Blood Sacrifice
by Sam Faith
“Home is where love lives.” My mother would tell me as she pressed mud onto the walls of our dwelling. Her hands were slick with its texture. The sun would creep round in the next hour and bake it on. She wiped the sweat from her forehead leaving a reddish smear behind.
I smiled at her and twisted a strand of my hair which was matting into a fine rat tail. I didn’t really get what she was talking about.
“We’ll have to cut your hair off if you keep doing that.” She commented.
I shrugged and kept twisting. I wanted my hair short anyway.
“You want a go?” she asked, holding some clay out to me.
I shook my head. Mud daubing was wife work, and I wasn’t interested in wife work. I wanted to run off with the village boys into the cool of the forest and try out my new arrows. And when the time came, I wanted to take a wife. I didn’t want to be one.
My mother continued with her work. “You’re like a being from the Time Before.” She laughed over her shoulder. “Or maybe one for the Time After… Go on, then. Go hunt.”
I charged off and found the boys gathering at the outskirts of the village where the Metal Relics and the Sacrifice Stones stood.
The boys were stripped to the waist in the heat, and had their salwar rolled high above their knees. Some carried spears. But for most, their hunting weapon of choice was a crossbow like mine. None of them could match me for skill though.
A couple of the village girls passed the Sacrifice Stones on their way from the well. Destiny was one of them. She put down her water bucket and wiped a hand across her forehead, then shook back her hair. A simple white shift clung to her body, and her skin glistened with exertion.
Her bright eyes bored into mine with a secret amusement as she placed a hand on her cocked hip. She was beautiful. I stopped and couldn’t help but stare at her.
The boys started to jeer at the girls. The only girl they tolerated was me, but that was because I could hunt. And I was only allowed to do that because my mother was the healer and for her child, allowances could be made. For a while.
“C’mon, Love!” Saloo, our undisputed leader bellowed. “Hurry up!”
The rest of the boys joined in, “Hurry up, hurry up!”
I got moving.
There was much back slapping as I reached them, then a little whooping as we tied our kerchiefs around our heads. The lure of the hunt beckoned. The heady, dank smells of the forest enveloped us. This was the place I felt most at home. This is where Love lives, I told myself.
Usually, our quarry would be the fat quail we’d flush out of burrows in the forest floor. We’d check our rabbit snares, and on some occasions take down a hare on the run. This time we were especially lucky. We found a litter of wild piglets, cosy and alone in their grass nest. We’d dispatched most of them with our hip knives before the sow returned screaming in anguish and fury.
As she charged, the boys scattered, but I stood my ground.
Time seemed to slow as I held my breath, raised my cross bow and shot her right between the eyes. She continued for a pace or two, then dropped dead at my feet, a small trickle of blood running down her shout.
The boys emerged from their hiding places and gathered around me.
Saloo gripped me by the shoulders. “This is a good blood sacrifice. You’re as good as a boy, Love.” He crooned. “You really are like one of us.”
The village fed well that night. Even the men were impressed as we marched into camp our kills. It was auspicious, they murmured. A good omen.
The men had been fasting for three days since the full moon and had abstained from hunting. They’d spent the days in the village shaping masks, fashioning clay pipes and sharpening tools for the boys” initiation rites which were to begin the next morning.
I lay on a woven mat after the feast, licking my fingers clean and noticed Destiny watching me through the flames of the cooking fire. I stared back at her until Saloo broke the spell as he flopped down beside me and tousled my rat-tailed hair.
“You can’t come with us after tomorrow.” He said ruefully. “Tomorrow, we go to the forest. Tomorrow, we become lost for ten days. When we come back, we will be men.”
He lowered his voice and spoke in a whisper, hiding his mouth with his hand.
“We have to survive alone. We have to prove ourselves. We have to choose new names. They cut us—it’s a blood sacrifice, too… I’m scared, Love. Things won’t be the same when we come back. We won’t be friends when I return.”
I looked into his sad eyes. How could it be that they got to go and become men, and I could not. How could it be that I could not also go and prove myself. What could be so secret and so strange that only boys could go?
“Maybe when I come back, we can be betrothed. If I take you as my wife, that is still something isn’t it? He asked.
I stood up abruptly. “No.” I hissed. “Never.” I kicked earth in his face and stomped away towards the newly daubed hut where my mother waited.
