Aur Child

Gallia-Tiul, most senior of the clan elders at Hill Village, had left that coastal place in haste. She had had no time to console the ailing villagers and their distraught families who feared that their relatives might suffer the same fate as Alai-Tiul’s wife and son. She had had no time to return to Bemko-Tiul to resolve her incongruous last words. And worst of all, since the only possible way for her to search at sea for Alai was on the merchant ship the Marlin, and by tradition, the crew had been required to depart immediately to avoid the curse of misfortune as witnesses to the pyre of the two prematurely departed souls, she had been unable to stay even the few hours more necessary to pay her last respects to the innocent mother and child who had fallen victims to the poisoned catches from Crabber’s Bay. To make matters worse, it had only been when she was far beyond sight of Hill Village’s wind towers, staring out onto the black sea beneath the full sail plan of the five-masted Marlin, that she had managed to connect the events sufficiently enough to realize that the implosions of the two Aur children must have been the source of a wicked discharge that had taken its toll on the villagers. It had been her recollection, late in the night as she lay awake with all these worries, that Jange’s recitation from Our Order could in fact tie everything together:

Beware its environs, for the souls of those who approach without caution shall be taken.

But that was several days ago, and she could do nothing now to communicate her realization to the other elders of Hill Village. The passage aboard the Marlin had been disappointingly uneventful; search as the bosun might atop the tallest mast, he had seen no indication of Alai’s little boat in their sweep of the seas on their first days northbound to their planned port of call, the village of Gjoa. She could not ask the captain to search any more, as she had already been generous enough to tack into the winds at broader reaches so that the sweep would cover wider swaths at the cost of extending the duration of the voyage. All Gallia could do now, with the Marlin’s anchor and rode securely fastened to the sandy bottom of the pincer-shaped bay in front of Gjoa, was to be ferried ashore and alert the elders here to the tragedies that had befallen Hill Village and, as soon as possible, return home when the next ship to the southern continent could take her.

Gallia trudged along the main quay of Gjoa, carefully navigating around ropes and crates. A slight wobble in her step might normally be interpreted as the effects of many days at sea, but that was not how the locals saw it. They were on alert for more interlopers. Crew and passenger registers had been scoured by the harbor master for people from the northlands, each one questioned about their faith in Our Order. Being a revered elder and from Hill Village, Gallia was excluded from these queries, but her disembarkation had been delayed so long that the intense midday sun now glared overhead, and she could feel her robes weighed down with sweat.

She was already weary. Travel by sea at her age was uncomfortable, especially when she slept poorly, suffering from nightmares almost every night. In her dreams, she relived the destruction of that strange boat. The boat of the Apostates. She was haunted by the scream that had cut the air when the boat had been shredded apart, the reminder of it mimicked by the most innocuous of sounds: a gull, the creak of a hinge, the rub of nail along a loosened plank on the ship’s deck. Whenever it came to her, she could feel sweat surface upon her aged skin.

When she had woken, she forced herself to think through the dream. A wise woman of so many decades, she was confident in her decisions. She could always explain to herself that there was little other choice. Time was of the essence to prevent villagers from seeing the boat and asking more questions. Still, she regretted the destruction and the frightening appearance of violence. Even now, in broad daylight, beyond the heat, she sweated more from the memory of it. Despite her affirmations of best intentions, something gnawed at her conscience. Gallia knew she had done something wrong, but could not say what exactly it was.

Gallia occasionally glanced ahead and recalled her previous visits to Gjoa. The lively spices, the joyful colors, the smiling people. A new visit to balance the sliver of new moon that followed her northbound journey. Renewing energy. A power of introspection and the ability to endure hardship for this important cause. Beyond celestial energy, she hoped to find her sister elders alive and well, although it had been so long – she reminded herself of this – that anything was possible.

But her cheerful memories did not align with the jeering people around her. She barely managed to get beyond the quay when she understood that something was very wrong. Her presence in the obvious robes of an elder should be that of one highly respected in any village she visited. That was not the case. The villagers, all of them, seemed to react to her as if she were a pariah.

“Boo!” howled an angry woman from a small fruit stand. Gallia adjusted her course away from the woman to the shade of the nearest buildings.

“Stay away, Apostate!” another shop owner called to her as she approached. He reached out from the window counter and swung closed the wooden shutters.

