“Hey.”
“What’s so special about that place?”
“That’s where Vektor and his gang hang out every other night. They’re up to something, I don’t know what. They’re not even allowed to go there. If our father finds out, my half-brother is in great trouble.”
“That means they’ll be far from adults.”
“Yes.”
“They’ll be vulnerable.”
The shit boy expected yet another opposition to his words. But an unbridled growl escaped her black lips, “How do you think to make him pay?!”
He smiled. “I told you, that place is near my tank. They won’t even know where all that… shit came from!”
She snorted laughter again, then she clouded. “Won’t they suspect you? I mean—”
“A suspect is no certainty.”
“Bai…”
Bai stood up with fists clenched. “AND WHAT ELSE CAN THEY—” He bent his head, and lowered his voice, “What else could they do to me? They didn’t kill me only because my life is much funnier to them.”
She opened her mouth to answer, closed it, then just said, “I…” and stopped, shaking her shoulders.
“Well, this was really comforting,” he said.
Tusday found some fun in that. “Come here, you star boy.”
He gave the hint of a smile and lay with his head on her crossed limbs. They kept silent, and Bai hoped that moment could last forever.
* * * * *
The shit boy was scrubbing the floor back and forth in the residence of the powerful Kahar Asmeghin. Nehorur himself had demanded that service from him since Bai was there with them.
Since my father showed him how a real Tankar dies, the young Nehama thought. His first duty, every day he was given to be alive in the Kahar village, was to scrub those splintered slabs until they shone. Nehorur had never hidden the symbolic value of that job, like when he poured any kind of rubbish on the floor. “Remember your place in the world,” he always said, staring into the boy’s eyes. “And clean.”
The Asmeghin’s abode was a sandstone, sumptuous palace in ruin, with much of the Gorgor decorations still visible. Solemn faces mutilated by time emerged all along the walls, just below the partially collapsed ceiling. Unmoved, they looked down. The chipped paint still survived on most of them, showing the white of their eyes, the red of their lips and their dark skin, mixed with the gray plaster which slowly would have prevailed.
The stairs were mostly broken down and the upper floors unreachable, gutted skeletal towers erected in memory of a past that was struggling to fade. Sometimes the wind blew so hard it gave voice to the highest ruins. Many thought they were still inhabited by the ghosts of the ancient Gorgor inhabitants, begging Skyrgal every night to spare them from the Red Dawn.
Many thought it was just the tears of the matter.
The wind was blowing that morning too, and the ruins were screaming their pain. Wearing his necklace made of ears, Nehorur sat on his throne composed of human bones, the remains of the Guardian leaders he had personally gutted in his long butchery career. Their skulls flanked the Kahar, and just like their deep, black orbits Nehorur could stare for hours at the young son of his old enemy—that Asmeghin of the Nehamas whose name was forbidden, the ghost wandering in his memories, tormenting his sleep and wakefulness.
The shit boy felt upon himself the stare of the living and the dead, experiencing mixed feelings—fear, but anger too, and something deeper he always tried to hide from himself.
One day, he found himself thinking when that flame made its way to the surface. Yes. One day…
“How does it feel.” The words of Nehorur seemed a statement, rather than a question. “How does it feel to be the cause of all evils in the world.”
The shit boy continued to scrub, as if those words were not directed at him. Sometimes he doubted they were directed at him.
“First the goats got sick,” the Asmeghin continued. “Then the children who drank their milk. But no child, if loved, get sick alone. Their mothers died right after.” He glared at him with his black, terrible eyes. “How does it feel. How does it feel to be the cause of all evils in the world.”
It was not me, the shit boy thought. Ktisis punished you for replacing him with their whore of the road.
Nehorur sipped from his cup, before throwing it at Bai. He missed the boy, perhaps intentionally. The glass shattered against the floor in a thousand crystal tears.
“You’re lucky I forbade you to speak. Any answer but silence would cost you your tongue.”
One day… the shit boy thought again. Yes. One day… His inner voice was interrupted by a door being thrown open.
