GRAY BLADE---- 4-5
A Parable for Our Times
This is a time-travel fantasy that is a parable for our times. It’s about the importance of choice and courage in the face of overt threats of violence.
After the first three chapters, two or three chapters will be posted every week until November 5, 2024. If you read at least into Chapter 6 or 8, you should have a pretty good idea if this serial fantasy is worth your time.
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BLACK FEATHER TIME
Beginning of Winter…
This is the time where the secrets of the Gray Blade are preserved. And, this is where the Portal Pool provides access to those secrets.
CHAPTER FOUR----HORSES
In the morning the snow had largely melted from around the small dwelling at the upper end of Spirit Canyon when Envis and Elanorah finished their breakfast.
A boy got off his horse and tied the three others that he was leading to a nearby tree. He paused at the front entrance, coughed gently, and cleared his throat quietly. Elanorah came out immediately and greeted him with a smile and a hug. “James! What are you doing here?”
“Mother sent me,” the boy said shyly. “She was worried about you after the blizzard.” His hooded winter cloak showed his fat cheeks and round face but covered the rest of his chubby body.
Envis joined them and nodded a greeting.
“Envis, this is James,” Elanorah introduced them. “His mother is my best friend and although he calls me ‘Auntie’ this boy is like my grandson.” She squeezed his shoulder where her hand still rested after the welcoming hug.
“Everyone in Red Water Town calls you ‘Auntie’,” the boy said with a shy smile just as one of the horses whined a greeting.
“Those animals must be the ones that you told me about,” Envis stared at the horses.
“Yes, these are horses,” Elanorah confirmed. “But, why do you have so many?” she asked the boy.
“Mother thought that you might like to ride back to Red Water Town and the pack animal is for your belongings,” James said. “The other horse is for your companion. Mother dreamed that your vigil has finally brought results.”
“Yes, it has,” Elanorah said as she turned slightly to look at Envis.
The girl’s eyes were alive with curiosity and wonder. She walked carefully over to the horses and gently touched the forehead of a small brown mare. The horse lifted her head to put a soft nose against Envis’ outstretched hand.
“That’s not the one that I brought for you to ride,” James began. “That’s the pack horse. She’s only partially broken and isn’t used to carrying riders.”
“It looks like the mare has chosen to carry Envis, rather than packs,” Elanorah said.
Envis smiled at the comment and calmly rubbed the mare’s neck and mane. “These are truly beautiful animals,” she said. “I wish that we had them where I come from.”
As they packed up and closed the shelter, James became more at ease and talkative. The party struck out single file along the rim of the side canyon and then turned to follow the main stream to the south. The boy’s chatter continued.
The mild weather had melted most of the snow, but some remained in the big banks protected by shadows and shade. Envis questioned James closely about the horses and Elanorah seemed to doze lightly as they rode along the east side of the stream.
It was about midday when they reached the place where the stream joined the Prairie Wood River. There they dismounted, started a small cooking fire and had some hot food.
“This must be fairly near your home village,” Elanorah said to Envis.
“It may be,” Envis replied. “If there are burial and ceremonial mounds up there on that flat hill, then my village would be straight across the river to the west.”
“Why don’t you two go explore,” Elanorah suggested. “I’ll stay here by the fire and rest awhile.”
The two young people re-mounted and rode up the low hill to where several groups of mounds spread out over the level ground.
“These are the graves of my ancestors,” Envis said sadly looking off into the distance across the river.
“Our mounds are right around our homes,” James said. “We like to have our ancestors close to where we are living.”
Envis nodded in a distracted way and said, “Let’s go see the village site.”
They rode down the slight slope, crossed the level floodplain, and splashed through the shallow water to stop at the foot of a steep hill.
“The site of my home village should be at the top of this hill,” Envis said. “But it didn’t used to have all these big trees.”
The bones of dead trees ripped from the stream banks glowed white in the afternoon sun. But the white ice that had been at the edges of the channel earlier in the day had largely disappeared.
They rode their horses up through the bare-branched trees and emerged on a fairly flat surface overlooking the valley. Piles of gray-white, melting snow filled the numerous depressions that pitted the flat land surface. Across the clearing at the edge of the trees farther west, a linear white band marked a shallow ditch filled with snow.
The two riders guided their mounts around the depressions. A light breeze moaned through tall brown grass.
Envis counted the holes that had been homes….four along an arc away from the trench that had once held the palisade wall. Riding to that specific depression, she dismounted and stood at the edge of the dip. She could almost smell the smoke from the cooking fire and taste the supper stew. Her breath caught in her throat as she stooped to pick up an object from the pile of dirt next to a badger hole. She slipped the souvenir into a pocket climbed back up on her horse.
“What did you find?” asked James as he rode up behind her.
“It’s just a piece of pottery,” Envis said hurriedly wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “There are probably lots of them scattered all over the village site.”
“There were logs raised in a palisade along this ditch,” she added.
