Nurturing Wonder

Possession

Ilsa stood patiently, stoically, as the priests painted arcane symbols on his black skin with acrid smelling white and red mixtures.

Some of the other children fidgeted or fussed, and one of the little ones wouldn’t stop crying, in spite of a beating for it earlier in the day. Two priests held her down while a third carefully sliced at her cheeks, cutting marks into her flesh that couldn’t be smudged by tears.

Ilsa turned his eyes away from her, but didn’t move any other part of his body. He knew from long experience that when fidgeting caused a priest to smear his symbols, it would result in a beating before they cleared the offending paint and started all over again. The few other children his age stood similarly still, silent, resigned to the priests holding the power of life and death over them. Their paint was finished first, as always, and their attending priests admonished them not to move while it dried, before moving to assist their fellows with the younger, less cooperative children.

Ilsa dozed on his feet, obediently still. When he was younger, the Suivage had been nerve-wracking. But now, he viewed it more as a day off from working the Church’s fields and cellars than as the day of terror and uncertainty it had once been. Very few of the children from his age group remained, but most of the Chosen would be from the younger groups, as always.

He turned his eyes back to the little girl, sniffling now rather than crying. Tears stung horribly as they flowed into raw cuts, making the cuts serve the dual purpose of unsmudgeable marks and disincentive to further bawling. She would probably be one of the Chosen, he thought. After seven years of enduring the suivage, he had noticed that the Chosen were always the weakest of the children offered. The ones who cried, the ones whose spirits were broken, the ones who only wanted to please the priests in the hopes that they would be sent home, or at least treated well. The demons always took the weak.

Ilsa was determined to be strong.

He had always been strong-willed. He thought that was probably part of why his parents had given him up to the priests on his sixth birthday. The priests wouldn’t take any children younger than that, or he was sure his father would have sent him away sooner. He didn’t remember much of his parents or his home any more. Mostly just yelling, pain, anger. The beatings the priests gave were easier to bear and easier to avoid than those he remembered from home.

Strength was the way to survive the Suivage. But he was not sure of anything beyond that. Adults were not a part of the Suivage, and he did not know what happened to his elders – just that past a certain age, they disappeared. He had strength in abundance, but not knowledge, and not the freedom to use his strength for himself.

His thoughts carried him through the interminable wait while the priests finished the last of the children’s markings, and fanned the final ones dry. Then it was time to move. The littlest went first, lead by the priests and placed in the inner circle, within the lines inscribed in the ground, surrounding an empty – for the moment – space in the middle, and ordered to stay there without fail. Then the next oldest filed into the second circle, inscribed on the ground around the first. Then the next oldest. Ilsa was in the fourth, and final circle. Beyond that, outside the sacred space, Ilsa could see normal people.

They crowded around, jostling, talking, buying and selling. It seemed like each person went his own way, choosing his own path. Very different from the proscribed life of the Shorn. These people wore clothes of all different colors, wore their hair long and short, braided, loose, oiled. The Suivage was Ilsa’s chance to see what his life could have been, if he had not been given over to the priests.

It was time. The crowd hushed, growing almost as still as the children in the sacred circles. Priests surrounded the outer circle, bearing the chosen. Ilsa looked around surreptitiously, seeking one face out of all the others, seeking the one true friend he had made in his time as one of the Shorn. Each Suivage, he looked for Kevek, made eye contact to let him know he still believed in him. Each Suivage, Kevek looked less and less like himself, had less and less of the boy Ilsa knew in his eyes. But still he looked.

The chosen gathered around them, attended by priests who kept them from wandering off or fighting each other, and kept the most disoriented from simply falling over. The chosen themselves were as naked as the Shorn, but far more colorful. Some looked almost normal with just a tinge of red or blue or yellow. Others were brightly colored, as if they had been painted. Those who had been Chosen the longest had grown monstrous features, spines growing out of their joints, claws from their twisted fingers and toes, horns from their heads.

Ilsa didn’t see Kevek among them.

At the last Suivage, most of a year ago, Kevek had been bright blue, with spines bursting from his skin at each vertebrae and the tips of horns just starting to poke through the skin of his forehead. His expression had alternated between all-encompassing fury, and pained confusion, as the souls within him fought for supremacy. The priests had bound and restrained him during the suivage, but Ilsa had still managed to make eye contact, had still managed to give his friend a smile. He wasn’t sure if Kevek had seen it, but he had done his best.

