Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

Mum and Dad didn’t have anything much to tell Ice. Ice told them to keep an eye open for anything strange and left.

“Where’s Tianamet?” I asked when she’d left.

“We left her at home dear,” said Mum. “Winemakers don’t have idols.”

“No,” I said. “Dad put her in the car and left her by the droven when we went to the barn and picked her up again afterwards and now she’s here somewhere, I can feel her.”

Dad looked really shocked and I could tell that I was right.

“Winemakers don’t have idols,” said Mum, again.

“I really need to talk to her because I feel really weird and I don’t know what to do. I want to go back to Ermish but I don’t want to leave Breeze, Cloud and Irvis and I don’t want the Haprihagfen to be reviled but I know two of their secrets and I think I know what the important one’s about.”

“You scare me when you say things like this,” said Mum.

“Can the other children feel Tianamet?” asked Dad.

“I don’t think so,” I realized that if Tianamet, well the idol, was an artifact, I’d heard many idols were, Breeze could probably detect her but I couldn’t explain that without telling them that she was a magis.

“It doesn’t matter because she isn’t here,” said Mum. “Is she?”

“Well I just couldn’t bring myself to leave her,” said Dad, “and I’ve heard that many Winemakers have kept idols from when their ancestors were Trulists.”

“But she links us to Ermish!” said Mum. “We’re supposed to be from Grisnarl, and be Winemakers!”

“Well I’ve got her well hidden,” said Dad.

“Eleprin knew she was here!”

“Look a mage told me that she has an unusual associate that makes people like her. It generates some sort of false psychic signal that makes you think she’s whatever korbar you belong to. I think that’s why I brought her in the first place and it may explain how Eleprin could detect her.”

“We’ve had a police mage in here with a magic detector!” said Mum.

“He’s only a level one mage,” I said. “Most school principals are afraid of magic and don’t want powerful magi working in the school.” Haprihagfen had told me that.

“We don’t know what could happen!” said Mum.

“Yes,” said Dad, “I was smart, I hid her in the ceiling, which can also be accessed from the room above ...”

“Where in the ceiling?” I asked.

“... so if anybody does find her, it won’t be clear if she’s anything to do with us and besides she could have been there for years.”

“Where in the ceiling?” I was walking round, looking up. The ceiling was composed of multiple removable panels, I just had to work out the right one. Of course most of it was too high off the floor or furniture for me to reach.

“Idols aren't really gods,” said Mum. “They’re just to give us an idea what the gods look like. The gods can hear you praying wherever you are even without an idol.”

“They’re like communication devices,” I said. They haven’t made any communication devices since the Cataclysm and not many people have them now but they allow you to communicate ... oh you know. “Although Tianamet, our idol of her, is the only idol I’ve ever felt anything from although I can also feel Yoho at the Vineyard, he loves me but he doesn’t like me pretending to be a Winemaker. Tianamet’s very strong and wise and also motherly, she’ll know what to do.”

“I always thought she was sexy,” said Dad.

“They’re not like communication devices!” said Mum, hitting Dad.

“Then Yoho will know what I’m doing wherever I am and he’ll disapprove of everything and he’ll, well I don’t know. I won’t be able to pray to Tianamet without Yoho knowing about it.”

Dad stood on a chair and pushed a ceiling tile.

“Well can’t you ask both of them to sort it out?” asked Mum. “I’m sure they understand why you have to pretend to be a Winemaker.”

“I don’t understand why!”

Dad got off the chair holding... the idol of the Trulist goddess Tianamet. She, it, looked like a small statue of a thin woman with wide hips and large breasts, wearing a space helmet and holding a disc in her left hand.

“What are you doing?” asked Mum.

“I’m proving something,” said Dad. “Look I’m a third son so I’m not in line to inherit the family idol. When I eventually became a father, I bought her from a junk shop, she’s a replica of one in Ermish temple, there’s a stamp on the bottom ...” He turned her, it, upside down and examined the base, which was cratored ground, like the surface of an asteroid or something. “Oh, I’m sure there was a stamp from the factory that made it. They used to churn out these things by thousands before the Cataclysm. The point is there’s nothing special about this one.”

I stared at him. “Most of them have a stamp on the bottom but this one doesn’t so that makes her special.”

“All right,” he said, “take her into your room and pray to her and see what happens.”

I did as he asked with Mum and Dad looking at me as if they were very worried.