The Woven End Read online

  478th star of the Çephelars

  "This one is rusted," Ton said. He handed the knife to Il.

  Il examined it himself. "Do you suppose someone would give a rusty knife, or did it rust in storage?"

  Ton grunted and handed the sheath to Il.

  “I don’t know. Do what you want to do with it.” He had little interest in an analysis at this point.

  Ton and Il were assigned the task of purging the Great Cold Home on their island this star. They had already been at it for thirteen hours. Ton was ready to go home hours ago, but with the Feast of the Descendants coming so soon and ten rooms remaining, it was not wise to return home just yet. Several hundred people on their island attended the feast with items that they hoped would last until a time when their descendants needed them in the Great Cold. Of course, things went bad, so they purged the homes every star. The Great Cold was so many stars away, but if these ancestors did not begin a cycle of giving and consideration of their offspring, could they guarantee that anyone would?

  "Pas the Ob! Look at that fishing hook," Il shrieked. "Who would bring a thing like that? Dullest hook I ever saw. We wouldn't catch one fish on it."

  "That's probably why they donated it," Ton grumbled.

  "It's not rusted but…I cannot leave it here for someone to try to catch a fish with it. Cruel."

  "Then don't."

  Il threw the dull hook into the bag of refuse.

  "We have only ten rooms remaining. Was that the last count, or do I misremember?" Il asked.

  "Ten. You're right. When will people learn how to seal the jars of honey? It's covered with dust and—ugh."

  Ton, who really was good natured most times, threw the jar into the sack of refuse. The jar shattered upon impact. Il looked at his friend, as if just now seeing that he was in a bad temper.

  "We have tomorrow, Ton. Let's just go home. I'm sure our wives have kept supper warm for us, and I think we need a rest."

  "Pas the Ob and a crooked man! I want this done so I can rest for a whole Star rise, not just a Star fall!"

  "Well, I'm going home. You're in a bad temper, brother. The last time you were in a bad temper was when that shaddy fish held your line for over an hour before slipping away. I don't want to be about for the torrent this time."

  Ton laughed quietly and his face relaxed. He slapped his hand to Il’s back and smiled.

  "Let's bury the refuse. It's already too heavy. We should have done it long before the bag was full. That whole load of rotted wood over-stuffed us. I suppose we don't need to bury the wood. That will give us less digging to do."

  The men each lifted a bulging burlap sack and went through the main room and to the stairs that led up the stone steps into the open air. A shovel rested against the mound-roof. Il grabbed it.

  "Star light," Ton said. "How our descendants will survive without Star light, cramped in a dank hole. I can't fathom it."

  "That is because you know the Star light. They won't. Maybe they will not survive."

  Ton shook his head. "They'll be animals. Just sad, lonely animals. Sometimes I wonder if we should just destroy ourselves before then. It would be an act of mercy."

  "Foolhardy," Il replied.

  Ton smiled again. "Where shall we bury the things?"

  "Elder Tok says he knows nothing has been buried in the southern wood yet," Il said.

  Ton set down his load, and Il followed his lead. Ton wiped sweat from his brow as he scanned the southern wood. He gave a quick look to Il and then back to the wood.

  "You mean to tell me that Elder Tok is not superstitious?" He squinted against the Star light, still scanning the woods.

  "Apparently not. When I asked him where we should bury the refuse, he made that suggestion. He doesn't want to create a heap of garbage, so he thought it best to go where nothing is, as of yet."

  "Are you afraid?" Asked Ton. He bent to pick up his bag.

  Il hesitated. "If you must know… a little."

  "I've never been there. The legend is hundreds of stars old, and it still has such power over us. I think the power must be dying if Elder Tok is sending us there."

  "Do you want to meet a white monster? I don't. Why shouldn't a legend like that have power over us? We can't prove it isn't true, and we can't prove that it is. I would rather put the trash somewhere else. What say you, Ton? Ton?"

  Ton laughed and trudged on. He shook his head, nodded toward the southern wood and glanced back at his friend.

