“I’m gonna mess up.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Wait. Here. Show me.”
“The chisel in the direction you want it to go. Like that. Ah!”
The hammer met his flesh, which opened immediately. Blood beaded on Gus’s hand as he laid down his tools in front of him. But the damage was done.
Going beyond his thoughts and resolutions, Domino reached out. He captured Gus’s hand and, giving the lead to his body, his instinct taking over, he brought the wound to his mouth and licked it. The gesture was natural, benevolent, one of a nichan protecting one of its own, caring for its wounds as an animal would do with its offspring. The sole accomplishment of this gesture slowed Domino’s racing heartbeat. He tasted the blood’s metallic, salty flavor, and felt a desire to protect rise within him, more intense than ever.
Before he realized the significance of his action, Gus withdrew his hand, looking shocked. “Don’t do that.”
Domino opened his eyes wide, more stunned than his friend was. Gus told him he wasn’t afraid of him. Apparently, that wasn’t entirely true.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Domino stammered, about to back away.
“Don’t apologize. Just don’t do that. There’s no telling what my blood might do to you. How do you feel?”
Confusion overcame Domino. “What?”
“I’m a Vestige, even though we spend our time pretending we don’t know it. My blood . . . ”
“What about it?”
“Don’t touch it.”
“I don’t get it.”
Gus’s hand still bled, but he ignored the red drop blossoming then running down his white skin, even as it dripped onto his board.
“You’re afraid I can’t transform anymore,” Domino said, for it was all that mattered to anyone else lately. “It’s because of what I am that you—”
“I don’t care if you’re a pure blood, Domino.” Gus cut him off, firmer but also colder, as if his friend’s remark had just offended him. “Do you think it makes any difference to me?”
“It should.”
“I’m right here. I’m not running away. I would have said the same thing to you a week or a year ago. You’re not the problem. I am.”
“You? Why? Gus, you’ve proven more than once that you’re not dangerous.”
“No one knows what Vestiges are made of. The Blessers say we stole the Light from the Gods, that we defiled it. Others say we are the dogs of the Corruption.”
Others. Did he mean nichans? “This is bullshit,” Domino said.
“The truth doesn’t matter. My blood could hurt you. Maybe it’s poison to nichans.” He paused, finally looking down at the superficial wound marking his pale hand. Like Domino, he watched the blood finally stop flowing to clot. Lowering his voice, Gus said, “Do you remember the men who hanged me?” The question made Domino’s chest uneasy. Of course he remembered. Gus didn’t give him time to answer. “They’d eaten something, a plant they found on the road. They thought it was beautiful, they’d never seen one like it before. Its leaves weren’t black like other plants. They were dark red, like raw meat. It was beautiful and . . . I think I recognized it. It was different. It was like me. Another Vestige. It was just too different to be normal. It should have scared them that it was that different. They thought its fruit must be a delight. They loved the taste. They ate every last berry.
“That night, one of them started shitting blood. Then they both spat blood, as if something was rotting inside or . . . melting their gut. They devoured the fruits of a Vestige, and if your brothers hadn’t killed them, those men would have died anyway. Maybe it was unique to this Vestige, or maybe it’s part of all of us. Maybe all Vestiges are really tainted from the inside.”
“You can’t believe that.”
“I don’t know. Do you? If I was chopped into pieces, would they find the same organs as in another human?”
“Don’t say that.” Pain grew in Domino as the renewed idea of his friend’s death barreled through him.
But Gus kept going, forcing this reality to take form in Domino’s mind. “Look at my eyes. Do they look normal to you?”
Yes, Domino wanted to answer, but he was afraid of angering his friend. The truth was inescapable.
“And my wings,” Gus added before taking a moment to think. “The Blessers have a sacred book. The Artean. It speaks of many things: good, evil, the Gods. Nichans and . . . Vestiges. It talks about us in very colorful terms.”
Domino had never heard of this book until now. He wanted to ask how Gus knew of it. Another dangerous question that he chose to keep for himself, for the answer scared him.
“What does it say?” he asked instead.
Gus looked up at his friend. A certain distress shone behind the hardness of his delicate features. “After meeting you, I realized that what the book said about nichans was just a bunch of crap. You’re nothing like what the book describes.”
“What makes you say that? What does the book say?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Gus sighed then wiped the dried blood off the back of his hand, rubbing it with the thumb that he’d just moistened on the tip of his tongue.
“The book says you’re tainted,” Domino guessed, bitterness growing inside him. “Is that it?” Gus said nothing, continuing to wash away the blood. His skin reddened under the brutal friction. “Why believe what’s in the book when it comes to Vestiges, but when it comes to nichans, it’s just bullshit?”
“Because I saw it with my own eyes.” Gus sighed softly and let his hand drop. “I’ve seen what a Vestige can do. I take a risk every time I touch you.”
“What if this plant was no Vestige at all?”
“Well, there’s no way to know.”
“You would never hurt me.”
“Some people would disagree. That’s why they kill us.”
“They kill us because they believe it will bring back the Gods. And because they’re fucking insane. Especially because they’re insane. That’s all it is, Gus. This has nothing to do with you or what you might do to them.”
