PART 2
CHAPTER 1
BEIZL
The thing which grabbed the salamander was not of a divine nature, but was fair to mistake her for an angel. It was a little girl, named Beizl, about 9 years old. She was gathering langostinos from the creek, picking the weak and straggling from the migrating wave. She saw the salamander, she watched its fight with the langostinos, and she took pity on it. As she watched its battle to the death, she felt that there was something special about the salamander. When she saw its mantis legs, she reached out to it with her Will, and felt back the echo of the Primordium. She decided to save the monster.
She set down her basket and stepped over the langostinos around the salamander’s rock. She picked up the near-dead salamander, and cast aside the langostinos that held its body. She gently, with such tenderness and care, set the salamander in her basket, and began her short walk home. Some time on the way, the salamander began to wake.
“What is this?” the salamander thought. “I live? Where am I? What is this… bed of sticks I am carried on?”
The salamander struggled, and failed, to stand on its horribly injured legs. It had lost too much blood, expended too much energy. Then it saw Beizl. To the salamander, Beizl was a titan. A great giant, insurmountable and terrible, with midnight black wooly hair, light brown skin, round brown eyes, and a narrow aquiline nose. The salamander was angered.
“You! You dare steal from me my destined glory? My honorable death in combat? End me, colossus of interference!” The salamander tried to writhe, but barely moved. It turned its mouth up at Beizl’s face, and with its tired lungs, it hissed at her. “My kingdom is lost, my lands salted and taken from me, do not steal also my dignity. I will strike at you, I will not be denied by destined fate.” Even in its own thoughts, the salamander was too tired to properly express fury. It saw the giant’s thumb over the side of the basket, and it tried to bite at it.
Just as its mouth made contact, Beizl brought her face down to the salamander. She pressed her lips to its head, and she spoke one word: “Sleep”. And the salamander did. It collapsed into blackest sleep, and it did not dream.
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Beizl was excited. She had found a strange and rare creature: A tiny and weak monster. She thought of the tales she had heard, of Deva using Will to shape primordium into living things, and the old witch-kings that had done the same, and she was filled with the giddiness of a dog presented with infinite birds to chase. But she also felt anxious, not knowing if Marta would permit her keeping the salamander. She feared that Marta would simply take her new pet and throw it in the big pot.
Her fears were a whimper next to the roaring elation. She was eager to prove herself capable, to show her strength and abilities to Marta. To prove that she was listening to Marta’s lessons. To prove her talents in Will. The world had given her a weak and feeble monster to take as her pet, for her to shape and form. The fantasy of a pet was the most alluring of all. The other children in the nearby village raised ferrets and millipedes, and Beizl was hopelessly envious of them. Today, that would change. She picked up her pace, still careful not to jostle the injured and sleeping salamander.
Beizl saw her home come into view. It was a low treehouse, only about 3 meters off the ground. The house was a circle, wrapped around the trunk of a grand and thriving fir. Log struts extended from the base of the trunk to the floor of the house, and log stilts around the edge of the house further spread the load to the ground. Much of the house was constructed of woven branches and vines, supported by a skeleton of staves between the trunk and the stilts. The roof was shingled with treebark, shedding any rain the forest canopy didn’t block.
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In truth, the house was more Marta’s than Beizl’s. Marta was an old hermit woman, and a witch, who built this house over many years. Long before Beizl came to her. Sure enough, Marta was standing in the window by the door, watching Beizl return home. The girl had returned more quickly than expected, and the old witch looked out at her with annoyance.
“Beizl! What are you carrying?” Marta shouted.
“Don’t be mad, Marta! I found something amazing!”
“Whatever it is, it’s going in the pot!”
Beizl froze at the bottom of the stairway to the house. “Marta please, it’s not food, please just listen!”
Marta glared at her from the window. “That thing in your basket, do you know what it is, Beizl?”
Beizl held her basket tight. “Marta, it was dying and I found it and saved it, look!”
Marta asked again. “Beizl! Stupid girl, that isn’t what I asked you! Do you know what that is?”
“Marta please just listen! I want to-”
Marta opened the door and came down the stair, glaring. “Beizl, answer me, do you know what that is?”
Beizl was scared of what Marta may do to the salamander. “It’s a monster.”
Marta had reached Beizl by now. She grabbed the basket and set it aside. “Why in the world did you bring a monster to our home, Beizl?”
