Aur Child

Village Elder Nallu-Hoenria tiptoed into the small seaside cottage where Alai-Tiul’s wife and son were convalescing on the larger bed. The dog’s tail swept softly across the floor beside them. The mounds of seaweed had been removed from their mouths and replaced with makeshift lozenges of the stuff. They both appeared to be sleeping. Jange-Nemla rose from a chair beside the bed and padded across the room to join with her compatriot in a huddle by the kitchen counter.

“How do they fare?” Nallu whispered.

“Well,” Jange replied. “They are eating. The boy asks many questions. He asks constantly about his father and Bemko.”

“We must trust in Gallia to find Alai-Tiul. But as for the whereabouts of Bemko, we must take on the responsibility ourselves.” She removed her scriptleaf from a deep pocket and placed it on the counter. “I have spent many hours scouring the texts. At first, I revisited those that we regularly study, but that seemed to be pointless. All of them I know without reading, and those strange words Bemko used are entirely unfamiliar.”

“Yes,” Jange said. “They are of a different place, perhaps.”

“I thought just the same. Or, actually, from a different time. The words are uncomfortable to recall, but they are seared into my mind. I managed to record the lyrics after careful meditation.”

She shared the illuminated face of a scriptleaf with Jange. On it were the lyrics Bemko had sung:

’Boil a’kelp bright,

For it won’ grow,

A cure all’itself,

O’r the great green glow.’

“Yes,” Jange said, “Those are the very words.” She shivered. “I am agitated just from reading them.”

“But think about them, Jange. They’re sung to children.” She pointed towards the bed. “Yet here is proof that they hold the instructions for how to bring those who have been poisoned by the implosion of an Aur child back to health. This was no simple lullaby. Indeed, Bemko told us himself that they are words of a psalm. How he knew this, I cannot say.”

Jange reached her hand out and touched Nallu’s arm. “What are you saying? Are they really words of a psalm of Our Order?”

Nallu nodded.

“Yes, and one from which we have not read for centuries.” She swept a finger across the small scriptleaf and angled it towards Jange once again.

“Look here,” she continued. “It is a psalm written in the early years after Cloudburst. We hardly read from that time; the events are so foreign and the psalms only confuse us nowadays. Everything from that time is often bunched together with that fateful day, but perhaps you recall that it was described to us as a pandemonium of sorts. Scattered pockets of Apostates searching for Aur children to strengthen their power reserves. Struggles. We tend to think of those years as a part of Cloudburst, but naturally they were each separate events. Events for which our ancestors wrote psalms and passed on the important parts to our clans via chants and, apparently in some villages, those chants became lullabies. Yet, in our revisions, these verses have been removed as outdated.”

Jange’s mouth was open. She shook her head silently in disbelief.

“Jange, we know not from where Bemko comes other than somewhere north of the Red Kingdom, but in his lands, they must have continued to sing this lullaby whether they understood its meaning or not and, incredibly, Bemko must have had his memory jogged by the shock of what happened. He knew the song, the psalm, and, incredibly, he interpreted it to produce the elixir to save Alai’s family. He has been underestimated.”

“Then he told the truth,” Jange said. “And we’ve punished him with banishment.” Her words sounded more like a weak cry.

“Yes. Yes, we’ve made a horrible mistake. But it’s worse than that, Jange.”

“It is? How so?”

“The psalms.” She pointed to the scriptleaf again and flicked through several pages. “This section is filled with references to plants and their combinations. It’s difficult to understand really, but there is so much here to suggest that all along, Bemko has done nothing less than unknowingly practice the teachings of an older version of Our Order, from a time when our ancestors were concerned with such practices. A time when they were relevant.”

Jange leaned over and squinted at the words written in the odd dialect. She whispered the words out as she tried to read them. Nallu touched her fingers to Jange’s chin and lifted her gaze to meet her own. A well of tears had accumulated in the deep bags of Nallu’s eyes and just then tipped over the brim to race down her rounded cheeks.

“And on a deeper level than we ever have.”

“You must find him!” The voice came as a croak from across the room. The elders jerked their heads upright. The blankets rustled as the mother tried to prop herself up. “Bemko means no harm,” she said. “He’s never meant any harm.”

“Yes,” Nallu agreed. “But it has been several weeks. Who knows where he’s gone to by now?”

“Who would know where he could be?” Jange asked.

The two elders stood silent for a moment. With a bright spark of inspiration in her eye, the mother turned to the boy. “If anyone knows,” she said, “he would.”

She gently woke the child. The two old women sidled up to the edge of the bed. After a few sleepy blinks, his sharp eyes were fixed on the women who hovered above him.

“And how do you feel today, son?” Nallu asked the boy.

“Elder Nemla has taken very good care of us, thank you,” he replied.

