Aur Child

Alai-Tiul, deposited by the Odyssey several miles offshore from where he sailed his small boat into the bay of Gjoa, now walked from the harbor directly to the wind towers. The street climbed straight up the largest hill in Gjoa, past the covered market square where fish and flowers were sold in equal quantities from weathered stalls, beyond the large courtyards shaded by ancient banyans where men sewed shiny foil chads to the fabrics they had dyed in anticipation of future moon ceremonies, along the low-slung wall where women sat and played the soft percussion of plastic and glass, and just above the commune buildings of smooth stone with their intermittent spotting of glazed tiles where the villagers of younger decades congregated to undertake their apprenticeships and begin their lifelong contributions to the village. Above all this, Alai-Tiul could see the bases of several wind towers, decorated in brilliant orthogonal shapes of green, blue, and red, soar up off the hilltop into the air to cloud-graced heights. It might only take ten minutes to walk that street from end to end, but for him it felt like ten hours.

It may have been the surprise of it all that made the walk seem to take so long. After all, he had thought nothing of his landing in the village in the middle of the afternoon when the streets would be abuzz with villagers moving about. He thought nothing of his arriving from the sea on his small boat and tying up at the quay. He thought nothing of being an outlander from the southern continent; these people had seen plenty of his kind before. Even he had been to Gjoa in his youth; he remembered the stark way in which nobody noticed anyone there. There were just so many people.

So, when he began his walk up the hill, and nearly everyone stopped in their tracks to stare at him, he couldn’t help but question himself. When a few people, and then even more, began to follow him and mutter in their local tongue several steps in his wake, he worried that something might be seriously wrong. He tried to think what it could be that had caused him to be singled out in this way. He looked down at his person to check that nothing blatantly obvious might be calling so much attention.

His clothing, he thought, might be odd, with their narrow legs and wide arms. Calliope had given them to him to replace the shreds of clothing he wore on his arrival on the Odyssey. These heavier garments clearly showed he was not from the region. They might look especially odd contrasted to his dark, curly black hair, thick forehead and nostrils, and short stature that identified his origins unquestionably as being from further south. His asymmetrical limp, an artifact of the slower recovery of one leg versus the other after nearly expiring into nothingness at sea, might be noticeable, he considered. But could these little differences in a busy harbor town really cause such a stir?

Of course, he couldn’t know that the village had been on high alert after the recent visit by Apostates attempting to raid the wind temples. He couldn’t know that when those raiders came and went, they too arrived by sea like ghosts without an oceangoing ship to substantiate their safe arrival and departure. He couldn’t know that the villagers were abuzz with the rumors spread vociferously by all who had heard of Sand Flea’s encounters with a wealthy stranger who had promised her she might live forever. And most of all, he couldn’t know that the villagers had been warned to be on the lookout for any suspicious visitors who threatened the security of the Aur children.

If he had known any of this, he might not have arrived the very same way the Apostates had, worn the very same clothes they wore, walked with a similar gait they used, and marched directly to the very same sacred destination to which they had attempted to gain access. Alas, he knew none of it, so instead, he couldn’t have raised the village’s alarm any more obviously than if he had been an actual ghost floating up the street towards the wind temples, howling as he went.

The villagers gawked at him. Many tailed behind to confirm that he really was heading straight for the wind temples. He climbed to the crest of the hill and arrived at the base of the wind towers to shouts and calls from a large crowd. On the Odyssey, he had planned to take an aggressive position. It was his idea to challenge the elders of Gjoa to tell him the truth about the Aur children or Aur boules. He would demand they confess the true relationship between Tellurians and the others who made all the technologies to which he had recently been exposed. If they refused to tell him what he wanted to know, perhaps he would even threaten them. He might go tell the villagers that they have been lied to for hundreds of years. It would, at least, be greatly troublesome to the elders to have to mitigate such accusations.

Now, with a boiling mob around him, he did not feel so quarrelsome. He would have sunk back into his little boat and sailed away if that route were available to him. Instead of going to the elders, they came to him. All of them. Perhaps twenty or more women of ten or more decades parted the dense congregation of villagers and approached Alai with just as much aggression as he had planned to display. They stood before him, beside him, behind him. He looked around, his thoughts nearly drowned by the unfamiliar words and jeers of the locals.

