The Goetari School
by G. W. McClary
part 1
Unfortunately for me, I had to be among the dead to be among the trees. I was winded from the climb, up from the plains below by way of rocky cliffs to the cemetery oasis, about a half-mile from the village. Among the rolling grass and scattered pines, near the edge of the plateau, there was a dense copse with a clearing at its center, one I often frequented. It was a shady, quiet place to think.
Within the clearing, three lopsided gravestones were planted in the soil, mossy and long faded, now unmarked, their anonymous corpses merging with the earth below. Little bits of broken glass were strewn about on the ground, flickering from the sunlight seeping in through the canopy, remnants of a fit of rage and a shattered bottle after a spat with my father.
The thicket was dominated by a great tree, the trunk of which was newly split and blackened like great folds of flesh, a beckoning womb, a cozy-looking hidey hole, for it had been struck by lightning during last night’s storm. I was drawn to it inevitably, like a jerboa to a juicy underground root.
I crawled in, expecting the walls to be damp, but they were quite dry. The tunnel was just wide enough for me to crawl through. I struck a match I’d pilfered from the kitchen to light the way once I’d ventured deep enough for true pitch-darkness. The earthen walls of the tunnel led sharply down, with roots hanging from the ceiling.
After much crawling, which made me quite muddy, the tunnel eventually opened to a massive cavity in the earth, in which rested a ruined city of crude stone structures. The buildings seemed ancient, and as if they’d never been maintained or refurbished. Rubble and fallen pillars blocked portions of the streets, and few of the enclosures had complete roofs.
The city was lit by torches braced to the outer walls. Just past the cracked and clustered metropolis was a lake, whose surface appeared black in the lack of light. All around it were verdant green streams wending through abundant foliage. The oasis above paled to that dark emerald splendor. All my life, there’d been a storehouse of water right beneath our feet.
In the center square of the city, a small group was gathered, lit by a large lantern urn in their midst. A man in a robe was addressing a group of boys, all around my age, wearing shoddy-looking patchwork fabric. One of the boys peered up and spotted me from where I was watching them.
“Master, Master, look, he’s here, the 13th disciple is here!” the boy shouted, his tinny voice carrying in the vastness. The Master, the robed man apparently, snapped his fingers, and two aged men wearing patchwork robes like the boys, their long beards trailing, emerged from one of the buildings and hurried toward me. They each grabbed me by an arm and led me toward the group, though I struggled and fought against them. We stopped at the building they’d emerged from, and they shoved me inside. On the table was a tattered robe like those the boys and my escorts wore.
“Change,” one of them said. They stood with their arms folded, their backs to the doorway. I stared for a while at my new wardrobe and tried to recall if any of the other boys wore shoes. From what glimpses I caught, they all seemed barefoot, so I left my leather sandals when I undressed and pulled on that scratchy tunic. The dense fibers clawed at my skin. I coughed to alert my escorts, and they ushered me to the others.
“Hail, Initiates, and welcome to the Goetari School,” the Master said. “It is here that you will begin your seven-year program of study, where you will learn the language of beasts and how to influence the weather, all without any exposure to sunlight. This ” — the Master indicated the fissured stone structures around us — “this once-great city will be your new home. You are free to go about as you please, aside from your duties and attending your courses, under one stipulation: you must never, and I repeat, never venture anywhere near the lake. Doing so is forbidden and will see you expelled and banished.
“The curriculum will be made clearer to you as you progress, but understand that a successful completion of your studies may come with a great reward indeed. You will all begin work on a compendium just like this one.” The Master lifted a dog-eared tome off the table, clearly handmade. “It will contain all the knowledge you’ve gained in your time here. Complete all this, Initiates, and one of you may very well be the next Weather-Maker.”
I raised my hand.
“Yes, Initiate?” the Master asked.
“Your school seems great and all, but I never signed up. I stumbled upon this place through the trunk of a tree after it was struck by lightning.”
The Master pulled an iron axe from his belt and waved it, causing thunder to rumble in the distance. “You dare question me?” he said.
“No, I just—”
“The truth is,” the Master told me, “you fled here. You came to us seeking refuge, did you not?” He locked his quartz-colored eyes on mine and narrowed his gaze. I heard his voice in my head, deep and rumbling and comforting. Good, calm yourself. You may very well be the one we seek, the Master said to me from within. But he was wrong. I hadn’t come seeking refuge. I fell upon the place by chance. Though I heard the Master’s voice in my head, I didn’t answer back. I at least had that.
“Lift up your arm, Initiate. Raise it over your head,” he said.
“Wh-what?” I stammered.
“Do it.”
I glared at him and raised my left arm.
“Just as I suspected,” he said, referring to my great shame, the feathers which grew out of my armpits instead of downy curls like my brothers’. “It is no coincidence you are here. One of our oldest scholars chose the place to leave the opening, knowing you would find it. He thinks you might become the next Weather-Maker.” The scholar of which he spoke glared at me from the shadows. Some of the other boys whispered among themselves, and one of them exploded.
“No, you can’t keep us here! I won’t do it. You can’t make me,” he screamed, dashing away from us. He was stopped by the ring of older men who had encircled us during the Master’s speech. The Master nodded gravely at the two men who held him. The boy bucked and wailed as they carried him away.
“Where are you taking me? Please, I didn’t ask to come here. My uncle is very wealthy. He will reward you all handsomely for my safe return.” His voice trailed off as they disappeared into the crumbling city around us.
“Now,” the Master continued, “I trust there will be no more interruptions. You will each be assigned Graduates, your sole liaisons throughout your tenure at our fine school. They will show you to your chambers. Don’t be discouraged by your meager accommodations. Sparsity is pivotal to the program at the outset. I trust you’ll find it sufficient for now.”
