Turn, Fir of Marla: 28 Xiven

Kayin slept in too late. He could tell already, just opening his eyes. The village usually buzzed in the mornings with trades and haggling, but if that sound already died down, then it was close to when Rinesa was at her brightest and warmest: midday. Aunt Aayin had already gone to set out traps for the edia, to try and capture them before they mated.

He rose from his cot and pushed off his patchwork blanket. When Kayin stepped onto the ground, his feet sloshed against the mat they lay at their cots every night before bed. He flinched at the cold, and looked to Aunt Aayin’s cot, only to find hers was already gone. If his rug didn’t dry out in time for the night, she would know he slept in….

Kayin had just finished throwing his mat of fur onto the wooden rack when he heard his best friend call to him.

“Kaaaaayin!” she called as she ran. “Come on! We have a new game to play!” He smiled at her as he sloshed his way closer to her. The Cold Season left the grass dead and muddy; it had yet to grow back, even though the season ended weeks ago. Aunt Aayin said it was because the land, Nycaid, was upset with Icheami, the air, and didn’t let him in to dry her grasses. Aunt Aayin said it like a joke, as if she never believed it. Everyone else would always take it so seriously and constantly curse Ichaemi for the cold ground, even though frost happened at the same time every year. It felt a little silly to Kayin; to him, these were just names of the land, the sky, the sun and day, and the moons—but to everyone around him, these deities dictated everything from a person’s mood to the crop yield. But why was it that his people claimed the sky could hear him curse and doomed the crops, but the trees didn’t care? It didn’t make sense, and no one would explain it to him.

“I’m cold,” Kayin said, crossing his arms. Could he blame Ichaemi for this? “I don’t know if I want to play.” Dania waved his comment away.

“Hush, you. I have this game: it’s called Dodge the Traps!” Her eyes darted around them from hut to hut as she shied closer to him, letting him in on her secret.

“Who’s playing?” Kayin asked cautiously. “I don’t want to get in trouble; Aunt Aayin always says to stay away from—”

“No, be quiet! Tailer and Sithie are playing, too. Just don’t tell anyone else.” He nodded to her, but narrowed his gaze suspiciously. Just saying that the twins they always played with were joining wasn’t much of an argument. Dania seemed to fidget uncomfortably under his scrutinizing stare, but she looked at him with such excitement that he found it difficult not to say yes. “Good! All right, so Tailer and Sithie are out in the forest looking for the traps. We’re going to tell you and Tailer what to do, and you’re going to be blindfolded.” She held up a strip of cloth in her fist. Despite her enthusiasm, Kayin raised a brow.

“What if we get caught in a trap?”

“Oh, hush. You’re such—you’re just stupid. Stop it. What are you, four? You won’t get caught,” she insisted. Kayin fell silent despite his urge to protest. “Let’s go. And if we get caught by an adult, just say you were following my and Sithie’s orders. No one can blame you if you were just doing what you’re told, right?” Her reassurance wasn’t calming him. For most adults, that excuse would keep him out of trouble. Not all, though. Dania huffed stubbornly and crossed her arms, then stormed her way to the forest’s edge. Kayin saw no other choice but to follow her.

“Took you long enough!” Sithie squealed from somewhere behind a giant tree. “Tailer and I were about to start counting the mushrooms!” Which shouldn’t have been very hard, Kayin thought, considering all of the mushrooms were about the size of every tree they were surrounded by—not to mention they glowed purple whenever the sun Rinesa went to sleep. Now that he thought of it, though, he wasn’t sure Sithie could count that high—or above ten, for that matter.

“Nuh-uh!” Tailer insisted defensively. He was sitting with his back against a mushroom, picking at his stubby, pink toes with a stick he had pulled off a tree. “She’s just being dumb.”

“Don’t talk about me like that! I’ll tell Mom you’re being a brat!” Sithie stepped out from her hiding place with a platter of moss atop her bright hair and a strip of cloth in her hand.

“And I’ll tell Mom you’ve been picking at the trees again—‘That’s an edia’s food, and edias are our food, so don’t pick at the moss unless you want to starve.’” His mimicking voice was eerily similar to his mother’s. He got the nagging pitch down perfectly.

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“We’re going to starve anyway.”

“Can we just play the game already?” Kayin asked finally.

Sithie turned her irritation away from her twin to Kayin. “Dania, make him stop being so rude.” She scowled at him; he returned the expression.

“Kayin, didn’t you just say you didn’t—? Be quiet,” Dania scolded for the umpteenth time that week. “Ugh, come on.” Tailer and Sithie stepped away from the trees and approached the others eagerly.

