“You believe him.” She spat the words.
“Of course I do. Do you not?”
“No! Today’s his 200th birthday? That’s insane. Even the theoretical max for a person is like 150. He’s a crazy old man. And you’re… you’re taking advantage of his mental illness. Why?”
ShutUpThisIsYourChanceHereShutYourMouthAndGoHomeNo
He was still staring at the tree. She saw his sunken eyes begin to fill with tears. But he would not answer her.
“Is it because of her? All this? You’re looking for an answer to an unanswerable question, Doc. People die. It’s what we do.”
It was a cruel thing to say but she knew she had to say it. It was the truth, after all, no matter how painful his new reality was for him.
He turned to her.
“I had thought, perhaps, given your background… thought you might take more time to consider what you have seen. Now I see this is too much at once. This year has been cruel to you. Apologies for my unfair urgency. We can continue our discussion Monday. Good night.”
He eased his weight from the railing to the wall as he moved. Warm yellow light beamed through the transom above the door.
“Doctor Behema, wait. I didn’t mean to…”
He placed his hand on hers. She found his skin as cold as the evening air.
“I will see you Monday. Tonight, many guests eagerly await conversation. You are not eager yet. Good night, Eliza. Take care during your drive home.” He looked past her to the specks of blue light falling from the clouded sky. “It may snow. In August! The world is changing.”
He vanished into the house. She thought to try the door, knew it would be locked, tried it and found it unlocked. She did not enter. Instead, she stood on the porch until her teeth chattered and the hot blood in her veins cooled. The tree’s omnipresent light painted her in neon blue, casting long shadows onto the porch and into the dark world beyond the farmhouse. She held a hand up to the light, tried to pluck an orb, and came away with nothing.
“Dammit, Eliza.”
CHAPTER 4 – BIRTH
The boy named Fen did not want to die. He thought about that often as his small family walked for several days from the nomadic goat herd they called home to the Ring of Stones. His teeth chattered in the biting wind. It was especially cold that morning, even for the wild Berian Steppe with its interminable winters. The cold snuck between the folds of his worthless cloak to steal precious warmth. It did not matter. He had been cold every day since the shaman pronounced him dead. That was three, no, four winters before, almost half a lifetime for a boy of only ten winters. Fen did not feel dead, though he was always cold.
He wanted to feel warm again, that was all. He was still alive. The soft thumping of his heart rejected all other declarations because he felt it himself. He was Leyevi Fen and would continue to be his parents’ son until he healed or died.
They reached the empty ring before dawn. The stones towered above his tall mother. No two stones were alike. Some were cut into perfect squares as wide as a man’s span from fingertip to fingertip. Others poked slender fingers at the sky. Some were the typical ugly gray of exposed boulders, streaks of muddy red stained others, and a few sparkled. Only one Balbal stood among them. The human-shaped stones littered the old places in Beria. His father kept a record of every one he found. Fen hated the Balbal. It did not belong here. He could not say why.
His parents carried him around the ring to see it all. Hadn’t his father promised this for many years? His son would see the Ring of Stones. Nothing could be more important for a Leyevi than to see and to understand. Fen knew in the way children do that they broke some adult rule by carrying him. He should have walked by himself or been left behind. The other pilgrims chose not to challenge his mother.
She smiled as they walked. She looked down only once. It was dark, he thought. She could not see him. No, she did. She refused to linger on her burden. His father glanced down more often. Even this young, Fen understood his father was the weaker of the couple. His mother vanished on weeks-long hunting trips but never once returned without fresh meat while his father tended their meager goat herds.
Fen hated the prancing, bleating, living goats. He longed to chase them but his worthless legs would not let him. He knew his father was odd even among the Leyevi and the other tribes of the Steppe. They visited the cousin tribes too seldom. Only the older, meaner folk bothered to remember the small Leyevi with their crippled son between visits.
They had no choice, unless his father chose to give up his unholy scavenging of the abandoned cities. There were no laws on the Steppe because there was no government. Each tribe managed its own affairs, as it should be now and forever after. Interfering with another tribe was unthinkable. It warranted whatever justice the offended tribe chose. Laws and governments and cities had their chance. They used it to cast the vile lightning into the sky. In return, the lightning hunted them, first chasing their technology and then chasing any gathering of enough people. It tormented the entire world.
Every time the distant clouds thundered or wicked blue light flashed in the evening sky, Fen remembered the pain caused by laws and governments and cities he had never witnessed. Civilization. Those were long dead things. Why did his father chase them?
He understood why, although it still made his stomach hurt and his face burn when he thought about it. His father scavenged the crumbling wreckage of what came before so that he could learn even more about their errors. Twice, maybe thrice each year, he would leave Fen in his mother’s care and take his turn vanishing in pursuit of elusive quarry. He travelled to places with names like Omsk or Mirny, Batagay when they were far north and close to the Berians, and Ulanbatar only once when they migrated much farther south into the desert wastes in pursuit of wild places far from other tribes who would destroy the relics of the Hollow Folk as quickly as they could.
