Oontab [Episode 5]

There was a time men did not die. They just lived and lived and lived eternally.

Then Manlum the first god of light coveted Ouwl'El's - the god of gods - power and set out to create his own existence - No'n-existence - feeding on the innocence of the existence Ouwl'El made with the strands of his hair as he sang.

And so men began to lose sight of life and living, so they could only live a few thousands of years.

And Manlum, seeking to obliterate all men, gave them haughty suggestions and selfish desires, so that they began to hate and envy themselves.

So the gods held a meeting to cause men to turn their hearts once again towards eternity. This is when the gods decided to use their wrath and wonder to stir men to remember who they were by damning those who trespassed against them to Manlum's torment and rewarding those who lived well with continuous life in another existence, while man's existence was purged of its ills.

It was feared among the gods, that in many years to come, man would no longer have the will to even exist anymore, as No'n-existence ate up the children of Ouwl'El through Manlum's deception.

So there was confusion in heaven and many of the gods tried to create their own existence in order to fix the first existence. Only a few of them have not been corrupted by Manlum's dark heart.

Ouwl'El, ashamed of the chaos in heaven, cut off the strands of his hair, hung them by the gate of heaven, and took hiding in one of the existences.
Hundreds of thousands of years later, no one knows where or who he is. Perhaps he is a wind, a sand or a water, we will never know, but whispers in heaven have it that he will sing again.

And fire is the sign.


~ Rotyuk, son of Ouwl'El, lost writings of Rotyuk.

Greda

“You understand the importance of what I am saying, do you not?” King Mogg asked. The old man, 80 years old, was heavily bearded; it covered his skinny body up to his arms’ length and his trunk’s width when he stood up. He wore coverings from the lustrous leaves of a rare palm tree, clothing as much as his chest down to just below his knees; a kingly cape woven out of the small fibers of a tree whose leaves were soft when dry (Tuki), covering the rest of his body. This distinguished him from the other people. The other people wore clothes as it suited them, more people wearing animal clothing than those wearing plant clothing, being that there were only but a few kinds of animals in the village. In fact, dogs and goats, chickens and rats were the most common, even though they were becoming extinct, and only from goats’ skins were the people permitted to make clothing out of. 

Most of the people avoided the king’s kind of material, because it was the King’s, it was unbecoming to wear similar clothing to that of the King. King Mogg sniffed hard to draw in the mucus that had gathered in his nostrils over the chilly night, until it sounded like a grunt. Still waiting for a reply from the other end of the discussion he seemed to be concluding, the King added, “Mmmm?” A wordless question, beckoning further.

Prince Greda, the King’s son, nodded. King Mogg continued

“The throne awaits you…” Greda had snatched another mango from the tray and taken a huge, slow bite; then he sat up, briefly glancing at the old man. Then he turned and looked. The king hesitated.

“I’m listening, Father.” Prince Greda said.

The King continued, “I want only one thing from you: I want you to lead my…your people and not merely be their leader or their king. I am saying it this way because my years have taught me that ‘leader’ is only a title if a man has not led.

“Very soon, you will engage in special training for your coronation, events more difficult than you had it when you were younger, and I want you not only to be prepared for the events, but for the coming kingdom, which is you.”

Silence.

A cough, then, “I want you to be strong and even though your council is there to advise you, you are at liberty to make the final decision at anything, even matters of the gods, but of course you must obey them at any cost…”

Prince Greda rubbed his palm over his face and grumbled under his breath. From the corner of his right eye he saw the chief palace guard flexing his macho like an animate statue at the entrance; the guard turned, stretched his head out through the curtain as though he had heard something alien, then he turned and flexed again, gritting his teeth and creating a small bulge at the sides of his face. There was something dark about Kanaka. Or maybe he felt so because he disliked the guard.

Prince Greda had a floundering relationship with his father. This was not as much due to the fact that he was just 18 years of age, a hot headed youth with many misguided impulses, as the actual fact that he was unsatisfied with how his father treated him; like a child. Apart from that, he could not see a King in his father; the one which he had heard told in stories about Gardutkar. To him, there was nothing fascinating about those stories, since the gods were responsible for the prosperity of the land. 

And the dead would look upon Gardutkar from beyond and spit and shake their heads in disappointment, as the tales of the ancestors faded from the mouths of the old men, and as the babies would live lives never knowing who they were; this is what Greda lamented.

He had grown to understand life from a thrill that he had only imagined. Ironically, this thrill was inspired by the stories of his father; how he had rescued what was left of the land from war and death among his people, and how he was made King. However, the stories were not befitting for a now slow old man lacking of spirit.

Prince Greda was an angry young man. He boiled hotter when one day, King Mogg had referred to Kanaka the Chief palace guard as Oontab, a title meant for the King's son. He began to do this more frequently, though inadvertently because he seemed to be trying to stop it, correcting himself several times that it happened. It became quite curious; it was the tradition of the people to call the King’s son “Oontab”, which means “keeper of the King’s household”; a title that gives the King's son, besides the Queen, an almost equal command of Gardutkar which is the household of the king. The title was to be revered. That was the confusion that had built over Prince Greda’s mind. Queen Shere had heard it too, once or twice and she also wondered.