  "I keep the shovel," Il called out, scrambling to catch up.

  "You wouldn't use a shovel, you'd use your feet."

  "To kick?"

  "To run."

  "You're right. You keep the shovel," Il said, extending the shovel to his friend. “It would slow me dow.”

  Ton took it from him. "Okay, but I have no need for it. I don't believe in the white monster, and I don't think I will be proven wrong. My father told me that the white monster is a myth. He claimed he'd been all through those woods, and there never was a monster."

  "Well, he didn't see it. What does that matter?" said Il.

  "He said, that a long time ago someone saw a very white man in the wood, but they had never seen one before. The island was once populated entirely with white-skinned people before our ancestors from the nameless land came, several hundred stars ago. I suspect there was a small tribe of white men who hid in the woods and the white monster was all that remained. I'm certain they are extinct now.”

  "How would your father know that?"

  Ton shrugged. "I don't know. I've wondered about it."

  Il approached the subject carefully, "You know, he doesn't really look like most people."

  They reached the forest's edge and stopped to look into the tangle of branches and leaves.

  "What do you mean?" Ton asked.

  "I mean that he's dark, but in a more golden way. Like the Star makes him golden, but his blood does not."

  "Come on. We can do it." Ton said, pressing onward.

  "Considering the story he told you, don't you think that's interesting?" Il persisted.

  “Think what is interesting?” Ton asked.

  “His skin color.”

  Ton laughed. "Why would I?"

  "Your father said he came from another island. You have no grandparents on his side and…Well, that sounds strange to me, now that you have told me your father's story."

  "Why should it be strange? People go from island to island, and parents die," Ton said, shaking his head.

  "Yes, but they still look like everyone else."

  Ton laughed. "This is why I stay friends with you, Il. You amuse me. Grand deductions from little ideas."

  "Grand from little! I think not. I—“

  "Shh," Ton wasn't smiling anymore. "Do you hear that?"

  Il stopped in his tracks. “Give me the shovel,” he whispered.

  "It's a voice," Ton answered.

  Il grabbed the shovel. "Where?"

  "How should I know where? I barely hear it."

  Il's words poured from his mouth without pause,"Ton, let's leave. Let's bury the things somewhere else."

  Ton laughed through his nose. "You can go, but I want to see where it’s coming from. You won't even catch a grogg fish that is right under your nose because you're afraid of its ugly face."

  That made him angry. Il hissed, "My father lost a whole finger up to the first knuckle to a grogg, and that grogg was exceptionally ugly. You know it is true. The teeth and the bulbous eyes. I—"

  “There…there it is again."

  Il heard it: a masculine voice, far away, desperate, muffled, unintelligible, perhaps a foreign language.

  Ton walked toward the sound. Il followed against his better judgment.

  The voice persisted and grew louder, though it remained muffled. There came a point when it seemed as though they stood on top of it, but they saw nothing. Then an odor…

  The voice spoke words that were familiar and similar to their own but, perhaps, did not m
ean to them what they once meant to those who spoke the same, stars before.

  "Pas the Ob there's someone—"

  Ton stubbed his toe on a metal pipe. He yelped a little and crouched down to brush away the moss, twigs, and leaves. He uncovered a rusted pipe, buried in the earth. The voice and the smell were appalling.

  Ton stood up, "Crooked men and feet! Don't get close to it, Il. It will knock you off your legs.”

  "Hello, down there!" Il shouted from a safe distance.

  The voice cried out in response.

  Il tried to translate. "It…it sounds like he said he's a dog and that his… something… something has trapped him. And that…he…I have no idea.”

  "You got that out of that?"

  Il began to explain, "Well, you know my mother never spoke properly, and after her sickness she only spoke through one side of her mouth…"

  "Let's dig the man up! At it now!" Ton thrust the shovel into the earth. He dug until he reached a spot where he could not penetrate the soil no matter how he tried. Ton was no small weakling. He stabbed at the soil again and again.

  "Ton. Here," Il called. "A door."

  Il brushed the door clean and opened it by its great round handles.

