11 -- More Jitzmitthra

Down the Avenue of Statuary I could see the shuttered windows in Adamas Nizen’s school standing wide open, so that anyone, not just solas could see what was being taught. But the teacher was juggling instead of teaching fighting. I stopped to watch because he was juggling flaming batons and instructing his students who struggled with simple leather balls. I wanted to stop longer and learn how to juggle but thought that my friend might want or need instruction this first Jitzmitthra morning.

Someone on Assiduous Effort Street had apparently paid to have all their white doves dyed red. I thought it was appropriate for the street that edged the looming bulk of the Mezem. I barked at the pigeons to make them swirl up and around against the blue sky right outside the Puckered Fig restaurant. And had the thought that it would be good to get my friend out of his room… even if he were still hurting from his wound. It wasn’t that far. I figured he already hated the Mezem worse than anyplace else in the city.

I stopped for a second to let an express chair swish by, the lead carrier shrilling a rhythm on the whistle in his mouth rather tune-like rather than just the usual harsh warning blast. Then I stepped over the chair-lane in the street before another chair could come blasting by.

I watched an Aitzas boy letting an Okas girl go in front of him… her costume a hand-made copy of the mad Imperatrix’s costume with gems made of rubbed smooth glass shards and his a falcon with true gilt wings and golden beak.

The guards at the Mezem were painted black as Srians and one – rather attractive actually -- was dressed as a woman. One of my Mahid made a kissing noise at that one and he batted his eyelashes at him… but I could see he was afraid he’d remember him later. “Jitz!” I barked at my Mahid to remind him… “Jitz! Jitz!”

He made a lazy swipe at me. “Down dog! Get down.”

I plowed through the wild array of costumes in the Mezem -- Iskanzas was also dressed as a woman with enormous eyelashes and ribbons of eyepaint -- and up the stairs to Raikas’s room. His door was open but I stopped outside it, unsure of what would be polite… even during Jitzmitthra.

It seemed as though even if every convention was thrown away, that was one that should not be… somehow. I peeked into the open door. “May I come in please?”

Raikas looked up from where he was stretched on his bed, leg elevated slightly on a couple of pillows. “Minis, yes…” he stopped, looked at me, his eyebrows climbing to almost disappear under his forelock, and broke into laughter. It wasn’t a man’s belly laugh… it broke high and he giggled like a boy, throwing his head back. I liked it and bounced and ‘rar rar rar’ barked to get him to do it more.

“…come… come in, yes.” He managed finally. I bounced in, barking “Ruff, woof, ruff, ruff!” I began sniffing in corners and the edges of his table and bed as though I was looking for a corner to pee on. His laughter, again, was a little startled, a little amazed.

“I guess I call you pup, today?” It wasn’t really a question but he seemed almost breathless. It wasn’t surprising, I suppose, from someone who had never seen us Arkans let our hair down.

“Want a scratch behind your ears?” he asked.

I started laughing and bouncing up and down in front of him. “Yup! Yup!” and then rolled on the floor waving my arms and legs in the air panting. He tentatively started scratching my belly and I ‘rar-rred’ and wiggled while he did.

“That’s just so…” He broke off and kept rubbing my belly while I ‘rar rar rared’ at him then started pulling one of his sheets off the bed, growling.

He yelped ‘Down boy, down!” and I started giggling harder. I rolled over on my belly and put my head down on my arms.

“I’m ticklish!” I said. And he giggled high and wilder even than before.

“RARARARARAR!”

“I shall have to take advantage of that!” he said. And lunged to tickle me. Not tentative as though I would order his head off, or tentative as if I could hurt him at all… Firm fingers that held me solid in the laughter. I couldn’t remember having laughed like that in years.

“Oh. Oh. I’m getting a cramp… stop… please?” I almost couldn’t remember the polite word, but did at the last moment. I was panting hard by then, as fat as I was.

Raikas let up on me and just held me there where he’d tickled me and I lay panting, recovering myself.

“I love… I love… Jiztmitthra. Even my birthday.”

He looked down at me with that puzzled look. “Jitz…mitth…ra. Your birthday is during this?”

I grinned up at him and panted “yup, yup, yup! Tomorrow… but like all Jitz it’s not a real day… so all of it is my birthday!”

“That must be taken as a sign of something,” he said quietly. I stopped wiggling and kept the tears that are close in Jitz back by swallowing hard.

“Yeah. Not good. Not proper. Very wild.” I looked down at the spots on my skin. “I was born backwards, my father says. Feet first.”

Raikas nodded. “Ah. Tomorrow’s backwards day… Skorsas said.”

I nodded. “I have to more careful tomorrow than most people.”

“Why is that?”

I started chewing on the ends of my hair, suddenly not liking the Diems much. “My nurse says I’m more vulnerable to the little devils tomorrow, the devils that turn the world upside down. My father cursed my mother for not having held me inside until after Jitz.”

