A valiant effort

“Hm.” Alex gave a noncommittal grunt as he let the idea sink in. After hesitating for a few moments he slowly shook his head “Naw. I can’t really ask her to swear eternal loyalty with me.” Adding ” She’d probably get the wrong idea. ” with a wry grin.

“Oh? And which impression are you trying to avoid, exactly?” I pressed my attack.

“And that’s why you don’t have any luck with the ladies.” He countered, completely ignoring the fact that -recent dry-spell aside- we both had enjoyed moderate success in our love-lives. “ Telling her ‘You look gorgeous tonight.’ Is the polite knock of the dating life. Asking ‘Want to swear in front of a pagan goddess that we’ll spend our life together?’ is more of a battering ram. “ he chuckled ” Hehe. You could hardly fault Amy for pulling up the drawbridge and getting out the kettle of burring pitch if I opened with THAT. ”

“But you’d like to exchange vows with me? ” I asked with feigned embarrassment “Gee, that is such a big step. I…I am not sure that I am ready.” I hard to fight hard not to ruin the effect by breaking out in a grin.

Alex gave an exasperated sigh “No! It’s purely platonic.” adding in a calmer tone “See. Took me five seconds to explain, and I’m pretty sure you believe me. ” he chuckled “ Can you see me doing the same with Amy?”

“Ok, ok I see your point. ” I lifted my hands in defeat. The banter had done wonders to banish my doubts to the back of my mind and this was clearly important to Alex. “So, you think we need one of the vines?” I asked looking back to the idol.

My friend nodded “The arms where bound in something that looked like the goddesses’ hair right? ” he explained “If you need the occasional strand for your rituals, giving the statue hair that grows back on it’s own would make a lot of sense. ”

“Makes sense.”

It took a bit of trial and error to figure out how to secure the vine around our forearms. There was no way we’d be able to imitate the elaborate knotwork shown in the pictures, but our solution looked sufficiently occult in our humble opinion.

Since this was mostly for Alexs benefit, it was his left arm and my right arm that were lashed together so his good hand would be free to cast the runes.

The pouch containing them rested in our two bound hands and we were facing the carved woman, which felt pretty appropriate.

“So. How many do you think I should take?” Alex asked, his hand hovering over the bag of…. What were these chips made of anyway? Wood perhaps? Or stone? ….They wouldn’t have used bone would they? Well, not human bone anyway, a university could probably get their hands on….

“What do you think?” Alex repeated, interrupting my train of thought.

“Huh? Oh, right. Just grab a hand full. It’s not like we could interpret them anyway.” I decided with a shrug.

“Here goes nothing. ” My friend murmured as his hand dipped into the bag.

“Wise One ” he addressed the idol after taking a steadying breath “we stand before you to prove the strength of our bond. Make your will known through the fall of the runes. ” A bit dramatic in my opinion, but I had to admire the forethought. The little prepared speech really added to the atmosphere.

There was a loud clattering as Alex let the coin-sized disks rain gently to the floor with a little sweep of his hand. In the flickering light of the candles, it looked like several of them split as they hit the wooden floorboards, both disks rebounding to fly in a different direction.

By the time the last rune had rolled to a stop and fell to its side with a faint ‘Click’, it was fairly obvious that it hadn’t been a trick of the light: on the floor before us were far more rune-coins that would have fit comfortably in Alexs hand.

And they had fallen in a way, so the lines on neighboring or overlapping pieces formed letters.

‘tWo ROds but NO

bAsKet

TO hoLD THem.

ChOoSE'

I just stared at the floor dumbfounded, they were slightly mangled ,sure, but those were clearly Latin letters spelling out a message in modern English. Granted, the brain is wired to seek familiar shapes even if there are none. The chances were pretty good that’d a few pieces would come to rest so they formed something that looked like , for example, an ‘A’ or a bird.

Had we just been witness as the proverbial monkey on a typewriter wrote Shakespeare by pure happenstance? The chances of this happening by pure chance were astronomically small!

But what were the chances of encountering an actual pagan goddess?

Just like me, Alex, who had been staring wide-eyed at the message until now, slowly raised his hand to cover his mouth. He had gone pale as a sheet, and I could feel him shiver slightly.

“It….” I began, wanting to assure him it was just an incredible fluke, but stopped when he mumbled something from behind the **** grip he had on the lower half of his face.

“Huh?” not very eloquent, but I WAS under a lot of stress right now.

“Should ‘ave ‘istened to ‘ou. ” He mumbled, slightly louder, without taking his eyes of the message.

“What…what are you talking about?” now I was starting to worry too. What had he figured out that I hadn’t?

“ ‘wo rods ‘o baske’. ” he said as if that would explain everything.

“What? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“ Should ‘ave asked Amy.” I could feel his tension building through our bound arms “ ‘ee ‘as a baske’ “

She had a basket? What did he…? Oh.

Oh!

The realization hit me, just as Alex,released the deathgrip in his face and started tugging forcefully at the vine binding our arms, throwing me off balance and letting the pouch tumble to the floor.

“No. No! NO! NONONONONONO!” his attempts grew even more frantic as the slender plant I’d snapped plucked without effort, now refused to budge. Once I had regained my balance I joint his efforts, but the bindings might as well have been made from steel for all the good it did.

Desperately looking around for anything that might help ( we hadn’t brought a knife but perhaps I’d find some particularly sharp stone?) I might use my eye fell on the the spilled contents of the fallen bag, spilling out the same word in a dozen variations: ‘cHooSE’.

“The fire!” Alex was staring wild-eyed at the smoldering coals “We can use the fire!”

That ….was a spectacularly bad idea. I really didn’t want to be a woman, but I wanted to turn my right arm into a charred stump even less. And if the vine could magically withstand brute ****…. “It won’t work! Stop it! IT! WON’T! WORK! IT WON’T!” But my **** screams fell on deaf ears, in his panic Alex was already blind to anything but what he saw as our last chance to escape.

I don’t remember much of what followed; we ended up rolling around the floor in a whirl of shouting, pleading, cursing and the occasional punch or kick. When the adrenalin left us, my friend was lying on top of me both of us aching and desperately gulping for air.

We stayed like that for, I don’t know how long, until Alex groggily lifted his head and gingerly started to pull himself to his feet, helping me up in the process.

“So. What now!” He sounded tired and didn’t bother lifting his eyes from the floor.

It hurt seeing him like that, resigned, so I turned my face away looking at the vine-covered idol instead. “We choose.”