Jubilation rang out among the dark domes of the encampment. A harsh breeze blew in heavily from the north, but it was a well-fated wind, one that brought news of rain coming near. The jubilation was for a simple reason. A small babe had joined the tribe that evening, her hair was of flame and her skin was bright. The mother was recovering well, the father was amid his peers in a circle of drinking and crude jokes, while the babe slept without a care.
In a one of the larger shared tents, its flap tied and secured against the promise of rain, the five elected Elders spoke of the child in hushed tones.
“A child with red hair is a strong omen. It was not guaranteed, but it is… possible?” Plini asked. His long grey beard was braided unevenly, fashioned to hang over his shoulder like a scarf.
The eldest Dreska shrugged, his rheumy eyes long blind. “The red hair is a good omen, I agree. The wind is favorable. The promise of rain is in her favor. But does she bear the mark?”
“Sadly, Esska did not find one. But the birth was long, and all were tired. We should let them have their time as a new family,” the younger Dreska shrugged in a learned mannerism from his father. “Knowing if the mark is there and not knowing makes no difference to us now. She is of the tribe, and we will raise her as such. As we have with all of our children.”
“If we were able to know,” Plini grinned, “the upcoming gathering would be a greater celebration. Our tribe has been in the Scrape for far too long. How long-“
“Too long.” Maz interrupted. “Our blessed consecration was before my great-great-grandfather was born! The Realmkeepers gave us our boon, and we were blessed. Has that lead to anything? Ten generations! Ten Etara! A hundred and fifty years! I have never heard of longer, and no one else has heard of one longer either!”
“Shhh, be calm, my friend,” Freih patted Maz’s shoulder gently. “This is the strongest sign we have had yet!”
“No certainty though,” Maz finished sourly.
“The next Etara is but fourteen moons away. In that time, we can seek strong omens, and prepare where we can. Perhaps she is not our Keeper, perhaps she is. Our goal is to keep our tribe from going down the path of false hope,” Plini said.
“Aye, aye,” the others agreed.
“If she is, the next Gathering after would be when the the babe reaches sixteen. That is a great omen! Marriage age for a Doorkeeper? She could bring her tribe and her husband’s tribe through the Door as well. The bonds of marriage can mean that more families escape from the Scrape,” Frieh commented.
The elder Dreska waved his hand and frowned. “No. This is not it. False hope. Only one tribe per Door. Let us keep our eyes on the means of our tribe’s well-being. Stay close to the herds, umanti-aana, harvest and gather. Tend to our arts, umanti-devna, and prepare for the next Gathering. We have families to build, tribes to expand. Only through umanti-aana and umanti-devna, we survive.”
“My father speaks truth,” the younger Dreska nodded. “My first son will be seeking a wife. My daughters are too young, but they could at least congregate with other families and to discover new friendships. To do that, we must focus on our tribe, umanti-na.”
“Aye, aye, umanti-na,” the others agreed again.
“But,” Freih posited timidly, “what if she is our Doorkeeper?”
The speculative discussion continued against everyone’s spoken and unspoken wishes.
Fourteen moons passed.
Esska’s third daughter had been lost to a Ghostbear, Plini had tracked the beast with his two older sons and had slaughtered it in revenge, leaving the carcass to a pyre so the creature would not rise again. The Horza family had been infected with an illness that had killed the family in their sleep, the bodies covered in black pustules. The tribe thought it best to burn the tent and label the site, nozu-tan, a forgotten place. It took a month to erect the signs and to place the markers so other tribes would avoid the site, and hopefully in turn avoid whatever noxious gas or infectious bug that had breached the family’s tent.
All in all, it was terrible, but it was life as it was in the Scrape. The world turned, children were born, some of them died, children that survived became men and women, and some of them died. Many would marry into other tribes, and new tribes would form. All One People, many tribes. As it was, so it would be, umanti-na.
The baby of flame hair was walking unsteadily, her bright shock of red tousles uncontrolled by the any attempts to curtail it, and by all accounts she appeared to be a smart baby. Not yet talking fully, but able to understand the adults around her in a capacity well beyond her young age. At the first birthday naming ceremony, her parents, Limas and Tollara, had named their first born Umai, an ancient tribal name of the Umanti, meaning “A Woman of Wit” or in the older tongues “Smart One”. Every day that she was exasperating her tribe, she was still thought of as a delightful child. The elder Dreska commented that being precocious was not necessarily a good thing for the tribe. But the mothers cooed, the fathers grinned, and life continued on.
Umanti-na.
