Natso, Belma, Gus . . .
Things were clear.
It was time to stop resisting.
By the time Domino found the strength to stand up, almost an hour had passed. He went back to the stream to rinse his mouth and to clean his face, chest and arms. One more moment of solitude and calm wouldn’t have hurt him. He reluctantly returned to the others.
When he arrived, Ero was no longer bleeding and had put his nose back in the right place. As much as he could. “All right, let’s go.” He picked up his satchel, Memek threw the other one on her shoulder, barely paying attention to Domino, and father and daughter went on their way.
Something was missing.
“Where’s Beïka?” Domino asked, following in their footsteps.
Ero looked over his shoulder without stopping. “On the road. I sent him back to Surhok. We don’t need him.”
X X I I
Eight days had passed since Domino’s departure when the village sentries opened the doors. The one who arrived, alone and unescorted, wasn’t supposed to be here.
Word spread faster than the wind. It reached Gus all the way down to the river.
Beïka had returned.
The bar of soap slipped from Gus’s hand, missing to slide to the bottom of the creek. The young man bent down, retrieved it, and stood up quietly. The only nichan on the riverbank, back arched above the water, busy scrubbing greasy kitchen towels against a washboard, glanced at him from the corner of the eye. The nichan kept his mouth shut, but the curve of a smile appeared on his face. Gus knew what was being said in Surhok, what this man thought of him, like the rest of his peers. Gus knew what people called him: Domino’s human. Domino’s Vestige. And he’d received more than one conspicuous look since his friend had gone on his pilgrimage.
On the way up to the baths that day, following in Matta’s footsteps, whose presence was supposed to cover the scent of the two young men’s intense kissing, Gus had averted his eyes from more than one indiscreet glance. Walking behind Matta had obviously not been enough. Even though his skin was dry, it was still covered in Domino’s sweat, his saliva, and probably the vague trace of nichan pheromones. The last was probably the cause of everyone’s sudden attention.
“Domino made quite a racket when he left the village this morning,” the woman had said when they arrived at the large, deserted bathhouse. “Everyone knew what was going on even before Orsa explained that she’s now in charge of the clan. I’m surprised it didn’t wake you up. Your friend clearly didn’t feel like leaving.”
Gus hadn’t answered anything back, stepping resolutely into the shack, immediately assaulted by the clammy atmosphere.
After wetting himself from head to toe with a bucket, he’d frozen in the middle of the steam and the receding, dripping water.
Did this really happen?
The question, popping up out of nowhere, had momentarily slowed his movements. It swelled inside him, pouring a flood of doubts into his veins and mind. Had he imagined the events of the past night?
Without thinking, Gus had slipped his hand between his legs. The village forbade sexual practices of any kind inside the bathhouse. With this thought, Gus had initiated his own pleasure. One hand leaning against the wall, the other focused on the right pace, a sudden rage had taken hold of him.
Rage against this place that imposed more prohibitions on him; against those nichans who probably thought that sharing their bed with him—a Vestige—was as disgusting as fucking an animal; against Domino, who had taken these women and then sought comfort in Gus’s arms . . .
It’s my turn. Fuck them all.
And he’d stroked himself harder, summoning the memory of his friend’s frank hip strokes against him, begging for an answer.
After coming, part of him dripping on the soaked stones, Gus had felt stupid and childish. The events of last night were his doing. He was the only one to blame for what had happened. He’d always known that it would be a mistake to engage into this kind of intimacy, that somehow he would end up overwhelmed with regret.
He’d stayed in the baths longer than he had planned to clean up the evidence of his misstep. The next nichans who entered wouldn’t fail to notice the foreign smell of his sperm. They would know what he’d done. He’d soaped his spot more than once.
Domino was gone, whether he’d wanted it or not. He would be away for several months. Since they’d met a decade earlier, the two boys had never been apart for this long. It was obvious to Gus that Ero had only one idea in mind: Domino had to transform himself. But Domino had been struggling against his true nature for more than three years. He’d muzzled himself with as much resolve as he’d fought the guilt strangling him every time he dared think of Mora. Gus feared that this pilgrimage might not be enough to change his friend’s mind on the matter.
