The Nichan Smile

by C. J. Merwild

  He swore through the pain.

  How could something like that happen? If he considered the knife Ero had put in his hands a disgrace, being attacked by a bear and losing to it was deserving of death. No nichan had a skin thick enough to endure such shame.

  Ero and Memek would soon return. They had to.

  Domino tried to get up. He dismissed the possibility. He was already weak, completely dizzy. He pressed harder against his wound. If he called his uncle, if he shouted to bring him back, would that be enough? Would he risk attracting all the hungry animals in the area?

  I’m going to bleed to death and die like an idiot.

  Gus.

  Domino couldn’t die here. Not like this—disgraced, helpless, empty of what made him nichan. And alone.

  Gus.

  He wanted to see him so badly.

  “No,” he whimpered, still pushing on his legs, which refused to carry him, and in a last spark of hope, he screamed his uncle’s name. It was all that separated him from his end.

  He shouted it again and again, pressing ever harder on his hatched belly, calling until his vocal cords snapped.

  “Domino!”

  Memek. Her silhouette stood high up in the darkness. Domino called again. Another dark figure appeared. Ero. With the same impulse, both nichans threw themselves down the slope. As they reached him, Domino pushed away the urge to let go and fall asleep. He wasn’t saved yet; he had to keep fighting.

  “By the Faces!” Memek cried out, adding her hand over Domino’s. “What did that? A dohor?”

  Ero knelt on the other side and briefly examined his nephew’s shoulder. “Who cares,” he said. “We have to get him a healer. We have to go back to the last village.”

  “You think they’ll have a healer?” said his daughter.

  “A—a bear,” Domino stammered, struggling to look up at his uncle.

  “What?”

  “It was . . . a bear.”

  “That’s impossible,” Memek said.

  “Don’t let me die,” Domino growled as she moved her hand away to take off her shawl and roll it into a ball.

  Domino recognized her intentions but couldn’t take his hand off his abdomen. More than ever, he wanted his blood to stay inside. But Memek’s iron fist forced him to uncover the wound. She immediately covered it with her shawl.

  “Don’t let me die,” Domino repeated.

  “Why didn’t you transform?” Ero’s anger was almost a caress compared to the pain. He put Domino’s good arm around his neck. “Why are you so stubborn?”

  “I can’t do it. I’ve tried. I can’t do it.”

  The pain in his arm soon climbed to his head. Well, as long as he was in pain, he would know he was alive.

  His uncle spoke. Memek did too. Nothing made sense, yet he clung to the shapeless words floating around him. He just concentrated on the pain as well—no way to ignore that bitch.

  He was lifted from the ground, and the rest of time and the world presented themselves to him intermittently, in the form of fragmented lights, smells, and cries.

  The lapping of the water. The scent of rain. The freshness of the rain. The voices of men. Knocks against the wood. Muffled responses. The creaking of a door. More voices. A plea. Memek? The stench of alcohol. Moaning and moaning and moaning, more and more timid. His own voice.

  Then he ran out of strength and fainted.

  X X V I

  Domino dreamed of Gus. He dreamed of that day when they were eight or nine years old, when they’d decided that their world wasn’t quite right.

  It was a challenge, a way, once again, to cut themselves off from everyone. From Mora, who didn’t want to play with them anymore because Belma offered him things that only grown-ups understood. From Ero, who pretended not to see them but who Domino and Gus still feared. From Beïka, who jumped at the slightest opportunity to mess with them. From Matta, who filled their heads with lessons that would never teach them to be strong and to fight the Blessers.

  So they’d decided to live in the woods. They were still within the village walls. No houses on the horizon. Domino could only smell his own scent and his friend’s. They gathered wood for a fire, found berries and fruits, and stocked them in a lotus leaf they’d picked by the river. They counted them. Enough for two. They marked the border of their territory with stones. No one would enter, not relatives, not wild animals, not even those dohors everyone was talking about although the two children wondered if the thing wasn’t just a lie meant to keep kids in line.

  They spent their day preparing for a life where there would be only them. Gus smiled, moving the stones to reduce their territory. Domino agreed and smiled just as much. They didn’t need that much space. Sitting face to face, they ate the berries, throwing them into each other’s mouths. Then they engaged in a mock hunt, Gus spreading his wing open to act like birds of prey while Domino made himself as small as possible, running naked through the wilderness, using his skirt as a shelter whenever Gus approached, laughing. Gus laughed so hard. Domino was happy.

  The day waned; the temperature dropped. They lay on the ground, close together. Above them, the sky soon disappeared, swallowing the world, only sparing the warm bubble surrounding their bodies.

  “You should be my partner,” Domino said. “Would you like that? Being with me always?” He’d never asked, neither that day, nor the ones that came after.

  Next to him, silence stretched for seconds, hours, years, myriads of lives. Then, “You left me,” said Gus.

  Domino turned his head, but he was alone.

  He opened his eyes, and flames blurred with tears burned his eyes. He lay on his back, his head tilted to the side. For a moment he stood still, bathing in the heat of the fire. Then the memories resurfaced like a mudslide, pouring over his exhausted mind. A cold tremor washed over him.

