Chapter Two
790 Words
Chapter Two
All went as expected the following day, uneventful, almost monotonous… until dusk. As Beautimus prepared for her evening bath, her eyes rolled back into her head, her legs buckled, and she sat hard on the packed mud at the edge of the river. “No, please! Not again.” She fell unconscious.
But in this vision, it wasn’t Áine who appeared to Beautimus alongside Sangrina, but the High Priestess’ House Chimp, Priscilla. When the chimpanzee emerged from the pink fog she opened her mouth to speak, but although she mouthed words, no sound issued.
“What is it you want to tell me, Priscilla?”
Priscilla pointed to her neck.
“Why can’t you just say what you want?”
Sangrina shook her head. “She’s trying to tell you, if you’d bother to pay attention.” She turned to the chimp. “If my stubborn daughter isn’t going to get the message, no need for us to stick around here, is there, Priscilla?”
The chimp and Beautimus’ mother disappeared into the pink fog. Beautimus came to, her flanks covered in black mud and slippery moss.
She called Lizzy. “I don’t get it. If Priscilla has a problem, she doesn’t have to sneak into my ‘dead mother’ visions. She can contact me on the Interface.”
“I’m telling you. Listen to the Goddess.”
Beautimus sighed. “You’re probably right, but I’m going to ask Priscilla when I see her at the Wasenia Festival.”
A foul mood like a wet coverlet dropped over Beautimus. She hoped she could enjoy the Wasenia Festival, but given her nightmarish visions, she wasn’t so sure.
***
Beautimus had a class to teach, but on the way to the school, she detoured to the Glen of the Ancient Ficus Trees to seek the council of Beard, a 2,000-year-old Banyan tree. The people of Wayflower revered Beard for his infinite wisdom. He stood at least thirty feet above the other trees in the grove, his canopy large enough to shield fifty bull elephants. He earned his name from the profusion of old man beard moss hanging from his limbs. He also happened to be one of only a few talking trees on all of Rendaz, and the only “talker,” as Rendazians referred to them, in the whole of Wayflower.
“Good day, Master Beard.” Beautimus bowed her head and lowered her eyes.
“Good day to you.”
“I have been…troubled. Have you any words of wisdom for me today, Master?”
“You did use the oracle, your Anam Glyphs, this morning didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“All right then, answer me this. Why do you seek my wisdom when you have a wisdom-source of your own making? In asking me to impart my knowledge to you, you are really saying you don’t trust your own.”
Beautimus hoped the old tree didn’t notice her flushed cheeks. “It’s that you have lived so long…”
Beard shook his leaves to interrupt her “…because I’ve lived so long your logic is I must be wiser than you? Is that it? Old grapes don’t make good wine. Good grapes make good wine. In the end, the only true wisdom is that which we cultivate for ourselves, Bea, no matter if we’ve lived 3,000 years, or are naught but wee saplings.”
The surrounding trees hummed, vibrated, and buzzed their approval in the way trees do.
On Rendaz, with the assistance of an “Old Mother”—a woman versed in the ways of magic—the ancient trees act as guides to young women wishing to become “Wise Women.” There were only a select few Wise Women among the Rendazians, Beautimus not among them.
The old trees also instructed young men in the “Sage Arts.” If a young man wanted to become a Sage, he approached a tree, and declared aloud his intention. The ficus willing, a boy would sit for years under its branches absorbing its wisdom until the tree pronounced the boy, “Full of Sap.” Sages lived their entire lives as celibate hermits among the trees writing poetry and authoring hefty philosophy tomes. The people of Rendaz greatly honored them, but since Rendazians were social as a whole, and all men are animals who enjoy nothing better than copulating, there were few Sages on Rendaz.
Beautimus sought Beard’s wisdom because she knew he’d provide the best council for how to deal with her visions, and perhaps he could ease her distress over her Anam Glyph reading.
“You have something to discuss? You wish to talk about the mystery of Áine’s murder perhaps?”
“Yes, Master Beard, I know it’s been a long while since her death…but...”
“You’ll know more about that when the time is right, and your recurring visions and the message from your Glyph will become clear soon enough.”
“How did you know about my visions and the White Light glyph, Master Beard?”
“Old trees know many things, Bea, many things. And, do look out for that brown chicken. She will cause you great trouble.”
- Writer
