CHAPTER 22
“SNAP YOUR HIPS into it,” I tell Remi, the aki with the gray streak in his hair. “Snap your hips into that right. Connect the dots.” Sometimes, others will trickle in, aki brought in by a Mage, and this guy was one of them. He’d come in a quarter-Moon ago, and I’d taken him into an empty clearing to help refine his one-two. His jab-straight. “Snap your hips!” I shout to him. “Back of the foot leaves the ground.” He does it, a left jab followed by a straight right. “Yeah, just like that.”
I jump down from the boulder and scoop up the mittens at my feet. Walking toward him, I fit them tight over my hands and wrap the loose straps around my wrist. Then I plant my feet, shoulder-width apart. I try not to think about that aki I saw by the Wall, the one who called me the new Catcher, whatever that means. Training the new aki helps. A little. “Now do it again, and duck like I taught you.” He does it again, jab, straight, then I swing for him with my right hand. And the kid ducks! He sees my eyebrows lift and smiles shyly before schooling the expression from his face. Can’t let me see that he’s begging for my approval. I shoo him out of the clearing. “Now go work on your leaps. Do that for a few rounds; have a partner count your rounds. And keep practicing this.” I mimic the one-two-duck. The aki hurries off, and I’m left with a space that smells like animal dung.
Wild animals sometimes roam. The stink probably comes from them. A lot of forest squirrels, but sometimes mangy dogs stalk through and paw at discarded handwraps. All we need is someone cooking goat off in the distance and a few poets and itinerant holy men, and we’d be back in the Forum. Some of the tree trunks wrapped with padding and cloth have stuffing sticking out of their blankets. The thinner trees slouch from the younger, wilder aki hanging and bouncing on their branches. The trees that haven’t been transformed for striking drills have messages scrawled into them. Some are tiny love letters. Some are dahia markings that signal territory. Somebody’s missing a slipper—I see it all covered in dust by a patch of weeds.
There’s space to move here. To run around. It’s not like Kos, where the streets and alleys are so narrow you practically have to squeeze through. We don’t have to memorize the trails and tracks here, the way we do the side streets of the Forum. We can run around and wave our arms here. Or, at least, they can. I still have to act like the oga around here.
I wander into a small clearing hoping to see that older aki. Maybe if I wait long enough, I’ll see that face with the spider tattoo poke out from the bushes.
Early on, I’d set up a horizontal striking post here. It hangs by two chains from a thick tree branch and swings at chest level. I have to hit it differently than I would an upright striking post because it pivots and catches me in the head if I’m not paying attention. I can either block and swing or pivot and riddle it with punches. Some days, when I look at how we’re made to live, when I see the near-endless rows of shacks we’re crowded into and the line that develops every morning for the bathing patch, the way the little aki shiver when they upend the bucket over their skinny bodies, when I look at how exhausted everyone is at the end of the day and I remember what I’m training them for, I come here to this striking post. And sometimes, I don’t even bother to block. In the back of my mind, I count the seconds to a round, and when I finish, I lean on it, heavily. I can be angry here, in this wide expanse, and I don’t have to worry about who’s watching.
A part of me is happy she’s not here to see me like this.
The Aunties used to worry about how I was angry all the time as a little boy. At least, as an aki, I have something to fight. Here, I have something to hit. And I imagine the Mages would prefer I do it to this bag rather than to their noses. I hate having to train children for this work. If I could, I’d rid Kos of every single sin, just so they wouldn’t have to Eat. They could remain with their families, grow up to become jewelers or algebraists or miners. Live normal, healthy lives. But I’m training them to Eat. To eventually Eat so much that they Cross over, then die.
They won’t be like me, though. Their sin-spots will fade. Maybe, after time, they’ll forget what sins they Ate. They won’t be marked forever.
By the time I finish, I’m exhausted. It feels good being this tired. I’m too tired even to hate what I have to do.
After another training session, I wander off to be alone again.
