Rhuna,
Keeper of Wisdom
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Copyright © 2014 Barbara Underwood
Barbara Underwood asserts the moral rights to be identified as the author of this work.
While some of the events are based loosely on historical incidents, this novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, businesses, organisations and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.
Table of Contents
Rhuna, Keeper of Wisdom
About the Author
More Books by the Author
Dedicated to the late and great
THOR HEYERDAHL
whose work inspired the writing of this novel.
Part One
(Tozar)
Rhuna felt the cold air tingle on her bare arms. The gusts of wind tugged at her old baggy tunic and whipped her long hair as she climbed the lonely track on the grassy hillside. The ground still felt cool and dewy under her bare feet. She stopped and looked back, tasted the salty air and drank in the deep blue of the endless ocean. Then she looked down and saw the changed scenery in the valley plain below. Rhuna remembered the dark green treetops and shady tracks that she used to explore in the valley, but it was a scruffy bald patch now, like many other parts of the island.
She reached the top of the hill and looked around. From there, she could even see the horizon on the other side of the island. Many times she had sat on this little hill and explored the empty horizon around her, imagining incredible places and adventures far beyond the dark blue line.
She continued over the crest towards a secluded green area among rocky outcrops, and into the sanctuary of her secret garden, to her make-believe friends, the plants and rocks. It was an oasis of many different trees and plants where her imagination could run wild, and where she felt safely secluded, far away from the people in the valley.
But today felt different to Rhuna. For the first time in her life she felt afraid. She was afraid of what was happening on the treeless plains in the valleys below, and what was changing her world.
Rhuna found the large-leafed plants that shielded the entrance to the cave, scampered through the concealed rocky opening and slid down the short dark shaft. This was the one place no one had ever been able to find her, and where she always felt warm and safe. She let her breathing return to normal and her eyes adjust to the darkness. The familiar dank smell calmed her, and the gentle echo of her movements reassured her. Inside the cavern, sunshine filtered through several narrow slits in the rock ceiling, shining light into the middle of the cave. It had always been her own special place of make-believe and play.
“Hello Cave, how are you today? The wind has told me bad news about more trees that are gone, and there are more giant stone men in the valley now, and I don’t know what I…”
She took a step towards the light, then stopped abruptly. Suddenly, she was aware of a presence in the opposite darkness.
“What do you do here?” Rhuna felt the ripples of the deep, strong voice brush her face. Her body stiffened with fright.
“I play here,” she squeaked.
“You play here?” The booming voice sounded surprised and amused, and it embarrassed her. "Child, who is your father, that he allows you to wander around freely and play in these caves?”
“I don’t know,” Rhuna stammered.
“Which is it you do not know, Child? The name of your father, or why he allows you such reckless freedom?” The voice had softened and felt like a warm caress on Rhuna’s petrified body.
“I don’t know his name,” she whispered.
“I see.”
The mellowed voice slowly moved towards her, stepping into the light. Rhuna gasped and straightened with surprise as she recognized the white robe. She had seen the Masters wearing them, but she had never been so close to one before. She had always thought it was forbidden to talk to one of the Masters.
“What is your name, Child? Do not fear to speak. Tell me your name.” He came nearer and Rhuna noticed the light colour of his hair and beard, and it reminded her of the fine sand on the beach. Under the filtered rays of sunshine, Rhuna glimpsed his gentle, clear blue eyes, and her tensed body softened.
“Rhuna.”
“Rhuna? Is this your only name, Child?” The surprise in his voice made her lips quiver and tears well in her eyes. She had always been so painfully embarrassed about her simple and strange name.
“Rhuna,” he said softly after a moment’s silence.
Rhuna had never heard her name spoken that way. It sounded new and special to her.
“Rhuna, you have suffered much due to the absence of a father. This is the reason you play alone in this cavern.”
Rhuna nodded, startled that he knew so much about her.
“Look at me now, Child,” he said, lifting her chin with a gentle finger until the soft sunrays enveloped her face. She looked into his kind eyes and saw recognition flash across them, and then long contemplation.
“You may call me Tozar,” he said after a while.
"What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I must remain here for a time. Would I disturb your play?” he said, brightening into a teasing smile.
Rhuna felt embarrassed.
“I don’t play anymore! Most girls my age already live with men!”
“Indeed they do,” the man replied quickly, still with a teasing twist of his lips. “You, Child, are not like them, however. Your powers of imagination are far beyond normal. You have many things yet to discover, Rhuna.”
Rhuna didn’t understand what the man meant, but his speech made her whole body tingle.
“Tell me, Rhuna,” he continued in a soft tone, “do others come to this cave? To play?”
Rhuna shook her head vigorously. “No, this is my cave!” she protested. “No one else knows about it!”
“Very well,” he said with a quick nod. “Let it remain so.” He stepped back into the darkness, and Rhuna found herself scurrying towards the cave’s small opening.
