LITMIR.BIZ

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between today and the near future. Red also stood for the Fire Kingdom, which never brought any good tidings.

      While the houses and cottages of the influential kinships were grouped around the village square, Esara’s hut stood by the edge of the village where nobody else wanted to live. The other houses formed a ring along an invisible line where the downs met the valley. They stood where the earth was still dry and the ground was even. The damper grounds were too valuable to settle on. They were used to grow onions, and lush grass grew there too, which brought the herds through the dry season. The rights to the grass were negotiated anew every year under the Tree of the Court. Only Esara’s house stood where the ground was much too damp, where the Fever Spirits lived, who brought sickness to the villagers.

      Yet for Chigg, Esara’s house was the most wonderful in the entire village. The cottages were mostly built out of branches, the gaps filled with grass and clay, for good wood was sparse. The Reeve’s house alone was made entirely of wood and even had a stone foundation.

      Esara’s house, on the other hand, was neither a cottage nor a real house. Upon her arrival in the village she had planted four fast-growing whisper-willows, which had formed the four cornerstones of the house and grew larger and stronger every year. The low-alder grew between these living columns, a dense, short bush, barely taller than the average man could reach. On the inside, where the light was less abundant, the twigs had died. Yet they remained as pliant as ever, which Esara had learned to use to great effect. The twigs on the outside, however, kept growing, turning the small shelter into a blossoming palace encircling a small, well-protected room in the middle. Esara called her house Grovehall.

      The ground was simply flattened earth, and despite the dampness of the area always dry, for the whisper-willows and the low-alder took the water from the earth.

      The more the bushes grew and the larger the house became, the more birds decided to nest there, so before long the boy was woken every morning by birdsong. And every evening, the loud screeching arguments between the birds trying to find their rightful sleeping place reminded him that it was time to go to sleep.

      Chigg was still too young to notice how Esara was avoided by the villagers. The women hissed after her and spat thrice on the ground if their paths crossed. The men dodged out of her way. Anyone who wanted to visit did so at night, in secret, and there was every reason to do so.

      Sometimes Chigg would be woken by hoarse voices, so quiet they were barely audible. The voices belonged to young girls asking for love-potions, hunters who had lost their skill with the bow, or anxious mothers, begging for a blessing upon some item or other, or else for a herb-potion to cure a child’s fever.

      Esara’s knowledge was not limited to fate; she also knew of the powers of plants, metal and earthen colors. The village near the border between Earthland and Metal World was too small, too insignificant and too poor to have its own healer, so Esara’s counsel was often asked, but love and respect do not go well with fear and dread.

      When Chigg was not sitting in Grovehall, he was running around or playing at any place in the village that enticed his imagination. When he was still small, he did not attract any attention, from either the adults or the other children. But after every harvest the adults began to talk more and more, asking why he was not working. And nor could the other children overlook him any longer.

      Brongard was much like his father. Tall, bulky, dark; convinced of his own importance. As the Reeve’s son he led the village children, determining what should be played in the little spare time they had, what should be talked about and, in particular, how things were to be done. On this summer afternoon they were to cross the village square. The disorderly jumble of children ran noisily after Brongard until he stopped abruptly. Right there, in the middle of the square, stood the truth-teller’s child.

      “Get out of my way, witch-boy,” Brongard said, calmly, as he had learned from imitating his father.

      “Why should I?”

      Brongard burst out laughing, for this was really an amusing question, and the other children laughed all the louder because Brongard had laughed.

      “Because we are many, and you are alone. Because I am older, bigger, stronger and much cleverer than you.” And, after a carefully chosen pause: “And because you are not one of us.”

      Chigg flinched, but covered it quite well.

      “What does it matter if I am alone or in the herd? The great hunters are all on their own,” he replied proudly.

      Brongard began to enjoy the situation.

      “And you are one of the great hunters? Take a look at our hunters, or at the wild beasts in the hills – if you can survive that. They are all large, strong and dark, like us. You? Look into a mirror, if you know what that is. You have probably only ever seen yourself through muddy puddles. You are no great hunter. You are small, you are pale, you are silent. You are a lost kid, at best.” Brongard gave a loud bleat, and the other children laughed again.

      Chigg stayed quiet. What could he have said? Perhaps the smithy had a mirror, because he could polish metal? The Reeve must have had one, because the Reeve had everything. He had long noticed that he looked different to the others. His hair was colored like the sun, changing its sheen all through the day. His eyes were further apart than those of the other children. They were gray, not brown, and a short, straight nose sat between them, more like a blade than a mace. Small as he was, he was faster and had greater endurance, but he simply did not have the muscle or the oxen-like strength of Brongard.

      Brongard used the silence in his favor and began to attack anew. “What I see before me is weak, filthy and stupid. Why don’t you just leave? You’ve no father, no mother. You’ve no past. You have nothing; you are nothing and will always be nothing. You’re barely human. You are... you’re a...”

      Brongard groped for a word that could contain all that his ten harvests of experience allowed him to feel. This truth, or what he considered to be truth, formed in his body, condensed in his head and broke out of his open mouth forcefully as a triumphant shout.

      “You are a Nill!”

      You are a Nill. The words rang as a hollow echo in Chigg’s ears. To denounce a human’s humanity was the worst one could to him. Perhaps neither Brongard nor Chigg really knew what a Nill was. But the words had been spoken, their power too strong for Chigg not to understand them.

      These four words smashed, hammer-like, everything he had lived into little pieces. In that moment, after barely eight harvests, Chigg’s childhood ended. Ended by a boy who wasn’t even evil, just older, larger, stronger and more ruthless than the others.

      Chigg stood rooted to the spot, not even moving as the other children passed him, puffing and shoving. Brongard was already a few steps away when Chigg finally turned around and yelled: “I will take the name Nill, and the whole world will bow before it!” But the shout broke after the first few words in his throat and the rest was so quiet that none could hear it. But it was the first sentence of his new life. Chigg had been the child, Nill was the man. It had happened faster than lightning could split a tree. And it happened quietly, unnoticed.

      Nill stood there for a few more moments, staring after the other children with empty eyes, until he ran home, disturbed and full of anger, sadness and defiance.

      “Where have you been, Chigg?”

      “I’m not called Chigg, my name is Nill!”

       “That is not your name.”

      “Now it is.”

      For Esara, her boy lost his name on that day. She never called him Chigg again, because he did not respond to it, but she never spoke the word Nill.

      The children’s argument had not gone unnoticed by the adults, and some of them saw another bad omen in it. Esara knew that the time had come to let her boy help with the work in the village. She would not make a truth-teller out of him, because real truth-tellers are born, not made.

      He may have

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