  The doors landed on the forest floor, the loose hanging ring handles gave a loud clank when they hit the ground.

  "You…you go," Il said.

  Ton descended the stairs, and Il followed, unwilling to be left alone.

  In the darkness, Ton felt the rock wall and protruding boulder with his hands.

  "It's a solid piece of rock. I…"

  The little light that shone down on the stairs from the mouth of the staircase, dimmed. Someone or something stood at the top.

  A small involuntary yelp escaped Il's mouth. Ton, however, turned about to face the guest.

  "Who's out there?" He called.

  Il silently pleaded with taps and "shh’s", but Ton heeded nothing. He stepped forward and looked up the stairs. A hooded figure with white hands hanging at its side looked down at them. Then it spoke.

  "In the constellation of the pawed horse, in nine thousand, five hundred and thirty-two stars, the savior from the Great Cold will emerge from this place. It is not his time. It is your time to proclaim his message. Teach the people to look for him and have hope for humanity's future."

  The hooded man fled. Ton ran up the stairs to catch a closer glimpse, but he was gone. Il came up with Ton, but did not stop to look. Ton felt his friend pass him and heard his flying feet. Ton left the bags, took the shovel, and followed at a respectable pace.

  #

  The elders approved a postponement of the Feast of Descendants for Ton to assemble many men in an effort to free the prisoner in the ground. The women made food for the men to send down the rusted pipe to the poor prisoner. Some men brought a team of oxen to pull the rusted pipe up and, hopefully, create a gaping hole that they could get through. The pipe did not move. They dug all around the cellar but could not penetrate its walls. The man remained in his prison.

  Slytian characters seemed burned into the outer stone wall, but no one understood them. They sent for Il to translate it because he was skilled with the çephel and reading its Slytian characters, but he would not come. He sent his son to do it for them, as he was also learned in the art.

  "Ten thousand stars," The lad read. "At least, in our language. I do not know how to speak Slytian, of course. I only read it."

  Ton remembered what the hooded figure said. Nine thousand, five hundred and thirty two stars from now was the time given. If that was true, this poor man had been buried here for—it was unthinkable. He would not have lived so long. Impossible. Im-poss-i-ble.

  It was difficult for the good-hearted people to give up on the buried man, but there was nothing else they could do. Nature would not surrender the man in the ground, and they were not strong enough to fight it.

  Meanwhile, Il hid himself away, much shaken by his encounter with the white monster. When he emerged from his room, he was a different man.

  His wife, who slept in their main room while he kept her locked out, dropped her ladle in the soup when the door knob finally turned and he emerged. He went in trembling and fearful though hardy in body, but he emerged with confidence and a pale, thin face. He struck her with his eyes. They were no longer gentle, but sharp.

  He left his family in the village so he might live in the woods. Ton visited his friend several times to plead with him to no avail. They had grown up together, but Ton hardly recognized his playmate.

  His wife and children, ashamed of his extreme behavior, left the island. Ton, consumed with guilt over the poor man buried in the earth, and incensed against his friend's abandonment of his family, reached a very low place in his life. His father disappeared—eaten by a wolf was the rumor—and his wife fell ill and died, leaving him to care for their three children alone.

  Most people forgot about Il. A star passed by before the sage emerged from the woods and renewed himself in their memories. Ton had little taste for it when Il stood up in the village square, wild-eyed and barely clothed.

  "My friends!"

  Many stopped their work, some cried out with delight, and a few ran closer to hear him. It was Il, back from the dead!

  "It was over a star ago that I and my friend Ton prepared the Great Cold Home for the Feast of Descendants. We were sent to the southern wood to bury the refuse, as is the custom. It was here that we encountered the prisoner of the woods and his keeper, who we once called the White Monster.

  "He told us that the savior from the Great Cold would come under the constellation of the pawed horse in nine thousand, five hundred and thirty-two stars. I have retreated to solitude under the pawed horse and emerge at the same time. It is now nine thousand, five hundred and thirty one stars until that great day.

