Sword and Sorcery of Avondale

by Kai Kazi

  Then it snapped in place. The school had made a mistake in teaching him their ways, because that’s all he’d need to get home.

  Nita’s eyes scanned the white chalk, outlining the wages they’d find, the things to ask. His eyes strained over the symbols, still struggling to make them into sense in his mind. All he would need is to speak English, to smile and nod at the right times, to give a firm handshake, and to ask in a polite tone where he could find the river of his childhood. Where he could find the valley he’d ridden through on horseback. And then he’d find his tribe.

  Perhaps he could clean houses, as one column of text detailed; all he would need is some money to feed himself until he could find a true forest or a river. To put sharper clothes on his back and better shoes on his feet – torturous as they were. If he looked civilized, maybe they would think he was civilized and not a student – long enough for him to learn what he needed and return home. He didn’t need them for anything – just to tell him where home was.

  When the day was winding to an end and Nita was back in his room with Pamuy, they huddled close together around a pile of marbles. They played on pretense, should a teacher walk in, but their voices were lower than a whisper.

  “Do you think they might have looked for Joshua after all? Maybe they went after him before morning?” Pamuy asked, drawing his blanket around him on the floor to block out the concrete’s chill.

  “They would never bother.” Nita dismissed, “Remember, it’s such a privilege to be here.” Pamuy snorted despite himself, “If you turned down your great opportunity, I don’t think they would come looking for you to try to give it back again.”

  It seemed like more children showed up every day; a few that went missing wouldn’t be sorely missed. He whispered his plan to Pamuy – of using what the teachers had taught them against these white-faces. Nita watched as light came into Pamuy’s eyes for the first time in a long time. Nita felt himself breathe in deeper than he had in some time; he wouldn’t be completely Albane. Somebody would be there to help him to find his way back home.

  “Do you think the best time to leave is in the middle of the night?” Pamuy asked, striking Nita’s marble with his own.

  “It worked for Joshua. That’s the only time everybody is in their rooms -- even the teachers,” Nita replied, striking a brightly colored marble in return.

  The dull echo of footsteps started down the hall, sounding like a change in the air; these “civilized” shoes had none of the subtlety or silence of moccasins. Nita and Pamuy fell into instant silence, clicking one marble into the next in a system that was more mechanical than fun as they waited for the danger to pass. The footsteps of a teacher came and went past their room, but their silence stayed after it had gone.

  Nita’s mind was alive even though his voice was silent, like a strike of sparks had been sent against a dying fire, reviving it. For the first time in months, he had something to look forward to. The thought of going home reawakened the homesickness in his gut, making it throb and ache like a sickness he couldn’t shake. When he went to bed at night, he closed his eyes and saw his mother, looking small and fragile under her mound of blankets – the way she looked when he last saw her. Nita saw the forest surrounding his village, and his father going out to hunt. It was close, just within his grasp.

  Even though the homesickness intensified, bringing tears to his eyes, he let his eyes etch over the memory – it had begun to fade, but this new spark of life was bringing it back. He remembered the deep grooves in his mother’s face, deeper than any of the other women her age, and the color her illness had drained from her skin. Sometimes she could barely keep her eyes open, but he’d hold her hand, listening to her breath as he faded to sleep at home. Now he faded to sleep all by himself, in the cold enclosure of concrete walls.

  But it wouldn’t be for long. His father had patted him on the shoulder when he first left. Nita’s father said in that firm, assuring way that he’d be back soon – the school wouldn’t have him forever. When Nita was pulled away with the other children, the flash of something pained on his father’s face told him maybe he was lying. Maybe he was, but it didn’t matter.

  Nita would be coming home.

  Chapter Ten

  Alba

  Alba came up from sleep with a gasp, ghostly images of violent hands and hissing words echoing in ears and flashing in her eyes. Korra stood near her, dressing, but she didn’t react to Alba – it wasn’t rare enough to be startled by. Alba watched Korra adjust the sash around her middle as she breathed in deeply, drawing reality back into her eyes while the nightmare faded. Korra fussed with it, trying to make it looser, trying to make it hide the swelling of her belly.

