Eshtine

"Dude, you had me at hello"

We interrupt this Krohnian alphabet lesson for breaking news: The story of how the Nashville Christian music industry got fired up about fighting AIDS in Africa can now be found here. And an interview with Jars of Clay singer Dan Haseltine on this subject is here. Go. Read. Enjoy.

the Krohnian alphabet: the letters "oh" and "oo"

This is the letter "oh."

This is the letter "oo."
The shape of the letter "oh" is a stylized tree, which is fitting because it is such a major part of the Krohnian word for "tree"--"koh." On its own "oh" is the verb "to be" in any form, so its shape can be taken to symbolize just the quiet act of existing without needing any of the movement of action verbs.

You may have noticed that most of the vowel sounds have both colors and verbs associated with them as well as nouns. "Tree" is "oh"'s noun, and blue its color, but one has to add an extra letter in each case to form these words ("blue" is "ohr.") "Oh" on its own always stands for the verb "to be." This function was perhaps too important to have the word burdened with other meanings.
Likewise there are only two meanings for the word "oo," and they are complementary. It can either mean the number "one" or "God." This is not the time nor the place for a full treatise on Krohnian theology, but as it is a monotheistic system with an emphasis on logic and reason and mathematical concepts, "one" and "God" do carry near-synonymous meanings.
No color is assigned to "oo," nor is there a verb (unless "God" is a verb, particularly if the Krohnians go in for the Prime Mover idea).

the Krohnian alphabet: the letters "eh," "y", "ee"

This is the letter "eh."

This is the letter "y."

This is the letter "ee."
These letters are closely related, as one might deduce from their shape. The ìyî character is the one exception I mentioned earlier to the one-sound-per-character ruleóand it might not be an exception at all. I have assigned it both the consonant ìyî sound and the vowel sound ìih,î but ìihî and ìehî are so similar that though I hear it in some words I may just have the pronunciation wrongóor there are regional variations. The word I tend to spell ìkahlihntehî might as easily be spelled (and sometimes I do spell it) ìkahlehntay.î Even between ìehî and ìayî there exists a realm of imprecision. Krohnian words have not taken a final, definitive form.

The shape of the ìyî is a stylized horse or deer or the like; the ìeeî is a unicorn. (Remember that the ìahî character becomes an ìayî with the addition of the horn from the ìee.î) The word for ìunicornîóìEeseefayrîóbegins with this letter. It should be noted, too, that Krohnian unicorns are notable for their hollow horns which connect to their nasal passages. An opening in the horn allows for a shrill warning note to sound through itótoo high, it is said, for anyone but another unicorn to hear. Whether this note is audible or not, ìeeî seems a particularly suitable sound to associate with these creatures.
The ìehî is this same stylized shape turned in on itselfóor perhaps it indicates an embryonic form; the sound is an ìundevelopedî one, a barely-noticed but common sound like the schwa in ìthe.î Neither it nor ìyî can exist as a one-letter word. ìEhî can, however, create the character-less sound ìhî in a way. If you put two ìehî characters next to each other, like in the word ìehehmnegoh,î when you pronounce the word you exhale the breath in betweenóìeh-HEHmnegoh.î The ìahî and ìohî sounds do the same thing, for instance in the word for ìhandîóìkohohn.î (This might also be a regionally specific pronunciation. In some places you might stop the breath there instead, as the Hawaiians do, and say it like ìkoíohnî instead of ìko-HOHN.î)
ìEeî can be a stand-alone word meaning the color ìwhiteî or the verb ìto belong.î Mostly it is used between two words to indicate there is a specific relation between them. Its closest English equivalent would be the word ìof.î ìEeseefayrî means literally ìbird-of-night,î ìeesî meaning bird and ìfayrî meaning night. Often dash marks join the words: ìtay-ee-fayrî = ìlight-of-nightî = ìstar.î

the Krohnian alphabet: the letters "ah" and "ay"

This is the letter "ah."





This is the letter "ay."


Iíve never tried to teach a new language before, so bear with me if all of this is convoluted, too vague, or too simplistic. Also try, through whatever I say, to remember that Iím approaching the subject as if this is a language spoken and written by a foreign cultureóbut that it isnít really; itís just some stuff I made up. So most of the time Iíll be talking about things as though theyíve had a long evolution of thought which we can now attempt to reconstruct, but sometimes Iíll just say, ìI designed this letter in honor of Becca.î
See the "More..." at the bottom of this entry? Click on it.

