“That’s stupid! You’re stupid! This is all STUPID AS HECK!” The boy wrenched himself away from the man dragging him towards the brightly colored camp. He left his brightly hued head cloth in the furious man’s grip as he stuck his tongue out in disrespect and turned to run away.
I had just delivered an item to one of the petitioning merchants nearby and was on my way out of the city’s boundaries. Free peoples don’t stay free for long in this city-state without some sort of physical enforcement at hand, and I was under a peace bond not to start nor finish any shit. So I watched the boy with mild disinterest long enough to determine he’s another spoiled brat of another rich bastard, I’m sure.
The child, perhaps of eight years of age, dodged one of the guards reaching for him. He didn’t watch where he was going (neither did I) and managed to run into me during the one hot second I had taken my eyes off of him. He bounced off my leg and fell gracelessly on the compacted dirt of the compound, pulling a bag off my belt as he scrambled for something to hold on to as he fell. Throwing the bag away, he shouted at me in the way frustrated children do when they know they’re not going to get away with their error this time.
His caretaker was upon him instantly. Snatching the boy off the ground with well practiced ease, he said many words in his native language with a tone that needed no translation. The guard that accompanied him picked up my flung bag, dusted it off, and returned it to me with a very formal bow.
I accepted the bag and inquired about the fate of the now crying boy being dragged by his ear towards the colorful tents. “First Mother has requested he be brought before her. He has made many errors of judgement, and his age will not purchase forgiveness.”
“First Mother, eh? The clan’s matriarch, I presume?” The guard nodded.
The caretaker reached the entryway to the tent, paused, then shouted something to the guard still before me.
The guard nodded then spoke to me. “Good Woman, the First Mother asks that you also attend, as the boy stole your bag from you, you are due compensation.”
“Compensation? But you recovered the bag, and that bag is empty anyways. I will not add to the boy’s sins by technicality!”
A thin merchant came up quickly beside me and whispered in my ear. “Attend! Cry for the boy if you please, but I shall pay you to deliver a message to the First Mother on my behalf. Ten words without expectation of a response.”
My mouth filled with the taste of iron and I suddenly smelled rust. I knew then I was dreaming, and there was certainly more at stake than than the ego of a petulant youth that did not likely exist.
“If you would use me to cause harm…”
“No harm! I only ask… awareness. Ten words!”
“Tell me your message now, and I shall consider what fee I shall charge.”
The merchant blinked in surprise. “Okay, but you must not tell any others what I say!” He pulled on my arm to hold me close. “The Blue Rooster flies furthest and truest to and fro.”
I rolled my eyes as the merchant’s magic attempted to bind me and failed. “If the First Mother asks me for the message unprompted, then, and only then, will I tell it. Otherwise, there is no contract between us.”
He released my arm as he realized he had no power over me. “And if there is?”
“Then you owe me. A debt equal in measure as I judge it to be. And unlike your attempt to bind me, once uttered, the contract will be sealed. I will find you no matter what world you are in, what form you may inhabit, or what fool you are deceiving, especially if that fool is yourself. Still wish me to bear the message?”
The guard had moved a respectable distance away from me, but was still close enough to be a detectable presence. The merchant looked between the guard and me. “Yes. I consent to the terms of the potential contract.”
“Aye, guard! I would to attend the First Mother after all. Though not in complaint of the bag, but merely to observe unless called upon. Is that allowed?”
“Yes, Good Woman, it is.”
“Then escort me.” And he did.
The First Mother sat on a simple carved backed chair covered with layers and layers of cloth and tapestries. I understood that each one was a symbol of the individual tribes in the federation that she ruled. While the more militant observers would see her symbolic dominion over the tribes, I also saw that it was a representation of the tribes consenting to her rule over them. Sure, she sat on them physically and metaphorically, but if not for their support, she would be sitting on nothing.
The elderly woman wore simple robes accented with simple gloves and was adorned with simple jewelry that gave no indication to the might of her power except for one thing that struck me cold with fear.
