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“Kinwa and the Engineer” by Ritter
In this story from the Loom of Hours, young Kinwa uncovers a sinister scheme while studying in the big city.
Today’s story is “Kinwa and the Engineer” by Ritter, a musical husky with a passion for literature. You can find more of his stories, including the full Loom of Hours cycle, on AO3.
Read for you by Rob MacWolf — werewolf hitchhiker.
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Transcript
You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.
Speaker:This is Rob MacWolf, your fellow traveler,
Speaker:and Today’s story is “Kinwa
Speaker:and the Engineer”
Speaker:by Ritter, a musical husky with a passion for literature.
Speaker:You can find more of his stories,
Speaker:including the full Loom of Hours cycle,
Speaker:on AO3. Please enjoy “Kinwa
Speaker:and the Engineer”
Speaker:by Ritter The Matubon people
Speaker:of Slow-Lake have a strange custom,
Speaker:which is that they consider teaching taboo,
Speaker:and refuse to mark symbols,
Speaker:deal in numbers, and do all but the most passive apprenticeship;
Speaker:for the only true knowledge is that which was wrested from the lions of one’s mind -
Speaker:all else is lies and the whispers of wicked men.
Speaker:Kinwa was the best and brightest student the Matubon had ever seen,
Speaker:skilled not just in hunting and tracking,
Speaker:pottery, and spear-throwing,
Speaker:but in writing and arithmetic
Speaker:and diagram-forming.
Speaker:He even knew how to talk to the spirits that live at the back of people’s minds.
Speaker:Really, it seemed like he was destined for anything,
Speaker:and that’s what the people of the tribe said -
Speaker:Kinwa does everything so effortlessly,
Speaker:it’s obvious he’s meant for great things
Speaker:(for skill is not just the measure of someone’s learning;
Speaker:it shows the degree to which they have fallen towards their own fate).
Speaker:Now Kinwa had long heard
Speaker:the deprecations of the elders against false knowledge, but he paid it no heed.
Speaker:What knowledge could there be that did not have to be wrestled against first?
Speaker:No, it was clearly fear of a strange and vast unknown that fueled this insensible caution.
Speaker:So when Kinwa had amassed all the knowledge he could from the tribe,
Speaker:he went to the city of Tulòn
Speaker:to see if he could seek admission to their great universities or esteemed engineering guilds.
Speaker:It so happened that Tulòn
Speaker:was about to embark on another grand construction project
Speaker:in honor of their ancient king,
Speaker:and was happy for all the help they could get.
Speaker:So Kinwa was accepted into the technical university,
Speaker:and began his new studies immediately.
Speaker:A curious phenomenon soon happened to Kinwa, however -
Speaker:he fell asleep. Really, some classes were just so boring
Speaker:and their equations so dense
Speaker:that as soon as they began,
Speaker:he would find himself suddenly overtaken by the weariness of the day, and would
Speaker:fall into restless dreams
Speaker:of frolicking among the meadows.
Speaker:The first week this happened,
Speaker:Kinwa was filled with shame -
Speaker:imagine, the pride of the Matubon unable to solve a few measly problems! -
Speaker:so he resolved to study hard
Speaker:and work towards understanding the material.
Speaker:The following week, however, Kinwa fared no better,
Speaker:and the lectures once more lulled him into a deep sleep
Speaker:(this time, the dreams were of playing with his faithful hunting dog).
Speaker:Kinwa, determined not to let these equations get the better of him,
Speaker:went through the readings back to front,
Speaker:solved the practice problems repeatedly until he could do them with his eyes closed,
Speaker:and took apart the diagrams and charts until he understood all the different parts of them.
Speaker:Finally, on the third week, Kinwa had caught up to the rest of the class enough that, look!
Speaker:he could follow along as the instructors
Speaker:threw up line after line on the chalkboard!
Speaker:He turned to his seatmate to share the good news, but to his horror, his seatmate -
Speaker:and all the students in the class - had turned into a different person, all of them
Speaker:the same pointy-eared figure
Speaker:with reptilian eyes, wreathed
Speaker:in yellow light.
Speaker:“Are you all right, Kinwa?” his seatmate
Speaker:asked, with a voice that was not his.
Speaker:“You look confused.”
Speaker:“Yes,” his seatmate on the other side added, in the same voice.
Speaker:“Come, let’s do the work that was ordained for today.
Speaker:Then you’ll feel a lot better for sure.”
Speaker:As one, the entire class, including Kinwa, stood up
Speaker:and left for the quarry,
Speaker:where they joined other work-gangs made up of the same pointy-eared individual,
Speaker:and hauled stone to the site of the new monument the entire day.
Speaker:Throughout all this, Kinwa had the feeling that he had not been meant to see any of it,
Speaker:that indeed an external force was trying to show
Speaker:that he was still back in the classroom
Speaker:looking at diagrams on the board.
Speaker:It was only through his mastery of mind that Kinwa was able to peer into the inner workings of his unconscious body
Speaker:and see reality as it truly occurred.
