Chapter Two: The Empty Village

Keeper of the Shade

Derian smelled the food before he saw the gate. He had fasted for two days, as was appropriate for the job he was taking on. There was cooking pork on the air, cloves and garlic from the western Wagoneer nation. The scent of fresh bread ran under it. Sharp smoke ran above it. Smoke was the smell of people. Yet he saw that the smells were deceiving as the scout’s report.

There was no smoke coming from the chimneys, only that smell of fire.

He came to a spot on the road where he could see into the open gate and much of the wooden wall. He noticed the raw skins of mountain goats rotting and littering the grass to the west. They were arranged in a tight cluster, like a large nest. He looked into the long pit, the stacks of stones, and the piled lumber that had been removed from a section of the wall. He found the cautious horse steps from the scout. He examined the two great wheels that had been constructed, one half decorated with many deft strokes of a two-hair painting brush and ink made from soot and saliva.

Derian reached down and touched the wheel of wood. He took one of the large beads in his hands, and squoze the pottery until it shattered. Oil and dust ran over his bleeding fingers and fell in clots onto the lumber. He rubbed the mixture into the wood with two fingers, and closed his eyes. He intoned from deep in his throat, “Shala Shaook.”

The acorn had sat high on the mother oak. It was a day as cool as it had ever known when it darkened, hardened, and fell. It plunged into the soft earth below. It pushed against the ground-sea and knocked off its cap. It sprouted a twin pair of leaves. It grew another pair, and felt bark harden around its soft stem. Then the snow fell hard. It was dark for a while. And it slipped into an eternity of rest. Then the snow melted and the roots crawled out like fingers growing on a baby. The light came back and it was taller and its bark was thicker. There were hundreds of brothers and sisters around it, bright green and proud, pushing up towards the mother and the warm sun. They felt and touched below the surface, swimming their tendrils around one another in the cool sea. They comforted each other and learned from each other and traded food between them. When its root found that of the mother tree it hummed. The mother passed things through the sea into his roots. It made it feel strong. Things crawled on it and made it shudder. Things passed by its leaves and shoots, and it hoped to not be crushed. It grew as much as it could, as the mother tree coaxed it and warned of the cold that would return. Then the death came, and the cold again. It was a cycle of rebirth and death for a hundred years.

Derian felt the pang of agony when the mother tree fell to a powerful storm.

And then the pride of taking the mother’s place on the hill.

The moment at the end was so short Derian nearly missed it. It was a flash- the axe in the side. Losing touch with the fingers and the saplings and the sea. The stripping of its skin. The boiling over flame. The creaking of being bent in an O. The drill passing through its flesh. The spokes being inserted. The harsh voices of strange creatures. It was a snap in time.

“Panna! Sh’equ van oit!” one of the voices said.

“There’s something in the walls,” Derian whispered, translating the Wagonish. He pulled his fingers from the wood before he got to the experience of himself. If he crossed that line, felt his fingers touch the wood, the small monk would be trapped, a whole-body freeze that would sustain until another of his order came and blessed him with the fragrant oil and blood and dust of a grave. Or more likely, until he died. He looked at the wheel. It had turned green from the rain and the sun. Grass had grown up around it.

He rotated his necklace until the oil and dust-stained part of the chain was against the back of his neck. He held the next large bead while looking into the village.

He could remember the first time he had seen into the spirit of an object. He was a whelping, seven years old. Master Rez pricked his finger and brought his hand into the oil and dust, showed him how to rub the mixture into the wood of a temple bench.

“Shala Shalook Savaine Studant,” Master Rez had chanted. It sent Derian back to the whirly-gig falling from a great tree, and being swept along a river. The story was similar but different to that of the mighty oak that had become a wheel. Instead of the sharp hot torture of being shaped, the bench endured the agony of being carved and then an unrelenting campaign of unwashed asses.

Master Rez and laughed hard when he pulled Derian from the trance and the child gasped for fresh air.

