GARAMOUSH
By Michael Wettengel
Text Copyright © 2014 Michael Wettengel
All Rights Reserved
Cover design by Finn Smulders
All Rights Reserved
All of the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
To the great people who helped me get here,
Brandi Reissenweber, Sam Luccioni Mancini,
Kristen Grismore, Alec Faleer,
and my whole family. You all put up with my
craziness and are now helping me to
infect the rest of the world with it.
I hope you’re quite proud of yourselves.
Table of Contents
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 1
“Hurry up, Father!” Eym called, her bright blonde curls lifting in the wind like flower petals.
“And why should I?” Stenn responded. “I know the way. How do you think you’ll get there if you keep running ahead of me?”
“Oh, Father,” Eym said, every word punctuated with a quick hop, “I know how to get there! Every girl and boy worth their salt knows!”
As if it was a cue, Eym broke out in a sing-song rhythm “All-Seeing Garamoush.” She cracked out the old ballad with a gusto that only youth could provide. Eym sang of the sleeping god’s life, from the time He walked amongst humans until He collapsed on the shoreline where He slept ever since. She paid special attention to the mention of the living god’s clairvoyance- His ability to see all across the land and mutter His findings in His sleep.
Stenn found himself half-mumbling some of the lyrics out of habit. Eym twirled and spun about as she sang. Her father shook his head and smiled, picking up his pace on the cobblestone path.
Stenn never grew weary of the wide open spaces in the world. The sense of freedom was something that Stenn drank up like water. Stenn turned as he heard his daughter start squealing. Evidently, his young daughter was infatuated with the great big outside world as well.
Eym laughed in delight when she caught sight of the first of many butterflies. They were all sporting the confident colors of springtime. She became a benevolent hunter, chasing down the insects with reckless fervor. The air was fresh with a hint of salt from the nearby sea. Stenn had walked the path more than enough times to have committed it to heart. The edge of the sea, and His Shore, would be just over the next hill.
The cobblestones of the path beneath his feet seemed to cave and move as if accommodating Stenn’s aging limbs. The warm spring wind chuckled as it tumbled through the wide, green plain. Stenn had to start picking out pieces of windblown grass as they landed into his short black hair. He had to admit, though, a seed of nervousness had taken root inside of him when he left his home in nearby Dehry Township that day. He had not laid eyes on the slumbering god since he left the Ministry of Fate and His Greatness- six years ago. Stenn liked to think he was a better man than he was back then, but if Garamoush could truly see all as He slept, He would certainly see who Stenn once was and the doubts he still had about himself. After all, Stenn thought, impulsively biting his lip, they didn’t name the Ministry after “His Greatness” for no reason.
Even those thoughts, however, could not weaken Stenn’s mood or his sense of wild amazement when he crested the hill with his daughter at his side. The hill continued down to form a cliff overlooking the sea. Save for the beach and the sea laying to the east, the cliff stretched in a nearly circular shape and it sloped downwards to the ground with an almost gentle slope. The space below could only be described as a crater; it was a gargantuan space that could have held a small city but now held a slumbering god.
Garamoush was a god in every right. There was not a single story, fable, legend, or nursery rhyme that overstated Him. If one could move past the fact that when He slept He looked more like a mountain than a living being, more parallels could have been drawn between Garamoush and a common tortoise as opposed to a god. He wore a shell, black and brown with silver veins like cut marble and bumped like an ancient tree. However, most tortoises didn’t have four arms, a flat tail nearly as long as the body proper, and a crown and cowl of gnarled white bone.
A sound of rushing air caught Stenn’s attention and he looked about, expecting to see the plains shimmering from a strong gust of wind. Instead, he was drawn to Eym, who was gasping in nothing short of wonderment.
Gasping was all she seemed to be able to do, in fact. Any words that she tried to form ended up leaving her mouth in quiet, out of order fragments. However, what Eym couldn’t say with her mouth, she was saying with her eyes. Her pupils shot around like birds taking flight as they tried to absorb all that she was saying.
Stenn smiled. I once was the same way, he thought. I once thought it impossible, incomprehensible almost, that something so enormous could ever exist. We’re hardly even ants to Him, Stenn had thought then and still thought now, it would take a god’s intelligence to even notice creature as painfully small as us beneath Him.
