Armon's Chariot
Jan. 10th, 2011 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsol Okay, I don't really know how to categorize this one either. Science fantasy? I think I need to stop trying to categorize stories.
Armon led his little herd of goats up to the Wet Rocks, just at the feet of Icewall. Down near the bottom of the valley’s bowl, the Icewall was almost pure white, and a cold stream emerged from beneath it. But up high around the edges, the Icewall was a dirty brown. Meltwater leaked under and around it, but it was only a trickle, dripping its way down the slope around the protruding rounded boulders in a thousand microscopic rivulets. These flows in miniature kept the ground soaked, and so the grass grew very well around the Wet Rocks, which was why the goats liked it there.
Armon sat on one of the larger boulders and carved with his whittling knife as the goats grazed. His grandfather told him that when *he* was a boy not older than Armon, the Wet Rocks were entirely covered up with ice. Grandfather showed him a rock that he claimed he had marked with a chisel long ago to show where the edge of the Icewall fell. The Icewall today was a good hundred feet beyond it. It’s retreating, Grandfather told Armon.
“I thought glaciers flow, like rivers of ice, down the slope,” Armon had said.
“True,” Grandfather replied. “They do do that. But they also melt, so even though the Icewall comes down from the high places, its forward edge draws back from the warmth.”
“Is it warmer today than it was when you were a boy?”
Grandfather beamed. “Oh, yes.”
Armon sat in the sun on his boulder. The goats did not range far and were content to crop the grass close to where Armon was encamped, their bells clanking and echoing off the sides of the valley. The sun was very warm that day, and Armon soaked it up like a lizard, his back to the Icewall, looking down on the cottages and footpaths of the village below.
A loud cracking, splintering noise came from behind Armon, and a shudder ran down his back. A soft shushing and roaring followed, accompanied by a spray of very cold ice chips that rained down on Armon’s neck and shoulders. Terrified, he more fell off than dismounted his rock and stared back at the Icewall.
A goodly chunk of the ice had come loose and had slumped forward in irregular blocks and head-size chunks. Armon had heard tales of people being buried alive in the ice when bits came loose off the Icewall. The elders still told the tale of the big wallfall where half the village was crushed under falling ice and suspended rocks and gravel. Armon’s spine tingled again as he thought of how close he had come to dying – if he had been resting against the Icewall, as he had sometimes been known to do on exceptionally hot days (despite warnings from his family), he could have wound up underneath a twenty foot tall heap with nobody around to help but the goats.
Peering up at the Icewall with one hand shading his eyes, Armon admired the clean white of the new Icewall surface and its contrast against the dingier tones of the old. Then something caught his eye – something reflective.
Armon’s heart leapt. People had found things in the ice in the past. Sometimes the things that were found were ordinary, or meaningless curiosities suspended in the matrix of frozen water and grit. But, also, sometimes truly remarkable or baffling things were dragged out and turned over to Chudo. Armon’s cousin, Lugus, had once found a disc of shiny metal the size of the palm of his hand. The disc had been golden in color but would not scratch and could not be melted in the hottest of fires. Lugus thought this find made him something of a big deal in the valley, and he was forever lording it over Armon.
Armon hoped now to have his own find. However, the shiny object was a good halfway up the sheer slope of the Icewall. The only way to reach it was to climb the tumble of the fallen ice like a staircase, and Armon felt this might be dangerous. He stared at it for the better part of the morning before summoning up his courage. Finally Armon did gingerly begin to pick his way up the icemound. The blocky chunks, it turned out, were largely frozen solid, and his footing was very firm. By the time he reached the clean white of the new wall’s surface, Armon felt like a fool for worrying about anything.
There was definitely something sticking out of the ice. Much of it was colored a dull sort of grey. It was wider than Armon was tall, but was only half his height, and it stuck out from the ice by about a foot. It was clearly made of metal, or at least partially so – the center of the shape was definitely some kind of silvery latticework, although it was pitted and corroded from its many years in the ice. But the top of it was that strange grey color, the color of field mice and stormclouds, with speckles of reflective mineral in it, like mica. Armon ran his hands across the top of the object and used his fingers to prise away an obstinate chunk of ice. He uncovered something and started with surprise.