One elder, with a narrow nose and withered arms, stepped forward from the inner ring that surrounded him.

“Apostate!” she said in the merchant tongue with a voice pitched through her nose so sharp that it pierced Alai’s ears, “There is no tolerance for your kind. Justify your presence here in our village!”

Alai looked around at the throngs of people. It might have been the entire village come to gawk at him. Apostate? Had his actions - taking the Aur child away from Hill Village, sailing aboard the Odyssey, conversing with Calliope – already made him a dissenter to Our Order? Even more puzzling was, how these people knew any of those things had happened. He had recognized the freedom his actions had brought him, but it had never occurred to him that what he’d done might make him an outcast. Indeed, he could not recall ever seeing anyone being treated so harshly by village elders. He felt his body stiffen. The sun felt like a beam of fire, further wearying his already weak body. Someone threw a handful of sand in the air above him. It rained down over his curly tufts to form a clownlike dusting. Taunting laughs bubbled up from the crowd. He tried to think of a suitable response but could only recall the original aim of his visit.

“I’ve come to question the elders about the Aur children,” he said.

The crowd erupted in fury. Many elders stepped back in shock at such belligerence. The small space he had been given in the center of the crowd shrank rapidly.

The same elder held up her hand to silence the crowd.

“Heretic! I thought I recognized what you were …” she ground out these words with a flash in her eyes, “when you hobbled up here on your wobbly legs and in those frumpy clothes. Apostate through and through! For how long have you attempted to manage even that sad excuse for a human gait? A day’s practice? Have you no shame to stumble up here in the light of day and ask of me that which we defend with our lives? That which belongs to us and shall never belong to you.” She pointed behind her. “The wind temples are not accessible to anyone but local devotees of Our Order on holy days. Devotees who are comfortable inside themselves! They are certainly not accessible to those hedonists who wish only to devour the Aur children as they were so many candies! As I told your despicable collaborators when they snuck up here, Gjoa shall protect her Aur children from all Incarnations of the Apostasy! You fiends will have to find some other branch from which to pluck the fruits after which you lust!”

The accumulation of villagers around him made him perspire more, but Alai straightened his back and maintained the objective of his visit. “I am no heretic,” he barked. “And I am not here to steal your Aur children. I am here to ask you why you hide their truths from all these people?” He waved his hands around at the crowd. “I am here,” he continued, “to ask you why you call them Aur children while others call them Aur boules.”

“Punthali,” one of the elders said in a lowered voice, “let us take this man away before he confuses our villagers with his delusions.”

The village elder named Punthali nodded in affirmation. “Yes,” she said returning her narrowly spaced eyes in a glare towards Alai, “but let us do more than just that. If he covets the Aur children,” she pointed towards the wind towers, “let us put him in with them.” Her voice now rose to a cry that caused her whiny pitch to crack. “Apostate! Your kind were warned when they last were here that any further harassment would not be tolerated. You break the ancient treatise. We know how to exorcise a trespassing soul!” She turned around towards the other elders, and then, “Which clan offers their wind temple to be honored with the sacred rite of exorcism?”

The crowd churned in perplexed murmurs. One of the elders stepped forward.

“Punthali, this not right,” she said in a whisper that still carried to Alai’s ears. “There must be a tribunal, an inquiry, and a finding.”

Punthali looked around at the scared looks of the villagers. She lowered her shoulders and placed her hands into the position of a mudra towards her fellow elder. The anger in her face seemed to clear away somewhat.

“You are right, Niraj,” she said, lowering her hands and feebly holding the wrist of her compatriot. “I have gotten ahead of myself. Yes, we must observe the protocol for even the most brazen affronts. Let us hold the accused in a wind temple and convene the elders. A post of guards shall detain him.” She looked up at the sky and then, “The exorcism, I am sure, can be performed before moonrise.”

Within minutes, Alai found himself in very familiar environs. Despite the brightly colored paints and hanging decorations on the outside, the wind temple into which he was placed looked no different on the inside than that of the wind towers at Hill Village. The plinth upon which a rickety power cell or a Aur boule could be placed was directly across the room, opposite the door which faced north. The rungs and the lofty landing rose into the dark heights of the tower. The sight of this last feature, upon which his lost son had climbed so many times, caused his legs to tremble.