“He’s got four arms, Father,” she gasped.
Stenn shook his head. That’s what you notice? Never mind the fact that He’s larger than your entire hometown. “Yes. Yes He does.” In the valley, Stenn noticed that a spattering of children, overseen by an elderly woman, was playing down in the sand. In Stenn’s day, it was almost a rite of passage for children to play near the benevolent god at some point in their lives. Stenn’s life as a servant in a lord’s manor never allowed him the luxury to see Him in the flesh, however. Stenn finally laid eyes on His divine form only a few years after joining the Ministry when he escorting a Declarer for the first time. He was happy to know that his daughter was already living a better life than he had.
There was another gust of wind but this time it came from down below. Garamoush’s breath pushed clouds of sand and dirt into the air that could easily swallow up whole groups of men.
“For all the sleeping He does,” Eym said, “why would He even need all those arms?”
“To Stir, Eym,” Stenn responded. “He couldn’t roll or move very well without all that strength, now could He?”
His Shore wasn’t even a shoreline before His arrival, in fact. When He had finally laid down to rest, He flattened virtually an entire hillside in the process. His Stirrings only made the Shoreline longer and wider as His massive frame flattened rocks and hills. The flood of clairvoyant visions Garamoush was said to have as He slept, perhaps understandably for a pacifist god in a world of humans, occasionally caused Him some distress. Thus, He tossed and turned in His sleep, not unlike the humans He was dedicated to protecting and watching over. His words had stopped wars, birthed cities, and imparted cures to stop plagues over the course of over two hundred years. It only helped Him that cities and towns that were miles upon miles away could feel the ground rumble just a bit whenever He Stirred. When a god was displeased, it was almost impossible to ignore Him.
Stenn sat and flexed his toes and fingers in the tall grass. It had been six good years since he felt his hands and feet laden down by the armour of a Ministry Knight. Six good years of life he lived without regrets because he spent all of that time watching his daughter go from a newborn to the curious young girl she was now. Stenn dug into his pocket and pulled out his pocket watch; the new invention of clockwork continued to amaze him and when the Ministry sent it along with him when he was freed from his duties, he found some kind of petty vengeance in asking merchants just how much the device would have been worth. He would have loved to hawk the brass cylindrical “gift” and spent the small mountain of gold indulging in every vice the Ministry warned against. It’s not like I even have the stomach for that
kind of stuff anyway, Stenn thought. Then he smirked. Please, I don’t think my wife would approve.
Eym’s eyes, like the clockwork inside it, wound over the watch. She had taken a fierce liking to the device since the moment she could hold it. That was more than enough for Stenn, so he kept it.
“Your mother should be here soon,” Stenn said, the clock showing that it was barely past midday. “It never takes more than a few hours to get here from Oxfield.” Tania had insisted on being with her father at Oxfield while her mother finished recovering from her gout. Stenn had received a letter just a few days before that his mother-in-law’s pain had subsided and she was quite vocal in her displeasure that he, too, did not wait on her. Eym had smiled and laughed along with her father as he read the letter aloud in his mother-in-law’s low, accusatory voice. Tania would have no doubt laughed alongside them, if not laughing the loudest of all.
Eym could hardly sit still; she bounced on the balls of her feet, her eyes darting between Garamoush and the watch.
“Do you think He’ll tell me my future one day, father?” Eym asked, her gaze now transfixed on the slumbering god.
“It doesn’t really work that way, I’m afraid,” Stenn said. “Garamoush doesn’t tell the future, He… sees things, sees them all across the world even as He sleeps. Then when something really bothers Him, He’ll start speaking in his sleep.”
“That’s much less interesting, Father,” Eym said, her brow trying adorably hard to look angry.
Stenn shrugged. “Just the way it is.” But you’ve been to plenty of Ministry services, right? Haven’t the Declarers told you some amazing things, things that somebody who has been asleep since even before I was born somehow still knows?”
“Well Father,” Eym said, utilizing all of the stubbornness that came with Stenn’s side of the gene pool, “He’s a god. He’s supposed to know things. Like the future. That’s a god-ish thing to know.”
“And have you ever spoken to a god, young lady?” Stenn asked with a smile. “How do you know what kind of ‘things’ they know?”
