Morajek by KeLP
Morajek slept that night, his back against the tree. An old tree it was, an oak of many hundred years, which had seen pass beneath its boughs many armies and merchants, kings and simple folks. He gave no thought of its history that dusk, for he was tired and his mind was obsessed with Toorins, the City of Many Treasures, that the road beneath the tree led toward.
In the folds of his tunic was a golden ladle, worth less in value than in symbolism, which he had liberated from the Temple of Orris, a god of the Nellerites. As he nodded off, he fondled the object through the cloth and chuckled at how easily it had been pilfered; Orris, god of judgment and mercy, had been judged inattentive.
He noticed not the squirrel, flattened on the limb above his head, that wanted to come down the trunk, but feared to with this man Morajek (though it knew not his name) leaning against it. So the squirrel decided, after much indecision and hesitation which is the way of squirrels, to sleep among the oak leaves in a comfortable crotch of the tree.
And a blue jay, higher in the tree, Morajek also failed to see, but it saw him, as jays are wont to do, for they, more than most creatures of the forest, see the things that happen in the daytime, and it was but dusk. And the blue jay, too, decided that tonight this oak would do for a roost and a haven against the owls and weasels and other dangers of the dark. So it, too, slept high in the oak.
Clouds moved in and drove the stars away, and the air was heavy with ozone and dampness, yet Morajek slept. The wind was slight at the base of the oak, and brisk high up where the blue jay held onto the small round limb, half-woke and fluffed his feathers, and returned to sleep.
It was not yet dawn when Orris looked down upon the sleeping man and, being a god with a sense of humor, amused himself with a bolt of lightning against the tree, and in an instant the soul of Morajek was mingled with that of the squirrel, the blue jay, and the old oak, and their souls with his. The theft had been repaid, and Morajek was startled awake to the waning echoes of a god's laughter, and he felt unbearable fear. His abdomen burned: beneath his tunic the ladle had partially melted and left its mark red and black upon his skin, a black circle within a red circle, the Eye of Orris. Oh, how the god laughed.
He started to rise, but fear came with an overwhelming urge to run, anywhere, quickly, yet he lay unmoving for he also felt, strongly, an inability to move. So his body shivered and quaked for hours; quaked after the sun rose, after it reached its zenith, after it slid behind the forest trees bringing the long shadows of late afternoon. And while he quaked and shivered, his mind darted among uncontrollable memories and visions.
There was the memory of digging in the pungent leafmold of the forest, and another of carelessly jumping from narrow limb to narrow limb as he traced a path through the trees.
There was the memory of crowded streets where he could slyly lift a purse. The memory of alleyways and footsteps and hands that pulled on his clothing.
There was the memory of long rivers that crawled across verdant meadows that he followed, just below treetop, gliding downward then rushing upward only to whirl into the canopy and stop there before the enemy could see, then loudly mocking him as he flew past and cursed his misfortune.
And somewhere beneath those memories, or maybe beside them, was another, more a feeling, of vague scratches that flitted quickly across his skin, of breezes and moisture and a resignation to being that bordered on fatalism.
Eventually his body fatigued of his quaking, and his mind fatigued of the incessant pictures and thoughts, so he moved not, and thought not, and lie as if dead beneath the old oak.
#
The pilgrims that carried Morajek to the Great Physician in Borest told of seeing first the animals they feared were demon-possessed. A blue jay and a squirrel moved beneath the oak in ways never seen before, in fits and starts neither flying, nor leaping, nor walking, but so confusingly erratic that for the most they fell and flopped along the ground, making noises that such creatures should not make. The pilgrims prayed, and drew their knives, and dispatched the creatures to the realm of the gods.
But the man they found there, near comatose, they feared to kill, for they saw the Eye of Orris upon his abdomen, and knew not what that foretold. They discussed the matter, and seeing as they were traveling to Borest, decided to put him on their cart, his life in the hands of Orris for the journey's five days.
The Great Physician scoffed at their tale, and drove them away, but not before he had the man placed in his infirmary.
While his disciples washed and groomed the man, the Great Physician studied the man's belongings that the pilgrims had left. They were simple items, and of not much value, not even the deformed and blackened golden ladle, but certain metal tools tucked in a leather case revealed to the Great Physician his trade and thus much about his past life. And his body, examined in detail once cleansed of weeks of grime and neglect, told also the same tale, with scars along his wrists and ankles, and, yes, he believed, even a faint line around his neck.
Still, his calling was not to judge, but to heal. So they placed a poultice of stimulating herbs, wet and hot, upon his brow and arms and chest and legs. Within minutes, his eyes showed awareness, then fear, then he shook and writhed and flailed that the disciples could barely hold him down. The Great Physician then quickly called for calming herbs, placed but on the man's forehead and held there fast by his strongest student until the spasms quit and the man again retreated into stupor.
