Chapter Two: I Come From the Stars...
Rayman could hardly stand up. He crossed the immense machine room limping a little, his eyes closing bit by bit in spite of himself. He saw that he was alone. Once again, he had worked longer than the others. The weak glow of the moon filtering through the half-shut windows bathed the dark room with a soft light. By the time Rayman reached the iron door, he had to dredge up the last of his strength to open it. A cool breeze swept across his face and instantly disappeared, as if it had waited an eternity for the chance to go in to escape the blazing heat of the day. The weather was unusually hot at that period, and the only good thing about Griffin's factory was its pervading coolness – as long as you didn't go near the burning hot machines, which on the other hand served well for heating during the winter.
Once outside, he closed the door behind him, leaned back and let himself slide down it. Sitting on the doorstep, he looked up into the sky. That evening, there wasn't a cloud. The stars shone with scintillating brilliance, like millions of sparks, scattering their light across the sky like a trail of silvery powder. Rayman was drawn to the mysterious force they emanated. Ever since he had been very small, he had always been fascinated by the stars. He told himself sometimes he didn't come from this planet. Like all children his age, he sometimes imagined coming from a distant world where he would have had a different life, a better one. And in that immensity of sky, that world could have been anywhere.
He got up with some effort and went down the steps one by one. He felt very much alone in the darkness of the night. Only a few houses showed any signs of life, with the smoke rising from their chimneys and their welcoming doorways. But times were hard. That was why half the children in the village worked for Griffin, while their parents harvested the stunted heads of mayly in the fields. Mayly was a kind of grain that grew enormous, tender, juicy ears in large numbers. But mysteriously, the harvest this year was poor. The water had become polluted and scarce, and mayly needed a lot of water to grow. The land wasn't producing enough to feed the village. And to crown it all, strange thefts were starting to happen now and again. Certain villagers, coming home late at night, swore that they had seen creatures fighting and running across the fields of mayly. Every morning they found a number of ears missing or crushed.
Since that time, none of the villagers went out at night, except for Rayman. He liked the night. For its stars, and for its calm, but also perhaps for its cool freshness.
All was silent now. Rayman walked along a path bordered by dry grass. On one side stretched the vast fields, in which could be seen the stalks of mayly, faded and already as hard as straw even when they had barely sprouted from the earth. More distant, one could make out a great forest behind the fields, that extended far across distant hills, where Rayman had never been. On the other side, the land dropped brutally off into a broad, deep ditch. That was all that was left of the river, now completely dried up, which had once run alongside the path playing the sparkling chatter of its crystalline waters like a musical accompaniment. But that was finished now. The water's melody had come to an end under the blazing sun. There was nothing left but a thin trickle of water threading through the marshy silt. Behind that could be seen the houses of the village, their silhouettes standing out against the night horizon. Rayman lived in a house further away, close to the fields of mayly.
He was in a hurry to get home and finally be able to sleep. He no longer thought about eating or doing anything else. His life summed up to nothing but working and sleeping, day after day. The air had become cool, and he felt better now. Still walking, he looked at his hand, which was beginning to itch. There was a dark spot on its back, a patch of blood. He had forgotten that he had cut himself on the gears of the machine that he had unjammed today. The wound was still a little open and formed an "S." The blood around it wasn't completely dry, and now that he noticed it, the cut was burning a little. Rayman glanced towards the little trickle of water flowing through what was left of the river. His wound was full of cinders and dust picked up in cleaning the turbines. He knew that he was risking an infection. So he ventured to the edge of the path and clumsily descended the muddy slope. At the bottom, he soaked his hand in the cold water and waited a few moments before starting to lightly rub it. Normally, the villagers quarreled over every last drop of water, but no one was here now and Rayman wasn't running any risk of that. So he stayed there for several minutes, then he got up and examined his hand. Another scar... and certainly not the last. His hand was clean now, all he needed was something to dry it off. He hunted through the pockets of his beige shirt and found in there, rolled in a ball, a piece of soft, thick material like cotton. Without noticing, he had kept the bit of dirty cloth in his pocket. He was surprised at first, then told himself that it wasn't a bad thing. He soaked it too in the water to clean it, and wrung it out. The piece of cloth emerged as good as new from its bathing, but it had doubled in bulk. Rayman wound it around his hand and his fist doubled in size. And finally he went back to his route.
He walked along calmly, and seemed to have no qualms about those rumours of mysterious creatures lurking at night on lonely paths. In fact, he didn't have any more expectation of ever happening upon one of them than he did of making it through a whole day without being called "Blondie"!
He walked along for a few more minutes until he reached a small yard surrounded by a wooden fence, and containing an old well that lay near a tree – a great oak, which from its mysterious aura might well have been a hundred years old. The fence led to a little house of wood and stone, which had an odd form, like a large hut. Its roof was thatched with straw. It had a wooden door, with a number of strange carvings. The stone wall enclosed a long wooden beam, on which rested two little windows with their shutters closed, but though which the flickering light of a candle was visible. Higher up, just below the roof, there were three windows still open, but there was no light coming from them. This house wasn't luxurious, but it was his home, and he wouldn't have exchanged it for anything else in the world. In the whole village, this was the only place where he felt at ease.