Speaker:The next time this happened,
Speaker:Kinwa made use of this mental mastery,
Speaker:and cast deep into himself.
Speaker:Moving through the recesses of his mind,
Speaker:he came upon a malevolent pointy-eared figure with reptilian eyes,
Speaker:surrounded in yellow light -
Speaker:exactly the person Kinwa had seen his classmates become -
Speaker:seated at a plinth
Speaker:and carelessly pulling giant strings as if they were the reins on a horse.
Speaker:“Who are you,” said Kinwa,
Speaker:“and what are you doing in my mind?”
Speaker:“Who are you,” screeched the figure, “and what are you doing in my mind?”
Speaker:“You are mistaken, brother,”
Speaker:said Kinwa, hesitantly.
Speaker:“This is my mind we are in, which I know
Speaker:because I am quite attached to it.”
Speaker:“It is my mind because I am the one controlling it!”
Speaker:said the figure. “Now get
Speaker:out of my mind and leave me to do my construction in peace!”
Speaker:It cracked one of the strings like a whip,
Speaker:and Kinwa unceremoniously found himself in the dream again.
Speaker:Now seriously irked,
Speaker:he resolved to get back at the mysterious person who had so rudely taken control of his body,
Speaker:and to this end, he continued attending the offending classes quietly over the next fortnight.
Speaker:He soon deduced that the diagrams and equations the instructors were preparing
Speaker:constituted a summoning ritual of some sort.
Speaker:As soon as he felt himself falling into the now-familiar trance,
Speaker:Kinwa took the mental path he had explored before,
Speaker:and upon finding the controller,
Speaker:proceeded to ‘paint’ the summoning diagram using his mind’s eye.
Speaker:He swapped out his name for what he assumed was the name of the controller,
Speaker:and immediately found himself in a crystal room,
Speaker:atop a ziggurat overlooking the entire city.
Speaker:In the center, floating cross-legged and insensate atop a velvet cushion,
Speaker:was the pointy-eared fellow from his trance.
Speaker:Kinwa, looking around and seeing nothing aside from a table full of refreshments,
Speaker:grabbed the nearest pitcher to hand,
Speaker:tiptoed up to the controller,
Speaker:and splashed him with its contents.
Speaker:“Guh!” yelled the figure,
Speaker:jerking awake and falling over,
Speaker:all while trying to pull its robes off.
Speaker:“I,” said Kinwa, splashing a little bit more from the pitcher,
Speaker:“would like an explanation.” “Ereakaiza’s
Speaker:eyelashes!”
Speaker:screamed the controller.
Speaker:“I will have your head for this!
Speaker:Guards! Guards!” “See, I know that’s a bluff,”
Speaker:said Kinwa, sloshing the pitcher around.
Speaker:“Nobody has been in this room for a day at least.
Speaker:You summon the food in, you eat it, but nobody comes in or out.
Speaker:You have cobwebs on you, for goodness’ sake.
Speaker:How long do you do this for?
Speaker:How are you not yet dead?”
Speaker:“Just get out and leave me be,”
Speaker:cried the controller, its ears waggling above its head.
Speaker:“What is it you even want?”
Speaker:“I want an apology,
Speaker:and I want to know who it is from,”
Speaker:said Kinwa. “And no more shoving around in people’s heads!
Speaker:You are giving everyone in my dormitory terrible nights’ sleep,
Speaker:and we all have classes to attend in the mornings.”
Speaker:“But that’s the whole point of the ritual,”
Speaker:whined the controller.
Speaker:“I take over your bodies and make sure that construction is proceeding as it should.
Speaker:My elders always said
Speaker:to never delegate a job if you could do it yourself.
Speaker:This way, I can do
Speaker:all the jobs myself
Speaker:and never have to delegate!”
Speaker:“That doesn’t make it appropriate,”
Speaker:said Kinwa, “and I still don’t hear an apology.
Speaker:We can keep at this the whole day if you want; I’m not leaving.
Speaker:leaving.” “Fine, fine,” grumbled the figure.
Speaker:“I apologize -”
Speaker:this it said in an obsequious, faux-polite tone “-
Speaker:for taking over your and your cohort’s bodies
Speaker:without your knowledge or agreement.”
Speaker:“And your name, too, if you please.”
Speaker:Kinwa gestured threateningly with the pitcher. “All right! All right. I am…” Here the figure pulled itself
Speaker:upright in an almost regal position,
Speaker:if it weren’t for the soaked-through undergarments and pile of wet robes.
Speaker:“I am Akbal, First King of Tulòn; now, Spirit of the City.
Speaker:I built this metropole from the ground up,
Speaker:and by the gods am I going to ensure that it stays up.”
Speaker:“A likely story,” said Kinwa.
Speaker:“Why then, Akbal First-King-of-Tulòn, do you possess your engineers
Speaker:and treat them like manual labor
Speaker:instead of the fine minds that they are?”
Speaker:Akbal wrung his hands.
