Daniel Ausema

         The beggar Tantus climbed up the steps on raw, bleeding knees.  At every ninth step he stopped and whipped himself across the back with a short, leather whip.  Townspeople streamed by, most not sparing the penitent a second glance.  The grocer, Mornit, who had always been kind to Tantus, paused to place an apple from his offering basket on the step ahead of the beggar.

         Gratefully Tantus took a break from his climb to devour the fruit.  Dark clouds hung low over the large town.  The clay buildings stood out in sharp contrast to the sky, pale red to its grey that bordered on black.  The townsfolk were hurrying to get their business done before the rare storm broke.  Even here, halfway up the temple hill, Tantus could hear the cries of merchants trying to unload the last of their goods.

         When all that remained of the apple was the tough core, Tantus peeled the shell back and picked out the tiny, black seeds.  These he grasped carefully in his right hand, discarding the rest, and resumed his painful climb.  The sharp ends of the seeds stabbed into the palm of his hand.

         At the top he did not stand up.  Crawling toward the black idol, he left two streaks of blood across the open temple floor.  Other bloodstains marked the floor as well, but none were fresh.  Tantus prayed that his blood and the apple seeds would be an acceptable offering to the god, Aishis.  Surely the god knew that he had no gold to offer.

         Tantus had never intended to be a beggar.  But he couldn't seem to stay focused on any task he was given by someone else, and any time he had a bit of money in his hands, he came up with a brilliant plan for earning more that somehow never worked out.  And soon he was always begging again.

         Tantus arranged the seeds at the feet of the idol.  It was a magnificent god, carved of a black stone streaked with flecks of white like a night sky with no moon.  The large belly was a promise of plenty, the phallus a promise of pleasure, the noble panther's face a promise of pride.

         Tantus looked on the god and prayed as he had once learned to pray as a student of the priests.  "Mighty Aishis, ruler of the town of Shial, lord of the great oases of the desert, bringer of storms and still air, of game and grain, grant my prayer.  I am a poor beggar.  I have nothing but my clothes, and often I go hungry.  I do not wish to beg anymore.  I pray for a pittance, a small treasure of gold so that I need no longer be a burden on those around me.  Whatever you give me, I will remember your greatness and generosity with every coin I spend."

         Then, before the idol, Tantus took up his whip and struck himself nine times before stumbling from the temple.  The skies opened in a fierce rain as he descended, the water stinging his raw shoulders.

         Back in the narrow room where Tantus slept ever since the previous owner's death, the beggar fell tiredly onto his bed, but he couldn't get comfortable.  The ordeal at the temple had tired him out, and the storm had soaked him, so all he wanted was to sleep.  But sleep didn't come.

         In frustration he finally decided to beat the reeds that made up his rough bed.  As he shuffled them around, though, his hand hit something strange.  He stuck his fingers back in among the reeds and carefully removed a heavy bag the size of the green melons Mornit sold this time of year...almost the size of his head.  Some insect bit his hand as he pulled the bag to him, but he ignored it in his curiosity.

         He pulled open the bag and saw gold.  Far more than he had imagined in his prayer to Aishis.  This was not a small treasure, but a large one, enough to make Tantus among the richest in the city.  The beggar's hands trembled as he picked through the thin, beaten coins and let them spill through his fingers.

         Many hours later he finally slept, gripping the bag tightly.

         He woke to sunshine, the storm and the morning both long past.  He wasn't sure what to do.  It didn't seem safe to just leave the god's gift there in the tiny room, but he couldn't walk around with it either.  He decided to take some of the money with him and hide the rest as well as he could.

         The first person he met in the street was Farla, an older woman who had helped care for him when he was young.  He greeted her, but she only turned a sad face toward him.  Before he could ask her anything, she entered a nearby doorway.

         The bustle of the town seemed normal to him, the usual energy the people had after a storm.  But he enjoyed it more now.  It seemed more fitting and more intense.  The god Aishis was good, and the people of his city should be energetic and happy.  It was right.

         Yet not everyone Tantus passed seemed happy.  It took a fair amount of walking before it struck Tantus that all the people who walked by with melancholic faces were people he knew, people who'd been kind to him as a beggar.

         At one point after passing a merchant who regularly tossed Tantus a coin, Tantus thought he heard a whispered, "Damn all the gods," but when he turned around he couldn't tell for sure who would have spoken.

         Finally he came to Mornit's grocery stand.  The melons gleamed on his table beside golden grains and the shriveled desert peppers that seasoned most of their food in Shial.  But the happiness Tantus saw in the beautiful food was not mirrored in the grocer's face.

         "I'm afraid I have nothing for you today, Tantus," Mornit said sadly.

         "No worry.  I wish to buy food today, my friend."  The former beggar held out a small coin.  Then two more.

         Mornit's mouth opened at the sight of the money and his eyebrows lifted.  But he didn't smile.

         Tantus selected a perfectly round melon and a loaf of hard bread and several peppers to stuff inside it.  He added a few other items without looking at them too closely and then handed the coins to Mornit.

