Enjoy.
EEDIUS AND THE DEITY'S BOOK
A long time ago, in the peaceful land of Ca’naan, there was a tree-deity called Pesteratus. He lived in an old oak, up on a tor overlooking a village, but had no objection to appropriating other trees. He was very old, and very bored, and very fond of causing trouble amongst the locals.
It so happened on one occasion that his eye fell upon the shepherd Eedius. This last was an old man, perhaps a little simple-minded as is the way of the country folk, but good hearted and kind. He looked after the sheep all day, and then took them home at night, and tended to every one of them as if they were his own children.
One day Eedius set his sheep out to graze, and sat himself against a tree. He unwrapped his meal – a simple affair of cheese and bread – and was about to partake of it, when he heard a voice.
“Eedius,” it said, “Eedius del Ca’naan!”
The old man turned, and saw a gnarled, wrinkled tree standing by him, where there had certainly been no tree before. Before he could blink, it moved, and Eedius realised it was not a tree.
“Great Spirit of Trees,” he acknowledged respectfully, recognising the deity. “How may one be of service?”
“Well,” said Pesteratus, rather spoiling the effect by suppressing a snigger, “I have a great honour to confer upon you, a – ha! – great honour indeed! I have written –” here he paused dramatically, “a book.”
“Indeed,” said Eedius politely, waiting for the deity to continue.
“Yes, a great book,” said Pesteratus, a little annoyed, “the most important book that shall ever be. And,” suddenly, “I want you to publish it. Seven hundred copies, and greatness shall be yours.”
With that, the spirit disappeared. In his place was a thick stack of paper.
Eedius took up the papers and looked them over. He attempted to read them, but could make no sense of what was said, even though the words were familiar. He decided to think over what the spirit had offered him later.
At evening he put his sheep in the pen again and walked down to the local tavern, stack of papers tucked under his arm. The tavern-keeper was a well-read man, but he could not make sense of the papers, and neither could anyone else at the tavern.
“Nevertheless it would be ill-advised to disobey a tree-spirit,” cautioned the tavern-keeper. “Go to Uuncarya, they have printing offices there. They will help you.”
So the shepherd put his sheep in the care of a neighbour, shouldered his pack and set off towards Uuncarya. It was a small city, but he found it easily enough, and it was not too long before he found himself in the printing office.
“Interesting,” said the manager of the office, looking down his spectacles at the manuscript. “Very interesting. I cannot pretend to understand it, but of course, a tree-spirit is smarter than I. Very well, we will print it, but you must understand you must do the type-setting yourself.”
“Type-setting?” asked Eedius, confused.
“Oh yes. You must set up the type for each page, the number of words and so on, so we have a template to print off on. Jarachaim here will help you.” A sickly-looking youth stepped forward.
So with the aid of the lad, the shepherd set up the type for every single page of the book, inserting little stone pegs with a letter inscribed on each into a page-sized frame. At last there was a type for every single page.
“And now,” said the manager, we may start to print. He took up the stack of types and walked into a giant room, with a machine filling up almost all the available space, ceiling to floor. He put in the types into certain slots, careful to rotate them in the correct direction, and fiddled with the controls. The machine came to life, printing and printing seven hundred copies.
While the machine worked Eedius found himself with some unexpected free time, and wandered around the printing office. At one room, he found a group of youths with slips of paper, flipping through the printed pages and comparing the slips to the pages. To his astonishment, he found that the slips contained the very first and very last sentences of various individual pages.
“Quality control,” said the manager, when asked. “If the first and last sentence is correct, the whole page must have been printed correctly too.” Eedius had to own that it made sense.
At last the pages were printed. But then came another difficulty.
“We lack the facilities to bind the books,” admitted the printing office manager. “Go to Pischon, they will help you there.”
So with a cart full of printed pages, Eedius made the long journey to Pischon. It was a small mercy that it did not rain.
Pischon was a big city, and Eedius was soon in awe of the surroundings. But quickly remembering his task, he headed for the publishing office of the city.
The office manager was willing to help. However, he noted that it would take a long time for the binding process to even begin.
“For,” he said, “we have so many books to print and bind. We will have to finish them before we go on to yours.”
“Well, this book is for a spirit,” said Eedius, and he explained the circumstances behind the book.
“Ah,” said the manager. “That is a very good reason. I will print this book first.”
And he kept to his word. Soon enough, Eedius was on the way home, his cart now filled with seven hundred volumes. The villagers welcomed him when he arrived, and wanted to throw him a party, but he modestly declined. He wanted to complete his quest and get his reward.
