The Oracle – Humility

Somewhere high in some mountains near you lives the Oracle…

It was morning and the light on the mountain was a peculiar shade of orange. The oracle sat dozing on her wooden ‘throne’, where she looked like nothing so much as pile of motheaten rags. She woke with a start, jerking a grimy thumb at her amanuenses.
“You run along inside, Watson. We’ve visitors coming.”
He didn’t understand how she knew there were folks coming, but he trusted her instincts so he ran. He was about to sit in his usual observation post when she spoke in a soft, but carrying, voice.
“Further in, boy, this lot have good eyesight.”
He went, scrambling up a stone staircase to the ledge where he slept and sitting quietly beside a narrow slit in the rock.
The three men who approached the oracle were big and bulky, with spreading tattoos and what even Watson could recognise as gymnasium muscles. He thought they might be abusive towards the oracle, but he reckoned without the power of legend.
The trio bowed briefly, but respectfully. One took a single step closer to the throne.
“Old mother, we would consult with you.”
“With me? Or with the voice of the mountain?”
“Are they not one and the same?”
“Sometimes they are. Sometimes they are not.”
The man rubbed a hand across his shaven head. “What sort of an answer is that?”
“It’s no more than the simple truth.”
The man’s chin jutted and he glared at her. Watson was pretty sure the oracle was meeting his angry eyes with her own cold, emotionless gaze.
“Why do you not fear me?”
Her laughter was derisive. “I fear nothing when I have my feet on the earth of the mountain. Least of all an ‘alpha male’ whose courage wasn’t sufficient to come to me alone.”
“Old woman, I could snap your neck like a twig.”
The oracle lifted her voice and it echoed all around the little plateau like the notes of a tolling bell.
“Set aside thine arrogance man child. Thou art not first in the eyes of any but thyself. Thy fast cars and houses do not make of thee a man, and if thou dost not mend thy ways thy followers will fail like vines in a drought. Thou and thine are not meat nor drink to the world. Begone from this place and learn humility.”
The oracle stopped speaking and the big man hissed.
“What’s to stop me killing you out of hand?”
Before the oracle had chance to answer, one of the man’s two followers started to scream, thin and high.
“What? What is the matter with you. Embarrassing me by screaming like a girl.”
The man just kept on screaming as a huge spider made its way across his chest, stopping at his throat. All three men froze, with the screamer barely daring to breathe, never mind make any noise. A tear ran down his face and the spider extruded a long tongue to lick at the salt.
It was the oracle who broke the silence.
“You consulted the mountain. Now leave while you still can.”
The spider whisked up into the treetops and the big man clenched his fists.
The shotgun she always kept hidden in her drowsy skirts bellowed, and the men broke and ran.
Once they were well down the slippery scree-littered path, the oracle laughed her wheezy laugh.
“The spider is animatronic,” she said. “It’s a test of courage. Them three failed dismally.”
Watson couldn’t disagree…

The Oracle foresees she will return next week…

Jane Jago