Beizl looked down at her feet, and Marta grabbed her by the chin to look her in the eyes. “Look at me Beizl. Why did you bring a monster to our home?”
Beizl’s eyes began to well. “It was… the langostinos were killing it, and I felt… really sad for it, and I really wanted to show you that I can do the stuff in the stories, and…”
Marta clicked her tongue and released Beizl’s chin. She picked up the basket, with the sleeping salamander in it, and started walking back up the stairs. Beizl cried, fearing for sure that Marta would kill the salamander and throw it in the pot. She followed right on Marta’s heels up the stairs, begging, pleading, crying for the salamander's life.
Marta ignored her, and brought the salamander to the house’s big sigil pot, full of gently simmering stew. The outside of the pot was wreathed in sigils of heat and fire, engraved into the cast cupralum, such that it maintained a soup-making temperature. It warmed itself, anything put into it, and the house around it. She dumped the salamander from the basket, onto a flat board. Beizl screamed to not kill it, she pulled at Marta’s clothes, she stamped her feet, and still Marta ignored her.
Marta put her hands on the salamander. She felt its heartbeat, she inspected its wounds, she moved its legs, she looked into its mouth. Then, she stopped for a moment, and thought. She asked Beizl if she had Willed it to sleep, and Beizl said she had. Beizl by now had mostly stopped crying, and watched Marta work
Marta retrieved a mortar and pestle, and put into it a few things from her medicine chest: Ground willow bark, cannabis bud and oil, and a few flakes of dried poppy sap. She quickly ground the materials into a rough paste. Then she wiped the salamander’s entire body with a clean wet rag, before beginning to apply the medicine.
Marta worked gently and swiftly. She used a wooden skewer to pick any debris from the salamander’s wounds. She packed the deep wounds with the paste, stopping the bleeding and sealing them from outside debris. She spread the medicine thinly over its shallow wounds. To finish, she mixed some soup from the sigil pot with a small amount of wine, and used a straw to feed it directly into the salamander’s stomach.
Finished with her work, she turned to Beizl. The child’s eyes were red and puffy from crying, snot ran over her lips, drool hung from her chin, and she hiccuped. “Clean your face, child. If the salamander lives, it will be yours.” Marta left Beizl, and went to the other side of the house, to work at her quilting frame.
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The Salamander began to rouse. As it did, it had a waking dream, a hypnopompic vision of claws and shells. It ate the claws and shells, and was in turn eaten by the claws and shells. Around and around this wheeled, eating and being eaten for all eternity, consumption and pain all the way down. The Salamander’s eyes opened so slowly, and the fading vision of violence was replaced with dim light and walls.
For the first time in the salamander’s life, it was in a room. Slivers of morning light shone through the ceiling, and the whispers of wind and leaves could be heard overhead, but the firmaments and sky could not be seen. The walls were woven willow and clay, and covered in reed mats, to keep out the wind. The air was warm, much warmer than the water of the pond and creek the salamander knew. It liked it.
When the Salamander tried to raise its head, white flashes of pain seized its body. Most of its body was numb, and anything it could feel was distant, but terrible. It could come screaming forth at any movement. Did it still have the parts it couldn’t feel? The salamander had no way to know until it could turn its head to see, but it did not dare try again. It scanned the room with its eyes. It vaguely remembered having lost an eye to the langostinos, but perhaps that was not the case.
A reed mat hanging on one of the walls fluttered, and through it came that same upright thing which had stolen the Salamander’s destined death. The Salamander was too tired, too sedate, too injured and exhausted, to so much as hurl a single profanity at the thing. The Salamander simply lay still, watching and listening. Its captor moved around the room with a speed the Salamander had never seen in such a large thing. It was as if a tree had seen fit to take flight in a great wind. It was intimidating, and even if the Salamander could move, it thought better to stay still and avoid attention. Then, the tall thing drew close and looked, and saw that the Salamander was awake.
The thing squealed and giggled. The Salamander had never known a sound so beautiful. Calming, pure, clear, serene, joyful. The Salamander felt as though its entire being had been rung like a bell. Its mind was eased, its muscles relaxed, and its eyes closed. No amount of snails, no amount of mantis, no amount of slain langostino, could compare to the satisfaction that was this tall thing’s laugh. And so the Salamander fell once more into sleep, deep and still.