Leaning against the frame, the man watched them with his arms crossed.
Mother would finish reciting her verses, finally feed her son, then get up to leave, sometimes allowing herself a caress on Marissin’s hair. Every time he looked up at her, she would remove her hand and step back, clenching her jaw.
“Don’t look,” she’d say, raising her voice. “Eyes like yours must stay on the ground. Do you hear me? I told you that a million times. Don’t look at me.”
So he lowered his gaze, tears gathering at the edge of his eyelids. Then she left the room, only to return hours later. The man would disappear with her on the other side of the door. And Marissin couldn’t sleep.
It was unlikely the man would come back tonight. Marissin had not seen him since the two strangers had taken him away. Neither him nor Mother.
Now sitting in the corner of the dark room, he fought to keep his eyes open. Since the three boys had found him, he’d barely slept. He wouldn’t close his eyes. Behind his eyelids was a rope and two men to pull it hard enough for Marissin’s body to fly and hurt. Sometimes he didn’t even need to see it to feel the burn on his skin and the air leaving his mouth in a mute cry. But it was getting harder and harder to stay awake.
The others lay on a mattress settled on the rough, woven floor, eyes closed, breathing peacefully.
They’d been brought here after their bath.
The bath. Torture. The two tallest ones had washed Marissin without giving him a choice while the smaller one looked across the foggy room. The human had struggled. His chest swelled with fury that he was too weak to fully express. He’d screamed and cried. He didn’t want to cry—tears were the statements of the weak, Mother used to say—but this treatment had overcome his resolve. He didn’t like their hands on him. He hated the imposed nudity just as much. It didn’t matter what their intentions were, or that the human was covered with dirt so thick it ran down his legs to the slabs on the ground in dark nets. No one was to touch him. The Book of Blessings said so.
Mother had said so. “People . . . people like you taint the air. They make the milk curdle, and they darken the sky. The Corruption is such that anyone who touches you will see their soul blackened, stained by the Corruption as well. O Marissin,” she moaned as she took his hand, letting it go immediately. “Giving birth to you has already damned me. As Blessers, it is our duty to erase this defilement. It’s the only way to return their Light to the Gods, to bring them back. I . . . I didn’t think it would be this hard.” Tears had filled her blue eyes, and she’d left, refusing to be one of the weak.
He rubbed his face and shook his head, as much to chase away this memory and the voice that echoed through it as to keep himself awake.
What was the point of all this? She’d read the Artean day after day, had dictated a course of action to him—what he could do, what he could say, what actions would cost him punishment. But outside the dark room where he’d lived, the world was absolute nonsense. Everything was brighter, blinding sometimes, and at the same time so much more frightening. She hadn’t prepared him for what was on the other side of the door. It wasn’t fair to him to have botched such a teaching.
Marissin was doing his best. When someone spoke to him, he looked down. But these men had hurt him. He’d let himself be beaten despite the rage bubbling inside him. Then he’d fallen into the flames . . .
“The way of an abomination is submission. Don’t look. Don’t answer. Don’t fight.”
He’d disobeyed Mother. He’d fought and watched. Now that he’d tasted the forbidden, its sweet flavor had become addictive. He couldn’t help himself. He wanted to look and see what would happen. It gave him . . . strength. But it went against his faith.
Without Mother to guide him, what could he do? He missed her. He resented her. He wanted to see her. He hated her. Every emotion almost suffocated him. Truth be told, it was easier to hate her than to mourn her presence. If he learned to hate her hard enough, would he stop hurting? Could he even achieve that?
As sole answer to his thoughts, his stomach growled. He pressed his hands against his belly as one of the boys stirred on the bed. It was the smallest one. Lit by the lamp hanging by the front door, he sat up as he rubbed his eyes, his wavy short hair pointing in all directions. Marissin pressed harder on his stomach, but there was only one way to hush it.
He couldn’t see the boy’s eyes but knew they were watching him. For a moment, the room and its inhabitants remained still.
Leave me alone. Don’t look at me.
Marissin wanted to lower his eyes, as he’d been taught, mainly to divert attention from himself.
Another fool move. The moment he looked away, someone would catch him. Who would catch him? Anyone. There was always someone to trap him as soon as he let his guard down, and there was nothing he could do against the powerful hold of their arms.
The black-haired boy tilted his head to the side. “Korono shi otta?”
It was only a whisper, other words whose meaning passed beyond Marissin’s comprehension. On the mattress, the little boy looked around. He got up, and Marissin suppressed a sob. The other child turned to the window and tiptoed up. He turned his back to Marissin, hiding his actions. Water splashed on the black-haired boy’s feet, but the wriggling of his toes was his only reaction. There was a loud scraping sound, and one of the other boys rolled and grumbled on the mattress—though no waking up on the horizon.
When the younger boy turned around, he held something in his hands. After a few steps sprinkled with a little water, the child stopped and that something he held appeared before Marissin’s eyes: a cup filled with water. The boy didn’t come any closer. Marissin had used all his strength to push him away in the baths, and he would do it again if necessary.
