The Truth of the First Night
We are commanded by the Sun of Enaka, the voice of the Ouna-Ma, and the bow of Khun-Taa, Fifth Leader of the Tribe. And we listen.
The trial of the Sieve will persist every day until Enaka’s glorious warriors of tomorrow stand apart from those lesser in strength, the weaklings that will carry no blade or bow, and, even worse, from the wretched cowards. Those, the Sieve will keep forever.
Neither bow, nor horse, nor blades shall the twelve-wintered of the Sieve see in the trials.
Three deaths will the children of the Sieve face:
Cold.
Hunger.
And the third, the unspeakable, the terrible.
What fate is deserved by each and every one of you will be decreed by Enaka, and she will tell only the First, Sah-Ouna, who will pass this wisdom down to the Ouna-Mas and the Reghen.
The First Reghen have forged the Truths of the Sieve, five generations past.
Listen to them now:
On the first day, the first who falls will twice be put to death, once with an iron blade and once with the blade of a beast.
This first, weakest of souls is the poison of Darhul and must not live among us. Do not spit at the feeble-bodied in the face, but send them to the tents of the help to live as Fishermen, Blacksmiths, and Tanners. But rip out the soul of the faint-hearted, the first one to fall, and only him, and into the Great River, the Blackvein, throw him unburned, before his poison spreads to the rest.
This is the Story that you will bring to the victors’ tent, the Wolves, on the second night before they go out again. In the weaklings’ tents, the Sheep, only horse dung and tar. May no Reghen or Ouna-Ma ever set foot there.
Thus declared the Ouna-Mas, the Voices of The Unending Sky.
The Reghen and the Ouna-Ma turned their backs on us and left without another word. Ughi, the poison of the Tribe, traveled unburned in the Blackvein, and I would never dream of him again.
They took us outside. No raindrop glimmered in the moonlight, and that made the darkness deeper than the first night even.
Old Man took me out of my thoughts. “Throw hides and boots in the first shed, leave only the loincloth on, and stand in line.”
“Again, the same?” I asked the others.
Atares shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know either.
“So, the Ouna-Ma doesn’t go to the Sheep’s tents?” Bako asked Murky Eyes. The Guide slapped him hard and then answered, “Today, when you fall, you will see.”
Bako didn’t know everything after all.
“To those who fell? No, the Reghen and the Ouna-Ma will never go to them. But they were not hurt. There they are.”
Elbia pointed to the moving torches on the right. Guides and a herd of children were approaching the field.
“And how do they learn?” I asked.
“You will tell them. So the weak come to respect the strong,” Old Man answered.
“But they live,” said Elbia.
“Yes, they are called Sheep, but if they slaughter us all like sheep… Who will become warrior?” said Atares.
“So, the maulers won’t tear apart the first to fall today?” asked Danaka.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
Apocrypha III.
A Thousand Sickles Fell on Them
As the One Mother heard the Legends, Chapter III
I dreamt of fields covered with dead frogs.
“Kill a frog, kill your mother,” said the witch.
How many times has my mother died by now?
I am not afraid of the witch. She started coming to the settlement after the fifteenth night. She never gets very close; she stays where the parsnip field ends, and the forest begins. She watches me, slender and swaying in the wind like the beech trees. She is the only living being that has come so close since the priest.
It is important for a small hamlet like ours to have its witch. I remember once I broke the milk jar coming back from the cow barn. I was twelve back then, and I didn’t say anything to anyone. I left the pieces close to the beech wood all night. In the morning when my mother asked for it, I swore that I had brought it back in. They found the broken jar under the same tree where the witch stands tonight. They all blamed the witch.
Once, the woodcutter’s wife set fire to their longhouse by mistake. I saw her run out, with the baby—not all my stories are sad—but there was no one else around. She told me that she had left the haystack and the baby close to the hearth, and made me promise to the twelve saints that I wouldn’t tell anyone, else her man would beat her to death. She blamed the witch. They believed her.
