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Part 1
Author's note: My first try at a Cythera-story. Looking forward to your reactions about characters, story and language. Thanks in advance.
Regards, Heidel
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It was nice to lie there on the hayloft. Sunshine poured in through the cracks between the broad wooden planks in the walls. When you lay on your back and looked up in the dark ceiling all the sunbeams became as visible as moonlight on water. He used to imagine that the dustfilled beams were city streets, bustling with people going from one place to another. Every speck was a human on an important errand.
Glaucus always did say that townspeople were busy and constantly on the run. Someday he'd visit one for real, until then he had his own town in the sunlight under the roof of the hayloft. "Hage? Kid, where are you?" Fola stood framed by sunlight in the open barn door. "I'm up here." "Well, it's time to get down and back to work. We're not going to wait for you." Hage jumped down from the loft into a haystack on the packed earth floor, rolled down the slope and followed Fola out into the farmyard.
Brushing straws from the shirt and trousers, he asked: "Has Glaucus found out yet why the grapes are so sour this year? It's no fun working in the vineyard, if you can't eat the grapes." Fola shook her head. "He's looked for every kind of vermin, disease and natural explanation, but still haven't found an explanation. We've been busy all the morning, experimenting in his study, to no avail."
During the last months the talk along the long lunch table had been about nothing else but the sour grapes. The grown-ups had talked about it jokingly at first when the early grapes turned out to be tasteless. "You've been too cheap with the dung!" they would shout to Glaucus, and the room would roar with laughter. "Perhaps you've been too generous with the scissors," Glaucus would answer, and the adults would boil over with laughter again. But as more and more of the grapes ripened - not to full, rich drops of sugar and flavor as other years - but instead to badly bruised foul tasting, skinny berries, the laughter had died down in the dining room. Now they didn't talk about anything else, but they talked with serious voices and sometimes with anger. But mostly with sadness.
Glaucus had paced restlessly along the wineyards when the paths should be traversed by pickers. Pulling bunches from the vines, tasting the grapes, spitting in disgust and trampling the rest down in the mud in disgust. He'd raged, shouting angrily at the clouds above. He'd been sorry too, crying just like when his favorite horse had died. He had no explanation, the older kids said. He'd locked himself up in his study, where he usualy blended different wines to get better tasting brands. Now he tried to rinse the foulness from the new wine. He'd brought several barrels of last year's wine with him. He'd filtered the new brew and blended it with the old - but it still tasted awful. One of the older boys performed a lively pantomime of Glaucus staggering around and vomiting every once in a while. A roaring laughing ovation from the kids greeted the stage play, which brought one of the older women over. Laughter silenced quickly when the performer got a good slapping.
Even old Taglia had been at a loss. The wisewoman had tried to find an answer by divinity. Asking two girls to dress in white and collect five flowers and three herbs from the hills above the vineyard, she set about the preperations. In the afternoon Taglia had made a fire from wood fetched from a old tree struck by lightning. She boiled some rainwater collected without it having touched either man or earth. And had then made tea from the girls' flowers. The older women had followed her with interest, some said that they had never before seen her making such a great fuss over a divination. When the flowers and leaves had soaked enough, she poured the brew into a bowl, swirled the contents around a few times and suddenly threw the contents on the fire sending up a great white cloud and making sparks fly wildly. Then she studied the remains of the bowl, the pattern of leaves and flower petals that clung to the inside. Almost everyone at the farm had come to watch. They gathered closer to hear Taglia's faint voice, when she would declare why the grapes rotten. Hage was kneeling by the fire, it was his responsibility to keep the fire going, and looked up into the old womans face. Her eyes searched the bowl aimlessly, like a hunger-stricken child searching for one more crumb of food to eat.
She looked up at the gathering, put the bowl down on the ground with a smack and tried to rise but didn't find the strength. "Nothing. I see nothing," she wispered. Silence was replaced by mutterings and prayers when her words were repeated by the ones close enought to hear her. "I see only darkess over the vineyard," she said, but her wheezing voice drowned in the crowd's mutterings. Only Hage heard her and saw her old eyes gleam over by tears. "Only darkness can I see."
