Page 30 of Humans Don't Have Horns
I have no words of comfort for him. I want to tell him they are dead, but he can see that. I want to tell him who Ashar is and what he did to me the night before he kidnapped me. But I don’t want to speak it out loud. I want to say something about Baghiva because her presence is so heavy with us. But I don’t know what to say. So I remain silent and just hold him for a while as he cries. I think to myself that it’s a good sign he cries. But it’s not.
After a long time, he pulls away from me and slowly stands up. He looks at me, my bloodied face, and he trembles. I can feel in my bones how bad it is.
My breath is tight through my bloody, swollen mouth. And I can only stare at him as fear creeps into me.
He turns and takes the clothes we removed before we went into the water, my pants and his shirt. They are smeared with blood and gore now, and he washes them. I don’t dare speak to him. He looks like the lightest feather can crush him now. And it’s so strange because he’s so big. And he’s supposed to be the warrior, the powerful one. He picks up our scattered belongings and arranges them neatly. Then he hands me my washed pants, a satchel with my knife, waterskin, and some food. He then looks at me for the first time and says, “You would be safer and better on your own.”
“Daton, don’t,” I say, and my voice cracks. He can’t do this. He can’t just give up on me like that. Not now, damn it.
His eyes are set on the ground now, his voice guttural. “I’m sorry, I can’t.” His knuckles whiten around his shirt. “I can’t go through it all over again.” And then he turns away from me and walks away.
I clench my jaw as I watch his big figure getting smaller and smaller in the distance. It can’t be the way we end. It can’t be that this powerful man, admired by his people and feared by all others, breaks this way. I know why he left. What just happened was a callous replay of his worst moments. Yet I can’t stop the feeling of being betrayed, deserted. I watch him walking away, carrying his ugly demons, and I’m surprised by the intensity of my heartbreak. I can’t stop feeling that if he cared for me as much as I do for him, he would have found the strength to stay. It feels petty to be angry with him. I knew he was broken from the start. And he never made any promises, never spoke of a future.
But this. How could he do this? I just killed for the first time. Yes, the vultures did the work, but it was by my calling. And the only person I could try to understand it with has just turned his back on me. I just relived my worst moments with my own demon, and now I’m alone in this. Again.
I take the washed pants and put them on while they’re still wet. Daton left me all our food and water, and the gesture only exasperates me more. If he cared, he would have stayed.
I start walking with no idea where to go. I walk for about an hour. It’s twilight now. I see a big oak tree at the edge of the field and sit at its feet. My face is pounding from pain, and I’m fatigued. Now that the adrenaline is gone, I think my nose and jaw are broken. I’ve never mended broken bones before, although my mother did teach me how. But I don’t know how to regrow the teeth Ashar broke.
The sky is tinged pink and orange by the setting sun. On any other day, I might be able to admire its beauty. I light a fire the way Daton taught me. How could I summon the vultures, talk to demichads, stop the direwolves, and understand Mongan? It is all a mystery to me. But I know now that there is something different inme. Was it always there, or is it new? Why can I do these things? For what purpose?
I think of Ashar. Of what he took from me. I will never get it back, no matter how many times he dies or in what ways. There was innocence in me, faith, a wholeness that will never return. I am glad he is dead, and I’m happy he died at my hands. His men wished to harm Daton and me. I am not sorry they died as well. But I know that when you kill an Aldonian or Kozari man, you don’t only kill him. You also kill his wife, for she must die with him by the True Religion. She cannot live without her shepherd. No matter how young their children are. How many women did I kill today? The thought is like acid in my veins. Were Ashar’s men married? How many orphans did I make? At least Ashar was unmarried.
I shut my eyes and fall asleep. In my nightmare, I see endless demichads. They are underground, each one in a transparent cocoon. I’m also underground, and I watch them sleep. Even then, they are gruesome and terrifying. I can see their monstrous faces relaxed. Their limbs are loose inside their cocoons. Earthworms travel inside and outside their bodies. Suddenly they all wake up at the same time and look at me with their beady eyes. And they scream an awful scream, their mouths open wide, showing all their teeth.
I wake up with my heart pounding, feeling watched. The sun is almost rising. Weak light penetrates the darkness. A giant direwolf stands right beside me.
