Aur Child

Sand Flea puffed her chest as she glided through the village of Gjoa. She already had her independence from the duties and lessons demanded of the other children. Now, she was also no longer abandoned. Maybe even loved! She knew that she had a friend who would return for her. She did not have disdain for others – these were, after all, her fellow villagers with whom her life was deeply interwoven, even if they didn’t care much for her – but she did understand that it wasn’t until recently that they had shunned her. Now, they all seemed to secretly covet the equilibrium she found between autonomy and inclusion. She was, she told herself, truly free. If there was anything that discontented her, it was the uncertainty of when exactly her otherworldly friend Digambar might return.

It was in this mode that Sand Flea, ragamuffin though she was, blithely paraded herself through the lot of a dilapidated building most notable for its housing of a troop of village street urchins. Such trespassing would be preposterous for kids from any other neighborhood, but Sand Flea was the exception. She didn’t actually belong to any neighborhood. Besides, most kids couldn’t be bothered engaging with Sand Flea; they had seen the outcome enough times to know better. Most kids, but not “Talley” Ashish. Nicknamed such for being a lanky tower of a boy in his second decade, he was the assumed leader of the troop. To him, it would be a risk to his stature to let that smart-mouthed brat strut through his turf.

He looked over a crumbled wall just enough to gauge her progress through the lot. “Hey Sand Bites! Where’s your dragon mommy? Eating fish under the quay?”

Other ratty heads popped up from behind piles of stone and building detritus. Eyes blinked within the frames of windowless walls. Some of the more impressionable kids snickered at Talley’s early volleys. Talley, raised in the Sonu clan but refusing that designation because he felt it weakened his independence, stepped out from a disheveled doorway, and grimaced towards Sand Flea.

Upon Talley presenting himself, Sand Flea estimated that she was equidistant from both sides of the lot. Steady on. She aimed for the other side without a glance at the instigator, knowing she might avoid trouble with the adults of the village abiding by her faint recollections of Our Order, “Move away from violence and towards dialogue.” But as with all things, Sand Flea had her own interpretation of those rules, “Always give the fools a chance to reconsider their misstep,” was what she preferred to tell herself. No, there was no need to be distracted; she had more important things to do. In her mind, this was diplomacy.

“Hey! Sand Rash!” he howled, “Get your ratty alley-cat tail off my lot!”

Despite her ostentatious gait, Sand Flea’s heart squeezed. Confronted again with thoughtless cruelty, her face momentarily revealed sunken eyes and a downturned mouth, but she deftly swept this emotion away. She neared the edge of the lot. Talley approached her with a territorial posture, yet Sand Flea noticed he did so at an angle that ensured she would be out of the lot before he intercepted her. It was the same way a wild animal might move to affirm its position while minimizing the risk of violence, a stance that satisfied competing urges in Talley Ashish’s young adult psyche.

“Hey Sand Rash!” He barked out again furiously at her as she stepped over the threshold of the lot onto the adjacent sidewalk. “I’m talking to you!” An arc of spittle escaped with his “t’s”.

Sand Flea turned around to face her aggressor. “If you wish to talk to me, you should begin with a title to which I might acknowledge, such as Street Princess. Otherwise, I shant respond a’tall.” She puckered her lips with airs of vanity and flicked her chin up high, then turned back around intending to be done with the conversation. Talley misinterpreted this as a weakness. In his presumed victory against the retreating girl, he hurled a final insult at her.

“Is that all those grimy little lips of yours can muster, Street Tramp?”

Well clear of danger and flustered beyond her short temper at this fusillade of blasphemes in the witness of her jetsam peers, Sand Flea swallowed a shallow expletive, choosing something more complex with which to respond.

“Talley,” she said with a jeer, the heads of the other kids now raised higher above their ramshackle bulwarks, “After your pyre has cooled, I’ll smear the ashes over my lips so that your first experience in the afterlife is something you never attained here on Earth; the kiss of a woman on your body.”

Talley Ashish stepped backwards. His mouth opened and closed without a word. He could hear the same snickering as before, but this time he was sure it was directed towards himself. The chance that the others hadn’t heard her was slight. He swiftly disengaged, turning and waving a hand backwards towards Sand Flea with a mumble, “Enough of her gobbledygook!”

