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The Jevlir Caravansary

Category: Fantasy

  • When the Orange Sky Gleamed

    “I’m going to tell you a story about the time when the orange sky gleamed,” said the old man.

    The children gathered around the fire moved closer. Some of them leaned forward so that they could hear the story. One of the older children wasn’t quite as interested.

    This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between persons, places, and events and those in the real world are purely coincidental.
    Copyright © 2012
    Henry E. Neufeld

    “The sky is blue in the day, and black at night. There are clouds. Sometimes they turn orange in the evening, at sunset. But the sky is never orange and it doesn’t gleam.” He was just into his teens and pretty smart. He wasn’t going to be awed by eerie sounding opening lines to old men’s stories.”On this day, it was orange, and it gleamed,” said the old man. Before the confident kid could interrupt him again, he continued. “We got up in the morning and there was just a bit of orange in the southern sky. It was a bad omen.” The confident kid rolled his eyes.

    “The shaman said it was a bad day. ‘When there’s orange in the south, stay under your roof,’ he told us. But the chief wouldn’t listen. He needed to get a caravan going to pick up gold, gems, and various items of bronze, iron, and even steel from the south. The shaman told him again not to go.

    “‘How long should I wait?’ asked the chief. ‘Until the orange sky no longer gleams,” said the shaman. But the chief wouldn’t listen, especially when the shaman wouldn’t tell him how long the gleaming would take to go away. So he sent out the caravan anyhow. In fact, he went with it. I begged to go. I was about your age.” He pointed to the confident kid. “I was just as stupid too. But they wouldn’t let me go.

    “Days went by. Almost the entire sky to the south turned orange, and it gleamed, sometimes with white, sometimes with various colors, but always with an orange tint. To the north, over the sea, the sky was pretty much clear. It was windy, but the whether was not too bad. Nobody had an explanation for the time when the orange sky gleamed.” The confident kid rolled his eyes again. He wasn’t going to be taken in by the repetition of the eerie phrase.

    Other children weren’t so jaded. “What happened?” they asked eagerly, leaning forward to hear the old man’s answer.

    “A week went by, and the orange started to fade from the southern sky. But the caravan didn’t come back.” The old man paused for a moment and pretended to be falling asleep. The children started to ask what happened next. They were acquainted with waiting for a caravan to return. It was how their town made its money. But they couldn’t remember a time when a caravan just didn’t return.

    “Another week went by and the sky was completely back to normal. But the caravan still didn’t return. The shaman didn’t say ‘I told you so,’ but one could see it on his face. It was really quite obscene to be so happy about a disaster. The chief’s son, who was in charge in his absence still thought the caravan might have been delayed. Maybe the load hadn’t been ready. But after three weeks it was hard to pretend that there wasn’t something terribly wrong.

    “So the chief’s son sent out a patrol to look for the caravan. They rode horses, so they moved faster than a caravan. They couldn’t find any sign of the caravan. They did find that the sand dunes looked somewhat different. The men were used to the sands moving about some with the winds, but this was like they were traveling through a different country. Finally they arrived at the foot of the southern mountains where the town was where they usually picked up their loads.”

    He paused again and pretended to be falling asleep.

    “What did he find there?” asked an eager voice.

    “Oh what?” The old man pretended to wake up suddenly.

    “What did he find? Did he find the caravan? Did they get back home?”

    “So many questions!” said the old man. “Well, no, they didn’t find the caravan. In fact, they didn’t find anything at all.”

    “You mean, except the town,” said the confident kid, not sounding quite as confident as he had before.

    “No, there was no town there. They could see the mountains rising up from the sand. They had all the landmarks. But where they were there was nothing but sand.”

    The confident kid made a dismissive motion with his hand, got up, and walked away. The other kids were horrified. They demanded another story, claiming they couldn’t possibly go to sleep now.

    The confident kid grew up, and he never forgot the story. He became a caravan merchant himself. New towns had grown up at the northern edge of the mountains. They bought things from the miners in the mountains as they always had. Caravans from the northern coastal towns came and carried them across the strip of desert land between the mountains and the coast and then sold them to trading ships. The winds rearranged the sand a bit, but not so much that one couldn’t find one’s way.

    Then one day the confident kid sat down around another campfire and heard another story. It was an old man from the mountains. He also told about the time when the orange sky gleamed. His story was a bit different. The gleaming started to the east and built quickly. He described a bit of fire in the sky to the south as well

    “What did everyone do?” asked the young man who had once been the confident kid.

    “Oh, nothing in particular. We just stayed inside for a few days mostly,” said the old man. Then he paused, expectantly. But the confident young man wasn’t going to ask. Finally he couldn’t resist. He had to finish his story. “After the sky cleared we took our next load north to the town at the base of the mountains, but the town was gone.”

    The confident young man was startled. He thought it had been an old man’s tale, but here was another tale to match. He wasn’t sure it was the same town even, but the stories matched so closely.

    It took him some weeks to find someone who knew where that town at the base of the mountains had been. The current town was in an oasis which had a spring. It was entirely a new town. The elder who finally admitted to remembering where the old town had been could only tell him it was no more than a mile or so off to the east of the new one.

    “But the town is lost, young man,” he said. “There’s no reason to worry about it. It’s buried in the sand.”

    That was precisely what the young man thought. “Who owns that land?” he asked the elder.

    “Owns a piece of the desert?” said the old man slowly. “Well, nobody.”

    “So the confident young man went back to the coast to hire some men. Nobody was very interested in his plan, but he was able to find enough people who needed the work. He took them back to the place where the village had disappeared, and set them to digging. It required a month of digging.

    The townspeople were delighted with all the money they were paid for food and water for the men digging in the desert. It never occurred to them to question the motives of the crazy man from the coast. But after a month he found what he wanted. There was the town, and there was the bodies of people, hidden in houses and covered in sand. He found even more than he expected. Though there was no way he could identify the people involved, he could tell there had been a caravan in town, and their cargo was well preserved under the sand.

    The confident kid who had grown up into the confident young man became quite a rich man. But he never told the townspeople what he had found. His workers were more than happy to share the wealth and head for home.

    Every few months after he returned home he would go to the great campfire in the town square and tell children a story. It was often the story of when the orange sky gleamed. And then he’d tell them the moral of the story. “Pay attention to the stories your elders tell. They might just have something important in them to help you grow up and become rich.”

    (This story was written for and submitted to the one word at a time blog carnival – orange.)

    There was a new town by the stream near the base of the mountain

  • Silly Who

    Karl’s Story

    Karl was pleased that his daughter Ellen spent so much time out in the woods. That way he wouldn’t have to be embarrassed by the silly things she did. He knew he should watch her more carefully, but he had never been able to bring himself to actually do it. If he tried to control her, things just got crazy.

    Ellen couldn’t speak and many thought she couldn’t hear either. She just made incomprehensible sounds. The reason some people thought she really could hear was that she had an uncanny ability to notice what was going on around her. Those who depended on the fact that she couldn’t hear and tried to play tricks on her generally were unpleasantly surprised. Her practical jokes were usually embarrassing and sometimes painful, but never fatal.

