“Tell me! From the beginning.”
“The beginning, yes. Where did I stop? Yes! I killed Blue. I did, I am pretty sure I did. And then she walks up to me; she kisses me. She weeps.”
“Aneria?”
“No, no! Her! Sah-Ouna. Her lips touch my cheek. She whispers the words:
“‘Victory, Da-Ren! Victory is yours.’
“‘Victory!’ I just repeat the word, knees trembling, arm bleeding.
“‘Victory has a heavy price, my son.’
“She places the bow and the quiver at my feet. Why? Why the bow? Is it a gift for me? I stand there not knowing what to do. I hear young voices behind me. A girl calls my name. I don’t want to turn, but she shouts it louder. Children. I turn to look, I barely make half a turn, and my eyes burn with poison. Seven children. They are completely unsuspecting, not tied or beaten; they just walk to the center of the arena, surrounded by unarmed Reghen and Ouna-Mas. They join the celebration of my victory.
“‘No, no, go back. Not this,’ I mumble.
“Thousands of my tribesmen up on the stands wave their red cloths and cheer for my victory. The children cheer as they recognize my face. They raise their small fists to salute me too. Skullface and the seven Rods with the maulers get closer. More Rods are nocking arrows and aiming at me.
“Sah-Ouna she speaks her words: ‘Sacrifice, my son. I know, it hurts. You may aim the arrows at the maulers, the Rods, even me. You kill some more, then you die, and the children will know. The Rods will bring more dogs. And the children will suffer and scream. An unbearable spectacle. Unworthy of Goddess or warrior. Or father. Unworthy of a Tribe betrayed. You decide. She demands sacrifice. Not murder. No more. Honor the Goddess. Silence the screams.’ She backtracks, her palm raised in a farewell sign, and slips behind the Rods.
“I look at the children, then at the Rods, the barking dogs. I stand between them, once more separating the wolf from the lamb. They close the gap between us.
“‘It ends now,’ shouts Skullface.
“Promise me, protect the children. Zeria’s words.
“They don’t know. They think that they’re joining a game. They gave them wooden swords. What can I tell them? Two of them, boys with long black hair, are already going at each other in a mock fight, shrouded with joy in the middle of the field.”
Da-Ren stops to find his breath.
“What was in the jar?” I ask.
He curls up into a corner again. I’ll wait for him, for the answers. Baagh has covered his eyes with his palms; everyone else stares in disbelief.
“What was in the jar, Da-Ren?” I repeat.
He continues.
“‘Gather, children. All seven next to each other,’ I say.
“Finally, the spectators understand what is about to happen. The cheers become a maddening murmur, and then silence falls. All silent now. The silence scares them; the silence makes the barking of the dogs ten times louder.
“‘Hey, look at me, child. Don’t be afraid. This is just a small trial. A game. To win, you must close your eyes. Then magic!
“‘What magic?’ she asks.
“‘The Forest Witch, butterflies. Don’t open your eyes, whatever you hear. To win. Promise.’
“‘Yes!’ all seven answer as one. One voice, in the middle, is stronger than the rest.
“They must not know. They must not see. The Rods silence the beasts.
“‘Last chance, Da-Ren,’ shouts the Rod.
“Sah-Ouna comes out of the darkness and shows her face again. She stares at me, then at the bow and quiver. She knew my fate before anyone else; I am her worthy son on the final night. They are seven winters old. I count. I can grasp six arrows with my left hand against the bow. Always six. Nock, pull, shoot, all with the right hand, exhale, nock, pull, shoot again. It will be very fast. But still. One child will remain last, standing, listening. She must not open her eyes. She’s in the middle, one step in front of the other children.
“She is the Pack leader, my sweet!”
“Did you…the children, Da-Ren? No!”
He can’t look at me anymore. Like a sinner repenting in the gates of hell, he is on his knees.
“The maulers. Have you ever seen them, what they do? In the Sieve? Seven Rods. Seven beasts. Seven children.”