James trotted his horse down into the snow and up onto the other side of the ditch.
“There’s no sign of them now,” he called back. “What happened? Was there a fire? How long ago did you leave this village?”
Envis shook her shoulders and came out of a distracted reverie.
“There was no fire on that wall when I was here,” she said. “It seems like it was very many seasons ago when I left.”
“You really don’t look that old!” James exclaimed. He rode along the west side of the ditch and then crossed back to the east side. He looked out over the flat hilltop pitted with vaguely square-shaped holes.
“So, what are those holes?” he asked.
“Those are where the homes were located,” Envis nodded and turned back to look into the woods across the trench. “Everything looks so different.”
“Why did you have a fortified wall?” James asked. He rode his horse back to where Envis slouched on the small brown mare. “What were you afraid of?”
“Nothing,” Envis said. “And, everything. The colonizers told us it was a good idea and we just seemed to agree to everything that they suggested.”
“Who were these teachers?” James began, but Envis had turned her horse and was riding out among the depressions filled with snow. They looked like square white blankets spread throughout the brown dry grass. Between the holes that had been homes, more animal burrows were marked by small piles of black dirt.
The two young people returned to the east side of the river and found Elanorah ready to travel again. The party continued south along the river.
At one point, Envis pointed out a side channel and said, “I remember when the river flowed over that way.”
“It looks like that must have been a long time ago,” James said nodding to the very large trees that filled the abandoned channel. “Just how old are you?” he asked repeating an earlier thought.
“She’s older than she looks, but she’s still a young person,” Elanorah said. “But she’s older than you and doesn’t need to be bothered by your relentless questions.”
James nodded and looked at Envis. The young woman seemed to have withdrawn into a distracted silence as they rode along.
It was about the middle of the afternoon when they stopped next to smooth exposures of red rock that stretched out into the river. Just to the east of the bare rock outcrops, a number of mounds dotted the flat river terrace.
Envis dismounted and walked out on a rib of red rock and knelt near the water. She ran her fingers along a series of small circles pecked into the smooth hard rock.
Elanorah and James also got off their horses and joined her.
“Do you see this pattern?” Envis asked softly. “And, look at that second one over there,” she said pointing back towards the higher promontory of rock.
“These are the symbols for the Earth and Sky,” she said. “The turtle is here near the water and the bird is up there higher. They are monuments to the balance of Earth and Sky.”
“I remember them,” Elanorah nodded and smiled. “It’s always comforting for me to see these motifs so close together.” James looked confused.
“The people who lived over there believed that it was important to keep them together.” Envis motioned across the river to where the narrow floodplain was bounded by the slopes of a steep hill. “We followed the teachings of the colonizers who emphasized the dominance of the Sky over the power in the Earth.” She shook her head sadly.
Elanorah waved away the next question that James started to ask. He snapped his mouth shut abruptly.
“I had a really good friend who was very important to me. He lived in that village over there on the west side of the river,” Envis continued. “His family preserved our older traditions while my village embraced the new changes brought by the colonizers. At first, we were all one people, but gradually our ways diverged with the changes. It was once a peaceful process, but it was becoming much more tense.”
“When did all this happen?” James burst out. “None of this sounds familiar and yet these villages were really close to Red Water Town.”
“It was a very long time ago,” Envis said softly, almost in a whisper.
“But, how can that be?” James persisted.
“It’s all just part of the mysteries of the Portal Pool,” Elanorah said with finality.
She returned to the horses, followed by the two young people. The three re-mounted and moved downstream toward Red Water Town anchored firmly in the time of the Black Feather.
CHAPTER FIVE----BURDEN OF CHANGE
Several days after she arrived in Red Water Town, Envis sat in front of Elanorah’s permanent home. The elongate and domed building had a double framework of wooden poles separated by a covering of bark and animal hides that were held down by large rocks that circled the outside. In contrast to this permanent structure, the little shelter in Spirit Canyon was only intended as a temporary sanctuary when the old woman kept vigil at the Portal Pond during each seasonal change. Elanorah came out of her house in Red Water Town and sat down next to the girl.
“You seem to be disturbed,” Elanorah said gently.
“Everything has changed so much,” Envis said. “My village is gone, the trees have grown so large, and even the river doesn’t run in the same place.”
“Those trees are probably not even the distant ancestors of the woods that surrounded your village,” Elanorah said. “Just think how far your Yellow Feather Time is removed from this Black Feather Time. There are probably ten or more generations between the two.”
She looked closely at the girl she was trying to support and comfort.
“I do know that,” Envis acknowledged. “But, it’s still a burden to really understand that fact at a gut level and to accept the changes as normal. Your time is not my time.”
“But changes are inescapable,” Elanorah said. “If you stand beside a small stream, you can probably see a high bank collapse or a sand bar grow larger. Changes among people over long-time spans are equally significant.”
Envis nodded and sniffled slightly, stifling a sob.
