...For A Fine Revenge To Take

[madwriter]

PROGRESS REPORT

New Words: 1050 on Chapter 1 ("Those Who Came First") Section 2 ("The Dancing Spirits") of Arizona. Yiska and Ooljee are scapegoated for the bloody results of the Zapotec's refusal to accept the results of the formal war.

Total Words: 16750.

Reason For Stopping: A bit of work about the house, then getting ready for the job.

Book Year: 941 B.C.

Mammalian Assistance: Vegas was at his guard post.

Exercise: Walking Tucker around the neighborhood; walking down to campus.

Stimulants: Birthday Homestead Dairy egg nog.

State of the Garden: Our surprise new rose bush has sprung up a third cane a few inches away from the original two. And the strawberry plants, God bless 'em, look like they're doing even better now than before they were dug up. A new one has sprung up away from the original replanted plot, and off all the mounds that once held dead strawberry plants, only one is still plant-empty.

Today's Opening Passage: Sunrise also brought the council’s summons to Yiska and Ooljee. The long timber lodge was a smoldering ruin, but the elder stubbornly gathered amid the charred logs to their normal places around the central hearth that had been the lodge’s center. Many of the warriors were there too, most showing obvious signs of fatigue but still standing straight with spears at the ready. Ooljee noticed that they were warily alternating their gazes between the council and her and Yiska.

Darling Du Jour: Ooljee liked the Olmecs, but she had never felt totally comfortable among them. While they were a grand people—and maybe could be again after the insurrections were finished—they spoke a different language, were born from a different culture and world. They said they came from the east and told the grisly story that the first people were crafted from stolen, sacrificed blood and ground bones from the underworld. Ooljee knew her ancestors came from the north, and her first ones were created as spirits in three levels of the underworld, only made flesh from the soil after emerging from a hole in the land many ages later. The names of her distant ancestors Nakuq and Salu were forgotten, but everything she knew of her own origins pointed north towards what was still called the Real Place.

“Bring all the seeds,” she advised her family. “Leave the jade and obsidian—they belong to the place we are leaving.”

Yiska shook his head. “We may need those to trade for food and passage.”

Finally Ooljee accepted her husband’s practicality in this. “But we will not, we will never, trade any of the skystones. They will lead us to our new home.” Yiska bowed his head.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Michener; Ford.