In the time when the world was still forming, there were a few animals, some people, and many, many gods. At this time, there was a dry valley that had no rivers, no lakes, and nothing else that was any good. A village of people lived here in stick and reed huts shaking in the wind. They planted, dug for water, and hid from the gods. But there was one man who lived with his family some ways off from the village who did not hide from the gods. Buzzard, most ravenous of gods, had given this man the gift to create new life so that when it died, Buzzard could eat it.
So the man, the carver, spent his days walking the wastes around his hut, led by the eye of Buzzard to find spirits trapped in stone or wood and set them free. The carver would drag logs into his hut, and after cutting away the shell that bound the spirits, the carver would give his breath to the still figures and pray for life to enter into them, and so it would. Days later, a living animal would push aside the leather door and run off into the plains. Buzzard forbid the carver to create what pleased him; he must always seek the spirit hidden within and carve it true.
The village elders had told him there was no profit in dealing with the gods.
The world was small, and the villagers couldn’t help noticing the things that the carver set free into the plains. Sometimes their elders would go to the carver’s hut, push aside his leather door, and sit down with him and his family. They would nod to his wife and ask her if she felt that the earth was still pregnant. She would say that it always was and always would be, that new things would come from it forever. The elders, with their stained hands and broken nails, understood the ways of earth and would be comforted by this. Then they would turn to the carver and begin to tell him what they thought of his carvings.
At times they would thank him, filling his home with hard, shriveled gourds and grain, skins of water, and polished stones. They’d throw a heap of animal bones down on his floor—antelope, fish, and pheasant. These, they said, are good. The carver told them he had no choice.
Other times, they would curse him, bring him the bones of lions and vipers, the dried bodies of scorpions. They would throw filth into his home and rotting meat onto his roof. Sometimes they would drive the carver’s family away with fire and burn everything they could find. These, they said, are bad. The carver told them he had no choice.
In those days, there was a war in the lands around the valley. Men covered their bodies in white paint and slew each other with whips and flint. It went on for months, until the shaman Dlero and his men were cornered in a bright canyon, surrounded by their foes. Dlero held his face to the sky and prayed to Toad, lord of the raindrop, for death to come to his enemies. Toad stirred in his sleep and all the clouds drained from the sky. Though his enemies eventually died from Toad’s drought, Dlero fell long before them; a whip tore out Dlero’s throat, and his men were overrun.
The elders had reminded the carver of Dlero and the blessings of the gods.
All color and water was leeched from the land. At night, the ground was covered in toads, their craggy bodies shivering and oozing blood from their mouths. The roof of the carver’s hut rasped when the winds blew, its reeds brittle under the weight of the sun.
It became harder and harder for the carver and his wife to gather food for their themselves and their small son. The carver’s son grew weak. It wasn’t until some months later that Toad’s wrath began to lift and the clouds returned. But it was too late. The carver’s son had died.
The elders had seen Buzzard’s shadow that morning, and they would not leave the village.
The carver did not stay with his wife to bury their son, but fled into the wilderness. He ran against the flight of the sun for two days, coming to the remnants of a swamp, the ground dropping off from the bank to twist into caverns filled with brittle grasses and moss. He collapsed in the shadows of dead branches and slept.
When he awoke, he was hungry, but he had nothing to eat. He waded into the deep places of the swamp, seeking pools where there might be fish or snakes. Though he wandered for most of the day, he found only a strange log. The bark was white, but had been stripped away in places, revealing black wood underneath. He knew that a powerful spirit must be trapped inside. He pulled off a piece of the bark and put it in his mouth. It was bitter. He set the log across his shoulders and started walking home.
Runners from the village saw the carver taking the wood across the plain. They went home to prepare gifts for him and hope that this would be good.
When he returned, his wife had cleaned the hut and buried their son, but she’d left the boy’s sleeping mat where it lay. The carver set the log down on the mat and picked up his pouch of tools. The bag looked like a wrinkled face in his hands, old leather bulging with knives, scrapers, and sanding stones.
“Buzzard has led me to another spirit,” he told her.
She shook her head, dark hair falling like feathers. “You should wait before you do Buzzard’s work.”
He was not listening. Already his hands were peeling away the rest of the bark.
The drought had withered the crop, and the villagers sucked stones and cursed. They dared not pray.
