I waited for him to lower his ax one more time. Before it was up again, my blade struck his left arm above the elbow. He fell to his knees with a howl which was drowned immediately by screams that would crush a defeated man to the ground. He raised his right hand, the one with the ax, but it just hung there. I hit him again on the left arm to be sure. His ax fell to the dirt. I fed on the warriors’ cheers of victory, and I hit his half-cut arm a third time to finish the job. His arm fell to the ground along with its rags. Blood spurting out, covering my body and his. He was squealing, but I could barely hear that either, even from two feet away. Ten thousand maddening bellows flowing from my ears to my hands. I grabbed his ax and brought it down to his neck. Blood of the othertribers! So beautiful and crimson it was. To kill for the Tribe. I am worthy, father. All those men watching me, they were all my father. Any one of them could be. I would wash myself off with the bitter mare’s milk-spirit which my fathers drank.
Khun-Taa himself was standing up, and the crowd was still going wild. As if it were his own feat, Gunna took the cut arm and walked around the field waving it at the warriors.
“Look at us now! Are we Uncarved or not?”
I was so thirsty. Rouba gave me a waterskin and I emptied it on my face; Blackvein’s water and the splattered blood of the green-eyed became one on my tongue. Malan was First among us and would fight last. It was Akrani’s turn.
We threw Akrani the Uncarved into the funeral pyre the next morning at daybreak.
“Unlike you, I choose the bow. It is fast and clean,” he said to me before he walked to the center of the arena. “I don’t want to lose a finger.”
I shrugged my shoulders. My little finger started stinging the moment he brought it up. Rouba shred a stripe of his own tunic and tied it.
“More water,” I said to him. I was still thirsty.
The Dasal across from Akrani was a wiry man, almost forty-wintered. I would not have chosen him. All this time he had waited calm, with eyes closed in his cage; his arms over his knees. The Dasal chose neither ax nor blade. He picked a shield, the only one there. He fended off the first arrow and ran toward Akrani. The second arrow didn’t pierce the shield either, but the third one flew very close to his ear and got tangled in his ragged hair. But he kept running toward the Uncarved. There was no fourth arrow.
When the Dasal closed on Akrani the sharp round shield became a hammering ax and a vengeful blade. Akrani’s light bow was a useless weapon in a melee. He fell dazed on the first blow of the heavy shield. The Dasal, holding the two ends of the shield, brought it down with rage onto Akrani, snapping his neck, smashing his head, and shattering his teeth. I could hear around me the sighs and the “aaahs” of shock and dismay after each blow, as if the Dasal were crushing thousands of warrior skulls, the skulls of our fathers. The Rods finally burst onto the field, with their long spears, and forced the screaming Dasal to stop.
Our stupid smiles and cheers disappeared. A deathly silence fell across the Wolfhowl. Chaka shouted for us to take away the body and the red-brown pulp that used to be Akrani’s head. I chose the shield. It was the only fast and clean way to scoop Akrani’s brains up from the dirt. The hungry mauler, his eyes glowing chestnuts, growled and walked around us impatiently as we carried the body away.
Thirteen of us had come Uncarved from the Sieve; four were still standing.
In the Stories of the Reghen, we were always victorious, but in three nights we had lost Lebo and then Akrani. The Tribe’s Legend claimed that the Uncarved were the best warriors, picked out from the thousands of youths who’d endured the Sieve. But the Legend had forgotten to tell us one thing: that the othertribers could kill us with equally great ease and greater hate. Even in the midst of the Great Feast.
At the peak of youth, when the soul is quicker than the feet, any Uncarved boy was certain that, up there, Enaka had eyes only for him, the One destined to be Khun. But all it took was a three-finger-deep blade in his first fight and the proud boy was nothing but ashes ascending to the Unending Sky.
With the Wolfhowl still silent after Akrani’s defeat, it was Malan’s turn to deal with the last of the green-eyed. The Dasal had chosen the shield as well and looked almost as strong as the one I had fought. That was when I began to fear that Malan, too, might fall. He was the closest thing I had to a brother. I wanted one day to beat Malan. I wanted to beat Malan every day, but I didn’t want to see him dead.
