Old Man approached us. His face was so close to mine that I had to take a step back.
“Why do they fall?” he asked.
No answer.
“Who will tell me?” He was louder, closer.
“They’re weaklings.”
“They’re Sheep. Their knees melt,” said Bako.
“It’s the hunger.”
“The cold.”
Some of those who had fallen were strong-built children.
“And not only,” said Old Man.
“You? Orphan?” Now he was asking me.
“What?”
“Will you fall?”
“Never.”
He turned his back on me.
I was the strongest. I wasn’t meat for the dogs. I had eaten well the previous night.
When only seven of us were left, early in the evening, I raised my fist to celebrate. The rest followed—except for Malan. He just looked at me like I was a fool. None of the Reghen made a move to bring us meat. I put my arm down, and we all continued to stand.
Six remained. The Reghen did not move. Then we were five. Nothing. It was late in the evening, and all the birds had disappeared. If anything moved among the branches, it was either wolves or, worse still, Reekaal. I had never been this close to the Forest at night before as I had these first two days.
And if two of us were left? Or one?
And if only Bako and I remained, that swine with the burnt cheek? How I wanted to be alone with him in this field, without blades, to fight bare-handed.
And if it was only Malan and I? Could I take him?
If it was Elbia and I? I didn’t want to fight with Elbia. She was a girl. What glory could I enjoy in that?
There was another one still standing, who I later learned was named Matsa. A Sheep who had no meat the night before. He was thin but not weak, each curve of his small muscles outlined as if he were a skinned rabbit.
Bako fell. Four of us remained.
The Reghen approached with a basket. The smell of meat.
I jumped around Bako, who was eating mud facedown, unconscious.
“You wanna fight, mudface? Get up. Come on, blade fight. Wake up, stupid. Don’t be afraid,” I yelled until they loaded him onto the cart.
Old Man came from the side and slapped me so hard in the head that I fell on my ass. The fresh blow woke me up. I had forgotten what my skin felt like all day. My meat was in the mud. He was shouting into my ear, almost ripping it out with two fingers. “Listen, fool. Don’t ever tempt the Goddess. She saw you, she heard you.”
He let me go, and I ran to Elbia. She had remained standing, a Wolf, like me. The biggest smile was carved on my face.
“He is helping me,” I told her.
“Who?”
“That old Guide. The one who took me out of the tent the first night.”
“I don’t like the other cloudy-eyed one,” she said.
I found the last remaining clothes under the shed and dressed, still lost in my smile. Those weren’t my clothes. The trousers were shorter. The coat was tighter, and it stayed open around the chest. It didn’t have my smell on it. It smelled of defeat. They were bad luck, these clothes. As soon as I put them on, the Goddess saw me. I stuck my tongue out at her all day, her rage would be soon coming.
I was walking toward the Wolves’ tent. Its hides were an earth color, and bull horns were tied on a stake outside. Gray hides covered the other tents to the left of me, those of the Sheep, and a staked donkey’s head stood in front of them. It was still dripping. To fend off the Reekaal.
We were just four children victorious in the tent, and it seemed enormous. The meat was even tastier. And more plentiful.
Elbia wiped her hands well on her trousers. “How do you do it, Da-Ren? Yesterday, they called you meat for the dogs, yet here you are again a second night.”
I wanted to tell her the truth. I imagine the mud to be horseshit.
But lies came out of my mouth. “Roast meat? I will be here every night.”
In a Tribe of carved monsters with iron-hard faces, she was the most beautiful. Her legs strong, not as a chicken, her brown hair shining like the tail of an Archer’s horse, her full lips like double-curved bows. And those bright, fiery sparks of her eyes foretelling that our Tribe would conquer the world.
“How do you do it?” I asked her.
A smirk. That was a smirk on her lips. How did I dare to ask?
“They came to our tent the day I was born, Ouna-Mas and Reghen. He said to my mother that I was marked for glory. I was born fortunate, and I carry this prophecy with me out there in the field every morning.”
It was the most fitting answer. She was the daughter of Enaka.
“You, Matsa?”
He hadn’t opened his mouth except to gape upon entering the Wolves’ tent. I didn’t ask what the Sheep’s tent was like. It was bad luck to go looking for defeat.
“I want to be an Archer.”
He knew what he wanted. I still didn’t.
“You, Malan?” Elbia asked him.
He didn’t raise an eye to look at her. He was looking at me.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think of anything.”
“Another moon. When we are done here, I’ll go see my mother again,” said Elbia.
She was looking only at me, once again.
I had no strength for any more talk. The sweet sleep of victory embraced me. I dreamed of a headless donkey trampling over Bako’s face and belly.
Midnight, I woke to the touch of pain and the sound of my own scream. A cinder had jumped from the fire and landed on my chest. It managed to burn a hole through the woolen tunic and was scorching my bare chest underneath. That cinder wanted to wake me.
I threw it away, and my gaze fell onto the two Guides in our tent. They were sitting in front of the fire, stealing its warmth, with their backs turned. They turned for an instant when I cried out, caught a glimpse of me, and showed me their backs again. The other three children were rolled up in deep sleep. I wrapped myself with the hide and closed my eyes, but the burn on my chest and the Guides’ words had woken me for good.