A gong sounded, then another, then a dozen all at once, from all directions surrounding their circle. Priests entered the circles again, pushing children to the side to form a pathway all the way to the center. Along that path trundled a cage, pushed and pulled by more priests, using long handles to avoid coming within reach of the creatures within. Nine more Chosen, all fully transformed, no longer recognizable as the humans they once were. They roared and rattled at the bars of the cage and the shackles binding them in place.

Ilsa stared intently, taking note of a bright blue body, willing it to turn so he could see the face, see if any part of his friend remained. It turned, roaring at the crowd, roaring at the Shorn children gathered for its Suivage. It caught him staring as the cage passed by Ilsa’s place in the circles and stared back, a silent snarl curling its lip. Ilsa watched as the cage passed further, placed carefully in the center. The blue Chosen continued to meet his eyes, a sign, Ilsa hoped, that his friend Kevek did still exist, and would know he was not alone at the end. He felt a familiar hatred kindled within, flaring up with sudden intensity but banked back to a smolder by the knowledge that there was nothing he could do to save his friend, or even to save himself. All he could do was watch.

The priests positioned the cage carefully within the circle of the youngest children, then walked the lines of each circle, ceremonially redrawing them following the lasting inscriptions in the ground, and incidentally tugging the Shorn into their final positions as they passed, arranging them evenly around the central cage. Ilsa wondered, as he did every Suivage, why the priests didn’t simply position the cage first and then arrange the Shorn once around it. Then the priests were past him, leaving the circles entirely, and it was time.

Again, a gong sounded, then another, then all twelve at once. An arrow flew over their heads, striking a plate on top of the cage and releasing the spikes from the roof to smash down on the Chosen within, piercing and crushing them into death.

Three of the littlest children fell down almost immediately, convulsing on the ground next to their confused age-mates. Then two more fell, also convulsing. One of the children in the second circle doubled over, gagging and shaking. Another screamed hoarsly, again and again before falling over unconscious. An uneasy minute later, one of the children in the third ring fell to her knees, sobbing and shivering.

That was eight. All the watchers waited uneasily for the ninth to be Chosen.

“Hide me,” Ilsa heard a soft voice in his head – a voice he recognized, the voice of someone he would do anything to protect. His hand twitched involuntarily, and he pushed it surreptitiously against his side, focusing on holding himself still. He looked intently at the cage, reminding himself of the inevitable fate of the Chosen, and steeled his determination to show the priests no difference from how he had been before the Suivage.

It was surprisingly easy.

After that one tremor, his body was obedient again. Nor did the voice in his head sound again. He wondered, standing there waiting for the priests to release them and collect the new Chosen, whether it had just been his imagination. But there was a Chosen missing. What would the priests do? All he could do was wait and see, waiting as patiently as his life as one of the Shorn had taught him to.

Eventually, the gongs sounded again – one, then another, then all twelve in unison. Priests ushered the Shorn away, leading them back along the road to the Church estate, where they would normally be allowed to rest the remainder of the day. They left behind the eight who had been Chosen, to be taken into custody by more senior priests who would see to their care as the demons within them started the long process of adjusting to and taking control of their new abodes. Ilsa studiously avoided wondering what would happen to him now, cutting the thought short each time it arose in his mind. “Later,” he told himself silently, “I can think about this later, when it’s time to sleep.”

They returned to the dormitories, where food was served and then the Shorn settled into their normal Suivage-day routines. Many retreated to their bunks to sleep. Some played with dice for pebbles, and others told stories quietly in corners. No one spent much effort on comforting the youngest, most of whom had just experienced their first Suivage. The Shorn learned the realities of their life quickly.

Ilsa retreated to his bunk, turning his back to the room and pretending to sleep. “Kevek?” He spoke in thought only, but loudly, seeking to call that voice he had heard briefly at the Suivage. A feeling of presence suffused him, and his body trembled slightly in spite of his determination to remain still.

“You’re strong, boy,” he heard in his head.

“Strength is the only way to survive,” he answered. “You’re not Kevek,” he observed, feeling disappointed but not surprised.

“No, but I did share his body for a time,” came the reply. “He lasted longer than most. He was the strongest one I could take, until you opened yourself up to me. Well, to your friend. But we were one and the same by then.”

“What do you want?” Ilsa asked, feeling a little angry with this voice that could speak so casually of consuming his friend. His dead friend.

“I want what you want.” the voice hissed, enticingly. “Freedom.”

Ilsa caught his breath, then willfully exhaled and smoothed his breathing pattern. “No sign,” he reminded himself. Then, “How?” he asked the demon inside him.