Several large villagers stood at the open doorway, taking turns looking in at him with equal amounts of scornful grimaces and curiosity. Alai paced about the circular room. He feared the accusation of Apostate, although he did not really know what it meant. He feared an exorcism, although he did not know what that meant either. More than fear, he began to grow suspicious of the terms he had agreed upon with Calliope. Earlier that morning, she had abruptly stopped him as he stepped into his boat to sail into Gjoa harbor and asked him when he intended to return.

“I should be back by nightfall,” he had stated, barely giving it any real thought.

“But what if you are not back by then?” Calliope asked.

“Well, then wait for me.”

“For how long, Captain?”

“What do you mean for how long?”

“I mean, what if you choose another course? What if you decide you no longer wish to sail aboard the Odyssey? What if you abandon your role as captain? How am I to know? Would you have me float out upon the sea indefinitely without recourse?”

Alai already had the sheet in one hand and the tiller in the other. He thought on this for a moment before asking, “Where else would you go?”

“If you were not intending to return, it would be considered a relinquishment of your title of Captain. I would simply return to those to whom I was owned before.”

“But … why didn’t you do that in the first place?”

“I came across you nearly dead at sea. As I’ve said, I am obligated to protect the life of any human I encounter. Doing so, further obligated me to give you captainship of the Odyssey. But what I ask now is how am I to know if you decide not to return?”

“And you wish to agree on a limit of time to wait before leaving?”

“Yes. One day? One week?”

“Calliope,” Alai interrupted her, “I have no intentions at this time to give up my captainship of the Odyssey.”

“After speaking with the elders, you might change your mind. You Tellurians are so fickle, you know.”

“Besides,” Alai continued, “I do not intend to let you sail away with my Aur boule.”

“Of course not. I would expect you to retrieve it before you abandon me.”

Alai stumbled on a few words as he grew impatient with the discussion.

“Very well, I expect you to wait here at least two days. And I will be back before that to collect the Aur boule. But if I don’t return, then you may assume I have abandoned my captainship and are released from waiting for me.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Calliope had said as Alai pushed his boat away from the Odyssey and trimmed the main sail.

Now, in the gloomy dusk of the wind tower, he suspected trickery in that conversation. The entire village seemed to have expected his arrival, and now he could not help but suspect that Calliope had anticipated he would not return. Of course, the idea of being detained – the concept itself nearly inconceivable – hadn’t crossed his mind. Now, it seemed he might be stuck here and forced to undergo some awful ceremony that may very likely prevent him from getting back to the Odyssey in less than the two days with which he had agreed with Calliope. Even for the innocent mind of a Tellurian, it was no longer too remote a thought to suspect her of subterfuge.

His pacing continued for many hours. Forced to occupy the core of his protestations, he wandered into doubts of his own intentions. Did he have the right to demand answers from foreign elders about their sacred objects simply because Gallia refused? His probity might be more convincing if he were to reveal to them the loss of his family and his suspicions why, but they had no reason to believe him.

In truth, he had no idea what they were debating or when they might come to a conclusion. The only inclination he had of activity outside the echoing chamber of the wind tower was the clumsy shuffling of the guards outside. His thoughts drifted to various ways to escape. He might take the guards by surprise with a mad sprint through the open doorway and head straight for his little boat. But the yells of alarm would overtake him and surely, he would be caught again before he managed to get the dinghy underway. They may have already grounded his boat or worse. To escape would require stealth, but with at least six guards posted at the doorway, it seemed impossible.

Night came swiftly. Alai heard the sounds of the guards taking turns eating their dinner. Two or three were still posted at the door while the others supped somewhere nearby. He recalled the threat of the village elder named Punthali that the exorcism for which he was surely to be sentenced would happen before moonrise; he knew that was not until a bit after midnight. His body was exhausted. Between his hike up to the wind towers and his pacing within, he had not walked so much since he left Hill Village. He considered whether it would be better to simply go to sleep on the hard floor.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash of earthenware and a bustle amongst the guards. One yelled at another about being clumsy. Alai approached the doorway to see what advantage this might give him, but the commotion seemed to put the guards on even higher alert. They crowded into the doorway and set their eyes upon him.

