Few Redveils walked around the tents; none of them alone. Their dresses were long but airy with a tied cord defining their slender waist. Below the waist the fabric was slit many times vertically, and the dress was reduced to black dancing snake ribbons. The skin of their legs was visible in their summer step. Their sleeves were short, above the elbow, to show the painted red designs on their arms. This was their summer garb that made the blood rise hot in a warrior’s head. Unlike the Reghen, the Ouna-Mas were unique in ways that were unknown to us. One had to look up close at the henna designs and to the different shapes of the half-shaved heads to see that they were all different from each other.
The Rods led me outside of a tent that was twice as big as the others, with wolfskins hanging from tall poles to the left and right of its entrance. That was all I had a chance to see. Their Chief tied a cloth around my eyes.
“Sah-Ouna is not ready for you. You will wait here,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Listen to me. Do not take that cloth off. Whatever happens, whatever you hear.”
I didn’t answer. He pushed me to my knees. The dark cloth was tied tightly behind my head, and light turned to utter darkness. My arms just hung down, my hands empty.
“Sah-Ouna will come at dusk. But if you take off the cloth, even for one breath, I will throw you out of here, and you’ll never see her,” the Rod said.
I didn’t hear his voice again. Silence fell for a few moments until I heard growling next to me and then that familiar and panting sound from the Sieve. My hands were not tied, so I could raise them to feel around. But I didn’t. The mauler licked my arm, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, frozen in the heavy heat. His piss, burning hot, flooded the dirt in front of my knees. Its smell brought back to my mind Greentooth, and the pails that she used to load me with. I held my breath and waited for him to stop. He left as he came, but I could still hear him. I didn’t open my eyes. The blindfold was drinking the sweat of my brow, the heat was scorching my skin, and the smell was deep in my nostrils.
It was much later that I heard the voices of the Ouna-Mas, rising crystalline and lustful in front of me. I couldn’t see their faces. I had heard this song many times. It was the easiest, the simplest, and the strangest at the same time. It spoke of brothers and dreams. They hit some long wooden tubes that made a rippling sound, the kettle drums came in strong, and the cymbals broke the rhythm from time to time. In the beginning, the Ouna-Mas were silent, and only the sounds could be heard. Then the words started coming out.
One word for Selene.
One for the wolf.
One for the horse.
For the Ouna-Ma.
One for the Sun.
One for the bow.
Their voices stretched each word for a long time, and with eyes closed I envisioned the Witches dancing, each word of theirs becoming a serpentine ribbon from their dresses and wrapping around me. In the middle of the song, their voices became a plea, a prayer, and then they started again from the beginning. I could feel them closer every time. Their words were now licking me everywhere.
An Ouna-Ma came so close that I could smell her skin. I didn’t see her, but her whisper burned next to my head. Her mouth was right there, and her lips brushed against my ear.
“Da-Ren. Crystal-cold water,” she said, putting a cup to my mouth. I was melting like a candle in the fire. I drank it as a newborn life.
I had come to their camp in midmorning to see Sah-Ouna. I remembered that, but I didn’t know why anymore. To ask for what? What would my first words be?
Their song began yet again, the prayer more melodious than before.
Another Ouna-Ma approached. Her voice was different. Burning hotter than the first.
“Da-Ren. Ninestar fire,” she whispered.
I felt her breath traveling over my neck, and it sent shudders down my spine as she put her tongue in my ear. I tried to raise my hands to touch her, to feel her, but she had already left. Another hand, a woman’s, cool to the touch, grabbed mine above the wrist. “Don’t, Da-Ren! Don’t open your eyes; obey Sah-Ouna.” A second hand touched me. And a third. They didn’t hurt me or pull me; they just gently caressed my skin. Countless hands were all over my body. It was late afternoon by now—I could feel it in the sun that didn’t burn anymore. But still, I trembled as if a freezing wind had embraced me. As unexpectedly as they had come, the hands disappeared. I wanted to find them again, but I didn’t open my eyes.
“Close your eyes. Or else you will lose them forever.”
