Chapter 4 Giftings

I recalled my first significant year-end gifting came at my nine-year-end. Midyear, when the big storms typically come to our homestead, I had learned the reason Da had dragged the Ænt-wood log to the top of Fork-Rock. Oft-times climbing the hill sized boulder to study Da’s log, I would a’times, lean against it as I read the books I’d borrow from the schoolhouse.  

Da’s Ænt-wood log had been hauled all the way from Moon Lake. I practiced my reading out where no animals came bothering me and I had plenty of light.  The Ænt-wood log was a curious thing. A deep walnut color with streaks of blonde throughout, the log didn’t have the appearance of wood at all. It had no bark and was as hard as rock. I tried carving into it a’times, being unable to leave as much as a scratch. Da said the tree it came from had likely died hundreds of years ago and the species no longer existed alive in any forest. He said legend and lore held that the tree was a ‘sentient’ tree from back when mægic still existed in the world. Travelers could leave messages by thinking or speaking at the tree as they would pass and the message would be passed to the right traveler as they in turn would pass by. What a brilliant thing that would be, sure certain.

That summer I also learned why Da put the log atop Fork Rock. Many a time when thundering storms rolled across our homestead, Da would step out under the back eaves and stare up at the Ænt-wood log. Then, one day, there came a strong storm. Winds were howling and the animals were more than a little restive in the barn. The grey-green clouds were roiling and flashes filled the entire orange and grey sky. After a time, the thundering clouds were clearly over the cottage. I knew Da would be up on the roof come morn fixing the tiles.

 And then it happened. 

Our house rattled and there came a thundering and a boom near akin to the Sky-stone crashing at Moon Lake. I jumped and drew a great breath. Da just stood with a wide smile across his face. I went to the window to spy why he smiled and saw that the Ænt-wood log was no more! I could not understand why Da would smile as a Sky-bolt had just shattered the Ænt-wood log.

In the coming two fortnights, Da did a strange thing. He worked each day and well into the night in his barn workshop. And stranger still, he kept the door shut tight and would not allow me in.

He had me do my chores and some of his as well. We ate tuber and carrots and onions stew most days as he did not hunt. I would snare a waterfowl on occasion and he would smile at my cleverness and add it to the stew or spit roast it. Most suns, during this time, he simply left me to my own devices. Some suns I would go to Grayce’s and get a good meal in return for some simple chores.

It came to be a full moon and a fortnight later and one eve I was out at the chop block. I had snared a large waterfowl and it would make Da proud if I chopped its head and gut it, I thought. I would pull its feathers and butcher it myself for the roast. But I didn’t get that far. Using Da’s double bladed dirk, and much too large for a nine-years sized hand, my eyes went wide as the blade slid easily through the fowl’s neck… then through my left hand taking my littlest finger with it. I didn’t feel a thing with the blade being so sharp. But when I saw it, my eyes went wide and I screamed, “Daaa” at the top of my lungs. 

The barn door quickly slid open and Da came to me, straightaway. He assessed the situation, grabbed my wrist, squeezed my finger tight, and carried me into the cottage. He cleaned the cut as I stared on in disbelief at my missing finger. Da pulled a covered cup from the high cupboard and opened its lid. With his finger, he reached in and scooped an unguent out and smeared it all about my hand where my finger once sat. With a paring knife from the counter, he trimmed some jagged skin from my finger and squeezed it tight once again. The balm he used both stemmed the bleeding and made my hand go numb. He then calmly proceeded to sew the gap were my finger once lay. Folding the remaining skin over and stitching it closed. 

I said nothing. 

He said nothing. 

I never pulled away or otherwise impeded his work. Da finished and I promptly fell into a deep sleep. After a bit and waking suddenly, I sat up with a start. I groaned and examined my hand which was bandaged and was throbbing and it hit me that it really wasn’t a bad dream. 

 “Would ye be ready to eat some roast fowl, I’ve beans and tubers, as well?” 

Life went on.

Though they happened at each year’s end, thirteen-year-end had brought my most special gifting of all. Da brought me to Argo’s Smithy. This day Da shared with me his secret of the Ænt-wood log and his three-fortnight of nonstop working in his shop in the barn. Placed on a work table in the middle of the Smithy lay a long object. Nearly as long as I was tall and covered with a leather wrap. Afore he let me uncover it though, he told me the story of the Ænt-wood log.