The many tribes of the Scrape converged on the great plain, a large open space, ringed by mountains on three sides, with a single river running through it. Outside the narrow lush perimeter of the river, the plain was mostly dry grasses and low scrub. In the summer months, the Realm Plain was hot and dusty, but in the winter, it was a safe respite from the ice storms of the north and the wet ferocity of the hurricanes that came in from the sea to the south. Springs bubbled at the center of the plain, and the many tribes of the one people erected themselves in a rough circle around it, eventually forming a great city of tents, with the springs and the river acting as a natural source of clean water and sanitation for the mass of people that congregated together every fifteen years to have cultural exchanges, in the form of arts, of tools and favors, and intermarriage. Many tribes had herds and hunting grounds that intersected outside of the great congregation, so these sorts of interactions occurred at a small scale throughout the intervening years, but every fifteen years, all the tribes gathered for the Doors-to-Open. This was known as Etara, the only true escape from the hard life in the Scrape.
Near the springs, as it bubbled and frothed to form a stream of its own that joined the river of the plain, the tribes of the Scrape would come together to place simple offerings at the great stone table, and seek favor from God. The one people knew that the Scrape was just an intermediate place. It was the place where true strength was forged. On the tenth night of the gathering, the tribes collected in their multitudes, and waited with baited breath. Fires were arrayed around the stone table and more were spread throughout the masses to provide comfort and warmth as the night air creeped in and the cold settled like a blanket in the valley.
The tribes each had sent one Elder from their own councils to form the Great Council that sat at the rear of the great stone table. The Umanti had of course sent their elder Dreska, as he had been their representative for the last three Etara, and would continue to carry that honor until death took him.
Dreska was now blind, and his son, the younger Dreska, helped him where he could, and the elder Dreska managed him along well enough. The Elders sat in a line on the stone table, the natural stage that had been created by the springs behind. All the elders from the other tribes sat with him, and they nominated one to perform the ceremony. This Etara, the nominee was Atak, an elder from the Drevantin tribe. Atak was still young compared to many of the other elders, his body thick with muscle and his long bushy black hair barely shifting to gray at his temples. His voice was like thunder.
“Tribes!” Atak roared.
The tribes all shouted their hunting cries, and the ground shook with their voices. They continued the tumult until Atak raised both of his hands and smiled widely.
“The sounds of all these Tribes brings my heart joy!” Atak shouted. “You, your families, your kith and your kin, fighting for survival in the Scrape, fighting for love, fighting for life. You are all strength! You are all worthy! Ananan, by the very hands of God, we are shaped from the Scrape! We are formed by God, and in turn, we form our future.”
“Ananan!” The tribes shouted the response.
“I call the Doorkeepers that are among us!” Atak raised his fists in the air.
There was silence. Still and complete. The babies did not cry. The children did not fret.
“I come!” A male’s voice called out.
Atak pointed his finger. “And who are you?”
The young man beat his chest with both fists as we walked forward. “I am Nessar, son of Ferra and Tolk, child of the Emar tribe! Emar-iun!”
“EMAR-IUN!” The tribe behind him roared in pride.
At the Umanti tribe fire, the elder Maz leaned over to his fellow elder Freih, “Two generations to our ten.”
Freih rolled his eyes and punched Maz’s knee congenially.
“I come!” A female’s voice called out.
Atak swung his finger towards the voice. “Ah, I know this voice! Cousin! And who are you?”
The young woman beat her chest with her fists as she approached the stone table. “I am Sarie, daughter of Trisa and Gol, child of the Lorik tribe! Lorik-un! LORIK-UN” She screamed the second call, and her tribe instantly were shouting their tribe mantra, pounding their chests in kind.
Maz leaned over to Freih again, and whispered, “Four generations to our ten.”
“Be still!” Freih admonished.
“Who else? Any other Doorkeepers among the Tribes of the Scrape?” Atak called out, his voice riding over all their heads unconstrained.
The silence was thicker than the heavy cold air descending from the northern mountains far in the distance, as a storm roiled to the south, the flashes of light in the night sky, rumbling to nothing before it reached the ears of the gathering.
Atak waited, as was tradition, for any Doorkeepers to announce themselves. When none did, he waved for the two youths to climb up the front of the stone table.
“I have Nessar of the Emar and Sarie of the Lorik to represent their tribes. I ask their elders here on the great stone table, here in front of all our one people at the gathering, do you commit your tribes to the Etara? Do you commit your tribes to leave the Scrape and to start anew? Do you commit to find a new life, with unique challenges and opportunities beyond your Door?”
Two of the elders stood and called out in unison, “We commit our tribes to Etara!”
Maz leaned over to Freih once again, “I bet we could get our hands on the Lorik’s tents before anyone else. They are on the south side of us, and our own tents block the others.”
Frieh tapped a finger against his chin and nodded thoughtfully. He waved for his wife to get the tribes’ kids ready to claim as much as they could after the ceremony was complete. It was often pure luck on how the tribes settled down in the Etara, so the claims were less than ideal for the tribes further away. Trading ran rampant after the claiming, so everyone usually ended up with what they desired, but still, to have the upper hand was a good omen.