On one stretch of Wall, rain has turned a painted portrait of an ancient rebel warrior into a curved, sliding mess of white and gray against the light brown of the stone. Elsewhere, more recently painted, a runner in sleek, patterned pants vaults over what has been stylized as a piece of the Wall, to make it look like that man whose head is uncovered and whose face can be clearly seen is escaping. Kosian script flows along other stretches of the Wall. Beautiful scribbling.
Scribes were here.
Farther down is where the menagerie begins.
Some of the beasts are beautifully rendered. The painted snake, rearing up to face the boar, painted in profile, with multicolored spikes running along its spine. The inisisa here are splashed with color in some places. The monkey’s limbs, eight of them stretched out to make a sort of wheel with bent spokes, create a rainbow, and the griffin caught in mid-flight has wings the color of the morning sun. There’s more black here too. Sunset doesn’t cast it all in shadow like it does on the other side of the Wall.
The girl with the long hair is here. The one who called me the strange name—Catcher. She has her back turned to me, and she sits in a crouch, wiping paint-smeared hands along the Wall in practiced movements. Her whole body sways, like she’s dancing. She’s fast, and all of a sudden, a large tail curls along the ridges of stone and fluffs at its end. Then another and another, until seven have formed, like the skeleton of a hand-fan, but caught in mid-swirl. It’s a painting, but like the best of the work from the Scribes, it shimmers in the light so that it looks like the sin-beast is emerging from the Wall.
A twig snaps under my foot. I half expect her to dart up and away, but she stands slowly and turns to face me. The spider-dot sits right on her forehead, and its legs run down her face. In daylight, the sin-spots that cover her from the crown of her head to the toes of her sandaled feet are even more striking. She’s as dark as me beneath her markings. Paint—orange, yellow, red—covers her palms. She doesn’t bother wiping her hands clean. Just stares at me. Silent.
“That was you the other day.” Suddenly, I’m right in front of her, and I can’t tell which one of us moved. But I can see the wrinkles at the edges of her eyes, and the way the handle of her daga dances against the insides of her fingers. She’s so fast I never even saw it slip out of her armband.
“You used to be a Scribe?” I gesture to the Wall.
She says nothing, but tenses, then drops into a fighting stance. I step back and throw my hands up instinctively, in defense, and she lunges at me. She hits me hard enough to knock the wind out of me. We crash to the ground. I can’t breathe. Suddenly, she’s up again, standing over me while a bear made of churning shadows turns around and faces us.
“Stay down,” she hisses. Her voice is deeper than I expected, and something sounds strange about it, almost like two people speaking at once.
The bear rears and roars, then comes down on all fours and dashes toward us. I scramble away, but the girl runs straight for the sin-bear. The spikes running along the ridge of its back flex. She flips her daga in her hands, and just as she and the bear are about to crash into each other, she leaps over it, as smooth as anything I’ve ever seen. She hurls her daga at it, but it misses. I flick my own daga out and prepare to run in and rescue her. But the girl’s strap runs against the sin-bear’s neck, wraps around, and the girl lands, pulling with all her strength and yanking the bear onto its back. Her muscles flex and ripple where they show, and she pivots on one foot, slips another daga from a small scabbard at her hip, and drives it straight into the sin-bear’s throat. Once the knifepoint pierces the nape
of the inisisa’s neck, it bursts into a cloud of smoke.
The smoke solidifies into a puddle of ink on the forest floor, then morphs into a column and shoots straight into the girl’s open mouth. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t even tremble. She chokes a bit as the sin races down her throat and into her stomach. It ends as quickly as it started. She swallows, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Staggers one step, two, then rights herself and is normal again, except for a new distant look in her eyes.
Her body tenses, and that’s when I see it. New ink.
Right at the base of her neck, above her collarbone, a bear in profile, rearing on its hind legs. She takes it without noise, not even a grunt against the pain I know is ripping through her skin. I’ve seen plenty of other aki react to Eating and the burn that comes with their branding. I’ve seen them doubled over, completely at the mercy of the process. Some of them fall on the ground, writhing, crying out for their mothers, for the Unnamed, for someone, anyone to make it stop. I’ve even seen them fall unconscious.
Bo admitted to me once that, very early on, he used to weep.