He realized that the light was coming from the kitchen; perhaps his mother was still waiting up for him? He ran to the front door. It opened with a sinister creak that reverberated through the hall. The first room was rather small, its floor almost completely covered by a large rug with interlacing black patterns. Inside, the walls were made of earth, and on the other side of the room, there was a little doorless entranceway above a step that led into the parlor. There was no light there, but Rayman knew the place well enough to take his chances in the dark. He crossed the small room to go into the parlor, which was somewhat bigger. It was furnished with several old couches, a fireplace, and a set of shelves covered with a variety of objects ranging from dusty old books, through some clay pottery, to candlesticks or little statuettes carved from wood; one of which had been carved by Rayman's father, or rather his adoptive father. That was the only memento remaining of him. Since his departure, Rayman and his mother had heard nothing of him. He had gone off with several villagers in search of a location where there was clean, plentiful water, such as a lake or another river. But he had never come back. Since then, Rayman lived alone with his mother, who never stopped hoping for his return.
Rayman continued to move through the blackness to the kitchen, which was simple and not very large. There was indeed a candle there, whose feeble glow lighted the room. It was placed on a table surrounded by little wooden chairs. The rest of the room was furnished with a washbasin filled with kitchen utensils soaking in the water. Above that were two closed windows, whose glass, along with the water in the sink, reflected the soft light of the candle in a play of shadows and tints of orange. In a corner sat an old cupboard, half open, the candlelight revealing a number of carefully folded napkins and cloths.
Then Rayman heard anxious footsteps. His mother rushed in, all in a state.
"Ray, is that you? Coming home again at this hour!"
"But mama…"
"No buts! Griffin has really gone over the limit this time!"
"Mum–"
"You wait and see, I'm going to give him a piece of my mind!"
"Listen, mama–"
"Aah! What have you done to your hand?"
"Mum, I'm fine…"
"Just look at that! Do you realize I've been waiting for you for three hours?"
"Mama…"
"And with all those things hanging about outside! You could have been devoured!"
"Mama…"
After having gone on for what seemed like a full hour, while inspecting Rayman from all angles, his mother finally let him get two or three words in.
"Mama… I'm fine, I just want to sleep."
"Yes, yes. Go on, but you let me take care of that nasty cut first, all right?"
"Yeah…"
His mother was always anxious about Rayman, whom she preferred to call "Ray." She waited for him all day while working in the fields; but this evening, he had returned even later than usual, and not for the first time. Griffin certainly had overstepped his limits. She was becoming more and more nervous, she would have liked to take Rayman out of that miserable factory, but she knew that he worked there to help her, and that without that help she might not be able to make ends meet. In any case, she would never have been able to find a way to stop him.
The bigger he got, the more she fussed over him. There was nothing she could do about it; he was growing quickly, too quickly perhaps. Every day he asked questions about anything and everything. They say that curiosity awakens intelligence, but he went too far, it was embarrassing sometimes. Rayman asked questions nobody had ever thought of, and for which nobody had any answers. His mother did her best to understand him, but it seemed that an invisible chasm was widening between them, a little more each day. There was nothing she could do; all children want to fly on their own wings someday, only it seemed that Rayman's were already spread and ready to take off.
They went up a stairway of stone and entered a dark corridor with brownish earthen walls, containing two doors and ending in a window. Rayman went into the door on the right, into his bedroom, which he considered his own true home. A medium-sized room, with a window giving a view of the distant village. The place was crammed with all sorts of objects, clothing strewn about the floor, several toys – not many – and then books, dozens of books, including one of his particular favourites, Salazar, the Serpentine Magician of the Stars, as well as several volumes about creatures resembling great dragons. Surprisingly, on a little desk he had maps of the world, as well as charts of the stars. From the ceiling was suspended by a thread a perfect model of a bird, a fierce, dominating raptor with great straw wings outspread as though it was hovering over the place. He had made it together with his father only a few months ago. His bed was rather small, but then Rayman wasn't very big either, it was roomy enough for him. In short, his bedroom represented his personality exactly. He sat down on his bed and waited for his mother, who returned with a little box. She crossed the room, stepping over the books scattered on the floor. She was rather tall and thin, with pale, clear skin. Her hair was long, brown, and thick, and the little braids she wore had difficulty containing all that abundance. Her large green eyes were sharply outlined in her pale, gentle face. She was wearing a white dress with a little leather vest over it. Rayman thought sometimes that she looked like a fairy, like those described in his books. She sat down beside him and pulled off his home-made bandage. The piece of cloth had dried and returned to its normal appearance. Rayman picked it up and examined it more closely.
"Where did you find that?" his mother asked him, as she made him another bandage worthy of the name.
"Oh… err... It's just, I took it out of the bits of waste cloth… Griffin told me I could take it for my cut."
Rayman didn't want to tell his mother that Griffin was hard on him, for fear she'd make another whole fuss about that.
Her work done, his mother got up, and Rayman lay down on his bed. She tucked him in and kissed his face.
"Goodnight," she said to him as she went out.
"Goodnight," Rayman replied, clutching in his hand the piece of cloth rolled into a ball.
And there it was, another working day ended. Tomorrow he would have to begin again, and come up with another excuse when he returned. He knew that his mother didn't want him to work all day, but he wanted to help her … and he had to pay off that accursed water mill.
And once again in the night sky the crystalline stars shone.
