Benayeem shrank from conflict or physical pain, so he went to the temple like a good son, though his heart wasn't in the motions his hands made, or the words he mumbled. He could barely make his hands move to build up the sacred fire. He knew his father felt scorn for him as he watched the slow way that Ben lit the incense and cleaned the idols with the soft cloth—that was the worst, he hated touching the idols—but his father didn't know about the ringing that seared his ears and brain while his feet were touching the temple floor. Wrong… wrong, he heard, the words taking shape as soon as he reached the threshold. Ben's secret was that he heard music that wasn't there; ringing bells, gongs, discordant screeching and notes that grated across his mind while he did his work in the temple. The goddesses stared down at him with baleful eyes full of malice. They weren't fooled by his blind obedience to his father. They knew he hated them. He learned to be invisible, and he had taken to hiding when he knew it was time for temple duties. But Jerutha's voice was too loud to ignore, and he sighed as he went to face his stepmother.
The discordant music was something he had heard all his life. It pressed on him at all times, making his life miserable. He heard it when he saw someone in the market give someone else the wrong change, he heard it when his father hit his sister. He didn't know how to stop the way he sensed people, the knowledge of their hearts, or the way his skin burned or the sick feeling in his stomach when he perceived wrong being done. So he tried to disappear into himself. He withdrew farther and farther away from the world, not taking notice when bad things happened, turning away and closing his eyes. He went to the market only when he needed to. His life became a circle between the temple, the school, and his home, and in this way he dulled the voices and the sounds, and kept them quiet enough that they didn't deafen him.
Jerutha stood in the entryway with her hand on her belly. Her eyes brightened as she spotted him and she smiled.
"There you are, Ben."
He nodded, looking at the side of her face to avoid her eyes. She looked away as well, but reached one hand out to touch his shoulder gently.
"Your father wants you to build the kitchen fire today."
Ben straightened, surprised. "What about the temple?"
"He sent Isika to work in the temple," Jerutha replied. She grinned. "You're free for today."
Ben felt relief soaking into him. He followed Jerutha into the kitchen and bent before the fire. He loved being in here, partly because when he was around his stepmother, the pressure on his mind lessened. His sense of her was calm and sweet, and she rarely did anything that brought the gongs booming into his head. Unlike his father.
"Isika wasn't sure you would be able to light the fire," Jerutha said. She stood beside the washing bucket that sat on the large stone slab she used to prepare food, washing the mugs from the morning's tea.
Ben snorted, pulling the logs out of Isika's gathering basket. "I'm sure she wasn't. Isika's only a year older, but she thinks she's the only one who can do anything." Wrong, wrong, chimed the voice in his mind, this time like tiny, piercing bells. Ben winced.
"Besides," he said. "I take care of the temple fire every day."
"True," Jerutha said, drying the mugs with a faded cloth, "but that fire is already lit."
Ben pulled bits of a stick apart to make kindling, shaping a little nest with it and placing the larger sticks over the top, like a tent in the little stove, the way his mother had showed him all those years ago in the desert. He still made fires the way she did. He felt a familiar stab of pain at the thought of his mother. He shrugged the ache away and adjusted a few logs, wishing this was his regular job. Ben loved making things, doing things with his hands, but when he turned fourteen on his last birthday, his father had determined that he would be a priest, and now he faced a lifetime of prayers to goddesses he hated.
He had just coaxed the spark into the kindling and was sitting back to admire the crackling of the fire when his father entered the room. Ben looked up, shocked. He couldn't remember the last time his father had been out of bed.
"Nirloth!" Jerutha exclaimed, rushing to hold her husband's arm. He was shaking and his skin was gray, but he looked as stern as ever. Ben shifted to make room as they walked past him. Jerutha helped Nirloth into a chair.
"Where is Kital?" Nirloth asked.
"He's playing in the yard with Ibba," Jerutha said.
"That boy plays too much, he should work more," Ben's father said. "But never mind now, just bring them both here, please."