Apostate? She thought. What had transpired here to cause a person of her dress and appearance could be confused for an Apostate?

A younger man stepped up to her and threw a fistful of sun-bleached street dust in the air in front of her so that the breeze blew it across her head and face. She sneezed and looked around to spot the perpetrator, but it was too late. Before she could correct her course, two others capitalized on her turned head and did the same. The murmurs grew to yelling as more clouds of dust appeared before her and a mob closed in. Her eyes caked with the fine powder, she held her arm up to block more dust. People charged wildly at her, swooping down to scoop handfuls of street dust and hurl it towards her, all the while threatening her with phrases and blasphemes in their local tongue. In their fury, first her head and shoulders, and then her entire body was metamorphosed with that fine white sand from that of an elderly black woman of the southern continent to a powdery ghostlike apparition that fulfilled the fears of their fantasies.

She was encircled between a small juice kiosk and a cast-maker’s shop. Stacks of plastic, metal, and glass ingots formed a small parapet wall that hemmed her in. The enraged mob continued their volleys. In one charge, an attacker in the process of dousing Gallia with more dust unintentionally landed the soft of his forearm across her face, knocking her to the ground with a violent shock. Her head hit the ground in the fall. The mob gasped with surprise. The man responsible spun around and came to a standstill midway between the crowd and where Gallia had fallen. He stared at her with his arm still held high in apparent astonishment of what he had just done. Gallia called out in a groan of pain; a voice seemingly from the Earth itself. She was so heavily smothered in dust that only her writhing distinguished her from the street itself. Silence caught the tongues of the angry villagers as they came to terms with having crossed a forbidden threshold.

Gallia rolled over and tried to open her eyes. She was confused and suffering. The attacks had come so unexpectedly and grown so swiftly that she only now understood that she was their sole target. As she lay there in agony, petite shouts of a single voice saying “Stop!” could be heard from inside the crowd. The figure of a small girl appeared through the many legs. The girl was nothing but skin and rags, yet she gawked with an expression as if, of the two, Gallia was the waif. Lying in that dune of confusion, Gallia felt the heat of the cast-maker’s kiln blow across her body.

“Please, little girl,” Gallia said in a cracked, dry voice, “Would you come closer?”

“Hold back!” the girl said, and then stepped indirectly toward Gallia. As she passed a curbside kiosk, she grabbed a customer’s mug of water standing on the counter. Kneeling to Gallia’s soiled face, the girl tilted the cup to Gallia’s lips and allowed her to drink a bit. She then moistened the tail of her dress, unusually bright against her pockmarked skin, and used it to wipe away the grime from Gallia’s eyes and nose.

The girl revealed a tiny smile in the corners of her mouth and said in a whisper, “I thought I recognized you. The others have too.” And then, moving closer to Gallia with expectation, she said in a purring voice, “My name is Sand Flea.”

Gallia did not understand the odd introduction of a girl who surely could not have been born before the last time she had visited Gjoa. “Thank you, child,” was all she could muster.

The disappointment in Sand Flea’s face seemed to suggest she had expected more. She wiped more of the caked dust from Gallia’s face. Shaking her head, she said, “You people are not fast learners, are you?”

Of the girl’s meaning, Gallia’s confusion was only doubled, but she managed to collect her thoughts.

“Please,” Gallia said, “Would you bring Elder Niraj to me?”

Sand Flea scoffed at this request. “Now that’s a bad idea, woman,” she said. “Don’t you talk to your friends? Elder Niraj is the last person you want to see. In fact, I would advise you to avoid making trouble with any of the village elders.”

“I am not making trouble with village elders,” Gallia said, looking into Sand Flea’s eyes with the indisputable power of a wise clan matriarch, “I am a village elder.”

Sand Flea fell back from her squatting position to sit on the trampled ground. Any villager would agree that the greatest extent to which a fellow human might be treated had already been tested this day, but to learn that these aggressions had been carried out upon an elder was nothing short of appalling, almost unfathomable. She opened her mouth before words were ready. After a moment, she looked up at the thick mob that surrounded them and then back to Gallia.

“It would be dangerous for me to leave you here, Elder….”

“Tiul,” Gallia said.