    This is a work of fiction. All persons, places, and events are products of my imagination.
    Copyright © 2012
    Henry E. Neufeld

    Still, she behaved so strangely when she was in town. She’d spend time down at the shrine just looking at the inscriptions on the walls. She’d sit for hours just watching people on the street. She was nosy. She showed up at places she didn’t belong. She never did any chores. In fact, Karl thought, she was completely useless as a person and he quite frankly admitted to himself and to his neighbors that he resented the cost of feeding her. But he was much too responsible, and though he’d deny it, gentle of a man to actually do her real harm, and so he just let her run wild.

    But he was delighted that she mostly ran wild far out in the woods. There were plenty of dangers out there, but at least he could pretend they weren’t his problem.

    This arrangement worked well until one day Ellen came into town and went straight to the village headman. She got his attention and then began drawing in the dirt with a stick. Her father, who had followed her to try to keep her out of trouble—well, let’s be honest, to keep himself out of trouble by keeping her from bothering people—thought that what she was drawing looked hauntingly familiar, but he wasn’t sure why. The village headman had no idea, however, and he roughly pushed Ellen to the ground, told Karl to “control his daughter” and stalked off.

    Karl tried to grab Ellen. The last thing he needed was to get in trouble with the headman. But Ellen was too fast and she disappeared into the woods. Karl chose the path of least resistance. He could always hope she would disappear again into the woods. He forgot entirely about the hauntingly familiar figures Ellen had drawn in the dirt.

    Karl couldn’t read. Neither could the headman. In fact, nobody in the village could read. To them the figures on the walls of the village shrine were just strange religious symbols. They knew the shrine was very old, but nobody really cared. One just went there to offer sacrifices to the gods, though nobody knew why. They were sure the figures had sacred power, but they had no idea what they were, or what they were supposed to depict.

    In the woods around there were ruins of other buildings, but nobody knew much about them either. They were just part of the landscape. Ellen had once led her father to one of those ruined buildings outside the village. She tried to point out things on the wall to him. He’d told her she was very silly, and that there was no point wasting his time.

    In fact, Karl thought whoever had built the stone buildings must have been pretty silly themselves. Why go to that much work for shelter when a few tree branches and some woven grass would do just as well. It was probably right that his silly daughter spent her time in all those silly piles of rock. He had left her there and returned to the village, never noticing her look of disappointment.

    For several days nobody saw Ellen at all. Karl was so pleased not to have to deal with her that he didn’t really get that worried about what might have happened to her. Surely she’d reappear in time.

    Ellen’s Story

    Ellen ran quickly through the woods to one of her caches of supplies. She had a hunting bow and a knife there, really all she needed to survive. She didn’t understand the problem. Did they imagine she would like about a thing like that? She was sure she had the symbols right. Why hadn’t they gotten her message. Over the 20 years of her life she had tried many things, including trying to move her lips the way other people did, but she’d always thought that when she drew the symbols people would understand her. But they didn’t.

    Silly villagers, she thought. And silly me. Why didn’t I realize they never used the symbols themselves?

    She ran through the woods for hours. Through the river gorge to the north ran a major trade route. At this point it didn’t belong to any country, king, or noble. It was considered wilderness. The caravans traveled with guards. Ellen had observed them many times before. She knew there were scraggly and poor caravans whose guards were dangerous themselves. She had barely escaped from contact with some of them before. But there were others whose clothes were rich. She had practiced writing the symbols she saw on the walls. It was with a caravan guard that she had finally made the connection between the symbols, the pictures, and events in her life.

    So now she went looking for a caravan and the guards. She’d have to pick one carefully, because she didn’t want to be captured and enslaved. But with the right caravan, she might get the guards to come and help her deal with what she had found in the woods. It would be good for them too.

    It was a full days travel on foot to the cliffs above the caravan road. Horses could make it much faster. When she arrived at the place where she usually climbed down the cliffs she found that the path was held. She should have thought of this. The people she had found near her own village would be planning to raid caravans, and this was the one place one could get down to the road easily. It would be impossible to sneak down the cliff where she had planned to.

    There were other places to climb, but she had never done so. She moved perhaps a mile further along the road, going downstream. She knew from the guards that they were near where the canyon came to an end and the road moved into territory owned by a king and patrolled by his troops. She felt her first true fear as she faced the cliff. She hadn’t been afraid when she found the bandits. She hadn’t been afraid when her father had tried to catch her. She hadn’t even been afraid when she saw the path blocked. She had never climbed down a cliff like this.

    She very nearly didn’t make it. Several times she came close to falling, and there wouldn’t be any second chances. She was so tired when she reached the bottom of the cliff that she couldn’t do anything but just lie there and try to recover. And then she fell asleep.

    She was wakened by a man in armor. He was poking her with a stick. She jumped up and tried to reach her weapons, but he knocked her to the ground. It was the first time she had been caught asleep by an enemy, and this guard clearly proved to be an enemy.

    It was lucky for her that the caravan was moving. These were the sort of merchants and guards who would not treat a girl in their midst well at all. But since they were moving they didn’t have time to do anything except throw her into a cage. She was not the only person in there. Apparently this caravan included slaves in its cargo.

    The other women in the cage tried to talk to her, but she couldn’t hear them, and she could get nothing from the movement of their lips. She tried drawing symbols on the floor of the cage, but they just thought she was crazy and moved to the other end of the cage. Ellen thought if they got together they could break out of the cage. Prepared, she was sure she could break away from these guards. But the silly women weren’t cooperating.

    Finally she scratched symbols for “ambush ahead” into the floor of the cage as carefully as she could. One of the guards looked at the symbols, but the silly man either couldn’t read or didn’t care what some girl had to say.

    So the caravan was completely surprised by the ambush. The other women huddled at the back end of their cage, but Ellen watched carefully for any opportunity. The opportunity came when one of the guards was hit by an arrow and fell against the bars of the cage. Ellen was able to grab his dagger and cut the ropes that held the door. In a moment she was outside and grabbing a bow. It was heavier than her hunting bow, but she was able to pull it, and she started to shoot, while carefully and frequently checking behind her.

    She moved slowly toward the cliff and she used her arrows against the attackers since it was clear that they had the advantage. She found these warriors much easier to hit than the game she had hunted in the forest, and most of them were not that well armored. If she had given her full effort, she might well have made the difference for them between victory and defeat. As it was, she killed the last of the attackers just after he had killed the last of the caravan guards.

    What was left was a small number of the merchants and their servants, none of them armed. They huddled together and waited to see what this apparition from the forest would do to them. Silly people! Some of them didn’t even realize she was the girl who had been captured just an hour or so earlier.

    She tried to release the women from the cage, but they were afraid to move as well. Silly women! They didn’t know who to trust even though she hadn’t given them any reason to fear her that she could see.

    She tried to get the caravan folks to understand that they could go ahead and get moving, but they didn’t get the idea. So she sat on a ledge just above the road and watched them. She hoped another caravan would come along. She still wanted to talk to some real guards, and she knew that there were more bandits than had been involved in the attack.

