Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

“I believeth that art me,” said Dwendra. “I hath a problem with Attan because he doth not liketh me but I do not thinketh he knoweth why.”

“We’ve rather covered that,” said Mum. “Anybody else?”

“Miandri because she didst useth her Old Magic to produceth a picture of a man trying to rapeth me and made Anden thinketh I hath been raped, not that being raped ist a reason for to hateth somebody, I wouldst have thought that, as a woman, Anden wouldst understandeth that. Then Miandri tried to getteth me to Valley Park but instead I went unto the courthouse. Then Miandri didst goeth round telling people I wert being raped and ledeth people unto the scene of this alleged rape only to findeth five dead boys from her school. This makes me believeth she wishes to rapeth me or maketh me appear to hath been raped to disqualifyeth me as a wife for Clindar according to Benai Nibeyim rules.”

“You killed Utnarata!” said Miandri. “Now all is gloom and there is no hope.”

“How can she kill a goddess?” asked Attan.

“How can she kill a goddess?” asked Miandri, hypnotically. “Who can kill a god?” Suddenly she jumped up and her chair fell backwards. “She’s an avatar! She’s an anavah, she’s Yoho’s avatar come to kill all other gods. She’s killed Utnarata and she’s going to kill Strumeg and his lover Denadria and then all the other gods who don’t have avatars!”

“I knew it,” said Attan, “she’s the thing the police are trying to protect us from!”

“I art a Yohoist, I doth not believeth Yoho hath an avatar. He wilt merely sendeth an anav priest to ... I doth not believeth this! I didst not meaneth this! I merely wanted to keepeth my promise unto Yoho!”

“The avatars won’t claim to be avatars, they will deny it and insist on being proclaimed by others,” said Miandri, bowing down towards Dwendra. “Oh, wow, you really are totally Yoho’s avatar. I will serve you for you’re clearly greater than Utnarata or the other gods!”

“I dist not meaneth this,” said Dwendra. “What hath I done!”

With that she got up and rushed round the side of the house and I decided I should follow her.

“Nice going Mum,” said Attan sarcastically.

I followed Dwendra into the garden on the other side of the house. I hadn’t got a good look at it before. It was mostly lawn with some children’s swings. The eastern horizon had a red glow to show Aleph would soon be rising to change blue day to white day. There was that fresh clean smell from the previous day’s rain.

I could feel Dwendra behind a tool shed and went round to find her weeping.

“I merely wanted to marryeth an anav priest so our descendents wouldst not be killed during the Cataclysm,” she said. “I dist not meaneth to marryeth the anav priest who art prophesied to come and save us! Thou art not him! Thou art merely a regular ...”

“Anav who’s supposedly descended from the Yohoist priesthood.”

She looked at me and asked, “What meanest thou?”

“That’s not exactly normal is it? You think you started this don’t you?”

“I toldeth Benai Nibeyim to breedeth an anav priest so I couldst marryeth him and saveth Yohoism. I thought they wouldst hath doneth it before the Cataclysm but they didst not! Now I hath a priest who’s had no training and knows little of Yohoism and art a Trulist although I thinketh thou art rapidly becoming a Winemaker! I didst sneaketh off whilst thou wert in the bathroom this morning and didst the DNA test. Thou couldst be a male-line descendant of any one of twenty four of the thirty seven priests!”

“I always knew I was different from everybody else but I didn’t think ... You now believe I’m a Yohoist priest?”

She stared at me, clearly trying to formulate an answer. I turned so I was in front of her, she had her back to the shed, with a hand on each side. Then I put my right hand on her neck and kissed her on the mouth.

“Thou art still not a proper Yohoist,” she said.

“But I’m some sort of mega fulfillment of prophecy. I don’t know if you’ve mucked up the prophecy. I’m not sure ... You’re totally hot! I think it’s time to go to Kledris.”

“Why Kledris?”

“There was a picture that looked like Kledris when Miandri tried to use her revelation spell to reveal the truth about gods.”

“Old Magic art evil.”

“That particular spell seems to reveal pictures that show bits of truth but without understanding the context, they can be misleading. I can’t see any harm in going to Kledris ...”

“They art racist!”

“It’s safe to go to the anav community. Perhaps it will tell us how to resolve our religious problems. Do you have a better idea?”

We’d visited Kledris when we were being taught to teleport and were told the main facts of its history. In this universe a hirsute human race, known as hairies, had been enslaved by a “naked” race (presumably one with hair mostly on it’s heads and groins, like all the races in Midbar-Binah) know as nakeds. On a certain starship the slaves had rebelled and taken control. However, the ship was badly damaged or the slaves didn’t know how to operate it or perhaps a bit of both. The result was that the ship had crash landed on Midbar. The survivors had sufficient numbers, skills, food organisms and equipment to establish a viable colony and had proceeded to do so. This particular Midbar sephir had a huge canyon stretching nearly half way around its equator, where most the planet’s surface water was located. The former slaves had set up solar panels and wind turbines around this, which were used to power bright, cyan lamps that served the same purpose as the sapphires in Midbar-Binah.

Unfortunately, their history of slavery had left the colonists with a racist hatred of nakeds. Therefore any faharni or glildacs wouldn’t exactly be greeted warmly, not to mention raising genuine questions about where we came from. Also we didn’t speak the language. The one place we could go safely was a relatively small valley to the south of the main canyon. This was occupied by anavim who were always very friendly to other anavim, hirsute or naked.