The Frightful Feast

The Frightful Feast occurred every year at the end of harvest time.  Each village gathered together on the hallowed day and celebrated the end of Summer, and the bounty that came from the goddess Eperna’s generosity.  It was a dual ceremony, because it also marked the day when Harradeus, the god of death, took Eperna away from the land of the living, down to the underworld for the Winter months.  It was traditionally a day of feasting as well as a day of pranks.  The trickster moon shone down on children, painted with white and gray faces like the dead, as they played games and enjoyed the fruits of the harvest.

Planchiko stopped talking and looked at the young man sitting across from him in the carriage.

“We will visit the village of Pankton for the Frightful Feast this year,” the elder Magian continued.  “I haven’t been there for the Feast in more than 50 years.”  He said this in a quiet voice, as though talking to himself.  “We’ll stay at my tower for a while before we go to the village.  It’s still many weeks before the Feast.  That will be fun, won’t it Minnow?”

The young man’s real name was Mido, but when he was young he had been given the nickname of Minnow, and it had stuck.  He had always been a small child, smaller than the other children his age.  He had lanky arms and legs and a thin neck.  He was now Planchiko’s apprentice.

“Of course, I loved the Frightful feast when I was young.  What kid doesn’t?  The treats.  Chasing each other around the green.  Dressing up as the dead --  Minnow?”

Sweat broke out on the young man’s face and arms and he began gasping for breath.

Planchiko rapped for the driver to stop the carriage and he leaned across to the boy and grabbed him by the shoulder.  The Magian had never studied the arts of healing, but he could use the power to calm someone.  After what felt like an eternity the young man took several deep gulps of air as the dust settled around the carriage, now motionless at the side of the North Road.

“It’s okay, Minnow,” Planchiko said.  “I think it has passed and you’ll be alright.”  

Planchiko was 67 years old when he decided to take on the young man as his apprentice.  The sisters of Annapraxsis had approached him and told him the story of the young boy, what little they knew of it.  An urchin from the slums of Sundjahar.  The Magian was getting old now.  It was time he picked an apprentice and passed on the store of his knowledge.  Before he died.  It wasn’t required to have an apprentice at the end of the life of a Magian, but it made sense, and most of them did so.  Otherwise what they had managed to find and learn would be lost again, with all the rest.

Planchiko sighed.  He hated thinking of death.  He couldn’t believe he had grown so old so quickly.  He wasn’t ready to meet Harradeus, or enter the underworld.  The carriage jostled back into motion as they continued their journey and he looked at the young man seated across from him.  

Minnow was something of a mystery.  He had listened to the meager story the sisters had told him and then he had followed them to their college.  Men were not allowed inside, unless they were someone like he.  A Magian.

He had entered the small, narrow room with the cot against the wall and saw the young man, huddled in on himself.  He had felt it then, that this young man had power.  After he had reached out to him with his mind and proven that the lad had talent he had felt pity for him.  His clothes were threadbare.  His feet had been washed, but there were callouses from going barefoot.

He had sat down on the cot, next to the young man, and introduced himself.  He told him that he was from the brotherhood of Magians and that the young man was welcome to study and become one of them, if he wanted.