Eym’s lip stuck out as she floundered, searching for an answer or a way to buy time so she could just make up something that sounded good. “No, I’ve never spoken to one” she admitted after a while, but was quick to retaliate with, “but you have.”
“Garamoush spoke at me,” Stenn said. “Besides, “it was the Declarers I was guarding that He spoke to. I just happened to be nearby.” Even the memory of Garamoush’s voice was so punishingly loud that the ghost of a ringing could be heard in Stenn’s ears. In truth, it was more like He spoke around Stenn, rather than at him. “It’s not like I knew what he was saying anyway. Only the Declarers knew.”
Her newest scheme foiled, Eym kept scowling and started to angrily pick at the grass beneath her.
“I just wanted to know if I’d grow up to be somebody great,” she said, “somebody like you, Father. I want to be in history books one day.” It was there that Eym’s mother and Stenn’s wife, Tania, started to come through. A big heart and bigger dreams was what drew the lowborn Stenn to the only daughter of a wealthy merchant. It was also those qualities that kept Stenn coming back no matter how many times Tania’s father shooed him away like a wandering, flea-bitten dog. Even back then, Stenn knew that he was hardly better than a hired thug when he worked for the Ministry. And in general, Knights weren’t seen in a very good light by regular folks. To make things even worse, Stenn had no family name or legacy to vouch for his character. In the end, Stenn had to admit that he was as close to being a dirty, homeless dog as a man could be. But Tania was persistent. It was a special skill of hers. Her endless energy for life rubbed off on her father eventually, so much so that the old man eventually became Stenn’s father-in-law. Tania’s energy must have infected Stenn as well and both he and Tania were happy to see that it passed to their daughter as well.
“You don’t need some stupid tortoise to tell you that you will,” Stenn said.
“Stupid?” Eym gasped, “I thought you said He could see all around the world as He slept. That’s bloody brilliant.”
Luckily, Stenn’s daughter wasn’t knowledgeable enough in the world of nuisances and sarcastic jabs; otherwise she might have taken that opportunity to turn Stenn’s words against him. If she was as similar to her father as he thought, Stenn probably wouldn’t have heard the end of it for some time.
“I mean that you can be great without somebody telling you that you can.”
“Oh,” Eym said, the gears in her head resetting, “I want to work for the Ministry. Like you, father. Or like Lord Ennet. He was a Declarer too, wasn’t he? Do you think I could be one? I hear they have to study loads to understand Garamoush. Months,” she said, incredulous, “years even.” Eym’s young body hummed with excitement as her dream was put into words and shared aloud.
Stenn, meanwhile, concealed his frown behind a thin smile. He had slaved for the Ministry for thirty years. Thirty years too many, he thought. If he could help it, the Ministry would not get ahold of another member of the Fenner family. But he also frowned for the man his daughter had mentioned. Lord Samuel Ennet and his wife hadn’t been seen in years. They, along with some of their retainers, had disappeared into the labyrinth inside of Garamoush’s shell five years ago and hadn’t been seen since. Most believed, and perhaps rightly so, that they were all dead. The shell of a god was hardly a place for man who was so old that his walking stick was practically his third leg.
Stenn’s mind remained dwelling on the Ministry. The ghosts of their rhetoric and the time that he had wasted listening to and following them still remained as whispers deep within his mind. They were merely whispers now, but they still lived on nevertheless. As if fate had a cruel sense of humour, Stenn’s eye caught sight a cluster of figures in the light shade of an outcropping of rock some ways away. He frowned as soon as he saw them.
Of course they’re here, Stenn thought, why wouldn’t they be?
The men and women of the Ministry of Fate kept to themselves, avoiding all contact with other humans and even the bright and cheerful sun. A pair of acolytes sat cross-legged with books in their laps, their faces and figures obscured by a hooded heavy brown robe. The dark gold embroidery on their sleeves and shoulders told Stenn that they were at least somewhat progressed in their studies to become full-fledged Declarers. In his days, Stenn had seen Declarers with intricate and oftentimes stunning embroidered art- usually of sacred scenes or symbols- woven into the fabrics of their robes by the Declarers themselves.
Stenn hesitated when he saw the Knight standing with his arms crossed and in his plate armour. He looked like a steel-clad statue as he stood guard over his charges.
