The Nichan Smile

by C. J. Merwild

  It hadn’t been enough. One more order, and Domino had found himself unable to produce a single sound, as though his tongue had been nailed to the palate of his mouth.

  Near the village gate, Memek and Orsa waited for them. Memek had followed them outside, offering to her father one of the saddlebags she carried; Orsa had stayed inside after kissing her partner and her daughter goodbye.

  Domino hadn’t been so lucky.

  After his frolics with Gus, he’d fallen asleep in his own semen. Exhaustion had won him over, reducing all his concerns to barely visible points on the horizon. When he awoke, Gus slept right next to him, so close that one of his hands rested on Domino’s waist. The nichan had smiled, unable to take his eyes off his friend’s serene face. What had happened between them was still so clear in his mind and warmed him with an unprecedented happiness. That feverish embrace; the right to kiss, to lick and taste every inch of Gus’s mouth; their clumsy bodies, only separated by a bit of cloth at the crucial spot, leaving them free to appreciate each other’s skin and curves, the pleasure they gave to each other. The rest had been clear in his mind. He’d come with the imaginary feel of his body diving deep . . .

  It hadn’t been the right moment. His body was still tense from his previous fucking. Gus deserved better than to share this moment with two other women.

  Domino had wanted to stay in bed, to wait for Gus to wake up. But he was dirty and needed a quick bath. After that, he would have gone back to bed without a sound, to contemplate Gus’s awakening at the crack of dawn. If his friend had accepted, Domino would have kissed him again. No excuses, no rut. The meaning of that kiss would have been crystal clear; Domino would have appreciated its full value.

  He’d gotten up to wash with a confidence and happiness freshly gained, his heart beating with enthusiasm. Yet the moment he’d been waiting for so long never came.

  All the day after, he’d emptied his stomach contents on the roads chosen by Ero. The Unaan’s order was still in effect. And Domino was still failing to get around it.

  As the opening day of the journey came to an end, Ero had sent Memek and Beïka on a hunt for food. He’d taken Domino to the nearest water point and forced him to drink and rinse his mouth. The acidity of the bile he’d regurgitated every hour since dawn had scoured his throat. Domino had drunk greedily and threw the whole thing up almost immediately.

  “You really need to stop being so contrary,” Ero had said, the perfect portrait of boredom.

  “No doubt warning me in advance of your plans would make me less contrary,” Domino had grumbled.

  He wasn’t done vomiting, but he still drank again before sprinkling mud-flavored water on his face.

  Ero had immersed his hands in the water to cool himself down too. “You think I enjoy this? You’re leaving me no choice, Domino. I’ve been preparing to take you on a pilgrimage for three years and it still pisses me off that it had to come to this. I’m getting to know you. You don’t want to transform, you don’t want to sleep with a woman, you don’t want advice from your elders. It would make your life so much easier if you knew what’s good for you. But no, of course not. Why would you? You’re so stubborn you can’t even see you’re hurting yourself. You remind me of your mother.”

  Domino had clenched his fists. He had felt the nausea return, this time for other reasons. For a long time he’d wanted someone, anyone, to tell him more about his mom, to fill the blanks of her life, to erase the blurry patches concealing her face every time he tried to summon the memory of her. But not today, and not from Ero.

  Luckily, the man hadn’t continued on this path.

  “You’re not the center of the world, you know. This pilgrimage is as much for you as it is for Memek.” Domino had looked up at Ero, surprised. “We all know what your problem is, and I hope to do something about it, because we won’t set foot in Surhok again until you’ve grown up. But you and Memek have another problem, one that all nichans share.” He’d splashed his face and rubbed with vigorous hands the scarred surface of his head. “You know why the elders established the pilgrimage when the Corruption came?”

  “To travel around,” Domino had replied, tense and reluctant to cooperate.