    It was past noon before anyone more showed up and it was a small patrol of guards. She had no idea where from. The lady who led the guards tried to motion her to come down off her ledge, but she kept her bow in hand and motioned for the guard to come to her.

    When the lady came up to the ledge she tried to talk, but of course Ellen couldn’t understand her. Ellen motioned as though she wanted to write, and the lady produced a pencil and some paper. It was nice to deal with someone who didn’t just think she was silly! She slowly wrote down the basics about the ambush and then she drew a map showing where the bandits had their large camp.

    After that things were easy. The guards hunted the bandits, and they were very skilled. They also released the women and promised to escort them back to town. They arrested the caravan merchants because they had taken the women from their town.

    When it was all done, they returned to Ellen’s village. Ellen wrote a question for everyone. “Why is everyone so silly?” she asked. “The villagers ignore me, the caravan guards ignore my warning, the women think I’m dangerous. I think I hate these villagers.”

    “Things look silly when you don’t understand them,” said the lady. “What’s really silly is when you won’t learn.”

    (This story was written for and submitted to the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival – Silly.)

     

  • Farmer Jack’s Arsenal

    “Old Jack has quite an arsenal,” said one villager knowingly to another.

    The stranger sitting in front of the village pub perked up. This was the sort of thing he wanted to know.

    “Who,” he asked, “is Jack?”

    “Farmer Jack,” said one of the villagers.

    This is a work of fiction. All persons, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination.
    Copyright © 2012
    Henry E. Neufeld

    “Yes,” said the other. “We call him Old Jack or Farmer Jack.”

    “What do you mean that he has quite an arsenal?” asked the stranger. It was a risky question. People often reacted badly to someone who was too curious about their stock of weapons.

    But the two villagers just laughed. “You’d really have to see it,” said one. The other just snickered.

    So the stranger set about discovering just what kind of an arsenal it was that this Farmer Jack had. If his boss was to gain control of this village and the surrounding farms, he would certainly have to get rid of any arsenals that might be in the area.

    That evening he asked a few of the people in the pub about Farmer Jack’s arsenal. He wanted to do it subtly, but it was rather difficult. “I heard there’s a Farmer Jack around here who has quite an arsenal, ha ha, do you know anything about it?” That sounded rather silly, but the reactions he got just weren’t normal. Some people looked at him as though he was crazy. Others laughed. A couple of them finally explained that in the mountains behind Farmer Jack’s farm there was a cave which was filled with weapons. What weapons? Oh, swords, crossbows, crossbow bolts, maybe even a ballista or two. One never knew what Farmer Jack might collect.

    He thought he noticed a number of people trying to conceal their faces. He thought it might be that they were laughing, but he set that aside. What could be funny about a cache of weapons? That was one of the things his boss would want to know. He’d want to grab the arsenal first.

    Over the next few days he tried to watch people as they went about their business, especially as they went to surrounding towns. But he never saw what he was looking for. He wanted to see some town militia or maybe even one or two people going and getting weapons or putting them back there in the arsenal in the hills behind Farmer Jack’s farm.

    So he sent in a report to the boss and the boss sent a couple more scouts to the town. It was important to locate this arsenal before he made his move. His men would be spread thin, and even one well-equipped militia might be able to bring down his entire plan to control the area.

    The new men actually scouted the area behind Farmer Brown’s farm. They looked through the hills, but they didn’t find any weapons, nor did they find anywhere that weapons might have been stored, nor did they see a single person carrying weapons one way or another. Well, except for one hunter who was using his hunting bow to hunt deer. They thought the hunter hadn’t seen them. It was important that nobody realized they were looking for the arsenal. That would just make people start to believe they were planning something, and that would be dangerous.

    Finally the boss decided to make his move. In order to make certain that everything was safe, they decided to send the majority of their troops to secure Farmer Jack and to close off the path to the arsenal. It wouldn’t do, after all, to let people go get weapons from there.

    They swept across the farm, surrounded the house, and grabbed Farmer Jack. The captain in charge of the operation congratulated himself on his success. There wasn’t so much as an injury, provided one didn’t count Private Smythe, who had turned his ankle in a post hole in one of the fields.

    Farmer Jack was an old man. The captain thought he might be 80 or 90 years old. “Where’s your arsenal?” he asked. “We want your arsenal!”

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Farmer Jack.

    The captain slapped him a couple of times, but one of his lieutenants pointed out that with such an old man, a slap might even be fatal. So they just told Farmer Jack that he might as well tell them, because they’d be there until they figured out where the arsenal was. They’d find it eventually, so why not make things easy?

    But Farmer Jack seemed uninclined to make things easy. He just sat in his big living room chair and thought. In the meantime, the captain’s men made a thorough search of the area for the arsenal or for any path that might lead the the arsenal. They didn’t find anything that wasn’t part of the ordinary farm equipment.

    But at least, thought the captain, nobody else could find it either.

    Just after dark they heard the sound of horse’s hooves on the path leading to the house. Such men as weren’t still searching for the arsenal prepared to stop the approaching horses. But what met them was a knight on his horse and with him several men-at-arms. If they’d all been there, they might have stood up to him, but as it was, they had no chance. The men surrendered quickly, and it was only minutes before the knight was in the house with Farmer Jack.

    Now the captain was sure there was an arsenal, cleverly hidden. What else would make an obviously well-off and well-equipped knight show up at one very old man’s farm?

    “Your plan, and your boss’s plan is finished,” said the knight. “I and my brothers in arms have seen to that.”

    There was a long pause. Finally the captain couldn’t stand it. “I have to know,” he said. “Where is the arsenal?”

    “The arsenal?” said the knight.

    “Yes. Our spies reported that Farmer Jack had quite an arsenal.”

    The knight stood staring at the captain for a long time. Then he started to laugh. He laughed long and hard. Finally he got control of himself. “You think there’s an arsenal around here?” he asked.

    The captain nodded.

    “Well, I suppose there is,” He reached out to shake the captain’s hand. Meet Farmer Jack’s arsenal,” he said. “Well, part of it, at least.”

    The captain looked blank.

    “Yes, I suppose I’ll have to explain.” He paused a moment. “You see, Farmer Jack has been living here for a long time. None of us are quite sure how old he is. Twenty years ago his wife died, and since then he’s lived on his own. Well, except for one thing. Any child or young person could find a meal in Farmer Jack’s house. They could find a job on the farm. And if they’d hang around long enough, Farmer Jack would teach them to read and write and the basics of handling farm tools, and yes, weapons. He was once a sergeant in the king’s army. He had so many of them that people took to calling them Farmer Jack’s arsenal.”

    The knight turned to Farmer Jack. “I take it the current crop is safe,” he said.

    “They’re out in the hills,” said Farmer Jack. “That’s where I keep my arsenal when there’s trouble.”

