclaimed. “My bones always move. When I lift the bag, when I toss them and when they’ve landed on the stone. They stop when I tell them to stop.”
“Dancing bones tell you that the future is not decided yet. It isn’t wise to keep reminding fate that it has unfinished business it should be taking care of.”
Esara’s fingers were shaking as she collected the bones one at a time and dropped them back into the bag.
“But you keep reminding me of things I have to take care of.”
“That is completely different. Do you honestly believe that you’re above fate?”
“Why not? There must be something that tells fate what to do.” Nill felt very strong and bold, and nothing could have frightened him in that moment, but Esara glared a
ngrily at him.
“Fool. Only a fool will challenge that which he doesn’t know, and an even greater fool doesn’t see who decides over his life.”
I decide over my own life, Nill thought, with all the hubris of youth, but didn’t dare say the words out loud. Esara’s face was far too serious. Instead, he decided to tackle the situation differently and asked: “Does that happen, though, that a human doesn’t have a future and it only happens much later?”
He felt like he was about to discover a great secret.
Everything about Esara’s face showed that this question distressed her, for future and fate, time and destiny are still secrets to the truth-teller, and she knew that one wrong word could change an entire life. With great effort she forced an answer.
“No, everyone has a future, but sometimes it can be several futures or fate can decide not to share the knowledge. Fate does not always want people to know its plans. Truth-tellers know this and have to accept that things happen as they do.”
But truth-tellers did not know that. Esara had lied. Sometimes it could happen that a truth-teller read the signs wrong, or that the vision was unclear and hazy, but oracle-bones that refused to come to a halt was something she had never seen in her life. All security had left her, because a future that did not exist was as the chaos before the making of the world. She tried her utmost to keep this terrible secret from Nill, and pretended the dancing bones to be little more than an annoyance. But she could not fool Nill. He had seen the gray pallor of her skin, the thin layer of shining sweat on her brow. He did not have to glance at her shaking hands to realize how disturbed she was.
It was one of those long evenings when nobody could tell when the day was over and the night began. The sun had gone down but still shone a red light into the dark blue night sky, and only rarely was one of the stars visible beyond the thin shroud of clouds.
Nill retreated along with his thoughts and fell asleep over them. Esara waited for the moon, for she had questions to ask before she went to sleep, but the moon seemed to have been caught in the clouds. It became later and later, and Esara’s last glance of the night was towards her fitfully sleeping boy.
Neither mother nor son witnessed the clouds finally break apart, upon which a pale yellow moon shone down. They could not have enjoyed the stars for long, either, because soon the mists began to waken in the flatlands and sloughs, sneaking into the village as they always did, spying into every stable and every hut that let them in.
The only place the mist could not go was Esara’s flower-house. As the fog hid the starlight, the emissions from Grovehall kept the mists away. Slowly a grayish-yellow smoke began to rise from the flattened earth, along the roots of the whisper-willows and the low-alders, more massive than the thin mist in the coolness of the night, more hectic than the quivering branches of the willows. While the damp air still caressed the animals and the scents of the evening dissolved into tiny water-beads, a foul, fusty smell broke through the earth of Esara’s house, with hints of sulfur and tar. And in the veils and swirls of this smoke, where it condensed for a few short moments, the first outline of a figure became visible.
Nill tossed and turned on the ram skins. The first fumes reached him and covered him. The smoke interrupted the deep, regular breaths of the sleeping boy and turned them into a hoarse, hasty cough, tearing at Nill’s lungs. Nill coughed and retched, screamed and leapt from his bed, his dagger held in his right fist.
He could not tell whether the smoke was surrounding the figure or was indeed part of it. Grayish-yellow streaks wafted over the mighty tusks of a huge battle-boar, its skull adorned with curved horns. The thick neck and muscular torso were mostly human, apart from two ridiculously small, red wings sprouting from the back. The hands ended in long, scythe-like claws and tore through the air like singing swords. But what made Nill’s gut cramp up were the creature’s legs. Strong, furry thighs from the hips downwards reminded him of wooly buffaloes, tapered down to giant feet that looked like they belonged to a bird of prey. The closer to the foot the fur got, the more it solidified and stuck together, forming horny scales, and below the knee it became a steely armoring. The feet were armed with rough, dark yellow talons, three pointing forwards and one backwards. A whipping tail, long enough to reach the creature’s own head, ended in a barbed point: a terrible weapon, combining the capabilities of a hook-spear and a whip. Talons and tusks, barbs and claws, strength, mass and wildness were opposed by nothing but the boy’s dagger for the protection of Grovehall and his life.