“You won’t go anywhere, interloper,” one of them snarled with contempt.

“Yeah, you’re to stay here until the elders return,” another said.

“Won’t I even get a meal?” Alai asked in a shaky voice.

A third guard looked over his shoulder and then he said, “You might’ve, but someone’s just knocked over the whole pot, so there’ll be nothing left for you tonight.”

Alai turned away from the guards and slunk into the darkness of the room near the ladder.

“I thought you might be hungry,” a tiny voice whispered from above. Alai started in surprise and looked up, but the space above him was darker than the night sky.

“I brought you some gotchi,” the voice continued, and a small hand reached down a tiny dish with a sweet-smelling pile of some sticky substance on it.

Alai cautiously took the dish. “Who are you?” he asked in a voice that echoed around the silent chamber.

One of the guards poked her head into the room and replied, “You don’t need to know us, man. Just keep quiet in there and let us have our supper.”

“You should keep your voice down, outlander,” the voice from above said. From the slight reverberation of the thin lattice, Alai could hear that the owner of that voice was now stepping down the metallic rungs. Tiny bare feet then slapped down to the ground and Alai found himself confronted by a miniscule girl in a dress that looked oddly new for the dirty little body upon which it hung.

Alai scooped the tiny serving of pudding rice into his mouth and swallowed it whole. It was the first food he had had since very early that morning.

“Have you been in here all this time?” he asked, finding a softer voice that didn’t attract the attention of the guards.

“Of course not,” the little child snickered. “Do you really think those guards are clumsy enough to knock over their own dinners? I made the distraction to sneak in from the hatch up there.” The small girl pointed up to the landing upon which Alai’s son had positioned himself so many times before. He wondered how he could have forgotten about the hatch that led to the outer rungs - those lattice-patterned rungs that Alai had always suspected were the way in which the towers generated electricity from the wind.

“Ah yes,” he said. “I forgot about that hatch.”

“You seem to have forgotten many things.” the girl drew her tongue over lips.

Alai dropped the corners of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he replied, “What else have I forgotten?”

The girl placed her hands on her hips and looked at him with squeezed eyes, “My message?”

Now Alai was baffled. He shook his head. “What message?”

The little girl gasped in a feign of disbelief and then “I’m Sand Flea. You’re here to give me a message, are you not?”

Alai must have looked totally confused because Sand Flea did not wait for him to respond.

“From Digambar,” she said. “What has she sent you to tell me?”

“You know Digambar?” Alai asked, his mouth hung open as he spoke.

Sand Flea looked to the corner of the plinth and craned her neck with impatience.

“I think that is clearly established. What I don’t know is …”

But before she could finish her sentence, she disappeared into the darkness of the corner. A guard poked his head into the room and yelled towards Alai.

“Man, who are you talking to? We won’t fall for any of your tricks. The elders told us you can do all kinds of things with dangerous technologies, so don’t think we’re not prepared.” After a moment of silence during which Alai did not reply, the guard continued with his lecture. “They’ll be done with their discussion soon and then you’ll have your excision.”

“It’s exorcism,” one of the other guards corrected him from beyond the doorway. It sounded as if his mouth was full of food, yet he managed to pronounce the word correctly.

“Well, whatever it is, you’re gonna get it soon. So just keep quiet and forget any games you might be planning. We’re not goin’ in there and you’re not comin’ out.”

The threats continued for several minutes while the guard stood near the doorway and mostly watched the others who were preparing to eat their meals. From the darkness of the room, he couldn’t have seen Alai follow Sand Flea up the ladder to the platform and step out through the hatch. Outside, the guards seemed fixed on the open doorway to the wind temple, so Sand Flea and Alai were free to slide down a banner rope from the outer rungs and sneak behind the meagre bushes that lined the outer edge of the pathway to the temples.

There were no guards stationed by the sides of the small park fronting the wind temples. Alai followed Sand Flea as she ran across the street and ducked down into the thickness of an unlighted side alley. They went unseen weaving their way through quiet alleys all the way down to the harbor. Finally, the two tiptoed out onto the quay to where Alai’s boat remained tied off to a rusting cleat exactly the way he left it earlier that day. All that was left to escape was for Alai to push his tiny boat off the quay and make the best of the darkness and a very calm evening breeze to sail back to the Odyssey.

