001 - The leaf fallen from the tree

What is this competition we feel, then, before we go, one at a time, through the same gate? -Rumi

The Philosopher in Arms,
Being the collected memoirs of Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e compiled by the Workfast Literary of Yeola-e; Aletheya Athal, editor, Y. 1555. [A.D. 4979]

I was seven when my blood-father was assassinated. When I went down into the courtyard, they had brought him in from where it had happened, and laid him under the linden tree. He looked as if he had spread out his cloak to take a nap in the shade, except that his limbs all lay straight, which they never did when he slept. On his chest was a nick from which flowed a single-drop-wide trickle of blood.

He’s not dead, I thought. I thought he was dead last time, when he went under for the Kiss of the Lake, and he wasn’t. He and they fooled me that time; not this time. He’s asleep. I know him better than anyone, so I’ll wake him up. My shadow-father, Esora-e, was gripping my shoulders, almost hard enough to hurt. I twisted out of his hands, ran and knelt at my blood-father’s side.

He was pale, but I’d seen him paler before, when sick. In the breeze, the flecks of sunlight from between the shadows of the tree-leaves played on his face, and the bright blond curls on his forehead stirred. I’d wake him. His eyelids would flicker open, he’d blink and smile and maybe yawn, say, “Chevenga,” and tousle my hair, and everything would be all right. I slid my hands under his shoulders, kissed his cheek and said, “Daddy, wake up.”

Several people gasped. A few called me, their voices sharp. That made me angry; he may be your semanakraseye, I thought, but he’s my Daddy. Then my shadow-father grabbed me from behind, lifting me away from him. A quick and blinding rage made me make a fist to strike him, but clenching my fingers made me feel wetness on them. I looked. My hand was wearing a glove of scarlet.

His back was coated with blood. When the Workfast Funerary people came and lifted him onto the bier, they bent him forward to show the people the wound. Between his spine and his shoulder-blade was a slit which opened slightly as they moved him, letting out a last slight red gush. The scratch on his chest had come from inside, made by the tip of the blade running him through from behind.

When fresh game is brought in for the stew-pot, you can see how the movements of the carcass, though caused by the movements of the hands that carry it, are reminiscent of the way the animal moved in life, since the bones and sinews retain the same form after all. So my father moved in their hands, his shining head lolling on the arm that cradled it, the muscles of his arms seeming to flex as they were crossed on his chest. By his blank face, you would think he did not care what was done to him; there was nothing in him, I saw now, to care. He was like a puppet without a hand.

Maybe death would be less cruel if it transformed us in some more blatant way, such as turning us brown like plants, so that a child could never mistake death for sleep, and then be struck by the truth while so close to the corpse. This thing that bore such a striking resemblance to my father was not him, I saw, but only that which rots if it is not burnt. This was the leaf fallen from the tree. He was gone, forever; he had been taken away by Shininao, his soul dissolved to return its energy to All-Spirit, finished with this life and this form. I would never hear him say my name again, because he was no more.

I went light-headed. Everything seemed unreal, like a design painted on a great round curtain all around me, behind which lay what, I couldn’t know. I heard the thud of my shadow-father flinging himself to the ground again, and his harsh, scraping cries. I saw, vaguely, perhaps the way babies see things, my mother’s white tunic with orange, turquoise, green and now red as well, browning on the edges. Her touch on my head was feathery. I looked again at my father’s corpse, and saw it change.

My eyes had drawn it nearer and clearer, like a sphere of crystal lying on the palm of your hand, enlarging one portion of skin, excluding the rest. Doubting my eyes, I tried to rub them, and found the back of my mother’s hand. I should not be able to see at all, yet the sight did not alter.

The face was similar, but different, the nose smaller; it had shades of my mother, as if I had become her, and saw something of myself in the husband I had loved. The features looked less jovial, and more careworn. The scars were worse; more wounds, and as well as the official brand-marks, other obviously purposeful ones. Most different, this man’s hair, everywhere—on his arms, between his legs, in the brows and lashes and soft curls on his head—was black, like an overcast night, setting off even more the death-pallor of his skin.

He was not my father, obviously. I didn't know who he was. I had never seen his face before. But I felt for him, and sensed that if I ever saw him again, even so fleetingly as a glance in the marketplace, I would know him. And though there was horror in the sight of his corpse, as with any, there was a grace too, brought by some sort of peace about him, which there was not in my father’s. He was dead, but it seemed as if he’d expected it, instead of experiencing it as the bitterest of surprises.

Then he was gone into blackness, leaving only the memory like the after-image of the sun in closed eyes. I found myself in the arms of my aunt Tyeraha, my face buried in her shoulder. She carried me upstairs to my parents’ room.

It was, of course, full of his presence, his arms rings and ivory comb and kerchief on the table, two demarchic shirts, black with the official white-bordered keyhole collar, strewn over the bed. Its meaning was all different, now. What had been permanent had become transient, for one thing. It would be replaced by the things of the living.

My aunt told me later I was dry-eyed, but my small brows were knit as if I puzzled over something. That ended after I absently picked up my mother’s hand-mirror, which, being made of Arkan glass, threw perfect reflections. You could say, perhaps, I chose to find that black-haired man.