SEERIE
© 2011 by Ella Hansing
Smashwords Edition
1.
Nereus plunged his calloused hand into a basket and drew out a generous clump of black ash, sprinkling it over the mud occupying a large reed matt. “The use of clay alone under the weight of the stone the owner has commissioned would crumble over time, but if you blend soot into the mortar it becomes as hard as rock.” A large drop of sweat slid down the contour of his nose, falling silent into the mixture. “No one builds like Greek masons, especially ones of Pargos,” he murmured. “Our hands are tasked with building housing for even the gods.” Sitting back he wiped his face and called, “Bring more water for this batch and stir it before it starts to harden.”
At the empty silence that ensued he turned, shading his eyes from the morning sun at his back. Only the servant who’d been charged with overseeing the day laborers stood behind him, arms folded in disinterest as he surveyed the stone and mortar supplies surrounding them.
Dusting his hands, Nereus rose.
“Where is he?” he asked, catching his breath.
The servant glanced up.
“You mean the young boy who assists you?” he asked, his clean fingernails languidly scratching his bent elbow. “I think he is at the front of the house with some other young pestilence. I would tell them to be gone if they didn’t seem to entertain my master’s daughter with their games.”
“That’s my son,” said Nereus, straightening his shoulders. Brushing past the servant, he made his way around a pile of stacked stone and moved toward the front of the property. A short, stocky man grasped his arm before he could proceed.
“Nereus, the foreman wants to know which workers you want to stay behind to help lay stones on the eastern wall. It’s gotten too high for the unskilled laborers to continue. The scaffolds are being set in place for you when you are ready to join us.”
“In a moment,” replied Nereus, distracted.
Reaching the front of the site he glanced up and down the cobble road, dazed with concern. The area was vacant except for a small girl sitting patiently on the newly laid steps, her tiny chin resting lightly in her cupped hands as she waited, the train of her pale blue toga lying in neat folds around her sandaled feet. Though her face had no expression, her eyes conveyed excitement. Without asking, she seemed to know what he was looking for, graciously pointing up the road in the direction of the central market.
Sounds of shouting drew Nereus’s gaze in the way she pointed him.
Around the bend in the road came a stampede of young boys, their faces bent with focus and legs straining to gain distance ahead of one another. Their arms reached out sloppily to hold one another back as they raced toward the construction site, the sounds of their sandaled feet slapping the smooth stones unevenly as they charged forward.
Nereus could feel his breath catch.
Breaking free of the pack with lengthy strides seeming beyond his means, Seerie slid sprightly between the two frontrunners to take the lead. He set his eyes fixedly on his destination, neither pushing his way through nor glancing back after outdistancing the others. Dark hair fanning wildly, knees pumping higher, and small fists beating the air, he brought himself back to the construction site within a few short seconds. It took all his remaining strength to bring his body to a skidding halt a mere foot from the house, his thin arm reaching out eagerly and fingers tagging the first step victoriously – his small chest heaving air into his body.
Nereus stepped his way as the other boys ended their run.
Seerie glanced up, his young face startled.
At seeing Nereus, the other boys kept their distance, breaking just short of the construction site.
“I’m sorry,” said Seerie, struggling to catch his breath. “They swore I could not beat them again. They said I cheated last time and took a short cut.”
At Nereus’s silence he added, “I won’t be absent again.”
Like iron bars, Nereus folded his arms across his chest.
The young boy froze stiffly.
“And now you have won?” asked Nereus.
Hesitant, Seerie nodded.
“We ran together, on a straight course,” he explained, “To the temple and back, so even the gods could vouch for the integrity of my run.”
Nereus looked off to where the rest of the boys had halted, his face becoming stern as he called to them, “Stay away from this property or I will set a dog out to guard it. You could easily be killed or injured near the scaffolds, and I will not have you in the way of the slaves and workmen. This is not the central market where you are free to run and play as you wish.”
