******
The next day was the second hunt of the gathering, and Niisa was forced to attend. They wanted an abundance of meat for the marriage feast later that day, after sixteen new couples would be declared a union. Some time after the feast and the drink, they would dance once more in the Ijo and feel the attachment to Daygo and all things, to celebrate life in its freest form.
Close to three hundred tribesmen attended the hunt, far too large a number to hunt together. They split into four groups, and each took a corner of the forest. The men had spent much of the gathering proclaiming their prowess in the hunt, and they were eager and excited at the chance to prove themselves. Today the hunt was an exhibition of skill, not the daily necessity it was the rest of the year. But to Niisa it held little interest. His own nerves worried him, and he feared the vast need he felt to succeed threatened to push him towards failure.
He trailed his uncle meekly and spent his time holding his mind open to balance and equilibrium. The noise upon their return was almost a constant, happy roar as the tribesmen slowly trickled back. They called out hasty questions and results to one another amidst high-pitched exclamations of triumph and disappointment. There were protestations of near misses and stories of valour and skill to accompany the upraised trophies that lent proof to their claimed exploits. Many eager and hopeful faces fell crunched to the bitterness of defeat while others flushed brightly in the joy of triumph. Alone among them all, Niisa’s stayed flat and neutral. His calm remained.
There was an hour’s rest before the wedding ceremonies began.
The sixteen couples were married together in the centre of the Rutendon. They stood in a line two steps apart from each other while the nine tribal chiefs stood spaced before them. The chiefs oversaw the marriage ritual, taking turns to say the appointed lines. The nine tribes sat cross-legged in an ever-expanding oval around them, in still silence. Amongst the even recitations of the priests could be heard the blowing of the wind, the rustling of the leaves, the gentle swaying of the trees that cascaded over hours of forest, up and down the hills and mountains and valleys, distant monkeys and cats, nearby birds, the creeping of ants and insects, spiders and flies, the wasps and the bees, the disturbances in the earth of moles, rats, mice, capybaras, the gentle hiss of a snake along the outskirts of the clearing; the sun itself seemed to leave a gentle, silent noise on their skin. The blue sky seemed to bless their quiet, the infinite space above them opened up to it. The moons dispersed, distant and meek. All was blessed, bright, holy.
When the recitations were over, the sixteen couples bent to their knees and opened their arms wide to the world, gently interlocking their fingers where their hands met. The chiefs’ knelt too, silent.
Slowly, as though connected by some common feeling, the tribes began to shuffle and rustle, and then whistle and slap hands to thighs and then cry out and roar until all of the Rutendon erupted in celebratory noise. And then parents and families of the joined stood to offer their congratulations. Some more rushed to light fires and cook the hunt and open sacks of cauim to pass out and drink.
Niisa rose alongside his family as everyone in all the tribes seemed to turn instantly outwards, chatting, laughing and embracing, leaving Niisa standing still, alone within the largest crowd he had ever known. He stared straight ahead, holding to silence as all about him descended into chaotic noise. He was not alone. He was the only one there that was not alone. He would attune to the all-thing. He would bathe in the Daygo stream.
Chiko turned to him and embraced him. “I am glad I gave you the wreath,” she announced. Then, as she normally did, she skipped to the next place of her attention.
He moved with his family, almost by instinct staying close to them, close enough to be associated without drawing attention. If he became separated, he would raise eyebrows and invite conversation. The best way to escape attention was to be the shy part of a group, the part that the eye skipped over. A single entity, alone, only caused notice. He had always been single, on his own, but it would not be like that anymore, he would be greater than all of them combined. He would be part of the all-thing. Daygo was his home.
His parents fell into conversation with Emeka’s. Emeka herself stood slightly apart with her friends. They chatted but she seemed distracted. She looked in his direction. She seemed shy as she gave a small smile. Niisa looked over her blankly. Niisa’s parents glanced back at him a couple of times. Her parents glanced at her. They looked at him. The smallest frown was on her mother’s face. Niisa turned his face, as if he was simply unaware of their attention, just shy and distracted.