He wasn’t the surefooted Malan of the Sieve. He was staring left and right. I could smell his fear. He was the rabbit in this fight. I could see ahead, and I saw his death. Malan lifted a blade, a smart choice against the shield, but I knew he wasn’t as good with iron. It was his first time fighting in front of everyone, the first time he had to kill with his own hands. The first and the last.
The time had come where I would finally beat Malan in front of everyone. The wind was rising stronger, cooler in the Wolfhowl. I was so thirsty. Victory was mine. The Goddess would grace me with… Raindrops? Raindrops were falling on my face. Thicker; more and more of them.
I should have known then. Enaka and Sah-Ouna had forever thrown their guarding veils over Malan. The exact same moment that the fight was about to begin, the Sky obediently unlocked the rivers of the Goddess and dropped them over our heads with thunder and lightning.
The Reghen looked at Sah-Ouna.
“Darhul is strong tonight!” the Reghen turned and shouted to Chaka.
The Reghen looked at Khun-Taa.
“Tomorrow!” he shouted again and for the last time.
Three breaths later, the rain was coming down, a pitiless, heavy gray veil. The thousands of warriors emptied the Wolfhowl in a stampede. We were soaked and alone in the middle of the arena. Rouba and Chaka set free the Dasal who had smashed Akrani’s head, and he disappeared in the storm. It was what the Truth of the Wolfhowl had decreed. A victorious man lives again. We dragged the last Dasal, the one who hadn’t fought with Malan, back to our camp and I put him in a cage across from our hut.
“I’m Veker,” he told me as I was locking the cage. “Let me go. I have always been a friend of the Tribe. I bring you the crazygrass.”
I spat in the dirt with disgust.
“You will fall in the Wolfhowl tomorrow,” I told him, wondering how he could speak our tongue so well.
He lowered his head, and he knelt as if to worship me.
“You saved my daughter,” he whispered.
He wouldn’t be able to find a word to thank me in my tongue. I pretended not to hear.
“Zeria, in the oak,” he said.
Zeria. The one of color.
I turned my back on him and ran away before anyone else came close enough to hear. I was unlucky that Malan had not opened him up.
I slept on a full stomach, hurrahs from jubilant Gunna and Balam, the two of three remaining older Uncarved, and from the younger ones.
“Da-Ren’s Story is in every tent, in every fire tonight,” Rouba said loud enough for all to hear.
Right there, he was the one father I had. The one true Guide, to lift my spirit high. The one I wanted to make proud.
Malan had disappeared into a corner of the hut, and none of us bothered him. The next dawn would bring his greatest day.
I dreamed of redbreast robins.
I opened my eyes in the heavy darkness of the night and awoke to Malan shaking me out of a deep sleep.
“Da-Ren, wake-up. He got away,” he whispered.
“Who?”
“The Dasal escaped from the cage. You have to help me find him. I saw him running. To the Forest.”
“Wake them all up. The Guides.”
“No, we two must find him. He’s mine, Da-Ren. Come on.” He pleaded like a child.
“We will not go alone.”
“You didn’t lock the cage, Da-Ren. It’s your fault. Help me now!”
Malan grabbed me by the hand. He had never done that before. I was fully awake and putting on my horsehide boots. We were tiptoeing out of
the hut. It didn’t even cross my mind that it was better for me if Veker escaped. He was the only one alive who had seen me hide the girl inside the hollow oak.
Zeria, he had called her.
Malan had taken bow and quiver with him, but in my confusion, I had grabbed only a short blade. The rain was still falling heavily.
Malan shouted, “He went in there, I saw him!” We pointed into the dark, where no one from our Tribe ever went. We had no torches—they’d be useless under the Sky’s fury. I did what every stupid, invincible seventeen-winter-old would do—I charged toward death.
