"The study of hidden things is pleasing especially from one who learns from them nothing but reverence and fear." - Montaigne
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So my iPad fails. Batteries. Gone goes a space station proposal that includes a hotel. No more mister marketing video.
I'm left remembering the duende. Lorca's duende. Left contemplating the Spaniard’s source for story because suddenly I’m back by myself, without the Internet, without ideas outside of my own experience, ideas that have often, especially in a battery-less vacuum like this, made me feel as though I am falling behind the times, trying to keep up with a world I've never sought to pace.
Thus, duende.
What have I been thinking about recently? Hierarchy. A lot about hierarchy and intelligence. Some about hierarchy and swamps. I know so little of swamps but I love swamps.
Some have been drained - Hello New York - but apparently there will be more, as the new water rises and cities are put under it.
That wasn’t meant to work as well as it did. The compost for this story comes from a long way back, before I started worrying about rising water levels.
Anyway, swamps.
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Rosewater
by Eric Westerlind
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1
—Yes, buggo, I feel them coming too.
The old ma'adan suggested to his many-legged mount that it move to the door of the thatch-roof hut, where they took in the thick moisture of the swamp. One of the mount's furry legs trembled in anticipation, and Pa'Torno suggested calmness. His cataracts thick, he stared past the banyans, vision just caught on the twin red delica snakes that wove together out into the changing leaves.
—A wild fall, he said. Come, my friend. Be brave.
The mount shuddered, but stood still. The sound of men's voices distant poling across the swamp waters was as raucous as coughing in the ear. Pa'Torno looked back towards his hutch — the bay shells on strands across the doorway, the bare earth flooring so cool in the day and warm at night.
- So little to take and so much to leave.
He suggested the mount enter and the stool spider obeyed, sidestepping in its long-legged, ponderous way, the old man wobbling a bit on top.
He snuffed the candle of ilica wax and stored it in his sash - the burn felt good and he moved more quickly, urging the mount to each corner - collecting his hokori mask, the thin brew of batsu he'd sip in the nights to come, and an old weave of reeds. Then they took to the trees.
It was a small feat to make himself so light that being strapped to the spider it could still climb because his age and the concentration it took, but once they were up into the canopy where the banyan and cheyote branches merged nearly to a mesh, he settled back into his form and let the mount bear its usual burden.
The spider took the branches naturally and from up there Pa'Torno watched the night come on as a swaying rush of stars in a purpling expanse, and heard the men raid his home like a pack of dogs.
2
- I have only come to say goodbye to you, my dear. Not convince you of anything.
Despite her age, the dryad's barken face twisted with the doubt of a woman of twenty. Her branches quivered.
Pa'Torno sat on the mount at her great base, looking small. He raised his wizened shoulders and fishing spear.
- Goodbye then.
- Where will you go, little wizard. You will not be welcome outside the swamp, same as you are not welcome within any longer.
Pa'Torno agreed with her.
- You are going into the city below.
The mount clicked its mandibles and the old wizard lowered a goji fruit for it to take and consume in a few scissoring bites.
— I will speak to the Popolos about the pact they have made with these men.
— They have made no pact. They have been subdued.
- I will speak to them
- You are a fool.
Pa'Torno agreed with the dryad and went below her branches.
-You have a child, he said. Planted here.
He rose from the mount on a disc of air and, relieved of his concentrated will, the mount scurried around the dryad's island looking for escape
-I will not convince you to uproot and come with, but let me take the girl.
A tiny maidenhair sapling, her eyes closed in sleep and mouth puckered to inhale and exhale grew in the splintered hollow of one of the dryad's three trunks.
- You are as foul a man as any, said the dryad. Her foliage lowered to shade the child.
On this count, Pa'torno disagreed.
— These men have lain paths through the swamp. They have stripped the Smith's Ghost of his rock and laughed to find him looking for it out of malice. It is locked in a box they have chained to his feet so he sits all day scraping at it with fingernails that can't make a line in the dirt. What do you think they will do when they find you both?
- They will die, she said, with venom. The spider mount clambered above her eyes trying to reach the canopy and she flicked it with a whiplike branch to land in the water at the island's edge.
- Without Og?
- Without Og.
They had both felt the incredible creature's death at the men's hands months ago.
- Pasco! the old wizard thought to the mount, re-binding it to his will with its name. Sleep.
The stool spider stopped skittering and slept peacefully in the dryad's exposed roots.
— Will you try your commands on me also, little wizard?
He settled the disk near the shade she'd created for her daughter.
-You misunderstand me, Chee'un Si.
-No, little wizard, I understand you perfectly. You are alone and scared and your people are in flight. You are desperate. Begone.
3
-She misunderstood me, said Pa'Torno. He sat on Pasco and Pasco stood at the lip of the well that led down into the swamp. It was one of these three such wells that led down to Rosewater.
He reduced the spider mount with a twist of his mind to the size of a thimble and cupped the creature in a palm, there on his disc of air. They drifted down the well, down past the grey cool stone, wet with drip, down to where the fibrous underlayer of the swamp fauna met the impermeable force of the city that existed below it, where the banyans and cheote, the mangroves and swamp cypress all reached down to and stopped and rooted in a great hemisphere, a hemisphere only open at the three wells’ exits. A hundred feet below, the sight of the city walls stood nearly a third of a mile high, flawless smooth stone in a circle whose distant side was invisible in the will o' wisp gloom of an underground world. All was green and blue in shades only as bright as a moss.
Pa'Torno settled on the wall-walk and returned Pasco to its rightful size. The mount relieved its nausea, unloading a nasty mess of goji-fruit and mouse.
- Sorry, my friend.
The wizard sipped batsu and suggested Pasco make for the guard's chambers down the walk saying to the moist air that she was right,
— Scared and alone, staring milkily up at the massive root overdome.
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I didn't imagine I would give myself an opportunity to follow old Pa'Torno around. A lovely indulgence for me — he has long been a character in my mental world, a sort of Gandalf / Elminster type, lives in the Blackwater, his people, the ma'adan, being forced out by cultural invasion. I imagine this portion of a story will sit as confusing to any reader who's never been to the Blackwater but hopefully I can make it clear over time. I’ll continue to explore with my old friend and his strange companion in coming weeks, so bear with the periodic nature of this, thanks.
Amazing as always!