Maker of Fire

Emily, Healing Shrine of Mugash

The return to Aybhas was uneventful, other than flying over all the flooded land. I got thinking that this would be my first experience with famine, though I heard that grain from the east side of the mountains was coming and would keep the wolf from the door until the winter wheat was harvested next planting season.

My life calmed down a great deal after all the excitement of being kidnapped and being trapped in Is'syal with too many Cosm in one place. For now, my comfort level for Cosm included only the gang of three, Lisaykos and Wolkayrs, and no one else. Otherwise, I preferred to be left to myself.

I spent my mornings learning how to move my tongue around my mouth from Lisaykos, or sitting out on the south balcony practicing where no one could hear me screw up. I had the hardest time learning the t-sound, followed by a vowel, followed by a k-sound. More often than not, the t-sound would turn into a d-sound and the k-sound came out sounding like a hissy ch-sound. Then there was the scourge of my existence: the w sound, which turned into a stutter more often than not.

I also despaired over diphthongs. The ow-sound was an especial source of agony where the sound is changed by the tongue and lips changing position at the same time. How in the world do little kids master this stuff? Lisaykos said I was making progress but it sure didn't feel that way.

Well, I walked into the skull repair and speech therapy of my own free will. If my life was on the calm and boring side, I only had myself to blame. For the most part, the old lady side of my brain could deal with calm and boring. The teenager side of my brain wanted a bit more excitement.

I started going for walks or runs in the afternoon, just to get out and stretch my legs. Lisaykos made me wear the grey and black mantle that advertised that I was from the shrine. I did notice after a rotation of getting out that there was always a garrison guard on an eagle overhead. Just to make life interesting for whoever was on that eagle, I started climbing trees.

Then I noticed when I was climbing trees, at least two people walking nearby who were very fit women with garrison-regulated hairstyles. So I started hiking out to reachable gravel bars in the river. First I piled up lots of driftwood. I made a stick and board friction fire starter. Then I'd dump my boots, wade into the stream and catch some trout. Afterward, I'd start a driftwood fire and toast my trout.

When I wasn't messing with the minds of the gals from the garrison who were assigned to keep an eye on me, I was looking over what I could find in the gravel bars. I wanted a hand lens or a loupe in the worst way but had to make do with my own eyes. I also wanted my furnaces back because I thought the sand in the river had potential. I could see quartz, feldspars, and black sand that I was sure was magnetite given how fast it settled when I swished it around with my fingers. I also used a piece of broken plate as a make-do gold pan and was happy to see the black sand settle instead of swish away. I even spotted some gold flecks.

So it looked like I had a decent source of silica-rich sand. I wanted to try melting it. That posed a problem since I was tethered to the shrine until the cold weather was over. I needed to make charcoal, fire some kaolin bricks, and build Agricola's furnace, which should get me to the 1,400 degrees Celcius I needed, unless I could find a decent flux to drop the melting temperature.

I never was able to eat everything I caught but I gave my leftovers to an old homeless soldier who lived in a little shack he built under the bridge over the river. He never said anything to me other than to shoo me away but I still left him fish and he still ate the fish. As far as I could tell, he made spare change combing the banks of the river for things he could sell to junk dealers.

One afternoon, three rotations after the flood, I was standing in the river waiting for one particular fat trout to wander between my hands when a griffin buzzed my campfire and stole the trout that was already cooking. The griffin circled and the homeless man came running through the water toward me. He picked up a big piece of driftwood and positioned himself between me and the landing griffin to protect me.

"You get away from here, thief," he swung the driftwood in front of him. "Stay behind me, little lady, I won't let him get you."

"Oh my, I must have left entirely the wrong impression, my brave friend," Asgotl said. "I meant to tease my friend who is behind you. She and I sometimes go fishing together."

To add to the confusion, a garrison guard on an eagle landed next to Asgolt and the guard jumped off. "Good afternoon," she looked at the homeless guy and Asgotl, "would someone please explain to me what you are doing that isn't threatening this Coyn, because both of you look like threats to me." Her left hand was holding a loaded crossbow, currently pointed down.

Asgotl slowly and languidly laid down. "I do believe this is just a misunderstanding, officer. This Coyn is a friend of mine and I thought to tease her by stealing her fish. This stalwart gentleman misunderstood my actions and thought I was threatening the little one, so he came running to protect her. This is all that has happened."

"Do you know this griffin, Great One?" the guard asked me, looking like she didn't believe a word Asgotl said. I nodded yes.

"Oh. And what about this fellow here? Was he protecting you?" She dug into a pocket and pulled out a wax tablet. I walked out of the river onto the gravel bar and wrote: "I indeed know him. He is a homeless soldier who lives in the shack under the bridge. I often leave him the fish I catch but can not eat. He indeed came to protect me, not knowing that Asgotl the griffin is my friend."

"Well then," she pocketed the wax tablet, "thank you for explaining that. Have a good day." She mounted her eagle and took off.

"So you do know this griffin?" the homeless soldier asked me, towering over me. I nodded yes.

