Tree of Life’s members will do everything for the 11 dead except show up in their place.”
– Pittsburgh rabbi to Mark Oppenheimer, from the latter’s “The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood”
Prosatio Silban and the Sobering Desolation
(A sequel to the preceding story.)
SOMETIMES, NOTHING CAN MAKE ONE feel younger than a good quest.
“It is called the Wellspring of Lost Years,” said the Siddis with a characteristic smirk. “And one sip from its dancing waters will restore your own.”
The Siddis, dressed in sand-colored burnoose, robe, and veil, was sitting with Prosatio Silban in the ale-garden of the village inn at Hightower. They were not far from the Azure Void’s northeastern edge, and although that enigmatic wasteland was hidden behind a line of low hills, its proximity filled the now-aged cook’s heart with pounding unease.
Prosatio Silban and the Sentinel’s Game
(First of two parts.)
SKIRTING THE AZURE VOID IS not for the timid, and while Prosatio Silban did not possess that trait in great measure he did on occasion come close to experiencing it.
“Easy, Onward,” he clucked to his buopoth, as the quaint dray-beast lumbered its way along the vast crater’s narrow rim-road. Not for the first time, the cook wondered how the hulking animal could plod with such careful agility between extreme height and utter depth. He murmured a grateful prayer to Piedrolo, God of Surefooted Ambling, as his galleywagon bounced over rocks and across potholes.
Unfinished Business (Introduction to The Cook For Any Price Volume II: More Commonwell Tales)
(The first of so-far-more-than-twenty new stories for a planned sequel anthology, beginning thus …)
PROSATIO SILBAN LEANED FORWARD IN his folding chair, placed his elbows on the drop-down dining counter, put his head in his hands, closed his eyes, and sighed.
What a time it’s been, he thought.
When we stand in awe, our lips do not demand speech, knowing that if we spoke, we would deprave ourselves. In such moments talk is an abomination. All we want is to pause, to be still, that the moment may last. … The meaning of the things we revere is overwhelming, and beyond the grasp of our understanding.”
— Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Prosatio Silban and the Fine Print
(With gratitude to Ann Clark.)
THERE ARE FEW THINGS WORSE for dedicated professionals than enduring their own uselessness. Well, perhaps one or two …
Prosatio Silban looked out through his galleywagon’s open doors and contemplated the heavy rain falling on Pormaris’ near-empty marketplace. Every summer tells the same story, he thought. The Season of Huddling drives away from the Commonwell’s markets everyone other than storm-braving scurriers – meaning anyone who would or even could take the time to patronize my portable business. Why do I bother to set out my menu-board? I need steady work, not dashed expectations.
Dining Companion (A Prosatio Silban Tale)
ONE MAN’S FRIEND IS ANOTHER man’s meal – or so Prosatio Silban discovered on an ill-starred expedition to nowhere.
The cook had made enough recent coin catering to Pormaris’ wealthy that he could let his dray-beast, Onward, choose their course for a time. They had begun with keen anticipation as they trekked northwest from the City of Gourmands to Hole-in-the-Air, a village marking the border between the Uulian Commonwell and its adjacent part of the Exilic Lands. I have always been curious as to what lay in this direction, Prosatio Silban thought as he surveyed an undulant line of distant hills. Does anyone live here? We’ll have to find out!