Rebellion: Prince of Dawn

Chapter 23.1: The Hanged Man

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CLINT KINO

The Hanged Man is the twelfth card of the Major Arcana in a Tarot deck. It invites one to willingly release control and surrender to a situation. This allows for a temporary pause for reflection and consideration of new angles. By accepting the present circumstances, one can undergo a personal metamorphosis, leading to valuable growth.

I was born a peculiar child.

Usually, a child began reacting to their parents a month after birth. They would speak their first words a year later—give or take a few months.

But I was a quiet baby.

Whenever I soiled my diapers, I never cried to get them changed. When I was scared, I never wept for comfort. When I was hungry, I wouldn't get fed until my stomach spoke for itself.

By the age of three, my parents had become so worried that they hired a doctor from a nearby town. Our village was situated right in the middle of a vast and dangerous desert so this normal check-up cost a lot of money.

The doctor concluded the obvious—that something was wrong with me. I never made a noise because I didn't know what noise was. Something was wrong with my sense of hearing.

Actually, saying something wrong was sugar-coating the situation because I didn't have a sense of hearing.

I was born deaf.

One missing sense was all it took for everyone to look down on me. My parents pitied me, doing everything they could to get me to stand on my own two feet despite my disability.

I never saw it that way. My lack of hearing was a part of my very identity as much as a person's voice was part of theirs. I was born this way and there was nothing wrong with accepting who I was.

Shortly after we found out I was deaf, a lady draped in weathered clothes showed up at our house. She resembled my parents, and in a way, it felt like we were connected.

The lady peered at me. "Hmm? Who are you?"

"Mah nem iz Clint," I spoke, trying as hard as I could to articulate my voice.

"Hi. Where are the people who live here?"

Mother almost broke the plates she was holding. She and Father rushed to the lady's side and hugged her so tight they could've suffocated her.

"Oh," Mother realized, grabbing me and the lady's hands and pulling us closer. "Clint, this is your big sister, Odetta. Odetta, this is your little brother, Clint."

I was sure we both said, "My what?" at the same time.

Odetta was my thirty-four-year-old big sister—the gap between us was thirty-one years.

Big Sis hated being trapped in the middle of a desert and yearned the adventure of visiting every named location on the map. About a decade before I was born, Odetta ran away from home leaving nothing behind but a note explaining this desire.

I was afraid of her at first. I didn't even know she existed until she showed up all of a sudden. Now, Mother expected me to get along with her just because we were family.

That fear didn't last long. Big Sis brought home books with her and she spent a lot of time getting me to perfect my reading and writing.

Once I got those down, she began teaching me how to read lips.

"It's just like jynx," she told herself. "Skilled jynxists can cast spells without speaking the incantation if they know how a spell feels. Speaking is the same. It's easier to listen to the words that come from the mouth, but you can also read what words a person's lips make without ever hearing their voice."