Talson’s death hovered above the ceremony of the twins’ marking.
The ceremony marking Elloch and Malek’s acceptance among the village’s roster of strong men was meant to be joyous, but their brother’s death from the lizard’s poison made the occasion feel too much like a funeral. Yet Elloch and Malek took no offense at the melancholy’s presence. For the twins knew they could not accept the glyphs of manhood they chose to place upon their skin without knowing how mortality laced their strength.
Elloch first climbed the steps to the village’s high wooden platform. Many were gathered around the scaffolding erected to welcome the twins into village manhood. The twins’ neighbors joined in a low hum that vibrated in Elloch and Malek’s ears, a growl of noise that rumbled from the crowd’s feet and through the earth. Many an outsider stood in the crowd as well, curious to leave the gray boredom of their ships’ berths and witness the village’s festival. Those outsiders clapped and screamed their appreciation, unaware of how their racket tampered the purer hum of the villagers’ chant.
Dressed in the robes sewn generations before the coming of the outsiders, old man Glennis met Elloch as the youth stepped onto the platform. Glennis’s hands held the sharp reeds that were the tools of the marking. Glennis’s reeds were well worn from the old man’s years of practice with the marking ceremony, and Elloch did not fear the pain those implements might have suggested if held by less capable fingers.
Glennis’s aged eyes looked deep into Elloch. “Will you accept the bite of my etchings so that we can announce you man?”
Elloch did not flinch. “I do so without fear.”
Glennis turned and placed the points of his reeds into a fire pit wafting incense. The points quickly turned red. Glennis suspected that Talson’s death had tempered the twins, and the old man did not expect Elloch or Malek to cry when the reeds were pushed into their flesh.
The reeds smoked as Glennis returned from the fire. Elloch’s eyes did not water as the incense drifted into their gaze.
“Have you chosen the symbol you would have etched into your flesh?”
Elloch raised his chin and spoke forcefully. “I choose the shape of the llungruel for my glyph. I will let the shape of the serpent glare from my back upon creatures that would trespass against me.”
A silence fell over the crowd. Many of the villagers shuffled their feet. The outsiders glanced at one another and tried to imagine the root of the trepidation that passed along the natives’ faces. The llungruel had run so feared within the thick lom fields that none had dared accept the lizard’s glyph since the days of the outsiders’ arrival. But Elloch would challenge the creature whose venom stole his brother from his family by adopting the llungruel’s shape upon his back. The village had not doubted Elloch’s courage, but neither had they imagined the youth would possess such daring.
Glennis’s face betrayed no emotion, though anxiety rose in his heart that his aged fingers might not remember the curves and points used to brand the llungruel.
“Your choice is a brave one.”
The villagers exhaled a breath and restarted the low hum that rumbled in the ground. The outsiders applauded even louder.
Elloch stretched, face down, upon the wooden dais raised in the platform’s center. Glennis tied Elloch’s hands and feet to the restraints so that any flinch from the reed would not mar the old man’s tracing. The outsiders inched closer to the stage and rudely jostled the villagers.
Elloch grunted when the hot tip of the reed marked a first bite upon his flesh. But Elloch made no other sound as Glennis worked the reeds beneath his skin. The villagers maintained their hum to give Elloch strength. They would have forgiven if Elloch would have moaned. There was no shame in crying during the ceremony’s hurt. Still, Elloch remained silent, and the volume of the villagers' hum rose.
Glennis’s memory of the llungruel returned. He traced the lizard’s shape first, until the tail wound around Elloch’s hip and its tongue flicked across the youth’s opposite shoulder. Glennis then filled the shape with intricate scales, a painful, slow process that dropped many hot reeds into Elloch’s skin. But Glennis worked skillfully, and when he came to etch the llungruel’s eyes, the marks of the skin’s burn and the pigment of the reed’s ink glistened with a ferocity that would make any who knew of the llungruel tremble.
Glennis untied Elloch from his bounds, and the newly-proclaimed village man turned his back to the crowd and stretched his arms despite the sting to show the shape of his glyph.
The crowd ceased their hum and cheered. Men howled. Women whistled. Outsiders danced with the villagers, and celebration filled the air.
“Go a marked man of our village, Elloch,” Glennis applauded. “Take your place in that proud crowd and show your brother the encouragement those assembled here showed you. Let your twin come to the platform to accept his mark as well.”
Elloch bit his tongue against the throbbing pain coursing across his back and slapped Malek’s shoulder as they passed on the platform steps. The villagers considered twins blessed sons and daughters. The old customs named twins magical. And twins blessed the crowd by offering two ceremonies of the marking in a single afternoon.
Malek also bravely mounted the platform, and his voice carried as had his twin brother’s when he announced the mark of his choosing.
“I too claim the llungruel’s mark!”
The crowd roared. The brothers honored their brother by taking the lizard’s shape upon their backs. The roar faded and was replaced with the villagers’ vibrating hum. Glennis flexed his fingers to shake away the cramps as he waited for new reeds to gain the fire’s glow. Malek also grunted upon the reed’s first touch, but Malek remained as silent as Elloch as Glennis traced the llungruel upon his back. Glennis’s hands tired, but he traced the second llungruel with such skill that the ink nearly slithered across Malek’s back.
Malek turned his back to the crowd, and the crowd rejoiced to witness the lizard’s glyph. When the harvest was so dangerous, when more llungruel lurked through the lom than ever before, when fever burned through the village, twins claimed the lizard’s shape as their mark to defy the llungruel, whose venom turned a tranquil people savage. Let the llungruel know the fear the creature cast when the lizard came to see Elloch and Malek’s marking.
Malek grinned as his brother joined him on the platform.
“We’ll not let Talson’s death be in vain, brother,” the crowd’s roared muffled Malek’s words so that only Elloch could hear.
“What more than taking the llungruel as our mark can we do to defy the lizard?”
Malek glanced at Glennis as the old man gathered his reeds. “If we can’t resurrect Talson, we will instead bring the old ways back from the dead. Glennis knows of the old medicines. I’ve listened to his stories, and I know Glennis knows how to bring it all back. We’ll go back to our people’s sacred island, Elloch. Glennis will tell us the way.”
Elloch frowned. “But the island is forbidden.”
Malek’s eyes flashed upon his brother. “And what remedy have those who forbid us from returning to the island given our village to heal the llungruel’s bite?”
“And how will we travel across the waters?”
Malek winked. “We just need to visit Glennis.”
Elloch nodded as the crowd continued to applaud. The outsiders had made their sacred island forbidden. The outsiders claimed the sea’s waters now hazardous to a simpler people who once dove unafraid beneath its waves. The outsiders claimed the waters were too congested with their massive ships for the small watercraft the village once launched into the waters. The outsiders claimed that the island, however sacred it may once have been to Elloch and Malek’s people, had turned barren in the years following the outsiders’ coming.
Elloch trusted the outsiders no more than did his twin brother. He had learned what little the outsiders’ medicines did to soothe the llungruel’s fever.
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sp; “Then we’ll talk to Glennis,” Elloch nodded, “and he will tell us how to return to our people’s sacred island.”