The Boy who Lit up the Sky (The Two Moons of Rehnor)

by J. Naomi Ay

  My brother laughed. “Even a blind boy can best you, Tuman,” he declared.

  “Your turn then,” I replied, retrieving my sword from the ground and tossing it to him. He turned it on and parried with the boy once, twice and then the weapon was again on the ground. “How can you do this?” I cried. “You cannot see where the blade goes.”

  The boy shrugged. “It vibrates,” he said. “And each sword has a unique tone. Sight is overrated.” He handed his own back to me and walked away.

  As with all our boys, the MaKennah was taken to the pasture land and told to select a horse. His choice was a wild black colt which he named Tirikla. The name meant “crazy”. It was an appropriate name as the colt was considered by most to be unmanageable, but he calmed under the MaKennah's touch, and the two of them became inseparable.

  Seasons changed and yet the young men in our village were still wary of the MaKennah. Though they shared lessons, they kept their distance from him, and he was excluded from all of their other activities. This bothered my father a great deal as he felt strongly that although we were princes, we must still have the friendship of our men. It seemed not to bother the MaKennah at all though. He did not seem distressed by his solitude, but kept to himself and often disappeared for long periods of time in the forest. He craved no companionship other than Rekah who upon learning to walk, followed the MaKennah incessantly.

  The girls, on the other hand, professed great interest in the MaKennah and would have followed him incessantly too if they could have. Packs of them would surround him at any given moment and often I would catch him tearing into the house, slamming the door and holding it shut despite the pounding and calls of the young ladies outside.

  “Perhaps this is why the boys don't like him,” Pedah mused with a smirk on his lips. “He has stolen all their lovers.”

  “Never the less,” my father said. “He must learn to get along with the young men.”

  “I think they fear him,” I said. "They have seen him move things with a wave of his hand or fetch his sword from only air."

  “I think I fear him,” Pedah said.

  “They will not follow him out of fear,” my father insisted. “They must follow him out of love.”

  Unfortunately, they were far from loving him. In fact the only emotion the boys seemed to express was hate. One day in late spring, nearly a year after Sehron came to live with us, I arrived home from my work in the fields to discover the boy sitting at the dinner table, his face and arms a mass of bruises and cuts. Garinka stood quietly at the stove frying pancakes while Rekah sat in his high chair ripping bits of pancake and stuffing them into his mouth.

  “What happened to you?” I asked Sehron. He didn’t respond, just fingered his own pancake.

  “The boys of the village beat him,” Garinka snapped. “Is it not obvious?”

  “Really?” I gasped. “Why would they do that? What did you do?”

  “He did nothing,” my wife replied slapping the pan on the stove as if in revenge. “He let them hurt him without raising a fist.”

  I studied Sehron who kept his chin down and mouth closed in a frown. “Why?” I said again.

  “Because they are all a bunch of fools,” my wife continued. Rekah laughed as if this were funny. He opened his mouth and chortled so we all could see the pancake stuffed there in.

  “Why did you not defend yourself, MaKennah?”

  “Because there were ten of them and only one of him!”

  “Garinka,” I snapped. “I should like to hear the words from his own mouth. Is that why, Sehron? Did they all gang up on you?”

  The boy nodded. “But that is not why,” he replied softly.

  “Why then?”

  The boy turned his silver gaze upon my face. “If I responded I would have killed them,” he said steadily. “And they do not deserve to die just because they are stupid now.”

  I stared back at him dumbfounded.

  “Do you think he would have killed them as he said?” I asked my brother the next day.

  Pedah shrugged and put a blade of straw between his teeth. He stared at the clear blue sky and whistled a tune. He had done this since my earliest memory. I called it his thinking tune.

  “Yes,” he said after a time. “Yes I do.”

  “Shall we keep him away from them? Shall we insist he be taught separately?”

  “No,” Pedah replied. “He will not hurt them. He already told you as much. Let us see where this takes us.”

  “But they might hurt him.”

