by Shade Owens
“Is that—” I tried.
Coin’s smile didn’t fade. “A river.”
“The river?” Hammer cut in.
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Arenas said. “What river?”
“I think it is,” Johnson said, showing more excitement than I’d ever seen from her. She extended her neck and took a few rapid steps ahead of me.
“I think it—” Hammer started, but she winced so hard that little lines formed on her face.
Something was wrong.
“Hammer?” I rushed toward her and grabbed her by the shoulder, then inspected every inch of her body for blood. “What’s wrong? Were you hit?”
She shook her head and reached for the side of her face.
“What’s goin’ on?” came Jack’s unevenly toned voice that mimicked an annoying chihuahua left in someone’s backyard—a noise that did nothing but irritate.
I fought the urge to glare at her. Had she not stumbled her way toward us earlier, none of this would have happened and she wouldn’t have set off that Ogre trap that nearly got us killed.
I shook these thoughts away. Had she not set off the trap, it would have been someone else.
“My toof,” Hammer mumbled.
“I thought you had your tooth pulled,” I said.
“I did,” she growled, then sucked in a big breath.
“Open up,” I said.
She gave me a one-shouldered shrug that said, No, really, I’m fine.
I wasn’t buying it. I eyed her closely. “Open up.”
She let her lungful of air out through her nose and dropped her jaw open. Arenas’s and Johnson’s faces came up beside me, their cheeks nearly touching mine, and we all looked inside. It didn’t take a dentist to see that it was infected.
The hole where her tooth used to be was oozing with slimy yellow puss, and the gum around it was red and severely swollen.
“Fuck,” Arenas blurted. She made a that’s disgusting face and pulled away.
Hammer closed her mouth and forced a smile. “It looks worse than it is. Really. It’s not that bad.”
“There’s puss,” Johnson said, matter-of-factly. “Anything with puss on this island is a bad thing, Hammer.”
Hammer didn’t say anything.
“What? What?” Jack said. She popped up beside Coin, who was surprisingly taller than her, and craned her neck from side to side as if trying to catch radio waves with her head. “What is it? An infection? A tooth infection? Oh God. Did she go to Ripper? Did she let her work on her teeth? ’Cause that woman ain’t got no background in dentissing.”
“Dentissing?” Johnson scoffed. “You mean dentistry?”
Jack stopped making her over-the-top hand gestures and dropped both arms at her sides. She stared at Johnson a bit longer than necessary until blurting, “Does it look like I gotta dictionary?”
Someone cleared her throat and I turned around to find Jordan—the woman who’d helped bring the net down—standing behind me. She looked even more slender up close, but it suited her even though she may have been considered unhealthily skinny by some standards. Her tiny frame made her hazelnut-colored eyes look almost cartoonish, the way anime characters often have oversized features.
“What’s up?” Jack asked, but all Jordan did was give her an up-and-down look before returning her attention to me. “I’m not trying to rush you in any way, but I thought it worth pointing out that we’re still on demon territory. We should probably get out of here in case there are more coming.”
With a firm nod, I looked at Coin. “Take us to the river.”
CHAPTER 3
The soothing sound of the water’s flow and the thousands of stones decorating the river’s borders made it evident we were following the same river Coin and I had found before meeting with the Hunters.
Had we passed Redwood?
While we’d thought Redwood to be the ideal spot for resting, it had turned out to be Ogre territory. And we’d been attacked on Ogre territory. It was possible we’d been close to Redwood and hadn’t noticed. I’d come to learn that the jungle’s thick walls of vegetation made it easy to pass by someone, or something, without realizing it.
“Ahhh, that’s nice,” said Jack, opening her mouth to catch some mist like a kid trying to catch snowflakes on Christmas Eve.
She scurried toward the river, dancing this way and that as stones wobbled underneath her bare feet. Her flabby arms—a result of aging skin—jiggled on either side of her body as she fought to maintain balance.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I shouted.
