Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

In spite of my parents’ reassurance and Tianamet’s presence, I’d been scared for these two days and had a definite feeling of foreboding. My fear reached a new height when we drove past an illuminated sign saying, WELCOME TO MINRIS, a mountain village famous for a notoriously large, strange and scary Holy Site where parents were said to abandon particularly mad children. It didn’t help that it was black night. My parents couldn’t possibly be going to abandon me, I was going to be important.

“I’ll be good!” I said. “Can we just go home now?”

“This is our new home,” said Dad. “We’re there!”

“This isn’t your fault,” said Mum.

“You’ve got to find out the Winemaker’s secret before we can go home,” said Dad.

I knew he didn’t really mean that but I wanted to believe it, that there was a way for us to go home and get back to normal.

A few minutes later, the car slowed and turned sharply left, the way a sign that said, WINEMAKER VINEYARD - HOLY SITE was pointing.

“It looks as if I’ll have to change to manual control,” said Dad, turning his chair to face the front of the car as we started crossing a stone bridge over a raging river.

I didn’t ask why we were going to the Holy Site; I was too afraid of the answer.

“Now one more time,” said Mum. “What do you tell people?”

“I’m Eleprin, I’m a Winemaker ...”

This made me feel uncomfortable as I could still feel the presence of Tianamet.

“… my family came here from Grishnarl because the Nuharas were persecuting us.”

“Who shouldn’t you talk about?”

“The funny man.”

Mum continued to drill me on the lies I was supposed to tell people and the things I wasn’t supposed to talk about as the car climbed up a steep, twisting, bumpy road on the other side of the river. We soon passed through an open gate, after which there were ancient looking trees and vines on either side of the road. I’d never been here before but I’d heard the stories from other children back in Ermish. I’d heard comedians say things like, “He was so weird that he was raised by the couple who’s doorstep the Winemaker Vineyard people had left him on.”

After a while, we reached the end of the road; a small car park with just one other car in it and a large building with big doors facing the car park on the uphill side. Mum and Dad got out the car.

“Come on!” Mum said to me.

“You’re going to leave me here! I’m important!”

“Of course we’re not going to leave you!” said Mum. “The people here are Winemakers, they’ll help us.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re Winemakers.”

I can usually tell if people are lying, even if I wasn’t a mindreader, and that sounded honest.

“Winemakers are weird,” I said.

“No,” said Mum. “They’re just like us but they believe different things.”

I looked at the trees and vines. In the dim, purple light of Bet they looked like the twisted limbs and tentacles of ancients tied up with ropes. I could also make out tortured faces. I considered if I’d be safer alone in the car or with my parents.

“You can’t find out the secret by staying here,” said Dad.

I decided that I didn’t want to be here alone in black night.

We walked up the path by the large building, with Mum and Dad holding my hands. They smiled at me but I knew they were a bit frightened. We reached a small building marked VISITOR INFORMATION. Tianamet’s presence was fading and there was a new feeling, presumably the Winemaker god or gods. Oddly, this didn’t seem worse, just different.

We went in and found a small room divided in half by a counter with pictures of vines, fruit and symbols of the Winemaker God on the walls. Then I realized that there was no roof; instead there was a tangle of several types of vine above us. A thin cactus stem with short spines went across them, with roots dangling as if they were trying to grab me.

“What happens when it rains?” I asked, pointing up.

“It hardly ever rains here,” said Mum.

“But when it does?”

I looked around and realized that there was nothing in the room that could be damaged by rain.

Dad walked to the counter and pressed a buzzer that was on it. Immediately I got a weird feeling, like there was a lot of power behind the door on the other side of the counter. The door opened and a faharni woman entered. She was dressed in pre-Cataclysm clothing, you know the sort that has a hard, corset thing and shorts with a pattern of diagonal black and white lines but no harness, and had long, gray hair, hanging loose.

On the way, we’d found pictures of Winemakers on the internet. Most were idlans or quippas, although some were faharnis, and they’d mostly dressed like normal people. However, I got a strange feeling from this woman, like nothing I’d ever felt before.