  “No,” my brother shook his head, "a scratch and bruise is nothing to a boy who has been beaten by the wrong end of a horse whip. Leave him be.”

  My father agreed with my brother but suggested that soon we should take all the young boys together on a journey in the forest against the elements. They would learn to rely on each other and hopefully bond.

  Due to the harvest, it was nearly the end of autumn before we had the opportunity to set out on this trip. The early chill of winter was in the air as Pedah, and I and our young men ventured on horseback for the village of Shrotru. There were many villages in our country, and often we toured in the summer so our people may see us and give us gifts and my father may listen to their troubles and adjudicate. Once a year all our village leaders came to us for the New Year's celebration. My father had gone alone during the last summer believing that the MaKennah was not ready to tour yet, and he did not want him left alone without myself and Pedah in attendance. Now the weather had turned bitter. It was a good time to teach the boys how to survive in the cold.

  We set out early one morning, the rain pelting us so that we were wet and cold within minutes of our departure. The horses snorted as they stomped along, great gusts of steam coming from their muzzles. As we rose higher in the mountains, the rain turned to snow. Everyone was dressed in thick skins and furs, and the horses each carried ample provisions although we had hoped the boys would hunt. When we reached Shrotru, the village chief would have a celebration dinner, and there would be many young ladies there to entertain and warm up our boys.

  For the most part, our first two days were uneventful. Sehron kept to himself at the back of our pack. His skittish horse did not like to be clustered among others much like his master. When we made our camp at night instead of assisting the others in hunting, gathering wood for the fire or helping to cook, Sehron spent inordinate amounts of time brushing down his horse. In fact, when the rest of us settled in to eat, the MaKennah disappeared. After two nights of this, Pedah was angry.

  “Does he think we were nothing but his servants? Is our food not fine enough for a Mishak prince?”

  “I'll speak with him,” I said, and after I had finished my own meal, I went to find the boy. I found him not far from the camp, up in a tree smoking a Mishak cigarette. It was the faint scent of the tobacco that led me there.

  “Can you come down here please, MaKennah?” I asked. “Might I speak with you a moment?”

  He leapt down and landed on his feet as if leaping twenty feet, or more from tree limbs was common for him.

  “Walk with me please,” I said, already stepping further into the forest. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground, but the sky was a kaleidoscope of stars overhead. “You do not associate with the other young men. You do not like them?”

  He shrugged and took a long drag on his cigarette.

  “You do not help put the camp together at night and find our dinner. You do not like to do this?”

  Again he shrugged.

  “You do not think it is fitting for a prince to do this work? Pedah and I are princes too, and we also have the blood of Karukan in our veins. You do not see us sit around and wait for our meals to be presented to us.”

  “It's not that,” he said quietly.

  A hawk called overhead, and he turned his face up to it.

  “What is it then?”

  “I do not like to cook.”

  “Oh? And if you did not know how to cook, how would
you eat your meat?”

  “I like it better when it is not cooked.”

  The hawk soared in a circle above us and seemed to steal his attention.

  I considered what and how he might eat that which was not cooked. I recalled how many nights he sat at my dinner table, presented with Garinka’s preparations only to toss it about with a fork much to Rekah’s amusement. After a few minutes, I would excuse him from the table as otherwise Rekah would begin to copy this game.

  “He is obviously well nourished and healthy,” my brother had said when I discussed my concern. “Perhaps he just doesn’t like your wife’s cooking. I’m not sure I do either.” Now I thought it was more than just my wife’s cooking the MaKennah did not like.

  “There are other jobs you may do. You can hunt.”

  “I can't,” he said distractedly, his face upturned to the sky.

  “Of course you can, you have been taught.”

  “I only hunt by myself,” he said sharply, turning his silver gaze upon me. “I do not like to hunt in a group.”

  “You are so certain of your skills? Alright, then you can start the fire.”

  “Do you think I need to learn how to start a fire?” he asked calmly.

