Garamoush

GARAMOUSH

By Michael Wettengel

Published by Michael Wettengel at Smashwords

Text Copyright © 2014 Michael Wettengel

All Rights Reserved

Cover design by Finn Smulders

All Rights Reserved

All of the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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To the great people who helped me get here,

Brandi Reissenweber, Sam Luccioni Mancini,

Kristen Grismore, Alec Faleer,

and my whole family. You all put up with my

craziness and are now helping me to

infect the rest of the world with it.

I hope you’re quite proud of yourselves.

Table of Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 1

"Hurry up, Father!" Eym called, her bright blonde curls lifting in the wind like flower petals.

And why should I? Stenn responded. "I know the way. How do you think you’ll get there if you keep running ahead of me?"

Oh, Father, Eym said, every word punctuated with a quick hop, I know how to get there! Every girl and boy worth their salt knows!

As if it was a cue, Eym broke out in a sing-song rhythm All-Seeing Garamoush. She cracked out the old ballad with a gusto that only youth could provide. Eym sang of the sleeping god’s life, from the time He walked amongst humans until He collapsed on the shoreline where He slept ever since. She paid special attention to the mention of the living god’s clairvoyance- His ability to see all across the land and mutter His findings in His sleep.

Stenn found himself half-mumbling some of the lyrics out of habit. Eym twirled and spun about as she sang. Her father shook his head and smiled, picking up his pace on the cobblestone path.

Stenn never grew weary of the wide open spaces in the world. The sense of freedom was something that Stenn drank up like water. Stenn turned as he heard his daughter start squealing. Evidently, his young daughter was infatuated with the great big outside world as well.

Eym laughed in delight when she caught sight of the first of many butterflies. They were all sporting the confident colors of springtime. She became a benevolent hunter, chasing down the insects with reckless fervor. The air was fresh with a hint of salt from the nearby sea. Stenn had walked the path more than enough times to have committed it to heart. The edge of the sea, and His Shore, would be just over the next hill.

The cobblestones of the path beneath his feet seemed to cave and move as if accommodating Stenn’s aging limbs. The warm spring wind chuckled as it tumbled through the wide, green plain. Stenn had to start picking out pieces of windblown grass as they landed into his short black hair. He had to admit, though, a seed of nervousness had taken root inside of him when he left his home in nearby Dehry Township that day. He had not laid eyes on the slumbering god since he left the Ministry of Fate and His Greatness- six years ago. Stenn liked to think he was a better man than he was back then, but if Garamoush could truly see all as He slept, He would certainly see who Stenn once was and the doubts he still had about himself. After all, Stenn thought, impulsively biting his lip, they didn’t name the Ministry after His Greatness for no reason.

Even those thoughts, however, could not weaken Stenn’s mood or his sense of wild amazement when he crested the hill with his daughter at his side. The hill continued down to form a cliff overlooking the sea. Save for the beach and the sea laying to the east, the cliff stretched in a nearly circular shape and it sloped downwards to the ground with an almost gentle slope. The space below could only be described as a crater; it was a gargantuan space that could have held a small city but now held a slumbering god.

Garamoush was a god in every right. There was not a single story, fable, legend, or nursery rhyme that overstated Him. If one could move past the fact that when He slept He looked more like a mountain than a living being, more parallels could have been drawn between Garamoush and a common tortoise as opposed to a god. He wore a shell, black and brown with silver veins like cut marble and bumped like an ancient tree. However, most tortoises didn’t have four arms, a flat tail nearly as long as the body proper, and a crown and cowl of gnarled white bone.

A sound of rushing air caught Stenn’s attention and he looked about, expecting to see the plains shimmering from a strong gust of wind. Instead, he was drawn to Eym, who was gasping in nothing short of wonderment.

Gasping was all she seemed to be able to do, in fact. Any words that she tried to form ended up leaving her mouth in quiet, out of order fragments. However, what Eym couldn’t say with her mouth, she was saying with her eyes. Her pupils shot around like birds taking flight as they tried to absorb all that she was saying.

Stenn smiled. I once was the same way, he thought. I once thought it impossible, incomprehensible almost, that something so enormous could ever exist. We’re hardly even ants to Him, Stenn had thought then and still thought now, it would take a god’s intelligence to even notice creature as painfully small as us beneath Him.

"He’s got four arms, Father," she gasped.

Stenn shook his head. That’s what you notice? Never mind the fact that He’s larger than your entire hometown. Yes. Yes He does. In the valley, Stenn noticed that a spattering of children, overseen by an elderly woman, was playing down in the sand. In Stenn’s day, it was almost a rite of passage for children to play near the benevolent god at some point in their lives. Stenn’s life as a servant in a lord’s manor never allowed him the luxury to see Him in the flesh, however. Stenn finally laid eyes on His divine form only a few years after joining the Ministry when he escorting a Declarer for the first time. He was happy to know that his daughter was already living a better life than he had.

There was another gust of wind but this time it came from down below. Garamoush’s breath pushed clouds of sand and dirt into the air that could easily swallow up whole groups of men.

For all the sleeping He does, Eym said, why would He even need all those arms?

To Stir, Eym, Stenn responded. He couldn’t roll or move very well without all that strength, now could He?

