The hoe rose.
Raka Wulung saw it not from the blade, but from Wira's shoulder.
Since he was little, his father had trained his eyes to watch for that. At cockfights, in the yard where soldiers practiced, his father would always whisper, “Watch the shoulders, not the feet. Shoulders can’t lie.”
Wira’s shoulder rose too high. His breathing was shallow. His left elbow was flared out. That wasn’t the movement of someone who wanted to kill. It was the movement of someone trying to frighten him so he would look strong in front of his friends.
Raka didn’t move far. He only shifted half a handspan within the shallow hole.
The hoe struck the ground beside Kala Dipa’s head. Dirt sprayed across Raka’s face. The smell of wet earth and the corpse’s rancid blood filled his nose.
“You see! You’re trying to hide the evidence!” Wira shouted. He raised his voice so his three torch-bearing companions could hear. “The District Chief said he must not be buried! He has to be thrown into the river!”
Raka was still kneeling. Both his hands were bleeding from clawing at the earth. In his right hand, he clutched the seal cloth—a small piece of cloth bearing the Kadipaten seal, stained with his father’s dried blood.
“No,” Raka said. His breath came in broken gasps. “I’m not the one hiding it. My father… my father held on to this until he died.”
Wira spat into the hole. His spit landed near Raka’s feet, wrapped in strips of rag.
“An embezzler’s son making excuses. What thief ever admits it?”
The three young men behind Wira raised their bamboo spears. Not because they were brave. They had been ordered by the District Chief to stand guard through the night, and they didn’t want to be blamed if the body disappeared.
From the darkness beneath the banyan tree, the torch that had been motionless finally drew closer.
Its light fell across a face Raka knew, but had never truly seen.
Mr. Dirga. The granary clerk whose leg had been broken three years ago when Raka’s horse struck him on the embankment. Raka remembered it. He hadn’t stopped. He had laughed and driven his horse faster because he thought it was funny to see the old man fall into the mud.
Now Mr. Dirga walked with a wooden cane. His broken leg was crooked. Every step made wood knock against the ground.
“Wira,” Mr. Dirga said. His voice was hoarse and quiet. “Lower your hoe.”
Wira turned. Fear showed on his face. Not fear of the crippled Mr. Dirga. Fear of his age.
“Mr. Dirga, the District Chief said…”
“I used to keep the tax records for this boy’s father. I know which seal is genuine and which is forged. You don’t. Lower it.”
Wira hesitated. He looked at Raka kneeling beside the body, covered in dirt and blood, his bare feet wrapped in strips of rag. He no longer looked like the Lord who had once commanded him. He looked like a sick child.
“Give us that seal,” Wira said at last, lowering the hoe but still pointing it at him. “We’ll take it to the District Chief. We’ll throw the body into the river. That’s the order.”
Raka shook his head. His head felt heavy.
“No,” he said. “My father… my father can’t be thrown away like a dead buffalo. Just this once. Let me bury him. After that, I’ll leave. I swear I won’t return to the village.”
Mr. Dirga stared at Raka for a long time. The torch in his hand trembled in the wind blowing from the sulfurous Kali Brangkal.
“How deep did you dig?” Mr. Dirga asked.
Raka didn’t answer. The hole only reached his knees. The earth was hard.
Mr. Dirga sighed. He turned to Wira.
“You go home. Tell the District Chief that Kala Dipa’s body was buried by Mr. Dirga outside the village boundary, on disputed land. Not inside the village. So the village won’t be cursed. If the District Chief gets angry, tell him to be angry at me. My leg is already broken. It won’t matter if he breaks it again.”
Wira wanted to argue. But his three companions had already backed away. They didn’t want trouble with an old man considered half a shaman because he could read and write.
“You’re responsible, Mr. Dirga,” Wira said. He spat once more in Raka’s direction. “When the sun rises tomorrow, if this boy is still here, we’ll stone him. The District Chief’s order.”
They left. The light of their torches receded, leaving behind the smell of palm liquor and mud.
Only Raka, his father’s body, and the crippled Mr. Dirga remained.