There are twenty characters in the Krohnian alphabet. In English, a single letter can have several different soundsófor instance, the letter ìaî in ìcatî or ìcake,î the letter ìcî in ìcatî or ìceiling.î But in Krohnian, each character (with one exception) represents a single sound. (Weíll get to the exception later.) In addition, there arenít any times in which two letters put together represent a sound distinct from eitheróthe way we put together ìtî and ìhî in ìtheî or ìcî and ìhî in ìch.î The sound of each letter is always consistent, so once you learn the characters, itís a simple language to read.
The range of sounds, then, is quite limited. It is much more like Hawaiian than English in that respect. For instance, there is no short ìaî sound in Krohnian. There is a sound ìahî (a bit like the ìoî in the word ìnotî) and ìayî (like the ìaî in ìcakeî). The characters for these two sounds are very similaróthe ìayî has an extra vertical line added to it, and that is the only difference. The line is the ìhornî from the character for the ìeeî sound, as though originally to write the sound ìayî one would have put the ìahî and ìeeî characters next to each other. Originally, then, ìayî might have been pronounced like the ìaiî in ìbonsai.î
The shape of the letter ìahî is something like a plus sign wedded to an ampersand. I no longer remember if I had a particular idea in mind when I designed it, but because one of the meanings of the word ìahî is ìand,î the shape is appropriate. I donít think I knew about the Dead Kennedys logo when I designed it, either.
The curving tail on the end of one of the crossbeams is a recurring motif in Krohnian letters. It gives a clue as to how the character is drawn. First the center vertical line is drawn, top to bottom, then the diagonal from the top right to the bottom left, then the pen stays on the paper to go up to the top left, then the diagonal to the bottom right, then the curved tail. The ìhornî is added last if the character is changed from ìahî to ìay.î
The character for ìahî can be a word on its own. It has many distinct meaningsóit is the conjunction ìand,î the verb ìto loveî in all its forms (ìI love,î ìyou love,î ìhe loves,î ìloved,î ìwill love,î etc.), the noun ìlove,î and can also refer to the color ìred.î The meaning must be deduced from context. (Have I mentioned that though Krohnian is an easy language to read, it is incredibly difficult to comprehend? It presupposes a high level of mutual understanding, if not telepathy, exists between two speakers. In written form it is valuable for transmitting poetry or other works in which ambiguity is accepted-nay-encouraged, but Iím not sure it could be used for anything more straightforward.)
Sometimes ìahî is used as an ending for a name to make it feminine. Example: ìsahnî means ìlion,î ìsahn-ahî means ìlioness.î
ìAyî similarly has several meanings. It can mean ìgirl,î the color ìyellow,î or the verb ìto giveî in all its forms.

the Krohnian alphabet: an introduction

This weblog is going to become a tutorial for the Krohnian language for a little while.
Krohnian is the language I invented for the country where my fantasy stories are set. It has its own alphabet--I considered this important for imagining how people in a foreign place would view the world. If they didn't speak English, they wouldn't use the Roman alphabet either. And if they didn't have the history we did of printing presses etc. then the way they used the written word would be different too, and the look of their letters would reflect that.
Each day I'm going to have some information about the letters themselves, the meaning behind their shape, what sort of philosophy one can gleam from them. The letter above is the letter for the sound "ah," which I've just put up tonight as an example. I'll write more about it later.

quote of the day

In studying the Bible as a young man, I found intimations of the idea that forms of media favor particular kinds of content and therefore are capable of taking command of a culture. I refer specifically to the Decalogue, the Second Commandment of which prohibits the Israelites from making concrete images of anything. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water beneath the earth." I wondered then, as so many others have, as to why the God of these people would have included instructions on how they were to symbolize, or not symbolize, their experience. It is a strange injunction to include as part of an ethical system unless its author assumed a connection between forms of human communication and the quality of a culture. We may hazard a guess that a people who are being asked to embrace an abstract, universal deity would be rendered unfit to do so by the habit of drawing pictures or making statues or depicting their ideas in any concrete, iconographic forms. The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking. Iconography thus became blasphemy so that a new kind of God could enter a culture. People like ourselves who are in the process of converting their culture from word-centered to image-centered might profit by reflecting on this Mosaic injunction. But even if I am wrong in these conjectures, it is, I believe, a wise and particularly relevant supposition that the media of communication available to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the culture's intellectual and social preoccupations.
--Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

poem: garden

The intense heat, the real noise.
The shape of a rainbow.
Backwoods and dark ordinaries.
I know his music too well, I think.
Stumbling and lurching in this garden,
All magnolia and coral bells,
I hear, not him, but this.
Starling pulling worm.
Staccato cricket.
I see, not him, but this.
Creature drama.
Dappled path, quick shadow.
No respecter of me.

The remnant (the end)

"One of us has to be given up," Fahree said. "You can see that, can't you?"
Loomahk could barely see anything. His eyelids were plastered together by need for sleep, by smoke, by welling tears he did not dare let fall.
Voortahn, Loomahk's packleader, tried to reason with him. "If no one comes forward to claim responsibility for the accident, the village authorities will come investigate. And then what? They will find the temple and destroy it, or they will find nothing and destroy our homes for spite. There are so few of us. If we fought, we'd be wiped out."
Smoke hung in the air like morning mist. It was mid-afternoon. Their patch of Gen-Re-Koh started burning the night before. The fires were all out now but the smoke would not leave.
"Let me be the one who is sacrificed," Loomahk begged. The fox met this idea with derision.
"Oh, yes. They would leave us alone then, would they? After meeting a wolf who admits playing with fire?"
Loomahk had gotten no sleep because his den, and the dens of his pack, were in the path of the flames. All the animals had managed to escape without serious injury, but the fire had spread to the village. There it trapped a whole family--man and wife, three children--suffocating them in their thatched house. The almost-tears were for them and for the one who had set the fire. It was an accident, if that mattered.
Voortahn spoke gently. "Loomahk, this is your home. It isn't hers. She shouldn't have been here at all."
The grey wolf had searched for Doe by firelight and at dawn and by the light of the sun crawling up into the sky. He searched Gen-Re-Koh and then even the village, where he learned of the deaths. He found her in his own den. Her hair was singed, as his was. She was shaking, a tree in a storm.
Fahree regarded him severely. "By bringing that woman into our midst, you have placed the temple in jeopardy. You will be punished for that. But Doe will be punished first, and by her own kind."
Doe had been mute at first. She just held up a stout, charred pine branch. After much gentle prodding (he had to know what happened before he spoke with his betters) he learned the whole of it. Ever since the failed attempt to bear the lightning-fire back to the temple a week back, she'd been puzzling over how to better the torches. Should the pine branches be coated in beeswax, or wrapped in cloth soaked in oil? She had her own hearth in Loomahk's den, but she wanted to test her torches secretly and surprise him. She took her improved torches to the temple, lit one by the sacred fire, and came back above ground with it. She tried to see how far she could carry it before it burnt out. But the torch burned too fast and hot, shedding fire and scattering it through leaves brown and cracked like old parchment, through the brush, through the whole forest.
Now Loomahk stood on the hillside by the creek with the leader of his pack and the leader of his worship. He had crooned Doe to sleep with assurances all would be well, all manner of things would be well. But he had gotten another wolf to stand guard outside the den, just in case. It was for her protection and for his--for the pack's protection, rather, and the temple's.
"What will Doe's punishment be, if she is brought to her village's authorities?" Loomahk asked.
"Her people will want death for death," Fahree answered.
Loomahk bowed his head. "Let me just ask one favor. Let me be the one who brings her in to the authorities. As you say--I was the one who brought her into this community; the blame for her presence rests on me. I should be the one to deal with the consequences."
His pack leader regarded him seriously. "You may do what you propose. Fahree will accompany you."
They would have asked Loomahk to do this if he had not volunteered, perhaps even forced him if he had resisted the job. But force was not necessary. Loomahk lived in a pack; he knew and accepted his place.
"Have you told her about the deaths in the village?" Fahree asked Loomahk as they approached his den.
"No."
"Good. Then she will not be suspicious. Have you thought of what we should say to get her to come with us?"
"It's up to you," Loomahk said miserably. "You are better at ruses than I am."

