Trial

Trial

Nu’fen was feeling a heaving beat inside of him, a melodic thumping that matched with the echo of the drums outside.

He sat alone in the tent, his caramel feet rubbing ankle to ankle. Outside, the Children of the Crescent Moon were ascending to the arena. He could make out their infantile chattering and woops of excitement. He was terrified. He was about to become a man.

He had been promised whizz-bangs for his ceremony, and to his relief the witch doctor had agreed. The most poignant moments of his childhood were littered with the doctors fiery creations exploding above the forest canopy. Patriarch Kafula always protested their use in public, but fell silent when the whizz-bangs erupted into their colourful helixes. Now, he could smell the acidic tint that floated through the glades after a launch, and he had to clutch his own body to stop him from running outside to see the explosions.

Nu’fen had demanded whizz-bangs and that is what he received. Whizz Bangs that would shock the Children into silence and reflect off the bronze in Kahli’s eyes. But the boy himself had to sit on his own, feeling the cold of the tent, the dust against his feet, and the yawning chasm in his gut. With every small explosion he felt a change in him, the passing of something. The men had told him about this. The awareness of all things, they had called it. This was the boy understanding that something was wrong. The boy will be telling the man to run, to leap back to the Crescent Moon.

However the man had to be resolute, and quell the cries of the child.

The Men had been especially sincere to Nu’fen recently. Often he would be the subject of snide words from elders sitting outside their huts, because he was young and therefore always needed criticism. The Men themselves blanked him; he was a fatherless child, and none of them could take up that divine role. Nu’fen hated this most of all; “Girl-student” “Queer child” and other such hurtful names were commonplace. It was not his fault that it was his mother and grandmother that had to teach him the rites of the tribe. It was not his fault that his father and grandfather were stupid men, unable to protect themselves from the endless forest.

In a plethora of colour, Patriarch Kafula boldly entered. Against the gloom of the tent of solitude, he seemed almost devilish, an alien thing sent to retrieve a vital part of Nu’fen. And this was somehow true.

“The boy must die” said the Patriarch in his sternest voice “The boy must die and the man must live.”

Nu’fen knew better then to talk until it was his time to speak. He could feel his body begin to react; it was if pumps were releasing anxiety into every single joint. He wanted to bolt, but also wanted to stand tall, but also wanted to change into a ferocious bird and prove his ability to do both. He began to shake. The men had told him about this as well. This was the unblocking of the waterfall, the end of the bodies resolve. Although this seemed to be a shared experience between all of them, it seemed to also be a big joke, and several of his peers made jeers about how his trousers would run like a torrent through river mud. He could not clear his mind of these thoughts.

The Patriarch stood over the boy, blocking him absolutely. All that was visible in the darkness of solitude was the vibrant bird mask that the Patriarch wore, mocking the boy beneath him. It looked as if it wanted to feast. That mask, one he had seen many times before, had now changed its expression. It was deadly, and hungry, and furious at the presence of the boy. The mask was only worn by men.

“Nu’fen” said the Patriarch “You must now die. You must wither to grow into something tall and mighty. You must collapse in order to be rebuilt. You will erase the swamp of your thoughts with the sweet waters of maturity.”

Nu’fen nodded frantically. He couldn’t look at the mask that glowered at him from above. He could just make out the Patriarchs pot belly. The arena outside was now silent; even the joyous sights of the Wicth Doctors inventions had faded. Now it was just the boy, persecuted, and completely alone.
“Are you ready to kill the boy inside of you and become a man?”

“Yes Patriarch” said Nu’fen automatically. He would not dare answer anything else at this point. He would press on through his fear, or always be a boy. Not even that, a boy raised by women, the most contemptible of creatures.

“You are willing to take the life of the boy inside of you?”

Nu’fen was flushing red. He was being mocked; the Patriarch didn’t believe in him. But he would. He would kill a full grown man if he had to in order to win Kahli and her body. Even though she was in the arena outside, he could feel her mentally pressing against him.

Weeks ago, Nu’fen had witnessed the birth of the moon liquid. As always, the boys were diving in and out of the roaring Amazon, one of Nu’fens favourite parts of the day. Nobody questioned his manliness at this time, as they all bathed naked, and nothing was hidden under the raw sun. Away from the group, he was holding his breath in the shallow yet warm water, picking up smooth pebbles from the tiny beach that rested there. He would grab the little ovals and slide them down his collar bone, feeling the smooth pebble scrape on his rough skin. The other boys were daring each other to swim into the middle current; not strong for any man, but rushing for a young boy.

“Nu’fen would surely drown” one chanted “Nu’fen would struggle even in the smallest current.”

“Nu’fen would consider a light rain to be a tempest” laughed another boy, his visage dark in the shade. “He would be washed away!”

