Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Enya returned home alone from the workshop, dragging her feet. As her body and mind felt exhausted, she fetched water and threw herself down on the bed without even thinking of washing.

It wasn’t easy today.

It was more of a mental hardship than physical hardship. Even though no one had hit her physically, their words seemed to have hit her more.

‘After Tarhan became deputy chieftain, I consciously tried to get out of the house more often and socialize…’

If she, who lived in the deputy chieftain’s hut, continued to retreat inside the house, the negative gaze towards them would only increase. Because of that, Enya deliberately went to the workshop where women her age worked and tried to get in the middle.

She was trying to alleviate the negative gaze towards him even a little. It was a greed that she wanted to be of some help to him, who was struggling outside. Of course, she knew that the level of effort could not be compared to Tarhan.

So, she couldn’t be more obvious to Tarhan.

‘If I show him the same things as now… I want to die.’

Enya bit her lip, thinking about what had happened today. She bit her lips so hard that the fishy taste of blood lingered in her mouth. It seemed almost impossible for her to win the favor of the people. Although she went out of the house with anticipation every day, all that came was coldness and sorrow.

It wounded her broken heart every moment.

Enya had no appetite, and she didn’t want to eat anything, but she made a fire in the brazier. She wanted to keep her promise to Tarhan that she would take good care of herself even if she were alone.

‘I have to practice how to make an Aquilean basket…’

She thought about what she was going to do tonight as she shoved the porridge of mixed barley and water with fish jerky into her mouth. As she passed the meal down her throat, her throat was pounding and her nose was sore. However, Enya emptied the entire bowl and cleared the table alone.

After that day, Enya visited the workshop two more times, but she was almost kicked out. The women were sweet and kind, in words, not wanting to trouble her. However, they later encouraged Enya to come back stronger enough that she could no longer push herself in.

When she came home, she had to hold back her desire to cry. As Enya counted the dates on the ground, she waited eagerly for Tarhan’s return.

The Day of Repose was soon approaching.

Tarhan’s group, who had gone to Perugia to pick up the women, seemed to arrive only on the Day of Repose’s evening, as predicted.

Aquilea was preparing the Day of Repose without them as scheduled.

The tribal women bathed together in a creek in preparation for a ceremony to be held at night.

At that time, Enya wiped her body with well water in the hut alone. No matter how brazenly she had been snooping around the women, she was not brazen enough to even bathe with them naked.

While the women were washing, the men, who had already completed the ritual of cleansing their bodies early, smoked leaf cigarettes, kept watch outside, or spent time wrestling with each other. Typically, it would have been a quiet time for everyone to sleep though today, the outside was already crowded with people passing by.

A vast fire began to rise on the large rock where the tribe would gather.

There was anticipation and excitement on the faces of the strong men who had already filled the place with excitement with drums made of leather. The women wore tops that showed off their moon-like chests, and they wore a fabric that revealed half of their hips, and they loosened their hair and put flowers in them.

Tonight, even the elders would be busy watching babies whining and give up sleeping at the sound of the shouts from outside.

The elders, too, would stay awake all night in preparation for the commotion that would ensue throughout the night.

The Day of Repose lasted almost seven nights in a row.

Everyone was excited about the frantic festival that was about to begin, but Enya’s hut is calm alone.

“…This was on the beach of Zineva, on the hill of Pinebam on a moonlit night when the Milky Way was falling…”

Enya was lying on her stomach alone in Tarhan’s hut, which was relatively large for her small body to roll around in, with something draped on the floor.

It was colorful pebbles.

“This was near the rocky mountain area where the hot spring water came from… This…”

They were all pebbles that she had collected when Tarhan went out.

Amethyst beads that looked like stars and crystals that seemed like clear water glistened in her palms. Some dried petals were also attached together. All of them were treasures that Tarhan found and gave to her or found together with her.

Enya smiled mischievously as she recalled the days when she and Tarhan first started collecting pebbles like this.

“Let’s get out.”

These were Tarhan’s words, who had endured the screams and commotions from the people on the Day of Repose. He got up and immediately said to the young Enya, who was trembling, blushing in her earlobes.

“Let’s get out. I’ll show you something pretty. Damn, you brutes… it doesn’t look like it will end…”

Tarhan, who had been scratching his head nervously, suddenly stopped speaking. The boy’s face went all over when he met her face, who had widened her eyes and gazed up at him.

