Archive for December, 2009
The Topaz
Monday, December 21st, 2009
It was a great golden topaz. A man in rags carried it in his last pocket across the hundred-year ice, until he came to the watch house at the mountain’s foot. The sentry took him in and gave him soup.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Jim Carrys It,” he said. “I’ll tell the story of it later; it ain’t a disease. Your name?”
“Annie Watches,” she laughed. “That’s the story of it, too.”
“Well,” he said gently, “someone else will have to watch, because you have to carry this now,” and he pulled the topaz out of his pocket.
Her eyes got round as soup bowls.
“The stories are true?” she asked.
“They are,” he nodded. “Except nobody knows if the ending is gonna be true.”
In the morning they decided he should stay and watch, as if they had a choice.
“You have enough food here till I get back. Feel free to carve,” she laughed, waving at ice walls covered in old stories about iPods and fields of grain and so on, and new ones, like the one about the topaz.
“It’s true?” she asked. “I just have to give it to the next person?”
“We hope it’s true.”
When she got to the village we all went down to the longhouse; she said, “Now I’ve got here the topaz that we heard the stories about. The man who gave it me is watching for me. We might be the last people to get it. The stories may be true: if we pass it to every person who was born when it was found, every person on earth…” She stopped there, too scared of hope.
We passed it hand to hand round the circle, like people had all over the world.
My name was Nicky No-name-yet. I sat by Annie, so I was going to be last, and I worried I might really be the last person of all, because I thought it should be somebody special.
When the topaz came to me it felt warm from everybody’s hands. Then it got warmer. It burst into light like the sun we’d seen once. It vanished.
Nothing else happened. Later Annie went back. A month after, she and Jim came over the peak and said, “the ice is cracking.”
“Look by your foot, Nicky Topaz,” said my sister. There was a tundra-pea sprout there, the first we had ever seen. We quick put a seal bone fence around it. Then we started dancing and shouting.
Chinrezik and the Isle of Demons
Friday, December 18th, 2009
On the south edge of the city, the river splits into two around an island. Now, in the time when the city was smaller and that island a far-off piece of rock, a group of terrible demons lived there. Manlike in visage, they possessed none of the goodness of heart and lived selfish, sordid, drunken lives.
A ship wrecked on the smaller rocks near that island, casting the sailors ashore. There, despite the city less than a day away, they fell prey to the demons’ power and adopted their lifestyle.
The city-guardian Chinrezik saw this and saddened.
Taking on the form of a giant horse, like the legendary Horse-King, he flew to the island on a foggy morning when the demons slept and said to the sailors, “Your wives and husbands are waiting with your children, fearing the worst. Climb onto my vast back and I will return you to them.”
The sailors all looked at one another, reluctant to leave this pleasurable new life – but, one by one, began to agree that their families were more important. Though some thought sadly of a return to life’s difficulties after their many days on the island, they followed the others’ – and Chinrezik’s – sentiments.
“When I leap from this island into the sky,” said the giant horse-Chinrezik, “the demons will sense your departure and call for you in the most tempting way. Fix your gaze forward and you will be safe.”
“We understand,” said the former Captain.
So the sailors climbed on the vast back and Chinrezik leapt into the sky and it was as he had said: the demons awoke and began calling, reminding the sailors of the many selfish joys the island held.
To Chinrezik’s dismay, several sailors longed for this life of constant selfishness more than their families and proper lives. As each looked at the island, he or she fell from the vast back. By the time they reached a safe distance, only the Captain and three of her crew remained.
Chinrezik extolled the virtue of these people, and he adjured them to console the lost sailors’ families and teach them similar values.