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.
We had remained outside all day, and it was now dusk. Razoreyes was passing around a cup of crazygrass to all children. She passed it around four times, refilling it from the pot. After the third sip, my head was burning and my fingers were ice cold.
Sah-Ouna took out of her pouch a skull, small, like a child’s, but long as a snake’s egg. She placed it next to her. A Guide brought her a sack, and she pulled out a white rabbit, still alive. Sah-Ouna took the rabbit in her arms. She looked at me. When I looked at the rabbit again, its neck was broken. It trembled its two last breaths and then its limp head fell to its side. She took out the ritual knife with the black handle, its blade shining over the fire.
“The blade was forged under a full moon by six one-eyed naked brown-skinned Blacksmiths,” said Bako.
For some reason, I believed him this time.
Just three nights ago, the moon had been full.
Sah-Ouna began to sing in a low, mesmerizing voice. It was not a song, more of a spell. Again and again. She said the words nine times.
I do not take the life from this rabbit;
I take the darkness from the tent.
I do not go to death like a sheep;
I go to my wolfen ancestors as a friend.
I do not take the blood from this animal;
I take the fear from your blood.
I do not throw the lola into the pot for you to lose your minds;
I throw the lola for you to find the memory of the old world.
The Witch made a small cut and pulled back the rabbit’s white fur from the top to its two hind legs. She broke its joints and then skinned the rest of the animal’s body and its head. The fat white rabbit now looked like a skinny rosy rat. She cut off the bushy tail and the head and opened the belly.
She took out all the entrails with care so as not to break the shit and piss inside. She held the heart and let it fall into the fire. The rest she gave to Keko, and he threw it away. I heard the maulers.
As Selene proudly rose, Sah-Ouna went into a trance that grew deeper with every breath. She fell backward and her eyes turned, becoming as white as the rabbit’s fur and the children’s faces around me.
The Guides brought more skinned rabbits ready for roasting, one for each fire. They cut each animal into four pieces and roasted them skewered on sticks. The Guides made us drink another sip of crazygrass. The Reghen gathered the sticks with the rabbits’ heads and placed one in front of each tent.
“To keep away the night demons. They always come on the final night of the Sieve to take the Sheep,” said the Reghen.
Razoreyes took two knives and began to dance with slow movements, bending her knees and waist in warrior positions. She circled the still body of Sah-Ouna and cut the air above her with sharp moves. She had an otherworldly beauty, this Ouna-Ma. For many nights in the winters to come, when I thought of a girl, Razoreyes, slicing the air with two blades, came second in my mind. When I grew older, I dreamed of her dancing around me. Until one day, after a few winters, that too happened, and she did dance atop me.
“What is she doing? Why is she cutting the air with her knives?” I asked.
I wished she would open Sah-Ouna’s throat and suck all the blood of the First Witch.
“She is protecting the body of the First so that no demon wind ghosts enter her.”
“See, Sah-Ouna is weak now; her sister has to protect her,” Danaka added to Bako’s words.
I wanted to scream, “Where in Darhul’s name are all these demons? All I see is a witch slaughtering us.”
As if he had read my silent question, the Reghen started his last Story of the Sieve and freed all the demons in the tent, mixed them up with the crazygrass we had drunk, and sank us into a nightmare before we even closed our eyes.
The Legend of the Final Battle
The Sixth Season of the World
You will know when Selene becomes red like the bleeding heart of the Goddess and remains that way for four moons. This will mark the time of the Final Battle, the Battle that will destroy this world. And so will end the Fifth Season, that of the Khuns of the Tribe.
The only being that existed before this world, the Demon Darhul, will rise with his nine heads from the sea and drag his hideous body onto the earth one final time. There, on the spring flowering earth, he will go to battle against the Only Goddess of the Unending Sky, Enaka. The servants of Darhul will be:
…to the North the Crystaleyed Drakons with the ice needles on their scales. They die only from the sleep of forgetfulness. We must never go back, or we’ll awaken them.
