In the military encampment, we were trained to think of ourselves as one body. We were encouraged to identify ourselves with our regiment, and if we could not do that, identify "regiment" with those who might support us, and who we might support. We were taught to imagine that we, as boys with purpose, were part of the great organ of the military, and that along with government, trade, and Rome itself, we made the great body of empire. We were told that we lived at the mercy of our empire, but that the empire was at the mercy of its organs, and of its smallest parts, its smallest men. And so this made us feel great in our smallness, and it helped me sleep at night when even though I was tired I could not close my eyes.
Death and starvation, disease, disfigurement, psychological scarring, exhaustion, the twisting of young men into monstrous forms, these things were all of a purpose and all of a single cause. It was easy to keep moving when all the boys around me agreed that what we were doing was important, and the more it tested us, the more the others seemed to say the same things. We ate and slept as one body. If one of us died of malnutrition or infection, we prayed for him and continued to say his name. Secretly, we named each other, and even when we had proper names, we whispered the secret ones in the dark. The same flesh, hundreds, thousands, endless.
And then there came a day when we, as body, sensed something different in the air. There was the taste of intrigue. The call had come for us to rise, and to wash, as usual, but where usually there was breakfast, there was none. In the cold, misty sunlight, so bright after sleep that one may only squint, we were told to line up, hands behind our backs. We were told not to look up, no matter what we might hear. We were told not to speak, not even to whisper, not even about our fears, concerns, about what was happening. We thought "decimation" for sins not our own. We thought "theft" for which we would all be punished, and some of us lose a hand. We never thought "masters" or "market". We did not know we were slaves. We had been told that we were soldiers. It was all a lie.
And my brothers had been lying to me, my own body, and myself, for surely some among us must have known. Surely, this was not the first time a line up had happened, and surely, there must be some among us who had at least heard rumors, who could have told us all and spared us the feeling of betrayal that would never completely go away, and that made a bitterness in me that caused me to feel resentment and mistrust. I waited in the line. It was many hours. I wept, and could not cover my face.
We had not been given anything to eat or drink, and so it was as if I were sleeping on my feet. My body could not catch up with me, and I felt very little. Shouted down to us were that there was a delay, and another delay. Every time I closed my eyes, my eyelids were red with the bright sunlight. Occasionally, behind our line, our direct superior would come down, trailing a reed rod down the backs of our knees to keep us awake as he passed. And after a long time, there came a man in a white tunic, with clean-looking leather thongs, and a measured voice. He held a long stylus and wax tablet, but didn't write anything. I wasn't allowed to look up, so only was able to see him from the waist down. "This," he said, gesturing. "This, and this. The others, none." One of them was me.
They stripped me and blew powder into my hair that smelled of lavender. They put me in cotton and gave me new sandals to wear. I was so upset about the lie that I could not even be angry, or be sad. A chestnut mare clad in indigo blanket was brought, and the man who had chosen me rode behind me, his forearms resting on my stick-out hips, his hands clasped over my belly. With wild sandy hair and a serious expression, he did not tell me that his name was Vasvius. I didn't care. After my earlier tears, I was ready to be numb and nothing for the day. We rode ten miles toward the sea, to Herculaneum, twelve boys, all in a line. The other boys could hardly have been called all of a kind, except that we were of similar heights and did not speak at all. Ten of them I never saw again. One of them was Cassius, but I noticed him, golden boy, lean.
A mile from the villa, Vasvius called, "Rein up," and we were allowed to dismount and sit in the grass for lunch. A few boys helped to secure the horses and dish up the midday meal. Evidence of a farm nearby mounted, as the grass was short from goat grazing, and I could smell the sweetness of ripening orchard fruit. There were many bees buzzing, busy with their back and forth. We had dates, dried fish, and watered wine. While I sat and ate, I watched Vasvius walk away down the dirt road without even a backward look. I had been trained viciously to stand up as straight as I could and walk as if my spine were made of iron, but Vasvius did it in a way that made it seem easy. Somehow he seemed loose and yet completely in control of himself. I lay myself down entirely on the grass once he was out of sight, the ground warm from sunlight, and ate my fish half-asleep in the honeyed air. An older boy placed his hand lightly on my stomach, near my pubic bone, and normally, while such a sexual gesture would have earned him a well-placed clout and a fight, I only said, "Abi," softly. Leave me be, and he removed his hand.