There was a tiny statuette set into the top of the object. It was a figure of a woman, but with wings, and no larger than what could fit in the palm of his hand. It was made of the shiny metal stuff, and was so perfectly polished and brilliant that it made Armon’s eyes tear up in the bright sunlight. She stood on the very edge of the grey shelf as if she were a silver bird preparing to launch itself off a cliff, already facing into a strong headwind, a sprite frozen in the act of taking flight.
Armon admired the statuette for a while, then inspected the rest of his find. It was encased deeply in the ice and wouldn’t budge. Armon tried to peer through the white of the ice but there was little translucence to it; what little Armon could see suggested that the find was large, and perhaps extended far into the wall. Next he inspected the underside of the metal parts and made another discovery: a rectangular plate of metal, with some of the ancient characters spelled out on its surface in raised letters. Could it be a relation to the ancient sign of STOP that resided in Chudo’s medicine hall? No, the characters were not at all the same as those. But they were exciting, and there were flecks of black spots on them that might once have been paint.
Armon suddenly found himself burning with the desire to share his find with the rest of the world. Scrambling off the ice pile and past the steep rocks, Armon left his bewildered goats behind as he ran all the way to the village.
**
“It’s not *yours*,” insisted Lugus. The boys were watching the village adults work on the dig at the Icewall. Some used prybars to lever out great chunks of ice and send them tumbling down the valleyside. Others trucked great sacks of slush and gravel out of the dig. Chudo herself oversaw the scaffold structure that kept the diggers safe.
“You didn’t find it,” Lugus continued to argue. “You didn’t dig it out. All you did was somehow avoid getting killed. You were just around when it appeared.”
“You’re very jealous,” Armon observed. Of course it was his. The thing in the ice had come to him.
“Jealous? Of what?” sneered Lugus. “In two weeks nobody will remember that you stumbled across that thing. And it’ll probably turn out to be something useless, or it will break in half, or will give off vapors that make everybody sick.” There was a village legend of such a thing happening, of a sealed pot that was opened and then those nearby had gone blind and coughed their lungs out.
“I wonder if it’s some kind of altar,” Armon mused, ignoring Lugus, which was the only sensible thing to do. He thought of the beautiful statuette, of the woman with wings of silver.
Lugus had more to say but he was interrupted; the village adults filed out of the dig and gathered around the cookfire to eat dinner. Everybody let Chudo eat her fill, but the silence of the group made it clear that everybody wanted to hear what she had to say.
“Well,” she said slowly, picking meat and meadow-rice out of her teeth, “it’s a remarkable find. I can’t honestly think of anything that anybody has ever found that is quite so remarkable.” Armon beamed inside.
“But what is it?” one of the adults asked.
“It’s bloody great and heavy, that’s what it is,” grumbled another.
“I can’t say that I’ve made up my mind what it is,” Chudo confessed, brushing off her skirt and squatting by the fire to rest her old bones. “It’s definitely metal, and also partially glass, but it’s huge – longer than three tall men lying down. It’s too big to be furniture, or a throne. I’ve got two basic theories. It’s either a tomb of some sort, or it’s a chariot.”
“A chariot!” There was general laughter at this notion, especially by Mag, Armon’s father. “That’s an odd idea. What kind of beast could pull a great block of metal like that? And where would one attach the traces?”
“I know, I know, I told you I don’t have all the answers; not yet anyway,” complained Chudo. “But, look: there are two things that clearly look like axles, front and back, and as for those scraps on the ends of the axles….”
“Wheels?!” Now the laughter was almost universal. “Perhaps they were bladders full of air! Picture a great metal chariot standing on four balloons!” Chudo smiled a little to herself and prodded the fire with a stick.
Mag looked thoughtful. “I think you might be onto something with this tomb idea, though,” he said. “And who knows what kind of funerary offerings might be inside. Goodness knows I’m no blasphemer,” (and here Mag made various warding signs toward the heavens), “but whoever’s buried in there has long since made the voyage to the afterlife, and they don’t need their life’s goods any more. I say we crack it open.”
Armon, for a few moments, had been living a happy fantasy. He was picturing his great metal chariot, drawn by four mighty stallions, swooping down the village lane. His little silver winged lady at the front leaned into the breeze of their passage. Perched atop its grey glassed-in top, perhaps with a bit of blanket for comfort, Armon imagined himself tearing down the valley and going to visit the strange people who lived in the mudflats and wove reeds all day.
