DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Acolyte, v. 1, issue 4, Summer 1943

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Acolyte, v. 1, issue 4, Summer 1943

Page 12

and soaking a strip from her cloak's edge in the tepid water to wipe his face. At intervals she brought him eggs, or the sweet gourds growing by the sacrificial bowl; but he paid no attention to them, or else strewed and crushed them with gesticulating arm. He shouted or muttered of animals which he had taken, appearing sometimes to think himself tracking a goat over frightful orags. Leyenda had his bow, Dal complained, and would not give it to him, so he could not kill the goat when there was a chance to do so. It stood and looked at him. Many times he said this, and finally she did bring the bow to him, but he only cast it aside with convulsive fingers; and she was puzzled and afraid. Then she thought of something more practical. Because he talked of a goat, some animal--or animal-shapen god--must be plaguing him. She would propitiate it, snare it with offerings, and then defeat it with a charm, and he would look at her calmly again.
Immediately she decided this--the shadows were spreading long on the ground--she built an altar; a tiny heap of reddish stones behind the hut, with red petals laid upon them; and then with a broken stick she obtained another ingredient--her own blood. The blood and the petals she stirred together, singing a chang whose words no one understood anymore, and she crawled around this affair three times, calling herself goat. Then it was ready, and with a wintry heart she waited for something to come and feed.
She did not see the day wane.
Three hours she crouched.
Then, with her words of damnation unuttered, Leyenda rose and went back to the sick man. Inside, she stationed herself by the fire, and fed it, and fed her thoughts. With the image of forests passed, of paths traversed along muddy shores, of ravines unsteady with rock, of dogs and men avoided, of valleys and plains and slopes and hills and remembered their flight. With what eagerness she had freed Dal, the death-destined prisoner of her brothers. How they had run in the first moments! And to what goal? She sensed somehow, but in an inarticulate way, that these ruined sunsets like blood running across the decks of wicked defeated ships as they nosed down to doom, were not isolated and meaningless phenomena, but that they had all along presaged the now apparent tragedy. A tragedy so high and exquisite that mournfulness was not even to be thought of. Their fate was linked to the ruins; their coming and abiding it had been destined. With them the old day had awakened. She had seen it in a dream. She knew herself to be of it. How the centuries had flowed back beneath those intermeshing stars! As ignorant of man as was the earthquake or the typhoon had they revealed themselves to be--forming patterns unmeasurable by miles and years-- patters whose ultimate nature the race would not survive to comprehend. The audacious eye viewed them, but it was as if a housefly wrought in a warm dung-heap should nestle in a roof built for snows and winters. Though she sat by the fire and the sick man, she peered backward into pasts so dark that only a hint of something stirred in them; and forward in wonder and doubt at the end, when all villages should be as were the citadels of the old race; when nowhere on  field or mountaintop would move aught but the pacing sun as its light revealed, caressed and forgot man's works in the course of declining day. Leyenda had not thought of this before. She would not ever have thought it in the village.
Calm as the light that flickered yellow in a little bowl in her father's house Leyenda grew. She wondered if her god had followed her. Diminished and spent was her woe. She had gone beyond protesting--she had reached an incomprehensible peace--caught, almost, some secret which fluttered in the dark beyond all fears. Beyond the night which lay all about earth, a fundamental source abode and dreamt in the desolations. Thence streamed the patterens which an hor ago had seemed agonising be-

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and soaking a strip from her cloak's edge in the tepid water to wipe his face. At intervals she brought him eggs, or the sweet gourds growing by the sacrificial bowl; but he paid no attention to them, or else strewed and crushed them with gesticulating arm. He shouted or muttered of animals which he had taken, appearing sometimes to think himself tracking a goat over frightful orags. Leyenda had his bow, Dal complained, and would not give it to him, so he could not kill the goat when there was a chance to do so. It stood and looked at him. Many times he said this, and finally she did bring the bow to him, but he only cast it aside with convulsive fingers; and she was puzzled and afraid. Then she thought of something more practical. Because he talked of a goat, some animal--or animal-shapen god--must be plaguing him. She would propitiate it, snare it with offerings, and then defeat it with a charm, and he would look at her calmly again. Immediately she decided this--the shadows were spreading long on the ground--she built an altar; a tiny heap of reddish stones behind the hut, with red petals laid upon them; and then with a broken stick she obtained another ingredient--her own blood. The blood and the petals she stirred together, singing a chang whose words no one understood anymore, and she crawled around this affair three times, calling herself goat. Then it was ready, and with a wintry heart she waited for something to come and feed. She did not see the day wane. Three hours she crouched. Then, with her words of damnation unuttered, Leyenda rose and went back to the sick man. Inside, she stationed herself by the fire, and fed it, and fed her thoughts. With the image of forests passed, of paths traversed along muddy shores, of ravines unsteady with rock, of dogs and men avoided, of valleys and plains and slopes and hills and remembered their flight. With what eagerness she had freed Dal, the death-destined prisoner of her brothers. How they had run in the first moments! And to what goal? She sensed somehow, but in an inarticulate way, that these ruined sunsets like blood running across the decks of wicked defeated ships as they nosed down to doom, were not isolated and meaningless phenomena, but that they had all along presaged the now apparent tragedy. A tragedy so high and exquisite that mournfulness was not even to be thought of. Their fate was linked to the ruins; their coming and abiding it had been destined. With them the old day had awakened. She had seen it in a dream. She knew herself to be of it. How the centuries had flowed back beneath those intermeshing stars! As ignorant of man as was the earthquake or the typhoon had they revealed themselves to be--forming patterns unmeasurable by miles and years-- patters whose ultimate nature the race would not survive to comprehend. The audacious eye viewed them, but it was as if a housefly wrought in a warm dung-heap should nestle in a roof built for snows and winters. Though she sat by the fire and the sick man, she peered backward into pasts so dark that only a hint of something stirred in them; and forward in wonder and doubt at the end, when all villages should be as were the citadels of the old race; when nowhere on field or mountaintop would move aught but the pacing sun as its light revealed, caressed and forgot man's works in the course of declining day. Leyenda had not thought of this before. She would not ever have thought it in the village. Calm as the light that flickered yellow in a little bowl in her father's house Leyenda grew. She wondered if her god had followed her. Diminished and spent was her woe. She had gone beyond protesting--she had reached an incomprehensible peace--caught, almost, some secret which fluttered in the dark beyond all fears. Beyond the night which lay all about earth, a fundamental source abode and dreamt in the desolations. Thence streamed the patterens which an hor ago had seemed agonising be- -- 12 --