Despite his new understanding of his Blush, Jethran still had no direction, no destination. All he could do was keep moving forward. As he wandered, he saw something that didn't belong. It looked like smoke. It carried the scent of mud or possibly clay. It promised warmth. It promised shelter. It promised people. He carried a hope that this could be a place of refuge. He changed his direction. A vague remembrance of the loneliness that had filled his life bubbled up.
He looked up and noticed, at the edge of the wood, a small group of people were waiting for him. They were dressed in simple gray tunics, their hands and forearms stained with the same gray clay, their faces etched with a solemn pity that felt disturbingly calm.
“You must have traveled a great distance,” one of them, an elder with kind, tired eyes, said. “You look weary and lost. Is it because of your brokenness that you wander? Is it because you are flawed?”
Jethran stared at them curiously, “Who … who are you?"
“I am Elderhere Evlewt of the Menders,” the elder said, his voice a balm of grandfatherly warmth. “We are here to help. We, too, were once broken by the world. We know the pain you carry. We know the desire to be rid of it.”
His words were a lifeline. Help. The word was a cool hand on a fevered brow. He was so tired of running, so tired of fighting.
They led him into their village, a place of stark, unnerving order. The air smelled clean and dry. He noticed the faint scent of clay and wood smoke from tall kilns that rose like chimneys against the gray sky. The huts were identical, formed from smooth, rounded clay, and the paths between them were swept clean of any stray leaves. Villagers moved with a quiet, purposeful efficiency, their hands constantly shaping, smoothing, and molding small gray pots and figures.
They took him to a long workshop at the center of the village. The walls were lined with shelves holding row upon row of unfired clay vessels, each one identical, perfect, and gray. In the center of the room, a large potter’s wheel stood silent, and next to it, a long, smooth stone table, cool and waiting.
“You are broken, my son and your pieces no longer fit together,” the elderhere said gently, his voice a steady, reasonable anchor.
“I am,” Jethran nodded, his voice a raw whisper. “I don't think I will ever be whole.”
“When a vessel is made from impure clay, it cracks in the kiln. It cannot be made whole,” the elder corrected. “Its only purpose is to be ground back into dust. The only way to create a perfect vessel is to first purify the clay.”
It made a kind of terrifying sense. In his exhausted state, the idea of being purified, of being remade into something strong and useful, was seductive. Evlewt gestured to the colors that swirled on Jethran’s cheeks.
“Your spirit is beautiful clay, child, but it is riddled with impurities. Inclusions. These colors … They are a weakness in the vessel. They are the points where you will crack under the pressure of this life. We can remove them. We can knead your spirit, work out the air bubbles of your doubt and fear, and carve away the stubborn flaws. We can make you a perfect vessel, strong enough to hold the emptiness that brings peace.”
“You can?” Jethran was stunned, “That would be so wonderful. Then I could return home.”
Two other Menders approached, their movements gentle, their faces filled with deep compassion. They smiled at Jethran as if he were a beloved son about to receive a magnificent gift.
“Let us help you take the first step,” the elder said, his hand on Jethran’s shoulder, guiding him toward the clean, stone table. “Surrender the flaw. We will make you whole.”
“Yes,” Jethran heard himself whisper, the word emerging from a place of profound exhaustion. “Please.”
He let them guide him to the table. They laid him down, their touch firm but not unkind. He registered the clean smell of the clay, the murmur of their calm, reassuring voices, whispering words like “purity” and “wholeness” and “release” like a lullaby.
Other villagers gathered, forming a silent, smiling circle, hands clasped, eyes closed in serene prayer. He imagined it must be some sort of massage therapy or extreme meditation. He wasn't sure what their process would be, but he was willing to try anything. He knew how good the table felt to lay against, how exhausted he was.
Then one of them placed a cloth over his mouth. As he breathed, the area around him began to darken and he felt as if he was drifting away. He saw the elder select a fine, sharp cutting wire from a neat row of potter’s tools on a small tray.
He saw him pull it taut between two smooth wooden handles, the wire so thin it was nearly invisible in the dim light. He could barely keep his eyes open. He opened his mouth to ask the elder what he was doing with the wire, but his eyes closed, and then, nothing.
***
He awoke slowly, drifting up from a black, dreamless depth. The first thing he registered was the cold. A damp chill seeped into him from the gray moss he was lying on. He had been moved from the stone table, placed outside. The second thing was the pain: a deep, throbbing ache that pulsed in time with his heartbeat, radiating from his left side. His head pounded. A thick, metallic taste coated his tongue.
He lay still, piecing together the fractured memories. The steam. The looping voices. The kind, tired eyes. The glint of the wire.
He pushed himself up, his movements sluggish and heavy. The world felt wrong. His body felt wrong, strangely off-balance. He felt an itch on the back of his left hand. He moved his right hand to scratch it, but his fingers met only empty air. Confused, he tried again, his fingertips brushing against the rough, unfamiliar texture of tightly wrapped bandages. The bandages were gray but we're soaked through with a deep wet, shade of purple.
He stared at the wrapped stump where his left hand should be. He traced the line where his wrist would have met his palm.
The quiet of the forest was absolute. There was no sound but the frantic, ragged rasp of his breathing. He brought the stump closer, his mind refusing to connect the sensory input with reality. The bandages smelled of iron and something else, something antiseptic and clean. He reached out with his right hand, his fingers trembling, and gently touched the end of the stump.
