Saturday, November 19, 2011

Golem

This is a chapter of my Nanowrimo work.  It may or may not stay in the final story.  It's a bit of history of my main character, Katrina Crowe.  She has a special "gift", she counsels those with supernatural afflictions.


         Richard had been her first client, and her first failure. Maybe that had been for the best. There had been a few other failures over the years, but Richard had been the worst.



He’d come to see Gram of course, but she was too sick to try to help him at that time. So he had to settle for Katie. Fortunately, he knew enough about his condition to give Katie a head start.

He was a golem, a creation made of mud, conjured by a nice widow woman to be her house man. Her husband had died very young and she'd needed someone to look after the home repairs and yard work. She didn’t trust hired help. So after some unconventional research, she found an old book that described the perfect servant and explained how to ‘make’ one of her own.

She treated him well and taught him to love beautiful things. Not just material, but natural. He also learned to love living and people.

His problem was, fifty years after she had made him, she was dying. And according to all he could find out, at her death, he would cease to exist. Though he cared for her, he wasn’t excited about his impending demise. There were still things he wanted to see, things he wanted to learn.

Katie liked Richard, he was soft spoken and well educated. She felt he did deserve to have more life and asked Gram if there was anyway to help him. Gram had looked at her sadly, and shook her head. It was the way the conjure worked. No one else could redo it. In fact, she didn’t even know if the spell Richard’s widow woman had used still existed.

Katie spent weeks going through Gram’s notebooks. She scoured the library in the city. The Internet was in it’s infancy. Google didn’t exist. There were mentions of golems in one of the oldest notebooks, but nothing useful. There were books of myth or of the sci-fi/fantasy genre, they were useless as well.  Even Richard had no idea where his maker had found the spell for his creation.

Richard told her it was alright. She’d done everything she could. 

 It didn’t make her feel any better.

The day came when the woman was taking her final breaths. What family she had was at her bedside. Richard, only being ‘the help’ was allowed to make his final good bye, then was released from his duties. He sat with Katie the rest of that day
.
She watched as he took in as much of the world as he could. It was a beautiful summer day. Flowers in bloom, the sun shining, there was even a soft breeze.

They sat outside, close to the woods, away from the sight of people. Several times she saw him shudder, and seem to become fuzzy to her. Then he sort of pulled himself together and remarked on a bird song or falling leaf.

Suddenly, he grabbed both of her hands. He looked into her eyes and smiled sadly. “Thank you, thank you for your time.”

Seconds later, her hands held only dried mud.

16 comments:

  1. Renee, that's a beautiful story. Just lovely and sad and tender.

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  2. @Cameron
    Thanks for stopping by, this was one of those popped into my head pieces. It's not relevant to the story I'm writing, but a piece of Katie's history.

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  3. Wow! I loved what I read. Sad yet tender and heart-warming. Great job!

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  4. Wow! That was awesome, Renee! I'm really interested to see what else you bring from this. I hope you decide to finish this story out. Very cool!

    Thank you for sharing this piece.

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  5. @Yvonne
    Thank you, I appreciate your comment.

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  6. @Brandon Duncan

    Thanks so much. This is just a bit of my main character's back story. The current story has a different "afflicted" person. I may have written about that person once... ;-)

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  7. Wonderful story, hope you spend more time with it, Robin

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  8. Wow, this was really interesting! Sounds like you have a great story in the works! =)

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  9. I like the idea that a golum comes from mud. In another story I have read they are made from wood. Either way, gollums are favorite fantasy creatures of mine. This really made me sad that at the end he was no more.

    I really like this. I hope I get to read more.

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  10. Sweet and polite. I loved this piece.

    Strangely unconventional - and I liked the fact that so much of it went through the stages of grief and we met Richard as he is in his "Acceptance" of his own demise.

    Nicely done.

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  11. @robinhawke

    Thank you, it was just one of those small things that wanted written.

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  12. @Nick Rolynd
    Thank you.
    I hope it eventually becomes an interesting story. I think the editing will be scary.

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  13. @The Drama Mama
    Thank you, this is pretty much all there is of Richard's story. I was just a piece of "history" for my main character.

    I've read of golems made of just about anything. I did a little research and found that the original concept was a creature constructed of mud.

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  14. @K. Syrah

    Thanks, I tend toward the unconventional. This story just appeared in my head and asked to be told.

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  15. Oh My Goodness this is awesome!!!! AWESOME! I hope you do keep it in your book.

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  16. @Wazhat
    Thank you! I really liked the way it turned out. I really need to get back to writing. I haven't since early December.

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