Gluscap and Malsumis

In the void before the world began,

When fog was thicker than thought,

Gluskap rose from the red clay’s dream

And found the earth unformed, untaught.

He knelt beside the sleeping stone,

And by his hands were drawn,

vales, deep, mountains, tall, that clouds shroud,

that sky and sea meet upon.

He traced his fingers through the plain—

A river sprang and ran,

And every bend became a song

To guide the steps of man.

From driftwood bones he built the moose,

From his sigh, the loon;

He breathed upon the barren hills,

And forests woke in tune.

With laughter sharp as northern wind,

He brought forth the frost to cool the flame,

Taming chaos, shaping form—

And gave each living thing a name.

Then, last of all, he molded us

From dust and dream and tide;

He set the fire within our hearts,

Then stood the world beside.

And when the stars began to spin,

He smiled and turned away—

His work still moves beneath the sun,

Renewed with every day.

After Gluscap shaped the rivers and named the loon, the moose, and the mountains, he walked the new world with hands still warm from making. The air smelled of wet earth and green things; light pooled in the hollows he had carved. On a ridge where the plain met the first forest, he found his twin brother sitting with his chin in his hands, moping with shoulders bowed as if the sky itself pressed on him.
Gluscap paused, the wind lifting the dust of his footprints. He sat a little way off and watched Malsumis, whose face was the color of river stones after rain. Being of a caring nature he said, “Brother, why do you sit so? The world is young and full of work yet.”
Malsumis did not look up at first. When he did, his eyes were small and restless. “It is not fair,” he replied. “You have given names to everything. You have given them shape and song. I have only watched. I want to make something that will be mine to hold.”
Gluscap’s hands folded in his lap. He smiled with the patience of one who had taught rivers to find their beds. “You may from and name one thing,” he said. “But hear me: to name is to take responsibility. A name gives power. It is an obligation that demands care. Those who name are keepers, not owners. To name is to promise.”
Malsumis sprang up as if the promise itself had lit him. He paced the ridge, eyes darting over the land: the river running like a smooth silver thread, the mountains standing tall like old sentinels, the forest breathing in a slow, green rhythm, majestic and untouched. “How dull,” he muttered, touching the bark of a tree as if testing its patience. “All this—so useful, so steady. So boring, as boring as the sky if not for the sun. He looks at the bland earth. Where is the bright? Where is the thing that makes the eye ache with wanting?” He turned his face to the sky, squinting at the sun that rode high and fierce. “The sun,” he said aloud, “that is something. I will bring the sun into the dull brown of the earth.” Beneath his feet, the ground shivered. Warm yellow stones began to form in the riverbeds and in the seams of the mountains, glinting like trapped sunlight. They lay behind the roots of the forest and under the moss, small and hard and utterly new. Malsumis knelt and cupped one in his palm. It was cold at first, then it warmed in his hand. This was his. “I name this Gold,” he declared, voice ringing. “bright as the sun and all will admire what I have formed.” Gluscap watched the stones with a quiet face. He nodded once. “So be it,” he said. “But remember your promise.”
The brothers parted at the edge of the trees. Malsumis walked the rivers, turning the stones in his hands, pleased with the way they caught the light. He came at last to a village where smoke rose in thin columns and children chased one another between drying racks. He set a stone on a flat rock in the square and called the people. “Look,” he said, lifting the stone so the sun struck it. “I have made something that holds the sun. It will glisten in your hands and make you feel the warmth of noon.” A woman who mended nets frowned and touched the stone with a cautious finger.
“It is a stone,” she said, “It does not burn like fire. It does not build a house or feed a child. It is only a stone.”
A hunter spat and shook his head. “What use is a thing that cannot be eaten, worn, or burned? We have wood for fire, skins for clothing, roots for food. This is only another rock.”
Malsumis’ face tightened. The first flush of pride cooled into something sharp. “Then I will make it more,” he hissed. “I will make it shine so that your hands ache to hold it. I will make it warm in your palms so you will choose it over the hearth. It will be desired by all!” He spoke the name again, and the gold answered. It gleamed with a light that seemed to come from within. When a child picked up a pebble, it warmed like a small sun and the child laughed with a new hunger. At first the desire was small: a woman set a stone on her windowsill, a man kept one in his pouch. But the warmth in the palm was a new kind of need, not a need per-say but a desire and desires breed wanting. The people began to want for Gold more than the security of the shelter, the protection of cloth or even the nourishment of food. The people indeed desired gold even above each other.
Villagers began to stop the river’s flow to sift for the yellow stones. They drove wedges into the mountain faces and pried out seams of rock. They cut the forest to reach the veins beneath. Chaos and destruction becomes the norm, all for the want of gold Where once they shared the catch and the harvest, they now measured one another by the weight of the gold in their hands. “Give me your Gold,” a neighbor demanded of another with voice hard. “You have more than your share.”
“No,” the other answered, clutching the warm pebble. “I need it.”
The quarrels grew. Men who had been brothers in hunting turned on one another. They no longer hunted for the deer. Instead they hunted for gold deep under the mountains. The gatherers did not gather for food, but left the fields in search of more gold. Mothers hid their children’s stones and then, in hunger, traded them for what little food there was. Some even struck down kin in the scramble for a vein of yellow.

When Gluscap returned from his long walk, he found the river choked with silt and the mountains scarred like open wounds. The forest stood in ragged lines where trees had been felled. The air tasted of smoke. He sought Malsumis and found him at the mouth of a mine, hands black with earth, eyes bright with fever. “Brother,” Gluscap said, voice low with sorrow, “what have you done? You named a thing and then commanded it to be a master. You have turned a promise into a curse.”
Malsumis laughed, but it was a brittle sound. “They did not see the worth in what I formed, until it burned in their palms,” he said. “They desired it, and so they came. I gave them what they wanted.”
Gluscap’s face hardened. “You have broken the promise of naming,” he said. “Names bind us to care. You have taught them to take rather than to tend. That is not the way of the world.” He moved among the people, speaking in the clear voice he used to call the loon and the moose. He showed them the hollowed riverbeds and the thin, hungry deer. He knelt by a child who held a warm pebble and took it gently from the small hand.

“This stone will not feed you,” he told the child. “It will not keep you warm through winter. It will not shelter you from storm. A name asks for care, not worship. Promise me you will care for the river and the trees, and I will teach you how to live with what you have.” Some faces softened. They saw the thinness of the deer and the emptiness of the fields and they wept. They set down their stones and began to mend the riverbanks and plant new saplings. They taught their children to fish and to share.
But others would not listen. They gathered the gold into sacks and left the land for foreign places where the bright stones were new and the hunger for them could be fed. They sailed away with their hoards, and the sound of their oars faded into the distance. Gluscap watched the departing boats until they were only a line on the horizon. He turned then to the land he had made and, with hands that had once shaped mountains, he smoothed the scars and coaxed the river back into its bed. The forest, given time and care, began to knit itself whole. He found Malsumis at the edge of the farthest mountain, where the last light fell. The brother’s shoulders were smaller now, the fever gone, leaving only a hard, restless hunger.
“Go,” Gluscap said. “Leave this place and learn what it means to keep a promise. Naming is a vow. If you cannot keep it, you must not name.” Malsumis slunk away, his steps long and lonely. The people who remained learned again to measure wealth in bread and shelter and the warmth of a shared fire. The river sang its old song, and the moose returned to the deep woods.
Gluscap sat beneath the first tree he had planted and let the sun warm his face. He closed his eyes and listened to the world he had taught, knowing that names would be given and promises tested as long as people walked the earth. For now, the land breathed easy, and Gluscap could rest until the next lesson was needed.