Sand Flea hadn’t noticed any of it. She was satisfied with herself, which was all that ever really mattered. She had already resumed her march towards the wind towers. A brief interlude with a poseur thug couldn’t distract her from the real excitement of the day. She had been asked to come see Elder Kamat for some reason, and she intended to spin the summons to get answers to questions. Questions that had been on her mind since her northland friend Digambar Dharmavaram had left her on the quay nearly a moon ago.

Sand Flea walked proudly past the bustling market street. Shopkeepers smiled at her. Some even waved at her. She understood their motives. They hoped by these precautions to fall into her good graces. After all, she was rumored to have reconnected with a distant family of untold wealth. A rumor started by herself, of course.

To the adults of Gjoa, Sand Flea was an enigma. The girl, in the early first half of her second decade, was mostly ignorable. She slipped along shadows and fed off the naivete of visiting merchant sailors. Her interactions with villagers were tangential, at best. Sure, there was Elder Kamat under which her care and responsibility fell, but Sand Flea rarely spoke with the esteemed elder. If anyone asked why she avoided the person who could easily rescue her from squalor, she would say she preferred not to be in the presence of a woman who couldn’t get through a conversation without contemptuously referring to Sand Flea as a free spirit. Village elders did not like free spirits; their preference for discipline and adherence to Our Order was antithetical to Sand Flea. Most adults assumed that Sand Flea had never even read Our Order.

When she arrived at the smooth stucco walls of Elder Kamat’s hut, she was surprised to hear the nasal voice of Elder Niraj through the window. Both of them? It must be serious. Their conversation, hushed but understandable from just beside the window, could not be ignored.

“I am at my wits end with that girl,” Elder Niraj said, “She puts the entire village at risk.”

“We don’t know that yet, Punthali,” Elder Kamat replied, “Let us remain calm and get to the bottom of it. She may have no idea what she has gotten herself into.”

“I cannot listen to her tongue. It’s a dagger in the shadows. I won’t tolerate her disrespect. She even flouts Our Order, Payyat.”

“She is my ward, Punthali. Let me speak with her. You need only listen. In that way, you can avoid her jabs. Come now, we have been on this Earth for more decades than moons in a year. Surely the two of us can retrieve what we need from a tiny girl who has no weapon but her wit.”

“I will try my best, Payyat, but I make no promises to stay quiet. It seems absurd that a village elder must yield to the nature of a willful child. You should have been stricter with her from the beginning.”

“Oh, now, now, what comes from passing judgement on one another? Just stick to the plan. I will simply ask her what she knows, and she will say what she can. You need not speak a word.”

This deliberation might have continued, but Sand Flea had heard what she needed in order to be prepared. She assembled her alibis, accomplices, and alternative theories for all recent ongoings about which she might be accused. Then, she rushed in with the airs of ticking off one more errand on a long list. The two elders, not accustomed to rapid entrances nor unannounced interruptions, stopped their conversation abruptly and spun their grayed heads to face the little girl. Elder Niraj sat with her back to the wall. She wore a saffron robe knotted neatly at the front that fit her like a thin pipe. An intricately embroidered pillow was wedged between her back and the wall to soften her position.

Village Elder Payyat Kund Kamat, rotating uncomfortably in her chair, immediately looked down at the bright new dress Sand Flea was wearing. She did not smile nor scowl. Her fixed expression was like that of most in the Kamat family, guarded and businesslike. Sand Flea realized this was the first time she had met the elder since Digambar had left Gjoa. She anticipated an imminent teaching in her matron’s minimalist fashion of direct quotation that never sat well with the wayward girl.

And sure enough, it came. “Our star reminds us daily of its massive presence. So too, Our Order,” Payyat-Kamat muttered.

Almost simultaneously, Village Elder Punthali-Niraj spoke in a tone as sharp as the nose on her withered face, “And here is our little Dharma-Kamat,” she said. Nothing but the very words themselves could have been interpreted as pleasant.

Sand Flea swept a petite mudra around to both women.

“Elder Niraj,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed to the ground after she relaxed her arms, “I would prefer you didn’t use that name, if you please.”

Payyat-Kamat pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Oh, feisty one,” she said, “not this silly argument again. She means no harm, child. If not to use the names you have, what then are we to call you?”