"Wake up, Doe."
She saw Fahree's grinning face as the world reassembled itself.
"I know you must think you have done something terrible. But spreading the fires of Re is never a crime."
"I did not mean to do it," Doe insisted.
He smiled down at her lovingly. "Then it was the will of Re working through you. You are a natural priestess, a missionary. You were born to bear witness to Re, and to spread Hawklion's fire not just to animals, but to your own kind. Will you accept this calling?"
"Preach to my people?" She had been ready for punishment, not for talk of vocations. This was mercy, except--going back to the village, to the place where she'd been exiled...She spotted Loomahk in the corner and turned to him with a helpless look.
"Be strong, Doe." There was a catch in his voice.
She nodded, feeling his strength in her. "If it is Re's will, I'll do it. Walk with me?"
"Of course."
Doe and Loomahk and Fahree walked westward together out of Gen-Re-Koh, the woman with her arm on the wolf's shoulder, the fox on his other side. A wind had come up. It brushed the smoke against them. Doe said it felt like the wind was blowing through her, "right through my skin, like I'm not really here." She smiled at Loomahk's silence. "Hard to explain."
"You are a ghost before you've even died, Doe," Fahree joked. Doe felt a shudder ripple through Loomahk's body. With a sudden premonition, she stopped and knelt at his side.
"Tell me what's wrong," she whispered.
They looked into each other's eyes for a very long time. Loomahk closed his at last. "I was just thinking about how cruel Re's will can seem sometimes. Asking you to go back to the people who cast you out, even to the priest whom you loved."
"I can face him," Doe assured the wolf. "He treated me like I had committed an unforgivable act. He left me lonely when I didn't deserve it. But I know what I'd say to him now. I'd say, 'You are not the final authority on forgiveness.'"
Loomahk's eyes welled with tears. Emotion drove his voice upward, almost to a puppy's whine. "I love you, Doe. Always remember I do."
"Love is sacrifice," Fahree interrupted, and Doe, cradling the side of Loomahk's face in her hand, felt his jaw clench. "It requires you to give up what you love. Can you face that test?"
Loomahk's eyes flashed. He fixed his stare on Fahree, but Fahree just shook his head slowly. The wolf opened his mouth to speak, but then he slumped down as though carrying a terrific weight. "Fahree is right," he mumbled. "Re is asking me to give you up, Doe, and I don't know if I am strong enough to do that."
Doe hugged him, hoping to send strength back. She got up and walked on. Fahree and Loomahk followed behind, speaking to each other in a language shared by wolves and foxes.
"But she should know the sacrifice she is asked to make," Loomahk was protesting. "It will not be worth anything unless it is done by her choice."
"Her kind doesn't understand how the community is to be protected above the individual," the fox replied. "The chance she will accept her proper fate is slim. Don't fool yourself, Loomahk. I know why you want to warn her. You want to redeem yourself in her eyes. You can't stand to think she will die thinking you have betrayed her. Your motive is selfish, and will only cause her more pain."
And so they reached the village. Apparently Voortahn had sent word ahead of their arrival. A judge was waiting for them, and the priest.
"This is the girl who is responsible for last night's fire?" the judge asked.
Doe turned wildly to Loomahk. "All will be well," he said again.
She turned to the judge. "The fire came here?"
"The fire killed five villagers."
She shut her eyes tight so the world spun. "I didn't know."
"You are responsible?"
"Yes."
"You know the penalty?"
One last time she faced Loomahk, who had bent his face low and would not look up. She had never been temperate. It was in her power to turn great love into great hatred. "You will be night to me from now on. I want you to know that. You will be the night I died. Was that what you wanted?"
He moaned low and deep.
"Since you have admitted your crime, we have no need for a trial," the judge was saying.
With her mindís voice Doe was screaming, ìRe--stay in the sky a little longer! Keep this night from coming!î
But her mindís ears heard a calm answer from some part of her that saw things the rest of her could not. ìYou know better than to ask that. The Rahs say that Re is their Good Predator. Why would the Hawklion keep a wolf from his prey?î
In her ears a roar of blood, and the voice of the old fox with his huge smile. "Sing it and you will never be afraid." The smile in his voice, a smile she felt as welcome, when someone else suspected he was mocking her. As the sword bit her neck, she sang what he had taught her.
Kee Re--sun in the east--lorhn ah sahn--hawk and lion--lehn sohn--protect our dreams.
Kee Re, lorhn ah sahn,
Kee Re, lehn sohn.

