A Beautiful Accident by Peter Orullian
My rating: 4/5 cats
The thin tip of the branding iron glowed a mellow orange, two gentle swoops intersecting near the top. I knew the symbol, just as I knew why it was being used. It was the Mal numeral three, and marked the number of cycles I’d been enduring Talenfoier—a very old word interpreted by modern linguists to mean torture of the captive. But I’d studied its Mal lingual root, so I knew better. Refinement through pain was its truer meaning.
this was a brutally gorgeous read about a culture in which pain is administered as a rite of passage to promote strength in its people, and an outsider who is enduring the rituals in order to prove his worth and recover an object important to his own people.
orullian does a really good job setting up this world and its belief systems. and it’s all revealed in an almost lulling prose, lingering over the details of scarification and ritualized infliction of pain. but it doesn’t read like torture porn—there’s a poetry to it, one that employs all the senses: the smells of hot iron and charred flesh, the artful arrangement of scars, the sound of heated metal against the skin, the taste of words, and of course—the pain of the cruciations.
Being branded hurt like all the glories of hell, so-called. The burn didn’t sink inside me, though. I wouldn’t allow it. The pain of the brand took hold in my skin, but that was all.
vendanj endures the repeated sessions, comforted by the gift of his people—a healing capability that lessens the effects of the rituals.
that is, until he meets seelia, a native mal woman who is undergoing her own pain rituals, and who scoffs at his evasive techniques that undermine the lessons of suffering.
“It’s arrogant to try and avoid the pain that finds you. As if you don’t deserve it.”
what follows is a friendship of sorts; a sharing of philosophies as the story languidly explores endurance, mercy, sacrifice, and ethical responsibility.
it’s beautiful, brilliant, and shocking. a lovely little burst of a novelette that hits each of its points without coming across as preachy or overworked. quiet, lovely, companionable pain.
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/stories/2015/01/a-…
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