The Always-House People
By S. A. Barton
Copyright 2012 S. A. Barton
Cover art copyright 2012 by Erik Elliott
Ba'el left the summer camp of the Goat People early, in the gloaming before dawn. He carried a good spear tipped with a flint he had knapped the day before and wore a heavy goatskin skirt to shield his groin from the rubbing of grasses. From a belt over one shoulder hung two gourds on leather thongs, one of water and one of roasted cracked wheat. They slapped a rhythm against his back as his leather-tough feet ate the distance between him and World’s Edge. When his path crossed a spring or stream he drank all of his water-gourd and filled it again. He did not touch the wheat, but ate the tender shoots of reeds and the fat water bugs that lived among them. The wheat was for when he could not find other food; he did not know how far he would wander, but it might be for many days. When he passed goats and antelope, his hand tightened on his spear but he did not stalk them. He did not wish to spend time slaughtering game or weigh himself down with carrying meat.
He was looking for something special. Something worthy of a Manhood Hunt. Common herd beasts would give him nothing new, nothing unusual, so he walked on. The sun fell, and he spent the night in a windswept tree, already farther from the encampment than he had ever gone before. He walked through a morning rain, quickly past the cough of an unseen lion, and the sun was low again on his left before he reached the dunes of sand that marked the End. The dunes were no higher than a three-summer tree, but there in the smell of the salt (holy! he muttered a prayer without thought) he could see a tiny dark smudge far out over the water. Perhaps only a cloud. Perhaps the Mountain Beyond The End where the Gods dwelt. He walked down to the edge of the sea into the shadow of a low craggy shield of stones sparkling with tidepools and grounded his spear. He knelt in the lapping waves, prayed, dipped a trembling hand into the sacred water. He implored Chael, clanlord of the Gods, to spare him the madness and death that was His curse upon those who dared drink too deeply the nectar of the Gods. He sipped and his mouth was washed with the powerful briny taste of the salt all peoples craved, that craving the mark of the truth of their faith. He let a tear of devotion fall into the waters, his offering, a return to Them of what was Theirs.
Then he heard a voice and he startled, rising to one knee, peering out at the Mountain. The voice of Chael? But it came again, behind him from the land.
“Boy!” He seized his spear and turned, stepping closer to the side of the great stones for shelter. His heart hammered and his breath drew deep, raising his spirit for battle. It was a band of men, standing on the dunes. One held the end of an oddly shaped log, dragging it. The leader, heavy with broad muscle and scarred among the white grizzle on his chest, started down the sandy hill. Three men, two women and a half-grown girl followed. The log marked a long furrow in the sand behind the hindmost man. Ba'el lowered the point of his spear into the sand, still gripping the shaft: a sign of peace, but from power. You are too strong to fight but I can hurt you, it said. The oncoming men shifted their grips on their spears closer to the heads, letting the butts of the weapons drag on the ground. We are ready to fight, but we will start no battle. The group halted just out of spear-thrust. The greybeard spoke.
“I am Ak'ken. This is my land. I take no offense if you offer no name. You may come to my house and share my food.” The words were the words of all people within the walk of a hand of days, but there were no strange clan-words. Ak'ken spoke as if he were of the Goat People, but was himself unfamiliar. Was this the wizard his father told tales of, spoke warnings of? The Gods-defier?
Although he used no strange words, he used familiar words strangely. Nobody spoke of 'my' land. Land was land. But this man used the same my he would use to speak of 'my leg' or 'my pain'. He used the same my, the always-my, to talk of 'my house' instead of the not-always-my. He also gave his name without knowing who he gave it to, and a name is a thing of power. He was either very strong or very stupid-- but nobody stupid could live long enough to have gray hair. Stupid killed young, like the throat-swell or the strangle-cough. A thrill of goosebumps ran up his spine and down his arms. His gut clenched a little, the breathless feeling that comes with dodging the horns of an aurochs on the hunt. He knew he needed to guard himself, and so was shocked to hear his own name blurt from his lips unguarded.
“My name is Ba'el. I will share your food but am ashamed I have nothing to add but a little cracked wheat. I am curious to see how your (the not-always-your) land is like your (the always-your) leg.”
The people behind the graybeard gaped at his boldness. The big man grinned hugely through his grizzled facial hair, laughed, and held out his spear, straight up and down. Ba'el held his out the same way and exchanged spears with the bigger man, a mark of hospitality.
Ba'el helped them gather food. The women swarmed over the rocks, plucking urchins and seaworms and tiny crabs from the tidepools. They placed the morsels they gathered in animal skins filled with damp seaweed. Where the rocks turned dark below the high tide mark, they gathered mussels and limpets. Ba'el and two of the other men walked through the surf, digging for clams and throwing them high on the beach of the women to gather up later. Ak'ken and the youngest of the men, barely older than Ba'el by the look of him, did magic. They pulled the log into the sea out beyond the breakers, then pulled themselves into its hollow and... there wasn't a word for it. They walked on water using the log and flat sticks dipped in the water for legs. He stopped feeling for clams with his toes and stared until he heard the other clamdiggers laughing at him. Then he started digging again, watching Ak'ken and his boy fishing in the End Of The World with lines of gut like one might take a fish in a stream. When they came out of the Gods' territory and back to mankind's on the shore, four large fish, strange silver and blue fish, flopped in the hollow of the log they dragged high onto the dry sand.
Ba'el came to look, but shied from touching the Gods' fish. Still, his mouth watered for them and he knew he would eat of them. The thought gave him a shiver and a rush of goosebumps.
