Category: Short Stories

The itinerant storyteller was old and gray, but while they showed the wear of travel, is clothes were of good quality, and he carried a sword and bow that were much above the average in the village. Such was expected of a successful storyteller.

So there was a huge fire that night in the center of the village, along with a fine feast, and a certain amount of beer, one of the products of the town. With the certainty of a law of nature, the visiting storyteller was invited to tell a story.

The children gathered near the old man, while the youth and adults crowded around, pretending they were less interested, but making sure they could hear.

“It is well-established that nobody can go through Entehrenac, which you may know as the pass of demons, during the months of winter,” he began.

He paused, waiting for a response. “Of course,” said an older boy. “Everybody knows that.”

“It is possible,” said the storyteller, “for everybody to be wrong.” There was a gasp from the crowd. This sounded like a dangerous statement. But storytellers were given great latitude in their culture. Besides, if this man would break with custom, the evening would be far more interesting than normal, say, if the storyteller told a traditional tale demonstrating the importance of living according to tradition and the decrees of the town elders.

“Long ago, so long ago that I had not even been born, a young woman lived with her family in a village just south of Entehrenac. Her name was Imeril. She was in her mid-teens and was a very unremarkable girl. She kept to herself mostly, other than helping her mother keep their house and care for younger brothers and sisters.

“Her father was a rich man. Some said this was because he was blessed by the gods. Others said it was because he was just plain lucky. Some admitted he had a way of finding gems and gold nuggets in the streams around their town. But others said he was a violent man and a thief, and that his riches were the result of theft, but nobody had been able to prove anything for years.

“Then one day an accuser arrived to claim that Imeril’s father had entered his house when he was not there, robbed him of gems he had stored there, and assaulted and killed his wife.

“The people gathered around the town shrine — it was much too small of a town to have a temple to any particular god — and the town priest, was asked to consult the gods. Nobody actually recalled how the man had become a priest, nor anything miraculous he might have accomplished, but it was well established,” the storyteller paused here for a moment, “that he was a priest and could, at need, determine truth.

“The priest required the sacrifice of a goat, which he examined carefully, and also rattled some bone dice around and read them with a knowing look on his face. Then he announced that the gods had spoken clearly in multiple ways, and they, the gods, declared Imeril’s father guilty as a murderer, thief, and also a rapist.

“Some further augury was required, this time costing two chickens.”

At this point some people noticed that the local town priest was looking frightened. Well, perhaps it was blasphemous to say the priest was frightened. Even in their thoughts, people changed that to “concerned.”

As well he should be! This way of describing priestly rituals was likely to cause people to question the value of the village priest. If they did that, they might question his rulings. If the did that, they might question the gods themeselves!

But the storyteller continued.

“Once the entrails of the chickens had been duly examined, and the dice again rattled and rolled, the priest announced the sentence. ‘This man and his entire household must be burned alive in the town square so as to cleanse our village of this evil.’ Some of the people were disturbed, wondering how it could be that a man they had known all their lives, even if they hadn’t really liked him, could be so evil that his sin must be expiated in such a dramatic and nasty fashion.

“But most of the villagers considered that the proper forms had been followed, and that the gods must have spoken, and almost immediately set about seizing the convicted man, his family, and even his slaves, of which he had two. The priest informed them that they were to create a huge bonfire just outside the town and burn the man and his household alive. This was, he told them, the will of the gods and what was required by tradition.

“Now Imeril, as a girl child, was supposed to be waiting for the results at home. In fact, a guard had been left to make sure nobody could escape, or, more importantly, carry out any valuable items from the house. She was certainly not supposed to hear the ceremony.

“But Imeril, though often quiet, was intelligent and observant. She thought this was not going to go well. She packed some things that might be needed in order to run, just in case, and then she took her six-year-old brother, a favorite of hers, climbed out a window in the back, and found a hiding place from which she could observe.

“It is, I must add, a very bad comment on the guard that she could do this. It says something about how alert the village people were that she could observe and listen with nobody noticing. It says something about the trust of a little brother that said brother remained totally quiet.

“When the verdict had been rendered by the priest, Imeril took her little brother, went to where she had hidden her supplies, and fled the village. It was winter, though spring was near. She decided the safest option was to go through Entehrenac, despite its reputation as the pass of demons, and the established fact that nobody could go through the pass in winter.

“It was perhaps, though not certainly, unfortunate that she was not as good at hiding her tracks as she had been at the other parts of her plan. A girl was not expected to learn how to travel quietly through the mountains while not leaving a trail.