The remnant (part 6 of 7)

"Something is upsetting you."
They had not spoken all evening, neither the wolf nor the woman. He had gone to hunt, she had fried fish, saving some oil in a bowl she'd carved. Doe was the first to speak now, while they waited together for dawn and for sleep. She was cradling Loomahk's head and scratching him lightly behind his ears, but she needed no wolf-keen sense to know he was not soothed.
He looked up at her without moving his head. His resulting face was very dog-like, and she almost laughed.
"We are good friends, you and I, aren't we?" he asked. "We can talk about anything without condemnation."
She nodded.
"Then please--tell me why you left the village. I would like to hear your story."
She bit her lip. "You heard something about it."
He nodded.
"From whom?"
He didn't answer.

"No, you don't have to say. Listen then. I travelled a lot, I sang for funerals from here to the coast of the Saykree--but I kept coming back here--there, rather." She fluttered her hand briefly in the direction of the village past the trees. "What I should have done was come back directly to Gen-Re-Koh. I think this is what I was aiming for, without knowing it. You and Re, my new life-love."
"Go on."
So she told the story. In her last visit to the village, she met a young priest of Oo, the spiritual guide of all who lived there. The priest had not been a follower of Oo for long. Once he had gotten his call, though, he had poured himself into the role, forswearing all his appetites, fasting for weeks on end, shutting himself in his study with books and calculating devices, emerging only to preach the ascetic life. Doe shook her head as she recounted this portion of her tale. "Save me from the newly converted--they of all enthusiasm and little sense!"
The grey wolf shot her a surprised look, but apparently Doe hadn't heard herself.
Doe was drawn to this priest, who, though not required by his vocation, had renounced the taking of a wife or lover. He renounced anything that was not an abstraction.
This had fascinated her. "I would argue with him for hours in the village square," Doe said. "He liked the challenge, I think. Most everyone else went along with what he said. I put up a fight, so I got all the attention." There was a note of pride in her voice, the satisfaction of a troublemaker. She knew what the priest did not--his real motive behind the hours of debates. And she decided to let him in on the secret.
She worked with him often--the priest said the prayers over the dying, she keened the grief. They would meet in his study to plan the order of the funeral, and often the planning was forsaken in favor of more hours of theological debate.
"He was a delicate man," Doe said sadly. "I used that to my advantage. I could push him to the cracks in his certainty, to where he was beginning to have doubts."
Then one day, as they argued in the study (where she'd latched the door lest they be disturbed) she finally asked the question he could not answer. "You preach against every pleasure," she said, "but I don't think you know what pleasure is. How can you do that?" She took the priest's hand, using its fingers to untie her bodice. She glided his hand against her skin and whispered, "How can you know what pleasure feels like?"
She had her victory, but the next day he was gone before she was awake. She went looking for him, but found instead a notice that her sort of singing was now forbidden. Singing funerals was too vulgar a display of passion for sacred acts. Seething, and hoping to turn public opinion in her favor, she staged her protest by making an effigy of the priest and moving through the square dressed in a bedsheet, like a wronged woman. Once a sizable crowd gathered, she stabbed effigy's heart--but here she'd misjudged badly. The priest was the embodiment of the crowd's religion, and well-loved besides, even if he was extreme in his renunciations.
"And then I came here," Doe finished. "I didn't have a choice. And my heart was broken."

The remnant (part 5 of 7)

The weaverbird flew from the cavern. The ears of the fox and the wolf and the bobcat lay flat against their heads. Doe did not understand the tension but surrendered to it, pacing in the red light and the smoke while being careful not to trip on the pile of gold. No one spoke.
The tiny brown bird returned after an agony of waiting, no way to judge how long it had been. Doe thought it brought with it a large black shadow of itself, but this turned out to be a starling. "Fire in the northwest," the starling said.
"Come on," Loomahk said to Doe as the temple became all activity. "You wanted to know about our religion? You can assist at our greatest ritual." He knelt on the floor, reminding Doe of the motions of the worshippers during their chant. She did not understand there was something he wanted her to do. "Come on, Doe," Loomahk repeated, and this time she got it. She used to do this all the time, as a child, running with the young wolf through all the wild forest, but she would never have dared ask for the privilege again. She climbed up on his back and lashed her arms round his neck tightly. He started up a slope of earth on the far side of the cavern, opposite where they'd come in.
At the top there was not even enough room for him to stand up straight and there were roots brushing against Doe's face. The dome of the cavern was all rock save for this one spot of bare earth. Doe tried to think how many times she must have passed this place while wandering the forest above, how close she'd come to creating a sinkhole with one unwitting step. But perhaps the dirt was packed too tight for this. "Push," Loomahk said. He turned a little to one side and pressed his shoulder against the ceiling. Doe let go of his neck but gripped harder with her knees to stay on as she pushed. The whole patch lifted out easily with a satisfying ripping sound as the roots on the edges were pulled from the surrounding soil. They had to scramble to balance their plate of earth and gain solid footing on the surface, where all was dark and cold and wet. Doe held the entrance open for Fah-Ree and the bobcat before tamping it back into the ground, where it showed no signs of its purpose.

