Aur Child

Alai woke the next morning to a silent house. So much so, that the decision to return the Aur child had not yet emerged from his memories. He could hear the waves crashing. Odd that he would sleep so late. He was usually the first to rise, and by this time, often returning from fishing the bay. He recalled that he had been up very late. Indeed, his head was still groggy from the trying contemplations that prevented him from going to sleep earlier. Even more odd that it could be so late in the morning without anyone waking him. He propped himself up on his elbows and listened carefully. Rays of the intense, summer sun illuminated the curtain-fashioned sleeping alcove; the effect on the heavy, red fabric that partitioned off this area a glowing, orange pane.

No one could be home; they were never that quiet.

Did they get up earlier? Are they outside? She had said something about the flowers behind the house last night, but surely, he would hear them if they were in the yard.

Alai stood up and drew back the thick curtains. The house felt like a barren cupboard, yet he sensed he was not alone. He turned to the adjoining curtains that blocked off his own bed and pulled them back. Alai started in surprise. Both wife and son were there. Completely still. A chill turned to cold sweat along his spine. Alai approached the bed. Stopped. Watched. No movement. He could not hear breathing. He quickly leaned over the near side of the bed and placed his hand on the blanket where it covered his wife’s hip. Cold! He tore the banket away and reached to put his hand on her face, but it wasn’t necessary. He could see his son lying there with an unmistakable complexion.

Alai grew sick in his stomach. His legs wobbled. Suppressing the urge to panic, he grabbed his wife’s body up into his arms and held her against his chest, squeezing her for a gasp of air. Silence. He gasped himself. The source, a sob or a shiver, he was not sure. He reached out and placed his palm beneath his son’s delicate head, scooping it up like a melon. A head that once poked and pried into the most curious of places now only responded to the pull of gravity; the body attached was limp.

Impossible! Why shouldn’t he refuse it? It made no sense. Everything had been fine. She had smiled at him before going to bed. The boy, he had been as feisty as ever. It couldn’t be true, yet the cold from their bodies pulled like a mortal sink beneath him; it threatened to drain him of all logic. He reached for folds at joints and curved above them like a lightning-struck elm, probing for a beat, a breath.

This couldn’t have happened. He shook his head. He was not more than two steps from them the whole night. In a fright, he looked up and around, searching for the culprit, but there was no clue. The dog didn’t point and growl in any direction, she only slunk against the bed with ears pressed desperately backwards and whimpered on the inhale as if she were being strangled. Her eyes begged up at him in confusion.

He had no idea how long it had been since he first discovered them there. In a stupor, he found himself still at his wife’s side. Alai placed those parts of the two bodies he had been clutching delicately down on the bed and stood up. What have I done? An abyss opened beneath him. He staggered and gasped for breath. His head was dizzy from a torrent of inescapable regrets – the half-carved slingshot he and his son had started but never finished, because Alai had been too busy with his own pursuits, hung lifelessly from a hook beside the boy’s bed; and outside the window, he glimpsed the droop of delicate flowers unprotected from the oncoming midday blaze because he had delayed repairs to an awning built for that purpose. She had hinted at that last night on their walk, but he was too consumed in his own thoughts to answer. His vision zoomed in and out in time with his pounding heart. He could hear the blood raging through his head like steep rapids. He stumbled forward to catch his balance but lunged for the curtains, seizing the undulating folds and hanging much of his weight upon them. Swinging like a pendulum suspended from this hold, he tumbled outwards into the main living area and as the arc his body described reached its apex, collapsed into himself on the floor in a hunched collection of folded-over bewilderment. Vacant. Unoccupied. Purposeless. There he remained.

For only brief moments was he aware of his own existence. A thought would appear and then flash away. A continuum of disparate ideas strobed through his head.

Sometime later – Alai didn’t wonder when – faint signals nipped at him.

The remote screech of Gallia-Tiul’s voice yelling, “Bemko!”

The brief flicker of a large shadow in the window.

The crunch of bicycle tires rushing to a halt outside the cottage.

The panting words of Gallia-Tiul.