His mother’s spear guided their migrations while his father’s curiosity kept them outcast. It did not matter that his father would take his discovered knowledge to other tribes to preach the gospel of the Steppe. All tribes understood the truth in their blood because theirs was the blood of those who survived. They did not need evidence to remind them. All they had to do, like Fen, was listen for thunder, see lightning, and remember that they descended from the people who adapted to this new world.
Fen asked his mother, once, about his father’s weakness. She was washing blood from her clothing. It joined precious meltwater in a basin that would hold the evening’s soup. The hearth fire flickered against the tent’s goatskin hides, filling the place with the smoke of mildewed peat that stung his eyes. She did not mind. She always provided. His young fingers worked the leather strips that would become a kind of nest for carrying him one day to see the Ring of Stones.
“He does other things here,” she said without looking up. “They help us as much or more than my hunting.”
“But what are they? I do not understand.”
He trusted his mother absolutely but her words made no sense. Hunting was the stuff of life. Wasn’t that same stuff on her hands at this very moment? Tending goats was… not. Scavenging old cities as they eroded to dust was worse. He scratched his dull legs and wondered if he would ever hunt.
Even then, because that young memory felt as distant as his earliest steps, he was already sick in bed while the sky spun above him. Her rangy stench filled his nose. She always smelled like the beasts she killed. Could they smell her as she stalked them? Did their stench on her body make them feel safe?
“You are simple like me. We walk and walk and our shoulders grow strong and we walk some more until our feet become leather.”
She tickled his exposed wiggling toes. He squealed.
“Your father is not like us. He walks for a long time but then sits down and asks questions.”
She warped her lips into an Oh and knotted her eyebrows together, forcing her voice into a comical baritone that whooped as she spoke.
“Why
do we always walk? Does my woman have to be gone for meat so long when she could be in bed with me? How can things be changed?”
She quit the mockery.
“These are the questions he asks me. I know nothing about them. If there is distance then we must walk and if there is meat then I go. But we have more goats every spring. The tent is warmer than it was before.”
Fen nodded although he did not understand. When he looked at his mother’s face, the world made sense. When he looked at his father’s face, he felt hot childish love but understood nothing. The man told so many stories. Listening to them always reminded Fen that he understood nothing. His mother continued.
“I can hunt only what is there. Your fathers thinks of ways to create more than what is there.”
“Like the dirt chewers.”
His mother’s lips turned up in a small snarl.
“Yes, like the dirt chewers.”
Thunder rumbled outside the smoky tent. She rose on long, bare legs and darted to the flap. Cold wind snuck inside as her head vanished. Fen licked his lips and tasted lightning in the air. She closed the flap.
“It is distant.”
She settled back at the basin. Fen let himself ask the only question he truly cared about. To complain of the hardness of life, he learned long before the first black pains of cancer destroyed his power to help his family, was to snatch at the wind or wail at the sun. Such was the way of the things and such it would be. His fingers returned to the leather strips. This, at least, was a thing he could do to help. He barely felt his own tiny voice as he asked the question.
“Will he make a way for me to walk again?”
His mother moved away from him. Had she gasped or was that still the sneaking wind? Then he saw her ironwood mask of a face and understood his mistake. A ravenous lion would be easier to face than his mother’s sharp eyes.
“No. He is not a god. There are no such things. You will face what happens to you and live or die. I want you to live.”
The mask softened around the edges of her eyes and mouth but the hard eyes remained locked on this face.
“Such is the way of things.”
That evening in the tent was many moons before. His father was gone to another pointless city and returned with stories of a hill made of rings far in the west. No, he called it a fort. Fen tried to remember if it was before or after the last winter. The snow rolled through his mind like it rolled across the plains around them. It was fruitless to guess. It was before. There would be an after until there were no more. To judge by the snow was to know nothing.
His parents settled around the stones. Nine in total formed the ring. Nothing stood in the middle except tall grasses. He longed to step into the ring. He wanted it so much that he dared test his worthless legs. The instinctive commands he knew any healthy person could send to their obedient limbs caused dull pain to throb in his.
That was something, in a way, but the dull pain reached higher now. It tingled his gut. Would it find his spine? He wanted to leave his legs for the wolves. People lived without their legs. At least it would be honest. He could not cut the breath from his chest, though. That daily fire would consume his first. So the shamans said. What did they know?
“Why are the stones here?” he asked.
His father looked down at him. They discussed this many times before. He thought back to another morning, when the wet grass stuck to his furs and the larks twittered in the sky. He loved those days with his father while they worked. He would carry his son outside to watch and learn while the sun shone on them both.
The man was only ever silent when he worked. The motion of his hands battled the challenges of his materials. Nimble fingers darted across bone and wood with carving knife until a shape emerged. He made grass lions, a slingshot, even a figurine that he said was Fen’s mother. The boy disliked that. It was not her and should not be called her. That morning, Fen’s father ran his hands over a goat in search of parasites.