In groups of twos the boys moved away down the street with slow steps, glancing sideways back at Seerie as they went. Seerie waved discreetly to them as they ventured on their way, and then nodded sheepishly at the young girl still poised on the stone steps. She had clapped her hands faintly at his victory before Nereus had stepped between them with his unreadable face.
Crouching down to Seerie’s eye level, Nereus gently wiped the perspiration from his son’s brow with the sleeve of his toga and drew him close. Though he shook his head in disapproval, a faint smile had begun to curve his lips, easing Seerie’s fears. “I bring you here each day with me for a reason, and it is not to torture you,” spoke Nereus quietly. “A man must obtain a skill in this life by which to sustain himself. I can pass onto you only the knowledge that I have. I don’t have anything else to give you, and you mustn’t grow impatient or distracted.”
Seerie nodded readily.
“A mason is skillful and powerful, employed by dignitaries and commoners alike to mold, chisel, stack, and scrape their visions into something concrete. You must labor long hours and devote your body to your trade. Your trade will mold you as it pleases.” He smiled faintly, his voice strangely small in contrast with his robust physique as he added, “But the structures you create will last a lifetime, if not more.” Nereus took him by the hand and led him back around the site – the half constructed walls enveloping them in shade as they moved from the front of the building.
He only released Seerie’s hand at spying a group of men standing near the mortar at the back of the lot. Stepping quickly around the stones and laborers, Nereus rushed to join them. The tallest of the group, who stood attended by the servant who Nereus had left with the mortar, was the first to turn and look at him.
“This is the head mason,” piped the servant, introducing Nereus.
The man looked sideways up and down Nereus and then promptly back toward the house, seeming displeased.
“As you can see the back side of the structure is far from completion,” began Nereus cautiously, “But you can also see that the inner courtyard walls are fully constructed, as well as the front wall and entryway columns. The scaffolds are being set in place for the eastern wall even now. It should be completed by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Did I ask you to speak?” said the man now turned away, voice low in agitation.
Seerie slowly made his way up to his father’s shadow, carefully stepping into it as he gazed at the gold dipped cuff the man wore on one of his wrists. An image of the god of intelligence and wealth had been intricately etched into the jewelry.
“Just tell me when this mess will be cleared away and my house finished. There are rumors hereabout that I cannot have it completed any quicker for lack of funding. I had to assure a man just the other day that the slowness with which you work was not on account of my finances.” He turned to look on Nereus, his eyes as cold looking as the polished marble columns at the front of the house.
Nereus inhaled deeply.
“The gods themselves could commission and beget a temple no faster than we build your abode,” he assured respectfully. “The stones you have purchased are slow to arrive. They must be transported from the quarry by the sea and carted through the city streets, which takes time. The mortar takes a day and a night to set as well.”
The man raised his hand dismissively to bring silence.
“Fan the mortar with mats if that is what it takes to dry it. In the morning I will deliver you more of my house slaves to accomplish the work faster. You will have no excuses then, for unlike the paid laborers you indulge, they can be beaten.”
Nereus opened his mouth to speak in protest, but the finely dressed man moved away followed closely by the slave and his companions. He stopped short of leaving only at spying the small girl from the front steps, who had ventured around the building as well, her light blue toga trailing airily behind her in the trodden dirt.
“What is she doing here?” he demanded of the slave.
“I don’t know –” stuttered the slave.
“Take her back to her idiot mother then,” said the man. “I won’t have my daughter wondering the streets of Pargos like some loose vagrant, making a fool of me as she pleases like her barbaric mother.”
Only when they’d gone did Nereus exhale, resting his hands heavily on his hips and looking down at Seerie. His face seemed so drained, so tight – like a stretched animal hide staked out in the sun to dry. Uncomfortable, Seerie glanced down at his own sandaled feet – his toes stubbed and calloused from the stone paths in the city, dirty from the worksite.
