Sprig's Diary - Archive
Sprig's Diary is a journal kept by a secondary character in my yet-unpublished novel, The Slipaway Trail. He's a favorite with my critique group, a little man about five feet tall with an inquisitive mind and a passion for healing.
Blood Sand
The tribesmen who rescued me led the way through red sand, which be both beautiful and horrible. The fine, smooth grains rolled under my feet, as slippery as ice. No deep orange this, like the sands I saw elsewhere, but a truer red, deep and rich. I could almost smell the life force veining through it.
The liquid flow of the fine grains before even the palest breeze hinted at salvation for the dessicated. As previously told, I put some in my mouth, hoping for water. The foul taste of the blood that formed instead shocked and horrified me. I spat it out and wiped out my mouth.
Although the dunes be as tall as any in the Rainbow Sands, they cover little territory. Thus, few casual travelers stumble across the Sett people who live there. The Sett be not a tribe but only one small village, with carefully guarded secrets. During my stay with them, I treated numerous small illnesses and taught them how to defend against disease. They considered my healing holy and reciprocated by sharing many of the secrets of their world.
They taught me that the sand?s blood be their primary source of healing, though it has no effect on disease. Skin rubbed with it becomes invulnerable to cuts, scrapes, and burns, including shallow stab wounds. To bathe in it is to become essentially invulnerable to wounds.
Among the Sett, a new babe?s first three days be frighteningly dangerous, and the entire village prays to their bloody goddess, Settire, to protect the child. Surviving that time proves the child?s strength of spirit. After three days, the child is "blessed," or bathed in blood, with prayer and ritual. The invulnerability to wounds thus bestowed be not permanent but protects for several months, if not washed off.
Blood be life. The sacred blood of childbirth, the protective properties of the bloody sand, the blood of warriors in battle be causes for celebration. Warrior rituals before battle include bathing in converted sand, to gain advantage over their enemy.
Little rain falls on the red sands. When it does?perhaps once a year?the resulting pools of blood be protected as holy places, an especially lucky place to bathe a new child. However, it be a most dangerous time, as well, for the rich smell of blood draws predators from many miles?and provides them the same protection if they lie or swim in it.
The thought of invulnerable warriors fighting invulnerable beasts shudders the hair on my arms.
To the villagers, theirs be a privileged and holy life in a sacred place. To me, the magic and the way of life fascinate, but I would not wish to linger?especially during the rains.
I cannot imagine the horror of living among lakes of blood with their pervasive stench. Blood be meant to flow within the body?s pathways. Loss of blood to childbirth, or to even minor wounds, can be fatal.
In my world, blood be death.
Rainbow Sands
My first visit to the Rainbow Sands will be my last, the Mother willing. Although the sands be unique and beautiful, the harshness of the desert does not appeal to me.
The Rainbow Sands be awesome in immensity, color, and texture. I discovered?with much help from residents?that each color contains its own magic, and its own religion, built around that magic. Mixing two or more colors produces an altogether different magical effect, often unpredictable and dangerous, but doesn?t seem to affect the local religions.
I miss the rich moisture of the Dark Wood. The Rainbow Sands be hot and dry with little life.Water sources be two days apart or more by shank?s mare. As the dunes shift before the wind, so do the few roads. Departing from the road can get ye lost, perhaps for days, and being lost can kill ye. Ye must wear clothing that covers as much of ye as possible for protection from the sun. Loose, flowing robes will not trap the heat next to yer body. And if ye do not travel overladen with water, ye will not survive being lost.
My own brush with death happened thus. From a vague outline of road in red sand, I wandered a few steps, certain I had only to turn and follow my footprints back. The black segmented insect that drew me scuttled across the sand, and I followed. Just a little farther, I told myself, excited to find this unknown creature. When I at last gave up the chance at a closer look, the light breeze had already filled my tracks.
What a disaster! It be a full day before I found the road again, and both my waterbags be empty. The heat blistered the brain within my skull and boiled the blood in my veins. My throat seemed full of sharp sand grains. My face ached, drawn as dry and tight as old parchment.
Having already traveled the coarse blue sands that become water in the mouth, I took a chance and put some of the fine-grained red in my mouth. It did not turn to water. I struggled not to swallow as the thick, metallic scent and flavor of blood filled mouth and nostrils. I gagged and spat it out, then used my shirttail to wipe out my mouth, but I tasted it for hours afterward.
I guessed that the wind-blown sand had also oblitered the road?my lifeline to people and safety. Had I not encountered helpful tribesmen, I would have died. They told me, in the trade tongue, that I be headed deeper into the desert. Into waterless death.
