Pastim

Pastim will crouch quietly in the blackberry patch, surrounded by the vines and thorns. He’ll be thankful that he choose this spot under a few scraggly oak trees, where the shade from the trees weakens the heat of the late afternoon. The blackberries will be just now ripening; they’ll be irresistible to the deer when they start foraging this evening. He will know from their tracks that they’ll be coming by here. All he will have to do is wait.

It will have taken him six hours to get here from his village down in the valley. He will have trekked all the way up and over the ridge into this drainage. The creek a hundred feet away will drain to the west, into the lands of the Chasts. He will know that he will be taking a chance trespassing on their land, but he will have figured that this little valley is so far from their village, and so much closer to his own, that they will never bother coming this far east. Still, Pastim will be careful. 

The sun will slowly sink and the oppressive heat will slowly abate. He will shift his position many times, trying to keep his muscles from cramping in the tight little nook he will be hiding in. And he will do it as quietly as possible, just in case a deer or Chast happens to wander close. 

The sun will set and the evening will cool rapidly. Pastim will listen carefully to all the night sounds of insects, birds, and bats, straining to hear the faint sound of a deer’s foot daintily touching upon the ground. He will stay low, close to the ground, not to stay out of sight but to insure that his scent doesn’t travel far. The air will slowly sift down the gentle slope, so he will focus his ears in the direction uphill from him. 

The hours will slowly pass. He’ll note a few stars wheeling overhead, only occasionally visible between the branches of the oak trees. He will curse himself when his stomach rumbles; he will remind himself to bring more food next time. 

It won’t be until after midnight that he’ll catch the sound of deer footsteps approaching. The deer will obviously have this blackberry bush in mind, as it will move directly towards the blackberries. Still keeping his head down and relying solely on sound, Pastim will smile to himself as he anticipates the coming flash of action. Slowly he will raise himself ever so slightly. Slowly he will pull his bow upwards to aim towards the likely position of the deer. Slowly, slowly, he will raise himself into shooting position. He will see the deer, a dark smudge on this moonless night, barely twenty feet away. The deer will be cautious as deer always are, stopping every few steps to glance about and sniff the air. He will feel the air slowly washing over his face and smile again at the knowledge that his scent is being carried away from the deer. 

Pastim will feel a rock under his knee as he puts more weight upon the knee, rising higher. The rock will hurt, but he will not allow himself to be distracted from his quarry. The deer will be hesitant, remaining still for long moments. Pastim will remain patient, bow not yet in position and arrow only loosely strung. The rock under his knee will continue to hurt, but he’ll notice that the rock itself feels strange. It won’t have the sharp corners or edges that rocks prefer to use to dig into one’s flesh at moments like this. It will instead present only a dull ache. Pastim will try to focus all of his attentions on the deer, but the oddness of the rock continues to distract him. 

The deer will decide that the situation doesn’t seem safe, and will turn away before getting close enough to shoot. Pastim will hesitate for just a second before deciding not to loose his arrow; at this range, it couldn’t penetrate deeply enough to seriously injure the deer, but could stick in its flesh and so be carried away. Pastim will have spent hours making that arrow; he will decide that he shouldn’t waste it on a poor shot. He will, however, sink down in disappointment. 

Then he’ll turn his attention to the rock underneath his knee. His groping fingers will find it and pull it towards his face. He won’t be able to see much, but wiping the dirt away, he’ll feel its smoothness and roundness. Testing it with his fingers, he’ll be astonished by the perfection of its sphericity. Putting down his bow, he’ll roll it between his palms and discover that it is indeed perfectly spherical. He’ll hold it up to gaze at it, but he won’t be able to see as much as his fingers tell him, only that it is about the size of his thumb. In his excitement, he’ll decide to take the chance of moving loudly at night in order to get home immediately. He’ll reassure himself that Mr. Mountain Lion will likely be intimidated by such brazen behavior. 

He’ll pause only a few times to catch his breath, and to examine his rock. Visual examination will confirm the perfection of its sphericity, and even more: the rock will be a brilliant blue with a reddish swirl sweeping across it. It will be the most profoundly beautiful thing Pastim has ever seen.