His parents were in fine form as they clasped hands, said “hi” to Emeka and the girls and wandered slowly onwards towards the sixteen couples. Chiko became lost and found as she darted between the maze of people, laughing and smiling and playing with other girls, playing small tricks on men and women who smiled down at her and laughed.
They made their way through the throng of people and eventually gave their congratulations to the newly-married couples. The feast was already underway; everything that the forest had to offer was cooking over nine fires. They wandered and ate different pieces and drank from sacks of cauim, never staying too long over any fire, sometimes tending to one for a time, ensuring the food did not burn. They would start the Ijo full and drunk. Niisa ate sparingly. After a time, he drifted away from the rest. He found an uninhabited hut and sat inside its doorway.
His heart seemed to want to beat from his chest, but he forced himself to remain gentle within, to keep calm. The first round of drums sounded. It was almost time.
The drums were beating solidly when he slowly came out of the trance he had fallen into. He rose to his feet. It was time. He strode from the hut. The noise had become drunken. People danced where they stood. Men pissed where they should not and some women did the same. More twirled, more kissed. This was the night of celebration, where the gathering became feral. Many called out to him, but he walked slowly past them.
“Niisa,” cried his mother, stepping in front of him, clearly drunk. “My boy.” His father strolled drunkenly some steps behind her. “How did you fair with Emeka last night?” She smiled down at him. “I hear you did good.”
“Niisa!” his father announced, almost stumbling into Fumnaya. “Your sister,” he panted. “She is drunk. We had to carry her back.”
Fumnaya leaned into her husband. “Poor Chiko. She is such a good girl.” She smiled at Niisa and reached out a hand, passing it through his hair. “She got too excited.”
“I must go to the Ijo,” said Niisa.
“Of course,” proclaimed his father, smiling. He turned and waved a hand to the glowing fire at his back. “Dance like the wind!” Niisa walked past them. The press of people was thickening. The noise gained some rhythm, and Niisa began to move with it, slowly.
The dance started slowly, but it built and built. The throng of people grew, the space began to compress, bodies encroaching upon one another. The beating of drums, the singing, the whistling, the rattling of orin sticks; random, disjointed, assorted, slowly developed towards rhythm, slowly joined, slowly found commonality. The movement, brash and erratic, improvised and considered, slowly started to meld towards the one, to enact from some felt purpose, an unseen direction emitted from the very air itself. Niisa fell into it, collapsing, drifting away, disintegrating from himself to a meshed piece of a whole. He danced. He sang. He moved. He lived.
Simple life, living, expressed.
The heat rose, with his eyes, to the dark night sky. Blinded to the stars, the red moon shone, the visible round iris of the isolated watcher alone in the sky, owning the dark. The fire grew, its heat pushing the bodies back. Short, sharp shouts emitted from a thousand voices bounced across the open air as the flames soared and crackled and gave that deep, burning roar that grew like some devil ready to consume the world, like the voice of destruction.
As though unknown of it himself, Niisa distanced himself from the fire. He cont
inued to move and chant but with each step he edged an inch further away. He could feel it again. It was almost a faint tingling on his flesh. An invisible vibration in the air around him. Though the red moon’s pull was not as it was the first night.
If he could sense it in the air, he could pass the test, he could leave the tribe, he could learn from the priests, he could connect, truly and forever, with Daygo. He felt this need, even though his mind was blank, even though he was lost in the trance of the Ijo. Eventually, as the pressing presence of the fire faded to a distant glowing, he escaped to the edges of the crowd. He turned, moving fluidly, flowing like liquid to the energy in the air. He travelled away from the tribes, away towards the cabin his family had been staying in.
