upward to go

There is now a goddess who helps to unmask the pain and the suffering lodged in the past. We carry these burdens along with ourselves and place them on dusted and egoic shelves that sit in the head-space that keep coming back to make our bright daytimes quite sullen and black. Her name it is Gha-li she has many arms and quick is the wit of her powerful charms and from her do radiate rays from the spine that pierce destroy rebuild – each one in its time. A necklace of skulls drapes down to her waist her long tongue the tears of the righteous tastes her eyes see all things that we think feel and do she crushes then remakes us – we broken – anew. With thick awesome power she walks among us and none can escape her most far-reaching thrust that pieces the lies that we tell ourselves oft that keep us from soaring – we godlings – aloft. Invoke her when on a new path setting forth to test long-held notions for intrinsic worth when cleansing the chakras or the inner state when bringing realities held up-to-date. She'll stand there unmoving through tempest and gale before her gaze all that's unworthy will fail and leave one devoid of all sadness and woe with nowhere but forward and upward to go.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on pixies' thieving

My my they are sneaky, those mischievous ones, who shorten the daylight, absconding with sun. Not as hard to fathom as they are to see, when coming the hurry when going they flee. They gather up photons, a few more each day, they lengthen the darkness, and rob us of day. Their clothing is leaf-fall, their hair spider-webs, they're quick rash and jumpy, they don't sleep in beds. But all golden treasure that they put away, does ooze out from hiding on first days of May. So fear not ye young ones but leap cry and bound, the sun-stealing pixies they are all around, they listen to no one but good kids who say, Go home now, you pretties – thieve no more today.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

sleepy, sleepy Yyeirdoyesst

There did live once a sleepy man who'd snooze away the day, and slumber deep as cow and crook would make off with his hay. He'd rake again, the very next, and lament his undoing, but afterward, he'd choose to sleep, neglectful of his shooing. He slept so much that mountains sprites those nasty mischief-makers, hatched plan one night to make things right and filled up their dream-shakers. They stole upon the sleeping gent young Yyeirdoyesst his name was, and covered him from head to toe in sparkling shiny sleep-dust. You did too much (said leader-sprite, admonishing his cousin) for now this man will sleep not nights but years – perhaps five dozen. The sprites they panicked, cried and fled, they raced on back to hearths they knew, they wailed and gnashed and foamed with dread, young Yyeirdoyesst they left for dead. But here a goddess came along, her life a careless happy song, she saw the poor man sitting there, with ruddy cheeks and golden hair, and spied the mischief all too soon, and bore him off for home, the moon. Oh what is done?! (she cried aloud, remembering the veils and shrouds that guard the waters of the moon from mortal man's intrusion) act is act, for worse or better; with me he stays but not in fetters. And so she ceased his magic slumber, hoping he would soon recover. Yyeirdoyesst he sat upright, looked around, realized his plight, shrugged his shoulders, lay back down, then bid the goddess fair good-night. Enraged his sloth did made her, mere death it could not slake her, she quickly conjured up his doom, then cast his mug upon the moon, then cast his body down below, and now his face will ever show, on lunar surface brightly.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

Zampyut the Sad

The young wife of King Zampyut the Wise had died during childbirth, and he was lonely. His other, grown children were off at different royal courts conducting business and forming alliances; his subjects were happy, housed, and well-provisioned; and the courtier who had been his most outspoken critic had been mistaken for a stag recently, and shot. Not only was the king lonely, he was also bored. His foul mood lifted and great joy flooded his heart upon hearing that a maiden had been spotted in the far reaches of the realm whose beauty outshone that of all others. “Bring her to me,” the king commanded to Thoraei, head of his security detail. “But be gentle, lest her fairness be ruined.” At once the man set to his given task, riding out forthwith and questioning many peasants as to the whereabouts of the mysterious maiden.

Having tracked her down in a hamlet nestled in the dizzying heights of the towering Yiptlong massif, Thoraei had her placed in a carriage and escorted back to the gilded halls of his king. “To where are you taking me?” the maiden asked, to no avail; awed by her radiant loveliness, the men of her escort were unable to look at her, let alone respond. ”The rumors were true,” King Zampyut said with tears running down his cheeks as he greeted the maiden at the outer boundary marker of his capital city. “Please, child, tell me your name.” “Vrida,” the maiden said, her dark hair and fair skin glowing in the light of the setting sun. Without another word, the king dismounted, helped Vrida from her carriage, and asked for her hand in marriage, right there in the dusty road. A wedding! What joy, the commoners said, what good fortune that our king has found a new queen so quickly.

