by Dan Pearce
Sem thought for some time. Dishon began to shake as saturated and frenzied panic took over his suffocating body. “Yes, my wish is the same,” Sem said.
Tashibag lifted her foot and motioned to the white-haired man who whispered more foreign words. The bear removed her paw completely, and Dishon nearly choked as he found lasting oxygen once more. He rolled to his side and clutched his chest, coughing and wheezing as he tried to find his natural breathing rhythm.
The witch reached down and grabbed hold of Dishon’s head with both hands, then forced his gaze to Sem. “Do you see this man?” He didn’t reply. She shook his head firmly. “Do you see this man?” Dishon nodded. “Because of the goodness of this man, you shall not die today.” He nodded again, and his eyes widened toward Sem as if to thank the man for his mercy.
“Thank you, Tashibag,” Sem said.
She released Dishon from her grasp. “This man shall live, but he shall never again be capable of those corruptions which have brought us all here. If there is goodness in this man, I cannot find it. Now come forth, Dishon.”
She walked to the top side of her drawing in the sand. Dishon, who still struggled to breathe properly, approached after she motioned for him to stand across from her. Tashibag reached for a handful of dirt and sprinkled it across her creation. Memories of this very moment now enthralled me. I didn’t know what to think or feel after all this time. As much as hated him, I wanted to scream to Dishon to somehow try and run, but my own fascination of the witch’s process kept me silent. The bigger part of me wanted this to happen, and I was fully aware that I was most likely the only person present who knew what was coming to Dishon. I remained silent.
Tashibag slipped her robe off and held it firmly clutched in both hands, as she stood naked across the circle from Dishon. “Many there are who steal, but few there are who will cunningly take every possession from honorable men,” she said.
Dishon stood motionless, closed-in by the mob, unsure of anything that was now happening. Tashibag lifted her robes and with one giant flick through the air, just as she had done with me, she used the wind to spray her creation’s dirt against Dishon. He fell backward and cried in his pain, as he reached his hands to the skin below his shoulder. Bright blue streams of light began beaming through his gapped fingers, and he screamed as he gripped the spot more firmly. Each of the colorful stones, which had sat piled in the middle of the circle burst into millions of bright specks, which now colored the brown Earth where the whip of wind had sent them scattering.
Burdo took Tashibag’s robes from her and the naked witch approached the agonizing criminal. She sat firmly upon his chest and snapped her fingers quietly at his face. His screams were silenced, and soon he let go of that part of him where his new mark had been placed. The white serpent dangled from Tashibag’s neck, and now methodically creeped its way through the air toward Dishon.
The same image of a ring, wrapped with the same serpent which marked me, now marked this man. The colors of the serpent in his mark were blue and gold. “You must hear this, or you will suffer far more than you must,” she said.
When she said those words, a wave of fresh guilt flooded me. I didn’t know whether it was guilt for the past or guilt over what currently was happening, but I silently begged Dishon to listen intently, and to heed whatever Tashibag was about to tell him.
“He took too much that was not his,
and behind stone walls of wealth he hid.
Destitution shall be his curse,
when loss can be, he shall be first.
No thing this man shall now possess,
except the clothes upon his chest.
A home this man shall never know,
his friends shall be the hail and snow.
If two winters the mountains see,
with no village he still shall be.
When he sleeps on the fourth sun,
he shall wake to find them gone.
And if he dares to tell his curse,
Life for all will get much worse.
His cock will harden, for each just twice,
Death comes to she who attempts it thrice.
No child shall suffer begat of him,
His seed will not create new kin.
Gifts this man may not receive.
Generosity cannot bring him reprieve.
If any shall try to kill the man,
The other shall die by nature’s hand.
And if this man desires to die one day,
Through this witch is his only way.”
After she finished the incantation, Burdo draped her robe back around her. She removed herself from Dishon and made her way to the bear as she fastened the tie around her waist.
Dishon lay in shock, a moment I remembered particularly. If it was similar to my experience, he knew something major had just happened, but wasn’t anywhere close to aware of the magnitude of that something.
My focus in that moment was so firmly set on Dishon, feeling as if I was watching a past memory of myself, that I did not notice how quickly Tashibag climbed upon the back of the bear. Without another word, Burdo led the group’s way through the wall of people which, quickly opened a path for them. “Tashibag!” I yelled behind them, as I realized my opportunity to undo my own curse was walking away. The witch didn’t acknowledge my cry, and riding upon the back of the great beast headed toward the road from Itzbi.
“Assist this man,” I ordered Sem, who stood spellbound and confused by it all. I didn’t wait to see if he heard me, and I took off after Tashibag.
I was the only adult who followed the witch. A few curious children kept a close distance behind the bear for a little while but were quickly called back by their mothers.
“So, you now wish to die, Cain?” Tashibag finally said after I repeatedly called after her, making it clear I wasn’t giving up just because she was ignoring me. Their caravan kept on at full pace, even after she spoke to me.