Nu’fen never had the competitive manner of the other children, and always let these jaunts glide over him like the pebbles on his back. But this day was different, and he felt a surge of hot energy that possessed him. Pushing his way into the current, smacking the bowels of the water as if he wanted to strike down the glinting fish below, Nu’fen dove deeper and deeper into the tide. The children hollered at him, and for once not out of meanness. He felt exulted by their respect, and out of his own daring. His lanky legs kicked fiercely against the reeds that brushed against them.

He could see the boy who had taunted him back in the shallows, and as he dove upwards to shout a jest back, the green water sucked inside his throat and hit the back of his tongue like a hammer. Instantly the water began to molest him, pulling him downwards and far away from the other boys. There was no other sound then the rushing of the tide. The river held him downwards, and Nu’fen began thrashing in pure panic. The forest had taken his weak father, but he was not his father, and he was stronger than drowning. He stopped moving, stopped thrashing, and extended all of his limbs. As his leg brushed the side of a bank, he leapt clumsily to the side with his hands. To his dying joy, they gripped a root, and he pulled himself out of the rip current and onto the side of a bank.

A searing pain spat up the side of his leg; torn open by a jutting branch. He wheezed and coughed, puking reams of water onto the dirt. His hands were swallowed by the mud, but when he could breathe again he began to cry and laugh at the same time. What a feat! He had fought the mighty Amazon and he had won. The other boys were pathetic now, and were too close to the Crescent. He knew he was approaching the time of the full moon.

It was not long after this he saw Khali. The girls did not often bathe together, and never in front of the boys; the mothers always kept their world of fragility separate to that of the men. Nu’fen found his feet sinking low into the warmth of a mud pack, but as he went to remove himself, his eye caught Kahli bending down low across a stream.

Like him, she was naked, but whilst Nu’fen had seen the male member many times, he had never seen any part of a naked woman. No man was allowed to speak of such things until the boy was dead, and the trial had been passed.

She was lithe, more sleek then anybody that he knew. Instantly he noticed the differences between her buttocks and his; how hers seemed to curve whilst his was thick and flat. Long black hair barely hid two young breasts that were lightly dotted with the droplets from the stream. She would stretch down and rub her wet hands along the curve of her legs. He could not see any sort of member and he was frightened by his own ignorance.
Instantly he was hit by shame, for no boy was allowed to see the fruits of a woman. At the same time, he couldn’t walk away. Where would he go after all? Back into the dangerous river? The only way out was past the silken girl. The crisis rooted him to the spot with his hands hovering around his waist.

Nu’fen began massaging his sex. It was not a conscious decision, and not one that he had ever truly made before. But now there was only Kahli, and the warm feeling of the mud running down his legs and hands. He stared intently, not daring to move too much lest she saw him and ran away to the village. He would not be shamed like that.

She was doing such mundane things; running her hair in the stream, finding flowers to place inside it, bathing her face and legs in the water. One time, she sat down almost facing him, letting the water run underneath her entire frame. Nu’fen did not understand the sensations that were shooting through him; he could mostly just feel the pain of his joints, especially at the knee’s. He wanted to leave and find a place to sit down. He wanted to stay forever.

After five minutes, Nu’fen felt the warm glow evaporate from his skin, and he felt like his crotch was starting to panic. His member rapidly lost form, and instantly the world was real again. The seriousness of where he was took him, and he knew that he must leave.

Nu’fen strode forward boldly. His lower legs were caked in mud, and the moon liquid clumped at the end of his dying member. As he splashed towards her, Kahli turned to him, and although he expected her to scream and to flee, she did not. She froze completely, like a small mammal realising that she was staring into the jaws of the crocodile. As they drew level, Nu’fen could not look at her directly, though he knew that she stared at his crotch, as she too would never have seen the mans parts. With a small level of dignity, he lay his legs into the stream, washing the mud as best he could. Then his hands returned to his crotch, but only to clear away the moon liquid and the dirt caused by his hands. She stood by him, unabashed by her nudity, her eyes wide in shock. She flickered from his face, to the rest of him in constant motion.

Climbing to his feet, recovering from both of his ordeals, Nu’fen felt almost at peace. He stared at the girl, his eyes taking in the alieness of her; the oval breasts and the wide nipples, the curve at the stomach and the thin arms and legs. He even scanned her crotch, but he still did not see where she stored her genitals.

Nu’fen had nothing to say to her, and so he just took her head in his hands, and placed his lips just above her eye. This was something he had seen men and women do around the tribe. And he had left it at that, not looking back once at the girl.
Not too long later, as he was grinding the wood of his pretend knife against a rough branch, the Patriarch had come up behind him. Nu’fen had turned through the night and he knew that his punishment had come, and he was caught completely in the tension of the moment. They were silent for what seemed like hours, encapsulated by the sounds of the forest.