She spun as fast as a wooden spinning toy, her arms still outstretched on each side.
“Do what?”
“Go near the water, dipshit,” Johnson said.
I shot Johnson a warning glare, but all she did was smirk sideways at me like being rude to Jack was fun for her. She acted as though Jack was the dumb kid in the gang, which made it okay to be condescending toward her. I wasn’t Jack’s biggest fan, but she didn’t deserve to be bullied, either.
The last thing I wanted was for Johnson to provoke someone again and a cause a fight. She tended to get under one’s skin.
With eyelids flat and mouth in a straight line, Jack stared at her. “It’s fresh water. I’m thirsty. I’d be willing to bet we’re all thirsty.”
The women behind me muttered, but no one stepped forward. Instead, their eyes shot my way every few seconds as if wired to a metronome.
Had I done this to them? Had I caused them to fear me? Or, were they so accustomed to fearing a leader that this was all they knew? While I didn’t enjoy feeling like an abuser, I appreciated that no one acted without my consent.
I wasn’t trying to be controlling, either. But the truth was, as a Hunter, I’d learned a lot about the dangers of the jungle, and it was my responsibility to ensure the safety of these women. How could I protect them if they didn’t listen?
I stopped searching the crowd when my eyes met those of the woman I’d tripped earlier that day. Although I didn’t know her name, I remembered how confused she was when I stuck my leg out to prevent her from running to the water. She averted her gaze the moment she caught me looking and locked her fingers together. She didn’t look all that old, either—probably as old as me. How had she ended up here? Had it been accidental, the way it was with me? Or was she a cold-blooded killer? Would she try to slit my throat in my sleep?
When she shifted her weight uncomfortably, her right foot squishing the dirt underneath her, I realized I was glaring at her.
“You,” I said, and she looked at me again. “Can you explain to Jack why we don’t go running toward water?”
She glanced around, obviously not understanding why I was singling her out. But no one spoke, so she cleared her throat. “Could be contaminated.”
Before I had the time to say anything, Jack scoffed. “It’s not contaminated. It’s flowing water. Not like we’re in the city.”
She was probably right, but she wasn’t getting the point. She’d decided to follow me¸ not the other way around.
“’Cause Brone didn’t say you could run up ahead of her!” Arenas shouted, but she rounded her shoulders when her voice carried all the way down the river.
In an instant, Jack pulled her head low to her shoulders She likely wasn’t trying to be disobedient or rebellious. Jack, as far as I knew, was being Jack—thoughtless and rash.
“It’s the open space, too,” Hammer said. Her stare fell to the river stones at her feet, and I could only imagine what she was thinking. Was she reliving that dreadful day? The day we were ambushed by Zsasz and her goons? The day I’d pushed Ellie, along with Rocket, Fisher, and Proxy into the river? The day Trim was slaughtered right in front of us?
And then, almost as if Mother Nature were in tune with our thoughts, color slowly faded from our surroundings. Overhead, hundreds of lumpy gray clouds slid across the sky and in front of the sun, darkening the trees around us.
Jack opened her mouth to
say something, but thunder clapped so loudly that she hopped where she stood and rushed back to us.
“Holy mother of—” she said, but a tremendous amount of water suddenly fell from the sky, causing the river to spit in every direction imaginable. The water, which had appeared blue seconds ago, now looked like spilled oil.
“Stay in the forest!” I shouted.
The women huddled close together, some dry and some drenched, depending on where they’d been standing.
The sound became static-like, a loud hum that seemed to fuse with the jungle’s preexisting orchestra of insect and mammal cries. If I weren’t trying to save my friends, I’d probably have asked the women to find a comfortable, dry area for us to lay low.
But there wasn’t time to rest.
Not now. Not while Zsasz and her army were making their way toward the Cove to slaughter people I loved.
Rain, shine, storm, tornado—I didn’t care. We’d make it to the Cove. I quickened my pace a bit, but I slipped in the mud and caught myself before I fell.