Vasvius stayed away nearly an hour, and any one of us could have run. I thought about it, but made no move. I knew very well the punishment for desertion, which was facial branding, though I realized to my horror that all the rules I knew were rules for slaves and not soldiers. But perhaps the rules were the same, I reasoned, chewing my way through a pile of dates. I bore my teeth at a boy who tried to take a date from me, and he quailed.
"I'm sorry, brother. Give me a date," the boy said, sitting back on his heels as I sat up to look at him.
"I'll share nothing with a bunch of liars and whores," I said. "Who put his hand on my belly? Who wants his nose bitten off?"
"They won't pick you," the little one said, rubbing his face with the back of his hand, like a mantis. He looked a bit like a mantis, with his big eyes. "You're crazy. If you damage one of us, don't be confused about what happens to you."
"Pick me? What are you talking about? We've already been picked."
"Ignorant," he huffed. "A fool. Doesn't know anything. No one liked him enough to tell. Foolish, marching without a single thought in his head, directly to his death. Give me a date and I'll tell you what's happening now."
I put a date in my mouth, sucked on it, and put it in his cupped hands.
"Joke's on you. Who cares about a little bit of spit. I'd get the same from a kiss," he said, chewing it.
"Tell me then." A breeze passed, blowing through my hair, blowing down my neck. I shook my head to shake away the sensation.
"They're going to eat us. Yes that's right. Everybody knows. They're blood-drinkers, directly from the shadow of the mountain, and if you fight back there's worse than death for you."
"What are you, eight? Get out of here, you silly screech owl. Wasted a date on you. Quit chewing. Swallow it. Who told you that, anyway?"
He held his hand out for another fruit and I whacked his palm with my wrist. "Ouch. Asshole," he hissed. "You better believe anything, because you don't know nothing. A boy got away once. He came back to our regiment to warn the others. He had bite marks on his arms. That's how I know. It's a family in regiment 12, not like yours. Shit regiment."
"What happened to him?"
"A shadow come in the night. Took him away again."
"You're a liar who likes dates. Why don't you run, then?"
He looked at me long. "That shadow had a beautiful face," he said, as if unable to contain it. "A face like the moon, pale white glow, a cool light. Gonna die anyway. I want to kiss the moon. I am only eight but I have dreams. Give me a nice death. I'm pleased to go."
"Look who's calling other boys crazy. Abi, crazy."
He shrugged and got up to go.
"Good luck dying," I said, as he walked away. "I don't intend to die today."
"No one intends to die," he scoffed, picking up the date I had thrown at his back and putting it in his mouth.
Looking to the side, I noticed the boy who I would come to know as Cassius watching the conversation, his fingers tangled in a horse's mane. He gave me a dead-eyed stare.
Shortly after that, Vasvius returned and ordered us to untie the horses and mount up, which we did, and at a walk we closed the last mile. By then, the afternoon had grown long, and for the first time I felt the fingers of the evening wind blowing up from the sea. On this breeze would the Sun be blown back, and his long cloak of colors cover the sky, which I could see in the roofless peristyle garden, where we were led, and told to stand at wait. "My advice to you," he said, in his measured voice, so cultured, "is not to look away, is to be confident even if you are afraid. There are rewards for boys who do not fear." For the first time, I felt his correcting hands, touching my chin to put it down, and my tailbone to straighten me. "What is your name?" he asked me, looking me in the eye. I studied him, and he was not a young man anymore, at least in his late twenties, but used well so that he was not bent. I wanted that sort of life.