    The knight looked back at the captain who still looked confused. “Don’t you get it, man?” he asked. “Half the government officials from here to the king’s court once found shelter here at this farm. We don’t talk about it, because Farmer Jack doesn’t like us to. He’s says it’s just what someone who has something ought to do. And yes, I said ‘we’, because I too learned which end of a sword was which right out there in that yard.”

    “People took to calling us Farmer Jack’s arsenal, not because we might help him, but because there were so many of us. But you heard me say he–and his good wife–taught us to read and write. Not one in ten people up in these hills can read and write. Not one in twenty know even the basics of using a sword. So when we left here most of us made good. We had the skills.”

    “So we really didn’t need to go after this farm at all,” said the captain.

    “Oh, it didn’t really matter,” said the knight. “Farmer Jack sent word to several of us a couple of weeks ago. The kids noticed your spies searching the hills and got suspicious.”

    “They said nobody had noticed them.”

    “Doubtless they never noticed the kids. Nobody ever does. But they were the arsenal, in more ways than one.”

    (This story was written for and submitted to the one word at a time blog carnival – arsenal.)

  • I Want Them to be Jubilant

    It was a long way to the capital where the king lived, so Baron Jubal was pretty much the law in all his lands. Recent decades had not been nice to his neighbors, so he was, for practical purposes, lord of all he surveyed. He was feared. He was obeyed.

    But he was not loved.

    This really bothered Jubal. He thought he was a good baron. He took an interest in all aspects of his people’s lives. He was not merciful or kind, he knew, but he considered himself just. It didn’t matter who you were. If you stole something a second time, you were beheaded. He regarded this as only just. But he thought he deserved to be loved.

    This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters, places, or events to anything in the real world is coincidental. Copyright © 2012, Henry E. Neufeld

    Each year on the anniversary of his accession to his holdings he held a celebration with a parade. He would appear to his subjects and speak to them. He would wave and accept their applause. Otherwise he did not appear in public. He didn’t think people needed to see him. He had subordinates to take care of such things. It was unfortunate for him that the day of his accession was the same as the day his father died. His father had been much beloved.

    After the first year, Jubal was very dissatisfied. He called in the man who had been in charge of the celebration.

    “I am much dissatisfied with the response to my appearance before the people,” he said.

    “What would you like to see,” asked the manager.

    “I would like the people to be happy to see me.”

    “I think the people were happy. They are not very demonstrative people.” The manager said this, not because it was true, but because he was searching for any excuse that would work. The people had indeed been very cool toward their ruler.

    “It’s not enough. I want them to be jubilant.”

    “Yes, my lord.”

    “Since this was the first year, I will allow you to keep your job and your head.” One of the least endearing features of the baron was that he could say something like this as though he truly believed he was being generous. It wasn’t even dark humor. He really meant it. “See that things go better next year.”

    The next year the manager talked to as many people as he could. He told them that the baron expected a more positive response, applause and shouts of joy, when he appeared. He suggested that the baron might be very angry if these were not forthcoming.

    Unfortunately for him the people didn’t really believe the baron could do that much to everyone who was attending the parade, and they didn’t feel very thankful for having to go through checks by the barons guards, then standing in the sun for hours, and finally seeing the not very beloved face of their ruler. So they clapped and said “hoorah!” in an ordinary tone of voice. It was worse than silence.

    The baron called the manager in and had him beheaded. Then he appointed another manager. The new manager was very motivated. He was aware of the fate of his predecessor.

    When he gathered people for the event he told them that if there was not an adequate response when the baron made his appearance, he would see that one in every ten of them was beheaded. He added that he would have spies in the audience who would see who was not cheering and would make sure the quiet ones were first to lose their heads.

    When the celebration came and the baron made his appearance, there was indeed a loud shout. There was cheering. People waved. At first Jubal was very happy, but then he noticed that people were not smiling. He was certain they were faking it.

    He called in the manager.

    “How did you get the people to cheer?” he asked.

    At first the manager tried to lie, but soon the king got the tale.

    “If you hadn’t tried to fake the response,” he said, “I would have mercy on you. But since you have tried to deceive me, you will die. And he had the new manager beheaded as well.

    The rest of the baron’s servants avoided him for some time, but finally he set his sights on one of his guards and appointed him to manage the next year’s celebration. The guard tried to claim he was indispensable in his current position, but Jubal was having none of it. And again he presented his desire. “I want them to be jubilant,” he said.

    The guard thought and thought as days turned into weeks. He couldn’t think of a way to make the crowd jubilant. But then he had an idea. At first he dismissed it. Could he carry it off? Would the people actually be that stupid? Yes, he thought they would be. In fact, if he did it right, they might not even have to be very stupid.

    The day of the celebration came. It had been a hard year. Besides all of the normal hardships, there had been a crime wave. Instead of just the normal thefts by the hungry or the marginalized, there was a new factor. A criminal who killed and tortured as well as robbing and vandalizing. He was known only as “the murderer.” One or two of his supposed cronies had been caught and executed, but the man himself was elusive. There was a pretty good description of him. He liked to leave people alive to spread the terror. But nobody could lay hands on him. Three guard captains had lost their heads during the year because they had failed to catch this criminal.

    What the people didn’t know when they arrived at the celebration was that “the murderer” had been caught by the baron himself. The manager of the celebration arranged a dramatic introduction of the baron, explaining how he had finally had to personally take over the search, and that it was only through is action that the murder had been caught. The people were so afraid of the bandits and of the murderer himself that they were prepared to believe anything as long as they could think that the attacks would cease. Their fear of the murderer overcame their coolness toward their ruler.

    When the baron appeared, the crowds were truly jubilant. They were also jubilant when the man presented as “the murderer” was beheaded. He fit the description so well that nobody questioned that he was the right person.

    The manager had correctly assessed the intelligence and observation skills of the people, but he had failed to consider the baron. So he nearly fainted at the look the baron gave him. It was a knowing smile.

    “A very good plan,” said the baron. “The people were truly jubilant. I think some of them even love me.”

    There was a long pause.

    “But I think their memories are short. What are you going to do for next year?”

    (This story was written for and submitted to the One Word at a Time blog carnival, on the word “jubilant.”)

  • I Am Justice

    “But I am Justice!”

    “I think you misunderstood. I came to this town looking for justice. A rich man in my village robbed me, and I came here for justice.” The woman looked bewildered. Justice—for that was indeed his name—just looked stubborn.

    “I’m Justice. People hear you wantin’ Justice, they call me. I’m Justice. What you want I do?”

    Copyright © 2012 Henry E. Neufeld
    This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters, places or events to anything in the real world is strictly coincidental.

    “I want Justice!” she yelled. Then before Justice could frame his reply (he had been about to say “I am Justice” again) she got back on her donkey and started to ride toward home. She was nearly out of money. She couldn’t go any further. What’s more she was so disgusted with this joke that the townspeople had played on her, doubtless taking her for a rustic stranger, that she didn’t want to go further.

    Justice wasn’t used to being left behind. Ever since he had started to grow into the muscular young man he was, he had been called to help with various problems. His mind wasn’t quick, though he wasn’t as stupid as he sometimes looked and acted. People joked about him. As the strongest man in town he was often in demand. “You want justice?” people would ask. “Just call him!”