  “Of course,” I said. “How will you warm yourself if you do not? How will you keep the animals away?”

  His silver eyes flickered across my face, and his expression told me he was annoyed with my ignorance. He held his hand out at the forest and pointed at a tree.

  “Fire?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  Instantly the tree exploded into flame.

  “Ay yah!” I screamed. “Put that out!”

  A crack of thunder sounded overhead. The stars were immediately obliterated by thick clouds, which began to snow down on us and the burning tree. The tree burned for a moment more and then with a hiss and a sizzle, the flames died out.

  “How did you do that?” I gasped.

  “Can I go now?” He asked impatiently, almost dancing in place.

  “Yes of course,” I said, and he was gone in the trees before I could even tell which way he went. I turned my eyes to the sky as the hawk screeched in fear overhead. I watched enormous dark wings snatch the bird from her path and carry her away to devour.

  In our group there were two brothers. The eldest, Pori, was fifteen and an excellent warrior especially for one so young. Being one of the oldest and strongest of our group, he was the natural leader. He rode at the front and ordered the other boys around. His dislike for the MaKennah was obvious. The other boys followed his example and scorned the MaKennah, as well. Pori’s younger brother was Padim, and he was just turned twelve years. Neither my brother nor I wished to bring such a young boy on our journey, but his father, a good friend of ours, insisted with Pori around, no harm would come to Padim.

  It was the fifth day of our journey and we were one day away from arriving in Shrotru. We made camp in a flat area under a knoll of trees. Upon the ground, there lay a few inches of hard snow, but the sky was clear and the weak winter sun glistened in the ice. The boys had split into their usual groups, but now Pedah had called them back together.

  “We will all go together in a hunting party,” he said. “We will bring our Shrotru Chief a stag to feed his people. Whichever one of you slays the stag may keep the antlers.”

  The boys started murmuring in excitement. A set of stag antlers was a great prize. Pori boasted that it will be he to win the prize, but his young brother insisted that it will instead be he.

  “The little one is just like you,” Pedah said to me.

  “And the older one is just as cocky as you,” I replied.

  We set out together on foot as stealth was needed. Pedah, in a quiet voice, instructed the boys how to slip through the forest downwind of the herd, to follow their tracks unnoticed, to take aim with their spears.

  A buck was sighted, a great and beautiful animal with a large rack of antlers standing silently, his breath warm clouds of steam rising above him. The boys did as they had been taught and surrounded the buck, tossing spears wildly when Pori gave the signal. Only Sehron did not participate. He lingered back in the trees, a shadow among the snow covered leaves.

  The buck was hurt but not killed. He ran wildly through the forest trampling on the spears and trailing blood upon the pristine white snow. We followed him into a clearing, knowing that he would tire eventually and then we would finish him off and carry him back to our camp. Pori, Padim and the other boys raced after him. There was no need for stealth and quiet now, so they yelled, whooped and tossed their spears about, their faces red with both cold and excitement. Pedah and I followed and watched as the poor beast finally fell to his knees, the white clouds of his panting breathing becoming thin trails and then ceasing as he fell upon his side. The boys were ecstatic. They raced to the buck, surrounding him and preparing to administer any final blows when a tremendous roar rocked the forest. A great black bear burst from the trees and headed straight for the stag. All the boys turned abruptly and ran back for cover except one. Padim was paralyzed with fear.

  “Padim! Padim!” Pedah yelled and bolted out after the boy although he was armed with only his blade. I ran too, but we were all too late as the bear had seized upon the boy choosing him over the dead stag. Pedah pulled up short, and I fell into him.

  “How can we fight this bear?” I cried as the boys screamed around us.

  “Fire!” Pedah yelled. “Or a spear! Who has still got a spear?” He looked around frantically at the trail of spears in the snow behind us.

  “Fire, Sehron!” I cried. “We need fire!” Where was the MaKennah? I did not see him anywhere. In the corner of my eye I saw something else though. Great black wings soared down from top of a tall fir tree and lit upon the back of the bear.