Though young, he was old enough to dislike seeing his father humiliated or fatigued. “Show me about the mortar,” he said, nodding back to the work. “I can stir it myself if you set aside the ingredients. I have strength enough,” he assured, flexing his thin arms.
Nereus laughed, at last nodding his head.
“Your mother left you with her humor before the gods took her away for themselves,” he warmly said. “No doubt she pleases them every day in eternity, much like she pleased me once here in life.”
As they began to walk back to the stonework, a young man came running onto the property from the street. Dressed in a short toga that reached only his knees, he came to where Nereus was and bent over, breathing heavily. When he’d caught his breath he reached into a leather satchel at his side and delivered a scroll to Nereus. Nereus unrolled it and looked briefly over its contents. It was from the quarry owner and read that there would be no more stone from the quarry that week due to the oxen falling ill. Nereus crumpled the scroll and cast it angrily aside.
The runner, seeming tired, picked it up and rolled it again murmuring, “I must deliver the same note to other masons as well.”
“Ah, I apologize,” spoke Nereus, running his hand through his moist hair. “Today has not boded well for me, or the other masons, judging by the content of your message there.” He glanced back toward Seerie – the bright sunlight causing his son’s small shadow to cast itself oddly across the hardening mortar. The heavy breathing of the runner filled his ears, in turn filling his mind with the image of Seerie touching the stone steps out front – his youthful face so gratified by his own triumph.
Nereus turned quickly back on the runner.
“Who do you work for, herald?” he asked.
“Hezen Mecni, in the city outskirts,” replied the young man, tucking away the scroll. Nereus watched him run nimbly back to the street through the stone stacks and head toward the central market, darting around a group of women carrying water jars. He then glanced back at Seerie.
“Go back to the house and rest,” he said, “I must work late tonight with the laborers to store the mortar and supplies, since there will be no more stone.”
“I can help,” offered Seerie.
Nereus smiled and shook his head, pleased.
“No,” he replied, eyeing him fondly. “Go rest those legs.”
҉
The next morning Seerie was woken before dawn. Nereus had already brought water from the well and set it by his bed matt, as well as lain out his toga and sandals. He now filled a satchel with half a loaf of bread and two pears that were nearly ripe. Seerie was accustomed to watching his father care for him, since his mother had died giving birth to him almost twelve years ago. He had never known her. He had been nursed by another woman who his father had paid to care for him. It was only in recent years that Seerie had begun to feel uneasy about the tasks his father must tend alone. A month ago, a boy had made fun of him because his father had to draw water from the well each day like the women did, waiting in line at times for his turn.
Seerie had chased after the miscreant a very long ways and could easily have caught him if he’d wanted to, as the boy was rather slow and fat, but he had given up and walked back to his own street – being uncertain of how he truly felt about the matter. Since birth, his father had enveloped him in so focused a love that for his own part he hadn’t yet questioned whether or not the absence of a mother or sister was even relevant. His father had always met his needs, and he had never considered himself to be lacking in any way. When arriving home to find his father stacking the kiln with wood to roast their goat meat, after a long day of masonry work, he had decided to dismiss the notion. The contentment of his still childlike spirit overcame his concerns one last time. He had embraced his father and set to work preparing the meat seasonings on his floor matt as was usual. He had yet to question his father once, or his father’s instructions, and that early morning, before the market had even opened or the streets had begun to fill, was no different.
Nereus took Seerie through the quiet streets of the lower district to the eastern wall without saying much, only tugging Seerie’s arm whenever he began to slow his walk or drift behind. Pargos was an immense city. By foot it would take perhaps an entire day to walk from one gate to the opposite gate. It was crowded and confined in many places, like in the lower district where Seerie and his father lived, but in others it was beautiful and imposing – like near the central market where the central temple of the gods rose, where the city dignitaries had established their elegant houses – in order to pretend like they were gods themselves as his father often said.