“You are called to become a man” said the Patriarch “And you will take the girl Kahli as your woman if you complete the trial. She will become yours, and she agrees to this. Do you understand?”

And now, two weeks later, the Patriarch grabbed Nu’fens shoulder in the darkness. The wind in the tent had arisen, as the noise from the arena died even more.

“It is time for you to leave behind your boyhood” he proclaimed with his booming monotone “No longer must you please yourself, and rely on others. You must take up responsibility, manliness, and take a woman as your reward. Your greatest gift will be acceptance and respect.

Come now and die before us.”

With that, the Patriarch gripped his arm and led him limply from the darkness of solitude into the roaring fires of the trial. Instantly the assembled erupted into manic applause; whoops from the village men that were louder then even the most ferocious whizz-bangs, wails from the women, knowing that they were about to lose one of their children. The Children that had not reached the stage of the Full Moon yelped like howler monkeys in the night.

As the Patriarch burst from the tent behind him, he grabbed the Childs arm harshly and raised it high into the air. He exulted a massive roar from the bottom of his throat, screaming to his tribe to offer their support.

The Patriarchs call was gutteral, primal. The boy wanted to cry at all the support, of finally being accepted. He had already seen his mother and grandmother, watching with sullen eyes from the makeshift stands. No matter where he looked, he could not see Kahli, the thing that his body needed in the night. That it begged for in the morning. The man would not let him cry though. The man inside of him chanted to stay resolute, and to prepare to meet his trial.

“Tribe!” called the Patriarch, spinning slowly in a circle, throwing his arms open in greeting “We must witness the death of a child. We must see the child die and let a new man emerge from the ashes. You must all stay silent whilst the boy dies, abandoned and alone from everyone it has ever loved. For only a man will be able to truly love a woman, love a family. Only a man will be able to control his urges. Only a man survives through the trial.

The boy has accepted his time to die, and is resolute. He will never have his moment again. And thus for Nu’fen we present a trial that is soley his. For no boy can ever die in the same way, the same way no man lives in the same way as another.”
He waved his arm towards two men in the shadows.

The raced into the middle of the arena, smacking their legs wildly. On their heads were giant baboon headdresses, and in primate movements they bounded before the tribe. Each man grabbed the side of a long piece of cloth that stretched through the centre of the arena. They pulled upwards, grabbing the fabric like it was an escaping ghost, and then tore at it in a manic frenzy. Underneath the cloth was a glittering, dancing pathway. It was the pathway to becoming a man.

“The boy must die” announced the Patriarch finally “and now the trial begins.”

To the announcement of drums, Kahli appeared from the opposite tent. She wore almost nothing, merely undergarments created from vines and leaves that revealed the curve of her breasts. At first she looked at nobody, but then he head slowly raised to face Nu’fen at the end of the glittering path. She stared at him without a smile. The silence engulfed the arena.

“Walk” said the Patriarch “Walk and claim your woman.”

Nu’fen felt no stir within him, none of the rise that he had experienced whenether he had seen her the previous week. His member was completely still. Only his heart was beating now, fiercely, thudding like it had in the tent of solitude.
Surrounded by everyone, he was now alone. He could see the girl’s curves from the distance and his mind focussed.

Nu’fen took his first step.

He gasped instantaneously as the small crackles of glass split the rough skin around his toes. He gaped as he realised his folly; the glittering path was made entirely of the fragile glass that they had traded for so long ago. Such an interesting material was almost worthless so far into the forest, but now it began to made sense. The boy would have to walk on path of blood.
The other foot followed, and though there was pain as he increased the pressure on the first foot, it fell neatly onto the shining path. Nu’fen’s eyes frantically scanned the path. The further it went, the more jagged the pieces seemed to become. He took a deep breath and pressed the first foot forward. Like a line of lightning being traced across his skull, he made a face of intense agony.

His lip curled upwards and the back of his neck became tense, as if it was about to snap. Glass had stabbed straight into the sole of his foot. He gulped fresh loads of air and knew that he could not walk the path. To take twenty steps or so on shattered glass was surely suicide. He was to fall, and lose all of his blood before everybody. They would take his shamed corpse and throw it into the river that had failed to claim him.

He knew he was starting to lose his mind. The boy was winning. The boy was louder then the man, the creature that was not yet fully born. It knew how to whoop and to yell, and to jeer with an infantile whine. But the man knew the trials of the boy; he knew the pain of being taunted, and the guilt and the shame that came from being covered by the moon liquid.