Now his fantasy was dashed. Armon pictured his father smashing in the smoky glass on the front of the artifact, wrecking the beautiful, strange old thing forever. And it couldn’t be a tomb; it HAD to be a chariot. There was no other explanation!
With a cry Armon dashed for the dig. Scaling the ice pile, he threw himself bodily upon the top of the object. Mag looked down on his son, who was trying to protect the artifact with his little body, and frowned.
“Armon,” he said patiently, “get off the ancients’ tomb, please.”
“No!” Armon shouted.
“Armon….” Mag’s patient tone was wearing thin. Chudo’s hand touched Mag’s arm.
“It can’t hurt to at least drag it down to the village for us to have a better look. We have better light down there; perhaps we can see something through the glass,” she suggested.
Mag considered the wisdom of this. “Oh, all right,” he sighed.
Still sprawled on the warm metal, Armon smiled. “Don’t worry, chariot,” he whispered.
**
They brought it down using sledges. It was a tremendous amount of work and required using both of the village’s teams of oxen for almost an entire day. By the end of the struggle, virtually everybody in the village had formed a negative, or at least grumpy, opinion regarding Armon and his ‘chariot’. But they got it down in once piece – all five thousand pounds of it – and with nobody seriously harmed in the process. They spent the rest of the day erecting a kind of lean-to above it, then retired to have a cold meal and get an early night’s sleep. But Armon couldn’t sleep.
Instead Armon stood at the opening of the shelter and looked at his chariot. The grey paint-coating was streaked with bands of rust, and the axles with their tattered black scraps looked somehow pathetic resting on the edges of their fluted rims, but the entire affair had a quiet dignity to it that Armon couldn’t deny. A hand fell on his shoulder, surprising him.
“What’s the matter, Armon?” asked Chudo.
“It’s got to be a chariot,” Armon said, close to tears. “And tomorrow they’re going to break it.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Chudo patted Armon with a hand so withered that her fingers looked like lengths of knotted rope. “I have a feeling that the spirits aren’t going to take kindly to that. Now, you go get some sleep, and tomorrow we’ll see what kind of chariot we’re dealing with.” The medicine woman winked at Armon, who felt better immediately.
The following morning, bright and early, the entire village was gathered in a horseshoe around the front of the artifact. Chudo had chosen to wear her medicine necklace. It was made out of the bones of countless small birds, and it rustled when she walked. The medicine necklace was a deeply impressive thing. “Let’s have a look at our tomb by the light of a bright day, then!” she announced.
Chudo climbed up on the front metal shelf and peered into the smoky glass. She crooned to herself as she looked, and from time to time traced wavy forms in the air with both hands. The entire village looked on soberly. The business of a medicine woman was not an affair to be rushed.
Chudo used a bit of chamois to wipe the glass clean of the dust and stains of the ages. Then she cupped her hands around her eyes and pressed her face up to the gently curved glass. She stared deeply inside, then exclaimed: “Aa-aa-aagh! A spirit ward!” She beckoned for Mag to join her, and he did so, but with grave reservations.
“Look inside the glass,” Chudo intoned, like a gypsy woman commanding a client to gaze into her crystal ball. Mag bent and mashed his face to the glass, looking where Chudo was pointing.
“It is dark and very dusty; the other side of the glass must be smeared….I see…I see an object. It is a cube! Yes, a cube, the size of a cup, with spots upon it.” He stood up, amazed. “A die!”
Chudo nodded knowingly. “A die. Just so.”
Mag shifted uncertainly. “What can it mean?” he asked.
“It is a sign from the spirits,” answered Chudo. “The symbol of random fortune. It means: if you violate this sacred vessel, you takes your chances.”
Mag frowned. “I don’t want to takes my chances.”
Chudo looked Mag over appraisingly. “I’m sure I don’t know why not,” she answered. “You’re a strong enough fellow. I’m certain you can handle whatever curses the ancients might throw your way, if the dice don’t roll in your favor that is.”
Nobody liked the sound of the word ‘curses’. “Well, it just seems a bit risky,” hedged Mag, who didn’t want to appear weak.
“I suppose,” Chudo said slowly, “that we could look at ways to manage that risk. Perhaps a consultation with the ancestors would be wise. And maybe a few counter-curses, sung during the full moon of course….”
“Most prudent!” admired Mag. “Yes. We shall leave it in your capable hands, Chudo. Let us know when it’s safe to open the tomb up. Okay, back to work everybody!” Mag clapped his hands.
