Blood and Branches
Days in the woods were flying by, and Aru was enjoying every bit of her time there. After extensive hours of classes which became more and more intense every day, just relaxing among the trees, observing nature, collecting flowers, and savoring the idea of freedom was priceless. There were more beautiful trees inside the walls—hand-picked, carefully planted flowers, perfectly manicured lawns… But Aru liked it better here, and she knew why. She was tasting freedom here. She picked wild berries, scratching her hands in the process. She gathered wildflowers of every color and braided them into coronets for herself. She examined every anthill, every bird nest, every tadpole with excitement and amusement, as if becoming one with them. She tried to feel what it was like to be an ant carrying food three times its size, or a baby bird opening its tiny beak for its mother. She adored nature.
When she was sure no one was watching, she hugged the trees. Feeling their rough bark scratching her palms and biting at her bare arms. Feeling as if she were becoming one. As if they came from the same source and were heading to the same destination.
Sometimes, she felt so uplifted by her experiences in nature that she imagined it was speaking to her. Like a hum chanting an old song, it spoke to Aru’s soul. And Aru understood. She understood the soil waiting for rain, the leaves counting down the days until they would fall. A tree stretching its arms toward the sky like a long yawn after sleep. Pale green sprouts—fragile, but curious, just like Aru.
Aru understood nature. Nun Tuulay always said that to be a good shaman, one must become one with nature. And maybe that’s why “The Telling by the Nature” was Aru’s favorite lesson. Tuulay taught them to observe nature and to understand what it was trying to tell them about the near future —and even the distant one.
She taught how to read the signs of upcoming rain, snow, or storms. How to foresee a fruitful season for farmers. What rituals would please the earth souls. What it meant when ants climbed their hills from the south—which gods were displeased. Or how ancient trees communicated with one another to spread news across their kin on earth.
These were all Tuulay’s teachings.
Aru was searching for a good branch that day to carve a small figurine for Manday. It was taking a while to find one, because she was looking for an already fallen branch.
Unlike the soldier squad, shamans could not cut a branch off a tree just to carve something. They were forbidden to harm nature for such a small reason.
If they had to hurt a tree, it had to be for a good reason—and they were always expected to ask permission first, explaining to the tree why they needed that branch.
And Aru didn’t believe that carving a figurine was a worthy enough reason to cut a limb. She shuddered at the thought of cutting one.
She went deeper into the woods. The trees were growing closer together, their branches brushing against each other like fingers touching, above her head.
A gust of wind blew and cupped Aru’s cheek, as if turning her head toward a specific direction.
It wasn’t playful, nor joyous as usual—it was tense and demanding. Aru knew she needed to go that way.
She didn’t want to. She knew she wouldn’t find anything pleasant this time. But she felt it in her bones.
Tuulay always warned them: if you turn away from the signs and refuse their guidance, they might abandon you altogether.
She gripped the hilt of her small carving knife tighter, until her knuckles turned white. She tucked it into her belt and stepped into the woods with quiet resolve.
The trees twisted into one another, as if hugging each other in fear.
She didn’t like this feeling. The woods were disturbed. The forest souls were uneasy.
The wind howled with fury.
Then she heard the voices. Voices of the boys—especially the one she disliked most, Kumus.
She stopped for a heartbeat, considering turning back.
The wind licked her cheek again, urgently. She understood that she needed to keep going.
She reached them in a minute or two. They were gathered in a circle around something.
They were excitedly talking to each other as they examined whatever the thing was.
Aru yelled at them:
“Hey! What are you doing?”
The boys’ heads turned to look for the source of the voice.
The younger ones wrinkled their faces in dislike, the older ones beamed curiously.
But they didn’t break the wall they had built by clustering together.
She heard that boyish voice again:
“Let her come near, to see what I managed!” he ordered the others .
They broke into two groups, opening a way for her to reach the center.
She tentatively walked through the openingand saw what had disturbed the forest—what had disturbed her soul from very deep, too.
A deer—no, a fawn—was lying in the center of the boys’ circle.
Kumus was standing tall next to it, holding a bow, looking proudly at the other boys.
An arrow was plunged into its beautiful, delicate neck; blood was dripping, pooling beneath it.
One of its legs was kicking the air as if still trying to run away.
In its beautiful eyes, sadness and disappointment were slowly fading.
A small squeak was coming out of its pierced throat.
It was drowning in its own blood. Painfully and slowly, it was dying.
Aru froze. Couldn’t think, couldn’t speak for a moment.
She fixed her eyes on its big brown eyes.
She felt something on her face—a wetness—dripping from her cheeks to her toes.
She touched her face and looked at her fingers as if trying to understand the source of it.
Kumus laughed.
“I was thinking you were a tough one, Aru. But you’re sensitive and whiny like all the other girls, aren’t you?”
Aru lifted her gaze and met Kumus’s watery blue eyes.
Aru felt like she could have squeezed his spineless neck and held it until the light deserted those disgusting eyes—until his worthless life ended.
A strong wind blew behind her as if encouraging her.
The raven cawed from somewhere.
