The rice was still on the ground.
The grains were dull white. Cold already. Mixed with tiny pebbles and the market dust trampled all day. A pinch of salt sat on top, clumped from the damp. The coconut shell Auntie Darmi had used still carried the smell of leftover spoiled vegetables.
Raka Wulung stared at it.
From a handspan away, the smell of the rice stung his nose more sharply than the incense in his room had back then. His stomach growled again. A humiliating sound. A sound he had never heard from his own body because he had always eaten before he was hungry.
Auntie Darmi was still standing in front of the stall. The little torch in her hand swayed in the rice-field wind. Her face was hard, but her chin trembled.
“Take it,” she said again. “Or let the rats trample it. Makes no difference.”
Raka wanted to say, I’m Lord Raka. I don’t eat off the ground. Even the dogs in my house eat from stone bowls.
But his tongue was numb. His throat was as dry as the town square had been that afternoon.
He looked at Auntie Darmi’s hands. Hands he had once ordered to wash his feet after they got muddy. Now those hands gripped the torch tightly, the veins standing out. Raka read the movement. Raised shoulders, short breaths. The woman was afraid. Afraid of what she was doing herself. Afraid the other villagers would curse her for feeding a criminal’s son.
“Why... why did you throw it on the ground?” Raka finally asked. His voice was soft. There was no shouting left in it.
Auntie Darmi gave a short, bitter laugh.
“Because once, when my son spilled the water he’d used to wash your feet, you made him lick the floor of the pavilion. Remember? He was eight years old. You said it would teach him respect. Now you learn, Lord Raka.”
Raka remembered. He remembered because it had seemed funny at the time. The little boy had cried, and Raka had laughed with Karno.
Heat rose into his face. Not the heat of the sun. Something deeper.
Auntie Darmi turned away. She did not wait for an answer. Her steps were quick, as if afraid she would regret it.
That left Raka and the rice on the ground.
The market wind blew, carrying the smell of garbage and dried horse dung. A large rat emerged from beneath the stall and sniffed.
Raka moved faster than the rat.
He snatched up the coconut shell with both hands. Hands that had once held nothing but a kris in an ivory scabbard were now covered in scrapes and dust. He did not pick up the rice the way a person ate. He scooped it up. His fingers trembled. Rice grains mixed with pebbles went into his mouth. The clumped salt tasted bitter. The pebbles scraped against his teeth.
He chewed hard. Swallowed. Choked. Coughed. Then scooped up more. Faster. As though if he stopped, his pride would return and forbid him.
He ate every last bit. Until the coconut shell was clean. Until his tongue could taste the earth.
His empty stomach accepted it with a sharp ache. Not fullness. It had only stopped growling.
He slumped against a post beneath the stall. His breathing was shallow. Tears came without being summoned. Not loud sobs. Just water running through the dust on his cheeks.
Above him, Majapahit’s sky was starless. Thick with clouds. The beginning of the famine season.
His bare feet throbbed. The blisters that had only been red that afternoon had now burst. Clear fluid mixed with blood seeped out. Every time he moved his toes, the pain felt like being sliced with a bamboo sliver. His torn blue silk cloth was no longer blue. It was brown with mud and sweat. Its sour smell was his own. The same smell he had once despised on farmers.
He needed a drink.
He dragged himself to the public well at the far end of the market. Once, he had forbidden farmers from the lower hamlet to use that well because, in his opinion, its water was for noblemen’s horses.
The wooden bucket was still there. He pulled it up. His hands were slippery. The bucket fell back with a loud thud.
A young woman drawing water for her mother saw him and immediately hauled her own bucket up faster. She left without looking back.
Raka tried again. This time he managed to draw up the water. He did not use a dipper. He plunged his face straight into the bucket. Cold water flooded his nose, eyes, and mouth. He drank like a buffalo. Water dripped onto his already filthy silk clothes.
His reflection in the rippling surface of the well made him stop.
That face was not his face. His hair was tangled with straw. His cheeks were hollow and dirty. His lips were cracked. The faded headband Auntie Nah had given him sat crookedly.
He wiped his face with his hand. The reflection moved with him, blurred.
“Raka?”
It was Kertra’s voice.
Kertra stood behind him with a little torch. In his hands were a scrap of cloth and an earthenware jug.