He’ll get home a few hours after sunrise, breaking into a run for the last few hundred yards. He’ll go straight to Fornak’s house, where he’ll thrust the rock into Fornak’s hands. Fornak will be astonished, too, but he’ll restrain his emotions while asking questions as to where and how Pastim found this amazing rock. 

People will gather round the two as the interrogation proceeds. Fornak will hold the rock up for all to see, and they will gawk in awe. The people will implore Fornak to explain the meaning of the rock, but he will equivocate. “I must see where you found this rock.” He will declare. 

Five men will set out: Pastim, Fornak, and three sturdy fellows, all armed with spears. As they approach the ridge separating their own land from that of the Chasts, they’ll slow down and move with greater circumspection. They won’t expect to run into any Chasts, but they’ll know that trespassing like this can trigger a war, so they’ll want to be especially careful. 

It will take most of the day to reach their destination; Fornak will tire more quickly than the younger men and will move more slowly. Pastim will have some difficulty finding the exact location of his discovery, but he’ll be dead sure when he finds it. He’ll point eagerly to the precise spot where the rock impinged upon his knee. Fornak will examine the spot closely, raking through the leaf litter and soil with his fingers. He’ll straighten out, scan the area, noting carefully the arrangement of trees and bushes. He’ll direct Pastim to dig down into the soil underneath the location of the rock. He’ll walk upwards in a widening triangle, pushing away debris with the butt of his spear to examine the soil underneath. After all this effort, he’ll be frustrated and at a loss for explanation. He’ll decide to return home, but will order the group to stay close to the creek bed and search for similar rocks. 

Amazingly, Pastim will find another round rock similar in size to the first rock and also perfectly round. This rock, however, will be orange in color. Fornak will turn it over and over in his hand, compare it to the blue rock, expressing awe at how perfectly the two match each other. The red rock will not glisten as brightly as the blue rock; its surface will have lost some of the polish in the blue rock. But Fornak will know that the two rocks are at heart the same. 

When they return to the village, Fornak will declare that Pastim will be his successor as the wise man of the village. He will order additional searches of the area, but nothing more will be found. Fornak will die a few years later, and Pastim will take his place as wise man. Everybody will believe that the rocks that Pastim found are magical and bring good luck to him as well as to the whole village.

As the years pass, hunters will occasionally visit the special place where Pastim found the magic rocks, but they’ll find nothing—until one day, many years later, when a hunter named Lilan will find not one but two more magic rocks! The first one he found on the surface, and the second one was just beneath it in the soil. Pastim will order a big expedition with many searchers to scour the area, and another magic rock will be found. Jubilant, the village will hold a grand celebration and build a special altar in the center of the village to keep the magic rocks safe. People will pray to the magic rocks, but only Pastim will be allowed to touch them.

Pastim will die in due time, and several generations will pass without any new discoveries, despite regular searches. There will be several encounters with Chasts near the special place, but in each case the searchers will prudently withdraw without a fight, and the Chasts will be satisfied in chasing them off. 

Many years later, the people of the Red Village, as the owners of the magic rocks are known, will swap one of their young women, Murnal, for a young woman from the Tree Village people 15 miles downriver from them. The Red Village and the Tree Village have always had friendly relations and frequently swap women; it’s sound genetic policy. Murnal will be given to a young man and they will be assigned farmland previously worked by a man who is now too old to work the land. They will settle down and raise a family.

But the Chasts will be an aggressive group and one year they will raid the Tree Village lands, killing several men and taking Murnal and two other Tree Village women. Murnal will be given to a wifeless young Chast man, and will settle into her new life with the resignation appropriate to the times. 

One day, while washing clothes in the river with other Chast women, somebody will ask Murnal about the rumors that the Red Village has some sort of magical talismans. She will fondly recall the magic rocks and how they are kept on an altar in the center of the Red Village. Another woman will ask her how they obtained the rocks, and Murnal will blithely report that it was a sacred place on Chast land up near the Rat Mountain.