Rhuna’s legs wobbled unsteadily as she raced down the hill, her heart throbbing loudly in her chest. She was in tears at the thought of her secret place having been found and invaded by a Master who had spoken to her, and even touched her. She felt her life had suddenly changed completely, just as the treeless valley plains had forever changed the island’s scenery.
Down on level ground, running clumsily back to her home, she suddenly caught sight of them. A row of eight monstrous stone men, all the same shape and with the same face, staring blankly across the valley plain. They had appeared overnight, and no one in her village had ever seen them moving from the quarry to their standing place. Uncle Metti had told Rhuna that it would take all the men on the island to move just one of them, let alone to lift one of them onto their raised platforms. Her mother had simply told her that the stone monsters walked themselves, but Rhuna knew that wasn’t true because the stone men had no legs. They stood on their platforms from the navel up, long arms and hands alongside their narrow torso, thin lips pressed tightly together. On their pedestals, they towered above Rhuna at least five times her height. Now they had come to her side of the island, and for the first time she felt anger
towards the invading stone giants.
Still shaken, Rhuna reached the small wooden hut that had always been her home, and ran behind it to find her mother. The brown-skinned woman was washing a blanket in the old wooden trough, her bushy black hair tied behind her head while she worked. Rhuna burst into feverish prattle about the man in a Master’s robe staying in her cave. Before she had finished, her mother began to laugh and shake her head.
“You and your imagination, Rhuna!”
“Mama, it’s true, the Master spoke to me and even touched me!” At this, her mother stopped laughing and briefly considered what could be true about Rhuna’s story.
“He touched you? How? Where?” she demanded. The horrified look on her mother’s face frightened Rhuna.
“In the cave; he was in the cave,” she gasped, fearing that she had done something terribly wrong. Her mother’s expression changed to annoyance as she returned to her work without another word.
“Who was my father, and what was his name?” Rhuna asked as she watched her mother continue to wash.
“Why do you ask such stupid questions?” snapped the mother, and began scrubbing the fabric much harder than necessary.
“Don’t you believe what I told you, Mama? About the Master in my cave?” she asked weakly. Her mother’s clenched jaws and heavy pounding on the washing answered Rhuna’s question, and she turned to walk away.
Rhuna had walked away like this many times when there was no answer to her questions about her father, but this time if felt different to her. Her life had suddenly changed that morning, and Rhuna knew that things would never be the same again.
For the first time in her life, Rhuna couldn’t sleep that night. The long night passed with images of the giant stone men and questions about the Master in her cave. When panic grabbed her about a terrible wrong she might have done by speaking to him, she remembered the man’s gentle touch. She relived the soothing warmth his touch and soft speech had radiated, and all her fears ebbed away. Finally, she fell asleep at daybreak, lulled by the way the Master had spoken her name in the special way that she had never heard before.
The morning brightness hurt Rhuna’s weary eyes as she went on her way to Velisa’s home to trade some sweet potatoes. She walked on the well-trodden track along a field of knee-high grass and shrubs, then past boulders and over a small creek that meandered towards the vast blue ocean. She enjoyed the short walk in solitude with only the sound of the wind and waves to keep her company. She always lapsed into daydreaming when she walked along these tracks, imagining that the rocks, plants and even the creek had thoughts and feelings like her own. The magical spell of her daydream was broken all too soon when she stepped up from the little creek gully and saw the settlement of seven small cottages ahead. Some of the homes were only tent-like structures made out of light branches and other plant material to give shade and shelter, while talking and eating was done outside in the communal area in the middle of the tiny settlement.
The children of the small village had always teased Rhuna and laughed at her, saying that her awkward ways were due to her pale skin and having no father. Some had even teased that her father was a ghost, a Walking Dead. She ignored them once again as they jeered at her, and she walked towards the thin-walled hut in which her only friend, Velisa, sat and combed her silky long black hair. Rhuna stood and watched a while, admiring her friend’s dark skin and smooth, shiny hair.
“Well, well! It’s Rhuna, come to fetch some sweet potatoes?” asked Velisa’s mother as she appeared from behind a thin bark wall. The woman was round and heavy, and had short dark hairs on her upper lip. She always spoke brusquely to children, and Rhuna tried to be polite in order to avoid the big woman’s reproof.
“Yes, please.”
The woman stooped to pick up a basket already filled with many sweet potatoes, clods of earth still sticking to some of them.
“Are we allowed to speak to the Masters?” Rhuna blurted as the woman handed over the heavy basket.
Both mother and daughter looked shocked. Velisa’s large brown eyes showed a hint of fear.
“What kind of a question is that?” asked the mother angrily. “Of all the things to ask! Why, you should be asking about which young men are available, how to tidy your hair and clothes, and…”
“No reason, really,” said Rhuna, taking the basket and making to leave quickly.
“Don’t you know, silly girl,” shouted the mother, “that there are dark masters trying to harm people like us with their unearthly powers? Didn’t your mother ever tell you about those things? And does she ever tell you about your father then, does she?”