Malan signaled for us to separate, and slipped out of sight. I ran through the tangled black trees with all my heart and strength. Selene was lost behind the clouds and the wooden skeletons that got in my way. A tall hideous shadow moved to my right, and then an arrow shaft broke on the tree next to me. I hid behind the trunk and stopped to catch my breath. It was the worst thing to do. My mind betrayed me. My shaking legs slipped in the mud. I wasn’t even a thousand feet into the Forest, but, there, for the first time, I succumbed to an untold horror. The cold yellow sweat paralyzed every joint in my body. The shadow again. Some creature fast, menacing. Hunting. I was not new to the embrace of death. I had felt it every moon since the Sieve, but that moment, the black drooling tongues of the demons were touching my feet, my head and my hands. I was inside of the monster. It had swallowed me. I cut the air again and again with my whistling blade, defending myself against the branches. Its talons were coming down to rip me apart. But I hit only air, raindrops, and dead wood.
Only a short time prior, I had slain the strongest of the Dasal in the Wolfhowl. But here, his ghost roamed free. I was inside the Forest’s green-and-black belly, and it was grinding me into a pulp of sweat, rain, and mud. I couldn’t find my way out. For one instant, I asked myself if Malan had really woken me up, if I really had run like a fool to go in there, or if it was a nightmare. I fell to my knees and put my hands over my head; I didn’t want to open my eyes ever again. I screamed from the deepest part within me. “Maaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
Malan? Mother? Was I calling her for the very first time? The word did not come out. I called her again.
I heard the shouts of our men—the only mother I’d ever had— and as I looked toward my right, I saw torches appearing and disappearing. The horns of distress were blowing throughout the camp of the Uncarved. I followed their cries, crawling fast on all fours until I found the Guides who had come for us. I came out of the Forest as if I had come out of a woman’s belly into the light. The rain had eased.
That was my first night alone in the Forest.
The same night I killed my first othertriber.
The same night I learned her name.
The same night I discovered the green fear.
I had become a warrior.
The thought never crossed my mind, that Malan himself had let the Dasal free.
Who thought like that?
Enaka had pitied him.
I didn’t think for a single breath that Malan had tried to kill me with an arrow in the Forest.
Who thought like that?
I was seventeen winters, eighteen springs young.
When I first saw Zeria.
I would again descend into the womb of the Forest.
It had conquered me.
I had already fallen in love with it.
That which I feared. That which was forbidden.
Before I even knew what love was.
I would find it there.
XXIV.
Skeleton
Island of the Holy Monastery, Thirty-third summer.
According to the Monk Eusebius.
In the damp of the night and the scorching heat of the day, Da-Ren and I wove the words of his story into bloodstained flower wreaths. My hand, already tired, dropped the reed pen when Da-Ren said his story hadn’t even started. Baagh warned me sternly before he left that these words would one day be read by the Emperor of Thalassopolis himself.
“The written codices will go to the Polis of the Kings. You write for the power-wielding Emperors, but also for the many,” he told me. “For those you will never see. Not for the few monks around you.”
How was it possible that the thrice-sanctified soul of the blessed Emperor could hear of such malevolent and brutish acts committed by these barbarians? For the first time, I considered that maybe not everything should be put to papyrus. And what kind of prayer or repentance could befit this savage man who lined up corpses as fast as I lined up the words?
“You killed a man. An innocent. You enjoyed it. I can’t write that. I will not. Do you repent, Da-Ren?”
I had set a rule that now proved foolish—whenever he referred to the death of another human being, we would fast for one full day, without even water.
“If you don’t change that rule very soon, you will die of thirst in the sunless cell, Eusebius,” he told me with a sorrowful chuckle.
And it was the truth. Even if I had all the strength of the saints, my emaciated body would never be able to finish this story. I changed the rule to require our isolation in the cell for one whole day, but that hurt Da-Ren even more. Especially when death rained down onto our papyrus, and we had to remain within the four stone walls of the cell for many days.