“They remind us to remember. Does that make sense to you?”
Fen looked up from his lap into the memory of his father’s long, lean face. His was the face of another tribe. His parents found each other while his mother ranged far to the north and west, though not as far as the mountains that bounded their living world. His father was a Novgorodi then. He gave up that home to leave with Fen’s mother. Green flecks sparkled in his eyes whenever he tried to teach Fen something new. They blazed in the morning sun.
“Because it is something we need to remember?”
“That is true! So what is in the ring?”
The boy shrugged. When he did, the nest of cloth that kept his legs warm, safe, and atrophied toppled over. He caught himself on an elbow as he pushed his father’s hand away.
“I have never seen it.” He heard his own bitter voice.
“But I have told you. Do you not remember all my stories?”
“Then I am telling you what you say is there.”
It felt good to turn his speech around on his father. Such opportunities were rare. His father slapped the goat on its rump. The critter bleated as it bolted away.
“Do not play this game with me.”
His father clicked and the next goat walked to him.
“What are you doing with the goats?”
“Cleaning thieves from their fur.”
He pinched the ground and held up a writhing devil of a tick. Fen toppled in retreat. His father crushed it, threw the ruination at his son, and laughed.
“A bug. They do grow larger here.”
“There is nothing in the ring. Why does the goat let you touch it when it knows we will eat it? I would not let a lion run its paw across me.”
“You would be surprised what you would let a lion do when it decided not to eat you each day. Besides, you are not a goat and I am not a lion. We are human. Why is nothing in the ring?”
“Because no one put anything there?”
“Nothing was there before the ring was there. Is this right?”
Fen caught himself chewing his lower lip. He scratched his itching legs through the furs. Talk of the ring made his legs burn.
“It is right. The Steppe was here before men built the ring.”
“Humans,” his father corrected. “So why did we build the ring?”
“To remind us… to remind us there was… to remind us there was nothing before there was something!”
“Well done!” He placed a hand on Fen’s shoulder. “Remember this. Your life is harder than most because of your illness. You will hate life for it. Remember this life cares nothing about you because it does not exist. It is nothing. I am nothing except for what I do. The same for you. Do you understand?”
Fen did understand. His legs were nothing until they carried him again or killed him. He brought his focus back to the cold morning and the standing stones. The space between the stones meant as much as the mighty stones, maybe more. His parents understood. This was why they would not leave their crippled son for the wolves. This emptiness inside him, this nothingness that made him strange, was both an anchor on his life and a chance to make a new life in the space it provided. He would take his chance or return to nothing soon enough. They saw no need to hurry along his brief existence.
“Thank you for showing me the stones.” He craned his neck to see his parents. “Can we go home?”
◆◆◆
They reached home the next day. Two dozen eager goats spied them at the horizon and bleated until the trio reached the tent. His mother dipped inside to check for thieves. She poked her smooth head through the tent’s flap.
“When will you walk, little one?” She started the game.
“When the stones fall down and the humans are gone.” He did not feel like playing.
“So it’s never, is it? Must we carry you forever?” his father asked.
“When the rains stop falling and the lightning eats itself,” Fen said.
His mother faked a scowl.
“Never, t
hen. Come inside. The tent is safe.”
She hunkered at the hearth’s cooled ashes as his father carried him inside. Fen’s fingers found the lacing that held his furs together. The simple knots, designed for release with a single pull and simple twist, did their work. His legs burned. They were too used to their daily comfort. The furs kept him too warm but hadn’t the shamans insisted, if he were to be left alive, that he be kept warm? But that was warmth. This was fire.
“When I grow into a wise man like my father and strong hunter like my mother,” he whispered.
His father’s mouth opened but stopped. Fen knew the look. His father was too weak to continue the game because he could not tell his son that his dream of adulthood would never happen.
“What is it?” his mother asked.
“My legs burn.”
He heard his empty voice again. At least it sounded unafraid.
“You must stay warm,” his father said. “All shamans agreed on this.”
But his father did not make his son stop removing the furs. His mother turned from the hearth as Fen pulled more layers free. Each caused raw nerves to alight with prickling pain. He removed the final layer. It stank of his unwashed body. He saw the horrid paleness of his own skin by the light of the sun through the tent’s flap. Those worthless weights shined like bleached bone.
His mother was beside them.
“What do you feel?”
He looked up and saw her hand atop the knife she kept tied to her waist. It was the finishing knife for killing exhausted prey. He smiled. She would not need it. In a fluid movement made possible by the endless falls and corrections that strengthened his arms and otherwise abandoned abdomen, Fen swung his legs from the nest. They clunked on the hard-packed earth. He pushed off his nest and for a wonderful moment hovered between his parents before he fell. The grace of his strong forearm prevented a broken nose.
“Fen…” his father muttered.
The Sin Eaters Page 3