…in the South the Deadwalkers, led by the treacherous Sorcerers, the Priests of the Cross. They hide in underground caves marked with crosses and crawl beneath the earth. They dress their half-alive corpses with clothes and jewels and swords. Even if you put them to death, their priests resurrect them from their bones and their rotting flesh. Only fire or beheading can annihilate them.
…in the West the deadliest of all, the bloodeating Reekaal, those who block our way forward. By day they sleep within walnut trees, and by night they feed on the blood of warriors and children who have wandered astray. The walnut trees bear fruit in the shape of small skulls, and within them are the brains of their doomed victims. Never go near them.
In the Final Battle, they will surround us and raise massive stone walls around us to stop our brave Archer riders. Mountains will spew thick smoke and choke the Sky. The Sky will cry a black poison that melts flesh and stone. The earth will burn hot, the ice castles of the North will melt, and the Drakons will bring their fury south. No one will be saved.
Then Enaka, in her flaming chariot, will descend for the last time to Earth with a thunderous crash. All who are ready will drink from her strength, and our warriors will be unleashed on the four corners of the Earth. And neither from the East nor from the South nor the North will they be able to stop us. In the West, there where the Sun kneels every night, the Final Battle will take place.
Archers of the Sieve, you are the sons of the Goddess, the ones to fall and rise in glory in the Final Battle.
Our sole ally in this battle will be the gray-haired Wolfmen, the servants of Selene, our ancestors and protectors. They breathe each night next to our sleeping young in the Sieve. They take and devour the weakest among us to preserve the strength of the Tribe. And if we lost a few of our comrades in the Sieve, we shall remember that the Wolfmen have commanded it.
You will be grateful to them in the Final Battle. When Darhul rises in front of you with his twice nine times burning nostrils that will spew out the End, a coward is not what you will want at your side.
Thus declared the Ouna-Mas, the Voices of the Unending Sky.
We had eaten better than any other night. We had drunk worse than any other.
“Wolves…devour the Sheep…in the West…Final Battle…Razoreyes…”
For a poisoned child losing his mind from Sah-Ouna’s boiled crazygrass, I could remember quite a lot. But not enough. I had forgotten the songspell of the Witch, the one that began with “I don’t take the life of this rabbit,” and that would cost me everything forever.
I dreamed horrible dreams. Maulers with bat heads and pitch-black eyes had formed a circle around the field, and I was in the middle of it lying helpless. Blood poppies grew out of my mouth, the four-legged creatures licked my naked skin, and the Ouna-Mas were sucking my strength. Razoreyes passed her forked tongue through one of my ears and out the other.
I awoke on the last day, the fortieth, just as I was starting to choke on my vomit. The Sieve was over. Almost.
XVI.
One Will Lead, All Will Fall
Thirteenth Winter.
The Sieve. The Final Day.
Most of us couldn’t stop the water running out of our asses all night. I was lucky enough only to vomit. Three times, and then I could stand again. I always had a strong stomach, another gift of the Greentooth, who fed us whatever was filthiest on this land and below it.
At dawn, the Guides found us awake, shitting, and moaning. As I stepped out of the tent, I noticed that the number of Guides and horses had doubled. My head was pounding as if the horses were galloping in there with iron hooves.
Keko and Rouba shouted for us to line up in the field.
“Dressed.”
Rouba stopped me at the horses’ watering trough.
“Drink water for five horses. The nightmare from the crazygrass kills,” he said.
I fell to my knees, puked one more time on the frosty earth, and then grabbed the trough with both hands. I dipped my head like an animal and drank. Rouba pushed me back.
“More. Clear your head. You will need it today. Today is your whole life’s Story.”
The children were in line. They put me first to the left, and the Reghen said, “Last day for all of you today.”
A few smiled. Most kept moaning. I looked at the ones smiling. The Sheep always smiled for all the wrong reasons.
