The Nichan Smile
Page 17
His vision was sparse with black spots. Through the dancing dots, Ero stared at him, his eyes fully darkened. Gus’s blood froze as he discovered the Unaan’s condition. Ero had come very close to transforming. Even though Gus was human, even though he wasn’t a proper member of the clan, he was no threat. Ero had no right to attack him.
Yet he’d done so in the past. Who would stop him?
The memory of a blue stone flashed, accompanied by a rush of adrenaline.
I am not a Ueto. He can do what he wants with me.
Gus resisted the urge to run away, to go back to hiding in the shadows as he’d done so many times. With tremendous efforts, he held Ero’s gaze and stood up again. Then Matta entered his field of vision, occupying it entirely. She grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him toward the exit.
“No! No!” Gus repeated in a broken voice, triggering a violent coughing fit. “I must—”
“Enough!” Matta said, pushing him more firmly, revealing the strength that was hers and which he couldn’t oppose.
Gus, however, resisted, cursing Ero with his eyes, almost challenging the man to lose control again, to strike him full force.
But before he was thrown out, Domino caught his eye. The tears on his brown face hadn’t yet dried. The cheek that had been slapped by Belma continued to redden. His lower lip was split.
This was unnatural. Gus’s place was here, with Domino. He had no right to leave him at a time like this.
Yet the door closed as Ero tied the rope around one of his nephew’s wrists.
Gus shoved Matta’s hand away. “Let go of me!”
He spat on the wooden slabs on the floor. A little blood mingled with his saliva. He massaged his neck and pushed back with all the strength of his will the tears that threatened to flow. No more tears; he’d forbidden himself long ago.
“Will you calm down?” Matta said. “Breathe, my boy.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Each word hurt his sore throat.
“Oh, but that’s exactly what I am going to do, and if you value your life, I advise you to listen with the utmost care.”
He spat again on the floor, raising his chin, his gaze going frantically from the woman to the glow of the lamps filtering through the infirmary’s window. He was soaked in sweat, as much from the heat as from his nerves about to snap. He wanted to scream, to break something.
“What is happening today, right here, is beyond your comprehension,” Matta said, pointing at the infirmary. “These nichans are facing a tragedy and a miracle, one having caused the other.”
“It was an accident!”
“I’m not done talking! You think you have a place in this matter?”
“I do!”
“You’re wrong. None of them need your opinion, Gus. Right now you’re a nuisance, a mosquito buzzing in their ears. If you keep bothering them like you’re doing now, one of them will finish you off.”
“Fuck them!” Gus hissed between his teeth, pointing at the infirmary with a trembling finger. “He’s tying Domino up like an animal.”
“There are nearly two hundred souls in this village. It is Ero’s duty to protect them.”
“That’s not how he—You can . . . Look. Look inside. Look what’s happening in the infirmary. You can do that with your Eye, right? You can do it! Just do it!”
Spy. It was for this reason alone that Ero had accepted Matta into the village. Everyone in Surhok knew that by now. The crystal set in her eye socket apparently had prodigious abilities. Matta had always chosen discretion in this regard—even though Gus and Domino had gleaned some information over the years, such as the Santig’Nell’s great age, or her unfailing memory.
But it didn’t matter to Gus. Only Domino mattered. She had to help him.
The woman scowled at the young man’s command. “I will do no such thing.”
“I’ve got to know what they’re doing to him!”
“This is none of your business.”
Had he understood right? Did she know how absurd her words sounded? If someone was messing with Domino, then it was Gus’s business.
“It’s a nichan affair that has to be settled by nichans,” Matta added calmly. “Domino is as much a hope for his clan, for his entire species, as he is a threat. What the Corruption has inflicted on nichans is still to this day a gaping wound. The change in their bodies, the loss of a part of the essence that makes them who they are . . . It’s not up to us to intervene. We can’t even understand how they feel. You know Domino’s heart, his fears, his sorrows, his joys. But you ignore everything of his true nature. Despite your appearance, you are more human than he will ever be. Whatever your feelings, whatever friendship you have with Domino, you must stay out of this.”
Matta’s pale blue eye pierced Gus, trying to make him absorb this speech. He pushed away every single truth it contained in its entirety.
“No,” he said.
It had to be clear. It was about Domino. Domino, who had faced men twice his size while Gus had been hanged from a tree. Domino, who’d fought to stop Ero from throwing Gus out of the village. Domino, who’d given him his first smile, his first laugh . . .
Domino.
Gus turned and kicked a pewter bucket that lay by a hut. The metal racket reverberated throughout the village as the bucket waltzed between two houses. The teenager held his head in his hands and leaned against the nearest wall. He was at the end of his rope, his body pulled down by exhaustion, but every muscle was tense, ready to be unleashed.
Once again, he tried to master the breath that slipped from his grasp. When that didn’t work, he began to count. One, two, three, four. He breathed in. One, two, three, four. He spat out air more than he blew it out. The technique Mora had taught Domino didn’t seem to work. Yet he insisted.
“You have the right to let go.” Matta’s voice was now soft, her flow slower, as if she was afraid to rush him. “You have the right to cry.”
