Ha'x mibli Kao-a so su-Yilakili : The Sound Of a Few Words Ringing

The Memoirs of Kilomela-Jann Urmonaxi

A Saiyan Among The Korud-Jin

II.

A Piece of the Sun: Xald-so na Ulkat'ta

My name was Rutabaga Vegeta.

I was born on the last day of the year 728, the son of Prince Konnyakku of Vegetasei and his third wife, Endifu. I was one of nine children, and the fifth of six brothers. Of my siblings, only one, the youngest, has survived to the present day.

My natural father, deeply concerned with matters of security, once commanded me to memorize the information on my personal documents. I was quite young then, perhaps five, and reading the tiny print and long lists of numbers seemed an insurmountable task. I wrote the words again and again in a little red copybook and read them aloud to the statues in the courtyard, a pair of scowling stone monkeys with clenched paws. I recieved a small purse of coins as a reward for my compliance, which, counted together, were worth little more than a box of matches or a handful of candies. This was the only gift I would ever recieve from Prince Konnyakku, who had, until then, invested nothing in my education and development. Five sons of better stock were to inherit my father's fortune and his titles. The prince, therefore, had no reason to solicit my love or loyalty. I kept the purse at the bottom of a drawer, believing naively that this was a symbol of his great affection.

While my father contributed greatly to my unhappiness in those days, my mother could do nothing to help earn back his favor. By the time I was six, she had quietly descended into madness, leaving only a decaying body that housed an unsound mind. My mother sat still and limp as a straw doll for days at a time, staring vacantly into the courtyard through the picture window. Often, she reached over to sniff a glass vial she kept on her dresser. The potent drug took her to a place where time did not matter. Here, she could wander freely in the maze of her sad history, talking aloud to phantoms only she could see.

My mother was my father's half-sister, my grandfather's daughter by a concubine of questionable ancestry. The old king was kind, but foolish, and suggested that my mother marry his second son, elevating her to wealth and respectability. In truth, he may have sensed her fragility, and sought to save her from a life of servitude. My father, young and arrogant, did not agree to the match until my grandfather was near to death. After my grandfather was buried, my father married Edamame, the daughter of a general, instead. After this, he was engaged to Kokka, a distant cousin, and openly denied that he had ever agreed to wed my mother. It was said that the mad daughter of a loose woman was an unfit bride for any man of the noble class, and my father would not shame himself in order to honor an old man's wishes.

Desperate, my mother approached Kokka, who was only a child herself, at the wedding celebration. She consoled the terrified bride, and made a fateful proposition. While Kokka slept soundly in my mother's quarters that night, my mother took the girl's place in my father's bed. Afterwards, to avoid a scandal, he had no choice but to give my mother the title of third wife. The servants enjoyed telling this story among themselves, laughing at my father's foolishness.

"That drunkard! So intoxicated, he couldn't tell the difference between a woman and a child underneath him! It's a wonder he even found the bed!"

Left to wander the royal compound most of the day, I was glad to have the company of my cousin, Vegeta the Younger. He was a rather stout, rough looking boy about three years my junior. He didn't speak often, but was prone to using his fists to lord over his playmates. When he and I played adventure games, I was made to act the part of the prisoner, the work animal, or the slave despite the difference in our height and age. He led me around the gardens, tied to a wheelbarrow. He ordered me to eat compost sandwiched between stale crackers. He glued my fingers to a bench with industrial adhesive. As miserable as our playtime was, Vegeta was the only other child who would acknowledge me. The others feared that I took after my mother, and had been told to avoid me. Because he was my first and only friend, I did not dare protest his cruelty.

My father paid me little mind, and saw no reason to defend me from my cousin's abuses. It was not Prince Konnyakku's way to strike or shout at those who displeased him. Instead, he ignored them until they disappeared. He allowed me to follow him silently while he monitored the progress of his elaborate strategies, without so much as a backward glance of recognition. I remember the angry red of my father's cloak and the sound of his boots on the marble floors. Tap. Click. Tap. Click. When I see soldiers marching in a parade, or a lost child wandering through a crowd, I am reminded of him.

