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Keepers were protected. My parents, the clan heads and the eight women who formed the Grandmother’s Council, the real authority of Village McNeil, followed us into the outer chamber, but no further. The Maurice escorted me to the room beyond. Sputtering yellow vegetable oil lamps cast a dim, flickering light over a dusty space dominated by a table and several rude chairs of elm wood. The air was dead and smelt of decay.

  “We are counting on you,” the Eighty-Fourth ‘Maurice of the Keepers’ smiled across the low table. “You are the smartest we have seen in five generations.”

  Behind him, and lining both sides of the cave, recessed into the cliff to form a backroom, shelves of books and papers in deer hide folios held the written knowledge of Village McNeil.

  “No one can read this writing.” He picked up a thin book from the table. Its heavy cover was cracked and dirty and the pages were brittle as he opened it. The stench of mildew washed my nostrils. I recoiled slightly, not from the oppressive odour, but from reverence. In the village these books had mystical power. The Maurice noticed my fear. “Yes,” he sighed, “everyone thinks these are holy books. Even the Keepers share that, except for me. I know, and you must learn, that these are simply tools left by the First Maurice to guide us through the years in keeping the mine safe.” His brow furrowed, revealing his frustration at not being able to understand the words. “They are to help us and not to be feared even though they are valuable. We think this one and the others on that shelf are teaching books for old Glish. See, there are pictures and symbols. Some pictures are of birds and animals we know, but others seem so strange.”

  I leafed through the heavy faded pages. It was an alphabet book with each page holding a letter that I had learned from mother. The pictures seemed to be related to the letter, and the bear, dog and apple were obvious, but others, like the smiling girl in a strange blue dress and waving a stick with a star on it made no sense. It was on the page with the sixth letter.

  “I will try my best.” I smiled at The Maurice, but it felt as if my face had frozen. I knew that I could no longer pretend. I would have to learn this strange old writing. “Can someone guide me?”

  “None know the writing.” The dark frown reappeared, replacing his smile.

  “I will try.” My mouth was dry and I felt as if I was telling some big lie, but I knew that I must succeed. Through the log walls of the cabin, I could hear the trickle of mine water escaping to the pond.

  “Good.” He rose to signal the end of our chat, but paused. “The water has changed and we need to understand. It has never happened before. Let us go out and join the clans.”

  We joined the celebration affirming the joy of Village McNeil, partying into the night. The timing coincided with the fullness of the moon after the summer solstice. Dusk lingered to a late hour, and then moonlight added to the light of the many fires. Gitters and drums made music and various forms of dance, traditional group stomping and chanting mixed with strange solo swaying and movements of pairs, mostly male and female, in more intimate embrace.

  Being the focus of the feast, I was expected to share in the dancing with many, including my family, the grandmothers, and then with many other women. For my part, my awakening body lusted for a girl my age, my childhood friend who grew with me and shared all. The fact that I did not have the greasy hair and winter smell was due to our summer bathing in the nearest lake. This water was about a kilometer away, although we did not use metric and I only learned that term later. We called the distance “a lake” which signified an easy walking distance. Multiples of “a lake” would indicate how far and much harder it was be to get to a place. A normal day’s hunt with my father would be about ten to fifteen “lakes”. Elsbeth and I, along with other children, would go to the lake each day to swim and frolic. We swam naked, with no shame. In this year of our changing, she was budding on the chest and my body was stirring, especially when I was near her. We all knew how babies were made, but unsanctioned intercourse was strictly forbidden amongst the unmarried. Elsbeth would have suffered indignity and perhaps held back from marriage for some years as punishment. I would have been sent on a personal trek, fasting to restore my standing in the village. Some never returned from this enforced quest, and the ordeal was considered to be so dangerous that it was only ever assigned when a male did some great wrong to the village. Most youngsters were accepted into adulthood during a large feast held at the summer solstice. Children were presented to the clans, signifying that those named were available for marriage. We both were tempted, our desires burned strong, but the fear made us obey the taboo. At my age I should have waited one more winter, but this night of ceremony was my right of passage. I hoped that my new status as a Keeper would allow me to choose and announce my betrothal to my dearest love. Once married, it seemed there was no restriction on promiscuity. Partners were traded from time to time with the only rule being that nothing was done in secret. Women who had not conceived in their marriage sought completion in another’s bed and everyone would celebrate a resulting birth. During the night’s dancing I was not surprised that some of the women were brazen in their advances, rubbing breasts against me and staring into my eyes, questioning if I might be available to them once married. There seemed to be more barren women these days.