  "The markings on the stone wall are clear to those who read the Slytian language. It confirms that something has wrought a wonder in nature in preserving our savior’s life. The white monster bid us to tell all of you about this savior's coming to save humanity. He bid us tell you that humanity should have hope. I, who was cowardly and afraid, shamed myself into my room for many Star rises before I left for the place of our savior.

  "In my room, I drank only water. I lay on the floor like a dog and cried. The white monster shook me as though I were a woman, and its words pierced me so deeply that I knew I must tell you all, but my fear—my horrible fear—it would not permit me to do so. I desired victory over it and stepped out of my fearful and shamed hermitage and into the open, wild hermitage of nature to find the heart of a man within me!"

  More people crowded in to hear Il. He did not speak like Il, he did not move like Il, was it really Il? Some drew closer to scrutinize his features and determine the answers.

  "I took ink and pen with me and every hide and parchment I possessed. I sat atop our savior's dwelling, and waited for the white monster to come. I sat there for three Star rises and Star falls before the hooded man came to me from the west. I asked him to tell me what he wanted to tell me and to give me the heart of a man to speak for it. He sat across from me, only an arm's length away, his legs crossed and his white hands resting on his knees.

  “Then I said, 'are you a man?' The white monster's hooded head nodded once. Then, he spoke, 'Aye, I am a man. You are the man for this task, you are. I am certain.'

  "Such a voice, my friends! I could not help but believe it. It was different from our voices. It was higher, sweeter, feminine, but not womanish. Its hands were delicate, but strong. It was a paradoxical beauty. He said that he was a man. A man—not a spirit, or a monster, or a star—a man.

  "He told me everything: who this savior is, how he will save us, and what must be done. I am here to proclaim this truth to the islands, and I call whoever will join me in this quest of preparation. If we are not looking for our savior when his time comes, he will come to us unheeded, and woe to us, for he will be angry! If we are prepared for his coming as these w
ritings prescribe," he lifted up a sack full of hides and parchments. "Then he will come to our delight and preserve humanity in the greatest hour of need. I implore you all to consider, as I know you always have during the Feast of Descendants, the welfare and good of our children's children's children, and to think on what is best for them. Who will hear what I say?”

  "Not me," Ton shouted.

  Il recognized the voice and searched for its owner. He looked over the crowd until their eyes met. Il’s face lit up. Ton stood across the square with his three children, a fishing rod over his shoulder. Il ran to his old friend and threw his arms around him.

  "Oh, Ton, Ton. I wish you would have come with me."

  "Your wife wishes you would have stayed with her."

  "There was too much in me to dwell with another human being. It is for her good that I left, and for the good of all—"

  "I think you'd be hard pressed to convince her of that."

  "Where is she?"

  "Another island."

  He stopped. "She—she left?"

  Ton nodded. "I helped her move."

  The old Il shone through for only a moment, surprise and sorrow flittered over his eyes but quickly disappeared into the wild face. He turned from his friend as though they had not spoken and continued his plea to the people for devotion to his new-found purpose in life.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Kings and kingdoms rose and fell. Common men became adventurers, adventurers became explorers, explorers became discoverers, discoverers became founders, founders became heroes, and heroes became legends.

  The world changed, wars raged.

  Lies were told, truths were revealed.

  Conspiracy! Tyranny! Revolution! Scandal!

  Technology advanced, poetry declined, ideas ran dry, abominations became loved. Ideas returned, poetry resurged, morality re-emerged, then it failed again.

  Communicate with ease, eat with ease, and grow fat with ease. Again and again.

  The cold homes served as museums. Ancient jars of honey and their ancestor’s supplies, provided and forgotten over time, were on display. Behold, the foolish, superstitious ancestors! How quaint, how sweet. Children visited the cold home museum and the carefully preserved ruins of the very ancient palace of the kings. They pretended to be these ancient, simple people dressed like the pictures in their books, while their parents mocked the religion of Ilians over the dinner table. The believers in government conspiracy and cover-ups held to the ancient religion of Ilians, but sensible, modern people refused.