Sand Flea swung one foot around behind the other and propped it up on one toe, and then, “What need at all is there to name something no one really cares about?” she replied.

Payyat sighed. She held out her palms towards her colleague with a little shake, and said to Sand Flea, “Dear, when your parents departed on their losting a decade ago – a truly uncharitable thing to do to a tiny little girl, this I have always maintained – do you know what the village said of you?”

Sand Flea did not respond to the rhetorical question posed by the elder under whose tutelage it had been decided so long ago she be placed after that pivotal event.

“They said,” Payyat continued, opening a gracious smile and holding a hand up to Sand Flea’s face, “Everything is a negotiation with her, she fits with the Kamats.”

Sand Flea smiled and giggled quietly.

“Except Old Man Kamat,” Punthali said, in her pitched voice, “He called you a hot-headed bundle. ‘Slaps around furiously like a shark in the shallows,’ were his words, I believe.”

Payyat added, “Not even halfway through your first decade and you were already stirring up the village.”

Sand Flea was not displeased with these anecdotes. The lightheartedness in the room gave her a chance to quickly snatch several pieces of dried fruit that had been placed on the table especially for the honored presence of Punthali-Niraj, the elder who presided over the wind towers. The laugh shared by the three dissipated as the elders eventually registered the stunt Sand Flea had just performed before their eyes. Silence returned to the room. Sand Flea could sense the impending gravity. Why else would these two have resorted to playfulness with her?

Payyat let out a deflating sigh, “I was already nearly twelve decades at the time.”

There was another moment of reflection, and then she continued.

“Yes, try as I might, I could never find a path to pacification. It is surprising in a way. You have never been physically violent like so many other young children before they are introduced to Our Order, yet your words dear … yes, your words can be a shock to people.” The frail woman nodded slowly and then added, “Children and adults alike. ‘Where does she get these frightful ideas?’ a mother asked me once.”

Sand Flea knew exactly how Elder Kamat would handle such a question. Shrug and smile away the blusterous oddity in her midst who was mostly beyond her control. Oddity indeed. Sand Flea refused to sleep at home, she brazenly preferred the warm beach with its crooked palms. She refused the clothing Elder Kamat had prepared for her; those garments, now too small to fit the sprouted girl, undoubtedly still remained in a small bureau in the next room. Instead, when what she wore had disintegrated into nothing more than shredded rags, she stealthily snatched the old clothes of other children hung out to dry in the neighborhoods. She refused to take the food offered to her. She would apply her wits to beg for scraps at the back doors of cafes. She refused the name given her by lost parents and the Kamat clan name offered her by Payyat. And who could argue with the reasons she gave for that?

The fact was that no one could argue with Sand Flea’s bite. Even her street name, a sobriquet adopted with a blend of chagrin and pride, was derived as much from her sharp tongue as it was due to the bites at which she always scratched. No, it was treacherous to argue with that tiny tempest. It had always been that way, and it was even worse now. She knew that. Even she heard the new haughtiness in her own tone that seemed to forbid anyone questioning the conflicted life she led. Hadn’t her recent success proven them wrong? Hadn’t she filled in the part that had been missing from her life all this time, a true benefactor? Protected, but running wild around town without discipline. Homeless, but with a bed and meal every night. Bedraggled, but shining with pride and contentment. Villagers had wondered how one tiny human could represent so many contradictions. Sand Flea had wondered how long she would be able to avoid questioning by the elders. Now, she surmised, she was sure to face their inquiries.

Payyat rubbed her hands up and down her thighs. From the corner of her eye, she looked at Sand Flea.

“Let’s start from the beginning.”

“The beginning of what, Elder Kamat?” Sand Flea asked.

Payyat squinted at Sand Flea. “Why did this interloper, who you claim arrived and departed on a ghost ship, befriend you child?”

Sand Flea straightened up. Even in this tense moment, she tingled at the chance to say her name.

“Do you mean Digambar Dharmavaram?” she said with a genuine smile.

“If that is what she pretends to call herself, then yes,” Payyat replied.

“Funny name for a bleached woman who is clearly from the northlands,” Punthali snickered.

“Oh, she’s not pretending, Elder Payyat, she even speaks our tongue.”