Speaker:“My viziers would
Speaker:botch all the finely laid-out plans I had by
Speaker:ordering the wrong cut of stone,
Speaker:passing on the wrong measurements -
Speaker:little things, you know.
Speaker:In the end, I had to spend so much more money tearing down these monuments that I decided:
Speaker:why even have supervisors if the supervisors couldn’t understand the plans.
Speaker:So upon my passing
Speaker:I put this procedure into motion,
Speaker:and it has served the city marvelously ever since!”
Speaker:Kinwa shook his head.
Speaker:“Akbal, you are the dumbest smart person I have ever met, and that includes myself.
Speaker:Have you considered that not all engineers are as
Speaker:bone-headed as your viziers?
Speaker:I figured out a way into your private chamber all by myself -
Speaker:surely I could understand the blueprints to your triumphal pyramid or
Speaker:whatever new thing you have brewing.
Speaker:Trust your underlings a little.”
Speaker:“Trust ruined my kingdom,
Speaker:and now you’ve ruined it too!”
Speaker:screamed Akbal.
Speaker:He ran at Kinwa, and as they collided,
Speaker:Kinwa became aware of the entire city as if it were a giant, limp beast on the ground over which ants made their home. They were the
Speaker:buildings and the quarters where the citizens made their residence and their businesses .
Speaker:At the ‘head’ of the city,
Speaker:Kinwa could see the palace and grand temple rising above all else;
Speaker:towards the flank, he saw the academies and universities and makers’ quarters,
Speaker:bustling with activity;
Speaker:and further down, where the tail would have begun,
Speaker:he beheld a giant pit
Speaker:with dust rising out of it -
Speaker:dozens of feet of scaffolding had collapsed,
Speaker:as well as some pulleys hoisting great carven boulders.
Speaker:All over the site,
Speaker:men and women were on the ground,
Speaker:holding their heads and moaning in confused pain -
Speaker:but they were themselves,
Speaker:not copies of the First King.
Speaker:“See what you did!”
Speaker:boomed Akbal’s voice in Kinwa’s head, before returning himself and Kinwa to material form.
Speaker:“By interrupting my concentration, you’ve set construction back by weeks,
Speaker:and you almost killed how many workers down there!”
Speaker:“Oh hush,” replied Kinwa.
Speaker:“Do you even care about your workers at all?
Speaker:One gets the impression that they only matter to you as vessels for your royalness to fill.”
Speaker:Akbal scoffed. “Why do
Speaker:they need to be any more than that?
Speaker:We have already established that they cannot carry out plans to save their own skins;
Speaker:we have seen that they can barely navigate a construction site without making some new disaster.
Speaker:Next, you will have me believe that they will design their own buildings themselves!”
Speaker:“And whyever not?”
Speaker:retorted Kinwa. “I have made my own huts without the benefit of someone guiding my hand -
Speaker:merely by observing others at work was I able to derive the principles of good construction.
Speaker:I cannot imagine that someone smarter with codices and numbers than me
Speaker:could not do the same for grander edifices.”
Speaker:Akbal sneered. “I waste my time -
Speaker:and everyone else’s! - talking with you. If you
Speaker:will not get out of my way,
Speaker:I will have to remove you myself.”
Speaker:And with that, he flung himself at the young student.
Speaker:Unfortunately, the old king did not consider
Speaker:that the body he was inhabiting
Speaker:had become frail and decrepit over many, many centuries,
Speaker:and was no match for the robust chokehold that Kinwa
Speaker:put him in. Thus, the First King of Tulòn
Speaker:was dispatched for the last time,
Speaker:and Kinwa spent the next few hours figuring out how to un-summon
Speaker:both himself and the elfin corpse
Speaker:from the top of the ziggurat
Speaker:(not that much harder than summoning, it turned out).
Speaker:The next time the usual classes rolled around,
Speaker:there was a bit of a commotion as the students and instructors
Speaker:quickly realized that suddenly they had nothing to do.
Speaker:But they came together
Speaker:and talked things out,
Speaker:and pretty soon were making new projects of their own,
Speaker:like an aqueduct to supply more fresh water,
Speaker:or a larger sewer system for the newer parts of the city.
Speaker:As for Kinwa, he had returned to his people, having had his fill of the city,
Speaker:and spent the rest of his days hunting,
Speaker:exploring, and occasionally agreeing to have a handful of youngsters apprentice to him.
Speaker:But he never went in front of a chalkboard again,
Speaker:nor did he deal with symbols and numbers;
Speaker:for there was a small part at the back of his mind that saw reason
Speaker:in Akbal’s doing,
Speaker:and it terrified Kinwa to know that,
Speaker:given the chance,
Speaker:he might put his own people to the same fate
Speaker:as the infernal king did.
Speaker:This was “Kinwa and the Engineer” by Ritter,
Speaker:read for you by Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:Werewolf Hitchhiker.
Speaker:You can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,
Speaker:or find the show wherever you get
Speaker:your podcasts. Thank you for listening
Speaker:to The Voice of Dog.