I hurried my pace until I was walking beside them. “I am already dead, witch. All people I have known are dead. A violent death befell my Racheele. My daughter must have died long ago. I wandered for so long after your magic moved me in my sleep. I don’t wish to die. I wish to finally live. Free me from this curse.”
Tashibag tapped a hand atop the bear’s head and it halted. She held the end of her staff toward me, and lightly brushed its tip against the mark she left upon me long before. “If you do not yet wish to die, I cannot help you.”
Her response greatly agitated me. Having wished for death many times in my wanderings, death at that very moment was terrifying and unwanted. “Please. I want to live.”
“As you wish,” she said, then tapped the bear’s head once more. The bear continued walking.
I stood where I was, frustrated at my complete lack of power to control any part of the situation. “Tashibag, please. I beg you. There must be a way,” I pled as they left me behind.
“There is a way, Cain” she said without looking back. “But only when you have become worthy of it will I share it with you.”
She was done talking to me after that, but I followed behind them asking a few more times for any further information she would give me. My cries seemed to disappear into the air around her, and I finally gave up.
I made my way back to Itzbi. Tashibag, the white-haired man, and the witch’s magnificent bear continued in the opposite direction. I kept my eye on them until I could no longer make them out in the distance.
CHAPTER 10
It seems things happen more quickly than usual when fear is involved. The people of Itzbi had started a host of new rumors, and gossip surrounding my possible cursing and my former relationship with Tashibag was quickly spreading through the village by the time I returned.
Dishon had been taken away by several of the city’s men, Sem among them. Those who remained behind demanded thorough explanation of my own nearly identical mark, which they had previously seen many times. I attempted to explain why I could not expl
ain the details of the curse to anyone, but it did not appease them.
Though the people of Itzbi knew me to be a good and decent man, it was decided that any man cursed by the witch was too dangerous a man to occupy a shared space with them. I didn’t argue. I did beg them to believe in the absolute power of what they had just witnessed as they decided how to handle Dishon. A brute of a caveman accompanied me as I gathered my Book of What Once Was, a carrying-pouch filled with water, and a few days’ worth of dried meats and fruits. I left the village behind, aimed in the same direction Tashibag had travelled, hoping I might find my homeland once again. I never did return to Itzbi.
Some amount of time into the journey that followed, I arrived at the outskirts of the Village Paigurn.
Any sign of human life was a welcomed sight for me by the time I found it. I had drunk the last of my water several days before and hadn’t been able to find nourishing food in the previous few weeks at least. Upon reaching the village, my dragging skeleton appeared to be pressing outwardly against every part of my skin. My lips were deeply chapped, and my mouth had little saliva left. My eyes felt as if they were being pulled into my skull, and my joints were saturated with constant pain.
This was the state in which Annia found me. Whatever trace amounts of energy had pushed me to make it to that point became used-up, and I collapsed before I could actually enter the village. I remember laying on the path, willing someone, anyone, to come out of their huts or holes and see me there. Eventually I fell asleep, or lost consciousness, I’m not sure which.
“Drink,” a woman said. “A mother’s milk will heal you fastest.”
I opened my eyes. Once they adjusted to the darkness, I found myself gazing up at a roof made from sticks, tied together with dried pigs’ tails. Cold, flat slabs of stone pressed more harshly than I was used to against the bones in my shoulder and ass.
A pleasant looking woman held her engorged breast in one hand and brushed her hardened nipple across my leathery lips. A large drop of sweet milk dripped onto my tongue, and I instinctively reached up and began sucking the gift from inside of her. I couldn’t drink much before my stomach became upset at the sudden presence of nourishment, and I let go of her breast. I dropped my hands and let my head rest on the stone below me once more.
The woman leaned forward and brushed my mucky hair away from my eyes. “You must drink more when your belly is able to hold it,” she said. “The look of death does not suit those strange blue eyes of yours. What is your name, man?”
“I am Cain,” I replied as I took in my surroundings more fully. “What is yours?” I had been moved inside a bound stick hut, which I presumed belonged to this woman. Glowing ashes of what was recently a cooking fire sent tiny billows of smoke into the branches above. A young boy, maybe five or six, sat perched near the pit holding a swaddled infant in his arms. Two beds made from fresh long grass ran alongside each other near the fire. It seemed there was no man living with them.
“Drink more,” the woman said, holding out her dripping breast again. “Drink what little you can for now. I am able to make plenty of milk. I am called Annia.”
The woman had a tender and nurturing demeanor. The skin of her hands had become rough like every person’s did, but the rest of her darkened skin was unnaturally smooth. She had more color in her lips than most, and her teeth were all still in place. Her hair was mostly clean and uncaked with earth. A pleasant grin remained situated below her slender nose.