  Alba felt dread as she rose from her bed, knowing there would be a battle of making her own dress drape over their body in the most subtle way possible. She felt awkwardly stuffed into her clothing, worse than when she first arrived, but she kept her hands over her middle and her head down as she attended class. She would catch the odd sideways glance from a student, and she all at once felt bare and exposed – as if they knew, as if they would tell. But it had been even more weeks, and not a single utterance of babies had been made.

  When Korra finished dressing, tears of frustration in her eyes as she turned away from the mirror, Alba caught the shadowing around Korra’s belly. She wouldn’t notice if she didn’t know what to look for, but soon that wouldn’t be enough – her mother had been so big, so round, there was no mistaking it.

  Alba felt a tear inside of her at the sight, standing to dress herself. Part of her was glad to see Korra struggling like she struggled, hiding like she was hiding. Another part felt shame even deeper, that she was not the first to have stepped into the headmaster’s room, and not the first to fuss with her dress to hide her shame.

  “When we have the child, they will know what happened,” Alba said softly, breaking the morning silence. She shifted her shoulders, trying to make her dress hang properly, but the difference was still noticeable. Her voice was just a breath – too low to be heard by anyone out their door.

  Maybe when the child finally burst forth, they would see – they would punish the headmaster.

  “They’ll find a way to pretend that it didn’t happen.” Korra returned, her voice lacking strength. “They’ll take our babies away,” Her hand -- looking thin and paler each day the bump of her belly grew thicker – pressed against the swell. “They might make us go away with them.”

  Alba expected the comment to shock her, but it didn’t. It rang in the air like the chiming of the church bell; stark, loud, but familiar.

  “Sooner or later, it’s going to happen,” Korra said, chiming again like that church bell; Alba felt like there was a weight on her shoulders as well as her belly, dragging her down with Korra’s words.

  As if the air had become thicker, Alba felt smothered, and pricks of tears started at her eyes. The battle she found every moment of every day sprung to life, and she took in a breath to hold back the tide of her tears. She wanted to cry as much as she needed to breathe, but the teachers paid attention to crying girls, and the other children noticed her when she cried. The headmaster hadn’t come to her room, hadn’t called her to his office in days, but he would notice too. She breathed deep as she pulled her sash tight to hold back her secret.

  But it was just Korra and her in the room, and like a dam pushed to its brink, it was going to break at any moment; it couldn’t be while teachers were watching. So Alba let it flood forward, shattering right there, and tears streamed down her cheeks. Every night, her pillow contained her tears, but it wasn’t enough to sate the shaking sobs now.

  Alba sank to the floor, pressing her face to her knees. “I just don’t want them to kill us.”

  Night after night and morning after morning she woke up with a gasp and a barely stifled scream, images of him pinning her, hurting her behind her eyelids. Sometimes she woke to him pressing down on her, her dress ripped and tossed aside in an instant; someti
mes she woke to the darkness of the room and her own gasping. Her eyes grew red from the sobs that plagued her at night, and her face grew ashen from the sleepless nights -- from what the baby was taking from her.

  The headmaster hadn’t come to her room in days; maybe he knew. Maybe he noticed the slight rise in her middle but the thinness of her arms and the dips of her ribs, and knew the signs.

  When he stopped coming to her room, the nightmares that brought her up in a frenzy of nausea and fear had turned – switched somehow, as if they noticed his distance and knew the meaning. The shadowy, ghost-like form of the headmaster pinned her down in her dreams, but there was a blade in his hand, piercing skin and cutting where he once bruised. He slammed the knife into her gut, into her face, into her arms, instead of slamming himself into her over and over again.

  The dream always started out the same; her eyes would open and she’d see warm light around her. She’d look up at the ceiling of her home, and then to her mother cradling her head, stroking her hair. Her father would be sitting beside her, telling her that the school had all been a nightmare – it wasn’t real.