“No!” Sand Flea gasped. A tear came to her eye. “He …he was telling the truth,” she said, and then, in the smother of a sob, “I was right.”

Once more, Gallia could not find explanation for the actions of this girl. She understood, at least, the consternation Sand Flea had expressed at leaving her alone with the crowd that had closed in upon them, craning their necks to hear their conversation. But before they could discuss the dilemma any further, it was resolved by the appearance of that very elder, Punthali Niraj, pushing through the inner edge of the crowd with a parade of other elders behind her.

“Sand Flea!” Punthali said with a roar, “Step away from the Apostate.”And, in another grumble of rage, she added, “You’re the last person in the village I want here.”

Sand Flea shot up in surprise and spun on her heels to look at Punthali who was now towering over her.

“You are mistaken, Elder Niraj,” she said in a cry, but Punthali had already used her lanky arm to push the tiny girl aside, the physical altercation perpetrated by an elder only added to the litany of violence that had betrayed the sanctity of the village that morning.

“Stop, Elder Niraj!” Sand Flea demanded from her oblique position between Punthali and Gallia, “A great error has been done.”

Punthali turned to the girl and said, “Enough! The only error here is your persistent interference with Our Order, the fundamentals of which you are hardly even qualified to be called a student. Away, you despicable street rat!”

The mob was again aroused by the belligerent words frothing from an elder’s mouth. The entire village had been on alert to look for outlanders who matched the description of the recently escaped Apostate. Now, with the wrath of Elder Niraj to confirm their suspicions, they could express their full anger at the threat made to their Aur children. They added their own spurning calls for Sand Flea to leave. From the dusty ground upon which Gallia lay, she looked up to see unrecognizable fury upon the face of her old friend and the blush of shame that that woman’s most recent words produced on the face of Sand Flea, a miniscule pea of a child. She attempted to interfere on the girl’s behalf, but before she could, Sand Flea forced her way between Gallia and Punthali and escalated the protest.

“No, you are making the error, Elder Niraj. This is no Apostate; this is one of our own. More than that, she is an elder of Hill Village. Elder Gallia-Tiul in fact. She asked for you. Do you deny her that?”

Punthali’s head shook in a perplexed, jerking manner. She stepped back, speechless, and looked down to study the face of the bedraggled person curled beneath her. Other elders pushed around her to look as well. Disturbed murmurs emanated from the congregation of women. Payyat Kamat and another elder stepped further past Punthali to Gallia, lifting her to a seated position in the shade of the building and continuing the process of wiping her clean. Sand Flea carried on in a voice that seemed to be tuned to catch the ears of even the furthest people in the crowd. Those words seemed to demand the onlookers focus on her. The elders did not interfere. For one moment in her life, Sand Flea’s voice reached above the rest. Her thoughts were heard.

“I have listened to your preaching and chiding, Elder Niraj. When I come to you with concern, you fail to listen to me. When I offer you facts, you only notice my mistakes. I tried to tell you before that there was more to this than just the stealing of Aur children. There is that, for sure, but there is more. I didn’t understand it. I wanted help. I asked for your help, but the only thing you had for me was all you’ve ever had, contempt and disdain.”

Some people in the crowd nodded or mumbled grunts of assent.

“When Alai-Tiul, the ward of this elder, came to our village,” she continued, “he told me he was not here to steal our Aur children. He told you,” she looked across the lineup of elders listening attentively to this pip, “he was here to ask you about them. To learn about them. I heard him.” She turned and waved her autumn brown leaf of a hand at the crowd, “We all heard him. Did you teach him? Did you share your knowledge?” She raised her voice. “No!” It was a thunderclap that might fit in a shirt pocket, and others also pronounced that word after her, as if they were practicing the sound of it.

“You insisted otherwise, you refused to listen. You seized him and threatened him and even took away his freedom. And,” she said, speaking to the crowd, “you turned us upon one another.” The crowd, disturbed by the truths in Sand Flea’s account, sloshed back and forth like water in a bumped bucket. “And now,” she pointed to Gallia, the dust cleared away from her face such that a gash and a drip on her forehead where she had fallen was now visible, “the result of your failings, your fury, lies before you.”

Payyat Kamat and several other elders lifted Gallia up, supporting her arms around their shoulders. They carried her into a nearby café. The crowd shed from the scene in layers. Among the flows of people moving in all directions, Punthali Niraj vanished. In a few minutes, Sand Flea found herself once again alone on the street.

