“Do not be afraid, little brother. I saved you. A peaceful death to end your shame. And I’ll avenge you. Not just Jak-Ur. I’ll fill wells like this one with the blood of these monsters. I will.”
My name is Sarah.
Watch me.
III.
Your Own Heart
Thirteenth Winter. The Sieve. First Day.
Red was the second color of the day. The maulers stopped tearing Ughi’s thighs, and the small open carcass was left to fill up with red water. It caught the rain, falling heavier now, like a warped cauldron, a cup for the Reekaal.
Not much later, the riders emerged as wind spirits born out of the hazy dawn. Three hooded shadows on horseback stopped in front of us. One of them had a female frame: a black robe split in the middle and the sides. Her legs straddled the horse snugly. She dismounted and walked toward us, the two Guides on either side.
“Sah-Ouna,” whispered Elbia. Her voice, sweet as a nightingale’s song, turned my fear into a mythical adventure.
“Sah-Ouna, the First Ouna-Ma,” said Atares. Sah-Ouna slowly raised her arrow finger. Silence.
I was at the end of the line, and she came to me first. Her skin pale, her eyebrows dark serpents. She sank her nails into my cheeks and turned my head to the right to look at the back of my neck. The fingers of her other hand, icy cold worms, slithered through my hair searching for something. From that night, she would be the one Demon who would haunt and hunt me.
“Worthy…to face the three deaths,” Sah-Ouna whispered to me. She mimed spitting on me but then moved to Atares.
“Worthy to face the three deaths.”
The third one was Elbia.
“Worthy to face all deaths.”
And so it went. Each kid, one by one, until she reached a boy who was coughing badly and couldn’t even raise his eyes to look at her. She passed him without saying the words or spitting. A Guide grabbed the boy, and they disappeared into the darkness.
“He is finished,” I heard Atares.
A whistling sound cut through the rain. An arrow landed between Atares’s legs, and he froze in place. Murky Eyes approached fast on foot.
“No talking and no moving, rats.”
The tall Archer boy standing next to Ughi’s torn body warmed the mud as his piss ran down his shaky knees. He had kept his stare down since the maulers left. Shaky Knees would be next.
I could see hardly anything around me. The rain was falling again like a veil of crystal thorns. I didn’t want to see. Nothing else. No one. I closed my eyes so as not to meet those of any other child. They stole my strength every time they looked at me. The darkness and the medley of sounds soon made me dizzy, and I opened my eyes again.
Before the pale sun was at mid-horizon, Shaky Knees finally fell, mumbling, “No, no.” When he hit the mud, no arrow struck him, no Guide cut his throat, and no mauler came to tear him to pieces.
Others soon followed. I counted the children around me, fewer than three times the fingers on my one hand remained standing. My knees started shaking. The day before, I had carried the pails till dusk without rest. The cold was twisting blades in my back. Almost defeated. But she saved me. The mud. Brown and wet like the pulp of horseshit and piss I had been drenched in since my seventh winter. I could see the Greentooth’s reflection, the one who sent me out every day at dawn in the dreadful heat and bitter cold, there. She was looking up at me, cursing me, ugly, but for once useful. “You? At the Sieve? Huh! You’ll fall on the first day. They’ll send you back here to the shit pails.”
She was right; they wouldn’t kill all of us. But if I fell, I would be thrown back into the world of that pulp from which there was no return. Its stink penetrated everything forever. Faced with it there was neither hot nor cold, nor any pain in the knees. I closed my eyes and saw the warrior on his gray-white horse that kicked over my pail. How strong and fearsome he looked. My legs turned iron hard.
Each of our warriors had three horses. And there were more warriors than anyone could ever count. And there was something more I knew: “How much does a horse crap in a day?”
I didn’t know the bow, but I knew that.
“About my weight in shit every day.”
I could pass into old age, many rainless summers, carrying steaming pails mixed with my own sweat and golden-green flies. And still, I wouldn’t have carried in one long life even what the whole of Sirol shat out in three days.
