Week 10, Storytelling: Sticks and Bones

In a small metaphysical shop in the middle of the French Quarter, there is a woman standing outside her door. Her shop has been here for over forty years and is full of new things and of things older than she is. This is the first place visitors go on their witchery tours of New Orleans. She is known to her friends and customers as Miriam, but her true identity is much more...serious.

After the tour joins her, Miriam scuttles around her shop as the new group shifts about looking at things, picking them up, turning them over in their hands. She stops and talks to everyone that is there. Usually, people only buy one or two things, just to say they bought something at a ‘real Voodoo store in New ‘awlins’, but sometimes she had special visitors show up. Today, that person was in this group and she was a powerful one. The girl wasn’t aware of her full potential, but Miriam could see it right away. As the girl went from shelf to shelf, running her hands over some stones, she stopped in front of a set of bones. She stood there and cocked her head like she was trying to make sense of them. Miriam walked up behind her and stood for a minute and watched. Miriam stepped beside her and touched her arm.

“Those are bones for throwing,” she said softly.

“What is that?” the woman said as she turned her head slightly and looked at Miriam out of the corner of eye.

“It’s a way of telling the future, like tea leaf reading, tarot, or palm reading. What is your name, honey?” Miriam asked.

“Lucy,” she returned with a smile. There was something about this old lady she liked, she thought.

“Well, Lucy, you ought to pick out a pair and maybe I can show you how to work them.”

“Oh, no, I can’t,” she said as she flipped over the bag to look at the price. “Yeah, I can’t,” she sighed as she placed them back on the shelf. “I’ve overspent on this trip already. These aren’t that much, I know, but I just can’t.”

Miriam looked around and turned back to Lucy. “Can you come back later, by yourself?”

“Uh...yes, ma’am. Probably so, why?” Lucy asked timidly.

“Well, you just come back by around nine and we will talk then,” Miriam said as she gave her a little wink.

“Oh, I better get going! it looks like the tour is leaving me,” Lucy said as she started walking towards the door. “I will see you later!” she called behind her as she waved goodbye.

At nine o’clock, the bell over the door rang as Lucy walked in. She looked around at the shop she had visited earlier during the day. It had a whole different feel at night. Candles were lit and there was a thicker incense smell than before, too. She breathed deeply and closed her eyes. As she was exhaling, Miriam walked out from the back of the store.

“Hello, Lucy. I’m so glad you came back,” Miriam said as she walked up to Lucy and grabbed both of her hands.

“Me too,” Lucy said as Miriam gave her hands a squeeze.

“Well, let’s just cut right to the chase shall we. I don’t know if you know it or not, but you are one powerful little girl,” Miriam said as she walked towards the back of the store.

Lucy stopped in mid-step. “What are you talking about? This,” she gestured around the room referencing Voodoo in general. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, I’m not, and I don’t think we have time to ease you into this. Things are a little more...dire than I realized earlier today,” Miriam spat as she grabbed Lucy by the arm and started pulling her to the back room.

The room was small with a little table centered in front of the fireplace. There were small altars all around the room, each one designated for a different deity or ancestor. Miriam gestured at one of the seats.

“Sit down, please. We need to get started,” Miriam said as she sat down and grabbed a bag from underneath her chair. It was the bag that Lucy had been looking at earlier.

“Wow, well, this escalated quickly,” Lucy laughed a little to herself.

“Yes, well, like I said, we don’t have much time to waste. My time has grown…short,” Miriam said as she poured the bones out on the table.

“First off, my name is Miriam. I am a priestess of Voodoo, as you probably already know, but I have another purpose,” Miriam said and looked at Lucy. She wasn’t sure if the child was ready for what she was fixin’ to lay on her, but she didn’t have a choice. “What I really am is death, not like what you think of as death, but that is my role.”

Lucy sat back in her chair and stared at Miriam. This is a dream, she thought, a really bad freaked out dream. Did she get some bad weed from that guy last night or what? But the more she sat processing what Miriam just said, the more right it felt. Why it felt right, she wasn’t sure, but she trusted her gut and it had never steered her wrong before.

“OK,” Lucy said. She inhaled and exhaled loudly. “What does that mean?”

Miriam was taken aback at how well Lucy just took that little bit of information. Maybe she was more capable than she originally thought, which would make the transition much easier.

