PRELUDE ─────
animal farm

THE POWER OF BLOOD

THE SACRED BLOOD OF THE LAMB

IT WENT QUIETLY TO ITS DEATH. A good omen for the games to come.

THIS IS IT: The Becoming of Kaz Alekseev.

─── FATHER, FATHER

His Father's kindness should be considered criminal. The way he is bringing up the wolf boy ─ to snarl, to hunt, to kill ─ with a heart. With a heart of malignant blood and decaying veins and rotting flesh. How inconsiderate of him, how selfish. But we will try to imagine him, facing this little dark-haired boy, who calls him ─ Father, Father, Father ─ and reminds him each time of his cruel purpose.

Father is just another cog in the machine ─ a well-oiled machine, running on fear and survival. He was a church clergyman, you know, before all this - before the blood and the salt. Before the weeping woods and bleeding rocks. He had seen to the birth of Kaz's older sister - a stillborn, a tragedy. Father had never thought his life-giving hands would teach someone how to kill. Kill, that is such a haunting word - beautiful, doubtless, but ugly too.

Father teaches the boy to shoot with his new fingers. First arrows, then bullets. Father hasn't yet. Father will. He tells himself that he will. He can never bring himself to. He takes the bow from the boy's hands and gives him marbles instead.

Marbles.

They are blinding under the sunlight. The boy runs around in the yard, playing with them. Rolling them around ─ counting them, then counting again. One, two, tree, fie, svem, ten!

Ten, yes! the Father cheers with him. Ten.

We try to imagine this boy with other boys ─ try. But there is something missing there, isn't it? Or there is something there that shouldn't be. Some innate sadness that paints him in a different light than others? The other boys' parents don't let them play with him. He is the Son of Maria, of The Lady of The Lake. They never had a funeral for her you know. But the boy knows his mother rests on the soil under wild waters. He doesn't know why. He doesn't understand how she would leave him and walk away, drown herself in the angry waters. His Father says it is not his fault but it feels like it? Would she have loved him better if he were early? Love him more if he were late? These are all justified guilts, of course. And which boy would like to play with someone who was baptized in blood. First Child of The Invasion. The small boy already holds a big place in the nation. 

The boy turns seven and runs around the yard with the marbles. Now he counts them ─ One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten! He sits under a beech tree and watches the clear water of the stream. The stream where his mother drowned. There is peace in here ─ the only time he feels peace in his restless body. He always needs something to do with his hands (writing, cleaning, playing), with his feet (dancing, jumping, playing). But not here. Here he is still, he is quiet. This will be a place of sacred worship. 

It was then the Boy had appeared. His name was Henrik, and he was the son of a high-standing Invader. He wasn't much older than Kaz, though his bony and wiry build made him look taller. His face was what struck Kaz the most - he had only seen this kind of sneering and threatening expression on the other Invaders, the ones responsible for gathering the village and picking out the traitors from the crowd. It sent a shiver down Kaz's spine as he stared into the glassy eyes of Henrik. His eyes had caught the flash of the marbles in Kaz's palm. He leered at him, and held out his hand. "Let me see them."

"No." Kaz did not want to give the marbles to him. Did not want them stolen, or destroyed, or hidden away.

"I want them." It was a wish, a statement, a command, and an order. Nobody had ever treated Kaz this way. He did not wish to be treated this way. He was smaller than Henrik, yet he did not back away. Henrik's eyes were entitled, but he hadn't threatened Kaz yet. Kaz hated him for it. He should be worth threatening.

"They're mine." He had grown dog teeth and growled. He had shoved him backward. 

Henrik stumbled, and Kaz was glad. He would not get what was his. "Hey!" He was angry. He advanced on Kaz, face red. Without meaning to, Kaz stepped back. He smirked then. "Coward."

"I am not a coward." Kaz's voice rose. There was a buzzing in his ears, his vision painted red as if he were looking at the world through colored cellophane. He felt the urge grip him and coil around his neck like a snake. His hand was itching. His mind was smeared with vile pictures ─ of the color, of the thickness. The snake noose around his neck tightened and the slithering animal raised its hood, staring straight into his eyes. And leaped into his mouth, past his tongue, down to his stomach, through his veins to his heart. It coiled around the wildly beating organ and wrapped around it, contracting it.

Desperation and obsession are the most fascinating facets of the human psyche ─ how the want twitches, how the rope pulls, how the terrible twist in your gut: a tornado of thoughts mulling over the quiddity of existence and its aftermath ─ how it will all lead to small, milk-colored hands, fingers barely long or strong enough: lifting a rock and aiming for the head.

Henrik's head thudded dully against the ground. The stone fell from Kaz's hand and he saw the surprised pop of his eyes. The ground around him began to bleed. Kaz stared, his throat closing in horror at what he had done. He had not seen the death of a human before. Not this: the rattle of it, the choke and scrabble. The smell of the flux. Kaz did not flee.

Sometime later, they found him, sitting by the dead boy Henrik. He had thought that his Father would be angry but he was just afraid. He had thought the Invaders would be angry but they were just proud.

A wolf learned without teaching. A wolf learned from hunger. A wolf always survived the carnage.