Domino froze for a moment as Beïka stood up and followed Mora and Ero. Leaving the human alone with this stranger? The woman probably didn’t know that getting close to the child came at a risk. She wouldn’t get anything but screams from him. If he didn’t warn her, she’d lose her fingers. As Domino was about to open his mouth, the one called Matta grabbed the human’s arm above the elbow and pulled him off the bench. He shouted, mouth still full, and clung to the table, trying to flee in the opposite direction. But nothing seemed to mar the calm and solemn expression of the woman, who carried the child out of the room without the slightest effort.
“Domino, hurry up!”
The young nichan had watched the scene in horror, not knowing whether to react or not. On the other side of the building, Mora called him again, and Domino found no reason to not join him. He took one last look at the spot where the human and Matta had disappeared, wondering if he had abandoned the other boy to a terrible fate.
Ero led the three brothers to the center of the great hall near the brazier, whose flames warmed Domino’s face. If half of the sanctuary’s occupants had ignored them before, they all turned toward them now, forsaking their lunch, when Ero stopped by the fire and announced loud and clear, “These children are going to take the oath.”
Within seconds, all the nichans present rose to their feet, and a small portion of them left the sanctuary in great strides.
Domino’s apprehension won him over. Unlike his brothers, the oath remained a mystery to him. When he’d asked Beïka about the subject, his big brother had replied that with this oath they agreed to belong to their uncle—but Domino had learned to question his brother’s words. Mora, on the other hand, had said, “We’ll be part of the clan. We will have a leader who will protect us and whom we’ll obey. That’s all right. We’ll do that. You have nothing to worry about, Domino.”
But the young nichan was worried, for if his older brother refused to reveal more, it was a cause for concern.
As if to confirm his thoughts, Mora put a firm hand on his brother’s head and smiled when their eyes met. Mora and their mother were so much alike that it was disconcerting. They had the same square face, protruding cheekbones and large, tired black eyes. According to their mother, Domino and Beïka took after their respective fathers. Pity. Domino would have liked to look more like his mother, if only to feel as brave as Mora did today.
Soon, the sanctuary filled, and in less than five minutes, it swarmed with all the nichans of the clan. Everyone would witness this moment. For the sake of his own dignity, Domino hoped this oath wouldn’t be painful.
“Mora,” Ero called, and the teenager raised his chin and approached his uncle. “Are you ready to begin?”
“Yes,” he breathed before getting himself together. “Yes.” The second time, his voice echoed throughout the room, reaching the high ceilings, slipping between the thick wooden columns.
“Kneel.”
Mora did as he was told and knelt two steps away from his uncle, who shortened the distance between them to an arm’s length. Then the man looked for something in his belt and, finding nothing, sighed.
“Does anyone have a blade for me?” he asked.
Mora’s shoulders tightened. So did Domino’s. It wasn't what Ero had announced a few days ago. A blade to cut. To draw blood. When had Ero changed his mind? They were only passing through, he'd said.
A woman stepped to Ero’s right and offered him a small, curved dagger, whose sharp edge shimmered in the light of the lamps.
“It better be clean,” the man said with a slight smile.
Many nichans laughed at his words, and the woman shook her head in amusement, waving the thick jewels that stretched her earlobes.
“Don’t keep them waiting,” she said before returning to mingle with the crowd.
Ero smiled affectionately at her, then his attention was on Mora again. He requested the teenager’s arm, who held it out to him after a moment of hesitation. Domino couldn’t distract his eye from the short but shiny blade as it kissed brown skin. When blood ran down Mora’s arm, the little nichan clenched his fists. They were going to do this to him. Cut his skin off.
Mora closed his fist in turn. There was a lot of blood, oily, rusty red, translucent and heterogeneous. Domino didn’t hear his brother’s and uncle’s words. His whole mind revolved around the wound and the blood dripping on the slabs.
He didn’t want the same thing done to him.
Then Ero put his thumb on the line of the blade and, once cut open, placed that same thumb against the gash crossing Mora’s skin. The two wounds remained in contact for a few moments. Then the man sucked the blood from his fingertip.
If only Domino had stayed by the table. As he ducked away, taking a step backwards in search of a better place to be, Beïka caught him by the arm.
No! I don’t want to. But there was no turning back. They would all go through this.
Suddenly a thunder of cheers and hammering heels shook the sanctuary from its foundations to its pointy rooftop. Mora got up, and his uncle patted him on the back. Someone brought a strip of cloth and tied it around Mora’s forearm. The fabric swallowed the blood from the teenager’s wound. He smiled forcibly. He sent Beïka to his uncle and stood near Domino, whose body mirrored the tremor of the flickering flames.
The blade ran this time along Beïka’s arm.
“You’ll be strong and brave, okay?” Mora said in Domino’s ear, who once again stared at the blood flowing from the newly opened wound. “It hurts a little. Just a little. You can cry if you need to.” Domino’s panting breath subsided slightly. “It’s okay to cry, but don’t take your hand away. Do you understand?” Domino nodded. “Good. You will be strong and brave.”
But Beïka’s words from earlier suddenly came back to the boy’s mind.
