beaming smile at her. “Of us all, the youngest yet one most cunning…”
It must have been the sight of her, now lit just so in the pure, sweet light, that brought the elderman to tears, a sudden well that fell from his face.
“A moment, dear peers, to compose myself…”
But all were spellbound by his sorrow. They studied the Mynes from head to toe.
The three of them — Minyon and his kin — had hair of red like the best of men, but longer and sleeker, straight down to the shoulder, or spilling over to cover the back, with a slick wet look as if soaked in blood. A liquid thick, maroon, and sticky. They shared a remarkable skin tone too, this middle-aged man and two just grown children, made of a substance more sculpted than born — something mined then fashioned into shape — hand finished, rubbed hard till near perfection, reflecting a glassy kind of complexion a few shades paler than typical folk. And their eyes surprised as well. Deep pools of dark, all but black as a vell’s.
Black too was the garb this Minyon wore, a simple suit of woven worm’s wool, clothes unadorned and strangely clean for someone coming from the road. Although they did fit his beardlessness.
Son and daughter were dressed in worn leathers, boar and boven, both softened by time. He in a vest baring arms and chest with wading pants just past his knees. She wearing less, but a low-cut bodice and short kilt showing her endless legs.
Each one was shod in old, crude sandals.
Finally, minister Myne continued, wiping the wetness from his cheek. “Thank you, fair Keep’s-people, for your indulgence. You must forgive this… my mortal weakness…”
“No need to apologize, pastor Myne.”
“Yes, please take you time.”
Minyon placed his palms together in a grateful, prayer-like pose.
“You are too kind, my brothers and sisters... O, what more witness does one need to show what a woeful soul I am. A sinner no better than any of you. A flesh and blood man of Syland.”
All eyes upon him were damp now too.
“Still, I owe you the simple truth.”
Axon tucked the talon blade into his wide belt of boven hide. Eela twirled her spear in the air then stuck it in the ground.
The elderman’s gaze turned distant and hazy, as if into a misty past.
“As on every Mid Summer’s Eve for thirteen full yet hollow years, I led my family in retreat, commemorating the one not here. Our bittersweet anniversary… of love and the hell of our lives before… For it was this day all those seasons long gone that the Wild took my wife and their dear mother, Faunon.”
Minyon tipped his head to the heavens then back earthbound looking folklorn again. He seemed to meet each treasured eye, reaching a heartstring deep inside. And there was a soothing to this voice, a music difficult to describe.
“My son and daughter grew to know the weight of this solemn time on me. And so it was yesterday they surprised their unworthy father with a present. Something to lighten my heavy heart.”
He spread his arms wide to touch them both.
“It was a daredevil hunt they devised and the ritual sacrifice of a beast born of hate, heat, darkness, and death — a creature I’d met but in lore and myth. Bull-bear or bear-bull as you wish, a monster both mammoth and malicious with bitter irony, nothing delicious, dripping from every crack, each tip of its thorny-toed hooves and black bared teeth. We found it guarding the pass southwest, at the place that the plainsmen call Hell’s Breath.”
The faithful gasped in disbelief.
“Oh, my friends, what happened then… it was something to behold! No less than a quest from some new testament or deed retold from a book of olde. A scene beyond my wildest dreams. An act befitting our fallen queen. Faunon honored by her children. Sainted, consecrated in blood…
“They drew straws and the first task fell to Eela to track and trap the bully thing, a trial using naught but her bare feet and the wits she had about her. Well, as well as the aid of a herder’s spear borrowed from a flocker here.
“She poked and prodded the grizzly demon until it was bullfull, seeing red. A bad-news bear gone very mad.”
Heads bobbed and nodded in approval, although no one made a sound now or uttered a single word.
“The final feat belonged to Axon, armed with only a claw-blade in hand. Standing face to face with the beast, he spoke his last peace, a warrior’s speech:
Give me life
But brutish and short
For kin and bone
I give my heart!
“Then he went in for the kill.”
Suddenly Minyon slipped into a whisper and people pressed closer just to hear.
“That’s when I found myself on my knees — miracle, wonder unfolding before me. A vision of foul bile spilled on the soil, turning the stained ground holy.”
The followers were fully beguiled. The elderman’s voice grew louder again.