Nichans cried. Domino cried. Of pain, of joy. He never held back and wore his emotions with pride. Gus didn’t cry. No one needed to know how he felt, so why display it?
He let go of his head and leaned it against the wall behind him. “I don’t want to cry.”
“I know exactly what you want. You have to control yourself. Don’t add to your situation. I know fighting is easier than facing your pain.”
“What pain?”
“You lost someone you cared about today.”
Mora.
They’d buried him in the woods just after his death, away from his family. When the nichans returned from hunting, Ero carried Domino in his arms. The others, faces undone, eyes sometimes reddened, followed him with their heads down. Beïka didn’t lower his head. When Belma had noticed her partner’s absence, the truth had rained on them all.
“That little motherfucker, that fucking monster! He killed him, he killed Mora! Your son has no father because of him. My mother should have let him die in her womb instead of giving birth to him.” Beïka had spat out his hatred, mad with rage, crying. No one had had time to stop him. The damage was done. Everyone knew what crime Domino had committed. Ero himself had come out of the infirmary to clarify the facts, both to clear Domino’s name and to announce the news, the one that would overshadow Mora’s death.
The death was there, however, implacable and crushing, like a massive blow to the ribs. Gus couldn’t afford to think about it for even a minute. He didn’t want to think that by following them on this hunt, he might have been able to heal Mora. He didn’t want to think about the void his absence would leave.
What could he do about it? Nothing at all. Right now, Domino was his priority.
“I have to go back there,” Gus said as if the conversation they’d just had never occurred, brushing aside Matta’s objections with a wave of his hand.
“Wait until tomorrow morning,” Matta advised. “You should eat—”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I can imagine. Sleep, maybe. No? I realize th
at must seem out of reach at the moment,” she added when he glanced at her with a dark expression. “You won’t get anything from them tonight. It’s up to them to deal with it. Make yourself as small as you can, for a few hours at least.”
So he was still there, having to remind people of his usefulness or pretend not to exist at all. Tonight, more than ever, he felt helpless. An outsider.
To tell the truth, he wanted to protect Domino, reassure him, offer him a shoulder to cry on, but he needed his friend just as much. Now that Mora was no longer here, apart from Domino, who would stop Ero from kicking him out? Gus’s gift was a significant safety feature. However, the boy kept telling himself that one day, this gift would no longer be enough. Ero would remember that nichans had survived without his help for thousands of years, and that they would do just fine if Gus disappeared.
For a moment, Gus blamed himself for being so dependent on Domino. He blamed himself just as much for reducing their friendship to a necessity. Domino was so much more than that . . . and Gus needed to see him.
You must stay out of it, Matta had said. And she was right.
Gus thought it might be a good idea to take this advice and wait until daybreak. Not a minute longer, though.
Back in the hut he shared with his friend, he stood in the middle of the room for a long time, staring at the empty bed he’d been reluctant to make that morning. Normally he and Domino would have been in the sanctuary finishing their supper, or in the baths, exhausted from their day of swimming, running, and climbing trees. Gus was indeed exhausted, but he hadn’t eaten, hadn’t bathed, and Domino was painfully inaccessible.
After long minutes of staring at the undone sheets, he lay down on the right side of the bed, his friend’s side. Domino’s smell lingered on the pillow. If he closed his eyes, Gus could imagine his friend was here too, beside him. He didn’t close his eyes. He refused to miss daybreak, even though it wouldn’t be there before long.
Gus hadn’t seen Domino’s true form. His true nature. A beast.
A real nichan.
A miracle.
That didn’t surprise Gus as much as he thought it would. Domino had always been special to him, but not only that. The other kids in the clan had always run away and rejected Domino. Without knowing what it was all about, could these kids feel a difference in him?
Domino talked about it sometimes, less and less as the years went by, as the matter seemed to lose importance to him. But Domino still cared—the sorrow in his black eyes spoke volume.
“They can’t hate you, they don’t know you,” Gus had told his friend, who had just explained that even when he and his brothers lived in Kaermat with their mother, children had always refused his company.
“It feels like hate, though. As soon as I approach, they run away, they look at me as if I just pissed at their feet. You know it, you’ve seen them.” The sadness on Domino’s face sickened Gus. Inside, he was boiling. He dreamed of throwing himself at those kids and tearing them down, one by one, even if this was but a fantasy.
Now Domino had grown up. He was no longer a child, but some things hadn’t changed. Kids still avoided him without the command seeming to come from their parents, as if their instincts were taking over.
“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” Domino had asked a few months earlier.
There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect just the way you are, Gus had thought to answer. Instead, he had turned to his friend, who was distractedly pulling out weeds, his gaze lost in the valley below leading to the bamboo forest.
“I’m here,” Gus had said. “I’m not running away.”
“You were before,” Domino recalled.
“I was running away from everyone. I’m not running away from you anymore. Is this worth anything?”
Domino had returned his gaze, the shadow of a smile on his lips. As always, actions were more important than words, Gus knew that. It had taken effect and Domino had seemed reassured, or at least diverted from his dark thoughts. “Are you implying that you’re more important than the rest of the clan? More important than the kids who run away when I show up?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Gus had said in all seriousness.