“I don’t know what’s inside me so I can’t really argue with them. Maybe they’re right.”
Gus stopped there, having made himself abundantly clear. Anger and grief grew into Domino at the same time.
Domino had often wondered where exactly Gus had come from, who had raised him until they’d met. Questions he had never dared ask for fear of crossing a line that would shut his friend’s heart. If Gus didn’t talk about it, it was because he didn’t want to. So Domino had speculated in silence, had invented a past that defied logic. He’d imagined parents for Gus, a man and a woman with golden hair and the same eyes as their son. It was idiotic. Human Vestiges were born of ordinary humans; only Gus had such eyes and wings. Then Domino had stopped imagining, accepting that this truth didn’t belong to him.
But he would have never imagined that Gus had such thoughts, that he saw himself as a permanent threat. Everything he’d just said was true, no one could deny it. Gus was a potential risk even though Domino refused to admit it.
Domino blamed himself for never having been able to guess his friend’s internal turmoil.
Strangely, and for the first time, he felt like he understood Gus. They were more alike than Domino could have imagined. Whatever the risk—whether or not there was one—he was willing to take it as Gus took it by staying by his side.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Domino said, repeating the words Gus had used earlier.
Gus returned his look.
The herbs took effect soon after. Domino grew dizzy and holding his chisel became laborious. He put it down and Gus helped him up—a seemingly risky but necessary physical contact—and into bed. As he sank, and Gus closed the window shutter and blew out the lamp, Domino thought one last time about that kiss he’d wanted to give him a few days earlier by the pond. This desire had survived the tragedy he’d just caused.
As promised, Domino didn’t
dream and slept peacefully. When he woke up in the middle of the night, Gus was sleeping right next to him.
X V I I
The little boy waited at the edge of the woods. He was less than half Domino’s height, had black hair awkwardly cut around his protruding ears, and round cheeks reddened with small pimples. Something was trapped in his hands, against his heart, like a treasure.
Arms full of logs, Domino stood still. When he spotted the child, his heart leaped into his chest. He looked around and then returned his attention to the boy.
Then, joy took off. Domino smiled.
Facing him, three-year-old Natso was smiling as well.
“Hi there,” Domino said.
He hadn’t spoken to his nephew in months. Belma was doing a great job at keeping her son away from Domino. A fulfilled promise. If the woman caught Domino so much as breathing in Natso’s direction, she would end it without delay. Apparently not enough efforts were put to the task. The little boy sometimes slipped through the net, making such meetings possible.
Domino ignored if his nephew knew what they meant to each other, if his mother or even Beïka had agreed to reveal to the child the bond they shared. But at that moment, as he was about to take some wood to the sanctuary’s kitchen, Domino had only one thought in mind: Natso looked more and more like Mora.
“What are you doing here?” Domino asked, not daring to approach for fear of alarming the child.
Under the dark sky, legs buried up to his knees in the grass, Natso stretched out his hands in front of him. Something was sticking out between his round little fingers. Half a dozen steps away, Domino made his decision. He walked at a measured pace toward the child. Domino came within three feet of his nephew, put his wood on the ground while crouching down, and studied the child’s face. Domino hadn’t stood so close to him since Natso’s baptism on the day Mora had—
Domino pushed the thought away and forced his smile to linger. He didn’t want his nephew to leave, that like all the kids Domino had met throughout his life, Natso felt that his uncle was different. Dangerous.
Not him. Faces, please. Don’t let him fear me.
But Natso didn’t bat an eyelash, always showing his pearly teeth in a touching smile.
“What do we have here?” said Domino. The young man wasn’t expecting a verbal answer. He knew, both from his brief experience and from the rumors circulating in the village, that at three years old, Natso had never uttered a word. But the boy understood what was said to him, so he opened his hands, revealing a tiny lizard with smooth, bluish skin. What was left of its falsely severed tail was pinched between Natso’s thumb and forefinger.
“Look at that. Here’s a great catch!” Domino congratulated him and the child’s joy lit up his face.
Though no doubt treated with the little delicacy that children showed at such a young age, the reptile was still alive. Through his and Natso’s heartbeats and breaths, Domino could make out the tiny pulses animating the lizard’s body. They wouldn’t last long.
“It’s beautiful,” Domino said when Natso brought the animal close to his uncle’s face, proudly displaying the fruit of his hunt. “Where did you find it?”
Closing his fingers on the lizard, the little boy turned around and pointed to a pile of lichen-covered stones.
“And you caught it by yourself?”
Natso nodded.
“Well done! A real hunter. You’ll have to give it to your mom. She needs to see this.”
But at these words, the little boy shook his head and handed the dying lizard to his uncle.
“What? For me?”
Natso nodded again.
“You want . . . to give it to me?”
Another nod.
Emotion burned deep in Domino’s eyes. It was but a half-dead animal. Yet coming from his nephew, whom he dreamed of knowing and whose company he sorely missed, the young man felt as if he were receiving a token of both love and forgiveness. He wanted to hold the child in his arms to thank him, maybe in hope of hiding the tears threatening to run down. Having not received the permission to do so, Domino raised his hand to tousle the child’s hair, as Mora had done with him countless times.