“Well, that means that every night, I sit down at this table and the outcome decides the fate of the souls on this earth. Have you heard the saying ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones’...? Well, in this case, it’s ‘Sticks and bones’ but the words will hurt you.”

Lucy and Miriam leaned in close over the table and began discussing what would come next. As Miriam grabbed the bones and threw them down on the table, the candlelight touched her smile.

Affaire de Bizoton 1864. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Author's Note: This story is inspired by the tale The First War that is included in the Apache Tales unit. When I read the first paragraph of the story, it mentioned how the Raven was in charge of divining whether people would live or die by throwing a stick and then the stone pestle I thought it would be an interesting and fun twist to the idea of the ‘stick and stone’ to write something that fit in with the saying "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." As I was typing this saying, trying to develop the story in my head, I thought about an old voodoo witch sitting at a table in a dark room throwing bones for divination, so that seemed to be the way this story ended up going. As I was writing the story, it took on a life of its own. Lucy wasn’t even a main character until I had gotten through about a quarter of the dialog. I then had to go back and work Lucy into the first couple of paragraphs to help tie everything together. The name of the main character is the name of a real Voodoo priestess.


Bibliography: Jicarilla Apache Texts edited by Pliny Earle Goddard (1911) New York: Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. VIII.

Week 10, Reading Diary B: Apache

Apache Tales Part 2
This section is a little more coherent, but there IS a story where a coyote's poop talks to him. I'm not sure why or how, but it did...yup, that happened :)

Supernatural Person in the Lake
In this story a woman gave her son the gift of becoming a medicine man. He killed some antelopes for her and then she wanted her gift back. Of course, he said no and told her he had given it to the 'supernatural' one, so she cursed him. He left and went to his own country and lived at the bottom of a lake. People tried to find him but couldn't. Two years later, the people were on their way to war. They stopped by the body of water where the son was and he started talking to them and recognized them as his people. He gave them a buffalo and asked them to smoke a pipe with him. He tells them when to attack and how to get the horses they want, he only asks for the black one with a white spot. They get the horses and let go of the black one by the water and the horse went into the lake.

Photo by thes26800. Source: Pixabay.

Coyote Tries to Make His Children Spotted

This story actually made me sad a little.

Coyote saw a deer with her fawns and wanted to know how she got them spotted. She told him that they were born that way. He didn't believe her and kept bothering her, so she finally told him that she digs a hole, puts a pile of cedar in front of it and then puts her children in the hole, lights the cedar, and the sparks are what makes their spots. He did this to his children, but they started crying. He didn't hear them(?) and left them there until the fire burned down. When he went to get them out, he took their pulled back lips as joy at being "so beautifully spotted". When he went to pull them out of the hole, one of their arms fell off. Coyote was so mad that he set the willows where the deers were on fire, but the deer had already left. 

Week 10, Reading Diary A: Apache

Apache Tales
When I was reading this section, I noticed that the number four is very prevalent within Apache culture as it is with Creek culture. I thought that was interesting how those two different tribes both have the same connection with the same number.

The Emergence
This story is about the beginning. People were coming and "he" made a mountain with reeds in the center. The reeds were twisted by four girls and wouldn't grow. So, the people made four ladders, one each of black, blue, yellow, and multi-colored. All the people climbed the ladder until they were all worn out. Everyone made it except for one old man and one old woman then everyone went away under the four different chiefs.

The First War
This story is about a raven that would determine whether people should die or not. He threw a stick in the water and it floated. He then threw a stone muller, which is like a grinding stone, into the water and it sunk and then people began to die. The people moved away into the four directions but couldn't sleep. The two old people, which I assume is the same two old people from the last story, gave the people four lice. There is a wounded chief.

Neolithic groundstone picture by Jose-Manuel Benito Alvarez. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The rest of the stories are a discombobulated mess just like the Eskimo stories, but not near as bad. I can only assume that it is this horrible because of the people making the translations since natives never wrote anything down and it was all passed by word of mouth. There is one story about a boy turning into a bear also. I think I might take the "sticks and stones" section of The First War story and see what I can come up with for my storytelling this week.