She wore a cloth headdress adorned with many hanging beads. The cloth itself covered her eyes completely and the beads hung in multiple layers to obscure the cloth. This was the headdress of a seer and I was suddenly uncomfortable and felt fully exposed.
I made obeisance as her head turned slightly towards me. Feeling as chastised as the boy should have felt, I mutely allowed the guard to direct me to the most distant guest rug from her chair. Some grander supplicants were already inside the chamber, seated on proper chairs, and already making snorting noises as I knelt on the ground.
The guard faced the First Mother and bowed. “The Outsider Woman is present, First Mother, as you requested.” The First Mother nodded slightly as the other supplicants stopped smirking.
The grandest of the supplicants immediately questioned if it was wise to allow street filth to be present during this most important of meetings.
“You should have thought of changing your shoes before you entered. It’s none of my concern if you are comfortable with camel shit being massaged between your toes.”
The First Mother delivered her rebuke flatly. I was suddenly no longer intimidated by First Mother and was instead struggling to refrain from grinning lest I become the next target for her vicious wit.
“Where is the boy? Have you him locked in chains at last? It was a mistake allowing him to be brought up without clan oversight. He has learned the worst of this city’s behaviors and none of the humility that should be his birthright. Even dogs are loyal to their masters, and he has forgotten who is over him.”
The boy was led into the chamber, clasped in lovely gold bracelets that were magically enhanced. The glittering shackles sparkled with mastery, jewelry, and tears as the boy began to realize his errors would not be glossed over by an oft repeated lecture this time.
The son of the clan’s ambassador, the diplomatic immunity granted to his father was unduly extended to the son. As a result the boy had become a pawn in the hands of the many merchants who truly ruled the city. Keep the boy happy and gain favor with the father in the form of lucrative business contracts and some illicit smuggling.
The list of “crimes” the youth had committed against the ideals of the First Mother and her brood were the same crimes all eight-year-olds commit. Refusal to eat vegetables. Improper acquisition of sweets and candies. Refusal to go to bed at the appointed hour. Boredom with lessons. General mayhem. Nothing that warranted clapping the boy in irons, regardless of the gold content.
As I looked around, I noted the absence of someone very important to the proceedings. Where is the father? As I thought the question, the First Mother inquired it from the boy’s caretaker.
The impatient man bowed, rattling the boy’s chain he held in his hands. “He has fled, First Mother.”
She turned his attention to the youth. “Boy. Do you know where your father has gone?”
“I don’t know! I just wanna go home! This is stupid! You’re stupid! I’m telling my father about this when he gets home and you’re gonna be in trouble! You stupid old CAMEL COW!”
The merchants smiled smugly to each other in a manner that set off my alarms and my rage as the caretaker raised his hand to physically chastise the boy.
“Hold.” My voice surprised me. This is not a locale where I may be brazen. Everyone turned to look at me. Some with mirth. Some with anger. “If you are going to strike the boy, I must leave. I am under a peace bond and I will surely break it if you abuse the child.”
“Think you he does not deserve a rejoinder?” The First Mother smirked and I realized there are several chessmasters before me.
“I think he deserves a proper punishment, but to attack the child for the sin of being a child is a bit excessive. He’s never been held to the fire before, that’s clear. Everything you are doing right now is probably the first chastisement he has been given in his life. He’s spoiled more rotten than rats drowned in old turned cream. Would you fault the cow for the rat’s defilement? Who allowed the cream to spoil? Who did not prepare for rats? Those who failed their duty are more at fault than the child who is fulfilling his role of being a child. Look at him. He’s terrified. His life is shattered and the one person he needs most is gone. What stories do you think he has been told of you, First Mother, that he is emboldened to call you… such… to your face? Who told him those stories? What stories should he have been told instead?”
I realized I was spending more words than I had been given credits for and ceased with a bow. The merchants’ glances of disgust towards me contrasted with the sniveling attention of the boy and the unreadable exposed portion of First Mother’s face.
A few silent breaths and she answers me. “You are asking for mercy, then.”
“I am, First Mother.”
“I will grant it, if you tell me what the man without my tent asked you to say to me.”
