Observe
by Eric Vogt"Child!"
"Yes, Grann-Momi," I said, not taking my eyes from the orchard where my sister was releasing praying mantises onto the apple trees. She moved in a way, though, that was not her normal way. It was a way that could catch an eye like a fish hook on a careless-cast line. Raini wanted somebody to watch her.
"If the Kinnemans see you watching her like that, they will take you away."
"But Roberat, Grann-Momi," I said. "He is watching her, too. Will the Kinnemans take him?" Grann-Momi looked out to where I pointed. Roberat was trying to look like he was working hard, busting soil with his pick, but his attention was not on the small patch he had already broken a dozen times. It was on Raini. Every motion of her arm was gentle, but with more motion than was needed to set a praying mantis egg sac onto a branch. She added extra waves to her arm so it came to the branch like a small piece of milkweed fluff on a light breeze. When she stepped to the next branch, her legs and back went side to side like rising smoke in still air.
"You see, Grann-Momi. Raini is dancing for Roberat."
"I see nothing!" Grann-Momi said. "You see nothing, child. The Kinnemans will have you yet!"
She dragged me out of the common room and into the kitchen, where she and Momi set me to kneading dough.
The next day, I was given to Unka Villat, who would make paint on the few things we let be painted. It was Grann-Poppat's idea. In the dark night, when they thought me asleep, I heard him telling Grann-Momi and Momi that the Kinnemans never took one that could paint or draw well. If my eyes must look and steal what they see, let my hands draw it, he said. Better than losing their daughter's per-husband to the Kinnemans.
While he taught me to paint, Unka Villat told me things nobody else would say. The Kinnemans like things that are most beautiful and most ugly. They steal what they see with their eye-tubes. What they steal, they take to their places, the places far across the forest on tall metal legs, inside metal walls. The Kinnemans dump the stolen things out - our lives and our happiness and our hurts - and show them to the other people that live in those places, putting them in blocks like ice where many people can see.
Unka Villat said the people born in those places are afraid to come outside their metal walls into our places where we live with small animals and insects, and plants that can sting, and sicknesses, and bright sunlight, and cold rain. That is why the Kinnemans steal our children, he told me, because we are not afraid of our world, outside of their metal walls.
My time with Unka Villat was short, though. My hands would not draw well. I could not make the paint right with a brush. I could find the drawing in the world, I could sit where the colors were best, but I could not make my hands create what my eyes could see.
Unka Villat never was angry with me, but he could not teach me what I could not do. It hurt him, I knew, that I could see what he could not, but that I could not put what I saw to paint, to share it with him.
Unka Villat showed me something else. He took me to one of the Kinnemans' trees, the ones no boys were allowed to climb, and he showed me a little house high up in it. He told me the Kinnemans had a ghost trapped in it who would watch us and call them when we did something they wanted to steal.
There were three different Kinnemans that would come to our village. I named them as Old Reddat, Young Reddi, and Blacka. I know it was wrong for me to notice what were men and what was a woman, and the color of their hair, but I did. They wore black clothes, very tight and shiny, like best leather all glossed. On their heads, they wore masks with long metal tubes that extended from their eyes. Their ears were covered with thick black pillows, and a fluffy wad like dense moss on a stick rode in front of their mouths. On their cheeks, their shoulders, and arms, they had little boxes or small, flat, black boards that had tiny, bright fires in green and red and sunset-color that twinkled on and off like stars or fireflies.
Most of the time, there were no Kinnemans in the village, but one came by for at least part of every day. If there was a celebration or a trouble in the village, a Kinneman was often there, watching, walking among us, talking quietly into his mask.
Meigi was my per-wife. I was brought over from my birth-village of Eiwauka from before I could remember to be raised by her family. Upon her fifteenth birthday, as she was the younger, we would be wed and she would become my wife, and I her husband.
Because she was my per-wife, I could share with her my secrets. At the first, she did not like me to talk about the Kinnemans, because nobody talked about the Kinnemans except to threaten with them. But soon she learned to notice them, too.
"Jaikat," she would say, "Old Reddat, he was with us when we gathered wild raspberries today. He followed us along the trail, all zzzzz, zzzzzzzeeeeee, zzzzzoooooooo, and hwheeeee!," she said, creating the same sounds that a Kinneman's mask made when it would move its head and look at different things.
"So we picked berries and we scared up squirrels who chattered at us, keetikeetikeetikeet and Old Reddat watched them too, with his zzzzeeeee eyes."