  The bear, the fall.

  He looked around and wiggled. He was inside a tent. The canvas hung over him in brown curves. A brazier in the center, different from those used by his clan. This one was narrower and screened. On the flames was a kettle. Domino rolled on his bed to widen his field of vision. The pain racked him. He shuddered and clung to the sheets on which he lay.

  “Hey, be still,” someone said to him.

  Domino followed the voice, his head pivoting. A scarf held his right arm firmly against his body. He remembered the alarming protruding joint of his dislocated shoulder.

  Memek was next to him.

  Her eyes tired, her hair loose, his cousin pursed her lips in a thin line. The delicate loops of her tattoos appeared more clearly to Domino. Triangles outlined with delicate petals. Honorary marks were supposed to mean something about the dead and the living who wore them. What was the meaning of the black shapes covering her skin?

  “You’re so stupid, Domino,” she whispered in a tense breath, bringing him to the harsh reality.

  “Fuck you too,” he replied without thinking, tired of receiving the same insults over and over again for so many years.

  To his surprise, Memek smiled and laughed lightly, lowering her head. When she lifted it up, her mismatched eyes shone with tears. She reached out her hand and gently tousled Domino’s curls. Such tenderness from her took the young man’s breath away. He and Memek had never been close, yet at that moment she seemed as worried and relieved as if they’d come out of the same womb.

  “What are we going to do with you?” she said in a low voice, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  He took a breath. “I tried to transform myself. I’ve been trying for weeks. I just can’t do it. I don’t know why I can’t. I just—”

  “I know. You told us.”

  “I did?”

  “You cried it, actually, while we were bringing you here. You kept repeating it, as if it could save your ass.”

  So Ero knew. Domino tried to rise to a sitting position, but the dizziness swaying in his head sent him back to his pillow. He swallowed with a grimace. His saliva was as irritating as sand. “Where
’s your father?”

  “He’s gone back to the camp to get our things. He should be back soon.”

  “What’s this place?”

  “Somewhere safe, with one of our own. The human healer in the village wouldn’t help us. ‘I don’t know how to treat nichans,’ he said. My father almost broke his door down. Some travelers gathered to send us away. And then Feanim opened his tent and offered to stitch you up.”

  “Feanim?”

  “Well, someone had to get your shit together since you were too busy leaking from every hole,” a nichan said.

  He stopped in front of the fire to stir the contents of his kettle with a wooden spoon. He looked Ero’s age. He had short hair tucked back, a slender figure and neck. He turned his head toward Domino, revealing gray eyes half hidden under thick glasses that narrowed his gaze. Like his body, his face was thin and hollow. His brown skin was tanned by the sun.

  “Don’t worry,” the man continued as he approached. “I’ve done this all my fucking life. Your guts aren’t the first I’ve had to shove back in place. Don’t give me that stupid look. You’re still breathing, aren’t you?”

  He then lifted the soiled cloth covering Domino’s left flank. Domino held his breath as the fibers stuck to the crystallized blood pulled at his swollen skin. He released a heavy sigh of pain then was able to see the damage the bear had caused. Four long, parallel cuts now sewn with clean, even sutures. This Feanim knew what he was doing, indeed.

  Finally looking at the rest of the circular tent, Domino discovered the clean, folded cloths on a hanging shelf, the bottles filled with various substances, the metal tools, most of which were unknown to him.

  “Your first stitches,” said Feanim. “You’ll live to celebrate them.”

  Domino looked at him, baffled by this remark. Feanim bent over to take a closer look at his wound over his round spectacles. “You’re covered in a lot of scars, kid. They’re nice, clean. Not a damn stitch in them. Whoever healed you would have a few things to teach me. Just when I thought I was good.”

  He finally looked up at Domino. His expression showed nothing but justified weariness at this time of night.

  “Yeah,” Domino said. He didn’t have to tell him about Gus, so he refrained. Next to him, Memek hadn’t flinched.

  With that thought intertwined in the mess of his memory, Domino rested his head and closed his eyes. The image of the bear jumping in his face immediately came to mind. The beast had approached him. It had…

  Natso.

  Domino opened his eyes. Everything was suddenly so much clearer. The truth struck him harder than a punch: in the last few months, Domino had managed to get close to his nephew. The little one hadn’t run away from his uncle, where all children had always had the reflex to do so over the years. Domino hadn’t thought about it, or maybe he’d purposely ignored the reality, too happy to be a part of Natso’s life. Now he understood.

  The nichan in him was gone. Gone.

  Did I do that? Did I kill the nichan in me by blocking it out all these years?

  Such a thing couldn’t be possible. Someone couldn’t just decide not to be anymore what the Gods had made them, right?

  I’m still nichan, Domino thought as Ero’s voice echoed, low and deep. “I brought this back for you.”

  “I hunt my own meat, you know,” Feanim said. “No need to be a hunter to get a snack.”

  “Think of it as a thank-you gift.”

  “You shouldn’t have bothered. Big change isn’t so bad either, you know.”

  Feanim looked around him with a long sigh and abandoned the dead hare hanging limp in his hand next to the fire.

