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A cradle of thorns

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  • A cradle of thorns

    (The second part of this story is an adapted version of a short story I posted here a few months ago. I've now decided to extend it into something bigger.

    It's my first fully fledged story on this forum. Hope you enjoy it.)

    _________________________________


    This is the sick land. This is madness.

    We sixty are the outcasts- the dispossessed, the lame and the crazed. For years we have wandered through lands ever more hostile, at the mercy of the elements and the barbarians that hunted us across the strange lands. Last autumn we numbered nearly one hundred, but that winter was cruel and the spring scarcely kinder. There is barely one among us who is more than a tattered bundle of rags, skin and bone.

    My own story? I joined this ragged band four years ago along with eight others who had survived when our village was razed by the raiders from the south. We were the ones who fled- those who fought are the ones who now lie crow-picked clean in the ashes of their huts. For a time I thought myself one of the fortunate ones, but no more. When the chill of night decends and the cold seeps into my bones I envy those who fell.

    We joined up with one of the nomadic groups of outcasts that occasionally passed through our lands- the lowest of the low. In better days I had thrown stones at them to drive them away from our crops, but now I value the safety of their numbers. There are savage tribes who hunt down people such as we, but their raiding parties are small enough to make them think twice before attacking us. Our band is bigger than any other that I've seen, even in our depleted state. When sole outcasts meet us, they tend to stay with us, for we have one thing that sets us apart from other pathetic wanderers. It's him.

    He is the oldest of us, and older than he has any right to be. I did not expect him to survive last winter, when we all froze and starved in the foothills, but he refuses to die. He has been wandering for years, longer than any of us, and there is a purpose to him for he hears voices that others don't. Once he was a warrior, a strong and deadly man, but his joints are now reddened and swollen with age and he walks only with difficulty and pain. His eyes are as clear as ever, though.

    It's his eyes that always struck me. There is a sense that, even when he looks you straight in the eye, he is staring clean through you and beyond the horizon. Our wanderings are guided by him, and he has lead us consistently with the rising sun to our right for all these years as we headed to the land of cold and mists.

    I can see him now- he's warming his hands by the fire outside his tent. Silhouetted against it's light his long white hair glows like a setting sun, but he can't bring light and warmth to this evil land. Some of us grew restless as he lead us relentlessly into this region of cold and misty swamps though none left. Then, two days ago, he brought us here and declared that we had reached his promised land- a slight and rocky promontory forming a near-island in the gloomy low trees of the marshlands.

    It will support life, after a fashion. There is just enough good ground to graze a few sheep or goats, and there is bare foraging around, but this is not a welcoming country. The stink of rotting vegetation hangs sweet and heavy in the air, and clouds of biting flies swarm in the evenings. Already two of our children have fevers, and one may die tonight. This will be another hard winter, for we will face it with no stored crops and poor hunting around.

    We are here because he saw this place many years before, and he knows that even if we will struggle to claw a living from this poor soil, and even if fevers may strike some of us down, the barbarian tribes will not come here. Though it is a poor home, it is at the very least a secure one and our few spears will hold it safe.

    Two rings of hide tents streaked and stained with mildew. A low and smoking campfire at the centre of each ring, adding it's small mist to the late evening fog creeping in from the surrounding marshes. Inside the tents, tired and sick travellers huddled together for warmth. Outside- just the lame and hobbling seer, and the warrior who ran rather than fight. Beyond- the cold and creeping marshes stretch towards the ice-dappled seas.

    We hang by a thread finer than the spider's.

    *******************************************

    (Extract from the Primary School's history textbook "A very long time ago".

    Six thousand years ago our ancestors first settled on what is now our capital city. It was very different then, because all around was forests and swamps. It must have seemed a very frightening place. Perhaps they went there thinking that enemies would be too scared to follow them.

    The remains of tents have been found when the subway was made. Why not imagine you are one of those first settlers and draw a picture of yourself and your tent in your workbook?

    ***********************************
    Last edited by Bugs ****ing Bunny; November 18, 2002, 16:16.
    The genesis of the "evil Finn" concept- Evil, evil Finland

  • #2
    Strip back history. Clear away the clamour of the modern age and turn to the dawn of our humanity. The northern hemisphere blanketed under dense forest for thousands of years, before the controlled use of fire and agriculture drove back the trees, pushing back the heart of the woods and what could be found there. In the steaming woodlands, shadows danced and whispered.