She made no attempt to hide her contented smile. Oh, that bastard’s gonna owe me big for this. I made the hand motions that announces my role as a courier and spoke the ten words the merchant had given to me.
Immediately the merchants within the tent burst into protestations and demands as I made the hand motions that announced my duty as a courier had been completed. She glanced at the merchants and they fell into surprised silence as her power closed their mouths.
“Weaver, then. Outsider. Untouchable. [Walker.] Mercy you have asked for, mercy shall I grant. The boy is yours to do with as you please for the next thirty days, but with the following conditions: You are not to leave the walls of this city. What manner of survival you must eke out for yourself and the boy while held here is not my concern. I understand you are under the control of a peace bond while within these walls, so my guards shall be your guards, but they will only act to defend you and the boy, nothing else. You shall receive no other help from me. If you wish to strike the boy, strike him. If you wish to work the boy, work him. You shall not sell or rent him to another, nor may you take his life, but all else is within your power.”
She leaned back in her chair and my doom was complete. I bowed in acceptance of the effects of my bleeding heart hubris and straightened up just in time to accept the boy’s chain and key from the caretaker. I stood and led the shellshocked boy out of the tent.
“Oy, guard. What manner of city-state is this anyway that the First Mother is a visiting head of state?”
“All the lords of the city are attending her now.”
“Oh. A plutocracy. Fucking great. No money means no power.”
I led the boy away from the silent tent. A street or two away, I sat him down and explained in simple terms the deep shit we were both in. “We’re being tested, I hope you understand. I think you’re better than you have been acting, and the First Mother is using me to put some asshole in their place. We have thirty days to stay the hell out of trouble, but that means you are going to have to live as an outcast with me.”
“So… I can’t go home?”
“There’s no home to go to, I think.”
“Then who is going to prepare my dinner?”
“You have two hands.”
“I can’t prepare dinner! That’s for the servants to do!”
I laughed. “Boy, you don’t have servants.”
“I have you!”
I stopped laughing. “Boy, you do not have servants. As of today, you will bathe yourself, feed yourself, dress yourself, and deal with yourself. You’re gonna find out just how rank your shit stinks, and I reserve the right to throw you in one of the city ponds if you can’t wipe your ass right.”
I unlocked the chain and separated the gold bracelets from each other. But I did not remove them for as long as I had the key, I could find him anywhere. “Now first thing’s first. We have to busk up some funds as what I have will only buy us maybe five days of lodging and food.”
The first night he cried. The second night he screamed. The third night I took advantage of the enchanted shackles to keep him silent in the upstairs rented room (with a locked door that did indeed remain locked) while I busked my cartomancy skills in the inn below. After purchasing another week’s worth of lodging and slightly better food in advance, I came up to release him from the stillness and silence. He said nothing at first.
“I had a servant I thought was too ugly to serve me, and I would command them to stand in the corner facing the wall for hours and hours because it meant I didn’t have to look at them while I played. It was all I could think about while you were out today, and I wanted to cry, but the magic wouldn’t even let me do that. But I’m a person and they’re a servant and that means it didn’t bother them like it did me, right? They don’t have feelings like we do, right?”
“Go stand in the corner and think about what the fuck you just said.”
It was another hour before I let the boy have his cry after all.
The guards were invisible to me. I would sometimes hear a scuffle in the alley behind me, or a door would be difficult to open at first and then suddenly swing open with vigor. If I were not attempting to be aware for their presence, it would be easy to overlook the few marks of their stewardship.
As days became weeks, the boy physically changed. He was growing up before my eyes. His apparent eight years of age became apparently thirteen years of age. I had strange men offering me strange rewards if I were to leave the boy in a strange place at strange hours. They all promised me that the boy would not be harmed as a result of the entertainment. They all promised various weasel worded oaths that implied I would be richly rewarded if I allowed the boy to be richly used.
We remained in poverty together instead. As he physically matured, he also emotionally matured and accepted his sentence. He never said what prompted him to accept his fate, but instead said that there was a kind of freedom in the subsistent manner in which we had to rely on each other for day to day matters.