The witch’s baby did not survive. They said it perished of fever in the forest hut, soon after my father exiled both of them from our land. Berries and parsnips are no food for a baby. It was after that she’d appear on the coldest nights, open a door and show her face, scream, curse, throw stones at the sheep and disappear. Still, I am not afraid of her; neither was Kinos. I had a puppy once.
I remember when I was twelve I stole a pear and disappeared by the southern barn to eat it. My father was there, with the witch, a year before she became a witch. I look a lot like her, I know that, though no one ever dared to say it. He had embraced her, and they were both swaying as Jak-Ur and my little brother were swaying forty days ago. In the end, my father moaned then laughed a roaring laughter and slapped her bare bottom once, before he pushed her away. Father wasn’t afraid of her. Why should I be?
Her belly started growing after that, and the priest came and said that it was the work of the Devil. Everybody believed him, except for my mother I think. I remember her spitting on the mud, and leaving the big house hearth while all the men were still arguing. They let us young stay through the whole argument. What kind of witch she was, that was the question. Was she a vrlak, one who wakes at midnight to feed on the living? No one had seen her do that. Was she just a false healer, one who reads the fortunes and tends the sick? Yes, they had seen her try to help the cattle with the blue-green dust, and she’d always look at men as if she knew what they were going to do. They always want to do the same thing. “Yes, a healer,” they agreed, and she was exiled to certain death in the dark woodland. The pack of wolves has grown bigger in there; the Hunter never finds a deer alive anymore.
But why should I be afraid of a healer?
The witch comes now and observes me and the well at night. She doesn’t come closer; she doesn’t scream or throw stones anymore. The serfs and the old warriors had made up tales: She doesn’t have any toes, she washes in pig’s blood, she turns the parsnips green and the turnips red, she devoured her baby.
Now that I am a bit older I can put the truths together. That baby of hers was my half-brother. I used to have two brothers.
It is important for a small hamlet like ours to have its witch. Else we would have murdered each other a long time before the barbarians came.
The rag doll I am afraid of. I dreamt of her. I hope it was a dream. Nana gave me the rag doll back when I was young and dreamt only of honey and warm bread. And Crispus, the boy with the curly hair. I used to dream of him a lot.
Nana sewed her out of sackcloth and fattened her with hay, back when she could trust her hands and eyes for such work. It was a scary faceless thing. I had to paint the doll’s eyes and mouth with chicken blood, paint some life on her sackcloth cheeks. It was the only one I had, so her only name was rag doll. She had black goat-hair glued to her head, and not much of a nose. I look a lot like her, I know that, though no one ever dared to say it. She was about the size of my forearm, and she disappeared the evening that the priest came.
The ax was no good. Jak-Ur had no space to wield it. I gave him a sickle; I didn’t want to throw my good knife at him. A sickle is even worse, but I have to make him suffer somehow. He knows I can’t lift a whole body. He has to chop it up to eight pieces or more, fill the burlap sack eight times. One load was only dead leaves and
crawling mud. He has been going on all day, chopping and digging with rage, to get rid of my brother. He keeps digging like that, and he’ll soon reach the hell where he belongs.
I don’t care what the priest said; I am not going to bury them. If all the dead build their new houses here, then the living have to run away. Not my brother or my nana.
I took the sheep out of the fold and brought those animals to the longhouse where I sleep. They are on one side now, and I am on the other. Winter is here; both they and I need the warmth. The manure separates their space and mine. The sheepfold I turned into a grave for all the dead. Or a bed for a pyre, I should say. I have gathered all the dead there, and all that came out of the sacks. Nana is there. If it were not for that drizzling rain, I would have finished by now. I gathered faggots, and I have oil and tar.
I thought that Jak-Ur would be in peace now that he is all alone. Yet he seems worse. Maybe it is the cold, maybe that he now has space to rest and accept his fate. He seems dejected, his back against the stone wall, his eyes always looking down to nothing. He doesn’t lift his gaze when I appear and shout at him. He will die there like that; sad and peaceful. I don’t want that. He will die believing that I was the one who tried to save him, wrapped in a shroud of kindness and hope. No, that can’t happen.
