Chapter 2

Before long, the people who settled had children who grew up and had their own children, and so forth. In a short time, those in Nemheim had no memory of life before Nemheim. No memory of the bargain made when they left Fael.

As struggles persisted in particularly bad years, the hunger spread from the outside in, from those deemed not as deserving, to the deserving. Families redefined a lifetime to a single day. One woke to hunger pains and the only point of the day was to find food for that day. Failure meant that any day could be the end of a life. There were no means to plan for anything beyond it. And if the next day came, another single-day-long life began all over again.

Their frontier had little escape to offer, no further frontiers to probe for promises of reprieve. The river bound them in the north, and across it lay wild Blada, too wild to hope for a better life. The eastern hills offered nothing to live off of. And the valleys beyond teemed with Neeklow and the other hill peoples.

In time, a few desperate people dared the bleak hills to the east, recreating the journey from generations before. Hungry people looking for a better place. Only, the horizon didn't offer much promise beyond hope. But hunger has a way of prizing hope, especially for the desperate. And that's how the stersh first went east into the barren, unforgiving interior hills. They carried empty stomachs and minds emptied of choices. They made promises to return, they made promises to find something better. Few returned. Of those that did, they only spoke of the horrors of the hills, horrors too terrifying to name. They feared uttering a name would call those horrors to follow them back, back to Nemheim. One of those that returned was a well known but quiet farmer. He had a wife, four children, and a garden of weeds. He had left a broad man with large eyes and an even temperament, returned hollowed out by the harrowing experience, with a savage scar across his chest, four claws had raked his flesh to the bone, exposing his ribs and sternum. His wounds festered and refused to heal. The cuts seeped blood until the day he passed. In his possession was a bundle of sticks with a ruddy bark and a blood red grain. The priest who, after failing to heal him, performed the death rituals noticed the bundle of sticks.

The priest had a round belly that shamed him. Beneath his frock he wrapped a strip of wool tightly around his middle in an attempt to conceal it. It made breathing hard, especially when he exerted himself. So he did everything slowly, calmly, except inside his home, where he'd let his bounds loose and breath freely.

The farmer's widow, distraught, without any means to provide an offering to pay for the death ceremony, noticed the priests curious gaze. She sprung into motion, scooped the bundle into her arms, dropped to her knees, and with tears streaming down her face she pressed the sticks into the priest's bound belly. He took a step back, uncomfortably laughed, confused by the offering, confused by her desperation, embarrassed that she might detect the wrappings around his stomach. Still, his eyes couldn't leave the wood. It had a strange beauty. She released the wood into his arms. A smaller branch fell to the floor and skittered at his feet. He looked down on the tangle he held and felt something. A warmth seemed to radiate from the wood. He nodded, accepted the offering.

He performed the leaving rituals and prayed over the dead man. He stuffed the wound with rosemary and huckleberries. She handed him a stick, what would be the ceremonial first bit of kindling to light on the dead man's pyre. The priest saw it was of that same, potent looking red wood and he shook his head no. Had her place it with his pile she gave for payment, and told her to fetch another piece from a different tree. When she returned, he performed the ritual to let the gods light the wood. Several strange words, spoken in a deep voice, with a stomping cadence. The branch, laid across his palms, began to shed a green, wispy light that seemed to flicker like smoke. Then the stick glowed white, heatless, a pure flame. He set it, lit and all, on the man's chest. Nothing caught fire from this magical flame. It just shed light, in a dancing, flaming manner. He gathered coals from the hearth in a bucket. He placed the smoldering, cooling embers on by the pyre. The winds lifted, called by the pure flame of the lit wood on the dead mans chest, and in time, long after the priest left, they would ignite the pyre.

He took the blood red wood back to his home. His wife saw the pile of sticks and chided him for the odds and ends he brought back as payment. He laughed at himself, admitted he had never learned to say no. She took the pile and tossed it out by the rest of their fire wood. She wiped her hands clean, a look of irritation on her face, that then melted to a loving acceptance of the bumbling fool (that's what she called him). She loosened the wrap around his belly, which spilled out over his belt, and kissed him lightly on his cheek. He took a deep, unrestricted breath, and followed her inside.

For the rest of that day the priest was filled with a dread of having lost something. At night, after his wife fell asleep, he slinked out of bed and shuffled softly across the room. His feet slid across the dried floorboards with a sooosh sound. He tried to disguise that he was sneaking. He felt ashamed of his obsession with these twigs and branches. He didn't want his sneaking to betray how much his thoughts centered on this exotic kindling. But he also didn't want his wife to wake and stop him from going to see the branches.

Two of the moons had risen, tuelal still hid behind the horizon. Breaks in the canopy of the towering redwoods revealed the moons in silvery beams. Passing clouds claimed the moonlight as their own, and the darkness would deepen and fade as they passed. A wind from the west, cold, shook the branches and the moonlight danced to the sound. His obsession lay next to stacks of ordinary firewood and that bothered him. He bent over with a grunt and moved aside his pile of branches.

He grunted again as he stood up, his hands pressed palm to palm at his lips. He stared at the twigs and he felt silly for it. Tree branches. Kindling. All day long, at the edges of his mind, like a cloud that cast a shadow, the image of these branches lingered like a foreshadow. And looking at the the tangle of branches, a few dried leaves curled had separated and fallen to the ground -- they looked like any dead leaf on a dusty ground. He laughed at himself, a quiet chuckle, shook his head and turned to leave. The moment he did, he felt a pang of vague regret. He turned back around, and hurriedly mouthed a prayer.

He rushed it, scared if he took his time his thoughts would talk him out of this inquiry his instincts so badly wanted to make. With his eyes closed, he extended his awareness. At once, he felt the warmth of the wood again, just like he had the first time he held them. The heat felt like the dying embers of a once strong fire.

He kept his eyes closed.

He opened his spirit and reached out. It's a sensation much like how one can draw a picture of a space by the sounds they hear. He was practiced at opening his spirit to feel the spiritual about him. He felt the shape of the wood, only it wasn't in the shape of a tangle of branches. It felt more like a crown. Then it changed shape. It felt like a different crown. And over and over, as his spirit felt for the wood, he felt a multitude of crowns, all regal, all magnificent, all worthy of dux and duxes (kings and queens).

He opened his eyes and took a slow step back. For a long moment, he considered the pile. "This is not just wood," he said to himself. He cupped his hands and began a ceremony. A wisp of iridescent green smoke wafted from his palms. He chanted, quietly, "Aenyl wythul nosturum." Over and over. Spoken softly, more like air that in the shape of a sound. With each repetition, the green smoke shone brighter, the light intensified. Revolution by revolution, it took on a shape. It became a roiling ball of green light that cast a mist like smoke made of pure light. He slowly cracked open his eyes, just a mere slit. His eye lids released each other. His lashes chopped up the view, and distorted everything. The world through that sliver was made of ghostly shapes and suggestions of their true form. He saw that the wood emanated a green mist of its own, and something more, at the heart of the green mist was a taint of orange.

He startled. His fingers straightened reflexively. The ball of green mist dissipated like sand, and quickly faded out. He stepped back. The branches still glowed, a faint greenish-orange mist, but only for a moment longer, then it too faded to a sandy-textured light, scattered on the ground, and faded out.

"This should not be so," he said aloud.