The Hungry Boy - We Wretched Creatures (a lore story PT: 2)

First part

His father’s voice still bellowed from the first floor. The same as always. How he was a lazy boy. Aimless. How…

“… he thinks he’s too good to be a farmer!”

The boy tried to hide his head under the hay. But his father’s voice was thunderous, sometimes, he felt as if his father had a special talent like his siblings. He once asked his mother but she shushed him, told him to never ask that again.

His mother tried to pretend her children were normal. She scolded them when she saw any flying cups, random fires or when she awoke from a dream with a suggestion that benefited his sister.

The boy thought it was because she was frightened. There once was a story of a boy in this village or that who could turn water into something far more bitter. It was said he could walk water and heal those dying of terrible disease. They had him torn to pieces by wild animals and displayed his head near the entrance to the town to show all those what happens to children with unholy abilities.

He didn’t know if that story was real. But he knew it scared his mother and angered his father. He knew they lived apart from their neighbours at what seems like the edge of the world because his six siblings could do strange things.

“But what can we do? Namis? We are no more accepted here than we would be out there,” his brother, Xita had once told him. “It would be simpler for you, you have no gift.”

That had hurt. The boy had struck his brother with a hammer, scarring his ear. His father had given Namis twenty lashes. Xita became less talkative after that and he feared Namis.

Namis felt he liked it. At least someone cowered under him. It was a taste of power.

It wasn’t enough.

There was a soft knock on the door. “Brother?” Soris whispers. “May I come in?”

Namis feels a flash of anger. “Leave me!”

Why must he come here and play the healer? He agrees with father. He is agreeable. There is nothing that disgusts Namis more.

“I want to tend to your back,” he whispers, “I brought an ointment our sister brewed this morning for the cows.”

“You think this is what bothers me?” Namis asks, a derision laugh accompanies his words.

“Then what ails you, brother?”

Namis groans as he lifts himself off the bed of hay and wobbles over to the door. He feels the trickles of blood running down his back, which inflames his anger more.

He throws open the door and finds his brother there, a worried look across his features, a jar in one hand and a cloth in another.

Namis glares. “You ail me, brother. I do not need my tormentor to come and heal my wounds after he has beaten me.”

Soris is taken aback by the accusation flung at him. His brother, Namis, had deep bags under his eyes, curly hair sticking to his teeth and a gaunt look in his eyes, all blood drained. Namis had been the most sickly of their parents’ children. Soris had been looking after his brother’s wounds with diligence.

“Because you are in pain you aim to hurt me but we both know I did not lift the whip that sliced your back,” Soris replies.

Namis leans in, his eyes much darker than Soris was used to. His breath rank and his body shaking. “I’ve suggested that we flee this place. That man who calls himself our father while treating us like his slaves! If we stay here any longer we will die!”

Soris hears this with a troubled look. “Namis, quite your words. Father won’t like this.”

“You love him more than you love me.”

“I do not. But the world is dark and could treat your siblings worse than he can. You would not understand—”

“Yes! Because I’m weak and ordinary. I have no special divine gifts as you all do! You would rather watch me get switched by that whip a thousand times over than face the world! You could be gods! Bathed in fame and riches! Temples would be built in your names, religions would form around your presence and kings would bow before you! But you’d rather this!” Namis spits in disgust. “Cleaning up chicken shit!”

Soris kept the same face he had and it made Namis want to punch him. Hurt him in any way to get him to react. To do anything that isn’t this silent judgment like peeked into his soul.

Soris lays a gentle hand on his brother’s hand and brings it to place a gentle kiss. He says softly, “brother, you are so blind. You cannot see past yourself and you impose your dreams on others. I fear you are going down a path that could lead to ruin.”

Namis jerks his hand away and steps back into the room, shutting the door in his brother’s face.

••••

That night, as his siblings snored around him —all seven of them having shared this room since they were infants— Namis stares up at the twinkling stars. So cold and distant. One of his brothers said the stars remain indifferent. Namis always felt a comfort in speaking to them.

He had sworn that they would listen.

So he whispered, he told them about his dreams, his frustrations and his hatred for his parents. Tears spring from his eyes as he spoke of his weakness. How unfair it was that he could take advantage of a gift of he had one, that those less deserving were blessed instead of a loyal follower like him. Did he not pray the hardest to the stars? Did he not pay in blood for these supplications? What must it take to be heard?

“Please,” he whispers, forehead pressed against his clasped hands, his knees aching from kneeling on the floor for so long.

He inserted all his might into that plea. He promised all he had which was not much but would give all even those things that are not his to give.

This was his only hope. His last night of begging. Tomorrow, he would hang himself from the tree.

"Please."

"Please."

"I beg you, stars."

"I have no one but you."

"Yes."

His eyes shot open and he straightens up, looking around the room. His siblings are still asleep on their cots. No one stirs in the house. He can't hear the farm animals. The dark corners of the room, where the moonlight does not touch, seem to expand.

"You have no one but me. It was this when you were born and it would be this when you die."

The face came from his left, his right, in front of him and behind him. It was in his head but also coming from his mouth. It was whispering in his ear and speaking outside his window.

"Who are you?" he asks.

"I was there at your birth. I have watched you grow. I have heard your prayers. I have seen your pain, my son. I had ached to nurse you. Wipe your tears and kissed your forehead."

"Mother?" he whispers.

"Yes. Your true mother. I have heard you, my love. I feel all you feel."

"I was born from my true mother— my real mother. The woman who sleeps downstairs," Namis says, "you cannot be my mother."

"That woman is not your true mother. For neither you or your siblings. She was a vessel. That is why she cannot love you like a mother, why she does not listen, why she fears instead of loves."

Namis swallows, his mouth and throat as dry as the summer heat. He bends a leg, placing his foot firmly in front of him but he dares not rise. It could be trick from a demon come to take his soul —for all the good it has done Namis— but he must take the chance that it is not.

“If you are my true mother. Why be so needlessly unfair and cruel? Why ignore me all these years? Why not treat all your children equally? Do you love my siblings more than you do me, Mother?”

“Of course I do not! You are my shining moon from which I orbit forever more. I would be untethered without you. I would not breathe without you, my son. I did not ignore you. I spoke to you as you did to me. You could not hear me against the noise of the world.”

Namis juts out his chin, an excitement builds in his chest that makes him want to smile but he forces that feeling down. Not yet. “I would only believe you if you showed me this love.”

“How can I? I will do anything.”

“Give me power. Give me power as my siblings— no! Give me more power than my siblings. Make them tremble before me,” he orders.

The voice of his mother is quiet.

Namis glares with rage. He tries to control his voice as he asks, “Mother?”

“I have.”

Namis blinks in confusion. “You have not.”

“I have,” she repeats. “Your power comes not from external forces but from within.”

Namis does not know how to respond to this.

“Your power comes from your stomach. Eat my starving son. Eat and you there shall be no power that you cannot have.”

Namis stands up and bathes himself in the light of the moon.