At the time, Enya muttered, not knowing anything, only sticking her face out of the blanket.

“Bu, but I don’t think we can go out recklessly…”

The boy snorted. He spoke as he pulled the girl’s blanket up to just below her eyes.

“In the first place, we don’t have adults to look after us, so what does it matter? And, I know the geography of this place much better than most of them.”

That was correct.

From then on, Tarhan had already been playing a part in the hunting workshop. She felt so much safer with him than with most adults.

After that, every year around this time, from dusk onwards, she was carried on his back and wandered around the surrounding area as if on a picnic. There were no places she hadn’t been to, and there were beaches, rocks, mountains, grasses, fields, and rivers.

Tarhan never got tired of carrying her all day long. He knew the names and uses of almost every bird and beast, tree and grass that he pointed to with his finger.

Once upon a time, she was so proud and curious that she hung on to him and fluttered her legs and asked him.

“Tarhan. Where did you learn all those things?”

“…My family.”

After a while, he answered bluntly, and his words suddenly disappeared after that. She immediately regretted the question.

Since then, he had never spoken about his family.

Enya gently stroked the pebbles one by one to remove the dust and washed them in water before wiping them with a cloth. She placed it back in the box where she kept it and organized it one by one.

After that, she took out small pebbles that didn’t shine that they liked to play jackstones with and practiced a few times on her own. Even with his callused hands, Tarhan was able to snatch a small pebble so swiftly that she was often unable to take even one out of five.

If she were sad to lose them, he would forfeit the next five for her.

Come to think of it, she had no memory of playing with him like a small pastime like this these days. It was also because he was so busy that when he came home, more often, he would just sleep and leave…

All of a sudden, Enya’s cheeks flushed red at the thought, and she hurriedly cleared the pebbles.

After they grew up, when he returned, they were so busy entangling their bodies that she didn’t have time to play the jackstone. How many times have they been inside each other without having time to take off their clothes properly?

“Ah…”

As she searched through the treasure chest with her face blushing in embarrassment at the thought of Tarhan, something touched her hand.

It was a small pocket.

When she opened it, she saw a necklace carved out of a white, rocky ivory-colored bone. The dazzlingly beautiful gold was wrapped around the precious grains, layer by layer. Enya placed the necklace very carefully in the palm of her hand. Her expression looking at it was proud and affectionate.

It was her favorite necklace.

It was her most precious treasure that she cherished so much that she had never even taken it out properly.

‘A necklace carved out of the bones of a beast that Tarhan first hunted at his coming-of-age ceremony…’

Although it had been more than a few years already, she still felt exhausted just thinking about it.

Everyone said that Tarhan would die alone, leaving only his bones. They said that no one would go looking for his bloodless body.

Enya still remembered that night as vividly as it was yesterday. She once again thought of living alone in the abandoned land, so she drew a knife and put it to her neck and stayed up all night with eyes wide open, thinking that she would rather die after him.

It was a windy day in the morning.

At dawn, he returned with an ivory bone larger than his body. It was that day that he, who was the last of the hunting group, caught the eye of the chieftain Kahanti.

This necklace was made of that ivory.

‘I’ve never been able to get it out, afraid to put a scratch on it…’

Looking at the necklace, she felt her heart pound again.

Even though it was only for a short time, she missed Tarhan to death. It was as if he took a part of her chest and took it with him.

…To her that this necklace was worth Tarhan’s life.

Enya put the necklace back in the pocket and tied a knot on it. It was placed very deep in the box. Laying was lying flat on the soft bed, it was usually a place where she and Tarhan slept together. So, now without him, it was an infinitely spacious place.

From the outside, it seemed that the festival had just begun, and the noise of the festival, which had been heard little by little, was getting louder and louder. The sound of horns and drums seemed to be transmitted through the ground. It seemed as if she could hear the people laughing.

She missed Tarhan.

Had he been by her side now, he would carry her on his back and take her somewhere where the grass was cool and the wind was not cold. There would be insects’ cries.

There, she might have made love with Tarhan once again while looking at the stars in his arms.

Enya turned to lie down so as not to fall into a miserable mood. Then, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

“Shhh… Quiet.”

At that moment, strange footsteps were heard around the hut. It was as light as a bird. More than one or two came rushing in and hovering at the entrance to the hut where she was sleeping.

Enya crept up to her feet.

Just in case, she had a bad idea.

Occasionally, the drunken men came out of the festival area and behaved strangely.

—

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