Aur Child

Bemko-Tiul refused to let go of the only two people he had left in this world. He had skulked within the cottage for days and nights, tending tirelessly to the bodies of mother and son with nothing but seaweed and nursey rhymes. He knew it was only a matter of time before he was discovered, and that he had done all he possibly could when he heard the brakes of bicycles squeak to a stop outside the cottage door. He stood up and walked to the kitchen, the furthest place in the small building from the bodies that lay upon the bed and looked from a sharp angle out the window at the shadows making their way to the door. The dog growled in a dark corner of the room.

“We’re coming in now, Bemko,” the creaking voice of Village Elder Nemla warned.

Heat hovered around the windows and, when the door was swung open hastily, a suffocating gust of it greeted him. That was the only greeting he received. The outdoor air exchanged with the pungent fumes, steeped in seaweed, inside the cottage.

Jange-Nemla entered first. She looked right to Bemko, and then left towards the bed. Her instant yelp of fright caused Bemko to jump. Her wrinkled hands covered her mouth. Nallu-Hoenria pushed the other woman forward so she could also get into the room. Her shriek of horror chilled Bemko such that he forgot his purpose. Until that moment, he had not considered what it might look like to anyone else coming in to discover his handiwork. As horrible as those two bodies might have looked to him, he who knew what he intended for them and had spent two nights and days with them, growing accustomed to their wicked posture, wrapped up to their necks in the rough-woven wraps of funeral drapery, propped up with pillows like playhouse dolls, static faces of those who were thought to have already passed on, mouths agape with the green molasses of moist seaweed packed between their teeth, they were indescribably less terrifying to him than to the two elders with whom he now shared this room.

Jange gasped for air behind her hands, hiding the scene from her sight. Nallu reached for the chair beside the door and folded down into a moan of horror. Bemko might have wanted to take that relative silence to make his case, but no words of reason came to him. Could he, a man of little sense, construct the sentence that explained away this ghastly scene? He thought not. Instead, he resumed singing the song that had lulled him by its lyrics to this very moment.

’Boil a’kelp bright,

For it won’ grow,

A cure all’itself,

O’r the great green glow.

As he sang the sweet tune, Jange’s cries accompanied him like a harrowing ensemble. Nallu had her hand to her chest as she breathed heavily through the rhythm of the repeating lyrics. She appeared too dizzy to stand.

Looking up, Nallu spoke to Bemko in a pathetic croak, tears flooding the thick haze of her pupils.

“What have you done?”

Bemko continued singing, but his pace increased, and the key shifted frighteningly higher.

“Bemko!” Nallu cried in a strengthened rage. “What have you done, man?”

Still, Bemko sang his horrid lullaby. Nallu pushed herself up and attempted to restate her question a third time, but she was cut short by Bemko’s alarming movements. He outstretched his arms and stepped towards the old woman in a trancelike state, singing his wretched lullaby with each step. It only took two strides to reach her.

’Boil a’kelp bright,

For it won’ grow,

Nallu glanced to her sides for a way to escape the approach, but there were no options. The chair was behind her. Jange was collapsed between her and the door. And Bemko, he was so large. He grabbed hold of Nallu’s arms.

“No! Let go of me!” she screamed.

Jange, too, screamed in terror at the shock of such violence. Her shrill pitch sank deep into the thick walls of the coquina cottage. She seemed paralyzed in that crumpled position beside the chair, the same place where Alai had assumed a similar posture just a few days earlier.

Bemko’s strength was unyielding. He sang his song and dragged the woman across the room towards the two bodies. Although she struggled to, she could not resist.

“Let go of me! Help! Help!” she screamed, her voice cracking.

There was no help and no alternative. Bemko exhibited ultimate power over the frail woman, forcing her to the bedside and then, grabbing her by the back of her neck, over the body of the boy. Nallu continued to scream in unbridled terror – her mouth, wide open, mirroring the green gape of the boy – but as he pressed her face to face with the boy, Bemko stopped his singing.

“Shh, Elder Hoenria, listen to him,” Bemko whispered into her ear.

It took a long time for Nallu to hear and then obey the words of Bemko. She now had her ear, by force, pressed close to the nostrils of the boy. Between her whimpers and sobs, Bemko saw that she was listening. As she did so, her eyes opened wider. She slowly drew her arm forward, now released by Bemko, to touch the face of the boy. She turned her head towards Jange.

“He’s breathing!” she said. “He’s …he’s warm.” And she reached across to the mother to touch the sliver of neck exposed above the heavy cloth. “And she!”

Jange looked across the room.

“But… how?” she said.

Bemko staggered backwards. He heaved in tremendous sobs. The relief swelled up from within him. With these initial reactions, he imagined himself emancipated from the most ghastly of crimes. He sat down onto the boy’s smaller bed, its frame squeaking in synchronicity with his deep guttural cries reverberated around the room. The boy’s hand twitched.

“Oh!” Nallu continued, “are these two really alive, Bemko?”

But the man could not speak. The room was notably quieter with the two elders stifled by an even greater shock. He raised his arm and pointed towards the mouths of the mother and boy; the dark green stuffing being brought once again to the women’s attention.

“What alchemy is this?” Jange managed to croak from her seat on the floor.

Through his sobs, Bemko now spoke.

“Not alchemy, ’tis from a psalm of Our Order,” he said.

“I know of no such psalm,” Nallu said, regaining herself and returning to a role of authority.

“But are you sure,” Bemko said in a hesitant voice and with a mudra to express the fear of his own boldness, “that you know them all?”

Nallu’s mouth opened in shock at the audacity of the question from such a simple man, but she seemed resolute not to respond in any other way.

“I think,” she said to Bemko, “you go too far, outlander. Your green thumb dabbles in an intolerable sorcery. This is something unnatural. It is time for you to leave our village.”