“I am Atak, anointed by the council of elders. I am Atak and I call upon Nessar to build his door. I call upon the Realmkeepers to bless this man and his door. I call upon God to bless his tribe in their Etara,” Atak yelled skywards. He motioned for Nessar to start his build.
The boy frowned in concentration, pushing his hands into the mud at the rear of the stone table, where the waters bubbled and hissed. He pulled up great wads of clay and started piling the mud at the center of the stone table as the elders nearby and the tribes amongst the different points of firelight looked on in wonder.
Nessar started to form the clay with his fingers, speaking harshly between clenched teeth. He was speaking the Realmkeeper’s tongue, something unintelligible to everyone but another Doorkeeper. The words were guttural and canted as a chant of sorts, with a rhythm that most followed well enough. His tribe stamped their feet.
At the Umanti fire, Tollara was patting her daughter Umai’s bottom gently, as the child slept against her chest in the warmth of her wrappings holding her firmly against her mother’s body. As soon as the boy on the stone table had started chanting, Umai snapped awake and turned her eyes to watch the table intently.
Plini had been watching the subject of his never-ending curiosity sidelong, and smirked widely when the baby’s eyes opened. He recognized that look. The baby had heard the words and she knew them. She heard the language of the Doorkeepers! Umai was a Doorkeeper! Blessed by God! He wanted to shout and jump and dance, but it would be terribly rude, so instead he forced himself to watch the young man Nessar in his craft.
The boy continued to pile the hot mud, speaking the words to the door he was building. He piled the mud into thin spindles each forming a small tower, and he wove them together like a weaver of grasses. The mud behaved as though it was something else, some other material that was not mud. Clay would have fallen into lumps, or puddled, but as it was worked by Nessar, it held its form, and arose into a work of art. He worked on both sides at an equal pace, slowly creating an arch overhead, with each pillar of woven mud coming together at the top. He carved with his fingers, far more deft than a finger or fingernail could do, as if he had a multitude of tools in hands, invisible to the onlookers.
He pulled more mud at the base of the door, finishing with a threshold. He screamed an unintelligible word and slapped both of his hands on the bar of clay between the two pillars. The pillars turned to a white stone, and between their shapes, under the arch of where they came together, a doorway opened. Light spilled outwards towards Nessar, and he stood shakily, a smile on his face. He waved at the door and fell backwards unconscious. A multitude of bird songs and the hum of insects of a summer day could be heard from the other side of the doorway.
Maz and Frieh looked at each other as many other tribe leaders did and nodded appreciatively. A stone door. A respectable door for the Emar, and a great effort by the boy Nessar. A good life awaited the Emar tribe. It could have stayed composed of the shaped mud, and been only a daub door. To be fair, a daub door is not itself a terrible outcome, but it was the lowest of the possibilities. Although the absolute terrible option was staying in the Scrape. Nothing was harder than the Scrape, so a daub door was still a blessed Etara. Maz gave Frieh a meaningful look, and Frieh shrugged, knowing exactly what Maz had been thinking.
The Emar Tribe did not gather their things, or return to their tents. Those were for the others to claim now. With smiles on their faces, and eyes full of hope, they made their way to the stone table. The Emar elder helped the boy to his feet and they stood nearby, as the families of the Emar tribe filed through the doorway of light, as the last person made their way through, the elder waved at the crowd, and helped their Doorkeeper stumble through the doorway. As they crossed the threshold, the door instantly fell dark, and crumbled to dust.
Atak raised his palms to the sky again, quieting the murmuring of the crowd. “We thank the Realmkeepers for their Door of Stone, and we ask God to watch over the Emar tribe as they are forever separated from us. May they be blessed!”
The crowd responded in unison, “Ananan!”
“Now, Sarie of the Lorik. You may build your door upon this table of stone. I am Atak, and I call upon Sarie to build her door. I call upon the Realmkeepers to bless this woman and her door. I call upon God to bless her tribe.” Atak waved at Sarie to build.
Sarie was a slight girl, probably not a day over fourteen, and barely touched by womanhood. She struggled to pull the mud up from the springs, and made steady progress in stacking it in two piles. She started chanting a lilting, wild monologue, interjecting small grunts as she worked with the heavy lumps of clay. She rolled the clay between her hands and soon was lost to her work. Her words had similar structure as the chant of Nessar, but it was far more stylized and complex. As her fingers worked up the columns, the mud took on strange shapes of circles and rings, abstract shapes speaking of ripples in clear water, as rain drops striking a calm pond. She worked up one column entirely before she started on the other. The other column was a perfect replica of the first, and she did not bother creating an arch between them. She connected their bases with waving pattern, placed her hands on the columns, and pushed all of her lungs into a single unintelligible word.
The pillars flashed from stone to silver to something that looked like the iridescence of a seashell, as it cooled, the columns appeared to be made of silver, and the doorway opened to the sound of crashing waves, and the smell of a ocean came from beyond. The scream of gulls punctuated the calm rhythm of the waves against a beach. She laughed once, and sat down where she was, giggling, seemingly awake yet dreaming.