Vrida, however, who had grown up chasing horses and eating wild onions in lush high valleys, began to curse her lot. 'Here I sit,' she thought, 'trapped in a stone tower in a strange city being dressed and poked at by foolish and soft-handed women, and all I want to do is run once more with my ponies.' “What do you desire, my Queen-soon-to-be?” said Zampyut upon composing himself after having seen her the next morning. “I wish only to go home, my King, and live the life of any other high-valley maiden; I miss my horses.” “I shall have your horses brought here. Would that make you smile?” “Please do not, my King – it would kill them to leave their home, just as it is killing me.” At this the King rose up angrily, making many threats and even kicking at a young errand boy who strayed within his reach. “Now that your sadness is known to me, it tarnishes my image of your beauty. As your King, I command you to be happy.” “Please, oh wise sovereign, let me leave again, and return to my family,” Vrida said. “No,” the reply; “you are mine, and shall stay mine.” That night, with a last long look at the cluster of stars to which she as a child would tell her darkest secrets, the beautiful maiden flung herself from her tower window onto the rocks below. Not only was the King lonely once more, his desolation was now saturated with sadness.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

Yendlon, spirit pony

The great snorting stallion turned to Yendlon and said: Manhood is soon upon you, and you must leave the herd or I will smite you with my flashing hooves.
Yendlon bit at the air and ducked into a fighting crouch, but the stallion fell upon him and chased him from the valley of his birth. The young pony took to wandering alone, his gray hide lashed by the wind and the rain as he climbed ever higher into the mountains that birth the sun. Soon, the grasses stopped growing and he searched in vain for even the smallest clump of clover.
Let someone chase me out of here, Yendlon thought as he walked among the craggy peaks. The winter was hard, and long; he ate moss and shivered at night under rock outcroppings as the snows piled up and hid even the hidden grasses.

Just as he was beginning to forget the meaning of warmth, the snows stopped falling, the sun leaped once more into the higher heavens, and the land erupted in pockets of lush green. The pony feasted on herb and clover, grasses clumped and loose. His ribs vanished behind thick layers of muscle and his pelt shone as if with an inner light.
For many seasons, Yendlon roamed the mountains, alone.
I shall look once more upon the valley whence I am come, Yendlon said to himself as he was eating the fresh grasses of Spring. He picked his way carefully along the rocks, running when footing allowed, and finally mounted a spire that afforded him a view of his ancestral herd.
He gazed down upon them with herb-sharpened eyes, thinking: Their numbers are many and the stallion looks weak, but I belong here, among the rocks and the dizzying heights.

Down in the valley, two mares looked up from a mound of sweet thick grasses and spied in the distance a lone horse standing.
See there, said the first, a horse perched upon the mountain.
Yes, said the second, I see him and recognize his shape. I knew his mother, whose son has grown large, and strong.
Soon enough, some of the other mares glanced up at Yendlon's gleaming mane and cast their eyes upon his muscle-bound flanks and his nostrils thick with morning air. They neighed to him, and whinnied with supplicating tones, but the solitary pony shook his head at them, and bowed low to the ground. He took one step, and then another, and was gone.
That night, the pony named Yendlon climbed the last peak of the last height and merged with the bright lights of the inky firmament. The twin maidens who forever stand guard at the entrance to Eternity placed his stars in the eastern sky, to hearken the end of winter's icy grasp.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

Grigovian fairy tales 3

(These stories are among the few that remain of the rich tradition of folklore that was all but destroyed during the Soviet occupation of Grigovia.)

'Do not leave here, and do not be afraid,' said Mother Rat. 'I shall return soon, with more to eat.'
Four sets of black eyes stared up at her as she gnawed at the greasy heel of a tuber, the first bit of food they had seen in weeks. With a shake of her lank and oily fur, she slipped out, and was gone.
The young rodents waited only a moment before they descended upon the tuber, scarfing it down and tussling with each other for the scraps.
'I am going out,' the rat child with the white facial marking said. 'To eat the bread I can smell with my cunning nose.'
'I shall go with you, to grab the bit of sausage I spied yesterday with my keen eyes,' said his sister, whose pelt was a light brown. 'We shall eat bread and wurst, and find more food.'
The third rat watched as his litter-mates left the cramped surroundings of their cozy little recess, cast a glance at his remaining sibling, and followed the others out into the dark.
The last rat, whose fur was red and gray, curled up in the corner and began to shiver, trusting that Mother would return.

