A Poisoned Land (Book 1: Faith, Lies and Blue Eyes)

by Craig P Roberts

  “I did, Owin,” the Mister said with a smile. “It was a wonderful shot.”

  His words made Owin forget for a moment, but as he looked back towards the woods, Leon’s body was face down in the grass. “I killed him.”

  “No, Owin, you saved him.” The Mister smiled warmly. “You saved all of us. Any act done in the name of the Mother is never a sin.” His eyes were unblinking.

  Owin wasn’t sure how long he sat in the grass, wrapped in those old arms but it felt like a very long time. Waves of guilt passed over him and a wrenching feeling deep inside swelled every time he thought of the life he had just taken. The Mister’s words made those waves die to a calm lake.

  He lay face down on his bed, not remembering much about the long stumble through the rolling grass fields back to the pod. The brother he shared his chambers with sat on the bed opposite. Although Owin was face down on his pillow, he felt Rojames’s stare.

  Rojames, or Ro as he was more commonly known, was the closest thing he had to a friend. Except for the Mister, of course. He was taller than Owin with slightly tanned skin and a long face. They were around the same age but Ro was always taller.

  “Did he die straight away?” blurted Ro.

  Owin didn’t answer. How the fuck am I supposed to know if he died straight away? The question made the image of Leon falling and landing on his arrow repeat in his head.

  “If the Mister told you to shoot, then you had to.” Owin could hear his brother trying to comfort him. “It was done in service of the Mother,” Ro continued, unconvincingly.

  Owin sat up, red faced, and looked straight at Ro. “If the Mister told you to slit my throat, would you do it?”

  Ro gave him no answer. All Owin saw was his brother’s blank stare back at him. That look told him more than any words could. He wouldn’t. He thinks I’m a monster.

  The Mister gave them everything. He rescued them as babies and took them away from the false teachings and the false goddesses on the mainland. If it wasn’t for him, they’d be worshiping false gods and catching sickness from the fakes, never having the chance to lay with a true goddess. He gave them shelter, food and water. They would be nothing and know nothing of the Mother if it wasn’t for his teachings. It was his love (and through him the Mother’s love) that made the Mister so important to all of the brothers on the island.

  “You need to eat, Owin,” said Ro.

  There was silence.

  After what could have been hours, Owin heard his brother get up, then the padding of his bare feet on the wooden floor as he left the room. Owin turned over and lay on his back. The pressure off his chest, combined with a sudden thought of the Mister’s words, made him breathe freely and easily for a moment.

  Leon flashed through his mind again. He pulled his top off and reached for his Mother’s Shield. He stared at the sharp pin on the back of the round, bronze charm. The little trinket was used to fix the white wrappings the brothers wore around their waists when they attended teachings. He looked so closely that the sharp end appeared to be slightly rounded. With a shaky hand, he moved it towards his bare chest. He pressed it against his skin until a sharp stab and a bubble of blood made his arm recoil. He gasped. That was just a pin…

  With a deep breath, he stabbed his chest again, dragging it down the length of a finger, leaving a thin red path on his smooth, pale skin. The pain didn’t feel bad—it was as if part of the guilt escaped.

  The thin line of blood gradually turned darker and the droplets crusted over. The red on the pin turned a warm brown and the dark-blue light of dusk dimly lit the snug bedchamber.

  Footsteps came from the hallway outside. Owin knew the sound of them well enough to tell it was the Mister. He moved his hand to cover the cut on his body. The door slowly creaked open and the man’s warmth filled the room.

  “Leon is with the Mother now,” the Mister said in a sure, low voice as he approached the bed. He sat at the end, next to Owin’s feet.

  The thought of Leon being at peace with the Mother was a relief. “And will he be with the goddesses now?” Owin asked. He began to sit up but then remembered the cut he gave himself.

  “Of that I am certain, my young friend,” he said with a smile. However the smile quickly faded from the Mister’s face when his eyes fixed on the bloodstained, Mother’s Shield lying next to Owin’s bed. His eyes narrowed. “You cannot feel guilt for this act, Owin.” As he spoke, he reached for Owin’s arm and lifted it to reveal the cut on his chest. “This will not help. The Mother does not teach you to harm yourself.”

