Chapter 60:

The Cursed didn’t wait for official ostracism to be voted in. Less than a diurnal after Rajani’s proposal had been rejected, Tanush was weeping in her arms. “They said I was a traitor. They pushed me to the end of the line and said it was because I hated the Cursed.”

Kishi’s wide-spaced eyes were full of tears. “Don’t play friends,” she said. “I hit.”

“Kishi, you mustn’t hit other students, whether they play with you or not,” Abha said, but her words only furthered Kishi’s sobs: “Mean! Mean! I want play!”

Rajani looked at her three cousins. Tanush hadn’t stopped crying since flinging himself into Rajani’s lap. Kishi was openly wailing. Fourteen-year-old Soti was quiet, but the anger in her eyes was easy to read. “It’s because of your proposal, Ni-am,” she said aloud.

Pity for her Table swept through Rajani. She would have never dreamed that the Cursed would turn on her and her Table members – especially sun-blessed Kishi – like this.

“It’s not because of her proposal,” she heard Lainla say. “It’s… it’s, well… because the Cursed don’t want things to change, Soti, and they’re angry, because…”

It was clear to Rajani that Lainla was having trouble believing her own words. Soti, too, didn’t seem to find Lainla persuasive. “If Ni-am hadn’t submitted her proposal, none of this would be happening right now.”

Hidden in Soti’s insistence was a cry for explanation. Rajani could hear it as clear as day. Why did you do this? What was it for? Did you know it would hurt us?

Rajani stood. She couldn’t let her cousins carry with them the false belief that she didn’t care for them. Nor would she allow cowards to define what it meant to be Cursed.

“Come with me,” she said.

Soti seemed relieved. “Where are we going?”

“The castra-dome,” Rajani said. “I’m going to tell you why I was sent there, and how I got out.”

***

Rajani led her cousins to the west forfend. She helped them climb up a ladder hanging from the limestone shell platform nested into the bio-dome’s branches. In front of them, across a sea of az hedges, rose the western mountain range. A rope bridge extended over the az hedges. Connecting the platform to a mountainside scaffold, the bridge had three tension-tight cables: one to walk on, and two to hold onto. Other ropes, extending like vertebra from a backbone, yoked the cables together.

“I don’t think Tanush or Kishi are tall enough to cross by themselves,” Soti said. “I could make it though.”

Rajani agreed. She sent Soti along first, then carried Kishi, then Tanush, across on her back. After letting Tanush down on the other side, Rajani eyed the hunter standing guard. Her body was tense, ready to respond to any insults or threats.

To her relief, the hunter instead gestured Kishi away from the edge of the scaffold. “Stay under the canopy. You don’t need to get any wetter.”

Rajani let herself relax. “Thank you,” she said to the hunter.

“Are you here to visit your friend?” he asked.

“My friend?”

“The overbelter. The tall, heavy one. They said he was eating at your meal bench.”

Rajani stared at the hunter. “You mean Sukren? He’s here?”

“I don’t know his name,” the hunter said. Behind him, along the scaffold’s edge, rain-soaked breathflower vines hung like a curtain from the canopy above. “But they brought him in during one of my previous shifts. They’ve been funneling the overbelters through.” He shook his head. “When I was young the castra-dome was a place to send adolescents. You know, the ones who wouldn’t behave after they turned fifteen, the ones who needed a little help to get the rebelliousness out of their systems.”

“That’s the way it was in my time, too,” Rajani said. “It was like a rite of passage.”

The hunter shook his head again. “Now this place is stocked with adults, overbelters. Dangerous people. Just the other day I caught my daughter lying so she wouldn’t have to do her share of cleaning the holy place. Any other time I would have had her up on trial and sent her here, like the Cursed have always done. But nowadays? No. I beat her instead. Better that than to find herself on trial, bound for a castra-dome that’s no longer meant for her.”

“Why are they putting overbelters in the castra-dome?” Tanush asked.

“They’ve been rioting and stealing,” Soti answered.

“Sukren too?”

“No,” Rajani said, thinking. The hunters took him, Jyotsa-am had told her. They pushed him back to the Gather’s Children ditch.

Rajani had assumed that Sukren was still in the ditch, guarded by the detail of hunters Chief had set up. She had expected to find him some time later after the security had relaxed. To hear that Chief had sent him to the castra-dome without first putting him up for trial…

Stolen novel; please report.

For the first time since her father died, Rajani felt fear inside her like a sickness. Who was next? Would it be her? She imagined the hunters coming for her, dragging her to the castra-dome, denying her the chance to defend herself before her people. Although in her case, would the Cursed even listen to her pleas?

“Ni-am, why else would Sukren be here?” Soti’s voice was trembling. “You don’t get sent to the castra-dome unless you do something bad, right?”

Rajani wanted to reassure Soti. She didn’t want her cousins to feel like they too could be next. But she couldn’t bring herself to lie. “Come here,” she said. She beckoned them to where they could stand on their toes to peek over the mountain’s crest. “Tell me what you see here on the other side.”

Her cousins peered over the ridge.

“A bio-dome!” said Kishi.

“It’s a lot smaller than ours,” Tanush said. He pointed to a bioplastic chute that ran down the scarp into the castra-dome. “What’s that thing?”

“The az hedges on this side are so much taller than the ones in our valley!” Soti exclaimed, before Rajani could answer Tanush. “How come?”