Silence. Only the slow flow of Kali Brangkal and the chirping of crickets.
Mr. Dirga crouched with difficulty at the edge of the hole. He set down his cane. He looked at the seal cloth in Raka’s hand.
“Open it,” he said.
Raka opened his fist. The cloth was already wet with blood from his fingers.
Mr. Dirga took it carefully. He brought it close to the torch. The Kadipaten seal was large, bearing an image of rice stalks and crossed krises. Beneath it was a small inscription, nearly erased by blood.
“Three years ago,” Mr. Dirga said softly, more to himself than anyone else, “Kala Dipa asked me to make him a new seal. He said the old one was lost. I made it. His seal was small, with five grains of rice in the image. This seal… has seven grains. This belongs to a Tumenggung. The seal used to send rice to the port, not to the Trowulan granary.”
Raka stared at the seal. On the back of the cloth, his father’s handwriting read, “It wasn’t me,” written in charcoal and blood, the letters trembling.
“Your father was an embezzler, Raka,” Mr. Dirga said. There was no hatred in the words. Only exhaustion. “The first and second years, he took a great deal. My rice paddy dried up because he dammed the water for his own fields. My leg was broken because of your horse, but it was also broken because I was forced to haul confiscated rice grain in the middle of the night. I hated him.”
Mr. Dirga looked at Kala Dipa’s swollen face.
“But over the last year, he changed. He refused to send rice to Canggu anymore. He said the rice wasn’t for Trowulan. It was for someone else who wanted to oppose Jayanegara. He was afraid. He wanted to stop. Then an envoy came from Trowulan.”
Raka felt the earth beneath his knees tremble. Not because of anything else. Because his own body was shaking.
“Why are you telling me this?” Raka asked. His voice cracked.
“Because you’ve eaten rice grown from the land you despised. Because you dug your father’s grave with your own hands. Because you’re no longer a Lord,” Mr. Dirga replied. “A Lord’s son would never dig earth with bleeding fingernails.”
Mr. Dirga returned the cloth to Raka’s hand.
“Bury your father. Deep. So the dogs won’t eat him. Then leave. Don’t come back. The Wulung name is dead. If you return, they won’t stone you. They’ll burn you alive because they’re afraid.”
Mr. Dirga rose with difficulty. He left his rotting wooden hoe on the ground. His only hoe.
Raka picked it up. The wood was rough and heavy. His nobleman’s hands, once used only to hold a light kris, now had to lift rotten wood.
He dug again. One swing. Two. The hard earth fought back. A stone tore open the tips of his already bleeding fingers. Sweat dripped into the hole, onto his father’s face.
He didn’t stop. The pain in his bandaged bare feet, the pain in his hands, the pain in his back—he folded all of it into the earth.
At last, the hole was chest-deep.
He pushed his father’s body inside. Then he covered him. One shovelful of wet earth, another shovelful of wet earth. He didn’t know any prayers. Prayers for dead nobles had always been recited by other people for him. Now all he could do was stare at the mound of earth.
A small mountain beyond the village boundary. No gravestone. No flowers. Only black earth that smelled of sulfur.
Raka knelt before it. For the first time since morning, he didn’t call himself Lord in his mind. He didn’t know who he was.
“It wasn’t me,” he whispered, copying his father’s words. He didn’t know whether he was saying it for his father or for himself.
Mr. Dirga’s torch had already disappeared into the darkness, heading toward the village.
From the direction of the village, a bamboo alarm bell was struck three times. It marked the passing of midnight and announced that the village cleansing would take place the following morning. A sign that all bad luck had to be cast out.
Raka stared at the mound, then at the village, whose lights were beginning to go out one by one. He had no home. No name. Only the bloodstained seal cloth in his hand and bare feet that could no longer carry him far.
Behind the banyan tree where Mr. Dirga had stood, another shadow had not left with Wira. A tall, thin shadow with a long staff, carrying no torch. It simply stood there, watching Raka kneeling before the fresh grave, waiting to see whether the boy would cry or rise.