I had an evil dream the other night; we were dancing in a circle, the witch, the rag doll, and me, all three of us looking so much alike. We kept swirling and dancing faster and faster, and the wolves gathered and howled around us and the fire. We were moving so quickly that I felt my body and my soul pass through that of the witch and the rag doll. So fast round and round; all three of us became one, and I was now flying, gliding above the leaves. I had no toes, and my laughter was a scream. I could taste the hatred of the witch for my father; I could taste the chicken blood on the lips of the rag doll. Mother spat at me. Can it be? Can it be that there was never a witch or a rag doll? Was I the witch all along? No, that can’t be, that would mean that father, the barn, leading the war dogs to our village, knowing and hiding, no, this is just my mind tormenting me, it can’t be. Not that it matters anymore because come tomorrow, I will become the witch. I just can’t believe that I was the witch all along, the death of them all, no that is just an evil nightmare, and I will not believe it. It doesn’t matter anymore, though, because I already doubt my mind and my life, who I was, and who they were. It is a terrible thing to lose your mind, for truth, nightmare and legend to mix into one. But that terrible thing will help me, come tomorrow.
There are a few things I am still certain of. I had a dog, a puppy. I remember that I buried it many years ago. I unearthed it the other night, only to make sure that I am not losing my mind. Only frail bones left; the molosser broke its front leg. I am certain that I had a little brother, I carried eight sacks with his remains, and I had to empty the sack each time because I didn’t have eight sacks to spare.
I know for sure that I have a man named Jak-Ur and a seven-year-old girl. I boiled our fattest hen, and I’ll bake fresh bread for the feast of spring tomorrow. And I’ll boil the sleepflower, and the mushroom of the forest, the one that brings eternal peace. We will gather around the fire for the last time after the sun sets.
Drink, my child, drink and forget, rest your head, rest your long quiver head next to your father’s, let me lull you into the darkness, the songprayer of the tribe, the song of Enaka.
O Goddess, sweet and beautiful,
come listen …
the woman mourns her offspring.
…
The darkness cries the sorrow’s song,
…And I will bring as sacrifice,
a young heart of my own blood.
I skip the words so that you can sleep faster. What a beautiful song that is, the one you always favored.
Sleep now, the eternal sleep, but don’t worry, I’ll keep you with me forever.
You, now. Once again it is time, Jak-Ur. Didn’t I tell you that I’ll kill you with song and wine? You have mocked me for so long, but now that the sleepflower takes you and your arms and legs fail you, what are you going to do? You are not a small girl, and this will not kill you, but do not mock me again. I am strong now, and I can even pull your bowstring. I can carry you out of the longhouse, to the field, upon the wheelbarrow and take you all the way to the well. The fall will wake you; the crush will probably kill you this time if you are lucky. You are half awake but can’t move your limbs; you barely open your mouth to mumble my name.
“Sarah, Sarah.”
Even uttering my name is hard in your stupor.
Down the well, you fall once more, and now you know that I was the one who threw you down years ago, the one who made you a cripple and an exile.
It is a full spring moon, and I see you once again down there, but this is the last time. No meat and no water anymore, no daughter, your offspring is sleeping on my arms the eternal sleep before I rest her in the pyre. Look at me and scream in despair, hear my words, no need for hand signs anymore, I know your tongue so hear me now:
“You savage beasts murdered everyone I loved, everyone I cared about. It is your nature, and I can accept it, but you, Jak-Ur should have never touched my brother. Shhh, don’t talk, don’t try, I haven’t gone mad, you should know that I planned it all along; my revenge will not be complete if you don’t understand that I planned it all along, that you never had me, and every time I gave myself to you was for the pleasure of this moment. This is true slavery and rape, Jak-Ur, to let someone so much inside you that when she betrays you, she rips apart every limb and joint of yours. The pain, feel it. Do you still think you got inside me all those times? No, I got inside you, only to break you apart now; I raped you.