“Arias, when we found the Ænt-wood tree up at Moon Lake, I told ye me Da had carved me own bow from Ænt-wood and that made it me most prized possession,” Da began.

“Yea, Da, I remember. Have you made me a bow?” anticipation clear in my voice.

A twinkle in his eye, he ignored my question.

“After my Da gave me my bow, he taught me about Ænt-wood. You saw that it was hard as rock and no knife, nor saw, nor axe will make nary a mark or dent in the wood, this is true. ‘Cept in two manners as he knew,” he elaborated. Argo leaned back against his shops work-table, listening to Da as well.

I knew not to interrupt at this point as Da was clearly in storytelling mode and no rushing would get me closer to revealing my year-end gifting. So, being the wiser lad that he’d said I had become this year, I encouraged him to continue. “Tell me Da, what you mean about the Ænt-wood?” 

“I drew the Ænt-wood log up to the top of Fork-Rock and waited. Patience it took, though me hands were aching to work it. I didn’t know if me Da had been telling me just a story, ye see. Sky-bolts he said, will let ye work the Ænt-wood best.” He inhaled, pausing and tapping his fingers against his thigh before he added, “And then it happened, by putting the Ænt-wood log to the highest point at homestead, the storms Sky-bolt was made to strike it. And when it did the log splintered into many pieces. Some were long and tall pieces and some were smaller and this gave me what I needed. Ye see, this is one way to make the Ænt-wood become more like other woods for a time. For three fortnight after the fierce strike from the Sky-bolt, I was able to carve the special wood. In those suns, I worked the Ænt-wood. I made the hilts for yer knives, the board and pieces for the Schäaken game and a few other pieces as well.”

Hearing Da recite his tale, I now understood that the year-end giftings from Da were indeed special and unique.

“The time ye can work the wood does not last and by the time ye cut yer finger from yer hand, I could work the Ænt-wood no more. The many pieces became as if they were rock once more,” he said. “But, there is more to this story and why we are here now with my good friend Argo.

 “Arias, lad, the Sky-stone we found all those years past plays a part in this as well. Using forge and smelting fires, Argo is able to separate the metals from the slag of the Sky-stone. The metals he tirelessly forged and folded and strengthened in. The properties of the metal when folded and pounded together has made the best blade known to either of us and are what your dirk and throw-knife are made from.”

Aghast that Da and Argo would do such things for me was humbling. Finally, I came to my senses and rose to shake Argo’s large hand profusely.

“It has been my pleasure to work these new and marvelous metals for you,” his voice always deep and melodic and more suited to chanteur than a smithy, I have always thought. “And Ètœn has gifted me a bit of the metal for my own purposes as well. And now, Arias lad, we’ve outdone ourselves in this new project. Go ahead then and uncover your year-end gifting.”

Making my way slowly to the worktable, I pulled away the leather wrap. 

Wonderment. 

“My Drægon’s tooth, oh, and is that the Drægon’s Firestone as well, Da?”

“Aye. And a little something more of you as well.” pointing to the center of the Bo. 

In front of me lay a staff near as long as I was tall. The Bo lay there dark with blonde layering and smooth as a riverstone. At one end, the top I suspected, was the white ‘Drægon’s tooth’ I’d found on Moon Lake beach and on the other end it held the long ruby ‘Drægon’s Firestone’. It was the very one I brought out from within the cleft of the boulder struck and split by the mighty Sky-stone. The walking stick held the natural curves, knots and bumps of a stout branch and in the exact center of the staff sat what appeared to be a piece of shining ivory embedded into the wood itself. Just below the Drægon’s tooth on one end and below the Drægon’s Firestone on the other end were a few elaborately carved runes. Da said they were from an old chest a friend had given him to hold valuables. He had always fancied the runes upon the box.

With pride, I’d never afore seen in Da, he explained how he and Argo had made the staff. “Though Moor and I have been training you to use a fighting staff, to this point you have not had the real thing. This is called a Bojutsu staff, or ‘Bo’, and is truly both a staff and a mighty fighting weapon.”

I gasped and touched the staff lightly with my fingers. 