  Owin gave no answer. He didn’t know what to say. And now, looking back, it didn’t feel as if it was himself who had pushed the pin into his skin.

  The Mister placed his hand over the cut. “Mother who created this body, see this blood and heal.”

  After the Mister’s words, a thought crept into Owin’s mind: “If Leon started to disbelieve…if he believed this false goddess, then perhaps he was not accepted by the Mother when he…died.” The words were out before he could stop them.

  He saw hesitation on the Mister’s face. “Owin, a moment’s disbelief will be forgiven by the Mother. Of that, I am certain.” The uncertainty in the Mister’s voice was something Owin had never heard before and it unsettled him.

  He’s just saying this so I feel better. Leon’s gone. I killed him in his moment of doubt and now he’ll spend the rest of eternity in the abyss. It was the place the Mister spoke of where brothers, who did not follow the teachings of the Mother, spent all eternity—naked, alone, with only ice to lay their head upon. He remembered the Mister’s words: “Bitter winds will cut through your bodies. Your fingers and toes will turn black and fall off, only to re-grow and be bitten by frost again. Your member will stiffen and never will you feel the release that it calls for.” The abyss that the Mister spoke of in all teachings, and whenever a brother sinned, was where Owin had condemned Leon to spend all of eternity. The thought sickened him.

  Days passed and sure enough the thin red path on Owin’s chest grew smaller. By the seventh day, it flaked away to nearly nothing and by the ninth day, the Mother had done Her work as the Mister had prayed. His spirit also healed. The Mister prayed with him daily and washed his body in the Mother’s Water. This was a small pool in the forest where the Mister took away sins that the brothers committed. In Owin’s case, it was the Mister’s way of cleansing the conscience, as no transgression had been committed in the eyes of the Mother. The cool water only came up to Owin’s knees. As he stood at the edge of the small lake, the Mister would cup handfuls and splash them onto Owin’s body. This, along with the Mister’s prayers, eased the guilt he felt from killing his brother. It was in the name of the Mother so it cannot be a bad thing.

  In the weeks that followed, Owin didn’t attend the Mister’s teachings where the brothers gathered in the House of the Mother. Owin was granted absence on the basis he adhered to his physical training and did not stray or sin. It was to allow Owin time to recover from the ordeal with Leon in private. However, the young brother was feeling almost normal again. He had come to terms with what had happened. If anything, he felt he had done his brother a kindness.

  He would walk in the forest while the others were in the House of the Mother. The pool was his favorite place. He took off his clothes and waded into the cold water. The moment was perfect. He had no pain. He had no worries. He felt no guilt and he could feel the Mother’s love. The chilly embrace of the pool crept up his body as he walked in deeper and deeper. Mud swallowed his feet and oozed in between his toes. It sucked at them as he lifted his legs to walk further. He paused, letting the surface of the water tickle up and down on his chest.

  Breathing and shutting off his mind, as the Mister had taught him, Owin began to meditate. Through the red back of his eyelids, Leon’s face appeared and it was a happy sight. Holding that picture in his mind, he prayed to the Mother to take Leon to the goddesses and forgive him for his disbelief.

  Allowing his mind to wa
nder freely, it brought him back to a day just after Leon was set free from his physical body. Owin remembered talking to Ro in his bedchamber. “I did the right thing, didn’t I?”

  “We’ve talked about this already, you had no choice,” Ro said, with a break in his voice.

  “He’d gone fucking mad. He was going against everything we’ve been taught.”

  Ro let out a sniffing laugh. “You can’t say Leon was mad. It takes a long time to go nuts. It wasn’t even a quarter moon-turn ago that we were sitting here talking to Leon about his visions and then how he was going to help train you for the trials. Did he seem mad to you then?”

  “No but—”

  “He was completely normal,” said Ro. “Did he sound like he was lying when he shouted to you?”

