Chapter 6: The Very Meagerest of Rebellions

Vekaya looked around as she pulled the strings from her dress into disheveled wads. Why would anyone care what she was doing? Surely, this couldn’t be seen as something bad, right? And there it was, the simple fact that she had to ask the question revealed to her how strange and dangerous her world was. What was considered wrong here? How would she know that she was doing something bad other than the creeping feeling that something was… off? And since she had woken up in the storeroom, that feeling had scarcely left.

She looked at the other children. Most were shoveling their food into their mouths. A few murmured here and there. Under her table, Vekaya worked the mass of fabric into soft strings. The excited children at the table with the blond haired boy went on speaking loudly and happily. There was no telling if anyone had noticed her fingers feverishly trying to fray the fabric. The more Vekaya looked for someone spying on her, the more suspicious she felt. Most of the fabric had already unraveled into single strings, which she then began to mash into chaotic but thicker, fluffier blobs of material.

The other children stood up and shuffled out of the dining hall. Would they expect her to go with them? What if she wasn’t finished? She looked around and saw the last children who had been in line hogging down their breakfast as quickly as they could. They looked panicked. She only had a few bites left, and the sense she was getting indicated that being the last in the dining hall was not a good thing. Nearly inhaling the last few bites, she began to chew and then limped out into the hall. It wouldn’t do to have to stick the balls of string into her ears on the spot, when it mattered. She needed to test her new tool, but how? She didn’t want to have to drink any more tea.

Vekaya entered another enormous room. The floor was made up of gigantic stone squares the color of sand. They were polished and shined in the dawn light. Some children were staggering into the room still bleary-eyed from the lack of sleep or from crying, or in many cases, she guessed, both. The room was a touch less decorated than the halls, with one single giant banner at the back with the same golden scales, shining as brilliantly as a large lamp at the rest of the room. There were elevated tables ascending in semi-circles around a raised platform in the middle. The other children took seats as they filed in. Vekaya saw where the boy with the blond hair was sitting and chose to sit as far from him has she could get. There was something about that boy – beyond the fact that he was a bully. And, she didn’t like it. As Vekaya glared at him, not entirely sure of why, the classroom, for that was what it was, began to fill quite quickly. A regular human woman - that is to say, not a shamasson - entered. She was older and looked around at the children without allowing her eyes to settle on any of them for long enough to take in anything but, perhaps, an estimate of how many had sat down. A lot.

“We begin!” she cried out with a sudden exclamation that jolted the few still sleepy children into full consciousness, “by crying out to our great god, Civius!”

Vekaya looked around. How did she know what a storeroom was and not know what this was? Other children bowed their heads, more or less in unison.

“Great Civius!” shouted the woman, “We look to you! To you! Our shining brightness in the chasm of evil that is this world! We NEED you to guide our way! We need your protection! We are all of us lost and hopeless without you!”

Vekaya shuddered, resisting the urge to gape at the rest of the class. Were they hearing this? What was she screaming about? The volume and shear emotion that poured through the woman’s voice left Vekaya with even more uncertainty than she had had in the dining hall. Why was this woman screaming like this? Were they actually in grave peril? Was she insane? Why wasn’t anyone reacting in a way matched the fury of the person at the center of the room?

And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. She was finished. She calmly said, “In Civius’ True House, I Serve,” and produced a book, which she began to read.

Vekaya’s eyes bounced around the room, and she tried desperately to find something that approached a reasonable reaction for what had just happened. The other children all murmured, “Ichthis,” back at the woman and pulled out books from beneath the tables where they were sitting. The woman began reading something about pillars and about Civius, and it wasn’t long before Vekaya went from a frightful sort of confusion to a bored one that was punctuated fright whenever the teacher stopped talking. When she did this, she was looking for a student to ask a question. The other children seemed to know the answers - fearfully or proudly, they seemed to at least get close. Vekaya wondered what would happen if the teacher discovered that she knew precisely nothing. She was not eager to find out.

But when the initial fear and stress began ease, she did learn. For Vekaya found that even by the end of her first lesson, she had memorized a few things:

Civius was supposed to be better than people.

He was far, far, far better than people.

They talked about Civius like he was there in the room with them.

They asked Civius for help, even though it was not immediately obvious as to why.

Civius had teachings called Pillars, and…

People were supposed to know what those teachings were.

Anyone who didn’t was a follower of Terre.

Terre was bad.

Terre was about as bad as Civius was good.

Vekaya had no idea what any of this was really about and found it almost as confusingly boring as it was interesting that people were so focused on it.