Later than she had hoped, Mother Rat returned home to find three of her cubs missing and the fourth being swallowed head-first by a thick, black snake. She lunged at the intruder and bit its face, but the snake thrashed about so violently that she was forced to flee the hole. She sniffed the air with her little nose and perked up her little ears, but neither sound nor scent of her babies reached her. So, with a shake of her lank and oily fur, she turned tail, and ran.

***

The child watched the sun rise through a crack in the beams of the wooden trap door. As soon as she heard boots marching on the courtyard's stones, she hurried back to the hole through which she had come. Replacing the bricks one by one and with great care in order to confuse anyone following her, she wiggled back through the narrow gap, taking care not to rip the pouch of stolen grain, and emerged into a familiar section of tunnel.
There was a noise behind her where no noise should have been, so she pulled herself into an alcove, to hide. After a long time, her limbs began to hurt. She was about to shift position when she heard the noise again – closer, this time. Her heart was beating so loudly in her ears that she was convinced it would betray her presence.
After an few more agonizing minutes, the noise sounded from just around the corner to her hiding space. It reminded her of someone with a bad cold muffling a sneeze.
'I must move now, or else whatever is out there will catch me,' she thought.
She leaped from her crevasse and ran through the dark, her hands feeling for the familiar guide-points, her memory guiding her home.
'I cannot lead it all the way back, for whatever it is will likely endanger my family,' she thought and darted into a section of tunnel she knew to be unstable and full of deadly sinkholes. Trusting her ears and toes, she wove her way through the ink-black pitfalls and plunging deeps of the dangerous length of tunnel, pausing at the end to listen.


Within a few minutes, she heard something scrape against a far wall; it made the strange sound that had made her want to hide.
'Here is where I make my stand,' she said to herself, settling into a fighting crouch and pulling her knife from its sheath, a brave decision for a girl of eight years.
She heard the muffled noise one last time, followed by desperate squeals and the sound of frantic scraping. Then, all was quiet for a moment, until whatever had been following her impacted, somewhere far below, with a dull and distant thud.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

Grigovian fairy-tales 1

Davoyend of Grissend was a naughty boy. He'd show up late for school; he'd eat only bread and sweets, refusing all vegetables; and he'd steal his younger siblings' presents on the feast of old King Vuolvesst the Merciful, on the night of the winter solstice, when it was customary to exchange gifts.

'Happy Fest of Vuolvesst,' said Therr, Davoyend's younger brother, hoping for a kind word in return. The older son, however, as he was wont to do, reared back and punched the boy in the eye-socket, pushed him down the hill next to their house, and ran inside to raid his meager stash of loose liquorice sticks and peppermint bonbons wrapped in paper.
'Look at me, I am the greatest,' Davoyend yelled as his brother struggled through deep and swirling banks of snow. With brown and sugary juices staining his chin, the older child made as if to push his brother back down the hill. Therr tricked him, however, by feinting left but going right. Rushing through the gathering night back to the house, the young boy pulled the door closed behind him and ran to the fire, to warm up.
'You rush in here caked in snow,' said Ulentha, their mother, shaking her head at the wet footprints staining the rough, wooden planks. Her scolding completed, she resumed chopping vegetables for the mutton stew, a meal customary eaten on the Fest of Vuolvesst. 'Where is your brother?' she asked.
Therr, shivering violently as powdery snows turned to water and ran down the back of his shirt, tried to answer with words, but could only manage a croaking sound.
'Perhaps he went to atone for his sins at the shrine of the mountain spirit,' said Ulentha, bending to the dishes, their clatter keeping her from hearing Davoyend pounding weakly at the back door.

The next morning, the village watchman in the course of his rounds found Davoyend leaning against the wall of his parent's home, frozen stiff, his face stained with sugary juices, his mouth, for once, empty of venomous vituperation.

***

One evening, while following a faint animal path toward his home, woodsman Heiryath Bordendt tripped over a piece of string. The string had been strung across the path and attached to some bells: they chimed softly. From the surrounding bushes came suddenly a couple of men running, bows armed with arrows, hollow eyes flashing in gaunt faces. Finding a man instead of a deer sprawled on the ground at their feet, they decided to rob him.

Heiryath, however, was clever, and quick. As soon as he realized that the men meant him harm, he spun into a fighting crouch with his hunting knife and ax extended in front of him. Blinded by hunger and greed, the men charged. Heiryath knocked each man unconscious with the blunt side of his ax, but instead of causing them injury, he left them with the last of his food and a note telling the local green grocer to feed them and send to the woodsman the bill.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