His wife left him while he worked and went out into the garden to lie down in the furrows between her plantings, ear pressed to the dirt. Gods circled overhead, but she did not notice them. The earth was full of everything.
The carver worked all night by light of the fire. The spirit began to emerge under his hands, and he thought that it must be a dog or wolf. As he sanded and more of the spirit emerged, the carver could not help but notice the similarities between this body and that of a child. The head started to slip up from the wood, like someone pulled from water. He began to make short flicks with his knife over the top of it, pulling up curls of fur, soft and dark. The head began long and narrow, but the carver found himself rounding it. Rounded like the head of his son had been. He carved the body free of its shell. The carver marveled at the strange angle the spirit was bound in, leaning back, legs thrust straight out before it, forelegs folded across its lap, head held up. It reclined back against the wall of the hut, just as his son had. The more wood he took away, the more like his son it looked, until the carver was racing along, hacking and sanding as fast as he could, cutting his hands in his haste. He finished and backed away from it in shock, the black wooden sculpture reclining on its mat against the wall.
The elders had told the carver before, the gods have no gifts.
The carver looked around his hut, checking the shadows to make sure he was alone. Had he carved it true? He’d been focused, hadn’t he, his hands following the natural splits and grooves in the log? He must have done it right. Shaking, he stepped around the fire and crept over to the sculpture. There would never be another chance. He’d be a fool not to act on such a blessing.
The carver called out to Buzzard and thanked him for this gift. He started rubbing the wood with his hands, chanting the life song and coaxing the spirit to awaken. He massaged and scrubbed the wood until it grew warm. Buzzard, he said, let this wood take my heat, let it fill with the moving air, and let it be flesh.
Buzzard’s magic answered his call. The carver doubled over as the breath and heat was drawn from him, scorching his tongue and mouth. His fire swirled in the rush of air. The breath forced itself between the wooden lips of his son, filling it. The carver waited for the wood to fade and become flesh.
The wood remained wood, glossy and black. The carver touched it and the figure opened its eyes. Staring out at him from the body of his son were the hard yellow eyes of a jackal. It lurched to its feet, wooden limbs creaking, and loped out of the hut on all fours.
The carver chased it, the wooden child’s hands and feet gouging the white clay around the hut.
“Stop!” he shouted. “My son, come back!”
His wife came outside and saw what he had done. She grabbed him.
“Let it go,” she said. “That is not our son.”
The carver tried to pull away, but she held him.
“He is our son!” the carver said. “Buzzard led me to his spirit, and I brought it out of the wood.”
She held him and stroked his head. “You will suffer for it.”
The elders watched the plain and waited to see what was new in the world.
The jackal’s spirit hated its false body. It threw itself from rocks and cast its heavy frame into the deep places of the swamp, but could not destroy itself. Eventually it grew hungry and snuck into the village, stealing an old blanket to wrap itself in. The villagers took pity on what they thought was a poor child. They invited him into their homes, gave him food, and let him sleep closest to their fires.
The elders saw the rings across his cheek, like the bands of a tree, and knew that this was some mischief of the gods come among them. They tried to warn the other villagers, but the jackal cried so bitterly that no one would turn it away.
In the next few weeks, the jackal stole blankets and pots from the villagers and hid them in other huts, causing many quarrels among them. He killed their animals and dragged the bodies back to the carver’s hut, throwing them onto the roof where they would rot in the sun. Eventually, the villagers chased it away with stones and fire.
The jackal stayed close to the village, however, and watched the children play. Following some of the village boys to a swimming place, he went far out into water and pretended to drown. When one of them came out to rescue him, the jackal wrapped his heavy limbs around the boy and sank. Several others, seeing only splashes and hearing screams, jumped in to help. The jackal killed many boys this way. The rest ran to get the hunters, but the jackal fled back to the carver’s home.
The villagers wanted revenge for what the jackal had done, but they were afraid of the carver and his wife. It was well known that the carver was a favorite of Buzzard, and his wife was closer to the earth than anyone.
A group of nomads injured from the war came to the village, and the elders treated them. The nomads fingered pendants of their gods, Elephant and Kite, and clutched their wounds. The elders told them that the gods were far away and couldn’t feel them.