It was real.
The rough fabric, the damp stickiness of the plum hued substance. It was blood. His blood. It wasn't gray. He finally registered the undeniable, horrifying finality of it.
That is when the scream began. It started as a low, guttural moan, a sound of pure disbelief. It built, tearing through him until it erupted from his mouth, a raw, animal cry of untempered horror that shattered the indifferent silence. It was the sound of a universe breaking.
The echo died, leaving a ringing, absolute silence in its wake. He lay there, trembling, the world reduced to the pulsing agony in his arm.
Then, he heard the soft crunch of footsteps on the clean-swept path. Evlewt appeared, his face a mask of serene compassion. He was not angry. He was not surprised. He simply nodded, as if this, too, were part of the process.
“The pain is the impurity leaving the clay,” the hereman said, his voice still a grandfatherly balm. “It is the sound of the flaw releasing its hold. Come, child. Let me show you what it means to be whole.”
He helped Jethran to his feet, the world tilting precariously. His body felt alien to him, a stranger’s form he was forced to inhabit. The elder led him on a slow, deliberate tour of the village, his hand a steady, firm presence on Jethran’s shoulder.
“We are all broken, child,” Evlewt explained gently. “The world is a careless hand, and it drops us all. We crack. We shatter. But we believe that the only way to be made new is to surrender the broken pieces.”
At first, Jethran nodded. The word broken echoed the accusations he had heard his entire life. It was a weight.
They stopped before a wem sitting on a small stool, meticulously sanding a gray clay pot. She looked up and smiled, a sweet, placid expression. When she spoke, her voice was a breathy, almost inaudible whisper.
“It is a beautiful day for mending,” she breathed.
“This is Gemma,” Evlewt said. “Her voice was once too loud. She loved to sing, you see. A grotesque passion. Her songs were a flaw, a crack in the vessel of her spirit. So, she surrendered her voice. Now, she only whispers. She is at peace.”
Grotesque. He felt a prickling sensation at the assault of the word.
They continued down the path, stopping before a hereman seated on a lilac bench, his hands methodically weaving a gray basket. He nodded to them, his face a picture of serene contentment. He had no feet.
"This is Frillem," Evlewt explained. "He was cursed with an incessant necessity to dance. He made others feeling embarrassed because they couldn't dance as well as he could. We helped him find it the ability to remain still."
Necessity. Jethran had grown to hate that word. His heart broke when he realized that these people had cut off this hereman's feet because he was a better dancer than they were
Finally, they returned to the center of the village. The elder turned to face him, his kind, tired eyes seeming to look right through him. It was only then that Jethran saw it. The elder’s eyes were not just kind. They were vacant. Two milky, gray orbs, devoid of sight.
“And I, child,” Evlewt shared, his voice soft and confessional, “I was disgusting. I saw too much. I saw visions of a better world, a world full with color and light and chaos. It was a beautiful, terrible flaw. It kept me from finding peace in the world as it is. So I surrendered my sight. Now, I see only what is real. And I am at peace.”
Disgusting. The word landed, and as echoes of everything he had been told his entire life.
Jethran closed his eyes. The sight of everything he had just witnessed left him feeling as if they were freezing. He felt as if he had kept them open too long. He needed to stop seeing.
The elderhere reached out and placed a hand on Jethran’s cheek. “And you, child, with your hideous flaw, the colors on your face … you, too, can find this peace.”
Hideous. The word was the final blow. Jethran felt a jolt, as if lightning had struck him, and he knew, with a certainty that defied logic, that this was wrong.
Something inside him snapped. The fog of his exhaustion, the haze of their calm, reasonable voices, it all blew away. He took a step back, pulling away from the elder’s touch.
“No,” he said, his voice low with a force he didn’t know he possessed. “You are not whole. You are empty.”
He looked at Gemma. “If you were tired of singing alone,” he said, his voice growing stronger; “you should have formed a choir.”
His eyes turned to Frillem. "And you could have danced to the music of her choir. Instead of letting people don't possess your talents remove your feet!"
And finally, he looked at Evlewt, at the kind, blind face that was suddenly the most terrifying thing he had ever seen.
“And you,” he said, his voice ringing with righteous fury; “if you saw a better world, you should have built it. Not cut out your own eyes!”
He held up his bandaged arm. His pain was a sharp, focused point. He looked at the space where his hand once was, and found himself aching, not only the ache of his arm but the ache having lost a part of himself.
"As for me," his voice cracked but resolute, “I am not broken. I'm wounded. There's a world of difference between those two things.”
Jethran continued, “Wounded by people who are so afraid of a little color that they would rather tear themselves apart than change what they see. I'm disconnected now because a portion of me has been stolen. But broken? No, I'm not broken. I'm beautiful."
He looked up at the village as the people simply stood there in shock. They didn't know what to think he had just told them. Evlewt gestured over to one of the other villagers, who scurried off into the clay hut where Jethran had been when he first arrived. She returned with his satchel, handing it to the elder.
"You must leave now." The elder said firmly. "You do not understand our ways and because of that you are a threat to the lives that we have made for ourselves."
Jethran understood fully. He took his satchel and walked out of the village. As he stepped out of the village, he reached up with his left hand to brush his hair out of his face. A motion that he had done countless times throughout his life. But this time, he felt a dull pain as he slightly banged the wound against his forehead. He knew then he would have to adjust to an entirely new way of living.