Chapter 5

Lalock, Village near Valley of Mist

 

Many more generations passed, and the Lalocks still live in the caves near the mysterious Valley of Mist. The valley is still a barrier to any movement south, and in all of history, no one has found an end to the valley, either to the East or to the West.

The village consists of a large number of caves that serve as homes. Several families live in some of the larger caves.

The priests and those who serve them live in a large communal cave only a short walk from the village. This cave serves as a temple of worship, and the place where the priests keep the sacred Fire.

Some caves have been eroded by wind and rain; others were carved into the sandstone cliffs with stone tools. A small stream runs at the base of the cliff, providing water for drinking and bathing. A large river flows some distance east of the village, at the base of yet another sandstone cliff. Trees grow right to the edge of that cliff, which drops directly into the river. The Lalocks use a trail down the side of the cliff to get to the river to fish, bathe, and swim.

A short distance from the cliff, the river runs into a valley of perpetual mist. The mist hides the valley completely. Many people ask, “Is there an end to the valley? Is there another side?” No one knows, but they can hear strange sounds coming from the valley. It is a dreaded place. Since no one who ventured far into the valley has ever returned to tell what was there, they call it the “Valley of Death.”

 

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Lalock is an unhappy place. Their God is an oppressive God. The priests sacrifice people to Fire and use the power of fear to control them.

The priests watch the young girls carefully to determine when they are becoming women. The girls are required to tell the priests when they have their first time of the moon. But before a girl can enter the temple to undergo the rite of womanhood, she must be examined by a priestess to determine if she is a virgin. If she isn’t, they declare her unworthy and place her in the sacrificial Fire, where the Fire God judges her.

Once it is assured that the girl is a virgin, the priests take her into the temple, where she is forced to submit nightly to them until she conceives. It usually requires about three months before the priests are sure the girl is pregnant. When this is confirmed, the priests tell the people and the girl’s future husband that they should be proud of her, because God has blessed her and found her worthy. God has impregnated her, and it is a great honor to bear the child of God. And then she is allowed to rejoin her family and marry the man of her choice, but the couple must pledge to raise their children to worship the Fire God.

If the girl doesn’t conceive in a reasonable time, the priests say that God has found her unfit, and she is thrown into the Fire. The priests tell the people that this is done to maintain the sanctity of the village.

 

Lalock men were tortured by stories of how their future wives were lusty participants in the sexual orgies, and in a few instances, they were forced to watch, in secret, as the sexual encounters took place. This was to assure the man that his bride-to-be was engaging in the acts willingly. The priests erroneously told the men that the girls found the experience so satisfying that they didn’t want to leave the temple even after conceiving. It took a very strong man to continue to love the girl he had committed himself to marry after watching her seeming to enjoy these encounters, and indeed it destroyed the loving relationship between many of the couples. It was very difficult for a man to love his wife’s firstborn, knowing that the child was not his.

The greatest torture a young man could endure was knowing that the girl he loved was being impregnated by another man. He knew that the girl also had a sexual release, but it was purely a physical response, and that her mind was saying no while her body was saying yes.

The girls told their betrothed that they submitted willingly because they knew that if they did not conceive, they would be sacrificed to the Fire God for being unworthy. The men knew this was true and tried to put the situation out of their mind. Some women anxiously watched the faces of the priests, wondering which one had fathered her baby.

 

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