One of the Faithful Five of the Asmeghin strode in, the patch on his eye proving the absolute loyalty always shown at the side of his lord.
Nehorur stood. A smile broke the hardness of his face as he walked to meet him. “Rogoh. My brother. What news?”
Rogoh beat his chest twice. “Asmeghin. The Nehama terrorists…they have—”
Nehorur grabbed his shoulder. “No. Not in front of the shit boy.”
They disappeared beyond the door leading to the family rooms.
Not even that, moments later, could keep away the scream of the Kahar Asmeghin, “Aeternus should have not left them to the Gorgors! I was meant to march on ASSADO and hunt them on those shitty mountains. I assure you it would have ended differently, Ktisis be CURSED!” His voice was followed by a racket of overturned tables and shattered glass. “They should have fought at the Fortress, leaving to me the hunt for that dog Exodus and his four shepherds. Their skin! I’d have taken their SKIN like humans do with us, to dance with it around the fire like our ancestors! Can’t you smoke them out of those ruins? What… what should I…”
“Asmeghin!”
“And where is Aeternus now? Locked inside that damn temple with his Gorgors kept as bodyguards, he left me alone with that whore of a goddess to defend me! He used me, can’t you see it? He…” His voice moved away until it was no longer audible.
Nothing could stop the thin, barely perceptible smile on the black lips of the shit boy as he scrubbed and scrubbed the floor. The desert, he thought. The desert never forgets. His ghosts always come back to hunt the wakefulness of the living.
The Asmeghin came back a little later, kicking the door open and walking to the middle of the room. “You’ll do as you’re told!”
The faithful one had disappeared. In his place, Vektor toddled behind his father. “Well! To clean the ass of that geezer, what an honor!”
“Vektor!” Nehorur turned around and grabbed his son by an ear, almost lifting him up. “I’ve had enough of this. What do you want to do, put me against the Last Shaman? Offend him?”
“I—”
“His power is ancient and comes from the unknown god, that damn crab. Just hearing him talking is something to be afraid of. He’s the one who rides the storm, the Guardian of the river…”
“Dad—”
“The medicine Tankar! And we need him.” He brought his son face to face. “He’s the last hope to get our people back together. You know how important he is to Tankars, don’t you?”
Vektor lowered his eyes. “Yes.”
“I want to hear you say it. What good is he, I ask you!”
“The Last Shaman heals. The blood of the desert flows inside him, as it’s written in…”
The Asmeghin pulled his son’s ear. “In?”
“In the Genesis of the Dunes! He cannot die!”
“And then?” Nehorur unsheathed a knife, bringing it to Vektor’s ear. “Don’t you think there’s something missing?”
“Dad, don’t cut my ear away…”
“Say it!” The father pushed the blade against Vektor’s face, making a drip of blood appear.
“He’s the only one who can nominate the Nomad Emperor of all Tankars!” Vektor screamed. “The guide of our never-born nation! Leave me! LEAVE ME!”
Nehorur pushed his son to
the ground, sheathing his blade. Blind violence flowed in the capillaries of his eyes. “He’s old. And his skin is cold. He’s about to die, and now that Gorgors have killed his successor—”
“We killed Exodus,” Vektor murmured.
Nehorur came forward and kicked his son in the belly. “GORGORS killed the Nehamas, don’t ever forget that! We negotiated until the end to spare them the massacre of Assado, remember? Do you remember? And now we take care of his son.”
Vektor, lying on the ground, said nothing. He looked at the shit boy out of the corner of his eye.
“Skalmold has summoned all the clans to his fortress in the dunes, except for the Nehamas for obvious reasons. That hasn’t happened for a long time. He’s looking for a successor, I’d bet the soul I’ve lost since…” The Asmeghin broke off.
