The Unfinished Land

Gifts Good and Bad

“I AM CONFUSED,” Reynard said as he and Widsith carried jugs to bring water back from a stream for Yuchil’s cooking. Kaiholo and the towering Kern trailed behind through the dense dry woods, and then caught up with them at the narrow run of water. Kaiholo squinted out over the flow with a yearning disappointment, as if he missed the sea. The four stood on the banks while Reynard filled one of Yuchil’s jugs and then did the same with theirs.

“Why confused?” Widsith asked over the water’s steady bubbling, sliding sound.

“Why must the trod judge me? And how doth it judge, and speak its opinion?”

“Nikolias knows more than any of us,” Widsith said.

“It hath judged,” Kaiholo said, “but the judgment is mixed and puzzling.”

“Childers are never easy to explain,” Kern said.

Kaiholo added, “Nikolias and Yuchil do not know what the trod is saying—and perhaps the trod doth not know, either! But Yuchil wants you to proceed, even so. That is a kind of faith.”

“Or she is simply rolling the die,” Widsith said.

“That sweepeth not my confusion,” Reynard said.

“Many are the languages Travelers have shared,” Kaiholo said. “The words Travelers brought the Crafters became flesh and growing green things and the fish and ropes and slimes of the sea. Words raised mountains and islands, roused storms, and lay over them calms. Words were brought that passed into age and never again made their play. Ancient words we still carry in our blood, and new words we speak through our blood and with our tongues. Our very shapes and dreams are strung out with words. So many words the Crafters have wielded since Queen Hel allowed them, some say chose them. Or did she?” He focused a sharp look on Reynard, shook his head, and walked off with his jug. Kern joined him, with a backward glance.

“What did I do?” Reynard asked, following the giant’s form up the bank and over to the trod.

“ ’Tis not thee, fox-boy,” Widsith said. “What fates the Crafters decree have been especially hard on those who ply the deeps.”

Kaiholo acknowledged this.

“May I speak, knowing also the sea, and having sailed often with those far islanders?” Widsith asked.

“Of course,” Kaiholo said.

“They knew the stars early on. They have gained and lost islands, in fire and storm, and along with them entire peoples, some they were, some they served. They know the sea as a spiteful wife. Did thine uncle share that opinion?”

“We knew many who died,” Reynard said.

Widsith cocked his head. “Languages divide and give us new reasons to hate—like the tower of Babel. Knowest thou that tale?”

“Of course!”

“That tower might as well have been built by Travelers, and they have carried a strange curse ever since—a curse that maketh them strong, until, some say, the day they are not, and then they will be harried and persecuted across the Earth. Perhaps that will be because they gave the Crafters power.”

“But I still do not understand! What be Crafters, and how can they do this?”

“I know some from Guldreth, and some from Troy,” Widsith said. “When Crafters first came down from the sky, invited, some say, by Hel, and until they had words, their minds were like the dark between the stars—shapeless. They brought to Earth, to the Tir Na Nog, and some say to the moon, the power to shift fates and change time and space—but they knew not how to record their tales or make others act out their plays—until Hel invited the Travelers to meet them.”

“How did they live, seeing such?” Reynard asked.

“That I do not know. Lacking language, the Crafters could do nothing and know nothing. Now they shape all of our history—and perhaps fill in the dark between the stars as well.”

“Guldreth collected the early drafts of many histories,” Kaiholo said. “You saw them. It was her passion.”

Kern returned through the woods and sat beside them, watching this discourse with quick eyes—especially focused on Reynard as the boy absorbed the tale wrapping round all tales.

Reynard squatted by the river, picked up a pebble, and threw it into the flow. “How can words give such power? We tell stories, but we cannot make such things,” he said.

“We are not Crafters,” Widsith said. He smiled ruefully and filled his own jug. “When they came here, Guldreth told me they fled from some force or malignity worse than themselves—but now, with the Travelers’ foolish gift, they fear no such malignity.”

“A lover’s bed is ripe for secrets,” Kaiholo said.

Reynard studied the Pilgrim’s changing expressions—amusement, disdain, and back to a defensive kind of amusement. “Crafters have neither human shape nor sympathy. They exercise their powers to make history without regard for how we feel, and so we are in their thrall. But they have no far-seeing eyes, no crystal ball, and so they send such as I out to discover and report—that they may celebrate their achievement! They wonder about what they have done… How doth it make the world different?” The Pilgrim poured his water back into the river. Then he bent and scooped again. “And why should not this island remain contented, and at the center of creation? I would it were so.”

“Because the Eaters supply you with time,” Kaiholo said. “The Sister Queens believe that what the Eaters and Travelers did was evil and all should be punished. The result is, this island is now broken.”

“Are the Queens correct?” Reynard asked.

“To bed,” Widsith advised, “before we speak more heresy.”

As he lay in his blanket, Reynard had a strange sensation of being back in England, falling slowly and lazily asleep in the tumbledown, net-festooned shack of his uncle—and thought that he had ever wished for knowledge and marvel, but would now exchange all he had learned, all he had seen, for this simple bed and a life of blacksmithing and fishing, a life where he might meet a young woman and bring up a family, subject to all the weaknesses and failures of his father, but nevertheless human.

But the voice spread smoke over this dream and memory.

You are the first word.

You are here.

No rest until it is done.