The bobcat and the fox had brought sticks with them from out of the temple. Loomahk and Doe both got one--Loomahk let Doe hold his. Doe smelled the scent of a winter fireplace and knew she was holding pine branches. The weaverbird and the starling, who'd flown out ahead of them through the other exit, now hurried the group toward a dancing light in the distance. Everything was either that small brightness or blinding dark. Doe saw very little but heard scuttling all around them, far more than the usual nighttime forest sounds, and had a sense many creatures were rushing away from what they were running toward.
Lightning had apparently struck a tall tree, setting it on fire and sending it crashing to the ground. Flames licked out from the corpse, but they could not go very far--the rainstorm had soaked the brush.
"New fire," Loomahk said. His voice was hushed, reverent. Fah-Ree was chanting under his breath. They were in the presence of the holy. The young woman felt their awe as her own. The Rahs, the remnant of the old religion, had been keeping a fire alive in the temple, but here their God had sent some more of His essence down to the world, a fresh revelation. It was up to them to gather it and bring it with care and ceremony to the place of its worship.
Fah-Ree, the bobcat, and the wolf held their pine branches in their teeth, but they could crane their necks out to a nest of flames and try to light one end of their torches. Doe had better reach, but she was unused to this kind of activity. On her first attempt she accidently tamped out one of the fires. The starling gave a strangled cry as if in pain. The weaverbird shot Loomahk a serious look full of meaning Doe could not interpret. The woman tried again, more cautiously this time, holding the branch close to the fire's blue heart until her torch burned white and gold.
The Rahs journeyed back to the temple slowly, stopping often to adjust the grip on their torches or to relight those that had gone out. The rain was long gone but there was still some wind. Doe walked with one hand cupped round her prize while the rest kept to her leeward side. Still, one by one the torches died out until Doe's was the last, and she couldn't keep it lit in the fall from earth to the temple floor. The trip had been in vain.
"Never mind it," Loomahk reassured Doe. "They often end this way."
But it saddened Doe to see all the animals work so hard for no return. She wondered if anything could be done. She wanted desperately to help, to prove new-awakening zeal in service to Re.

The remnant (part 4 of 7)

A storm was coming. Loomahk felt his fur prickling and his skin crawling. "Storms make me anxious," Loomahk said by way of apology when Doe asked him to sit still. He'd been pacing the cave all day, not going out, but shuffling toward the entrance every few minutes and whimpering low in his throat with a sound like the rumble before an avalanche.
"We're in a dry place," she pointed out. "And we're safe from lightning as long as we stay inside. What worries you?"
"Do you think there will be lightning?" he asked.
"You sound as though you want lightning," Doe said with a frown. "Oh--is this to do with Re?"
Before he could answer, there was a sudden howl of wind--the first sign, save for the wolf's perpetual motion, that a storm approached. Loomahk loped to the entrance, baring his teeth into the wind and sniffing the scent of electricity. Doe came to stand beside him.
"You never answered me last night." she said.

Loomahk did not know what to say. He couldn't lie to her--she might find the truth soon enough, this very night even, if all went well, but..."We do have such a place. Like your people's houses of worship, yes. Only, it is a sort of secret."
Doe's eyes misted. "You think so little of me? Do you think I would betray you or anything you held sacred?"
He lowered his head in shame. Of course he thought better of Doe than that. He loved her deeply and would not deny her anything. "If you want to see it I'll take you there," Loomahk said. It would be a good way to tear into the hours before the storm, bite them through instead of pacing and nibbling at the edges of them like some grasschewer. He darted into the wind and fast-descending cold.
"I didn't know you meant right now!" Doe shouted in protest, running out after him.
They stood soon in another cavern, this one no small distance below ground. Doe had gone by the dome of it many times without noticing--a little hill bordered by stones, two fan-trees on either side, so near to the village she could see its lights through the trees. Not far from the hill was a rift in the earth, well hidden in the brush, just big enough at its widest point for a full-grown wolf to wriggle through to fall on a soft pile of fanleaves beneath. Doe had come tumbling down after with no thought of how to return to the surface. She was fearless.
They stood in a vaulted room. Light from a small dying fire glinted in Loomahk's eyes. Fearless Doe shuddered to see his eyes like that; they gave him the look of the ghost wolf who hunted the unwary on foggy nights. But the guttering flames were reflected elsewhere--on other surfaces, in other eyes. First Doe saw a tiny weaverbird and a bobcat and a fox, all swaying a little and softly repeating a chant with a rhythm strange to her ears. Two things about this scene interested her--that after each sway, they pressed their bodies almost flat on the floor, and that a bird and a cat would be worshipping side by side.
"Re may be the Good Predator," Loomahk explained, "but there is no bloodshed allowed in the temple."
"What did you call Re? The 'Good Predator'?"
"The Sun is Hawk and Lion, yes? Both hunting animals. The sun knows and aids those of us who must kill by hiding his light at the end of the day. Hunting's best at night. We are thankful for the time Re leaves us, and we call Hawklion 'Good Predator.' That weaverbird, and rabbits, and deer, and all other such creatures--they must have a different name for the Sun, but I don't know it.
Next she noticed, in the middle of the floor, a strange jumble of glittering objects. Doe had to stand in a pile of black ash (remains of past fires never swept away, she figured) and lean far over it to get any sense of what it was. The collection was arranged in a wide disc. In the middle were shining yellow pebbles and bits of sand. Strangely, the sand also sparkled in the ruddy light. Gold, she realized. Gold nuggets and gold dust. This inner circle was about an arm's length in diameter. All around it were rings, brooches, necklaces, earrings, and dahntahl coins, all gold, all brought, Loomahk explained, by packrats or ravens.
"The first circle predates the Rahs," Loomahk said. "It was here in the temple when we discovered this place. We've added our tribute since then."
Doe undid the strings of the 'ket she had tied to her belt and scattered her own gold coins from it to the floor. Loomahk gave her a severe look. "I know gold has value for your kind. That better not have been all you had in the world."
"I still have some silver," she answered, knowing he would not understand the difference in value.
The chant was over. The fox came padding up to Doe with what appeared to be a grin on his face, though with foxes sometimes it is hard to tell. "Welcome, lovely one," he said in a lilting voice that rendered all he said a chant. "I am Fah-Ree, and I lead worship here. What may I call you?"
"Doe."
"Doe, I thank you for your donation to the temple. What may I do to repay this generosity?"
"Will you teach me that song?" She said it without thinking. In a way, that's all she was, a singer. The lure of new melody was irresistible.
The fox bowed. "It would be so delightful to me to be able to say I taught a human one of our songs. It would bring me such joy as I can't even express." Loomahk narrowed his eyes at Fah-Ree; he knew the fox well, and knew when his tone was mocking. But Doe hadn't seemed to notice. She clapped her hands gleefully, like a little girl.
"The words are simple enough; just take care the rhythm does not trip you up. He sang slowly, deliberately, with his paw marking the beats on the floor.
"Kee Re"--sun in the east--"lorhn ah sahn"--hawk and lion--"lehn sohn"--protect our dreams.
"Kee Re, lorhn ah sahn,
Kee Re, lehn sohn."
He smiled with all his pointed teeth. "Nice, nice. No better tribute to Re than a good song, except perhaps a good hunt. Time enough for that outside the temple, though, eh, Loomahk? We are all true to our natures."
"Sometimes I think you are nothing more than your nature, Fah-Ree," the wolf answered, but he was interrupted by a thunderclap.

