The Reign of Magic. Wolf Awert

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      Chapter 2

      “I don’t want to go.” Everything in her contracted. She bent her back, fastened her long, still rather bony arms around her knees and stared at the floor. As everything contracted in her, the world around her shrank too until it was no more than a dot, a spot of clay stuck in a small gap between two woven twigs. The clay was crumbling at the outsides and was darker in the middle, as though it were still moist.

      “Tiriwi!”

      Whenever Grimala said her name it sounded as though a bird was calling for her.

      “Tiriwi, you aren’t listening.”

      Tiriwi freed her gaze from the clay-smeared weaving and looked up into Grimala’s good-natured, smiling face, Chiwita’s mischievous face and Kamana’s serious but friendly face.

      Tiriwi had heard enough. More words would change nothing.

      “I’m an Oa like you,” she said quietly. “I know every tree-trunk and every leaf. The sun caresses me by day and the moon guards me in the night. You must know that my place isn’t anywhere in the world, but right here. Did you not teach me to be content with what I can find where I live? That in humility we have wealth? And that it is the Oa’s task to preserve the world, not change it?”

      Though Tiriwi could no longer remember every single Tree-blossoming she had ever celebrated, she knew that it was far more than she had fingers. Only the last Tree-blossoming did she keep in her memory like a sacred treasure, for shortly after it her entire life fell into disarray.

      One evening, when everything was still as it should be, she had ended the day with the other girls by the large fire. It must have been a special evening as Grimala, Keeper of the Village, had stood by her and laid a hand on her shoulder. When Grimala stepped into the circle she always stood until someone invited her. She never had to wait for long.

      “Grimala, can you tell us a story?”

      “Yes, tell us the story of Osir and Atak and how they made the land and the sky.”

      But wise women like Grimala never simply told stories. They were the keepers of myth and legend. They preserved the eternal truths of their people which they told over and over again, until they had become a part of the memories in every Oa’s minds and hearts.

      Grimala never let them wait for long. She sat down, crossed her legs, stretched her back, and looked around the circle. The small ones sat right by the fire, the older ones behind them, and the mothers were barely visible in the semi-darkness behind them. Girls rarely sat beside their mothers. They preferred to sit close to their best friends or play under the watch of their older sisters.

      Grimala always waited until everyone was still, and all had fallen silent save for the crackling of the fire. Into this silence she would speak her first words. And so it was on this eve: “Today I will not be telling the story of Osir and Atak, for their tale was made for children. Today I will tell you the truth about the beginning of the world, the birth of the sun, moon and all stars.”

      The children looked crestfallen, the mothers looked around anxiously, and little furry creatures with cold paws ran down Tiriwi’s back. Osir and Atak, no more than a children’s tale? Grimala waited until all whispering voices had become silent once more and the mothers had taken their children to bed. She seemed not to notice the fire in the middle losing its warmth, the stars blinking threateningly and the moon retreating behind a cloud.

      “In the beginning, there was a great empty bubble where the pulse of life pounded. The Void heard the pounding, surrounded it, took it as a part of itself and followed its rhythm. It expanded, contracted and expanded again, until it went too far and tore into an uncountable number of bubbles, meandering in the void. So had it been foretold, so had it happened, for the mother of all being is the Nothing.”

      Grimala took such a deep breath that it sounded like a sigh.

      “Some of the bubbles stayed silent, in others the pulse of life continued aimlessly for a while before it stopped. But one bubble did not allow the pulse to become silent. It kept pulsing, so full of joy and strength that its outsides connected when it contracted and became stuck there. So it came that there were now two instead of one.

      “The Void now saw its counterpart, recognized itself, startled and fled from itself. What it left was its magic.

      “Thus the wise ones say, in the beginning there was magic. There was and still is only this one magic. It has no form and no shape, no past and no future, no place and no destination. It is the mother of all things, of the beginning and the end. It is enough for itself, and whosoever controls it is a God, for who else could understand such magic? It is the magic of the Nothing. If summoned, it takes shape and stops being in the same instant.”

      The mothers nodded thoughtfully. They had learned of this tale when they had grown from girls into women. Tiriwi felt the mothers’ agitation, felt Grimala’s hand on her shoulder, strong and secure, and suddenly she understood that Grimala was telling the story just for her.

      “The Nothing bore Fate, which wished for Time to serve it. But Time refused to serve Fate, and created Space to trap Fate in. From then on Fate and Time have been fighting an eternal battle as disparate sisters. Fate decided on which things happened, but Time decided when.

      “The Nothing recognized the wisdom of Space and Time and bore a Light that did not shine. Time, Fate and Light are the three children of Nothing. Time and Fate are never-ending mysteries to humans, whereas Light was different to its sisters.

      “The Light exploded and cooled down. It became so cold that it could finally shine, and by shining it became colder still. The places that were particularly cold contracted and took shape. Hot gas fumes raced through Space and gave it forms. And the Light became colder yet until even the gases shone. And when these gases contracted they became solid and kept their shape. In the once empty and frightened bubble the first dust particles began to wander about.”

      Tiriwi knew all too much about dust. The wind blew dust in her eyes or carried it out of blossoms. The very earth beneath her feet was made up of fine and coarse dust. But dust in a bubble? Tiriwi had forgotten all about Osir and Atak.

      “All of you know this one last bubble. It is the sky above us. Sun, moon and stars are the last shimmer of the Light, and where there is none the darkness reigns. Light and dark made shapes and forms, and shapes and forms are the other side of the Nothing. So began the world.”

      Grimala rose to her feet.

      “And so, also, the magic of the Oas came into being. The sky above us, the earth below and all around us. And we are in the middle. We are the bridge between the world we live in and the sky we were made in. But only we Oas have kept this knowledge.”

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