One of the Chast women will report the story to Maingrel, the Chast chieftain, who will immediately call a council of the Main Men. They will express outrage upon hearing the news that the people of the Red Village have been stealing magic rocks that rightly belong to the Chast people. They will demand an immediate attack on the Red Village, but Maingrel wasn’t elected chieftain for being stupid. He will recommend a more subtle approach that would be more likely to succeed. 

First, the Main Men will not succor outrage among the other Chast people. The story will spread, and the Main Men will reassure people that they have always known of the magic rocks and have been receiving proper payment from the Red Village people. Meanwhile, Maingrel will begin a reconnaissance program, sending scouts into Red Village territory, mapping out the safest routes to approach the village, the best hiding places to use during the journey, and how to attack the village at night.

The Main Men will endorse Maingrel’s plan and begin executing it, a process that will take several months. Having put together the whole plan in secret, all the Chast men will set out one day with a full complement of spears, clubs, food, and water. The first day they will travel to the boundary separating their land from that of the Red Village. That night they will enter Red Village territory and get to a thick wood just three miles from the Red Village. They will spend the second day hiding in the wood and sleeping. The second night they will approach the village. It will have the standard layout: an artificial island in the river, surrounded by walls of logs, with a short causeway connecting the island to the land. The gate to will be heavily reinforced and fronted with rock, with guard towers on either side of the gate. The gate will be closed at night. 

A few of the Chast men will hide underneath the small bridge on the causeway, while the bulk of the men will hide themselves in a depression about a hundred yards from the gate. A third, smaller group of Chast men, the fastest runners, will hide themselves near one of the main fields about 300 yards away from the village. They will wait for morning and the departure of the Red Village men to work in the fields. The first step will be an attack by the third group on a few of the field workers. This will start a ruckus that will draw all the Red Village men; the Chast attackers will flee. This will be the signal for the other two groups to emerge from their hiding places and rush the gate. The four men under the bridge will get to the gate before the guards can close it; they will fight the guards while the main force approaches the gate. Once inside, the two forces will kill the gate guards, close the gate, and prepare to defend the village against the returning Red Village men. A group of six men will run to the central altar and seize the magic rocks, along with some appropriate girls as hostages. 

Once the Red Village men have returned, Maingrel will negotiate with them. He will accuse them of stealing the magic rocks from Chast land; he will proclaim that the Chast men have come only to reclaim their rightful property. If the Red Village men want to fight, the Chast men will slaughter all the women and children inside the village; their alternative will be to permit the Chast men to depart in safety, bringing the most nubile Red girls along with them as hostages. Maingrel will add the requirement that one Red village youngster who knows the location where the magic rocks were found guide them to that location. The Red Village men will be furious and will scream bloodcurdling threats, but eventually their leader, Fromkilty, will gain their ears and convince them that their best option is to accede to Maingrel’s proposal. 

Slowly, carefully, the gate will open and the Chast men will emerge in a tight pack, with six of the Red Village girls and a blonde boy inside the group. They will move past the Red Village men with Fromkilty shouting reminders to his men to let them pass. The Chast group will move slowly until they are well past the Red Village men, then the group will loosen up and move more quickly. The Red men will follow them, but Maingrel will demand that only a small contingent follow them to the border between their lands. Again, Fromkilty will accede to their demands. After walking all day, the Chast men will reach the border and release the girls; the boy will stay and guide them to the place of the magic rocks. The Chasts spend the night there, and the next morning they release the boy with some food and water to make it home.

 Both sides will return to their homes, with much anger on one side and triumph on the other.

To insure that the Chast land is respected, Maingrel will build an altar at the location of the magic rocks. They will also build a shelter for the altar, and they will clear the area of brush. One of the old Chast men will be assigned to keep a vigil at the altar and search for more magic rocks every day. The Red Village people will never return to the spot.

The old man’s constant searching will eventually turn up another magic rock. This one will be especially strange: it will be clear like water, with something colorful inside. Yet it will still be hard as rock. Nobody will have ever seen anything like it. Encouraged by this discovery, Maingrel will provide another old man to help with the search. Together, the two old men will completely clear everything near the altar right down to the dirt, and then expanding outwards from there.