Vektor looked at him, scared and embarrassed at the same time. “Dad…”
“We’ve walked on a thin thread of spider web until now,” Nehorur continued. “And we’ve been left alone in the storm by the one who pushed us in its middle. The assassin was on the road and we gave him a ride, but we can still fix it. The Last Shaman is the key. He must be. There must be a reason for all this.” He slipped into a heavy silence, echoed by the emptiness of sand, stone, and ghosts lying all around. “We betrayed our god with the cult of a crucified whore, imposed by one who wanted our lands, our… their cursed temple. He was right, can’t you dig it?” Nehorur stared into the void again, but couldn’t find any answer. He closed his eyes on the turbid memories living again in front of him. “Gorgors raped their corpses among the burning ruins and I did nothing to stop them.” His eyes found Vektor again. “But it’s still my dream. Put them all together, to be the father of the Tankar Dawn. And it’s you dream, too, because what’s in the earth goes from father to son.”
“Dad. I—”
“Yes, you’ll be careful about what you say from now on. You can never know whose ears are listening, and for what reason.”
“I only see the shit boy.”
They both turned to the shit boy, who moved his gaze away only then.
“He was looking at us,” the father noticed.
The son didn’t answer. Even if he wasn’t Bai’s best friend anymore, Vektor looked at him with compassion and fear for what was surely about to happen.
Nehorur moved forward unsheathing his knife. “Were you listening to us, you worthless piece of white shit? You know you’re not even allowed to look at me?”
The shit boy kept on scrubbing, hoping the world would forget once again about him.
But Nehorur lifted him and threw him down again. “I should have killed you before the Last Shaman knew of your existence!” He nailed the shit boy to the floor with a knee on his back. “Weren’t you told not to spy on adults? I tolerated that you opened your mouth when that bitch of my unwanted daughter met you, but no, you don’t understand.” Nehorur pulled his white mane. “You need an exemplary lesson, just like your father. That coward found shelter in his death fearing to face me, don’t you know that? He left his son alive to pay for his mistakes. So be it. Pay for his mistakes, Baikal son of Exodus! Keep still. I’ll do everything.”
The shit boy whimpered, knowing he could not speak, could not scream, or they would take his tongue too. He had received very precise rules the day he was allowed to live, and those rules were to be respected. In every moment.
Nehorur kept the boy’s head pinned to the floor. From there, the young Nehama saw Vektor staring at him. Save me, my friend. Remember? Do you remember when we laughed together?
Vektor moved a step back.
“No, never step away from blood, my son,” the Kahar Asmeghin said. “Blood is life. It’s the red ribbon that keeps all mortals together, the only ode to existence. This is what the Last Shaman taught me that day. And this is what I teach you today.”
A brief silence. Then the shit boy felt the pain on his temple irradiating to his whole face and body. He shut his lips and planted the claws of a hand into the ground, breaking them. He whined as Nehorur sawed his ear, digging in his skin and cartilage, pulling and tearing.
A rebel tear escaped the boy’s eye. He bit his tongue and spat blood.
Nehorur laughed heartily, tearing away his ear with a last tug. “Next time remember to close your ears…sorry, I meant your ear.” He barked and laughed, but his smile didn’t touch his eyes. Something else was written in that fake euphoria: pain, frustration, and an irrepressible resentment against himself. The shit boy knew it. The shit boy could be crushed, humiliated and mutilated, but no one could take his memory away from him. Nobody could deny the truth right where it still lived: inside him, under his most filthy memories.
“Do you have something to say?” Nehorur asked waving the severed ear right in front of his nose and loosening the grip on Bai, lying in his own blood. “Do you want me to cut your tongue, too? Ha? You hear me?”
The shit boy raised his eyes to Nehorur. All the power of that gaze poured on the Kahar Asmeghin, breaking the smile on his lips.
Nehorur spat on him. “Remember you’re forbidden to reproduce, you’re forbidden to grow up. The day I see the signs of adult age on your body, I’ll make sure that your blood will die with you, last of the Nehamas. Nehama. Nehama! Nehama!” He repeated that name obsessively. “Where will you run, surrounded by all this stone? Your only hope would be to die of starvation, because when found—and you know you’ll be found—I’ll do to you what I should have done to your father. Did I ever tell you how we planned to kill him—of the dance in his skin, the skin of all of them, in the presence of mother night?”