But this is the first time I’ve seen an aki not cry out in pain after having Eaten. The first time I’ve seen someone other than me unaffected by what she has just done. By what has just been done to her. She killed that inisisa almost without thinking, and she Ate that sin with that exact same attitude. Complete instinct.
Footsteps behind us announce the Mages. They arrive in a group of three, and the Mage at the forefront, named Ishaq, wears no hood over his bald head. I’ve seen him around a half dozen times. I recognize the pastiness of the skin on his face. It’s strange, and it never gets easier to look at.
Two aki trail behind the Mages, both of them a little younger than me. One of them, Ras, carries someone in his arms. The other, walking next to Ras, has two shovels over his shoulder.
The Mages say nothing as Ras and the other aki walk past me and the girl, and Ras lays the body down on the ground, and the other aki begins digging.
“Zainab,” one of the Mages calls out.
So, that’s her name.
The girl turns from watching Ras and his companion dig the grave and walks obediently to the Mage who has called her and who now turns and walks away, Zainab skulking behind them. The paint on her palms has dried.
I’ve seen this before. Where have I seen this before? My mind flashes to a Mage in an alleyway with a flock of aki behind him. I’m watching as Baba speaks with the Mage and hands him more ramzi than I’ve seen in my life. Almost as soon as the memory comes to me it’s gone.
I head over to Ras. The other boy doesn’t introduce himself.
“A Mage called forth a sin for him to Eat,” Ras tells me, digging. “He couldn’t beat it. The inisisa ate him, then went wild and escaped.”
No doubt searching for other aki to consume.
Suddenly, the one with no name begins to shake. His shoulders tremble, and he lets out a sob, then he can’t stop, and he shuffles to a row of bushes by the Wall where he can cry in peace. I pick up the boy’s shovel and see the comatose aki’s face. The eyes of the boy we are burying are blank. No irises. No color in them at all. His skin has turned blue. His lips are dried. He’s gone. Eaten. He has Crossed.
I don’t recognize the boy, and that hurts. I’m responsible for him, for his training. This is the first one I’ve lost like this.
I catch Ras’s eye. He’s older. One of the dahia leaders. Others flock to him. Ras takes the stone the boy wears around his neck, that jewel the boy kept near to remember his past before the forest, and adds it to his own necklace. So that the boy may never be forgotten. The stone, a dull blue, flares when it touches Ras’s chest. Someone will soon walk through the camp with coal for those who knew the aki to stud into their ears. To remember that he died. To remember how.
Ras hoists the boy up over his shoulder and carries him away. He doesn’t want us to have to see him end his suffering.
When he brings him back, the boy’s eyes are closed—peaceful. And there’s a streak of blood on Ras’s pants where he’d cleaned his daga.
Neither of us says a word as we bury the boy.
CHAPTER 23
IT TAKES A while to get to the Mages’ quarters. I think they did that on purpose to discourage wandering. Maybe they really see themselves as apart from the rest of us. I’ve been put in charge of the dirty, lowly aki, and they can wash their hands of us. But we can’t keep going like this.
I have to ask them if they can build a better bathing area and increase the water supply so that the morning wash line isn’t so long. I’ll tell them that if more aki can wash at the same time, it’ll pass more quickly and we can spend more time training. I won’t tell them that even aki have dignity to maintain, as much as it may surprise a Mage to hear it. I don’t think that argument will play very well with that crowd.
When large tents and a few wooden outposts come into view, I know I’ve arrived. Mages mill about in their cloaks, many of them with their hoods pulled back. They haven’t seen me yet, so I imagine this is what they look like when no one is watching. I even see a few Mages smile. Some of them dare to chuckle. I guess Mages were regular people once. Seems impossible to think about someone like Izu, or like Ishaq, as someone’s son. Which is why it’s strange to watch a Mage tell a joke. It’s like watching a yam sprout legs and start dancing.
I wonder if Zainab lives here too. She’s obviously special to the Mages; I haven’t seen her much recently, so maybe they keep her in hiding. There are too many questions here. For now, all I need, really, is better bathing conditions for my charges.