Rajani decided to answer Soti’s question first. “The az hedges are taller here because on this side of the mountains, it rains even during dry seasons. It means the people in the castra-dome can’t leave unless someone throws a rope down this chute to pull them up.”

“And you got sent here?” Soti asked, giving Rajani a sidelong glance.

Rajani took a deep breath. She didn’t relish telling this story, but she knew it was time.

“When I was fifteen, I became a hunter,” she began. “During my trials, Pratap of the Vadyan Table singled out me and Lainla. You know how the Cursed think of myxte girls, that we’re bossy to our own Table members but soft to outsiders. That’s the main reason I’m always so forceful with everyone. It’s better for an outsider to interact with me and think, ‘oh, if you’re this forceful with me, you must be really bad at home, must be a total tyrant to your Table,’ than for them to think, ‘oh, you’re a typical myxte girl, bet I can take advantage of you.’ Which is what Pratap must have thought back then, that we’d be easy targets.

“The trials, though, they’re your first chance to develop your reputation as a hunter. Are you going to break under the pressure? Are you going to take what they give you? I knew I couldn’t let Pratap mark us as harassable. If I let that happen, nobody would ever leave us alone again. So I drew him away from Lainla; I taunted him, and he left her alone to focus on me. I thought I could get him to stop targeting me after it was just him and me. I was wrong. My taunts caused him to be hell-bent on cutting me down to size.

“Kebet was also having trouble. He was the smallest boy in our cohort back then, and a lot of the older hunters didn’t want him to pass the trials because they thought he’d be a burden. I convinced him to join me in striking back against both Pratap and the ringleader of the group that was targeting him.”

Her cousins gaped at her. “Weren’t you scared?” Tanush asked.

“Yes. But I was more scared of seeming weak.”

“What happened next?” asked Soti.

“Kebet and I broke into the rubber forge and stole a pair of knives. When Pratap and the other hunters came for us during the next session of the trials, we attacked them.”

“Nobody got hurt,” Rajani explained when Kishi gasped. “Kebet and I were fifteen years old with no previous training. They disarmed us without breaking a sweat. After the hunter trials were over, we were tried before the lodge mother moot, courtesy of Chief Bikash. We were convicted. A troupe of hunters accompanied us over that very bridge we just crossed.”

Kishi looked back at the rope bridge hanging behind them. Its meaning was changing for her, Rajani could tell. It was no longer just a frightening path but one that the lead hunter of her Table had taken.

“At that point the Jinkari were basically Gather’s Children,” Rajani continued. “Papai had lost his leg years ago. He was still our lead hunter, but in name only. Shib-vyn could barely grip anything anymore. And Kishi and Tanush, your father had just died.

“Lainla was technically a hunter after the trials, but she was too young and small to actually function as our Table’s protector. Those who visit the castra-dome to give food to their imprisoned Table members have to be hunters strong enough to fight off other people who might try to take their packages of food. So if you’re a Gather’s Child, and you’re in the castra-dome, you’re looking at death by starvation.”

“How did you make it?” asked Soti.

“Kebet’s father brought food for me. He didn’t have to – he had no reason to. I was the one who had dragged his son into that mess. But every time he came down that chute with food for Kebet, he had food for me too. This is why the Jinkari Table will always stand by the Solonsa Table. This is why what threatens the Solonsa Table threatens us.”

Rajani saw understanding light up Tanush’s eyes. He had known already that the Solonsa and the Jinkari shared a bond. They often celebrated Gather’s Days together; they always backed each other in confrontations with others. Now he knew why.

“Kebet and I looked out for each other inside there. We protected each other until the time came for us to be released. But there was a problem. Only a lead hunter can do the run for an imprisoned member of his Table to be released. Kebet’s father could do it for Kebet. As for me… Papai stepped up. He took on Hunt’s mantle, to bring me back to the Jinkari Table. He did the run for me – and then died from the burns and the blood loss.”

Rajani reached out to wipe away Tanush’s tears. “This is why we say we belong to Hunt’s Table,” she whispered, reverence filling her heart. It was a thing of awe, to consider a god doing the run for you, bare feet on burning coals, bare flesh tearing against the sharpened bones that marked the path of the run. And you, running behind, the fire of the coals subdued by the osseous shards broken against the body of the god.

Soti’s eyes were shining.

“Afterwards, I thought I had to make up for Papai’s death. I… I think I still feel that way sometimes. But when I listen to our sacred stories, when I look at our economic, legal, and social institutions, all I can see is that when the gods say you are Cursed, what they mean is this: that you were imprisoned, then freed. That you were outcast, then accepted. That you were a Gather’s Child, then brought into Hunt’s Table. And that means Papai doing the run to bring me back, that was him naming me as Cursed. That was him reminding me who I am.”

Something was changing inside Rajani. Even as she spoke the words to her cousins, she felt herself pulled forward into a story that renewed her deep within her hidden heart.

You are of my Table, the god words whispered. You are of my flesh. You don’t need to prove yourself. You are already proven – by me.

“You asked me, Soti, why the Cursed are condemning us, why they’re putting overbelters into the castra-dome. It’s because they’ve forgotten something. They’ve forgotten that to be Cursed is to be a Gather’s Child. But our Table? We won’t forget. We can’t forget. It’s written into who we are.”