Chapter Text
Pain. That was all he remembered.
Burning, searing pain. Behind his eyes, through the tips of his fingers. A pounding headache like no other.
A green light. Pulsing, unnatural. Wrong.
Questions. So many questions, too many to possibly answer, in words that sound so strange.
Useless. He knew that feeling well. Those around him thought him useless, he could not give them what they wanted.
…did he even want to?
And then – it was over.
All of it, in a blink, over.
Then, warmth. And a voice.
Shh, my child.
You’re safe.
I will keep you safe.
Let us start over.
But over the years, even these few memories would fade. They would come back in flashes and strong emotions, but only ever in the safety of dreams, quickly forgotten in the harsh light of the waking world. Because the story does not start with waking up from a dream, but of being found.
The young boy came to himself laying on a coarse grainy substance that he couldn’t identify. He took in deep breaths of air that seemed so strange to him and blinked away a crustiness that clung to his eyelashes. The strange coming and going feeling by his legs, he soon realized, came from waves of water washing up to his waist before receding, again and again.
It took him a moment to realize he had no idea where he was.
He scooted up away from the waves, squinted up at the sky, though he did not know why. The sun was high and something in him told him that meant something, but…
He had no idea what.
Then, a gasp.
He turned his head to see a large, large man with an even larger stick staring at him. Shock, the boy knew that much. The man was shocked.
And quickly running over to him, scaring the boy into scooting away from the man as he approached.
Noting his apprehension, the man went to one knee. “Child, are you all right?”
Was he? The boy didn’t feel hurt, but something about this felt deeply, deeply wrong.
“Do you understand me?” The man asked slower. “You look Metkayina, but I suppose you could be from farther north. But I don’t believe the dialects that diff-”
“I understand you,” the boy said. His throat felt dry, scratchy. Like he had not spoken in a very long time.
However he spoke, though, clearly caught the man off-guard, but he tried to hide it. “That’s good. Give me one moment.”
The man stood, cupped one hand around his mouth before he yelled to a figure further down on the beach, “Roxto get Tonowari!”
“Why?”
At that, the man groaned. “Roxto! Go get Tonowari! I found something important!”
“But I’m looking at shells!” The figure whined.
“This child,” the man muttered under his breath, before saying louder, “Get. Tonowari. Now, Roxto!”
“Who is Tonowari?” The boy asked hesitantly as the figure down the beach turn and ran towards some strange structures even further away.
The man knelt down by the boy once again, “He is our Olo’eyktan. I suppose you really are not Metkayina if you do not know of him.” Then, he hesitated, “Then, again, you look young. Very young. How old are you, child? Are you from the sailors?”
The child blinked. He did not know that last word the man said. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know how old you are or you do not know if you are from the sailors?” The man repeated. Then chuckled self-consciously, “I suppose I should ask you one at a time, I apologize.”
“I don’t know either,” the boy said. He should, though, he knew that much.
The man looked alarmed at his answer, confirming the boy’s suspicions that these were answers he should know. “Do you know your name?”
The boy almost said he didn’t, again, except- “I…I think so?” The man nodded, encouraging him to continue. “I think I am called Spider.”
The man recoiled slightly, scrunching his nose. “Is that a name?”
Well, now the boy really wasn’t sure. “Uh…maybe?”
“It almost sounds English,” the man said, though mostly to himself. “Do your people run into Sky People often? Did they, before?”
The boy just blinked. He knew the word for the sky. He knew the word for people. But together? He had a very strange image of the man in front of him with large wings. And he didn’t know what the man meant by “before.”
Then, suddenly, the man was grabbing his hand. The boy yanked it away with a violent hiss, holding his hand to his chest and scurrying farther away.
“I am sorry, I am sorry,” the man apologized. “I was just checking something.”
“What?” The boy asked, keeping his distance.
“You have three fingers and a thumb, I needed to be sure that was all you had,” the man said. “Our…enemies have a fourth finger. They can be very tricky to spot, though I have only seen them in mimics of the forest people.”
The boy could not make much of what the man was saying at all, though he had a strange flash of a young boy with hands like that. Who laughed and pulled pranks, but as soon as the boy tried to latch onto the memory, it vanished. He forgot about it as soon as it came and, suddenly, another man was approaching.
“Ro’un, why is it always you, my friend, that makes the most interesting finds?” This new man was also large, but not in height like the first man, apparently named Ro’un. He was broader in the shoulders and muscular in a way that made the boy feel even smaller.
“It is not on purpose, I assure you,” Ro’un said. “Pull up some sand. I was just accidentally terrifying the young boy.”
