The Sticks and Stones God by Douglas R Turek

The Sticks and Stones God
by Douglas R. Turek

The very first sensation I ever had was brief and confusing, but joyous. A cool breeze blew across my self, and I became aware of the fact that I had a body. I did not know who or what I was, nor did I know enough to care. A cool breeze blew, and I felt it. I then sank back into the sleep that I had sprung from, without dreams or thought.

Some time later, I felt my second sensation. Heat poured into my body. I felt the beginning of what I would later understand as pain. Sleep again.
On my third awakening, I was more aware, and the sensations flowing into me gave rise to questions. I felt more, and so felt more complex. I realized I was blind. How I knew there was light to see is unknown. Gods accept this as part and parcel of their godliness. I felt the presence of someone nearby, though I could not hear them. I was deaf as well. Sleep came, but it was not the dull oblivion I had dissipated into before, but rich and wondrous. A tapestry of abstract thought woven with cool breezes and heat and the vague longing for more senses.

My fourth birth was fantastic. I had eyes, made out of stones, ears formed from little hollows carved into my head, and there were sticks jutting out of my body that were useless but feeling limbs. I stayed awake. I saw an old man sitting before me. He was brown from an unusually bright sun, and nearly naked except for a threadbare garment wrapped around his loins. He knelt before me and dipped his hands into a small wooden bowl. The bowl was filled with clay and he smeared this on my stick arms and legs, as well as the main part of my body. Clay went around my eyes,and I could feel it turn on, become part of my flesh. My eyes seemed to dim at one point and the old man must have sensed this. He reached into another bowl and brought his dripping hand up to my eyes and they were new again. I felt a tightening in them, and I could move them around for the first time. Besides the old man was a small tent made out of animal skins. Other than that, there was nothing but a few bowls in between the old man and myself. They were filled with water, wine, clay, and ash.

When the old man had finished covering my limbs in clay, he dipped a hand in wine, and then in ash, and wiped the resultant goo on my limbs and then poked me in the front of my head three times. My limbs surged with feeling and I moved them for the first time, to touch my new mouth and nostrils.
The smell of the world came upon me. I could smell the old man, the dry leather of the tent, the tartness of the wine and the burnt odor of ash. I could also smell a hint of dried meat and the faint aftertaste of fruit. There was a depressing chalkiness to the taste of the dirt in the air, but I savored it. Even unpleasant sensations felt good to me.
The old man got up and ran into the tent, and returned with a longish piece of wood. He spoke to me for the first time.
"Make the wood burn." He held it before me.
"How?" My first word, and it tasted delicious. As I spoke it, I felt a rush in my head as I acquired the ability to speak merely by trying to do so. It was the first taste of my godhood, and it felt great.
"Think it into burning." I looked at the piece of wood, and I thought about it burning. That thought brought to me knowledge of fire. I could see the wood as a conglomeration of many small pieces of matter, all stuck together. They were spinning and jostling against one another, and I thought about them spinning and jostling faster. The end of the wood burst into flame, and the old man shoved it into my chest. I fell back onto the ground, the stick jutting out of me awkwardly, and sleep consumed me like fire.

When I awoke, it seemed as though some time had passed. I asked myself how long I had been asleep, and the answer came to me. It had been days. The stick was gone, but I still felt the fire in my chest. I had the heart of a god burning within me. I got up and looked around. The old man was sitting in front of the tent, looking at me. He held up his hand. He held a seed.
"You need to eat. Make us a plant. Use this seed. Make it grow, like you made the fire." I walked over to him and took the seed from his hand. I thrust the seed into the ground near the tent and willed it to grow. The ground shook and a massive tree sprung into being, shooting up into the air. Its branches extended out and nearly burst open with leaves and fruit. I felt the growth of the tree as though it were my own body, and the appearance of the fruit woke me up. I reached over to a branch, pulled a piece of fruit off, and ate it. It was delicious. I noticed that I was now several feet taller, but proportionally thinner. I pulled down several pieces of fruit for the old man, who dug into them hungrily, and then I set about eating my fill. I ate most of what was left on the tree, but left a few more meals worth for the old man. I took the seeds from another piece of fruit, and went about making an orchard around the old man's tent.

I considered him. He was a frail old man, sunburnt and sickly looking, but he was obviously a powerful magical being. My godlike sense of immediate knowledge did not tell me anything about him, and so I knew he had magic, but I could not discern its nature. I finished making the orchard, and I now towered over the old man. He waved me over. I gathered up an armful of fruit and sat near him, eating while he talked.
"I brought you to life with my magic, and I need you to do some things for me. I need a river, a loom, and I want to eat meat. Whenever you create something, you grow strong with the power it takes to make that thing. Every time you make life, you gain more life. Make me also an oven so I can cook the meat." I nearly laughed at him, giving me orders like that, but I knew that I would comply.

I spread my senses far and wide, seeking the best possible source for a river. There was a mountain some distance away, just at the horizon, and I figured out the best course for the river, which was a slightly downhill and twisting course. I willed a groove into the earth from the mountain past the tent and orchard and onwards to a distant sea, and split the earth beneath the mountain, opening a spring. I could feel, even at a distance, the rush of water down the path I had carved out. It was now just a matter of time before the river came by.

