Tap, tap, tap.
The sound of the black bamboo staff receded.
Master Agra walked toward the western forest. He did not look back. His steps were limping but sure, vanishing among the banyan roots and the sulfurous darkness rising from the Brangkal River.
Raka Wulung was still kneeling before the mound of earth covering his father. The leftover sticky rice on the ground had already been trampled by ants. The cloth stamped with the fake seven-grain seal in his hand was wet with sweat. A rotting hoe lay beside him.
The bamboo bell from the village rang again. This time, four strikes. The signal for the last watch before sunrise. After that, Wira and the watch youths would come with stones.
Raka looked at the mound one more time.
“I’m leaving now, Father,” he whispered. His voice was gone.
He did not know whether his father could hear him. He only knew that if he stayed here until sunrise, this shallow grave would be dug up again, and his father’s body would truly be thrown into the river like a dead buffalo. And they would stone him to death as the son of a thief.
He forced himself to stand. The foot wrapped in Kertra’s rag bandage throbbed violently. The blood had dried black. He picked up a small wooden stick for support—not Master Agra’s staff, only a broken banyan branch.
He walked on, following the fading sound of tap, tap, tap.
The western forest of Wringin Anom was not haunted. It was only a sparse teak forest where villagers gathered firewood. The ground was dry, full of roots that rose like veins. The smell of dried teak leaves mingled with the scent of red earth.
Master Agra walked without a torch, as though his feet knew every root by heart.
“Your foot is noisy,” Master Agra said without turning. “Like a pregnant buffalo.”
Raka did not answer. He held his breath against the pain. Every root he struck shifted the bandage and reopened his blistered wound.
“Why are you following me?” Master Agra asked again, still without looking back.
“You said you’d teach me,” Raka replied, panting.
“I said there was a condition. Did you hear the condition?”
“Forget the name Wulung for seven days.”
“Forget it,” Master Agra repeated. He stopped beneath a great teak tree. Moonlight shone through the leaves onto his face, blackened by betel. “Not merely stop saying it. Forget it. If you’re still carrying that name in your head, you’re still carrying that corpse on your back. It’s heavy. You won’t be able to walk far.”
Raka nodded. “I can.”
Master Agra stared at him with his one small eye.
“We’ll see.”
They walked on until the edge of the forest met a narrow path leading to a small hamlet called Kedung Pahit, where charcoal makers lived. At the hamlet’s entrance stood a small bamboo stall that opened very early for the charcoal laborers. The smell of corn rice and charcoal mingled in the air.
Raka’s stomach, which since yesterday had held only rice scraped from the ground, half a cassava, and two bites of sticky rice, growled loudly.
Master Agra stopped in front of the stall. He did not enter. He simply stood there.
The stall’s owner, a stout woman with charcoal-black hands, came out carrying a basket of corn rice. She recognized Master Agra and nodded. Then she saw Raka behind him.
A skinny boy in a torn blue silk shirt turned brown, bare feet wrapped in blood-black rags, smelling of corpses and sulfur.
“Who’s that, old man?” the woman asked Master Agra warily. “Your son?”
Master Agra did not answer. He looked at Raka. This was his test.
Raka opened his mouth. His throat was dry. His nobleman’s instinct, which had automatically surfaced whenever he met commoners for seventeen years, rose to his lips.
“I’m Raka Wulung, son of Kala Dipa, a nobleman of Wringin Anom. Give me some water and—”
The words came out on their own. Loudly. Just as he used to command Kertra and Auntie Sari.
The stall owner fell silent. Then her expression changed.
“Wulung? The thief’s son whose body they’re going to throw into Brangkal? So this is the grave boy?”
Two large charcoal laborers came out from inside the stall. They still held charcoal shovels in their hands. Their eyes fixed on Raka.
Master Agra remained silent. He did not defend Raka. He only watched.
The first charcoal laborer spat onto the ground near Raka’s bleeding foot.
“No wonder you smell like a corpse. Get out of here! Don’t bring bad luck to our stall!”
Raka took a step back. A teak root stabbed his injured sole.
“I only asked for water…” he said, his voice shrinking.
“There’s no water for nobles! The only water here is ditch water for a thief’s son!” the stall owner shouted. She was afraid—afraid her hamlet would be cursed because the accursed boy had come there.
Master Agra finally moved. He did not strike the laborer. He merely raised his black bamboo staff and lightly tapped the woman’s basket of corn rice. The basket fell, spilling rice onto the ground.
“Hey!” the woman shouted.
“Sorry,” Master Agra said flatly. “My hand slipped. Like this boy’s tongue slipped.”
He turned and walked away from the stall, leaving Raka standing before the spilled corn rice mixed with black charcoal dust.
The charcoal laborer shoved Raka hard in the shoulder. Raka fell on his backside. His bandage came loose. The blistered wound, already blackened, opened again and began bleeding fresh. The pain shot all the way to the crown of his head.
“Go!”
Raka struggled to his feet. He did not pick up the spilled corn rice. He limped after Master Agra, who was already far ahead.
His breath came in broken gasps as he fought back shame and pain.
Master Agra stopped beneath another teak tree and waited.
“How many times have you said that name?” Master Agra asked.
“Once,” Raka answered, head bowed. His tears fell onto the dry ground. Not because the laborer had shoved him, but because he realized he had failed before even a day had passed.
“No,” Master Agra said. “Twice. Once with your mouth at the stall. Once in your head, when you thought you were still a Lord entitled to clean water. You still think people should give you things because of your father’s name.”
Raka could not answer. Because it was true.
Master Agra let out a long sigh. The smell of betel on his breath was sharp.
“I told you already. I don’t need a nobleman’s son. When a nobleman’s son is hungry, he asks using his father’s name. When a ragged vagrant is hungry, he asks with his hands. Or he endures the hunger.”
He turned around.
“Seven days failed in the first hour. You haven’t passed.”
Raka panicked. He grabbed the ragged edge of Master Agra’s cloth.
“Old man! Don’t leave me! I can’t go back to the village! They’ll kill me!”
Master Agra looked at Raka’s bloody hand clutching his cloth. Then he looked at Raka’s bleeding foot.
“Let go,” he said softly.
Raka did not let go.
Master Agra jerked his cloth away. Raka fell again.
“I’m not abandoning you. You abandoned yourself. You chose to keep carrying that corpse.”
Master Agra walked on. The tap, tap, tap of his staff receded as he went deeper into the increasingly dark teak forest. This time, he walked quickly and did not wait.
Raka tried to stand and follow him. His injured foot could not bear it. He fell again. He crawled several steps. Teak roots scraped his hands.
“Master Agra! Old man!”
There was no answer. Only the chirping of crickets and the smell of charcoal from Kedung Pahit, still lingering in the air.
Ahead of him, the forest was dark. Behind him lay the hamlet that had just driven him out, and the village of Wringin Anom, whose people would stone him when the sun rose.
He was alone between two places that wanted nothing to do with him. Sitting on the dry ground with his bandage undone, his foot bleeding, unable to use the name Wulung, and with no new name willing to accept him.
And from the direction of the hamlet, he heard the footsteps of the charcoal laborers returning—their shovels in hand, a small torch burning between them, perhaps to make sure the grave boy had truly gone.