  “Eagle,” Pedah gasped dumbfounded as the giant raptor seized upon the throat of the bear with its sharp beak. The bear roared and rose up on his hind legs tossing Padim aside and frantically tried to shake the winged beast from his back. He galloped across the meadow and then stumbled and collapsed, his own blood leaving a red trail across the snow. Pedah and I ran to Padim and my brother gathered the boy in his arms and hurried back to our encampment. The rest of the boys and I watched as the eagle ripped apart the dead bear's flesh. With something bloody and dripping firmly lodged between his long talons, he retreated to the treetops.

  “We have both a stag and bear to drag back to the camp,” I said when my heart had calmed, and my voice and breath returned to me. I sent a few boys back to camp to bring horses. In the meantime, the rest of us set about to devise a sled to drag the carcasses. Dusk had fallen upon us, and we would not have had enough light to skin and treat the meat here.

  Over the next few hours, we dragged the animals back to our camp. Padim was sitting by the fire wrapped in blankets when we arrived. He was bruised and cut but was already telling great tales of his fight with the bear. The boys gathered around eating their dinner of bear meat stew while Pori lobbied for the bear's claws. Antlers were nothing compared to the value of a bear claw necklace.

  “Padim fought him bravely,” Pori insisted. “It should be his reward.”

  The boys agreed as they always agreed to Pori's wishes.

  Pedah looked up from the skinning of the bear’s pelt. We would leave it with our brothers in Shrotru to cure. “The eagle took this bear's heart,” my brother remarked. “How curious is that?”

  We looked too and saw the open space behind the bear's torn lungs.

  “Ripped it right out,” Pedah said with a frown and winked at me. “Have you ever seen an eagle do such a thing?”

  “No,” I shrugged. “I have never seen an eagle attack a bear.”

  “Hmmph,” my brother snorted and went back to the pelt, humming his thinking tune. Then he looked up at me again with a twinkle in his eye. “Have you seen Sehron? Was he with you on your return here?”

  “No,” I shook my head and realized with all the commotion and worry o
ver Padim and the bear, I had completely forgotten about the MaKennah. “I have not seen him since we chased the buck from the forest.”

  “He was frightened,” Pori laughed. “The great MaKennah was scared and ran away to hide.”

  The other boys laughed dutifully.

  I glanced at Pedah who raised his eyebrows, a knowing smile on his lips.

  “Should we be worried?”

  “I suspect he'll show up,” Pedah said, and the words were no sooner out of his mouth than Sehron emerged from the darkness to stand beside the fire. There was something in his hand, and it was dark red and dripping blood.

  “Are you hurt, MaKennah?” Pedah asked to which the boy shook his head.

  “Just frightened,” Pori sneered and came to stand beside the younger boy. “Where were you MaKennah when my little brother fought a bear like a man?”

  The silver light washed across Pori's face. Sehron held out it his hand and the bloody object in it.

  “What is it?” Pori flinched.

  “The heart of bear,” Sehron said evenly. Pori stepped back.

  “You took it from the eagle?”

  “No. I took it from the bear.”

  Pori lost all color from his face. He stepped back again and nearly fell into the fire.

  “Prove it,” he said but his voice wavered. “You lie.”

  The MaKennah tossed the heart into the fire where it flamed and burned bright.

  I saw now there was a dark stain across the MaKennah's tunic, and blood dripped down his back and into the snow.

  “Sehron, you are hurt,” I realized and I jumped up. I pulled at his tunic. Across his left shoulder were five long, deep gouges, the mark of claws, bear claws.

  “How is that possible?” Pedah asked and winked at me again. He hummed his thinking tune even louder as if it were a song.

  “It was an eagle,” Pori declared. “I saw a great black eagle. We all did.” He looked at the boys for confirmation. Some looked back impassively while others just looked at their feet. Padim gazed up at Sehron adoringly.