The third morning in the embankment hut.
The wound on Raka Wulung's foot had stopped bleeding. Kertra replaced the rag bandage with a broad teak leaf tied in place with palm fiber. It itched, but it wasn't as painful as yesterday. The hand blistered by yesterday's bamboo shovel was beginning to toughen. Thin calluses were growing on the palms that had once been smooth from oil.
He woke before sunrise after seeing rats scampering across the hut's thatched roof and finding that the old buffalo's droppings beneath the tree had piled up again overnight.
Kertra was already awake, drawing water from the ditch to water the newly planted rice seeds. His back was slick with sweat despite the lingering chill in the air.
"Your buffalo crapped again," Kertra said without turning around. "Clean it up. Like yesterday."
Raka didn't argue. He picked up the wooden bucket, still wet, and the bamboo shovel whose handle had been polished smooth by his own hands. Limping, he walked to the pen. The smell of the buffalo's wet black droppings still stung his nose, but it no longer made him nauseous like it had on the first day. He knew the smell by heart now.
He drew up the brown ditch water, poured it, and scraped. One shovel, two shovels. Rice-paddy mud slipped between his toes, bandaged with teak leaves. Cold. Flies buzzed around his face. He brushed them away with his shoulder, not with his pampered hands anymore.
From a distant embankment came the sound of several people walking. More than one person.
Jono, Kertra's father, arrived with two other farmers carrying hoes. They had come to inspect the newly planted rice paddy. Jono was a hard man, his back bent from a lifetime of plowing, his eyes slightly crossed from being splashed with mud so often.
He saw a stranger sleeping on a torn pandan mat in his hut. Then he saw the boy scraping out his buffalo's droppings.
Jono's face immediately flushed red.
"Kertra!" he shouted from the embankment. His voice was heavy as wet earth. "Who's that? Who did you bring to my hut?"
Kertra set down his bucket and hurried toward his father.
"Father, he's..."
Raka turned as well. He saw Jono. The old instinct he'd held down for three days, the one he'd buried along with his father's corpse, suddenly rose back into his throat.
Jono was one of the farmers whose rice paddy Raka's father had drained after he refused to pay the additional tax. Raka had once seen his father kick Jono's bucket over and spill it simply because Jono had come to complain.
Raka stood. The bamboo shovel was still in his hand. His torn blue silk shirt, covered in buffalo droppings, fluttered in the morning wind.
"Jono," Raka said. His voice unconsciously turned hard again, taking on the commanding tone of a Lord issuing orders from horseback. "You don't need to shout. Your son Kertra told me to stay here. I..."
He almost said that name again. The name Ki Agra had forbidden. The name that had already made him fail at the charcoal stall.
"I'm Raka Wulung. Kala Dipa's son. I'm only staying here until my wound heals. You don't need to be afraid. Once I've become a..."
The words hung unfinished.
Jono stared at him from atop the embankment. The two farmers behind him stared too. There was no fear in their eyes anymore, nothing like before. Only hatred they had kept buried for a long time.
"Wulung?" Jono repeated. He spat betel-stained saliva into the rice paddy. "Wulung is dead. Thrown into the Brangkal. All that's here is a thief's son eating rice grown from the soil. You think wearing that torn shirt means you can order my son around again?"
Raka felt the blood rush to his head. The morning earth, already beginning to scorch beneath the rising sun, burned the soles of his feet through their leaf wrappings. The smell of his own sweat mingled with the buffalo droppings on his hands.
"Watch your mouth, old man!" Raka snapped. His hand tightened around the bamboo shovel. "Your father was the one who..."
He didn't get to finish.
Smack!
The slap was loud and wet. Louder than the shovel striking the mud.
It was Kertra who slapped him. Not Jono.
The blow came from the side, from Kertra's right hand, callused and caked with mud. It struck Raka's still-dusty left cheek. His head snapped around. The teak leaf bandage fell from his foot. He landed sitting in the newly cleaned rice-paddy mud. Cold mud filled his mouth.
The rice paddy fell silent. Only the ditch water continued to flow.
Jono and the two farmers stood speechless. They hadn't expected Kertra to slap him. They had thought Kertra would defend his friend.
Raka sat in the mud. His left cheek burned. It wasn't the sting of a blistered wound. This pain was different. The pain of humiliation. His mouth tasted of blood from biting his gums, mixed with the taste of mud.
His right hand still gripped the bamboo shovel. The reckless nobleman's instinct screamed in his head: Hit back! Strike him! You're a Lord! No servant dares slap a Lord!
He raised his head. His eyes met Kertra's. Kertra stood before him, breathing in short bursts, his right hand still trembling from the slap. His shoulders rose and fell. His eyes were red.
"Do you understand the condition I gave you yesterday, Grave Boy?" Kertra said. His voice was quiet, but everyone on the embankment could hear him. "I said if you ordered someone around like a slave again, just once, if you used your father's name to ask for anything, I'd bury you in this rice paddy."
Raka read Kertra's body language. His lowered shoulders and grounded stance weren't meant to intimidate him the way Wira had. Kertra really would bury him if he argued again. And Jono would simply let him.
Raka looked at the bamboo shovel in his hand. If he swung it now, he could strike Kertra in the head. Then he'd be driven out again. And die in the forest.
Slowly, he let go of the shovel. It dropped into the mud with a soft plop.
He didn't stand. He remained sitting in the mud. His left cheek was red and swollen. Mud clung to his lips.
"I... I was wrong," Raka said. His voice was barely audible. For the first time in his seventeen years, he said it not because his father had ordered him to, but because he knew he was wrong.
Jono snorted. "That's enough, Kertra. Let him stay in the hut until his wound heals. Then tell him to leave. Don't bring bad luck to our rice paddies."
Jono and the two farmers left, leaving footprints on the embankment. They didn't look back.
Only Kertra and Raka remained in the newly planted rice paddy. The sun had climbed high enough now, and its heat was beginning to prick their skin.
Kertra squatted in front of Raka. He took a clean teak leaf and roughly wiped the mud from Raka's swollen cheek.
"Does it hurt?" Kertra asked.
Raka nodded. Tears spilled from his eyes, mixing with the mud on his cheek. He wasn't sobbing. The tears simply flowed from the sting of the slap and the pain of humiliation.
"Good if it hurts," Kertra said. "So you'll remember."
Kertra helped Raka to his feet and supported him back to the hut. There was no apology. None was needed.
From behind a bamboo thicket on the distant embankment, the same place as yesterday, came a soft tok-tok. A black bamboo cane tapped against the earth. Twice.
Raka turned quickly. There, among the bamboo shadows shifting in the wind, stood a thin figure with betel-blackened teeth and one eye. Ki Agra. He hadn't left. He had been watching everything from the beginning.
Ki Agra didn't approach. He only nodded once toward Raka, whose cheek was swollen and muddy, then smiled. It was the first smile Raka had seen from the old man. A smile without mockery.
"There," Ki Agra's hoarse voice carried across the rice paddy, soft but clear. "Now you're human."
Ki Agra turned and walked back into the bamboo shadows, leaving Raka still supported by Kertra, his cheek swollen and his first real lesson sinking into his skin rather than merely entering his ears.