The remnant (part 3 of 7)

Every spare moment afterward Doe begged Loomahk to tell her everything about Re. He had plenty to say. After his mate's death he had become something like a minister among the small community in Gen-Re-Koh, though his office did not much resemble the priesthood she knew. He told her Re-worship had all but died out when human settlers first arrived in Krohn, long, long ago.
"Why?"
"I don't know. From the stories I've heard, I think many of Re's ministers were power-struck and had allowed the religion to get corrupt. When the humans' idea of God came along, it was too appealing to abandon the old and follow the new."
Then tensions had developed between animals and humans, leading to an animal revolt and a simmering animosity into their own time. The revolt had turned some minds back to "purer" expressions of animal culture, including the old religion--no longer a major force attracting power-seekers, it grew in the shadows as a secret source of pride. It bore little resemblance to the worship from centuries back, but nonetheless followers considered themselves cloth cut from the same fabric as their ancestors.
"We call ourselves 'Rahs,'" Loomahk said.
"The remnant." Doe smiled. "I like that."

What those that returned to Re discovered was a God who could not be interpreted in infinite philosophies. The tradition was to assign Re a dual nature--the Hawk, symbolizing Her heat, and the Lion, symbolizing His light. It was also a truism among animals that lightning was fire from the heart of the sun, loosed in frustration for being choked in rain and clouds. That lightning had been the cause of many forest fires, killing the faithful and unfaithful indiscriminately, proved this was a capricious God. Re was majestic, powerful, wise--but no one ever called Re good.
"But why worship a God who can harm you?" Doe found this the most difficult concept to grasp in the religion she came to adore, and perhaps she never did grasp it.
Loomahk had given the matter much thought himself, and had developed a theory which satisfied him. "The first animals see many forces beyond their control--sun and wind and rain. Rain washes you clean, gives you water to drink, grows plants--but rains come or don't come without pattern, and sometimes rainstorms are dangerous and the rivers flood. Wind is pleasant on your skin--unless it is winter and the chill breeze bites you, or a windstorm knocks down every tree. The sun gives warmth and light, rises and sets every day without fail, and the only evil Re brings is the rare fire. So Re is the one to worship, and if Re is not perfectly good--nothing else is either."
Doe did not speak of her old life anymore. She turned her back to it violently in favor of this new learning, this idea of a God whose power she could feel as a gentle touch on her face. "I could love Re," she whispered to Loomahk in the night. "And--barring those forest fires which you say are rare--Re would never break my spirit or steal my heart, like everyone else I've loved."
Loomahk thought, "You could love that rock over there and it, too, would never steal your heart." But he did not say it out loud.