    The ancients feared and worshipped, clinging to their paths and clearings and steering clear of the darkwoods. For one hundred millennia they made peace offerings to their spirits. The names they fearfully accorded them may have changed, but the faces remained the same. One was the Mother, from whose mountainous loins and vast breasts all life flowed. Her face was in every corner of life, and the terrible mothering embrace was escaped only through death.

    Her consort was a lesser power, but an elemental force nonetheless. The horned god, named Cernunnos by some. To others, he was Bo. Their later ancestors called him Baal, and even when temples of carved stone had supplanted the sacred glades the priests spilled the blood of infants to appease him. Their altars were stained black from the flow of opened throats, the blood of the babies. By then he was already dormant, having shrunk back into the woods into hibernation, abandoning his people to their fate. If, indeed, he had ever cared for, or even noticed them.

    The temples of the horned God were torn down over hundreds of years of conflict, until his worshippers were crushed. Their conquerors corrupted his name again, and called him "Beelzebub". In time they came to regard him as an integral part of their own faith, as a by-product of it rather than the wild force of the darkwoods he had been. The priests of the new faith named him "Liar" and "Fallen angel". They denigrated the Mother too. Confronted by her raw fecundity they recoiled in horror, and called her "Whore of Babylon", whilst turning to their altar-boys for comfort.

    Yet in the woods, some remember. In the oldest carvings, the vaguest dreams, and most pagan of traditions, the Mother still pours life from between her splayed thighs, and the horned God still howls at the harvest moon, and heads the Wild Hunt, as it rages through the forest in a bacchanalian fury. The farmers still touch wood or iron, and threw salt to ward off the goblin minions of the Wild Hunt.

    But back in that time, in the darkest heart of the woods our oldest gods, Baal and the Mother, were sleeping. At times, the horned God's great boar's head, crowed with the razor tines of a red deer, twitched fitfully.

    Almost as if he was waking.

    __________________________________________________


    The temperature hovered slightly over freezing, and the thick mists swirled lazily around the ancient elms, which dripped condensed dew into the still black water of the creeks. A shriek in a hidden copse betrayed the presence of a fox, but other than that all was still.

    Under the poor shelter of a fallen tree, the mad youth shivered. Another spasm struck him and he retched, but spat only bile. There was nothing left in him to come up. He pulled his tattered and stinking otter-skins around him and curled into a tighter ball. He moaned and sweated in his fever.

    A pale and skinny boy with a fresh scar across his brow from where one of the stones had struck. They had driven him from the village because of the bad spirit screaming in his head, making him howl like a dog and foam at the mouth. He bit them, when they were unwary. For five years he had been the lowest of the low, the groveller after scraps. His mother was long gone- five years back she had given birth to twins that were joined at chest and hip, so her neighbours took mother and babies out to the creek and drowned all three. Now their patience with her older, feral son was exhasted and they drove the snarling youth away into the woods.

    He knew enough to steer clear of the red fungus that grew by the creekside, for it woke the ancestors and made them curse the diner with terrible dreams and sickness. But four days of hunger proved more cruel than the fear, so he had crammed handfuls into his mouth. Now he moaned and whimpered as the toxins ate into him.

    The sun was almost at it's highest point when the crisis struck. A terrible spasm ripped through his body and he screamed and thrashed in the dirt. His heels drummed on the ground and a bloody froth exploded from his mouth as he chewed his tongue into a pulp. Every muscle and sinew creaked as his body arched back like a bow. He screamed, choked, screamed again. Then he fell limp.

    A weak sunlight was streaming through the bare trees, but he saw only red mist and a rising darkness through his tears. The cursing and howling in his head had died away, for the first time in his life. In it's place was a steady and terrible whispering. For the first time, he understood.

    He saw a burning tree in the dead of night.

    He saw the blood spurting from the throat of a slaughtered hog.

    He saw a gale ripping through the darkwoods.

    He saw a thousand shrines sprayed with the blood of babies.

    He saw the cold, dead eyes of a striking adder.

    He saw the weak and maddened spirits of a hundred thousand ancestor-spirits shaping themselves into a handful of silent and terrifying shapes.

    And finally, he saw the great, scarred and antlered form rise and blot out the sun. The horned God threw back his ancient and new-born head and howled at the sky, while the immensity of the mother poured out life and sucked in death. Dragging hinself to his feet, the boy spat the blood from his mouth and screamed in reply.