Jerutha left at once to find the children and Ben was alone with his father. He closed the door of the stove and sat back with his hands on his knees, not looking toward where his father sat, just a few feet away. With the music droning in sickening loops, he sensed his father clearly, and everything in him screamed with dread. He felt like he would throw up.
"This will be for the best, son," his father said to him. "You will see."
Ben's eyes flew up to his father's face, and he had his mouth open to ask what would be for the best, when Jerutha came back into the room with the little ones. They were giggling together, but they stopped when they saw their father sitting at the table.
"Father!" Ibba cried out. "You're better!" She ran to him and hugged him around the waist. Nirloth smiled, but pulled her arms off of him.
"Not better, dear one. I have something to tell you." He turned to look at Kital and gestured for him to come closer. Kital was the only child who was actually Nirloth's son, and his skin was a little lighter than Ben's or Ibba's, but for all that, he didn't resemble his father, or even seem to feel much of a connection to him. Kital's bubbly four-year-old energy was too joyful to be comfortable around his stern father.
"Kital," Ben's father began, but then he needed to pause and take a breath, and Ben's stomach began to squeeze into a ball. Ben slowly stood. Nirloth went on as Kital looked up at him. "You are blessed, son, and you live in service of the goddesses, as do all the Workers. Your service is changing, growing, as of today."
Ben glanced at Jerutha and saw her standing, bent over, gripping the back of the chair opposite Nirloth's, her knuckles white. He couldn't see her face because her head was bowed and her hair fell around her like a curtain. Ben was paralyzed. He thought that if he could only speak and keep his father from speaking, he might be able to stop this from happening. He understood, suddenly, why his father had sent Isika to the temple today.
He forced his mouth open. "Father," he said, but it was a whisper and one glance from his father had him as silent as the heavy stone table his father now thumped with a fist.
"Silence! Benayeem, if I want you to speak I will command you to speak. Kital, you will enter the service of the goddesses tomorrow. You will be sent out, as an appeasement, for the health of the priest and thus the health of all the Workers."
Kital blinked up at Nirloth, his eyes large. He didn't seem to understand. He turned to look at Ibba. She retreated from their father and stared at him with a white face. She knew. The blood left Ben's face and the pressure on his whole being was like a huge gong ringing. He heard screeching, discordant music. Wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG, it shouted. Kital looked at Benayeem and when he saw the look on his brother's face, he understood that something very bad was happening, and he began to cry. Ibba started crying as well, and the two of them ran to Jerutha, clinging to her skirts.
"What are you saying, husband?" Jerutha asked Nirloth, her voice a rasp, her face paler than usual. She put one hand on her belly and sat down abruptly.
"You heard my words," Ben's father said. "I am giving Kital over. I am the priest of this village, and if I die, the whole village will die. Benayeem is not cut out to be a priest; there is no one I can pass my duties along to. If I had known, when I took Amani in, that her children wouldn't even find it in them to give the goddesses proper respect," he spat the words in Ben's direction, and then Ben truly wanted to disappear, "maybe I would have reconsidered and sent her away."
Ibba and Kital kept crying, a
nd the pressure on Ben continued. He knew it would continue as long as he was in the house with this great horror. So he left. He walked through the kitchen and out the door, ignoring his father's shouts. "Even now?" he yelled. "Even now you run away? Get out of my sight, boy! And don't come back until I am asleep, or you'll be sorry!"
Ben didn't look back at the house. He focused on moving his arms and legs under the pressure that had now built so much that it threatened to flatten him. Ugly, horrible music made the ground swim before him. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
What do you want from me? He called out in his head. What am I supposed to do? Of course it's wrong, but nothing can be done! There was no answer.
As he ran across the yard and said the sacred words to leave the walls of their ground, he spotted Isika coming back from the temple, and he ran even faster. He knew what was going to happen, almost as if it was written out in front of him. He couldn't be there for what would happen next. Isika never tried to disappear. She dove straight into whatever trouble she found, no matter how afraid she was, and she suffered for it. He kicked at a rock on the path and kept running.
