Sidrus saw Tyc looming above him. He closed his eyes. Seconds later she pulled one open and stared into it, a flaming torch being held close; he could feel its heat scratching his sight. She mumbled something. The flame was gone and he started to move. Not on his own. He floated up and forward on his frame of handcrafted wood, being carried into the row of huts where the ceremony had been prepared and was waiting.
She had been inside him three times before this night. But her rummaging had been confused. She had not found the clear instructions she wanted. His injuries had produced a resonance that distorted her seeking. The unconscious state of the host was also blurring the definitions between him and the secluded sacred one. Tyc had been praying for an awakening and now it had happened. She was ready, shaking off the residue of her sleep, where she had been dreaming of a running horse. She had only ever seen one once, when she was a child. It came with a party of invading forces, who had no real interest in her or her village, they were just passing through into the interior. The rider and the horse had walked in the surf, cooling the animal’s hot hooves. At first she believed that the man and horse where one creature. The horse of her dream was a very different beast. It was made of shadow and flickered as if seen through windy foliage. It was kept captive in a wheel where it ran in circles, its hooves never touching the ground. When the boy had arrived shouting “Mother Tyc!” the horse had vanished as if a flame had been blown out.
The frame was carried into two of the huts that had been restructured into one. It was placed on an angled trestle of the same wood. The eyes of the damaged man were working wildly, as were the flaming torches that illuminated the dancing walls and the hoard of effigies and talismans that looked from there towards him.
“We will wait till dawn this time,” Tyc said to the men who lined the room. She then crossed the space to the frame and placed her rough, lined hand gently on Sidrus’s head. She leaned close to him, but her words were not for Sidrus.
“Very soon, sacred one, very soon we will have you free and in the heart of your people.”
She moved her hand from the forehead to the back of his head, where she had previously removed the bones at the back of his skull. It was there that she squeezed her hand into his brain. Slowly, so as not to tear and injure the soft tissue. The swellings that had distorted his head had occurred because of her intrusions and the softness of his previously diseased anatomy.
Sidrus prayed again to his savage God to whom he had given so much. He had understood nothing of what the hag had said and hated her sickening touch. If ever he slipped this obscene pantomime, he would butcher her, break her idols, and raze the village to the ground. The other inside him was weary and angered by this continual hubris, the bile of which poisoned their shared blood and left him feeling exhausted.
Tyc wallowed out a stream of sung commands as the daylight slanted through the gaps and windows of the long hut. The men who lined the walls standing between the staring deities changed the dirge that they had been singing for days. This one was faster and swayed layer upon layer of sound. Sidrus felt sick as his frame was lifted and turned into the sun. He felt even sicker when Tyc began sliding her hand into his brain. She did it with the very slow caution of a nervous lover, easing her fingers between the folds and layers where she had been before. The limp light that would soon roar filled his eyes with a yellowness that he would never forget.
Tyc knew that Oneofthewilliams was in there waiting, that he was shivering under the brain and sleeping in the long bones, even though they had been dented and bruised. She knew she had to gather and assemble him and that he would know how. Know what could be taken from where and how.
By her hand she had tools made of steel and iron, but most important she had tools made of grass, hair, and feathers. These were the ones that would do the real work after the metal ones had slit the tough fibres. She would feel the whisper lines and be told where to grip and pull the brain apart. To cleave the two minds, one precious beyond gold, the other to be sealed back to boil and rage in its own vile juices.
She needed all the strength she could muster. What she had been asked to do would take at least two days and nights and the fingers of many strong hands, entranced and guided by her. She assembled her assistants and supplies. She took a mouthful of a slimy substance from a sealed jar and put a reed to her lips. The other end she slid into Sidrus’s brain where her hand had been. Slowly she blew the substance into the folds, knowing that her own charmed mumbled spittle would enhance its potency. When it was absorbed she lay down to sleep, waiting for it to take effect. Some hours later she was awakened by a faint high whistle that seemed to be coming from the prone figure’s eyes. Her helpers had stepped back from the frame, terror seizing them by the throats, their own eyes staring and whatever hair they had standing upright on their shining heads. Now it was time to bind them to her will and begin the operation.
All the signs and omens were right. It was just after midday and the sun outside was ferocious. Everybody in the long village that bit into the contours of the beach and coastline was silent. The day-to-day chores had ceased. The Sea People sat in the shade without speaking. Some smoked palm-leaf cigars, others chewed crimson nuts. Even the children were quiet, infected by the weird concentration of the adults. They listened to the continual murmur of the sea, occasionally looking at parents and elders to check that all was well. The only sound in their world now came from Tyc. She sighed and grunted with the effort of her labours and gave commands to those close by. All were covered in blood and the smell of warm open flesh filled the room, only suppressed by the pungent vehemence of the scorching irons and the high burning note made by their intermittent usage. Cauterisation and the binding spell were the only methods she had to contain the fleeing blood and lymphatic fluids.
At the end of the next day they separated the frame, having to make some new cuts along its axis. The sawdust fell to the hard ground like innocent snow after what had leaked and pumped across it before. The two halves were taken to two separate huts, each with their own attendants. Tyc collapsed and slept for another two days only after giving strict instruction that should anything go wrong she was to be awakened immediately. It was unlikely because great sleeping draughts had been administered. The tribe slowly began to go about its normal daily business of fishing and talking, mending nets and cooking the fruit of the sea. It seemed odd to all of them after the weeks of waiting. The hourly chanting and the smoking sacrifice. Each time any one of them passed either of the huts they could not help but squint inside. Only the very old, with few syllables, averted their eyes completely. Even the great ocean stayed quiet and poised, not allowing the winds to rise and trouble its lingering swell. The fishes flopped into the nets without conflict or struggle as if they too were so engaged in listening that they had not noticed their incidental drowning in the thorny air.
A week or so later chaos broke loose when Williams crawled out of his restraint and dragged himself to the ragged door of the hut. His sleeping attendants quickly lifted his bandaged form and carried him between them into the sun and instantly rising wind. Tyc waddled up from the sands and the children followed her. A great crowd came to meet their saviour and the fact that he was only half a man did not concern them. They were overwhelmed to have him returned, finally to live with them forever.
The occupant of the other hut slept longer and remained passive and silent. There was more to mend and the length of him was now grafted onto bound wood. When he did awake he was unable to sit up because he did not understand the form and asymmetry of what once was his body. So he rolled back and forth on the surface of his world, attracting the attention of his attendants, who heard the shuffling grunts and the rudimentary words (which was good considering he had been given the vocal cords and one of the lungs). The anger that drove him forward identified him clearly as what had been called Sidrus. The wrath and memory had been contained exactly where it could be easily determined. The body that had grown so strong, and renewed into a virile healthiness that could have competed with his brother, was now gone. The bandaged shard was an invented slither nailed to a permanent ingrown splint. He was now a kind of puppet, a scarecrow: a head and rib cage supported by an invented spine and a semi-working leg. A turnip on a stick. With the help of the shy attendants who well understood his evil self, he was propped up dizzily on the frame, which now looked like a rudimentary bed. He twisted his tightly sutured neck and lifted his arm to touch his head. But no arm came to do the work where the ghost one probed. Nothing was there on either side. He no longer possessed arms. He looked down to the numbness in his legs and found he had only one and that it had been modified and changed beyond recognition. They gave Sidrus a new name. He was now Wassidrus, and he was alive and as well as he was ever going to be.