Challenge 85

Count the Numbers

Please read “The Orc of the Covenant” first.

Challenges have usually featured Big Ideas in hopes that readers will be inspired to send us their own. Our first Challenge does the opposite: it brings a text right up against our noses. Maybe that will give someone some ideas.

Six rows of carrots. Six of sweet onions. Six of corn. Six of taters. I was counting the rows as I walked. I didn’t really need to count. I knew well the number.

Thus begins Thomas Lee Joseph Smith’s “Orc of the Covenant”: with numbers. And, as it begins with numbers, so it ends, with the number of rings ordered at the jeweler’s. Numbers recur throughout the story, as well, often enough to be noticeable but not so often that they distract us.

The challenge is to tell us what the significance of the numbers is. Is there a progression? Does there seem to be a pattern to odds and evens? Or does the unusually frequent mention of exact figures seem to have a purpose?

Numerology doesn’t count; no fair bringing in extraneous systems. All we have to go by is the story itself.
Well, okay. Here are a couple of Big Ideas for those who like them:
1. The title “Orc of the Covenant” is obviously a parody on the biblical Ark of the Covenant. Is there any connection? Or is the title only word-play on the similarity of “orc” and “ark”?
2. As the ending suggests, the story is a political allegory. What might it represent?

On a completely different note, how does John Thiel’s “The Ranger Knew a Trick” fit the topic of the Discussion Response?

Please send us your ideas!