When I get closer, a few Mages brush past me like they don’t even see me. One woman with silver braids nearly knocks me over, and I turn, daga in hand. I’m about to let her know what I think of her and her kind when I spot Aliya, hurrying toward me with her parchment clutched to her chest.
“Hey!” I shout.
Aliya stops and looks around like she can’t see me, then when she does, she heads straight for me, grinning. “Isn’t it amazing here? I can’t take notes fast enough. I’ve already witnessed three sin-eating rituals. At this rate, my research will be complete in no time, and I—”
“Aliya,” I cut her off. “My kids stink. Like no other. Like week-old moi-moi left out in the sun. Like a wild boar ate another wild boar’s leavings, then left them for another wild boar to eat.” I can’t stand her gushing right now, not when we don’t even have proper bathing conditions. “The way the bathing area is set up now, there’s no privacy for the little ones. Or the older ones, for that matter. Tell your ogas they need to build us stalls, or I quit training the aki.”
She looks like I just hit her in the chest. “Taj . . .”
“I’m serious. It is not you who has to stand next to them all day.”
The call to prayer sounds. Even this far out, we can hear it.
The caller’s voice is faint, and I hadn’t even heard it while I was arguing. But now that I can focus, the voice makes me feel like suddenly I’m back home watching everyone in their dahia gather around their shrines and sit in silent meditation.
Aliya spares me a glance before heading off to where a group of Mages have gathered. They have their prayer rugs laid out beneath them, and already a line of them, facing toward Kos, have begun the ritual. Kneeling, bowing, then back up—moving in that way that reminds me of Mama and how, whenever she prayed, it seemed as though she were having a conversation with a very dear, very quiet, very kind friend.
Suddenly, I don’t have the heart to talk to anyone anymore.
The young aki dance by the light of the campfire. The ones that aren’t finishing their meal form a loose circle and stomp a rhythm onto the forest floor with their feet, singing a song I remember having heard in the Merchants’ Quarter when Baba used to walk me through the market. I recognize only phrases, but the youth who’ve com
e from around there or who’d been rounded up from that area sing loudly, bouncing on their feet, clapping in unison. A song about a trader and a noblewoman and a lost pearl making its way through the Forum.
The dance is contagious, and I find myself tapping along. During the chorus of the song, one sin-eater, sometimes two, breaks away from the periphery of the circle and leaps into the middle, stepping along to the beat faster and faster, arms and legs swinging joyfully through the air. Then they jump out again, rejoin the fringe, and someone else takes a turn to shine.
A couple of the younger aki play-fight by a set of trees, rolling and leaping in and out of the shadows, practicing the moves I’ve been teaching them.
I bring my soup bowl to my lips, drain it dry, then wipe my mouth with my sleeve.
Ras breaks away from the group of aki who’ve been sitting by the dancers. He has a soup bowl in one hand and tips it back, slurping it up as he walks. It’s empty by the time he reaches me. He slides down the side of the tree with a thump and rests at its base next to me.
He reminds me of Bo, the way others are drawn to him. Automatically, they look to him as a kind of big brother. He’s kind that way. Kinder than me. Even if he were the only child in his family, he looks like someone’s older brother. He’s certainly skinnier than Bo, but they both have the same look of silent strength on them.
“You don’t dance?” he asks.
I shake my head. When Ras doesn’t look away, I meet his gaze. “You?”
Ras snorts. “They’re not ready-oh. If they let me in the center of that circle, forget it. It would be the end of everything, and they would have to go to sleep.” He shakes his head. “No, I’ll let them have their fun, because I’m a generous man.” He looks inside of his bowl, turns the thing over so that different angles catch the firelight.
“Ugh,” Ras says. “Not like the pepper soup my mother makes. Ewoooo. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that Arbaa pepper soup isn’t the best pepper soup the Unnamed ever made us capable of putting together.” He shakes his head. “This one aki, you see him over there? He’s trying to keep the rhythm, but he’s always off. He tried to tell me that the best pepper soup comes from Ithnaan, and praise be to the Unnamed who stopped my hand from just slapping this boy.”
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