Like she had awoken from a nightmare, she moved suddenly and quickly.
She pulled the knife she had placed under her belt and lunged toward Kumus.
Kumus’s smart smirk disappeared when he felt the cold steel pressed to his neck.
“What are you doing?”
Aru didn’t answer—couldn’t.
She was feeling a burning rage in her stomach, making its way up to her throat.
She felt like if she opened her mouth, fire would come out instead of breath.
She sensed movement behind her.
The boys were fidgeting, as if trying to understand whether they needed to interfere.
The raven cawed again, and then she heard the small squeak of the fawn—and instantly understood what to do.
Why she had been called by the forest.
Not to take this worthless soul—but to take another one.
To end this misery.
She pulled back her knife from his throat, leaving a small bloodstain behind.
Then she turned to the fawn and kneeled before it.
She kept crying and crying, wiping her knife onto her white skirt because Kumus’s disgusting blood was smeared on it.
She should have pushed it hard enough to cut a small line on his throat.
She didn’t want his worthless blood on this knife to dishonor it.
She caressed its delicate neck, felt the crazily beating carotid artery under her palm—as they had been taught in anatomy lessons.
She said,
“I am sorry, I am sorry. I am sorry that you had to lose your precious life in this coward’s hands. I will give you peace. Please forgive me, I couldn’t prevent this from happening.”
She wanted to say many more things, ask forgiveness for hours—days.
But she had to end its suffering as soon as she could.
She thought about her father.
He always hunted just enough to keep his family alive—only males and fully grown ones.
And he always finished their lives with one clean strike, to prevent them from suffering.
An honorable hunter would do that.
An honorable man.
Not Kumus.
So she took a deep breath and plunged her knife into its artery with one determined stroke.
She cut its throat, and in seconds, the light of life left its eyes permanently.
She closed its eyes gently, caressing its eyelids.
She dipped her index and middle fingers into the blood pool beneath the little fawn.
Now, no one dared to make a sound.
Not even Kumus.
She lifted her fingers and marked her forehead with the blood, drawing a five-pointed star.
She yelled back to the boys:
“Leave! Now!”
The boys understood the assignment.
They shifted and started to move back inside the forest.
Kumus hesitated for a moment, as if wanting to say something, but then gave up and followed the other boys.
Aru was preparing to make a crossing ceremony.
They had been trained to do this kind of thing.
But of course, crossing ceremonies were for people—not for deer.
If Manday ever heard it, she would tear up.
Temene would lose her mind.
Aru didn’t care.
Aru picked a small stick from the ground.
She drew a large circle around the deer.
She marked the directions.
She knew that she wouldn’t be able to draw a pentacle under the fawn — that’s why she had drawn it on her forehead with the fawn’s blood in the first place.
Then she stepped into the center of the circle.
She closed her eyes and started chanting the old words.
"Oh holy gods of after life, please hear me
Take this soul to your side and believe me
I witnessed and I am vouching for it
That this soul is worthy and solid
Accept my offer and my prayer to you
Take this soul as granted, and let me show you
I will guide it through to the gates
Let it never fear what faith awaits"
Aru started humming the melody they used for intercrossing the worlds.
It was always played with kam drums, and it was really hard to hum, so she started vocalizing it with meaningless words, but managed to keep the rhythm as the kams did.
She stopped thinking, let her body sway with the rhythm, and let herself go in that emotion—in trance, until she found the peace and could bring it to this little fawn.
Suddenly, but not alarmingly, visions started to come.
It was different from the lessons.
It was her first time knocking on the doors of the upper realms (knocking the upper realms doors → knocking on the doors of the upper realms).
She was trying to make them take an animal’s soul to the heaven.
She didn’t even know if it was possible.
But she cried out with all her might, to make her voice heard by any of the gods.
She cried, “Please! Any of you, please… Take her and give her peace.”
A vision of a hand, mighty and big, reached to the fawn.
Then arms lifted the fawn onto its legs.
She was alive now. She looked again with those big brown eyes.
But there was no pain, no agony in those eyes—just peace.
The man was as big as a tree, his back was turned to Aru.
It was misty, and Aru couldn’t see the details.
It was like looking through a frosted glass.
He took the fawn with him and started walking with it side by side.
Then, just for a split second, he turned and looked back.
A pair of eyes, as if penetrating through that frosted glass, shone brightly and vibrantly.
A pair of amber eyes, burning with mystery and curiosity — then disappeared as it came.
Aru fell down on her knees and collapsed to the ground.
She lay there in fetal position, as the fawn’s brittle body was cold near her.
She cried and cried, until nothing was left inside her.
She cried for her lost family, cried for the childhood that was stolen from her.
Cried for being so lonely and cried for not being strong enough to prevent this from happening.
Cried for the fawn and its abruptly ended life.
Her ceremonial paint melted away with her tears.
She didn’t care if she had to be whipped for it.
She cried until no tears were left.
When Aru finally managed to stand, the sun was about to sink behind the far horizon.
She knew that she had made a decision:
She would be the strongest shaman that history has ever seen—
and never let the innocents suffer again.
Never.