The Great Physician had them wash away the remaining herbs, and went to his study to contemplate this case. He foresaw a lengthy treatment, perhaps years, and with no surety of returning the poor soul to lucidity. Yet they would try, for that was their calling.
#
Pilgrims brought strange tales of a great oak tree on the Toorins road whose limbs shook and waved when no wind was present. Leaves dropped and sprouted on different limbs in different seasons, out-of-sync with the other trees, and sometimes, when the wind blew hard through its boughs and the limbs scraped and rubbed, it seemed to form words, indistinguishable and indecipherable words, but words unlike a tree had ever sounded.
The City Fathers of Toorins tried to ignore the pilgrims and their tales, for pilgrims are known for their incredulity, but when the stories continued and grew, they decided to see this tree for themselves. The Thirteen stood before it on a calm and sunny day, and the oak limbs writhed, and brown, mottled leaves fell from the same branches that sprouted green buds and held green leaves. Dead, dry limbs pushed green buds from the tips, with acorns hanging on leafless shoots from the lifeless middle of the branches. Some of the Thirteen shook in fear, some prayed to their gods, some cried or cursed at the sight; they conferred and soon all agreed what had to be done.
An army of laborers was brought to the great oak. They felled the tree and hewed the branches into thousands of chunks, while their fellow workers dug and heaped the red clay soil in a berm to circle the stump, revealing the great roots. Even as they sawed the limbs, those limbs would twist lightly with none touching them, and the roots themselves were seen to tremble and shiver as they were uncovered.
And when the work was done, with a pit tens of feet deep opened around the stump, and the chunks of branches and trunk arrayed along the berm, they fell more trees, of cedar and pine, and heaped the wood into the pit, even atop the stump and stuffed betwixt the roots. They fired the cedar, a purifying wood, and the pine, whose pitch assured a bright and savage fire, and the Thirteen blessed the actions.
Over the next few days, with the stump blackened and still alight, the oaken chunks were added to the pyre, and yet more cedar and pine to that, until all the oak was burned and the pit was filled with the ashes of the wood.
When finally they left the evil place, many noted the red-rimmed pit filled with black ash, and remarked how it resembled the Eye of Orris.
#
Many years passed, and the Great Physician could look upon Morajek as, if not cured, at least successfully treated, for he could speak his name, and sometimes other single words; he could follow directions, if given when he appeared most lucid, and if not hurried to complete the task; he could feed himself, most of the time, and self-medicate with the needed herbs and foodstocks, most of the time; and, although his days were spent dulled and slowed by the treatments, the times of frenetic activity and paralysis waned from month to month.
Eventually, they could take him outside. He had his plot of land to garden, poorly, but the disciples and other patients, for there were always other patients come to Borest to see the Great Physician, tended it behind his back well enough to harvest a few victuals. Mostly, he would stand and gaze at the treeline that bordered the Great Physician's retreat, hoe or weed for a few seconds, then stare again. On a good day, he'd work many minutes before halting; on the bad days, they'd have to bring him back after he would scamper across the field for a few hundred yards, collapsing in violent spasms or freezing rigid as stone.
The years turned into decades, and the Great Physician grew older and seemingly less wise. Fewer patients came to see him, and fewer disciples craved his knowledge, and the day came when there was but Morajek and he. The patient had become a loyal servant, with days between the episodes of uncontrol, as the Great Physician labeled them, and when they did occur, they were short-lived. Still, Morajek could not speak but in phrases of two or three words, but that was enough, for the Great Physician understood him well by now. And so they lived simply in what the Great Physician termed his retirement.
It was not a full retirement, of course, for Borest was a city, though a small one, and misfortune would befall its citizens; then, the city was glad for the Great Physician with his retreat outside the city walls, even with his outdated beliefs and unfashionable treatments. So he continued to see the occasional patient, and they would tell of the manservant Morajek, slow and dimwitted, who doted on his master.
#
They found the Great Physician dead one day, his body lying near the treeline far behind his home. Those who found the Great Physician said around his body were many, many footprints in the dirt, as though a struggle had occurred, and his hands were outstretched in fear, or, others said, pleading. They searched for Morajek, but the manservant was gone.
#
In the Temple of Orris in Toorins, in a obscure corner where are stored the seldom used and damaged artifacts used in worship, is a golden ladle, blackened and warped by heat. The pilgrim who sold it to the Temple had little to tell, save that he'd found it a few yards off the Toorins road, on a grassy mound whose sunken center of grayish soil intrigued him enough that he dug there for treasure, and found the ladle. The priest gave him a few silvers for it, for the engraved Eye of Orris on the handle proved its origin, and it would have been sacrilegious to not redeem it.