“Just a moment,” said Chudo. “I need your boy.”
“Yes?” asked Mag, something in the tone of his voice suggesting he felt something was up.
“The spirits sent the tomb to Armon,” continued Chudo. “He must figure in my divinations. I promise not to hurt him very much.”
“Yes.” Mag contemplated his son and his medicine woman. “Well. I suppose we can get by without him for a short while.”
“Only a few days.”
“Yes.” Mag was stiff with suspicion, but he withdrew with the others.
Armon sprang upon Chudo and hugged her with all his might.
“Enough! Stop!” Chudo complained. “Don’t crush my fine necklace!”
**
Over the next few days Armon explored every square inch of his chariot. He was intrigued by the strange seams in the metal that curved around its skin – gaps too wide to be scratches, but too tight to admit a finger, and a stick inserted met resistance from a tarry substance. He pieced together the scraps of rubber and wire on the axles and concluded that, yes indeed, they might well have been inflated pouches at some point. He loved the ornamental mirrors on the sides, the curves of chrome and silver, the overall shape and form of his discovery.
But most of all Armon loved the little statuette. He came to believe that she was a tremendously important part of this entire puzzle; his chariot must somehow be consecrated to this remarkable otherworldly goddess, who could walk on two legs like men, but fly through the air like birds, and look impossibly graceful doing either.
On the third day of his examinations, Armon was running his hands along the sides of the chariot when his fingers traced along one of the slot-like gouges on the sides. The slots, he knew, were lined with curved metal that felt comfortable to his fingertips. He imagined the winged goddess standing here, just as he was, reaching her silvered fingers under the slot, exerting pressure…
There was a muffled pop. Something under his fingers gave way. The underside of the slot moved a fraction of an inch. Armon’s heart stopped. He felt something had happened, but he didn’t know what.
“Chudo!” he hissed. The medicine woman was only a short ways away and on the other side of the chariot, grinding something with mortar and pestle. She looked up mildly.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know!” Armon answered honestly.
Chudo nodded. “I thought something might eventually happen,” she said. “The spirits brought you to the chariot, and the chariot to you. Well, there’s nothing I can do to help you. You’ll have to see this through yourself.”
Armon looked down at the slot, and slowly removed his hand. Nothing happened. He inspected his fingers. They were intact. Armon ran his eyes across the skin of the chariot. Could it be – could it *possibly* be – that one of the outer seams had subtly shifted? Might that portion of the chariot’s skin be ever-so-slightly out of flush with the rest? Acting on instinct, Armon reached his fingers back into the slot, braced his feet, and PULLED with all his might….
There was a tearing sound as a seal, closed tight for a long time, suddenly gave way. Stunned, Armon watched a portion of the skin of the chariot hinge outward, an impossibly close-fitting door, giving off a musty smell and a cloud of reddish dust. From her vantage at the mortar and pestle, Chudo saw an amazed Armon’s head slowly sink out of sight to explore the mysteries of the chariot’s interior.
He was gone for a long time. Chudo considered coming over to see, but decided it would be an insult to the spirits. She worked grinding her roots.
When he finally emerged, Armon came over to sit beside Chudo. Chudo kept working but stole glances at the silent boy. Eventually even her old medicine woman patience gave out. “Well?” she asked.
Armon sighed. “It’s a tomb after all,” he said. “There are two mummies in there, sitting in thrones of leather. They were buried in furs and with jewelry and other fine things. Oh, and they had a cat.”
Chudo’s eyebrows rose. “A cat?”
“Yes,” said Armon sadly. “In a little box, with cage bars, and a handle.”
“Oh.” Chudo considered all this.
“Well, don’t let it bother you too much, Armon,” she said. “It’s still the most remarkable find ever to come out of the Icewall.”
“But I wanted it to be a chariot so badly,” Armon confessed. “It’s what it *should* have been.”
Chudo took pity on the boy. “I think that’s what it was, in a sense. Perhaps those people were buried in a tomb that was decked out like a chariot. They believed that when they died, their chariot-tomb would carry them away to their final resting place.”
Armon’s eyes widened. “Perhaps they believed that they flew through the skies!” The winged statuette made sense now.
“Perhaps so.” Chudo rose stiffly and beckoned for the boy to help carry her roots back into her house.