Week 9, Extra Reading Diary: Brothers Grimm (Hunt) (First Half)

Brothers Grimm (Hunt)

Hansel and Grethel
I've read this story before, but I don't ever remember the parents being the one's who sent the kids out to the forest in the first place. What a sad situation to be in! The rest of the story is semi-similar to what I have heard before. So, the evil step-mother made the father lead his two kids into the woods so that he and his wife would have more to eat. Their first attempt failed because the children had overheard the step-mother's plan, but the second time, it worked. They came upon a house made out of bread and sweets. The witch disguised herself as a sweet old lady that just wanted to feed them. Obviously, she wanted to EAT them. So after the first day, the witch had put Hansel in a cage outback and made Grethel feed him to make him fat. Hansel wasn't getting fat so the witch decided to eat him anyway. On that day, the witch warmed up the oven to "bake some bread" and told Grethel to get in so she could see if it was warm enough. The witch wanted to just shut up Grethel in the over though, but Grethel caught on and the witch ended up getting in to show her it was big enough and then she pushed her in and locked the door. She busted Hansel out of the cage and they both shagged out of there after filling their pockets full of jewels that the witch had all over the house. When they got back to their father's house, they found out their step-mother was dead. They showed their father all the stones that they had stolen. 

Illustration of Hansel and Grethel by Theodor Hosemann. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Thumbling

This story is about a couple that wanted a kid so bad, they didn't care how big he was, so of course, the wife gave birth to a boy that was no bigger than a thumb :) He was quite a sneaky little man and ended up going around tricking people to make money.

Week 9, Storytelling: Together Forever

Pat was a very handsome man who seemed to have it all. He lived in Manhattan with his beautiful and loving wife in a condo right next to Central Park with a vacation house in the Hamptons. He worked on Wall Street and they had all the money, cars, and houses that they could ever wish for. Life was perfect, or so it seemed to everyone else. Pat, however, was miserable. He had been with his wife since high school. He did love her, and she had stuck it out with him through college and all of the late nights at the office as he worked his way up the ladder. He loved her, he really did, but his uncle had just married a woman named Ruby who was half his age and she was really hot. I mean hot, hot. She was young and beautiful and he wanted her. He always got what he wanted, even though he had never wanted another woman before, and he was going to get what he wanted this time too.

Pat decided he would ask Ruby out for lunch in the guise that he was just wanting to get to know her better. Although he did want to know her better, he wanted much more than that. They were in a dark quiet restaurant in a booth in the back corner and had been drinking wine and talking for over an hour past the end of their lunch. Pat figured this was the best time to make his move. Ruby responded just the way he wanted. They ended up renting a hotel room in Brooklyn and spent the rest of the day doing things that I can’t say in this story. When it was time for them both to go home, Ruby turned to Pat and told him that this was going to be a one-time thing and for him not to tell his uncle and she wouldn’t tell his wife. She also told him that if he didn’t keep his end of the bargain, she would tell them both what had happened. Pat agreed but knew that this was not the end of it. He wanted her more than ever now and he intended to have her.

A week later, Pat called Ruby to meet him for lunch again. She refused and reminded him of her warning. He said he remembered but that he just wanted to talk to her. She hesitantly decided to meet him and he immediately started trying to talk her into going back to a hotel with him. She refused and warned him again as she got up and stormed out of the restaurant. Pat sat there and turned over what had just happened in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more angry he got. He refused to let her say no. She was going to be his one way or the other.

One evening a week later, Ruby was coming back from the gym. She opened the door to their apartment and sat her stuff down on the floor. There was something off, but she couldn’t tell what just yet. She yelled her husband's name as she walked into the kitchen and after he didn’t answer her, she went looking for him. When she walked into their bedroom, she screamed. Lying there on the bed was her husband and Pat’s wife, both naked, and they both had their throats slit. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing and couldn’t stop screaming. After she “calmed” down, she called 911 and waited for them on the sidewalk in front of their building. She called Pat next and told him what had happened. He came over immediately and they tried to comfort each other the best they could. After the detectives questioned them and the coroner removed the bodies, she had to go get a hotel room since her apartment was now a crime scene. After she checked in, she took something to help her sleep. After drinking a bottle of wine, she finally was able to relax and drifted off to sleep. She was woken up by her cell phone ringing at 3:00am. It was Pat, she started talking to him about what had happened again and he cut her off.

“I did it for us,” he said.

Ruby didn’t quite understand at first. And so she started talking again about the accident.

“I DID it for US,” he said again, this time with more emotion in his voice.