Thus I learned, early and hard, that ye can never carry too much water into the Rainbow Sands, and that leaving the road can have dire consequences. It be a harsh and unforgiving land, but for all that, it bears rich magic and new knowledge, a treasure for a thirsty soul.
People of the Blue Sand
Blue sand filled the horizon, stretching in all directions. The color be evening blue, the color of mousebreath, rather than the deep, infinite, impenetrable blue of summer midday. It be coarser grained than any other sand I have yet seen.
That be the magic of the blue sand?ye can drink it like water, for it turns liquid in the mouth, although it be warm, rather than the cool water for which I yearned.
In a vast desert where little grows, these sands be a treasure, supporting many settlements of the Pomlo tribe. They be an agrarian people, though such seems far-fetched in this desert. Crops thrive about each settlement, providing food to the people and merchandise to sell or trade with other peoples. They also sell waterskins of blue sand to other tribes, who are admitted cautiously through heavily guarded borders.
This way of life be not so simple as it sounds. Water be the catalyst to change blue sand to water, and there be no oasis or river in the blue dunes. For this reason, most transformation be done by taking great mouthfuls of sand, then spitting out the transformed water. Thus are their cisterns kept full.
Only each settlement?s three holy men?water-fat men? may "seed the cistern." The rite is held every new moon, with outsiders barred from the settlements for the duration. Prayers and dancing accompany the private purification rites and then, from midnight to dawn, the holy men replenish the cistern. Some type of sacrifice be hinted at, but I learned no details.
For the next two weeks, more blue sand can be added to the cistern?s water, but sand added too fast will overfill the cistern and seep out. I confess to a fuzzy understanding of this process; logically, the sand that forms the walls, lined only with copper sand, should itself become water. Yet I have observed that seeding the cistern regularly is necessary to maintain the water level.
Cistern water be used for crops and rituals. Drinking water, including water for trade, be obtained by the handful as needed, from the surrounding dunes.
In addition to each settlement?s three holy men, they be ruled by an elderly wise woman. She serves until she dies, grooming three potential successors. Upon her death, the three holy men choose the settlement?s next ruler from among them.
My time with the Pomlo be pleasant, as they are a happy, social people. I made many friends there, the most special being Hapla, the wise woman of my host settlement.
Ah, the debates! The sharing of ideas, of thoughts on the universe and the holy! We learned much of each other, Hapla and I?and I learned that, even with my beloved Mirita long in her grave, a part of me need not remain parched and brittle. We coupled with much laughing during my visit, and if aught could draw me back to the Sands, Hapla and her dark, merry eyes would be the magnet.
Mousebreath
Even a day that begins poorly, with a fall in a meandering creekbed, can end well. Before day?s end, I found a new plant! Never had I seen such, although the find be in the tallgrass, not far from the Edge of the Dark Wood, where I live. Granted, it be a remote part of the tallgrass, perhaps twenty miles from the nearest home settlement. Amid grasses a foot taller than I, I nearly missed it, but it may be my most exciting find in years.
In the tallgrass, I assumed all flora like much sunlight, for few trees exist. This one hides in the shade of the grasses, preferring little sun.
I have named it mousebreath. The plant grows six to eight inches tall, and several may take root in an area, but they do not grow in clusters. The flowers be tiny, the size a mouse might collect if it could do such. They be bright blue and delicate, with pistils and stamens that would have to be bundled to reach the thickness of a mouse?s whisker.
I noted no smell at all until I had gathered a feedsack full, carefully unearthed for transplanting. Their delicate beauty led me to believe the scent would be as delicate and beautiful as the flowers, but alas, it be not. The smell be not awful, but a bit musty with no hint of nectar?s sweetness. I even tasted two or three, squeezing the stems for liquid, and finally chewing the flowers.
The taste be awful, musty and sour and half rotted in flavor. I gagged and spat it out, recognizing the flower?s natural defense against grazing animals.
Yet there be an interesting effect, even from so little a taste. A bruise from my earlier fall healed before I arrived home, and the pain subsided well before that. My headache from too much sun disappeared. The finger I sprained in the same fall ceased to hurt, although the movement remains as limited as before.
This, I believe, be a powerful medicament. I can hardly wait to arrive home so that I can begin to experiment with my samples. I will also correspond with other healers of my acquaintance, to see what they may know.
What a find! I must see what will sufficiently mask the flavor, yet allow the mousebreath to do its work. What will be its effectiveness in a poultice? Must it be ingested? What can I combine it with to increase the efficacy of the medicine?