    So when this very troubled woman headed off down the road into the hills, Justice decided that he couldn’t leave things as they were. When people called him he was always able to help. It was like a law of nature in his mind. It never occurred to him that the reason he could always help was that people always called him to do things that required strength, like moving their furniture.

    Nobody even noticed when Justice grabbed a bag, filled it with clothes, a few tools, and a little bit of food, and headed off down the road. They assumed he would be back sooner or later. He was a fact of life.

    Five days later, Justice showed up in the tiny village of Marani. He settled himself in at the local inn and ordered ale. It was hard to miss Justice. In a room full of people he stood out. People were afraid of him. Not that he looked angry or made any threatening moves. It was just that he looked like he might carry off some of the furniture without noticing he’d done it, sort of like other people might pick up a coin.

    It wasn’t long until someone asked him who he was and what he was doing there. “I’m Justice,” he said, “I here to help da lady.”

    “What lady?” they asked. But Justice just kept his silence. The people thought he was being enigmatic, but the problem was that he didn’t know the lady’s name, nor did he know who it was who had robbed her.

    By the next day the lady heard that Justice was in town. She didn’t go to see for herself. She didn’t want the Lord Mayor, as he styled himself, to realize she had asked for someone to come to town. Especially since she hadn’t.

    By evening, however, the Lord Mayor got word that Justice had arrived in town. Justice, said his agents, was very large and muscular, and could doubtless carry away the inn on his shoulders should he choose to do so.

    “Perhaps his presence here is just a coincidence,” said the steward.

    “But he says he’s here to help the lady,” said one of the agents.

    “It could be some other lady,” said the steward.

    The Lord Mayor just looked at the steward, but his eyes said, “You idiot!” That was what he was thinking, because there really wasn’t any other lady that Justice could be here to help.

    “If he wasn’t named Justice,” said another agent, “it might look different.”

    “Yes, but he is,” said the Lord Mayor.

    The next afternoon the Lord Mayor stopped in to see Justice. Justice seemed uninterested in the problems of ladies at the time, and just wondered if the Lord Mayor needed anything moved. The Lord Mayor concluded that Justice was very enigmatic, and was playing with him. The fact was that Justice was smart enough to realize he would need money if he was going to stay in the inn, and had already made quite a bit by moving large things for various people.

    Next the Lord Mayor went to the lady and asked her, quite belligerently, whether she had asked Justice to come to town. She told him the truth, that the people in the town had sent her Justice when she asked for justice, and now that the young man had followed her here. The Lord Mayor laughed and laughed.

    But when he got home he heard about Manny the pickpocket, and how Justice had broken his arm when he found it in someone else’s pocket. People were starting to say that justice had been done. By Justice.

    Justice had no such plan. He just didn’t like to see people robbed or hurt. He hadn’t actually intended to break the man’s arm, but Manny had struggled so hard while failing to let go of the stolen purse, and Justice being as strong as he was, he accidentally broke Manny’s arm.

    Perhaps there was more to this than he supposed, thought the Lord Mayor. So he told one of his agents to kill Justice. Maybe he was just a strong young man, but maybe not. Might as well be safe.

    The agent spent all that evening looking for a chance to slip a knife into Justice, but he never really got a chance. Every time he got close enough he was somehow blocked. He was perfectly willing to do the deed in public. The Lord Mayor (as he styled himself, of course) would protect him. But he could never quite get into position. Justice was always turning to face him at just the wrong moment.

    Now the Lord Mayor was really concerned. Could it be that this was an expert agent of the Baron, or perhaps even the Duke or the King? He needed to think of some way to do something about it, but what could he do? If the King, heaven forbid, was aware of his activities way out here in the wilderness, what else might he know?

    He tried twice more to have Justice stabbed in the back. The second guy actually managed to swing his knife at Justice’s back, and cut him, but he just threw the attacker against the wall (a couple of broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder), and went about his business.

    By this time the Lord Mayor was so worked up, he was convinced that an agent of the King was playing with him, and that it was only a matter of time until he was arrested, taken to the capital (so far away he wasn’t sure where it was), and doubtless beheaded.

    After another quite day or two (ominously quiet, thought the Lord Mayor), he decided that his only option was to flee the town before he was taken. So he loaded most of his riches on a mule, and got on his best horse, and headed out of town early in the morning. What he didn’t realize was that Justice also went out for walks in the hills early in the morning. So as the Lord Mayor left town, there was Justice standing at the edge of the road, looking out over a valley.

    Justice was just enjoying the view, but the Lord Mayor was certain that Justice was there waiting for him. He had one chance, he thought, and that was to push Justice over the endge of the cliff. The drop off wasn’t very high, but it would be high enough. He spurred his horse forward, intending to turn just as he hit Justice, and thus be rid of his problem.

    But hearing a horse behind him, Justice stepped aside. The horse managed to stop right at the edge, but the Lord Mayor flew out into the air and with a scream fell to his death below.

    Justice verified that the Lord Mayor was dead, then took his body, his horse, and the mule containing most of his riches back into town. The townspeople gathered around, and called the lady. She took the horse and the mule, and its load, and claimed the Lord Mayor’s house. It had all been stolen from her in the first place.

    She made sure to reward Justice as well. “When they sent you to me, I thought they were playing a joke. But now I see they were right. You are justice.”

    Yes, I am Justice,” said Justice. But he looked puzzled. He still had no idea what the lady wanted him to do.

    (This story was written for and has been submitted to the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival.)

     

  • Are You Sure You Don’t Want More?

    Ferod stood in shock in front of the shrine. He’d distinctly heard the words.

    “Are you sure you don’t want more?”

    He didn’t really believe in the old gods. Nobody even seemed to remember the names of whatever god or gods this shrine might be dedicated to. But he had run out of money to pay for seed grain, and if he had no seed grain there would be no planting, then, of course, no harvest, and therefore no seed grain for next year either. So he came to the shrine and asked the gods, whoever they might be, for money to buy seed grain.

    “No,” he said, inwardly cursing himself for responding to the imaginary voice. “I just want money for seed grain.”

    He said this because he didn’t believe in the gods and didn’t suppose they were going to give him even that much. So why ask for more?

    On his way home he tripped over a rock and fell into the ditch beside the path. As he was scrambling back out of the ditch he felt something smooth and hard. When he got back to the path he brushed the object off and found that it was a large silver coin, worth precisely the amount he needed to buy seed grain.

    Stupid gods, he thought, making me fall in the ditch in order to find this pitiful coin. But at least it will buy me that seed grain.

    Ferod’s farm went reasonably well for the next few years. He didn’t get rich, but he always had enough to feed his family, with seed grain left over for the next year.

    Then his wife got sick. The village shaman performed rituals over her, but she didn’t get better. He applied all the folk remedies he could remember from his mother, but she only continued to get worse.

