Drakon Omnibus

by C. A. Caskabel

  The twenty-first day was approaching, but its ghost had not appeared to warn me. Every day was going a little better than the day before. I looked for the Stories and I slept with the Wolves every night to hear them.

  Rouba, the old Guide, encouraged me in his own way. “The Reghen will come again tonight. They’ll bring a new Story,” he would say.

  “I will be there,” was my answer.

  I didn’t fall again, not until the twenty-first day.

  Instead of a Story on the thirteenth night, the Reghen said only a few words to us, but they were enough. “You are not here to die. They give you too much meat for that. Not like in the other camps. There are forty and more camps like this one with children your age in the Sieve this winter. Children you haven’t seen yet. But this one nests the best.”

  They were the most beautiful words I had ever heard. Whether it was safety or pride that flooded through me, I can’t remember. Those are things I try to remember now in the winter of my life, but I can’t. Not the events themselves, because they are engraved with iron and fire, deep bloody grooves inside my mind. It is my mind itself that I try to remember, the first thought I had when I was living those moments. What I felt. It would be a lie to say that I remember.

  That was how we came out onto the field on the thirteenth day—with the Reghen’s word that we were in no danger and we wouldn’t be killed. We were the best pack of all the Sieve’s camps of the Tribe.

  And as the Reghen finished his words, reassuring and beautiful, death arrived hungrier than ever before.

  The first girl, Rido, fell too early. She didn’t join us the next morning, or the one after that. For days she had almost split in two from coughing, so I was expecting this to happen. It killed me to hear her every morning. Her curly black hair would straighten and cover half of her back every time the rain poured. The curls would rise back when they dried and bounce like they were alive on their own with each cough. Such a sweet little black-haired lamb fighting with the wolves for so many days. She was the thinnest and the shortest, twelve-wintered but half my size, and I dare say the bravest for having stood for thirteen whole days next to us. We would never again see her in the Sieve.

  It wasn’t long after that when Atares fell next to me.

  “You fell again? Are you sick?” I had asked him the day before.

  “I know what I’m doing,” he answered.

  He didn’t know shit.

  From the first day, he pretended to know everything, but he had been among the first to fall for the third day in a row. He fell first to his knees, two paces away from my feet, and then facedown. He almost made it look real.

  I heard them first. I had forgotten them for days now. I turned and saw them, the gray demon-dogs barking and running toward us. Atares was lying next to me, and the maulers were coming straight for me, straight for him.

  My legs froze. I didn’t run. He wasn’t unconscious. I just yelled, “Run, Atares. Now!”

  His eyes were open, his ears already knew. He grabbed my calf and tried to get up, but one of the dogs trapped his forearm in its jaw. The second dog went for his neck. I kicked it at the ribs with my free leg, but it made no difference. The boy’s fingers slipped away lifelessly, leaving a trail of mud on my skin, as Rouba lifted me in the air and dragged me back. A scream flew out of Atares’s mouth. It lasted a few breaths, but I kept hearing it for many nights to come. Children screaming.

  It is only when the dogs rip the meat from the thighs with their razor teeth that I ask myself. Why would the Goddess ever make us leave this life squealing like pigs and sheep? Wouldn’t it be more glorious and fitting to turn into a cloud of stardust and rise high in the sky, our brave ashes dancing around Selene, swallowing her light? Weren’t we her beloved Tribe? Why did she open us up like a cauldron of meat and red water? Like animals.

  The maulers were the end of fat-mouthed Atares. They shut him up quickly, and forever. I was splattered in long thin lines and splashes of deep red and I smelled like a carcass for two nights until the rain washed me off.

  Everyone’s face, stomach, and asshole tightened up for the rest of that day. Atares was dragged away into the mist. Up until then, no one had been killed except Ughi on the first night. If I came out a winner, maybe I’d learn that night from the Reghen’s mouth why Atares deserved such a fate. It wasn’t hard to win that day. So many children were coughing and falling.