My spirit has been buoyant ever since I found it, and the Trail cannot take me quickly enough to my workshop.
Magic Trail
The Slipaway Trail be longer today than usual. The usual four hours from end to end today required half again as long. I had planned three days? outing and be disappointed to spend so much of it walking the magic Trail. Still, my time should suffice to explore at least a few destinations.
I took time to add notes to my diary. The sentinel trees at the Trail?s opening remained the same. I recognized a certain twisted branch on the left tree, and a woodpecker hole on the right tree, exactly there. Never had I seen a woodpecker?or other living creature?near the Trail. How long had the hole existed? Nothing ever changes?not size, nor holes, nor branches, nor leaves. Had they been normal trees once, that a woodpecker had delved sharp-beaked for its dinner? Had they become magical, or ...
No, no, no. Living things be not magical. The Trail itself be magical, so at some point it must have picked up the trees and carried them along, with all the brush between them. Roots and all? How could that be possible? My poor brain near burst with consideration of what be possible and what not. After circling the problem like a wake of vultures for hours, I set it aside as unanswerable.
I noted, too, that no footprints or wear had beaten down the path, yet it seems unlikely that only I know of it. No litter, no horse dung, no broken twigs on the thick bushes lining each side of the Trail, as if it had never borne foot, paw, or hoof.
The bushes pose an enigma of their own. Not even a cat could get through them, they be so thick and tough. Beyond be only grayness, like fog but not. Be that a magical place? Or nowhere at all, if that be possible? What happens to any who might get through all the brush? From curiosity, I began to chop my way through them, for a peek at the beyond. Only three feet in, already worn from the work, I chanced to glance back.
The brush enclosed me, as if I had never cut it, not even an axe scar on the limbs. I chopped through the same brush again to return.
I sat awhile to recover before going on. Already the bushes be restored to normal?the same ones, even the same leaves and twigs. I could not bear to reconsider the same impossibilities that had plagued me all day. I turned instead to contemplation of mystery.
Some things man will never understand fully. The hunger for new knowledge be deep in me, and once I believed anything could be understood with sufficient thought and study. With age, I have learned better. The metaphysical be so far above those susceptible to death, so changeable and amorphous, that it be beyond understanding. This be a good thing.
How poor would be a world fully understood, with nothing left to surprise us and fill us with awe?
Tripwire
Today I visited the thick trees of the Dark Wood to hunt perberries for the rich, sweet wine they make. The bushes ring many trees there, but the floor of deadly tripwire denied me access. Instead I studied the tripwire, which be yet a mystery.
Tripwire?s near black vines bear dull, heart-shaped leaves and large tendrils, far different from the delicate coils of most vines. If ye be still and silent as stone, ye can see it breathe. It crouches with an unnerving sentience impossible for plants.
I sat in the border between sunlight and shadow, hearing too much rustle for the light breeze. Sometimes I held my breath, inexplicably wanting to escape detection.
Heavy pods, previously unobserved, hung near hidden below the leaves. Unthinking, I reached for the utility knife on my belt to collect one.
With a sigh like a snarl, the nearest vine rose up and reached, wrapping wrist and knife.
My hair stood on end. Fear soaked through me. I had seen the prehensile vines kill a deer, and I be much smaller. I froze, holding my breath. The tripwire waited, quiescent, until I moved, then stretched more vines towards me.
What a predicament! How could I free myself without triggering further attack? Hoping my heart?s hammer be inaudible, I forced a foreign calmness. At last I reached oh, so slowly with my other hand, perhaps an inch at a time or less, testing to discover what movement would trigger the vines. It took long to touch the knife, longer to free it from the tendrils.
Cutting the tough vine from my wrist proved more difficult. When at last it parted, I waited for my heart to slow and my palms to dry. I shifted closer, as slowly as possible, to locate a pod near the edge.
I strained for slow, imperceptible movement. At last the pod fell free. I felt its shriek in my bones, of pain and fury and fear. Imagination? Perhaps ...
The vines rose up with a whispered roar, throwing themselves in my direction. "Infant" or "offspring" or some such concept poured through my brain. No true word be shaped, but I could not ignore the feel of outrage and anger.
I closed my fist about the pod and flung myself away from the tripwire, scrambling on all fours. Twice I must stop to cut free an ankle or a thigh, as fear thundered through my blood. I won free?barely?with the pod still safe in my fist. The tripwire extended its reach, its roots digging closer to the village, but it stopped before exposing itself to the sunlight.