“I had a dog once, I had a brother, I had a man, and a daughter. You can’t scream, only mumble ‘Sarah, Sarah,’ and even that is hard for you. Now you can weep because this is the end, the end of you and your offspring. It is only my beginning. I will find your tribe, I will find your Khun, and I will avenge my brother. You are exiled to the darkness forever, you’ll die of thirst, hunger, and sorrow down there, as it should have happened all along. You will see a soft glare covering everything soon, but it is not your Goddess descending. I am building a pyre, for her body. I’ll rest the bones of our only child in there. Beg, as my brother begged, mumble your dying grief: ‘Sarah, Sarah, Sah, Sah, Sah.’”
I had a puppy once, I had a brother, I had a man, and a daughter. And I killed all of them. From the dog, I kept the bravery, from my brother the sadness. Jak-Ur gave me the rage, and from my daughter, I kept the skull. And as I ascend to the hill to meet my destiny I carry only a few more things with me.
Listen to me, you all, Jak-Ur, father, brother, priest, Crispus, Khun-Taa, all of you who came to reign over me. I will not run and hide, that decision I made long ago. I made a promise to my little brother that I will fill wells with the blood of this tribe. All things happen for a reason, all the sinners and the believers will be judged, so the priest always said, and he read it in the Book of God and who am I to doubt God? You will be judged, today.
It was for a purpose that I learned every word, Legend, and Story of your tribe. Our Tribe, now. I had the witch give me the herb that makes the voice coarse and wise, and I chewed on it, like cud, for years. For a purpose. I had a reason: to be the first woman south of the river who can shoot this bow, Enaka’s bow that I strap on my shoulder. To suffer years of pain lifting my child up only with two fingers. And I don’t plan to kill anyone with this bow, I could, but that’s the weapon of the many. I have other weapons, much more powerful. “Hunt a wolf for me, my love. Bring me his hide.” I’ve torn my dress, above the waist, my breasts are naked under the gray wolf-hide, as I ascend to the hill. There is a reason I chose this hill, the one across the Blackvein River, the one that the full moon will rise from, and my shadow will shine in the full Selene, atop the hill, above your camp, my leader, great Khun-Taa. Look up, I command you. Look at your First, because I will be your First, I was Sarah, and I will be Sah-Ouna the First, see the long skull of my daughter that I hold in my hand, still burning my fingers in the chill of the night, it will burn forever, that murder of the innocent I will have to live with. Live. If what I have left is still called life.
Ascend, Khun-Taa. Ride your rose gray stallion; I am waiting for you at the top of the hill, see my breasts in the half-open wolf-hide, awaiting you full and eager. The trader brought me a good razor, and I shaved my head, and I threw the black hair down the well. I am a witch and an archer, a Storyteller and a mother of a Longskull, I am your Goddess. See me shooting the double-curved bow, aiming at Selene, hear me sing the Legends of our Tribe, I’ll talk to you about our ancestors and the she-wolves, about Khun-Nan and Ouna-Ma the First, I’ll tell you of cities, princesses and Gods who await you to ravage them, I’ll whisper to you of Reekaal and dark forests. Don’t ask, you know where I come from, Enaka has sent me, my Khun, you cannot doubt that, if it was just the songprayers and the bow you might, but not the skull. Once you see the quiver skull of a child, you are mine forever. Don’t ask who I am, because you know I am her voice. I was sent by her, the one who sacrificed her children to save us, our one and only Goddess Enaka, I was sent to guide you, to sing to you your destiny. Drink the lolum I boiled, my Khun,
venture with me in the darkness, let me sing to you the Story of the First Reghen, let me take you in my mouth, and bathe with you naked in the moonlight. It took me seven years of pain and sacrifice to get here, I made a promise of revenge, you don’t need to know any of that, let me tell you the Story of Khun-Taa’s father, the one that only you and a few Reghen know, and Jak-Ur, one of the Rods who heard it long ago from your own lips. Believe. Don’t doubt; I am sent by Enaka, my name is Sah-Ouna, I used to be Sarah, but no more, and I am your destiny.