Six months later they will find another magic rock, but the truly sensational discovery will come just eight days after that. Whilst scraping away at the dirt nearly 50 yards away from the altar, the old man will uncover something white. It will be much larger than the magic rocks, about the size of a boy’s fist. Digging excitedly, the two men will unearth the most astounding object they will have ever seen. It will be dirty but on cleaning it will prove to be pure white. It will be a bit longer than the span of a big man’s hand. Each end will be rounded, but the cross section of the length will be circular, like a big tree branch. Unlike a big tree branch, it will be perfectly circular in cross section; like the magic rocks, it will be perfectly smooth. 

The two old men will stare at it, mouths agape. One will turn it over and over in his hands, and then freeze at the sound of something moving inside. He will tilt it one way and hear a slight click, then tilt it the other way and hear another click. The second man will seize it from the first man and rock it back and forth, hearing the clicking sounds made by something inside sliding around. They will stare at each other wide-eyed, not knowing whether to be elated or terrified. They will sit for an hour, tilting it back and forth, holding it up to their ears, shaking it, trying to figure out what is inside it. Then they will begin the journey back to the Chast village, arriving late at night, demanding that the guards open the gate for them. They will wake Maingrel to show him the mysterious white thing. He too will shake it, listening to the rattle. He will call an immediate council of the Main Men, where they will discuss the meaning of this awesome discovery. The discussion will continue well past sunrise, and the rest of the Chast people will gather around the meeting room, but they will be shooed away by a guard. 

The council will decide that the object must somehow be opened, but it will defy any attempt. The composition of the object will be obvious: a cylinder with a cap on each end. But no amount of effort will prise either of the caps off the ends. Even the strongest of men will fail to budge the caps. But they will find some success using their obsidian knives; determined scraping with the sharpest knives will slowly cut into the caps. They will find the material to be harder than oak, but not as hard as rock.

The work will take all day and into the night. Their first cut will give them a tantalizing glimpse of something inside, but no access to it. They will make a second cut to expand the hole, and then a third. Around midnight they’ll get the hole large enough for something to drop out of the hole: a black round rock, just like all the other magic rocks. But something even larger will be inside, and it will take the rest of the night to enlarge the hole enough to retrieve that object. 

They will find that object even more confusing. Black will it be, but with some shiny places. It will pass from one hand to the next. Some will sniff it and smell nothing. One fellow will try to bite it and find it rock-hard. Much discussion will flow for hours as they try to assess this weird, weird object. 

Then one of the men will jump back and drop it. “I pushed on this shiny thing and it moved!” he will cry. The others will crowd around as he repeats his action. Wonder of wonders, his action will push a shiny piece out from inside the black object. With some experimentation, they will discover that it rotates outward from inside. One of the men, fingering the shiny part, will run his finger along its edge and suddenly cry out in pain, a line of blood appearing on his finger where he ran it along the edge.

Minkey the seed-master will cry out, “It’s a knife just like our obsidian knives, only much sharper!” Maingrel will seize it and examine it closely, gently running his finger along the cutting edge. He will look up at the group and say, “Yes, it’s a knife!” 

Stunned by the realization, all the men will step back and sit down, staring in puzzlement at this amazing knife. It will be thinner than any obsidian knife they have ever known, and yet stronger. The shiny stuff of which it is made will mystify them. Maingrel will lift the knife and stab it into a wooden stool. The blow would shatter any obsidian knife, but this knife will sink into the wood so deeply that Maingrel will need a second hand to get it out. He will pick up another bit of wood and easily slice off shavings so fine that they curl. 

Maingrel will hold the knife up for all to see, and they will all know its meaning: power beyond anything they have ever known. Power to cut anything. Power to shape the world. 

They’ll find one other item curled up inside the white holder: a sheet of something white and flexible. On this sheet will be a picture of a person smiling and holding up the knife—the very same knife that they have found. It will look like any painted picture, but much, much more exact. It will look completely real! They’ll be even more flabbergasted by the discovery. How could such a thing exist, they will ask. This person in the picture must have put the knife inside the white container, sealed it, and buried it for them to find. But who is he? They will wonder. How did he make this wondrous knife? And how did he make his own image? All this will be very disturbing to the entire tribe.