  Close to him, Ero was dripping with water. The rain still drummed against the tent canvas. The man got rid of his wet belongings, wrung out his beard—which had thickened over the past few weeks—and quickly laid his eyes on the camp bed where Domino was resting.

  “It’s late. Go back to sleep,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ero sighed and looked away, taking off his rain-darkened clothes. “I’m tired, Domino. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  When Domino woke, Ero and Memek were nowhere to be seen. Neither was Feanim. Sharp gusts of wind shook the sides of the tent. The timid daylight intermittently pierced the darkness. Domino, himself heckled by a shiver, stood. He pressed his hand against his bandage, as if to make sure his guts wouldn’t spill out through the sutures. He hadn’t slept this much in years. Even his seasons hadn’t worn him down as much. Yet he didn’t feel as awake as he would have liked. His vision was blurry as he looked around, his mouth pasty as he swallowed through his parched throat.

  As slowly as possible, he pivoted on the camp bed. A grimace and a furtive thought. After what had happened the day before, could Ero and his daughter have left without him?

  They wouldn’t dare . . .

  Voices seeped through the thick tent, and Domino listened. One was unknown, tense.

  “Everyone agreed to this. The other nichan told me so when he left. One day should be enough to pack everything up, right?”

  And another that the young man had memorized in no time. Feanim’s. “And you think I can carry all this crap on my back? Do I look like a damn turtle?”

  “Please, be reasonable. We’re only trying to prevent trouble,” said the other. His heart was human. It beat hard and fast, all wrapped up in the characteristic breath of low stamina.

  Like Gus, every time he tried to keep up with Domino’s long strides.

  “You be reasonable,” said Feanim as Domino stood.

  Wearing only pants, a sling supporting his arm, and the many strips protecting his wounds, he walked through the tent with a not-so-steady pace that kept shaking him from left to right. He opened the entrance. The midday light fell on his eyelids, forcing them to crease. Close by were a pair of men. Beyond them lay a small village covering the side of a hill. Domino and his family had left that place two days earlier. This emergency had delayed them.

  Feanim, turning his back on Domino, continued, “We have a wounded boy in there. You would send him to the wilds? With his guts out? You want him dead or what? Give this kid time to recover. He can’t even stand up. So walk . . . ”

  The human facing him—a man with round cheeks reddened by the cool breeze—looked up at Domino, who stood at the tent’s opening, and sighed.

  Feanim glanced over his shoulder and his bored look turned darker than the sky above their heads. “Fuck me! Your timing is a real problem, kid.”

  “He seems fine to me. You nichans are rough-skinned,” said the human. “Tomorrow morning, then. Do not force the kivhan to visit you himself.”

  “Or what? What’s he gonna do about it?”

  The human kept his mouth shut and walked away from them, his brown hair tossed back at the top of his head by the wind. Feanim sighed and took off his glasses to polish them off on the corner of his sleeve.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Domino said in a hoarse voice. “What’s going on?” He already had a vague idea.

  “We made too much noise last night. And that mess tends to attract partisans like shit attracts flies. They’re kicking us out.”

  It was Domino’s turn to sigh. “You too?”

  “Aren’t we nichans popular these days? I didn’t plan to stay here. Don’t particularly like the view. But leaving tomorrow . . . Fuck, why did I sell my wheelbarrow?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll get another one. I’m used to it. We all make mistakes. The Gods have a nice sense of humor. They probably thought it’d be more interesting if we were all a bunch of idiots.” Feanim looked down and walked back to the tent. “And you’re not responsible for everyone’s problems, so quit apologizing all the time. Keep that for when you truly mess up.”

  “I was attacked by a bear, because I never learned to transform,” said Domino. He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to tell the healer.

  Feanim looked him up and down, frowning. “What’s wrong with you,
kid?”

  Domino laughed and grimaced as his belly contracted. “At this point, what isn’t?”

  Feanim returned the laugh. “Well, for sure you’re a strong beast. With all the blood you left behind you, I don’t know how you’re even standing right now.”

  “You heard the man. Us nichans are rough-skinned.”

  “Yes, and my ass is made of goose meat.” Feanim sighed again and threw a glance over his shoulder, toward the village. “The Gods really tried. They made us look human to fit with the others, but in the end . . . Might not be possible for the lot of us to live together.”

  Domino trembled as another gust of wind swept his bare skin and penetrated in the tent. Would Gus have agreed with Feanim? He who had grown among nichans, who had let Domino cross the threshold of his intimacy.

  “Maybe everyone just needs to try harder,” Domino said.

  Feanim shook his head, eyelids heavy above his steel-gray eyes. “Quit being naive too, kid. There’s a reason why people don’t try.” He folded back the entrance of the tent and stood at Domino’s side, close enough for every single wrinkle of his face to show. “They don’t try because they don’t want to.”

  Before leaving, Ero asked the healer how long it would take Domino to recover. Sitting on the bed, letting Feanim free his arm from his sling, Domino looked up at his uncle. Ero continued to ignore him. Unable to decipher his uncle’s expression, Domino looked away, giving up on receiving sympathy from his chief.