I looked down on my costume and it seemed just silly. I sat up a bit more. “You’ll see sugar devils tomorrow. For people to eat.”

“Ah,” he said quietly. “Those little devils.”

“Everybody eats them,” I said. And he grinned at me.

“I would never have thought Arko could be like this.”

I smiled at him and panted like my costume. “This year is wilder.”

He grinned at me. “Why is that?”

I wiggled a little to get my tail out from under me. “Ummm. Every four years there’s an extra day? And things get even more nuts?” I changed the subject because I didn’t want to talk about it any more. “You’re looking better than yesterday.”

Raikas looked thoughtful, something I was getting used to seeing… “It’s a leap-year. On the Yeoli calendar too.” He seemed surprised that our two countries would have that in common.

“Ummm.” I said intelligently. “Yeah. Ummm. Raikas? I was… kind of confused yesterday.”

“By what?” He turned his thoughtful look back on me.

I was chewing on the ends of my hair enough that the ends all the way across were wet, the odd, oily flavor of hair in my mouth. “Well. I was scared because I thought you’d get killed. And then happy because you weren’t. Why were you unhappy? You’re still alive…” One hand had hold of the end of my costume tail and I played with that while I waited for him to think.

Raikas took a deep breath. “Minis. My war training. Was for one thing only. To defend Yeola-e. That’s the only reason I should ever fight. That’s sacred to us.” He looked into the distance, thinking. “I had agreed. But it’s one thing to say you’ll do something, and another to have it in front of you, having to be done. So… I…killing…”

I sat up straight. “You hurt because he died?”

“It only belongs on a battlefield, lad. I hurt because I killed him.”

I nodded, chewing on the ends of my floppy ears instead of my hair. “So was the guy I read… the philospher… mis-quoting your founder? I hoped… I wanted to help…”

He cut me off with that odd slash of flat hand. “No.” He shifted a little on his bed as though he sat on something sharper than goosefeathers and lamb’swool stuffing the mattress.

“It was a little garbled,” he said. “But I understood it.”

I poked at a feather jabbing out of his mattress, the tiny sharp quill as delicate as a needle. “If…”

“If we… are keeping you as a slave… and you’re a warrior… isn’t that a battle?”

The careless truth out of children’s mouths. I had no idea how pointed my questions were. But I had no idea why he was so upset.

He sighed and answered me in a way that no one ever had before. “I guess you could say… since I’m fighting for freedom… but it’s all staged… set up for a crowd…” He sighed and picked at the bandage on his leg almost the way I picked at things, then looked up at my puzzled face. “To kill someone just for someone else’s entertainment… that’s sacrilege. It’s wrong to kill someone for trivial reasons.”

That I thought I understood. “Like a sin? The Gods don’t like it?”

He nodded but it wasn’t sure, like a foreign language word, signing his yes handsign. “Sort of. It’s wrong. You don’t see it?”

I wanted to see what he was saying but I wasn’t sure I understood. “I think so.” He stared me right in the eyes and I tried again. “You mean… everyone… is… important? But…” That went against every lesson I’d ever had. Every lesson that said a person was only worth the caste he was born into.

He picked up both my hands, probably less important to him that to me since he used his hands so freely, looking into my eyes as though what he intended to say was truly important.

“Everyone is important. There were people… a mother… a father… who loved him. Siblings… family.” He looked right through me, looking into the life of the man he’d killed. “Maybe a wife, now lost to him. For what? For my freedom? It makes me sick.”

I didn’t know where the tears came from, they welled up unknowing, unwilling. I found myself choking on them thinking of a man whose life I hadn’t counted, or cared for. “A slave? A fessas? An okas? Everyone is loved?”

I wasn’t. I knew it suddenly. And couldn’t let myself realize it. I was not loved. It was too much to bear so I forgot it as suddenly as I realized, to float up in my mind now and again like a foul bubble of corruption to assault my mind as though it were my nose. You have never been loved. No one really cares if you live or die. “I shouldn’t cry.” I struggled to suppress it. It was something too painful to know. Raikas was looking at me as though he didn’t recognize me.

“I don’t mind,” he said. “You Arkans hold it in too much… well maybe not this year, but usually.”

I took a deep breath and shoved down what I felt. I knew how to do that really well. “I could howl.”

“You’ve lost me, lad.”

“I never thought of slaves as having families.”

“Did you think we grew out of the ground?” He sat up straighter and pulled me onto his lap, unthinking, somehow knowing I needed cuddling… “We all have families and that man just died by my hand.”

I sat still on his lap, confused and wondering if he even noticed that he was acting loving, holding me. Slaves were just there to be used up. I’d never thought of it.

There was only one thing for me to say. “Raikas… I’m sorry.” I wasn’t crying any more. “I’m sorry.”

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This scene from Chevenga's point of view