Her elder stood, climbed the table, and gathered the manic child in his arms. The Lorik tribe migrated from their fire to the stone table, and the families filed through quickly, their faces awash in relief and joy. The elder helped Sarie through the door, and like the first one, it crumbled to dust the moment she crossed the threshold, the sounds and smells lost to the cold winds of the Realm plain.
“We thank the Realmkeepers for their Door of Silver, and we ask God to watch over the Lorik tribe as they are forever separated from us. May they be blessed! And so this Etara is done. I am Atak, and I bless these tribes to survive the Scrape until our next gathering in fifteen years hence. The claim may begin!”
Again, the crowd responded in unison, “Ananan!”
The youngest and fittest amongst the gathered tribes broke into a foot race towards the Emar and Lorik tent sites to claim what they could for their own tribes. Everything was up for grabs, and it was good natured fun, because of the shared joy of watching two tribes escape the Scrape was something that brought happiness to everyone that had looked on, the certainty of more years of hard life in the Scrape was not weighing heavily for the moment.
Maz shrugged at Frieh, “Silver door? Not bad, not bad.”
“Not a gold door. I thought it was going to be a jeweled door at first, and then it went silver, and then I swear I saw a flash of gold. I was disappointed. The last gold door was when?” Frieh asked.
“The Etara of my fifth year, I think.” Maz smiled kindly, shaking his head. “They are indeed rare. The rare doors are rare for a reason. Although I cannot imagine what that reason is.”
“What do you think we will get?”
“We don’t know if we have a doorkeeper in Umai. Plini planned on watching her like an eagle. I wonder if there are good omens awaiting us. But remember, even a duab door is a blessing. Any door is better than the Scrape.”
“Umanti-na, my old friend.” Maz grinned. “I think we need a drink. Last night on the great plain. And we should see what our children have claimed!”
“Umanti-na, Frieh. I hope the children find a nice spear, mine is starting to crack.”
“Stop throwing it at rocks then,” Frieh teased.
“Umai!” Limas called from the flap of the family tent. “Where has our blessed child ran off to, Tollara?”
There was no answer, since Tollara had died during the hard winter when the thinnest chances of survival were an everyday fact, and for the tribe, the circumstances had not been forgiving that month. The herd they followed had wandered into a storm and it had taken weeks longer to cross the glacier than planned, and the locking illness had found her, making her blood turn solid. It was a quick and merciful death, which carried its own blessing. Now it was summer, and the light was long. Limas knew that Umai was probably foraging down by the waters, but he was always worried since it was only the two of them. Umai was special, but not for the reasons the tribe or the elders believed. It was because Umai was the only piece of Tollara left in the Scrape, and Limas needed whatever little piece his wife had left behind.
“Nothing but work with our child, Tollara. You’re right, I should be patient. She is only eight. But half a person.”
Umai was exactly where her father had guessed. The herds congregated at the waters, a wide culmination of rivulets and thin streams that formed a sheet of rippling white ribbons over the hard stone. It shifted and pulsed as it found new paths over the flood plain, moving sand a few grains at a time. The herds paid no mind to the small child as she played in the sand, dipping her toes in the cool water, and enjoyed her play. Their huge forms waddled slowly amongst the thin ribbons of water, foraging slowly on the glut of greenery that summer brought. The males had not grown in their tusks and horns yet, and the females had all given birth, so the herd was as docile as they would ever be. The Scrape was nearly tolerable when the seasons aligned and life was allowed to thrive.
The child sang a small song under her breath, the words meaningless to anyone that wandered close, but she piled the sand, letting it take its form, the sand grains holding fast were they were placed. Any other child’s little sand structures would quickly flow into a sad pile, and every build would result in a mound. Umai’s held fast, slowly building upwards, her structure holding firm.
Umai sang of her mother. Of her father. Of her tribe. But mostly of her lost mother. It wasn’t in any language that the tribe would understand, but her heart felt what it felt, and the song reflected her heart. The female Gregas of the Herd perked their ears, rotating their sail like folds towards where Umai worked the sand, wandering closer towards her. Each Herd was comprised of four different types of animals, and each animal had their place in surviving the Scrape. The Gregas were the largest, and the most defensive when predators came. They would encircle the Herd, and use their massive forms as natural walls to ward of the predators. They did so now, slowly encircling Umai as she sang. They were dumb beasts, but they instinctively knew what love was.
Umai formed two columns, each only reaching her small knee. And she slapped the ground between them, culminating her song. The columns sparkled briefly, taking on hues and colors, shifting rapidly through different states. Umai watched with a wide grin, tears slowly rolling over her cheekbones, dripping of her lip where her two front teeth were still missing. The columns coalesced into a gently glowing source of light, each rippling and shifting slowly.
“Mother?” Umai called through the miniature gate.
“Who’s that?” A thin voice came from the other side. “Someone there?”