They all walked inland together, angling into the sun off of Ba'el's original path into a wrinkle of low hills, the water-walking log going shh-shh through the grass behind them. The sun was the width of a fist held at arm's length closer to setting when they reached the camp and he saw why Ak'ken used the always words to speak of it. It wasn't a camp. It was something else that there was no word for.
It was a bald-faced affront to the Gods. The clanlord of the Gods, Chael, gave the way: people move with the seasons. They follow the fruiting of the fruit and follow the summer game into summer and the winter game into winter. Houses are no more than skins to carry, Chael provides a place to erect them in each camp and blows them down when he is displeased. There were skin houses here, too. They stood at the edges of the always-camp and good-to-eat plants grew near them outside of the circle of always-houses, growing in neat unnatural rows. Some people carried water to them in bulging, dripping skins, hung in pairs from poles balanced across their shoulders. Ba'el trembled a bit at the insult to Chael's wife Krn, the nature Goddess-- how did they dare show they had no trust in her to care for her own body: the Earth and the growing things?
The worst lay at the center of the always-camp, inside a ring of smaller always-houses. Three great houses, bigger than anyone would need to live in, one long, two round. All three were built of large blocks of dry clay with bits of dry grasses sticking out from them, stacked as high as the head of a full-grown man. Atop those were laid tree trunks, at an angle so the peak reached nearly as high again. The gaps between them were filled with more of the mud-grass mixture.
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Ak'ken walked ahead with the men and women, carrying the food to the long always-house where many people were already gathering to prepare and later eat the modest feast, leaving Ba'el standing with the boy-man. Ba'el turned his head up to look at the lanky youth, a head taller than him but not so deep in chest and shoulders.
“What is this place?” he asked, spreading his arms to include all he saw.
“I did not ask your name but I heard it, and so I am Isk. Two summers ago my clan was scattered by a great fire, a hand of days walk to the south. Many died, the few of us who lived went out to seek... different things.” His brow furrowed at a private pain. “I came to find the End Of The World, to ask the Gods what I was meant to do after they saw fit to take my people. I asked but there was no answer. I waited. Ak'ken found me there in the third day of my vigil, not far from where we found you. When I told him what I was doing he laughed and said there would be no answer. He would not explain that, but asked me to be his guest. He has shown me many new things. Mainly he has shown me that we do not have to be at the mercy of nature, but that we may work to increase the goodness it brings us. At first I thought it was evil. Now I see it is good.”
“But, the insult,” Ba'el said, unwilling to name it aloud, pointing at the rows of plants and at the always-houses, “there, and there. The Gods have told us these are wrong.”
“Did you hear it said by a man, or by a God? Who said it said it.”
“Gods speak through the holy. You know this.”
“The holy say the Gods say go gather food. Do the holy gather? They say the Gods say carry our houses and walk. Do they carry anything? How is it that when the Gods speak through the holy, it is we who serve the holy?”
“This is stupid. You speak against the Gods. The Gods will punish you.” Ba'el turned to leave, spitting violently near his feet to expel the rotten taste of their conversation.
“More of our children live.” Isk said sharply to his retreating back. Ba'el stopped abruptly, half-turned back.
“What?”
“How many of your clan's young see their tenth summer?”
“Of each hand, two. The Gods take three to serve. Of times one father gives more, another less... but you have heard the chant.”
“Of course. Ak'ken has been here five hands of summers. I have talked to everyone here. I can count. Here, of each hand three live, not two. If we offend the Gods, why do they take more of your children? If Ak'ken is wrong, how has he lived here at the End Of The World in sight of the Citadel Of The Gods and lived his life more than nine hands of summers?”
Ba'el goggled. Nine hands! Seven was old, eight ancient, ten venerable, withered, useless. But Ak'ken worked in their sight even as they spoke carrying wood for the cooking fires. Worked hard and strong like a hunter of only four or five hands.
“If this is what cursing the Gods looks like, what...” Ba'el said, his mind grasping for a thought to complete. Isk leaned forward and spoke low in his ear.
“There are no Gods. We work for what we have.” He stepped back and smiled. “We are happy. We are full.” He patted his belly, lean, but with muscle and not hunger, with a sleek layer of fat easing the shadows of labor-sculpted flesh. “There is much to learn here. Go and think. Sleep in my house. It is a clear and warm night and I will enjoy the stars. You have much to consider and I will not try to consider for you, to confuse you with more words. My words are nothing. Do not hear them. See us and look into your heart and ask yourself what you see there. Ak'ken taught me that.” He paused for breath. Ba'el still had not moved again, his eyes wide like the antelope's when he sees the lion. “Go, Ba'el. I will leave food and water at your door so you may be alone. Show me when you are ready.”
Ba'el followed Isk's pointing hand to the house. The always-house built on top of a round wall of dry mud blocks as high as his armpits. Though the sun had been strong all day the house was cool. The mud walls, as thick as his arm was long, held the heat at bay. A breeze blew between two untied skin flaps at the doorway. The light they let in showed him a wide nest of straw covered in a broad giraffe hide. A skin of water lay beside it, he drank and lay back to think. The Gods took fewer children here? How could that be, if these people had forsaken the Gods? Perhaps the Gods took more children of the godly, to serve them better? But then how would the godly thrive, if there were fewer of them? If the Gods acted so, the godly would die out, overrun by the ungodly.
Why also would the Gods give more pain to mothers and fathers for their worship instead of less? Why would worshipers have more childrens' funerals to weep at unless...
...Unless worship offended the natural order of things. Disturbed, Ba'el rolled over in the skins, hiding his eyes behind his arm. He couldn't bear to think anymore. He tumbled, lost, into fitful sleep.