When Vegetasei abruptly began to lose the war against the Korud-jin and their mercenaries, my father finally left the palace to lead the defense effort. While he was away, I dreamed of vast armies meeting in the courtyard among the hedges. The chaos of battle occupied my thoughts, and I foolishly wished for the opportunity to prove my worth with violence. As a heroic warrior, I would be praised by all who scorned me, and my father would be proud to count me among his sons.

A few days after my ninth birthday, which came and went with little fuss, my father was taken prisoner and executed. His head and tail were sent to my uncle, King Vegeta, in a cardboard box. Vegeta the Younger, who claimed to have witnessed this, recounted that my father's thick hair had been shaven clean and his scalp painted with strange ritual designs. His eyes had been gouged out, his ears cut off, and the skull filled with wax. By severing the head and destroying the means by which it could sense the living world, the spirit of the deceased could never return to avenge itself.

Thus, the aristocracy entered an official period of mourning. My mother rubbed ashes on her face and hands, as was customary. She did not weep, but instead stared vacantly at a water stain on the wall for many days. The servants tried to feed her at first, but she refused nourishment. I wet her lips with a spoonful of water, but it only dribbled down her nightdress.

The day my mother died, she woke me in the wee hours of the morning, unexpectedly alert, but unable to speak. She wore formal court dress, arranged haphazardly as if she had readied herself in a hurry. I remember the thinness of her body beneath her heavy garments, quivering nervously and stumbling as she walked. She seemed unnaturally cheery, despite her frailness. Her mind had shattered long ago, but perhaps she was inspired by some memory of joy.

We walked in the gardens before the sun rose, hand in hand. She smiled and nodded at the skeletal trees as if they were old friends, mouthing words with no sound. We returned at dawn, just as the yellow moon began to fade in the early light. She kissed my forehead, and I disappeared beneath the covers, too sleepy and confused to ask questions.

Later that morning, Edamame stormed into our apartments, my half-brother Apuru squirming under one arm. I was startled awake as she whirled through my bedroom into my mother's private quarters. I had not shaken the sleep from my eyes before I heard a terrified shriek tear through the walls of the house. The child began to bawl, a door slammed, and the sound of hurried footsteps faded as she fled.

Edamame returned to fetch me in the afternoon, after the servants carried my mother's body out of her apartments under a white sheet. Apuru was quiet, tied to her back with his thumb in his mouth. Edamame grabbed my wrist, but I ran from her, and dove into the room my mother had died in. I knew Edamame would not follow me, the vision of my mother's corpse still fresh in her mind. I locked the door.

On top of the dressing table was my mother's precious vial, emptied of its contents. A thin film of green powder clung to the surface of the dark wood. I lay on the floor in the impression of her body, tracing the interlocking patterns of the carpet with my tail until I fell asleep.

My mother had carefully chosen the day of her death. Enemy troops gathered in the courtyard and dragged the occupants of the compound into the gardens while I slept. My mother's rivals, once proud and haughty, shrieked and struggled, trampling the foliage as they cursed their murderers. The shrill cries woke me, and I curled my body beneath the window ledge, fighting the urge to look out.

I was slowly overwhelmed by a vile odor, like tar burning and meat cooking, an unfamiliar scent that violated my senses, and churned my stomach. I vomited, my heart racing, throat squeezed tight by fear. A deep rumble rose up beneath me, as if the house itself had been called to life. The ceiling cleaved in two above me, and the glare of the noon sun streamed in through the fracture. Then, I saw only black.

I was next aware of being carried, and awoke on a cot in a dark tent, my ears ringing, my vision blurred. I had been covered loosely by some women's clothing that looked eerily familiar, limp and deflated without their wearers. Apuru was nestled beside me wrapped in a man's shirt, unscathed but frightened into silence. Vegeta lay on a stretcher, face red and swollen, skin raw and oozing, fingers black with soot. His eyes flickered open and closed quickly as if he were trying to wake himself from a dream. All of his cruelty had been repaid a hundredfold.

I recognized the smell of burnt flesh again, and my stomach jumped into my throat. Mercifully, my insides were empty. A pulsing pain spread from the base of my spine, up to my ears. I could not feel any sensation in the length of my tail, only an eerie awareness of its presence. I reached into the back of my torn nightshirt and felt only a moist stump covered by a dressing. My hand stunk of ointment. I began to cry bitterly and tore at my bandages.

