The pillars of creation

Oba peered around in the dark barn and saw the heavy steel scoop shovel leaning against the wall.

"I'll scoop it, Mama. You go back to your spinning, and I'll scoop the barn good."

He didn't exactly know how he was going to scoop the solid frozen muck, only that he had to.

"Get started now," she huffed. "Use what light is left of the day. When it gets dark, then I want you to go to town to get me some medicine from Lathea.»

Now he knew why she had come to the barn looking for him.

"My knees is aching me again," she complained, as if she wanted to cut off any objection he might voice, even though he never did. He thought it, though. She always seemed to know what he was thinking.

Today you can get started in the bam, and tomorrow you can go back to scraping the muck all the way down until you clean it all out. Before the day wears on, though, I want you to go get my medicine."

Oba pulled on his ear as he cast his gaze toward the ground. He didn't like going to see Lathea, the woman with the cures. He didn't like her. She always looked at him like he was a worm. She was mean as rake. Worse, she was a sorceress.

If Lathea didn't like someone, they suffered for it. Everybody was afraid of Lathea, so Oba didn't feel so singled out. Still, though, he didn't like going to see her.

"I will, Mama. I'll fetch your medicine. And don't you worry, I'll get to work at scraping the muck out, just like you said."

"I have to tell you every little thing, don't I, Oba?" Her glare burned into him. "I don't know why I bothered raising such a worthless bastard boy," she added under her breath. "Should have done what Lathea told me, in the beginning."

Oba heard her say this often, when she was feeling sorry for herself, sorry that no suitors came around anymore, sorry that none had wanted to marry her. Oba was a curse she bore with bitter regret. A bastard child who'd brought her trouble from the first. If not for Oba, maybe she would have gotten herself a husband to provide for her.

"And don't you be staying in town with any foolishness."

"I won't, Mama. I'm sorry that your knees are bad today."

She whacked him with the stick. "They wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to follow around a big dumb ox seeing that he does what he should already be doing."

"Yes, Mama."

"Did you get the eggs?"

"Yes, Mama."

She eyed him suspiciously, then pulled a coin from her flaxen apron. "Tell Lathea to make up a remedy for you, too, along with my medicine. Maybe we can yet rid you of the Keeper's evil. If we could get the evil out of you, maybe you wouldn't be so worthless."

His mother, from time to time, sought to purge him of what she believed to be his evil nature. She tried all sorts of potions. When he was little she had often forced him to drink burning powder she mixed with soapy water; then she would lock him in a pen in the barn, hoping the otherworldly evil wouldn't like being burned and locked up both, and would flee his restrained earthly body.

His pen didn't have slats, like the pens for the animals did. It was made of solid boards. In the summer it was an oven. When she made him take burning powder and then dragged him by the arm and locked him in the pen, he near to died of terror that she'd never let him out, or never let him have a drink of water. He welcomed the beatings she would give him to try to silence his screams, just to be let out.

"You buy my medicine from Lathea, and a remedy for you." His mother held up the small silver coin as her eyes narrowed into a spiteful squint. "And don't you go wasting any of this on women."

Oba felt his ears heating. Each time his mother sent him to buy something, whether medicine or leather work or pottery or supplies, she always admonished him not to waste the money on women.

He knew that when she told him not to waste it on women, she was mocking him.

Oba didn't have the courage to say much of anything to women. He always bought what his mother said to buy. He never once wasted it on anything-he feared his mother's wrath.

He hated that she always told him not to waste the money when he never did. It made him feel like she thought he was intending to do wrong even though he wasn't. It made him guilty even though he had done no wrong. It made what was in his thoughts, even if he didn't have them, a crime.

He tugged on a burning ear. "I won't waste it, Mama."

"And dress respectable, not like some dumb ox. You already reflect badly enough on me."

"I will, Mama. You'll see."

Oba ran around to the house and fetched his felt cap and brown woolen jacket for his journey to Gretton, a couple miles northwest. She watched him carefully hang them on a peg, where they would stay clean until he was ready to go to town.