It was all he could think about. Day and night. He couldn’t focus on anything but the silence and loneliness that surrounded him. As soon as he entered the sanctuary to take his meal, eyes would turn in his direction. Gus would sometimes surprise a few words: “I remember when it was just a wild beast.”
“I guess Domino managed to tame it.” Laughter.
“Is it going to get wild again?”
“Humans get rabies, don’t they, like animals?” More laughter.
Some of them didn’t even bother to whisper.
Several times, Matta had invited the young man to join her during meals. Gus had refused. He didn’t need company. He just wanted Domino back.
But Beïka was home. Only Beïka. Why only him?
Gus had to know what was going on.
He wrung the sheets fresh from the water as hard as he could and tossed them over his shoulder. The water ran down his dead wing, down his back. He barely noticed the coolness that would otherwise have soothed the effects of the late summer heat. But Gus’s heart beat too fast; questions assaulted his mind. Nothing else mattered. He left the riverbank and returned to the heart of the village.
Beïka was there, near the now-closed Surhok gates. He was talking to Orsa, his face closed, his arms folded over his tattooed chest. As rumor had it, he was alone; not a sign of Domino’s presence.
His laundry dripping in the dust, Gus stayed out of sight and continued to observe them. He told himself that any moment now, the doors of the village would open again, revealing the silhouette of his best friend. His fears would then be allayed.
But that didn’t happen. Beïka finished his conversation with the temporary clan leader and left her to return to his own hut, eyes dark and his jaw clenched.
Night fell a few hours later. No one showed up at the gates.
When Gus got up the next morning, nothing had changed.
He needed to know. Where was Domino now? Was he okay? When would he be back? Gus wouldn’t ask Beïka to go into details. The important thing was Domino’s safety. He wasn’t so distraught as to nag the man with a hundred useless questions. People didn’t need to believe that Gus couldn’t take care of himself without Domino around to wipe his ass.
Domino’s Vestige . . .
Gus didn’t need anyone. He could survive on his own, unlike the rest of them who absolutely needed an Unaan to feel whole and protected. But it had all happened so suddenly. One moment they’d been kissing—somehow things had gotten even further than that. A few hours later, Domino had left without warning, as if nothing had happened.
The only person who could answer him right now was Beïka. And Gus wanted to talk to him as much as he wanted to see that blue crystal again. Orsa might know some details, but Gus had never spoken to her. She was Ero’s partner, after all. She probably shared the same displeased opinion as the Unaan about humans walking freely on their territory. But he kept in mind that she was still a valid option.
Gus sat where he and Domino normally ate all their meals: at the end of a table away from the others. His food, illuminated by the flickering light of the grease lamps, had cooled. The vegetables had shriveled, the meat juices had
congealed. He hadn’t touched it. His eyes were on Beïka at the other end of the dining room. The man was eating with two nichans a little younger than him, scraping the bottom of his plate with his spoon, laughing at the words of one of his friends. He stood up, nodding to his companions, took his dishes with him, and retired to the kitchen.
Gus had already made up his mind.
He left his table and followed Beïka.
When he arrived in the kitchen, lit only by the oven and a lamp hanging above the sink, he found the nichan activating the fountain above his dirty dish. He looked up as he felt Gus approaching. His unkind glance was filled with a deaf anger that Gus detected despite the poor visibility.
One question, nothing more. It would only take a minute. And whatever if Beïka didn’t answer it.
Gus advanced and stopped a few steps away from his best friend’s brother.