Without making any sudden movements, the black-haired boy squatted down and put the cup on the floor. He tried his luck and pushed it with his fingertips a few inches toward Marissin, who stood motionless, stunned. Then the other one left him in peace, going back to lie down on his mattress.
Silence returned.
Marissin stared at the cup with his swollen eyes. The flame of the lamp was reflected on the water. He’d never seen a flame before the men took him away, only the white crystal that lit up Mother’s pale face and red hair and crackled endlessly.
“Fire will make you pure, my son.” A promise.
He missed the white crystal.
He missed Mother.
He was hungry.
He threw himself on the water and drank it as his stomach growled again. And in spite of himself, he fell asleep a few minutes later, his face pressed against the wooden wall.
I V
After the newcomers were allocated a small hut, they were offered a place in the large dining room of the sanctuary. They settled there the following day, as quiet as rocks, sitting at one end of an empty table. After a moment, Mora motioned to stand up. All around them, other nichans brought food from what must have been the kitchen.
Before Mora was up, the young man called Javik approached them. He carried a steaming dish of vegetables. Behind him, a little girl followed, dressed in the same plain, blue tunic that all the kids wore in the village. Her arms were charged with plates and dishes. She must have been a little younger than Beïka, wore her long hair parted in two braids, and had mismatched eyes—one black, the other water green.
They lay their burdens down in front of the boys.
“This is Memek, my sister,” Javik said.
Nodding in their direction, the little girl greeted them, then, with a movement so simultaneous that it seemed rehearsed, she and her brother focused their gaze on the human.
No clothing was adapted to the child’s unnatural morphology. So they’d found clothes too big for him whose seams and aging weave threatened to tear with every move. On the back, two slits had been roughly cut to accommodate his wings.
Next to him, Domino bent forward to set up the flatware, hoping to divert the attention of their
visitors with a little hustle and bustle.
Mora got up. “So we’re cousins,” he said, helping his little brother arrange the pewter and clay plates.
Javik and Memek didn’t seem to be leaving, but they’d only brought four plates. They didn’t intend to share the meal with them and had come only to offer their own to Mora and his brothers.
Unlike his little sister, Javik looked away from the Vestige and forced a smile. “You don’t remember me either, do you?” he said to Mora.
“Actually, I do. I remember a little boy running naked through the village on rainy days.”
Javik laughed more sincerely than he smiled. “All the kids do that.”
“They don’t all do it carrying a hen over their heads and hoping to fly away.”
Domino had no idea what the two boys were talking about. He would have gladly asked, but he kept his eyes on Memek. She stared at the little human, head tilted to the side, an enigmatic smile on her lips.
She noticed Domino’s worried look and immediately turned her attention to Beïka. Children always did that. Their eyes never stayed on Domino for too long.
“Can your Vestige speak?” Memek asked.
A plate in his hands, Domino opened his mouth to answer. Beïka went ahead of him, generously helping himself to the sweet reed shoots and turnips. “We found it in the woods. It was screaming like a pig being butchered.”
Domino shuddered. On the bench, knees bent over his frail chest, the human peeped at the vegetables.
“But it talks, yes or no?” insisted their cousin, and her brother and Mora turned to her. “Just make it talk.”
“I can’t. It’s half wild,” said Beïka. His plate was filled at a glance.
Mora took the spoon out of his hands. “Who told you to eat everything before anyone else?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Does it have the gift?” Memek continued.
Next to her, Javik pursed his lips, studying the child with unblinking eyes. Where Memek seemed fascinated about a rare specimen, her brother showed more circumspection.
“Of course it doesn’t. It’s dumb,” Beïka said.
“He’s scared. Leave him alone,” Domino cried, seeing the center of attention hiding his face between his knees. Wrapped in his right wing, the little boy breathed hard but slowly. His shoulders shuddered with each passage of air through his lungs. Surrounded by all those nichans, he was tiny and yet unmistakable due to his light skin and hair. Domino’s chest tightened. “And he’s not dumb. He’s nice.”
No one paid any attention to him. Memek asked again if the child could speak, and Beïka received a slap to the back of the head when his words became too coarse for a twelve-year-old.
After that, their cousins took their leave. Unlike them, they said, they ate either in their hut or at the big table near the brazier, with the clan chief and his partner, their parents.
But before leaving, Javik dipped his hand into his trouser pocket and placed a handful of sparkling silver coins on the table. The young man smiled at Mora, responding to his surprised look. “The booty of a hunter. Twenty heads. I’m sorry not to bring you the rest of it. My father is a hard man to bargain with.”
Most nichans followed this same ritual, sharing the fruits of hunting and crops in their own hut, or in the sanctuary. Since meal times depended on each individual—and their habits and chores—the main sanctuary room was always half empty when the boys came to eat.
However, on the third day after their arrival, the hall filled up entirely in minutes. The wooden benches scraped the floor in a continuous cacophony (the human sitting between Domino and Beïka cowered, pressing his hands over his ears), and nichans sat right next to them, some waving at them, sharing names, others smiling in a friendly manner, staring out of the corners of their eyes at the winged intruder, who followed the three brothers everywhere. Everyone feasted in a din of conversation, laughter, metal banging metal, liquor constantly filling empty cups.