“You are not my mother,” Umai realized as she said the words aloud.
“A child in my apartment? Who are you?” The voice replied curiously.
“Umai.”
“I can’t tell where you are, Umai. Are you here in my living room?”
Umai did not answer the question, and she certainly did not know what ‘living room’ meant. “I was looking for my mother.”
“All my children are grown. I am a grandmother now. I am a mother, but not your mother, love.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“What is her name?” The grandmother asked.
“Tollara.”
“What an odd name. Tollara. What was her last name?”
Umai sat back from the gate, confusion crossing her elfin face framed by her wild red hair. “Last name? What is a last name?”
“It is a name for your family. My last name is Cheshire, like the cat.”
“I don’t know what a cat is.” Umai replied, she closed her eyes, furrowing her brow. This wasn’t right. Her mother wasn’t there.
“What was your last name dear?” The grandmother tried again.
“Umanti is our tribe name…”
“Ah, great! Tollara Umanti. I can check my phone. My eldest son gave me a new phone for my birthday a few weeks ago, and I am still learning how to use it… I’ll ask for your patience please. Is Tollara one L or two L’s, dear?”
“I don’t know what an ‘el’ is.”
“Poor dear. Let me see if anything is close. Ah… shame… no results dear. But I guess with a foreign name it could be spelled a number of ways. At least how I spelled her name, there are no results. Do you want me to call the police? Do you need help dear? If you tell me where-“
Umai shook her head and her tears picked back up with a fury. She angrily slapped the columns with the swipe of her hand and the inert sand fell to the ground to be caught up again in the rivulets.
“Where are you, mother?” Umai whispered.
As the child wept, lost in her own misery, the Gregas lowed nearby mindlessly chewing on the short grasses among the streamlets.
Umai ran among the grasses, chasing the flying Foskers as they leapt from their hiding spots among the stones. Their wings clapped loudly as they took flight, chittering with their mandibles at the intrusion of the human playing whereever she pleased. It was nearly the cold season, and the birthing’s in the Herd were long over. Umai’s father said it had been three years since her mother’s passing, but he still insisted in talking to her spirit whenever he thought no one was watching.
The next Etara was in four years, and Umai was already nervous. The Elders had started teaching her the Way of the Keepers. Nothing but pressure from Plini, the wise Elder that tutored her. She did not like Plini much, because he was unfair. He asked her to remember everything, when the Way of the Keeper should have been called the Way of Water, because it flushed through her as if she was a sieve.
She peed out the Way, that is how well it stuck with her.
The tribe only had four elders now, which was a bad omen. Not a terrible one, but an unfortunate one. It was offset some by the good omen that the Elder Dreska had passed due to old age, an exceptionally rare thing to occur in the Scrape. People were buried every day, but those people had died from terrible things. A death from being older than the world ever expected you to get was a blessing of its own. The younger Dreska was now the only Dreska. He was the eldest of the elders himself, and now the leader for the Umanti clan. He gave the word on the final decisions of the Umanti tribe, and lead the tribe in following their herds, as the beasts followed the migrations and signals of the world that the One People could not intuit themselves.
Umai was glad for these breaks. This was time that she could be herself away from the expectations and the pressure. Out amongst the grasses, should could let her legs pump downwards against the earth beneath her, feel the way part ahead, and have the wind on her face. It was flying, nearly. It was escape, nearly. For a moment, Umai thought if she believed it hard enough and with enough fervor, God would pick her up and let her command the skies like the birds, whooping while she looped, shifting side to side, diving and rolling beneath the clouds but above the plain. It was belief that coursed through her veins, not blood. Blessings could be had through belief. Omens revealed themselves through belief.
A child, running with abandon, a cry of joy at her lips was a good omen no matter what. On a far hill, Plini watched as his student broke left and then ight amongst the tall grasses, stirring the flying Foskers to take rapid flight, their four wings beating the air furiously in offense. Plini knew Umai was special, but she had to sing. He had fretted over it many a time with the other Elders, each trying to understand if this was their chance at an escape from the Scrape. She did not have the mark. No. She did have the omens. Yes. She appeared to understand the Doorkeepers. Yes. She sings to the world. No.
At least as far as Plini knew, Umai did not sing, or chant, or litany like the elders had heard from other tribes that had their own Doorkeepers. As they grew up, the Doorkeepers would follow a pattern of behavior. A way of interacting with the world, that was unique, but special. Umai had, so far, none of those quirks. None of the idiosyncrasies that were omens of a Doorkeeper. Umai had not opened herself to becoming.
For him. Or for her father. Or for anyone. What was a Doorkeeper that chose not to invoke their voice? How could she raise a door for the tribe if she did not believe in her own voice? His lessons meant nothing if she could not let herself be carried into the sway. The mud would remain mud. The door would never appear, and the tribe would endure the Scrape for years and years to come. He shook his head, clearing his wayward thoughts, and leaned forward on his spear all the more.
