The mound was still wet.
Raka Wulung knelt before his father's grave, the one he had just finished burying. The black soil beyond the village boundary reeked of sulfur and the old stench of buffalo carcasses from Kali Brangkal. The smell clung to his broken, bleeding fingernails. The battered hoe Dirga had given him lay beside him, its wooden handle slick with blood and sweat.
He had no idea what prayer to recite for a nobleman who had died by state punishment. Those prayers were usually recited by other people for his family. All he could do was stare at the mound. In his hand, he still gripped the cloth bearing the false seven-grain stamp, now dry and stiff.
Wind blew in from the rice paddies, carrying a cold that pierced his bones. Dirga's torch had vanished into the darkness toward the village. Wira's torch and those of his companions had gone out as well. Raka was alone now with the shallow grave and his bare feet, wrapped in strips of cloth blackened by blood and mud.
He had to leave. Dirga had said that if he was still here tomorrow morning, people would stone him. But his legs wouldn't move. His back felt broken. His entire body, trained since birth only to ride horses and wield a light kris, had been used tonight to drag a corpse and dig through hard earth.
Then he heard it.
Not the footsteps of a villager. When villagers walked at night, they carried torches, and their bamboo sandals made noise. This sound was soft. Tap... tap... tap... wood striking stone. Evenly spaced. From behind the great banyan tree marking the village boundary.
Raka raised his head. His neck was stiff.
Behind the banyan's roots, hanging like a curtain, stood a shadow. Tall and thin. It carried no torch. Only a long staff whose tip tapped the ground, feeling out the path.
The shadow had been there all along. Since Wira had lifted the hoe. Since Raka had started digging. It had only stood there in silence. Watching.
"Grave boy," the shadow said. Its voice was hoarse, like someone who had chewed betel nut all his life. "Finished burying a thief with a thief's own hands?"
Raka tried to stand. His bandaged foot throbbed, and he fell back down. His hand instinctively reached for the hoe.
"Who are you?" Raka snapped. His voice was no longer loud, made hoarse by dust and the tears he was holding back. "Come out! Don't hide there like a rat!"
The shadow stepped out from behind the banyan's roots. Moonlight filtered through thin clouds and fell across him.
He was old. Older than Dirga. His body was thin and dry as firewood. His clothes were neither a nobleman's nor a farmer's. They were ragged, earth-colored, and covered in patches. His teeth were black from betel. One eye was white and clouded over, blind. The other was small and sharp, looking Raka up and down.
His staff was not the cane of a cripple. It was a black bamboo staff with a sharpened tip.
Raka knew the type from Auntie Nah's stories. A wanderer. A man with no village. A man whose origins and skills were impossible to identify.
"What are you looking at?" Raka said. He still held the hoe as if it were a kris. "Want to take my father's corpse and sell it too? Go away!"
The old man did not leave. Instead, he squatted at the edge of the grave with a lightness that did not suit his age. He sniffed the fresh earth like a dog.
"Terrible digging," he said quietly. "Too shallow. When the heavy rains come, the dogs will dig it up again. They'll eat your father's corpse again. Are you a nobleman's son or just a lazy boy?"
The words cut deeper than Wira's hoe had.
"I dug it with my hands!" Raka shouted. The last of his nobleman's anger rose again. "You think it's easy to dig through earth this hard? You try it!"
The old man laughed, a toothless sound.
"I saw you. I saw you from the beginning."
He pointed his staff toward the dark town square in the distance.
"I saw you in the town square. Wira lifted the hoe to strike your head. His shoulder rose too high. His elbow opened up. A fool strikes like that. All you had to do was shift half a span. No need to jump. You read his movement."
Raka fell silent. His breath caught.
No one had ever noticed that. His father had once trained him to read the movements of fighting roosters, but his father himself had never praised him for being able to read a person's movements. This stranger had seen it from behind a tree, in the dark.
"You too," the old man continued, pointing at Raka's bandaged foot. "Your foot is bleeding, but you still managed to drag a corpse as heavy as a buffalo down the main road. Not because you're strong. Because you're reckless. A spoiled nobleman's son is usually reckless only when he wants to take someone else's toy. Your recklessness comes from someone who has nothing left. That's good."
Raka lowered the hoe a little. A strange feeling stirred in his chest. It wasn't fear. It wasn't anger. For two days, everyone had looked at him with hatred or pity. This old man looked at him as if he were merchandise. Judging him.
