A beautiful day, really, and a pleasure to be walking beside the horses. My friends had entered into the great town, and the four of us took an easy pace back into the hills. Conversation with the others was useless – for they were fairly useless themselves! Broken things, good for nothing but what their master might tell them to do. When I look at them with the Second Sight, they make me sick to my belly. But I felt sorry for these poor, beaten things, so I thought I will cheer them up with a Song.
Well! They are very particular! I sing my favourite Song of a thing to do, which is to crouch in the marshes and look into the pools, staying very still for a long time and watching the spirits’ shadows dancing around, feeling the dried mud baking in the sun around my loins and my Turtle-Maker, but with the wet muds of the marsh sucking gently at my feet. Hah! That is a good thing indeed, and makes one to think on the strange two-ways nature of everything that we are – both earth and water, both sun and mud, both dark and light, both flesh and spirit. Grandfather Turtle bearing the weight of the good brown Earth upon his back through the Endless Waters, his broad back in the light, his feet paddling the blackness, his eyes seeing all that is bright and that is dark.
Those broken things are so stupid! They acted bored, but really, they do not understand. So, I sing them another Song, of the Great Seas before the Earthmaker called on Grandfather Turtle to bear the soils above them. I get nowhere with this Song, they are getting the wind up them and mucking around skittish with the fear of all that water, like it is about to drink them all up in one gulp. So stupid.
But then I get the Song that is loved so well by all that is really wild in its heart, even these poor, broken things, the Song of running on the firm sands by the beautiful bay, with the gold kicking up behind your bald feet, the salt wind giving you the tears of bright movement, and the good pain in the lungs that shows your spirit is well pleased. Oh yes! They love this one all right! I keep singing it for them all day long, as really, I am very sorry for them. It is not a right thing to do, to break a beast and make it move and think in ways it is not meant to do. Oh, my master has given me a sweetmeat, how happy I must be! Oh, my master tells me I am good, how happy I must be! Oh, my master beat me with a stick, how naughty I must be! What rubbish!
That is the trouble with these peoples. They do not treat with the creatures rightly, bending them to their will in such a way that they destroy a thing, really. It is another sign of their weakness, and of how far they have wandered from Korgatsu. They think that they can make a creature do what they want and it will not matter; that they can tear the soil and make it give them what they want and it will have no bad consequence. What foolishness! They have wandered far, and lost Earthmaker. They are feeble, and so are driven to grand and selfish spirits to call God and worship, and end up no better than these snapped beasts. That is why, when the others are not with me, I walk with the horses, and do not ride on their backs, to remind them of what they are. But they do not take the hint, they are stupid.
I sing long to them, and the day closes around us.
It is a long time back to the Hill, and I leave the stupid horses untethered – they are too daft to go anywhere useful to them. I take good care concealing the war-gear of my fellows, I feed myself enormously, and take much sweet water, and then I wander up, up, up, as the Heavens begin to stoop lower, and the Sun desires to drink itself to death in the Sea beyond the mountains. The Magic Time, the evening, when the spirits of the Dawn are drunk and fumbling, and Those of the Night wake up to snap at them. This was a fine time to see through the Misty Eyes of Uncle Heler.
As I slow with the climb getting harder, and the air does not come so easy to the draw of the lung, I glaze my vision, and here they all come dancing before me, the bright creatures of the elsewhere. Things hiding their bright eyes under the rocks, or flashing through the grasses, and the lonely soaring soul of an eagle high above. The strange two-natured way of life – as the day darkens, so the spirits of the night ignite the Hill! Baby insects crawling and flying, mosses leeching the moistening air, petals closing round the glowing heads of their sprites.
Well, a while longer and I come upon him. It’s the very bare peak of the Hill, with all the curve of the Bent World around us, and surely beyond my sight the far-off darkening sea. I see all the frantic activity buzzing around in the air at first, revealed through Misty Eyes. He’s naked, kneeling, bent double and softly rocking, his cheek against the ground. Then I see his soul sear on the edge of the night, burning up to make the skies sting! The wind’s up, and then I hear his chanting. He been at it a while now, I can tell, I know the signs when a man’s been at the spirit-songs long – the strange flow of a tongue that’s cracked, a throat that’s dry beyond desert, the coarse overtone of a voice a God will hear. He is oblivious. I could be a Goat-Man on fire, he wouldn’t see me coming.
Oh, but he been trying everything to get Them on him. There’s the charred sticks, the basin, the stones. His arms are all well cut –oh yes! They like that - and his legs and body are all well-wet with his blood. I can see the spirits flitting and dancing about him, but some come, some go, few will stay. It is not to Them that he’s calling. I jog up and set some water near to him. His black eyes don’t see me, and I take the chance to look long, long into the night of them. Fascinating. Beautiful. Terrifying. Where you gone, Cleombrotus? Keep on it, man, you get there! I can feel it!
I sit back aways and think on how to help him. I chew on some cettel nuts and let my mind take its path to my kin-folk.
‘Hey, Old Man, Wise-Beak, what do I do here to help him? Maybe I harmonize a ritual, a great ceremony to help him do the thing here? A fine old Chant or Song to aid his quest now. Come on, you know the way of it, open your old craw and you tell me!’
‘You do nothing, Young Fool, you Soft-Back! You leave him be: if he be right with his Gods then he get there! And why you mess about with them knackered-up horses? You stupid as they!’
Well! Always I am to be at the end of the sharp tongue and the gnarly mouth! I spit out those damn cettel nuts and stump about a bit. At least I keep his body safe while he gone, then. Still he murmuring, on and on the intoning. I lie awhile. I watch the stars come out. The Great Dragon spiralling He-SheSelf across the sky. I rock myself to his moaning rhythm. The Heavens slowly creep...
Then, it come, and there was no warning, it come right out of nowhere. A shock and a rush, and his broken voice is shouting! Still on his knees, but his back arched all the way backward, and his great shout flying out from his stretched mouth, and his blood-crusted arms clutching the air! I glaze over with Misty Eyes again, and slip into the Otherworld, and Ai! It’s a fierce Black Wind upon him, taking him, pouring in and out of his mouth and his cuts and his eyes! Ai! It’s a terror and a screaming! I cannot bear to look on him! Oh why can I not rip my eyes away!
I’m up, and shaking, and running about like a crab with a gull on him! Boy, the spirits around are whirling, they go crazy, launching themselves in the air, and this Dark Vapour, it pushing itself right into Cleombrotus, squeezing its way in to every last bit of his body. Surely, he’s going to bust wide open!
Then he’s rolled on his side, his eyes tight shut, and he’s gasping like he dove down far as Father Loon. All the night’s quiet about us, just the moan of the wind, and the panting of him, and of me too. I run up, seeing the spirit within him dimming now. Diminished, exhausted, crumbling. I give him water. I crouch near to him awhile, keep my eyes on the skies, on the lands below us. I shiver.
He slumbers, this Son of Darkness, the sleep of the Dead. All this, for the whim of a spirit. What is it makes us do such a thing to ourselves? To abase ourselves to some God of a spirit to gain his small favour whilst we lose our soul for the privilege? These Gods are so selfish, they care nothing for us, only for what they can get out of us. And then, they will leave us to die when they have no more use for us! Like so much horse-flesh we are to them, and yet we let them do it! Let them break us and have ourselves beg for sweetmeats and cry shy of the stick if we go our own way. It is weakness. What are we, really?
I cover him up, and draw my cloak around me. It is all very confusing, and I am a long way from home. I am up on a hill in the dark with the winds, and the seas are nowhere.
It will be a long time, but I sit here and wait for the Dawn.