  “Clever boy. The rest of us had forgotten who we were, what we’d lost. Can you imagine for a minute what it felt like for our ancestors when it suddenly became impossible for them to return to their original form? The Orators’ sermons say that they felt as if they’d been stripped of their identity. At first they believed that they were being punished by the Gods out of hatred and human jealousy. Nichans had lost their names and faces overnight. Others said their souls. They were even doubting their pasts and the Gods . . . I think that’s bullshit, but I know the feeling.

  “The pilgrimage was an ordeal, a way to reconnect with nature, to rediscover the true color of our blood. We’re not human, but we’ve modeled much of our way of life on theirs. It makes me sick that it’s come to this.”

  “You hate them, but humans are as much creatures of the Gods as we are.”

  “That doesn’t mean we have to pretend to be them.”

  “We’re not. We just needed to . . . adapt.”

  “Oh, I heard that before, you know? Your grandmother, when she still ruled the Ueto Clan, thought we had to adapt too. She had plumbing put up all over the village, made foolish deals for furniture and all kinds of crap we could do without. She wanted her protégés to learn the art of blacksmithing and weaving. ‘These are the Gods’ plans,’ she used to say. She wanted to turn us into humans; it’s as simple as that. She refused to acknowledge the Corruption’s doing, even when its shit was raining on us. I stopped this nonsense before it went too far. Some nichans would be content with that, you know? Those who aren’t built for hunting or fighting. They no longer see the point of going back to our roots, of understanding what makes us different from humans. The pilgrimage forces us to turn away from the easy way out, from human habits.

  “Now, many things have changed. There’s a threat hanging over us. This pilgrimage is here to prepare you to face it. I lost a son because we underestimated the Blessers and the hatred they spread everywhere. I won’t lose my daughter or my clan, as well. Even you, as annoying as you are—I’ll kill to protect you.”

  Memek and Beïka had returned. Ero had nothing more to add. Domino had stopped vomiting. Resignation it was, then. But until sleep took over, his gaze had turned east, to Surhok, to Gus.

  After being violently pulled out of his dreams, Domino stood and rubbed his eyes. In front of him, her braided hair ruffled by sleep, Memek nibbled a stick of sugar cane, a frugal breakfast before the hunt. Beïka wasn’t far away, turning his back on them to urinate against a tree. Ero was nowhere to be seen. When Domino asked after him, Memek threw a stick at her cousin and wiped her hands on her legs.

  “He went scouting,” she said.

  “That’s no excuse for dawdling. Get up and get ready to leave any minute,” Beïka added.

  Domino kept his eyes away from his brother, still filled with disgust. The sound of Omak’s words still echoed in his thoughts. What if I tell you that Beïka lasted longer than you did? Will you mount me again?

  Domino ate, using water from a skin sack to wash his face and rinse his mouth. He rubbed his teeth with his fingertips and chewed black, round bathia leaves whose acidic taste wiped away any other flavor on his palate and tongue. Only then did he get up.

  But Ero delayed until the sky was at its lightest shade of dirty gray. The other nichans heard him approaching before they could even see his head sticking out through the foliage. The bottom of his pants and shawl were wet with dew.

  He watched his daughter and nephews. “There’s a farm to the southeast. Humans.”

  “Friendly?” Memek asked.

  “I only saw a woman outside tending goats and some geese. The yurt is small. There are several humans inside.”

  “A family?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “How many human
s?”

  “Too many hearts beating for me to count. At least four. The woman was acting strange. She was tense. Maybe her age puts her in this state; she’s not a young girl anymore. I kept my distance to not scare the animals. Something’s going on over there. I want to check it out.”

  “What do you expect to find?” Memek said.

  “I don’t expect anything. I’m just taking the lead.”

  In front of him, Beïka took a step. “Whatever it is, we don’t have to be afraid of a bunch of humans.”

  Ero glanced at him but didn’t react. He deflected his gaze to Domino. “You’re coming with me. We’re going to talk to this woman.”

  “Aren’t you afraid to scare her?” Domino asked.

