The New Year

originally posted March 21, 2006

"Happy New Year, Master," black-haired She said to me.

She understood, finally, the meaning of my fast, the talk of reflection, of taking stock. Apparently, in all her time on my world, no one bothered to mention to the little barbarian that the new year commences with the beginning of the vernal equinox. Improbable, I think, but not impossible. I explained the meaning of the whitewash, the pitch and the brak. Too, the importance of meeting the sun the following day.

"A joyous En'Kara to you, slut," I said, not unkindly, and then nodded to Elise, who also knelt close, "And you."

"En'Kara!" yellow-silked She exclaimed. It is something to see the light of recognition go off in a woman's face. She was piecing it together. We have journeyed north for several hands. We are on the Pilgrim Road. There are people who journey with us, the caravan wagons from every city south of the Vosk and, in the past three days, from east and west, every city north of that great river. We march to the Fair of En'Kara.

Vesutto will be there. He will have traveled from Venna with the actors of my play 'The Fall of Agamedes'. Fiery Locutius, actor par excellence, will be with him. He is to the stage what Scormus is to The Game, what Marlenus is to the throne of Ar. Tempermental, arrogant, the complete master of his craft. It is my hope the play is received as well by the world as it was in Venna. Of course, Locutius could read the notices on a city's public boards and he would not fail to gain an enrapt crowd clinging to his every word. Still, let them hear the words of Szol, he of the Poets, from the mouth of their beloved Locutius. When they leave the Fair, homeward-bound, repeating the lines of their favorite actor, recreating the scenes from memory by the light of their campfires, it will be what I've written. Let them argue over the message, the moral, the finer points of the plot. Let them delight in the turns of phrase. Let them.

I have thought much about it the past hand and, of course, on other things. I have come to few conclusions, save one. The journey is not at an end. Last evening a girl begged to be low at my feet. I allowed it. Removing my sandals, she kissed from my feet the dirt and dust of the day's trek. This, too, I allowed. She was fearful, but not hesitant. It is curious that I should come to own her this way, purchasing her on The Pilgrim Road in the shadow of the Sardar on the evening of the first day of the Waiting Hand.

"Elise is your slave, Master," she said."Go to the tent, taking your place among my women, Samantha and She," I told her.

I would be alone with my thoughts for one last time before dawn. When Tor-tu-Gor lit the horizon, I would not be in Ar to paint my doors green and partake in the public celebration, the feasting. I would be half a day's trek to the Sardar, standing, acknowledging The Central Fire. I saw them in their camps, rousted from their wagons, hundreds of men from a hundred cities of my world standing in the field around me. We watched the sunrise.