The torch was drawing closer.
From the direction of Kedung Pahit hamlet, a small red light swayed. Two large charcoal workers approached, shovels still in their hands. The smell of charcoal and sweat drifted on the cold morning wind. The eastern sky was already beginning to pale, no longer black.
Raka Wulung was still sitting on the dry ground beneath a teak tree. The strip of scrap cloth around his foot had come loose and lay on the ground like shed snake skin. Blood from his burst blisters seeped into the red earth. He could not stand. His legs, which had dragged his father's corpse, dug a grave, and followed Ki Agra through the night, had run out of strength.
The shovel rose.
"Hey, Graveyard Boy! We already told you to leave! You're still here!"
Raka closed his eyes. He had no strength left to read the man's shoulders. He could only wait for the blow to fall. Maybe the shovel would not kill him. Maybe it would only knock him unconscious, then drag him beyond the forest boundary.
A branch snapped. Not from the direction of the hamlet. From behind him. From the direction of Wringin Anom.
"Stop."
The voice was not loud. But the charcoal worker recognized it.
Kertra emerged from behind the teak tree, carrying a small bamboo torch with a sickle-handled stick strapped to his back. His clothes were caked with rice-paddy mud. Sweat covered his face from running.
He had not come from the charcoal hamlet. He had come along the forest trail leading to Wringin Anom. He had already walked a long way.
"This is our hamlet's business, Kertra," said the larger charcoal worker. "This boy is the son of Wringin Anom's thief. Bad-luck stink. The District Chief said to drive him out if we saw him."
Kertra did not look at the worker. He looked at Raka, sitting on the ground with his foot bleeding.
"He's not your hamlet's business anymore," Kertra said. "He's my field's business. He stole cassava from my hut last night. I'm the one who gets to beat him. Not you."
It was a lie. Raka had never stolen any cassava. Kertra was the one who had thrown half a cassava to him at the market two nights ago.
The charcoal workers glanced at each other. They did not feel like quarreling with someone from Wringin Anom this early in the morning.
"Fine. Take him away. Just don't bring him back to our hamlet. He reeks of corpses."
They left, their torch receding and leaving the smell of charcoal behind.
Only Kertra and Raka remained beneath the teak tree, which was beginning to brighten in the morning sunlight, though the sun had not fully risen.
Kertra crouched. He looked at the loose bandage and Raka's gaping foot wound, packed with dry dirt.
"Idiot," he said quietly. It was not an insult born of hatred, but the frustrated curse of someone watching his friend act like a fool. "I told you not to be here once the sun came up. Instead, you slept in the middle of the road."
Raka did not answer. His throat was dry. He was ashamed.
"Where's Ki Agra?" Kertra asked. He saw that the branch Raka had used as a walking stick had broken in two.
"He left," Raka answered. His voice was hoarse. "I failed. I said my father's name at the food stall. He abandoned me."
Kertra sighed. He opened the small clay jug hanging from his waist and poured water over Raka's wounded foot. The sting made Raka hiss and clench the dirt.
"Bear it," Kertra said. "If you scream, those charcoal workers will come back."
He wrapped Raka's foot again with a fresh scrap of cleaner cloth. The knot was tight, the knot of a farmer who knew how to bind an injured buffalo's leg.
"Did you follow me from the village?" Raka asked quietly once the bandage was finished.
Kertra did not answer right away. He stood and roughly pulled Raka's hand to make him stand.
"I saw you drag your father's corpse to Brangkal. Pak Dirga told me you were given a false mark. I saw you follow that one-eyed cripple into the forest. I was afraid you'd die in there and your ghost would wander through my rice paddy. My field was already cursed because your father blocked its water last year. I don't need your ghost adding to the bad luck."
It was an excuse he had made up. But Raka did not argue. He let Kertra support him. Kertra's shoulder was hard and smelled of mud and sweat. The smell of work. Not perfume.
They did not return to Wringin Anom. Kertra led him in a roundabout way, along a narrow rice-paddy embankment used only by field guards, toward a small hut in the middle of a newly planted field. The hut was made of bamboo with a thatched roof, where Kertra and his father usually kept watch over sparrows. It was far from the village. No one could see it from the main road.
Inside the hut were a torn pandan mat, a clay pot, and an old buffalo tied beneath a tree. The buffalo was thin.