For now, let the child run. Let her be free. Let her find joy among the Foskers and the grasses. For joy alone was a hard thing to find, and a child had the profound gift to create it out of nothing, and that alone was a miracle worth noting and an omen worth cherishing.
Plini sighed and watched Umai run.
His voice was like thunder. Atak, older now but still a hulk of a man, bound in muscle and vigor, shouted out across the Gathering from the great table at the springhead.
“I call the Doorkeepers that are among us!” Atak raised his fists in the air, like he had the last Etara, fifteen years ago, and as was the tradition in every gathering. He felt blessed to have his first grandchild among the crowds, watching this as he had when he himself was a child. Continuity brought strength to the One People. Strength helped the people survive. This was something that he could do to bring the people and keep them safe.
The crowds were nestled among their fires, the great council of the Gathering sat on the stone table, looking out over them all, waiting for the Doorkeepers to present themselves.
Silence hung heavily over the crowds, fearful to murmur or whisper and bring a bad omen to the gathering. No one stood, no one yelled out to declare themselves for their tribe. Atak knew there was a rumor of a doorkeeper in the Umanti tribe, one of their young women was supposed to be a Doorkeeper. He also had heard rumor of another in the Fasa tribe, a boy that had supposedly chosen to not participate in the last Etara. Had he not heard the call? Was Atak not loud enough?
No one dared move or speak.
Atak tried again, “I call the Doorkeepers that are among us! Come forward and take your tribe to a bright future!”
“I come.” A small voice called out to the left. He was a waif of a young man, being held at the shoulder by a larger man behind him. The young man was not long for the Scrape, and he carried the air of death about him.
His voice broke the interminable silence and the crowds of the gathering let out an unconscious collective sigh. Small flights of laughter and coughing ran across the one people in crests, crisscrossing like colliding waves on the shore.
Atak pointed his finger, “And who are you?”
“I am Tyris, son of Mresk and Didoni. I am a child of the Fasa tribe, and my father comes with me.”
Atak paused. The young man had not called out his tribe with a hunting cry, the tribe had not called back. The encampment behind the frail looking man and his father was deadly silent, and every single one of them was looking away from their Doorkeeper. Atak turned and glanced at the elder of the Fasa tribe. The man nodded with a frown, and immediately, Atak understood. This was not a blessing. The young man was a sacrifice. But he could not turn him away, that was not Atak’s role here. All he could do was watch and pray that God did not curse their tribe. A hard choice to be made in a hard world.
Atak stammered as he continued, his voice weaker than when he started. “A-An-Any other Doorkeepers among the Tribes of the Scrape?”
“I come.” A young voice. A woman’s voice!
Atak spun on his heel with joy and directed his finger on the young red-haired woman standing at the forefront of the Umanti encampment. Where the last tribe had looked away from their frail Doorkeeper, this tribe was staring at theirs with deep adoration. Out of the corner of his eye, Atak took note of Plini nearly erupting from his seat in excitement.
Atak smiled widely, feeling the infectious positivity spilling from the Umanti tribe, “And who are you?”
“I am Umai!” The red haired woman paused, and Atak realized just how beautiful she was. Her stature was lithe, her stance defiant, and she raised a single hand into the air with pride. “I am the much loved daughter of Limas and my mother Tollara, may her spirit glow with pride. I am a child of the Umanti tribe.” She pumped her fist once, “Umanti-na!”
The tribe erupted as if some unspoken agreement had been reached. “Umanti-na!”
She pumped her fist again, “UMANTI-NA!”
The tribe all jumped to their feet, screaming to the sky above as if calling down God himself to bear witness. “UMANTI-NA!!! UMANTI-NA!!!”
The other tribes were besides themselves, as if something wild had been unleashed. They started to pump their own fists jubilantly into the air as Umai strode towards the stone table. Tyris followed meekly, gladly disappearing into the fervor, his father guiding him by the shoulder through the din.
Atak waved for the crowds to fall silent. “I have Tyris of the Fasa and Umai of the Umanti to represent their tribes. I ask their elders here on the great stone table, here in front of all our one people at the gathering, do you commit your tribes to the Etara? Do you commit your tribes to leave the Scrape and to start anew? Do you commit to find a new life, with unique challenges and opportunities beyond your Door?”
Plini and the Fasa elder both spoke in unison, “We commit our tribes to Etara!”
The crowd shouted, “Ananan!”
“I am Atak, anointed by the council of elders. I am Atak, and I call upon Tyris to build his door. I call upon the Realmkeepers to bless this man and his door. I call upon God to bless his tribe in their Etara.”
Maz sat next to his long time friend Frieh, both near the fire in the chill of the evening. They both had a few keepsakes in their pockets, for they knew today was the chance to leave the Scrape forever. It was all on Umai.
