Magic's Discovery: Convergence of Disparate Cultures

Childs' Innocence

Herfiete

He lay, spasming in the grass, frothy spittle on his lips. Herfiete lent over the body, studying the child’s jerking. The green still stained his hand as well as lips, the plants lay strewn in all directions.

“This is devils,” muttered one elder.

“They have claimed this place,” agreed another as they both looked around with accelerating breaths, and darting eyes.

A female was screaming for her child while her mate held her back, fury and anger in his teary eyes, as he too surveyed the surrounding forest.

“Herfiete!” scowled a female.

She looked at her mother, and with her head hung, backed away slowly. The adults all were collected together discussing what they should do, and if they could move the body for burial. Herfiete seen his brother and lunged for him. He screamed and as she collided with him. Her teeth sank into his wrist. He cried out again, pulling her hair, and punching her face with his other hand. Immediately they were both grabbed and pried apart.

“Herfiete! Go back to the village!” demanded her scowling mother again.

The possessed child’s parents were both now focused on their now only child. They looked at her with a scowl of their own, as she walked away. She slapped at some long grass, but looked back at the clearing, seeing the same green stains on the child’s hands, in their arms. She glanced down, and smiled smugly at the scattered collection of pulled vegetation, before hurrying away, out of the tree line, across the flat grassy plain, towards the village on the other side of the far brook.

****

As she went to cross the brook, she noticed a deer. It was hacking and gagging, but whatever it wanted to get up, it couldn’t. She tilted her head in interest, and crept closer, but hid behind a bush. It would stop, and begin again, only for nothing to be heaved up. It kicked at its own mouth and throat. And then it stopped. It ran to the bush next to her. It’s nose turned up at the scent of the berries, but still it looked as if it were fighting within itself. It snatched the berries in its mouth, as if any second longer would prevent it and began chewing furiously. It gobbled a mouth full, and yet another. Then she seen the heaving begin in the gut this time. It only took two heaves before the deer vomited. It sniffed what came up, reeled, and took off to the plains. She curiously crept forward, and noticed the leaves of the plants in the vomit were the same that were plucked and strewn about the spasming child, as well as the ones his little brother carried. Herfiete snatched as many berries as her hands could carry and ran as fast as her little legs would go.

****

When she neared them, the boy’s body was jerking harder, but was slowing. She dropped next to him, with cries of shock screaming into the air. She began stuffing the berries into his mouth as fast as she could, bursting and smearing them all over his lips. Two strong hands snatched her, yanking her from the boy, and then spun her, shaking the life from her body.

“Don’t you get it! He’s a devil in him! Leave him be! He isn’t your play thing!” bellowed the father with tears of rage dripping down his cheeks. “He’s my boy! My boy that I’ve lost!”

“But… But he’s no—“

“Do you hea—“

They all turned at the sound of the boy retching. Everyone fell backwards, with the father even letting go in his terror. Herfiete dove for the boy, slamming both extended hands into his gut. His lungs burst the contents of his stomach onto the ground next to him, and then another retch followed it up with dyed stomach acid. Again he vomited, until nothing would come up. He lay there shaking, crying, begging for his mommy.

“A deer ate the same plants and I seen it trying to puke at the brook. It smelled these berries and didn’t want to eat them, but forced itself. It puked after eating them, smelled the plants in its vomit and then ran off for the horizon.”

“A deer showed you this?” asked her mother.

She happily nodded.

Murmurs were sounding as the adults all spoke. The mother stood where she had, holding her youngest, and kept glancing between the child crying for her and Herfiete. Herfiete nodded at her with wide eyes, and the mother ran to her boy, with her other still on her hip. The adults noticed and shouted for her to stop, but she was already at his side. Seeing a child merely clinging for his mother, they all looked at Herfiete who was watching the boys and mom with smugness splattered to her face. She noticed the other adults and looked at them, before her face drooped into worry, and she took a step away.

“Show us where the deer was,” commanded one of the elders in a soft, yet demanding voice.

“Yes! Yes! Follow me!”

****

Adults ran after child as she hurried to where she’d been. She found the spot again, telling them of what she seen, and showed them, acting it out. She showed them the spot she hid, and pointed out the bits on the branches of the berry bush, and then the pile of puke. Her face contorted into horrified disgust as the soft voiced elder took a stick, poking into the vomit. He drug a complete leaf out, and then ordered Herfiete off to get the leaves the boys had carried. She ran off, and returned with barely any breath remaining in her heaving chest. She bent over holding out a leaf. The elder held it next to the one on the ground.

