The Oracle at Toko-Ri
Intro and Prologue
The following is a work of fiction. It is not in the slightest meant to represent reality. It is the first section (prologue) in a series of vignettes. You might call them moralistic vignettes… like Aesop’s Fables except not with animals.
I will be posting on an erratic schedule, and will be interested in seeing if anyone likes these. I have a half dozen already written, and ideas for several more; feel free to post suggestions. I currently have several more instalments scheduled to post.
—
Grengin tried again to lift himself up… and once again flopped back into the water, defeated. The rocks lining the hole his leg had too tight a grip.
He could pull himself out if he could just reach something! But the mud under this bridge gave no purchase to his hands, and everything else was too far away.
The river, stream really, he was in wasn’t that cold, but it was cold enough so that he could feel his life slipping away…
—
The bar wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t empty either, and not so noisy that the sound of the door opening and closing again didn’t attract attention. But what really attracted attention was the sight of the man that had come in. He was soaking wet… or had been, anyway. His clothes now looked just incredibly damp.
And he was covered in mud from the waist down, and not exactly clean above that.
“Do you have any thing hot?” the man said, standing in the doorway and looking at the bartender.
“Aye, I have some spiced cider that I keep hot,” that worthy answered. “And I have some spare clothes you can change into if you’ld like my wife to wash those.”
“I would be grateful, and would pay grateful too,” the man replied. “And dinner, and a bed, if it can be found.”
The bartender said they could, and the man was soon ensconced at the bar in new clothes, sipping the cider, and waiting for the stew.
“How did you come to be in such a state?” the local blacksmith asked. A large man with a large voice he was often the first to speak to strangers.
“I’m grateful you should ask,” the man said, “As I was going to have to tell you anyway…”
“I was traveling up near Spentart, and needed to cross the stream there. Like a fool I decided to ford the stream instead of going down to the bridge. Altho I have forded many a stream before and never this kind of problem had.”
“So I went to ford it and stepped in a spot that was deep, and went down in over my head.”
“I can swim, but I was, as you know, fully dressed, so it took me a while to come right. And the stream was flowing rather fast. I had just struck out toward shore, which wasn’t far, when I came to the bridge. I was traveling downstream feet first, since I had been trying to reach the stream and, just under the stream my left leg went and got itself wedged into a hole between two rocks. A deep hole and big rocks.”
“So there I was, caught fast. I tried and tried to get myself out, but there was nothing to pull with, and I couldn’t get myself turned around right to push out against the rocks.”
“I tried and tried and it must have been two hours later, when I had just about given up and was practically numb from the cold, when I heard a voice, and turned to see a man poke his head under the bridge.”
“‘Well, well, so you are here,’ he said. “She told me you would be, and it seemed little enough out of my way it was to look, but I didn’t really expect to find you.’”
“Well, I had no idea what he was going on about, but I was grateful enough to be pulled out of there, which he didn’t find hard, standing on the ground and all.”
“And then he told me this story. He said he had met a little girl on the road. He said she was a foul smelling beggar girl, who claimed she was an ‘oracle’. She said she knew he was looking for a place to put his next store and she promised him that he would find it if he just did her a little favour.”
“He said he laughed and said he bet the favour was a meal. But she said, no. That she was an oracle and had no need for food. But that there was a man that would need saving along his route, and that if he looked under the bridge downstream from Stenart he would find him. And that if he found him and told him to do something then he, the man he saved, would tell him where to put his store.”
“Well, he said he laughed but as how he’d keep it in mind. And having no real idea where to go he decided he might as well go that direction. And then he did find me.”
The bar was silent for a few moments, and the innkeeper’s daughter came out, looked surprised, and handed the man his stew.
“And did you?” a voice asked from the corner. A voice belonging to a thin man, who happened to be the village teacher.
“And did I… oh, did I tell him where to put his store? I did indeed. As you may know Stenart is getting bigger, and all they have had so far is traveling peddlers. I think his store will do well there… dry goods and all.”
“And what did he tell you you were supposed to do?”
“Why, come here,” the man said, “And tell my story.”
“Here to Toko-Ri?”
“Yes. The oracle told him I needed to come here, tell my story, and tell everyone that she’ll be setting up up… I don’t know what it meant but she said she’d be setting up at the end of lost cave trail.”
He looked around, “That mean anything to you all?”
The locals all nodded, and the barkeepers daughter said, “Its right out back behind us. That trail goes up a mile…”
“Two at least,” a man corrected.
“Two then. And it dead ends into this kind of cup in the mountain where there isn’t anything. Tales say there used to be a cave there.”
“Well, then I guess I’ve done my job. I don’t know if I hold with Oracles, but my life was saved and I’m not one to hold out from being grateful and paying my debts.”