Becoming a Memory (Fog VI)

Just then a player from Bran’s team came and shouted to Bran to wake up “the ball is coming this direction”. Bran got up with a start. The mass of 50 or so players came running up and someone shot the ball to the kaey. It almost landed in the middle, but Bran stopped it and sent it to a teammate and the mass of players ran to the South. One of his teammates yelled for Bran and he to switch, which Bran gladly did.

“Hey Yust! Hey Ry!” He shouted as he ran south following the players.

“Make the kaey Bran!” Yust shouted back.

“You’ve longed for him” Ry stated. It was a statement bereft of jealousy, curiosity or any emotion. It was a statement of fact, of confirmation.

“I do... ah, I did.”

“We all do with childhood friends or village youth at some point. It is our lot”

Melancholy blanketed the statement like the ever present fog reaching over the hills.

“Was he your first experience?”

“My first and the only” Yust replied, the longing already weakening as it was being replaced by another.

“I trust it will not be your only” Ry said. Yust smiled, his melancholy hidden now.

“Let’s go get food” Ry announced after a pause.

Yust lifted his head.

“I am famished. Want to go to Bearcamp? I have not yet asked. I did not know you were ‘of Bear’ or where you grew up”

“Yes, I am the same branch as you, but I suspect our twigs are far apart.

Yust took in the information and wondered if because they were both of Bear that would hinder or help the discussion for the evening. They both got up and walked to Bearcamp to be greeted by Ry’s mama. His mama, Eli of Bear was a large woman, rare among the baypeople, but she looked very much like the namesake of her line and her village. She gave Yust a hug that almost folded him inside of her.

“You are darling. I love that you are of Bear. Did Ry tell you that I am ‘of Raven’? Yes, isn’t that a rarity! A woman of one village living in another! Long story.

So, a memory? I hope you move to Heronhaven. Ry needs a companion. Is that your hope? I hope to meet your parents tonight. I know your mama, we used to play together when we were children.”

Her words, like her hugs, enveloped everything. Yust liked her immediately. If Ry and he became companions, she’d be his village mama, the mama of his spouse. He liked the thought of having a mama or papa who wasn’t as guarded in their words as his own.

She had just finished making a fish stew and offered that and maize cakes to the two of them which they ate heartily and plead for a second helping. She obliged and served it with a side of stories.

They loitered for a bit listening to her.

“You should have been a memory mama” Ry chided when she paused after the story about how she got lost and found her way home when she was eight sols.

“Well, the stories I know that aren’t mine are from our memory. My stories I told the memory of course, but he never recounts them”

They all chuckled.

Ry and Yust got up. The evening festivities and discussions were about to begin and they both went to their camps to help prepare and bring their village food gifts. Tonight was the night of discussions. By tradition, no decisions were made. It was also the first night of stories. Memories that had come would tell stories of the baypeople. Some were myths, some were from long ago, others recent. All seemed to have something to do with the discussions at hand, some moral or lesson or tradition. Growing up Yust didn’t understand that at first, but as he got older and listened closer, he understood.

As they walked to the labyrinth, arms full with food and Bran chatting with Lan, Yust’s mind kept wandering about the roles and positions of memories and cares as he was soon to be one. The memories or cares were not allowed to take part in the decisions made the next evening, that was only left for men and women in attendance who had wed. The memories’ power was in the stories and traditions they knew and told. They could sway decisions, and often did, by the ones they told or did not tell. Cares role in the society was even more nebulous. Theirs was in the esteem that the villagers held for them; for the diseased or injured they cared for, or the elderly, maimed or children they took in. It was in the healing herbs they gathered and tended, the medicines they made, the knowledge they had. They could sway the entire village through their gifts and the whispered thoughts while tending the village. No villager was untouched, or not indebted to, by the nurture of a care. A care’s whisperings held sway over the minds of others.

Peto, Ravenband’s care, in contrast to the other cares from Yust’s observance, was far more laconic than others, who were known for being talkative as a group. He was even more reticent than the quietest villager. There was something about him. He silently held private pains he could not heal in himself. Yust respected Peto, he had set his broken arm when he was nine so expertly that no one or he could ever tell the bone had broken or even had broken the skin. He had seen others whose arm or leg was crooked or scarred deeply. Their cares were not as deft as Peto. He had also heard of stories of children dying from broken bones because there was no care in the village. For that he was grateful. But he rarely talked to Peto, his reserved manner precluded friendship.

There were times where the lack of direct voice for memories and cares in the affairs of a village or the baypeople chaffed at Yust’s sense of fairness, but he vaguely remembered a story or myth that explained that would be too much power. It also irritated his sense of romance that the men and women of his ourien could not choose their companion. The others more often could choose the mate they liked or were at least attracted to, but memories and cares could only choose a village. Their companion had to be the memory or care that was already in the village no matter their age, gender, looks, personality or desires. If the village had no memory nor care, you’d be alone. Even then, the villages with vacancies of memories or cares were a select number. Bran had young women of nearly three dozen villages to choose from. Yust had four choices and the cares of two were either much too aloof or much too mean and both were much too old. Only one, Ry of Bear in Heronhaven, was nice, young and attractive both in sight and manner. The more that Yust thought of these restrictions, the more frustrated and even perhaps angry, he became. By the time they reached the labyrinth he became silent from an explosive anger at his lot. His best friend’s focus on Lan hardened his mood.