Rhuna felt her cheeks burning and her legs itching to run again. “Thank you for the potatoes. My mother will bring the breadfruit,” she prattled as she turned and fled the small hut.
When Rhuna had returned home and had finished the morning’s chores of cleaning and storing the sweet potatoes, she washed herself all over in the large wooden trough. She had carried the buckets of water from the nearby creek and taken one of her mother’s cakes of soap. It smelled of coconut and it lathered when she scrubbed hard. Her wet hair was full of tangles after its wash. She dressed in her other tunic, her naked body underneath tingling after the invigorating cold bath. Before leaving, she found one of her mother’s belts and tied it around her waist. It felt very uncomfortable, but her thoughts quickly returned to more disturbing matters. She strode up the hillside towards her secret garden and hiding place, feeling both thrilled and anxious about the man in the cave, and then she realized that she had not combed her hair. She hardly ever combed it, and she wondered why combing it today was suddenly so important.
Rhuna slid down the entrance shaft of her cave and saw the man standing in the middle of the lighted area facing her. She saw him more clearly in the stronger mid-morning rays. He looked tall and strong under the long robe, and Rhuna noticed the well-fitting garment’s side clasps and matching belt. It reflected the sunshine unnaturally, as if the robe’s material were not of this world.
“M-master Tozar,” she began nervously, “am I allowed to speak to you?”
“What causes you to ask such a question, Child?” Tozar responded.
“My mother, people in the village, they… I’ve never seen anyone speak to a Master. And because people say bad things about them, I thought…”
“Ah, as I expected,” said Tozar. He smiled at her and stepped closer, reaching out to lay his hands gently on her shoulders. “There exists no law forbidding speech between anyone,” he said firmly. His eyes left her face and lowered to her belt. Immediately, her hands moved and fidgeted with the tight strap around her body, and she felt her cheeks become hot.
“You have been troubled this past night and day, Rhuna. Come, sit and tell me your thoughts,” he said as he guided her to the soft edge of the sun’s rays, towards several neatly-folded blankets on a raised area of the cave’s floor. Rhuna noticed that he had slept on this padding of blankets, and she wondered if he had taken her cave, her secret place, as his new home.
“The trees are all gone and there’s a whole big row of stone men along the beach near my home,” Rhuna began, grateful to be letting out her troubling thoughts. “I don’t like them; they look so mean and strange.” She turned to the man’s shadowed face and asked why all the trees were being taken away.
“For the planetary and cosmic energy forces to be tapped and utilized more efficiently,” replied Tozar. Then he smiled gently and explained further. “You see, Child, this planet we live on, the sun, moon and stars all emit energies that give us life. Not only food and water. You know that the food plants come forth from the ground, nurtured by soil and water to grow, do you not?”
Rhuna nodded eagerly, pleased to have understood the Master’s words for once. “I know about growing food plants, about water, and even about the moon!”
“Very good, Child. And although we do not see them moving and growing, you know that it is the earth and sky that make them gro
w, do you not?”
Rhuna nodded harder. “Like Old Tree in my secret garden,” Rhuna said positively. “I know that the garden has been making Old Tree grow for many lifetimes already, even though I haven’t seen it grow.”
“Yes, yes, exactly like your garden,” nodded Tozar and smiled at her again. “Many other energies and forces prevail around us that we cannot see, however we may utilize them according to our requirements. Certain cosmic energies combine with those of this planet to produce various electro-magnetic forces that may be harnessed for various purposes. Many of these move in either circles, spirals or along certain lines according to the earth’s landscape.” Rhuna watched Tozar’s profile as he spoke, and noticed the even features of his face. “The large standing stones you have observed are positioned according to this science of harnessing cosmic and planetary energies for the purpose of vitalizing the soil, purifying the underground water table, invigorate plant and animal life, even to heal some ailments. There are many additional benefits, also. However, the trees interfere in the successful harnessing of these energies, therefore they are removed.”
“Is that why some of the stone men stand in big circles around one of the hills?” Rhuna asked.
“Yes!” said Tozar brightly, and turned to smile at her. “You are an intelligent girl.”
“Oh no, I’m not! Everyone says I’m stupid, because I’m… I’m .. pale and because I.. I don’t have a father…”
“Do they indeed?” Tozar frowned. “You are merely as yet uneducated, and that is a world removed from stupidity. You have the power of visualization, and this is a great strength.”
“But how do the stone men get there? They don’t have any legs so they can’t walk,” said Rhuna, her curiosity now ablaze.
Tozar laughed and the sound reminded Rhuna of water gently cascading down the gully after rain. “It is by use of the planet’s electro-magnetic forces, in conjunction with intermittent cosmic energies, and at times by the use of sonic vibrations to levitate. It requires considerable knowledge and skill to make the correct placements in order to balance the planetary and cosmic forces,” he explained with enthusiasm.
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