His Shore wasn’t even a shoreline before His arrival, in fact. When He had finally laid down to rest, He flattened virtually an entire hillside in the process. His Stirrings only made the Shoreline longer and wider as His massive frame flattened rocks and hills. The flood of clairvoyant visions Garamoush was said to have as He slept, perhaps understandably for a pacifist god in a world of humans, occasionally caused Him some distress. Thus, He tossed and turned in His sleep, not unlike the humans He was dedicated to protecting and watching over. His words had stopped wars, birthed cities, and imparted cures to stop plagues over the course of over two hundred years. It only helped Him that cities and towns that were miles upon miles away could feel the ground rumble just a bit whenever He Stirred. When a god was displeased, it was almost impossible to ignore Him.

Stenn sat and flexed his toes and fingers in the tall grass. It had been six good years since he felt his hands and feet laden down by the armour of a Ministry Knight. Six good years of life he lived without regrets because he spent all of that time watching his daughter go from a newborn to the curious young girl she was now. Stenn dug into his pocket and pulled out his pocket watch; the new invention of clockwork continued to amaze him and when the Ministry sent it along with him when he was freed from his duties, he found some kind of petty vengeance in asking merchants just how much the device would have been worth. He would have loved to hawk the brass cylindrical gift and spent the small mountain of gold indulging in every vice the Ministry warned against. It’s not like I even have the stomach for that kind of stuff anyway, Stenn thought. Then he smirked. Please, I don’t think my wife would approve.

Eym’s eyes, like the clockwork inside it, wound over the watch. She had taken a fierce liking to the device since the moment she could hold it. That was more than enough for Stenn, so he kept it.

Your mother should be here soon, Stenn said, the clock showing that it was barely past midday. It never takes more than a few hours to get here from Oxfield. Tania had insisted on being with her father at Oxfield while her mother finished recovering from her gout. Stenn had received a letter just a few days before that his mother-in-law’s pain had subsided and she was quite vocal in her displeasure that he, too, did not wait on her. Eym had smiled and laughed along with her father as he read the letter aloud in his mother-in-law’s low, accusatory voice. Tania would have no doubt laughed alongside them, if not laughing the loudest of all.

Eym could hardly sit still; she bounced on the balls of her feet, her eyes darting between Garamoush and the watch.

Do you think He’ll tell me my future one day, father? Eym asked, her gaze now transfixed on the slumbering god.

It doesn’t really work that way, I’m afraid, Stenn said. "Garamoush doesn’t tell the future, He… sees things, sees them all across the world even as He sleeps. Then when something really bothers Him, He’ll start speaking in his sleep."

That’s much less interesting, Father, Eym said, her brow trying adorably hard to look angry.

Stenn shrugged. Just the way it is. But you’ve been to plenty of Ministry services, right? Haven’t the Declarers told you some amazing things, things that somebody who has been asleep since even before I was born somehow still knows?"

Well Father, Eym said, utilizing all of the stubbornness that came with Stenn’s side of the gene pool, He’s a god. He’s supposed to know things. Like the future. That’s a god-ish thing to know.

And have you ever spoken to a god, young lady? Stenn asked with a smile. How do you know what kind of ‘things’ they know?

Eym’s lip stuck out as she floundered, searching for an answer or a way to buy time so she could just make up something that sounded good. No, I’ve never spoken to one she admitted after a while, but was quick to retaliate with, "but you have."

"Garamoush spoke at me, Stenn said. Besides, it was the Declarers I was guarding that He spoke to. I just happened to be nearby. Even the memory of Garamoush’s voice was so punishingly loud that the ghost of a ringing could be heard in Stenn’s ears. In truth, it was more like He spoke around Stenn, rather than at him. It’s not like I knew what he was saying anyway. Only the Declarers knew.

Her newest scheme foiled, Eym kept scowling and started to angrily pick at the grass beneath her.

I just wanted to know if I’d grow up to be somebody great, she said, somebody like you, Father. I want to be in history books one day. It was there that Eym’s mother and Stenn’s wife, Tania, started to come through. A big heart and bigger dreams was what drew the lowborn Stenn to the only daughter of a wealthy merchant. It was also those qualities that kept Stenn coming back no matter how many times Tania’s father shooed him away like a wandering, flea-bitten dog. Even back then, Stenn knew that he was hardly better than a hired thug when he worked for the Ministry. And in general, Knights weren’t seen in a very good light by regular folks. To make things even worse, Stenn had no family name or legacy to vouch for his character. In the end, Stenn had to admit that he was as close to being a dirty, homeless dog as a man could be. But Tania was persistent. It was a special skill of hers. Her endless energy for life rubbed off on her father eventually, so much so that the old man eventually became Stenn’s father-in-law. Tania’s energy must have infected Stenn as well and both he and Tania were happy to see that it passed to their daughter as well.

You don’t need some stupid tortoise to tell you that you will, Stenn said.

Stupid? Eym gasped, I thought you said He could see all around the world as He slept. That’s bloody brilliant.

Luckily, Stenn’s daughter wasn’t knowledgeable enough in the world of nuisances and sarcastic jabs; otherwise she might have taken that opportunity to turn Stenn’s words against him. If she