I heard a low and deep voice behind me, and I guessed it was Sah-Ouna. Her words were warm, not threatening. I kept my eyes closed against my will. The words of the Witches’ song began again rhythmically, now far from me. Two strong men’s hands raised me and dragged me until we entered through hides in a space where the heat was even stronger.
“Now you can open your eyes,” said the Rod.
My eyes stung from tears of weariness and the smoking fire. I was in her tent. Weak torch flames lit the space, and Sah-Ouna sat across from me, sitting on her knees on a hide. Deep inside the tent I saw two huge hooded creatures. They were dressed like Ouna-Mas, but they were tall and broad-shouldered, bigger than I even. They stood completely motionless; I didn’t know if I was looking at carved, painted statues or monstrous Witches. Their arms were crossed, and I couldn’t see their faces under the hoods. As the light danced on their bodies I thought I saw blue ornaments on their strong forearms but I didn’t trust my eyes.
“Why are you here, Da-Ren?” asked the Witch.
“What are they?” I pointed at the creatures.
“A dream. A nightmare. Are you afraid? Why are you here, Da-Ren?”
Why should she have the most beautiful voice? She didn’t look like an old woman to me anymore. When I was a twelve-wintered I remembered her as a vile, scrawny bitch. But now I saw a figure slender as a fallow deer, and her eyes shone with the black fire of the forest animal. Her skin was unwrinkled, and though I remembered it pale, it was now dark. I was starving. She did not have the long head of the Ouna-Mas. Neither veil nor hair bun could hide that. I wanted to touch her, to feel the power emanating from the Goddess herself. For a moment, I thought the hooded creatures moved under the half-light and were looking at me.
I hadn’t answered her.
“Why are you here?” she asked me again.
“You called for me,” I told her.
“Did you open your eyes out there?”
“No.”
“Everyone does. When they touch.”
“I speak the truth; I didn’t open them.”
She nailed me with her stare, trying to suck out the lie from inside me. But she couldn’t find it.
“You speak the truth,” she said.
I hadn’t opened them, not even for one breath.
“I want to become—” I went to say.
“You know what you want to become?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know what you are. Why didn’t you open your eyes? Maybe a demon’s daughter stole them from you, Da-Ren?”
“No.”
“In the Forest. Blue?”
How could she know? Even I had forgotten the blue eyes for a day. This camp of shadows, the tongues of the Ouna-Mas touching and singing to me had erased them.
“No.”
“You didn’t open your eyes. But you did see the blue. Your mother, Da-Ren.”
How did she know? She caressed my arm, moving from the elbow upward while thrusting the words inside of me like a knife. What did the demon want inside my head?
“I was raised an orphan.”
“Yes, yes, you were sent to the Greentooth as a baby, your mother screaming and cursing when they took you from her. I remember as if it were only yesterday when they first brought her from up north.”
I didn’t care about my mother.
“She bore you a ninestar. On purpose. It was what she wanted.”
“I am not—�
�
“You are. Her blood. Her darkness. Her curse on us. Even the Goddess can’t see inside of you. I do.”
“I am First of the Uncarved,” I said.
She did not answer to that. She filled two cups with steaming black water.
“A great trial awaits you, Da-Ren. If you pass it, the Goddess will accept you.”
“I am not afraid.”
“You have to learn fear, desire, and terror. You did not open your eyes. You endured in the darkness. No one is that strong unless he is a son of the darkness.”
I had to find the words, the pleas, the wishes. This was my one chance. Sah-Ouna extended her arms to give me the cup. Her arms so close to my chest. A memory, an image of the past. Elbia. Elbia, the sacrifice of the Sieve returned to my mind.
“Drink now, but once you are back outside, you must not open your eyes. Promise the Goddess.”
“I promise.”
Someone was walking to my left in the darkness of the tent. I couldn’t see. Sah-Ouna offered me the cup to drink again. I smelled the crazygrass. I didn’t want to swallow the black water that steals the mind. I kept it in my mouth. Sah-Ouna, smiling calmly, pressed her fingers on my cheek as she had done on the first day of the Sieve. I kissed her hand spontaneously with desire.