“The people of the town gathered the household into the town square. Some of them were hesitant, but it only took a few mentions of the curse of the gods if they didn’t do precisely as those gods demanded to shut them up. The mob was getting quite stirred up enough to burn an entire household alive.

“Then suddenly someone noticed that Imeril was missing. They must have the entire household! If anyone escaped, the town would be under a curse. Nobody was sure whether the priest started this story, but he certainly agreed to it when asked.

“So a group of men from the village grabbed their hunting bows and hunting knives–swords were unknown in that village–and they proceeded to hunt for Imeril and the little boy. They almost missed some of the obvious clues that Imeril had left due to her complete lack of experience at traveling through the forest.

“Soon they realized that she was headed for Entehrenac. There was some discussion. But in the end, they decided they had to continue. After all, it takes considerable anger–real or contrived–to decide to burn an entire household.

“Imeril was well up into the pass by the time they caught up enough that she noticed them. While she was inexperienced, she was in good shape, and she moved fast. She was, I must add, very much motivated!

“She could tell that her pursuers were gaining on her, even though she was pretty sure they hadn’t noticed her yet. She was also slowed by the burden of a six-year-old child. She never considered leaving him behind.

“Then she saw her chance. There was a rock, the remnant of an earlier rock slide, that was near the edge of the path, which looked like it was about to fall in any case. Using a handy branch, she set about to send it over the edge to the trail behind her, which meant ‘below’ as well, to stop her pursuers. She was really thinking of blocking their path.

“But rocks in mountain passes that are subject to avalanches may have unexpected effects–never forget that should you be in a mountain pass–and it was just at the start of spring. The rock went over the edge almost as soon as she touched it with her branch, and it bounced against several other rocks and trees. At the end, it hit a log that was the last thing holding back tons of snow, rocks, and dirt, and set off a spectacular avalanche.

“The ground shook, and Imeril thought they would be carried away. In fact, the path a hundred feet behind her disappeared, but the path where she was and ahead of her remained in place. When the noise and shaking stopped, she could see nothing of her pursuers.

“She nearly died from cold crossing the rest of the pass, but a teenage girl emerged, barely alive, to find refuge with a farmer. The people on the north side of the mountain, as you know, are generally farmers.”

The storyteller paused, and let some of the children work themselves up to say, “Don’t stop there!”

Some of the adults hoped he would. They wished he had never come to town. Good stories were supposed to reinforce obedience and good behavior. Sure, the sentence had been harsh, but if people started arguing with the gods, where would it end?

But the storyteller was not finished.

“A few weeks later, some of the regular summer merchants got together the first expedition to go south through the pass. There they would bargain with the mountain dwellers for gold, silver, and gems. The first passage was always difficult, often requiring making new sections of trail, especially if there had been particularly bad avalanches.

“The merchants had heard of the girl who came out of the pass, but she had hired on with a merchant caravan weeks before, and besides, most of them didn’t believe she had come through the pass at all. It was an established fact that that was impossible.

“So they traveled through the pass, and they came to a place where they could see signs that the a stream had been blocked by an avalanche and then the blockage had been removed when enough snow and ice had melted. It looked bigger than any such catastrophe they had seen before, but they didn’t really understand just how big.

“Not until, that is, they got to where the village had been. That village was simply gone. They found just a few remains that might have been part of a village, but they might have missed them if they hadn’t been looking diligently.

“When word of this got back to people who had heard Imeril’s whole story, there were quite a number of explanations.

“Some people believed that Imeril’s father had been falsely accused, and thus the village had been cursed, and Imeril had miraculously survived.

“Others thought the village had been cursed by their carelessness in allowing someone under the condemnation of the gods to escape punishment.

“Others maintained that the entire story was made up.

“There were a few oldtimers who said, ‘Why do we need to invoke the gods? That’s the way villagers, village priests, mountains, snow, avalanches, and floods work. It’s a tough universe.’

“Imeril’s brother became rich and famous and is known as Galdor the Sailor.

“Imeril always tried to reenforce the first option, that her father had been falsely accused. It was the one that had kept her alive.

“But when I was old enough to understand my mother told me that was all nonsense. ‘Your grandfather was indeed a murderer, thief, and rapist. I escaped because I knew that, and assumed the gods would declare him guilty.”

It was a good thing the storyteller had such a good sword and knew how to use it.

This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons in the real world is strictly coincidental. Copyright © 2024, Henry E. Neufeld. The featured image was generated with Jetpack AI.