January 09, 2018

PodCastle 504: Words Never Lost

51 minutes

* Author : DaVaun Sanders

* Narrator : Dominick Rabrun

* Host : Setsu Uzume

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

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PodCastle 504: Words Never Lost is a PodCastle original.

Rated PG-13

Words Never Lost

by DaVaun Sanders

Imala spat on the schoolhouse’s brittle timbers as she passed, slipping behind the Tyre Orphan School’s woeful outbuildings and through the fence. A lashing awaited anyone caught here, but she had broken her promise to meet Vachaspah one too many times.

The soft crack of fledgling bone pulled her eyes up. An owl had perched atop a nearby saguaro, its dead barrel bleached white. Pitiful screeches and wet, tearing sounds floated from a wicked nest made entirely of long thorns. The owl’s wet beak dipped down again and again, skewering its floundering owlets. Bloodstained tufts of soft down littered the ground.

Imala fled across the wash. The undergrowth traced fresh welts over the bruises on her sun-brown forearms, pulling her dark curls free of their twin-tails. Her schoolteachers scoffed at Apache ways, but owls heralded lurking ghosts as surely as Christian prayers brought calloused knees. She desired no encounter with the ghost bound to an owl that devoured its own young.

A bizarre clearing stopped her flight. Angular letters left seeping wounds in the nearby palo verde like a wasting sickness. At the center of it all stood Vachaspah, gouging words into the earth with his bone-handled steel blade. Hair the color of rainless clouds swayed about his shoulders, tangled with the carved charms and turquoise amulets adorning his neck. Never before had Imala been so convinced of the shaman’s madness.

“If anyone sees this …” Imala held in a shriek. “I promised you more paper!”

“You promise many things.” Vachaspah did not look up. “You promise children who desire our ways.”

“They’re afraid of you,” Imala lied. She feared him, and his lessons about the spirits. “And you never meet in the same place twice.”

“Your pale teachers’ words twist the tongue even worse than the eye.” Vachaspah gestured to his careful scribbling. “This story speaks of how Coyote tricked the Mountain People. You should listen.”

“We need words, not stories. Elan wants to write his father’s line, and Jacali’s afraid she’ll forget her aunt’s lullabies. They’ve all lost our tongue, except for me.” Older orphans spat in Imala’s porridge when she turned her back, for knowing more Apache despite her half blood. The younger traded her favors for teaching them, but Vachaspah need not know that. “Besides, your stories are too long to write.”

“Easier to place them here instead.” Vachaspah’s knife traced a circle on the withered skin over his heart. “Without them we’re dust on the wind.”

“I hid your words on my skin last time,” Imala insisted, holding out her purpled forearms. She had rubbed herself raw with soap for days so the ink faded faster. “Headmaster Seare lashed me every morning he saw them. No one else will come. Paper is better.”

Stubborn, blind child.” Vachaspah snorted, stepping lithely across the mud to preserve his story. He pulled a hidden bundle from the drooping, thorny branches of an acacia and motioned Imala closer.

“What’s this?” She eyed the offering like a scorpion’s tail.

“Your mother made it before those lost men witched her away from us to live in their tomb. Her power saw far past day and night. I fear it stirs in you.”

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