Chapter Fifteen
Dahav
My knees hurt from kneeling. I’ve lost track of time while I’ve been here in front of the shrine. Just a little bit longer, and I’ll get up. Noka says I pray too much. When your priest tells you that, you know you’re overdoing it. Just a little more. I inhale. I can still smell the burned flesh in my nostrils. It penetrates the heavy scents of incense that fill the temple even though it has been a day and night since the bodies were burned.
I could never get used to that smell. It is disconcerting how the stench of the women’s flesh burning is similar to that of burnt cattle. I expect men’s burning flesh to smell the same, but I wouldn’t know for sure. Death by immolation is reserved only for women. Men are hanged when they receive the death penalty.
In Aldon, they burn their dead. I suppose that is why widows are burned instead of hanged. In Kozari too, we burn our dead. We only embraced certain parts of the True Religion. Yet this sacrilegious tradition of burning the widows was too happily adopted by my grandfather. It is repugnant the way the men of my family knead and twist our faith to their benefit.
I run my thumb along my Sun charm and repeat the passages Iknow by heart. If I concentrate just a little more, I can stop hearing the widows’ screams. But I’ve been kneeling for hours, and still, their screams are loud in my ears. It is the guilt. Well-earned guilt.
I should have saved them. Ashar had a harem of fifty-three women, and they burned them all. Fifty-three souls. It took hours. First, they burned Ashar’s corpse, or what was left of it. They usually don’t cover the corpses, but the state of it was so appalling they had no choice but to drape it in gilded silk. Then they burned his concubines. And in a matter of hours, two hundred and four bastards were orphaned. I should have done something.
But I couldn’t risk revealing my true intentions just yet. Fifty-three souls. Some mothers, some sisters, and some friends. Dead. Burned alive. Fifty-three and I did nothing. It will haunt me to the death. Mira, who taught me how to avoid getting pregnant, was one of them. She was not yet twenty.
I grip my Sun charm tightly until the rays cut my flesh. I did nothing to save her. “You do right by her children. But you can do right by them only if you are queen,” Nass said when I couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t breathe. “You can help no one if you fail,” he hissed at my unwaning dismay.
Four days have passed since Ashar’s death was announced. In three days, they will crown his brother Zorer the new king of Kozari. If I fail.
A woman has never ruled Kozari. Women’s place here is only under the boot of men. But Ashar overstepped. He shook the balance of power. He made traditions and laws seem too flexible. Something that was previously unheard of in Kozari might now be tolerated. You can only knead faith to some extent.
Ashar was not a stupid man, but darkness ruled him. Who knows better than me how dark he was? And in his darkness, in the pleasure he took in hurting people, he forgot that power isn’t secured to the ones born with it. It comes to those who take it, who nurture it. He did not consider that the noblemen in this land could take his insults only to a limit. For years, he wronged them, took gold from them,gave them only crumbs of influence. He didn’t consider that the noblemen were armed, that they were dangerous. And he was right in a way, since they never rose up against him.
But Zorer’s teeth will darken from the rotten fruits Ashar ate. Ashar went too far with Sheva. He raped almost every woman I know, but he crossed the line with Sheva. Because her husband was a nobleman. True, not one of much significance. Yet a nobleman still. Ashar arranged for his death and then took his wife, Sheva, as a concubine. When it happened, I couldn’t understand why he did it. After just a week in her bed, he returned to pester all of us again. But I abandoned any attempt to understand Ashar years ago. There is a darkness that even the burning light of Sun can’t reach.
The only explanation I can find for his darkness is the use of the Cursed Ones’ horns. I truly believe their hunted souls darkened his mind. Yet I’m too young to remember what he was like before. And now he is dead, not by sickness, not at a good age. He was preyed on by vultures. But vultures don’t attack the living. No, Lian somehow killed him using the animals. Nass’s spies informed us.
When I first saw Lian, she reminded me of a beautiful doll my mother gifted me once. It was hard to capture all of her true appearance with those pearls she wore. I’d never met someone whose hair and eyes weren’t yellow. And all the other Aldonians’ hair and eyes are red like blood. Only hers was white, like the freshest snow. But you could hardly tell, since her hair was mostly covered. Still, she was strikingly beautiful. And her poise and aura were part of everything a princess ought to be. Like a perfect doll to display to all.
My mother had just died, and they said she might be my new mother. I was eight at the time, devastated at my mother’s death. I didn’t realize then how afraid I should have been, and just how much she protected me from him. I asked Lian if she was going to be my new mother. She replied with the sweetest voice, “Mothers are irreplaceable, but I’ll be your friend if you like.”