Don’t whimper, my Khun. Not yet.
XIV.
The Legend of Nothing
Thirteenth Winter. The Sieve. Twenty-Eighth Night
“Only seven lashes? He was easy on you,” Rouba told me.
I had asked him once. He was the older Guide and should know.
“Why Elbia? She was so… She was the best.”
“That’s why. They chose only her from the entire Sieve. This and forty-one other camps,” he said. “What sacrifice was worthy of Enaka? That weasel Atares or that worm Ughi? Or should we have offered the Goddess the ashes of a ninestar like you? The curse had to be broken, Da-Ren.”
Rouba motioned to a child, a Carrier, to bring more manure for the fire.
The sickness stopped spreading a little while after Elbia’s death, exactly as Sah-Ouna had foreseen.
“And if it hadn’t stopped, Rouba?”
“We would need another sacrifice.”
It was so simple, and I understood it many winters later. After some sacrifice the plague would stop. Exactly as Sah-Ouna had foreseen.
Bako was spreading a different, false story: that Elbia was the one who had brought the curse to the Tribe and had to die. As much as I wanted to split his head in two, my strength had left me. Even from then, early on in my life, I understood that I wouldn’t be able to split open all the heads that spat out stupid stories.
“Rouba didn’t tell you the whole truth. I will tell you why they killed Elbia,” Malan told me on the twenty-third night after seeing me alone and lost in the darkest corner of the tent. “If you give me your meat today.”
“Half.”
He turned to leave when I stopped him, offering the meat in my hand. I had fought all day to win it, only in the hope that I would learn something from the Ouna-Ma’s Story. I picked it up from the mud and the piss of the fallen and washed it in the rain. When he ate it, he looked at me with a grin and patted me softly on the shoulder a couple of times. His lips were tight and his head was nodding.
“I will tell you. When you’re older.”
I jumped on him, and we punched each other until Keko’s lashes split us up. I got most of them because I wouldn’t stop.
I could feel the fresh wounds opening with every movement for many nights. My lips were torn and swollen, and that was a good excuse for me not to eat or talk to anyone. On some days, I stood through the trial because I could forget the pain. On others, I just didn’t care and fell. Not on purpose. Atares’s fate didn’t find me.
The only thing I cared about was to escape. The Forest on the north and west sides of the camp was a dark world I wouldn’t enter. To get to the trees, I had to get past the maulers. And then, what would I do in the trees? Reekaal lived there, wolves and terror.
Most of the sheds with the hay bushels were on the eastern side. Everyone would see me if I climbed over the sheds. And then to get down, I would have to jump above the wide and thorny bushes. The easiest way seemed to be the most straightforward: escape from the southern gate, the one everyone used.
I waited one night when I had purposely fallen. I was at the last tent, the one at the farthest southeastern point next to the gate. Our Guides had left us and gone to their own tent for shelter. A drenching rain was falling, the kind that washed out scents, footprints, and sounds. The children around me were asleep. Most of them had passed out. I kept my eyes open. When one of the children moved in the middle of the night, as if to wake up, I hit him from behind with a wooden pole and he fell back down.
I crawled outside and made it to the only gate. No one was guarding it. I would leave and never come back. I didn’t know where to go. Maybe I just wanted to make it easy for them to send me to find Elbia.
I got out of the camp easily in the night, but without torch and stars, the only thing I could do was feel my way around in the mud.
But I was free and away from the Sieve.
I slowly started to see a few flashes of light in the rain. I was in a clearing with tents all around. The flashes were escaping from the small gaps in the tents that were burning dung fires. I saw three more tents beyond the clearing. Six tents were in front of me as I dragged myself along the mud road, the one used for carts and horses. I crept toward my left and came upon some sheds with hay bushels. I was in a second camp. Exactly the same as my own.
I continued south. I wanted to get somewhere, to find a horse. I came to a second gate, same as the one I escaped from. My hides, my skin, the rain, and the mud were all one. I passed through the second gate. I saw flashes from six tents in front of me on the mud road, three to the right farther beyond the big clearing, sheds to the left of me.
