Hello and welcome to meet us pod episode six. I'm your host de
metus. I'm sorry for the delay in this episode, I hope to be
able to get back on a regular release schedule from here on
out. I've been getting some really great submissions and for
all of you that have submitted stories and haven't gotten
response yet, I will be getting back with you this week. I have
fallen behind. We have some new theme music for me this pod.
It's called into the unknown and it comes to us courtesy of pod
Sprite. You can check out more of odd sprites work over at odd
sprite.com which is linked in the show notes. Please stay
tuned after the story to hear about how you can help us keep
the show going and growing. Our story for this episode is
raising words by Stewart see Baker? Stewart see Baker is an
academic librarian I coolest and speculative fiction writer is
fiction and poetry has appeared in Cosmos modern Haiku, and
flash fiction online among other magazines. Stewart was born in
England has spent time in South Carolina, Japan and California
and now lives in Western Oregon with his wife and two sons.
Although if anyone asks, he'll say he's from the internet. His
website is info mansi.net Stewart also has novelette
called the Abbott's garden on Amazon. I'll put a link in the
show notes if you'd like to check that out. The story will
be read to us by Lauren Burwell. You may recognize her voice she
played the part of Lynda in Episode Five is dead guy
walking. Lauren has been dabbling in voiceover narration
work for the past two years. You can find more of Lauren
Burrell's. narration@librivox.org As
always, her Librivox page will be linked in the show notes.
Without further ado, here's our story.
Raising words by Stewart see Baker. After we entombed my
father, he transformed into a giant bird of purest white, and
burst forth from the earth all holy and clean. My mother and
her co wives my sisters, my cousins, all followed as he
soared majestic and terrible, filled with beauty away to the
east and the sea. I alone are the women in that place stood
watching the rest ran through the plane and brush pushing past
the sharp bamboo which must have cut their feet like soars. They
ran through the wave and spray unmindful of the cold wetness,
which wrap their robes about them like black ocean weeds. As
they ran, they sang their high pitch nasal voices rising and
rhythmic bursts of ritual limit to the commie my father had
become I alone saying no songs. I alone remembered. When I was
very young I used to beg my father to take me hunting.
though even then he was stern he would always relent the sun
glinting through his jet black hair as he grinned our secret
grin and set me in the bow of the sky reaching Black Oak at
the forest edge. I love the burst of activities as courtier
swarmed around reading horses and bows. The shouts ringing out
in the crispness of the early spring air. But I love more than
way my father sat perfectly still astride his own horse, his
own bow held loosely in his lap. He would chant the ritual
blessing slowly, with a godlike calm. I used to sit in the Oak
for hours and listen to the distance the Romina bowstrings
reveling in the idea that all things were connected. And the
idea that my father connected them, when he slayed the
Warlords of the Komodo tribe. My father received a new name
Yamato Takeru. They called him as he died, Yamato brave. When
he returned, he had changed. He no longer hunted, no longer held
his bow. Instead, he practiced swordsmanship he stood waist
deep in the Kenai River, drawing and slicing and drawing and
thrusting over and over and over again, with a sword we learned
he had received from his aunt, the High Priestess at Issei. He
did not come to my mother or her co wives a single time before
leaving again at the emperor is ordered to pacify the peoples of
the East. A part of him I thought, a part of my past, was
dead and gone forever. My mother cried for days, and I was filled
with an unease of a world on strong. We heard tales of his
further exploits this Yamato Takeru, who had been my father,
he smashed savages, argued with commie and gods, and struck them
all down to the dead land of Yomi if they did not submit, my
mother and her co wives received reports daily, tracking his
progress with a mix of hope and trepidation. From the bowels of
the yoke where I sat alone once again, I could find no trace at
former times, you will marry the inverse first grandson in raised
my chance of ruling. Those were my father's first words to me
when he returned my cousin, I stated it flat and unflinching,
ignoring my mother's grasp. Yes, my father said, the thrones air.
And if I will not, my father laughed a sound sudden and sharp
like an arrow striking would you would raise words On Me Girl, I
have killed kami and burned to the ground hold tribes of
stinking rebels. I have subjugated the rivers and the
seas, and bent the messengers of gods to serve my own will. If
you refuse, I have other daughters. Any of them can
easily become my eldest.
I set my teeth and raise my chin. As you say, my lord
father, keeping my words to myself, but that night I went
once more to the forest. I did not stop as I usually did at the
foot of the oak, but walked further than I ever had before
into the untouched wilderness of the deep forest. I walked until
the canopy closed overhead, then opened again to reveal the
eternal patterns of the heavenly River. The air was rich with a
smell of houmous and rot. I came to a mystery spring in there I
stopped and missed the dim shapes of pines and rocks, and
the silent blue distant stars reflected on its surface. A
white bore, as big as a war horse rose from the waters, its
eyes and focused. Its form shifted as it walked, lop size,
bulges of life forming on its body and sluicing away into the
air with each step. A commie it's now close enough that I
could feel its breath on my skin, even in deep it spoke.
Woman child, it said, What do you seek? The words echoed in my
skull with the sound and thunder of trees falling. I do not
reply, I do not dare. Woman child. Do you seek justice? No,
I, woman child, do you seek vengeance? No, I do you seek? It
paused, JAWS opening slightly. Death My father died already.
What I seek is your father's death. It will come again. If
that is what you seek. My breath set like a stone in my stomach.
My throat burn like fire be scarred a rasp, I order you stop
I wanted leave this place woman child, the kami said or what you
say you do not seek will come to you. Then it turned back towards
the spring. And as it did so slowly melted upwards into the
mist. I walked through the forests for long enough to count
a lifetime. I lived off mushrooms and berries, drinking
from polluted streams whose water chilled my throat and
aching belly. When I last found my way back to the Yamato. I
knew I was told that a half moon had passed my mother ran to me
her hair in disarray and her robes disordered. Her eyes puffy
and red. Think the white plane of heaven. She have sobbed
collapsing against me. I thought we had lost you too. So it was
that I learned my father had been struck dead by Mount buki
by massive white commie in the shape of a bore. While I
wandered lost in the forest, as my father's commie vanishes
towards the sea and the wailing of my mother and her co wise
fades from hearing. I stepped from the shadow of my father's
new built whom faces empty grave and speak. Raising words one
final time. I will remember you as you were I say and not as you
became daily will I erase your divinity ever chronically in
your early mortal life until your godly wrath is not but
legend. I will tell all who listen, have order and calm.
Then I turn I do not look back at the fields and the cliffs in
the mountains and the oceans of my homeland. I turn and face the
sun and I leave that barren place and search a fertile
Grail.
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