  Two nichans and an old human isolated in the middle of the woods. Domino had never been this far southeast—or anywhere else—but knew that nichans only entered a human village if they were invited. A verbal invitation, most of the time, was enough but necessary to avoid trouble. Many nichans resented the company of humans. The opposite was also true.

  “A red cloth is nailed to the door of her house,” Ero said. “Some humans show their sympathy for nichans this way. But let’s be careful.”

  “You’re going without us?” Beïka asked with indignation.

  “You and Memek will wait under the cover of the trees. No one must see you. You’ll stay within earshot.”

  “You’re sure you’re not overreacting?” asked his daughter. “It could be the family of that old human.”

  “I don’t think so. The smell of them . . . I don’t like it.”

  “Have you ever liked the smell of humans?” the girl grumbled.

  Ero’s plan then found its purpose in Domino’s mind. Nichans rarely traveled alone. The case of two nichans showing up at the home of a human ally would be quite ordinary. If danger presented itself, Memek and Beïka would come as reinforcements with the effect of surprise on their side. Domino, however, hoped his uncle was being overly cautious.

  A few minutes later, the yurt appeared through the dark vegetation. It was a little larger than Domino and Gus’s hut, with a black moss-covered roof. Strangely enough, the house had been built around a tree whose dense foliage protected the animals and farmers from the corrupt sky and the weather. The woman Ero had mentioned was still there, caressing with a caring hand the head of a suddenly agitated goat. The other four goats began to snarl, nervous. They felt the presence of the nichans close by. In a separate pen, the geese reacted to the goats’ panic.

  Yurts were mostly owned by nomads. They were simple dwellings easy to assemble and transport. However, this one seemed not to have moved for years. Plants climbed on its facade. A nest was perched on the edge of the roof, threatening to fall. The people who lived here were now too old to carry on traveling, Domino thought.

  With a gesture from Ero, the group split up. Domino and the Unaan moved slowly toward the farm, trying not to cause more anxiety in the animals. The woman noticed the change of mood of her protégés and looked around. Her skin was dark, like that of the Uetos, her hair silvery, and her eyes were bright green. She was tiny, her back was bent like a hook, and she wore simple gold bracelets on her ankles. For a human, she seemed to be between seventy and eighty years old. Domino wouldn’t have been able to estimate her age correctly; the life expectancy of humans was much shorter than that of nichans. At the age of one hundred and thirty, Dadou was in better shape than this human.

  Her face crumpled with wrinkles as she noticed the two nichans standing a few steps from the pen. But soon she seemed to change her mind, and her features, although worried, softened on her forehead.

  “Ohay,” she greeted them, clutching the hemp collar of the anxious goat she had been caressing seconds earlier.

  “Ohay,” Ero said, and Domino nodded, readjusting on his shoulder the skin satchel Memek had given him before they parted, making him look more like a traveler. “I see the sign,” Ero said, pointing to the ruby cloth hanging from the yurt’s door.

  “Yes.”

  “We haven’t found water in two days. Do you have any for travelers? Or some milk, maybe?”

  “Yes,” repeated the woman without taking her eyes off them. “Yes, I have milk. Come closer. Not too close. My animals.”

  “Of course.”

  It was useless to tell her that nichans, without water, could last for months by drinking the blood of the animals they hunted. If the woman was aware of that fact, she said nothing of it.

  Ero and Domino took a few more steps. At the other end of the enclosure, the goats crowded together, sticking their heads between the fences, looking for a way out. Their owner pulled out a stool, a bucket, and started milking. The animal she chose tried at first to escape the grip of her owner, but she let herself be milked.

  “That’s very kind of you,” Ero continued in the tone of the discussion. “With this drought, all the streams are dry.”

  “I understand,” said the woman.