“It was The Great Deer here, to warn us it wasn’t a spirit…” gasped the elder.

Herfiete stood smiling ear to ear while the elders and her mother congratulated her patting her back and hugging her. The father of the boys burst to them, The elders turned to see him as he swept at Herfiete. She shrieked at the top of her lungs until it was obvious the man was hugging her and twirling in a circle.

“My boy! My Boy! You saved my boy!”

The mother neared them, a boy on each hip with the one having tear stains down his face, and the other crying as he still did not understand.

Yektarnic

“Well, dummy, if you didn’t argue with her, then she wouldn’t strike you.”

“No. I’m serious. You always get your way. I can’t explain it. You always do.”

“No I don’t. If I did, would I be going to the river instead of climbing trees right now?”

“Well, n— You didn’t try this time…”

Birds took to the air with squawks and screams. Both boys dropped to their belly’s immediately. Their eyes darted, their bodies still, and their breathing rapid but quiet. The grass moved to their side. Then the other. It moved again, and then it leapt after.

****

Both boys were running as fast as their legs could carry them. There was no searching for trails, or thinking of the path with the least resistance. There was merely heart thrashing, breath chilled, leg blurred running.

“Leave us alone!”

“Yeah!”

“Go get a deer!”

“Ye—“ a scream interrupted the fearful agreement.

The scream chilled Yektarnic’s chest, and kicked him in the butt, throwing him forward faster yet, with his legs stepping with the other, before the previous could fully trip over root, or rock.

He dared not look back. The wines smacked his face, and he almost collided with trees, when he did dare to look back, only to finally find a root that wouldn’t let his foot go. He screamed as the pop vibrated through his body and into his ears. He crashed to the ground, with his foot still stuck. It was right there.

“GO AWAY!”

GO AWAY!

He screamed both in thought and word, and then he heard the sound of it’s claws digging into the bark of the tree next to him. There was a flash of orange and black, and then it was gone again, deep into the forest. His chest and heart were calmed before he stood. He looked around sure it would jump out at him in any moment. He turned, looking at the tree’s trunk. When he found the thickest section of the moss, he reached down, picking up a long stick, and began limping. He could weave another basket. There was no backtracking. Only heading home to tell everyone what happened.

****

When he reached the main path to his village, there was the sound of his mother wailing. The stick left the ground, and both feet pounded on the soft earth of the forest floor. He burst into the clearing to find his friend.

“Melic? It got you!”

“No. I tripped over a rock. And then smacked headlong into a tree. It left me to go for you. Both of them did.”

“What? No. There was only one.”

“No. There were two of those spotted beast.”

“No. I was chased by only one.”

“I told you! You always get your way!”

“Oh shut-up!” His mother was checking his scratched up face, and descended over arms, hands torso, and finally feet, where she found the swelling. There wasn’t any warning. His foot was yanked, and he fell, his refute to Melic being cut off. “Yektarnic lay where he’d crashed and indicated his mother and the village healer. “Get my way, huh?”

“It was on you… you couldn’t have outrun it…”

“What did you do?” asked the healers husband. He carried a staff with bones tied to it, a jaguar’s skull secured to its peak, its eye sockets looking down at the ground, with its upper canines on either side of the staff.

“I didn’t outrun it… I tripped and screamed for it to go away, and it did. It jumped off of a tree, and then was gone.”

He tossed bones down at Yektarnic’s feet, and then scooped up earth, drizzling some on it, and then blew the rest of the earth in his flattened palm on Yektarnic. He hesitantly looked down at the bones, and screamed, falling backwards. His hand lifting and a lone, shaking finger pointing at the boy. “He’s been evil touched…demons want him, so beasts flee…”

His mother flinched her hands away from him immediately, but the healer kept on studying the ankle, humming as she went, and then stabbed his ankle. The witchdoctor screamed again, taring the skull from the top of his staff, and catching the dripping blood in the base of the hollowed skull.

“See!” He cried, indicating it to his wife.

“I see blood from a swelled ankle,” she replied with a blank, slow blinking look.

“Bah!” scowled the man. He jerked the skull towards Yektarnic’s mother, swirling the blood as he did so.

She whimpered and looked at it, screamed, and then further scurried away from her son.