“You could have—”
“She opened her eyes, Euse…”
He stops and drowns in his tears. He crawls and embraces my knee. Why am I still standing strong? Why can I still listen to this? It brings me shame that I am still standing, unlike all others.
“She didn’t keep her promise. She saw me, aiming, shooting.”
What a curse that I can still ask questions!
“Did you kill the last Sson?”
He gets up after many breaths, at the first break of dawn, calmer than before. He can turn from madness to calmness in an instant, I’ve seen him doing it before. He has no more tears. He gives me a puzzled look.
“What does it matter how many Ssons I killed, Eusebius? No. One can never kill all the monsters. Not even a monster can kill all the monsters.”
“What was in the jar, Da-Ren?”
“I brought the offering. What Baagh asked for.”
“Do you feel proud, Eusebius?” asks Baagh.
“I don’t feel—”
“Or a fool, because a fool you are,” says Baagh, banging his fist once on the cedar table. “How many times did he tell you the truth in this story? More than you cared to decipher. You’re not listening; you’re torturing him,” Baagh yells at me in a rage. “Just yesterday. Find that chapter, Nathan. Named: The Heart of the Innocent. You read those words, my words, just yesterday, Eusebius, I was shivering as you were reading. I thought you knew. I thought you understood that no one else should. How could you not know after all those years?”
I read Baagh’s words from that chapter:
“Did you know that the ancient witches would burn a heart whenever they prayed for a goddess’s favor? It is the strongest of magic, a heart; but not any heart. It has to be the heart of the innocent,” said Baagh to me once, when we were sailing across the sea. “Seven lives, seven hearts, the strongest of magic. So they thought. To defeat death, resurrect the dead. Anastasis.”
How could I not have known for so long? The monks are staring at me now. Da-Ren’s face has turned hard as iron and stone again. He cried as much as a man could cry in one night. His tears have all dried up, and he keeps speaking as in a trance now, not looking at anyone.
“No, I didn’t kill the Sson. Do you really want to know what I did?”
“No, I don’t want to know anything. But I don’t have a choice anymore.”
“I opened the first body. Still warm. The sternum broke with two sounds; I hear them every night. I took out the heart; in my hand. The crowd was roaring. I still hear them too. Then the second. They’d never seen that before. It seemed like such an act of bravery to them. By the third heart, no one was cheering anymore. I didn’t stop. The brave warriors froze in terror. Silence fell once more. All I could hear was the sound of my own hands. They always keep jars next to the altar. Wine, milk, blood, and one with honey. I took the one with the wine, walked all the way and gave it to Malan.
“‘Drink! Victory! Sacrifice, Khun.’
“I took the one with the honey. I put in the offering for you. The seven.”
“Did he really let you go?”
“Malan? Yes. What darker revenge could he have dreamed? I swear that he looked sad as I approached him and offered him the wine. The greatest man I’d ever known. The greatest monster. Uncarved together, since children. What cruel revenge could he inflict upon me other than that I’m still alive? Kill me? Pity not the dead for they sleep peacefully in the pyre. Have you ever seen a dead man get up and scream? As I do every night? Because I wake up every night. And I must wake up every morning. I don’t even have the strength to cut my hands off at the wrist. Because it would be weakness, not strength. Because I don’t d
eserve such peace. Do you know why I decided to stay here all those years? Because it is the worst punishment I can inflict upon myself. There is nothing to do in this desolate rock of salt and stone. No one to love, no one to fight, no horse to ride. There is only one thing to do. Suffer. Suffer the remembrance of the past. That’s the only thing I deserve.”
“Why did Malan let you live after what happened at White Doe?”
“Oh, poor Eusebius. You still don’t know the Story you wrote, you just passed over it, but we must stop here now. Leave the rest hidden for the monks who will copy it after you to decipher.”
“I can’t believe that he would let you go. I don’t believe anything anymore.”