“You okay?” Coin asked.
“I’m good.” I turned my head sideways, but only enough for my voice to carry over my shoulder. “Try to stay dry. The last thing we need is someone getting sick.”
Hammer cleared her throat but didn’t say anything.
“What?” I asked.
She hesitated, which meant she had something to say but was making every effort possible not to embarrass me
“That’s not true,” she said in a soft voice.
“What’s not?”
“This stuff drippin’ out of my nose,” Jack blurted out. “That’s snot.”
I let out a soft sigh and returned my focus to Hammer.
“The whole getting sick because of rain thing,” she said. “It isn’t true.”
“Oh, well,” I said, “my mom always—” But I stopped myself, feeling like I’d reverted to my ten-year-old self.
My mom…
I squeezed my eyes shut and rainwater dripped off my eyelashes. I couldn’t think about that right now.
“Who cares?” came Johnson’s voice. “I’m sure it isn’t good for anyone. I got drenched a long time ago in the Working Grounds… You know, when Murk came out waving her hands, telling everyone to go back to the Village. Anyways, I was working on something special, and I didn’t want to go back.”
“Get to the point, chica!” said Arenas.
Johnson winced at her. “I didn’t dry off all day and I ended up getting this nasty rash on my back. Took weeks to clear it up. So yeah, there’re dangers to being wet.”
Jack smirked, her head bowed forward. “Not in my book…”
Hammer glowered at her, evidently not a fan of sexual jokes. “Anyways, it’s not a good thing, but rain itself doesn’t make you sick—”
“Made me sick when I was a kid,” Coin cut in. “Got bronchitis and shit.”
“It wasn’t the rain that did that,” Hammer said.
“All right,” I said, waving two hands in front of me like giant scissor blades. “Just stop.”
I felt a bit stupid for having passed along information I’d learned from my mom. It made me seem like I wasn’t fit to be a leader, like I had no place guiding so many women when I believed something as trivial as rain gave people colds.
What else was I wrong about? It wasn’t like I had the internet to confirm my beliefs.
We continued our walk as I pondered whether I was too young to be in charge.
It’s only rain, I told myself.
It was impossible for one person to have every answer out there. In truth, I was the reason these women had escaped the Northers’ grasp in the first place and the reason they were still alive despite having been found by Ogres.
That had to count for something.
Had Ellie been by my side, she would have wrapped her warm arms around my shoulders and told me everything was going to be fine.
“Ellie.”
I hadn’t realized I’d breathed her name aloud until Coin shot me a side glance and said, “What?”
I shook my head and she let it go—probably because something else immediately caught her attention.
“Yo, Brone, check it out!” She rushed toward a thin-trunked tree and brushed her fingers along the bark’s grooves.
I didn’t bother asking her what she was trying to show me. I already knew—it was one of the markings she’d left behind when she and I had traveled this same path.
Instead of wasting my energy on speech, I offered a weak smile.
“What’s that?” Hammer asked, but before either one of us had the time to answer, Tegan’s matted head popped in front of us all. She forced her way through fallen leaves and pressed her cheek against the bark.
What the hell was she doing?
Her long, bony fingers slid along the tree’s trunk and she looked back at us, eyes so large she resembled a pug.
“What?” Johnson said, though it came out as more of a sneer. She was still as impatient as always especially when it came to eccentricity or intelligence. It was almost as if she thought herself better than others, but it wasn’t hard to figure out that her anger was probably the result of low esteem and insecurity.
“La-la-lapacho,” Tegan said. She tilted her head back with a childish grin on her face, and my gaze followed hers.
High above, hidden among the thick green leaves surrounding the tree, were leaves so bright and pink that for a moment, everything around me disappeared. The contrast made me think of a ball of cotton candy surrounded by dirt. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen before. How had Coin and I not seen its colors? Had we been so preoccupied that our surroundings had become one giant blur of green?