CHAPTER 4
The crying went on and on as Isika ran toward the house. Benayeem burst out of the front door and ran to the gate, fumbling with the latch until he finally got it open. He flung the gate wide and ran out into the street without closing it behind him.
"Ben!" Isika called, and he paused to look at her with wild, red eyes, then kept running. Truly alarmed, Isika walked to the house, her stomach rolling and tossing with fear. Her body went cold when she saw Jerutha sitting in the kitchen garden rocking back and forth. The walk to the door seemed very, very long. Had Nirloth died?
In the clean, swept earth before the door, Ibba and Kital sat with their arms around each other. Ibba was crying. Kital's eyes were wet, wide, and shocked, the color of morning tea in his light brown face, shaped just like their mother's.
"What happened?" Isika cried, falling to her knees to put her arms around the two of them. "Is it Father? Is he… did he…?"
But whatever had happened, he hadn't died, because there he was at the door, looking down at her, standing for the first time in weeks, though he held tightly onto his cane. His white hair stood up from his head and steely gray eyes flashed from his set face. A deep dread filled her as she stood to face him.
"What is happening?" she asked, remembering to aim her eyes away at the last moment. It was unspeakably rude to ask a question while looking into someone's eyes, it was the most invasive thing you could do toward a person's soul.
"I feel strong," he said, almost to himself. He lifted his head. "The strength I feel confirms my decision," he said, and she couldn't help it, her eyes flew up toward his. He was looking off into the distance, toward the temple. "I will give Kital over at dawn, the day after tomorrow."
The world blinked red. "No," Isika said, and her voice seemed to come from somewhere old and dead. Ibba began to wail again. "No," Isika said again, her voice increasing in volume on the word until she was screaming and screaming and screaming. Her father withdrew, into the shadow of the dark house, and she followed him.
"You can't!" she shrieked. "You can't!"
"It's done," he said. "I announced my intention while you were away. Great downfall will descend on the whole village if I turn back now."
He had sent her to the temple so he could announce this evil without her there to stop him. The blood left Isika's face and her legs shook as though she would faint. She sat on a nearby chair with a thud. She watched, unbelieving, as he limped to the house altar and picked up the small brass horn. When she saw his intention, she leapt up to stop him, but she was too slow, and he sounded the blast. The horn rang out, signaling to the village that a child from this house would be given over. She listened to the strident ringing in stunned silence. When it ended, Nirloth put the horn back in its place on the altar and leaned heavily on his cane.
"We gave Aria over," she said, pleading now, tears running down her face. "No family is expected to give more than one child over."
"Except in times of extremity."
"Extremity? Your illness? An old man dying is not extremity! You'll give his life for yours?" She flew at him to grasp his sleeve and beg for her brother's life, but he lifted his cane and struck her on the side of her head. A blast of pain echoed in her ears and she fell to the floor, holding her hands over her head, trying to block the cane that came down on her, again and again. And still she wailed and shouted. "He's not yours to give over! He's mine!" Until the cane struck her above the ear and all was black.
When she opened her eyes, Jerutha was bending over her, weeping as she wiped Isika's face with a cold cloth. Isika winced as the water stung the many cuts where the cane had dug into her skin. In the past her father had slapped her, or used his fists on her, many times over, but he had never done this. She didn't know what was happening to him. He had always been serious and hard, but never cruel.
Kital's life for his. Tears came to her eyes again, then spilled over, burning the scrapes on her face.
"Hush," Jerutha said. "You must not fight this, Isika. It is the way."
"The way?" Isika's voice was rough from screaming. She sounded broken.
"Hush, hush."
"Where is Kital?"
"Sleeping beside Ibba," Jerutha said. "They're worn out." She put a hand over her full belly, her face falling, her kind blue eyes filling with tears. She stroked Isika's face. "I'm so sorry, my love."