The next day, the girls and women of the village got up early to see the boys and men off. I stayed on my straw pallet with a flax coverlet pulled up to my eyes despite the heat. I told my mother I was sick.
“Mmmm,” she said as she felt my forehead. “I’ll make some lemon and ginger grass when I get back.” But she didn’t come back for a long while.
I crept over to the window slit and peeked out to see if I could spot her. Most of the women were by the fires making the day’s soup and dumplings. My mother was not among them. I ventured out with reluctance. I kept to the shadows between the women’s huts.
I spied her having a frantic conversation with Destiny’s mother at the edge of the village among the Metal Relics. She slapped one of the larger relic’s blade like protrusions and started crying. My mother rarely cried, and only then with rage and frustration.
I slipped back to our hut and back onto my pallet. I fell asleep.
I didn’t wake again until nightfall when my mother finally returned home. She had various provisions with her. This was unusual as food was never to leave the cool of the stone house, the only stone-built dwelling in the village and like the Metal Relics, a leftover from the Time Before.
She re-wrapped the food; ryebread, apples and smoked dried meat and packed it into a hessian backpack. Next, she took some clean shifts of hers and chemise and salwar of mine and packed them into another bag. Again, this was all very unusual.
I cautiously moved my coverlet aside and sat up.
“Get your arrows and your crossbow ready,” she said. “Tomorrow, we have to go…”
“Go?”
“Don’t question me, Love. This can no longer be our home. For when the boys come back as men with new names, it will be time for the girls” initiation. There will be the cutting and…it’s not like the boys” cutting. It’s a blood sacrifice to take a part of you away that you will never get back. They leave it on the Sacrifice Stones for the hawks to peck. You will never feel joy and you will lose your name.”
She looked at me with such sorrow and horror in her eyes that I recoiled and did as she requested.
I got my arrows and my crossbow ready. I sharpened my knife and set aside my best sandals.
We gathered at the Sacrifice Stones. Besides my mother and me, there was Destiny, Rainbow, Happiness and Brightbird as well as their mothers. Women who didn’t have names. They’d lost them after their cutting. They were only known as wives and mothers of the children they’d birthed. If women bore no children, they were soon shed as wives and had no way of being identified at all. They were ghosts. They cleaned the latrines and buried the dead.
We left before the birds sang. The women hesitated at the edge of the forest. Women did not have any business to go in there. Among us, only I knew it and I knew it better than anyone, any man.
We walked for days. Weeks.
We walked along a long stone road. Through a new weirder forest. We walked through places where the trees twisted, and the plants were so mutated from things that happened in the Time Before we could barely recognise them. We saw strange birds and large fanged creatures with stripes chasing boar what were huger than any I’d ever seen.
We walked along a winding river of such wild boiling water; we were afraid to drink from it. We walked in untamed rain and under baking sun.
My best sandals wore a hole in them. And still we walked on.
Then we came upon a clearing with many stone houses and different Metal Relics from the Time Before. But no Sacrifice Stones. It was cool and shaded, but near an open meadow of fine grass and delicate flowers through which a mild sweet-watered river flowed. It was clear that no one had lived there for a very, very long time.
“This place will do," my mother said. She took a house on the outskirts for herself and got back to the business of healing.
One day, some other mothers from another place joined us, and they brought their sons with them. Young men keen to take wives.
Destiny sneered at the boys when they arrived and moved into my dwelling with me.
In fact, many girls sneered at the young men, for although they were happy to lie with them, most didn’t want to be their wives. And there were some of the young men who didn’t want to hunt and much preferred wife work. There was also those who wanted to do all things. And those who invented new things to do.
“Let everyone do what they want,” my mother said. “The old rules don’t apply here for this is now the Time After. Things will settle… It will all work out…”
And because my mother was a leader of sorts as well as the healer, everyone listened.
And so, our community grew.
A community where we all have names, and we can do any job we like. Any of us can go into the forest if we want. There is hunting in the forest, but there is no cutting. The only blood sacrifice is the one the animals give us… and the one when children are born. For both, we are always grateful as both give us life.
In the day, I take Destiny into the forest and show her the use of knife and arrow, teach her the way of the hunt. She’s good, but not as good as me. Neither of us are wife, and yet, we both are, for each other.
At night, I watch her skin glisten by the flicking light of a tallow candle as she undresses and comes to me. She is beautiful.
Afterwards we lie in each other’s arms. She runs her fingers through my short hair.