“But you wrote it in that first chapter of yours, Eusebius. I told you right up front. When I spoke to you about the first time I ever saw Sah-Ouna. Find the chapter named: Your Own Heart. At the very beginning of our Story. I told you right there. How do you defeat the Demon, Eusebius? I told you because I saw it. I did it.”
Nathan is searching with his candle. Like a madman he is looking through the codices, a smile of joy on his face; for him, this is all amusement. He finds it there, what Da-Ren had told me to scribe on one of the first codices. How do you defeat the Demon?
“The Demon always looks you in the eye. And she knows all she needs.”
She? The Demon is a She?
The Greentooth continued.
Never in the heart. She cannot bear that. If you want to defeat the Demon, you must rip out your own heart and offer it to her. Then she will fall on her knees and sing her grieving song to you. And that will be her end and yours as you both sink to the bottom of the Blackvein River, together, in the last embrace.”
He had told me what happened a thousand times, but I never dared to listen. The heart, the jar. I erased them. I never asked about Aneria. In my dreams she is all grown up, she swirls in a red dress, dancing in the spring fields of Lenos, poppies up to her knees.
“You see now, Eusebius, Malan is not the One. He is just another powerless child of the Sieve. Someone else.”
Yes, someone else. I understand now.
“Did Sah-Ouna let you go? In front of everyone?”
The first bird of the daylight dares to step onto the sill and whispers: “No matter how much death your stories speak of, I will sing only of summer.”
“Sah-Ouna came again and embraced me one last time after I put the offering into the jar. She knelt next to me and sang. The songprayers. I finally remembered them, Eusebius. The Witch sang them next to me, in my ear, and the Wolfhowl flooded with the song of the Ouna-Mas. She then took me in her arms, her hands so cold, pressing hard. Her eyes were dead; our brethren were dead. I had ripped out my own heart, the Tribe’s, hers. I had defeated the Demon in the Final Battle. My victory, an unspeakable sacrifice.
“Don’t look in the codex, Nathan, for the song of the Feast of Spring, of Selene. I will sing it to you. I know it now.
O Goddess, sweet and beautiful,
come listen to your children.
The Sun has hidden from the Sky,
the black star shocks the darkland.
The red-eyed eagle flies blind,
his blood rains on the gold steppe.
The man bewails for his horse,
the woman mourns her offspring.
O Goddess, bright and powerful,
now stay with us this night.
The darkness cries the sorrow’s song,
the fear rips our loins.
Bring back Selene’s gift to us,
we beg you to reveal her.
And I will bring as sacrifice,
a young heart of my own blood.
“One heart, Eusebius. That was what I could not recall, why my prayers failed. They all knew the sacrifice, Eusebius. Even I who had forgotten knew. Your Cross Sorcerer, when I asked him for the first time, Sah-Ouna, Enaka, and all your gods in the sky asked for the same thing. An innocent heart. I hope that they are satisfied now. I hope they’re filled with joy and new life. Maybe now they’ll finally help me.”
There was nothing else.
I, Eusebius, had written the story of Darhul, Sah-Ouna, and the Drakon. I had uncovered all the demons in their true story, not in their own half stories. The one story that binds them all together. The price? Somewhere along the way my God drowned, lost to me forever.
I turned to Nathan.
“Behold! We found the beginning and the end you were searching for. And it has dawned.”
A dark day.
Apocrypha XII.
My Son
As the One Mother heard the Legends, Chapter XII
“Did you really call him ‘son,’ Mother? Out there tonight? Did you?”
“How do you know that, Asimea?”
“The Rods who were down in the arena with you. One spoke.”
“Was it hard? Is that what you ask? It was a dagger through my heart. But the truth always is. That ninestar man, he finally succeeded where I have failed for so long. He tamed the Tribe, fulfilling a destiny he never accepted but couldn’t escape. He did what I always wanted, he drove us far away from the Blackvein, back to the steppe. He took the revenge we always dreamed of, and yet we never dared achieve. For that, he deserves to be called ‘my son’ even if that was only for one night.”