“And why were you doing that, my foolish friend?’ The new man asked, with a sterner tone and a cutting expression, even as he knelt down next to the other man.
“I was confirming that he was Na’vi,” Ro’un explained. “I grabbed his hand and I scared him. Though I am very, very sorry.” He aimed this last phrase back at the boy, who just glared slightly and held his hand closer to his chest.
“He is far too young to be anything but,” the other man said. “Disregarding the fact that we are still years away before we must fear that sort of thing.” He turned his attention on the boy, “My name is Tonowari, Olo’eyktan of the Metkayina. May I ask what you are called?”
“…Spider?” The boy tried again.
Tonowari rolled his lips together, glancing to Ro’un who just shrugged.
“He doesn’t seem to remember anything,” Ro’un said. “Not his age, his people. That’s all he gave me for a name. Is it English?”
“It may be, but I am not sure,” Tonowari admitted. “If it is anything, it is likely a nickname. The sailors go by those more often than their true ones, especially the little ones.” Tonowari considered the boy once again, “Does your head hurt?”
Now that he mentioned it, the boy did feel a strange throbbing in his head. Actually, it hurt quite a lot. He nodded slowly.
Then, suddenly, he felt as his eyes filled with tears as some strange, large emotion filled his chest. He went to rub at his eyes, accidentally letting out an involuntary sob as he did.
“Oh, little one.” Tonowari’s voice was soft and sad. He approached, slowly at first, and something in the boy told him to hold out his arms to the man as the tears came faster. He began fully sobbing as Tonowari picked him up, strong arms holding him close to his chest as the boy laid on the man’s large chest. “Shh. Shh, you’re safe. We will take you to our village now. You are safe.”
“He is asleep,” Tonowari whispered to Ro’un as they drew closer to the village.
“Not surprising.” Ro’un looked at the small frame in Tonowari’s arms. “I cannot think of anyway for him to appear on the beach that would not have some horrible ordeal preceding it.”
There was something about the way Ro’un said that made Tonowari paused. “Speak your mind. What troubles you?”
“How did he end up here?” Ro’un asked. “That beach is protected by the reef. It is like he materialized out of the air.”
That…
Was a good point.
“And all the sailing pods are south this time of year,” Ro’un continued. “He would have to have traveled quite far.”
“Perhaps his family split from the pod for some reason.”
“Then where are they?” Ro’un asked. “Where is the wreckage of the ship? Where was the storm that could drown an entire family, except for a young boy?”
“If he fell off the boat-”
“Then one of his family’s ilus would have caught him,” Ro’un said. “I have known not one sailing family, especially ones with small children, who have not worked with their ilus for emergencies such as that. I have watched an ilu follow a swimming child for hours as the child got on and off the boat and back and forth from the shore. None of this makes any sense.”
“He is of the sea,” was all Tonowari could say. “Look at his skin. Look at his tail, the webbing of his toes. I do not know what has happened, but he is clearly ours.”
“That is not the question,” Ro’un said. “The question is how. And it is one your mate will demand an answer to.”
Another excellent point.
“Fortunately of the three of us, my mate is the smartest,” Tonowari said. “Perhaps she will see an answer that we do not.”
A large crowd had gathered by the time they stepped onto the netted walkways of the village. They stared at the small child in Tonowari’s arms as he made his way to his family’s pod, where Ronal waited alone.
“Where are our children?” Tonowari asked as he entered the pod, Ro’un still following.
“I sent them to be with my mother shortly after you left,” Ronal said, her eyes fixated on the boy in his arms. “Who is this?”
“He called himself Spider,” Ro’un said as Tonowari rolled out the children’s sleeping mat, still young enough for them to share. Gently, he placed the young boy on it, his heart hurting just slightly as the boy clung to him even in sleep.
“Shh,” Tonowari soothed as the boy whined when Tonowari broke the contact. He smoothed back his hair and the boy quickly fell back into deeper sleep.
Ronal knelt by the top of the boy’s head, considering him with a critical eye. “I have never heard of a name like that.”
“Maybe a nickname,” Tonowari suggested.
Ronal did not seem to agree, even as she said, “Perhaps. But this child cannot be of the sailors.”
Well, there went that theory. Tonowari asked, “Why not?”
“His ears are not pierced,” Ronal said. “He’s too young for tattoos and jewelry could have been lost in the incident that led to him washing up on the beach, but the sailors pierce their children’s ears on their name day.”