  Owin shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t remember much.”

  After a long sigh from Ro, there was silence. Everything in the pod was still. The sun went, leaving the occasional soft gust against their window.

  “The Mother is all powerful, yeah? I mean, She created everything and controls everything?” Ro’s question came out of the blue but Owin instantly answered.

  “She doesn’t control everything. She created us all with freedom in our hearts.”

  “Why are we free to do what we want if She punishes us when we doubt Her teachings?”

  Owin could feel his anger building. “Why the fuck are you asking this? It is to test who is worthy of a place with the goddesses. Only brothers who are worthy will ever get to lay with the goddesses,” Owin quoted confidently with an edge of frustration.

  “Why not just create everybody worthy at the start? Then we could all get a bit of—”

  “Look…We can’t begin to understand Her ways!” Owin spat his words through gritted teeth.

  He stood up from his bed and stared at Ro, lying there on top of his bedcovers with his tall groomed hair. The doubter looked into Owin’s eyes as he spoke. “The goddesses used to live among us. Well, not us but others who came before us on the mainland. The Great Poison killed thousands of them. Why?! Why didn’t the Mother just take away the poison? Actually, why the fuck did the Mother allow the Great Poison to happen in the first place?!”

  Owin was getting more and more frustrated. “You know why! There was corruption, greed and the brothers took the goddesses for granted, so the Mother—”

  “—So the Mother killed the goddesses too? And saved a few on an island somewhere in the world and kept the rest for us to enjoy when we die?” There was almost the sound of shaky laughter in Ro’s voice.

  “Yes!” Owin shouted. “And I’m going to make sure I get my place on the Hidden Womb so I can be with them in this life and the next.” He felt a lump in his throat.

  “If the Mother loves you so much, why would She make you kill Leon?” Ro asked unblinkingly, with his jaw hanging loose.

  “She didn’t! I chose to kill him!” The words tasted bitter.

  “He was your friend, you bastard! He was one of us!” Ro punched his pillow as he sat up in bed. Owin suspected his brother wasn’t as accepting of his actions as he first showed but now it was clear.

  “I know he was, but he was mad and the Mister told me it needed to be done!” Owin’s voice shook.

  “Well it must have been the right thing to do then…” Ro threw his hands up in the air. He shook his head.

  “The Mother speaks through the Mister and it is he who guides the brothers,” Owin quoted in his defense.

  “And what makes you think these words are true, Owin?”

  “You’re beginning to sound like Leon…” With a warning look, Owin left the room and walked the narrow wooden hallway of the pod. He sat in the small communal area on the soft seating and hugged his knees close to his chest. The fire burned softly across the room. As he stared into the flames and felt the warmth, he began to feel the cold of the pool around his body again. His thoughts were brought back to the present.

  The cold hit his chest and he realized he had been in the chilly water, meditating longer than planned. With stiff legs, he waded back to the pool’s edge. A brisk wind cut through his shivering body. When he wrapped the soft toweling around his shoulders it felt as if it had been warmed by a fire. He gathered his clothes and made his way on the track that led out of the forest.

  As he left the shelter of the trees, he paused at the edge of the grass. He slipped his chilled legs into his blue cotton trousers and pulled on his soft blue top. The flopping hood hugged and warmed his neck.

  Halfway across the grass, he heard voices ahead. They were laughing and shouting. It was the other brothers returning to their pods after their teachings. When he drew closer, he could make out Ro, Riler and Frazer. He spotted Riler first, of course, because he stood a head higher than Ro, who was quite tall himself. Frazer stood out from the two on either side of him, with his blond hair next to the two brown-haired brothers. His blond brother, Frazer, lived in the other pod but would drift between the two groups, never really fitting into either. They stood on the raised wooden path surrounding the timber pod; its arching grass-covered roof framed them. The sun glinted off the round windows.

  “No, he was more like this ‘ahhhhhh.’” He could hear Riler joking with the others.

  “Nah, it was like he was heavy breathing.” Ro started to make puffing sounds.

