"The Dance, the Worship, and the Years of Silence," Part 2. (an unfinished story)
With whom could I bargain for her to have a good life?
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" -Isaiah
In the epic tales, each story has a moment—a moment in the dance—a moment when the young women are presented, when she looks up, and sees a man looking upon her. My tutor taught me that these tales are all lies. Sartala, whom my father and my mother chose to school us children in the classic epics when we were young, was a strong woman. Not old, and not young, she could silence the sauciest of my brothers with a stroke of the blade of her eyes. With stillness. Now she is old, and has forgotten many things. Our family has been her only family for quite long. We all respect her.
Shall I speak of the year when I sought the hidden knowledge of the ways of the gods so ardently? Sartala was openly pleased and proud that she would train such a pious young woman, only six season-runnings. She could not have guessed my impiety. The matter I was seeking was this: Who among the gods would take an interest in the destiny of my sister? With whom could I bargain for her to have a good life? It has never been known in the history of our people that a child born so deformed or with such a weak mind has lost its curse as it grew. But this is the blessing I would seek.
So I—the precocious child with lilting voice and gesturing hands—wondered which god to seek for this blessing, and that blessing. I pretended to be interested as Sartala told me of blessings of prosperity, and of fertility, and of health, and of womanly virtue. But always, always, I waited to find which of the gods would care about a child like my sister. And as I waited, I feared that my only answer would be: "the gods are too great; they could not care." Thinking my only answer would be silence…
Part 1 is here:
“I will ask the gods for... a husband who is kind and patient and does not fear a curse.”
Written: September 2015
Influences: C.S. Lewis’ “Till We Have Faces” looms large here! “Those gods—the sort of gods you are always thinking about—are all folly and lies of poets,” Orual’s tutor, “the Fox,” admonishes. (“And yet the real lilt came into his voice when he sang ‘Take me down to the apple-laden land,’ says Orual—I mean Lewis.) Sartala’s words and thoughts resemble it in one way, and yet not in others.
Re-purposing fragments of my writing: Just noticed a parallel within my most recent short story. Excerpt: “But, as I say, I wondered: Is the power in the status of their position? Is it their ‘look’? Or does the very silence of the glance silence the one they look upon?”
Regarding writers “re-purposing” scraps of what they wrote before: I was very excited to discover that a pivotal moment in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Smith of Wooton Major” which resembled something in LoTR. They were both moments in which a major character found it very difficult to release his hold on a treasure beyond price—and each one was a treasure which gave the possessor power in an otherworldly realm. (I wonder which one he wrote first!)