World Whisperer Box Set

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Benayeem!" Jerutha called from the door to the house. Ben heard her from behind the back wall, where he sat looking out over the fields. He was putting off his ordinary job of doing the temple work, which he hated with a loathing deeper than anything, except, perhaps, the memories of the walled city, memories he tried to keep shut away. Day after day, though, he was stuck doing something he hated. It was that or suffer the consequences from his father.

Benayeem shrank from conflict or physical pain, so he went to the temple like a good son, though his heart wasn't in the motions his hands made, or the words he mumbled. He could barely make his hands move to build up the sacred fire. He knew his father felt scorn for him as he watched the slow way that Ben lit the incense and cleaned the idols with the soft cloth—that was the worst, he hated touching the idols—but his father didn't know about the ringing that seared his ears and brain while his feet were touching the temple floor. Wrong… wrong, he heard, the words taking shape as soon as he reached the threshold. Ben's secret was that he heard music that wasn't there; ringing bells, gongs, discordant screeching and notes that grated across his mind while he did his work in the temple. The goddesses stared down at him with baleful eyes full of malice. They weren't fooled by his blind obedience to his father. They knew he hated them. He learned to be invisible, and he had taken to hiding when he knew it was time for temple duties. But Jerutha's voice was too loud to ignore, and he sighed as he went to face his stepmother.

The discordant music was something he had heard all his life. It pressed on him at all times, making his life miserable. He heard it when he saw someone in the market give someone else the wrong change, he heard it when his father hit his sister. He didn't know how to stop the way he sensed people, the knowledge of their hearts, or the way his skin burned or the sick feeling in his stomach when he perceived wrong being done. So he tried to disappear into himself. He withdrew farther and farther away from the world, not taking notice when bad things happened, turning away and closing his eyes. He went to the market only when he needed to. His life became a circle between the temple, the school, and his home, and in this way he dulled the voices and the sounds, and kept them quiet enough that they didn't deafen him.

Jerutha stood in the entryway with her hand on her belly. Her eyes brightened as she spotted him and she smiled.

"There you are, Ben."

He nodded, looking at the side of her face to avoid her eyes. She looked away as well, but reached one hand out to touch his shoulder gently.

"Your father wants you to build the kitchen fire today."

Ben straightened, surprised. "What about the temple?"

"He sent Isika to work in the temple," Jerutha replied. She grinned. "You're free for today."

Ben felt relief soaking into him. He followed Jerutha into the kitchen and bent before the fire. He loved being in here, partly because when he was around his stepmother, the pressure on his mind lessened. His sense of her was calm and sweet, and she rarely did anything that brought the gongs booming into his head. Unlike his father.

"Isika wasn't sure you would be able to light the fire," Jerutha said. She stood beside the washing bucket that sat on the large stone slab she used to prepare food, washing the mugs from the morning's tea.

Ben snorted, pulling the logs out of Isika's gathering basket. "I'm sure she wasn't. Isika's only a year older, but she thinks she's the only one who can do anything." Wrong, wrong, chimed the voice in his mind, this time like tiny, piercing bells. Ben winced.

"Besides," he said. "I take care of the temple fire every day."

"True," Jerutha said, drying the mugs with a faded cloth, "but that fire is already lit."

Ben pulled bits of a stick apart to make kindling, shaping a little nest with it and placing the larger sticks over the top, like a tent in the little stove, the way his mother had showed him all those years ago in the desert. He still made fires the way she did. He felt a familiar stab of pain at the thought of his mother. He shrugged the ache away and adjusted a few logs, wishing this was his regular job. Ben loved making things, doing things with his hands, but when he turned fourteen on his last birthday, his father had determined that he would be a priest, and now he faced a lifetime of prayers to goddesses he hated.

He had just coaxed the spark into the kindling and was sitting back to admire the crackling of the fire when his father entered the room. Ben looked up, shocked. He couldn't remember the last time his father had been out of bed.

"Nirloth!" Jerutha exclaimed, rushing to hold her husband's arm. He was shaking and his skin was gray, but he looked as stern as ever. Ben shifted to make room as they walked past him. Jerutha helped Nirloth into a chair.

"Where is Kital?" Nirloth asked.