I laughed at her strange noises - she always told stories with the sounds of the moment. Not only could she use her voice, but she knew how to bang a rock against a stick just right to create the sound of a walnut being broken, or how to sift a handful of corn into a wooden trough to make the sound of rain, or make a drumhead croak like a frog.
"I did get myself beaten from Annti Joedi, though, when we were halfway home." She smacked her hands together sharply, and stopped smiling.
"On what?" I asked.
"I saw how our mouths were darkened from eating berries while we gathered, so I crushed some in my hand to color my cheeks, like they will be on our wedding-rite's day," she said, smiling again and touching my hand. "Old Reddat looked into my hand with his long-eyes on their metal tubes, all zzzzeeeezeeeezzzzzoooooo. The ends of the eyes are like pure ice with no cloudiness; they show-back like still, still water. So I used his eyes to see my face so I could color myself even and pretty."
"What did the Kinneman do when you looked into his eye-tubes?"
"Oh!" she said, sitting straight up and clapping, giggling. "His eye-tubes shortened all the way back, ZZZZZZEEEEEEoooooooooo, and inside, something opened wide, like our eyes' black-spots open in the dark. And he moved his body back from me, to not touch, but kept his head real, really still-like. That close, I could hear his head humming, like a tiny, quiet mosquito, eeeeeeeeeee." Meigi moved her hand around my ear, just like a skeeter in the night. "Old Reddat kept his eye-tubes still for me, aimed right to my face so I could see. The buzzing would louden as his head moved, so I think it was a mechanism that keeps the tube aim still-like, even when he moves.
"I could use that mechanism in my bow, to keep my arrow aim true-like while stalking."
"But Jaikat! The best," she said. "The pillows on Old Reddat's ears, they made a sound too, grzzzbzzzzkzz to him, and he would talk quiet-like in funny words, like ours and different, and the ears would make more sounds to him. He must have some mouse or cricket in the ear-pillows to talk with."
"And after Old Reddat went away, you got beaten?"
"With no reason given, just beaten!" Meigi said. "But Annti Joedi washed the color off of my face, so she could pretend I was beaten for acting adultish even though I only count eleven years."
We were a people with few words for seeing things. We could speak some colors, but not all that were in the world - the sky and the river and my per-wife's eyes were all called blue, even though they were each on all a different blue. A deer and some woods and mud, a dog and my hair, all were called brown, though the deer and my hair had some red to them under the sun.
We did not have words to describe the motion of snakes, which was like the side-to-side movement of Raini's body when she knew Roberat watched her even though he was not her husband. We did not have a word for the circle of colors that went across the sky after a rain or the spray of those same colors when I would spit a mist of water into sunlight. I learned to run off to be alone after rain, because I was often beaten for watching the color-circle, with threat that the Kinnemans would take me for it.
We had a thousand words, though, to describe a flavor or a sound. Grann-Momi's acorn and lentil stew, with turned cider and garlic, was rich and sinuous. Our pipes and mandolas were shimmery and prismatic. Unka Krisat's big-bellied drum had ebony tones or a crimson luster. My Meigi's voice, when she sang, flittered and glinted. Her lowest notes were verdant, her highest crystalline.
Our dances were danced, not watched. All either moved, or put their eyes to their instruments. Our dances were not intended to be seen, but they would take the dancer's body full-to.
On the Herd-Cull of my eleventh year, we feasted and had strong drink and four huge fires around the village square, and much dancing.
Sadly, there was much trouble that night. I was first beaten for stopping to watch the dancing, instead of taking a drum if I was tired. But I saw the motion of both Roberat and Josifa, who was Raini's husband. Roberat's legs moved like he had extra knees, and his head tilted to make his neck look longer. Josifa pulled up his sleeves to show strong, strong arms, which he held stiff and hard, muscles standing out like tree roots from the ground.
I was dragged to our house by Momi. "Never watch the dance! Never, child, for the Kinnemans walk our circles and take the child that watches."
"But Raini watches, Momi!" I was beaten, hands hard across my face to make my mouth too sore to speak, a tooth landed upon the bare wood floor - a single white tooth with drops of blood on the light-brown oak wood. On my hands and knees, I looked at the colors while Momi shouted at me, until she noticed what I was seeing, and she kicked me.
After being beaten, I was put to the room I shared with Meigi, but out the window I climbed. I knew a Kinneman would come to our village - me beaten, Raini and Roberat and Josifa dancing in ways not normal. There was anger, hard feelings, hungers within our village - all these things together could not fail to bring a Kinneman.