The day I noticed the apparently thirteen year old boy was now an apparently eighteen year old boy was the day there was a harsh and demanding knock on the door. The First Mother’s emissary had come to announce the thirty day period of the boy’s exile was over and we were both summoned to appear before her.
As we left, others from her clan entered. They scoured the room of our belongings and brought them with us to the First Mother’s compound. I noted it only took three people to carry our combined belongings, and that after they left, there was no trace we were ever there.
The boy, now a young man, was humble and contrite as we entered the First Mother’s chamber. At her command, I unlocked the gold shackles from the youth and surrendered key, chain, and shackles to the unchanged caretaker. The caretaker regarded the young man coldly for a moment, then turned and left without saying a word.
“My eyes have watched over you both for the past thirty days. My hands have held away those would do you both harm, and my ears have heard every word you both have said between yourselves and to others. Have you any words to be spoken directly to me?”
“What happens to him now?”
The First Mother turned to face him. He lowered his eyes in respect. “As you have lived for the past thirty days, so would the oligarchs of this city-state have us all live. You were used to humiliate us, and to undermine our right of self-rule. They have cried out to others that without their gifts and assistance, you were unable to distinguish between feces and food. But you have proven them wrong. They gave you nothing and tried to take what little you were able to find. They think power requires demonstration to be proven. You have shown them that true strength requires only resolve. Here then is the choice you must make. Return to the blood that formed you. Come back to us. Serve your time amongst the Embraced and find who you are. Or… leave us, and find your path elsewhere, but without any assistance from the clan.”
He remained perfectly still for a few more seconds than I was comfortable with. Silently, he knelt and placed his forehead on the ground. “It was when I was stripped of what I thought I was, that I started to find who I am. I am of the Clan. From the Clan was I birthed and for the Clan will I serve. I yield to you, First Mother [of the Clan], and shall be as your son.”
She nodded and six men came in the chamber from an interior room. They all wore light hued robes and cloth headdresses that covered their eyes. They surrounded the young man, separating him from me.
“Then go with your brothers, and join their number.” He bowed. All seven men left together. Three of the adorned men left first, then the young man, then the remaining three. It reminded me of another dream but I did not have the chance then to reflect on the symbolism.
“And as for you, Weaver. You have no place to rest except for the chamber that has been set aside for you within my reach. Stay the night in comfort and security. It is the least I can do for providing the same to [a son of the Clan].”
“Eh… After all I put him through, First Mother… are you sure he was in comfort and security?”
“You could have abused him.”
“I kinda did.”
“You know of what I mean.”
I did. “… I … couldn’t do that.”
We talked more on various topics. And by talked, I mean she inquired and I answered. Some of the questions were painfully obvious, and some of the questions were painfully obtuse. I knew she was testing me further, but for what purpose, I could not deduce.
A sudden lethargy overtook me, and I found myself nodding off to sleep standing up before the First Mother. At the second faux pas, I opened my eyes to find a small child had taken my hand into theirs. Without ceremony or any formal dismissal, I was led away from the First Mother to a waiting thick pallet on the floor. I was asleep the moment I surrendered my weight to the cushions.
When I awoke, I felt another larger body in the room with me. I heard the sound of water being poured into a wide vessel and the soft hush of cloth sliding over cloth. I opened my eyes and looked over to see the young man now attending me.
He wore robes of unbleached linen and a simple headdress of linen cloth wrapped around his head. Strings of beads wrapped over the cloth, and more beads dangled over where his eyes were hidden. Another seer’s headdress. The simple presentation deeply bothered me.
I have seen this headdress before.
I’m sure I have worn this headdress before.
As he bothered with laying out plain clean clothes (tunic, pants, and sleeveless robe) I mimicked the blindfolding action on my own face to sort out why his appearance was disturbing me.
I realized then why the seers of his clan were called the Embraced, and the function of the First Mother. I recoiled in surprise before I remembered my manners and the hundred ways I was already in deep shit.
“You have started to waken, then.” He paused at my movement.