    Then he remembered the shrine. He hadn’t been there since his prayer for the seed grain. He really didn’t believe the gods had provided the silver coin. Clearly it was just a coincidence. But it could hardly be less effective than rubbing his wife’s body with that noxious smelling green mixture he had simmering in a pot on the stove.

    So he went back to the shrine. “I would like my wife to live longer,” he said.

    “How much longer would you like her to live?” he thought he heard. What an imagination I have! he thought. Here I am holding a conversation with a pile of rocks.

    But he answered just the same. “I’d like  her to live five more years,” he said. By then the children would be old enough to work in the fields, and she would be older than many women he could name. Yes, five years would do.

    “Are you sure you don’t want more?”

    He didn’t bother to answer. He felt too foolish. And besides, he didn’t believe the gods would do anything in any case.

    But when he returned home, his wife had taken a turn for the better, and had thrown out the noxious smelling green stuff he had been cooking on the stove. So things got much better.

    Better, that is, until five years later his wife fell from a ladder, broke her neck, and died. Ferod was too grieved and angry to notice that it was five years to the day from his visit to the shrine.

    Still, the children were older, and were able to work in the fields, so life went on. It was lonelier. Much of the life went out of the farm. But they kept on living.

    Then came the great drought. Not only was Ferod’s farm dry and unproductive, but so were all the farms around. The river was nearly dry. There came a day when Ferod knew that if they didn’t get rain immediately, they were all going to starve.

    So once again Ferod went to the shrine. He didn’t really believe it would help, but he went anyhow, as had been his habit when he was desperate. The shrine was covered with vines now so that the rocks could hardly be seen.

    “I need enough rain to water the crops,” he said.

    “Are you sure you don’t want more?” he thought he heard again.

    “Why do you always ask that?” he shouted. “OK! I want more! I want lots of rain! I want it to rain and rain.”

    He said this because he didn’t believe the gods would do anything. Besides, the question made him angry because he felt foolish.

    But before he was halfway home clouds were gathering and the rains began. It rained all the rest of that day. It rained all night. Then it rained the next day. In fact, it kept raining for two weeks. The river rose ominously, but it hadn’t overflowed its banks.

    Nobody considered that it was raining in the mountains as well. But then there came a day when a rocky barrier was swept aside in the mountains and a wall of water swept through the village. It took away houses. It washed away the crops and most of the soil in which they grew. When it was done there was nothing left of Ferod’s village.

    Ferod managed to survive, clinging to a large tree on top of a hill that wasn’t quite completely submerged. When the water receded he went to find the shrine.

    There were only a few stones left scattered where the shrine had been. He raised his fists and yelled at the gods. “Why did you do this to me?” he asked.

    “We only did what you asked,” said the voice. It might have been in his head. It might have been carried on the wind. He wasn’t sure.

    The voice seemed to mock him. “Are you sure you don’t want more?”

    (This post was written for the one word at a time blog carnival, on the word “more.”)

  • The True Word is Withdrawn

    He couldn’t be more than four or five years old, thought the headman. He really should know, as this was the son of the resident priest at the little shrine on the north edge of town. But he really couldn’t remember.

    This is a work of fiction. All person’s, places, and events are products of the authors imagination.
    Copyright © 2012
    Henry E. Neufeld

    He’d wandered into the headman’s office and said he had a message from the gods. It was impossible to believe that the boy could think of the words he used. He’d condemned the headman for having one of the villagers executed on false evidence, and for stealing the property of others. The child had called the man, the elder, a liar, a thief, and a murderer. He said the gods were going to punish him.

    It was intolerable. The child had said the message was from the gods, but he knew it had to be from the child’s father. How the father had known the headman’s secrets, the headman had no idea. But there was only one answer. The priest had to go. And the child would have to go as well.

    “You lie,” said the headman. “Your father put you up to that message.”

    “No, it is from the gods,” said the body.

    “Liar,” shouted the headman. But the boy didn’t show the expected fear.

    “The true word is withdrawn,” he said. “The gods will no longer speak.”

    The headman laughed. “The gods will no longer speak,” he muttered. As if their speaking ever did any good. The priest brought regular messages, but they were either just general congratulations or they were so muddled nobody could figure out what they meant in any case. Who cared if the gods didn’t speak any more?

    A few days later the priest and his wife were arrested. Everyone suspected the charge of theft of public money was trumped up, but they weren’t sure, and besides, nobody went against the headman. As was the tradition, the boy was given his father’s place. Of course, he had to be cared for by someone, and the headman generously offered to give him a home until he was old enough to go live alone in the shrine.

    The years passed. As expected, the little boy grew up and became the priest of the shrine. And as was expected of him, he began to produce oracles from the gods. They were suitably difficult to interpret. Nobody could tell whether they were true or not, because nobody could be sure what they meant.

    Yet the headman’s luck seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. From time to time as he was lying in bed unable to sleep he’d start to believe it had started on the day that the little boy had told him the gods were going to punish him. Then he’d push it from his mind. It really had just been a trick pulled by the boy’s father. Good thing he hadn’t fallen for it.

    The boy, so far as the headman knew, didn’t even remember the incident. After all, the child had been very young.

    Then came the day when the baron called for the headman to bring troops. There was to be a great battle. The headman didn’t want to go. What he needed was an excuse to stay away and send someone else. In fact, he wanted to keep all of his cronies and supporters from having to go to war and send some of the others.

    The best way to do this was to have an oracle that told him (or could be construed to tell him) what he wanted to hear. That would justify him before the villagers, and reported (with suitable adjustments) in a letter to the baron, it would justify his sending someone else in response to the request—really an order—for support.

    He didn’t bother to say anything to the priest, who would doubtless produce something suitably incomprehensible which could be interpreted however he needed it to be.

    All the warriors gathered in the town square to hear the oracle before the chose those who would go to fight for the baron and those who would stay and defend the village.

    “Those who go will face great trials, but will return crowned with glory and honor. Those who stay will be surprised and will suffer dishonor.”

    It was suitably obscure, but how could he interpret it as direction from the gods that he should stay at home? He should have coached the priest as to what to say. Clearly the young man hadn’t realized his sponsor wanted to stay and had made the oracle too precise.

    So the headman led the small group of warriors off to support the baron. As would be expected, those who were his closest supporters chose to go with him. Who could resist returning crowned with glory and honor? Who could explain such a decision?

    It was unfortunate that the town elder left in charge was not a close associate of the headman. After all, the closest associates had headed off to war. He suspected the headman was stealing from the town. He suspected he had had innocent people imprisoned and killed. But he didn’t care.

    The elder began to talk to others in the town, and they decided they really didn’t need the headman. They decided they would kill the headman and any warriors who chose to support him when they returned. They thought the number of returning warriors would be diminished, and they would be surprised.

    It was an unsavory business. The rumors in the town were intense. Some said the interim headman was in bed with the real headman’s wife. Some said that it was the headman’s younger daughter. Everyone was talking about how the supposed caretaker was taking things for himself.

    Then one day the watchman shouted out the word. The warriors were returning.

    The men gathered near the gate, planning still to arrest the headman. What else could they do? Despite the chaos, there was no way they would survive if they let the headman take back power.