At the trunk’s base, tree roots hid neatly beneath the earth, and around it, hundreds of vividly pink leaves lay still, droplets of rainwater making them look even shinier than they were. Had I walked right over these, thinking they were flowers? I’d grown so accustomed to seeing colorful flowers around trees that I never took the time to observe anything anymore.
“What… is… that?” Jack asked. She was so mesmerized that she sounded high.
“She just told you!” said Arenas. “Lapucho!”
“Lapacho,” Hammer cut in.
“Never heard of it.” Jack continued staring up into the leaves. Her bottom jaw hung loose, making her neck disappear entirely, and her rotten teeth looked like pieces of old toffee.
“Me neither,” someone said.
“Me neither.”
“What’s that?”
“Did you see that?”
“Move, let me see.”
“L-l-apach-ch-cho,” Tegan repeated. With her nails, she began pulling at pieces of bark and slipping them into what appeared to be a bag or a saddle made of suede. Then, she dropped onto her hands and knees and started scavenging through the dirt, throwing mushrooms and branches out of her way as she searched for what I assumed were healthy fallen leaves.
“Ah,” she groaned, and she wrapped her fingers around a handful of bright leaves. She slipped them into her bag and continued searching.
Arenas tilted her body toward me and crossed her arms over her stomach. “What’s she doin’?”
I shrugged. “Supplies, I’m guessing.”
“Chica, what you doin’?” Arenas shouted.
Tegan didn’t look back. Her arms kept swinging around in every direction as she searched for her previous leaves. “H-heal,” she said.
“Heal what?” Jack asked. She’d stopped staring at the overhead leaves, and now, she stood with both hands on her waist as if surveilling Tegan were some important job she’d been assigned.
“T-tumors,” Tegan said, never once looking back. “Every… Everything.” She shoved another handful of colorful leaves into her bag. “Cancer.”
Perhaps if I’d had ten eyes around my head, they’d have met everyone else’s at the same time. I sensed their attention on me, but my gaze landed on Coin, who looked as dumbfounded
as I probably did.
“Franklin,” she whispered.
CHAPTER 4
“I’m not trying to be a downer,” Hammer said, “but what you’re thinking is completely insane and would never work.”
“You heard Tegan babblin’ under that tree,” Coin said. “That shit treats cancer.”
“She has pancreatic cancer,” Johnson said. “I’m sorry, but leaves aren’t going to cure that.”
“Why you guys arguin’ about curing?” Arenas said. “Man, the girl’s with Zsasz now. Not like you’d be able to help her anyway. She ain’t on our side anymore.”
“Arenas is right,” Hammer said.
Coin scoffed and flicked her wrist in the air. “You women ain’t got no faith.”
Though I admired Coin’s positive attitude, I was beginning to side with everyone else. It was delusional to think that some leaves and tree bark could eliminate a disease so far progressed, wasn’t it?
“All’s I’m sayin’ is—” Coin started, but she stopped talking and turned her head toward the river. “You hear that?”
“Hear what?” Arenas’s big eyes shot from side to side. “Fuckin’ spit it out! What is it?”
Coin sucked on her golden tooth and assessed Arenas up and down. “Calm your ass down. It’s the waterfall.”
“The waterfall?” Arenas asked.
“We’re getting closer,” I said. “Come on.”
Coin looked at me, and I knew what she was thinking: Yeah, the waterfall, where Brone kicked that Norther’s ass (literally) and sent her flying to her death.
But she must have known I didn’t want it brought up because she kept her lips sealed tight.
We continued along the riverbed, careful not to step out into the rain.
At the same time, Tegan kept digging through her leaves, counting them with a whisper. It was like watching a kid count their candy on Halloween night. Every time she dug deeper inside her pouch, several pink leaves flew out and twirled around her ankles. Then, she’d stop walking and crouch down, nearly tripping the person walking behind her every time.