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Old 01-20-2005, 03:05 AM   #317
piosenniel
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Rôg - the Elders speak . . .

‘So, Little Wanderer . . . you’ve come back alone? Not with the others . . .’

He laughed at this old name, remembering how his aunts and uncles had chided him for his explorations. Caught up in following some little bird or bug or even a trickle of water back to its source, his feet sought out the answers to his wonderings. It was often he would be called back from his inquiries only by the frantic calls of his family as they sought him. And here the old woman was now, saying Little Wanderer . . . herself so tiny beside him.

She had loomed so large for him as a child, when the story of the Star Isle was told, and now he stood head and shoulders above her thin, weathered frame. Her gnarled hand still grasped the crooked yew wood walking stick as she looked up at him. Beside her was a very old man, even thinner than she, if that were possible. Bald as a buzzard, his dark eyes looking kindly at Rôg. And suddenly he felt very young in their presence and small. He stammered out some greeting, trailing it off at the end, unsure of what to call them.

‘Just call me Old Mother, if you wish. That will be easiest,’ she said. She crooked her forefinger at her companion. ‘And him, Old Father.’ The old man’s eyes twinkled at her words. ‘It doesn’t matter. Our names flew away in the dry winds long ago, I think.’

The old man turned and motioned for Rôg to follow after him. Back into the foothills a short way. Supper was cooking and hot water on for tea, he said. Rôg followed along behind them, the ridiculous thought running round and round his head. I knew it! They do eat! When they were children, Daira had tried to convince him the Elders lived on wind and sand. Rôg smiled smugly at the thought of proving her wrong after all these years.

~*~

Dinner passed in a pleasant manner. The stew of roots and grains and desert hen was tasty and filling, the tea strong and sweet. The warmth of both drove back the chill that fell as the sun sank. The old man poured each a second mug, then added a few sticks to the small crackling fire. ‘Well,’ he said, sitting down on his mat next to Rôg. ‘Why have you come?’ ‘Two things, two questions I have that I hope you might help me with,’ answered Rôg, thinking hard about which he should ask first.

‘Aiwendil, I think,’ he muttered to himself, biting his lip.

‘Speak up, boy!’ the old man said, scooting closer to him. ‘These old ears can’t make out your mumblings.’

He began with the meeting of his traveling companion in Rivendell; their shared interests in birds; the large store of knowledge about the varieties of birds and other creatures that Aiwendil seemed to have. ‘He is a keen observer of their habits,’ Rôg said, ‘but in that respect not that different from others I have met who followed such pursuits.’ He plunged on, taking a deep breath, telling them of the peculiar things the Aiwendil sometimes did. He had seen the old fellow talk to birds and to a few other animals. And not just talk, as someone who is fond of the little creatures, but listen to them and respond to them in their own way. They were not afraid of him, these animals Rôg had seen speaking with the old man, and often they brought him messages of happenings in the area. Still he seemed just a well-learned fellow, Rôg went on . . . pleasant, if not a little vague as older folk are . . . until they had come south.

The old man and woman kept quiet as Rôg paused in his explanations. Into the silence Rôg blurted out the recent events that he simply could not make heads or tails of. The sandstorm and the old fortification they had sheltered in; Aiwendil’s reference to himself as an old dreamer; his talk of the Men who had built the fort, interlaced with a darkness that had come and wrong choosings. The distant land across the sea from where these Men had come . . . he’d named it the Star Island . . . and he spoke as if he had been there himself . . . It seemed, so Rôg explained, as if the old man was waking from a hazy dream. Aiwendil’s eyes were bright, their gaze purposeful now, and he had begun to talk of a ‘purpose’, as if he had remembered something he had set out long ago to do.

‘A need he spoke of, a need to act, to stand up, face a problem, a rising darkness - unlike those of the Star Island who ignored what was happening and were destroyed.’ In a more hesitant voice he continued, ‘He tells me I am also called, but I cannot think how. Though I think not just me in particular, but all Skinchangers. Though Ibar says it really is not our problem . . . he is clan-leader, I know, but still I feel he may be wrong.’

Rôg frowned. ‘Well, really this all leads into my second question, too.’ And with this he launched into the brief story of what was happening in the south to the other clans, as he had gleaned from Narika and Miri and others of the Eagle clan, throwing in his own observations and the observations of the larks who had spoken with Aiwendil. ‘Oh, and I forgot to mention this, too . . . Aiwendil can change shapes . . . I saw it with my own eyes. He seems a bit rusty at it, but can do so when need calls. He’s not a Skinchanger, not a member of a clan, or so he says. And now that I think about it he was rather vague just how he could do what he did . . . telling me it was a long and complicated story.’

Finished speaking, the young man looked up at his two listeners wondering if they had understood at all. He had meant to be clear, but somehow his thoughts had gotten all jumbled together. Expecting to see frowns of confusion on their faces, he was taken aback at the hoots of laughter that issued from the both of them.