* * *
We slept in separate cells, outfitted only with a pile of hay on which to sleep and a desk which contained our empty compendiums. Communication among the Initiates was discouraged but not expressly forbidden. Though I never whispered back, the others would deliver messages to me as we passed each other while performing our duties.
“I heard they fed the banished one to the beast in the lake,” the first whisperer told me.
“The Master flew me in on a flying machine,” another said.
“Those on the surface are doomed,” came another message, though my lips remained sealed. I often pondered the gossip but dared never to bring it up to my Graduate, lest I be an accomplice to their treachery and end up like the banished one.
I longed to return to my family, to our home in the village, but the Master’s hypnotic hold on me was strong. I felt the homesickness being knocked back by unseen psychic caresses. That must have been why none of the others rebelled as well. But still, the Master didn’t seem to have as firm a grip on me as he did on the others.
* * *
At first, we were essentially lay servants, plating food and handling light cleaning duties. This went on for some time, until one morning I awoke to find my Graduate standing in the doorway, holding a white robe and a length of rope.
“Put this on,” he said, handing me the robe. “We’re going to the surface, but even at night you will need its enchantment to survive the heat.” Much must have changed since I was on the surface, since then it was hot, but not unliveable. I wondered how my family was faring back at the village.
I obeyed and slipped the robe on over my patchwork tunic, a cold chill running through me as the fabric touched my skin. My Graduate tied the rope around my waist and cinched it, testing the tightness of the loop. “Master’s orders,” he explained.
There I was, leashed like a pet fox, but I still felt some excitement at getting to see the surface again, if only under cover of night. I thought only briefly of escape, as the Master had achieved some psychological grip on me, perhaps through hypnosis. I knew I would be loyal and not bolt once we reached the surface.
The rope fixed firmly about my waist, my Graduate tugged me along, up the stone stairs which I hadn’t trodden since I came to this place. We emerged from the blackened tree, into the cemetery oasis.
“We will be visiting the neighboring farms for alms. Be on the lookout for yowie, for they are most active at night.”
I’d heard tales of the yowie from those in the village. They were tall, ape-like beasts that slept in the carcasses of trees during the day and hunted at night. The axe at my Graduate’s waist was a small comfort, but I prayed we wouldn’t encounter one.
“Could we visit my family one day?” I asked my Graduate.
“Maybe one day, Initiate, but not this night. You were lucky you came down when you did. Many were lost when the dry spell swept across the land.”
I knew I wouldn’t be able to see my family in the village, but I peered off in their direction, nonetheless, hoping they had survived this so-called dry spell.
The landscape was dotted with cactuses of various shapes and sizes, though we avoided the largest ones. It didn’t take me long to discover why. On the way to the farmhouse, a jerboa, with its skinny heron-like legs, its whip of a tail, and prominent ears, was making its way across the plains a good distance ahead of us.
The jerboa passed close to one of the larger cactuses, and a creature sprang from a hole in the prickly exterior, snatching up the jerboa in its jaws. Its equine head, covered in scales and slick from the slimy water inside its hideout, flailed the limp jerboa for a few moments and then dragged it inside, surely to finish its meal.
“Was that a bunyip?” I asked my Graduate.
“I see word travels easily in the village. It was indeed. The stories say they used to snatch up men who took more than their fair share of fish from the rivers and streams, back when the region was populated by such things. Now they are resigned to a clandestine life, hiding just as you saw.”
We traveled on, and a jerboa came bounding up to us across the flats. It did not flee as one would have had I encountered one alone, but I wasn’t alarmed, as they were harmless. The furry creature directed its beady, onyx eyes at my Graduate and produced a series of squeals and squeaks, the likes of which I’d heard many a night when one passed by the village.
To my surprise, my Graduate responded back in kind, cupping his hands in front of his mouth and blowing to produce the sounds. The two went on in this way for some time, until my Graduate seemed satisfied and shooed it away.
“Will I, too, be able to talk with the beasts of the land as you just did?” I asked him, as we continued across the plains.
“In time, Initiate, in time,” he said, tugging the rope, his gaze fixed firmly ahead.
It took a few hours before the first farmhouse came into view, a two-story cabin with a handful of ailing patches of ground beside it. An old mule brayed from a shack built into the side of the house.
We took cover behind a large stone outcropping. I watched as my Graduate removed his reflective robe, and I followed suit. We stashed them near the base of the stones and made our way to the farmhouse, shielding our eyes from the glaring sun, which seemed to gaze upon us with disappointment.
As we came upon the house, a farmer stepped out of the doorway and onto the porch. He wore a simple cloth tunic, which was finery compared to what we wore in the village. My Graduate flashed the iron axe at his hip.
“Can I be of aid?” the farmer asked him.
“Yes, kind sir,” my Graduate replied. “I beg of you. I’m traveling with my son here, and we’re quite hungry. Could you spare but a single baked egg?” My Graduate hadn’t warned me I’d be part of a con.
“We haven’t any eggs,” the farmer spat, “nor chickens to lay them. There’s naught here but that old mule and our fields to sow.”
“Of course, sir, my apologies. We will take our leave,” my Graduate said. He tugged me along, the rope still snug about my waist. We visited two other farmhouses, both of which provided us with a single baked egg. My Graduate stowed our alms in his robes, and we made our way back to the cemetery oasis, and the School.
“Wait, where are we going?” I asked my Graduate once we were back underground.
“To the lake,” he said, leading us along.
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by G. W. McClary