"Sit," Kertra said.
Raka sat on the mat. It smelled musty and of rats, but it was softer than the market dirt.
Kertra handed him another half of a boiled cassava, just as he had two nights before.
"Eat. Then work."
"What work?" Raka asked.
Kertra pointed to the wooden bucket and water scoop in the corner of the hut, and the pile of buffalo dung beneath the tree.
"See that buffalo pen? Clean it. Draw water from the ditch over there. Pour it over the pen. Dump the dung on the embankment for fertilizer. My father makes me clean it every morning. Today, you clean it. Consider it payment for the mat."
Raka stared at the pile of buffalo dung. It was black, wet, and covered with flies. The stench stabbed at his nose.
Just one day earlier, he had ordered Kertra to clean his horse's dung with his bare hands. Kertra had refused, clenching his fists. Now Kertra was ordering him to do the same thing.
Blood rushed to Raka's face. The remnants of the Raden inside his head whispered, Order him. You're Raden. He's a servant.
Kertra's hand was already gripping the sickle-handled stick on his back. Not as a threat. It was simply a farmer's habit of holding his tool. But his eyes were fixed on Raka. Waiting.
Raka read Kertra's shoulders. They did not rise the way Wira's had when he wanted to intimidate someone. They were lowered, ready. If Raka shouted, Kertra really would hit him with that sickle-handled stick and drive him out of the hut. And Raka would die in the fields.
Raka stood on his painful bandaged foot. He picked up the wooden bucket. The wood was rough and heavy. He limped to the small ditch beside the field. The ditch water was brown and full of tadpoles. His hands trembled as he drew water. It spilled over his wounded foot, making it sting.
He returned and poured it over the buffalo dung. Flies buzzed into the air. The foul smell rose around him. He took a small bamboo shovel and began to scrape.
The shovel was heavy. The dung was sticky. Hands that had once held nothing but a light kris now had to drive a shovel into muddy ground.
He felt himself about to vomit. He held it back.
Kertra sat on the embankment, watching while he ate cassava. He did not help.
"Take it slow, Raden," Kertra said. He deliberately mocked him with the title. "Wouldn't want those soft hands of yours to blister."
Raka did not answer. He kept scraping. One shovel, two. Sweat dripped into the dung. The smell of it mixed with the smell of his own sweat.
One pile was finished. He dragged it to the embankment for fertilizer. His bandaged foot sank into the muddy rice paddy. Cold mud seeped between the bandages and mixed with blood. The pain was excruciating.
But he did not stop. He went back. Drew more water. Poured more. Scraped more.
Until the pen was clean and the water in the bucket was gone.
He collapsed beside the pen, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His hands were covered in new blisters, not from the heat of the earth but from the shovel handle. His torn blue silk cloth was now splattered with black buffalo dung.
Kertra stood and approached. He looked at the clean pen. Then he looked at Raka's bleeding hands.
He did not praise him. He only took his water jug and poured clean water over Raka's hands, washing away the dung and blood.
"Why didn't you order me around like before?" Kertra asked quietly. "You could have shouted at me earlier. Like you used to, when you ordered me to clean your horse's dung with my hands."
Raka watched the murky water dripping from his hands.
"Because if I shouted, you'd hit me and drive me out," Raka answered honestly. "And I have nowhere else to go."
Kertra fell silent for a long time. Then he gave a short laugh.
"Honest at last. Good."
He took the other boiled cassava and split it in two. He gave half to Raka and ate the other half himself.
"Listen, Graveyard Boy," Kertra said. He no longer called him Raden. He used the name the people at the food stall had given him that morning. "You can sleep in this hut until your wound heals. But I have a condition too."
"What?"
Kertra looked him straight in the eye.
"Order me around like a slave one more time, just once, or use your father's name to ask for something, and I won't slap you again. I'll bury you alive in this field, right beside that buffalo dung fertilizer. Understand?"
Raka met Kertra's eyes. There was no hatred in them. There was a promise. A promise he would keep.
He nodded. This time, not because he was afraid of being hit. Because he understood.
"I understand."
In the distance, behind a clump of bamboo on the rice-paddy embankment, came a soft knock, knock. The sound of a black bamboo staff tapping the ground. Very soft, almost swallowed by the wind over the fields.
Ki Agra had not gone far. He was still watching.