         "That should be plenty, but I also want a question answered."

         Mornit only nodded, and the sad look had not completely given way to surprise.

         "You seem sad.  And others too, I've noticed.  What's happened?"

         Mornit's face constricted briefly, and his eyes narrowed.  Then the look passed, replaced again by sorrow.

         "One of those mornings it seems the gods have cursed, you know."

         "Oh?"

         "No thief came to my home, I know, yet I find much of my money has disappeared."

         Tantus thought furiously.  Would it look strange for him to give Mornit some of the treasure Aishis had given him?  Would it be insulting?  In the end he simply paid a good price for a bit more food and left.

         At the shop of a tailor who had once given him some cast-off cloth for new clothing, Tantus heard a similar story.  Like Mornit, the tailor invoked the gods as the source of his loss.  Tantus refused to haggle with the man for the fine new clothes he bought.

         When he returned to the street to make his way back to his room, Tantus was expecting the gloom of his friends to be over the entire town.  But it was not so.  Most of the townsfolk still had the boisterous energy he'd noticed when he first got up.  The day was ending, but happy groups moved about the streets, oblivious to the curses of the gods on his friends.

         Tantus sat in his room and pondered while his fingers swam through the bag of gold.  The night was old when he finally fell asleep.

         He woke and thought he knew what was happening.  But he wanted to test his idea out first.  Taking a handful of coins in the small leather pocket he'd bought, Tantus walked out into the sunlight.

         The after-storm excitement had not completely faded from the town, but Tantus ignored all those happy people.  Every time he saw people he knew, though, all those who had been kind to him as a beggar, he stopped them.

         As he'd suspected, each one had a sad story to tell.  For some it was a bet gone awry, for others an unseen assailant in the night, and for others a business deal that fell through.  But all were sad, and all had lost money to the storm, to the night, to the gods.

         With each, Tantus made sure they got a coin or a few from him, either by buying wares from them or by slipping the coins into their clothing without them knowing.  Every time a coin left his fingertips, he thought of the generosity of the god Aishis and imagined the money as an offering to the town's patron deity.  The handful of coins he'd brought diminished, and Tantus was amazed by the number of townspeople who had been gracious to him through the years.

         As he moved through the town in this way, he saw something else besides the sadness of his friends.  So many of the townspeople seemed to be always out in the streets, even those who ran businesses.  This had been great for him as a beggar, but now he saw that they must lose business that way.  A smart person could easily make a living setting up some kind of messenger service.  And many of the beggars, who knew the streets well, would be ideal messengers and carriers.  Too bad, he thought, the idea only came to him when he already had more money than he would ever need.

         Finally in the evening he returned to the temple hill and walked directly up to the idol.  A few people who had seen him two days earlier crawling and penitent gave him surprised looks, but no one spoke to him.

         The idol appeared the same as always, proud and pleasured and full.  Tantus knelt down on knees he realized only then were still raw.  He placed what remained of the coins he'd taken that morning before the idol and lowered his head to pray.  He did not speak immediately, but thought first of the lessons he had learned long ago when the priests had hoped he would become one of them, some of the many people who had learned he couldn't focus long on any task given him.

         "Mighty Aishis," he finally said, "ruler of Shial, lord of the oases, grant my prayer.  You are powerful, I know now beyond a doubt, and yet not all-powerful, so I pray that you might have the power for this one request.  I am a rich man suddenly, but it seems that my money has been bled from those I love.  So now I pray for them.  Grant them your treasure, for they are more deserving than I."

         Then Tantus returned to his rough bed.  He refused to check on the bag of treasure before falling asleep.

         The next morning, the third morning since his initial petition, Tantus, the former beggar, opened the bag and found, as he had expected, that most of the gold was gone.  What surprised him was that some remained lining the bottom, enough that he couldn't really beg for a living without offending the gods of the desert.  Just enough, perhaps, to create a messenger system for all the businesses in town.  Whether that worked out or not, he would have to find true and honest work.  The gods would demand it.

         What he knew beyond doubt was that each coin that remained and each coin he earned from then on he would spend as an offering to Aishis, whether buying a beautiful melon or a clay pot or paying a former beggar to deliver a message.  The god may not be all-powerful, but that's what he needed people like Tantus for, to add their power to his.  Tantus himself, once a beggar, would be a valuable instrument of a god.

         Tantus went into the town, its streets now striped with the shadows of scattered clouds, and found a new undercurrent there, not quite the excitement that had followed the storm, but more of a strange sense of surprise, of wonder, almost of awe.

         Fingering the flattened disks of the coins, Tantus wandered the town in search of messages

.

 

 

Copyright 2006, Daniel Ausema

Originally from Michigan, Daniel Ausema recently moved to the edge of the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado.  He is now a stay-at-home dad and writes furiously during naptime and Sesame Street.  He has stories available and forthcoming from All Possible Worlds, Jupiter World Press, The Sword Review, and Noneuclidean Café and poetry in Scifaikuest. 

 

 

Cover: "Jupiter Rising"

Copyright 2006, Karl Eschenbach

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