Glaucus wasn't eating in the hall that night. His place at the head of the table was empty. Laughter was rare and talking subdued. When they almost had finished eating, they heard a tumultuous noise by the door. "It's magic I tell you. Magic!" "Get thee away from here, you.. you old hag." Glaucus walked through the door in a tempermental mood, brows drawn together and hands clenched into fists. Close by his heels old Taglia hobbled in, trying to get hold of his clothes. "I saw it, I tell you. It can only be magic. Only magic can stop me from reading the leaves." She fell to the floor, still shouting in high-pitched voice. "And the only way to stop magic is by magic. Don't you understand that?" Glaucus stopped in his tracks. Breathing heavily, he turned around to face the old woman. "Taglia, you were old even when I was young. You've never been wrong in predicting the weather or the harvest. But in this matter, I tell you, you are wrong. Magic has nothing to do with it." Red in the face, he turned his back against her and walked to his chair by the table.
"Aye, I've told you the weather of countless days and I told how the harvest would turn out to you and to your father before you. And remember the time I told you to buy the that horse from farmer Gras, no matter the price. You followed my advice - although during loud protests. What did that bring you? The best breed of horses for miles around. I wasn't wrong then, and I'm not wrong now either." He tried to ignore her, seated by the table he waved his hand to be brought food. By the door old Taglia cumbersomly rose to her feet. Standing there aged and wrinkled, she spoke up again in the silence of the room. "I tell you this, Glaucus. I tell you this with all my conviction: If you do not act against an act of magic, this farm won't survive to meet another harvest. Now I've told you what I know and believe."
A travel in search of magic
Not many evenings after Taglia's prediction, when the talk along the table buzzed more than usual of whispers about magic and Glaucus had been quiet most of the evening, hardly been touching the food, he suddenly pushed back his chair, rose and adressed the now quiet room. "The day after tomorrow I'll travel to the north to find a way to right whatever wrong I've done to anger the gods." He left the room accompanied by surprised voices and angry shouts from around the table. To the north! Hage couldn't remember that anybody from the farm had travelled that far. Glaucus usually only ventured so far as to the closest town to sell his wine. Hage wished so that he could join Glaucus on his journey.
That night he hardly could sleep. The long dark bedroom was filled with snoring and sleepy mutterings from the other boys. This night the reassuring noise failed to put Hage to sleep. He lay on his back, looking into the darkness with tumbling thoughts. Every day since his mother had left the farm, so many years before - when he still was an infant - he'd been reminded that he should be grateful for Glaucus taking care for him. Every day when he got fed by other women, he'd been reminded that he had a debt to pay to Glaucus. Even since he had started doing smaller tasks as running errands to the workers in the field or in the wineyard, he'd still felt a burden of debt. He'd never be able to pay back what he got from Glaucus. But even heavier burdens was the questions he wanted to ask his mother. "Why did you leave me? Why didn't you bring me with you when you left? Do you not love me?" He wanted to look into his mothers eyes and ask her those questions. Whenever he had asked the older women about his mother, they hushed at him, shaking their heads. "Don't ask about her, young one. She's not here, but you are - that's all." The only one having patience with him was Fola. She sometimes used to take him for a walk and let him talk about heaven and earth, without shaking her head. He really didn't know why she did it, but there in the night he found a knot in throat when contemplating running away from the farm and Fola. In the dark room filled with snoring, he felt the burdens grow heavier and heavier.
He'd heard the grown-ups drunk talk late at night after solstice festival and they had talked about old scandals and other events. Sometimes they'd mentioned his mother. "She's probably long gone now, never intended to settle down here. Always wanted to go back north again," someone would say and the other would agree before turning their talk to other things. Would he ask Glaucus to take him along to search for his mother? He'd never do that. If he brought anyone with him, it would be some of the older boys. And if he did bring Hage with him, he'd certainly not have time to look for anything else than a cure for the wine. Would he instead try to run away, sneak aboard the carriage and hide? If Glaucus found him, he'd be furious. He had to choose between staying at the farm, his home, or run away in search of his mother - and turn his back on Glaucus and Fola, who helped raise him. Eventually sleep drowned his troubled thoughts.
In the morning soon after breakfast, Hage brought the horses from their enclosed pasture and led them to the wagon as was his duty. Pulling the harness over their heads and fastening the bridles, as he done a hundred times before. He used the time to think again about his decision. When he was done, he carefully looked around to see that nobody saw him. There wasn't a person in sight. He picked up his bundle from the hiding place in the straw and climbed into the wagon beneath the streched canvas and found a nook where he could roll himself up for the journey. Outside the carriage he could soon hear the people assemble as Glaucus climbed into the seat and took the reins. "Pray for my quick return," Glaucus said as he put the horses in motion along the dusty road. Hage got jolted and battered on the wagon floor, but that wasn't why he was sobbing. He cried for not having said goodbye to Fola and the other kids.
(To be continued)
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[This message has been edited by Slayer (edited 04-24-2001).]
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