“Yes, I heard you’ve said that as well.”

Again, Punthali spoke when she had promised not to, “Well, it must be a clever trick. Some kind of device that …” Payyat held up a hand to remind her not to do so.

Payyat continued. “Well? Why did she befriend you?”

“I offered to help her buy a chart, that’s all.”

“Hmph,” Punthali said, “And you expect us to believe that in exchange for that tiny service – although I won’t say the number you ran on that shyster Sujai was entirely unwarranted – she secured you room and board at the village inn until you’ve reached your third decade and fit you with a new wardrobe?”

Payyat blew a sigh through her teeth and shot a frustrated look at Punthali.

“Wardrobe? Only knickers, shoes, and this dress, Elder Niraj.” Sand Flea slipped her thumbs beneath the shoulder straps and hoisted the garment slightly off her waiflike body. Pinkish scars from many bites could be seen in that flash of otherwise dark skin.

Punthali raised an eyebrow, “The accommodations, child, worth thousands of pieces, paid for in gold?”

“That was not part of the deal, actually. She just offered those things to me because we became friends.”

“Ha!” cried Punthali, and she slapped her hand down on the table, a little vase of flowers fell over spilling water around the fruit plate, “Enough of this rigamarole! Can you tell us now that you had nothing to do with the others who came to spy on the wind temples? That you weren’t intending to help them carry away the Aur children?”

“What? The Aur children? You mean those silly boxes from the moon ceremonies? No. I only heard what they said about their visit, Elder Niraj, that’s all.”

“And what was that, dear?” Payyat asked, Sand Flea noticed she was cleary struggling to regain control of the conversation.

“Digambar had asked them ‘Did you manage to enter any of the wind towers?’ Wind towers, mind, not temples. That was odd, don’t you think?”

Niraj replied, “Those who only take their energy call them wind towers, but we understand them just the same.”

Sand Flea continued, “The man said that they tried to enter but were waylaid. By you, Elder Niraj, I guess?”

“Despicable monsters!” Punthali grumbled. “Is that all they said?”

This was indeed what Sand Flea had been waiting for. She would normally have avoided offering up so much information without a price, but she guessed she could divulge this without giving anything away since it was nothing they didn’t already know. The charade was worth it if only to have the chance to tell the elders the end of that odd conversation she had overheard.

“Well,” Sand Flea wavered, displaying just enough reluctance in her glances around the room to imply some sort of complicity, “There was something else he said.”

“A-ha,” Punthali squeaked, her gold-hoop earrings wiggling slightly. “Now we have it.” Just as Punthali leaned forward, Payyat leaned back and folded her arms. She frowned at what would surely be some new transgression, this time very likely against the entire village for which she would have little recourse to protect the girl.

“Speak up, child,” Punthali insisted.

“Well, he said he attempted to give you a bribe, but you refused.”

“Yes, yes, what else did he say?”

A tiny smirk cracked along the side of Sand Flea’s face as she said, “Then he called you an imbecile-priestess and an old hag.”

Payyat gasped at the contemptuous words. Punthali nearly choked on the fruit in her mouth. Her wrinkled face flushed with anger.

“You disrespectful little vagrant!” she said, losing her notoriously short temper to the embarrassment and the con, “Just another one of your duplicitous pranks. A waste of this village’s energy! You are nothing, but ungrateful to the few who have done all they can to help you your whole life. It is no wonder the village shuns you. You can go! Go and make friends with those wicked Apostates! Go and find what they do to you. You think you have a friend? You tiny fool! You’ve been taken in. You’ve been used. A taste of your own medicine, except that you’ve risked all our safety in the gambit. How dare you defy us? Sever your soul from your body is what they’ll do! They’ll…”

But Village Elder Punthali-Niraj was not able to tell Sand Flea anything more about what some people called Apostates might do with Sand Flea’s soul because Payyat-Kamat had taken the opportunity of this outburst to lift her rickety body from the chair and step between the two others. She threw her arms around Punthali to smother her fury. Within the muffled space between the two old women, Sand Flea heard the soothing words of Our Order quoted by Elder Kamat, “Move away from violence and towards dialogue.”

