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?”
And the Third Reghen, the wisest of the three identical brothers, stepped forward and said, “I will also go, my Leader, because the Drakon is a sly demon, and he will set a trap for my brothers.”
“And what can you do?” the Khun asked.
“Nothing!” replied the Third Reghen.
“Nothing? What good will that do?”
“When I wait patiently in the icy cold for two nights, what do I fear?
Nothing.
And when I have nothing to eat for three days, what do I wish for?
Nothing.
When I empty a quiver of arrows, what distracts my mind?
Nothing.
When the othertriber begs me for his life, what torments my soul?
Nothing.”
And the Ouna-Ma answered, “Now they are enough to defeat not only the Crystaleyed, but all the Drakons.”
And so it happened.
The Second Reghen, the strongest of the three, left on his own and searched for two moons. It was he who found the Drakon and led the others to the demon’s whitest lair, white of the snow, white of the crushed bones.
He waited awake for nights, and when the Drakon fell asleep he signaled for the other two to approach. But the Drakon fooled them, for his nine eyes never slept all at once. One of them was half-open. The Drakon spread his wings and chased the Reghen with the rage of forty winters.
“Run to save yourselves,” shouted the Second to his brothers.
The Third Reghen was ready.
The Second had done his duty. Now it was up to the First, for he was the only one who could kill the Drakon.
The Third had only one thing to do. Nothing.
The Third did not run. He stood still in front of the Drakon. The beast flew over the frozen river to attack him. The distance between them closed. The raging fire from the monster’s nostrils surged around the Reghen’s shield and scorched his face.
The First Reghen, who had climbed and hid among the white hair of a willow t
ree, found his one chance. He aimed as the Third was burning in agony. His iron-tipped arrows flew and shattered the crystal eyes of the Drakon. His iron blades tore through the air and sank deep in the beast’s heart. The ice river boiled in the Drakon’s black and green blood.
The three Reghen brothers returned victorious, though the Third was disfigured for life. He wore his gray hood so as not to frighten those who looked upon him and never took it off again. His brothers, the other two identical Reghen, also wore their hoods to honor their own.
The Third, the Reghen of Nothing, had very little life left in him. A treacherous ice needle had found its way into his body when the Drakon got close to him. The ice needle grew and grew next to his heart until, by the next winter, it had pierced his lung and sent him to Enaka with the most triumphant of Stories.
The two brothers Reghen continued to wear their gray hoods, eternally loyal to the Third. They never took them off.
We defy everything.
We sacrifice the best.
With our sacrifice, the entire Tribe we protect.
We fear Nothing.
Or else, and far worse, we die for Nothing.
Thus declared the Ouna-Mas, the Voices of the Unending Sky.
All the children, except for one, hypnotically repeated the Reghen’s last words of the Story: “Nothing. Nothing.”
The strength returned to the Tribe in the days to come, and to the children. We did not hear any more coughing. The curse had been lifted, and the dying no longer breathed near the same fire with us. As the days of the Sieve were running away, the children took the Reghen’s words and made them a game.
“It will rain all day today.”
“What are you thinking, Bako?”
“Nothing.”
“When you fall and there is no meat at the Sheep’s tent. What do you think, Urak?”
“Nothing.”
“The maulers have come for the orphans again. What are you thinking, Malan?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you thinking about, Da-Ren?” Rouba asked me on the thirty-eighth day as we were walking toward the Wolves’ tent yet again just as twilight clutched the last clouds in the west.
“Noth…”
Nothing. I couldn’t see her smile.
“Noth…I…Elbia,” I answered.
Rouba stared at me silently for two breaths and then slapped me on the cheek, trying to wake me up from the nightmares.
“The snakes have gotten your spirit, kid. Elbia would have understood. It had to be that way. Elbia has risen in glory, up in the stars. We ended the plague with her blood and with her body. And her eyes cry with shame for you every time she sees you losing yourself. You disgrace her.”
“Her eyes did cry that morning, Rouba, but…”
It wasn’t shame.
“And what do you tell her, acting like this? That she died for nothing? Death strikes fast. No begging, warning, explaining. That is the Sieve.”
That was the Sieve. It wasn’t enough to have strong legs and never fall.
We had to endure three trials, to face the three deaths as they had told us from the first night.
Cold.
Hunger.
And the third, the unspeakable, the most terrible.
I hadn’t tamed the third yet, the tyrant of despair, of Nothing, to be able to stand again and endure after losing all light and all hope. When Nothing would matter anymore.
We did not bury the dead in our Tribe, but that night I buried Elbia into the dark past and moved forward.
To Nothing.
XV.
Crazygrass
Thirteenth Winter. The Sieve. The Final Night.
No one fell on the thirty-ninth day.
“Tonight, everyone is a Wolf,” said the Reghen, early, with the first light of dawn, before we even undressed.
Whispers traveled from mouth to mouth that the Sieve would end that very afternoon or the following morning. And then what? I could no longer remember my life before the Sieve. But all trials come to an end someday. The worst trials of my life ended when they were finally under my skin and I had accepted them. As brutal as the trials were, by the time they ended I feared what followed more.
Some, like Bako, were bragging that they would join the Archers and leave for new trials and glories away from us shit orphans. They considered themselves the Wolves of the Sieve, even if they had fallen many more times than I. Before Elbia’s death, I had fallen only once. I fell a few more times after that twenty-first day. I was no longer the best, whatever the best could mean.