"Why are you harboring someone cast out from her people, Loomahk?"
The wolf looked up, startled. He was out in Gen-Ree-Koh hunting with the pack. He'd lost the scent and his companions but had been found by a tiny weaverbird who addressed him now from a sohn-tree.
"Doe cast out? What kind of tale are you telling me, storyteller?"
"A true one, wolf. Give up the hunt for now and listen to it."
Usually it was a pleasure to listen to weaverbirds. They could weave a tale so skillfully you even caught the scent of those involved. But knowing a character in the story took away all the enjoyment of the art.
He saw through the weaverbird's eyes the village square where she made her home. He heard a high melody (the weaverbird whistled it for him) and scathing words accompanying it. Villagers who had wandered in twos and threes in all directions were thronging now as blackbirds round new-scattered corn. In the midst of this was a girl with large eyes burning with anger. She was the singer. She flailed the melody round her as a whip, and she was dressed in a cloth sheet, a bedcovering. She carried a knife and a figure like a scarecrow. "The priests of Oo wear what that scarecrow was wearing," the weaverbird explained. The girl led her procession to the center of the square. There she quit her song with a stab of her knife at the heart of the effigy. Loomahk could imagine the crowd's reaction without any words from the storyteller.
"She was at your cave the next night," the weaverbird finished. "I would have told you sooner but I wanted to speak to you in private, and you are never alone."
From then on Loomahk waited for the chance to hear Doe's side of the story. He knew her nature and knew she was prone to moments of drama. He trusted that what the weaverbird was reporting was one of those moments and that the situation was not as serious as it sounded.

The remnant (part 2 of 7)

Curled like puppies in his den, Loomahk and Doe talked the night away of what they'd done in the years since they'd seen each other. Loomahk spoke of his "silver-haired beauty" who'd borne him twin boys.
"Where are they now?"
"My boys head a pack of their own south of here. My mate was killed by a hunter two winters ago."
"I'm sorry. I wish I'd known. I could have sung for her."
"You used to sing all day, every day, when you visited me. Because of you I thought all human children were singers."
"You should have met more of us." She turned to lay on her back, looking up at the vault of rock. "I wanted nothing so much as I wanted to be a bard, but no one would train me. They said I had no discipline. I had to get work keening at funerals. They don't want a trained voice for that, they want someone who can project suffering." She smiled, not with her eyes. "Which I've always been able to do! But oh, it got too much, following death around. I was too good at what I did. The people wanted to turn me into their grief."
"So you gave it up."
"I gave up a lot of things to come here. I remember being happy in Gen-Re-Koh. It may be the only place I was ever happy."
They fell asleep at dawn.

When Loomahk first met Doe he thought she looked breakable. Thinking her delicate, he always did what we could to protect her--a trap many had fallen into, many times. He loved her unconditionally, like a father. She knew that and could tug at his emotions when she needed to. In a sense she was still a child, using the only power children have to make their way in the world. Loomahk wanted Doe to be happy, but did not know how he could help her. "You know you can't stay here indefinitely," he said to her as they ate a meal together (cooked rabbit for her, raw rabbit for him) a few days after her arrival. "And I know you're not the hermit type. I can't see you holed up away from the world of men in a hut in the woods. Have you thought of what you want to do now?"
She busied herself pulling bones apart, sticking her finger in her mouth when hot juice burned her. "When you're out hunting and I'm gathering firewood and berries and things wolves won't eat," she finally began, "I spend more time alone than I've ever spent. All my life I've gone from one lover to another, one funeral to another. The only thing constant is the crowd. I've had a chatter of voices surrounding me my whole life long. Here it's quiet, and I'm hearing a new voice--in my heart. I'll get the answers from it if I listen."
"How will you know it will tell you the truth?"
Abruptly, she asked, "Do you believe in Oo?"
It was his turn to concentrate his full attention on his dinner. He crunched bones wearing a thoughtful expression. "If you're asking do I believe in a God, the answer is yes. But I do not call Him Oo."
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I said."
"Loomahk!" She swatted him playfully. He responded with a growl, but there was no menace in it. "This is important to me. I want to talk about Oo."
"I don't know anything about Oo."
"What God do you know?...You're not saying you worship Re?"
He said nothing, but blinked his pale blue eyes.
"The sun? You worship the sun?"
"You worship a number," Loomahk answered defensively.
"I never said I worshipped Oo." Her rabbit was cool enough to handle. She jerked strips of meat from the bones and spoke with her mouth full. "The priests say things that don't ring true with me. Oo corresponds to the number 'one,' but It isn't the number 'one.' That's the first bit I don't understand. It is or it isn't, you know? Because then they talk of God's attributes the way you talk about the number. Multiply one by one and it stays one--thus Oo is unchanging. Multiply any number by one and the number remains itself--thus Oo lets you stay who you are."
"Your priests sound wise," Loomahk said.
"That part is not what I quarrel with. They go on to say, Oo can be divided by Itself forever and never be diminished. Divide any other number by itself and it will become Oo. This proves, they say, we must divide ourselves by ourselves. They claim the goal is to renounce all we are and then we will reach God." She made a face. "I've spent all my time trying to become someone. I don't need to hear that God wants me to become nothing."
"I don't think I understand," Loomahk said. "The priests tell you something about your God and you don't believe them? Don't you know your God for yourself, what He is or what He isn't?"
She gave a start. "Who can know God that well?"
"They have you worship a God you cannot know?"
"You know yours?"
"Of course."
"Wait, wait wait..." She fluttered her hands, frowning in concentration. "The sun. Hawklion. Re. You really do worship the sun."
He looked uncomfortable, but his tail thumped the ground. "You can't deny it!" she crowed. "And it's the sun that's your God, not some abstract idea based on the sun, like Oo is an abstraction from the number. That yellow ball rising in the morning or covered by clouds--that's God to you."
"You're like the rest. We worship a God we can see so you think we're primitive, whereas we--some of us--think humans have intellectualized themselves out of the world around them. We can't believe you see God's light, you feel God's heat on your face, but you don't bow down. You've left God lonely."
It was Doe's turn to look uncomfortable, poking at the dying fire to avoid the wolf's eyes. "The priests don't like us talking about experiencing God. The senses are fleeting, they say--you must approach God through logic, the only lasting path. They don't like any sort of emotion much. I got into trouble with some priests just from singing at funerals. Too much raw emotion, they said, too--"
"--animal," Loomahk finished. Doe met his eyes, her own eyes widening with sudden comprehension.
"That's what it's all about, isn't it?" she said. "We can't have anything in common with you. Oh, Loomahk..." She clutched the ruff at his neck, and he tasted salt on her cheeks again.

