Oliver D. Bernuetz's Stories

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In the Mishap House

What do I remember of my grandfather?  My oldest memories are of a giant of a man, someone full of life.  He filled every room he entered and seemed to make all the colors brighter and the sounds louder.  You had to look at him, listen to him.   His big booming voice, his loud infectious laugh, his obvious love of life.   And then it happened.  One Sacred Time when the stead had gathered to worship the gods my grandfather took a leading part, as he always did, in the sacred rituals.   This was when I was very young mind you so I was still ineligible to participate myself so what little I know of that time I have heard from others.  My grandfather led the sacred rites and everything seemed to go well as normal.  Well, everything did go well, that is for most of the stead at least.  When the ceremonies were over and everyone had returned to this world they all got up and looked around to see if anyone had returned with any gifts from the otherside.  Pretty quickly they realized that my grandfather was not standing like the rest.  Healers cautiously tried to wake him, to see whether he had stayed behind on the Storm Tula but they soon determined that was not the case, that he was present here but that something had happened to him.  Something had crippled his soul and he never stood or talked again.  And those are the bulk of my memories of my grandfather.  That once great hero, godi and skald lying wasting away in the Mishap House.  I remember how it shocked me the first time I saw him there, that bear of a man, just lying there.  I had never even seen him lying down and to see him there not moving or doing anything but just breathing was a terrible shock.  At first I refused to believe it was him but my mother quietly insisted, with tears in her eyes, that this was indeed her father.  I didn't want to see him after that but of course I did, he was family.  After that I visited him once a year in the Mishap House when we honor our ancestors.  It was always sad to see him and I hated it.  Despite the healers best intentions the air always smelled faintly foul, like failure I always imagined.  My grandfather wasn't the only inhabitant of course but he was the only one who never moved or made a sound.  He just lay there and the healers had to feed and tend him like he was an infant, but worse because you at least expect a response from an infant.  So I visited him in the darkness of the Mishap House, many of the denizens preferred the darkness as it concealed so much.  My grandfather lay near a window though and was always in the light when I saw him so I couldn't help but notice how he dwindled over the years.  As I got bigger he seemed to grow smaller as what muscles he had wasted away.  Every year I visited him, sat on the finely made chair at his bedside and told him of what was happening in our lives.   I told him of the joy I had found with a soulmate, how glad we were to find each other and how happy we were when we had a child.  And how a part of our hearts broke forever when that child died.  Of how my father fell fighting the bitch goddess' forces and the heavy taxes that fell upon our family after that.  And how my cousin disappeared into the Hollow, never to be seen again.  When I look back I feel glad that the good memories still outweigh the bad and I suppose that's a measure of a life well led. 

And I remember when my grandfather died.  In my fortieth year the healers came to me and told me that my grandfather had spoken!  I couldn't believe it so I dropped the oxen traces where I'd been plowing and rushed to the Mishap House to see for myself.   I flew across the tula and everyone stopped their work to stare.  I ran to the far corner of the tula where the Mishap House stood and stooped to bend under the doorway as I had grown to resemble my grandfather.  The house was nearly empty as most of the residents were outside enjoying the warmth of the Elmal leaving only a woman whose mind had been raped away by Lunars and my grandfather inside.  I went over and knelt at his side, taking his dry, cold hand in mine and was shocked when his eyes opened and he looked at me!  He spoke and I had to bend close to hear what he was saying.  As I did he repeated himself.  "It is like looking in a clear pond to see you.   Who are you?"  I told him that I was his grandson and that his daughter and wife had left to join the ancestors years before.  He nodded slowly and said, "Well I will be joining them soon enough myself."  I pressed his hand and asked the question everyone had wondered for years, "What happened to you."   He didn't reply right away but his milky gaze looked around the House.   "So similar and yet so different," he said.  "What's different?   I don't understand what you mean, grandfather."  He turned to me and smiled weakly, "This House.  Like all our stead this House serves to imitate Orlanth's Storm Stead, yet like a reflection in a pond the imitation isn't the same as the thing imitated."  I still didn't understand what he was saying and I pressed him for more information.  By this time the healers had returned to the House, I had left them far behind in my haste, and they were listening as well.  My grandfather weakly shook his head, "I learned that the Storm Stead too has its Mishap House where the crippled followers of Orlanth live, or maybe it just represents someplace needed.  For whatever reason that Sacred Time when we had gone to visit the Storm Stead I was drawn to a tall, dark longhouse on the edge of the stead.  I had never notice it before and wouldn't have known what it was as no godi or skald had ever described it to me if I hadn't seen the runes over the doorway.  As I said before I had never heard that the Storm Stead had a Mishap House before.  But I was drawn forward and despite my misgivings I went inside."  And there my grandfather stopped talking and we waited for him to continue.  "And what did you see?" I pressed after I had waited as long as I could.  He shook his head violently.  "What was inside was nothing that I can frame in mortal words.  Broken deeds, broken dreams and pieces of gods and heroes.  The lack of wholeness."  I struggled to understand, "But why then did you come back yourself broken?"  He turned to me with great sadness in his face, his whole face sagging under its weight.  "How could I remain whole myself in the presence of such shatteredness?  And now that I am ready to join the ancestors some kindness or oversight has freed me to go to them in one piece."  He looked happy briefly and then smiled a beautiful smile, "It please me greatly to see you as a whole man and now I can go on to my rest with an easy heart."  And with that he lay back, closed his eyes for a last time and died.

And now here I lie here dying myself, not in the Mishap House as I am still whole of body and hale of spirit, but in my own bed in my own longhouse, and I think of my grandfather and his tale of the Mishap House in the Storm Stead and I am pleased.   Pleased that I have never seen that tall, dark longhouse on my many trips to the Storm Stead and I hope that you never do either.

September 05, 2003. 

Last updated October 07, 2016

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