Uncle Ero ate with his partner and children at the other end of the room. He gave his nephews but a brief glance that day.
Something was missing.
First of all, their mother. Days went by, and no one showed up at the gates of Surhok. Mora asked his brothers to be patient, which was neither of their fortes. Domino often woke up at night and wondered where he was. When he remembered that their mother wasn’t around, his heart became overwhelmed, and new tears stung his eyes.
Just like him, his mother hadn’t been sleeping very well. When he struggled to find rest, Domino would turn to the lamp burning on the other side of the bed, huddle up against Ako, and follow the movements of her nimble fingers as they patched his worn-out tunics—until he was old enough to do it himself, like his brothers—sometimes until dawn returned. Then they would get up together and go out to fetch water from the well, listening to the waves rolling and crashing on the shore. Domino insisted on carrying the bucket no matter its weight. Then he would help his mother prepare breakfast, recognizing the signs of her good mood in her offering to cover his cassava with a drizzle of honey.
Besides her alarming delay, there was an almost total absence of activity. Everyone in the clan lived at a steady pace. Chores were everyone’s lot, and days were short. When they still lived with their mother, the three boys took care of their responsibilities throughout the day. Cleaning, cooking, clearing traps outside the village or the nets in the sea, picking up fruits from the trees in the area, clearing the vegetable garden. Things were no different here, yet no one asked for their help. Every day, their meals were brought to them without anyone expecting them to reciprocate, despite Mora’s repeated offers to do so. Someone would always come to collect their laundry and bring it back the next day.
There was a simple reason for this: they hadn’t yet sworn an oath to Ero, the chief of the Ueto Clan, and without this oath, Domino and his brothers were there as guests. Guests who were taken care of, but with limited liberties. They were no Uetos, and since their mother was supposed to join them here, they didn’t have to be.
“We shouldn’t take the oath,” Beïka mumbled during lunch on the seventh day.
Mora looked up from his plate and peered around the room. Even though nichans’ senses were highly developed, the words remained between them.
“What are you talking about?” Mora asked, relaxing.
“I don’t want to take the oath.”
“Why not?”
“Mama will be here soon, and we’ll leave. Right? If we take the oath, it means she won’t come back. He’ll force us to stay.”
This distracted Domino from his food. Next to him, the human had turned away from them to munch on a piece of meat, the juice of which ran down his wrists. Mora had stopped complaining about the boy’s manners within a short time. As long as the little one ate without making any noise, it suited him, he’d said.
“Are you talking about Ero?” Mora asked.
Beïka raised his eyebrows as if the answer was obvious. “Who else?”
“Do you think he’s forcing us to stay?”
“Maybe.”
“And what’s in it for him? Can you tell me? No, don’t answer now. Think before you speak.”
Beïka darkened and hit the bottom of his plate with his spoon again and again. Unlike his brothers, he’d already finished his lunch.
Mora finally answered. “Tell me, Beïka. The food you’re eating right now—do you think it falls from the sky, sent by the Gods? We are mouths to feed. It’s Uncle Ero who feeds us. These vegetables come from his gardens. It’s he and his hunters who go out to brave the world so we don’t starve.”
Beïka turned pale, and Domino looked up, his lips forming an O. Ero approached them, close enough to have heard Mora’s words. Their uncle smiled.
A woman was at his side. Domino knew at once that she was human. Much smaller than Ero, her skin was black and her frizzy hair as dark as Domino’s. She was dressed in the Torbatt fashion like all adults there, wearing
a dark blue tunic cinched at the waist with a shawl partly thrown over her shoulder. But what caught Domino’s attention was the woman’s left eye. It was entirely blue—a pale, pearly blue—with no pupils or irises. Like a small blackbird egg, or a round, polished crystal. The other eye wasn’t as disarming, of a deep brown color.
Strangely, it was difficult to determine this woman’s age.
Ero and she stopped at their table.
“What kind of a person lets his nichan brothers and sisters starve to death?” their uncle said.
Mora stood up. “Good morning, Uncle Ero.”
The man turned his attention to Beïka, then Domino, who nodded to him. When the man lowered his eyes to the human, every trace of his smile vanished. The child returned the look, a wing spread around his shoulder, chewing his piece of meat ever so slowly.
Domino had noticed that the human had been chewing carefully since the first meal he’d agreed to share with them. That day he’d left a tooth behind. A baby tooth, fortunately, but the blood covering it proved that it hadn’t been meant to fall out yet. Domino had retrieved the tooth that lay on the corner of the table, thinking that the child didn’t possess anything, and here he was, falling into pieces before his eyes.
Beïka had taken the tooth from Domino’s hands and thrown it into the village woods once out of the sanctuary. “It’s fucking gross! Why are you doing that?” the boy had scolded, and Domino had frowned.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s gross. I just told you.”
Ero motioned to the woman to his left. Her detailing of the human child lasted longer than the Unaan’s.
“Matta will take care of the Vestige,” Ero said. “She speaks Sirlhain and Tuleear. The rest of you, come with me. You will finish your meal later.”
The Nichan Smile Page 4