Only when they reached the Eastern gate and went out did Seerie question where they were headed. He had thought perhaps they were visiting a former construction site to glean some wisdom, or perhaps they were headed out to the quarry by the sea to speak with the owner, but that would be in the opposite direction.
“Where are we headed,” he asked, his voice sounding strangely small in the openness outside the city.
Nereus glanced back at him briefly, tugging him to keep him moving forward. “Do you like it out here?” he asked.
Seerie glanced around at his surroundings. It was seldom if never that he ventured outside the gates. He had no business outside the city. His eyes seemed to almost relax as they strayed far and away across the rolling hills. The path they had started out on had grown smaller as they distanced themselves from the gate, simmering down into a small footpath through the grass. It did smell fresher out there, with a breeze to gently move his hair and glide coolly over his skin. The ground did feel less hard beneath his sandals, being less trodden on than the ground inside Pargos. It was solitary but for a herd of goats wandering aimlessly in the distance – the herdsman barely noticeable as he sat patiently on a rock overlooking them. Seerie glanced behind his shoulder at the city, which sat back like a watchful lion conceding its prey – the sounds of the waking market therein fading fast. He decided he did like it, and imaged that he must feel similar to how the gods felt each day, looking down at something from afar. Walking hand in hand with his father, with the city now as small as his clenched fist, he was overcome with a sense of control. Nodding his head, he murmured, “Yes.”
“Good,” said Nereus, running his free hand through Seerie’s dark mane.
Seerie moistened his small lips with his tongue and glanced up at his father sideways, considering for a moment how anxious he appeared, how strained his body felt through their clasped hands – his brown eyes searching the hills almost directionless. Eventually he stopped a small boy who was guiding a small group of goats past them with a stick, murmuring in a questioning tone, “Hezen Mecni?”
The small boy pointed further up the path to where another trail divided off.
“Up the herald’s path,” he replied obligingly.
Nereus thanked him and led Seerie in the direction they’d been pointed. When they reached the summit of a gently rising hill, the beaten path beneath them dispersed into grass and Nereus found what he was looking for – his face at last relaxing and his breathing becoming gentler. Below them stretched a low valley with withered, dry grass that reached their ankles spreading as vast as a sea. At the far end of the basin an uneven track of sand had been established, accompanied by several large tents, benches, and a pulley for a large hole in the ground, presumably a well. On the tracks there ran a group of young men, their skirted togas flapping freely in the wind as they ran together to circle the course, their heads bent low in focused energy, the risen daylight falling gloriously on their visibly oiled shoulders.
Seerie could only stand in awe, no longer able to move forward.
Even from a distance, the power in their strides and the aura of balance and discipline they exuded was apparent, leaving him mesmerized. It was Nereus who had to tug at his arm and pull him down the slope toward the level terrain, the sun increasing in warmth as it was directly overhead now.
When they reached the small camp beside the tracks, Nereus became helpless again – seeming uncertain of what he was looking for. They didn’t have to wait too long though. In a moment one of the tents burst open, the dusty flaps giving way to a short, fat man with a thick black beard and bare, glossy head. His brown beady eyes spied them immediately and he made his way over, averting his gaze to the tracks dismissively when he reached them.
“Two silver coins to deliver, tradesman. It’s cheaper if you drop off in the city. I can’t have you impatient fools out here disrupting the focus of my disciplined training. I’ll only tell you this once.”
“Are you Hezen Mecni?” asked Nereus.
The man turned abruptly toward him, eyes intently wide.
“Who is asking?” he barraged, “Who are you and what are you doing in my valley? Are you with the city council? I have paid my dues, I assure you. Or perhaps you’ve come on behalf of the temple? I can assure you, the priests will have no more of my profits after the results of the last race. You can tell those robed demigod pretenders that I will be keeping my money and investing my hopes in something a little more tangible than the goodwill of the gods: the strength of my athletes. Yes my new measures of discipline with them shall prove profitable in the end.”