Stenn almost didn’t want to look the man’s way for too long, just in case he was somehow recognized. He knew how absurd the idea was, given the distance at which he sat from them and considering how preoccupied their minds must have been. Garamoush rarely spoke with any real consistency- gods were probably not known for a sense of timeliness since they lived forever- but His Stirrings were the best indicators that the Ministry had that He might speak soon. But for the past couple of years, Garamoush had been strangely silent. He Stirred with ever-increasing frequency and yet He said nothing. Stenn could hardly change the fact of the matter, but even he was beginning to grow nervous about the god’s prolonged silence.
Simply looking at the trio for too long was making Stenn’s stomach turn over, as if they were demons trying to tempt him back into a life he had chosen to leave behind. So, he turned away from them and back to Eym. Back to the life had had chosen to replace his old one.
A rumbling ran beneath Stenn’s feet. Eym was quick to notice it, too, and was quicker in rising to her feet. A sound like the low blowing of a horn ran up from the valley below up to the cliffs. The sound was indeed low and loud like a horn, but it was strong enough to push against Stenn’s chest. It felt like somebody was pushing a rock up against his chest. He had felt it many times be
fore, but had never grown used to it. He knew exactly what it meant.
The valley below was now thrumming with activity. The small horde of young people that ran and played around Garamoush was being called to and the children’s old caretaker had personally run up to the playing children, trying to pull them all away. Her voice was drowned out by the thunderstorm of noise that was coming from Garamoush.
“What’s going on, Father?” Eym asked with her eyes still on the valley below. She had her hand on her chest, evidently not enjoying the strange new sensation.
The children in the valley didn’t seem to realize the amount of danger they were in. Some simply bounced up and down in joy from the new sensation. One who appeared much older than the other children simply stared at Garamoush. Then, her long dark hair snapped close to her back as she crouched down like a hunter about to fall upon prey. Stenn raised his eyebrow at the young lady, but put her away in his mind- the rumbling and noise was only getting worse.
“He’s going to Stir,” Stenn said, putting his hand on her shoulder. Both he and Eym knew what it meant for the great slumbering god to Stir. Stenn had told his daughter all about the feeling and the borderline incomprehensibility of the whole experience of watching, hearing, and feeling Him Stir. Stenn wagered that Eym was still having a hard time believing what she was experiencing.
Like a human in sleep, Garamoush tossed and turned. The Ministry always told Stenn to regard a Stirring as a sign that Garamoush would speak soon. But for right now, Stenn only knew it as a sign of impending mortal danger for the children below.
The ground lurched and trembled as Garamoush swung two of His enormous arms into the ground and rolled Himself over. Watching Him move was like what it must be like for an ant to watch a human. Everything seemed to move in slow motion.
The chaos below only grew when He turned again, lurching and throwing His weight to the side and bringing it down heavily on the ground. Stenn could barely watch, knowing that He might also be coming down on the terrified children.
His arms smashed into the ground, sending sand and dirt into the air as He came to a rest, His shell once again level with the ground.
Stenn bit his lip. He knew his conscience- his damn conscience which he had been stuck with the moment he met Tania- would not allow him to stand idle while children were thrown into mortal danger. He felt like it could excuse that comparatively small infraction of abandoning his daughter to go try to be a hero.
Eym must have sensed her father’s discomfort. She put her small hand on Stenn’s clenched fist.
“I’m sure they’ll be alright, Father.”
Stenn gripped her hand with his scarred and pitted one. It practically devoured Eym’s whole. “Let’s hope so,” Stenn whispered.
The pandemonium on His Shore wasn’t quieting down. In fact, the chaos only seemed to grow. The elderly matron of the children was taking turns flailing her arms about in dismay and embracing her recovered youngsters. Now, however, people were starting to come down from the hills and cliffs that overlooked Garamoush to help reconcile the whole affair. So far, though, nobody was particularly effective. Men and women both looked, understandably, hesitant about approaching the sleeping god, lest He Stir again, or inflict some kind of godly curse on them.
“Look,” Eym shouted, her pale finger jutting down towards Garamoush. “That boy is walking back!”
It took Stenn a moment to notice the tan fabric of the boy’s shirt and trousers, but his daughter was right. The boy was walking, though it looked more like dazed stumbling from so far away, over to the matron. The old woman stopped her flailing once again to partake in the only other action her arms seemed fit to do- embracing the child.
