by J. Naomi Ay
The Two Moons of Rehnor
Book 1
The Boy who Lit up the Sky
J. Naomi Ay
Published by Ayzenberg, Inc.
Copyright 2012, 2013, 2014 Ayzenberg, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
070114
Cover Design by Robert W. Cabell
Also by
J. Naomi Ay
The Two Moons of Rehnor Series
The Boy who Lit up the Sky, Book 1
My Enemy’s Son, Book 2
Of Blood and Angels, Book 3
Firestone Rings, Book 4
The Days of the Golden Moons, Book 5
Golden's Quest, Book 6
Metamorphosis, Book 7
The Choice, Book 8
Treasure Hunt, Book 9
Space Chase, Book 10
Imperial Masquerade, Book 11
Rivalry, Book 12
Novella Collection
Lydia's Dance
Meri
King of the Streets
Taner's Running Game
Diridan's Daughter
Cassia's Favor
Thad's Mistakes
Space Doctor
Big Red
Time Tripping Adventures
Black Gold
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Meri
Chapter 2 – Taner
Chapter 3 – Rucia
Chapter 4 – Taner
Chapter 5 – Meri
Chapter 6 – Moira
Chapter 7 – Sorkan
Chapter 8 – Taner
Chapter 9 - Berkan
Chapter 10 - Taner
Chapter 11 – Mariya
Chapter 12 – Taner
Chapter 13 – Tuman
Chapter 14 – Tuman
Chapter 15 – Berkan
Chapter 16 – Tuman
Chapter 17 – Katie
Chapter 18 – Mariya
Chapter 19 – Katie
Chapter 20 – Meri
For Mimi & Marty
I saved this one for you.
I didn't know why until it was done.
1
Meri
"What have you got there?" I asked Sister Moon.
"A pot of gold," she cackled holding up a little purse and shaking it. It jingled with heavy coins.
"No," I said reaching for the baby in her arms. "Who is this?"
"A Karut." She easily relinquished him to me. I peeled back the blanket and looked at the little face.
"Aren't you pretty?" I stroked the soft cheek. "You're sure he's a Karut? He's so pale."
"Maybe he's a half-breed," she replied, already counting the coins. "So many good Mishnese girls giving themselves to Karut men after poor Lydia was forced to do it. I suspect we'll be getting a lot more just like him."
"Maybe," I agreed, stroking the baby's tuff of silky black hair. "He's sweet all the same. Does he have a name?"
"Senya."
"Senya," I repeated.
"Now don't you go taking special heart to this little rat," Sister Moon scolded me as she tossed the coins back in the purse. "The same will happen to him as the rest of them."
"Maybe he'll get adopted by a nice family," I said wistfully. "Look what long eyelashes he has."
"Nobody will want a Karut," she snorted. "He'll be here with the rest of the nasties until he runs off and gets himself killed on the street. Get yourself back to work now. Put the baby in the baby room and go check the one year olds' buckets."
"Yes Ma'am." The baby put his little fist in his mouth. "Can I give him a bottle first? He's hungry."
Sister Moon shrugged. "Be quick about it."
"Thank you, Ma'am." I curtseyed and hurried the baby to the baby room where I could get a bottle out of the warmer and sit for a moment before I had to dump all the potty buckets. Twice daily I had to circle through the one year olds' room here in the Old Mishnah Orphan Home where twenty babies sat naked in chairs, eating, sleeping and pooping at will. I spent about two minutes with each of them, wiping them hopefully before they broke out in rash, putting ointment on their rashes and hugging them all for just a moment before I must put them back down and move on to the next. By the time they graduated on to the two year old room, they were allowed to wear pants and shirts, sleep on cots and eat at small tables. If they messed their pants for whatever reason, they were sent back to the one year old room for a day which was such a punishment that rarely would they mess again.
The baby room was my favorite place though. It was quiet and warm in there, and I could sit in a rocker and cuddle as many little bundles as I had time for. The older ones stood in their cribs and waved to me as I came in. Some babbled out a few nonsense sounds and some smiled showing me two or four tiny teeth.
"Hello babies," I called to them.
"Hello Meri," Sister Lena called back. She was in a rocker with one of the few little girls we had. Most of our children were boys. I didn't know why they were abandoned more often than girls. Girls could be put to work, I supposed. Certainly our girls unless they were rescued before age seven or eight, would be put to work earning their keep.
"Who have you got there?" Lena asked.
"A new one," I replied, grabbing a bottle and settling down next to her. "This is Senya."
"A Karut," she gasped with surprise. The baby she was holding stopped sucking and looked at her for a moment.
"Yes, but he's pretty isn't he," I said, offering him the bottle. He sucked it greedily and patted it with his hand.
"I wonder why the Karuts didn’t take him." Lena peered at him through her bottle thick glasses.
"Sister Moon thinks his mum was Mishnese. Was your mum Mishnese, Senya?" I teased. The baby smiled with the nipple still in his mouth.
"He says yes." I laughed as he sucked fiercely once again.
"He is beautiful," Lena agreed. "What color are his eyes?"