Nill thrust and his dagger sliced through the creature’s outstretched arm, merely disturbing the smoky swirls. The whip-tail with its metal barb circled through the air with a howl, passing through the walls of the hut as though they weren’t there, and wrapped itself around Nill’s chest. Nill felt icy cold and fiery heat at once. But the tail dissolved on the surface of his body, disappearing into his flesh and reforming behind him. The smoke became murkier and denser. It stopped swirling and started to drip like oil. Nill let out another scream. His battle-cry of anguish and anger with the light, penetrating sound of his young voice made the creature jerk up its head. It roared back at him. Dull, but from the depths of its body it aimed the roar at the boy. It was the sound of chaos, shaped, but not yet words. The sounds marked the beginning of feelings, while destroying all thought. The roar blasted through Nill’s head, surged down his spine, tumbled in his stomach and tore back out through his skin. Nill shook under the branding storm of a language he did not understand.
Esara stood with her back to the wall, paralyzed by fear, her fingers digging into the woven branches of the low-alders. Nill’s first cry had woken her. She had leapt up before she could even see anything, prepared to defend her son from anything and anyone threatening to disturb Grovehall’s peace. But at the sight of the swirling cloud whose stench settled heavily in her nose she lost all strength and determination. Esara was but a truth-teller, yet from the remains of a past life that had long sunk beyond memory an old knowledge rose. And with that knowledge came understanding.
Esara’s eyes darted around the room and came to rest on a small table, on which stood a bowl of blossoming Nightwort. Nill had brought it home two days ago from one of his wanderings.
“Drop the dagger and take the flowers!” she screamed.
But Nill did not understand. He glanced at Esara and saw her mutter words he could not hear, their sound drowned by the growls of the boar. Nill flipped the dagger so that the point faced downwards like a wildcat’s claws. He lowered his arm, stretched his wrist and the dagger vanished from his opponent’s sight, well hidden behind his body. The beast swiped at Nill with its left arm to crush his shoulder and sink its claws deep into his flesh. Nill turned, dodging the attack, and struck upwards with his dagger. The blade went through the arm, throwing up a cascade of brownish-yellow swirls. The battle-boar roared louder.
Esara’s voice was suddenly clear and bright in Nill’s mind and bypassed the disturbed air. Somewhere in a mystical center between his ears it sounded calm, decisive and urging, with no fear or desperation. “Drop your dagger, take the flowers. Focus on the flowers, forget the smoke. Remember how it was when you picked them.”
The beast’s next blow hit his shoulder and the claws sank deep into his flesh. The pain was more severe than when he had been struck with the whip, but again there were no wounds, and not a drop of blood spilled from his body.
“Remember how it was when you picked the flowers, how you carried them home, how you placed them back in their natural element, the calm water.” Esara’s voice had lost its urgency and instead sounded as monotonous as a small brook. It took Nill’s thoughts away from battle and war to peace, to beauty and love. Nill turned about, took the flowers carefully out of the water and let the beast be. He did not feel the hot-cold grasp of the paws around his throat, nor the sharp horn of the claws. A comforting warmth spread from the watery plants in his hands through his body. The pain of fire and ice dissolved, the eerie cre
ature in the smoke became ever more translucent. The last thing Nill saw was the battle-boar’s wide open maw, the huge skull thrown back. It looked as though it wanted to shout something. Then the smoke vanished and only a faint echo remained of the roaring and howling.
Esara embraced Nill and whispered: “Come now and sleep. It was just an illusion, a vision with no power.”
Almost limply Nill let her guide him. He was numb and fell asleep instantly. Inside him, the battle still raged. All through the night he tossed about, screamed and woke with blank eyes staring at invisible pictures. Esara sat by him all night. To stop the slight beginnings of the fever she repeatedly spread a few droplets of water from the Nightwort on his brow. When Nill finally seemed calm, the sun had begun to rise.
“I had a terrible dream,” Nill said as he sat blinking on his bed. “I dreamed of a terrible creature I had to fight.”
Esara looked tired and old. Several strands had loosened from her banded hair, her hands shook slightly and her eyes were deep. It was not the lack of sleep that brought this weariness about.
“I wish it were so,” she said quietly. “Look, your knife is lying there. Exactly where you dropped it. And if you check the floor, you’ll find traces of your foe. I’ll brush them away when the sun stands higher.”
Nill looked at the floor from his bed and saw a fine yellow dust with a scattering of rough black grains.
“Sulfur and Dark-filth,” Esara answered his puzzled gaze.
“What was that creature that attacked us?” Nill asked.
Esara gave a bitter laugh. “It was a demon. I only saw the smoke and smelled the stench that heralded it, but I’ll never forget that smell.”
“Couldn’t you see it?” Nill asked.
Esara shook her head. “Sometimes only the person who is targeted by the demon can see it.”
“I don’t even know if it was really there,” Nill said. “I could make it out quite clearly, but we could not touch each other. My dagger went through it like the smoke it arrived in, and its claws did not harm me even though I felt them.”
