The Other Shrine

By the time we'd put sufficient distance between ourselves and the crabs, it was too dark to see much of the valley where we eventually spent the night. I brought my salamander out to light our way, but we were unable to find the valley's shrine among the trees and underbrush; after I nearly turned my ankle in a gopher hole while looking for it, we decided to wait and pay our respects in the morning.

Our night was thankfully uninterrupted by crustaceans of any size. Before breakfast the next morning, we set off to find the shrine so that we could thank the valley's spirit for their hospitality.

The shrine was easily visible in daylight. We hadn't seen it the previous night because it was an entire sandstone boulder, nearly twice my height, standing by the spring that was the source of the valley's stream. The top of the boulder was carved into the shape of an octopus lifting a trapdoor to peek out of it. We'd simply been too close (or so we thought) to make out the carving the night before. There was no obvious space to leave offerings at the front, so we went around the uphill side and found a handful of Jingli characters carved into the stone.

"Please see other shrine," Chak translated for the rest of us.

Everyone shared a significant look. It seemed likely, at this point, that we had stumbled into the valley of a trickster spirit. Unfortunately, once one has begun an interaction with a trickster, the outcome of quitting is usually worse than the outcome of simply gritting one's teeth and following through. Besides, some tricksters can actually be pleasant company if allowed to amuse themselves. Keeping alert, just in case, and mentally preparing ourselves for something annoying, we set off to look for the other shrine.

The valley was a relatively short and narrow one, roughly crescent-shaped, so we didn't have to look long. The stream ended in a small pond at the other end of the valley. As with all the other valleys, it wasn't clear where the water went from there; into the next valley's spring, perhaps. The edges of the pond were lined with cattails and amphibious blackberry vines, but after some searching, we managed to find the shrine hiding among them.

This shrine was carved in the shape of an upended tortoise. Where one might expect a tortoise on its back to look alarmed, this one was smoking a pipe and sipping from a mug of tea, looking entirely comfortable in its position. The mug held a small stone octopus with a few tentacles curled over the rim. The flat underside of the tortoise's shell would have made a good space for offerings if it had been left clear; instead, it was occupied by an open stone book with a few more lines of Jingli characters carved into its pages.

"No, not this one either," Chak translated in a flat voice. "Try the other end again."

This was more or less the sort of thing we'd been expecting. Still, it was a pleasant enough morning - the sky was blue, the breeze was cool, and the winged gophers who'd endangered my ankle the night before were singing harmonies in the acacia branches - so we didn't mind a little extra walking.

On returning to the spring at the upper end of the valley, we were somewhat surprised to find that the boulder had been replaced with a fountain. Several tiers of singing stone frogs spat water into basins, which eventually emptied into the stream, while a stone octopus conducted them with a baton from the top. The entire structure was darkened with age and water and had clearly been there for years; but then, so had the boulder before it.

"Just one more," Chak read from a plaque at the base of the fountain. "Keep walking, you're almost there."

Back at the pool, we found that the water now drained into the mouth of a large stone whale. Inside its mouth was a stone walrus; inside its mouth, a stone stonefish. The stonefish's mouth held yet another stone octopus, which was holding up a sand dollar with more writing on it. Chak had to swim out into the middle of the pond to read it.

"I lied!" he translated. "The last shrine is back where you started. This really is the last one, I promise."

Mogen grumbled all the way back to the spring.

Further searching failed to turn up another shrine at the spring end of the valley, nor at the pool end either, when we went back to check there again. As we had been walking for at least an hour on empty stomachs and were beginning to run low on patience, we elected to pause for breakfast and continue searching afterward. Karlishek and I went into the wagon that we shared to fetch some pakals for breakfast, while Mogen and Chak gathered some blackberries from the pond to go with them.

Inside the wagon, among the bags and crates that held our food supplies, we discovered the fifth shrine: a stone octopus sitting on top of an overstuffed stone suitcase. A carved sock protruded comically from one side, despite the octopus' lack of feet. Two tentacles held up a stone luggage tag with even more Jingli carved into it. We called Mogen and Chak back to the wagon - which was, after all, where we had started - and Chak translated the tag while we ate.

"Thank you for being so amusing," he read. "It's funny to watch people with legs walking in circles. This is my niece. She is very bored. Please take her somewhere else so she can see the world and stop driving me crazy."

The small stone octopus looked smug.

A trickster's niece as a passenger hardly seemed to qualify as a gift, or perhaps even a wise idea, but at least the writing had asked us nicely. In fact, aside from the harmless prank played with the shrines, our brief stay in the valley had been quite pleasant; we'd had a peaceful night and fresh fruit for breakfast. After a brief discussion, we decided to take the stone octopus with us, hoping that we'd be able to drop her off in another valley if she became too much of a nuisance. We thanked the spirit, glad that we'd been able to offer it some entertainment, and went on our way.

For the rest of the day, at least, traveling with the octopus was uneventful. Though we never saw it move, her suitcase was in a different spot in the wagon every time we looked, with the octopus on top facing toward whatever interesting piece of scenery was visible outside the wagon at the moment. Attempts to ask her name were met with a different answer each time, all of them carved on the luggage tag in elegant Amrat; apparently, she'd overheard Karlishek and I speaking and realized that we didn't understand Jingli. When Chak, in the next wagon, overheard us calling her by the first name she provided and informed us that it was in fact a rude pun in Jingli, we realized that she was also taking advantage of that fact to amuse herself. Subsequent names turned out, according to Chak, to be more of the same. The octopus had a seemingly endless supply of rude puns and kept herself thus amused for the rest of the day.

Otherwise, she was a quiet, unobtrusive passenger. Though still somewhat apprehensive, we began to hope that perhaps we wouldn't regret bringing her along.