She could see the gaggle of elders among the shadows of the café, reaching out to touch Gallia and speaking in soft tones to her. Some shook their head. Others, she noticed, were openly crying. She shifted her toe forward so that she flattened the clumps of dust that had collected in the concentrated shuffling where Gallia had fallen. She walked toward the café, hovering at the threshold within earshot of the cooing elders. A tinny voice carried through the air in her direction.

“Sand Flea,” Punthali Niraj said, “May we speak?”

Gallia and the other elders quieted down and looked to the door of the café where Sand Flea stood facing Punthali, the latter presenting the mudra to the girl with her head deeply bowed. Sand Flea’s lip quivered. Never before had she seen the top of that woman’s gray head.

Punthali looked into Sand Flea’s eyes and approached the girl. “You have spoken words so much wiser than I could have imagined for a person your age. It struck me that I never knew what a perceptive, intelligent young woman you are. You are, indeed, the kind of rare young woman who we yearn to discover and, as acolyte, share our sacred texts in the hopes that one day she might lead a clan and the village.”

Sand Flea flattened her feet but did not reply. Her hands were glued to her sides. Punthali continued.

“You have learned things that are never known by other villagers. And when you came to us, to me, for help – you are right – I ignored you. Worse – as you said – I treated you with contempt.”

There was a moment of silence between them. Sand Flea nodded awkwardly.

“But Sand Flea,” Punthali said, her eyes returning to the downward glare of a lead elder, “we can only act wisely upon full knowledge. There was much we did not know until it was too late. The reason we expect you and everyone else to confide in us is to avoid this very kind of misunderstanding. Surely, a young woman as wise as yourself can recognize this.”

Sand Flea lowered her eyes and settled into a mudra as she stepped back from the elder. When she was certain no one else was any longer paying attention to her, she quickly swept her arm across her eyes and squeezed her nose dry.

The other elders had managed to wipe away all traces of the dust by the time Sand Flea and Punthali entered the shaded café. Payyat Kamat was still tending to the small gash on Gallia’s forehead with a cloth dampened by lime juice, the gentle motions nonetheless making Gallia wince slightly. The owner of the café placed a tray of cold drinks on the table and stepped back in a low-bent mudra.

Gallia smiled at Sand Flea with the swollen eyes of a doting grandmother.

“Come closer, my dear girl,” she said with a cracked voice that betrayed her weakness.

Sand Flea stepped slowly to Gallia and presented an elegant mudra.

“I understood that you have met my ward, Alai-Tiul. I have traveled here from Hill Village hoping to find some clue of him. It brings me great joy to learn that you spoke to him. Is he well?

“Yes, Elder Tiul,” she said, raising her quizzical eyes to meet the old woman’s. “He arrived a day after the third quarter moon. He departed the same evening as it rose above the horizon.”

Gallia looked around at the huddle of elders who had separated a path for Sand Flea to approach her.

“My sisters tell me you were the only one in the village to insist that he was not another Incarnation of the Apostates come to steal the Aur children. How did you know this, child?”

Sand Flea scanned the group of elders under whose discipline she had lived all her life. There was nothing she could say that would not expose their follies; yet only the truth was an appropriate response to an elder.

“Well,” she said, with a hint of hesitation, “he said so to all of us.”

The only sound was the shuffle of plates in the small kitchen behind the group. Sand Flea seemed to be allowed more time to speak.

“And,” she added, “Apostate or not – whatever that means – if he had really come to steal Aur children, only an idiot would walk right up through the middle of town under the afternoon sun and attempt to do so.”

Gallia heard a grumble coming from Punthali.

“Also,” she continued, “he told me that evening he was from Hill Village. Before he left.” After another pause, she said, “With his little boat to return to the ghost ship.”

Gallia reached her hand out towards Sand Flea. The little girl instinctively reached out to grasp the withered fingers of a very different looking elder from far away.

“He was mistaken by all others but you. You saved his life in doing so, Sand Flea,” Gallia said, as tears welled up and spilled out over the puffy corners of her eyes. “And I thank you for that.” She squeezed the girl’s miniature hand.