“Now mister,” Sand Flea said on the quay, her eyes set in anticipation, “tell me your name.”

“I am Alai-Tiul,” he said, panting with exhaustion. He swallowed hard and attempted to wet his mouth, “And I must thank you so much for getting me out of that. How can I ever repay you?”

“I couldn’t leave a friend of Digambar’s to those cruel women,” she said, and after a moment of contemplation while Alai continued to regain his breath, she continued, “I’ve never seen Elder Niraj lose her temper like that before. And believe me I’ve tried! She definitely was angry that you came back to steal the Aur children. But …why do you want them?”

“I don’t want any Aur children!” Alai said. He held out his hand as he insisted these words.

“Fine, so you say, then you must have come to give me a message from Digambar. Now, just tell me what she wanted to say to me.”

Alai grabbed his stomach and winced in pain. He doubled over and sank low in the boat. “I think it was too soon to eat solid foods,” he mumbled out loud.

“What’s with all of you?” Sand Flea asked, “Tender stomachs and a distaste of gotchi?”

After a moment, Alai recovered from the spasm and looked up at Sand Flea. “Are you …are you the princess?” he asked.

Sand Flea gasped. Her eyes welled up and she covered her mouth with her hands.

“Is that what she calls me?”

“Yes,” Alai answered, “Digambar called you that.”

“Oh! She does still love me.”

“Yes, she said she loves you.”

“And she will come for me, yes? Has she got permission yet to take me with her?”

“I …I don’t know that, Sand Flea,” Alai said, he was careful to avoid upsetting the little girl.

“Oh, I hope it will be soon. I only want to be free of these cruel elders and heartless villagers. I only want to live together with Digambar, forever, in the far northlands above Dragon’s Snout.”

“In the northlands?” Alai asked. “Above Dragon’s Snout?”

“Well, yes,” Sand Flea answered with a flare of pride in her voice. “She even told me that.” Then, she laughed with a tinge of condescension and said, “Don’t pretend you don’t know from where Digambar comes.”

“No, Sand Flea, I don’t.”

“What? You’re not from there too?” The glow that had shined in Sand Flea’s eyes went out like a light. “You don’t know her?”

“No. I’m so sorry.”

“But I thought you were all from the same place? All of you were … hiding, she said.” Sand Flea scanned Alai with a pass to verify her earlier impressions. “And there’s no merchant ship due for days, so I know you’ve come from a ghost ship.” She nodded towards Alai’s boat, “You can’t sail that thing across the sea.”

“Sand Flea, I think you misunderstand me. I’m just a man from the southern continent. From Hill Village actually, if you know that place. I’m not the same kind of person as Digambar, whatever that is.”

“What are you then?”

Alai opened and closed his mouth. He searched for something else to say. Perhaps something more convincing. “Just a man, like I said.”

“How do you know of her then? She said they rarely speak to people like us. She said I was a … rare perception.”

“We … we were on the same ship … but at different times, you see?”

Sand Flea looked out along the bay. Lights from the buildings flickered off the calm waters. A glow from the moon was just showing in the horizon.

“How came you to be on a ghost ship?” she muttered, mostly to herself.

“Look,” Alai said, “I’ve got to go now. Before the moon reveals the boat.”

Sand Flea grabbed his arm and blurted out in apparent desperation, “Oh, Alai! Don’t leave me here! Please take me with you to be with Digambar! Trust me, she and I, we are friends. Close friends. I have waited here patiently for her since before the solstice! She promised to take me with her, and I know you can bring me on the ghost ship to her!”

Alai looked at that little, pleading creature beside him. As he processed his thoughts, he opened his mouth in an attempt to reply to the girl. She looked at him with wide, desperate eyes. He said, “I’m sorry, Sand Flea, but Digambar is…” he paused, changed his mind, and then continued, “... not with me, and I likely won’t see her again. Now I must go to that place you spoke of. Dragon’s Snout.”

The little girl sunk to the flats of her feet. Her lips pressed together in chagrin.

“Goodbye,” he said.

Alai released the warp from the quay and his boat bobbed off until he set the sail. In the distance, yells and calls of anger spilled down the hill. There was no time left to speak. He must go. She must stay.