“Does this mean Mama’s not coming to get us?” Domino asked.
Mora put back his hand on his little brother’s head. “It’s possible. I’m sorry.”
Unease grew in Domino’s throat. Could he start crying now?
New cheers rose all around them. Unlike Mora, Beïka’s smile was colored with pride. His arm was wrapped in a bandage and an uncontrolled roar escaped him. A triumphant cry. He, who’d never gone a day without reclaiming the warmth of his mother’s arms, with which she embraced him every morning, seemed to have suddenly changed his mind about the oath.
All eyes turned to Domino.
“Come here,” Ero said.
For lack of other choice, Domino obeyed. Silence fell as his knees hit the stone. He looked up at his uncle. His dark figure was cut out in the golden light of the brazier on his back. He was so tall and looked so strong—a monolith rising from the earth. With the blade he held in his hand he could easily slice off Domino’s arm.
“Give me your hand.”
You’ll be strong and brave, okay? Mora’s words echoed in Domino’s head, and his arm stretched out in front of him, trembling from the shoulder down. His uncle then bent and knelt on the ground to reduce the gap in height that prevented him from taking his nephew’s hand. Ero’s fingers were thick, warm, and calloused. They closed tightly around Domino’s tiny wrist. Then the blade approached, inspiring retreat. It opened the skin widthwise in the middle of his arm. The lips of the wound spread instantly, accompanied by a burning pain that went up to Domino’s neck. His tears flowed like his blood. In silence.
“My protection comes at a price,” Ero said. “Swear to obey me, swear to follow me, swear to respect me, and it is yours.”
All this?
Obey, follow, respect. Would their mother approve? Mora and Beïka had agreed. If Domino refused, would they throw him out? He would have no one left.
He nodded.
“Swear to obey me, swear to follow me, swear to respect me, and it is yours,” Ero repeated. “Swear, my boy.”
“I swear.”
Ero sighed. “What do you swear?”
“I swear to obey you. I . . . and to
follow you, and to respect you.”
Ero’s grip grew fiercer with each passing second; Domino could have sworn that too.
“I swear,” he promised to end his torment.
He was sincere. He wouldn’t let anyone separate him from his family.
As with his brothers, his blood was mixed with his uncle’s.
He was loudly congratulated, and Ero rose to his full height before wiping the knife against his sleeve and returning it to its owner.
Domino suddenly felt nauseous, but he pushed on his legs to get up. Blood dripped to the ground, and his uncle frowned. The blood didn’t pour from the cut on his arm. It was flowing from his nose. Domino raised his hand to his face, but all his strength abandoned him before his fingers reached his nostrils.
He collapsed backwards, and Mora’s intervention was all he could trust to prevent his head from smashing on the ground. “Hey, are you all right? Domino, can you hear me?”
He could hear, but his answer didn’t come.
Mora’s arms tightened around him, shaking him slightly—or rocking him? The sensation was the same as the tide rolling against his body. “Domino, answer me!”
Domino was certain that if he spoke he’d throw up his lunch on Mora’s lap. He couldn’t tell his brother that, either.
“Domino! By the Faces! What’s going on? What’s happening to him?”
“He’s young. That’s a lot to take at his age,” Ero said.
Domino closed his eyes. Around him the ceiling and its crisscrossing beams had started to twirl.
“Is it bad?”
“Probably not. It should pass.”
“You don’t know?”
“Take him to lie down. Go.”
“All right.”
“You, stay here. You’ll clear your brothers’ lunches.”
“All right.”
And as everyone moved around them, leaving the room, returning to their unfinished meal, Domino clutched his aching arm against him.
No one had remembered to bandage his wound.
V
Without ever loosening her iron fist, the woman dragged Marissin through the great hall. She pushed open a door, pulling him into darkness, and the heat of a large oven breathed at their faces and took the boy by surprise. For a moment, he stopped fighting back, his eyes drawn to the gaping and burning mouth of the hearth where embers glowed a fierce red, before struggling once again. His feet, shod in worn leather savates, skidded on the stone, offering no resistance.
The woman tightened her grip on his arm. “Faces, witness me! This is difficult behavior.”
What did she . . .
For the first time in days, words made sense, as much the plea to the Gods as the complaint.
Marissin was caught off guard and stumbled before getting his act together.
They progressed across the room. Another door was opened, and the outside light blinded the little boy. His heart drummed in his ears, and only now did he notice the slippery piece of meat between his greasy fingers. He wanted to let it go, but his fist refused to unfold.
In the next few seconds, woman and child struggled through the village, crossing the central square, its paving stones still stained with the blood of the huge nohl. The people present outside all seemed to be heading towards the large building. He and the woman entered the hut where Marissin and the three boys spent their nights.
The woman put him in a corner—the one where he settled at night—and finally freed him. “Don’t move. Stay right here.”
How good and strange it was to hear that woman speak words he understood. The men who had taken him away from Mother had spoken his language too. Not as well as this woman, though. Her accent was the same as he remembered, with subtly pressed consonants and a hint of unquestionable truth. It was almost reassuring, but not enough for him to lower his guard.