This went on for, as far as Vekaya was concerned, far too long. She had finished with her blobs of fluffy former string when she realized that the class was ending. The teacher had stopped speaking and was marking a place in her book. Behind Vekaya’s version of that same book, the one that she had been trying to use – with no effect – to help her understand what was going on, she had managed to make some good sound stoppers for her ears. She tried them one at a time in the palm of her hand, and sure enough, the sound was gone from the right. The sound was gone from the left. With both of them in really well, she couldn’t hear anything. When the first teacher left, the children filed out of the classroom, down the hallway and past all of the bright decorations and gilding, up a flight of stairs, and, bearing Vekaya along with them, into another classroom. The children whom she had seen in the first classroom were mostly the same ones here. She was about to run out into the hallway to see if there was some kind of mistake, if perhaps she would, mercifully, not have to listen to that again until she had a better understanding of what was happening. But, she had forgotten that she still had the bits of string in her ears.

By the time that she realized she was being spoken to, she had to explain why she would want to stuff ruined string into her ears. She could not hear the teacher and the shamasson talking to her, but it was obvious what they wanted. And, it was obvious that they had seen that trick before. Her heart quickened as she thought of the bittersweet tea and the nightmares.

“Little Girl,” said the human teacher, her words were loud as they broke the new silence of Vekaya’s formerly mute world. “Do tell us why you had stuffed up your ears so that you could not hear.”

Pulse quickening, she wracked her brain for what to say. The shamasson was about to chime in, and she was sure that she would say whatever they wanted then. The situation was slipping out of her control. She wanted to cry. But, that was when Vekaya learned something about the people in the House of Civius and about herself.

“I wanted to better worship Civius,” was the first thing that came out of her mouth. It seemed like the only way that she could be on the same side as those who had power over her. The teacher and the shamasson exchanged looks. That wasn’t going to be enough.

“I was meditating on his wisdom and his justice,” Vekaya rambled, “but I just kept getting distracted by everything going on around me. If I close my eyes and stuff the string in my ears, I can truly be at peace.”

Her eyes bounced from one face to the other. If the shamasson asked her what the truth was, which she surely would, Vekaya would have no real choice to but to tell the truth. What would she do then? How could she possibly escape that voice? Her fist was clenched. Every muscle in Vekaya’s entire body was tightly wound, waiting to try, somehow, to resist the voice. Would it be enough? From the ball of her fist came a warm stickiness, where several of her nails had dug into her palm so hard that they had broken the skin. The pain radiated out, making its presence known.

“Really Little One?” came the shamasson’s voice. “Civius would not like it if that were an untruth. It would hurt him so badly.”

Vekaya didn’t say anything for a moment. She half expected the truth to float out of her. It didn’t. The pain from her hand. It came ringing through the shamasson’s voice.

“I… I…” Vekaya stammered.

The shamasson’s unblinking face came closer.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You can tell me whatever you need to.”

The pain from her hand was cutting through the haze that surrounded the words.

“I cannot understand why you are asking me,” murmured Vekaya in a voice that sounded, she imagined, like herself in a daze. “Of course, I wanted to be closer to Civius. What other explanation could there be? Icthis.”

And, that was something else that Vekaya learned. The clarity of pain would wash away the fog of a shamasson’s voice like spit in a river. As she walked away from her interview, she smiled to herself. This world was dangerous and frightening, but it could be beaten. There were ways that one could at least think for oneself.

Classes on the Pillars of Civius were hopelessly boring. Within a few days, Vekaya would learn a few of the holy writings that were taught, revered, and worshipped. Many of the Pillars were not only contradictory, but suspiciously only taught a certain way. But from this, Vekaya learned something else.

That particular day, they were studying the Pillar of Sociality. The teacher - not a shamasson - was explaining what could be gleaned from a story of some unfaithful follower of Civius who had questioned his teachings and was killed by a landslide. The story plainly showed that the woman had merely voiced one complaint about her husband’s death in a war against non-believers. That was deserving of being by crushed by rocks? Could the lesson, instead, be related to the fact that it was the tendency of rocks and heavier objects to fall down and that being in the path of rocks that are following their natural course downwards could be dangerous?

“Ma’am,” Vekaya haltingly blurted, “might this be a lesson about the Pillar of Order, as well?”

The teacher looked up at her with grimace.

“Mmm?” she said.

“Well, it seems that if she was crushed by rocks, well, couldn’t that have happened because those rocks fell down on her? I mean, it would seem that if she had been, I don’t know, more orderly, she wouldn’t have been around rocks that were placed so precariously?”