“All right, now put on the blindfold,” Sithie told Kayin sternly. He was hesitant to accept the piece of fabric that dangled from her fingertips, but he took it and looked to Dania, who urged him to put it on with a nod.

“But I don’t know if I should,” he protested at first.

“Come on, don’t be a Kayne, Kayin!” Dania cooed next to him. She nudged him in the shoulder gently, as if to assure him that she knew he wasn’t actually a Kayne, but then handed her own blindfold to Tailer.

“Did you use this to pick at the moss?” Tailer asked in a whisper. Sithie began to protest wildly, but Dania talked over her.

“It’s not even that dark! I could still see when I tried it on,” she insisted.

“Don’t call me a Kayne,” Kayin muttered under his breath, a bit delayed. Despite his previous resistance, he found himself raising the blindfold over his face.

“Then don’t tell me what to do!” Dania shot back with a scowl. “Put it on.” Kayin frowned, yet tied it behind his head and hid the knot inside his messy mop of midnight black hair. Dania was wrong; he couldn’t see a thing. Then again, he was always told that females had better vision in the dark. He wasn’t sure if he believed it, himself, but he would never dare to say that out loud if he didn’t want a swift switch to his backside.

“Now what? Do you direct me around the traps?” Kayin asked flatly. There was a chilled breeze, and he coughed softly at the musty, sour stench that stained the strip. Once he was silent, there was a series of sharp crunches of the leaves and twigs snapping. The hairs on his neck rose. His heart started to pound hard in his chest, and suddenly he began to wonder if they had left him or if they were playing a prank on him. “Did you leave?” He wasn’t sure why those were the first thoughts in his head, considering they’d never done that before, but they had threatened to if he didn’t do what he was told. Perhaps they finally meant it.

“What are you doing?” came a stern voice. Kayin’s stomach sank. Now he knew why the other kids were quiet. Either they had hid or they were stunned into a fearful silence. “I told you not to play near the traps!” He felt a ripping at the back of his head, and finally he could see the world again. He sort of wished he couldn’t, though. The look of utter terror on Tailer’s face wasn’t comforting. “Explain yourselves!”

Kayin twisted himself around and faced the voice. Aunt Aayin, proud and lanky, leaned over him with the blindfold in her hand. He ducked his gaze to look at her bare feet, cut and bruised from the traps she set every morning. The traps they were about to play in.

“I told you to stay away from the traps! You were trying to play with them, weren’t you?” Kayin could feel Dania shift uncomfortably next to him. Aunt Aayin’s disappointment hurt her as much as it did him.

“We were just playing a game Dania made up,” Kayin muttered truthfully as he picked at the loose strings on his over-sized shirt. He knew the “she told me to do it” excuse wouldn’t work on his aunt, but it was worth a try.

“Dania, apologize to Kayin for getting him in trouble.” Kayin looked up with wide eyes, and then looked to Dania. She was furious.

“Why do I have to apologize to him? He’s the one that started to play first! And he’s—he’s him!” she protested, gesturing to Kayin. He was stuck wondering why Tailer and Sithie weren’t being scolded, and how they were getting away so easily by merely creeping along the shadows of the forest to try and leave.

“Would you prefer if I told your mother you disrespected me?” Aunt Aayin shot back. “Apologize to him! Tailer and Sithie, go tell your mother what you’ve done. I will know if you did or not.” The twins didn’t hesitate to run away. They never even looked back to see what was happening to him or Dania.

“I’m sorry, Kayne,” Dania spat.

“Kayin! There’s an in sound!” he protested immediately as he turned to her to look her in the eye. She looked back at him, brown eyes challenging and unmoving. Her gaze shifted to his Aunt Aayin, and she shrunk into herself.

“I’m sorry, Kayin,” Dania corrected. Aunt Aayin shifted her terrifying expression.

“Now you, Kayin, for placing the blame on Dania when it was your fault for listening to her.”

“What!” Kayin said quickly. “But if I don’t listen to her—” Aayin wouldn’t have any of it, and hushed him with the wave of her hand. She gestured to Dania expectantly.

“I’m sorry, Dania,” he muttered to the floor.

“I don’t believe you.” Dania crossed her arms, waiting for another apology, but it never came.

“It’s good enough. Now Kayin, go collect firewood—”

“But we just did that yesterday!”

“Enough. You slept in late and you broke a rule. Dania, go tell your mother what you’ve done, then go help Kayin.” Well, that was one benefit to being betrothed to Dania: Aunt Aayin got to punish her just as much as Kayin. And for whatever reason, getting Dania in trouble was one of the most satisfying parts of the day, especially when he saw her reaction to him sticking his tongue out at her.