The Boys of Fire and Ash (24 page)

Serin was the only one not smiling. She was still cold and icy, still unsure of us. “Do you remember Tanuk?” she asked, pointing to the silver-haired woman from the ambush. Her face was tender, a happy smile with sad eyes. She'd been the one to suggest we go to Lussit, and really, she'd saved our lives. The three of us nodded and Serin continued. “We will share her hearth tonight.”

Without another word, Serin began to head for the cave opening, and the three of us were quick to follow, too frightened to be left behind with these gushing, weepy Potentials.

As we approached the mouth of the cave, light from the outside hurt my eyes. I looked back, hoping to catch a last view of Lussit, but whatever view I might have had was blocked by the following Potentials.

Outside, the camp was alive with all kinds of women, different shapes and sizes. A scattered group of withered old things was waiting by the entrance, their heads pressed to the floor, singing and praying, while more seemed to be waiting to see us. Old faces and younger ones, girls as small as the Abish fortune-teller giggled in groups and whispered as we passed. Two girls, closer to our age, I guessed, fought each other with bo staffs and sticks. They were growling and viciously battling. My jaw nearly fell open when the smaller one flipped over the taller one, taking out her feet with a single swipe as she landed. The taller girl fell on her back and roared with frustration.

I looked to Av, who wasn't paying attention, his mind a million miles away from where we were, occupied by a million questions for Lussit, no doubt. But Fiver—he was grinning. It was a big stupid, gawking grin and I hoped way down in my soul that I hadn't looked like that when I first saw Lussit.

“Our girls learn young,” said Serin when she noticed us watching. “And they learn fast. It's important to be well versed in combat when you are a Belpheban.”

“And if they don't?” asked Fiver.

“I'm sorry?”

“If they don't learn fast, what happens?” I didn't like the tone in his voice. He was challenging her and she knew it. “You throw them away like you do all the boys?”

I held my breath and waited for Serin's response, but she
said nothing. She simply looked at him with a bit of what I could only identify as pity.

All of a sudden one of the Potentials ran out of the cave and burst into a full-blown wail as she rushed at Fiver. “Benedon! My Benedon!” she cried. “I had to! I just had to! It was the only way to keep you safe!”

Before she could wrap her bony arms around him, Fiver threw her thin, frail body and the woman went flying backwards into the waiting arms of the other Potentials.

In an instant, Serin had him firmly in her grip, his arms pinned behind his back, her bo staff holding up his chin.

“Sisters,” she said to the Potentials, who were busy quieting the crazy woman, wiping her tears and smoothing her hair. “Our visitors have had an exhausting day. Let them rest over a nourishing meal before we reunite them with their Mothers.”

“She's not my Mother!” Fiver growled.

“No, I doubt she is,” agreed Serin. Then, turning back to the sobbing woman: “Amala, Benedon was born over twenty years ago. These boys are too young to be your Benedon.”

The woman fell to her knees, lost in grief, while Serin let go of Fiver and pressed on to our destination.

“What in the name of Rawley is wrong with these women?” Fiver said.

Serin turned to look at him, stunned at his reaction. “The same thing as you, little Fiver. Heartache for what they lost.”

“Then maybe they shouldn't have chosen to chuck us in the first place,” Fiver grumbled under his breath.

Serin stepped up to him, pity gone. “Chosen? What choice is it you think we Belphebans have?” That suspicious look was back on her face. I didn't like it. “Tell me
something, Ikkuma boy. What made you so sure our dear Amala was not your Mother?”

He couldn't be. He wasn't. He said nothing, shrugged, and kept scowling at the ground, but the damage had been done. It wasn't that Fiver knew the Amala woman wasn't his Mother; it was that Fiver didn't want to know. He didn't want to know who his Mother was as much as I didn't. But we had to pretend we did want to know…and we were failing…and Serin was noticing.

“Pity for the timing,” she said, backing away, an obvious restraint in her posture. She didn't want to come down on us just yet. “Amala would have been a wonderful Mother to have. You would have been lucky if she were.”

Still, Fiver kept his mouth shut and the group, minus Amala, continued on towards Tanuk's home, a dwelling of low walls of stacked stones and mud with an orange canopy draped over the top. Serin stopped at the opening and Tanuk pulled aside the curtain, ushering us inside.