The heeler shook her head slightly at the boy, and smudged dirt into the wound, stopping the bleeding, and then wrapped it with leaves that she tied.

“If you keep staring at those bones, one day they will end in yours breaking,” chided the woman as she helped the boy to his feet, and then pushed him towards the village, before indicating for Melic to come and help him.

“If you bring him into our village —“

“I’ll save a boy form being eaten. If you think he is such a danger, then sleep out here with the dark spotted fire ones…” She turned, returning her knife to its sheath around her neck. She paused, pulled it back out of the sheath, and then licked its tip. Everyone around them flinched with gasps. “Tastes the same as yours, or anyone else's.”

“I warn you Secerli th—“

“Then prove it. If he is more of a danger, then sleep outside of the walls. Otherwise come in here because if he does have something in him, you’re the only one who can protect us. I do not think that whatever he has though, if he does, is worse than what chased him. Do you?”

Everyone looked from heeler to witchdoctor.

“If he manifests…”

“Then kill him with the sacrificial knife so we can beg for forgiveness for whatever has brought us that evil.”

The witchdoctor nodded. He picked up the bones, and returned the skull to the tip of his staff, tying new grasses where he’d torn the others.

The others followed him back into the village, where he remained at Yektarnic’s side all night.

Buliktar

The fire crackled, and popped as it lapped at the logs. The tribe was gathered around the fire. The women were preparing the day’s catch. The heads were kept, the scales, fins, and bones were all thrown to the wolves of their tribe.

Painted sticks were being slowly tapped on the logs they sat on, their ends hollowed. The leaders all looked at one another, smiling, and lifted their bowls of crystal clear water. Their tones were low at first, and the women looked at each other, smiled, and began humming.

“Spear or net, we shall not fret; Depth or shallow, the fish we follow!! …ooh! Night or day, each does pay; Catch and sail, winds we hail!! …Ooh!! Sky and water, are what matter; Paddle and boat, help us tote; Sea we plead, us they feed!! …Ooh!!! —“

Buliktar looked down at the fire as he swayed with the singing. He blinked as he was certain he seen a boat amid the fire’s flickers. It was being pushed over wave, and nets cast from it. The sound of waves growing mixed with the crackle of the fire on the beach.

The sticks were now pounding faster and faster as the men’s song sped up, with the women now offering their soft voices as a chorus. They sang no words, but when the women’s voices joined, most of the men’s eyes closed as they swayed. The song changed, to match whatever was the beat of the drummers. The sound of their strikes changing depending on where on the end of the log their struck, or if they hit the side.

The wind blew and it carried a chill from the water with it. A welcome change to the stagnant air. The singing continued until the women began to hand out the wooden slats with fish, and a pile of greens boiled in the pots that Buliktar hated, but as was their customs, would never show anything but gratitude.

The stories began after the leaders were lastly given their food, but waited until the women sat down before each of their fathers and husbands. He smiled with kelp sticking between his lips at his sister-mother, who he’d been boiling it, smiled and patted his cheek. Their head mother sat directly before his father, and his sister-mothers sat around her, while his second-sisters sat in the middle of them. Buliktar, his lone son, sat beside his father on the log.

Mektite was was clicking at him. He glanced to see her sister-mother poke her thigh, and her head mother give both first and second-daughter a disapproving look, before she looked up at her husband. Buliktar looked up at the burly man, to see him nod and smile at him, looking at his second-daughter with a smile, and then back at Buliktar. His cheeks burst with warmth, and he turned his face back to his slab, and began scraping his fish and greens into his mouth. He glanced up again at the gut shaking, laughing man, with cheeks full. Her sister-mother shook her head with a smirk at Buliktar, while Mektite smiled wider at him. He was sure that his food would burn in his mouth from the warmth of his cheeks.

A deep chuckle next to him had him looking at his father. Buliktar’s own sister-mother touched his knee, motioning at Mektite with her chin, ever so slightly and rotated her eyes in a full roll, and then batted them at him. Fish and greens spewed into the fire, and nothing but laughter came from everyone around the fire, including his head-mother. More laughter erupted as Buliktar watched the fire change. A girl appeared on the bow of the boat, and male walked towards her, with his hand outstretched. Buliktar turned away. His father lifting his arm in tear dripping laughter as Buliktar tried to hide his face in the large man’s side.

Milefier

The pot shattered, but nothing touched it nor fell it.