"I don't know. Open your eyes, baby. Let me see your pretty eyes."
The baby opened his eyes as if he understood me, and Blessed Saint, I nearly dropped him. His eyes were silver, like swirly specks of silver light.
"Blessed Saint," Lena cried upsetting her baby who howled in protest.
Senya closed his eyes again as if he knew this is what caused us fright. He finished his bottle and sucked air until I wrestled the bottle from his mouth and held him against my shoulder.
"He is possessed." Lena calmed her baby and then quickly put her back in a crib. "Do you think this is why the Karuts didn’t want him?"
"He's not possessed," I insisted, burping my little friend. "He's sweet." He patted my face with his hand while looking out across my back.
Lena looked at me warily. "It is strange though."
"It is," I agreed. "But they are kind of beautiful too." Surely, if he was possessed, we would know that somehow. I might have to ask the Father about that, but I hated speaking with the Father. He always wanted favors, and his breath was bad, and his old skin was wrinkled and made my own skin crawl.
I changed Senya and put him in one of our shirts. I was about to put socks on his little feet when I was stopped short.
"Lena, can you come here?"
She approached with narrow eyes. I held up a little foot. Senya reached for it too.
"Look at his nails," I said. "Why are they like this?" Gingerly, Lena touched them. She visibly shivered. Senya played with his toes. He put one in his mouth and sucked on the long curled nail.
"We should dispose of him," she said.
"Dispose?" I cried.
"Throw him out in the gutter before …before..."
"Before what?
You mean to kill him?"
"No, no." She walked away. "Maybe send him to the Karuts. I have a bad feeling about him."
"Will you tell the Father?"
Lena turned and looked into my eyes. She nodded slowly.
"Don't hurt this baby," I begged. "Let me take care of him."
"I have a very bad feeling about him," she repeated, and her wimple nearly fell off as she shook her head. "Something is wrong about him."
"I promise, Sister. Please let me care for him. If he turns out to be bad, then I'll help you get rid of him. Don't turn him out now and don't tell the Father."
"What will you do for me if I agree?" She asked, lifting her head haughtily.
"What do you want?"
"All the diapers," she said. "All the time."
I looked down at Senya. He smiled at me, and when he opened his eyes they sparkled. "Okay," I agreed, falling in love with this strange little fellow. "I will do anything to save little Senya."
I was strange too. My back was crooked, and my face was scarred. I was ugly even though I wasn't always. Once I was a beautiful young girl who nice boys would ask to dance and nice girls would chat up. Once I went to school and got high marks in Mishnese and literature and fair marks in math and science. Then my step-father wanted me, and when I refused he pushed me down the stairs and broke my back. As I lay crumpled, he set my clothes on fire. The Saint saved me, and after I was healed, I came here to love other children who no one wanted anymore.
Senya loved me, I thought. He greeted me every day with a smile. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even make noise, but he stood in his crib and waved at me and his silver eyes sparkled. Everyone else he ignored. He sat in the corner of his crib sucking his fingers, or lay on his back and played with his strange toes.
The Father came to look at him. "How much was in the purse?" He asked Sister Moon. She told him, and we all gasped as it was such a large sum. It would feed everyone in this house for a year. "Will there be more?" The Father wondered aloud.
"I think so," Sister Moon replied. "For as long as we keep him."
"Then we will keep him until they want him back," the Father declared. The next week, the Father had a new speeder. It was shiny and red with rich leather and polished wood inside. It looked very expensive. He wanted me to sit in it with him. He wanted me to pleasure him while he drove it around. I did because he was the Father and I was so ugly no other man would want me. If he threw me out on the street, I would have nowhere to go and be forced to pleasure other men who were worse than him. This is what he told me when his leavings were in my mouth, and I wished to spit them out on the fine carpet of his new speeder.
When I came back to the orphanage, I went to the baby room and found Senya crying. He sobbed silently, his little body heaving but making no sound. There was a red welt across his back. "Who did this?" I demanded of Sister Lena.
"Sister Moon," she said. "Sister Moon says he is destroying too many socks and wasting our precious cloth. She says he is to have cold feet all winter. He shall have no more socks."
"But why did she hit him?" I asked, picking him up and holding him tight until he stopped crying. He put his hand on my face and nuzzled my neck.
"He looked at her with his wicked eyes and she said she felt dizzy because of it and nearly fell down. He is possessed she says, but the Father says he must stay here so we cannot throw him out in the gutter."
I wondered if I could take Senya and run away. I would have to pleasure anyone who would give me money, and how many would want one as ugly as me? I would have liked a real job. Once I knew how to type and could speak well and answer a vid and perhaps put together things with my hands. There were no jobs like that anymore. There were no jobs for anyone because Mishnah was broke. There were only jobs for men who joined the guards and women who worked as maids in the Palace. I could not do that because I was a woman with a broken back and burned face.
It was a cold winter, and there was not much food. The money from the purse had been spent on the Father's new speeder and his fine clothes and jewelry. The children cried because they were hungry and cold, and the old radiators spat and hissed, but little warmth came from them. Senya's little feet were always cold, and when I was with him I wrapped them in rags, but someone else always took them off. Senya sat in his crib and held the bottle himself. He was getting big, and his face was taking shape.