A ferret he had caught the night before was buried outside the hut, its limbs bound tightly to its body, and still alive. He reached the hut and scrawled the earth clear with his hands, still moving to the rhythm of the dance, his hips, his feet, his legs, humming, as his nails grew dirty, as the hole grew. He found his catch. He took him into his hands. His knife was buried beside it.
He took the ferret into the hut and sat with it resting in his hands. His gaze fell steadily on the other corner of their hut. Chiko lay facing him. The noise was thumping from outside. It was close to its peak. Niisa looked at his sister. The bottoms of her eyes seemed to shine in the moonlight. Her chest rose and fell between her arms. She snored lightly. Her legs were pulled up close to her. The hut was dark, but the moonlight shone through the door, a grey light that fell on her sleeping form, that ended across her knees, her arm and chest, as though a sign, as though an invitation, giving vision to the work that he must do. The ferret rolled softly off his fingertips, landing on the dirt floor with a soft pad. Dead. He placed the knife quietly beside it. He still hummed. He broke into a soft chant, his movements still rolled languidly as he stepped forward and stood above her. It did not take long to use the weedgrass that he had wrapped tightly around the ferret’s form to tie her ankles and wrists, and to turn her onto her back. He stuffed her mouth with fur padding. He retrieved his knife. He knelt beside her. Still chanting, he raised the blade high and brought it down just below her sternum. Her screams were muffled, her eyes were wide and white as he sawed through her. Her body grew taut and shook and struggled, but he pinned her with his knees as he sought with fingers and eyes and everything for what he must sense, what he must know. His prayers were answered.
3. Racquel
He crawled along the side of the street, at the feet of the homeless. His forehead was wet, the fringe matted against his head. His mind was vacant, as were his eyes. He continued onwards, crawling. The dust and dirt pushed underneath his fingernails as his hands grasped at the ground, as though he might be thrown from it.
He stopped again, and started to cry. Why was he crying, what was wrong?
“Liam! What are you doing?” He heard a laugh but from a great distance. “Liam?”
He curled up in a ball on the ground and hugged his head. He felt a pressure on him. Something was shaking him. He fought against it, tightening his grip upon himself, curling up tight. He would not be pulled apart, he would stay together. Eventually the rocking stopped, the shouting in his ear ceased and he was left alone.
He was in a cocoon of protection, nothing could enter; there was nothing else but him within it and nothing outside. His tears left his face salty and moist. There was warmth from within. Warmth and safety.
******
Racquel walked side by side with Alison on the way back home from the well. Alison had plump features. She had a round face with fleshy cheeks that always seemed a little flushed and a wide nose. Her fringe lay over her forehead, feathered out just above her eyebrows. The rest of her light brown hair was tied in a ponytail that swung behind her as she walked. She was a couple of inches smaller than Racquel and almost the same age. Both girls were just shy of their fourteenth year.
She lived close to the outer wall of Teruel, three streets in from Baker’s Corner, but she normally walked with Racquel until Sparrow Street before they went their separate ways. The sun had dipped below the buildings of the slums, meaning there was less than an hour until twilight. Racquel quietly withheld a sigh of annoyance as she thought of the boy Liam. Why hadn’t he shown up? She had made Alison wait with her for close to half an hour before her constant pestering was too much to bear and they left without him.
It had been another sunny day, though not quite as hot as it had been during the previous week. People seemed a little more relaxed as they walked the streets, probably relieved at the slight break from the oppressive heat.
“I heard Dad talkin’ to one of his friends yesterday,” said Alison. Racquel looked across at her as she talked. She was her best friend, though at times Racquel wondered how. They seemed to have little in common. “They were talkin’ about a guy who didn’t pay the tax. Said his daughters would be sorry. Dad said he was a scumbag for not payin’, when he had daughters like that, not lookin’ after his family.” Alison glanced Racquel’s way for her reaction, but Racquel had none to give, so she continued. “I think he is a scumbag. A man has to pay his way. Thank Lev I don’t have a dad like that.”