They talked as if I weren’t there.
“We should have patched our tent before the Sieve. It leaks every night,” said Murky Eyes.
“Just as well. There’s only four left today, so there’s enough room in here for us. The fire is bigger here. Rest and eat,” answered Old Man.
“Third winter in the Sieve. A cursed fate. Where are the raids we used to go on, Rouba?”
Rouba! I knew the name of the old man who kept helping me.
“It’s too late for us, Keko. We won’t be raiding anymore. We have only the Sieve,” answered old Rouba. His hair was gray and thinning.
“This is shit here. Minding, killing children.”
“Yeah, there’s no joy in this. But you know what the Reghen say.”
“Better go to battle with eight wolves…”
“Than ten sheep. This is the Truth of the Sieve, two out of ten perish. It has to be so, Enaka demands the purge.”
They had a slice of meat. One would take a bite and pass it to the other.
“Can you believe that these two are from the orphans? Who would have thought it?”
I tried not to make a sound. The fire stole their words and carried them up to the smoke hole, and I lost them. But when the dogs weren’t barking outside, I could make out what they were saying.
“You are new to the Sieve, Keko. I have seen it many times. It is a great strength. Those who don’t have a mother don’t cry, don’t care.”
“And they don’t fall.”
“Yes. Look at that kid, Da-Ren. Have you seen how he stands, like his legs were tree trunks rooted to the ground? He may not fall for the entire Sieve.”
“No one has ever done that.”
“Oh, but he is strong. I tell you, he has passed his twelfth winter and we’ve forgotten him.”
&
nbsp; I lowered the hide beneath my ears so I could hear.
“With so many buckets of shit that he’s carried, yes, he is strong. But those brown curls of his hair. His mother was an othertriber for sure.”
“Well, lucky for him that she no longer lives,” said Rouba. He turned to look at me, and I just managed to close my eyes.
“Have you seen the other one, that Malan? Whenever I turn my back, I fear he’ll stab me with a knife.”
“He has the eyes of the Reekaal. The Cyanus.”
“Do not bring the Reekaal into the tent at night. The nights belong to the demons, and they can hear.”
The Reekaal, the legendary otherworldly demons of the Endless Forest, did not steal my attention. I wanted to hear about me.
“Do you think we may be rearing the future Leader here?” asked Keko.
“Of one of the warrior Packs? For sure. But of the whole Tribe? The One? The next Khun? There are more than forty other fields with other children in the Sieve scattered around us.”
“But we chose the strongest children here.”
“Even so. How many winters has it been? I am an old man, and Khun-Taa is still the Leader of the Tribe. Twenty-five winters now. And there are so many others, older than they are, waiting to be Khun.”
“And if we have a woman Leader growing here? Leader in a Pack? The Archers? That Elbia?”
“You know that one of these three has the curse of the Goddess. It is always the strongest of the Wolves who carries it. Second-day standing—”
“It is not Elbia. Da-Ren has the curse,” Keko said.
Something was walking on my foot, but I didn’t dare move. Matsa was mumbling in his sleep, and the Guides stopped talking for a few breaths.
“How do you know?” asked Rouba.
“On the first day when Sah-Ouna approached him first. Didn’t you see? The mark is well hidden by his hair, but…”
The dogs kept howling outside, and I wished for lightning to burn them. I closed my eyes and played dead as the Guides turned toward me again. I tried to breathe as if I were asleep.
“What mark?” asked Rouba.
“He’s a ninestar. I don’t know how he can still be alive or what he is even doing here. But Da-Ren has the curse for sure. The third day is dawning today. Count. On exactly the twenty-first day, the Ouna-Mas will finish him.”
“A ninestar and an orphan?”
I remained frozen when Rouba’s fingers passed through my hair. They were warm from the fire.
“Black livers of Darhul. That’s a solid mark.”
“What is it?”
“He is not just a ninestar. He has the mark of the full red triangle. See, here. A cursed ninestar,” said Rouba.
He took his hands away. Keko’s hands also searched through my hair. They were rough, like blade stones, grinding the bones beneath my skin.
“A full red triangle. Mark of the darkness,” Keko said.
“Careful you don’t wake him.”
“He’s sleeping like a rock on the banks of the Blackvein. He won’t wake. They’re all dead tired.”
“A true ninestar. I’ve never seen one in the Sieve. Not one in the ten thousand Archers when I was there.”
“No one would ever make it alive that far. It takes another five springs of training to join the Archers. Black fate. What demon took the mother’s mind to bear him a ninestar? Couldn’t she hold another night? Or push sooner?”
I wanted to get up, ask, yell, shake them up, but I didn’t. They would hear my heartbeat. They’d know I wasn’t asleep. I was a “ninestar.” And worse, I had no idea what that meant. The Greentooth always told me, “You won’t last even nine nights in the Sieve, you cursed creature.” She never said seven or ten. Always nine.
“What punishment does his mother deserve? Would you slaughter her if you knew her?”
“Slaughter her? I would nail her to a stake. Is that why Sah-Ouna spat on him first?” asked Keko.