    But it was a sad procession that entered the town. The headman was lying on a wagon. His weapons around him. He had been presented with a wreath as a crown by the baron for his valor in battle. Though the wreath has withered, he was, indeed crowned with honor. He was also quite dead. And embalmed. It really was quite a surprise.

    But before everyone realized this a battle broke out between the warriors who had been left behind and the small number who had returned. Despite their small numbers, the returning soldiers did well, and killed most of their attackers. There was only one of the warriors who had stayed in the village left alive and unmaimed when the battle was over.

    He went to the temple and asked the priest how everything could go so wrong for everyone.

    “The true word was withdrawn,” said the priest who had been the boy. “What did you expect?”

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  • A Fresh Perspective – I

    (See also A Fresh Perspective – II.)

    For years merchant trains had passed through the town by the falls on their way to the great north-south trade route to the west. The terrain was terrible, but alternate routes were even worse. One could go two or three days journey southward, past the end of the gorge below the falls, then cross the river, and head up on the southern side, but that took even more time and the road above the falls wasn’t any better on that side than on this one.

    This is a work of fiction. All persons, places, and things are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance of anything or anyone in the story to anything or anyone in the real world is coincidental.
    Copyright © 2012,
    Henry E. Neufeld.

    Then had come the bad news. Several towns to the east had gotten together and were clearing and improving the road that bypassed the end of the gorge. They were blasting passages through the rocky hills. They were building a bridge across the river past the end of the gorge. They were building a road that avoided the river entirely. Put simply, they were making it possible for wagon trains to cut several days off their passage and avoid the long treck up the mountain to the town by the falls. The distance was greater, but the time was substantially less!

    The elders of the town by the falls were downcast. Almost all of the income for people in the town, and for miles around, came from the trade traffic. There were porters to make the climb up the mountain, caravan guards, blacksmiths, and all the workers required to clothe and feed them. So they hired an engineer to estimate the cost of blasting a road up the mountain and then improving the road by the river. If they could do this, the route through the town was much shorter, and they could bring the caravan traffic back.

    But the engineer told them that the cost would be much too great. Not even if everyone in the town donated their labor could the cost be brought down to something the town could afford. The resulting road would be hard to navigate, with nothing but tight switchback turns. It would even be dangerous.

    The elders argued for hours. They discussed where they could get loans. They wondered if there was a way to bring goods up to the town that would cost less than building a road. Some people thought one could contrive a way to bring wagons up to the town with a contraption of pulleys and ropes, but the elders dismissed that immediately. Who would ever think of doing such a thing?

    Then one man, bearded and dressed in animal skins, tried to get their attention. He first tried clearing his throat, but nobody listened. Then he waved his arms, but nobody noticed. Then he said “excuse me” while he waved his arms. People nearby said, “Shhh!” but nobody paid any further attention to him. Finally he jumped up, waved his arms, and yelled, “Hey! Excuse me!”

    Then one of the elders said impatiently, “Yes? What do you want?”

    “I have an idea,” said the wild looking man.

    “Who are you?” asked the senior elder.

    “I’m Embo, a hunter and hunting guide,” said the wild man.

    “And what qualifies you to have an idea about our road? We have consulted all the best experts.”

    “I grew up in these woods,” said Embo. I have guided hundreds of hunting parties upstream and downstream, and far afield in the mountains to the north. I know these mountains.”

    “Knowing these mountains doesn’t qualify you to build roads,” said the engineer.

    “I’ve never heard of you,” said one of the elders.

    “He doesn’t look respectable,” said another elder to the person beside him, in a voice he thought was quiet.

    “I know these mountains,” said Embo again.

    There was murmuring amongst the elders and the audience, but the head elder waved his arm and silenced them. “We have been arguing for hours and we have not found any solution. It won’t hurt us to hear this … um … man’s idea.”

    “To the north perhaps a day’s journey, there is a gap in the cliffs. It leads up onto the plateau a few miles west of the village. One could build a road through it, and it would join the river road.”

    “That is why hunting guides shouldn’t pretend to be engineers,” said the engineer. “The passage up to the town is only the minor part of the problem. Building an adequate road along the river presents a much greater problem.”

    “Yes,” said the senior elder. “What do you say to that?” But he asked his question in a tone that expected an answer. You see, none of the elders knew about the gap in the cliffs. They were only interested in what was in the town and in the caravan traffic. Why bother with gaps in cliffs?

    “Well,” said Embo, “I was coming to that. Everybody knows [they didn’t, but why bring that up?] that another day or so westward along the river the current slows enough as it crosses the plateau so that one can navigate it with boats or small barges. . . .”

    “There’s another reason that hunting guides should not pretend to be engineers. How are these boats to get far enough above the falls so that they can be used safely?” The engineer crossed his arms over his chest and gave Embo a challenging look.

    “I was getting to that,” said Embo. “I have frequently moved hunting parties up the river by simply having horses pull the boat along by walking on the current road. While the road is rough on wagon wheels, the horses can handle it quite well.”

    The engineer opened his mouth to speak, but Embo held up his hand. “Before you tell me this is another reason why a hunting guide should not presume to be an engineer, let me tell you that I have seen this sort of thing elsewhere, and that it would probably be best to have the boats hauled by oxen. The path will have to be improved, but not nearly as much as you are proposing. The resulting travel time will be days shorter than it is on the new road, and the wear and tear on the carts will be much lower.”

    The engineer opened his mouth and shut it several times. He wanted to object, but he had already thought of some improvements that might be made to the plan, and there was a commission at stake.

    “I see you are just now beginning to get the idea,” said Embo. “Perhaps that is why engineers should not presume to be hunting guides!”

    (This story was written for, and has been submitted to the One Word at a Time blog carnival on the word “Fresh.”)

     

  • We Want You to Recover the Staff

    “We want you to recover the staff,” said the mayor.

    “Why? Why not just make another one?” asked Jed. He was young and liked to do important things. Recovering a stick didn’t sound important.

    “Make another staff?” asked the mayor incredulously.

    This is a work of fiction. All persons places and events are products of my imagination. Copyright © 2011, Henry E. Neufeld

    “It’s just a stick,” said Jed.

    The mayor looked at Jed for a moment. How could he explain? Perhaps he shouldn’t try.

    “You know the market stall, the one just in front of the entrance?” he asked.

    “Yes,” said Jed cautiously, but he couldn’t keep the acquisitive gleam out of his eyes. Every craftsman in the village wanted that space.

    “I happen to know it will be vacant in a few weeks. If you recover the staff for the village, I will see that you get the spot.”

    “I understand that old Edward the clothier who has it now paid well over a year’s wages for it.” Jed said this in the tone of a casual observation.

    “Yes, but it could be yours if you just recover that staff for the village.”

    “Very well,” said Jed. “I will try to find the thing and bring it back.”

    It took Jed some time to find the staff. The problem was that while it was distinctively carved and quite old there was nothing else to commend it. He couldn’t think of any reason that anyone would actually remember it. And he was right. They didn’t.

