“I want to die and be eaten by black worms, i-ihiiij! Die and be done with, like others before me. I want to go where Grandma went: into death, i-ih-iiij! Do you really think I still don’t know? Grandma is dead, and you got rid of her like a dead sheep or a dead cat. You have probably hidden her under some gravel or in a hole in the ground. Or maybe you threw her to the foxes and the wolves. You keep talking about a journey and about the salt, but I know what is going on. You’re lying through your teeth because you think I am a fool, but I am not!”

By then I could see and hear clearly again. My parents stood as if chased apart and looked past me silently. It was probably this wretched picture that brought me to my senses. I suddenly understood that they hadn’t tried to beat me to death, but merely to silence me. And then it dawned on me that I was without Grandma, without Arsylang, without the flock I had once owned, separated from Brother and Sister, at war with the sky, and about to go to war against my parents! I would lose what little I had left. There was no way I could afford to lose them, so I had to resign myself to what had happened.

Someone who was inside me, but could not be me, was saying these things. It must have been a stranger. There was no way I would listen to him. I did not know him; he had only just showed up, alien and disgusting, and was insulting me along with everything that had ever happened, everything that had been part of my life, everything that nobody had the right to tear away from me.

I pulled myself together and resumed the fight. I screeched for all I was worth, lashed out in all directions, threw myself to the ground, jumped up, stumbled again, threw myself down once more, and then jumped up again. What was the point of my birth and my survival? What was the point of my dreams and my prayers? What was the point of the blessings others had given me, of their praise and their promises, or of the efforts I myself had made? I had been cheated out of a life. I did not belong between sky and earth.

So far, my voice hadn’t gone hoarse nor my body limp. But I knew I was about to lose my voice and the strength in my limbs, and that thought enraged me more than anything else.

But the same knowledge also made me fight. Who was I if I could not ward off he injustice so shamelessly inflicted upon me?

Why was I this way?

Why was it this way?

Why, i-ih-iiij, why?

The defiance in me blazed fie cely.