And I remember when my grandfather died. In my fortieth year the healers
came to me and told me that my grandfather had spoken! I couldn't believe
it so I dropped the oxen traces where I'd been plowing and rushed to the
Mishap House to see for myself. I flew across the tula and everyone stopped
their work to stare. I ran to the far corner of the tula where the Mishap
House stood and stooped to bend under the doorway as I had grown to resemble
my grandfather. The house was nearly empty as most of the residents were
outside enjoying the warmth of the Elmal leaving only a woman whose mind had
been raped away by Lunars and my grandfather inside. I went over and knelt
at his side, taking his dry, cold hand in mine and was shocked when his eyes
opened and he looked at me! He spoke and I had to bend close to hear what
he was saying. As I did he repeated himself. "It is like looking in a
clear pond to see you. Who are you?" I told him that I was his grandson
and that his daughter and wife had left to join the ancestors years before.
He nodded slowly and said, "Well I will be joining them soon enough myself."
I pressed his hand and asked the question everyone had wondered for years,
"What happened to you." He didn't reply right away but his milky gaze
looked around the House. "So similar and yet so different," he said.
"What's different? I don't understand what you mean, grandfather." He
turned to me and smiled weakly, "This House. Like all our stead this House
serves to imitate Orlanth's Storm Stead, yet like a reflection in a pond the
imitation isn't the same as the thing imitated." I still didn't understand
what he was saying and I pressed him for more information. By this time the
healers had returned to the House, I had left them far behind in my haste,
and were listening as well. My grandfather weakly shook his head, "I
learned that the Storm Stead too has its Mishap House where the crippled
followers of Orlanth live, or maybe it just represents someplace needed.
For whatever reason that Sacred Time when we had gone to visit the Storm
Stead I was drawn to a tall, dark longhouse on the edge of the stead. I had
never notice it before and wouldn't have known what it was as no godi or
skald had ever described it to me if I hadn't seen the runes over the
doorway. As I said before I had never heard that the Storm Stead had a
Mishap House before. But I was drawn forward and despite my misgivings I
went inside." And there my grandfather stopped talking and we waited for
him to continue. "And what did you see?" I pressed after I had waited as
long as I could. He shook his head violently. "What was inside was nothing
that I can frame in mortal words. Broken deeds, broken dreams and pieces of
gods and heroes. The lack of wholeness." I struggled to understand, "But
why then did you come back yourself broken?" He turned to me with great
sadness in his face, his whole face sagging under its weight. "How could I
remain whole myself in the presence of such shatteredness? And now that I
am ready to join the ancestors some kindness or oversight has freed me to go
to them in one piece." He looked happy briefly and then smiled a beautiful
smile, "It please me greatly to see you as a whole man and now I can go on
to my rest with an easy heart." And with that he lay back, closed his eyes
for a last time and died.
And now here I lie here dying myself, not in the Mishap House as I am still
whole of body and hale of spirit, but in my own bed in my own longhouse, and
I think of my grandfather and his tale of the Mishap House in the Storm
Stead and I am pleased. Pleased that I have never seen that tall, dark
longhouse on my many trips to the Storm Stead and I hope that you never do
either.
Oliver
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