  Then she would go out with her father, and they’d walk through the village, and she would smile and wave at everybody. All of her family was there, and all of her friends. Then everybody would freeze. Alba was the only person who could move, and dread like a splash of cold water washed over her.

  In the dream, Alba would turn around to see the Headmaster pounce, knocking her to the ground with a flash of white pain spiking through her head. His hands would be on her, tearing at her clothes, stripping her while her family stood frozen, motionless. A blade would catch the light, glimmering before it slammed down into her chest. The headmaster would scream at her, hissing the vile things he had done to her, stabbing her through the heart.

  The dream would always rip her awake. Tears would trail from the corners of her eyes as she lay in her bed, waiting for morning to come and knowing that as soon as the sun dipped down once more, it would all happen again.

  Chapter Eleven

  Nita

  Joshua was back in class.

  As Nita sat in his desk, his eyes aimed at the blackboard ahead of him but his mind alight with plans of escape, the taller child had walked in soundlessly, taking his seat. Ms. Wright had watched him enter, but there was no shock on her face, no surprise – as if she knew; as if she expected it.

  Nita looked at the boy who had run away – the boy who was the one flicker of hope Nita had seen in months – and watched him take his chair, folding his hands in front of him, and looking forward without light in his eyes. The children around him couldn’t help but stare; and despite their manners, despite their fear, a chatter rose up like the building roar of the wind. Ms. Wright snapped a firm correction, silencing their voices and calling for their attention. Nita’s mouth never opened, but he stared at Joshua like he was dead and had come to life again.

  The confusion was almost as painful as the fear.

  It’d taken some time – the classes drawing them apart, the teachers keeping chatter to a minimum – but eventually the children drew out an answer from Joshua.

  He had come back on his own.

  Pamuy told Nita as they sat on the floor of their bedroom, playing marbles in a system they’d adopted as habitually as attending classes. Their conspiring voices were almost too low to be heard by each other; their ears trained for anyone approaching. Joshua had run. He made it through the forest, through the town, and a great long distance back home – still in his uniform, still with those torturous shoes on his feet. They had never caught him, never stopped him, and he finally managed to trace his way back to his village. It’d taken days, but finally the surroundings looked familiar to him, and the sounds were the ones from his childhood, and he stumbled back into his home.

  His people didn’t recognized him when he rushed up, tears in his eyes. His friends didn’t know him as he struggled to speak the words of his language – deadened in his mouth, English breaking through in the way his native tongue had when he first arrived at the school. His hair was short and cropped, his skin paler, his voice different. His manners were like the white-faced administrators, and his steps were heavy like theirs. He didn’t know the sound of the forest anymore, and he couldn’t remember how to trace the location of the moon or the seasons.

  The school had done it. They changed him. They’d made him a civilized white man, and his tribe didn’t want him anymore. Civilization had taken him, and his people couldn’t take him back.

  “He wouldn’t say anything else.” Pamuy whispered in a hush; his voice was starting to choke with tears. “Another kid said maybe they made him leave. I don’t know. Maybe he left on his own?”

  Nita couldn’t find his breathe; couldn’t find his words.

  “Maybe it was too hard?” Pamuy asked, and Nita realized he wanted to be comforted; to be told a truth he wanted to hear.

  He was afraid of the same thing, at the same time as Nita.

  What if his tribe didn’t want him?

  A wash of tears flooded to Nita’s eyes, and he had to cast away the thought to keep a sob from choking out his throat. “I don’t know.” Nita whispered despite himself.

  Joshua had nowhere else to go. Whether he’d left on his own, unable to fit in, or had been thrust from his people as a pariah, he had come back. Pamuy said there was blood seeping through the back of Joshua’s shirt; punishment for ever leaving. A warning to any other child who wanted to leave.

  Nita’s hands were starting to shake. He dropped his marble, breathing in a sharp breath. “It’s not going to be us.” He said with a strength he didn’t feel. “Our families are different.”

