Oontab [Episode 8]

Bantaik

Sometimes, Bantaik was forced to wake up because of the way his left arm hurt.

This night, he decided he had had enough, because it was preceded by flashes from his past set in a nightmare and was jerked up from his sleep. Sitting up on his mat and picking up his scepter with the hurting arm, he bowed his head low and murmured a prayer to the gods, even though the sun was not yet out, and he did not feel peace that he was heard, but he opened his eyes and went ahead with what he was about to do anyway.

“Gok ti, gok ti, a’an palo vi’efala mo”, He started, grabbing the hurting arm with the other hand.

He then rolled his feather bag aside on which he laid his head for sleep, and he took a stalk from underneath the featherbag and cut a small dying leaf off the stalk. This leaf he had cut, he began to chew. After chewing a little bit, he brought the phlegm from his mouth and rubbed it on the hurting arm, continuing his speech,

“Palo va’an lasifotofoya, kan hnang davlo me’an shik.”

He spoke the ancient language of Gatu, which when spoken in its purest form possible, incantations were most effective. The words he spoke seemed sufficient for the ritual he was performing, because the surface of his arm fizzed at the exact place he had rubbed the phlegm and something which was not there began to appear.

“Things which we wish be not to behold with eyes, we see.
Things which we rather would they be, these not can be;
And whichever man be dare defy, let him understand,
There be no more truth for discover than man eyes demand.”

The surface of his arm had fizzed its last and a scar appeared where it was not.

Bantaik was alarmed after a long moment of examining the scar. He was familiar with the sight until he saw blood dripping from the scar; that was what alarmed him, because he had expected the hidden scar which he’d had revealed to be old and long dried.

His eyes bulged in horror. This could not be!

He wasn’t even sure what could or could not be, but a scar of many years ago could not be as fresh as though it just happened a few minutes ago.

He panicked, scrambling and knocking over several pans and pots, picking up a clay pot of water to wash the blood off the arm, trembling as he did so. The bleeding reduced, then he cut another leaf from the stalk he had picked from underneath his feather bag and chewed it to phlegm again. He rubbed it on the bleeding arm.

He recited an incantation again, which sounded like the continuation of another incantation,

“…yet when light be departs,
Shadow with it be follows;
But as sure as there be one ‘today’, many ‘tomorrows’,
Eyes will be only behold in light,
And if be so, will not be escape shadows bright.”

The wound fizzed, but nothing happened.

Kanaka

The sun was setting. The blue-green-orange sky began to darken as the stars gave it a tint, to ward in the moon to the display. Kanaka’s heart beat strongly as he contemplated if it was the right time to tell the King about the dream that brought him home. He had to tell him eventually.

Mogg

King Mogg was in the courtyard alone, watching the last rays of the sun go down when Kanaka came in and knelt before him in honor. He bid Kanaka stand and a conversation ensued between them,

“My King, I greet you.” Kanaka said.

“Oonta…err… Kanaka, son of Gardutkar, you are welcome. I am pleased to see you off your duty.” King Mogg replied. He was still struggling not to call him by the royal title. He paced around just to make sure that no one, more importantly, that the Queen wasn’t listening.

“Is something troubling you?”

Glad that the King had asked, he found a softer ground to drop his words, “My King, I have come to you with a burden in my heart… in fact, it is another thing that brought me to you from the beginning; I come to seek answers concerning… my scar from a wound which I am not sure of what origin it has.” And saying the word ‘scar’, he turned the scarred arm towards the King’s line of sight so that it could be more visible in the retreating light of day.

The King’s lips bent and his eyebrows inverted into a bewildered frown. “What about it?”

“Since the day I was wounded and got the scar – I was afraid to tell anyone this for fear of being misunderstood – I regularly had this certain bad dream… a nightmare - ” he paused as though waiting for King Mogg to chip something into his speech; nothing, except for the same attentive bewildered expression. Just as he was about to continue, King Mogg, not sure whether or not to speak, nodded, saying,
“Go on! Go on, I am listening.”

“The nightmare is like this…” Kanaka started, explaining the details of the atmosphere around the nightmare bit by bit. He elaborated on how dark the nightmare had been in his eyes. He talked about the fact that he was watching, but yet he was in the nightmare as well, actively involved with the conversations that ensued in it. He talked about the crows that fell from the sky and from whose dropping blood had sprouted trees from the soil. King Mogg could not be more terrified at the overall horror Kanaka had experienced in the nightmare than at the next set of words that came from Kanaka’s mouth, “My King, I saw…” he paused, then, “I s… saw you… and Rotyuk in the nightmare.”

“The gods!” King Mogg exclaimed. “I was in your nightmare?!”

Kanaka couldn’t respond and there was a long silence.

King Mogg sighed hard. “Continue.” There was fear etched in his eyes.

