Modern Mythology
Penny K. Moss
Published by Storm Moon Press LLC at Smashwords
Copyright © 2011, Penny K. Moss. All rights reserved.
Publisher's Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Cover
art by Darryl Taylor
http://liquidd-1.deviantart.com/
ISBN-13: 978-1-937058-42-5
ISBN-10: 1-937058-42-5
The Umi have a saying: a story's meaning hides between its words. I have an Umi ear—there's depth between the words in my grandmother's and brother's stories—but not an Umi voice. Not yet. As a runecaster, I must imbue my words with precise meaning and leave no space between them if I wish for my casting to succeed.
Or so I was taught. Runecasting is a Hotan craft, and the Hotan are fond of rigid structures. I suppose I am as well. A Hotan runecaster would not use a word as imprecise as "suppose", but it is an appropriate word for me. I've chosen to return to my family in the Southern Circle, but that choice does not undo the fifteen years I spent learning Hotan ways. And making Hotan choices. After I completed my schooling, I chose to serve my mandatory trade apprenticeship under a runecaster, not under a merchant or a tanner or a mistress in any other trade of value in the Southern Circle, and I cannot deny the craft appealed to me, in part, because of its structure. If I were a better Umi, I would say the craft appealed to me despite its structure. Runecasting is magic. I have always been enchanted by magic. I have always looked for it around me, a rare trait for an Umi child.
In Umi lore, magic belongs to the sky. It wasn't always so. Long ago, our ancestors roamed both sky and land, shaped both heaven and earth with their magic, saw no distinction between the legendary and the commonplace. But as all people do, they fought amongst themselves. The battles grew so fierce that the wisest of our ancestors—at least the wisest who had freedom of movement—withdrew and folded themselves into the earth. But not before chaining the most bloodthirsty of their kin to the sky. When that did not stop the fighting, our earthly ancestors set countless barriers between them, sacrificing their magic to make the barriers unbreakable.
Umi lore does not mention the barriers our ancestors placed between the Southern Circle, where the Umi live with their Sibling Tribes, and the rest of the world, but there are so many, they may as well equal the number between earth and sky. Life here does not follow Hotan patterns. Had the Hotan never come to the Southern Circle, had they never forced the Five Siblings into its structures, I never would have learned the earth has magic. I never would have learned my craft.
Life is richer with magic.
And without my craft, I would not have Räivä.
I do not have my brother's knack for storytelling. If this were his story, he'd have no trouble choosing the proper beginning. I do. Do I start with the first time I saw Räivä? It was on the caravan to Pekkanon, where I attended boarding school. Our parents were not allowed to bring us to the school themselves. School officials believed it was healthier for us children to have a clean break from our families at the familiarity of our local trading outposts, so at the end of each summer, they organized caravans to transport us to Pekkanon. Räivä was my neighbor's daughter and two years older than me, so she sat ahead of me in the caravan, straight and proud. I understood enough to know my parents had not wanted to send my brother away the previous year, and didn't want to send me away that year, but they had no choice. And I understood enough to know Räivä, like my brother, could understand what the school officials were saying when they spoke to us in Hotan, but she only spoke Umi until we arrived in Pekkanon and she had no choice but to switch to Hotan.
It was the same the next year and the year after that, and every year until she started her trade apprenticeship and did not return home in the summer. I saw eight years of her steadfast protest. Even though I rarely saw her at school and had only a handful of exchanges with her on the caravans, I was enthralled by her.
There was never any question if Räivä would return to her family after she completed her trade apprenticeship. Of course she would. There were questions about me, but I did come home. I wanted to see my family, my grandmother and my brother especially, but also my cousins. I wanted to see what sort of life I could have in the Southern Circle, if I could have both my family and my craft.
And I wanted... I wanted Räivä to see me as a woman, not just as young Käde, the neighbor's daughter who'd had a schoolgirl crush on her. I wanted to see if I could have a life with her.
I got what I wanted, though it was hard-earned. Most things are in the Southern Circle.
The Umi have a custom: hunters make a gift of their first kill. It is customary, though not required, for new hunters to bring their first kill to the family hearth of someone they care deeply for. These days, the practice was often used to initiate a courtship. That wasn't true in my grandmother's day, when new hunters were still children.
Now, new hunters were young men and women. My cousin, Anso, earned her provider beads during her first winter home. At twenty, she was the youngest in our family since her father. My brother, Eino, has yet to earn his. I'd been afraid to ask him how he felt when we saw the family hunting party off two weeks ago for the second hunt of true winter. I knew he wanted to go with them. True winter, when the sun remains below the horizon for sixty-two days, is the most auspicious time for hunters to earn their provider beads.
I suspect Eino partially regretted volunteering to remain at the family hearth with our grandmother and me. It was a necessary decision. With our grandmother ill and me unfamiliar with maintaining the winter hearth, someone needed to stay with us, and Anso needed the experienced hunters in our family's hunting party. My family had grown so small since the last summer I spent with them. My parents, Anso's parents, and their siblings had all died during true winter. A hunting accident. Neither my grandmother, nor Eino, nor my cousins spoke about it. I didn't want to, either, so I hadn't asked a second time.
At any rate, I suspect Eino wished he was a part of Anso's hunting party, and that was why he kept one ear free for any sounds of their return. We had enough food to last the three of us for another two weeks, so it wasn't hunger that primed his ear. He heard, and identified, the faint drumbeat before Grandmother or I did.
"That's Öiry's drumbeat." Eino met my eyes over the fire, but his gaze was unfocused. He listened, and just as I could make out the beating, he smiled and said, "It's good news." He rose, motioning for me to follow. "Come help me guide them in, Käde."
Öiry. Our neighbor and Räivä's father. I didn't know him well, but he had taken Anso and her siblings into his family's hunting party after our family's had died. Without his kindness, we wouldn't have a hunting party, and Eino and I wouldn't have had a family to return to.
I was still relearning Umi customs. I knew it wasn't unusual for one family to check in on its neighbors during true winter, but not before the halfway mark. The first half of true winter was usually devoted to family, to honoring our ancestors with stories and, now, reintroducing adult-children like me to the patterns of life in the Southern Circle. The second half was for socializing and sharing meat, especially with families whose hunting parties had poor luck. And then there was Saika's Homecoming, the day when the sun finally rose again. All the Umi in the area gathered at Nediä, the stone pillar that had once been a bridge to the sky, to welcome Saika's return. I was looking forward to it not only because I'd get to see, and hopefully talk to, Räivä, but also because the story of Saika's rescue when she was abducted by Ivö, the bear king from the far edge of the world, was my favorite story. Not surprising, since Saika had been rescued by the sky witch, Terhi, and Terhi had used all of the magic at her disposal in her quest.
"Good news?" I asked.
Eino's smile widened. "Come see."
Our grandmother cocked her head to one side. "Oh-ho." She reached for a poker and roused the fire. "Going out to greet them will steal what strength my lungs have. So take my drum, Käde. Eino taught you our welcoming beat, yes?"
My grandmother's drum had been her grandfather's, the one thing of value he had brought with her from the Lah when he married into the Umi. I nodded. The drum hung on the wall, the outline of an orca, the totem of the Lah, barely visible on its face. I pulled on my overcoat and mittens and took the drum from its hook.
Eino was already outside. He had the torches lit and was standing in front of them, watching the horizon. It was night, truly night, the moon a thin sliver peeking through between the green ripples of Terhi's Sight. I preferred the dark of night over the odd blue twilight that served as daylight during true winter. Night, at least, was familiar. I had seen enough of it in Pekkanon.