“All in one line, you follow him,” Rouba pointed at me. This jolted me out of my daze. “Da-Ren, you’re first. Start walking. There.”
I lowered my head and squinted. We hadn’t gone there ever before.
“There,” he showed me again pointing northwest, toward the Forest.
To my right, the sun had risen pale and weak, just like the day he devoured Elbia. Sacrifice?
I started walking toward the skeleton oaks.
“Where are we going?” asked a boy behind me.
“Where everyone bleeds,” answered Keko loud enough for all to hear.
No one was in front of me, not even a Guide, as if I knew the way. The fog was shrouding my path in a white gloom. The trees were emerging slowly through the mist, one by one, as I approached them.
Elbia told me a Story before the twenty-first day. She said there was an age-old bloody war going on in the Forest every night, every winter. The firs and the oaks were fighting. For many winters now, the firs were winning. Their trunks standing strong spears of darkness, their branches rising up black and green iron blades. The oaks were withering away. Their branches thin like the bones of the weak, their trunks gray, wrinkled, and old. The oaks were bleeding death. Their blood, a bronze river of leaves, was crackling under my boots.
“But how can the war go on every winter if the oaks die?” I asked her.
“They come back. In the spring, they rise again.”
It was the last Story she told me. I wanted to ask her but never did, “Are children oaks or firs?”
I kept a steady pace among the bronze path of leaves. It felt like I was completely still and the trees were floating toward me. The bats were sleeping through the long winter. The first birds of the dawn were the only life on the branches. A handful of redbreast robins and starlings with shiny feathers, green and gold like the Forest of spring. The morning dewdrops were sprinkling me from above, trying to help me.
“Wake up, Da-Ren. It’s the last day.”
I could hear her voice warning me, and when I closed my eyes I could see her ice-blue lips. Crazygrass.
I took a wrong turn when I thought I saw her shadow among the firs. Rouba ran forward and showed me the way. His face, worried, brought me back.
“Why am I leading?” I asked him.
“Malan at the back is asking why he is following,” he answered. “Shut up and move!”
Rouba walked next to me, mumbling the songspell of the night before.
I do not take the life from this rabbit;
I take the darkness from the tent.
I do not go to death like a sheep;
I go to my wolfen ancestors as a friend…
Senseless words. My head was still pounding hard from the crazygrass.
Not much later, we reached a glade. I saw a ring-shaped field about eight times my fingers in paces from one end to the next. The field’s fence was made from poles thrust into the ground and tied together with rope. There was an opening to the fence, a gate marked left and right by two spears like the ones the Rods carried. On the opposite side from where we were standing, there was a second opening of the fence. It led to a square tent.
“A red tent!” Bako cried.
It was a square tent with dark stripes. It was too far to tell whether it was red or black. Just dark. The stripes were painted uneven and violent, wide in the middle, thinner at the edges, as if the nails of a monster had clawed at soft flesh. Our tents were all round. Very few, like those of the Ouna-Mas, were square. Even fewer were painted with the blood-red stripes, and no one ever went near them.
“If you want to live, do not ever enter a red-painted tent,” said one of the well-known Stories of the Tribe.
“You get in but never out of a red tent,” added another boy, a Sheep whose name I still didn’t know.
“So, is this the Endless Forest?” Matsa asked.
“This is a small woodland, not even the beginning of it,” said Bako. “The Forest starts half a day’s ride from here. That way.” He pointed west.
We stood there for a while, still trying to remember Stories about red tents.
Urak saw them first and let out a cry. Outside the red tent, two shadows as tall as men, walking on two feet. They had the head, the fur, and the tail of a wolf. The Wolfmen that I had seen on the eighth day in the Sieve. This time, everyone saw them. There were two of them. They were quite far, so I could make out their shapes but not their faces. One of the shadows turned toward us, crouched down, and let out a long howl. Robins flapped their wings, and starlings shat their green and gold feathers.