“This is where love lives.” She whispers and touches her heart.
I smile and place a hand above my own and know I have come home.
I smiled at her and twisted a strand of my hair which was matting into a fine rat tail. I didn’t really get what she was talking about.
“We’ll have to cut your hair off if you keep doing that.” She commented.
I shrugged and kept twisting. I wanted my hair short anyway.
“You want a go?” she asked, holding some clay out to me.
I shook my head. Mud daubing was wife work, and I wasn’t interested in wife work. I wanted to run off with the village boys into the cool of the forest and try out my new arrows. And when the time came, I wanted to take a wife. I didn’t want to be one.
My mother continued with her work. “You’re like a being from the Time Before.” She laughed over her shoulder. “Or maybe one for the Time After… Go on, then. Go hunt.”
I charged off and found the boys gathering at the outskirts of the village where the Metal Relics and the Sacrifice Stones stood.
The boys were stripped to the waist in the heat, and had their salwar rolled high above their knees. Some carried spears. But for most, their hunting weapon of choice was a crossbow like mine. None of them could match me for skill though.
A couple of the village girls passed the Sacrifice Stones on their way from the well. Destiny was one of them. She put down her water bucket and wiped a hand across her forehead, then shook back her hair. A simple white shift clung to her body, and her skin glistened with exertion.
Her bright eyes bored into mine with a secret amusement as she placed a hand on her cocked hip. She was beautiful. I stopped and couldn’t help but stare at her.
The boys started to jeer at the girls. The only girl they tolerated was me, but that was because I could hunt. And I was only allowed to do that because my mother was the healer and for her child, allowances could be made. For a while.
“C’mon, Love!” Saloo, our undisputed leader bellowed. “Hurry up!”
The rest of the boys joined in, “Hurry up, hurry up!”
I got moving.
There was much back slapping as I reached them, then a little whooping as we tied our kerchiefs around our heads. The lure of the hunt beckoned. The heady, dank smells of the forest enveloped us. This was the place I felt most at home. This is where Love lives, I told myself.
Usually, our quarry would be the fat quail we’d flush out of burrows in the forest floor. We’d check our rabbit snares, and on some occasions take down a hare on the run. This time we were especially lucky. We found a litter of wild piglets, cosy and alone in their grass nest. We’d dispatched most of them with our hip knives before the sow returned screaming in anguish and fury.
As she charged, the boys scattered, but I stood my ground.
Time seemed to slow as I held my breath, raised my cross bow and shot her right between the eyes. She continued for a pace or two, then dropped dead at my feet, a small trickle of blood running down her shout.
The boys emerged from their hiding places and gathered around me.
Saloo gripped me by the shoulders. “This is a good blood sacrifice. You’re as good as a boy, Love.” He crooned. “You really are like one of us.”
The village fed well that night. Even the men were impressed as we marched into camp our kills. It was auspicious, they murmured. A good omen.
The men had been fasting for three days since the full moon and had abstained from hunting. They’d spent the days in the village shaping masks, fashioning clay pipes and sharpening tools for the boys” initiation rites which were to begin the next morning.
I lay on a woven mat after the feast, licking my fingers clean and noticed Destiny watching me through the flames of the cooking fire. I stared back at her until Saloo broke the spell as he flopped down beside me and tousled my rat-tailed hair.
“You can’t come with us after tomorrow.” He said ruefully. “Tomorrow, we go to the forest. Tomorrow, we become lost for ten days. When we come back, we will be men.”
He lowered his voice and spoke in a whisper, hiding his mouth with his hand.
“We have to survive alone. We have to prove ourselves. We have to choose new names. They cut us—it’s a blood sacrifice, too… I’m scared, Love. Things won’t be the same when we come back. We won’t be friends when I return.”
I looked into his sad eyes. How could it be that they got to go and become men, and I could not. How could it be that I could not also go and prove myself. What could be so secret and so strange that only boys could go?
“Maybe when I come back, we can be betrothed. If I take you as my wife, that is still something isn’t it? He asked.
I stood up abruptly. “No.” I hissed. “Never.” I kicked earth in his face and stomped away towards the newly daubed hut where my mother waited.
The next day, the girls and women of the village got up early to see the boys and men off. I stayed on my straw pallet with a flax coverlet pulled up to my eyes despite the heat. I told my mother I was sick.
