So, here is what I read aloud last night in the continuing saga of "a Misspent god." Frankly, this story is not easy to write. It does not seem difficult because of the first-person perspective nor because of the content. Rather, it is difficult to write because I want to be so very careful in building the plot to a phenomenal point of conflict. Carefully, carefully I trod toward a resolution by which I am completely intrigued.
The Crone
I
found a plateau nearby strangely vacant of vegetation and sufficiently flat
enough for me to lay out full length.
Tiny deer fled from the nearby rocks as my shadow darkened their
habitat. Because the crone had ignored
my calls I lay down and watched the clouds.
Presently a hawk flew overhead and I reached up and gently tapped its
tail feathers and laughed when it careened through the air screaming at me to
leave it alone. Soon it flew out of my
reach and I went to sleep in the hot sun.
The
next thing I recall was the ground trembling.
I woke in a shadow—the shadow of my father walking toward me. I did not know how I should or could
react. I was at his mercy as I lay
there. The earth ceased trembling as he stopped near my side. I blinked up at his aspect. The sun crowned his head with its brilliance.
This is what he said to me. “Helgeror
tells me you bested her at the library.”
There was a groundswell of challenge in his voice, but I did not
respond. “I would test you now in this
matter. However, your mother has told me
she has sent you to the crone for a journey to the lower realms. So, I shall test you later.” And with that, and not waiting for any
response from me, he turned and walked off of the plateau and into his chariot,
a great cloud of dust in his wake. I
hated him even more then and determined that I would never permit him to test
me. I felt my feet slip off the edge of
the plateau and realized that I had grown even taller as he spoke to me. I was glad for this, for I had hoped that
someday he might fear me as much as I feared him. Then I slept again.
The
crone woke me in the obscurity of twilight.
She stood by my ear which was as tall as she. Her voice was gentle, but her aspect with
harsh. She had been legendary for her
beauty. But now her legend was made of
other things. She woke me with these
words: “So, this the son of Ogmios and
Ernmos. You have come at your mother’s
bidding. What does she want of me?” I stretched and the plateau trembled. I was in no particular hurry, so I sat up
slowly. The crone was behind me then and
she had to shout up at me. “You will
have to lay back down, boy, if you want to speak with me!” At this I reached around behind me and
grabbed her in my fist. I swung her up
near my face. “Or,” I declared to her in
a small clap of thunder, “you will come to me!”
She
was unimpressed and her eyes were as dark as midnight. She closed them slowly and her aspect grew
larger in my eyes. In the next moment I
realized that she was not growing, rather I was becoming smaller. Soon my grip around her was strained and I
could no longer hold on to her. She
laughed at me and cried out with delight, “How small do you wish to be, little
god? How small?!” I only called out to her when I saw her ankle
bones at the bottom of her tattered skirt.
Then everything stopped. She
leaned over and one dark, black eye blinked in my face. Her breath was hot and heavy like a summer’s
day at the seashore and it reeked of garlic.
She
told me three things. The first was that
by sunrise I would be the size of a man of the lower realms. The second was that I would remain in that
form for only six turns of the sun. And,
finally, I was to have no powers except that of the lower ones. I protested loudly, especially on that last
measure. But, she laughed and said that
my father had made this so. Then with a
blink of that terrible eye she was gone.
Copyright
M.R. Hyde July 12, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment