Kainon

An orange-gold hue broke over the hills, those bespeckled by pale cottages with layered-straw roofs. A gathering of neatly dressed men and women arranged round the well of the village, which was dug in a communal center in the middle of the mostly matching homes and shops, and on the cobbled lip of which stood the most neatly dressed man in town: the Governor of the Solstice.

Of course, he who governed the annual celebrations of light, life, and otherwise, was the eldest of the elders, who all hoped would be the wisest as well. This year, however, with the passing of their latest eldest elder—who was very much a wise man on top of disconcertingly old-–a less ancient though far more disconcerting old man by the name of Kainon. To many, he was the source of their own rolling eyes, as he often would try a tale on the nearest who would listen, and when one was trapped in their field, in the wash on the river, or at the wheel in their den, Kainon would be sure he was nearest to them.

His tales lasted always ‘till the task at hand was done, and all the way up to the moment the victim of Kainon’s ramblings could secure their door between them and he. Never the “normal” sort, either, did Kainon have to tell about. His stories were always terribly grim, and more ancient than the recently deceased eldest elder’s great-grandmother (who, herself, was said to be impressively aged). To his good fortune, his neighbors tended to enjoy his generally positive attitude. This allowed a certain tolerance of Kainon and his odd habit of extolling the old legends near forgotten by the younger generations.

That tolerance had been thoroughly stretched and tested over the weeks preceding this year’s aestival affairs. Where and when—as his enigmatic agenda would dictate—Kainon would profess his antiquated fables and dull-polished allegory tripled in frequency and annoyance. To be sure, a maiden busy with threading may occasionally prefer a story over the quiet of her own company, and the same can be said of any of the tenders of the field. Indeed, a jabberjaw was far more a pleasantry than the alternative on the ears of the young; those who are quick to boredom on the thousandth sound of a sickle swung low through whispering stalks and many-tongued corns.

And yet, novel as they usually were, Kainon had been in an absolute frenzy for well over a fortnight, and his tales had turned from relevant reminiscing on great names and deeds gone past into esoterically strict commands and meticulous demands, all said to serve the spirit of the Solstice he accused had been surrendered along with the youth’s interest in those ancient herofolk and mighty acts of goodness.

Of these youths was Spes, the great-grandson of Kainon, the now eldest elder. Spes would have once, as any like lad, when he was just tall enough to help with counting eggs, been spirited away in the lays of old Kainon. Quite had it been on many bright evenings back then. This was most painfully a ritual for years disrupted, for it was nearly a decade ago that Spes bid love and sorrow upon the remains of both his father and his grandfather. They had been slain, each in their own battles, after having been drafted into a recently ended civil war. The young boy had all too quickly grown beyond being taken by whimsy and wonder. To Spes, there was little left to wonder when the whims of the winds may turn down in violence even on the wisest of worldly viziers.

The boy who once adored weavings of sword-swinging epics, and the crimson draw of wicked confrontations, had found, since saying his farewells, that the red of those tellings was of a shade worth it turning away from. Worse yet, even the common contrivances—for which Kainon was no less known than any other style with which he proffered his ponderings—with reference to one’s fair health, or the proper manner in which to position the portions on a meal laden table, had become like wasps on Spes’s bare behind. His neighbors would occasionally find Kainon’s soothsaying character a cause for irritation, but the boy had begun to ignore the words of Kainon completely, even going so far as to avoid his great-grandfather in the open field, with all to freely see his awkward inching dance upon the soil. Eyes to the clouds, ears full of thunder, and itching soles, his legs moved to a quiet pattern in any direction away from the wearing weight of a memory returned unbid.

This year, Spes had nowhere to run or dance off to. Only a month earlier, he had come into his eighteenth year. Responsibility had, in effect, reared its oft indelicate head and put upon the boy the obligation of service to the region, and with that a choice between the profession of a scribe, or answering the call for recruits by the new soldiery that had formed to replace those that once were. Before, Spes may have had a curiosity for the sword, and a willingness to consider enlistment. Now, the chisel and quill seemed all that was in sight, beside the clouds.

Culminating pubescence aside, it was the way of his village to ensure each person eighteen and older cared for their share of the duties placed upon the people by the eldest elder in preparation of such preeminent parties as to be held for Kainon’s first (he hoped) Solstice as the greyest of the greys in town. Spes grew weary of the endless barrage of cryptic chidings and quippy derisions almost at the start.

“A loose knot fastened is a knot-loosened noose!” he hollered as Spes tied down the tent poles, those meant to give rise to roofing of thick, colorfully-patterned quilts.

“The winds of the hill bring a blistering swill to the fool overfull of their cup!” the old man shouted in the nights, when all Spes wished for was a moment to cherish an ale or three, as his agedness certainly allowed.

“The sun will spy on beds undried if ne’er we right the beddings!” the eldest elder wailed, pointing over and over, at this spot and that corner in the fields, where Spes was assisting in the adjustments of a water channel. Kainon had been fiendish in his perplexing insistence on perfecting so many details about what Spes had always taken to be a gloriously casual affair. Details that, to Spes, seemed nothing more than the expression of a grave-fearing daudler who finally had a real task to maintain after so many decades of wrinkled childishness.

His mind occupied with how he would choose the path of his life of maturity, Spes maintained his chores with minimal care, sure to correct his work at the command of his unbearable forebear. A mere day before the Solstice, however, tragedy poised itself once more, and leapt as unexpectedly upon the boy as twice before. In the early morning, his grandfather Kainon awoke him in a rush. The rains had arrived on the winds of hills, and it was the sound of terror upon the roof that fully woke Spes and jumped him to his feet.

Kainon was strangely reassuring, though, and despite the initial outburst intended to wake the boy, Kainon took on a joyful demeanor, and pulled Spes outside by his arm. He pointed and jumped and shouted a moment before catching his breath, and in his most manner of self, gave to Spes a quiet prayer:

“Grandson, my bloodkin, my love, and my oath,

I’ve witnessed your birth, merrymaking and mirth,

And that once which struck on the chord of your growth,

That ashfall to earth, ferry taken, a famished dearth,

That lash which hazard, or decisions rash, hath thrashed,

With sign unshown to whether passion possess claim to last,

Your sunken back, on which pedestal you test your worth.

Let value be what is beheld in these resplendent scenes,

So near to needless death obscene, yet averted with turning of our eye,

And the hoisting of our sleeve.

Believe thee once, you did, in chivalry,

and honor renowned so that its sheen reflected even in the evening gleam.

Let honor be that which is compelled through fortitude of reasoned mind.

Where rains would usher into ageless hell even babes, you have stayed us our time.”