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Did Pat kill them, or have them killed, so they could be together? She sat there with sheer panic on her face.

“Ruby, I did this for us. Now we can be together,” Pat said in a sweeter voice.

“I didn’t want this though,” Ruby replied. She was in tears now and was in the beginning stages of a panic attack. She had to hang up and call the police she thought before this got out of hand.

“Ruby, don’t you dare think about calling the police. I will kill you if you do. I will kill you no matter what you do unless you agree to be with me.”

Ruby was stunned. Pat was crazy, he was really certifiable. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

“I take it from your silence that you need a little time to make a decision, but I know what it will be. I know you want to live. We will have to wait an amount of time so it doesn’t seem out of place that we are living together, but you will be mine,” Pat said very calmly.

Pat hung up and Ruby sat there staring at the phone. She didn’t want to die. She sat there and thought about suicide and actually calling the police, but at last, she picked up her phone and texted one word to Pat. “OK”

An arial view of Central Park by Central Park Conservancy. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Author’s Note: This story is based on Patussorssuaq, Who Killed His Uncle from the Eskimo Folk Tales Unit by Knud Rasmussen. This was one of the most coherent stories from this unit and I thought it would be the best one to try to re-write. This story is a simple one of jealousy and how doing something wrong can come back and bite you in the butt or as some put it Karma. I wanted to put a modern spin on the story, kind of like a Boil Your Bunny/Fatal Attraction feel but reversed but also not in the exact same way. In the original folk tale, Patussorssuaq got his comeuppance for coveting his uncle and his wife, he even ended up losing the stolen wife. We all know real life isn't always that cut and dried though and that sometimes bad people get away with bad things. I decided to change the ending to be a little more realistic into how this would really go down. Hopefully he will get what is coming to him in the afterlife. I intentionally left the ending open so that the reader would leave wondering what really happened to them in the end. I also decided to shorten his name to Pat since his real name is a mouthful.

Bibliography: Eskimo Folk Tales by Knud Rasmussen, 1921.

Week 9, Reading Diary B: Eskimo

The second half of the Eskimo Folk Tales was a little better than the first. 

Patussorssuaq, Who Killed His Uncle
This story is about a man who wanted his uncles wife for his own, even though he too had a wife. The uncle and his wife were getting ready to move and Patussorssuaq couldn't bear to be away from his uncles wife, so he killed his uncle. After killing his uncle, he went back to his tent to kill his wife, but she had already ran away to her family. Somehow there was a boy in the tent when Patussorssuaq got back and he told him his wife was gone but he didn't know where she was. He took his uncles wife as his own but she died soon thereafter. Then his uncles spirit came back as a fox and killed Patussorssuaq.

Angangujuk
This story is about a man, woman, and their son. One day the man went away on a hunting trip and the boy was playing around the house while the woman cleaned hides. The boy disappeared and when the husband returned, he though that she had killed him. He was getting ready to kill her, but she begged him to look for the boy first. It turns out that the boy had been taken by inland people. The man and woman had taken a shaman with them and they put a sleeping spell on the people that had their son and then snuck him out and back home.

Drawing of Inuit boy rom Godthaab. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Week 9, Reading Diary A: Eskimo

I decided to read the Eskimo Folk Tales unit for this week. I found it really hard to read these stories since half of them seem to have no point nor a logical progression from one sentence to the other. It's just been really weird. Anyway, on to my diary.

The Coming of Men, A Long, Long While Ago
This story is about creation. It says that the earth fell from the sky and children were born from willow bushes. And then man wanted a dog, so they made a leash and went stomping on the ground and dogs appeared. Then, men did not die, but just grew old so they could not see, or walk, or lie down and the earth was overran with men, so there was a flood. They also lived in the dark so they made a compromise to die and have light. When they died they covered the bodies in rocks. 

Nukunguasik, who Escaped from the Tupilak
This story is about a man with no wife (which they all seem to be about) who went kayaking and ended up on a beautiful island. He found a man there talking to something in a hollow telling it to bite Nukungasik to death. Nukungasik snuck up on the guy and scared him and he fell in the hole. The man had been talking to a Tupilak, which seems to be like a Jewish golum. After the other men went to look for him, the Tupilak had already ate him.

(Mask used by Eskimo shaman in causation of illness. Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

The rest of the stories are just really strange.