“Great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.”
-George MacDonald At the Back of the North Wind
To all appearances the gods had deserted the viking in his need. In his frustration, Akedah fired that same arrow at the moon. “Take it back!” he growled. The arrow hit the moon and sent up a spray of shining moon dust with the impact.
Perhaps, in some cases, the viking’s instincts were smarter than his brain, and perhaps this actionable lack of philosophy is what we could attribute his good fortune to in many cases. Perhaps, his willingness to take the next step, any logical next step, protected him from the overwhelming stagnancy that overtakes men like moss overtakes a stationary stone. Peers had sometimes accused him of brash and unsafe action, but no one ever accused Akedah of lackluster procrastination - which is - the greater evil.
The arrow returned to Akedah’s hand fully drenched moon poison. This poison is released from the moon every 28 days when it is in full bloom, that is to say, when it is a bright perfect globe like a white-seeded dandelion.
When the world was young, people knew about moon poison, how it drifts its dusty seeds out into the solar system on lunar flares. Today, after landing on the moon and scientifically evaluating its surface and finding mostly igneous rocks, modern man has disposed of any new speculation concerning moon makeup, however; if the astronauts had taken up residence and observed the moon first hand through its cycle they might have reported otherwise. It is important to remember that all things magical or miraculous, are made of the same atoms and elements as the rest of the universe. Water can be turned miraculously to wine but first it has to flow through the Vine. There is nothing strange about that.
And so again without prelude of excessive forethought, Akedah fired the loaded arrow at the guffawing giant. This time when it hit its mark the moon poison dissipated into Aipaloovik’s blood stream.
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In his youth, Aipaloovik the Terrible had grown fat munching on eskimos and picking his teeth with narwhal tusks. These days, he fancied himself a snowbird, relocating in his middle age to the sunny mediterranean. He would still visit his mother up north, and she would chat with him about what she wanted him to get her for her birthday, or nag at him for never being able to maintain a marriage. Sometimes she would put the two together, “Oh my little Snuggymumps!” She would announce as though the thought had just occurred to her. “Did you know my birthday is this spring? Maybe you keep your next wife without taking a bite out of her. Then maybe you could visit me with sweet little baby grandstinkies on my birthday.” Aipaloovik thought that maybe he would like to have some little stinkers to carry on the terrible heritage of the Aipaloovik namesake, but self-restraint is not something any child learns when they are catered to by doting mothers. This is especially true in the case of children who are the size of several elephant seals. So Aipaloovik’s well-meaning mother had spoiled her son and in the process spoiled any chance at hearing the thumpity-thwap of little grandstinky footsteps in her home.
Aipaloovik was really intending to actually entertain the thought of perhaps not taking a bite out of this wife. He was going to try to save this one for his mother. Well, maybe only one small bite. It was just that whenever he tried to only take one small bite he always wound up eating the whole wife. He did not think this was any fault of his, it was just that it was a shame to let the rest of the wife go to waste with profuse blood loss. If they would just stop bleeding, he would not have to finish them off.
All these thoughts evaporated from Aipaloovik’s conscious mind as the poison crashed it way into his brain like an explosion of light. He felt as if the full... Support this podcast