Stenn looked to the outcropping of rock for the three members of the Ministry. All of them were gone and the books of the acolytes had been left behind. Stenn quickly found them again, their small-looking bodies made even more miniscule by their closeness to Garamoush. The Knight had his back to the acolytes and was slowly pacing, keeping an eye on everybody and anybody, those mighty metal gauntlets of his shined in the sunlight. Meanwhile, the acolytes had apparently been joined by a new member- a Declarer. The Declarer held her hands high above her head and was shouting out apologies, requests, and questions.
In other words, they were doing bugger-all to help the people who were panicking barely spitting-distance away.
Stenn ran a quick count of the heads. Seven children had vanished under the shadow of His shell. Six were mustered around their caretaker.
“There’s still one missing,” Stenn said, “the young lady with the dark hair.” He had to suppress the urge to bounce on the balls of his feet.
For a few moments, nothing new happened. The world continued on as normal and the little corner of it that Stenn was in continued to drive itself mad. Stenn had to look down at his feet; the sound of heavy clopping made it seem they had begun nervously moving on their own. However, when Stenn looked down, his feet were rooted in place as before, but the sound was still getting louder.
Again, Eym saw it first. She eagerly pulled at Stenn’s shirt sleeve. “There’s Mother’s carriage! And look, Grandfather Bartholomew’s driving the horses!”
And driving them he was. Stenn’s father-in-law pushed the pair of horses like he had a horde of demons after him. Either that or he caught wind that a god the size of a mountain just moved. Bart’s flat grey mop of hair bounced about like the carriage itself. The carriage’s four tall wooden wheels trundled about the cobblestones and people scrambled to get out of their way.
Bart pulled his cart to a halt and as he quickly tended to the agitated horses, the door to the carriage swung open and Tania stepped out. She evened out the creases in her simple dress and tossed her short blonde hair out of her eyes. She gave an energetic wave to Stenn and Eym.
Stenn raised his hand to his father-in-law, then to his wife. He pointed down at Garamoush and yelled he was going to help the children. Tania yelled something in return, but the wind drowned out both of their voices.
“You heard what I said, right?” Stenn asked, turning to Eym.
She nodded. “I know what you need to go do, Father.” She smiled and her eyes lit up with pride. “Do the Fenner family proud,” she said. Stenn playfully patted the back of her head at her cheekiness.
“I will, my noble lady,” Stenn said, playing along. He even bowed, which according to Eym’s explosion of giggles, she enjoyed greatly.
“Come back safe,” Eym said, sounding notably less playful.
Stenn thought for a moment. “Words will only go so far, Eym.” Stenn dug into his pocket and pulled out his cylindrical watch. He pressed it into her small, soft hands. “Hold on to this for me. On my honor, I’ll be coming back for it.” Stenn knew he needed no collateral to make him come back in one piece and his daughter probably didn’t need it either. But if it set them both more at ease, Stenn could justify it.
With that, Stenn began running. He found the same paths that he had taken alongside Declarers and other Knights; they had practically been engrained into his mind after all of those countless assignments. This time, however, he had no Declarer to watch over, no holier-than-thou baggage to weigh him down. He found himself moving freely. In a way, it was liberating to run as quickly as his body could carry him down the paths the Ministry supposedly owned.
Stenn was not the only person rushing to aid the children or their wailing caretaker. However, he was the only one to get close enough to touch Garamoush. The great god shook as He slept, His breathing carrying the strength and consistency as the coming and going of the tide. Stenn wondered why He had chosen this beach as his place to sleep. Maybe the waves soothe Him, he thought, maybe He doesn’t feel so alone when there’s something else as powerful and old as Him nearby.
Stenn ran about half the length of Garamoush’s enormous black, spiny shell before he needed to stop and catch his breath. It was like he was trying to run his way around the outside of an ent
ire city. He stained his ears to hear the children and their caretaker. The tone of their voices hadn’t lightened or calmed in the slightest. Still one missing, Stenn thought.
A gust of wind tickled the back of Stenn’s neck. But unlike the warm beach air, this wind was cold and dry. Stenn turned to see that it had come from what looked like a hole in His shell.