“I have started to understand. Yes. How much of you is still you and how much is… them?”
He smiled. “I am still very much a novice. It is unlikely I will be fully taken. I can hear them, like the buzz of a distant bee. Just enough to know they are there, but not enough to become them.”
He extended his hand towards me. “Here. Allow me to bathe you and assist you. The First Mother calls for you but for this meeting, you must be clean.”
“Ritually clean.”
“Yes.”
I took his hand. He pulled me closer to him. Perfectly able to see what he was doing without the use of his eyes, he quickly started to undress me without emotion.
“Why you?”
“You are most familiar with me and would not become defensive despite my gender.”
“Bullshit.”
His hands stopped slipping my pants under my hips. He tilted his head in a simultaneously questioning and listening gesture.
“As Weaver, I don’t give a fuck about gender. But I do give a fuck about actions. Your actions have zero sexual connotations. You could be replaced by any number of Embraced and I would not be on the defensive by any of them. This isn’t about me. This is about you.”
“You just tilted your head because the buzzing just stopped, I bet. Did you become so used to them being in your head already that when they silenced you were caught off guard? Don’t forget the circumstances of our meeting, and the thirty days we huddled together. A month ago, you would have screamed for my head on a plate for the sin of breathing in the same room as you, and now you are serving me with an act you considered worthy only for an automaton to complete.”
He bowed his head but not before I caught the flush of color to his previously stoic face. He slipped my pants completely from under my hips and removed them from my legs. In complete silence, he completely undressed me, bathed me, and redressed me in the clean clothes he had already laid out. The fashion of the clothes were the normal for his clan, but they were devoid of any family or tribal marking. Any who saw me would identify me as an outsider immediately.
As Weaver, I kept the same ultra short afro I wore in the waking world. In this dreaming world, most men and women wore their hair at least to shoulder length if for nothing else than to use the locks as displays for their jewelry. Plain heads were the mark of slaves, as even the poorest of souls had some sort of covering to hide the neck from the searing penetration of the Sun. So it was no surprise when the youth picked up a simple beaded netting to place on the crown of my head as a fashionable yet humble adornment.
I leaned away.
He paused and tilted his head again.
“I am not owned.”
He nodded silently, folded the beaded netting onto itself, and tucked it into a pocket of my sleeveless robe.
He took me by the hand and led me to a chamber deep within the clan’s compound. Even though the “building” was really made of elaborate tents carefully assembled, the inner depths of the compound had an unusual sense of strength to it. Like the allegory of the First Mother’s chair, the united strength of all the assorted tapestries, ropes, and ties, created an edifice that provided comfort and security.
But as he led me deeper and deeper, I was also aware of a low, distant buzzing in the furthest reaches of my mind. Like a bee in a distant field. Of course the First Mother would be surrounded by the Embraced. She is, after all, the queen of the hive that is called the Embraced. I just haven’t figured out if she is the focus, the mask, or the embodiment.
Before entering the chamber at the core of the compound, he stopped and turned to face me. Lifting the left edge of his headdress, he winced as his eye saw light for the first time in at least two days. He and I both waited for him to adjust, and to focus his revealed eye on my face so I could see all of his emotion before he spoke.
“I was not commanded. The task was to go to another, to one of my brethren with a woman’s body so not to alarm you. I requested the duty to serve you. Because… Because thank you.”
He quickly lowered the mask back over his face before I could breathe to answer him and struggled against himself and against the resurgence of the Embraced over his thoughts. When the preternatural calm resumed over him, he started to turn away.
“When he is his own again, tell him I would have allowed the duty from none other, regardless of gender. Because… Because some lessons cannot be taught.”
He nodded and I felt them nodding in the distance of my mind. He opened the curtains obscuring the entryway and escorted me into the presence of the First Mother.
The buzzing intensified, and I realized what other dreams she reminded me of. I stopped in a moment of panic as I had to remind myself of all the markers that signified not only where I was, but when. The youth held my hand gently as I forced myself to be calm for my own sake.