Jange reached out a hand and petted the boy’s hair back.

“But what of my father? And Bemko?”

“Well,” Jange said, “that’s just what we want to speak with you about. At least, we wanted to ask you about Bemko, since you might know him better than anyone.”

“Yes?” the boy said.

“The question is, where would Bemko be if he were not here? Do you know of a place where he might like to go or, hide perhaps?”

The boy smiled.

“That’s an easy question, Elder Hoenria,” he said. “Bemko’s favorite place besides his greenhouse would be the flowering meadows past Sharkjaw. He even has a small shack there where he sleeps some nights. Do you know the place?”

Jange looked up at Nallu.

“I know it, yes,” she said, “but isn’t that beyond sight of the wind towers?”

The boy looked down into his lap.

“Oh,” he muttered, “perhaps that is something else Bemko has done wrong.”

“Oh, no,” Nallu replied quickly, “Not at all. In fact, I think there really is nothing that Bemko could ever do wrong.”

Sheltered by the heat of the sinking sun, Jange and Nallu rode their bicycles to the limits of the pathways that reached deep into the forest behind Hill Village. As they abandoned their bicycles and began the ascent up the inland hills of Sharkjaw, Nallu looked back to see the top half of the wind towers. Once over the hills, they would no longer be in sight. She inhaled deeply and steadied herself for a transgression she had never dared before. It was almost exciting.

She looked back to see a similar expression of consternation on her comrade.

“Come,” Nallu said, “Let us show that we too might break the accord when we must.”

They followed the path evidently worn by the heavy lumber of Bemko’s boots until several undulating hills gave way to a vast multicolored meadow glistening like a plate of candied sugar crystals in the setting sun. Nallu was first to crest the hill and witness the symphony of foreign flora. She gasped at its beauty, stopping wholly in her place.

In a bedazzled whisper she spoke.

“Our Order is but one in an infinite universe.”

Jange reached the same overlook and held on to Nallu’s arm. Nallu could feel her trembling. She completed the verse of which Nallu had begun.

“Infinite other orders exist elsewhere.”

There, among the illustrious waves of rare species never seen along the coast, a tiny shed stood. The women held hands as they stepped down the hill into the meadow and followed the meandering path to the ramshackle shed. They discovered the elongated structure had only three walls, the fourth, south-facing, being fitted with only a large sheet of sheer fabric that appeared to serve as netting. Behind this translucent partition, a hammock was hung and, between that and the netting, Bemko stood in silent attention as the two women who had banished him from Hill Village two weeks earlier approached. He leaned his neck forward to avoid the low ceiling. His broad shoulders were slunk down, his hands fallen to his sides. His eyes were somewhat screened by the fabric, but Nallu could nonetheless see in them a desperate sadness.

Nallu looked at Jange, but the latter seemed unwilling to address the man. Nallu wobbled down onto her knees and presented a mudra to him.

“Dearest Bemko, cherished member of the Tiul clan, we have come to seek your forgiveness. You understood what we did not. You acted when we would not. You have taught us that there is more to Our Order, and more importantly, more to a person, than we may think we know. Your brave and – you must not discount it for anything less, because we surely shall not – brilliant deeds have not only saved the lives of those two wonderful people whom we all love, you have also removed all suspicion and skepticism of your close friend and clan brethren, Alai-Tiul. For that, we are forever grateful.”

Bemko ran his fingers through his flaxen hair and opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Nallu continued. “And Bemko, there is something more.”

“There is?” he managed to say in a whisper.

“Yes, there is something I have come to realize that I believe may be of help to you.”

“What is that?”

“Your knowledge of those abandoned passages. You know, it’s very unique. I have visited many villages in my decades, and I have never heard of one who continues to study those older editions of Our Order. Of course, there are some elders who take an interest in those things, but they are not shared with others.”

Bemko shook his head. “What does that mean?” he said.

“It means that, if you were to find the village where elders readily study these passages, you might also find your original home.”

“Oh,” Bemko gasped. “I should go and find them then?”

“Perhaps, if you wish, but hopefully not yet. The villagers, they will wish to see you. They will wish you to return to Hill Village. I wish you to return to Hill Village. Bemko, we all wish you to return to Hill Village. Won’t you please accompany us back there so that we can make our apologies formally before the villagers, restore you to your home and family, and celebrate your gallant deeds as they deserve to be?”

Bemko reached forward to push the netting aside and stepped across the threshold of the shed. His face squirmed in the confused expression he was wont to make when circumstances superseded his sensibilities.

“Would you really be so kind to me?” he asked.

Nallu reached out her hand, the very hand that Bemko had grasped and forced across the cottage of Alai-Tiul so recently.

She smiled with caring eyes and said, “We will always be so kind to you, Bemko-Tiul.”