He was told to watch out for the Great Beast, was given the usual small pouch of food and told to seek drink where he might. The first night was to be spent in the cave of the jewelled bird god, beneath the skull shelf. There would be two stops during the day, one at the tree of the tailed god, and one at the well of the One-Of-Frogs.
Thewson received no message in either place. The tree, aside from the carved image at its foot, was insignificant. The well smelled of stagnant rot. The cave of the jewelled bird was warm, dry, and smelled pleasantly of the spice flowers which grew at the entrance. Thewson scratched himself out a level space on the floor and built a small fire, and lay curled beside it staring into the shadow dance the flames made. He had not expected to receive a message from the tailed god. The tailed god was mostly a god of thieves or messengers, a god for getting out of tight places, a god for the small hours of the morning. The One-Of-Frogs was a god of wet places, a god who would cure diseases of the skin, most particularly the flaking disease. Thewson had conducted himself with proper respect in both places. He had been told what could happen to young men who failed in respect to even the least of the gods. The gods could get even in ways never suspected by men until they found those unmentionable things actually happening to them.
The jewelled god was a god for warriors because it did not rest. It did not perch, nor was it seen nesting. Its wings moved always like the shadow dance of flames, and it was tireless. Small boys, always in motion, were called by the jewelled bird god’s name. Warriors, tireless in battle, were given the name of the jewelled bird god in addition to their battle names. The image of the god flickered in the shadows of the cave, suspended by ancient art and nearly invisible strings, as restless as the bird itself. The nervous glitter threw scraps of light across the walls and floor, across Thewson’s dusty arms and chest, up and across and pause and back and down and pause and up and across and pause and back and …
The god spoke to him, in a voice like the whirr of wings, a dry, quiet buzzing. ‘Another message seeker, eh, eh? Stupid. Silly. I’ll give you a message, young killer. Fly. That’s the message. Disappear. Vanish. Go like the breath of wind and the sound of lost wings. Eh, you get that? That’s my message to you. When faced by danger, flee.’
Thewson tried to open his eyes and could not. He raised his head with enormous and concentrated dignity. ‘I couldn’t do that. No warrior could do that.’
‘So die, then,’ whispered the god. ‘So die with your blood all around you and your pretty skin in tatters. Eh? I don’t know why I bother. I tell them all. They never listen.’
There was a feeling of vacating, as though someone long in residence had gone away to an unimaginable distance, and Thewson opened his eyes. There had been a finality about that last phrase, ‘They never listen.’ Deep inside him, something snapped to attention, and Thewson heard. ‘I’m listening,’ he whispered into the silence. ‘Really.’
At the end of the distance, at the place where distance ends, an opening happened and the dry whirr came through, softly. ‘Well, think about it, eh? Think about it.’
Thewson slept well. The next day’s trip took him through the little clearing where the Tree of Forever stood, the stone god house at its base dwarfed by the towering trunk, the xoxaauwal, the sky gatherer. Nearby was the house of the old shaman, and Thewson paid his respects to both the Tree and the office. He went then to the place of the giver of law, the ledge of ending where the god of things forgotten lived, then to the falls, streams, pools, and marshes of the woman gods. He slept nearby, expecting no message. Indeed, it would be exceedingly inappropriate to receive a message from a woman god. He wakened, blushing, but could not remember why.
That day he went through forest and over cliff and by chasm past the whole pantheon of weather gods. He bowed before lightning and thunder and rain and mist and wind and the god-brothers little-wind and great-wind, who were quite different from the God-Of-Wind-Alone. He gave obeisance to dawn and morning and to the Ulum nur wavar somu’nah’aluxufus, the God-Of-When-Trees-Eat-Their-Shadows, that is, the noonday god who sat with his big hat and staff in the sun of the cliffside above the desert. In the desert he burned incense to the god of the sun, to the god of drought, to the god of heat (who brought fevers and could be propitiated with beer and the juice of limes) and to the thorn god, That-One-Who-Prickles.
At the edge of the desert way was the place of flowers and the holy garden where the gods of planted things lived; the blossom goddess and the pollen god and the fruit goddess and the grain god and the Blind-One-Who-Lives-Below responsible for the roots of things, especially potatoes. It was a neat and carefully tended place, full of old men and old women and orphan children and warriors who had been blinded or crippled plus a few young men and women who had taken the flower way. The jewelled birds hung in the air before the massed flowers, the whirr of their wings saying ‘think, think’ as they crossed the sightless gaze of the blind warriors or the limping steps of the lame. Thewson shook his head and compressed his lips, thinking. Then he went into the forest again.
It was growing dark when he came to the grove