“If you had surrendered to panic, you would not have been allowed to hurt yourself.” The First Mother’s voice echoed in my ears and between my ears.
“I would quip that you did not mention being unable to harm you as a deflection, First Mother, but this deep in the hive of the Embraced, that is an unchallengeable assumption.”
“Large words hide small fears.” Her voice pulled each syllable into sentences in their own right.
“I’m terrified right now, First Mother. I know I am dreaming, but this is no mere dream. I know what the buzzing I’m feeling in the back of my head represent, and what the headdresses mean. I’m doing my best not to panic, First Mother, and I do not mean to offend you in my attempts to remain calm.”
She shifted her head, and all of the others in the chamber left except for the young man who escorted me and a young woman who I assumed had been the original pick for attending me. I had been so unfocused by my fears that I did not realize the chamber had been filled with other people until after they left. The sudden solitude unsettled me further.
“Sit.” A cushion was placed under me as I quickly complied with the command. “Why did you sit? Out of social obligation? Because your legs were uncertain? Did you feel compelled? Or relieved?”
I felt nauseous as she questioned me. The memories and feelings from two previous dreams threatened to overwhelm me in this one.
“Yes, face them. Do not hide from the memories of What-Never-Was and What-Is-Again. This place is not like those places, and this place is those places from a different perspective.” Her voice echoed between my ears again and her resolve kept me from folding into myself.
“I am the same that enslaved you, and the same that freed you. I am the worm in your bones and the heat in your blood, even as I am the sword that cut the leashes and the key that opened the door.” Her form wavered on the high chair. She appeared as shadow held captive by the lengths of cloth wound about her.
The buzzing increased in volume and deepened in pitch. It sounded like a vast cavern filled with thousands of men droning on with overlapping mantras and meditative hums. I thought that was a strangely specific identification and held on to that thought as if it were a floating log in the middle of a devouring sea. I had to find my footing in this dream again.
“If I wanted to consume you, you would not even have known you were doomed before you ended. I did not bring you here, to this point, for destruction. You have questions that could not be asked in the languages you speak. I have answers that can not be given in the languages you understand. But as [static], question and answer are also [static]. If you would know, then speak your desire to know and use that desire to cut through the fear that in entombing you instead.”
I looked at the First Mother, and saw [a horror]. I looked at the First Mother, and saw [a nightmare]. I felt the buzzing crowning my head like solidifying thorns that pricked me with bloodless panic.
I [gestured] and forced myself to remain in the moment of this dream. I [gestured again] and surrendered my futile defences into the ground under me. I lifted my head and [gestured a third time] before speaking.
“I would know.”
The young man and young woman came forward from their positions behind me. They took my arms and guided me to move closer to the First Mother. Now within her physical reach, the two youths adjusted their stance and their grip on my arms. I recognized the formation we made as preparation for what some would kindly call an “indwelling”.
My past would call it, a “possession”.
She reached her right hand out and over my head. Carefully, she touched the spot between my eyebrows with a cold fleshless finger. If voiding my bladder had not been part of the preparatory ritual cleaning, it would have been the uncontrollable response now. Fear is such a bitch at times.
I realized I was only able to internally bitch about the prevalence of fear because the buzzing had stopped. The navel of the universe became the point where her flesh (thin as it may be) touched mine. I found my will and perception drawn to that spot and focused until I felt the world around me would implode into that scant space like a collapsing wormhole.
She suddenly moved her hand, closing and covering my eyes in the process. I heard the rattling of the beaded netting in my pocket. My last independent thought was that the beads sounded the same way my rosary beads feel.
Then the hive mind embraced me. My back arched as my head snapped back. I heard the sound of my teeth grinding under pressure as my throat spasmed. The grip of the youths never faltered as they absorbed the force of my body’s weight forced onto them from my form collapsing.
I fell.
They caught me.
I received the answers as promised.
And was unable to bring any of them to the conscious, waking world.
As I woke, shuddering as profusely as I was sweating, I noted that I held a little less fear than I usually do. Again I had the sense that something deep and fundamental had been changed in me.
This too, shall be revealed with time.