Transformation

Transformation

         “You have done a terrible and unforgivable deed, and the People will not abide it.”  With these words, the head elder nodded to the guard that held his leash.  He was jerked backward by the throat.  At the same time, the other guard slammed the shaft of his spear against the back of the young man’s knees, forcing him to a kneeling position.
         “The Council has spoken, and you shall be banished from the People, never to return upon pain of death,” said the head elder, her eyes blazing with fierce determination.  “Take him deep into the forest and release him to his fate.”  The guards yanked him to his feet and quickly hustled him through the door of the meeting house.  An hour later, he was shoved to his knees again, and he felt the knife cut away the bonds on his wrist.
         “Go now, and never return, or I will personally cut out your liver,” said one of the guards in a low, menacing murmur.  The young man painfully rose to his feet and staggered forward through the ferns that carpeted the forest floor.  Soon, he was alone.
         He slowly sank into a sitting position, leaning his back against the man-sized root of a tree.  “How could this happen?” he thought.  He remembered the look of horror on the child-girl’s face when she stepped through the door of his lodge and saw what he held in his hands.  Her scream had brought warriors boiling through the door, and before he knew what had happened, he was in front of the Council.
         Certainly, he had known that what he had been doing for many cycles of the moon was forbidden.  “No male shall look upon the written word” was one of the twelve laws of the People.  But when he had stumble across the sacred scroll while cleaning the matron’s sleeping room, he had been overcome by curiosity and had opened the scroll.  It had become his secret passion.  The men were allowed to hear the readings of parts of the scrolls in Meeting, and being of somewhat sharper intellect than most of his peers, it didn’t take him many cleaning days to decipher the lines of symbols.  He had begun to experiment with forming the symbols using a piece of charcoal from the fire, but only during prayer time, when he was sure nobody would intrude on his privacy.  Disastrously, the young girl had burst in on him, apparently playing a hiding game instead of attending her prayers.
         Shivering now, with his bare back against the rough bark of the tree root, he knew that he would surely die.  Men could not survive alone in the forest.  It was a truth he had absorbed with his mother’s milk. No food, no clothing, no shelter, and above all, no People, would finish him within a few days.  He could not provide these things for himself, for that was the domain of the women.  Yet, how did they bring forth these blessings?  Surely, if he could teach himself to read the sacred symbols, he could learn to provide for himself.
         He stood, and began to walk through the woods again, paying little attention to where he was going.  He was thinking of what he had read in the scroll.  Much of it had not made sense to him, but he remembered many references to “the power of the order of the symbols”.  When he had experimented with forming the symbols, he had felt a strange compulsion to place the symbols in a certain order, but his efforts had yielded only jumbled and disconnected meanings.
         His feet seemed to come to a halt of their own accord, and when he focused on his surroundings, he saw that he was standing at the edge of an open glade, covered with low growing greenery that had tiny, star-like white flowers.  A small brook meandered through the clearing, and on the far side of the glade, where a hillside sloped up from the stream, there was a cave formed by an overhanging flat boulder.  Perhaps this, at least, would be some shelter.
         As he stepped under the overhang, his eyes were drawn upward.  On the ceiling formed by the flat slab of rock were rows of the sacred symbols!  Craning his neck, he tried to make out the meanings, but when he felt he was close to understanding, his eyes would blur and the idea would slip away.  Frustrated, he realized that he was exhausted.  His arms and legs ached from his rough handling by the guards.  He laid down on the powdery dirt floor of the cave, and fell into a deep and troubled sleep.
         As he floated back to consciousness a considerable time later, he noticed that he was staring straight up at the symbols.  In his groggy condition, he didn’t try to form thoughts from the symbols, he just let his mind drift.  Suddenly, he realized that he was seeing a complete message in the symbols.  “The power of the symbols comes from the gods,” he read.  “To release this power, you must only trust.”
         Without really thinking about it, he rose to a cross-legged position, and began to form symbols in the dirt.  When he had finished, he read what he had written. “Let there be warmth.”  He closed his eyes, and put away all thoughts.  When he opened them again, he saw that where he had written the symbols, a small fire now crackled and popped, and he felt the warmth of the flames.  A feeling of power surged through him, and for the first time in his life, he knew great happiness.
         He stood and walked out into the glade, and pulling up tufts of flowers, he exposed the rich soil underneath.  Again he put away his thoughts, and began forming symbols in the dirt.  He closed his eyes and felt the power flow through him.  Minutes later, he opened his eyes and beheld a small patch of tall corn plants where the symbols had been, the ears fat and the silks gone brown and crinkled.  He plucked one and shucked it, then when he bit into the kernels, delicious sweetness filled his mouth.  Standing there chewing, he looked slowly around the glade, and smiled.
         Two weeks later, the young man, now transformed, stood in the mouth of the cave and surveyed his beautiful glade.  He was dressed in a long flowing robe of the finest silk, with sacred symbols embroidered around the hem.  Fruit trees blossomed around the edge of the glade, and orderly rows of vegetables filled it’s center.  Trout leapt in the pools of the brook.  The cave floor was covered with rich, textured carpets, and there were furnishings of glowing wood and soft cushions.
         Now that he knew the secret to the sacred symbols, he felt no need to return to the People, and to their narrow, constrictive laws.  He viewed the world the gods had created, and he was happy.