“But he paid a price unlike no other. Tonight, my guts hurt, my heart aches, I don’t think I’ll get any sleep for a long time. Those children tonight…”
“He paid the price like all the others, Asimea. Like I did when I had to sacrifice my daughter—she was the same age when she died. Like you do every day when you watch your only son become a longskull warrior, someone who doesn’t even know you. Like the price I’ll pay again. Pity him not, Asimea. For almost every father and mother, north and south of this river have suffered the same and more. Khun or peasant. This man, Da-Ren, was fortunate. His sacrifice meant something. No more wars, no more massacres.”
“What do you mean, Mother? When you said ‘the price you’ll pay again.’”
Sah-Ouna held the wooden cup of the belladonna, and her hands trembled uncontrollably as she sat next to the hearth.
“It must be done, Asimea. At Malan’s wedding. If we fail or are betrayed, we’ll burn, but there is no choice. Malan cannot lead us. Not anymore.”
“Is this what you truly wish? Do you want to poison him?”
“I know it hurts you, him being the father of your child and my grandson, but it must be done, Asimea.”
Poor witch, you never guessed the truth and you never will.
“And then?”
“Then, we’ll bring the auguries, utter the prophecies. Lead the Tribe back to the steppe. When the time comes, my grandson will be Khun. You’ll make it so. But my only son, the life of my loins is dying. His mind has rotted, and he has no love in him. No other love than for wine and for himself. He is gone, lost to us forever.”
“Do you want me to do it?”
“No, it is not fair to you. It is not your burden. I have to; I will.”
“Your secrets are sealed with me forever, First Witch.”
“Not forever. All stories scream to be told. Once I die, when the time is right, tell them. Find those who can write and tell them. About us, about my son.”
XCV.
Three Lives and Seven Deaths
Island of the Holy Monastery, Thirty-Sixth Summer.
According to the Monk Eusebius
Locusts. They descended upon the sun-scorched fields, countless of them, spreading like black cloaks of death. For two summers, they ravaged the few crops of the island, devoured every leaf, every blade of grass. The peasants, young and old, fought with rugs, hoes, and shovels to defend their plots. But the dark-winged swarm would not stop; they got into the screaming mouths of the old and ate the eyeballs of the young. They’d raid the island for a few days, then be lost for weeks or months, and return once life and hope sprouted anew to feed once more.
Only now, in the first
month of this summer, did God finally send the rosy starlings to save the farmers. Flocks of rose-beaked, rose-breasted starlings filled the sky. The peasants and the monks always called them holybirds. “Locust Hunter the Rhodochrous,” is their name in the ancient scrolls. They too had flown in black flocks from the south, following the locusts from the holy land of Zeev.
Not one locust will survive the holybirds.
The few remaining crops will be saved. Just now—a little before the pirates arrive and the farmers abandon the island forever—God sent the holybirds to save the crops. Now, when they are worthless. A miracle!
Da-Ren had said once, “The gods created us, so they’d have someone to laugh about.”
The holybirds announced the last day. Their black feathery heads and their soft rose-colored breasts filled the Castlemonastery at the first light of dawn. Their song everywhere.
“Your time is over, men, take your words and your gods away, load them on to your boat and leave. Those of you who stay here will die before sunset.”
The monks froze at the words of Da-Ren’s truth, but instead of making haste, they remained a little longer, obliged to give an answer, to make a last wise remark.
The First Elder sat on the bench, grim and tired and turned his head toward Da-Ren, speaking the first kind words in four years:
“You stopped the savages. Alone. Your sacrifice is unbearable, but God recognizes it amidst all of your crimes.”
“And what reward does God have for me? He never helped me,” said Da-Ren.
“He will offer you peace.”
“When? By twilight, I will find it on my own.”
“To share your story, that in itself is peace,” Baagh said.
“You fooled me, Baagh. That’s not why I came here, to tell stories.”
Drakon Book IV: Butterfly Page 31