“You know, we’ll always call it ‘Armon’s Chariot’ now,” Chudo confided to Armon.
So of course he felt much better after that.
Armon led his little herd of goats up to the Wet Rocks, just at the feet of Icewall. Down near the bottom of the valley’s bowl, the Icewall was almost pure white, and a cold stream emerged from beneath it. But up high around the edges, the Icewall was a dirty brown. Meltwater leaked under and around it, but it was only a trickle, dripping its way down the slope around the protruding rounded boulders in a thousand microscopic rivulets. These flows in miniature kept the ground soaked, and so the grass grew very well around the Wet Rocks, which was why the goats liked it there.
Armon sat on one of the larger boulders and carved with his whittling knife as the goats grazed. His grandfather told him that when *he* was a boy not older than Armon, the Wet Rocks were entirely covered up with ice. Grandfather showed him a rock that he claimed he had marked with a chisel long ago to show where the edge of the Icewall fell. The Icewall today was a good hundred feet beyond it. It’s retreating, Grandfather told Armon.
“I thought glaciers flow, like rivers of ice, down the slope,” Armon had said.
“True,” Grandfather replied. “They do do that. But they also melt, so even though the Icewall comes down from the high places, its forward edge draws back from the warmth.”
“Is it warmer today than it was when you were a boy?”
Grandfather beamed. “Oh, yes.”
Armon sat in the sun on his boulder. The goats did not range far and were content to crop the grass close to where Armon was encamped, their bells clanking and echoing off the sides of the valley. The sun was very warm that day, and Armon soaked it up like a lizard, his back to the Icewall, looking down on the cottages and footpaths of the village below.
A loud cracking, splintering noise came from behind Armon, and a shudder ran down his back. A soft shushing and roaring followed, accompanied by a spray of very cold ice chips that rained down on Armon’s neck and shoulders. Terrified, he more fell off than dismounted his rock and stared back at the Icewall.
A goodly chunk of the ice had come loose and had slumped forward in irregular blocks and head-size chunks. Armon had heard tales of people being buried alive in the ice when bits came loose off the Icewall. The elders still told the tale of the big wallfall where half the village was crushed under falling ice and suspended rocks and gravel. Armon’s spine tingled again as he thought of how close he had come to dying – if he had been resting against the Icewall, as he had sometimes been known to do on exceptionally hot days (despite warnings from his family), he could have wound up underneath a twenty foot tall heap with nobody around to help but the goats.
Peering up at the Icewall with one hand shading his eyes, Armon admired the clean white of the new Icewall surface and its contrast against the dingier tones of the old. Then something caught his eye – something reflective.
Armon’s heart leapt. People had found things in the ice in the past. Sometimes the things that were found were ordinary, or meaningless curiosities suspended in the matrix of frozen water and grit. But, also, sometimes truly remarkable or baffling things were dragged out and turned over to Chudo. Armon’s cousin, Lugus, had once found a disc of shiny metal the size of the palm of his hand. The disc had been golden in color but would not scratch and could not be melted in the hottest of fires. Lugus thought this find made him something of a big deal in the valley, and he was forever lording it over Armon.
Armon hoped now to have his own find. However, the shiny object was a good halfway up the sheer slope of the Icewall. The only way to reach it was to climb the tumble of the fallen ice like a staircase, and Armon felt this might be dangerous. He stared at it for the better part of the morning before summoning up his courage. Finally Armon did gingerly begin to pick his way up the icemound. The blocky chunks, it turned out, were largely frozen solid, and his footing was very firm. By the time he reached the clean white of the new wall’s surface, Armon felt like a fool for worrying about anything.
There was definitely something sticking out of the ice. Much of it was colored a dull sort of grey. It was wider than Armon was tall, but was only half his height, and it stuck out from the ice by about a foot. It was clearly made of metal, or at least partially so – the center of the shape was definitely some kind of silvery latticework, although it was pitted and corroded from its many years in the ice. But the top of it was that strange grey color, the color of field mice and stormclouds, with speckles of reflective mineral in it, like mica. Armon ran his hands across the top of the object and used his fingers to prise away an obstinate chunk of ice. He uncovered something and started with surprise.
There was a tiny statuette set into the top of the object. It was a figure of a woman, but with wings, and no larger than what could fit in the palm of his hand. It was made of the shiny metal stuff, and was so perfectly polished and brilliant that it made Armon’s eyes tear up in the bright sunlight. She stood on the very edge of the grey shelf as if she were a silver bird preparing to launch itself off a cliff, already facing into a strong headwind, a sprite frozen in the act of taking flight.
