Read Part I
Read Part II
Read Part III
Khalina has been talking to a watchtower in her dreams, learning much and losing something in the process: her precious parchment, ink and quill, eaten up by some of the tower’s enemies, the moths. Now, with her new mentor’s help, she needed to find more.
Morning came again, and Khalina began to make preparations. She would have to have a plausible reason to go where she must. And something of her own to leave in exchange: a necessary sacrifice for what she was coming to realize was a very important task appointed to her.
She told her mother, after barn chores: “Dede, I’m going to the old church to make an offering.” Quite true, if also meaning something different from what the lady thought. “Don’t be too long. We have k’ubdari to make for the menfolk for when they get back from the forest, you know.” Sighing with pleasure at her easy exit, Khalina hurried up through the narrow stone-walled streets to the magnificently frescoed little local chapel which her area called its own, though it was abandoned and without priest or services. All they had at the moment was tradition, imperfectly recalled from memory and the hearsay of oral hand-me-downs. It was an open secret to the neighbors where the huge old lock’s equally ancient key was hidden, and she scrabbled with her long thin fingers between the stone blocks. Got it!
In she snuck with a creak and groan of lock and hinges, into the darkness lit only by daylight coming through a single narrow window. The saints in their magnificent reds, yellows and gilts stared down at her from the curved walls as her eyes adjusted, but this time she had no time for their splendor. Neither was the delicate carving of stone sufficient to move her from her goal, although usually the beauty here was enough to take her very breath away.
But what was this? Not just one arrow, as the Tower had said there would be, but two, pointing in opposite directions. She had no time for these games: someone else could come in at any moment and leave her stuck to explain!
“Think, think! One arrow is of little feathers—they’re even still falling from the dome… the other is made of holes being eaten into that carpet right now… How strange! Which one can I trust?” Footsteps passing by reminded her of the urgency to finish before any interruption.
She thought some more, flashing though ideas. “Both arrows seem equally miraculous, and they’re being made at the same time, as I watch. They’re the same size and shape, but contradictory, so they can’t both be right [inventing logic on the fly], nor should they both be wrong, according to what he told me last night. What else could make one right, the other wrong, and WHICH?”
No time to experiment. She chose, followed her choice (unmaking the arrow in the process of her passing), and found a few precious sheets of new parchment flattened together under one of the floor’s carpets. Next to them, an eagle feather to be carved into a quill. Fitting them inside her blouse, she lit a nail-thin candle and shot up a lightning-quick prayer of thanks to accompany its twisty rising smoke-tendril. Just in time: another worshiper was coming in. She left her offering, and fled as innocently as she knew how.
—But how did you know, in the end, which was the right arrow, with so little time to choose and no one to help you!
—Aha! Finally, it came down to an educated guess based on the character of the arrows themselves. One was made of something given at a cost: the little birds’ feathers plucked out by their own beaks. The other was formed by destroying something useful: holes in weaving, spoiling it like my own paper and pen were damaged. Still a guess, but less chancy as I look back.
—And what about your sacrifice? What was that?
—My first lessons on writing. It might be said that I don’t need them anymore, although they are precious to me as something to give my own children when the time comes. But I can always re-write them, and get some more practice into the bargain, while other young people can now learn from them too. Their content remains in my mind’s eye, where no moth can eat it to dust.
—Little one, you delight me with this imagination that you have, and do your race proud. I too, it seems, may have chosen well.
This time, when she stirred at dawn, she began to immortalize everything in her best writing, just as it had come to her. She now knew that her secret lessons had not been in vain. The power of words!
BLOG by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