Eedius headed up to the tree where he had first met the spirit. “Great Spirit of Trees!” he called. “I have come with your books!”
Pesteratus appeared. “Why, this is very good of you,” he said, privately amused. “Yes, it is quite fine- oh dear, look there is an error over here.” He opened the book to the two-hundred and fifty-sixth page. “This should have been spelt with an “y”, not a “i”.” Eedius, upon comparing the book with the manuscript, was dismayed.
Later that evening he sat in the tavern, depressed that he had managed to overlook a single error. The tavern-keeper attempted to be comforting. “Look here!” he said suddenly. “It is but a single error, is it not? Why not print out “y”s, cut them out and carefully paste them on top of the “i”s?”
“It won’t work,” said Eedius gloomily. “The letter “y” is much wider than the letter “i”. There would be no space to insert it in.”
“Well then replace the whole word! We’ll help, won’t we?” The tavern roared in agreement.
So it happened that some villagers ran off to Uuncarya, and others rifled around for sticky gum and cutting materials. Since the whole village was helping, it did not take long for the erroneous word to be replaced in every single copy.
Again Eedius climbed up to the tree, and called out, “Great Spirit of Trees, I have come with your books!” And again Pesteratus appeared.
“Very good!” he said. “This is really too fine – oh dear! It seems you have missed out an entire chapter! Right after page three-hundred and seven!” And Eedius looked at the manuscript and realised it was true.
You may have realised by now that there had been no such error, and Pesteratus was having some fun. But Eedius thought that he was at fault, and so he went back to the tavern to mope.
“Cheer up!” said the tavern-keeper. “We managed this once, we shall do so again!” The tavern roared in agreement. “Let’s see… Why don’t we print out the necessary pages, cut the book apart and put them in? If we remove the covers first it’ll be easy!” Eedius saw that this plan was good, and so it was done. They sent for the printers and made seven-hundred copies of the extra chapter, and then passed them around the village along with a copy of the book. Each person would take the cover off, cut open the book at the precise chapter page, insert the new pages and then glue back the cover. It was simple, and so it was done quickly.
This time however, Eedius was more cautious, and checked through the each book carefully, comparing it against the master manuscript. As he was looking through one, he stopped in alarm.
“Why,” he said, “this one has the new chapter inserted in the wrong place!”
“So it is,” said the tavern-keeper, “and upside-down too, if I am not mistaken! This is too terrible. I say, wasn’t this copy one of those made by the blacksmith’s lad?”
The blacksmith’s lad was sent for questioning, and as it transpired, it had been late at night when he repaired that particular book, since he had many more volumes to finish and his own work as well. He was not sure if he had made more mistakes.
“Dear me!” said Eedius. “I will have to cut out the chapter and put it after the correct page.”
“I’ll help you check for more errors,” offered the tavern-keeper.
More such insertion mistakes were found, especially after the tavern-keeper hit upon the clever expedient of flipping straight to page three-hundred and seven and checking for the first page of the additional chapter. Evidently, seven hundred volumes were too much to repair even when distributed around an entire village. Still, they worked to resolve the problems, and at last the books were complete.
Eedius, now weary from the strain, walked up to the tree again. “Great Spirit of Trees! I come with your books!”
“And a very good job of it too!” said Pesteratus, making his appearance. And with a swift snap of the fingers, six-hundred and ninety-nine books caught fire.
“Wha- what!” Eedius snatched the last volume to safety.
“Well, they weren’t really needed,” said Pesteratus casually. “But I’ll let you in on a secret. This is the Book of Life. It holds the key to manipulating the souls of the living in any way you want.”
Eedius was dumbfounded. “But – but – that’s impossible.”
“Nonsense. Why, that which makes you alive is a tiny twisted string! Fancy that!” Laughing uproariously, Pesteratus turned to go.
“B – but – wait, Great One! I cannot read the book! How do I use it?”
“Read the book? Why would you want to? Making the book gave you all the answers!” And with a final laugh, Pestaratus disappeared.
And indeed Eedius had the answers, if he could but realise it. But Eedius lived in a simpler time, and perhaps you know more than him.
Fin.
Story notes: Most of the strange things which happen to Eedius are meant to illustrate various rDNA concepts - see if you can figure them out.
With thanks to my father for naming Pesteratus.
2 comments:
Right. I'm afraid I do not know what the rDNA concepts are. So, I don't think I will be able to figure out the story.
Just take it as a silly pointless fairy-tale then. :)
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