“No,” said Nereus hurriedly, for the man began to move away. “My name is Nereus Philotheos. I’m a mason in Pargos. I’ve come here with my son to see if you won’t apprentice him as a herald, a messenger in your trade.”
Slowly the man wheeled about to face them, the sweat on his bare head reflecting the sunlight blindingly. “Ah. You would like me to train your young youth here and run him in the Eleventh Race, yes? You would like me to feed and care for him, to pamper him, and finally to give him the one spot I hold every four years in that damned race simply because it suits your taste to have him glorified before all of Pargos as the sole mortal champion of the gods for the following four years?”
Swallowing, Nereus blinked and shook his head.
“No, I don’t know anything about that – I’m a mason.”
“Shah!” spit Hezen, “Like that isn’t what every other father or mother of some precious Greek brat hasn’t insisted at my door. As if you wouldn’t kill or steal simply to ensure your son is given the opportunity to obtain the type of glory bestowed on the few majestic athletes that triumph the Eleventh Race of Pargos. Well, I have my own dream, mason, to win and it doesn’t involve me training or rolling the dice on your green spawn there.”
Nereus stepped in his path to keep him from leaving, his face tightened with determination. “No,” he insisted, “I had not even considered he might race at such an event when coming here. He is simply a good runner. He is fast, and hasn’t the heart for masonry, though I have implored with him often enough. Race him competitively or not it is neither of our concern. But keep him as a herald and he will not disappoint. I have witnessed often enough that it is his heart to run.”
Hezen glanced back at Seerie, his face less animated with annoyance. Crouching down he examined Seerie closely, his eyes squinting tightly so that they could scarce be seen. “He is scrawnier than the pheasants I ate for supper last night. His legs are like the two poles supporting my tent.”
Inhaling deeply, Seerie puffed out his chest as far as he could manage – his heart beating rapidly as Hezen briefly looked him in the eye. The folds around Hezen’s eyes relaxed as he fully met Seerie’s youthful gaze. Although anxious, it also appeared determined, and hopeful, much like his father’s tone. Without further words Hezen rose and turned away toward the tracks where the athletes ran, his arms folding composedly behind his back.
“Of course,” he murmured at last, “Though I mention only one out of five-hundred athletes will even get the chance to compete in the Eleventh Race, it is a chance worth any of their weight in gold, mason. The athletes who compete and win are second to none other than the gods. Come, what will you trade me in exchange for training this thin waft of a boy and one day bestowing on him the possibility of consideration for possibly being considered among the rest of my fine athletes, whom I will consider each individually for possibly representing me in such an event as the Eleventh Race?”
Overwhelmed, Nereus ran his hand through his hair and let out a short breath, glancing off to try and think what to say. His eyes fell on the odd hole in the ground a short distance from them, with the wooden pulley stationed precariously over it for hoisting up water. Shrugging helplessly, he turned back to Hezen. “I can, build a well wall for your drinking hole over there. It would take a week’s worth of labor at which I am very skilled. It would keep your water cleaner for a lifetime, if not longer, and make it easier to draw, much safer.”
Hezen stroked his beard, putting on a great show of reluctance.
“Hezen!”
They were interrupted by a voice that called out from the hillside leading into the field. A young man moving cautiously slow in his decent made his way over to them. When he drew closer, Seerie observed that he walked in a slightly odd manner, as one of his legs appeared misshaped at the ankle. His face was moist with perspiration as he carried a rather large basket on his back, secured by a leather strap around his chest.
Hezen’s annoyance seemed to return and he crossed his thick arms in front of his chest, impatiently leaning to one side as the man joined them.
Breathing heavily the man removed the reed basket from his back and placed it on the ground, recovering his composure by realigning his disheveled toga and pressing back his dark hair from his brow.
“Who do we have here?” he asked of Hezen.
“No one,” waved Hezen dismissively, “Another workman begging me to apprentice one of his brood for a chance at the glories our athletic enterprise can boast offering.”