#
End
Morajek slept that night, his back against the tree. An old tree it was, an oak of many hundred years, which had seen pass beneath its boughs many armies and merchants, kings and simple folks. He gave no thought of its history that dusk, for he was tired and his mind was obsessed with Toorins, the City of Many Treasures, that the road beneath the tree led toward.
In the folds of his tunic was a golden ladle, worth less in value than in symbolism, which he had liberated from the Temple of Orris, a god of the Nellerites. As he nodded off, he fondled the object through the cloth and chuckled at how easily it had been pilfered; Orris, god of judgment and mercy, had been judged inattentive.
He noticed not the squirrel, flattened on the limb above his head, that wanted to come down the trunk, but feared to with this man Morajek (though it knew not his name) leaning against it. So the squirrel decided, after much indecision and hesitation which is the way of squirrels, to sleep among the oak leaves in a comfortable crotch of the tree.
And a blue jay, higher in the tree, Morajek also failed to see, but it saw him, as jays are wont to do, for they, more than most creatures of the forest, see the things that happen in the daytime, and it was but dusk. And the blue jay, too, decided that tonight this oak would do for a roost and a haven against the owls and weasels and other dangers of the dark. So it, too, slept high in the oak.
Clouds moved in and drove the stars away, and the air was heavy with ozone and dampness, yet Morajek slept. The wind was slight at the base of the oak, and brisk high up where the blue jay held onto the small round limb, half-woke and fluffed his feathers, and returned to sleep.
It was not yet dawn when Orris looked down upon the sleeping man and, being a god with a sense of humor, amused himself with a bolt of lightning against the tree, and in an instant the soul of Morajek was mingled with that of the squirrel, the blue jay, and the old oak, and their souls with his. The theft had been repaid, and Morajek was startled awake to the waning echoes of a god's laughter, and he felt unbearable fear. His abdomen burned: beneath his tunic the ladle had partially melted and left its mark red and black upon his skin, a black circle within a red circle, the Eye of Orris. Oh, how the god laughed.
He started to rise, but fear came with an overwhelming urge to run, anywhere, quickly, yet he lay unmoving for he also felt, strongly, an inability to move. So his body shivered and quaked for hours; quaked after the sun rose, after it reached its zenith, after it slid behind the forest trees bringing the long shadows of late afternoon. And while he quaked and shivered, his mind darted among uncontrollable memories and visions.
There was the memory of digging in the pungent leafmold of the forest, and another of carelessly jumping from narrow limb to narrow limb as he traced a path through the trees.
There was the memory of crowded streets where he could slyly lift a purse. The memory of alleyways and footsteps and hands that pulled on his clothing.
There was the memory of long rivers that crawled across verdant meadows that he followed, just below treetop, gliding downward then rushing upward only to whirl into the canopy and stop there before the enemy could see, then loudly mocking him as he flew past and cursed his misfortune.
And somewhere beneath those memories, or maybe beside them, was another, more a feeling, of vague scratches that flitted quickly across his skin, of breezes and moisture and a resignation to being that bordered on fatalism.
Eventually his body fatigued of his quaking, and his mind fatigued of the incessant pictures and thoughts, so he moved not, and thought not, and lie as if dead beneath the old oak.
#
The pilgrims that carried Morajek to the Great Physician in Borest told of seeing first the animals they feared were demon-possessed. A blue jay and a squirrel moved beneath the oak in ways never seen before, in fits and starts neither flying, nor leaping, nor walking, but so confusingly erratic that for the most they fell and flopped along the ground, making noises that such creatures should not make. The pilgrims prayed, and drew their knives, and dispatched the creatures to the realm of the gods.
But the man they found there, near comatose, they feared to kill, for they saw the Eye of Orris upon his abdomen, and knew not what that foretold. They discussed the matter, and seeing as they were traveling to Borest, decided to put him on their cart, his life in the hands of Orris for the journey's five days.
The Great Physician scoffed at their tale, and drove them away, but not before he had the man placed in his infirmary.
While his disciples washed and groomed the man, the Great Physician studied the man's belongings that the pilgrims had left. They were simple items, and of not much value, not even the deformed and blackened golden ladle, but certain metal tools tucked in a leather case revealed to the Great Physician his trade and thus much about his past life. And his body, examined in detail once cleansed of weeks of grime and neglect, told also the same tale, with scars along his wrists and ankles, and, yes, he believed, even a faint line around his neck.
Still, his calling was not to judge, but to heal. So they placed a poultice of stimulating herbs, wet and hot, upon his brow and arms and chest and legs. Within minutes, his eyes showed awareness, then fear, then he shook and writhed and flailed that the disciples could barely hold him down. The Great Physician then quickly called for calming herbs, placed but on the man's forehead and held there fast by his strongest student until the spasms quit and the man again retreated into stupor.