Beïka and Domino had a slight family resemblance, something in the curvature of the bridges of their noses, in the shapes of their long faces. The resemblance went no further. Beïka had hair cut flush with his skull, fleshy lips, thin eyebrows, and a round, hollow scar in the middle of his forehead (result of a bad fall during his first hunt with the Uetos). And then there were the honorary marks that covered a large portion of the man’s neck, chin, and chest. They undoubtedly changed his features, making his neck and his jaw look narrower than they were. In the end, Domino and his brother didn’t look so much alike. Especially not when Beïka’s eyes betrayed a deep disgust as they landed on Gus. Domino would never have looked at him that way. Was he even capable of looking at anyone like that?
“Is Domino okay?” Gus asked.
He could have greeted his friend’s brother, asked him if he’d encountered any danger on the road. He preferred to avoid false pretenses. Might as well get to the point.
In the kitchen, you could have heard a pin drop.
What he expected happened. Beïka threw his half-rinsed plate into the sink, sending water splashing against the wall and his light pants, then he turned around. He walked toward the door leading to the courtyard.
Gus had thought he would accept the lack of response, for he’d prepared for it. He’d lied to himself. The silence only strengthened his resolve. He wouldn’t have the patience to come back and question Beïka later. He insisted. There was already anger in his own voice.
“I just want to know if your brother is all right.”
In an instant, the air in the room froze. Beïka turned around. It took him but a second to walk through the kitchen and grab the hem of Gus’s shirt. Gus gasped, too slow to retreat. He always forgot how fast nichans were.
“Don’t even talk to me,” Beïka said through his bared teeth, drawing Gus to himself, dominating him from all his height, chin up. “Get it? And don’t look at me. Look down!”
His collar trapped in Beïka’s grip, Gus looked up at him. The man wanted Gus to submit himself, like a nichan facing his Unaan. What’s next? Beïka was no Unaan, and Gus wasn’t nichan. Beïka would have to make him. Gus had long ago broken free from that compulsion. Don’t look, used to say the woman who’d raised him in that basement. Don’t look down, Matta had advised him to help him regain his dignity. Of the two paths, he knew which one he wanted to walk.
Beïka’s grip became more urgent. “I said, look down.”
Gus didn’t. He’d stood up to Ero more than once. He would stand up to anyone.
Beïka’s hand engulfed Gus’s face. Brutal, it closed like a vise, half on his throat, half encompassing his cheeks. In his surprise, determined not to give in, Gus didn’t immediately understand what was happening. When his back and wings hit the wall behind him, he finally tried to break free. Beïka was all the more violent. His strength wasn’t as overwhelming as his uncle’s, but Gus was certain it could crush his bones, tear his jaw off.
“Don’t look at me,” Beïka whispered.
He turned Gus’s face to the side, forcing him to look away. Gus resisted. His head still turned to the right, revealing the side of his face and his old burn scars to the man. A burning pain spread to Gus’s cheeks, his head, his spine. He didn’t scream, he didn’t say anything, although his heart was pounding at a desperate pace, hard enough for everyone in the sanctuary to notice. Apart from his constant resistance, Gus was helpless.
Beïka’s breath swept across his ear. “You’re just like him. You think you’re better than me. But what are you without my fucking brother to protect you? I’m gonna tell you: without him, you’re an insect among gods. You’re nothing. Eventually, someone’s going to step on you. So a word of advice: you better hide and pray. Next time you get in my way, you’ll feel it coming.”
He pressed both sides of Gus’s face one last time. He was trying to wrest a complaint from him. Gus kept his teeth firmly clasped together. When Beïka finally let him go, Gus looked up at him, provoking. He trembled. Tears blurred his sight.
A simple effect of pain, he told himself.
Either the nichan didn’t see his defiant gaze in the dark kitchen, or he was done with him. He gauged Gus for a second, then turned.
Gus stood there a little while longer. As if dazed, his mind slipped away. He didn’t know what to do now. He should have left the room. Nothing happened. He stood on his feet, his wings against the wall, his body refusing to awake. He was still trembling.
He took a deep breath.