“I saw myself… I… I killed Rotyuk.” At that point, Kanaka could not hold himself from the pain of watching Rotyuk die in his own arms, even though it was just a nightmare. He dropped his head and gritted his teeth, holding his breath for a short moment, then he puffed and continued, “Before he died, he scraped my flesh off, and the same scar is on my hand now, but - ”

“How did you get the scar?” King Mogg cut in, now in the climax of angst.

“Rotyuk scraped my skin off when I flung him into the red pit, and - ”

“No, I mean… I mean in reality, not in the nightmare.”

“When I was a child, I brushed my arm against the sharp side of a branch of a small tree - ”

“And I was there when it happened, wasn’t I?”

“Err… you were not, but you came home when you heard I was injured.”

The weight of King Mogg’s sigh increased as he held Kanaka’s scarred arm up to force his eyes to examine and see the scar with only the moon’s light. It began to look less like a branch had dug into Kanaka’s arm. The spacing between each stroke made it look like the fingers of someone.

King Mogg discovered something that night which seemed to make him look pale in the face under the shy light of the moon.

“My King, I do not understand. Do you know what any of this means?” Kanaka queried, now back on his knees.

“It is a mystery to me Kanaka. We can only hope it is just a nightmare. Err… besides, it can’t possibly be something that is about to happen since Rotyuk is dead - ”

“But how did Rotyuk die?” Kanaka cut him off this time.

King Mogg was livid, but one couldn’t see much of it in his face. The questions were reopening corpses he had long done away with.

Corpses.

“Nobody knows, Kanaka. He was found dead in his shrine and buried immediately. It was the will of the gods. They took him.”

Kanaka persisted, sensing that the King was trying to hide something from him and not seeing why he should understand why, “But it’s also possible that it is something that has happened before, and maybe - ”

“Don’t be ridiculous! If it has happened before, then what concerns you with  the death of someone you know you did not kill?!” King Mogg’s was loud now, but after looking round if anyone was watching, he continued, whispering, “It was just a nightmare, and I think the less you keep your mind on it, the less it would bother you when you sleep again.”

“Forgive me, my King. But our people do not take nightmares for granted…  And even if it is to be treated in such way, the problem is that the nightmare has always come as it willed, even when my mind is far from it, and since I saw you in it, I thought you might have at least an interpretation that suits, or at least an idea, perhaps it is tied to something that has been happening to you recently...”

Kanaka sighed uneasily when King Mogg shook his head without saying a word.

The King bid Kanaka stand and clasped his arm and greeted him good evening as Kanaka went his way.

Indeed, King Mogg was agitated because he could not hold back his deep fear from expressing itself.

The Forbidden Forest.

Sapas

Sapas, Mama Yuttputt’s daughter had swept the front yard one evening with palm fronds she had tied together herself and was going to the backyard to do the same. She was on duty the next morning to that but she wanted to save herself some more sleep, so she decided to do her duty the night before. Clever girl. She was one of the many servants not allowed to pass through the palace to the back, so she went round the palace.

On approaching the back yard, she saw Kanaka kneeling before the King. No one had seen her and when she turned to leave, she heard Kanaka tell the King a strange story. It puzzled her, and so did the scar on his arm. She just thought there was something strange about it; or familiar. Just when she thought she had heard enough, she saw King Mogg clasp Kanaka’s arm, as he would a bosom friend and her suspicions soared.

Mogg

The King took his panic to the Spokesman, and the Spokesman was irritated by it, but he did not hint at his irritation.

“I swear by the gods!” King Mogg shouted, his words echoing through the small shrine, one could have been sure the gods were in that room listening.

Bantaik knew that he should be the one to worry about what the King had told him concerning Kanaka. But he was the Spokesman, wielder of many spears unseen by the natural eyes.

If anyone was in danger of being found out for his evil deeds, it was King Mogg.

“And in dream, he be saw you and Rotyuk, but I was… he was me?”

“I am telling you; he told me he saw it in a nightmare. And the scar Rotyuk gave y –“

“Yes, scar, certainly, memory curse I be put on him works!” Even though the scar worried him a little more than he wanted to admit.

“Will it wear off?”

“I be told you before, my King, it will be not wear off, unless my will is be no longer tied to it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It mean unless I be choose to break it. So he will be never know it was I who be killed Rotyuk.”

The Spokesman, wielder of many spea…

“Good. Because he cannot afford to remember that the scar appeared the day Rotyuk gave you that same scar before he died.”

“Yes, my King. To him, it be just injury he be got during play as child man.”

“But I do not understand. How is that possible?”

“My King, I have be seen that spell before.

A man be casts spell when he is be separated by death or distance from someone, a family member he be loves dearly, and that someone is be marked so that he or she be found easily. That also is be true origin of ghosts, spirits of dead people who be cast that spell, so they be return from dead to be find their loved ones.”

“So Rotyuk cast that spell on Kanaka? What does that mean?”

Bantaik paused and frowned shutting his eyes in the gesture, then he spoke up,

“The boy’s brother is be Rotyuk.”

To be continued...

- Telsum Bini