The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Dentures cxxiv-cxxxix

No sooner had their imprecations faded, however, than the Father of Teeth stumbled upon what appeared to be a bundle of dry sticks wrapped in parchment. As the Father of Teeth righted himself and prepared to kick the bundle into the midst of his enemies, the sticks creaked painfully upright and assumed the shape of a hunched and starved creature clutching a greasy package.

"Wretch," said the Father of Teeth, "why do you lie in wait for unsuspecting travellers, when you have neither the strength to rob them nor the wherewithal to trade with them, but only the meagre remnants of your anatomy with which to inconvenience them upon their way?"
"Most impious and blasphemous intruder," said the hunched and starved creature, hunching yet further in its defiance, "you have assaulted me with your irreverent words and assailed me with your inexcusable feet, and under normal circumstances your punishment would be most dreadful. But in view of the present emergency a dispensation may be made, for by tripping over me you have kicked me in the ribs, which is the traditional method for motivating a dilatory servant."
"And are you a dilatory servant?" asked the Father of Teeth.
"I am slothful beyond excuse, yet privileged beyond worldly dreams," said the hunched and starved creature, and began to haul itself effortfully forward, still clutching the greasy package against its cavernous abdomen. "I am the last hope of my tribe, which is to say the last hope of all humanity, for none outside my tribe can propitiate the Creator in the appropriate fashion."
"A fairly common condition among tribes," said the Father of Teeth. "And what form does this particular propitiation take?"
"Since time immemorial," said the hunched and starved creature, "we have wandered the land, hunting and gathering and occasionally sacking a city for our sustenance, in accordance with eternal law. We have saved the best portions of all we find for the Creator, to be delivered to Him by His chosen ministers, who take our offerings into the holy places and, if the offerings are found acceptable, emerge with their beards miraculously enriched with grease, which they ceremonially wipe away while belching with otherworldly contentment. Alas, in recent years the land has been struck with drought and disease, and the cities have been deserted, or else built defensive walls which the Creator, in His infinite wisdom, has left intact so as to instruct us in the renunciation of material concerns. Now there is none left of the tribe save the ministers and myself, and I have just returned from a month's expedition to gather a final offering, which the ministers have proclaimed may prove barely sufficient to ensure the Creator's mercy and effect the tribe's restoration."

Even as the hunched and starved creature spoke, they came within sight of a large tent made from skins, with a flat stone before the entrance. There was nobody outside nor any sign of movement within, but the hunched and starved creature knelt and shuffled its way towards the stone, striking the ground with its forehead at regular intervals, during which it held out the greasy package at arm's length to prevent any damage. Finally reaching the flat stone, the hunched and starved creature placed the greasy package upon it, offered a mumble of prayer and made a grovelling retreat, collapsing after a dozen yards into the same bundle of sticks which had tripped the Father of Teeth.

After a while the tent-flap opened and a man emerged. The contemplative life had kept him in fairly good health, at least by comparison with the bundle of sticks. He knelt before the stone and, with such hasty reverence that he might almost have been making ready to indulge a purely carnal appetite, opened the greasy package, Then, licking his lips with piety, he seized it and disappeared inside.

Eventually, just as the bundle of sticks had said, the man and two companions emerged from the tent, wiping from their beards the miraculous manifestations of the Creator's mercy. They found the Father of Teeth picking his craggy gnashers with a splinter of short rib from the bundle of sticks, who would require it no longer. "Is the tribe restored, then?" inquired the Father of Teeth politely.
"It would appear so," said the man who had taken the greasy package, "for in place of our slow and lazy servant He has sent us a new one, healthy and hale if as yet unschooled in the proprieties."

There followed a brief and untidy skirmish, during which the Father of Teeth seized the oldest and fattest of the ministers by the small of his back and bit out his lumbar vertebrae. Retreating in horror while their colleague flopped and shrieked upon the ground, the two relatively undamaged ministers stared from one another to the complacently crunching Father of Teeth.

"Are we not saved?" quavered the one who had taken the greasy package. "Can it be that the Creator has truly abandoned us?"
"Those questions I am not qualified to answer," said the Father of Teeth; "but for whatever it may be worth, at least you have each other."
"But how shall we sustain ourselves?"
"That question," said the Father of Teeth, "I have answered already."