"He looks more and more like a Karut," Lena said beside me. "He looks like Prince Sorkan."
"He does," I agreed, admiring his handsome little face. "But pale."
"Maybe he'll get darker over time," Lena thought. "Did you give him this bottle? It's not time for him to eat." She took it away. Senya opened his mouth to protest.
"I didn't," I said. "He was already drinking it when I came here."
"Well I wonder how he got it then," Lena frowned and just as she did so, the bottle went flying out of her hand and back into Senya's.
Lena and I both screamed.
Senya popped the bottle back in his mouth and gave us a big smile.
"How did he do that?" Lena whispered, her eyes giant saucers.
"I don't know," I whispered back. "Do you think that's how he got the bottle from the warmer?" We both looked at the warmer as if it could speak to us. Lena turned back and snatched the bottle out of Senya's grasp again. He opened his mouth in a silent howl. Lena ran across the room and put it on the warmer table.
"You want it, Senya?" She challenged. "Then take it."
Senya pulled himself up by the bars on his crib and held out his little hands. The bottle flew across the room right into them. He fell back on his bottom and sucked triumphantly.
"Don't say a word of this to anyone," I begged Lena.
"Blessed Saint," Lena collapsed in a chair. "What is he?"
"Please Lena, please! I'll do anything. Don't let them throw him out on the street!" I was on my knees before her.
"Okay," she said, narrowing her eyes and smiling wickedly. "Forever and ever you will be doing the diapers, Meri."
"I will, I will," I promised.
Senya laughed. It was the first noise we had heard from him. I ran to him and gathered him in my arms.
"You little devil," I cried, and he laughed some more.
"Mayhap, he really is," Lena snorted and walked away.
We lost four babies from the baby room including our one little girl. There was a fever going around, and the diapers were endless and messy. Our one year olds and two year olds were sick too, and I was forever dumping buckets filled with loose and foul smelling stools. Our two year olds were messing their pants, but we did not punish them because several of them had died, as well. Our building was cold, and the snow and frost outside made it impossible to open the windows and bring in fresh air. The children burned with fever and then shook with chills. I wrapped and rewrapped as many as I could, but there were not enough of us Sainted Ladies here to take care of them. There was sickness in the city, and bodies lay in the gutters where ever you walked. Our dead children joined them waiting for the coroner's van to collect them.
Three times a day I checked on Senya and each time he stood and greeted me with a smile. He called me by name now and jumped up and down yelling 'Meri, Meri, Meri' when I came in. He didn’t get sick like the other babies even though his feet were like ice every time I checked them.
The spring came, and Senya was moved to the one year old room. I did not think he was quite that old because he had only four tiny teeth. He could stand well on his own and feed himself with his hands and he was hungry and wanted more food than all the bottles in the warmer. I gave him a spoon, but he banged it on the table top and hit himself in the face with it. Though we had lost many from our nursery, many more were coming having lost their parents during the winter freeze. Our baby room was crowded, and we had to move out anyone who could manage in a chair for now.
Senya sat in the chair like the other one year olds. Most of them sat quietly or slept, laying their little heads d
own on their table tops sometimes right into their food. Senya didn’t like it. By summer, he was climbing out as quickly as anyone could put him back in. Some of the other boys followed his example and in no time they were running about the room knocking over the buckets and creating a nasty mess. They were all punished soundly, and their poor little bottoms were red and swollen for days and days. Senya didn’t learn though. He continued to climb out, and now Sister Flower locked him in the closet.
The closet was exactly that, two feet this way and two feet that with a small door at the bottom to crawl in and out.
"I have never used the closet for one so young," Sister Flower said as she carried the squirming Senya. "But this one is beyond any other punishment." She opened the door and shoved him through, swatting his bottom soundly. "Don't mess in there," she called. "Or you shall have to sit in it for many days." The door slammed shut, and she locked it with the key.
I cried myself to sleep that night worrying about my poor baby locked in that tiny dark space. As frigid as the winter was the summer burned with heat and in that tiny closet, he could be roasted alive.
The next day, Flower opened the door and pulled him out. He glared at her with his silver eyes and then held out his fat little arms to me.
"You are too kind to him," Flower spat at me. "He is a horrid little Karut that should be thrown out on the street."
"Come baby," I said and fetched him a glass of water because he was too old now for a bottle though I would dearly have loved to sit with him on my lap; his head against my breast, watching him suck the bottle and pat my face as he did so. Senya returned to his chair but still he did not like it and climbed out again and again. The boys watched him but did not follow. Senya was returned to the closet again and again throughout the summer.
One day in the last month of summer, a man called upon us. Sister Moon sent for me.
"This fine gentleman is here to see Senya," Sister Moon said, and I saw in her hand was another purse.
"Do you mean to adopt him?" I asked meekly for this gentleman was dressed in fine clothes and looked very wealthy. He was big with white blonde hair and very pale skin. I wished for Senya to be adopted by such a fine man, but my heart would be broken too.