Unlike Bako, I had no idea where I wanted to go. It would be enough that I wouldn’t return to the Greentooth. The weakest began to pray to Enaka. But it was their prayers especially that she wouldn’t heed.
The Guides ordered us to light big fires in the middle of the field, and we brought hides to sit around. When the Sun was high, the Carriers passed milk to everyone. Not meat, and that worried me. But the maulers had disappeared, and everyone believed that we would leave at once. No trial awaited us.
“Today is a feast,” said Keko.
Rouba was pacing, caring for the horses. He never sat down to enjoy the fire.
“It’s not over,” he said when he found me for a moment alone. “Keep your eyes and ears open. It begins now.”
We lit seven fires in a circle. Five of us gathered around each one, with a larger fire in the middle for the Guides.
Beyond the field, to the west, I saw them. Skeletons taller than any warrior, holding hands, frozen white, wearing only the gray hair of a mad witch on their skulls. They weren’t marching, but they kept waving at us. I kept looking until I realized that they were nothing but snow-covered oak trees, their branches white on the side above, gray-dark below. Once more, the Forest disappointed me.
Nothing had come out of the Forest that winter. No animal, monster, or man. Only howling and leaves. When it wasn’t snowing and the sun was shining, the wind would bring us the only message of the Forest. Bronze leaves would lift up from the earth and dance all the way to reach our camp. Bronze was the only new shade the Forest brought in a Sieve that was colored scarcely. Black, gray, brown, white. Red.
I was looking for the Reekal of the Forest. For the Wolfmen I’d seen that eighth day. I never told Elbia about the Wolfmen. Why? Maybe because I had never wanted to worry her. Maybe the Wolfmen were another one of my dreams. As I was looking west to face my fears, everyone else was looking in the opposite direction. A cold wind embraced me as if Elbia’s ghost had glided past my body, coming to join the festivities of the Sieve. Sah-Ouna had just passed the gate and entered our camp.
“She has come again, Da-Ren. Careful now. It isn’t over,” I heard the ghost whisper to me before it hid among the oak skeletons.
Sah-Ouna was not alone. A younger Ouna-Ma was next to her, the one I would call Razoreyes. When she took off her red veil, I forgot about Elbia for a while. I learned then to create nicknames for the Ouna-Mas and the Reghen to tell them apart. She was the same as the rest. Black hair cropped short like wet grass, black pupils reflecting the endless darkness of the Sieve and the long quiver head. But her eyes were different, younger, and sharper. Razoreyes.
I didn’t fall in love with that Ouna-Ma, nor did I touch her. Not then. Winters later, when I got to know many Ouna-Mas, their tongues, their breasts, and their legs, then I fell in love with all and none of them. I didn’t have any feelings for Razoreyes. Only the feeling of something growing hard under my trousers for the first time.
“They come out from the womb that way. They were born wrapped within their mother’s womb sheath, still unopened.”
It was Bako talking close to my ear, which was enough for me to know that this was all nonsense.
“The pupils are like that from the herbs that they drink,” Rouba told me.
“When they are still babies and their skulls are soft, the older Ouna-Mas tie their heads with bandages, and that’s how their skulls get their shape,”
said Danaka.
I believed her. A girl can’t be blinded by a razor-eyed witch. We boys were already moths doomed by the merciless blaze of her eyes. It was us boys whom Enaka and Sah-Ouna desired. They prepared us, countless boys, to suck our blood and marrow in the Final Battle.
Denek, who was frequently in the Sheep’s tent, said the pupils could grow twice their size and cover almost the entire eyeball when they fucked and reached ecstasy. I didn’t know then what he meant, but as I grew older I saw it many times. And I learned that it didn’t matter. Whether they were born or became that way. The Ouna-Mas carried the Story of the entire Tribe, the past and our future. Their power came from us.
Razoreyes and the Reghen sat next to Sah-Ouna as she began reciting the sacred rites. A cauldron was already on the fire. I had heard the Guides cursing whenever cold, rain, sickness, or death came. I didn’t know what these swearing words meant, but they were at the tip of my tongue.
“What do you want with the cauldron, you vile bitch, you Darhul’s vomit? Do you want my beating heart, to throw it in there? Do you want to rip my eyes out so that they never see what they saw on the twenty-first day? What demon are you to sacrifice Elbia?”
I didn’t cry out the words, nor did I whisper them. Why should I? The Witch knew my every breath. She knew what was eating me inside. Enaka knew too. We were not hiding in the tent but outside, under her Sky, where no secret could be kept. At the edge of the western horizon, the Sun wielded his bloodied swords, fighting Darhul in the last battle of the day. Who was I to argue with the mothers and the daughters of the mighty Sun himself?
The Witch took out some herbs, a rasko root, and some dried walnut leaves and threw them one by one into the pot. She never touched the walnut leaves with bare hands but held them with a cloth. She then carefully took out from a pouch a small branch that looked like wheat in shape but was green in color.
From a distance, I saw Rouba’s mouth open and close many times, saying the same word over and over, but I couldn’t hear what it was. Rouba was whispering, “Crazygrass,” but I understood that later. The pot boiled fast, and Sah-Ouna filled a cup and took four sips four times, turning the cup to the four points of the horizon.
Drakon Book I: The Sieve Page 10