“Milefier! Watch that temper, I have said!”

“I cannot help it mother! How am I supposed to be chipper when brother won’t leave me be?!”

“He is but a babe. Surely you can react differently…”

Milefier screamed again, smacking and swatting at the toddler climbing up her back, yanking on her hair with all of his might. The vase her mother was carrying, while trying her best to hum, shattered. The water splashed the floor, and the flowers were moldy and withered before they hit the floor. Toddler and child’s eyes almost arooga-ed out of their heads as they seen their mother running across the sand after them, sandle in hand. They both ran in opposite directions, scrambling on all fours. Their mother didn’t miss a beat. She hopped on her bare foot, and some will understand when I tell you how she threw those sandles like a ninja darts a knife.* One connected with her daughter’s nape of her head, while the other hit the toddler square in the moss padded butt.*

Milefier held the bound bundle of sun dried grasses, swiping them side to side as she cleared the dust from the pottery on their space of the market. Her brother was pushing a stool across the ground. Their eyes were locked, tracing each other’s, as the daggers flew. Eyes snapped back to their task as the humming entered the room. Their mother held up another piece of clay, and placed it upon another section with others in the sun. Their father followed, wiping his hands on his leather apron. Milefier watched on her hands resting on a mostly dried vase. There was a gleem in his eye as he watched his wife place the still moist clay on the hot sand. She turned, smiling at him. Her smile turned to serious as she stepped forward, negotiating the trade of skewered lizard for pot. Warmth flooded Milefier’s chest as she watched her father look on after her mother with pride. She felt the clay change and looked down in shock as intricate designs etched through the surface of the vase. She yelped, catching the attention of her father. He walked over looking at the vase in amazement.

“Daddy I d—“

He hushed her with two fingers prssed flat against his own lips, and knelt once he reached her. He traced his hands over the clay, noting the smoothness of the curves and the unblemished consistancy of the design.

“When you felt good?” he asked, still studying the vase.

“I must have that!” He spun, to see a woman hurrying to them. A goat apart from what other animals in tow. “I seen you putting your finishing touches after thinking hard about its design. I must have it!”

“But i—“

“Yes, Yes of course!” cried her father louder than necessary with telling eyes at Milefier. “This one is the finest of all of the pieces here ho—“

“Take her. She has had a kid, and produces good milk,” continued the woman, pulling a lead, to a goat, to hand off to Milefier’s father.

The vase was snatched and left his hand the moment the rope touched his other. The woman scrutinized the vase intently. The father stood there, looking between her and the vase, before she turned and walked away without so much as a second recognition of his presence.

Her mother turned, happily having negotiated an extra lizard, when she screamed. Milefier’s father spun, his body bulking and tensing, but the mother was almost to him, excitement and glee beaming from her eyes.

“How did you negotiate that?! I’m the negotiator… you are the artist! I’ve never been able to get so much for one of our clays,” she asked, excitedly petting the baying goat, and scratching under the chin.

In a hushed voice, with eyes darting everywhere but his family and possessions*, the father muttered, “Not here… Home.”

His wife looked at him with glee drifitng from her eyes, replaced with worry. She immediately looked over to Milefier, only to see her daughter slink away at the slightest. She was at her side before she could run away, squeazing her in an embrace, uncaringly smooshing the cooked lizards against her.

“I love you my daughter. I will always love you. You have nothing to fear from us.”

Sarelacy

Her boots echoed in the cold halls. she slid around the corner, and hussled for the next room. When she entered, the warmth of the fire tickled her nose.

“I have the parchments you requested?”

“Eh?” the eyes darted up but then were back down without any other response.

She hurredly placed them in the carved channel in his table carved from the same rock everything else was. She returned to her own desk, and began copying the sheets he’d placed in her own channel. She placed her hollow pen on the parchment, and then poured her ink into its widened inlet. She wrote, while only looking at the parchment she was copying. The hollow, thin, pen, made from removing the soft center from thin braches and twigs. The top was a widened section with a funnel-like design molded from sap and the center taken from the same branch or twig. Every character she wrote connected to the previous, with her pen not even rising when it ran dry. She would pause, and add more ink, and continue on, each next line began where the last ended, making anyone reading follow the characters in a zig-zag pattern down the parchment. She hissed as a drop of ink slipped past her pen, and blotted her page. She dared not look up. His eyes were already burrowing into her skull. She took her drawer, and pulled the blot into a thin continuation of her sentence, before widening it to its proper width with her pen as she continued on. Her tutor* looked on and nodded in approval as not even he could tell the blot had ever been there. Fat lamps were lit, and they wrote long into the night. She dared not stop, until he had informed* her to, even as her thumb muscle bulged, and her arm cried. At the current time, it did not seem as if he would. She didn’t have to look up to know this, or even to receive his signal. She merely had to listen for his chair sliding on the floor.