“The priests don’t know where I am,” it answered him. “And you are strong enough to hide me from them, at least for a time. Tell me, do you ever work the outer fields?”

“Often. The eldest Shorn work the farthest fields. That’s the way it’s always been.”

“You will work them as normal. Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I will watch through your eyes for an opportunity to escape.”

“Escape is easy,” Ilsa said contemptuously. “It is surviving afterwards, and avoiding being captured and dragged back to the Church that is hard. Tell me how you plan to do that, and I will consider it.”

The stranger within his mind seemed taken aback at that, and he caught a shadow of a feeling. “You want me to die, don’t you?” he asked, tensing up in spite of his determination to appear normal to any watchers.

There was no answer.

The next morning, Ilsa rose with the waking gong, ate a breakfast of gruel with the others, and then trekked out to the fields. They carried hoes with them, for the crops were young and the fields needed weeds removed to let the grain grow freely. They were unguarded, for all the Shorn knew that escape gained them nothing but punishment when they were returned to the Church.

Ilsa set to hoeing as he did any day at this time of year, glancing around to let the demon within his mind see the fields, the forest nearby, his fellow Shorn working the field, and the lack of guards. “See?” He thought loudly, “Escape is easy. But I will only escape if you come up with some way for *me* to survive.”

It was several minutes before he heard a reply. “I will be with you as long as you live,” said the demon.

“That doesn’t make me want to die,” Ilsa answered.

“If you stay, the priests will find you out. You won’t be able to hide all signs of me for long. Then you’ll be trapped among the Chosen, drained and drugged, and doomed to die in the cage!”

“Drained? Drugged?” Ilsa had never seen the Chosen beyond the Suivage, but neither of those things sounded good.

“It’s not pleasant,” the demon said sharply.

Ilsa shrugged as he continued hoeing. “Dead is dead,” he thought. “If I escape, I get brought back, and you still get found out. So it’s the cage either way.”

“You could die fighting,” the demon whispered. “Die free.”

“Death is not freedom,” Ilsa replied.

The demon was silent for the rest of the day.

At sunset, lower-caste priests walked around the fields, calling the Shorn in for their supper. They lined up, filing along the table that held bowls, spoons and a priest serving from a huge vat of pottage, a nondescript gray liquid that was roughly the consistency of pig slop. It was hot and filling though, so the Shorn took their portions eagerly before returning to the dormitories to sleep. Ilsa took a bowl and spoon, and held his bowl out to be filled by the priest manning the pottage. The priest ignored him, however, instead filling the bowl of the next person in line. Ilsa looked at him disbelievingly, but the priest didn’t seem to see him. Nor did the other Shorn, since the next child held out her bowl, which the priest filled, and then the next child after her. He stepped to the side, watching curiously.

“This is how you will survive,” whispered the voice in his mind.

Ilsa nodded thoughtfully. Then he dipped his bowl into the pottage to fill it to the brim, more than double the portion the priest was doling out. He licked the outside of the bowl, careful to get every drop, as he walked back to the dormitories to finish eating and sleep.

“How long have you been trapped?” Ilsa wondered, “Going from Chosen to Chosen in the Suivage?”

There was a pause. “Longer than you can comprehend,” the demon finally answered.

“A human lifetime is nothing to you, then,” Ilsa thought. He thought of the old, wrinkled senior priests, wondering how old they were. “If I live another twenty, forty years, that’s not that long for you, is it?”

“Not that long, no…”

“A bargain, then. My freedom for yours. You help me to survive and live a normal life, and I make sure I don’t die in the Suivage.”

“The Suivage is not the only way my kind can be trapped.” The demon cautioned.

“So you warn me of the other ways too. The deal is: you help me live a free life, and I make sure that when I die you are freed. But if you cross me, try to kill me early, then I come back to the priests and I tell them what I am. That I’m Chosen. And you stay trapped. Deal?”

“I… swear to help you survive. In freedom.”

Ilsa thought the demon sounded reluctant, but the prospect of freedom was enough to make him take the chance. “And I swear to avoid any death that would trap you anew, and to free you with my death when I am done with my life.”

In the morning, the demon did his trick again long enough for Ilsa to take as much porridge as he could eat. Ilsa took the usual trek out to the fields, and once the other Shorn were settled in to their hoeing, Ilsa simply walked away. He took the hoe along as a walking stick, and set out through the forest to faraway lands and freedom.