I took one of the fruit trees and split it into planks of wood, which I fashioned into a pen for animals and put it down besides the tent. The old man looked on approvingly. I then willed the dust beneath our feet to form into meat animals, five in all. I put them in the pen. I felt a charge in my body and I acted instinctively. I tore a few branches from another tree and cast them upon the ground. As they landed, I threw my will at them and the formed the shape of a loom, which seemed to grow shinier and darker in the wake of my will. It had transformed into a stronger wood, and was covered in varnish and smoothed itself out before my eyes.
The Old Man went into his tent and emerged with a bundle of lint and tiny scraps and remnants of fabric that he had apparently collected for many years. He placed it before me and loooked up at my face.
"Make for me a spinning wheel. I want to make thread to use in my loom."
"Old Man," I said, "I could simply conjure for you all the clothing you could ever want, made from the most exquisite fabrics imaginable. You needn’t concern yourself with such labor." I looked down at him and I felt something in between pity and duty. He was so small and frail, and yet he had brought me into being.
"What you derive from conjuring, I derive from spinning and weaving. Call it a hobby." Again my god’s awareness brought into my head the concept of hobby, full-bloom in my mind. I understood, and thought it good for him to have some way to occupy his time. I conceded to his request, crafting a spinning wheel for him as I had the loom, and then raising from clay some stocky animals whose fur could be shorn off and spun into thread. I then made the ground send up two bushes that bore large seed pods filled with fine threads of soft fiber. Now the Old Man had more to work with than an old collection of lint and scraps. I felt kindly and proud. He sat down and began spinning thread from his scraps, working in some of the plant fiber. I watched him for awhile, silently collecting information in my head about fabric, weaving, and clothing, but I grew bored and wandered off into the orchard, tasting the fruit.

As I walked, I saw high above me a bird, soaring and circling, occasionally moving its wings to give it another burst of energy. I wondered if I could fly. I was, after all, a god. Try as I might, I could not will myself into the air. I blamed my colossal size; giants must be, by nature, earthbound. I walked back to the Old Man, who busied himself at his loom.
"Why can’t I fly? I am capable of creating things from nothing but dirt, so why can’t I be like a bird?"
"You are an earth god. When I created you, I made you from clay and wood and wine and ash. All those things are from the earth. Had I made you from cloud, you would fly, but then you might not be able to walk."
"And why did you create me anyway?" I could feel a constant flow of faith from the old man, but I could not discern its nature, nor could I see into his mind. It seemed my godknowledge stopped at his skin and could go no further.
"I needed a loom, and I was hungry. My trees died a long time ago, and I was unable to replace them. When the rains stopped, the animals died, the trees withered and went bare, and I have lived here since, hungry and gathering magic." He removed his newly made fabric from his loom and began cutting the cloth with a small knife and sewing it with a small bone needle.
"Without food?"
"Yes. It can be done. I am a sorceror, and living with hunger is one way to gather power. When I had enough, I was able to create a god." He fiddled some more with his sewing needle.
"And that is me?"
"Yes. I made you and named you and you have brought to me a loom and food. I am now well fed and have woven what I needed." He held up a coat. It was woven from thread made from scraps of fabric and plant fibers. It was of so many colors that it looked overall a dull gray. Attached to the back of the coat were two large pieces of fabric cut to look like wings. He put on the coat. "Now, god of my creation, you are to fullfill your purpose and serve me one last time." I had an awful sense of foreboding. Dread stirred the fire in my heart. I wanted to reach out and crush him before he could do anything, but he had already done everything. I could not harm him, even thinking of harming him was painful to think. My godsense could only tell me that he who named me had power over me. My body stiffened, my skin grew tight and uncomfortable, and I felt cold. Mouths opened up all over my body.

"I named you, but I am unable to say your name, because it takes twenty mouths to say your name properly. You, god, have twenty mouths now." His magic infused every cell of my being. I grew hot with pain and cold with fear all at once. A crushing sensation surrounded my body, and my massive body became smaller.
"Say your name, god!" All of my mouths opened up and each said its part of my name. As each one spoke, it closed up forever. I felt old, tired, and weak. My godsense dwindled until I was left with mere senses, and only one small fact manifested in my mind as my godhood disappeared from me. My name had been a spell, carefully constructed. It fed upon my godpower to execute itself. In the end, I had shrunken to a weak old man who lay on the ground before a great gray bird. It flapped its wings and hovered in the air for a moment to speak to me one last time.

"Old Man is your new name, and as I take your godhood, I leave you with my magic. If you make it, perhaps we will meet again on the moon, where gods go to live." He flapped his mighty wings and soared into the sky towards the moon, until I could not see him anymore with my small eyes.
I harvested as much fiber from the bushes as I could, ate a piece of fruit, and knew I could wait. I felt magic growing inside me in tiny increments, and then a river of cool spring water flowed by me.