She heard it a while later, when the lamps were dimming. They’d once wrote to the light of a fullmoon, so the chair was the only clear indicator of the ending of the day.

“How many did you finish,” asked the man as he looked fondly down at the girl, who still wrote until she’d finished the page.

“I have just finished my third,” she replied with a spark of pride.

“And there is nothing on the page but perfection?” She leaned away from the table, as he leaned down. He studied it for a moment, galncing back and forth between the two copies. “Good. Good. He will be pleased with These. We must have them all done by the end of the week.” He looked at her slyly. “Once they are done, you may go and do your other studies for the next handful of moons. I want you to give me everythign you can find about the mammoth’s culture*.” His face darkened, then its back to the table with you. I cannot be losing my prime* student.” Her face lit up. “Now off to bed with you Sarelacy. We have much work to do in the morning.”

He stooped low. Their foreheads met, with weak hands lifted. He cupped the side of her jaw, and she his cheek bone. Their strong hands held behind their backs. As they seperated, his hand lingered, and she paused as was the custom. He left but the brush of a kiss on her forehead. Then they were parted. He was looking over the parchments, and transfering them to a drying table. Sarelacy left the room, and walked through the halls, a bound collection of smaller rooms, connected with walls that had been carved from the earth, or halls carved down into the earth, that had connected to yet other walls, making up the caverns. She walked down the stone steps. The moon’s white light shone off of the hard packed snow, and ice windows of the raised buildings. She was headed for the caverns, when she paused, and instead headed for the ledge’s peak that hung over their city. A cold wind had her gripping her warm coat* tighter, embracing the furs of the inturned skins. She reached the peak, and knelt by a shrub to lessen the wind’s bite, before she looked over. There were a few fat lamps lit, shining in some of the risen homes.

First there was a series of fast sounds* on the pact snow, and then a thumping grabbed her attention. She slowly turned to find not a white bear, or wolf; but rather, a very ticked off hare, who was declaring this was his territory with defiant stomps of his large, hind feet.

Her cheeks lifted, but her lips did not part in the smile. Her parchment was in her hand already, and she was scribbling with her scalpted charcoal. More stomps, she didn’t move, but her hand. Stomps closer, still her vision stayed studying it with her peripherial, and her hand continued on writing rough measurements, and descritptions of its behavior, appearance, and other attributes. It was now a mere meter from her, her writing stopped, and its foot thumped on the ground again. Her face descended into confusion at the prey animal being willing to get so close. Her eyes darted around while her head stayed still. It wasn’t until she glanced down by her knees that she realized there was a burrow in the snow, next to the small shrub. There was a furious collection of stomps. Sarelacy looked up at the hare who ran away. It stopped another meeter later, looking at her. She looked back down at the burrow, and again she heard the scuttling, and then the stomping a meter away. She again looked up at it, to find it run away, only to stop, and look at her with its back yet facing her.

You don’t want me near it… Why would you lead me away though. WHy not just keep running?

She stood. The hare darted off across the ledge, stopping only when it was many yards away. It squeaked. She stood and followed. Again it was darting off, hopping to and fro. Hey eyes blinked as dusty snow was picked up, and blew against, and past her. She looked around after the gust was over, to find that the hare was no where to be found.

Its white coat allows it to blend with the snow she noted, pulling her parchment bindings back up.

She walked back to the shrub, and studied the hole near its stalk*. An idea struck her, so she laid down on the ground, and put her ear to the hole. When she closed her eyes, and focused, she could hear weak squeaks from inside. Her eyes lit up with excitement.

You’re a girl! You had babies!

Again charcoal was marking up the parchment. She looked at the shrub, noting it as well, and thinking there might be a connection to the burrow’s location. She recorded a description of its appearance, its hardy textur to its needles, and how willing its branches went with the wind, but its stalk* remained as it was, tilting only slightly. When she finished, she turned back and headed for the caverns.