Prax! Oh, Prax! Oh, sad and lonely! Oh, so sad and lonely, that is what the Wasteland sing to you, and its song so mournful and so long, over and over until it become a very part of you, and always you will carry a dried out void in your soul that no amount of Sweet Water can soothe and make it Vanish.
The barren Earth, so marred and scorched, stretch itself out from your cracked feet forever, and all it want to do is make you as parched and arid as its own lifeless Self – sterile and fruitless and empty.
The Spirits all so strong and violent in that harsh place, and They move real quick and scream and wail at you or at anything that passes or at nothing, shredding the star-smattered black nights and the bald fierce blindness of the daylit Sky above you. Such a cacophony, such a soul-shattering howling and roaring They will strike at your Spirit with if you dare to open your ears to try to hear the Spirit Songs in that blasted waste.
All day long and all night They gibber at you, so you end up gibbering too, shaking and starting at any sound or movement that come about you, really unnerving you and tearing any sense of hope or peace from your soul. Oh, take back Your gift to me now, Uncle Heler! These Misty Eyes will show me nothing out here but pain! There is no escaping Their constant keening and baying. Oh, the dreadful appearance They display to you, the frightfulness of Their countenance They will mark you with should you dare to peek at Them in Their misery and shrieking awful loneliness! So strong is the Presence of Death in that barren emptiness, that the Spirits grow strong indeed with no green or fleshy or watery thing to tie Their lost dead Self to. Exiled, unwanted, unworshipped, unloved. They grow great in Their Power out here, with no Living Thing to appease Them.
It is not a Right Thing to drive These dead souls into exile in this way. Oh, the Affliction of Death that was unleashed upon us all and makes such an almighty mess of our continued existence! Sad and lonely and mad, these poor shunned Spirits, spurned and scorned and forgotten, cursed by Death.
Listen, my Father, he tell me well why he himself is so out-cast and rejected, why the whole people find him so abhorrent when he come back from his Kindling in the Black Caves, and why all those who awaken their Spirit-Self are turned away by the Flesh-Men of the tribe and have to fend for themselves away from the Living People after their Change. He say to me: ‘Young Soft-back, every people has a scapegoat and a Wanderer, one who is Unwished-For in the tribe. To them has fallen a grave and awful duty, and it is allotted to them to swim a lost and lonesome sea. For they it is who hold and stem the people’s Fearing, and as even you know, young fool, that Fearing is of Death.
‘Death is that thing that steals from the Flesh-Self the spirit, and once It come, there was no way ever to be a turning-back. It fall to us all, as It fall to Grandfather Mortal, and not even Great Sofal can keep Its black tongue from our eyes.
‘So it is, my fool, my Gramper, that long has it been in our family that we will bear this dreadful task. For without us, all the tribe would swim fearfully, not knowing with who they may be dealing, and whether they have their interest at heart, or simply want take out their vengeance and their terror on The Living, and drive us all apart.’ And he grimace and he shake his arms and make his eyeballs go white in the back of his head. Holy Shit! He really know how to scare the crap out of you, does my old man – and when I was small I was sure that the answer to why everyone so frightened of him was much simpler, what with such a bizarre and fickle carry-on he make.
But no, it is not only because he do such strange and incalculable things, and commit such outrageous acts against the Cherished Taboos, and is black and burnt from head to feet since his Great Change. He tell me why it is, and he let me know why always I am to be treated differently, and why even my best of friends looked at me sideways from time to time, or whisper when I draw myself nearby them; and how much worse that is all going to get some dark day, when I go down into the Caves and let my Flesh-Self die of my own volition, and make bright lights in that part of the Self supposed in everyone else to stay asleep, and all the gods and Spirits forbid you ever wake It up!
‘Gramper, the Dead, They need The Living,’ he say to me, ‘They need Them more than The Living need The Dead. They will come back and haunt us, and heckle us and terrify us because They want still to be alive. They are sickened by Their being cheated by Death, and They will do whatever They can to make sure that we suffer for it too while we are still alive! Some of Them have things They still want to do; some of Them have desires and grudges They still chase; and all of Them want to be back in Their Flesh - or someone else’s if that all rotted away and gone.
‘Who will stop Them, Gramper? Who will keep Their menace and severity away? Who will put Them in Their place, and keep Them there?’ And he grasp my shoulder hard with his blackened hand, and he push his fishy breath right in my face, and he look for all the world like he is absolutely crazy and going to make me crazy with him, too.
Of course, it is not as simple as all that, and not nearly so frightening as he like to make out, not all the time. Some of Them are friendly, and some of Them don’t care one egg for the Living at all. Many of them are not too bright, and just need swatting away like the flies in the Swamps, and told to go shoo! for being so stupid. And some of Them will give us help and aid when no one Living is able or around to do it, and when the Flesh-Self fail or there is no one left alive any more who knows what is needed now; or tell us stories and remind us who we are when we have grown careless or weak or forgetful.
But some of Them are angry. Some of Them are like These dreadful Spirits out here in Prax, lost in the Wastes forever. The Spirits out here need a man who will negotiate with the Dead Ones, soothe Their pains and plump Their pride, and chide Them and sometimes beat the Hell out of Them to remind Them of Their inevitable Dead place, and keep Them from bothering the Living. Someone who knows what it is to be as sad and lonely as Theirselves. And as I swim this wayward and wandering path, lost in the currents and tossed on the tides and battered by the waters, alone and far from home and wanted by no one, I come to understand Their sorrow. For Their sorrow is my sorrow. Their indignation is my indignation. Their terror is my terror. And Their exile is my exile.
And only now do I see why my father send me on this Swimabout. To be broken, and beaten, and defeated, despised and crushed; to be depressed and maddened, to know what it is to be lost, unwanted, and frustrated, and to fail. And just as my old father is Unwished-For, so will I be feared and denied. And yet as he is called on when the tribe need his knowledge or skill or the help of The Dead to aid them, so will the people call me when they are at need. And though I will live an outcast and pariah, yet will I never be lonely - for having died, I will treat the Dead Ones rightly: and so They will not come to shriek and bawl at me, but to sing.