The Tale of Oriel

For Ray Haas—this, in admiration & appreciation

H
E KNEW FROM THE FIRST
that this man would know how to hurt him. He had to keep the fear secret, and he couldn't cry no matter how much he wanted to. When he was hungry he couldn't ask for food, when he was cold he couldn't try to push himself closer to the fire, when he was tired he had to stay awake, when he was lonely he had to be alone. He knew from the first that he would have to be strong.

Damall's Island rested on stone. Boulders edged the island, and rose up out of the ground in unexpected places all across it. The harbor beach was made up of stones as sharp as shells, as if a giant had brought his hammer down on the boulders, and shattered them. Some of the boulders walked out into the sea, but the waves could no more move them or beat them down than the wind and rain could. He learned to be as strong as stone.

He brought nothing with him to the island but the clothes he wore. The Damall took away his clothes and dressed him in the tied trousers and brown shirts all the boys wore. There was a pile of boots in all sizes—the soles made out of the same soft leather as their sides—for when he could not go barefooted. He didn't know if he had brought a name with him to the island. If he had a name, the Damall took that away, too.

The Damall was master. A tall thin man, with hair as pale as the bellies of fish and eyes that glittered like the sun on water, he was the sixth Damall to be master on the island. The boys, who did not know if they were slaves or sons, obeyed the Damall. They worked the year around, to serve the Damall.

In spring, the schools of fish were netted, then spread out on the flat rocks to dry in the sun. There was the garden to turn over, and take stones from, and then plant with onions and turnips, parsnips, cabbage. In spring, the places where the wind had torn the roof tiles off, or the snow and sleet had worn them through, had to be mended. The sows, which had wintered in a shed, slunk out into the trees to give birth. They had to be found and brought back before they could eat their young. The stench of the long shuttered winter had to be washed out of the whole house.

Spring took the boys out from under the Damall's glittering eye. When winter sleet beat down on the roof, the Damall would as soon call for the whipping box as find any other way to hurry time along. But in spring the boys scattered all over the farmstead, and it was harder for the Damall to get them.

Griff told him that the island boys had to know how to swim before they could be trusted on a fishing boat. On the first warm day in spring, a boy who couldn't swim went out in a boat with older boys. The older boys dropped him overboard and sailed away.

The Damall watched to be sure it was done properly. The Damall sailed a boat by himself and watched from nearby.

Sometimes the boy just couldn't learn to swim and he would sink. Most of the time the boy struggled, and learned, and swam back to the island. But sometimes a boy would be too young, or be someone who couldn't float, and he would sink. The drowned boys were usually never seen again on the Damall's island. Maybe, like fragments of boats that washed up onto the Damall's shores, the drowned boys washed up on one of the other islands. There were many islands here, of all sizes, scattered close to the mainland, like swimmers trying to climb back onto solid ground.

He was afraid of the water, afraid of its cold dark deepness.

Griff told him that the boys who sank were afraid. They flailed their hands around and tried to breathe water, because they were afraid.

He said he wasn't afraid.

It wasn't true.

Griff woke him up one night, in the room where the littlest boys slept rolled up in blankets on the stone floor. Griff led him to a place where the shore sloped slowly down underwater. Griff showed him how to lie on the water, as if it were a floor, and then how to kick and paddle his way along the surface. Griff didn't want him to sink, and die.

Swimming was easy, after all, even at night when the sky was as black as the sea. Swimming was like a game he could play, once Griff taught him how. Not many days later he was taken out in a boat, but he wouldn't let the bigger boys push him into the water. He wouldn't let them think he was frightened. Nikol wanted him to be frightened. Nikol looked over to where the Damall sat smiling in his own boat, his hair as white as the frothy tops of waves. Before he would let Nikol push him out of the boat, he stood up on its side, and balanced there, and jumped into the water, and set out swimming for the island.

He heard Nikol cry out in disappointment. He heard the Damall laughing.

That night he was the one the Damall called up, to sit at his table close to the warm fire and to eat whatever the Damall had left on his plate, which was more and better food than any of the boys got. “Nikol wanted you to drown,” the Damall said.

“Aye,” he said. It was true.

“Shall we whip him for that?”