"It was just a misunderstanding," Asgotl said reasonably. "I offer my apologies for giving the impression that I was attacking."

"Well," mister homeless tossed the driftwood onto the gravel bar, "that's that then," He started limping back to his shack.

"Excuse me," Asgotl extended a wing to block his path.

"What?"

"I wanted to thank you for protecting my friend, even if it was a misunderstanding. That was a noble thing to do," Asgotl was sincere. He retracted his wing.

The man blinked, "well, right, that's just what people do, uh, right." He nodded his head and limped back to his shack.

Asgotl turned his head back to me. "Aylem's here. She's got stuff for you. She sent me to fetch you. And here's your fish that I swiped." He held out the fish on the stick I had impaled it on. I took it and set the stick back to cook the trout over what was left of my fire. I climbed up, strapped in, and thumped Asgotl to take off.

He got into the air and climbed. He kept climbing. The eagle started following us. He's such a bad griffin. He was going almost vertical and then pulled his wings close to his body, and using his tail as a rudder, performed a stall turn. Nose down and wings in close, we dropped out of the sky at a ridiculous speed, passing the startled eagle and rider and gaining speed. Asgotl leveled out over the river, dropping speed. I wish I had a hand signal for "do it again." That was better than a rollercoaster ride.

Having pulled a stunt like that, Asgotl flew sedately and calmly to the south balcony. I unstrapped and slid down his neck to the ground.

"Wasn't that fun? Wasn't that fun?" he said, bumping me with his peak. I was nodding and grinning. I could do that all afternoon if we could get away with it. Our self-congratulatory session was abruptly interrupted.

"Ahem," the queen, arms folded, was glaring at us from the door, which was being held open by Lisaykos, who was looking merely annoyed. Yep, we were busted.

"Just what do you two think you were doing?" She had that parental scowl on her face, the one that telegraphs that you're grounded for all time. I didn't have a tablet on me so I couldn't scrawl "stall turn" and hold it up like a wiseass, but I certainly thought it. It was just some harmless fun.

"I believe what we were doing was losing the mounted garrison guard sent to tail Emily," Asgotl said factually as if we did this every day. "And we did a splendid job of leaving her and her eagle in the turbulence of my pinion feathers."

"Arg!" Aylem smacked her palm against her forehead in a most dramatic facepalm maneuver. "Asgotl, Emily has no magic. If she falls off, she has no magical protection and would fall to her death."

"Aylem," the griffin sounded a bit annoyed, "then make a magic tool for her if it makes you feel better, but you can't keep her locked up in a box with cotton padding. She's her own person. She will do what she wants and not what you want her to do, which is stay within these walls and never go out."

The queen's face was turning an interesting shade of red and a terrible pressure was building that forced me to my knees. I couldn't even find the breath to scream. Everything turned red until it went black.

-----------------

The soul that was once Emily, in a place that doesn't exist

"Let's go for a walk," the short little jizo said.

So I walked with him through endless groves of blooming cherry trees. I did not understand why I felt sorrowful about the beauty of the trees.

"Because it is the nature of beauty to be ephemeral," Jizo said. "Everything has an end, even gods, even existence. Fill your eyes and enjoy this now, for soon it will be gone."

Then it was gone and where we were walking was nothing and nowhere.

"It is the abyss," Jizo said. "It is waiting for a new creation."

"You should not be here," Jizo remarked. "There was a mistake in the timeline. This is the bridge back to where you belong. I can not make you go back. You must choose which way to go."

"What is there? I do not remember."

"I will show you."

On the tiles of the balcony were two bodies. One was a girl halfway between adulthood and childhood. A slow drop of blood fell from her nose. Next to her was a huge griffin, not moving or breathing at all.

"Asgotl! Is he dead? Oh please, not him." It felt like my heart had dropped into my stomach. Jizo looked at me, "you think of him before you think of yourself?"

"What I can do is worthless compared to him. He has a real skill and can render a real service." I nailed Jizo with a glare. "Aylem would be broken if she lost him."

Jizo looked at me and then through me and then out of me and back into me. Words don't describe the feeling. Then he smiled his little happy smile and thumped the non-existent ground with his Buddhist monk's staff with the jingling rings and Asgotl started breathing.

"Thank you," I was relieved. "So am I dead now?"

"Well, that's up to you. All you need to do is step onto the bridge and you will be back to that place."

"And if I don't?"

"Millions of souls will live and die in needless suffering."

"But that is the nature of life. How did that one-sentence history of the world go in One Thousand and One Arabian Nights? One is born, one suffers, and then one dies."

"Let us put it a different way," Jizo said as a night sky full of stars appeared. The cherry trees in full bloom lined the path and in the distance, a campfire was burning cheerfully with seats around it made out of sections of fat tree trunks. Mueb was there. She was wearing Carmen Miranda's dress and hat from the Chiquita banana commercials and peeling the bulbs from camas lilies. Another woman was there too. She looked like a 1950s housewife with styled hair, a prim blouse and skirt, and sensible shoes. She was knitting tan and green socks.