That night, the nomads covered their pendants and told the villagers about the machete men of the deep desert. The machete men lived alone and forsook all gods. Some said that the first of them had prayed to Newt, but had murdered him. No one could remember why. Now, they crushed and melted the stones of the earth for iron, something the gods had forbidden people. The elders sent a runner into the deep desert to find one.
The runner found the machete man bent over his fire-pit, exhaling black smoke and angry red light at the stars. The runner waited on the edge of the camp, but would not approach. The machete man let him wait half the night, then covered his pit and quenched his fire. The machete man walked out to meet him then, a string of beaten metal squares looped on a leather cord around his neck, his machete hanging from his belt.
The runner told the machete man everything that had happened, all the wickedness of Buzzard. The machete man packed his things and left at once for the carver’s hut.
Days later, the carver saw the machete man approaching across the wastes and came out to meet him. He saw the iron blade, the necklace of metal, the man’s fire-hard face. “You are here because of my son,” he said.
The machete man nodded.
“I will not let you kill him.”
The machete man took the blade off of his belt and pressed it into the carver’s hand. “No, I will not kill him,” he said. “You will.” The machete man unrolled his blanket and sat down to wait.
The elders watched the night and whispered to each other. They asked, when man has metal, what need has he to pray?
The carver felt the cold metal against his hand, not knowing what to do with it, and ran back into his hut. He slipped the machete into the hut’s rafters. He spent the next few days in exhaustion, pleading with the creature night and day to speak and chiding him for his ill behavior.
The jackal became so violent that the carver bound him with ropes, but it gnashed through them with tiny wooden teeth. It threw itself into the fire pit, and the carver put out the fire. The jackal attacked him and they wrestled in the darkness.
Slamming into the wall, they jarred the machete loose and it fell. It was dim in the hut, light trickling in from cracks in the ceiling, but it was bright enough for the carver to see the machete fall. It bounced and rolled to a stop in the dust. Falling backwards, the jackal stepped on the flat blade and howled, a sound like thick trees twisting. The jackal pressed himself against the wall and cradled his foot, burned from the touch of the metal.
The carver knew then that those yellow eyes had never belonged to his son. He cried in anguish and raised the machete against it. He hacked the heavy wooden body into chunks and burned them.
He walked outside and called for his wife in a hoarse voice, but she did not answer. He went to her garden, but coils of tall thorns surrounded it. He slashed at them with the machete, but the blade only bounced away or tangled in the vines, and he could not get through. The machete man sat on the earth smoking his pipe and watching the carver. The carver walked away from his hut, still holding the cold metal. He went across the white plain to the same brittle hill of trees where he’d first met Buzzard.
The elders tell their children to stay away from danger. Wherever you go once, they say, you will return to.
The carver stared at the hard earth in front of him, rather than up at the sun The first time he’d come he’d only been a boy going out to the small stand of trees to play. He’d fallen asleep under the skeletal boughs, a new carving of a bird in his hands, when Buzzard had come to him. The god settled heavy on the boy in his sleep, and whispered an offer in his ear. He would be known. He would be powerful. His skill would be without equal. The carver had awoken in a circle of brown feathers, Buzzard waiting on a branch above him. He’d said yes.
The trees were just as hooked and twisted as he remembered. The carver forced his way between the spiraling branches, more of them snaking toward the earth than away from it. He found the circle of feathers where he’d left it and sat down among them. He called out to Buzzard in a broken voice. For a long time, the carver waited. He picked up a broken hunk of wood and began shaping it purposefully, ripping and gouging out the shape of a bird without wings. After finishing, he sat it down beside him in the circle. Immediately he heard a rush of feathers.
Buzzard came down onto a branch above the carver, head cocked to hear his words. The carver stood up and looked into Buzzard’s white eyes. The carver’s mouth was dry and his head hurt from days without sleep. He looked up at the god, fat and glistening with dried blood, and remembered his son. He could think of nothing to say. The carver leapt up and caught Buzzard in his hands. The god screamed and thrashed, but the carver would not let go. With a cry of rage, he crushed it’s neck in his fist and beat it against the dry earth. Feathers were thick on the ground.
His hands dark with blood, the carver walked out of the trees. The machete man stood with his belongings packed, waiting. The carver started to hand the machete back, but the machete man shook his head. He had a second necklace of beaten metal squares and fastened it around the carver’s neck. They walked away, their heads hung in sadness.
The elders know that the gods hold their breath, awaiting our commands.