“I told you. You didn’t believe me,” said Bako. The fool was happy that the Legend was true.
Some of the children were already running back to hide in the trees but didn’t go far. The Guides chased them and gathered all of us in front of the fence. We all huddled close, touching. A couple were holding hands. We were not a long line anymore but a bunch of scared sparrows. Or starlings, or robins. I looked around. I tried to listen. All birds had disappeared.
Danaka said, “This is a cursed place of bloody rituals. I’ve heard of this. The last day of the Sieve. The Wolfmen. They take the weak.”
We were all there, weak or not.
If I hadn’t gone through the madness of the Sieve, if I hadn’t been poisoned by the crazygrass and the Reghen’s Legends, then I might have seen clearly. I would have seen two tall men dressed with the hide and head of a wolf. Because that was what I saw after all. But that morning, none of us saw men dressed as wolves.
We were all sure that we had seen two fearsome otherworldly monsters. Wolfmen. The Guide said, “We’ll all bleed.” The Wolfmen shadows were howling, the tent was painted red.
“Look there—more of them,” said Danaka, and my head turned right to the woods.
At first, they did look like a pack of black monsters walking toward us, their heads coloring the mist blood-red. But as they came out of the woods, I recognized the red-veiled Ouna-Mas approaching on foot. Reghen and Rods were also coming along with the Witches. Warriors followed them as well, on horseback. It was the second time the warriors had come to the Sieve to see us. Maybe that was the fateful time for me.
“Is she there?” I asked.
“Shut up, Da-Ren,” Keko said.
Malan pointed at the pack of the Redveils. There was a black veil in the middle. He didn’t talk, but as he was looking at me his lips made silent her name, “Sah-Ouna.”
Malan was as calm as the Blackvein’s water.
The Redveils and the rest came up to the fence and took positions as if they expected to watch something. Sah-Ouna was not in front, I couldn’t even see her.
“Trial. Not sacrifice,” I heard again Atares warnin
g me. His voice was coming out hoarse and cold. I turned but didn’t find him. Atares was long dead. A mauler had ripped out his throat. Crazygrass.
“Urak, you’re first. Get here!” shouted Keko, who stood close to the fence’s opening. Urak didn’t move. Two Guides grabbed him and took him to the middle of the field. He was there all alone, about six breaths of fast running from where I stood in the fence. Short and angry as a mauler, strong and stupid as an ox, he started to whirl around. Everyone stared at him. Rouba threw him a small knife and pointed toward the center of the field. Two small sacks were there. Urak approached them, hesitating and stopping every few steps.
“Hey, Urak, watch out. Darhul’s head is in there,” yelled Bako, ending his words with a nervous laugh.
Cowards laugh when scared. Rouba smacked him hard.
“You don’t get to laugh today. Watch. Stupid!” said Rouba. He might have hit Bako, but he was looking at me when he said the words.
Urak opened one of the sacks slowly and stuck one hand inside. The sack moved. He let out a scream and pulled out his hand. He was bleeding. A white rabbit jumped out of the sack.
Malan laughed. But Malan didn’t look scared. I should have laughed too, only because it happened to Urak. But I was busy trying to remember. Something familiar. Sah-Ouna just the previous night, the songspell, the rabbit.
“Rouba was right. I should have drunk more water.”
I was talking to myself. I had no one to talk to. Elbia and Atares had gone to the stars, Malan rarely spoke, and Danaka and Bako were not ones I wanted to have words with.
Urak was always the stupidest of all of us. That’s why he became a ravenous beast when he grew up. The rabbit was out of the sack on the ground. Urak and the rabbit stood still and stared at each other. The beast made the first move and started to chase the animal. It was already too late for him, and the rabbit disappeared with quick leaps outside of the fence.
Urak jumped over the fence to chase the rabbit, but the two Guides, one of whom had lashed me many nights before, caught him and dragged him back into the field.
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