“Why else? Sah-Ouna knows the fates of us all and every breath that comes out of our mouths till the day we die. Who do you think marked him as a baby? The Ouna-Mas.”
“Stupid of you, Rouba. Why did you bring him in this pack? With the strong?”
“You shut up. The Goddess decides,” said Rouba.
I had forgotten to breathe for some time.
“Wake them up. It’s time for them to go out.”
The other three woke and ate their gruel quickly. I couldn’t swallow any, as if the mush were made of river gravel. I felt a tickling like a scorpion running up my ankle. It was only a small shiny green stinkbug warming itself near the fire. I’d eaten stink bugs many times when hunger was cutting me in half. In the orphans’ tents. Where my mother had abandoned me. Whoever my mother was.
VII.
No Mother
Island of the Holy Monastery, Thirty-Third Summer.
According to the Monk Eusebius.
An eternal traveler am I, my sandals walk upon all the empires of mortal Kings, but only in the Empire of Heaven do I belong.
And now, as I write the story of Da-Ren, nowhere will I make mention of the name of his tribe, or the names of our Empire and its Emperors as they have already been written down in history. Because this is not the epos of one tribe, of the straw-haired, or the brown-skinned, or the blue-eyed, or the slanted-eyed, or the black-haired. It is not the story of a tribe of the north or the east whose feet once thundered upon the earth before obliterating itself, a victim of its own barbarism. This is a story of every tribe’s rightful thirst for survival, and its lawless hunger for the annihilation of its neighbors. God has not cursed or embraced one tribe alone; anyone may sit to the right or to the left of Him.
And I will make no mention of the dates of the historical age because it is the story of every age from the time that Man made the knife, sharpened it, fastened it to his belt, and fought the abominable beasts and his own despair with his Brother as comrade. Until the time when Woman came between them and the Brothers turned on each other. And Woman planted in their place the seed of the next Man, the better, the stronger.
And I will not refer to the empires and the cities with the names that all remember still. I will intentionally wash them clean, for I can bear none of them, nor omit them from my story, nor write their true names. They are the names of all the cities that fell, and will fall again, into the hands of the barbarians. Even those that still stand unconquered will fall in time. For it is all of these cities, ours and theirs, that deserve to weep for this story. And it is all the fiery deserts, the endless grasslands of the steppe, and the darkest forests made of timber and of stone; these are the wombs that spat out the barbarians and will do so again.
No, I will not mention all this because I am a man of God, still, and this is not my world. I am only passing. My world is eternal, there above in the heavens—neither north nor east have I a curse to cast, neither south nor west do I have to offer praise.
Already fourandten days had passed since I had commenced on the documentation of Da-Ren’s story. The elder monks had decreed that it was to be I who took on the task of the scribe.
“The wisdom of the monk is within his cell, in his solitude, and a great sin indeed it would be for one of the Elders of advanced age to hear the profligate memories of this barbarian,” said the First Elder.
“You are a young novice. You will have all the time to repent, and this tedious task will also serve as your penance,” they explained.
I am eternally grateful to their fear and their laziness.
Da-Ren had been for a year on Hieros Island before he was persuaded to tell me his story. He had spent those months in chains, then exchanging pleas and curses, and finally with ample study of the holy and other books. He was neither a monk nor a novice, nor would he ever become one until all his unholy deeds had been documented. The monks expected him to suffer for his sins, repent, and receive forgiveness. He would accomplish only the first.
He did not attend the holy service, b
ut we offered him food, clothing, and lodging. In exchange, he would fish, carry stones for the walls and the church and other supplies from the cove up to the monastery. The idle receive no food, and the lazy deserve no warm clothes, not even at the Holy Monastery. This was an inviolable rule.
I had taken it upon myself to try to teach him our language as best I could. He could speak quite a few sentences but could not write a single word. I explained to him that I would begin to write down his story only when I deemed him ready in language and mind. He agreed to all these terms because of the assurance the monks had given him that this would save his wife and daughter.
It was the kind of story that one would never read in a monastery. After many years of study, I knew well the language of the saints and the sages and the writings of east and west, but I could not understand even the simplest truths of his tribe. There in the north, between the steppe and the North River, Blackvein he called it, was a world of agony, dark and barbarous, a hell deep within the bowels of the earth.
At first, he believed that we would finish in no more than a few weeks. Initially, I shared that belief and expected him to recite a brief story about his wife and daughter and how their lives were in mortal danger. But I knew nothing of his tribe and every answer he gave me, brought up more questions. At the end of the second week, he asked me if it was necessary to describe with such exhausting detail his childhood years.
I answered, “The elder monks asked you to tell me everything that you saw and lived. Everything, Da-Ren, every pagan custom and any sacrilegious acts.”
I did not know what sacrilegious acts a boy of twelve could commit and what purpose it served to waste so much papyrus and time stolen from my prayers to write this sinful barbaric tale. But these indeed had been their words to me.
It was worse than any rumor ever heard of these tribes. A man of God would never read it, and it would not lead me closer to the gates of Heaven, but to the jaws of Hell. And we were only at the beginning.
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