It was modest, even simpler than the A-Frame. Nothing but blankets and pillows and a corner devoted to dishes and pots and a few bags of grain, as though they didn't want to make themselves comfortable. I guessed that was the point. Blaze said they moved a lot.

A little girl, younger than Cubby, with curly golden hair and dimpled cheeks, giggled when we entered and ran to an older girl with the same golden hair, a stunning picture of beauty were it not for the monstrous swollen gut she was resting her threading on. I stared; the belly wasn't fat, it was round, swollen, like someone had filled her full of air. It looked sore, though she seemed comfortable enough.

“My youngest daughter,” said Tanuk, and the round-bellied woman nodded and smiled.

Fiver was staring too, almost frightened by the look of her.

“The baby will be here any day.”

The girl placed a hand on her stomach and rubbed. “I'd hoped for today, but she doesn't seem to want to come out!”

Out? I looked back to Fiver, who'd gone pale in the face. Out of her stomach?

Serin watched the confusion on our faces and a wry smile spread across her lips. “Not much learned about the birds and the bees in the Ikkuma Pit, is there?”

“A bee did that?” said Fiver, incredulous.

Serin threw back her head and let out a cackle, and I noticed the rest of the women had started to giggle.

“Don't tease them,” said Tanuk, smiling. “Come now, boys, let that be a lesson for another day.” She ushered us away and picked up the little girl. “My granddaughter, Pepper.”

We nodded politely and the little girl giggled.

“Please sit, let us eat.”

We looked around, unsure of what to do. Serin and the other Potentials sat easily enough, plopping themselves down on the pillows and blankets, forming a perfect circle. The three of us did the same and sat in awkward silence while Tanuk dispensed bowls to each of us filled with some goopy, sloppy mush that smelled like feet.

Then, the night got worse. As I tried to choke down the bland, salty slush, each of the Potentials trotted out a bunch of keepsakes from when their sons had been born, sons they hoped might be us. They handed their bundles to us one by one—swaddling clothes, dusty and ragged blankets, wooden toys and rattles—and asked if any of it looked familiar. It didn't. Even if these items had once belonged to me, I was just a baby. How could they expect me to remember? I
shook my head no, over and over as the next Potential passed me her trinkets. Av and Fiver did the same and I wondered why Lussit was putting us through all this. She could spare Av all of this and just tell him who their mother was. Maybe she didn't want the others to know they were related. Perhaps she was trying to save Av by not telling him.

Every look of disappointment from my headshake should have made me happy, I should have taken delight in inflicting misery on these awful women, but instead I found myself feeling sorry for them. “The Guilt,” Farka had called it, and each of the Potentials was covered in it. They'd spent a lifetime regretting letting go of their baby boys.

“No,” sighed Av as he handed back a fuzzy pink blanket to Tanuk. “I'm sorry, I don't.”

His hand rubbed his forehead and I didn't know if it was his injury or the Sister thing that was making his head hurt.

Tanuk nodded and folded the little blanket on her lap.

Tanuk had been the easiest Potential to deal with. She wasn't as crushed as the rest of them when we said no, and she didn't watch us like all her life's hopes depended on one of us being her son. She simply accepted what we said and her posture stayed straight. She didn't slump, she didn't frown. She just watched us patiently, fingering the blue pendant around her neck, and treated us with all the respect and hospitality she could. Tanuk had a quiet strength about her, a dignity that I had to admire. If I had recognized her fuzzy blanket, it may not have been the worst thing.

I watched as her hand dropped from the object on her neck. It was a tube, kind of, a tube I'd seen before, only much smaller. “What is that?” I said without thinking.

“What? My Abish shroud?” She looked at the blue stone object dangling from her neck and smiled.

“Abish shroud?”

She slid the object off her neck and handed it to me. “A tricky little contraption invented by the Abish to keep secret things safe.”

I turned it over in my fingers. It was identical to Blaze's flint box, though smaller. The stone was so bright and smooth.

“Secret things,” I repeated.