“Let’s get outside of this tomb that you have stuck me in, Eusebius. Did you find an innocent victim and go green with fear? You have only just brushed against the first branch of the forest. Prepare to swim in the red sea of guiltless blood. You will be searching for air in vain, as I do in this hole. If you cannot endure it, then leave. I have no pleasant stories to tell you.”
Da-Ren could have killed men without remorse in his previous life, but for me everything had to be deciphered as an ancient symbol on papyrus: symbols that I had to read, to find the way toward God and forgiveness somewhere within all this barbarism.
“What did you feel? How did you sleep at night?”
“What are you asking me?”
“Do you repent?”
“Oh yes, every night, but not for that night.”
“Did you hear them at night, the screams of the innocent Dasal? That was not your enemy that came to harm you. You killed him for fun. That other boy with the rain of arrows before. How many unspeakable horrors?”
“Too many to count. That was only the first day. Then every day. Can we go outside, Eusebius? I can’t breathe in here with all this candle smoke. Let’s go fishing today.”
When he began to talk that way, we had to get out into the light and go to the sea. He had undertaken the task of fishing for the needs of the monastery. For many days, there were no supplies or stones for him to carry up the endless steps. He desperately searched for something to do during the times I was away at my prayers. Something other than punching his fists into his cell wall waiting for the Sorcerers of the Cross who would come to save his wife and daughter. After a while, I realized that what he really wanted was to slice the sea with the oars and to rest his eyes into the blue.
I did him the favor and climbed down the steps to reach the rocks next to the harbor where Da-Ren liked to fish. We stayed in the small boat for a long time, and he would dive into the sea and come up for air. He managed to catch a few small fish with his spear. Nothing like the experienced fishermen of the island, who dove deep and disappeared for a long time beneath the water.
When the day grew hotter, he lay down in the boat with his eyes closed, as if waiting for the sun to devour his whole body and leave only his bones. The heat brought to my mind the funeral pyres at Sirol. The story of his tribe was written all over his body, with knife wounds, lashing scars that still whispered the name “Elbia,” from the right side of his forehead to the soft part of his neck on the left. His body was criss-crossed with large scars, one under the lowest rib on his right and one on his left arm, but he hadn’t told me the stories of those two yet. He touched the scar under his right rib with his fingers.
“What do you ask of me
, Eusebius? To tell you what I felt? What do you want to hear?”
I had to find the Demon. If I knew the name of the Evil one and removed it from inside of him, then my mission would end in victory. Only the humility and patience of a monk could uproot the beast.
“Yes, what happened inside of you? Did you feel guilt, fear? Joy, perhaps? That is what I must know, Da-Ren, or else how can I bring your story in front of the elder monks?”
A ship appeared on the horizon. It was too far away for us to distinguish what trade it was. Da-Ren locked my head in his arm with one hand, grabbed my jaw with the other, and forced me to look in the ship’s direction.
“It’s coming. You see it. At dawn, it will be here. What do you feel, Eusebius?”
“Let me be!” He had almost taken off my head.
“What do you feel? The pirate’s knife on your throat? Is the blade cold? The wheat that the merchant brings us? Is the wood-baked bread tasty? The princess of Thalassopolis who sailed to come and burn only you with her lips. Is her skin warm? Is her tongue wet? Now. Now tell me. What do you feel? Or does the sun blind you so you cannot see?”
What did I feel? Her tongue.
“Twenty years later, Eusebius? If I ask you after twenty years, what will you tell me about what you felt just now?”
Da-Ren rowed the boat closer to shore and jumped back into the water. It was only up to his waist. After a while, he saw some movement around the rocks on the seabed and started poking around with his spear. He put his left arm deep into the water as if to grab something. I laughed afterward. A reddish-colored octopus was wrapped around his arm, leaving a trail of dark ink in the water behind it. Da-Ren jumped back, startled by the creature. It was perhaps the only time I saw him frightened by something so funny when the slimy tentacles wouldn’t release his arm. The beast was no bigger than the palms of two hands. Its eyes opened wide to meet Da-Ren in the final battle.
“You have to bite it behind the eyes, and then it will die,” I told him.
The octopus refused to let go.
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