‘And here we thought you were coming to ask us about which woman you should choose to marry!’ the old woman laughed, her eyes twinkling at him. ‘About time, don’t you think?’ she asked, nudging the old man in the ribs. ‘We had her all picked out, you know,’ he said, grinning broadly at Rôg. The old woman stood up and picking up the tea kettle, refilled their mugs. Then, settling her haunches back down on her woven mat, she spoke quietly to Rôg, all hints of levity now gone.

‘When the children first hear the stories we tell, they enjoy them for their grand excitement, for the funny things that happen, and how the heroes, bigger than life, win the day and save the people. Darkness is pushed back, evil laid low. Light shines through and the goodness of creatures in the stories prevails.’

‘This is so,’ continued the old man. ‘The pattern is set and as the children grow older it begins to shift from the fantastic to the ordinary, as situations arise in their own lives. Choices are reflected in the old stories, and are reinterpreted. And not all choose well.’ He paused for a moment. ‘This Aiwendil, that is a name from the Nimîr, I think. Its meaning I don’t know. But have you heard his Mannish name?’

‘Aiwendil is an Elvish name. It means “friend of birds” . . . but he was called Radagast, also,’ Rôg answered. ‘Though what that means I could never discover.’ ‘Some called him fool and simple, too,’ he added as an aside, remembering some unkind whispers he had heard.

‘Radagast! Hmm?!’ murmured the old man. ‘That is an old name, is it not?’ asked the old woman, nodding at him. She picked up a stick she had used earlier to stir the fire and drew three figures in the sandy soil – two near each other and one standing a little apart.

From long ago, she said, there were stories handed down of three travelers who came east from over the western sea. One all in white, the other two in sea blue. The one in white, it was said, was clever . . . wise, perhaps . . . and he soaked up tales and other odd bits of information like a dried up cactus in the wet season. Their little clan avoided him; it was said by others his roots seemed twisted and that he did not grow true. He stayed only a while and then returned westward, or so it had been handed down. They had heard no more of him.

Now the ones in blue - they came east together, it was said, but even when they reached the shores of the Inner Sea they were drawn further east and passed over the waters to the lands near the rising sun. The Elders now long gone never knew the blue ones’ real names; one they called Giant Man, the other Far Traveler. They were friendly enough it seemed when they passed through and they spoke a little of themselves, though in veiled terms. From what the Elders understood, they were to be helpers of some sort. But what help they offered was not clear and then they were gone.

There was some brief reference those two had given that they were only two of five who had been sent. The White one, of course, and then, one garbed in grey. Grey Pilgrim, the Elders knew him as, though he had never come east, and there were no tales they knew of him. But there was one, it was said, they hoped would come . . . one of gentle spirit . . . a tender of beasts. One sent by a most gracious Lady from West over the Sea. It was long they looked for him to come, but he never did.

‘Yes . . . yes, that was him,’ affirmed the old man, his eyes bright with the remembered story. ‘There was a verse . . . oh, now how did that begin, old woman,’ he said a little fretfully. ‘We were to speak it to him, to remind him of his promises to the Lady.’

From beyond the fringes of the little group came the sound of a phlegmy cough. ‘You mean that old saw that starts out:

Wilt thou learn the lore . . . . . that was long secret
Of the five that came . . . . . from a far country? . . .


And so on . . . and something about hidden counsels and the Doom cometh . . .’ offered a tall, angular man, his few strands of white hair, thin and wispy against the tanned skin of his head. Several others of the Elders, seeing the small fire and its attendant tea kettle had come down to join the trio, mugs in hand. ‘That’s it,’ said another old fellow in a fringed red shawl, holding his cup out as the kettle passed. ‘Never much liked it . . . too serious and somber by half . . . what with all its goings on about Dagor Dagorath and the world’s unmaking. Bet one of the old Nimîr wrote that one. Never were ones for the lighter side of life.’

Another old woman, her skin pulled tight over the contours of her skull, chortled as she plunked herself down next to Rôg, startling him as she had slid in so silently beside him. ‘We had a better one than that . . . remember?’ She poked Rôg in his ribs with her bony finger. ‘You know it, too . . . the old counting out rhyme for games . . .’ ‘Come on,’ she chided him, ‘say it with me.’ Rôg’s frown turned to a smile as she started the sing-song verse, and in old habit, he pointed round the circle that now sat about the fire and chanted with her . . .

Eagle chooses
Earth advises
Send the five
As Shadow rises

White is cunning
Grey hides flame
Hand in hand
Blues leave the game

Brown it is
Who’s sent to mend us
Gentler One!
From dark defend us!

Intry Mintry Cutry Corn
Rock, Sand, Grass and Thorn
Fur, feathers, worm to hawk
Five wizards in a flock
Some came east and some went west
Choose the one you think the best

Earth and twig
Bear and wren

Brown, it’s brown!

You’re IT!


There was a short span of uncomfortable silence as Rôg looked about the group. All the fingers now pointed to him. The old faces looked at him expectantly then cracked into smiles, laughing at his discomfiture.
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