Maz turned his head, as if looking over the crowd, but muttering under his breath so the nearby children would not repeat it. “Bet they get a stone door.”
Frieh shook his head slowly, and smiled kindly, “That lad blessing his tribe with any door is a gift.”
“What do you think, Frieh? Stone? Bronze?” Maz pushed lightly.
“For this sad day, I hope the Realmkeepers give them the sky, the heavens, and all the treasures they deserve.”
“So not a stone door? That’s your bet.”
“Hush,” Frieh admonished his old friend kindly.
Atak motioned for Tyris to start his build. Tyris grimaced, swallowed once, and his father helped him gather the mud from the spring. He was so frail, he could barely gather the mud into a pile. His father murmured quietly along side, encouraging his son to push and pull the mud. Tyris chanted wearily, pulling the mud up slowly from the thick bases, not working with grace, speed, or elegance, but working as if it was the last thing he would ever do. The regret flowed out of him, tears coursing from his eyes as he worked.
The gate was pillar of bulbous shapes, each precariously balanced on the one beneath. No arch connected to the two, and with a deep gasp, Tyris exhaled with his hands between them. The gate glowed gently, the pillars glistening like freshly turned pottery. The boy leaned back looking at the door with the crook of an uneasy smile on his face, and his eyes rolled upwards. His father caught him gently as he fell back and his father began to cry. Deep wracking sobs rattled his body, but he was utterly silent.
There was no applause. There was no calls. It was silence. Silence for the fallen. The giving of life in the Scrape was a blessed omen indeed. Selfless. For love of his tribe.
“A Duab door,” Maz nodded sagely. “The Scrape never stops taking, does it?”
“It never stops testing the faithful.” Frieh wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
The Fasa tribe walked single file towards the table of rock. As each of them passed the fallen boy, Tyris and his father holding Tyris’s body in repose, each tribe member bent to kiss the upturned forehead. Even the children stopped to kiss their passed Doorkeeper. After the tribe filed through the door of mud, the father Mresk stood slowly, hefted his son’s limp form over his shoulder and carried him through the door to be the first of the Fasa tribe to be buried in their new world.
The gate fell dark, and the mud cracked and turned to dust, swirling away in the light breeze like ashes on the breath of a roaring fire.
Atak cleared his throat with a heavy cough, and raised his hands over his head as if pushing a burden skywards. “We thank the Realmkeepers for the…,” He cleared his throat again, “Door of Daub, and we ask God to watch over the Fasa tribe as they are forever separated from us. May they be blessed!”
The crowd remained silent, every single person locked in a reverie of sorrow. No one shouted the customary ‘Ananan’, a praise to God. The children knew to be quiet. In the Scrape, when the adults were silent, the loud children tended not to survive long.
Atak’s arms faltered briefly, and he lifted them even higher hoping that no one noticed. “I am Atak, and I call upon Umai to build her door. I call upon the Realmkeepers to bless this woman and her door. I call upon God to bless her tribe.”
Umai felt the call. Not the one of Atak, but something deeper. The song unsung. The breath not yet taken. The anticipation of falling towards the water after jumping from the bank. She felt the words that composed her bones, and the vibrations that innervated her soul. She vaulted deftly onto the stone table from the front, her fair honed skills of a young huntress evident. She nodded to Plini, a small smile at the corner of her mouth only for her teacher. He winked in response, sublime, patient joy written broadly across his features.
“Umanti-na… ashes of my mother, tears of my father, the Scrape takes. We give,” Umai chanted lightly under her breath, closing her eyes as she pushed her hands into the exceptionally warm mud of the spring. She pulled it into great clumps, slapping fistfuls against each other, until a large mound formed between her legs. She picked it up and carried it to the front of the table. “We give, and we marvel at our strength. We love those that come before, and those that come after, and those that we lose along the way. I sing for my tribe…”
She repeated it as a mantra as she gathered mud in multiple trips. “Umanti-na… ashes of my mother, tears of my father, the Scrape takes…”
Umai did not look at her tribe. She did not look out over the great congregation of the One People. She did not look for her cousins or her father. She only saw the pattern. She kneeled, watching in wonder as it unfolded before her. It was the call she felt. It was given life, and breath, and agency. The pattern unfolded from nothing into something that she could only express with her hands. She felt words tumble from her mouth, quick and formless, nonsense to her ears, but wholly meaningful to her heart.
The words were from somewhere else, the pattern flowed through her, filling her like an empty vessel, tumbling verbally as they overflowed her consciousness. Her fingers worked the mud, yet it did not stick to her skin. She felt her fingers pinch and smooth, working in smooth, even motions, pinching here, layering more mud there.
Umai quickly made her pillars, each taller than her. She started to form the archway, but is was beyond her reach. It was meant to be there, she saw the promise of it in her mind. She turned, took two strides to Plini and lifted him to his feet wordlessly.
“What are you doing child?” Atak grumbled behind his hand.