Some time later a menacing stranger emerged through the flap in the tent, followed by several helmeted attendants. I could not decide whether the stranger was a man or a woman. The stranger spoke a language that sounded like game birds squawking, shrill, grating and dissonant. An erect posture and commanding demeanor suggested that this individual was in charge of the others. I decided that the stranger was a man, for no woman could be so imposing. I would encounter Tem Zarbon's bawdy caricature in newsprint hundreds of times in the next decade. I am quite certain that he and the androgynous stranger were one and the same.

I held my breath, certain they had come for me, but they were not interested in the son of a third wife. The life of Vegeta the Younger was worth a great deal more than mine. Thinking back on this now, I have come to believe that my insignificance was my salvation.

The attendants lifted Vegeta, who had begun to squirm feverishly, onto a gurney and followed the stranger out into the courtyard, now strewn with rubble. The last man, breathing heavily, pushed my only playmate out onto the cobbles, and the rattle of the wheels vanished into the distance. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

Time seemed to accelerate, the seconds racing past until my surroundings became a muddled blur. Even now, I cannot trust my memory of these events. I may have slipped in and out of consciousness for days, or perhaps had only cowered there for a few excruciating hours.

When it was night and the tent had been plunged into darkness, Apuru began to whine, not like a child, but like a feral animal, abandoned by his mother and all who had cared for him. I swore that I would protect him as best I could, forgetting the rivalry forged by our father's egotism.

The tent flap opened and a dim gas lantern emerged, followed by an arm and the huge shadow of a creature with great horns that grew from both sides of its head. Apuru gurgled. I nearly screamed, but thought better of it.

The creature raised the lantern to his and I saw that he was only a man, but a man unlike any man I had ever seen. The man took off his horned helmet. His pale face was tattooed with beautiful and curious patterns. Dark vertical lines that stemmed from his forehead continued over his eyelids and ended at the base of his thick neck. Tiny blue-black dots made a path across his face from ear to ear, following the outline of the cheekbones under the skin. His eyes were kind and gray, with tiny wrinkles radiating from the corners. His filed canine teeth gleamed a savage white. In the yellow light of the lantern, I felt warm and safe, as if this man carried with him a piece of the sun.

" Boy, what is your name?" He spoke my language softly and haltingly, as if the words themselves had a bitter taste. The man nodded encouragingly, but my words were lost, my tongue limp and tangled.

The man sighed. " It does not matter." he said. He scratched his temple, thinking. His fingers had been stained blue to the second joint, callused palms covered in a maze of interwoven coils that continued onto the underside of his wrist.

" I have heard that you are a brave young man, watching over your brother so diligently, despite your injuries. You have nothing to fear from us any longer, " the man said. He spoke very stiffly, unfamiliar with the nuances of my native language. "We must decide what is to be done with you and your brother, If you will allow me to advise you." He put his hand on my shoulder, and I flinched, unsure if the the stranger was trustworthy.

"My father is the master of many fields in a place called Urmon, where it is beautiful and green. There is a deep river at the edge of it, and a house on a hillside. That is my home, and in a short time I will return to it."

I leaned towards him. "Do your wives live there?" I asked, quite certain that a husband could not be shared peacefully between women.

The man seemed perplexed for a moment, then laughed. " No. my wife lives there. She is very happy that I am coming home soon, because it has been a year since we have seen one another. "

"Do you have any children?" I wondered aloud.

The man sighed. "We have no children, but we have long wanted a pair of fine boys to be our sons. It is indeed fortuitous that we have crossed paths."

Apuru coughed. I could choose a better future for him, and what had come before would not matter. He would have no memory of this day. I felt as if I had been born into the darkness of that tent, a spirit boy who had sprung up from a pile of old clothes, motherless, fatherless, homeless, nameless. My wounds, fresh and painful a moment ago, were like old bruises. I wanted to go to the green fields, to the river, to the house on the hillside. I wanted to go to the woman waiting there, for the man, for my brother, for me.

" I am called Jann-Run. " said the man. "All that is mine will someday be yours."

The man took us out of the tent, my brother carried high on his wide shoulders. Together we faced the chill of night, surrounded by the charred remains of a brief and lonely life. But I was no longer afraid, for in my hand I carried a piece of the sun.