"Palomia," I told him, the stress on the "o".
"Stand up straight and look ahead, and all will be aright. You are the right sort, and know that, and look on. Palomia the pugilist. Do not fight," he said. "And for all of you, it is 'Yes, dominus' or silence. It's understood. Do not lock your knees, or you will faint."
And so we waited, and I did not know how to be afraid, already so numb from the dizzy upheavals of the day. I looked up and watched the stars creep out among the deep colors of late evening, my stomach hollow from little food, and from the release of a cramp I had been feeling since morning.
Around us darkness fell as the moon rose up, and the other boys were growing restless from fatigue and from hunger. After awhile some of the younger ones began to sit down, and to cry, for even in the camp they had been allowed to eat an evening meal and to go to sleep once the moon was high. A few of the older bent to entreat them, stand up, their voices shaking with nerves. "Get up, Tertius," I heard one of the older whisper, "it is your whole life that hangs upon you now. Here is my arm," but Tertius could not get up, and began to cry. And shortly one I didn't recognize, but who I would come to know as Vivacio, and who in the darkness and at only sixteen looked like a long, white-haired nymph of Bacchus slipped in and pulled the crying child from his regiment brother, and went away without a single word of protest. And then we all knew that we were not waiting at all, but standing a cruel test, and my mind filled with visions of a little crying child murdered.
One by one the sylph came to take them away. Beside me, the brat who'd eaten my kissed date began to whimper, and his legs to shake, and before he could fall, he went the dark as well. The pale creature who took him looked into my eyes with his blue ones, without expression, mouthed my name.
I did not look but all that night, I knew it was Cassius still there near me, refusing to go into the dark. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the impression of his blond hair and stiff body, and I concentrated on not being tense, though it had grown cold, and my mind a riot of anger and sorrow. So well did I concentrate on seeing nothing, that at first I did not register that there was a shadow standing beyond the doorway, in the atrium. The shadow at first did not move, but I knew that it was looking at us. After awhile, it began to weave its head, like a snake, but I could not blink, I could not look away, though my vision began to blur and the little hairs on my neck stood up. For what felt like an hour I watched the shadow weave, as if in a hypnotic dance, my heart beating in my back, and it seemed to dissolve, this darkness, moved off, gone. And not long after that, Vasvius came, and said, "Salve," welcome. And he named us. He took my hand. He washed the sweat off my body. He tilted his forehead against mine and said, "Sleep well. You are safe."
All that I know about the others, is that for some nights after that, I cannot say for certain, but I thought I heard the sound of children crying, on the wind.
Two years later, on the day Aulus and Nonus joined us, selected without ceremony, they told us to stay in our room. We don't know either what happened to the boys who came in with them, as that selection was all for show. The result had already decided before it began. Those boys never made a sound, and aside from brief glimpses, and the shadow I saw, I never saw or spoke to the master at all until I was told, two years after Escha came, that the master had decided to let me stay.
"This is because of you. Everything is different because of you," I told Escha, who was always kissing the backs of my legs when he could catch me unawares, who was always chasing me, and clinging to me and saying, "Te amo, Iovita," I love you, and to my words the boy only buried his face in my tunic and laughed. Escha was beloved of the shadow, not me. He was chosen directly for this, I'm telling you. That is what he was for, and why they picked him. If you were ever told otherwise, that his making was a mistake, or an accident, or under pressure, I will call the snake a liar. It is a lie. Every one of you is here because of Escha, and every one because the master felt lonely to be adored by him, and his lovely, open face, defiant of suffering. We are here only because the master wanted to change the course of his life, and to be kind, and to love again. And only because he found one who could create those things in him. And the master wants Escha still, though he is dead, which is the only reason why we all remain living. We are his shadow, and our sun is gone, and how long before Leechtin realizes it, and we disappear?