Every damn day, the shit boy thought. Crushed by the eyes of the Asmeghin and his son, he ignored the pain and the extreme humiliation to go back to what he was doing when horror struck. He knelt. He took his rag, and began to scrub the floor, washing away his own blood, never taking his eyes away from Nehorur’s.
The Asmeghin flipped the ear in the air like a coin, before catching it again. He turned his back to Bai and exited the room.
Vektor stood where he had been all the while. “You should stop making him angry,” he said. “You should stop! You should stop!” he screamed.
The shit boy was not allowed to answer. The shit boy kept on doing what the whole world was expecting of him.
He scrubbed. He scrubbed. He scrubbed.
* * * * *
The shit boy marched to his appointment. For once I want to live up to you, Dad. He raised his eyes to the sky, covered by thick, shapeless clouds. I will do the right thing, I will do it to the end. I will defend what I love even if I have to die for it.
The first thing he saw was the huge Skyrgal’s thorax. The upper part of the colossus had collapsed to the god’s feet, his every muscle contracted in a perfect torsion as he dealt a mortal blow or flew from Angra; it was impossible to say. Nothing remained of the lord of Creation but his wings on the ground. The rare times it rained, water collected in its hollows and the little Tankars took the opportunity to escape the desert weather.
Looking up at the god, he got to the labyrinth entrance, but Tusday was not there. Did she get in without me? he wondered, before a sinister laughter made his hair stand on end.
He heard Tusday’s scream, a whimper loaded with panic, “Bai!”
“Tusday!” He entered the labyrinth. They got her. Oh no. No! Don’t take her away from me!
The unmistakable voice of Vektor echoed under the vaulted ceiling. “Come here, little dog! Arf, arf! Here doggy dog!”
“Let her go!”
Only a laugh answered him as he went deeper into the heart of darkness. He couldn’t hear his baby though he called and called. “Tusday! Tus. Oh, Ktisis… let her go!”
“Here, doggy dog!”
The shit boy growled. He bumped the tunnel walls with his shoulders and his white hair tinged with red Nehama blood.
He heard her again, “BAI! Please, please help me, Bai!”
Distorted by the deformed walls,
he heard the young Kahar’s reproach, “Shut up, you bitch! That name is forbidden! We rape your ass tonight!”
The eyes of the last Nehama lit with folly. I kill you all! All of you!
“We rape you!” one of the lackey repeated. It was Gamu, son of Gehennah, the Beshavis Asmeghin.
The corridor led to a wide room with the sky as a ceiling.
Bai looked about as he went around the basalt altar raising at the center of the mosaic floor. From there, he could see inside the three tunnels beyond the archways open in the solid walls. At the far end of the one leading outside, beyond darkness, he saw a candid shape against the stars.
Tusday’s back was to him.
Bai took a step. The haste that had brought him there vanished into anguish. He entered the tunnel and walked toward her, unable to deny the truth. He feared that as soon as he touched her Tusday would vanish as if she had never existed. And if it’s really so? What if she’s always been just an illusion?
In the darkness, Vektor laughed. Everything laughed.
“Tusday.”
She trembled and turned, in tears. “Don’t look at me like that, Bai. Please. Don’t turn away from me!”
The young white Tankar took another step. When he felt the world breaking under his feet, he understood that there was no ending to solitude. Thick shit splatters splashed against his face, as his ungraceful body fell into the pool at the bottom.
He raised his gaze, gasping for freedom, stretching his hands, but the hole of fetid pain was too deep this time.
He could only see the sky, from there, in the ruined building.
Her face rose and laughed about him. “Come! He did fall for it.”
No… Bai’s mind whispered. No, not you too.
Other faces appeared all around. Vektor and his two toadies, the firstborns of the Tormentor and Beshavis Asmeghins, laughed at the shit boy as they had never done, now they had found the way to move the boundary of humiliation a bit further, and hit him right where he didn’t want to be hit—the weakness he had allowed himself to believe he was still…
Happy? Alive?
The Tankar Dawn Page 2