Maybe it is my fault; I wanted to become his Goddess. By now he is convinced. It was that day after he chopped up my brother’s body. I then lowered a bucket of water. Then some spelt bread and even some roasted gosling. Only time I gave him meat; I was celebrating too, it was time to get brother out of there. Now that my brother is gone, I approach the well and there is no fear, only hatred.
I then lowered the bucket a third time. The priest’s head was in it; green like a fresh watermelon. Kill a frog…
“See, I killed him for you. Cut his throat with the sickle. I cut the one who threw you down there.”
And you understand what I am saying. We all speak the one tongue of blood.
Jak-Ur lifted the severed head by its scant oily hair and bellowed in joy. It didn’t last long, joy never does. I didn’t give him any meat after that. The last few days I gave him only parsnips and turnips. Parsnips green as the frog, turnips red as the priest. Watermelons.
The settlement is not something that one woman, even a young one like me, can keep going. It might be only a few plethra of land, but still one has to plow, harrow, break the clods and sow. Harness the ard to the ox, herd the sheep without a dog, feed the chickens. It is a miracle that I even managed to plant some turnips. I can barely work the handmill, that stone is so heavy. If Jak-Ur were up here, he could help with all that. Or I have to go to the town, and I’ve never been there. I have to tell them about the barbarians and the raid, and they’ll save me. They’ll give me twelve children or banish me like the witch. But what about their priest? I have to think up something. What if he told them before he left where he was going? They’ll come asking. My mind is on fire with all those thoughts at night, and I can’t get any sleep. That’s why I see the witch; she comes after midnight. I am still awake, she waits there, next to the parsnip field.
I can go ask her for help. She is a healer; I need something for my mind. She saved my life once; maybe she will again. Maybe tomorrow.
It is the same dream again. The rag doll is a grown woman, my size, and she walks away from the sheepfold and toward the beech. She doesn’t even walk; she hovers close to the mud, barefoot and with no toes. That’s not strange; she never had toes, she is a rag doll. She holds a sickle. I run behind her; she turns and gives me half a stare with one of her chicken blood eyes. “You painted too much life on those cheeks of mine, Sarah,” she says in a shrill voice and then vanishes in the wood. I look over the two-foot stone wall of the sheepfold; the bodies are all chopped up, as if a thousand sickles fell on them. All except for Nana. I wake up shivering. It is the autumn night of All The Dead and I am all alone.
VI.
Ninestar
Thirteenth Winter. The Sieve. Third Night.
“O Goddess sweet and beautiful, come listen…your children…bring the light…” The words, I forget. Never could I remember the prayers, the songspells of the Goddess of light. Not even in the darkness, when I needed them most.
In the foggy darkness, my defeated rivals, no more than shadows shorter than I, began to gather. I was the first to make it to the field. Across from me, two golden eyes beamed through the bare trees and two wings, sharp as blades, spread left and right. The silver light of Selene colored the monster approaching.
“Demon,” I cried.
The eagle owl found a spot on a cut trunk next to me, and his angry hoots greeted the children.
Not many breaths passed until I heard a vicious snarl, and this time it was indeed a monster. The eagle owl took flight. A dark four-legged creature was coming toward me with an unceasing steady growl, as if it had a curdled gob of spit trapped in its throat. The torchlight illuminated its head. The beast’s eyes, like shining chestnuts, mirrored my tremble. It wasn’t the four gleaming fangs that weakened my knees. It was the smaller teeth, so many and so sharp, lining the beast’s mouth. As the torchlight flickered, the mauler’s slow breath came out warm on my balls and froze me still. The dog stopped growling, bent its head, and licked my toes.
“You still smell of horseshit,” Atares said with the first laughter I had heard in two days.