  Elsbeth and I did marry, and she birthed two children. The oldest, a boy, was promised to the Forest Clan to fill the gap left by my adoption. Our daughter would be claimed by Elsbeth’s own clan, the Growers, to become a goatherd and gardener. We raised them in those traditions despite our being a family of Keepers. The villagers gave us much praise and respect during that time. All of this happiness was to change, of course, as my knowledge grew, and I began to warn of the danger.

  It took me ten years to master old Glish, or more correctly, learn it enough so that I could understand much of the writing. Some of the things would forever be hidden. They required teachers of deep understanding, and we had none. I could not speak it with confidence. The sounds were a mystery, but I invented what I thought they might be and that satisfied the villagers. The strangeness of my speech wrapped me in mystery and authority. I am writing my name and my wife’s name using the Glish symbols that I think make the sounds. This may all have been an invention on my part, but it started a trend in the village that led to me writing down everyone’s name in Glish. The people take great pride in that.

  The history of the place became clear to me, the purpose and the deadly danger that was hidden deep inside the rocks. The mine, the old documents call it McNeil Mine, was dug a thousand years before in a world whose power I cannot imagine. It was abandoned, but The First Maurice turned it to its deadly purpose. In the ten years of my learning, many of the old Keepers died. Some, like the Eighty-fourth Maurice, simply finished their allotted time. Several died in agony, some withering away while others seemed to be healthy one day and dead in only a few days. I inherited, at age of twenty-two, the deer skin jacket as the Eighty-seventh Maurice. There was some resentment from those who had been born to the Keepers, but the Grandmothers ruled, saying that I was the wise one; they needed to learn from me. The women’s protection kept me safe for the next two years. But even that would change.

  Within the old mine lay a horrible danger. The First Maurice, whose full name was Maurice Pasterczak, described himself as a Nuclear Engineer. I had no understanding of what nuclear meant or what an engineer was. He called it “nuclear waste” and one list I found, in a very thick book, detailed things called “spent fuel rods” and what was listed as “low grade contaminated material”. His papers warned that most of it could kill for many thousands of generations. The pages are crumbling, but there are enough readable passages to make me fear. Maurice Pasterczak noted that all of this would make a person sick; “exposed spent fuel” would kill within days if someone even came near to it. His mysterious “rays” and “high energy particles” were the cause, but I had no reference for them. I could only think of the sun burning my skin and windblown sand hitting my face. I too
k the warning to mean that it was much worse than these puny irritations. The Maurice’s statement that, the storage method is likely to begin breaking down in twenty-five generations or so, terrified me the most. The note said it was a guess. I was humbled that the great First Maurice, the founder of McNeil, would admit to not knowing. That fact made me feel better about my own ignorance. It also meant that even with more than one Maurice in a generation, it was likely that by the fiftieth Maurice the mine had become contaminated and dangerous. I came to this understanding in my ninth year of work, under the eighty-sixth Maurice. More than thirty Maurice’s had overseen the mine since the time it began to fail. Within the year I was to be the eighty-seventh Maurice; the first Maurice in the last fifty to understand the mine’s purpose and the only one ever to know that the storage was failing.

  Here I must explore what my Glish dictionary called “irony”, but what the forest people always referred to as the “work of the Trickster”. When I was first adopted into the Keepers some of the members born to the clan resented my honours. A few conspired to