As I stood there looking at the thick brown mud around my feet, I said to myself and to the Greentooth that I wasn’t going back to the shit even if they kept us standing for one moon. The Greentooth was not my mother. Every night, I wished for the heads of Darhul to come out and take her before the next day dawned. But she taught me more than my real mother ever could have. Others would fall. I would not.
There were a couple of girls among those still standing. I moved between Elbia and Atares. I was not going to fall in front of her feet. She reached over to me with her fist and touched me. A smile, not a smirk. “Hold on. Don’t fall. It’s almost over.”
Her hand was covered in mud. It was warm and soft, like life.
“What’s over?” I asked. Before I finished my words, a reed arrow landed three fingers from my foot.
The Guides threw into carts the children who fell. Unconscious or dead, I knew not. When each cart filled with four or five, the Guides took them away. But it would end.
It was early evening, and eight of us were still standing. Elbia, Atares, and Urak from the Blades, another girl, two boys I didn’t know, and Malan. They had brought him into the orphans just one winter ago, after our warriors’ raids in the South. His skin was milky white, but they told us that he was one of us and not an othertriber.
Finally, one of the nameless boys fell. The second horseman dismounted and took off his hood. He was a Reghen, a Truthsayer, his gray robe marked by the red circle. His voice was as strong as ten warriors’ as he spoke. My whole life gushed out of his chest:
The Truth of the Sieve
Children of the Archers, the Rods, and the Blades, the Hunters, and the Craftsmen, the Trackers, the Tanners, and the orphans: Prick up your ears like the Wolf, plant your legs like the stallion, and hear now the Truth of the Tribe’s Sieve.
The twelfth winter is upon you, and the Sieve will decree where the next one will find you.
This first night, the Wolfmen, the protectors, and the Guides of the Tribe came and gathered you from your tents, which you will never see again.
Into trials of the Sieve you will enter for a moon and a half and the eyes of Enaka, the One Goddess of the Unending Sky, will be upon you.
Only the strong will leave the Sieve as warriors. Hunger and ice will become your brother and your sister. Dung and rotten fish are the fate of the weak. The Wolfmen, your Guides, will allow no sheep-heart to waste a warrior’s bow. Guides you will call the old warriors, who in winter will place you on the path of the true Golden Sun and Silver Selene.
Enaka watches from above, and from her lips the winds of victory blow upon you. Become Warriors. Stand by her in the Final Battle. Do not end up in the nine jaws of Darhul.
As sheep for slaughter, you enter the Sieve,
as ashen wolves of the steppe, you will leave.
Thus declared the Ouna-Mas, the Voices of the Unending Sky.
For countless nights, each breath and word unchanged, I heard the Truth of the Sieve. That was the only thing any boy my age wanted to talk about. Old Man left a basket between ours and the Reghen’s feet. The smell of meat.
“Seven pieces. One for each. You are the Wolves of the first night. No meat for those who fell, the Sheep. That’s it for today,” the Reghen shouted. The gray-hooded man looked young from up close, only a few winters older than me.
I wanted to let out a cry of joy, but nothing came. I wanted to run, but I was too tired and numb from the cold, so my legs shuffled to the basket. Urak got there first and grabbed three pieces of meat, but Atares and another boy fell on him,
kicking and punching until he was left bruised and stunned. Atares took the last and smallest piece of meat and dipped it in the mud before shoving it into Urak’s mouth. Danaka, the second girl, cheered him on. So did I.
“Go over there to eat,” said Old Man, pointing to the only tent at the southwest corner of the field. I stole a glance to the left of me and saw other Guides dragging the last cart of the day to the tents on the opposite side with a few children in them.
“Will we see them again?” I asked.
Elbia looked at me with puzzled brown eyes. Beautiful.
“The Sheep? Why, yes. Hasn’t your mother taught you anything?”