That night, one of the children will ask Maingrel to tell the story of where they came from. Maingrel will start to tell the age-old story, and adults will come to sit around the fire in the warm air until almost the entire tribe is crowded into the central square to hear the story.

“There was no beginning,” Maingrel will say; “The world has always been and always will be. We can never know all the things that came before us, nor will we ever know all the things that will come in the future, for we are meant to live now, not in the past nor in the future.”

“But we do know some things about times past. The earth was once populated by a race of giants. These were truly remarkable creatures. They were 30 feet tall and the ground shook as they walked. Everything about them was big. They had boats like ours, only their boats were bigger than the entire river.” 

A wave of awe will sweep through the audience. One child will shout “How can a boat float on a river that’s too small for it?” The parent will shush the child, but Maingrel will laugh, “That’s a very good question. The boats the giants built were not for floating on the rivers. They were for floating in the Big Salty Lake to the west.”

“Have you ever seen the Big Salty Lake?” another child will ask.

“No, I never have. I don’t know anybody who has; all we know is what we have heard from travelers who have seen it, but we have heard the same tale from many travelers over the years. The Big Salty Lake is about sixty miles west of here, and it stretches out forever. On the east is the land and on the west is the Big Salty Lake. The water is so salty that you cannot drink it. Nobody has ever taken a boat to cross it. The few who tried never came back. Sometimes people see huge fish in it, fish so big that they would provide a feast for this whole tribe five times over.”

Another wave of awe will sweep over the listening Chast people. 

“These giants had boats that flew like gigantic birds in the sky. They could fly anywhere they wanted to in their boats. And they had wagons, too, only their wagons were much bigger than ours and the wagons moved by themselves. The giants would get on the wagons and the wagons would take them wherever they wanted to go.” 

“Did they have giant horses to pull the giant wagons?” a child will ask. 

“You would think so, but the giant wagons didn’t need horses. They just went all by themselves with nothing pulling on them at all. The giants had many other wondrous things, but they were proud. They destroyed themselves in giant fires. All the giants were burned up in the giant fires.”

Another child will pipe up: “Why wasn’t the whole earth burned up in the giant fires?” 

“Another good question!” Maingrel will laugh. “Much of the earth was burned up in the giant fires. And the smoke from the fires darkened the skies for years; many animals died and crops would not grow. But the earth has healed now.”

“Where did we come from?” 

“Nobody knows. Some people say that our people were hiding underground and came out after all the giants died. Some people say that a few giants survived the fires and gave birth to newer, smaller people, and that’s who we are.”

“Are there any boats and wagons left from the giants?” 

“Is that you, Bontree? You certainly are clever little fellow, always asking interesting questions! No, there is nothing left from the days of the giants. It was a very long time ago and everything they built was destroyed in the fires.”

“Then how do we know that the giants were real?” Bontree will ask.

Maingrel will burst out laughing. “Clever boy! Yes, that’s a great question to ask. All we have are the stories that we tell around the fire. I have heard these stories all my life, and I am repeating to you exactly what I learned when I was a boy. But now we have something else: the magic rocks and the knife. Clearly these are very, very old, and clearly they were sent to us from somebody in the distant past. There’s no doubt that there were wondrous people in the past, and that they are all gone now.”

Bontree will be on a roll: “But the man in the picture holding the knife is not a giant. He looks like he is our size.” 

Maingrel won’t laugh. He will pause, frown, and think for a moment. “Yes, Bontree, that’s very true.” Then Maingrel will rise and, without saying another word, go inside his house. 




It wasn’t particularly warm, but Chris was sweating and puffing nonetheless. He paused and wiped his brow, muttering to himself about lost stamina. He looked down into the hole he was digging; it was about 20 inches deep. He looked around, gauging the likely erosion patterns given the lay of the land. “Good for at least 3,000 years” he told himself. “More likely 5,000 or 10,000 years. Maybe even 25,000 years if future precipitation patterns are weak.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a blue marble streaked with red, dropping it into the hole. Then he shoveled the dirt back into the hole, packing it down with his boot when it was full. Then he walked back to his house. He was getting old. He’d dig another hole tomorrow, he told himself.