The boy with the blond hair, whom she had learned was named “Nerod,” laughed derisively. He was the kind of boy who would tell a teacher if he didn’t think that you were paying attention or volunteer you for a difficult task. He had learned the teachings. He had learned all about charity, order, civility, sociality, and kindness. And, Nerod had learned how to use those same teachings to make people miserable.

“Precariously?” said the teacher as Nerod stopped laughing, “Who taught you that word? You don’t need to know words like ‘precariously’. Who do you think you are, a scholar at the Misarine Idz?”

“I just thought-” Vekaya started.

“And that,” concluded the teacher, “is the entire problem. Have faith. We are telling you how to think of this. Come here.”

Vekaya stood. The rest of the room was silent, as all of the children knew what was coming next. The teacher instructed Vekaya to hold out her hand which, reluctantly, she did. The teacher then swatted her hand several times with a stick. It didn’t hurt terribly much, but the shock of it caused her to recoil. Who was this woman who was hitting her? Was she missing the fact that if Vekaya’s interpretation was correct, all she was doing was preventing anyone from understanding the truth? Whack after whack of the stick caused something to harden in Vekaya. She was starting to learn from the people in the House of Civius. The truth did not matter to them. Patience, Order, Charity, Sociality - none of them truly mattered to this Civius. He found ways to break his own rules when exacting cruel and unpredictable revenge against his own unwitting creation.

When Vekaya walked back to her seat, she noticed Nerod and his friends sneering at her. It took everything in her not to walk right up to him and knock him out of his seat. With the blood pumping in her ears from the consternation of sudden and unjust punishment, she felt powerful enough to have done it. He wasn’t that much bigger than her. She forced herself to maintain calm. This was a dangerous place. Think of the tea. Remain calm.

Again, and for the rest of the day, things were done by Vekaya. She did not do them. She watched herself eat. She watched herself walk. Shamassons ushered her to a classroom, where other children were reading. Reading was done by her. The teacher asked questions. Sometimes, she could hear herself answering the questions based on what she had read. There were no decisions, only the memory of things done. As unnerving as it was, it was easy. It was so very, very easy. But those things were not Vekaya. That was not who she was. There were moments when she made herself snap her fingers to be sure that she wasn’t in a shamasson stare.

In the classes, they kept talking about Civius. They kept pointing out how wonderful he was. They ended everything with Icthis, which was some sort of praise for him. How did they know that he was a god? Vekaya didn’t ask. She didn’t feel like it. She wanted to, but it wasn’t… it wasn’t... She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

The classes wore on. Vekaya was not even certain how many she had been in at the point where the haze around her started to clear. The other children were singing. It took her a moment to realize that she, too, was singing. Only, she didn’t want to. So she stopped.

Which felt fantastic. It felt like a dream come true. She decided to stop, and she did. No more singing.

One of the other children next to her saw that she had stopped. He looked at her with an air of wonder. She did not know this boy, but his face was one of amazement. You could just stop? He continued singing. His expression eventually changed to one of fear and then panic. The boy’s eyes raced from Vekaya to the page in the song book that contained the lyrics to the song they were singing. Back and forth. Back and forth. His hand touched the book; it pointed vehemently at the words. His eyes pleaded with her.

Was there danger? Why was he looking like that? Surely, there could be no danger in not singing. Surely not. But then again, she thought, sure of what? She didn’t even know where she was outside of “the House of Civius.” What was the harm in singing, for now? The very idea of it was loathsome after she had experienced the joy of not doing it. But, perhaps, it was smarter. She began to mouth the words, again. It was different now, because she had made up her own mind to do it. This wasn’t a song being sung by Vekaya, as she looked on. This was Vekaya singing a song so that she could figure out why the song was being sung in the first place.

The boy’s eyes returned to the page with less concern. He smiled at Vekaya. She did not smile back. She did not want to at that moment.

Vekaya learned some very hard lessons in the House of Civius, but at that moment, she had taken a stand. She was not going to go along with what these people, whoever they were, would say. The haze of the shamasson’s voice might have worn off, but the memory had not. The more that she returned to full control of her faculties, the angrier it made her. She was not about to be anyone’s doll or puppet.

The entire room of children was singing the same words, the same way, at the same time. No one was out of place. No one was doing anything differently. Could they remember who they were? Did they know anything outside of the House of Civius? What was out there? Why were they all where they were? Where was that?

The very moment that she began to ask those questions, Vekaya realized that the answers were not in the House of Civius. They were outside of it. And she was going to find those answers. She chose to.