  She was devoted to her milking, and yet Domino could feel the distress emanating from her, from her mechanical yet irregular movements, from her voice on the verge of breaking. Nonchalantly, he looked around and listened. At first nothing, then he perceived against his eardrums the beating of hearts—fast, human—and breaths. He didn’t know how many. He sniffed the air but didn’t detect anything coming from the house. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction, working against him.

  The woman got up from her stool and pulled the half-full bucket. Ero took out his recently emptied goatskin and uncorked it. He bent down low enough to get on the same level as the woman. With a trembling motion, she tipped her bucket over and the milk flowed into the bottle neck.

  “Is everything all right?” Domino asked her in a low voice.

  Hearing him for the first time, or perhaps because of his question itself, the old woman was startled and milk dripped to the ground, in the dust. She looked up at him, but immediately lowered her eyes.

  “You look nervous,” Domino said, even lower now.

  A little farther away, his brother and his cousin could no doubt distinguish his words. The humans in the house couldn’t.

  “Visitors are rare,” the woman whispered.

  “What about human visitors?” Ero asked.

  The milk stopped filling the bottle, for the woman was now shaking too much to keep her bucket on the right axis.

  Domino wanted to offer to relieve her, realizing how thin her wrinkled arms were, but Ero spoke before he had time to do so. He bent over a little more and spoke firmly. “You live here alone?”

  “With my husband,” the woman said, trying in vain to tip the bucket.

  “Is he inside?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was now but a breath lost in the breeze.

  “Who are the people with him?”

  She spoke faster than Domino had expected—like a cry for help. Or a trap. “They arrived two days ago. They said they found nichans heading east. They think . . . from here.”

  “Did they come from here?” Ero asked.

  “It’s possible.”

  “They’ve retraced their trail.”

  “They said the Blessers punish those who help your kind. When they realized your people sometimes pass through our house, they decided to stay. I wanted to give them some animals. They don’t want them. They said they’d leave once they’d killed more nichans. They said they would forgive us.”

  “How many of them are inside?”

  “Four.”

  “Do they have pistols? Strange weapons hanging from their belts, some kind of small mechanical tool,” Ero explained as the woman didn’t seem to recognize the word.

  “I think one of them has that, yes.”

  Domino clenched his jaw and refrained from looking up at the small opaque window of the yurt facing the sheepfold.

  “Thank you very much for the milk,” Ero said in a normal voice. He closed his water-skin, put it back in his satchel, and smiled at the woman. “I have s
ome meat on me that might spoil, killed this morning. Do you have any salt? Or maybe you have something to smoke it with? I know it’s a lot to ask. I could offer you some of it, as a thank you for your good services.”

  As her breath became panting, the human raised her eyes towards them, paling slightly. In the bucket, the surface of the warm milk undulated under her shivers. Ero had just revealed his intention to enter her house. The signal had been given, as much to those hiding inside the yurt as to Memek and Beïka.

  After a long time, the woman put down her bucket. “I have salt, yes.”

  She opened the gate and led them to the entrance of the house. Domino prepared for everything. He could feel the warmth and tension sweating from his uncle’s muscled figure. The man was preparing for battle. Hidden in the thickets, Memek and Beïka followed their movements. They wouldn’t appear until the last moment. The Blessers’ partisans hiding inside needed to believe until the end that they would have only two nichans to face.

  They had at least one gun, enough to do some serious damage.

  But this damn weapon had a weakness. Although Domino had never seen any with his own eyes, he’d been told that the Sirlha’s pistols got dirty after each detonation. The partisans, much like the Blessers, stuffed the cannon with small fragments of Kispen crystal, a mineral with fairly flammable properties and whose shards were as sharp as razor blades. The heat from the gunshot produced fragments as thin as ashes that stuck to the walls of the barrel, clogging it. The gun was then too hot to be touched, so it was necessary to wait a few minutes before scraping the inside and then reloading it. A devastating but limited weapon. If the humans waiting for them inside thought they would only have to deal with two nichans, perhaps they’d save their ammunition. Domino hoped so from the bottom of his heart.