I found a place near-like to a fire where the shadows would hide me, but where I could see the square. I wanted to take some cider, to soften the pain where my tooth used to be.
Raini was on one side of the fire with a drum, with two Annti watching her. Roberat was put to work carving the roast sheep for the feast, and he carved the meat with motions like falling leaves. Josifa was still in the dance, his shirt sleeves still rolled up to show the muscles.
I watched other hard feelings and hungers in the square, as I moved here, moved there to keep all of the people within my seeing. I watched the sadness in Karlat who much loved his wife, Darami, but was not loved by her. I watched Carali, scared, wanting to take the cider cup from her husband, but he was already too far. Carali knew she would be beaten, for no reason but that Ghorgat beat her when he had cider.
I watched Ghorgat, wishing somebody would keep him from the cider, but nobody would. I forgot myself, and walked through the light. Poppat saw me and came toward me, pointing to tell me not to move or run, but to stand for my punishing. But he stopped suddenly, looking past me, and he turned back to pick up his mandola. I looked over my shoulder, and there was a Kinneman. It was Blacka, watching the square as I did, watching nobody take the cider cup from Ghorgat, watching nobody look at Carali because nobody wanted to see the fear in her eyes.
The Kinneman was close enough for me to smell him, all harsh and sharp odors. I could not hear the sounds of his mask over the music and dance and rushing crackle of fire. The Kinneman did not look at me, but was careful as he moved to not step on me.
"Kinneman," I said, but he looked only at the square. "Kinneman!" I touched him. His black clothing was cold and taut, he solid beneath it. The Kinneman turned to me, the pure-ice eyes on their metal tubes shortening. I could see my face showed back in his eyes, colored by the fire with a yellow that was redder than yellow.
"Kinneman," I said. I was about to say, "Kinneman, take me with you," but I was stopped by a sound, the sound of Meigi, voice suddenly raised with song. She sang a pure violet note, dressed in ruffles and lace. She dropped her voice, to her emerald and sapphire tones, as Grann-Poppat called them. She sang them, looking straight at me.
I remembered myself, then. I could not let a Kinneman take me, for I had the best singer in ten villages waiting for the age to be wedded to me.
"Kinneman," I said. "That is my per-wife. I am the luckiest boy there is, that my birth-parents have matched me to her."
The Kinneman looked away from me, back to the square, his tubes stretching out to see the people of my village standing there, Carali and Ghorgat forgotten, Darami and Karlat forgotten. Raini and Roberat and Josifa forgotten. They did not look at the Kinneman and I, but we were all they could see.
I turned away from the square, and went back to my room, to await another beating.
It did not come. My family came home, and Momi came into the room, taking Meigi's bedding away. I heard Meigi asking why she could not sleep in our room, and she was slapped and told I must sleep alone that night.
"Will you send my Jaikat away, Momi?" she asked, voice deep with fear. Momi gave her a second slap, and told her to sleep by the foot of her and Poppat's bed.
Slowly, the house quieted. I could hear adults at the square, pair by pair, stop drinking and go to their houses. Ghorgat's voice grew louder and louder, demanding more cider from Carali, taunting the other men who went home to their beds and wives. After the last of the others left the square, Ghorgat and Carali went home, he singing a rude song that ended as they climbed their front steps.
I heard, quietly, the gentle footfalling of the Kinneman, still in the village, walking past the houses. He stopped near my window, but when I turned to it, I could not see him. In the silence of the house, though, I heard his mechanisms below it.
I heard the shouting start from Ghorgat and Carali's house. I heard a quieter argument between Raini and Josifa from their room, next to mine. Each fight grew slowly louder until I could no longer hear the Kinneman's mechanisms, but I could still feel him on the other side of the wall, waiting. I wondered if his strange eyes on their tubes could see through it.
The whole village heard Carali start to scream as Ghorgat started beating, but all stayed silent. Even Raini and Josifa let their fight lie as they lost their words against the rage of Ghorgat.
I did not hear my door opened. I did not know anybody was in my room until Poppat threw his body across mine, pinning me down and shoving a cloth into my mouth. Grann-Momi was behind him, a cape-pin in her hand.
"We can not let the Kinnemans take you, child," she said.
With my eyes broken, my Meigi was ever more dear to me. I learned quick how to move through the house, and from the house to the outhouse or the well. Other places, I needed an arm or a hand to guide me. Most times, it was Meigi. I could no longer do proper boys' work, so was sent to give what help I could to my per-wife on hers.