When fear and madness dance together, mortals can only laugh bitterly. Where was I? No matter how long I dragged myself in the mud, I was in the same place. I came to a third camp the same as mine.
“There are many camps like yours in the Sieve,” I remembered the Reghen saying.
I sat under the shed to rest and clear my head. As if Elbia could hear me, she pleaded with the Goddess to part the clouds of Darhul that were hiding Selene. Rain puddles caught the moonlight and glowed faintly like ghostly torches. I could now see more things but they could see me too.
I was in another camp. Different from my own. But the same in every way. And I had just passed another one. Also the same. I reached the easterly tent in front of me. I could make out from its position that it was one of the Sheep’s tents. I looked inside. A fire. Smoke was escaping from the hole. Many children. Twelve-wintered like my peers, they seemed. Madness was dancing faster than fear.
I climbed to the top of a shed. I looked toward the east to see what was beyond the thorny bush. More camps. Identical camps, like giant cages everywhere around me. I got away only to find them in front of me again. I jumped down and started to run back to my own. A dog barked somewhere behind me but didn’t follow me. Running in the darkness, I passed the entire third and second camp and finally made it back to my own. Just before I stepped into my tent, Keko came out. With squinting eyes, his head bent to the right, he called out to me, “What are you doing here, orphan?”
It took me three breaths to answer him. Then I remembered that I had fallen with the Sheep the evening before. I had to carry out the chores of the camp for the first time.
“I am a Carrier tonight, I’m getting to work,” I answered.
“In the middle of the night?”
“The fire. Inside. It’s fading.”
He let me go.
I hid into my tent. The fire inside was indeed fading. And so was hope.
The thirtieth day of the Sieve found me a Carrier. In grief and shame. I wished to have the plague, to be done. I didn’t have it.
Instead of Elbia, the Greentooth waited for me in my dreams on the thirty-second night. She was kicking me in my sleep and saying, “Buckets, wake up, fill and carry.” It hurt.
Someone was really kicking me. It was Rouba. “The Reghen will tell a Story tomorrow. Don’t miss it,” he said.
“About Elbia?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“I don’t believe this. You are really doomed, you know. Yes, her too,” he mumbled, his eyes looking away from me.
I wanted that Story. If I could just think of nothing all day, nothing but the Story, my legs would hold. They did. On the thirty-third night, in the winners’ tent, I looked to find some hope again in the Reghen’s Story. Something to help carry me forward. With my belly full of meat, the Reghen began his
Story for yet another night, one of the last of the Sieve. We had been through a whole moon and were almost through another half.
The Legend of Nothing
The Fifth Season of the World: Part Three
There was once a Drakon, blue as icy death and gray as sorrowful life. He had one less than ten crystals for eyes, legs like ancient frozen trees and ice needles bestudding his scales. He protected the river’s crossing to the North and had sealed the passage to any living creature. The Tribe had to cross the river or perish, and Khun-Nan asked, “Who is brave enough to go and kill the Drakon?”
“I am!” shouted the First Reghen, the fastest of the three identical brothers. “For I can turn backward on my saddle and lie down on my chest, and with my horse in gallop, I can shoot nine arrows, each only a breath apart, straight into his nine eyes. And then I can pull in one move both blades from their scabbards and send them straight into the beast’s heart.”
But the First Ouna-Ma, the daughter of Khun-Nan, answered, “Another will be needed to help him.”
And Khun-Nan asked again, “Who else will accompany him?”
“I will,” answered the Second Reghen, the strongest of the three identical brothers. “For I can defy hunger and cold, and climb for days, and walk for nights in the snow. I will find the Drakon’s lair and wait, for as long as it takes, until he falls asleep. And then I will tell my brother to come.”
But the First Ouna-Ma answered, “We will need yet another.”
And Khun-Nan asked again, “Who else will accompany them?”
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