His left foot shuffled forward, but it seemed to collect fragments as he did so. He winced again and again. In a mad instant he considered bursting forward, running. But it would only take one large piece to bring him toppling forward to his mutilation.

The next step was like a boa snapping his arm, except he felt it in his toes, shooting through the bones. He wished that his feet were submerged in the warm mud, back on the river. He wished it wasnt so silent, that they would do something else besides stare.

With another step he was halfway, and he dared to look down. His feet were oozing thick trails of blood, and the twisted beast of panic was roaring in his head. Nu’fen was going to die here, before every person he had ever loved.
But Kahli was staring at him so intensely, and even through the agony, he felt a stir in his trousers. In fact, as he stood still, the more he returned the stare, the more strength he found. He knew that he had walked barefoot for most of his life; he had to rely on his youth to carry him.

His next step was a slash into the forbidden, a stab into the unknown. It pierced the back of his foot, like he had been stabbed in the crotch. The area was so vulnerable that he let out an audible whine. The world was dissolving around him; bursts of neon colour were erupting before his eyes. As his next step fell, the waterfall came, just as the men predicted. A thin stream of urine was spreading down his legs, and his breathing heaved and tugged just the same as the Amazon had against his naked body. He had urinated in front of his tribe. He was ashamed. Tears began streaming down his face. The boy was gasping for oxygen. The man gritted his teeth.

“I...” he burst, but no, he couldn’t stop now. He had to have her. He would explore every inch of what a woman was after this one trial. His mother had said nothing; his peers wouldn’t say a word. The cocktail of shame and guilt was spilling through his brain. He had to know. Another step. Then another. The glass was inside his wounds now, and it was becoming impossible to retain balance, but the man was almost at the end.

Finally Kahli began to show concern, and her bronze eyes mourned for him. Through the tears and snot that fell down his face, Nu’fen saw her visage, her perfection, and he screamed for her. He screamed, and screamed, and tore down the barriers of whom and where he was. His throat roared louder and with more passion then the Patriarch could ever muster. The women in the audience clutched each other and cried softly to themselves. His mother was in floods of tears, seeing her boy completely alone. His Grandmother stared with cold eyes. With a dead-pan acceptance.

He raised his shaking arm, too afraid to take another step, for he had seen the size of the fragments in the final stretch. He wanted to feel her skin so badly. She was everything now.

As he raised his leg, his arm pulled him forwards by an extra inch, and that was all it took. The boy slid ungracefully to his knees, and there was a sickening crunch. His eyes were wide, not recognising anything any more. The Amazon was now his nerves, and it was boiling, melting the forest around him.

“Kahli...” he gasped.

He began to crawl the final stretch. Glass stabbed into his palms, but now he had no awareness. The boy was in his final death throes. The man was flickering.

His face was cut by a jutting splinter. Drool and tears collected at the front, blood and urine mixed at the back. He wept in full force. He dove forward.

Nu’fen felt dirt beneath his ruined body. He had half leapt from the glittering path, and he knew that he now lay at its end. Bleeding all over from a thousand non lethal wounds, his body was swamped in the agony of dying.

He could see the sun above him, even though he knew that it was night. He could see the gods celebrating for him. For an instant, he saw the disgusting face of his father, beaming at him, before it faded into the thick features of the Patriarch.

Nu’fen wheezed to himself, his body ruined. His twitching arm brushed against the patriarchs legs.

“The boy is dead” said the Patriarch quietly “And he can never come back.”

A maddened smile formed on Nu’fens blood stained features.

“The man however, is not present.” announced the Patriarch gravely “For what man would crawl through a bed of glass just for a woman’s approval? Just for her touch. He is a fool who thinks that he can mate after trying to impress with ones own self destruction. A man must sacrifice, yes, a man must act decisively, yes. But only an immature boy would destroy himself just for the taste of a woman’s flesh.”

The boy is dead. But I don’t know what remains.”

And with that, the Patriarch was gone. Darkness was closing in. The tribe was fading, vanquished by the void. There was only the shining figure of the girl, his desire, illuminated before him, staring down with a look of concern and pity.

His arm twitched towards her, to grab her, to pull her close to his disfigured form. But the shine began to fail, and soon he was alone in the gloom.
The witch doctor was approaching. All his sight was the doctor, all his feeling was eclipsed by the ending of the boy.

Nu’fens eyes seemed to shake in their sockets. His hands desperatly grabed his crotch.

“Let me keep it” he begged in his delirium “Don’t take it from me!”

Is grip tightened in panc, and then, alone and bleeding, Nu’fen fell into the void between the mature, and the immature. The boy, and the man.

The Crescent and the full moon.

© Copyright Sam Kearns 2011. This work may not be reproduced anywhere else without the Authors permission.