He passed through the gate and went to the first house on the street. Its door was open, as had been reported. Inside was a table, with food set out on wooden planks. But it was not as the scout had claimed. The food was spoiled and fuzzy with blue and white growth. Flies buzzed happily over a mummified rabbit hanging above the hearth. Derian wiped the oil and grave dust from his fingers on his cassock. He searched the home from corner to corner. Worn boots were lined up near the door. The sleeping pad was made up and covered in a slick of dust. He felt the hearth stone with the back of his hand. It was cold as the dead. He sniffed, and smelled of old ashes. A wind came through and sucked ash up the chimney.

That’s the smoke I smelled, he thought, watching the bits curl around one another as they took flight.

He looked at the door from the inside. Above the door frame, a broken piece of wood was nailed to the wall. He pushed the door. It jammed against the broken wooden post and would not shut. There was another piece of wood nailed to the door, hanging downward. A lock, it seemed. He turned the wood on the door upright and it embraced its downward hanging mate.

“The door didn’t close because this pin was in the way,” Derian said. The wood had splintered unevenly, preventing the door from shutting.

Why nail the door shut? Derian wondered. He looked around again, and found a hammer lying beneath the table. The metal was rusted and the wooden handle crumbled against his touch. He took the next bead and crushed it over the bulky iron head. It was pitted and scarred. Whatever curse was laid over this town was one of decay. Everything will return to dust before the year is out, Derian figured. He rubbed his fingers against the meat of his palm, then rubbed the oil and dust into the hammerhead.

“Shala Shaook.”

The metal was birthed in hot fire. It had existed as part of something else, but the heat rendered that memory out as flame renders fat from meat. It was soft and pliable, and the strikes from the blacksmith’s mallet made it sing. The hammer head took form. It was polished with a soft rag and fine sand. There was a prickling when it was brought out into the light for the first time, the sun glinting off the shiny surface. It was touched and examined by another, who hit a handle through its port. The fit was made snug through heat, which felt glorious. The hammer traveled on a bench seat beside a large freckled man. It took residence at a port by the sea. It felt envy of the other workers, who used wooden mallets and watched as the freckled man sank in nails with a single strike. It was stolen by another worker, who kept it hidden in his straw mattress. It never saw light again, until its next owner came, and pulled all the straw bedding out into the street. It fell to the dirt road and felt its handle being grasped. It felt the eyes of examination.

Work was different then. It struck pig skull instead of iron. It had its handle replaced one summer, but the man with the pigs never came to pick it back up. The repair man sold it as scrap to a traveler. It was in a bucket of hammers then, and it could feel the metal of its head begin to rust. It rained often, and water collected in the bottom of the bucket and made its handle swell and rot.

Its handle slipped from its hole as another hammer was pulled to the top. It sat in water for a long time, never seeing light or heat or work.

Then it was pulled from the bucket and up into the light. A large hand held it, and brought it into a dry place. It was polished by cloth and wet sand. It felt the flakes of time be scoured from its faces. Then a handle was set and fit well by heat. Glorious heat. The hammer built many things by way of the large handed man. It was kept dry and the handle was oiled often.

Soft voices were muffled. Then a scream. The large hand picked it up, and it hit true as it had on a boat long ago. It sang as it sent iron nails into soft wood. It was held in the large hand, swaying at his side.

“Blessed Brodah protect this home,” the large handed man yelled. The hammer rang with his tone. The door shook. “We have nothing to do with…” the hammer fell as the door was blown in. A wind colder than ice rattled through the house. “You are not welcome here!”

The head swung at a shadow, and passed through. It fell to the dirt floor and lay at rest until…

Derian snapped his hand away from the hammer. He pulled out a chair from the table and sat in it, shaking as the chair broke and he fell to the ground. He sat on the broken seat, closing his eyes. He retrieved the memory of the shadow. He meditated on it, passing it around his mouth like a wine. It was shaped and shapeless, tall yet short. It flashed with uncertainty. And the feeling which the hammer felt cast out from the shadowed figure was that of the dock workers. A feeling of envy.