3. Taru & the Shamen

         Shamens were sure strange creatures.  Healers and wise guys alike, if you didn't fence them into a cabin they'd wander off looking for 'shrooms or some other strange thing and you'd never see them again, especially if you needed one.  Taru enjoyed a good mushroom now and then (except when they made her sick or she saw funny lights) but she wouldn't go out and ask a lynx for one like the last wise guy did.

         She had the current village healer trapped in his cottage with a huge pit just outside the door so the crazy old coot couldn't get away.  Unfortunately now he wouldn't talk to her.  Every time she tried to ask him about her dream he would only hmph in her direction and go back to tossing his chicken bones.  She had been trying for three days to learn what the dream meant but this was the only shamen she could find in the area and he wasn't talking to her.

         "But I keep seeing my throwing axe!  It's glowing!  Why is it glowing?!  Is it posessed? Is there an evil spirit living in it?  Is it blessed?  Is this a good thing? Is it a bad thing?  I don't understand!  It frightens me."  she said in a small voice.  The young huntress sat down in a forlorn little pile in the yard.  Visions always frightened her until she could find help to understand them.  She snuffled in pathetic dejection.

         She looked up to see the old geezer standing in the doorway.  "Hmph.  Silly little chit.  Run around the forest chasing after minks and foxes with feathers in your hair.  What do you know?  Your vision is the oath of iron.  If I teach you what to do with it will you fill in this confounded pit and let me out?"  he scowled at the gaping hole in the ground.

         "Sure!" Taru jumped up to fetch her shovel.  Shortly thereafter the hole was filled and she had laid the Oath of Iron on her cherished axe.  The young huntress looked up in time to see the wizened madman toddle off into the forest on his crooked spindly legs, chortling gleefully and scooping up mushrooms and popping them into his mouth with mindless abandon.  Taru blinked in surprise and the shamen was gone, disappeared back into the shadows and tree moss from whence he had come.

         Taru shook her head as she picked up her pack.  Shamens were sure strange creatures.  That was when the bone in the dust began to sing....