The woman scratched something against the wall and lit the lamp near the door, coloring the dark hut in a golden hue. She retrieved the stool on which the chamber pot rested and sat down in front of the child, staring at him with her luminous blue eye.
He wondered if she was like him, if she carried the same difference inside her.
The words of the Book of Blessings emerged in his mind. The usurpers’ offspring should never be worshipped.
Her left eye . . .
Only one eye, either blue or red, or as dark as night. He’d forgotten the other shades. It didn’t matter. The Matrons of Sirlha—mere giant crystal deposits whose claim to godhood was denied by the Book—had been destroyed. And the remaining ones would soon meet the same fate. At least, that was what Mother had said.
“The Matrons are an insult to our creators, Marissin. Usurpers! That’s what they are. Other statements are lies. The prayers sung in their name are blasphemy. They turn men—good men, Marissin—away from our legitimate Gods. Faces above! These stones are even more dangerous than you. It’s a good thing two of them were blown to bits. And their offspring . . . These men and women carry lies and our damnation in their wake,” she’d said, fist over her heart, the other hand gradually erasing by dint of caresses the characters inked on the paper.
But what had she called them, these offspring, these apostates serving false goddesses? San . . . Santi . . . No, he couldn’t remember. Yet, he’d listened to every word written in the Artean.
He didn’t need to remember them. He knew this woman was one of the Matrons’ progeny. An evil born after the coming of the Corruption. As was he.
“What’s your name, young man?” the woman asked. Nothing but the creaking of the wood under her stool. “My name is Matta, daughter of Hope. Will you give me yours now?’
Still nothing.
The way she spoke. It had nothing to do with Mother’s voice after all. Where was the shivering of lips, the confidence always on the verge of breaking, or the heavy swallowing of restrained sobs?
Marissin held his tongue. Matta had touched him, too, creating a bond between them. It is wrong, Mother’s voice hissed in his head.
“You have a name, don’t you? Everyone has a name.”
The boy shook his head to avoid having to open his mouth.
Marissin.
No! No name. That child no longer existed. He’d stayed down there in the basement, waiting for Mother to return. Whoever stood here now, with his wings to the wall and his hands sore from the cold, wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
“No?” Matta said, still standing upright on her stool. “Very well. We’ll have to find you one, in this case. Start thinking about it. Now, where do you come from?”
Did he know? Saying that he came from a dark room didn’t sound right. He came from Mother’s womb; this he knew for having been repeated so many times. However, in light of the recent events, it didn’t seem relevant to him anymore. He was alone now. The place he came from no longer existed, like his name.
“Where are your parents?” the woman continued, raising an eyebrow above her brown eye.
“Dead.”
This answer eluded him in spite of himself. He hadn’t thought about it until then, hadn’t expected to be questioned about it. Was someone’s infinite absence considered death?
When the door had opened that day there had been no Mother on the other side, just the man’s shadow, then two other men. Mother hadn’t protected him when one of them had covered him with a woolen blanket and lifted him up like a sack of grain. She hadn’t saved her son from being thrown into the bottom of a cart. Neither had she stopped those men from looking at him, touching him, shaking him around. It was through her infinite absence that one of them had brought Marissin’s face close to the campfire to get a better look at him in the dark. The teeth of the flames feasting on the meat of his temple forced him out of his sleep at night. His face was still painful today. He could see nothing out of his left eye—for as far as he could remember it had always been blind—but the pain in his eyelid was as unforgiving as the rope.
He'd been abandoned. He had no one
. Dead. A word that somehow, deep down, meant I’m alone.
“I see,” Matta said. “At least you’re capable of speech. Do you know what you are?”
He hesitated, searching her words for a trap he could slip into. She’d already touched him. The link between him and the woman was made. Whatever the consequences, he would live with it. He could.
“Abomination,” he said for the first time, an air of defiance passing through his eyes.
An abomination.
Soulless.
A thief of Light, the Light of the vanished Gods whose faces no longer colored the skies.
A Light tainted by the Corruption.
He could have replied that he was human, nothing but a boy, for that was true as well. But he wasn’t going to pretend to be naive. He knew what others saw when they looked down on him.
Matta eyed him from head to toe and tilted her head to the side. Her scrutinizing gaze went right through him, as if every hidden truth about him could be collected with enough intention. That blue eye . . .
“What an awful word! How dare they? People here use the word ‘Vestige.’ Far more accurate and respectful, if you ask me. What I’d like to know is if you know what it means.”
“Dead,” the boy repeated.
She looked at the puckered wound circling the left side of his neck. He resisted the urge to hide it. So he let her watch. Everyone was watching. He had to show them it didn’t affect him.
“You look very much alive to me.”
“Soon dead.”
“Nonsense. It doesn’t have to be so. The nichans of this clan have no reasons to hurt you. People here aren’t—”
Nichans.
The little boy’s eyes widened, and his heart swelled in his chest, threatening to rip it open. Those people were nichans.
“Nichans,” he said, shooting a look at the door.
“Yes, nichans,” the woman confirmed.
“No.”
“No what?”
He glanced up at her. She was so calm, as if unaware of the danger.
The Nichan Smile Page 5