I was counting torches as the Guides were lighting them, around the field. They were about as many as the eyes of Darhul. The light from each torch moved differently, but together they were one dance, one circle of death around us.
I stood between Malan and Elbia, but Old Man ordered her five bodies farther. Our fingers briefly touched as she slowly walked away. Atares said with a muffled voice, “Stop, or they’ll throw you into the river.”
The Sheep stood among us, and we were all there again as in the previous night. Only Ughi was missing.
“They don’t know, do they? They still think the first boy dies,” asked Atares.
“Or the first girl,” said Malan.
I heard a little girl next to Elbia. She was crying, coughing, and screaming, all together.
“I don’t want to fall first.”
Elbia took her hand and whispered something into her ear. I didn’t hear it, but it calmed the girl. Maybe she told her not to fear because they wouldn’t kill the first to fall. Or just simply, “Be strong.” Elbia surely knew what to tell her.
“The second trial begins. Stand a Wolf today, and you’ll feast on roast meat,” the Reghen announced.
“Didn’t they give you meat last night?” I asked the weakling who stood to my right.
He gave me a blank stare as if he understood nothing of what I said.
“Did you get any gruel this morning?” I asked.
It took him many breaths to give me an answer, and I wondered for a moment if the Guides had cut out the tongues of the Sheep.
He finally stuttered, “Yes.”
It would have been so much easier if they hadn’t given them even that. Without food, they wouldn’t last even till noon.
The trial continued unchanged. We stood in the darkness, in the first breath of dawn, and then through the soft rain. I kept an eye out for the dogs, the frozen rage, and the veiled Witches—anything that could attack me. Nothing. It was easier than the first day. A handful of children fell a little after daybreak.
“You can all go to the demons. I can live without meat.” With those words, Atares knelt and then crushed on the mud. It was the first surprise of the second day; his voice was not weary, he didn’t even look tired.
Atares talked too much, and he was curious. He may have wanted to go to the other tents, those with the many children. He would have more Stories to tell there, I thought.
Bako did not fall, nor did Malan. My mind went back to the blade fight, Bako beating me easily in the tent the previous night. In there, I was the orphan, the one who didn’t know anything. But here, outside in the
mud, I was the Wolf.
And how could I not be? That was how the old Greentooth raised me since I could walk, each day harder than the one before. Not enough mare’s milk, plenty of kicks and curses, and two pails to fill. The only thing that ever changed was the season: the cold that froze me to the bone, rain like needles, and heat that almost melted my skin. The day was rarely good. When it was, it was worse because the other children were out playing. Insults and stones were flying.
“Stay away, you filthy mongrel.”
“Take your flies and get lost.”
Each pail was heavy as a two-wintered baby, and Sirol was endless on foot. I had marked the camp from end to end. From the eastern end of the bootmakers’ tents to the western end of the Archers’ camp, next to the Endless Forest. But I still didn’t know how to count more than a few times on my fingers.
I counted sunlight. On my eleventh winter, when I was strong enough, I figured that if I walked fast all of a day’s daylight, without even stopping for a breath, I could cross once from east to west all of Sirol. My legs and hands were iron. My mind could go blank all day, working as a mule. These trials of the Sieve were silly chores. How much I wanted to shout to the Reghen, the Guides, and the Ouna-Mas: “This is too easy for me. I will never fall!”
I didn’t.
Neither the Guides nor the dogs harmed the first child who fell on the second day. Nor did they harm any of the other weaklings. The Guides were no longer a threat; the other children were.
Roast meat every night. I wanted to scream with joy. By full-moon night, I would be a true fearless warrior, faster and stronger than the mauler; bite him in the neck. Victory messes quickly with the head of a twelve-wintered boy.
The day was passing under light rain and the stares of the weak. The rain added to the boredom. It stopped late in the afternoon, and a rapid cold came from the Forest. The cold tired me only a bit, while others were shivering from head to feet.
Drakon Omnibus Page 5