  The silence stretched out for a long time, and Nita could feel Pamuy’s response building like a dangerous wind. “What if it is us, though?” A small gasp came from his throat. “What if we have to come back?”

  Nita shook his head, not letting the feeling that was forcing tears to his eyes seep in – he couldn’t. “We’re never coming back.” He hissed, “Never. We’ll get jobs. We’ll take care of ourselves. We’re never coming back.”

  Nita cast his thoughts far away from his family for the first time since he arrived, casting it to the teachings he’d seen on the chalkboard. He was better than they ever gave him credit for – he’d survive without them. Joshua had returned, but Nita never would. English had betrayed Joshua, but Nita spoke it even better than him – he’d get a job, get money, get a place to stay.

  When he walked into class that day, he was ready to listen to every word the teacher spoke, drawing in the information he had cast out before – had shunned, certain it made him betray his people. He stepped through the door, and there were new faces filling new seats; their hair freshly cut, their skin still darkened by the sun, their clothing looking awkward on their bodies. They were new; an untarnished batch of faces who were at the beginning of it all.

  Nita took his seat, careless of them; he wouldn’t be here long enough to learn their names. He waited in silence, and when an older child entered the room, Nita looked on in confusion as he watched Ms. Wright nod and direct the kid to the empty chair beside him. The boy looked angrier than anything; not startled, not shell-shocked like the others surrounding him.

  Nita knew what was coming, even before Ms. Wright wandered to the front of his desk. New children came every few weeks, and they were assigned to some of the students who had stayed at the school for a long time. Their native language was strictly forbidden, but hand signals and expressions were meant to bridge the gap. It took weeks to make any progress, at least – months for the older children, whose tongue couldn’t pick up the English shape. It was hard and frustrating to get the essence of things across without a language to manage. Some English words did not exist in Nita’s native tongue, making it nearly impossible to manage.

  Nita had no one to guide him in his first days, when the school year was early. He never had someone to watch after either, even though
he’d been there long enough. Nita felt dread flood through him as Ms. Wright smiled down on him.

  “Nicholas, I know that you haven’t been here as long as some of the older boys, but you speak English quite well.” She gestured to the boy beside him. “So you’ll help this new student during his time here. I know he’s a tad older than you, but I’m sure you both will get Albang just fine.”

  Nita knew more than felt himself paling; maybe it was the cold shiver of disappointment that spread over him that tipped him off, or maybe it was the sympathetic but firm look Ms. Wright gave him.

  “I know you will do great, Nicholas.” She placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. Nita’s gaze shot down furiously to his desk to hide the fear, the anger, the despair in his eyes from her. Her hand left and he heard the clicking of her low heels bringing her to the front of the class, but he didn’t look up. His hands were clenched under the table; this was going to change everything about his plan.

  Another student, one he had to take care of, meant someone to follow him around all day. Someone to eat with. Someone to share a bedroom with; how was he ever going to leave if they had this unwitting spy set on him?

  Nita wanted to think of the kid beside him as an incarnation of betrayal; sharing his skin tone, possessing the high forehead of his people, but ready to stand between him and the door to freedom. The older children were always taught to watch after the younger, reporting any misbehaving to the elders. The elders of this school were more like prison guards; wolves surrounding the herd, Nita thought. But as Nita dared a glaring glance to the kid beside him, he saw the child looking even more furious than him, glaring unabashedly at Ms. Wright standing beside the chalkboard.

  Maybe not a spy after all, Nita considered.

  The scowl didn’t leave Nita’s face as the class went on, and both he and the new boy sat there like mirroring gargoyles – solitary and furious. Nita’s mind was a furious storm of thoughts; trying to think of how he could avoid the boy, how he could convince him to come with him, how he could get someone else to translate and guide the new kid while Nita went on with his plan. By the time class came to an end and Nita was gathering up his books, he had arrived at a decision.