Before taking her breast into my hands, I admired for a moment just how few scars and imperfections I could find on her person. During my time in Itzbi, I came to realize that survival no longer pounded the average person’s body into calloused roughness the way it did to nearly everyone nearly two hundred years earlier. So many new and incredible tools had already made growing food and trading supplies quite a bit easier. Communities worked better together. Each member made his or her own contributions to make life more easily sustainable for all. Hunting, which was where most danger existed, was left to only a handful of men, and time had made them more proficient at it. Annia’s contributions involved carrying water to others from a spring which came up through the ground just outside of Paigurn. Her son spent a couple hours each day finding and binding bundles of dry wood and trading it in the village for food.
I drank as much of Annia’s milk as I could stomach and asked for water instead. Annia dipped a crude stone cup into a clay pot and held it to my lips as I sipped. I drained the contents of her entire water pot within minutes, and she sent the young boy to the spring for more.
I liked Annia so much from that very first moment I opened my eyes and our gazes met. I made every internal excuse I could to leave her after she brought me back to health, knowing I could not allow myself to feel things for another woman. Yet, somehow, I always found a reason to linger, and to absorb more of her, and to ignore the sensible and cautious thoughts about her which never let up.
It was Annia’s eyes, mostly, that kept me there. Those eyes looked affectionately upon me, and as we came to know one another, her eyes began to show some sort of beautiful trust in me. The more I looked into her eyes, the more they became lost in mine, and soon it was too late for me to leave without hurting her. We soon fell in love with each other, and when it became clear that my chance to avoid it had passed, we made the most intense love I had yet experienced in my life. As if a hundred years of loneliness was being taken from me all at once, I incoherently let go of my fear and let myself be emotionally made more whole by her touch.
I made my new home in Paigurn with Annia and her children. I left them many times over the next many summers, as I searched for any information that could lead me to the whereabouts of Tashibag. The witch had told me there was a way out of the curse, once I was worthy of it. I did not know what she meant. Desperate to not lose Annia, I ventured into many distant and strange lands, never able to find the woman who could set me free.
On the seventh summer I was led to another witch in Buh, a village far beyond the mountains South of Paigurn. The people called the witch Ackgri, which was their local word for miracle. He was a tranquil man who lived meagerly and without much fuss among his goats and geese while he performed occasional healings for those who sought him out.
Ackgri seemed he was the complete physical opposite of Tashibag. He was very old and had aged well past the average life span of the time. Thick wrinkles covered his heavily freckled skin. His dark black eyes seemed so at peace beneath thick and matted dreadlocks. His ears were pierced up and down with dozens of razor-sharp fish ribs. The skin beneath the sparse white hair on his chest had been painted over with black tribal markings. His fingernails and toenails had all been ground into fine points, so that they resembled the claws of an animal. He wore nothing but a saggy skin around his loins, which wasn’t even long enough to cover his balls.
Ackgri welcomed me into his home when I found him, if one could call the place he lived a home. He had built tall walls using the hollowed logs of fallen trees, all leaning precariously against the others. It seemed a single gust of wind could bring it all down. He had no ceiling, and his hardened dirt floor was heavily speckled with white splatters of goose shit. He had rolled two large stones into the midst of it all to use as chairs next to his own fire pit. There was no bed of any type that I could see.
He spoke the same language I learned during my stay in Itzbi. As if he needed to prove to me that he was indeed a witch, he motioned for me to sit and informed me just what it was that brought me to him. “You desire to break a curse placed upon you by another witch,” he said. I scrunched and raised my eyebrows, unsure whether I should be impressed or cautious. He continued. “Say nothing more of it for my protection.”
I nodded. “Yes. Can you help me?”
He ignored my question and motioned for me to sit on one of his stones. “You also greatly desire not to lose the woman you now love,” he said as he also sat.
I didn’t know that word. Love. And I
told him so.
He smiled. “Love, old man, is new to this world. So new, in fact, that rare is the man or woman who has yet known it.”
I had never been called an old man, as to most I was quite middle-aged. I laughed to myself as I thought about the reality that I was, indeed, an old man. “But what does it mean to love?” I asked the witch.
“You tell Ackgri,” he said. “You were the very first man to know love so many winters ago, were you not?” My confusion after he said it must have been apparent in the silence that followed. “The first woman, she who died, tell me of her.”
How could he possibly know about Racheele? I didn’t know, but I welcomed the opportunity to freely speak of her to someone. “I always used to tell her she was the sun itself. She was one who smiled often. I desired to know her and no other.”
“What else?”
“Any time that passed apart left me wishing for her to be there again. When she laughed, I felt I could be the defeater of any strain. I listened to her heart beat as I pressed my ear against her breasts, praying to the gods that nothing would happen to stop its beat.” Ackgri’s smile grew larger as I spoke. My eyes began to well. “The land was small when we were together, and all fear was villages away.” A tear emerged and rolled into my beard before I could defensively wipe it away. I thought of Abel. “I would do anything for that woman, and she would do anything for me.”