"It must not happen," Isika said, clenching her fists, wincing with the pain from moving her mouth. She wondered whether she would be disfigured. She lifted her hand to her face and lightly touched it.
"You will heal fine," Jerutha said, taking Isika's hand and moving it away. "The scrapes are shallow. Oh Isika, little sister. How could you rush toward him? You know better."
"It must not happen," Isika repeated, but she felt a deep sense of panic. It was happening again. She had been too small to stop her sister being given over, to prevent her mother's death. Deep shame washed over her, the sense of being undeserving of life because she hadn't been able to save their lives.
"There is nothing for it," Jerutha said. "We must accept it." Through the door, which was still open, Isika saw the last rays of the sun touch the kitchen garden. Her mother had made flowers grow where flowers had never grown. People had whispered that she was a sorceress, to make colors come from the dull earth, but she shook her head and laughed. "Treat the earth well," she told Isika, "and it will respond to your hand. This is the true way." But when Isika pressed her for more, she had shaken her head and pinched her lips, looking distressed as she glanced at Nirloth, who sat in the shadow of the porch.
In the afternoon light Isika saw the bean vines glowing, soft and golden, the curling tendrils of green grasping at one another, holding onto each another in their urge to grow tall and reach for light.
"This must not be," she repeated.
Jerutha sighed and shook her head. She washed the cloth out in a bowl of water and dabbed at Isika's neck.
"We have work to do," she said.
There was preparation to be done for the sending. They needed to make the sleeping tea, and fold the cloths they would put in the boat, red for penance, white for purity, green for the envy of the goddesses, the envy that prompted the Workers to assuage them by giving their children to the goddesses. Isika thought she might vomit.
"Jerutha," she said, putting her hand on her stepmother's hand. Her voice was choked and low and the room swam in front of her. If she wasn't careful she was going to pass out again. She realized that she was half lying on Jerutha's crossed legs. Her stepmother stroked her forehead gently with her free hand. She had always been so kind to the children, ever since she came to them, barely more than a child herself.
"Jerutha, Kital is my baby. I can't give my baby over. This will be your child one day, Jerutha! Everyone gives one child, that is the way. It is not the way, to give over so many. He won't sto
p! What if he wants to send your baby out, once it is the ripened age?" The Workers didn't give their children over before the age of two. The goddesses cruelly insisted on the bonding between mother and child before snatching the children from their parents.
Jerutha's face paled and she gripped her belly with one hand. She carefully lifted Isika's shoulders off of her lap, shifting so she could heave herself to her feet. Her belly stood out against her thin body like a melon. Jerutha was only ten years older than Isika, but she had lived a lot in a short time. Her mother was one of those who couldn't accept the life of a Worker, destined to feed the goddesses with time and sweat and children until death. Jerutha's mother had been altered, even broken, when her oldest daughter was given over many years before Jerutha was born. Her mother had later given birth to Jerutha and two other children, but she hadn't been right in her mind, and finally, she had wandered out into the wilderness, never to return. Jerutha had taken care of her younger siblings for much of her life. She and Isika were alike in many ways.
Jerutha paced, gathering the things they needed for the sending preparation: herbs for the sending tea, colored cloths. She opened drawers, searching for things they hadn't used in four years; she pulled bundles of herbs out of dusty baskets. In between, she paced. She walked from one window to the other, gazing out at the garden, her hands spread over her belly as though she could guard it from the world.
She looked up at Isika, who hadn't moved from where she sat.
"Rest, daughter," she said. Her voice was very quiet. "I'll finish here."
Isika stood and limped toward the main sleeping room. In his sleep, Benayeem had rolled himself into a corner, and Ibba and Kital were piled like puppies on the center mat. No, as she drew near, she saw that Kital's eyes were open. He turned toward Isika and she hurried to curl up beside him.
World Whisperer Page 3