Armon admired the statuette for a while, then inspected the rest of his find. It was encased deeply in the ice and wouldn’t budge. Armon tried to peer through the white of the ice but there was little translucence to it; what little Armon could see suggested that the find was large, and perhaps extended far into the wall. Next he inspected the underside of the metal parts and made another discovery: a rectangular plate of metal, with some of the ancient characters spelled out on its surface in raised letters. Could it be a relation to the ancient sign of STOP that resided in Chudo’s medicine hall? No, the characters were not at all the same as those. But they were exciting, and there were flecks of black spots on them that might once have been paint.
Armon suddenly found himself burning with the desire to share his find with the rest of the world. Scrambling off the ice pile and past the steep rocks, Armon left his bewildered goats behind as he ran all the way to the village.
**
“It’s not *yours*,” insisted Lugus. The boys were watching the village adults work on the dig at the Icewall. Some used prybars to lever out great chunks of ice and send them tumbling down the valleyside. Others trucked great sacks of slush and gravel out of the dig. Chudo herself oversaw the scaffold structure that kept the diggers safe.
“You didn’t find it,” Lugus continued to argue. “You didn’t dig it out. All you did was somehow avoid getting killed. You were just around when it appeared.”
“You’re very jealous,” Armon observed. Of course it was his. The thing in the ice had come to him.
“Jealous? Of what?” sneered Lugus. “In two weeks nobody will remember that you stumbled across that thing. And it’ll probably turn out to be something useless, or it will break in half, or will give off vapors that make everybody sick.” There was a village legend of such a thing happening, of a sealed pot that was opened and then those nearby had gone blind and coughed their lungs out.
“I wonder if it’s some kind of altar,” Armon mused, ignoring Lugus, which was the only sensible thing to do. He thought of the beautiful statuette, of the woman with wings of silver.
Lugus had more to say but he was interrupted; the village adults filed out of the dig and gathered around the cookfire to eat dinner. Everybody let Chudo eat her fill, but the silence of the group made it clear that everybody wanted to hear what she had to say.
“Well,” she said slowly, picking meat and meadow-rice out of her teeth, “it’s a remarkable find. I can’t honestly think of anything that anybody has ever found that is quite so remarkable.” Armon beamed inside.
“But what is it?” one of the adults asked.
“It’s bloody great and heavy, that’s what it is,” grumbled another.
“I can’t say that I’ve made up my mind what it is,” Chudo confessed, brushing off her skirt and squatting by the fire to rest her old bones. “It’s definitely metal, and also partially glass, but it’s huge – longer than three tall men lying down. It’s too big to be furniture, or a throne. I’ve got two basic theories. It’s either a tomb of some sort, or it’s a chariot.”
“A chariot!” There was general laughter at this notion, especially by Mag, Armon’s father. “That’s an odd idea. What kind of beast could pull a great block of metal like that? And where would one attach the traces?”
“I know, I know, I told you I don’t have all the answers; not yet anyway,” complained Chudo. “But, look: there are two things that clearly look like axles, front and back, and as for those scraps on the ends of the axles….”
“Wheels?!” Now the laughter was almost universal. “Perhaps they were bladders full of air! Picture a great metal chariot standing on four balloons!” Chudo smiled a little to herself and prodded the fire with a stick.
Mag looked thoughtful. “I think you might be onto something with this tomb idea, though,” he said. “And who knows what kind of funerary offerings might be inside. Goodness knows I’m no blasphemer,” (and here Mag made various warding signs toward the heavens), “but whoever’s buried in there has long since made the voyage to the afterlife, and they don’t need their life’s goods any more. I say we crack it open.”
Armon, for a few moments, had been living a happy fantasy. He was picturing his great metal chariot, drawn by four mighty stallions, swooping down the village lane. His little silver winged lady at the front leaned into the breeze of their passage. Perched atop its grey glassed-in top, perhaps with a bit of blanket for comfort, Armon imagined himself tearing down the valley and going to visit the strange people who lived in the mudflats and wove reeds all day.
Now his fantasy was dashed. Armon pictured his father smashing in the smoky glass on the front of the artifact, wrecking the beautiful, strange old thing forever. And it couldn’t be a tomb; it HAD to be a chariot. There was no other explanation!