“I swear that a father has never been prouder.” He sighed in a sad and wistful way.
“Don’t stop now,” a new acolyte worried.
“Tell us the tail of your story.”
“Amen!”
Minyon smiled. “Of course I will. How could I leave you out there in the wild?”
The sun shone in his entrancing eyes like two stones of treasured obsidian.
“To do justice to this animal king, they gutted it swiftly and by hand — Eela peeling its pelt from the front, Axon skinning the belly and back. It came to them like second nature, the more the gore the more they enjoyed it. Soon there were entrails everywhere.
“And I read them, just to be sure.”
That really piqued his pupils’ interest.
“What did they say?!”
“Please…”
“Yes, yes, do school us!”
He raised his palm and silenced them with a dramatic pause…
“First I foresaw an impending feast, a menu full of fetid beast — truly, all bull,” he quipped. “Bear with me…”
His joking evoked a fawning laugh. Then Minyon’s tenor turned serious.
“But down in the bowels, I found true news and knew we needed to return. So we hastily fashioned a pilgrim’s pyre and set our sacrifice afire.
“Grateful for its gift to us we ate of its meat, lifting it up to the heavens first in humble praise of this life not taken in vain. And we prayed that by this offering we might bring some peace to the wrongly departed — their long-lost, my much-missed, our dearly beloved. The girl of my dreams taken bride by a nightmare. O my Faunon Myne…
“I searched for a sign of her in the flames… but no spirit appeared or called our names. That is, until suddenly, there it was! For an instant a flare of light so bright, the glow of a figure all in white… And then in a flash it was gone — burned out. Nothing but ashes, dust in the wind.”
Minyon cleared his throat.
“No firebird rising, born again…”
He looked off as if keeping a deeper pain or something darker to himself.
“It was just at dusk’s dawn that we set out for home, we three, the last of my family line. And as nightfall stole the remains of the day, I felt a familiar old feeling return — the curse of being a Fell-Behind, left lost in the dark for twenty-some years, abandoned for thousands of suns…”
Minyon suddenly stopped himself and took on a lighter near cheery look. “But enough of the past, let’s leave that for the future — it’s high time to get to the present tents!” Then he shifted his stance setting course for the entrance.
“Wait!” wailed a whey woman.
“Elderman Minyon…”
“What of your prophecies?”
“And those omens?!”
“Ah yes,” Minyon mused, “I guess I can share them… Though judgment hour is all but here. I’ll have to foretell in a nutshell.”
Just then from the settlement hill tolled a hellish warning bell.
Minyon Myne pressed on nonetheless. “It was the brute’s distempered blood, cold to the touch an
d sour to taste, that told me first to test the heart. That organ showed signs of a fabled animal — mighty, brave but gravely ill, as if wounded by a hound of hell or perhaps a creature more feline…”
“Ooo!”
“Amazing!”
“On the nose.”
“So, so sad to say but so…”
“Whoa is the great vell Arrowborne.”
“The brother Treasuror’s very own…”
The congregation seemed poised to sing the praises of the graceful steed. Until Minyon interrupted them.
“And speaking of that woeful one,” he said in a plush and velvet tone, “I spied troubled times ahead for our dear and fearless leader. A season of wither, storm clouds coming, in the murk of the bared bull’s phlegm…”
“Thank heavens you’re back to warn him!”
“Is there hope for a savior?”
“Some higher power?”
“Lord willing,” smiled the elderman.
“And what about strangers?” asked Teely Tynn. “Were there any portents of them?”
The augur thought and stroked his chin. “Yes, now that you mention it. Deep down in the belly of the beast, I found food enough for a three-day feast — vermin and varmints of all shapes and sizes — provisions as if for an epic quest. To me these were symbols of wayfarers, three, from distant lands on a mission of mercy. Emissaries bearing gifts, envoys with long tales in hand.
“And…”
Minyon hesitated a moment, pondering, then went on.
“I sensed something else, next door in the liver… Not always trustworthy but I’ll tell…
“The smell of its bile foreshadowed a leaver, one drenched in the stench of the Wild’s vast swamps through which he’d tried to run and hide. A young fool making a fateful mistake. An error of Eros. A futile trial. And then