  The Voice of the Unending Sky came again in the middle of the night to festoon with words the two fresh deaths. The Reghen was talking to the Ouna-Ma. She whispered to him, and he recited her answers. It looked as if he were having a conversation with himself, repeating loudly to us both his questions and the Ouna-Ma’s answers.

  “Why did Enaka punish Atares?” asked the Reghen.

  Like the wind passing through the hides, the Ouna-Ma whispered into his ear and he shouted her words. “Enaka, who sees everything from above, threw a curse on that devious weasel. He fell first every morning for days now, not out of weakness, but to idle alone all day. No one cheats or quails in the Tribe. Enaka sees. Cowards can hide in the vast forest, demons into the deep sea. But may no one ever dare fool her under the Sun, the Selene, and the stars.”

  The Reghen wouldn’t stop.

  “Tell us, Ouna-Ma. Will another one die in this way if they cheat?” asked the Reghen.

  Again he answered himself with Ouna-Ma’s whispers escaping from his gray hood.

  “No, not like that. Much worse.”

  Grim and frozen were all the faces around me except for the giggling laughter of someone after the phrase much worse.

  It was Malan.

  “What if he had the sickness?” I asked him.

  “Didn’t you hear what they said?”

  “And if…”

  I was trying in vain. Atares had helped me the first night, but in the end, it was his own scheming mind that did him in.

  “Much worse,” the Reghen repeated, louder this time so no one would forget. As if anyone would.

  I knew there were many worse ways for someone to die in the Tribe. Crucifixions for the othertribal sorcerers of the Cross, impalements with stake slathered in lard for the deserters and traitors, and flaying for those caught stealing from the Khun. I had seen and smelled these deaths in all their horror in Sirol every summer.

  The Ouna-Ma stood near the torch unveiled that night, as we all stared, enchanted, at her snake-egg head and her full black eyes. She had painted tears that shone still on her cheeks. But, that night, a true crystal tear did escape between them.

  “Why do you shed tears, Voice of the Sky?” asked the Reghen.

  “For Rido,” replied the Ouna-Ma, who for the first time opened her mouth in front of us.

  She then drew her red veil across her face and left us alone and motherless again. Rarely, very rarely, did people have the chance to hear the true Voice of the Sky and to melt as if they had swallowed flaming coal.

  That night, after I closed my eyes, I felt a small hand grabbing my calf and then pulled away. Atares’s nails leaving their scratch marks on me. Every night, the same nightmare returned. Until the twenty-first night, when I forgot about him completely.

  Children continued to fall and disappear in the days to follow, and all from the same cough. A curse had fallen on the Tribe, and the Guides all covered their faces with hoods. They said the black clouds of smoke we had seen rising from the warriors’ tents in the south were the bonfires of our dead. A plague, a terrible sickness had spread across Sirol.

  “Darhul spews his evil blight on us,” Keko the Guide said as he was warming himself again in our tent.

  “And that Keko is his murky-eyed servant,” I whispered to Elbia. She smiled and covered her face with her hands for him not to see. We hid beneath our hides, away from the breath of death, of Darhul, of the curse, and of the even viler breath that spewed forth from Keko’s rotten mouth.

  The fear of the evil sickness ruled over our souls. For a while, I lost count of
the days. Until a clear night came and Selene was nowhere to be seen. And that’s how I found my count again.

  Elbia and I overcame the trial every day and slept in the same tent every night. I was full of life, victory, and strength. It was that night, as we were returning to the Wolves’ tent, that I saw Rouba, Keko, and the Reghen talking together outside our tent. And for the first time there were two Ouna-Mas beside them. The image of all of them standing there talking jolted me awake.

  “How long have we been here?” I asked Elbia.

  “Not even a moon,” she said, “too early to start counting.” Selene showed her face, a thin crescent at the far corner of the Unending Sky. Elbia looked up at the night sky and counted with her fingers.

  But I already knew.

  The dawn to come would be the twenty-first day.

  Apocrypha VI.