The remnant (part 1 of 7)

On a day of grey skies and chilly air, a young woman walked alone into Gen-Re-Koh Forest. Her pace was halting but her head was held high, and she had a look that challenged anyone in advance who dared question her right to be there. Some of the inhabitants stared at her openly, even making loud comments about her appearance to their neighbors, but most acted as if she weren't there, even when she stared at them.
She stopped beside a tree with papery silver bark and a round opening just above her height. "Tillik?" she called.
She heard scuttling inside the tree, and a squirrel's head popped out of the hole. "Who is this calling for Tillik?" the squirrel demanded in a shrill voice.
"My name is Doe. I'm an old friend," she explained. I wanted his help finding someone."
"And you thought he'd be here?"
"I'm sorry...has he moved? I thought this was his tree."
"Tillik's been dead more seasons than I've been alive. You haven't been in this forest for a while, have you?"
"No...no, I haven't."
"All alike, your kind," the squirrel muttered. "Only come to see us when you're in need."
The woman hesitated a moment, unsure what to say next. But a blackbird watching in the next tree spoke up then with a kinder tone. "Who is it you thought Tillik could help you find, child?"
"A wolf named Loomahk."
On hearing this the squirrel laughed. "The deer goes willingly to the wolf? First I've ever heard of that."

The blackbird tsked disapprovingly and turned again to Doe. "Head east. See that tall spicenut tree on the little hill just past the creek? Loomahk's pack has a few dens around there. Walk slowly and keep calling Loomahk's name. Else the pack might decamp as soon as they catch your scent."
Thanking the bird and ignoring the still-chittering squirrel, Doe did as she'd been told. As she neared the creek things looked more and more familiar, except much smaller than she'd remembered. The hill she'd once clambered up like a rockclimber was now just a pillow of earth. But perched on top was a massive creature, all nose and teeth and muscular legs. He was bigger than she remembered, but she knew him instantly, and he knew her.
"Doe!"
The great grey wolf ran down the hill and vaulted the creek to reach the woman. She put her forehead to his, buried her hands in his fur. He touched his tongue to her face and tasted salt. He stepped back. "What is it, Doe? What's wrong?"
"I've missed you." She wiped her eyes and smiled.
"It's more than that."
She laughed. "Can you smell heartbreak on me? No wonder people feel so uncomfortable around animals. Your senses are too keen."
He looked at her expectantly. She patted him on the shoulder. "It's a long story."
"I always knew your life would be a series of long stories."
"What do you mean by that?" she demanded.
"No harm." He showed his teeth in the universal "just playing" wolf gesture. He couldn't smell heartbreak on her, he just knew her history. Loomahk had known Doe when she was a little girl with eyes too large for her face, liquid and strangely dark, so even when she was smiling you saw tears in them. That is how she got her nickname. He hardly remembered what she'd been called at birth, "Doe" suited her so well. She was a raw nerve as a child, crying suddenly and for days or becoming ecstatic with the slightest excuse. He had not thought it likely she would grow temperate with age. She hadn't.
"I'm just tired of it," Doe was saying now. "I needed to go someplace where I'd be better treated. Men have been eating up my spirit."
"I hope you don't think a wolf could--"
She clamped his mouth shut. "I'm not asking that of you, Loomahk. Can't I just stay in your den a night or two? I want a warm body next to me who won't take anything in return."
He considered it. "If it were only up to me I would say of course you can stay, as long as you need to," he said. "But I can't make any promises without consulting the pack. Wait here." He ran down the bend of the creek out of sight. Soon Doe heard a cacophony of yelps and whines. Here came about a dozen wolves, white, silver-grey, or grey with black points on ears and tail, like Loomahk. She found them too beautiful to be frightening. She was rarely frightened, though, even when she should have been.
Loomahk's pack arranged themselves in something like a straight line, which was clearly difficult for them, the ones in the back whimpering and straining their noses as far forward as they could. One by one they splashed noisily through the creek and padded up to her, not directly, but in a semi-orbit, sniffing, retreating, circling behind. Doe kept herself in a crouch with her eyes lowered and hand outstretched for all those curious noses.
A he-wolf with black-tipped ears was the first to speak once the interrogation was complete. "Why exactly do you want a human in your den, Loomahk?"
"She needs a place to stay, sir. She and I were friends when we were cubs."
"Most of us had humans as childhood playmates. But then we grew up."
"I don't smell any fear on her," a she-wolf commented. "She either has a very pure spirit or a child's mind. Either way, sir, I think she poses no threat."
"She feels entitled to be with us, that's why she shows no fear. We must not allow her that delusion."
The debate went on for very long with Doe never addressed directly. She felt smaller and smaller as the night wore on. Consensus was only reached because it grew too late to send her back out into the forest alone, and as long as she stayed one night, she might as well stay longer. "I bid you welcome, Doe," the head of the pack, the he-wolf with black-tipped ears, said at last. The matter settled, every wolf but one padded away into Gen-Re-Koh.