Domino had smiled for good.
The phenomenon persisted, but now the shadow of an explanation was emerging. Animals felt nichans’ proximity at a remarkable distance. They could discern the presence of these powerful predators and move away from them without further ado. Did nichan children share that sixth sense, that survival instinct not yet regulated by reason that told them to stay away from Domino?
Would this first transformation change anything to that phenomenon?
The vision of Domino’s skin turning black flashed before Gus’s still-open eyes. And the muscles and bones of his back waving, changing, remodeling themselves . . .
On taking Domino back to the village, Ero had summoned Muran and Gus to the infirmary. Once back in his human form, Ero had been forced to stun his nephew. A precaution, considering Ero had no desire to bury another of his protégés today, he had said.
But the inconspicuous bump left on the back of Domino’s skull was only part of the problem. Still stunned by the news and Beïka’s hateful cries, Gus hadn’t immediately noticed the piece of fabric attached to his friend’s leg.
Not attached.
Gus recognized the blue linen of Domino’s pants. As if out of a heavy sleep, he’d reached out to close his hand on the fabric.
Ero was quick to push it away. “I tried to take it off. It’s stuck in the calf.”
Gus and Muran had then started to work. No matter how confusing the sight of those thick fibers trapped in the flesh and skin was. No matter that no one knew how the cloth got trapped inside Domino’s unharmed leg. Muran had cut open the calf, revealing inch by inch the bottom of the pants creased between the muscle cords. The foreign body had been removed, and Gus had closed the wound. Once his work was done, he couldn’t find the strength to get away from Domino, to take his hands off his friend’s leg and skin. This contact alone wasn’t enough to provide meaning to what they’d all just experienced.
Once again, Matta was right. Gus knew nothing about his friend’s true nature, or even the nature of other nichans. He could speculate to exhaustion; he would get no answers.
Gus slept less than two hours that night. The rooster crow brought him back to reality before the sky turned from black to dusty gray. He waited a few more minutes, got up, and set off.
The village was waking up. A few nichans entered the sanctuary to have their first meal of the day. A small group headed for the baths in the village heights, clean clothes shoved under their arms. Farther on, he heard the sound of claws sharpening wood. The coolness of the night still lingered. It grazed Gus’s bare arms and face, still puffy from sleep. Facing him, across the central square, the infirmary was dark.
He knocked gently on the door, a weight pulling at the back of his tongue. Ero appeared on the other side, scowling. He looked down at Gus and seemed to hesitate between closing the door in his face and finishing what he’d started the day before. Gus swallowed hard and remained calm. Ero took up all the space in front of him; it was impossible to see if Domino was still asleep. The human had to come in to be sure.
“I don’t remember asking you to come.” Ero’s voice was hoarse and tired. He’d probably stayed up all night, keeping an eye on his nephew, tightening the ropes, Gus thought.
There was a pause during which Gus took a deep breath to give himself courage. “I won’t cause any trouble.”
“You’re wasting my time. That’s what you’re causing.”
“Please.”
If those words grazed his tongue, they grazed his pride even more. If anyone in this clan didn’t deserve to be begged, it was Ero. But did Gus still have a choice?
Ero waited.
Gus resumed, his teeth clenched, “I won’t touch his bonds. I’ll follow orders. You won’t even notice I�
��m here.”
For a moment he thought of begging Ero again, for the man would probably enjoy the sound of his despair. He threw the idea away and waited patiently. The clan chief’s gaze was heavy on him.
The door opened, and Ero stepped aside to let him in. With a cautious step, Gus crossed the threshold, went around the bed, and grabbed the little bench on which the herbalist was always the only one to sit. He pulled it to the bedside and sat down next to his friend.
Domino was asleep. A trickle of dried saliva stretched from the corner of his mouth to his jaw.
On the other side of the bed Ero untied the bonds holding Domino’s wrists. Despite his surprise, Gus held back his reaction. Ero went to the ankles, then finally to the rope wrapped under the teenager’s ribs.
“If things go wrong,” Ero said, rolling the ropes on themselves, “you’ll be the first to suffer the consequences. He didn’t wake up yet, but when he does, it might be a bloodshed. It better be all right with you because I won’t stand in the way if he rips your throat.”
A threat. Typical. However, even though Ero scared Gus, his words didn’t.
“Let him,” he said.
Ero nodded his head and returned to sit in a corner of the room.
Gus placed two fingers on the side of his friend’s throat. Domino’s pulse was normal, steady and strong. He breathed easily, clenched his fists occasionally, wiggled his toes. The only apparent abnormality was the amount of sleep. Normally, three to four hours of sleep were enough for him. Today, even the rough hemp tightly knotted to the point of leaving marks on his skin wasn’t enough to disturb his rest.
As day broke, Orsa visited the infirmary, holding a bowl of cassava for her partner. She noted Gus’s presence, kept her comments behind her teeth, briefly massaged the nape of Ero’s neck as he ate, and walked away after receiving a kiss on the back of her hand.
The door slammed, and Domino’s breathing changed. Gus, who was choking back a yawn, stood.
Domino’s eyelids fluttered and then opened. “Mora.”