Darkness consumed me and I was embracing it silently.
“Spit it out my love,” I heard two lips whispering behind Sah-Ouna. It was there behind the Witch, Elbia’s ghost-white face. Her empty eyes were no longer brown; her mulberry lips, no longer the color of rose petals.
Sah-Ouna turned to look back and then turned to me again.
“How? You see her, Da-Ren?” As if she could see Elbia too. She blew the dust toward the girl with a hissing sound. Elbia’s ghost vanished. “Do you see in the darkness of the caves, Da-Ren? So many surprises you bring, young one! You desire her? Now you can have her,” she told me. “Just close your eyes,” were Sah-Ouna’s last words to me.
I had swallowed the black water. I was lost.
She was beautiful and young, like an untouched Ouna-Ma before her virgin veiling.
I closed my eyes. I dreamed of her naked.
She took on the face and body of a grown-up Elbia.
The breasts of the Witch, small and upright, chirped dark songs.
Maybe she was naked. The crazygrass.
Even now I don’t want to admit it.
I felt her hands gently embracing me, fire burning inside. Elbia’s body. My eyes shut, my body riding a dark horse.
I awoke from a heavy slumber. Only a few embers around me; neither Sah-Ouna nor the hooded creatures were there. Those were not statues. I remembered Gunna describing the monstrous Reekaal who had attacked him one night in the Forest.
The Rods came in, blindfolded me again and took me outside of the tent where they left me alone. I heard the song of the Ouna-Mas from a distance. “Don’t open your eyes. The Goddess is watching,” Sah-Ouna had commanded me.
“Everyone opens their eyes,” she had said.
Was it fear or desire? Shame or unsatisfied lust? Had she defeated me? I could still defy her. I raised my hand, tore off the cloth, and threw it away.
I wanted to see. Twenty paces from me a group of Redveils had gathered around a tall fire. One of the hooded shadows stood much taller than the rest next to the angry flames, while the serpents of their dresses were moving around it. The tall shadow removed its hood, and I looked at it, him, whatever it was, for the first time. In the distance, I saw a longskull, I saw a man, I saw a seven-foot tall monster, his enormous arms opening wide under his robe like wings, fingers like talons emerging, eyes glowing in the reflection of the fire. Potent crazygrass that was. It had made the Witch beautiful and conjured Elbia and the Reekaal. My body was freezing as the day’s sweat met with the first chill of the night. The Ouna-Mas stopped their song and turned to face me with eyes like smoldering coals. The huge monster was burning silent, his body and arms painted blue like the heart of the fire. The Cyanus Reekaal of the Legends.
The one of color. I had to get out of there.
“Run away, Da-Ren. Run, now,” whispered the white-eyed ghost girl again.
I ran without looking back, found my horse still there at the gate of the settlement, and disappeared into the night.
Enaka was the only one still watching me from above. Her First Witch had made me promise to keep my eyes closed. I had betrayed her yet again. Sah-Ouna, Elbia, the Ouna-Mas, Enaka, the Greentooth, even my own mother. This one and only night, all the Witches of my life—alive, dead, and eternal—had called me to them and fought for the right to nest in my heart forever. They were all defeated. The night didn’t scare me. It came, licked me, and passed over me like a summer breeze.
And the day dawned blue.
XXVII.
The Legend of Er-Ren
Eighteenth summer. Uncarved—Wolf.
Rouba and Chaka were waiting up for me when I returned to the Uncarved in the middle of the night. A Reghen was with them.
“It is the command of Sah-Ouna that you leave for the campaign to the North. The Archers will go after the Garol, who have risen up,” the Reghen told me. “We have to see if you are worthy and ready to lead the Tribe,” said the Reghen.
The trap is always baited with a great promise.
“Did you see her? What did she say?” asked Chaka.
“Who?”
“Sah-Ouna, Da-Ren. Who else? Where there any others to see?”