And I? I opened the pod to reveal a nest of silky fibers, holding tiny seeds?the next generation of tripwire.
#
Footnote: Years after I wrote this, the silky fibers became known as the rare and beautiful silversilk.
Wolf Winter
The Edge of the Dark Wood suffers a horrendous winter this year. Many of the little people have run short of food, and the snow be too deep to forage more. As midwinter nears, the cold bites ever deeper.
Predators find poor hunting, while prey takes refuge in hollows warmed by their body heat. Wolves sometimes lurk outside the visk oaks, trying to catch someone outside?but without success, thank the Mother.
Today, as I prepared a hot, savory dinner, a wolf pack snuffled at the cracks of my door, snarling. I had left thick walls when hollowing out my home. Nevertheless, I feared the wolves? strength of desperation.
Their clamorous ferocity shrank my vitals, and a rotten-meat smell clogged my nostrils. When they flung themselves against the door, I bundled up as warm as I could, picked up my walking stick, and trudged upstairs. The big door juddered behind me, and I quickened my pace. Near the third floor, I heard a loud crack, and then another. The door splintered as I climbed out the trapdoor. I latched it securely behind me, panting with exertion and fear.
The wolves ascended stairs, their hunting howls and hungry growls accompanied by thudding feet on the stairs. I climbed again, racing for the final escape hatch. The hatches be less thick than the front door and I feared their being breached, though above the wolves? heads and harder to assail. The final hatch be almost a hundred spiraling steps more, so that perspiration drenched me and my legs trembled.
When I could climb no more, I sat on the step, waiting, sucking in frigid air that burned my lungs. Far below, more wood cracked. This wood be not dead and dry but part of the living tree. I felt the tree?s pain, heard its silent cry in my bones.
The howling and snarls subsided. The tree became still, no vibration of the pack?s climb. The silence be absolute as the world held its breath.
I shivered, sweat-chilled. Nought above the third floor be heated, though still within the tree. Legs trembling, I continued up and through the final trapdoor, set in the first branchings. I clutched the railing, a hundred forty feet high, and stared through the branches below me. Even bare, they provided some concealment for the platform.
Far below, the wolves emerged from my home. They drifted away, tails between their legs and heads down against the bitter wind. For safety, I waited before returning to the first floor.
Much be destroyed?my dinner and all food within reach. Clay pots, bottles, drying herbs lay shattered, the kitchen near destroyed. Paws printed the flour on the floor, marked by tongues and noses where they had eaten it. Two lamps in the great room had fallen with no harm, being unlit. The cracked door hung from one hinge.
All could be repaired or replaced. I could set barricades until then. Life would go on as before, with little impact from the raid.
I wondered if that be true for the wolves who visited.
The Black Caverns
Today I found a rare glow worm, three inches long and softly fuzzed with pale yellow hairs. A tiny glow sac bulges near the end of each fine hair. I took care that no action of mine should harm the fragile creature. With it in my pocket, I traveled the Slipaway Trail to the Black Caverns.
Drawn by hollow silence and pregnant air, I feared to travel into the darkness. Lured by the possibility of the never-seen, I could not resist. The living caverns waited with bated breath.
For hours I wandered blind, led by the kiss of a breath on my cheek, or by a contented sigh just beyond my hearing. I would not use the glow worm, for its light be brief. Instead, I felt my way along treacherous paths through jumbled rocks and pot-size holes. A low groan prickled my hair, but hearing it only once, I judged it no more than wind having its way with the rocks.
I entered an empty space where my feet echoed far and froze in terror. How close be my feet to an abyss? Sweat cooled my brow and soaked my beard. I could not force another step.
The glow worm in my pocket might help, but it be so small and the space so vast, I did not anticipate much aid. I forced a foot forward, managed two shuffles. Then my toe stubbed on some minor obtrusion. I fell.
I rolled down a jagged slope, bruised and sliced, knowing I would die. I stopped, tasted blood from my bitten tongue. My clothing gaped where rent. My chin bore a bald spot where I landed on my own beard and ripped some out.
Frantic, I eased the glow worm from my pocket by feel, fearing to have landed on it. At first I thought it dead, for I did not feel it move. I held my breath, fumbled to find its shape with shaky fingers, stroked its back lightly, head to tail. I think. It be difficult to tell, with a glow worm. The hairs be soft to the touch, if stroked with the growth, and the bulge near the ends tickled.
My finger woke the glow sacs. A soft light reached beyond what I expected.
A twinkle caught my eye. I looked up. My breath caught.