“Umai, are you well?” Plini asked. The other elders looked on with concern and confusion.
She ignored them both, and pulled Plini to the pillars, and pointed downwards at the stone table between them. “I need your knee, teacher.”
Plini grunted as he took a knee and held his arm up to brace her. Umai took some mud from her pile and stepped on his knee, leaning against his hands. The crowd was murmuring loudly.
For this sight was new. Never had a Doorkeeper formed a door with the help of another.
Umai worked the mud gently from one pillar to the other, her chanting flowing towards music. She heard the change, felt the lilt, the lift, the wings of words flapping towards song. A rhythm in her chest, her lungs demanding to resolve the melody, she suddenly burst into song as she formed.
The congregation fell silent. For this was not only new, this was unique. An omen unlike any other.
Umai sang for her tribe. Her people.
She sang of her mother lost, Umai hunting for her through the tiny feeble gates on riverbanks and stagnant pools.
She sang of her father, his endless devotion to his wife, his daughter, and ensuring that he was everything they both had needed him to be.
She sang of the spring sky, pink and orange clouds set against endless blue, the great Gregas lead herds moving north in a great procession, their lowing like chants to an old, forgotten god.
She sang of the summer grasses, the Foskers jumping over the heavy seeds, the pollen afloat on the unseen breeze, one lending the other animation and the other lending presence in return.
She sang of the autumn harvests, the culling, the gift of the herd to the One People, their braids longer and their skin tanned.
She sang of the rocks slowly protruding in the winter, the turning of the world, its leaning away from the sun, and the heavy dark that would drift downwards from the mountain peaks covered in solid white.
She sang for those they had lost through illness, accident, or terrible circumstance.
She sang for those watching, their eyes brimming brightly with tears, their children clutched against their legs tightly, watching on in wonder.
She sang of the One People, the faith, and the promise of what the Scrape created in its harshness. A beauty all its own. It was profound. Beauty that would not exist without the horrors. Strength that would not exist without the challenges.
She climbed down, and kneeled next to her teacher, letting her voice raise all the higher. She sang of the pattern, the unfolding of self, the giving that every Doorkeeper performed. This was the truest act of faith, the commitment to the People, the love of one’s family. She understood why Tyris had tried, she understood why he pushed himself, she understood why he gave what he did.
She would have done the same. Her voice was resonant, the table vibrating beneath her. Umai let the last note trail off, floating free from her throat, and she silently slapped her hands to the unseen threshold between the pillars.
At the Umanti fire, Maz held his breath. He fumbled to his right for Frieh’s hand. Finally making contact, he gripped it tightly. Frieh squeezed his hand in return, the anticipation connecting their spirits through their palms.
Umai leaned back, feeling her eyes suddenly heavy. She was exhausted all the way down to her bones. She tipped to her side and felt her teacher catch her gently. He whispered in her ear, “Rest, child. I will carry you through myself.”
Umai passed out as she heard his words, and Plini looked upwards at the arch and pillars of mud. They shimmered and shifted, the arch turned pearlescent, and a wave of energy flowed outwards from the center and down the pillars in turn, bouncing at the stone table and returning upwards, to repeat the process again, faster with each iteration.
Frieh muttered, “Another door of Silver? In my lifetime?”
“No, that is not silver. It is shifting still. Gold? No…” Maz replied. His voice went breathless. “Ananan.”
Plini kneeled, holding Umai against him as he watched the pillars shift from mud to some material he had never seen of. He lacked the words to describe the beauty of them. The coalesced into being, ephemeral twisting of both light and shadow, seen and unseen, brilliancy of hues interlocked in a dance that represented a gate. It was a door of light. It was a door of spirit. He wanted to reach out and touch it, but he knew he was unclean.
The door was holy. He clasped Umai all the tighter as the gate opened, and song spilled from beyond. It was an ethereal cascade of many thousand voices, one of which Umai was herself. Her song had been a part of hundreds and no one else realized it. The voices rushed outwards from the gate, and One People fell to their knees in reverence.
Umai had built a gate to the Realmkeepers themselves.
The Umanti tribe filed slowly towards the gate, nothing in their hands, only the palms of the smallest children. They filed past Plini and Umai, one sleeping soundly against her teacher’s chest, the other leaning back in wonder as he took in the wide green fields, the trees that seeming touched the silver sky, and the towers of stone and glass standing in the distance. The One People could not see through the gate, but if they could, they would see a great multitude of people dressed in bright colors, sparkling jewels set in their brows, and giants made of silver gossamer standing among them, their palms turned upwards towards the sky as if in prayer.
The tribe filed through the gate, and Maz held Frieh’s hand still as the crossed. Last was Umai’s father, a small, sad smile on his face remembering Tollara’s pride in her daughter. He helped Plini lift Umai between them, and they carried her through.
The Scrape, the Elders, and the One People continued on, unseen, as the gate of light collapsed behind the Umanti for ever.