“It keeps my treasures for me,” Tanuk said, and winked. She reached over and twisted the top to the left, then the bottom to the right. She pressed each end between her index fingers and with a click the little blue tube opened, a frayed old cloth poking out.

She pulled out the cloth and unraveled it to reveal a little black footprint pressed into the fibers.

“My boy's,” she said, smiling sadly.

The foot was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, little toes no bigger than a seed.

I nodded awkwardly, not sure what to say, and handed it back.

“Has anyone ever found the son they were looking for?” Av was talking to Serin and she smiled as she swallowed her food.

“Of course. There have been many.”

“So…a lot of us come back, then?” Av looked disappointed, as though every Big Brother had been nothing but a Mother seeker all along.

“A few. Not often, but indeed there have been some. I can't remember the last one that came. What was it?” She looked to her Sisters and asked, “Four years ago?”

“Four,” agreed Tanuk, clicking the stone tube closed and hanging it around her neck, hiding her treasure once more.

“Four,” came the familiar, snake-like voice of Farka as she threw aside the curtain and stormed into the room.

“Farka,” said Serin, nodding in a rather cold greeting.

I tensed when she looked at me. She made my whole body cold and stiff, she made me feel like a Slag Cavy, caught in the hunter's eye.

“Boys,” said Tanuk, handing Farka a full bowl of her salty slop. “This is my eldest, Farka.”

Poor Tanuk. Stuck raising a monster like Farka. No wonder she sought her son. Any child would be better than Farka. I shuddered at the thought that she could be my Sister, but I doubted it. She was sharp and strong, a good hunter. We had nothing in common.

“Yes, many have returned and reunited with their Mothers,” said Serin. “Most don't ever find their Mothers, of course.”

“Sad when that happens,” said Tanuk.

“What's sad about it?” spat Farka. “They aren't supposed to be here.”

“Quiet, Farka,” snapped her Mother.

Farka simmered in the corner and no one moved to make room for her in the circle. She sat, scooping up the slop with her fingers and glaring at the three of us as she ate.

“And they just leave?” I asked, doing my best to ignore the burn from her stare.

Serin nodded.

“So…where do they go?”

Serin just shrugged but Tanuk smiled and patted my leg. “Bigger things, my dear,” she said. “Many of them have even joined the Resistance against the Beginning.”

“Well,” said a woman cradling her lost son's rattle, “if only to follow the first.”

Tanuk nodded and smiled. “Yes, you boys are stronger
than you know. Not long ago, one of you nearly took down the entire Beginning order.” She turned her smile to me and squeezed my shoulder. “You're so much like him….”

I couldn't help but think of my Big Brother, Cheeks. We'd been nothing alike and everyone back home was quick to point that out. No matter how much Cheeks tried to pass on what he knew to me, I never seemed to pick it up. No one back home would have ever said I reminded them of Cheeks.

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Tragic story, really,” Tanuk sighed. “He came here. He'd just had his Leaving Day. I'd say he was a couple years older than you boys now.”

Av and I nodded, and I hoped Farka wouldn't comment on how young we were again. Tanuk continued. “Anyway, he never did find his Mother, poor thing. But he did find love. He fell hard and fast for one of our young Sisters, and it wasn't long before the two fled from us.”

“How come?”

“They wanted to be married. That's something a Belpheban just does not do.”

“Why not?” asked Fiver.

Tanuk let a breath escape her nostrils. “Love is little better than a curse for our kind. Ever since the time of Belphoebe, any Belphebans who find love quickly find misery and destruction.”

I remembered the rock twin, Amid, murdered for his love of Belphoebe.

“And so it was for our Sister in this case. Since the Belphebans do not allow marriage, the two went looking for a people who would. Unfortunately, all they found were the Beginners.”

“Stupid girl,” hissed the woman with the rattle.

“They were quickly wed and embraced by their society, marking them with the brand that marks all Beginners.” Tanuk pointed at her neck where it joins to the shoulder. Just where Blaze's had been. “The mark of Ardigund. And the two lovers, so skilled and so smart—they were descendants of Belphebans, after all—climbed the ranks of the Beginning order rather quickly, too quickly. Both became the pride of Krepin's armies. Our Sister, she was utterly seduced by the teachings of the Beginning, and the words of Aju Krepin.”