“Mmmm,” she said as she felt my forehead. “I’ll make some lemon and ginger grass when I get back.” But she didn’t come back for a long while.
I crept over to the window slit and peeked out to see if I could spot her. Most of the women were by the fires making the day’s soup and dumplings. My mother was not among them. I ventured out with reluctance. I kept to the shadows between the women’s huts.
I spied her having a frantic conversation with Destiny’s mother at the edge of the village among the Metal Relics. She slapped one of the larger relic’s blade like protrusions and started crying. My mother rarely cried, and only then with rage and frustration.
I slipped back to our hut and back onto my pallet. I fell asleep.
I didn’t wake again until nightfall when my mother finally returned home. She had various provisions with her. This was unusual as food was never to leave the cool of the stone house, the only stone-built dwelling in the village and like the Metal Relics, a leftover from the Time Before.
She re-wrapped the food; ryebread, apples and smoked dried meat and packed it into a hessian backpack. Next, she took some clean shifts of hers and chemise and salwar of mine and packed them into another bag. Again, this was all very unusual.
I cautiously moved my coverlet aside and sat up.
“Get your arrows and your crossbow ready,” she said. “Tomorrow, we have to go…”
“Go?”
“Don’t question me, Love. This can no longer be our home. For when the boys come back as men with new names, it will be time for the girls” initiation. There will be the cutting and…it’s not like the boys” cutting. It’s a blood sacrifice to take a part of you away that you will never get back. They leave it on the Sacrifice Stones for the hawks to peck. You will never feel joy and you will lose your name.”
She looked at me with such sorrow and horror in her eyes that I recoiled and did as she requested.
I got my arrows and my crossbow ready. I sharpened my knife and set aside my best sandals.
We gathered at the Sacrifice Stones. Besides my mother and me, there was Destiny, Rainbow, Happiness and Brightbird as well as their mothers. Women who didn’t have names. They’d lost them after their cutting. They were only known as wives and mothers of the children they’d birthed. If women bore no children, they were soon shed as wives and had no way of being identified at all. They were ghosts. They cleaned the latrines and buried the dead.
We left before the birds sang. The women hesitated at the edge of the forest. Women did not have any business to go in there. Among us, only I knew it and I knew it better than anyone, any man.
We walked for days. Weeks.
We walked along a long stone road. Through a new weirder forest. We walked through places where the trees twisted, and the plants were so mutated from things that happened in the Time Before we could barely recognise them. We saw strange birds and large fanged creatures with stripes chasing boar what were huger than any I’d ever seen.
We walked along a winding river of such wild boiling water; we were afraid to drink from it. We walked in untamed rain and under baking sun.
My best sandals wore a hole in them. And still we walked on.
Then we came upon a clearing with many stone houses and different Metal Relics from the Time Before. But no Sacrifice Stones. It was cool and shaded, but near an open meadow of fine grass and delicate flowers through which a mild sweet-watered river flowed. It was clear that no one had lived there for a very, very long time.
“This place will do," my mother said. She took a house on the outskirts for herself and got back to the business of healing.
One day, some other mothers from another place joined us, and they brought their sons with them. Young men keen to take wives.
Destiny sneered at the boys when they arrived and moved into my dwelling with me.
In fact, many girls sneered at the young men, for although they were happy to lie with them, most didn’t want to be their wives. And there were some of the young men who didn’t want to hunt and much preferred wife work. There was also those who wanted to do all things. And those who invented new things to do.
“Let everyone do what they want,” my mother said. “The old rules don’t apply here for this is now the Time After. Things will settle… It will all work out…”
And because my mother was a leader of sorts as well as the healer, everyone listened.
And so, our community grew.
A community where we all have names, and we can do any job we like. Any of us can go into the forest if we want. There is hunting in the forest, but there is no cutting. The only blood sacrifice is the one the animals give us… and the one when children are born. For both, we are always grateful as both give us life.
In the day, I take Destiny into the forest and show her the use of knife and arrow, teach her the way of the hunt. She’s good, but not as good as me. Neither of us are wife, and yet, we both are, for each other.
At night, I watch her skin glisten by the flicking light of a tallow candle as she undresses and comes to me. She is beautiful.
Afterwards we lie in each other’s arms. She runs her fingers through my short hair.
“This is where love lives.” She whispers and touches her heart.
I smile and place a hand above my own and know I have come home.
Sam Faith is a writer and film maker.