"...[name] stood in the [name2] Hall, a hundred peers watching from the galleys
above. She called her Provider's name, and all could feel the power she commanded.
[name3] summoned his wards, but all that watched knew his efforts were in vain.
The next name she offered was his, and the misery of [name3] was legend."
translated from Dekàlan fragment found in ruins of Ilduùn
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Portrait of Anzal (and Kera) Lapth
Dates: 628-now DR
Place: Loston, Oth
Type: Known (O-34)
I remember the first time I noticed Kera, my wife.
It was summer. I don’t remember the year. We had been running
up and down the shore playing `Urdar hunter’ for most of the
day. Mostly we weren’t allowed to play that far away from
the town but there hadn’t been any real Urdar sightings in
almost a year, and we’d told our parents that we weren’t
going to cross the road. It was getting late and the sun had turned
the clouds from white to orange and red. We were laying on one of
the irregular lakeside hills watching the clouds move across the
mirroring surface of the Nularya Lun. A couple of the children had
already run home, complaining that they’d be catching grief
for being late to dinner. The remaining group extracted promises
from them so that they’d keep to the story we’d concocted
to cover our day’s adventuring. They said that they wouldn’t
tell and ran back into town.
Sitting there on the hillside watching the sun fall
into the woods, one of the older boys started talking about a monster
that lived on the south side of lake. Most didn’t believe
him because the older children were always telling the younger ones
scary stories. He said it was true and that if we wanted he would
show it to us. He warned us that if we went we would have to be
very quiet, because the monster was sleeping. This was different.
You never could see most of their “monsters” because
they’d only crawl into your house at night when no-one was
awake, and disappear when you lit a candle. He eventually convinced
the group to follow him and he scooted down the hill and ran south
along the shoreline.
In time it was getting darker and long passed time
for turning back. Whatever trouble awaited us at home would be the
same then, than it would be if we turned back a little bit later.
We pressed on as fast as our legs would carry us, jumping across
over-flow streams and pushing on through thicker and thicker weeds.
It occurred to us that even if the boy’s monster wasn’t
real, there were plenty of woodland creatures that were. The woods
are filled with noises in the evening and each one made us jump
nearly out of our skins. When I’d almost had enough the boy
said we were there. Relieved, I began to turn back, but then I saw
the thing.
Rising out of the twilight stood a large thing. It
looked like a giant sitting on the lakeshore, its back bent and
its head heavy with thinking, or perhaps smelling the ground. Most
of the kids stopped far short of the monster, but the older children
ran up to it and were poking it with sticks. “Don’t
wake it!” yelled one of the kids, but then grabbed her own
mouth realizing her folly. The older children just laughed and poked
the large black thing harder, which now made a deep metal sound.
I followed some of the other children closer and asked what it was.
The older boy said they were slaying the monster and continued to
bang it with their sticks. This seemed like a fun game so I found
myself a stick and joined in.
As soon as I’d returned with a stick of my
own I saw that the other children had stopped and were standing
back. I stopped and looked around at the others. Something was different.
Then I heard a sound like a thousand bees coming from inside the
thing. It was humming. I also heard one of the older boys say to
another “it’s never done that before”. “My
papa says it’s harmless,” said another, stepping forward
and striking it again. Soon most of them had resumed banging on
it and we couldn’t hear the hum anymore over the din of their
sticks. I eventually gathered the courage to walk up to it, but
instead of banging it I placed a hand on its smooth metal hide.
It was vibrating and warm. I mentioned this to some of the others
and soon most of the monster-slayers had their hands on it and had
their ears pressed to its side. A familiar voice announced, “it’s
never done that before.”
It was about that time that Kera called down to us.
Kera was younger than me but a good climber. When we looked up everyone
saw that she’d managed to climb up the spine of the monster
and now stood some twenty feet high. Her brother asked her to come
down but she walked around up there talking about how she could
see far across the lake and back toward the town. One of the older
boys threw her a stick and she banged it against the top of the
thing and said that it was slain. Lots of the children cheered.
They wanted to get this over with. It was getting dark and almost
everyone wanted to get home. I pressed my cheek against the warm
metal and listened to the monster hum. Whatever it was. It was not
dead.
Everyone seemed finished with the adventure and were
talking about returning when Kera’s brother yelled out from
the other side. We ran around to find the little girl laying in
an unnatural way on the ground. Her legs were bent wrong and her
right elbow was turned and rested beside her head. She was awake
and breathing and on the verge of screaming. One of the three older
boys grabbed Kera’s brother by the shirt and said, “We
were never here. This is your fault. She shouldn’t have been
climbing on it”. With that, they sprinted off into the weeds
and long low ridges. Kera started screaming. I helped her brother
pick her up. We didn’t know how to, her arms and legs twisted
like they were. I held her feet which didn’t seem to bother
her, but her brother held her under her arms and she winced and
cried with every step we took.
It took us a while to find the road and turn left
back toward the town. Some of the children had run ahead to get
help. Their story was that we’d been playing on the edge of
the woods when Kera had fallen from a tree. It was dark when we
saw the lantern lights and a couple farmers heading our direction.
He laid her down in the rutted road and waited. The men looked scared
when they arrived, pointing their lanterns out into the night. One
of the younger farmers had a sword in one hand. I’d seen travelers
pass through with swords, but didn’t know any farmers that
had one. The older man picked Kera up himself and told us to stay
close. As a group we walked to the tavern where many of the parents
were gathered to discuss their “lost” children. When
we first appeared in the doorway we each got threatening looks but
then that changed when the farmer entered with Kera. He laid her
on a table and someone ran out into the night to retrieve the priest,
who someone said was “good at setting bones”.
After some time the priest arrived and gravely looked
over the girl who was now passing in and out. He removed her shirt
and dress and ran his fingers over her bruised and swollen skin.
He nodded to himself a lot. The parents circled the table quietly,
watching him. The priests produced a bottle of blue powder from
his coat which he told someone to mix three pinches in a glass of
water. They did. Someone held up Kera’s head and they poured
the concoction down her throat. Almost instantly her eyes closed
and her body went limp. The priest looked pleased. After that he
probed her bruises harder with his fingers, feeling where her arm
and legs had been broken. It was later explained to me that when
he was satisfied that he understood each break well enough, he would
grab the limb and twist it back into place. Kera seemed to shudder
for a minute after each resetting, but she did not wake up. After
a while she looked regular again.
The next spring, I saw Kera planting wildflowers
in front of her parents’ house. I walked over to ask how she
was doing and she said fine. While sitting, she lifted her dress
to her knees and showed me how her knees had grown knobby. The priest
had said she didn’t heal right but she wasn’t sure how
she could have done it differently. She pointed to two branch-crutches
and explained that she needed them to walk sometimes because her
balance wasn’t too good. She also said she wouldn’t
be climbing any more trees. We talked for a while and then I continued
on my way. Over the next couple days, months and years I stopped
by Kera’s home more and more.
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