“In its making, the only other way that the Ænt-wood can be bent to yer will, is what Argo and I have done for this year-end’s gifting,” placing his great hands upon my shoulders from behind. “Argo set up the tools as we needed. He built a jig to hold the staff tight and sit centered over his smelting flame. As ye know, yer Drægon’s tooth and the Drægon’s Firestone were shaped each a bit like a dagger, iffin’ ye will. This gave me the idea of embedding the stones directly into the Bo-staff at each end. They are each pointed to one end and as long as me hand, or near about. Anyways, Argo got the smelting fire roaring with two spikes in it and the center of the stick about three hands above it and with the spikes white-hot at their heads, me and Argo pushed the spikes into each end at the same time.  I’d swear the Ænt-wood screamed as we pushed and the staff split into three fingers at each end and then we each stabbed yer Drægon’s tooth and Drægon’s fire into the split ends. While this was a happening, just as I thought it might, the center of the stick above the smelting fire opened in a crack and I placed a piece of your finger bone, the one that ye cut clean off yer hand, and stuck it right in the crack. Argo picked up the staff and put it into his water trough and the staff likened to take life!  It grabbed them Drægon’s stones and yer finger bone and squeezed them tight into itself to become part of the wood itself, I reckon. And now you can clearly see bits of the Drægon’s tooth and Drægon Firestone and your finger bone through the cracks.”

It lay there, smooth and varnished and all about finished to a fine sheen, but Da said they didn’t do any of that, it was just finished that way when the firing and dousing was done.

I was astounded that Da would give me such a thing. He but claimed the stones and the bone were already mine and he and Argo just fancied it up a bit. I knew “fancied it up” meant hours of carving in his shop and my eyes watered a bit at the wonder of Da’s affection for me to have done it at all. And the finger bone, likened to what his Da did for him with his bow.

“Well then go ahead, lad.” Da prodded me. “It’s yer gifting, go ahead and pick it up.”

They had to almost force me to pick it up and when I did, I almost immediately dropped it. As I gripped it again and tighter, in its center to lift it off Argo’s worktable, my whole body warmed from my head to toes. The heat radiated from where my hand grasped the Bo and I swear the Drægons Stones glowed a little. Raising it, immediately it felt like an extension of my own body, truly a part of me.

“Da.” Straight to his eye. “What did it feel like when you lifted your bow for the first time?” He said not a word, but something in his eyes answered my question.

My fourteen-year-end gifting reflected more about training in the art of soldiering as that was what Da knew best from his life. He gifted me a short sword. But again, no ordinary short sword. Argo had forged the blade in the likeness of my dirk and throwing knife with a double edge and a Drægon likeness etched into the center valley of the blade. The length of the blade measured as long as my arm, from shoulder to wrist and less than a hand’s width wide. The edges were honed to a sharpness that would cut a ripe tomato and yet did not nick nor dent or ever lose its edge. It seemed I used the whetstone just for the practice of it. A deadly weapon.

My fifteen-year-end gifting was a compass. Likewise made of the moon metal and Argo had fashioned for it a chain that I could attach to my belt or place around my neck. It too had an intricate Drægon motif on the back etched upon the surface by Argo in the likeness designed by Da. Da tutored me on its use. He lessoned me in reading maps and travelling afar. I knew not why he felt I should understand such things, but ne’er-the-lesser fascinating to me. The compass held a special mægic all its own.

On my sixteen-year-end, Da had spent the previous two days in towne without me and when he announced his arrival back home I came round front from the barn to meet him. There, tethered to the rear of the wagon stood a marvelous horse. It was a sixteen-hand Paint of black-and-white. 

I slowly approached the skittish colt. As Da had taught me, keeping eye-to-eye, I bowed my head ever slightly to him as I approached. At first, he balked, but keeping calm and with a confident gaze upon him, he soon started to settle. Approaching yet closer... as with Bane, I found a connection with the beast somehow. I leaned forward and touched my forehead to his and then reached up to rub his head between his ears. A contented whinny was my reward and his whole body shivered as he relaxed. I knew then that training would come easy with him. Da nodded in appreciation of what I had done. Da explained he was a colt of Bregœ.

Paint, as I immediately named him, turned out to be a very intelligent horse and Da taught me the methods to train him in the likes of Bregœ.  I was becoming an animal whisperer in my own right.