Nosa's Story

Long ago, there was a couple who lived beside a forest.

The husband was a renowned beast tamer and hunter. He was as close to his hunting hound and snow eagle as a father was to his children, and his miraculous archery could easily strike a vulture in the eye.

The wife was a master weaver. Flax, silk thread, and cashmere seemed to possess souls of their own in her hands, weaving countless exquisite patterns under the guidance of her crochet hook and spindle.

They had married young and loved each other dearly. Even after many years, they were still as passionate as they had been on the day they first met.

One day, the husband suddenly said, "Perhaps we should have a child. Though the hunting hound and snow eagle see me as their father, one day I will die, and they will need a new father."

The wife smiled gently and raised the crochet hook and spindle she never set aside. "I hope it will be a daughter. They see me as their mother, but these hands will grow old one day."

Just as on the day they had first met, they were filled with passion day and night. Every second apart was an agony to their hearts.

Yet fate toyed with them, and they were never able to conceive. The husband was deeply disappointed, so he brought three sheep, three fish, and three river birds to seek a shaman's help, praying for the gods and spirits to grant them a healthy child.

"You will have two children. One will be devoured by beasts in its swaddling clothes, while the other will grow up healthy, filled with love for its family."

The man brought the shaman's words home to his wife. At the thought of their child being gnawed apart by beasts, the kind woman felt as though molten iron flowed through her veins, burning her heart red until she fell sick in bed.

Day and night, the husband prayed for his wife's illness to improve, so they could return to the passion they had known on the day they first met.

After a long while, the husband grew disappointed in his wife. The shaman had already spoken the prophecy. He had to find a way to have two children and choose one to cast into the forest for the beasts to devour.

He placed his hopes in the Forest Witch, hoping the mysterious witch could make his wife set aside her fear of the prophecy.

The witch agreed to his request on the condition that the man raise a pack of hyenas into the deadliest killers in the forest.

"This old woman has no family. Now that she is old, she only wants her home to be a little livelier."

Skilled in taming beasts, the man easily fulfilled the witch's request. He taught the frail hyenas to obey commands, track prey, hunt, and become deadly killers in a corner of the forest.

The woman's belly swelled day by day, and the couple was overjoyed when they had a beautiful daughter with soft golden hair and lovely amber eyes.

But it was a girl. The man wanted a son to inherit his beast-taming craft, so he secretly sought out the witch again without telling his wife, hoping for a son.

The witch demanded that the man exchange his most precious possession for another precious thing. He believed she meant his daughter.

For the shaman's prophecy had revealed the fates of the two children: one would die by being devoured by beasts, while the other would grow up healthy with love for its family.

The father smeared the scent hyenas hated most onto his daughter's swaddling clothes. He had trained these "sons" himself; with a simple command, he could make them charge at the fiercest brown bears in the forest.

The girl was swallowed by the hyenas. Her shredded swaddling clothes were blown by the wind onto the hook of the loom, staining the child's clothes her mother had woven with a layer of blood that could never be washed away.

He waited eagerly, believing he would soon receive a son who could inherit his craft and reputation.

Other than the knife-like pain that surged through him whenever he thought of his daughter being devoured by hyenas, he devoutly waited for the prophecy to come true.

Soon afterward, his wife's belly swelled again. But on the day she was due to give birth, the child would not come. Seeing that both mother and child were about to die in labor, the husband went to find the witch again.

This time, the witch merely handed him a knife and said it could save one person.

He cut open his wife's belly and took out the beloved boy. He cut the umbilical cord, washed the tiny, slick, bloodied body with warm water, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and placed him beside his dead wife's pillow.

Strange barking drew the husband to the window. Outside stood the hyenas he had once regarded as "sons," with the corpses of the hunting hound and snow eagle clenched in their jaws.

They charged into the house, killed him using the methods he had taught them, and devoured the swaddled child.

Just as the shaman had foretold, one of the couple's two children was devoured by beasts in its swaddling clothes, while the other grew up healthy, filled with love for its family.

"This is Nosa's story..." The man drew his longbow to its full length, the arrowhead aimed at Kas, who had remained silent all this time.

His halo-like body roiled constantly, black and red intertwining, his blurred facial features shifting between ferocity, coldness, and regret.

"She grew up day by day, filled with love for us. She inherited my beast-taming skills and archery, as well as Angeli's gentle fingers. I will not allow anyone to threaten her!"

Kas crouched beside the rock wall and took a sip of the cloudy, bitter malt ale from his horn cup. Like the man, the drink churned in his throat, filled with pain.

"All right, then let's agree on one thing first... Nosa committed the sin of eating people."

"This is an ancient Reshman tradition long forgotten: consuming the flesh of the dead to inherit their wisdom and memories!

I watched her grow up day by day with pride. I watched her use those little hands to carve out an underground tomb herself, a tomb where our family could reunite. Do you know how proud I was, Kas?"

"To hell with your tradition..." Kas spat out a cloudy, beer-stained gob of saliva. He rose to his feet and approached the man step by step.

"Why? Was the prophecy more important than your wife, the hunting hound and snow eagle you saw as your children?

They loved you. They stood alive before you, wove your clothes, kept you warm, cooked for you, and treated you as the only thing in their lives. You could have reached out and touched her loving face and moist lips.

But you chose to love someone you had never seen, someone who was like a lie!

No, you did not love her either. What you loved was only a dream, an abstract and empty prophecy..."

"Shut up!" The man released the bowstring. This arrow, filled with love for his daughter, fear of the prophecy, and a father's hatred, would pierce anyone who intended to harm his child.

The arrow flew through the glass-like flowing world without any pattern. It was a shattered arrow made of memories, will, and dreams, twisting through the refractions of red and black before suddenly piercing Kas's chest.

It drove resolutely through the torn linen lining, pierced the thick muscles wrapped around bone, and cut through pulsing blood vessels, only to rebound off his heart and shoot back at its attacker.

Kas's ice-blue eyes gleamed like the cold, silent eternal glaciers of the Sorrow Mountains beneath a dark sky.

He despised men who loved abstractions more than reality so deeply that when the arrow brimming with love, fear, and hatred entered his body, the fury in his heart overwhelmed everything and rejected that hollow arrow.

He stared at the charcoal blazing in the furnace, at the man who had wounded himself by shooting the arrow from his chest, and muttered:

"Those who inflict suffering upon others shall surely endure the agony of being consumed by blazing flames."