  Hunt a Wolf for Me

  As the One Mother heard the Legends, Chapter VI

  Sleep with me, this first winter. You are a broken man. The prison of that well humbled you. My father said that nothing breaks a warrior faster than being in a cell for too long. Once, when he was a soldier, they threw him in a cell for half a moon and he always talked about it.

  They don’t make cells of pity, to keep men alive. The silence of the cell shutters a man’s soul, and it can never be glued back together. Your hobbled leg doesn’t help either. You are born and raised a mounted archer, but now can barely ride, and the mule is not much of a ride.

  I thought you were going to take me to them, across the river, north. I thought you’d get me to find my mother and that warlord of yours who led you here on his rose gray stallion. I know my mother is not alive, I pray that she isn’t. Jak-Ur told me what happens to othertribers; that’s what they call those women they enslave.

  “No, no,” you shake your head.

  You can’t go back anymore. Is it the leg, or the disgrace of being imprisoned for so long? You can’t go back, and it is better that way.

  You eat and sleep, sleep and eat, sometimes you stay silent outside the hut, gazing up the sky. Sometimes you limp in slow circles around the well, afraid to look down. You don’t touch me, not yet. It is not because you are noble and caring, but because you are weak and defeated. You need more meat to grow strong. Once we slaughter the spring lambs, your vigor will return, and you’ll become hungry for me.

  It is summer, and we are sweating against each other. You still have no horse, but now you ride me, you bellow and moan, and I squeal like a little animal, you pull my hair, and my gaze meets your Goddess, you don’t have a God but a Goddess, oh that I love about your tribe. I love everything about these moments, I labor all day, carrying the weight, and work the land, only to feel that I am riding a dragon, fly above the forest when you are behind me. Oh, make no mistake, I’ll have my revenge, and I’ll suck the blood out of your veins. But not yet.

  That boy Crispus was so handsome with olive eyes and brown hair, clean and beautiful. He lay down next to me with watery puppy eyes, and he too moved, but I didn’t feel anything, some pain, discomfort, he winced, he moaned, and then he embraced me, moaning harder, and then stopped, and I was glad it was over.

  Now I let you take me, make me a woman worshiped, make me a woman ravaged. Your fingers pressing the bones and the skin around my waist, the pain and pleasure inside me, the summer heat melting my mind. It is the only moment I forget what you are and what I have become. It is the only moment that the ghosts leave me alone. My father never built a chapel, only a small shrine, I’ve never been to the God’s house. I have never experienced the wonder of the holy liturgy, maybe that’s why the Devil stole me, my holy liturgy is you screaming and embracing me when it is all over.

  It is autumn, and my belly has started to swell. You go north sometimes, to check on them, you fear they might come again. I made a deal with a southern trader, a ruthless man who comes to buy our grain and sheep, and brings me seeds, tar, and a candle every year.

  “You will lie to everyone, say that the murrain took all the living here. Make sure no one comes. I’ll sell you sheep and grain at half the coin.”

  He agreed, and nobody from the south comes here anymore. They are afraid of the plague and the barbarians.

  Tell me of your tribe. Tell me of a Goddess named Enaka, of the double-curved bow. Tell me everything, so your daughter will listen. I know it is a girl I carry, I feel it fighting me inside, not fulfilling me.

  “We can never go back,” you say, everyone shares the common women, there is no man and woman together as a couple as there is under God.

  It is hard for you to explain all these things, but I learn every word. Your tongue is simple, for children and beasts—you cannot learn mine, you don’t care, or you’re not smart enough, but I will learn everything about yours. I can already recite Stories about the Reghen now and about the Archers and the Ouna-Mas. Most of the women of your tribe are brood slaves. But there are powerful witches, the Ouna-Mas, the ones with the long skulls. I’ll ask the witch, and she will tell me how I can give birth to a longskull daughter. She is the only one who knows, she must be because she is the only one I see other than the trader and you.

  You said the witches control their own fate, you drew me the head of the witch, and I’ve never seen anything like that. I thought you would draw someone with horns and fangs, but the witch is a longskull monster, hairless yet slender, with woman’s breasts.