Around me, the large, shallow bowl sparkled and winked in the glow?s reflection. Light sparked from the gigantic shattered diamond in which I sat, and from smaller diamonds lying within. Rainbow prisms danced in the air. Awe overfilled me, the excess rolling down my cheeks as tears.
I sat until the worm?s glow waned, absorbing wonder and beauty. My rough voice echoed from the facets, sweet as windchimes. When I finally left, I carried away a small, perfect diamond, and a small, perfect glow worm, my new traveling companion.
Magic's Nature
Magic be amazing. In a few weeks, I will be 100 years old, and my understanding remains elementary.
Magic be the unexplained and the inexplicable, the most misunderstood, underestimated, overestimated, untrustworthy force of anything on this earth. It be contained in non-living things, although these things may once have lived. It may be the most powerful force in the world, and the most valuable. And most treacherous.
I suspect the trouble be with us, the humans who encounter it and try to use it. We make assumptions before we know enough. We try out the magic, test it, see what it will do?and stop, without seeking what else it may do. That can be a fatal error.
Let me tell ye about a man I met this morning. Ezeke looks older than I, though he be 40 years younger. He be one of the big people, of course, so he ages faster.
Ezeke told that he carried a bit of magic in his pocket, a small piece of iron that could be bent and shaped with the hands, before slowly resuming its former shape. Sometimes it reclaimed its shape faster than others, but he thought nothing of that. One day he gave it to his small grandson to play with. The child rebent and reformed the metal in myriad fantastical shapes and watched in fascination as it unwound and unbent back to its true self.
In the evening, the family conversed by the fire at home. The child sat by the hearth, playing with the iron. Ezeke enjoyed watching the boy work on a difficult shape, tongue sticking out between his lips. The child leaned toward the firelight and stroked the iron with his fingertips, until it evolved into a crude knife. In triumph, he laid it across his palm and held it high for all to see.
For some magic, heat or cold be a catalyst for change. This be one such. In the heat of the fire, the reversal happened in a blink. The energy so generated hurled the crude knife from the child?s palm and into his face, point first. Ezeke must watch in helpless horror as the child died of the wound. His own son cursed him.
Zeke has never returned to his son?s home. He cannot face his family, cannot bear even his own home. For twenty years, eaten by grief and guilt, he has wandered where the road takes him, telling his tale to all who will listen.
First
The first big person I met frightened me.
When I be about twenty, I accompanied my father to a small town called First, to buy halfponies. The story be that two big people argued over who found that site. One killed the other in a duel and claimed to be First, and so they named the town after him.
At the time, I thought myself quite tall at five feet. Only one man at home stood taller, by one inch. But at First, every man be at least eight inches taller.
People lived in stone "houses," which I had never seen before. They be square, with rounded corners and round-edged roofs slanting from front to back. Or from one side to the other. People worked in "shops," rather than in the open. I felt small, ignorant, and intimidated by strange domiciles and much openness. The great spaces be uncomfortable initially, but I soon became used to them.
My father paused by a pen to look over several halfponies. As we discussed their finer points, a man appeared suddenly beside me. I had neither seen nor heard him coming.
Energy burst into my fingers and toes, prickling my cheeks and scalp. My stomach bounced. He be huge! A man over six feet tall, built like a slab of granite, with glints of mica in gray eyes. Until he smiled at me, I did not realize I had backed away from him. I swallowed and stood still?and tentatively smiled back.
"Your first time in a town?" he asked, his tone friendly. "Arth, this must be the son you?ve spoken of for years. He has your eyes, bright and inquisitive."
"Aye," said my father, "this be Sprig. Son, this be Parnit, the wagoner."
Many big people bend over or even half-squat to address a little man, as if he be a child. Parnit did not. ?Welcome to First,? he said, starting to stretch a hand toward me. He must have seen my confusion, for he smoothly moved it to my father, as if that be his original intent.
My father shook his hand gladly, demonstrating to me the customs of the big people, and then I shook, too. My hand disappeared entirely inside his.
"Come in from the sun," invited Parnit. "We can drink fresh-pressed cider while you rest your feet from the long walk. I enjoy visiting with little people, and there?s plenty of time for business after that."
My father and Parnit chatted amiably while I sipped sweet, refreshing cider and answered the questions that came my way.
Later, riding home astride our two halfponies, I recalled the day in wonder. So much be new to me?the wide space, the size of the people, their strange customs, the town of houses and shops?and apple cider. My heart filled with gladness, for all the newness, and for a big man who treated me as if the size difference held no meaning.
The small town belonged to the big people, but it be my First, too.
