“Brother, stop that.”
The two men turned their heads at the same time. It was then the youth noticed the woman’s eyes.
They were a translucent gray. Perhaps she hadn’t been born this way, but a thin membrane had formed on her eyes and clouded her vision.
He thought her eyes were beautiful.
The woman was more beautiful than anyone he had ever seen before.
“If he’s bad, all we need to do is chase him away. Don’t hit him,” she said gently.
The young man sighed. “All right. We’ll get rid of him.” He grabbed the youth by the neck and brought him to his feet. Then, he dragged the youth outside.
The youth kept looking back at the woman. With a worried expression, she faced the impenetrable space before her, staring with her gray eyes.
The young man dragged the youth out of the house and all the way to the forest path. There, he released his bonds and kicked him, making him stumble onto the ground. As the youth tried to find his balance, the young man kicked him in the stomach.
“Tell that monster,” said the young man as he watched the youth writhe in pain on the ground, “that my sister is off limits. I don’t know what is going on, but my sister will never be a part of that!”
And the young man turned to go back to his house.
The youth grabbed his ankle.
Turning, the young man kicked the youth in the face. Coughing, the youth collapsed once more and spat out the blood that pooled in his mouth. But when the young man turned toward home again, the youth grabbed his ankle once more.
In truth the man was frightened, but he didn’t kick the youth this time. Instead, he stared down as if there was something he hadn’t noticed before.
“What is wrong with you?”
The youth carefully looked up at the young man. He gestured putting food in his mouth.
“You want food?”
The youth nodded.
Nonplussed, the young man gave a snort of laughter. And he lifted his foot to trample the youth again.
The youth covered his head with his hands but didn’t make to escape. He lay there before the young man in the most self-denigrating pose possible, beseeching him.
“Are you a fool? You come to our house looking for a sacrifice and now you want to be fed?”
Looking up, the youth vigorously shook his head. He made eating gestures with his hands again.
The young man looked down at him for a long time. “Maybe you really are a fool.”
The only answer the youth could give him was to keep miming eating.
The young man roughly brought the youth to his feet. “We’re only doing this once,” he said as he dragged him along. “Just once. When you’ve eaten, leave. Go far away and never come back.”
XV
The youth never strayed far from the house the gray-eyed woman and her brother lived in.
When the woman brought him food, he gobbled it up quickly. Her brother took him to the shed after his meal. Without any explanation, as if there was no need for any, the brother attached a chain to the youth's right cuff and fastened it tightly to a rafter of the shed using a heavy lock.
“Don’t think you can do whatever you like with us.”
The brother left.
In the morning, the brother came back and released him, but the youth sat lingering in the shed.
Only when the brother tried to shoo him away did he mime with his hands and feet that he had nowhere else to go. When the brother became angry and used his fists, the youth didn’t try to avoid the blows. He fell to the ground and acted as pitifully as possible, begging to stay with them.
“Tell me the truth. Where are you from?”
At this question, all the youth could do was shake his head as hard as he could.
“Why are you here? What do you plan to do to my sister?” He was struck with blows along with each question, but all the youth did was shake his head. The brother became convinced he was at least partially a fool.
At first, the youth mostly sat in the shed. Then one day, the brother dragged him out of it. Instead of his thin, outlandish trousers he was given a thick, practical pair along with a tunic, and taken to the forest. Of his elaborate costume or the cuff on his right wrist, the brother never asked a thing.
He followed the brother around gathering mushrooms and fruit. The brother hunted small animals as well. The youth knew nothing about hunting or anything else that was the slightest bit useful in putting food on the table. And because he was bad at everything, he was regularly beaten by the brother. Even as he was beaten and insulted, he never tried to avoid the blows or escape.
He did know one thing, and that was which greens were edible; he presented whatever fragrant herb he found to the woman along with the mushrooms and fruit. The woman avoided him and generally tried to keep her distance, but when he offered these gifts, she seemed at least a little pleased.