Racquel looked away, ignoring the gibe as she was used to doing. Alison’s father was a matis enforcer and friends with her uncle Galo. That was how Alison and Racquel had met and become friends. Alison’s father Damon had brought her to the bakery one day and the two of them had started talking. Damon and Galo had liked the idea of their friendship and had promoted the relationship since.
The truth was Racquel didn’t really have any other friends. She used to be friends with a few girls and boys on her street, but as she grew older Galo had wanted her to help out in the bakery more and more. Anytime he had seen her out playing with other children, he would call her in and set her to a chore. Over the years she had slowly lost track of everyone but Alison. She met with her twice a week. Most other days she got a chance to leave the bakery for an hour or so before dusk. She normally spent the time out beside the well, watching people as they finished up for the day. It was a relief just to get away from the house for a while, even though sometimes she found herself lonely as she watched groups walk by, chatting amiably.
Alison continued talking, regardless of Racquel’s lack of participation in the conversation. She rarely needed encouragement to talk. “Anyway, I guess Dad will be paying him a visit. What has you so glum? Still thinkin’ of your slum rat boyfriend?”
“No! I’m just hoping Galo will be in a good mood when I get back. He had to leave the shop this evenin’ to order a load of firewood for the oven. He normally comes back from Jessup’s in a bad mood. Calls him a cheat!”
Alison looked across at her. “You afraid he’ll hit you again?”
“No, he’s just been very … on edge lately.” Galo hit Racquel all the time, just not normally in the face.
Racquel looked down at the dress she wore. It extended to just past her knees and was embroidered with flowery patterns. Her aunt had spent hours sewing the floral design into it. Galo had yelled at her more than once about the waste of good thread, but she had persisted, meekly forecasting how lovely Racquel would look when it was done.
It was beginning to tighten around the chest as her breasts grew. They had been on the rise for nearly two years and now represented two handfuls. She hadn’t noticed at first but now felt sure that her hips had become more rounded too. She wasn’t sure of what she thought of all the changes to her body over that time. She might have preferred if it was somehow more discreet. Her uncle Galo had started to take a lot more notice of her since her womanhood had begun to show. She sometimes felt his eyes follow her across the room. She had looked back yesterday and saw him glance up from her posterior angrily. He had shouted for her to find something useful to do.
“So you think your boyfriend will show up tomorrow? He prob’ly will when I’m not here. I can’t believe you had me waitin’ half an hour for some slum ra
t!”
“Don’t call him that.”
“Why? That’s what he is, isn’t he?”
“He’s the same as anyone else.”
“He is not! If my father found out that I was hangin’ out with some rat, he’d slap me silly.”
Like the sons of enforcers are any better, thought Racquel, but she kept it to herself, as she so often found herself doing. Alison seemed to nod as though she had won the point.
“I went behind the barn with Fin last night!” she said, suddenly excited and eager for Racquel’s opinion. The barn was a warehouse at the end of Alison’s street that all the locals referred to as “the barn”. Racquel looked across at her.
“Just the two of ye?” she asked.
Alison nodded. “Let him finger me as well!”
Racquel gasped a little in surprise, and Alison let a squeal, happy with the reaction.
“How … was it?” Racquel asked shyly. She could feel herself blushing as she said it. She had only kissed one boy before. It was a short affair that Alison had set up. She had been teased for weeks until she finally agreed to kiss a boy that Alison found for her.
The next day, while out at the well, Alison had seen two boys their age walking towards the market. She had run over to them while Racquel waited awkwardly by, not sure whether to look over or pretend indifference. The first boy seemed shy and refused, but then Alison asked the second and he nodded his head vigorously. She had led him over to Racquel. They then walked hand in hand to the wall of a building and kissed right then and there. At first it had only been on the lips, but when he gave an angry look she had opened her mouth to him, their tongues meeting. After a while, his hand reached up to grab at her breast. She had allowed it to stay for a few seconds before pushing him off and running back to Alison.
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