The Metkayina were a large clan made up of many different villages and sailing pods. If he did not come from a pod…
But there had been no storms. They were a good deal into winter, far past when violent storms usually formed, the kinds that wrecked villages and swept individuals out to sea. Besides, Eywa gave plenty of warning when those brewed and Tonowari would have known by now if a village was hit hard enough to lose a child in this manner.
“He remembers nothing?” Ronal asked.
Tonowari shook his head, “Nothing at all, besides the strange name.”
The boy looked so small laying there on the bed. Younger than Aonung, Tonowari decided from looking at him. Aonung had finished his fifth cycle of seasons that past Spring. This young boy looked to have maybe completed four. The idea that he was alone in the world at such as young age tugged at Tonowari unpleasantly.
“Ro’un, leave us, please,” Ronal said suddenly with the full authority of the Tsahik in her voice.
Ro’un bowed his head, “Yes, Tsahik,” then quickly took his leave.
Before Tonowari could ask why she had Ro’un leave, Ronal was bent over the boy, her hands gently on both sides of his head and her lips close to his forehead, whispering words Tonowari could not hear. As she sat up, Tonowari saw tears in her eyes as her thumbs stroked gently at the sleeping boy’s temples.
“Ma Ronal,” Tonowari’s voice filled with alarm. “What is going on?”
“He is ours, by Eywa,” Ronal all but whispered. With one hand she moved the boy’s arm, the one closest to Tonowari, to reveal the pale inside. “Look.”
There, high on the inner of the boy’s bicep, hidden from Tonowari’s view, but not Ronal’s, was a strange birthmark. A mark in the exact shape and location of his and Ronal’s familial tattoo, the one they received upon the birth of their first son and a tattoo that any adopted children would take on as a show of the spiritual connection. Tonowari stared in shock.
This happened in spirit songs and old tales. Even in the stories, the children still belonged to others initially, and the elders told them as a way of reminding the people of the importance of children in the eyes of Eywa. The role of parents to cherish and guide, the role of children to learn and make errors with the certainty that their parents would love them even in their failures.
“Eywa does not want us to know where he comes from,” Tonowari said, the realization hitting him suddenly.
“She does not,” Ronal agreed. “It is not our job to question why.”
The boy slept through the parade of elders that came into the pod to confirm the mark with their own eyes. Once the last elder agreed, they addressed the village, gathered right outside the pod, Tonowari and Ronal watching from inside, Tonowari holding Tsireya while Aonung stood with Ronal’s arm around his shoulders. Their grandmother brought them with her when it was her time to confirm the mark and they seemed to take the understanding that they had a new brother in stride.
When Tarum, the oldest man in the village, announced the child’s place amongst the chief’s family, whispers broke out that Tonowari expected. He addressed the people after Tarum. Spoke of Eywa’s blessing, not only on his own family, but to the village. For Eywa to give them this child, she clearly approved of them and their ways.
Then, Tonowari added what he knew his people would not like. “I ask that we remain quiet about this child. About how he came to be amongst us. He belongs to myself and my mate. His past does not matter.”
The censure he expected, though, did not come, but rather nods and murmurs of agreement. A few of the warriors stopped by after to see who the people were quickly referring to as the miracle child.
“What are we gonna call him?” Aonung asked as one warrior knelt by the boy’s side to pray.
Tonowari looked to his mate.
“He said his name was Spider,” Ronal said. “It may be the name Eywa gave him while she brought him to us.”
That could be one explanation for the strangeness of the name.
“Spider?” Aonung looked quite unimpressed as his eyes moved from his mother to his new brother.
Tsireya, from where she rested her head on Tonowari’s shoulder, just said, “I like it.”
“You also like tangaroot,” was Aonung’s response. “I’ll just give him a nickname later.”
Ronal and Tonowari shared a familiar fond glance over Aonung’s head. They sent him and Tsireya back to their grandmother’s as the last warrior left.
“He’s still sleeping,” Tonowari said, kneeling once more at Spider’s side.
Ronal chuckled quietly. “He’s tired, my love.”
“How do we explain this to him? He will be so scared.” Then, “what if he remembers his people when he wakes?”
“If he does,” Ronal did not sound at all worried that such a thing might happen, though, “I doubt they will be pleasant memories.”
“He looks healthy,” Tonowari said. He studied Spider’s small body. “No scars.”
“There are many ways to mistreat a child that would leave no visible marks.” Ronal stroked Spider’s hair once more. “We will know more when he wakes.”
There was a part of Tonowari that wondered if they would, though. After all, how affected can you be by something you don’t remember?