“What mother? He’s an orphan,” said Atares.
“Worthless orphans. Two of them are still standing today. I can’t believe it,” said the other boy, whose name I didn’t know.
Murky Eyes came next to me as we were talking. He lifted my mane and looked at the back of my neck as Sah-Ouna had done earlier. His stinking mouth was gaping and silent. I was staring at the slots under his eyebrows. His eyes were covered with gray-white clouds.
“The Reekaal got him,” Atares whispered. Murky Eyes lifted his hand and slapped the babbling boy.
The Tribe had many Legends because we had too many demons to fight. The most horrifying of all were the Reekaal, the bloodeaters of the Forest. No one had ever been able to describe them in detail. Whoever had seen them lost forever the life and the black from their eyes. They turned to a cloudy gray, and most times so did their minds. Just like the man standing in front of me.
The same Legend said that the only way to kill a Reekal was to offer him your own heart. No one dared lie about ever killing a Reekaal. But the Greentooth who raised us repeated the Legend so many times that it had become engraved inside me. They were senseless words, but I couldn’t forget them.
“The Demon always looks you in the eye. And she knows all she needs.”
She? The Demon is a She?
The Greentooth continued.
“Never in the heart. She cannot bear that. If you want to defeat the Demon, you must rip out your own heart and offer it to her. Then she will fall on her knees and sing her grieving song to you. And that will be her end and yours as you both sink to the bottom of the Blackvein River, together, in the last embrace.”
But who could ever rip out his own heart? It took me seven lives and deaths to learn that.
Apocrypha II.
I Want to Be Your Goddess
As the One Mother heard the Legends, Chapter II
Now, you are down there, and I am up here. I have the power and the bucket, and you are the one begging. I want you to beg me, not to curse me, that’s why I didn’t even approach the well the first two days. I didn’t want you to think that I was the one who pushed you. For you, I am going to be the one who keeps you alive. I am going to be water, bread, hope, your only chance that you will not sleep your last sleep curled around the skeleton of my brother. No matter what wretched bitch spat you out, no matter your savagery, this is a punishment even you can be scared of.
I have a torch. I have tar, cloth, fire, oil, and wood, and I can set it ablaze anytime and see your face down there. I don’t need the sun or the moon. But I want you to pray for the sky’s lights; I want to be your goddess, the one who rides the moon chariot and tames the sun rays, the one who comes only when you pray hard.
I have an ox. I keep it far away by the chicken barn so that you never hear it bellow. Otherwise, you’d know that I could harness it to pull you out of there. You wonder where your horse is.
I had a dog. Kinos the White. A hound from the Thousand Islands, a restless thing, the color of curdled milk, not quite white, that I had since he was a puppy. I was seven then, and he was old now. Back then I was afraid of him. He wanted to play and never stood still, as hunting dogs do, but I was too little to know that. I spent days and nights terrified of that puppy that I later came to love more than anything. My father mocked my fear, then had me be the one who fed him the scraps and bring him water. I would tremble as little Kinos jumped on me every evening, impatient and joyful. But father was right. Soon I became the master, the one who brings the water and the food. I had a puppy once. I trained it well. It would wag its tail and stare at me with bright eyes. Just like you are going to do.
I want you to dream of Sarah all day, with your eyes wide open.
So now, you think, you hope, that I was not the one who pushed you down the well. Hope and fear mold the truths.
That chubby priest helped with that; God help him now.
He came alone on the third day on a mule, he had heard of raids farther north—he’d never have come if he knew that the infidels had reached our village. He came to warn us he said, but I think he wanted to secure his trophy before it was too late. I hid so that he wouldn’t find me until a thought crossed my mind. He turned around to leave when he saw the corpses scattered around the huts, but I ran and stopped him.
“Help me, father.”
“What…what?” He didn’t seem happy to see me.