“I came as soon as I realized what was happening. Where are they?”

The deep, drawling voice of Bemko-Tiul reverberating across the windowsill.

“I’m sure I ain’t seen no one leave the house all morning.”

The whirlwind of heat and salty dust with the opened door.

The trample of frantic feet entering the cottage.

Alai remained in a huddled pile against a chair. These signals had brushed by him, but he hadn’t cared about any of them. He didn’t care about the knock at the door, that the door opened. He didn’t care about Bemko and Gallia entering, or that Bemko lifted him up and attempted to position him upright in the chair as if he were a fallen pillow. He didn’t care that they spoke to him, lifted his head, asked him panicked questions. His eyes were open when Gallia held him by the chin and lifted his eyes to meet hers, but he stared far beyond her. She said something. He didn’t hear it.

Alai didn’t care about them walking about the cottage, opening the back door to the porch, or pushing back the curtains. He only cringed slightly from the depths of his abdomen when Gallia shrieked the names of his wife and son. When she returned to him, and held his head up again, asking what had happened, a single tear streaked down the flesh beneath his eye and wetted her palm.

He didn’t care about the rush of activity around the bed, the instructions and urgency assumed instantaneously. He didn’t care that Bemko lost his composure and crumbled into convulsive tears, and he didn’t care that Gallia abandoned the scene in search of help. Alai remained in a huddled pile in the chair.

Less than an hour later, Gallia returned with two other villagers. Bemko had been sobbing to himself, singing a lullaby for most of that time, but had calmed himself enough to rise from the other chair a few minutes before they had arrived. He ventured a look towards the two tender bodies covered in blankets on the bed and mumbled to himself in a trembling, hushed tone his massive lungs could barely muster. It was a mumble, but a man of that size mumbled audibly.

“It must’ve been that cell. Mighty powerful thing, she told me. I’d hate to be so blunt about it, but I’d be a fool to think they’ll point to anything else.”

Alai suddenly looked up. The motion pulled Bemko’s attention towards him.

“Take care of my family,” Alai whispered, but Bemko furrowed his brows in confusion.

“You know, I tried, neighbor.”

He shook his head and looked away from the wicked reality shrouded in the sleeping alcove. There was no mess, no clue, no indication of what had happened. Alai didn’t register what Bemko had said; the voice just started at some moment and the rumbling words echoed within Alai’s pounding skull as if there was no way for them to exit. They just kept bouncing around and getting tangled up in the thump of Alai’s pulse, beating and churning.

When three others quietly slipped into the cottage, Bemko resumed a more active role, helping them wrap the bodies up in blankets and prop open the front door. Gallia had poked around the little cottage looking for any clues as to what had happened. Everything seemed to be normal. Dishes were clean. Shoes were placed neatly by the door. Nothing was out of place. The only thing that caught her eye was the uneaten portion of soup remaining in a clay pot in the coolbox. That, and there were only two sets of bowls and spoons on the drying rack.

When the bodies’ wrappings were checked once more, they were then carefully carried through the cottage. As they walked the larger body past where Alai was sitting, he weakly reached his hand out and touched the blanket. Gallia stopped at his side and urged the others on. She leaned over to him and placed a caressing hand on his head.

In a whisper, with the soothsayer voice of a practiced patron, she said, “Stay here, Alai. This is not your fault. You must rest now. I will return this evening. We are here for you, dear child. All the stars are here to help you, my child. I will help you.” She pressed his hand gently, and then, “Yes, stay here. I will help!”

Alai blinked. Then, all four stepped outside leaving Alai in the thunder of silence.

In the courtyard, the others strapped the wrapped bodies to Alai’s bicycle trailer. Gallia gave Bemko brief instructions before they pedaled the deceased off to town. Alai heard it, but he didn’t care.

“Let him grieve in peace but keep an eye on him …and eat nothing!” She turned toward her bicycle, “I must explain to the others what has happened,” she said, but then turned back to Bemko for one last instruction, “Take that clay pot from the coolbox and bury its contents deep in the forest.”