"Have a seat," Jizo said, handing me a stick with a marshmallow on the end. "You're the sort of person who catches them on fire," he grinned at me. He was right.

"If you don't go back," Mueb said, "millions of souls will live and die in needless suffering. If you do go back, then millions of souls will live and die in needful suffering because you were there to give them meaning." She picked up a stick, stuck a camas bulb on it, and started to roast it over the fire. "Don't forget to tell people that they have to cook the bulbs thoroughly or they'll be quite sick. Folks should start gathering them now before the snow arrives or there will be starvation this cold season."

"What the...?" I was really getting sick of cryptic gods. "Look, I don't appreciate all this weird instruction and revelation garbage. I'm not even anyone mystical or religious. I'm certainly no one special nor do I want to be. I didn't even believe in higher powers back on Earth. I don't go for this mumbo jumbo crap and sideways mystic voodoo. So why me? I can't imagine anyone less qualified."

"You see Emily, we had a need to fill in your current reality and you had all the job skills we were looking for," the 1950s housewife said with a mother knows best smile. "It was simply a matter of finding the right person for the job. You aren't the least bit magical in this reality and that's just perfect; and you can do wet chemistry and pyrometallurgy from the ground up, which is even better. I'll be frank with you. We want to get iron and steel going before we have magic-powered wars over deposits of tin because that's what will happen in a century if iron and steel don't show up."

"And there's the problem of your friend Aylem," Jizo sighed as his marshmallow caught on fire. "You are her punishment," a skeleton in a back robe said in the voice so old and dry that sand fell from his breath as he talked.

"Who are you?" I asked. "Death?"

"Oh no, I'm Landa," the skeleton said. "He's death," the skeleton pointed at Jizo.

"Did you guys mix up your scripts or something?" I demanded to know. All four deities thought that was really funny. They laughed hysterically for at least five minutes. Go figure.

"I have many names," Jizo said, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. "They call me Gertzpul where you're currently living. I don't think I would go so far as to say that you are Aylem's punishment. Rather, you are more like her geas."

"Her what?"

"Her geas."

"What is a geas?"

"It's an obligation, dear," the housewife said. "Oh, and I'm Surd, by the way. A pleasure to meet you. And here I thought I would have to wait my turn in line." She beamed at me.

I shook my head in disbelief, "I don't get you people or half the things you say."

"It's alright, Luv," Mueb said. "It's supposed to be ineffable."

I felt like tearing my hair out. What did I ever do to deserve this gaggle of goofball gods?

"What Aylem needs is you as a friend," Landa the boneman said. "She needs your courage, which you have in abundance."

Well, that made no sense to me, given that most Cosm scare the crap out of me.

"Oh nonononono," Landa corrected. "The opposite of courage is not fear and fear is not the opposite of courage. Courage is what made you stand between your friend Hessakos and that archer."

"So you oddballs want me to be a friend of that oversized overpowerful overmagical monster woman who just killed me because she has a bad temper? Are you nuts?"

"Probably," Jizo grinned.

"So what if I don't go back?"

"Then, Luv," Mueb started munching on her roasted camas bulb, "you'll go down the tunnel to what waits next for souls after their current lives are over."

"Emily," Landa sat down on the stump next to me, "if you go back, you can give a new revelation, since those have more importance than dream commands, that Aylem should not be put to death. Aylem must break the crystal in the Well of Landa for the Coyn to be free. If she is executed or punished in a way that deprives her of her position as queen, she can't do that. You need to prevent that."

"I can take care of preserving Aylem's life and role since she is at my shrine," said the lady in the holy lady robes, straight out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. "You can arrange a revelation for the crystal when Emily visits your shrine, Landa."

"Yes, that will work."

"Will you go back, Emily? Please?" Mugash smiled down at me. All the wounds of the world were healed with that smile, and all the hurts that sapient races do to one another were made right. There was no pain or suffering in that smile, just love and compassion, and understanding. Mugash fit all the niches in my mind for what a deity should be. She was the real thing.

"If you go back, Emily, I will tell you where to find phenol," Tiki pulled the marshmallow off my stick and ate it. "I wasn't kidding about that. I will reveal the secret location of phenol to you. That's how important this is."

"You guys are gods. Can't you take care of these things without involving me? I really don't get you folks." A new marshmallow appeared on the end of my stick.

The six gods who were present all turned to me and said in unison: "It's ineffable!"

"Emily," Mugash said. "I must warn you that if you do go back, you will be in a world of pain. Aylem hurt you so badly your soul fled your body. But it must be this way, or Aylem will not be motivated to change. You are her geas, but you are also her punishment."

"If I go back, the Coyn will be free?"

"It won't happen tomorrow, and it won't be without much hardship, but yes, the Coyn will be free," Landa said, a small pile of sand gathering at his feet as he spoke. "If Aylem breaks the crystal in the Well of Landa, the charm of control will be no more, and the Coyn and the griffins and the winged horses and the roc eagles and the Chem can all be free."

I had no idea who or what the Chem were. I popped the marshmallow in my mouth after blowing out the flames. "Where did that bridge go?"

"You've already crossed it," Mugash said.

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