  All three of them wore the white wrappings pinned around their waist, using their Mother’s Shields. Owin was only a few steps away from them. Frazer seemed more serious than the other two. “What do you think it felt like? You think he enjoyed it?” Frazer asked, leaning in and grabbing Ro’s shoulder to get his attention.

  The other two looked at each other, cracking smiles. Ro laughed. “Mate, he was obviously enjoying it. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

  “You’ve done it before?!” Frazer beamed and nodded with a wide stare fixed on Ro. He always seemed to eye the other brothers up and down as he talked to them.

  “Yeah, done it four or five times.” Ro shook his head and rolled his eyes. He looked at his reflection in one of the circular windows of the pod, fixing his hair after a few stray locks blew out of place in the breeze.

  Owin saw through Ro’s show-off smile. “No you haven’t, you lying bastard. And if you have, then you’ve sinned and you’ll end up going to the abyss. A brother should not indulge unless in the House of the Mother.” He threw in a quote at the end.

  “Fuck off,” Ro mumbled as he barged past, followed by Riler.

  Frazer remained behind on the path next to the pod. “Where have you been?” he asked, inspecting Owin with his usual sweeping but friendly eyes. Frazer was the same height as Owin but wasn’t quite so skinny and had more of a muscular frame, proving to give him an advantage whenever they sparred hand-to-hand.

  “At the pool,” Owin replied. What’s it to you? His blond brother unsettled him at times. When he wanted to be left alone, Frazer would often be there asking him questions, wanting to tag along. He was probably the friendliest out of every brother on the island though. Owin tolerated him and sometimes enjoyed having somebody on his side all the time.

  “Well next time you’re going there, tell me and we can go together.” Frazer smiled. “Anyway, I’m going back to my pod. Saul needs me to help him with something. I’ll see you later at supper?” he asked.

  Owin had taken his meals alone in his bedchamber ever since Leon’s death. Tonight, he planned to eat with his brothers again. “Sure, yeah. Bye.” Owin tried to sound friendly but wasn’t sure it came across that way. He turned and walked to the front of the pod. Pushing open the round, heavy door, he went inside and walked down the hallway. Once in his bedchamber, he threw himself face down onto the bed.

  He had his supper in the main hall of the House of the Mother that evening in a daze. It was the first time he was with the entire host since everything had changed. Two long tables with benches on each side filled the long room. They all buzzed around him at lightning speed; arguing, laughing, sne
ezing, coughing, burping, farting and occasionally banging into his chair as he ate. He was managing to eat more these past few days; his stomach calling for food again after wanting very little since the death of Leon.

  He was slowly returning to normal and the routine he had known his whole life was gradually slipping back into place.

  In the morning, he would wake and stretch with Ro. They would walk to the House of the Mother for breakfast in the main hall. Sitting and eating, Owin would gaze up at the hangings that dropped from the high roof. Four hung over each table and each had an image of a goddess. They wore long dresses, that showed off their shape. Owin would stare at the one in the green dress. She had dark skin and big tits. Her dress revealed her stomach and down nearly to her sacred place. He always wondered what she sounded like and what it would feel like to squeeze her bosoms.

  After breakfast, the brothers would head back to their pods to get dressed for training. They would wear the blue fighting jacket of the Mother and loose blue cotton trousers. Training would take place all over the island: the grass fields, the ring, the forest, and even in the House of the Mother. The Mister wanted them to be able to fight and defend themselves in any situation. Owin preferred the ring because that’s where they would actually use the techniques they were taught. It was there, at the trials, that the brothers could display their strengths to the Mother. Most trainings were a sweaty blur for Owin. The Mister would command them to do certain exercises and movements and they would perform them until they dropped. Sometimes he would stop to teach them new techniques—ways to lock somebody’s arm or to pressure point a part of the body, but then the beasting would continue.

  After washing and changing their clothes, they would return to the House of the Mother for lunch. The Mister would normally choose two brothers who had impressed him at training to sit with him at the top table in the main hall.