Chapter 2: The Man From The West
The night was cool and swift in its approach as the sun set behind the mountains in the west. It shrouded the clear sky in indigo hues, lengthening shadows and silently taking refuge from the earth for the night. The air was crisp and sweet and the day’s sweat finally dried upon the brows of the workers.
A man robed in blue watched over them all, tired and hungry servants who’d been in the mines since the crack of dawn. He watched the ebbing pattern of lines of people emerging from the mouth of the cave, like ants following invisible scent trails back home. He collapsed the small golden telescope in his hands and tucked it under his robes. Now they were almost invisible, blending into the rocks and crevices with the night like sand disturbed in water. No wonder there was no news of this place. Nobody dared venture into the barren canyons this far inland. Nobody, except the poor souls bound here by contract or by threat.
Naru brought the lower part of the Litham around his mouth and nose, breathing in the faint aromas of dried flowers he tucked around his neck. The choice was vain and seen by some as feminine, but walking the desserts and mountains in scalding heat while rationing water and subsisting on dry food changed a few things about the nature of one’s breath, and he wasn’t willing to bear such easily altered problems for meaningless judgements from others. He wasn’t confident about many things, despite his continuous and even at times laborious pursuit of knowledge, but he was confident that nobody in this land had travelled the distance he had.
He turned his back to the wretched souls. Through his looking glass he had seen the tiredness and misery on their faces, inadvertently playing a game others enjoyed, a game that he too was a chess piece of. Somehow, he had seen the Sultans and the clan leaders and the regions for what they were and since then, since his indictment into their leathery folds where he saw what true human treachery was, he had sworn an oath to himself.
He breathed in deeply to allow the fragrant dried flowers to calm his nerves. Even in death, nature served a purpose. What purpose did humans serve when they stole from their brothers and caused a demand for what was being mined in those caves? Those people had families, communities, lovers, ambitions, and now they were secluded in the valleys and their blood was not their own. His heart ached for them but raged against the Sultan. How could one have gentle eyes after seeing what you truly did behind closed doors? They dug and they cracked and they coughed from the dust for a mineral they didn’t even know.
He knew, of course, what they were mining. Dayes. It was thought to be called this because of how they shone when refined, but truly , he learned from the hidden vaults, they were called this to conceal their discussion in everyday language. Their power and potential was so mighty that the mention of them caused wars. To hold a Daye was to hold the world. In their natural form, they looked no different from common basalt, but once refined through several quick successions of heating and cooling and then ground to fine dust, they resembled the radiance of sunlight darting on sea waves and the pearlescence of opals. They were sieved into small glass amulets no larger than a fingernail. Between the upper clans, Dayes were shrouded with such secrecy that it was simply dismissed by the common folk as supernatural tales akin to fairy dust and fountains of youth. But Naru knew better.
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He turned down thin windy path he’d taken to his vantage point on the ridge until the foot of the mountain where his camel was grazing. Under the full moonlight everything seemed surreal. He gazed at his dark hands, then his soft palms which alluded to his not being involved in any manual work his entire life. From a young age he had been thrown in a boarding school to study many languages, regional cultures and, without anybody’s knowledge, dark arts. Commoners called it black magic but when you understand the science and the supernatural there was nothing really magical about it. Either way, he’d gone as high as possible in his studies and landed himself in the snake pit. Though he was surrounded by gold and marble fresh fruit he was also at the mercy of the Sultan and the four clan elders. He was a gazelle in a claustrophobically small savanna surrounded by hyenas, yet he was still able to learn most everything he could about Dayes and so every page he turned, every Daye he cracked with his fingers, every war he learned of surrounding them, it congealed his blood. To turn God’s creation into a weapon against your people turned his vision red. The real enemies laughed while humans tore themselves apart. The real enemies were unseen, unheard and yet they were the victors, he’d experienced it first hand as a teen and yet not a single mention of them in the history books.
When he was younger, a Djamon had razed his neighbourhood while he was in his boarding school. He had returned home for the break to ruins and blood clumped sand where his home and many others had previously been. For three nights, he was tortured in his dreams. He thought he would lose his mind. Images of his family, his neighbours, his friends running from something unseen. He’d return to the rubble of his home to salvage what belongings he could find, reeling from the silent disappearance of his entire community. He found baskets woven by his sister and mother, his father’s tools, all of their clothes. He also found parts of their bodies which he could bury and pray for.
One evening, while searching aimlessly for anything he could retrieve before he left, an old man called to him a few houses over. It was Mr Suleyman. He’d also been away during the attack and shared the same astonished affliction. But he’d told Naru something that, Naru realised now, would change the entire course of his life.
Naru’s mother wasn’t killed, she was taken.
“A Djamon,” he had specified. “My wife saw everything. If you’d so like you can come for tea and ask her everything.”
So Naru set off with him and that same night, he’d cried like the child he was in the arms of Mr Suleyman’s wife. His mother had returned, mid flight, in search of something, as Mr Suleyman’s wife, Ruqiya, was emerging from the rubble and trying to flee. Something dark and twisted materialised and a gnarled arm burst from thin air. Naru’s mother was grabbed by the neck and hauled into the dark shapes. Ruqiya had doubted herself, believed it was the rush of fear causing such hallucinations. But by then, Naru knew of the existence of Djamon’s. They were not fairies, they were real, and they had taken his mother.
Djamon attacks were common back then, before the Sultan came to power, and villages disappearing were not unheard of. People moved to Shodimo for prospects but also for safety. Under the Sultan’s rule, the city was yet to be attacked even once.
He closed his fists to calm the writhing aggression within him. A man was as strong as his control on anger. He reached into his robe for his book and made a note of the cave and everything else he collected that day, double checked he was on the correct route and whistled to his camel. Tonight he would camp, and the next morning he’d set off for his semi final destination.