“Minion,” I whispered.

I was afraid of the woman but thought I should warn Mum and Dad.

“Be polite!” said Mum.

“We all serve our God,” said the woman, sweetly. “How can I help?”

I wasn’t convinced. I knew minions mostly looked weird and this woman looked like a fairly typical, old faharni but I was still sure she was a minion. She hadn’t exactly denied it. Was this the secret? I couldn’t really talk about this now.

“Well we,” Dad said, “my wife and daughter and myself, are Winemakers and were driven out of Grishnarl by Nuhara persecution, although the Trulists didn’t exactly stand up for us.”

“Typical,” said the woman. “They make all these noises about equal rights for everybody and then don’t do anything useful when there’s a real problem.”

“Anyway,” said Dad, “we came here because we’d heard that there was a Winemaker community here. Unfortunately we spent most our money moving so I was wondering if you could help us.”

“The only Winemakers in Minris, well the only ones who are active in anything that can be called a ‘Winemaker community’, are the inhabitants of the Vineyard,” said the woman. “We’re a particular order called ‘Haprihagfen’ although everybody here just calls us ‘Winemakers’. Although, of course, anybody can become a Winemaker, or should be able to if the Trulists hadn’t outlawed religious conversion, joining our order requires rather more specific qualifications ...”

“Being minions,” I said.

The woman looked me in the eyes and I knew I’d annoyed her, and she said, “Your daughter’s rather special isn’t she?”

“I’m important!” I said. “Is that the same as being special?”

There was silence for a second and then Mum said, “Of course she’s special.”

“To us,” said Dad, “but she’s really a very normal girl but there’s nothing wrong with that.”

I crossed my arms and pouted at him.

“You’ve had trouble with her before,” said the woman. “Were you just persecuted for your religion?”

“Yes,” said Mum.

“Why else would anybody persecute us?” said Dad.

“Does she normally go round saying that people are minions or things like that?”

“She’s got a rather overactive imagination,” said Mum.

“Some people might think that she’s psychic,” said the woman.

“What’s a psychic?” I asked.

“Mind reader,” said Mum, “and you’re not one of those are you?”

“Korbarism, discrimination based on if you’re a psychic and what type, is wrong,” said the woman, “but people still persecute those they think are different in that way, particularly non-psychics persecuting psychics, so you shouldn’t go round telling people that you think people are psychics or minions or something. Do you understand?”

I stared at her with my mouth shut tight and my eyes narrowed. I did not understand! Of course I knew that the six main sins were: racism, sexism, korbarism, orientationism, familyism and religionism. The only one I didn’t understand was korbarism. Presumably this meant persecuting korbars but I didn’t know what a korbar was. I’d asked a number of times and been told things like, “You’ll understand when you’re older,” or “It’s complicated,” and on one occasion got a very complicated explanation that had something to do with the gods. I’d even looked it up on the internet but that had just been confusing as well. The trouble was that I didn’t know if a Winemaker child should know this.

I realized that the woman’s mind was unusually easy to read but she thought in a very complicated way. She realized that I didn’t understand and decided that this wasn’t a good time to explain.

“I only told Mum and Dad,” I said, wondering if the woman was a mind reader.

“Anyway,” said the woman, “you want help finding a new home. The biggest Winemaker community is in Hecrin.”

“We can’t speak Hecrini,” said Dad, “and I don’t think they’d let us emigrate there.”

“Then there’s Ubata.”

“The Winemakers there are always fighting with the Nuharas,” said Dad. “I also have a job offer in Minris.”

“Perhaps Yoho wishes you to settle here,” said the woman, “I think it would be good to have some Winemakers who don’t belong to our order or pretend to be Trulists. It’s rather late to be driving anywhere, we can put you up in our guesthouse for a few nights and help you find some more permanent accommodation. We also have a girl about your daughter’s age who’d like another girl to play with.” Then she lifted up part of the counter and walked to our side. “We're about to have our evening meal, you can join us, you must be hungry.”