"He's playing in the yard with Ibba," Jerutha said.

"That boy plays too much, he should work more," Ben's father said. "But never mind now, just bring them both here, please."

Jerutha left at once to find the children and Ben was alone with his father. He closed the door of the stove and sat back with his hands on his knees, not looking toward where his father sat, just a few feet away. With the music droning in sickening loops, he sensed his father clearly, and everything in him screamed with dread. He felt like he would throw up.

"This will be for the best, son," his father said to him. "You will see."

Ben's eyes flew up to his father's face, and he had his mouth open to ask what would be for the best, when Jerutha came back into the room with the little ones. They were giggling together, but they stopped when they saw their father sitting at the table.

"Father!" Ibba cried out. "You're better!" She ran to him and hugged him around the waist. Nirloth smiled, but pulled her arms off of him.

"Not better, dear one. I have something to tell you." He turned to look at Kital and gestured for him to come closer. Kital was the only child who was actually Nirloth's son, and his skin was a little lighter than Ben's or Ibba's, but for all that, he didn't resemble his father, or even seem to feel much of a connection to him. Kital's bubbly four-year-old energy was too joyful to be comfortable around his stern father.

"Kital," Ben's father began, but then he needed to pause and take a breath, and Ben's stomach began to squeeze into a ball. Ben slowly stood. Nirloth went on as Kital looked up at him. "You are blessed, son, and you live in service of the goddesses, as do all the Workers. Your service is changing, growing, as of today."

Ben glanced at Jerutha and saw her standing, bent over, gripping the back of the chair opposite Nirloth's, her knuckles white. He couldn't see her face because her head was bowed and her hair fell around her like a curtain. Ben was paralyzed. He thought that if he could only speak and keep his father from speaking, he might be able to stop this from happening. He understood, suddenly, why his father had sent Isika to the temple today.

He forced his mouth open. "Father," he said, but it was a whisper and one glance from his father had him as silent as the heavy stone table his father now thumped with a fist.

"Silence! Benayeem, if I want you to speak I will command you to speak. Kital, you will enter the service of the goddesses tomorrow. You will be sent out, as an appeasement, for the health of the priest and thus the health of all the Workers."

Kital blinked up at Nirloth, his eyes large. He didn't seem to understand. He turned to look at Ibba. She retreated from their father and stared at him with a white face. She knew. The blood left Ben's face and the pressure on his whole being was like a huge gong ringing. He heard screeching, discordant music. Wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG, it shouted. Kital looked at Benayeem and when he saw the look on his brother's face, he understood that something very bad was happening, and he began to cry. Ibba started crying as well, and the two of them ran to Jerutha, clinging to her skirts.

"What are you saying, husband?" Jerutha asked Nirloth, her voice a rasp, her face paler than usual. She put one hand on her belly and sat down abruptly.

"You heard my words," Ben's father said. "I am giving Kital over. I am the priest of this village, and if I die, the whole village will die. Benayeem is not cut out to be a priest; there is no one I can pass my duties along to. If I had known, when I took Amani in, that her children wouldn't even find it in them to give the goddesses proper respect," he spat the words in Ben's direction, and then Ben truly wanted to disappear, "maybe I would have reconsidered and sent her away."

Ibba and Kital kept crying, and the pressure on Ben continued. He knew it would continue as long as he was in the house with this great horror. So he left. He walked through the kitchen and out the door, ignoring his father's shouts. "Even now?" he yelled. "Even now you run away? Get out of my sight, boy! And don't come back until I am asleep, or you'll be sorry!"

Ben didn't look back at the house. He focused on moving his arms and legs under the pressure that had now built so much that it threatened to flatten him. Ugly, horrible music made the ground swim before him. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

What do you want from me? He called out in his head. What am I supposed to do? Of course it's wrong, but nothing can be done! There was no answer.

As he ran across the yard and said the sacred words to leave the walls of their ground, he spotted Isika coming back from the temple, and he ran even faster. He knew what was going to happen, almost as if it was written out in front of him. He couldn't be there for what would happen next. Isika never tried to disappear. She dove straight into whatever trouble she found, no matter how afraid she was, and she suffered for it. He kicked at a rock on the path and kept running.