The Great Physician had them wash away the remaining herbs, and went to his study to contemplate this case. He foresaw a lengthy treatment, perhaps years, and with no surety of returning the poor soul to lucidity. Yet they would try, for that was their calling.
#
Pilgrims brought strange tales of a great oak tree on the Toorins road whose limbs shook and waved when no wind was present. Leaves dropped and sprouted on different limbs in different seasons, out-of-sync with the other trees, and sometimes, when the wind blew hard through its boughs and the limbs scraped and rubbed, it seemed to form words, indistinguishable and indecipherable words, but words unlike a tree had ever sounded.
The City Fathers of Toorins tried to ignore the pilgrims and their tales, for pilgrims are known for their incredulity, but when the stories continued and grew, they decided to see this tree for themselves. The Thirteen stood before it on a calm and sunny day, and the oak limbs writhed, and brown, mottled leaves fell from the same branches that sprouted green buds and held green leaves. Dead, dry limbs pushed green buds from the tips, with acorns hanging on leafless shoots from the lifeless middle of the branches. Some of the Thirteen shook in fear, some prayed to their gods, some cried or cursed at the sight; they conferred and soon all agreed what had to be done.
An army of laborers was brought to the great oak. They felled the tree and hewed the branches into thousands of chunks, while their fellow workers dug and heaped the red clay soil in a berm to circle the stump, revealing the great roots. Even as they sawed the limbs, those limbs would twist lightly with none touching them, and the roots themselves were seen to tremble and shiver as they were uncovered.
And when the work was done, with a pit tens of feet deep opened around the stump, and the chunks of branches and trunk arrayed along the berm, they fell more trees, of cedar and pine, and heaped the wood into the pit, even atop the stump and stuffed betwixt the roots. They fired the cedar, a purifying wood, and the pine, whose pitch assured a bright and savage fire, and the Thirteen blessed the actions.
Over the next few days, with the stump blackened and still alight, the oaken chunks were added to the pyre, and yet more cedar and pine to that, until all the oak was burned and the pit was filled with the ashes of the wood.
When finally they left the evil place, many noted the red-rimmed pit filled with black ash, and remarked how it resembled the Eye of Orris.
#
Many years passed, and the Great Physician could look upon Morajek as, if not cured, at least successfully treated, for he could speak his name, and sometimes other single words; he could follow directions, if given when he appeared most lucid, and if not hurried to complete the task; he could feed himself, most of the time, and self-medicate with the needed herbs and foodstocks, most of the time; and, although his days were spent dulled and slowed by the treatments, the times of frenetic activity and paralysis waned from month to month.
Eventually, they could take him outside. He had his plot of land to garden, poorly, but the disciples and other patients, for there were always other patients come to Borest to see the Great Physician, tended it behind his back well enough to harvest a few victuals. Mostly, he would stand and gaze at the treeline that bordered the Great Physician's retreat, hoe or weed for a few seconds, then stare again. On a good day, he'd work many minutes before halting; on the bad days, they'd have to bring him back after he would scamper across the field for a few hundred yards, collapsing in violent spasms or freezing rigid as stone.
The years turned into decades, and the Great Physician grew older and seemingly less wise. Fewer patients came to see him, and fewer disciples craved his knowledge, and the day came when there was but Morajek and he. The patient had become a loyal servant, with days between the episodes of uncontrol, as the Great Physician labeled them, and when they did occur, they were short-lived. Still, Morajek could not speak but in phrases of two or three words, but that was enough, for the Great Physician understood him well by now. And so they lived simply in what the Great Physician termed his retirement.
It was not a full retirement, of course, for Borest was a city, though a small one, and misfortune would befall its citizens; then, the city was glad for the Great Physician with his retreat outside the city walls, even with his outdated beliefs and unfashionable treatments. So he continued to see the occasional patient, and they would tell of the manservant Morajek, slow and dimwitted, who doted on his master.
#
They found the Great Physician dead one day, his body lying near the treeline far behind his home. Those who found the Great Physician said around his body were many, many footprints in the dirt, as though a struggle had occurred, and his hands were outstretched in fear, or, others said, pleading. They searched for Morajek, but the manservant was gone.
#
In the Temple of Orris in Toorins, in a obscure corner where are stored the seldom used and damaged artifacts used in worship, is a golden ladle, blackened and warped by heat. The pilgrim who sold it to the Temple had little to tell, save that he'd found it a few yards off the Toorins road, on a grassy mound whose sunken center of grayish soil intrigued him enough that he dug there for treasure, and found the ladle. The priest gave him a few silvers for it, for the engraved Eye of Orris on the handle proved its origin, and it would have been sacrilegious to not redeem it.
#
End