Everything was all right. Ero had done much worse to him. Those two humans had done worse with their rope. Beïka was a small fry, a loudmouth. If Domino had caught him laying hands on Gus, he would have taken down his older brother . . .
Gus straightened up. What a silly thought. Domino wasn’t his protector. Gus could take care of himself. He wasn’t going to stand there shaking like a kid until his friend protected him. Protect him from what? From whispers and rumors, from nichans, from Beïka?
He’d get through this without the help of anyone.
X X I I I
A detonation cracked in the distance. It echoed over the surface of the blackened grassy plains here, yellowed there, blended with the wind, crept between the rocks that lined the stream. When the echo reached the sleepy little camp, no one flinched.
Domino opened his eyes. The same blast had surprised them a few days earlier, and the sound had become the new anthem of the area.
The family had entered the Osska Lakes region, moving closer and closer to the capital, Papema. They’d been resting at the exit of a sanctuary when the blast had resounded and alerted all the travelers who weren’t yet aware of the last local news. They had been quickly filled in on the situation.
It was rumored that a crystal deposit of considerable but undefined size—for it was still largely buried underground—had just been discovered nearby, by the Ukatehontasan Lake.
“Another Matron,” had said the keeper of the sanctuary, nose close to the tanned skins Memek offered to his expertise in hope of compensation. “Can you imagine that, one of those things in Torbatt? It’ll bring all the Blessers and their supporters ’round here if it gets out.”
Ero had turned his eyes toward a cloud of black smoke that rose like a tower toward the equally dark, puffy clouds. “This din, it sounds like the gunshot from a pistol.”
“For sure, sounds like it. It’s nothing but the picks of the idiots who gathered around that giant rock. Every time they hit it, it makes this noise. I guess they’ll stop when they all go deaf. The smoke comes from the camp they established there.”
“What are they trying to do?”
“Apart from this never-ending mess, you mean?” had said the other nichan, concentrating on the merchandise. (He’d occasionally glanced furtively at a group of travelers pitching a tent near the sanctuary.) “Some say they’re trying to tear this thing to pieces. Only way to kill it before it manifests itself. They say this is how the Blessers took over the east, by tearing the Matrons to pieces. People around here probably want to kill the rumor before it spreads. Can’t blame them.”
“Do you have an Unaan? What do they think of this initiative?”
“An Unaan? No need for a big word. Our protector came by to check it out. She said there’s no danger. They’re just frightened humans. I get how they feel. We nichans don’t need a Matron, either.”
The man had spat on the ground, a bored pout on his brown face, and traded food for half the skins brought by the Uetos.
Domino had remembered Matta’s lessons. She was a Santig’Nell, one of the Matrons’ daughters, a chosen one. She came from the east, from Laranga, the Sirlhain capital, the exact place where the Blessers had first struck nearly twenty-five years earlier. According to Matta, there remained one Matron in D’Jersqoh, south of the Coroman Continent, across the sea, and two Matrons in Ponsang, the capital of Meishua. And according to the sayings, destroying the usurpers, as they called them, was their divine mission.
Many people considered these powerful crystals to be new Gods, worthy successors. A blasphemy to many others. If a Matron emerged in Torbatt . . . Domino had understood the initiative of the local people without approving it. He pictured them with shovels in one hand to excavate, picks in the other to break up the deposit of inestimable potential. The Matrons were sentient. Matta had described their intelligence as superior to that of the most evolved beings in the world. Instead of destroying such an entity, a creature of the Gods, it would have been better to go east and close the border to block the way to the Blessers. But not everyone possessed the soul of a hunter, and Domino doubted that these Torbs, frightened by the sight of a giant crystal, would be able to repel an impending invasion.
The small group had stayed several days at the sanctuary, using the time to sell the furs they’d hunted, to trade some food. Not enough to their liking, despite Memek’s efforts—no one negotiated with as much verve as she did. Domino had come to her aid with little result. The other travelers clung to their possessions as they did to their own offspring. They probably thought they could get a better deal in Papema.
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