Elanorah put her arm around the younger woman and the two looked south down into the main part of Red Water Town.
Elanorah’s home was located on a high flat bench north of a small creek that joined the Prairie Wood River just to the west. The main sprawl of the town was south across the creek on a slightly lower terrace surface that sloped gently off to the south.
The two women walked down to the creek, crossed the solid ice, and climbed the slope that led up to the concentration of dwellings that looked like Elanorah’s. There still was no snow on the ground and the grass was all a monotonous brown.
They had been invited to a midday meal at the home of James’ mother who was also a Sojourner. After the meal, the conversation turned to animals.
“Would you like to see the horse herd?” James asked eagerly. “My father is with them right now. We could go see how they are doing in this warm winter weather.”
“Maybe later,” Envis said. “They are really not like any other animal that I have ever seen. They are definitely interesting and I would like to see the herd sometime.”
“They are invaluable,” the boy’s mother said. “We can easily pack up and move everyone in the whole town when the time is right.”
“Like when the summer buffalo hunt happens,” James chimed in. “And, we really need them to do the actual hunt.”
“We have buffalo in my time,” Envis perked up. “We process them to send the hides and other food products down the Roiling River. It’s the traders’ job to gather up material for the elite people in their home city.”
“There was a time in my memory when there were no horses or buffalo in this Prairie Wood Valley,” Elanorah said. “The first horses came and the buffalo returned at about the same time that some of our people followed the dwarves’ diaspora up the Roiling River.”
“But, tell us more about the commerce in buffalo products, Envis,” the boy’s mother interrupted. “Most of our trade exchanges involve stories and new songs. We really don’t do long-distance trading of food items. We grow and gather all the food that we need right here in the vicinity of the town.”
“Well, it isn’t just food,” Envis said. “Or, more accurately it isn’t just basic food. It’s more like luxury, non-essential items that are uncommon in the traders’ city. Trinkets made of soft red stone are also especially popular.”
“That’s confusing,” Elanorah said. “Most of our so-called trading is actually social interaction that involves non-material songs and stories while your trading activity is for exotic food and trinkets. I’m beginning to understand some of the root causes for the conflicts that are developing in your Yellow Feather Time.”
With that reminder, Envis’ breath caught in her throat and she began to weep quietly. The two older women tried to provide some reassuring comfort and James was embarrassed.
“Maybe we could go visit the horse herd tomorrow,” he offered.
Later that afternoon, after the emotionally exhausted Envis had slept briefly and Elanorah had rested from their walk back to the north bench, the two women resumed their conversation.
“Everything has changed so much,” Envis began. “The river, the animals, and the people have all changed. The empty house holes in my abandoned village site really drove home the differences.”
“We live on the west side of the river and our mounds are on the east side,” she continued. “You live on the east side and have your mounds scattered right among the dwellings in the town.”
“But we also have additional ceremonial sacred spaces on the high hills across the river to the west,” Elanorah said. “Everyone does things in a slightly different way. Surely, not all people live in exactly the same way in your Yellow Feather Time.” She was trying to get Envis to talk about the troubling changes with the hope that a rambling discussion would provide some distracting comfort.
“Of course not,” Envis said. “The people in the village west across the river from the rock exposures that we visited do live in the way that we once lived before the traders and missionaries and corn came up the river.”
“What exactly was this other village like?” Elanorah asked.
“It has a rambling and open layout,” Envis said. “The people periodically roam away following animals and plants in seasonal rounds.”
“And, how is that different than your village?” Elanorah asked.
“We live in a tight and crowded existence protected by the surrounding steep slopes and a trench with a log palisade. We stay in one place for all the seasons and tend our cornfields. The buffalo come close into the valley and we don’t have to follow the herd in a chase and hunt.”
“All this was a change brought by the outsiders? What other things did they bring?” Elanorah asked.
“They have a different way to make pottery and brought new designs for the vessels and utensils,” Envis said.
“So that’s why you were so interested in the ceramic icon in my bag of bundles,” Elanorah said.
“That’s right,” Envis replied. “It seemed to have ceremonial significance and that was what inspired the new pottery designs that the traders brought.”
“They want us to adopt the new designs as a part of a different emphasis in spiritual matters,” Envis explained. “They want changes that lift up the importance of Sky Powers and play down the Earth Powers.”
“No wonder there are conflicts accompanying the changes in your time,” Elanorah said. “It’s not just trade and construction patterns. It’s also about religion. Those subtle conflicts often lead to the most overt violence.”
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Several days later, Envis wandered among the mounds mixed with houses in the main part of Red Water Town. The midwinter thaw had continued with moderate temperatures, but there was a feeling of impending snow. Somehow the air just smelled different.
“If Elanorah is right about our changes leading to physical conflict,” she thought to herself, “I need to learn the lessons here in Black Feather Time fast so I can return to my own Yellow Feather Time and apply the ideas that might save us from violence.”