“If you mean I saved him from the exercises,” Sand Flea replied, “I don’t think that’s entirely true. I heard the elders arguing for hours about how to do them and none of them could remember.”

Some of the elders chuckled awkwardly. Payyat muttered quietly, “Our star hides itself to reveal the presence of infinite other stars beyond our reach. So too, Our Order.”

Gallia looked to Payyat and nodded approvingly. “Indeed, it does,” she said. Then, she returned to Sand Flea.

“Dear girl. Would you be so kind to tell me about your other friendship?” She looked to Payyat for reassurance and said, “The elders tell me you call her Digambar?”

Sand Flea took a small step back.

“I would that you don’t intend to hurt her,” she said.

Gallia pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“There has been too much hurting already, Sand Flea. I promise to you upon the one remaining Aur child of my clan that I have no intention to harm your friend. If I can, I hope to try and help her.”

“I don’t see how you can do that,” Sand Flea said, a toll of doubt in her voice. “She can live forever. She is my friend, that’s true, but she told me nothing of her intentions regarding the Aur children. Yet it seems to me that what she wants is the same as what you want, and you cannot each possess the same thing.”

“There was a time,” Gallia said, looking thoughtfully at the girl, “when we actually did share with the Apostates. It is written as such in Our Order. I cannot guarantee that this is again possible, but I am willing to try.”

Sand Flea shook her head. “It’s no use,” she said. “Digambar is beyond your reach. She too travels on a ghost ship and is long gone by now. So is Alai. He said he must go to see her.”

“And if I would like to find my ward, Alai-Tiul, where should I go?”

Sand Flea squinted. “You seek Alai-Tiul only and you won’t hurt Digamabar?”

“Both are true.”

Sand Flea scanned the elders. She stepped up close to Gallia-Tiul and whispered in her ear.

“I sent him off to the northlands. A place called Dragon’s Snout.”

Gallia groaned. She looked around at the other elders. “You wonder why I came here. The Apostates that visited Gjoa set on stealing your Aur children came to Hill Village on the same deed. There they brought disaster, destroying two of my clan’s Aur children in the process. The third, they tracked down when my ward Alai-Tiul carried it off to sea and now, it seems, albeit inexplicably so, that both he and the Aur boule are on their ship. Yet Alai came ashore to Gjoa, so he must not be held against his will. The purpose he gave – seeking answers to questions I would not give him – suggests otherwise. I am relieved that he is alive, but now I feel even more urgency to find him and explain to him the true cause of his family’s death. And,” she said, turning back to Sand Flea, “I have other work to do too.” She swallowed hard before continuing, “I must attempt to engage the Apostates and seek to improve our understanding of one another before any more mistakes occur.”

Payyat shook her head. Her eyes were round with fear. “What do you plan to do with them?” she asked.

“Talk to them,” Gallia replied.

“How will talking help?” Payyat said, “With them, there is no talking, only taking.”

“But we once knew more about them than just that. Isn’t there more to learn of them than whatever makes them act as they now do?”

Payyat waved her hand and blew out her lips in disgust. “All that knowledge from earlier editions of Our Order was cut away when we abandoned hope with them and their incessant duplicity.”

“And I question why we should do that.”

Payyat was not the only elder heard to gasp at these words, but Gallia carried on. “None can challenge my adherence to the faith of Our Order. Since I was myself an acolyte, I have studied the scripture and trusted in its guidance. Yet, with every generation, and in every village, we whittle away at the core of its message to suit our changing world. We justify the abandonment of outdated passages and parochial reinterpretations as a desire to remain relevant to current context, but I ask you this: If we’ve deemed so much of the original texts no longer relevant to our villages, where exactly does that leave our original faith? Perhaps our struggle is not the fault of others’ transgressions but instead of our own? Perhaps we’ve failed because we’ve forgotten? Our forefathers made peace with these people. Why shouldn’t we?”

Payyat’s voice was shaking, “You risk much by this. You risk our security.”

Gallia smiled. “I risk no more than what we’ve already lost by shunning them. We teach our own that dialogue against confrontation is always better than silence. Why should this not apply to these adversaries? If it doesn’t, then perhaps Our Order is not an omniscient prescription of the universe but just a clever collection of sayings within the vacuum of our villages.”

These impious words seemed too treacherous for challenge. Payyat chose a different tack.

