I’ve been hanging around with Widgecraft for going on thirty years now.
We all went gray going along with his ridiculous dream to defeat the demon lord. Everyone had different colored skin and eyes, different upbringings, different languages; but we stuck together till we all had the same hair color. It was quite a long journey. Frankly, I’m impressed we survived.
Widge is a dumbass who loves a good festival, but once he’s in the forest, he’s cautious and stronger than anyone else. That’s why I teamed up with him, of course, but there were more than a couple times I thought, Oh shit, we’re doomed.
I’ve been punched so hard by a demon I flew up into the trees. I’ve been surrounded by a swarm of poisonous ants. I was tormented by a horrible fever, cause unknown, for three days and nights.
It was a life of coming out of the forest crying, I don’t wanna diiiie! and then going right back in because if you’re going to die, the forest is the only place to do it. I’m a bit of a dummy myself—I just have to breathe that forest air. It’s basically my hometown.
So into the pub where this band of dumbasses hangs out comes a woman who looks awfully out of place. She wore a pure white dress with a pure white hat. Even her skin was so pale you wondered if it had ever seen the sun. In contrast, her hair was a glossy black, and her gleaming eyeballs were so big they seemed about to pop out of her head.
This was a real lady. She was a clever, elegant, city girl. Her parents let her go to school, and now she worked as a fancy-pants Sister.
I’m from a minority group that lived on the eastern edge of the forest, got mud-colored skin full of tattoos, and no one in town even comes near, but here she was sitting across from me, and with this serious-ass face she says:
“Can I be your apprentice?”
At first I didn’t even know what she meant. Then after thinking for a minute, I realized she was teasing me, and I thought it was funny, so I laughed. I laughed up a storm, took my glass of bukaren wine I hadn’t even had a sip of yet, threw it in the Sister’s face, and gave her a thumbs down. I made sure she could see my darkly shining orc fang ring.
“I’ve got a message for your god. ‘If you wanna be my apprentice, come on by.’”
The guys at the pub laughed their asses off. The Sister bobbed her head, made a half-asleep nonsense comment, “I’ll try again another day,” and left.
She had a better ass than I expected, so I made my friends laugh again by making a joke about it.
✦ ✦ ✦
I was born, as you know, in the Seigaya region. It’s on the other side of the Demon Lord Forest smack in the middle of this country. I was born in the east, but not in a city there. I was practically raised in the woods. This skin, these tattoos. The food and culture is different, you know. So we’re called the Cursed People.
Of course, we’re not cursed at all. Not a thing’s wrong with us. The curse is in you all’s eyes and hearts.
Anyway, we couldn’t stay where there were lots of people. We lived in a little riverside village, crawling around in the dirt with the beasts.
The river running through the forest is the color of dirt. They say it’s a flow of rainwater, and drinking straight from the source is a recipe for the runs. Besides that, the weather’s much hotter than it is here. The first things I remember are the reek of grass and the smell of mud; the buzzing of the bugs and the demon battle cries you hear at night.
We get a spear right from birth. They’re the short kind you can use as projectiles. When you reach a certain age, you get your own string and feathers to tie to it. That’s so everyone knows who made the kill. By the age of 15, we’re full-fledged hunters. That’s what we’re raised for.
“Igo, you’re next.”
Once, when I was eight or nine, the adults ordered us to climb to the top of a cliff and jump into the river. There were a few trials a year like that until we came of age. The guys who died weren’t cut out for living. In other words, they couldn’t be helped.
I was good at moving my body and showing off my bravery. Nothing ever scared me. I turned around, pointed my thumbs toward the ground, and pulled a stupid face by rolling my eyes and twirling my tongue as I fell. The adults made sour faces while the kids my age clapped.
People said I would be a hero. A hero. They were idiots, the whole lot of ’em. They believed with a religious faith that a man who would turn the world upside down could be born in that little shit stain of a village.
After each trial, the men who performed especially well were tattooed. It was a lot of pain for a kid to take, but it was an honor. I drank celebration water and calmly accepted the ink. By that time, I already had a chest full of black. I had more than any of my friends.
But on rainy days, it itched. The ink was made of demon blood. The adults said it wanted to return to the forest.
The demons are terrible beings, but to us they’re almost like gods. It was believed that bringing our flesh closer to theirs was one way to grow stronger. As a kid, that logic made no sense to me, and the whole thing was just a big pain. It itched so bad until the blood took to your own.
One rainy day, I thought I would go to the river and wash. The itching wasn’t quite as bad if you cooled off the skin. But that was where I encountered one for the first time.
A demon.
It was watching from the opposite bank—a monster with four legs like a horse and a long neck. But its body was all squishy like it didn’t have any bones, and its eyeballs took up half of its head. When it opened its mouth, I could see packed rows of sharp little teeth, and sticky drool dribbled out. Then it licked its lips at me as I stood there quivering, unable to move, and waded into the river.
Demons are demons, I thought. There’s no way a couple tattoos can bring humans any closer to them. Humans are nothing but food. We get eaten and die—that’s it. The thought made me pee myself.
But I didn’t die back then. I was saved.
Men who fail to pass the trials but also fail to die are made into wall men. They become the wall outside the village that protects it.
Standing before me was a man with long, dirty hair. I had never met him inside the village. He shouted something that wasn’t human language as he scooped water out of the river and flung it at the demon. That made the demon back away. Little by little. The demon that went into the river voluntarily now hated the water once the man had touched it.
Then the man began binding his own arm. He wound a thin string tight around it just below the elbow, then bit the inside of his mouth and spat blood on his arm. The blood bubbled on his skin and started to smell like rotten eggs. He thrust it toward the demon and screamed like a horse, “Neigh, neigh!”
The demon chomped the arm and sucked the blood that spurted out. All I could do was shake with tears coming out of my eyes. But the demon just did what it was doing for a little while, then eventually removed its mouth and tamely went back to where it came from.
The man’s arm was a mess. He was groaning on his knees in the river when I approached him. “Are you all right?”
He turned to me and said, “That one wasn’t starving. We’re lucky,” smiling through his cold sweat. “All it cost us was a little blood. Today’s a good day.”
I noticed upon taking a closer look that one of the man’s legs was made of wood. I thanked him. But he wasn’t happy about that. He didn’t seem to like my tattoos.
“Don’t tell anyone you met me. Go home.”
I was helpless anyhow, so even though I was worried about the man, I went back to my house. Then I heard from the men of the village about the wall men. They said it had nothing to do with me, but they told me a little when I pestered them.