Selcouth, God of Wanderers

The Godhead

Gertrude was another ring.

No, that's too simple.

Gertrude was a young metalsmith who made Randy and fell in love with her work, which her work reciprocated by falling in love with her.

Too creepy.

Gertude was a bracelet (?), a necklace (?), a nose ring (?)

Maybe, but where's the drama in that—true love transcends jewelry type?

What if Gertrude was a dagger!

Yes, now we're getting somewhere. One was meant to be a decoration, to adorn the slender finger of a beautiful young noblewoman. The other was meant to kill the very same woman. They meet at midnight in the deep dark. A fancy room by candlelight. The assassin enters, and before the noblewoman can scream he stabs! His dagger (Gertrude) catches the light—as does her ring (Randy). The meet-cute at midnight. Love at first glint. Oh, the danger! The suspense! Will she live? Will she die? Will the dagger and the ring ever see each other again? They belong to different families, vastly different item types. Can their love transcend? Yes, but in a most tragic way, as both in hopelessness choose to be melted down rather than to exist apart. Or, perhaps, When Randy Met Gertrude. The attempted assassination of the noblewoman was just the beginning. The two items meet time and time again, but each time they fail to profess their love for each other. It's never the right moment. Never the right place. Until, one day, it's too late.

And so on and on my imagination runs as Tabatha of Thask and a group of emaciated farmers armed with rather misshapen pitchforks escort me toward the Godhead, which, it turns out, is that very big unidentified structure silhouetted against the sky I saw in the previous chapter.

One mystery solved. Another begins: what is the Godhead?

From up close, it looks like a statue. Am I really supposed to talk to it or is the "talking" a metaphor and I'm supposed to think my story? Does it even matter what I say, or does my success or failure ultimately depend on what the villagers believe: if they believe my story was sad enough, the Godheads's tear (or "tear") drops and the village is saved. Is it all a meaningless act which may or may not coincide with a change in the weather? What is belief, really?

Something factual: there are indeed stairs carved into the side of the Godhead. "So, I climb the stairs until I get to the ear and then literally say my story into the Godhead's ear?" I ask Tabatha of Thask.

"Yes. There's a small platform to stand on."

"Do I say it in my normal voice, like I'm using now, or do I yell it, or whisper?"

"Speak normally. If there's a problem the Godhead will tell you."

"Like tell me tell me, or more like tell me symbolically by my reading of a change in the atmosphere-kind of thing?"

"You're asking if the Godhead has a voice," says Tabatha of Rask.

"Yes," I say.

"Godhead," she says—upwards, "do you have a voice?"

The answer is a booming, "I do," which sounds like a loud, low wind reverberating in a colossal cave. "Why would I not have a voice? I have always had a voice."

"I asked for the benefit of a new storyteller."

"Storyteller," the Godhead says to me, which gives me goosebumps, as I have never been spoken to by a deity before, "ascend with your tale. I possess both voice and ear, but please do tell your tale into my left ear, as I believe my right has been impaired by the recent construction of a bird's nest."