“Natso!”
Domino’s hand froze in midair and then withdrew. Her cheeks covered with honorary tattoos, Belma ran the last few yards between them, grabbed the child’s arm, and shoved him behind her.
Ice coursing through his veins, Domino stood and took a step back, forgetting his abandoned fuel in the grass.
Belma glanced blackly at Domino and then leaned over to her son. “Go back home at once. Dadou is waiting for you to eat. Now, Natso-sanoa.”
Sanoa, meaning “my son,” or in this case a clear way for any Torb to remind a child who was in charge. Joy had deserted Natso’s features, but he wasn’t told twice. With his hands still full, he turned around and, throwing a last glance over his shoulder, walked away from the woods, scampering toward the heart of the village on his little legs.
“We were just talking,” Domino said.
“Talking?” Belma said, pointing to the nil probability of such action when it came to her son.
“No, I . . . He just wanted to show me a—”
“Do I look like I care?” A breeze passed between them. “I told you to stay away from my son. I meant it. I may not be a hunter, but I’ll make you regret it if you keep going.”
If he kept going? A ball of frustration swelled inside him. He’d never gotten too close to Natso before. Belma had made herself clear, but it was guilt that had held Domino back. But for some reason outside of his control, the child kept coming back to see him.
“He came to me,” Domino said. “What was I supposed to do? Send him away? Ignore him?”
“Don’t put the blame on him.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“You’re just making excuses, as always. Last time he lost a sandal.”
And Domino hadn’t lied. The shoe had been lying there, a few leaps from the front porch of Belma’s hut where Natso sat and played by himself. Domino hadn’t taken two steps in his direction before Beïka, the asshole, had appeared to stick his oar in.
“So now what? Killing our brother wasn’t enough? You want to settle the score with his son too?” Beïka had told Domino, proudly displaying on the whole surface of his neck, jaw and torso the marks honoring Mora’s memory, marks that Ero still denied Domino for fear of damaging his transformation abilities.
It was useless to defend his case. Belma wouldn’t give in. But in the face of the anger growing inside him at the mention of this incident, Domino couldn’t keep quiet. “I would never hurt him.” A poor defense. He’d killed Mora, even though it was the last thing he wanted. Domino added, for it was all he had left, “I . . . I’m his family.”
Belma shook her head. “He already has a family. He has the clan, he has Dadou, he has me, and—”
“And who? Beïka? With him around, no wonder the kid can’t talk yet.”
No . . .
Belma’s eyes sprang open as if Domino’s fist had just lunged at her gut. Domino froze in fright. He’d replied without thinking, without considering the harm his words could inflict. The point had been to insult Beïka, to support his brother’s terrible influence on all the children left to his care. Instead, he’d just insulted Belma and her ability to raise her own son—the son she was raising by herself because of Domino.
“I’m sorry,” Domino said, red with shame. He still couldn’t believe that he’d had the audacity to speak such words.
“Go fuck yourself, Domino,” Belma answered.
She stared at Domino’s imploring face for a moment. Nothing he would say could save his case. He’d just ruined his chance to be a part of his nephew’s life.
I’m just a fucking jerk.
Belma turned around and left him there.
Darkness crept in between the trees, and Domino picked up his wood.
Tomorrow he would go on a hunt because Ero had
allowed it. Ero still hoped Domino would change, that Domino would stop being afraid of the nichan inside him—that real nichan that had taken Mora from him, that today kept him away from his family.
Three years earlier, Domino had made the decision not to transform anymore. He could live without that part of himself. He had to live without it. But to live without his family was unbearable.
When he left Surhok at dawn the next day, he took one last look at Belma’s hut, where Natso was probably still sleeping.
So much blood. Gus couldn’t have missed it.
The nichans swarmed into the village, a small group of five individuals. In the middle stood Ero. In his arms, his face pale and agonizing, was Domino. His leg was bloody from the thigh down. A crude bandage covered the wound.
Again? Gus thought.
In the three years since the discovery of Domino’s true nature, the nichan had been wounded at least four times during the hunt. Given his condition, this misadventure wouldn’t be without consequences. If this continued, Domino would lose his right to hunt with his own people.
Gus ran to them, lungs squeezed tight between his ribcage and his pounding heart. Ero had ordered him to join them in the infirmary. Gus was already on his way. It was becoming a habit.
The mattress on which Domino had been laid quickly became soaked in blood. Domino gritted his teeth and twisted the sheet into his fists as its fibers were drowned in the oily, coral liquid. He was livider than ever.
Keeping calm, Gus laid his hand flat next to the soiled bandage. He didn’t need to watch the wound, for he’d see it properly in a few seconds.
“I’m fucking done with you, Domino,” said Ero.
He paced the small room, fists on his hips, sweating. He kept his eyes downcast, as if one look at his nephew would have been enough to set off his temper. Gus imagined him tearing off the bandage and letting Domino bleed out before their eyes.
Domino didn’t respond, breathing laboriously, his pain and strength leaving him.
It had to be done quickly.
The Nichan Smile Page 21