"What do you want?" Raka asked, his voice softer.
The old man rummaged through his patched cloth bag and pulled out a small banana-leaf packet. He tossed it into Raka's lap.
Raka opened it. Sticky rice with salt and a little dried salted fish. A wanderer's meal.
"Eat," the old man said. "If you die of hunger tonight, this shallow grave of yours will have been a waste. Then I'll have to dig another one for you."
Raka's stomach growled. This time, he didn't refuse. He had no strength left for pride. He took the sticky rice with his bloodied hand and put it in his mouth. Salty and soft. Far better than the stale rice he had eaten off the ground the night before.
The old man watched him eat with his small, sharp eye.
"What's your name?" the old man asked after Raka swallowed his second bite.
"Raka Wulung," Raka answered quickly. There was still pride in the name.
The old man spat. His red-black betel juice landed beside the grave mound.
"Wulung is dead. All that's here is a grave boy with a rag-wrapped foot and hands that smell of corpses. Your name is too fine for a shallow grave like this."
Raka clenched his fist. The sticky rice crumbled in his hand.
"I'm Kala Dipa's son! I—"
"You're the son of the corpse you buried yourself," the old man cut in. His voice suddenly turned harsh, no longer hoarse. "You think burying your father makes you dutiful? You buried him because you were afraid they'd throw him into the river and you wouldn't be able to sleep. Not because you loved him. You still count profit and loss like a nobleman. That's what I see."
The words struck the place that hurt most. Because they were true.
Raka lowered his head. The sticky rice fell from his hand onto the ground. His shoulders rose and fell. Not from the cold.
The old man stood. He tapped his black bamboo staff against the ground twice.
"I am Ki Agra," he said. "People call me Walang Keling because I limp and my teeth are black. I have no home. No students. My last student died because he was arrogant. Just like you."
He turned, preparing to leave toward the western forest, in the direction where there was no village.
Raka panicked. He didn't know why. Maybe because everyone had driven him away for the past two days. And for the first time, someone who had insulted him wasn't driving him away—he was simply leaving.
"Wait!" Raka cried. He tried to stand, and his bandaged foot began bleeding again. "Teach me!"
Ki Agra stopped. He didn't turn around.
"Teach you what? How to dig a deeper grave? You already know how."
"Teach me martial arts! Teach me your skills! I want to get revenge... I want to prove—"
"Prove what? That a thief's son can become an even bigger thief?" Ki Agra turned around, his small eye blazing. "I saw you avoid Wira's hoe earlier. You've got talent. Your eye for movement is sharp. And you've got guts. But your arrogance hasn't been broken. You still carry the Wulung name on your back like a corpse. It's heavy."
He looked at Raka's father's grave mound.
"You want to become my student?"
Raka nodded quickly. The tears he had held back since noon finally fell, mixing with the dust on his cheeks.
Ki Agra came closer. He crouched, bringing his face close to Raka's. His breath smelled of betel and forest soil.
"I don't need a nobleman's son. Nobleman's sons are whiners. When they're hungry, they cry. When they're hurt, they ask to be carried. I need a ragged vagrant. A ragged vagrant who knows that the earth can be hot or cold. A ragged vagrant who is willing to learn because he'll die if he doesn't. Not someone who wants revenge."
He raised his black bamboo staff and pressed its sharpened tip against Raka's chest, still clad in a torn blue silk shirt.
"Forget the name Wulung for seven days. Don't say it. Don't use it. If anyone asks who your father is, answer that you have no father. If you fail even once, I'll leave you in this graveyard. And you really will become a grave boy."
The staff pressed harder. It hurt.
Raka looked into Ki Agra's one eye. Cold and honest.
Behind them, in the direction of the village, a bamboo watch bell was struck again. The sign that the night watch was changing. The sign that sunrise would come soon, and Wira's promise to stone him would become real.
Ki Agra pulled back his staff and walked away without waiting for an answer. Its tapping faded into the darkness of the western forest.
Raka sat alone before his father's new grave, with the remaining sticky rice on the ground, the false-stamped cloth in his hand, and a choice his father had never given him.
Would he remain Raka Wulung, the nobleman's son who would starve to death the next morning in the village that hated him, or become a nameless ragged vagrant who followed that one-eyed madman into the forest?