“She knows now what she’s done!” Punthali sounded as if she were choking on tears. “The snotty misfit gambles our souls, Payyat.”

Although Elder Niraj had stopped speaking after that, Sand Flea could still see small flashes of the narrow woman’s jerky movements from behind Elder Kamat as she tried to regain her composure. Sand Flea had hoped the joke would be more fun, but the insults and cruel thoughts Elder Niraj revealed in her outburst struck Sand Flea deep. She felt a pang of true emptiness sweep over her. Emptiness she never felt before in her home village, despite all the hard knocks she had come by before. She had always believed that, while the elders may have felt obligated to treat her more like a student than a child of their own, they genuinely did care about here. She had excused her own actions so many times because she expected the elders would treat her with the same unconditional love given to children by their parents. But now she recalled that tenet of Our Order that she had always understood but had never thought would apply to this: Without a promise, there can be no expectations, only hopes.

This fusillade of raw ideas convinced her that the love of the elders was certainly not unconditional. It might not even be love. This left only one person in the world who might truly love her, and that made her all the more desperate to believe it was true. She knew she had risked much to play the joke on Elder Niraj, but she still had a plan to protect herself from any repercussions. And now that her relationship with the elders was irreversibly changed, she might focus on getting the answers to the questions that had kept her awake this past fortnight more than the biting of insects.

“No, no,” she said, “That wasn’t the only other thing he said. I thought you would want to know about the last thing I heard.”

Payyat turned around halfway and held up a finger in Sand Flea’s face. “Now listen girl,” she said, “I am warning you. I won’t tolerate that kind of disrespect and trickery on an honored elder, not anywhere but especially not in my home. You deserve to be dealt with severely already for how you’ve twisted this conversation, so you had better think carefully before you say anything else.”

There was a pause as the people in the room each shifted their feet slightly. Payyat turned completely around to face Sand Flea. Punthali held her head in her hand and kept her moistened eyes closed. Sand Flea stepped back to place herself closer to the exit.

“Now,” continued Payyat, “have you truly something else important to tell us about these terrible creatures?”

Sand Flea could see anger deep within Elder Kamat’s eyes, despite her efforts to remain calm. She wondered at how sensitive these normally collected women could become over the subject of strangers touring the wind temples. Why were they so enraged? Sure, those others looked a lot less friendly, but Digambar was nothing but magnanimous.

“The man said,” Sand Flea continued without hesitation, “that you seemed wary of them.”

“Yes?” Payyat said, in a leading tone.

“Yeah, his exact words to Digambar were, ’she seemed wary of us, and maybe even suspected what we are.’”

The two women were quiet at this, so Sand Flea pursued the question she had longed to ask the elders.

“’What we are’, he said. Not who we are. Isn’t that odd, Elder Kamat? I have wondered about it all this time. What does it mean?”

Payyat reached out and placed her hand on Sand Flea’s shoulder.

“It means nothing,” she said.

“But, surely it’s something,” Sand Flea said, although she was only thinking out loud. “I couldn’t really understand it all these days. And what you said just now, Elder Niraj. That thing about them severing the soul from the body. And to call them monsters coming to steal the Aur children. It’s all so confusing. Are they really dangerous? Please, Elder Kamat, Digambar is my friend. If she is in danger, or if she is really dangerous somehow, I would want to know. What were they looking for at the wind temples? Do they really want those boxes?”

“Ahh,” Payyat murmured as she tried to disengage Sand Flea from the interview, “what anyone may seek to learn inside the wind temples is of no concern to a young adult who refuses to study Our Order.”

Sand Flea couldn’t deny being ungraciously dismissed. Village Elders were always confusing things by shifting meaning or reciting their scripture. Sand Flea didn’t ask what was inside the wind temples – she knew well enough from the recounts of others who were granted access on holy days that there was nothing in there except for some ladders and the podium where the Aur children rested. Aur children, those heavy boxes that the elders made a big deal about, carrying back and forth under embroidered silk veils during the lunar ceremony when the village’s batteries were re-energized every month. “A blessing from our star. A blessing from our Aur children,” they would say, and then ask the villagers to recite a selected excerpt of text. Now that is rigamarole! No, Sand Flea didn’t ask more. One thing was clear, she had asked the right question. She knew this because the elders refused to give her an answer.