Teckelmas Three

The  Final Part of the Xmas adventure.

Teckelmas Three

The shadow grew taller and thinner but did not wane and reached out over the dogs towards Gwillo. Its arm or arms turned gray and hazy as if turning to dust or  smoke and Gwillo shivered. He wasn't trained to hunt this kind of monster.

Then something happened. From overhead came a burst of sound and light and all his dogs came to glow. First Tau and Ankhet the most brightly and then the glow spread to the others and then something fell from the moving brightness overhead. Gwillo had once seen a picture showing a spirit with multiple wings and this ... it was the essence of small hounds with wings for legs and wings for flight and it lead the pack towards the darkness baying battle joy and the darkness fled and shrink withering like a plant in summer heat and then became nothing and the night seemed warmer. The spirit hovered for a moment and grinned at him and flitted off and up then there was a final burst of light and only the stars glowed overhead.

Three men were walking uphill to him.

"Come warrior come with us to Bethlehem to give gifts to the Holy Child!"

The rest of the night was equally strange. Gwillo remembered candles and golden lanterns and the scent of uncommon spices and all of them beasts barbarian herders and wise men kneeling to look at a child.

The thing that Gwillo remembered the longest was that all of his pack seemed healthier and smarter and the next day inspecting them he found their coats in perfect condition and old scars faded and his prize bitch returned by the magistrate had the most perfect litter of pups he had ever seen. And he had a new job guide and guard for the Magi as they returned home!

And that is how the ancestors of modern Teckelsteiners helped play a part in the first Christmas!

The Origin of Teckelstein

The origin of Teckelstein

This passage comes from chapter 2.


A young European Bronze Age hunter had discovered the mountain-side cave of one of the last descendants of the hominoid people now known as Neanderthals and then as the Wild Folk of the Forest. The Neanderthaloid had a pack of canids with puppies, who were strange shaggy dwarvish things, like the hominid they shared a den with, not exactly hounds with short legs, or terriers, but something ancestral to both types of canids. The elderly hominid beckoned in a friendly manner to the younger human and presented a squirming tail-wagging pup, holding it up to him in one large hand as a gift of friendship. The young human looked at the strange creature who seemed to be half giant with his large deepset eyes, massive projecting nose, round chinless face, and equally massive shoulders and arms, and yet dwarvish and stunted below the waist line with shorter legs beginning to become withered from the effects of osteo-arthritis and other ailments.
"
“ … yes … ,” whispered Sassy anxiously, remembering her history classes, “You take the pup and offer your protection to the Spirit Walker of the Old Ones and he shows you how to align your fields and settlement to the local geoforces, the ley lines, to create a Holy Earth Covering place."

 (*Teg is an ancient and honorable Indoeuropean Radical!)

Fresh material soon. I'm rereading all the posts again to make sure Sassy and Goldie's  erratic narration hasn't made the plot lines too confusing and to pick up any dangling threads that need to be more tightly woven back into the whole!