  My breasts are getting fuller; I scream at you when you pull and bite at the nipples.

  And there are archer women in your tribe, women who can pull that bow you brought with you and shoot arrows. I’ve tried, sometimes you let me try, only to laugh as I struggle and fail.

  “See this, lift this with two fingers first. Only then you try to shoot the bow.”

  This is a large block of firewood, and you grab it by a worm’s hole, and you lift it up and down with two fingers. It weighs as much as a grown child.

  “You don’t have to learn the bow, woman. I will hunt for you.”

  “Hunt for me, Jak-Ur.”

  You see, Jak-Ur, I don’t care to shoot the bow to kill you. I can kill you with song and wine in your sleep a thousand times over. The bow is not power, but I so much want to learn the bow, so you stop laughing at me; so that you respect me.

  “Do your witches shoot the bow?”

  “No, never. You are either witch or archer. Or a common—”

  Fuck “common.”

  “What if one, One, was a witch and an archer?”

  “Can’t be.”

  “What if she was?”

  “She would be Goddess, not woman,” you say.

  Oh, this is good, so very good, I like this tribe of yours. I will rip it apart like a little suckling pig on a long winter night roast. Someday, not yet.

  “Are all the Ouna-Mas born longskulls?”

  “All, except for the First. All her daughters are.”

  This is good.

  Anastasis.

  I am so ready, but now I know that I’ll have to wait. It will be long.

  Sleep with me, Jak-Ur, and when you wake up, remember more stories to tell me.

  Feed from my breast, little one, suck my youth; I am going to change your bandages later; your head is so long and beautiful like a quiver. It was so simple to make you a longskull. I didn’t even need evil spells or leaves; I just bandaged the head when the bone is young and soft. Now I wrap it tight every three days with fresh cloth.

  It is late summer again, and we hide in the witch’s hut. She is not here; she never is when I come with Jak-Ur. Jak-Ur told me that we must hide in the forest. He saw them gathering across the river; it is the time when they raid. He is protecting us from his own tribe—we took the animals and escaped in the forest. A basket of skulls is next to the witch’s hearth, where the gourds used to be. I think she separated them from the ashes of the sheepfold after the snow drowned the pyre. One skull is staring at me angry as a judging priest.

  Feed from my breas
t, little one, and don’t be afraid of all these horrors. I’ll protect you from all of them. Oh, I hate you with all my heart, I didn’t know it till I saw you, I felt it, but you are Jak-Ur’s daughter, the spitting image. I was a vessel he used; a jar left empty now. A jar filled with rage.

  I watch from the wood as the archers come and raid. Their warlord, Khun they call him, not king, is first there, and his guards surround him. You were one of his guards you say, a Rod. But they would never accept you anymore, not after so long, not with that leg of yours.

  I carry the little one with me whenever I go, I carried her since she was so small, almost like a rabbit, a rabbit with your vile eyes, and I have carried her for two winters now. You don’t have years; you count winters and moons—I know everything about you, never forgot a word you uttered. I can recite most of the Stories and the Legends. The she-wolves were your mothers?

  “Hunt a wolf for me, Jak-Ur. Can you do that for me? Bring me the hide of the wolf, its head.”

  Good, good. You are trained well now, like that puppy I had.

  I carry the little girl with me everywhere. Always did since she was born. I made a hole in a hide and I wrap her in it. I place the two arrow fingers of my right hand in the hole to lift her up and down. She likes the sway; it puts her to sleep. She keeps growing and getting bigger; I still carry her with two fingers.

  I can almost stretch the bowstring now. One more winter. Laugh as much as you want, one more spring. Then you will meet your Goddess.

  Come the first full moon of spring, I go and light a candle for my little brother. It is the one thing I do all year, the one night I remember the dead when life returns to melt the snow and paint the fields.

  Come summer, we hide in the forest to escape the war dogs. The witch is never there when I go with Jak-Ur and for some reason that scares me. She only appears when I come alone.