Prince Greda, even though he was the Oontab by inheritance, came to covet the title and frowned at how it was losing its importance. But King Mogg had not see a king in him.

There were so many questions left unanswered. The stories his father had told him when he was younger had become meaningless as he got older. His best friends shared the burning in his heart, and they were together driven by a passion to find answers, even if it inspired them to be rebellious.

“Greda”, King Mogg would say to him as a child, “no one knows these tales the way I am telling you,” then he would rub his head and begin with the words, “In a certain time, in a certain place, on a certain hill…”

The phrase had once sparked a fire of wonder in Greda’s imagination as the missing pieces of the words cried out to be filled.

“…And that is how the tortoise got his shell cracked…” What is a tortoise?

“…And that is why the snake crawls on its belly…” Where did all the snakes go?

“…And the gods cried till they watered the earth with their tears, and plants began to grow again…” The gods cry?

A burning desire to find, be and do something new and spectacular drove Greda, even to error.

The Spokesman said that the gods were not to be questioned, so the people revered the gods in order to avoid their wrath and survive, hoping one day to see the gods when they pass on to join the other ancestors as they visit the beyond.

So it was only a matter of Greda's increasingly burning curiosity before he would tresspass against the gods.

Eventually. One day at a time.

When Prince Greda would leave the palace, he would head out into the evening to seek the company of his friends. Prince Greda had almost completely been absent from the conversation with his father, and when he sighed, the next thing he heard his father say, “Have you heard me, Grerrededa?”

With another thankful sigh, he replied, “Yes father.”

Shere

The Queen. Shere. She was beautiful, even in her old age, 65 years. She was no longer as graceful as she used to be in walking and was stalling in her speech as well, yet she had long black hair that was the garment for the head of her still beautiful heart. Her eyes were sinking but the eyes of her heart still had an audacious bulge, seeing farther than warriors on a raid and seeing more colors than a child can recognize; the one hers once had. The jewels on her hands and feet, and the crown on her head adorned her black skin, which was flaking mildly as though purposefully dried and burnt beneath the sun, and it made her look as willful as she was at heart; the same skin that had been the envy of many of her friends when she had been younger. She was the voice that kept peace in the village, and she stood out like a hill to be admired by other women in Gardutkar. Even though she did not have the best out of life; orphaned as a child, an arranged marriage, inability to give birth, and enduring a miserable wait after which the prince was born, then a permanently unyielding womb, she was the epitome of joy without condition that Gardutkar sought to achieve for the years of her reign with the King. She was a kind woman and handled her atmosphere with a gentle touch and with grace. It was like the plants responded to her touch, because when she set up a garden herself, it bloomed and blossomed and glowed and thumped with the beat of her heart.

The only thorn dug deep in her flesh was the boy.

“My King”, started Queen Shere one day to her husband.

“Yes?”

“Is anything…” she paused, then, “you have been recently quite enchanted with something or someone these days… What is it?”

“What do you mean?” King Mogg inquired, knowing that she knew exactly what was happening even though she was asking.

She sighed, feeling uncomfortable talking about it, “My King, you do not refer to your son as Oontab… err… maybe even not as much as you do your new palace guard, Kanaka.” Then she sighed again. She had not planned to divulge so easily, but then she found herself mentioning the insignificant palace guard.

The King was silent. She pressed on, looking at his frown marks underneath both his cheeks.

“Won’t you say something? The last time you called someone Oontab that same way, it was that fatherless baby you found lying around after the war.” She said, with burning contempt in her voice, at the new subject of her speech.

“Lioness, I am not in the mood to exchange words with you today. I made a few mistakes several times in my speech…look, we are both getting old -” King Mogg referred to her by the name ‘Lioness’, an animal he had never seen, but had been told about by his father. It was known for its royalty, glamour, bravery and pride in the animal kingdom; in essence, it was the queen of all the animals.

He was avoiding her eyes, it could have been normal, since she was a woman, but she was his wife so that was worth her noticing.

“But it calls for alarm that you would make such a mistake many times. Maybe it is at the core of your feelings. Even a mad man would know -”

“Look, people make mistakes.” King Mogg was now raising his voice.

Queen Shere mellowed. She gave away her accusatory tone and softened her face to a smile to mollify the King, now starting to think that she had made a mistake by asking in the first place.

“My King, I mean no offence, but all I am saying is that you honor your son, the prince, and make him feel like he belongs to the royal family; let him know what it means to be King. He needs to be in proper shape before the coronation, and recently, he seems not to be, at least from what he has been saying.”

After a short pause, King Mogg decided he wanted to know what his only son would not tell him as he would his mother. Mothers always have that special bond with sons more than fathers do.

“What has he been saying?"

She sighed. She would not let that out; at least not now.

“He just wants to be a great king, and I want him to be an even better king that you have turned out to be. Don’t you want that too?” She gently rubbed the back of his hands to make her words seem as gentle as possible.

King Mogg hesitated for a long time, struggling to dismiss the lingering question,  and then he finally smiled and sighed saying, “Well, of course I do! Who wouldn’t want his son to be better than he is as a father?”

“A better king?”

“Yes, king.”

Queen Shere could not make much of a positive response from King Mogg, but she only assumed that he meant what he had just said concerning her son, Prince Greda.

To be continued... 


- Telsum Bini