There is a wonderful group called “The Fairy-Tale Reserve,” where writers and artists play entertaining literary games: they write tales and draw pictures on a given theme. On my birthday a New Year game began, the idea being that the tale-and-picture should be created according to a recipe sent to each participant. I could not help joining in, taking the start date as a sign))
This is the recipe I received:
A fairy-tale recipe for the New Year game in The Fairy-Tale Reserve.
The main ingredient, also the focus of the plot (the main hero / object / event around which the story is built) — An Appearance
Spices or important ingredients (characters / objects / events involved in the main plot) — Great Maskauekuen, a thread, an escape.
Other seasonings (characters / objects / actions / events mentioned along the way or playing secondary roles) — Soyala, a crash.
Maskauekuen and Soyala are Native American names.
And this is what I came up with.
“He has appeared!” shouted Soyala, knocking over a heavy oak chair with a crash.
Great Maskauekuen stood in the doorway with his head lowered.
“Where is your vaunted greatness?” Soyala demanded, twisting her lips until she looked like a spiteful coyote. Her black braids curled over her shoulders like two snakes.
Maskauekuen stepped back, as if frightened by the poison of those snakes.
“Where have you been all these days? Why did you leave me alone in this cold weather, without help and, most importantly, without the red thread you promised to bring a month ago, so that I might finally tie it around the ankle of my right foot, as the custom of our ancestors commands?! I am a married woman now!”
Maskauekuen was silent.
His face, the color of a ripe melon too much touched by the midday sun, turned to stone. With unblinking eyes he looked at the formidable woman, who at that moment reminded him of an old witch, and thought that when he had left to bury the hatchet — having first exchanged it for the proud honor of involvement at the shop behind the old tavern, on the edge of the hemp field where the wigwam of wandering hunters stood — that witch had been young and tender.
Maskauekuen had only gone into the tavern for a minute that day to ask after the health of the innkeeper, a man-rock whose hands seemed carved from red stone.
Of course, the man-mountain was far from Maskauekuen’s greatness, for everyone knew that the Great One had inherited his strength and agility from his father, chief of the glorious tribe of the Red-Cheeked.
Although, to be honest, this greatness was not at all visible to an outside observer; it existed only in the minds of the colony’s inhabitants. But after all, eyes are located in the head, and the head ordered them to see the power and strength of the chief’s son and to call him Great.
Having slapped one another on the shoulders and rubbed noses and foreheads, as ancestral traditions required, the Great One and the innkeeper sat on the tavern threshold to smoke a pipe and be silent about life.
The pipe was especially sweet that day, and the silence profound. Thus a week flew by. Then Maskauekuen slowly rose and said:
“I shall go.”
With heavy steps he walked around the tavern and pushed open the half-closed door of the shop.
At the table sat an old woman, the mother of the shopkeeper who had gone to the neighboring reservation for new hatchets at the end of the year before last and had never returned. Everyone already understood that it had been an escape. Everyone except the old mother. And although there had long been nothing in the shop, the old woman came there every day and stared without blinking out of the window at the dusty road leading beyond the mountains, where her son had gone in search of new hatchets for a better life. Had he found anything, or was he still searching?
Tears rolled from the old woman’s tired eyes, ran down her face, dripped onto the floor, and the boards of gray eucalyptus — cut down back when the mother’s cheeks were still firm and red — the boards from which the shop floor had been made, had blackened from those tears.
“Where can I get the hatchet that urgently needs to be buried in order to end the feud between the two territories? Only from the neighbors can one obtain threads spun from llama wool, without which no Red-Cheeked person can manage!” the visitor silently asked.
But the old woman was silent too, and only cloudy gray tears rolled down her sunken cheeks.
“I will go to the wanderers,” thought Maskauekuen. “They may be able to trade a hatchet for whiskey.” Though he had no whiskey either. But had he not been called Great for a reason?
Maskauekuen left the shop and turned back to the tavern. The man-mountain silently rose to meet him, again patted his shoulders, again rubbed forehead to forehead with the visitor and asked:
“What do you want, Great One? To smoke another pipe?”
But Maskauekuen shook his head first from right to left, then from left to right, and silently pointed to a dusty bottle in the wooden cupboard in the far corner.
“I shall give you whiskey, but what will you give me in return, Great One? How does one value the priceless?” asked the innkeeper.
“I shall exchange this bottle for a hatchet from the wanderers in the hemp field, and then I shall bury the hatchet. Then the war with the neighbors will end, and we shall be able to obtain from them threads spun from the wool of llamas caught by hunters. And you will be able to be proud of your involvement. What can be more precious than pride?” Maskauekuen replied.
“You are great and wise,” said the innkeeper, and handed him the bottle to which the Great One’s thumb pointed.
Tucking the whiskey into the fold of his sleeve, Maskauekuen set off toward the field.
A dry wind was blowing, carrying the scents of the hemp field along the street, mixing them with dust and felting the black hair of the great Red-Cheeked into a strong mat.
He walked slowly and majestically, feeling with every step the importance of his mission and the weight in his sleeve.
At the edge of the field the Great One stopped, filled with grandeur, closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Only after standing so for several hours, breathing with his full chest, did Maskauekuen step toward the wigwam of the wandering hunters.
There were two of them. A red-haired lad thin as a bow’s arrow — surely his mother had been related to a steppe fox — and a sturdy man with skin the color of a bronze sunset.
Both silently looked at Maskauekuen, and in their gazes there was neither understanding of their happiness nor awareness of the greatness of the moment.
Maskauekuen too was silent; only his eyes, with black pupils dissolved in coal-dark circles and shaded by marble veins, slowly revolved, as if feeling and assessing everything inside the wigwam.
There was no hatchet here either.
Without saying a word, Maskauekuen left the wigwam, sat down in the middle of the hemp field, pulled the bottle from the fold of his sleeve, noting with surprise that its dust had settled on the sleeve, bit through the cork with strong teeth and, throwing back his head, began to drink. The burning liquid heated his throat, his sharp Adam’s apple moved like the pendulum of an old clock, and with each swallow Maskauekuen stopped thinking about the hatchet not yet buried, the feud not yet ended, the llama-wool thread not obtained, the reason for the innkeeper’s pride disappearing with every drop, and the one thing that remained — escape after the runaway shopkeeper, who, apparently, had also failed to find any hatchets.
But Maskauekuen was great. And that greatness did not allow him to take the cowardly path.
He stood and reluctantly, with difficulty moving his feet, went home. Slowly he climbed the creaking steps, pushed the heavy door with effort and entered...
Soyala knocked over the chair with a crash. The snakes of her braids flew above her head:
“You have appeared?!!!”