With a cry Armon dashed for the dig. Scaling the ice pile, he threw himself bodily upon the top of the object. Mag looked down on his son, who was trying to protect the artifact with his little body, and frowned.
“Armon,” he said patiently, “get off the ancients’ tomb, please.”
“No!” Armon shouted.
“Armon….” Mag’s patient tone was wearing thin. Chudo’s hand touched Mag’s arm.
“It can’t hurt to at least drag it down to the village for us to have a better look. We have better light down there; perhaps we can see something through the glass,” she suggested.
Mag considered the wisdom of this. “Oh, all right,” he sighed.
Still sprawled on the warm metal, Armon smiled. “Don’t worry, chariot,” he whispered.
**
They brought it down using sledges. It was a tremendous amount of work and required using both of the village’s teams of oxen for almost an entire day. By the end of the struggle, virtually everybody in the village had formed a negative, or at least grumpy, opinion regarding Armon and his ‘chariot’. But they got it down in once piece – all five thousand pounds of it – and with nobody seriously harmed in the process. They spent the rest of the day erecting a kind of lean-to above it, then retired to have a cold meal and get an early night’s sleep. But Armon couldn’t sleep.
Instead Armon stood at the opening of the shelter and looked at his chariot. The grey paint-coating was streaked with bands of rust, and the axles with their tattered black scraps looked somehow pathetic resting on the edges of their fluted rims, but the entire affair had a quiet dignity to it that Armon couldn’t deny. A hand fell on his shoulder, surprising him.
“What’s the matter, Armon?” asked Chudo.
“It’s got to be a chariot,” Armon said, close to tears. “And tomorrow they’re going to break it.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Chudo patted Armon with a hand so withered that her fingers looked like lengths of knotted rope. “I have a feeling that the spirits aren’t going to take kindly to that. Now, you go get some sleep, and tomorrow we’ll see what kind of chariot we’re dealing with.” The medicine woman winked at Armon, who felt better immediately.
The following morning, bright and early, the entire village was gathered in a horseshoe around the front of the artifact. Chudo had chosen to wear her medicine necklace. It was made out of the bones of countless small birds, and it rustled when she walked. The medicine necklace was a deeply impressive thing. “Let’s have a look at our tomb by the light of a bright day, then!” she announced.
Chudo climbed up on the front metal shelf and peered into the smoky glass. She crooned to herself as she looked, and from time to time traced wavy forms in the air with both hands. The entire village looked on soberly. The business of a medicine woman was not an affair to be rushed.
Chudo used a bit of chamois to wipe the glass clean of the dust and stains of the ages. Then she cupped her hands around her eyes and pressed her face up to the gently curved glass. She stared deeply inside, then exclaimed: “Aa-aa-aagh! A spirit ward!” She beckoned for Mag to join her, and he did so, but with grave reservations.
“Look inside the glass,” Chudo intoned, like a gypsy woman commanding a client to gaze into her crystal ball. Mag bent and mashed his face to the glass, looking where Chudo was pointing.
“It is dark and very dusty; the other side of the glass must be smeared….I see…I see an object. It is a cube! Yes, a cube, the size of a cup, with spots upon it.” He stood up, amazed. “A die!”
Chudo nodded knowingly. “A die. Just so.”
Mag shifted uncertainly. “What can it mean?” he asked.
“It is a sign from the spirits,” answered Chudo. “The symbol of random fortune. It means: if you violate this sacred vessel, you takes your chances.”
Mag frowned. “I don’t want to takes my chances.”
Chudo looked Mag over appraisingly. “I’m sure I don’t know why not,” she answered. “You’re a strong enough fellow. I’m certain you can handle whatever curses the ancients might throw your way, if the dice don’t roll in your favor that is.”
Nobody liked the sound of the word ‘curses’. “Well, it just seems a bit risky,” hedged Mag, who didn’t want to appear weak.
“I suppose,” Chudo said slowly, “that we could look at ways to manage that risk. Perhaps a consultation with the ancestors would be wise. And maybe a few counter-curses, sung during the full moon of course….”
“Most prudent!” admired Mag. “Yes. We shall leave it in your capable hands, Chudo. Let us know when it’s safe to open the tomb up. Okay, back to work everybody!” Mag clapped his hands.
“Just a moment,” said Chudo. “I need your boy.”