“Yes. No. She told me that a great trial awaits me. If I pass it, she will…accept me.” I struggled to remember her words.
Chaka and Rouba exchanged glances as if all of this meant something.
“That’s it,” said Chaka. “Your final trial. The Reghen’s words make sense now. You leave at dawn.”
“This is a great honor,” Rouba told me. “No Uncarved has ever gone on a campaign before finishing his training. You will be riding among the warriors.”
“You will go with him too, Rouba.” Chaka nodded. “He will need a Guide.”
Rouba stuck his blade into the ground to support himself and knelt. “I never dreamed of being in a battle again,” he said. He turned toward me. “And you, you Da-Ren…” He had no more words; he was shaking. An old man’s love and admiration are hard to conceal.
We shut our eyes, though not for long, and woke up before dawn to pack our weapons and ready the horses. There were few of us, just ten Packs. It wouldn’t be a long campaign, but not a one-day raid either. Rouba told me it would be a full moon at least before we were back. The horse that Chaka had given me was strongly built, and I rode taller and braver with each step it took. We moved north, alongside the Forest but never inside it. Almost four hundred warriors in all. The Garol peasants in the north had revolted and slaughtered the guards we had left there. We were to bring the vengeance of Enaka.
“It is a long ride to the Garol settlements, but it will be a quick battle,” said the man who was leading us.
“Is that Druug, the Leader of all the thousands of Archers?” I asked Rouba.
“Yes. Is he better than you?”
“His son wasn’t, for sure. We were in the same hut, Uncarved Starlings, long time ago. He died an Owl the second spring.”
Only one of my arrows had found Redin, the first Uncarved to fall. Above the navel. Any other memory of Redin was fading away.
“Better not remind him of that,” Rouba said.
Rouba kept me next to Druug, so I could learn from him. He told Druug that I was there because Sah-Ouna had demanded it. But everyone knew already who I was. The First among the Uncarved. The Goddess had marked me as the next Khun, their future Leader. If only I managed to complete the final trial unscathed.
After a half-moon’s ride, we made it to the largest of the villages, the only one that was barely fortified, before nightfall. I had thought the breeze would be stronger up north, yet that was one of the hottest evenings of my life. I was dripping with sweat, and my mind started to stray
from the heat on the saddle all day, from lack of sleep, and from being stuck to the animal. Druug sent out a Tracker, and he returned a little before sunset. He had seen from up close the Garol and he was certain that they had seen us also.
“They’re waiting for us, barricaded. I count more than six hundred,” the Tracker reported.
I turned to Rouba and said, “The Garol outnumber us. And he says they are well protected behind the sacks and the carts.”
“They are farmers.”
Druug looked at me as if I were a small rat at his feet.
“Why are we riding slowly for so long, boy?”
“The oxen, the carts,” I mumbled.
“Yes, the carts what? Do you know how many arrows those carts carry? More than two thousand shafts for each one of the Archers. If I shoot a thousand times, don’t you think I’d find a neck or an eye? How did you count them as more?”
He was right. They were very few.
“They don’t know how to fight on horseback. They can’t ride and shoot a bow at the same time. They don’t have our bows. They will be dead before the sun reaches mid-sky. Most of their fathers died in the previous uprising. I was at that battle too,” Rouba said.
“Then, why do they?”
“Who knows? Maybe we took all the wheat, and they can’t get through the winter. They choose to die this way, fast.”
“When do we charge?” I asked Rouba.
He gave me a serious look.
“You and me? Never! We will sleep until dawn is upon us. Then the nine Archer Packs will attack, and when it is over, the last Pack of the Blades will move in to clean up whatever is left.”
“What am I going to do?”
“You will watch. Next to me. We will fill quivers with arrows so that they’re ready when the Archers return to refill.”
“That’s all?”
“What do you mean, ‘That’s all’? If we don’t do that, the othertribers will be skinning you alive slowly by nightfall. Your pelt will make a fitting saddle for your horse. All this shit is important. Go and fill the resin and oil pails for the arrows, if you want more work.”
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