the khagan of soil

The Khagan of Soil was so slow that if he invited you over for supper, not only would you be done eating by the time he finished grace, but you would be hungry for breakfast by the time he swallowed the last bite of his meal. In his dotage, he became slower still, until his heart beat once an hour, like the chiming of a clock, and yet slower, until a whole year passed as a day for him, with spring as his morning and autumn as his dusk.

The slower he got, the wiser he became. At first he could listen closely for the ponderous language of the soil, then the centennial utterings of the stone beneath it, and then the slower and stranger liturgies of the things farthest below, until all of the secrets spoken by the earth were known to him: buried treasure, buried bodies, the coming of earthquakes, and the disposition of the dead.

He grew lonely in the quietude of his life, and spent sixty years making six children of clay and stone, three sons and three daughters, in hopes that they would keep him company. Even these beings of earth, however, were too impetuous to live with a man of such supreme slowness, and left him in his House to find their fortune in the world.