Of Galatt and the Dasqhara

The night slowly passed by, and when a trio rays of light began to peak under the shades covering my window, I knew that I had only a few hours before Nidath’s return. Now, however, this did not inject as much fear into my heart as it had the night before, as something marvelous had happened during the dark hours. On the third day, Etiar had asked about my best playmate in my youth. I had not had many friends in my life, so recalling one might have been difficult even during normal times. At length that afternoon, however, I had remembered a young boy named Galatt, whom I had known in Kapabaj. Galatt and his family had attended the Yellow Church along with my mother and I, and he and I soon took to recreation outside of the services.

Galatt and those days in Kapabaj seemed like an entirely different life now, as though I was recalling a story I had once read, or perhaps a legend that had been passed around Ilepya. I felt alienated from those times, and I had convinced myself that they were no longer part of my true identity. They had instead merely become a cautionary tale, as that fanatical woman who had borne the bastard child was a caricature of a wild Kapbaji woman, and her stubborn and ignorant son represented the dangers of trusting the Anotus against his own greed.

But they were mine. Only I had lived those events, and I needed to make them even more real than ever before, in order to inspire me to fight against the mistakes of my upbringing. It was good to think of details, rather than of ideas, of my Kapbaji years, for they kept me connected to my purpose. I wanted to prevent every man future man from being blinded by the ignorance I had once faced, and I would have to constantly remind myself of the smallest elements of this ignorance in order to keep it extant.

Galatt and I played a number of games, but among our favorite was a game of chance known as Dasqhara. We had played the game with a set hand-crafted, rudimentary dice, and for several days of my eleventh year, Dasqhara was the event I looked forward to most.

One afternoon, during a particularly long game of Dasqhara, my mother discovered the two of us playing. She screamed in horror as she witnessed me throw the pair of dice, and she quickly scooped them up and crushed them before our eyes. I began to protest, but my mother was impervious to my tears, and she lifted Galatt right then and there and threw him out onto the street, shouting “there will be no gambling in my house!”

In between her fits of rage, I objected to my mother that we had not gambled any goods, but she did not care. “It is the work of evil! I shall not have Galatt here again! You will not speak to him!”

“It is not Galatt,” I argued. “He did not teach me the game; I learned it from Anzidrion and showed it to Galatt.”

But my mother could not be swayed. Rather than change her verdict on Galatt, she extended the sentence to Anzidrion. My brother and I were not to have contact again, she ordered us, and if any of us ever played a game of chance in her home, he would be sent to live on the streets and forgotten forever.

My mother was a frightening woman, and I did not dare cross her. However, once her fury let up, she permitted Anzidrion and me to speak to one another again. Then, but two or three weeks afterward, we relocated abruptly to Ilepya, to this very home. I had never before considered that the Dasqhara incident with Galatt had been related to our move, but now I could not shake the very idea. My mother had made rasher decisions before; why would she not disrupt our lives because of a game of chance?

Memories of Galatt had come to me when Etiar had asked about my playmate, and I revisited them during the night following Nidath’s first visit. It was that night that I realized how Galatt and I had occupied ourselves, how we had been found out by my mother, how I had been whisked off to Ilepya because of it all. Galatt was no longer a simple thing, but instead a detail in a larger story from my past. I had managed to recall all of it as a chain of events, offering new analysis and reason as to why any of it had happened. My brain had redeveloped one of its functions of old, and it gave me a sense of hope. Yakko was still lost, P’att was still alienated, Ilepya and Hihaythea were still in violent turmoil, but at least, if by some miracle, all of these things were righted, my mind was capable of recovery as well.

“Hope,” I whispered. I added it to the list: confusion, guilt, sadness, surprise, shame and now hope. These were all emotions that I had lost, but that had returned by way of Etiar. Meanwhile, I added Galatt to the list of simple things that I could remember. For the first time in two weeks, I felt accomplished.