As we walked, my arm in her hands, she would tell me what she could see. Always, an Annti was close, though, to be sure I was not teaching her to see the way I used to see. When we were apart, Meigi would come back with the story of what she had done without me, with her voice making the bird calls or gigglybrook sounds. Or she would scrape a knife with a nutshell or shake a pebble in a shallow bowl to let me hear what her voice could not speak.
The Kinnemans still came to the village. We created a way for her to tell me where the Kinnemans would be. She would turn my hand, palm down, and tap with her fingertip. Where she tapped told direction, with one tap per pace to tell distance. We both knew that the mechanism noise pitched down to shorten the eye-tubes and look close, and pitched up to stretch them to see far. Meigi would sing their zzzzzz noises, to tell me how the Kinnemans changed where they looked.
When I counted my twelfth year, as is normal I was made to move my things from the room I shared with Meigi. At that age, it is no longer proper for boy and girl to share a room for sleeping. Momi and Poppat told Meigi and I that we could share a room again after our wedding-rite.
I was made to sleep in the boys' house in the village, where all of the other boys counting twelve years lived until their wedding-rite day. The men of the village each took turns to sleep at the boys' house, and every morning meal, they gave us teaching in men's things while we ate.
After morning meal and teaching, a friend would walk me to my family house. Meigi would tell me what she had dreamed the night before, or tell me how much she missed hearing my breath next to her in the dark.
Together, when our time was not busy with work, Meigi and I created funny stories to tell for Rest-day evenings or festival nights. I would make the words, and she would speak them with her colorful voice. While she told the story, I had a board with many things to make the sounds her voice could not, all arranged so I could hand her the right things at the right times.
On the night of Strongest-Sun festival, after feasting and our story, Meigi took my arm in her hands, and we slowly left the village square. The noise of it got quieter as she led me, step by step, and the heat of the fires faded until she turned us and we walked off of the hard trail into the scent of the forest.
"We are followed?" I asked.
"No. Nobody," she said, but she turned my hand down and tapped a Kinneman, fifteen paces behind. We walked until she, all sudden and gentle, turned me and backed me to a tree. The older boys at the boys' house would sometimes talk of kisses. Their rude words, though, could not begin to explain the feel of Meigi's lips on mine, salty of sweat and glowing of cider. They never spoke of how the world is gone from within a kiss, so it was that my tongue was bitten in Meigi's surprise when the Kinneman touched her.
"Meigi Meddjisdotti," the Kinneman said, with a man's voice.
"Who?" I asked. "Reddat or Blacka?"
"It is too dark, Jaikat," she said.
"I am the one you call Blacka," the Kinneman said.
"Are you taking my Jaikat?" Meigi asked, her voice weighed heavy with fear and tears.
"We need you, Meigi Meddjisdotti," the Kinneman said.
"No," I said. "No - she does not see, anymore than I do."
"I do not see what the Kinnemans see," Meigi said. "You can not take me, and my Jaikat is blind. Please, go away, Kinneman."
"We don't need your eyes, Meigi Meddjoisdotti," the Kinneman said. "We need your ears. What you hear, you repeat, more real than the original. Like Jaikat Eiwuakssonnat used to see things more fully than the rest of you."
"Kinnemans only take people who see," Meigi said. "I do not see, I only hear."
"You can not take her," I said, trying to pull Meigi back, behind me. She would not move, though.
"You can not stop me," the Kinneman said.
Meigi started screaming, her voice, strong from singing, was loud. "KINNEMAN!" she shouted. "A Kinneman is taki - "
Blacka, the Kinneman, had touched her with something that shut her mouth quick, with a clack of teeth, and made her fall hard to the ground. I, too, felt the Kinneman's power through her, but weaker, for I did not fall. I felt a loss of breath, my muscles locked, a feeling that was not pain, but was still very, very wrong went through me.
The Kinneman pushed me back, hard, and I fell. I heard him pick up my Meigi and walk. I shouted once that a Kinneman had taken my Meigi, then made myself quiet, to hear where the Kinneman walked. I heard his steps and tried to follow, but branches and tree roots stopped me. I shouted many times for the village. The sounds of the festival died with my shouts, but nobody came.
©Eric Vogt
Eric Vogt is an easily amused technical writer and slightly rusty old rivethead who lives in Madison, Wisconsin. His fiction has previously appeared in the anthology Desolate Places and the online magazine Third Order.