He hated the whippings. He hated watching a whipping almost as much as he hated being whipped. The whip had a thick wooden handle and little leather tails with knots tied into them and, in some of the knots, little sharp pebbles.

“Shall we call for the whipping box?” the Damall asked. The Damall leaned close to him, leaning across the wooden table, and looked into his eyes.

To say yes meant to watch—as they must—and know that Nikol would hate him even more and look for even more ways to hurt him. To say no meant crossing the Damall's will and making the Damall wonder if he was a weakling. He sat silent as a stone while the Damall waited impatiently, until he thought to say, “Don't care.”

“Ach, you bore me. Get away. Get out.”

He obeyed. He hadn't eaten, and he was hungry, but he didn't ask to stay at the table. The Damall whipped Nikol anyway. The Damall wanted to hear Nikol's bitter protests, and loud wailings under the whip, and Nikol's whimperings when he pulled his clothes back on. The Damall liked to see Nikol being angry and not being able to do anything about it. The Damall liked to see Nikol being afraid and being ashamed.

He was walking back from the privies that night when a stone hit him on the mouth. Blood dripped onto his tongue. Nikol thought he could hide in the dark and throw a stone without being known, but Nikol was stupid with anger and slow with the weakness that came after a whipping. Nikol was older and bigger, but Nikol ate a mouthful of dirt before the fight was done.

Griff washed off the cut with wine stolen from the Damall's barrel. When that stinging eased, Griff sprinkled a little of the precious salt from the Damall's cellar onto the open wound, so it would heal clean. If the Damall had caught Griff taking wine and salt, Griff would have begged forgiveness. Griff would have been afraid and sorry and promised never to do it again. When Griff was afraid he would promise. Later, he might take the wine and salt again, and be afraid again, and promise again, and break the promise again, over and over again. Griff had the bending strength of a sapling.

IN SUMMER, GRIFF BENT TIRELESSLY
over the gardens, pulling up weeds, and tirelessly over the smokehouse fires, where hams and fish were hung along poles, and tirelessly over the oars when the wind died and the sail flapped uselessly. Griff never complained and seldom smiled.

He was like Griff, and didn't complain, but he smiled often, and laughed, too, for no reason. He could run faster and swim farther than any other boy, after eight winters' growth had been added to the three or four he'd brought to the island. He was handiest with the boats, and handiest with the nets, and it had been years since he had lost a fight. He was the one all the boys wanted to sail with, or work beside—all the boys except Nikol. He was the one the Damall liked best to take across the sea to the market town, the two of them sailing away at dawn, in a boat heavy laden with smoked and fresh fish, as well as barrels of the black gostas that were caught crawling around the boulders, with claws so strong they could take a boy's finger off if he wasn't quick. The Damall would sell first, and then buy flour with the money, or buy cloth for shirts and trousers if that was needed, or buy barrels of wine. Always they would buy as large a cone of salt as they had coins for, to add to the Damall's saltcellar.

Once the Damall had given him a pinch of salt on top of his turnip stew. He was the only boy ever to have salt on anything.

Once the Damall took Nikol to the market town, and they bought a dagger, but the dagger wasn't for Nikol, it was for him. The Damall gave the dagger to him, and promised to show him how to use it. But the next morning the dagger was gone from under his mattress. Nikol thought he would tell the Damall, but he didn't.

On the Damall's island, each boy of sixteen falls was taken to the city, and sold. The journey to the city lasted two nights away from the island. He made many of these journeys with the Damall and such a boy, from the time of his own sixth fall on the island. In the boat, the boy had his hands and feet tied, because no boy wanted to be sold as a slave, or to the mines, or to an army. The boy would ask for help to escape, or ask for pity, or ask for mercy. He never answered. He sat deaf as stone at the tiller. After the boy had been sold, he could wander around the city on his own and spend the three copper coins the Damall would give him out of the sale price of the boy. Once he spent all of his pennies on sweet cakes, which he carried back to the island wrapped up in his shirt. He gave them out among the boys, leaving none out. He felt, when he gave out pieces of sweet cake into the open hands, and the boys all looked eagerly at him—he felt clever and strong, the best of all of them.