“But the ghost ships upon which they sail,” Payyat pleaded. “It travels so fast. It departed Gjoa after Marlin did and arrived, by your account, in Hill Village the same day or possibly earlier. And it has already returned here a fortnight before you. It could be thousands of miles away by now.”

Gallia frowned. “Then,” she said, “I have no other option but to depart as soon as possible.”

“The next ship north is that one, called Sahar.” Sand Flea pointed out the window to the other large vessel in the harbor. Large bundles, likely spices and grains, were being lifted into its hold. “She leaves tonight. Or,” Sand Flea looked towards where the sun might be in a pantomime of checking the time, “in about five hours. If you are to gain passage, you will need your papers expedited.”

“Yes, indeed. Perhaps you know someone who can render that service?”

Sand Flea nodded. At the same time, she reassumed the businesslike posture that always suited her when negotiating with merchants in the harbor. “Of course, I know,” she said, “I know everything about Gjoa. I know everyone here.”

“Sand Flea, if you would expedite my papers for Sahar within the next hour and transfer my travel case from Marlin to Sahar, I would be most grateful.”

The girl did not attempt to bargain, she didn’t even negotiate a price. She nodded with a look as if she wanted to help Gallia, but there was a slyness in that expression that betrayed some other desire.

“Yes, Elder Tiul,” she said, “Don’t worry. I will take care of these arrangements for you.”

“Is there something else you want to say to me, Sand Flea?” Gallia asked.

Sand Flea looked at the ship and back to Gallia. “Well,” she said, “there is a favor I would like to ask of you.”

The elders listening to this conversation responded with widened eyes and a few hushed gasps of surprise. Despite all the leniency Sand Flea had been granted today, she was as cheeky as ever.

But Gallia did not have the same reaction. She smiled and exhaled in a slight chuckle saying, “Very well, young one, what is it that I can do for you?”

Sand Flea did not hesitate, “Please take me with you,” she blurted out in a cry of desperation, stepping forward and kneeling in front of Gallia. The request seemed to take Gallia by surprise because she failed to answer the question right away. Sand Flea pressed her case.

“I only wish to be with Digambar. She told me to wait. Alai told me to wait. But I know there is no chance to be with her if I remain here. I can help you. I can carry your things. I can help aboard the ship. Just please do not leave me here when all I want is to find her.”

“But you don’t understand,” Payyat said, stepping forward and placing a hand on Sand Flea’s shoulder. “That woman does not live in our world. To be with her, as you say you wish to do, requires you to forfeit your own body. To separate your soul from your body. It is forbidden by Our Order. It is impossible.”

Sand Flea could not understand, let alone find words to respond. As if her mind had reached its limits of comprehension, she defaulted to the natural state of an overwhelmed child and began to cry. The tears appeared softly below her eyes at first, but then sobs vibrated out of her tiny chest. She crumbled to the ground between Gallia’s feet and let herself cry freely.

Gallia looked around the room at the other elders’ empathetic but fixed faces.

“To travel such a long distance, hopping from ship to ship, takes patience and perseverance, let alone physical endurance,” Gallia said, looking down and petting the little girl’s midnight hair. “On the way, I am committed to restudy annals in the scripture of Our Order with a new perspective. It would be helpful to have a younger companion to travel with me. Yes, to help with the regular arrangements needed for quick transfers in my hope to find Alai-Tiul. But what I would need most is the mind of a clever understudy to join me in preparing for the challenging consultations I must attempt with the Apostates.”

Sand Flea continued to cry on the floor before her, but the wailing had subsided to sniveling. “Do you,” she asked in successive gulps between sobs, “mean me?”

“We would both need to commit to hard study,” Gallia said. “It would be up to us to learn from the words written by our ancestors to discern what might be common ground. And what you desire, child, cannot happen without careful preparations. To meet Digambar once more,” the old woman frowned, her consternation presented in the folds that pinched the wound on her forehead, “would require an understanding of what it means for a human to separate body from soul. And what’s more? You must then be willing to do it. It would be intimidating. You will have to make choices that presently you cannot even comprehend. But if you are determined to do this, to go there, I will not refuse you. So,” she reached her hand down to the girl, “would you join me in such a venture, Sand Flea?”

Sand Flea again grabbed Gallia’s hand and said, “I would, Elder Tiul.”