He was mumbling, trying to grasp what had happened here. Jak-Ur started screaming as if he’d heard the priest. He couldn’t have heard his mumbles, probably smelled his stench. My mother said that the priest never washed unless it was a great holy day. It was her only effort to console me. Fortunately, there are five of these each year, holy days that is.
“A barbarian,” I say, a smirk on my face contrasting the priest’s sweating agony. He doesn’t answer, he shivers.
“Oh don’t worry, it is thirty feet deep. He can’t come out.”
The priest walks with arms and legs wide, favoring one leg to balance his weight. Priests of the Faith are allowed to marry. God demands that they have many children, even girls, and they always choose wives much younger than them to endure the pregnancies. Nine is an evil number; a good wife should strive for twelve as the number of the months of our Savior and the sacred elders of the books. Swollen bellies for girls with hardly any fuzz between their legs, swollen bellies until our hair turns white.
The priest approaches the stone rim of the well, with furtive steps. It is noon, and the light is bright as he looks down. Jak-Ur screams. The priest is the very first face Jak-Ur sees. The one he’ll hate. The priest doesn’t give water or food to Jak-Ur, he mumbles more holy words and then steps back and disappears from Jak-Ur’s view.
“We must bury the dead,” the priest says.
We, means I have to do it, he is not one to dig ten graves. I’m not either, even if I had the strength and the will I wouldn’t. I didn’t kill any of them. I buried Kinos.
“We will return with more men to make it right. It’s time to go.” I take you with me to give me twelve children. Boys to serve God, the Emperor, or become slaves to the barbarians. “Did you?” The priest dares to ask me finally.
“Me, no! How could I? It was my brother who pulled him down there. He is still there.”
“Who?”
“My brother. He is still down there with him.”
The priest covers his nose with the back of his hand. Only now does he realize what the reek that wafts up from the well is.
“We must come back to bury them. Anastasis,” he says.
“Can’t we just burn them?” I ask, my brow creasing playfully.
“Anastasis,” he repeats with a stronger voice, to erase my blasphemy.
Anastasis. Again, to stand.
Resurrection.
I know the words of the faith, it is just that I don’t understand them. The dead have to be buried to rise from their bones; they can’t rise from ashes. This God of ours seems weak or one of peculiar habits. Why does he need the bones of all things? Is he going to glue them back together one by one, slather them with fresh flesh? Is he going to use them as rolling pins, flesh for flour, to smoothen out the new muscle? Butter for fat? And then wrap it all together, like the cheese, honey, and walnut pies Mother used to make. She would have made one today; it is the Seventh Day of the
Moon. And then? Will God kneel down and blow young dreams down the ears of the risen or will he leave all the sadness inside? Does he work so carefully with each cadaver, as the carpenter works the wood? Why can’t he just speak an incantation and make the dead rise again?
“Can you walk?” the priest asks. I see his lips moving; his brimmed hat covers his eyes completely.
He needs the mule; I am the one who must walk. It may be his weight that forces him to ask, but probably not.
“Yes, I can. But, let me show you something first, father. Come to the barn. Give me your hat.”
How could I ever marry one whom I must call “father?”
It is the eighth day now that Jak-Ur is trapped down there. The fifth after the priest came. I showed my face for the first time to Jak-Ur, that same night after he saw the priest. That was the first time I brought him water and bread. We started to make signs. I gestured a fat man pushing him down the well. He gestured for a rope to pull him up. A ladder. His horse. But the horse ran away moments after Jak-Ur fell. A rope. Yes. There used to be a bucket tied to a beam, a pulley, and a lever. When I was a kid and the well’s water was still cold and pure we’d put a watermelon in the bucket and lower it. Cold watermelons. I devoured them, but my brother never liked them, as if he knew. But even if I had the bucket and the pulley they wouldn’t hold the weight of Jak-Ur. I am here for you. I’ll pull you out with my bare hands. I scream, I pull, I grunt, Jak-Ur tries to press his boots onto the wall. One step, up, two steps, he climbs. Those stones are slippery, very slippery.
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