Raka quickly wiped his face. He tried to sit up straight, like Lord Raka taking a rest, not a thirsty ragged vagrant.
“What do you want now?” Raka said. He tried to make his voice harsh again. “Want to watch me drink like this? Are you satisfied?”
Kertra did not answer right away. He looked at Raka’s bleeding feet.
“Sit,” Kertra said.
“I don’t need—”
“I said sit. Or your blood will attract dogs.”
Kertra’s tone was not the tone of a noble giving orders. It was the tone of someone used to managing his younger siblings. Raka, with the pain already reaching his knees, finally sat on the well’s rim. The cold earth stabbed his backside.
Kertra poured water from the jug over Raka’s feet. The pain made Raka hiss and clench his fists. Kertra cleaned the wounds with the scrap of cloth, roughly.
“Ow! Easy!”
“If I go easy, you’ll start acting spoiled again,” Kertra replied without looking up. “My father says wounds like this have to be washed with salt water. Otherwise you won’t be able to walk tomorrow. Then you’ll die in that stall. You’ll stink.”
“Why are you helping me?” Raka asked. “This afternoon you said you wanted to throw stones at me.”
Kertra stopped. He looked at Raka. The torch cast hard shadows across his face.
“Because this afternoon you were still Lord Raka. The lord who made me clean horse dung with my bare hands. Tonight you’re just a stupid boy eating rice off the ground. That’s different.”
He tied the scrap of cloth around Raka’s foot. A tight knot, the knot of a farmer.
“You have to apologize,” Kertra said quietly. “Not to me. To Auntie Darmi. To everyone you trampled on. Then maybe they’ll feed you tomorrow—not from the ground.”
Raka stared at the binding on his foot. The scrap smelled of sweat and mud, but not rot. It smelled like work.
“I... I don’t know how to apologize,” Raka said. His voice was barely audible. “My father never taught me. My father only taught me how to make people apologize to me.”
Kertra stood and picked up his torch.
“Learn. Otherwise you’ll die a real Gembel.”
Kertra left, leaving the jug with its remaining water.
Raka sat by the well for a long time. The market was quiet at night. Only the chirping of crickets and the dripping of water from the well broke the silence. In the distance, he heard children who had not yet gone to sleep still jeering at him, imitating his limping gait.
“Ragged vagrant... ragged vagrant... eating rice off the ground...”
That afternoon, the call had been laughter. Tonight, it had become a name. People called him that without needing to know his real name.
He dragged himself back to the stall. The scrap of cloth on his foot let him walk despite the pain. He lay down on the hard ground. He used his torn silk clothes as a mat, with the jug beside him.
His eyes were nearly closed when another set of footsteps approached. Not Kertra. Heavy footsteps.
Wira, the young man who had guarded his house earlier.
Wira carried no torch. Only the smell of palm liquor.
“The Ragged God,” Wira said softly. There was a smile in his voice. A smile Raka knew. The smile of someone looking to take advantage of the weak. “You’re still here?”
Raka sat up, alert.
“Tomorrow morning, the District Chief is going to cleanse the village of bad luck,” Wira said, squatting in front of the stall. “Your father’s body is still in the town square. He isn’t allowed to be buried in the village cemetery. They say he has to be thrown into Kali Brangkal so the current can carry him away. So the village won’t be cursed.”
Raka’s blood stopped.
“What?”
“You heard me. Kali Brangkal. The place where they dump dead buffalo carcasses. They’re taking your father there when the sun rises. Unless...”
Wira glanced at Raka’s torn silk clothes. Even torn, the gold thread along the edge was still there.
“Unless his son takes him tonight. Carries him away. Buries him outside the village boundary. But you have to drag him there yourself. No one is allowed to help. That’s the District Chief’s condition. Otherwise, let the current carry him away to be eaten by monitor lizards.”
Wira stood and chuckled.
“So, does the Ragged God want to be a dutiful son tonight? Or will you let your father become fish food?”
He left, abandoning the smell of palm liquor and those words.
Raka stared into the darkness toward the town square. From the stall, he could faintly see the wooden post. His father’s body was still there, hanging in the dark.
His newly bandaged bare foot throbbed. His stomach had only just been filled with rice from the ground. His whole body hurt.
And he had to drag his father’s corpse away tonight, alone, through a village that hated him, if he still wanted his father to touch the earth as a human being.