“Yes?” asked Mag, something in the tone of his voice suggesting he felt something was up.
“The spirits sent the tomb to Armon,” continued Chudo. “He must figure in my divinations. I promise not to hurt him very much.”
“Yes.” Mag contemplated his son and his medicine woman. “Well. I suppose we can get by without him for a short while.”
“Only a few days.”
“Yes.” Mag was stiff with suspicion, but he withdrew with the others.
Armon sprang upon Chudo and hugged her with all his might.
“Enough! Stop!” Chudo complained. “Don’t crush my fine necklace!”
**
Over the next few days Armon explored every square inch of his chariot. He was intrigued by the strange seams in the metal that curved around its skin – gaps too wide to be scratches, but too tight to admit a finger, and a stick inserted met resistance from a tarry substance. He pieced together the scraps of rubber and wire on the axles and concluded that, yes indeed, they might well have been inflated pouches at some point. He loved the ornamental mirrors on the sides, the curves of chrome and silver, the overall shape and form of his discovery.
But most of all Armon loved the little statuette. He came to believe that she was a tremendously important part of this entire puzzle; his chariot must somehow be consecrated to this remarkable otherworldly goddess, who could walk on two legs like men, but fly through the air like birds, and look impossibly graceful doing either.
On the third day of his examinations, Armon was running his hands along the sides of the chariot when his fingers traced along one of the slot-like gouges on the sides. The slots, he knew, were lined with curved metal that felt comfortable to his fingertips. He imagined the winged goddess standing here, just as he was, reaching her silvered fingers under the slot, exerting pressure…
There was a muffled pop. Something under his fingers gave way. The underside of the slot moved a fraction of an inch. Armon’s heart stopped. He felt something had happened, but he didn’t know what.
“Chudo!” he hissed. The medicine woman was only a short ways away and on the other side of the chariot, grinding something with mortar and pestle. She looked up mildly.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know!” Armon answered honestly.
Chudo nodded. “I thought something might eventually happen,” she said. “The spirits brought you to the chariot, and the chariot to you. Well, there’s nothing I can do to help you. You’ll have to see this through yourself.”
Armon looked down at the slot, and slowly removed his hand. Nothing happened. He inspected his fingers. They were intact. Armon ran his eyes across the skin of the chariot. Could it be – could it *possibly* be – that one of the outer seams had subtly shifted? Might that portion of the chariot’s skin be ever-so-slightly out of flush with the rest? Acting on instinct, Armon reached his fingers back into the slot, braced his feet, and PULLED with all his might….
There was a tearing sound as a seal, closed tight for a long time, suddenly gave way. Stunned, Armon watched a portion of the skin of the chariot hinge outward, an impossibly close-fitting door, giving off a musty smell and a cloud of reddish dust. From her vantage at the mortar and pestle, Chudo saw an amazed Armon’s head slowly sink out of sight to explore the mysteries of the chariot’s interior.
He was gone for a long time. Chudo considered coming over to see, but decided it would be an insult to the spirits. She worked grinding her roots.
When he finally emerged, Armon came over to sit beside Chudo. Chudo kept working but stole glances at the silent boy. Eventually even her old medicine woman patience gave out. “Well?” she asked.
Armon sighed. “It’s a tomb after all,” he said. “There are two mummies in there, sitting in thrones of leather. They were buried in furs and with jewelry and other fine things. Oh, and they had a cat.”
Chudo’s eyebrows rose. “A cat?”
“Yes,” said Armon sadly. “In a little box, with cage bars, and a handle.”
“Oh.” Chudo considered all this.
“Well, don’t let it bother you too much, Armon,” she said. “It’s still the most remarkable find ever to come out of the Icewall.”
“But I wanted it to be a chariot so badly,” Armon confessed. “It’s what it *should* have been.”
Chudo took pity on the boy. “I think that’s what it was, in a sense. Perhaps those people were buried in a tomb that was decked out like a chariot. They believed that when they died, their chariot-tomb would carry them away to their final resting place.”
Armon’s eyes widened. “Perhaps they believed that they flew through the skies!” The winged statuette made sense now.
“Perhaps so.” Chudo rose stiffly and beckoned for the boy to help carry her roots back into her house.
“You know, we’ll always call it ‘Armon’s Chariot’ now,” Chudo confided to Armon.
So of course he felt much better after that.