    __________________________________________________

    It was the next day that he entered the village. They had picked up stones when they first sighted him, but froze when he draw nearer. No longer was he the scampering and grovelling mad boy- he stalked into the enclosure with an eerie calm. His eyes stared clean through them as if fixed on some distant and terrible horizon. When they looked into those eyes, they feared him. Even more than the ancestors, they feared him, and a cold and empty wave lapped up their bowels. Yet they stood back, and let him enter among them.

    Almost as if they had always been waiting."

    *****************************

    (Extract from the Primary School's history textbook "A very long time ago".)

    Here is a small statue of a what looks like a man with horns. The early settlers didn't go to church like we do. Instead they made up gods to worship like this horned man. They also worshipped the earth, who they imagined to look like a big woman.

    Why not imagine you are an early settler, and want to make sure that your crops will grow? Try drawing a picture of a god you might pray to in your workbook.
    The genesis of the "evil Finn" concept- Evil, evil Finland

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    • #3
      Re: A cradle of thorns

      Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
      It's my first fully fledged story on this forum. Hope you enjoy it.
      A very nice story. Original and engaging. Hope to see it continue soon.
      XBox Live: VovanSim
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      • #4
        I will repeat what vovansim has already said, keep writing,
        A proud member of the "Apolyton Story Writers Guild".There are many great stories at the Civ 3 stories forum, do yourself a favour and visit the forum. Lose yourself in one of many epic tales and be inspired to write yourself, as I was.

        Comment


        • #5
          Bleak dude....really bleak...but still well worth the read despite the fact that there's not a single line of dialogue. Usually that doesn't work out, but this written well enough that it doesn't matter.

          Comment


          • #6
            Dialogue is a very tricky one to handle when writing about the very distant past. I have never seen it carried off to my satisfaction, even by far better writers than myself. It either comes across as just 21st century chat looking abandoned in time, or some godawful parody stuffed full of "Gadzooks!" and "By the Goddess!".

            That's probably being a bit anal about the subject, but in this story, it just felt right to keep to the voice of the mind.
            The genesis of the "evil Finn" concept- Evil, evil Finland

            Comment


            • #7
              I don't think this story is consistent with Lucarse's guide
              Any views I may express here are personal and certainly do not in any way reflect the views of my employer. Tis the rising of the moon..

              Look, I just don't anymore, okay?

              Comment


              • #8
                Without a doubt, this is one of the best-written stories I've ever read on this board. You've taken an intriguing angle on this story and I'm anxious to see where you'll take it next. Keep it up, and soon.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Laz is one of the best writers on this site.
                  Any views I may express here are personal and certainly do not in any way reflect the views of my employer. Tis the rising of the moon..

                  Look, I just don't anymore, okay?

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Ah I see Mr horse is capable of posting on the stories, but sadly still at the expense of Lucarse.
                    Last edited by ChrisiusMaximus; November 19, 2002, 21:50.
                    A proud member of the "Apolyton Story Writers Guild".There are many great stories at the Civ 3 stories forum, do yourself a favour and visit the forum. Lose yourself in one of many epic tales and be inspired to write yourself, as I was.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      What did I say?
                      Any views I may express here are personal and certainly do not in any way reflect the views of my employer. Tis the rising of the moon..

                      Look, I just don't anymore, okay?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Ive deleted the angry rant sentence now Horse, I trust this meets with your approval.

                        Ive just had to edit a selling mistake, I hope noone minds.
                        A proud member of the "Apolyton Story Writers Guild".There are many great stories at the Civ 3 stories forum, do yourself a favour and visit the forum. Lose yourself in one of many epic tales and be inspired to write yourself, as I was.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Lol Chrisius you misspelled 'spelling'

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                          • #14
                            Good Lord, it is beautiful.
                            Read Blessed be the Peacemakers | Read Political Freedom | Read Pax Germania: A Story of Redemption | Read Unrelated Matters | Read Stains of Blood and Ash | Read Ripper: A Glimpse into the Life of Gen. Jack Sterling | Read Deutschland Erwachte! | Read The Best Friend | Read A Mothers Day Poem | Read Deliver us From Evil | Read The Promised Land

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                            • #15
                              If i could make the Wild West story half this good i would die content.
                              Read Blessed be the Peacemakers | Read Political Freedom | Read Pax Germania: A Story of Redemption | Read Unrelated Matters | Read Stains of Blood and Ash | Read Ripper: A Glimpse into the Life of Gen. Jack Sterling | Read Deutschland Erwachte! | Read The Best Friend | Read A Mothers Day Poem | Read Deliver us From Evil | Read The Promised Land

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