    After several weeks he was about to give up when he ran across a stall in a small town market that could best be described by the word “miscellaneous.” There were several staffs there, generally for walking, and amongst them he saw one that was too short to use as a walking stick, unless for a child or a dwarf, and too thick to be comfortable for them.

    It was the village staff. It took all of Jed’s self-control to keep that acquisitive gleam out of his eye. It was his downfall in negotiations. But he managed.

    As he passed over the three copper coins to pay for it, the stall keeper said, “I hate to question a sale, but I’m wondering what possible use you have for this. I haven’t been able to figure it out.”

    Jed considered telling the man the truth, but he was afraid the price would change. He just said, “I have a project and this wood will be just right for it.” The stall keeper just shrugged, took his coppers, and said good bye and good luck.

    Back in the village Jed took the staff to the mayor. “Here’s your stick, Mr. Mayor,” he said in a careful mix of formality and sarcasm.

    “Thank you,” said the mayor, “but I think I will need you to present this formally to the city council.”

    “Why?”

    “It’s important, Jed. You don’t understand, but the council will, and the village will.”

    So Jed took a deep red cloth that the mayor provided, worth much more than the staff, and wrapped the staff in the cloth. At the council meeting he carried it formally into the council chamber and presented the staff to the mayor. Then he was waved over to what was clearly the seat of honor.

    Jed had never been to a council meeting. He had never cared about the politics of the village at all. He was a craftsman, a woodworker, and a good one. But he spent all his time on practical things.

    The village bard got up and began to sing the song of Jed, who had recovered the village’s staff. It described the way in which authority had failed when the staff was missing (though Jed had never noticed), then the many terrors Jed had endured to recover the staff (none of which had actually happened). Then it told the story of his triumphant return to the village.

    In the weeks that followed Jed tried very hard to tell his story. Some of the young, practical folks listened to him, but it didn’t matter to them much in any case. The older villagers and the children preferred the story the bard told. Because he wanted to correct the story, he listened to some of the other stories, such as how the first mayor of the village had received the staff directly from the king.

    Jed got his place in the market, right in front of the entrance. But soon he realized that it didn’t make any difference at all. Everyone wanted to get their furniture from the living legend who had recovered the staff. At first it bothered him, since the story wasn’t true. But as the copper, then the silver, and finally the gold rolled in, he almost forgot about the real story.

    Many a visitor would come into the marketplace looking for someone to make a piece of furniture or do some repairs. “You’ll want to go to Jed in the first stall,” the villagers would say. “He’s already a legend, even though he’s rather young. You’ll want your work done by the man who recovered the staff.”

    The villagers were happy. Jed almost forgot. But every so often it would bother him when someone bought something for well above the market price just because they were buying it from a living legend. It made him try very hard to produce the best product he possibly could so that people would get their money’s worth.

    It bothered him, but with the money in his hand it didn’t bother him very much.

    Then one day a rich man from a city far away stopped in the village. “Are you Jed?” he asked.

    “I am.”

    “I have a friend who has a chair made by you, and I have never seen such workmanship. I want you to make a table and a set of chairs for my dining room.”

    “You’re not here because of the staff?” asked Jed.

    “What staff?” asked the rich man.

    “Never mind,” said Jed.

    And he went happily to work.

    (I wrote this story for the Recover Blog Carnival.)

  • The Sayings of the Master

    Iluan-ga had not felt such excitement for a very long time. She was 81 years old, and a member of a well-disciplined order whose members maintained physical and mental health, and reasonable emotional control.

    She paused in her study of the ancient manuscript. PÂ-EKLI-TÎ-ÂN she read. “The saying of the master.” Not PÂ-EKLI-ÂN “a saying of the master” or even yet PÂ-EKLA-ÂN “a saying of a master.”  More importantly not PÂ-IR-ÂN “sayings,” which would match the readings she knew from more recent manuscripts. In the current dialect it would be PA-IR-AN EKLI, as current speech avoiding the extra infix characteristic of the ancients. “The sayings of the master.”

    This is a work of fiction.
    Copyright © 2011
    Henry E. Neufeld

    Twice before she had encountered this reading, though in modern form, and had heard two different dismissals. In once case the suggestion was simple scribal error. In another, a collective usage. Yet she knew of no other instance of PÂ-ÂN used as a collective. Yet the reading seemed so strange to her as to be utterly impossible.

    There could not be just one saying of the master. Perhaps there was one key saying of the master. That would explain it. Even that was somewhat heretical. The entire order lived their lives according to the sayings of the master. There were thousands of them. The master had spoken much wisdom during his life.

    Yet in a lifetime of study of the manuscripts she had begun to wonder. In her own mind — and strictly in her own mind, as such a thing would never do! — she had formulated a hypothesis. She thought that there had been a smaller collection of sayings, large and full of wisdom, no doubt, yet much smaller than the ones possessed by the order today. To those original sayings had been added the sayings of disciples (specially inspired, she added piously to herself), which expanded the wisdom to meet new situations.

    So she had spent her lifetime, using the blessing of her near photographic memory, to responding publicly to challenges of the wisdom of the sayings, while privately looking for the true core.

    And here at Turio, high in the mountains, with the special blessing of the order due to her long service, she was looking at one of the most ancient collections. If the superscript was to be believed, it dated to a mere century after the death of the master. And it contained the one truly enigmatic reading.

    She had established that earlier sources had less sayings. She had defended the missing sayings by the usual route — establishing their genealogy by tracing them to a reliable source. Yet she had never imagined a singular saying.

    As she recovered from her original shock, her eye went almost automatically to the margin, only to be shocked further. “The story of the saying of the master,” the carefully written note said, “can be found in the inner vault of TU-Û-IZZI-ZHO.” “Where’s that?” she thought, but it hit her, almost before the thought was complete. The ZH sound dropping out in proximity to the hard Z, the common shift of the extended ZZ to something softer. Here she was.

    And there in front of her was the inner vault. She didn’t have explicit permission to look in it, but she thought her commission from the head of the order would cover it. The question was, did she have the key? She worked through the set she had been given, and sure enough there was the key to the inner vault. It appeared nobody thought it particularly important. It was just another cupboard on which the relics of the order might be kept.

    As far as she had been able to tell, nobody here could read the oldest syllabic script in any case. She had to oil the lock to open it, but once inside, covered in dust, she found a stack of manuscripts. She had to work her way through a stack of records from the first year of this monastery’s founding, a historical treasure, no doubt, but of no interest to her. She finally reached a single sheet that appeared to contain some sort of narrative.

    It read (in modernized form):

    This was recounted to me, the founder of this monastery at Turio, by the Follower himself. The Follower sat at the bedside of the the Master when he lay dying. He asked the Master what sayings of wisdom he should pass on to future followers.

    The master spoke briefly, as always. “No saying, only thoughts and actions.”

    Then the master passed on to live amongst the gods.

    Iluan-ga looked at her own translation for a moment. Then she reconsidered the ancient forms and adjusted those last words: “No saying, only thinking and acting.”

    And how, she asked herself, do I think and act now?