Withering Hope

by Hagen, Layla

  "I'm sorry if—”

  "Let's not start that discussion again, Tristan. You have nightmares. They're not a big deal to me, just noise. But they are a big deal to you. You didn't have any more last night after I came to you. When you slept in the cockpit, you thrashed around all night. This is an improvement."

  "Yeah, it is."

  "Well, that is the whole point." Tristan nods as he moves the bird around over the fire. "What did you do with the snake?"

  "Got rid of it. Was lying in the sun on top of the shower."

  "Can we do something from preventing snakes, or anything else, falling inside the water bucket?"

  "I'll come up with something, sure."

  "Thanks. The food looks like it'll take a while to be ready. I'm going to search for fruit so we can eat them for dinner."

  Tristan stands up abruptly. "No."

  "Huh? Why? I do this every day."

  "I saw some worrying paw prints around there." He points to the space between the tail of the plane and the fence.

  My stomach leaps to my throat. "It got on the inside of the fence? Can you tell what it was?"

  Tristan shakes his head. "It might be a jaguar."

  "You said those were rare."

  "Yeah, well, we already got lucky crashing on this hill above the floodwaters; I guess we aren't lucky in this department. From now on, we'll stick together at all times."

  "But that's not efficient at all," I protest.

  "Neither is you getting yourself killed."

  "Why are you so pessimistic?" I ask, exasperated.

  "I'm a realist. You have no idea how to defend yourself."

  "I can climb trees," I say heatedly.

  Tristan abandons all pretense of focusing on our meal and stands up, agitated. "So can every animal in this forest. Besides you freak out when you see a damn snake. How will you keep your head cool when you're face to face with a jaguar?"

  "I freaked out once," I say through gritted teeth.

  "Once is all it takes to make the difference between life and death. Are you actually fighting with me over going into the forest on your own? You're afraid of it."

  "That's why I always try to stay close to the plane," I spit back.

  "It’s not up for discussion. If there's an emergency that requires just one of us to go into the forest I will go, and you wait inside the plane."

  "Oh so you can go on your own, but I can't? Last time I checked, you didn't have superpowers." I try to control myself. What on earth brought on the temper? It’s not because he thinks I can’t defend myself. I know I can’t. I take a deep breath, poking around my mind for an answer, replaying this conversation. The second the word jaguar pops up, I realize what brought this on. I’m just terrified—petrified that something might happen to him. It terrifies me more than the idea that something bad might happen to me. And the fact that he takes his own safety more lightly than mine furthers my apprehension.

  "I can defend myself, Aimee," he says in a more measured tone.

  I back off, drawing a few deep breaths. "Okay, I’m being ridiculous. You are right, of course. It's dangerous to run on my own when there might be a jaguar around. But we have to be reasonable. I went by myself into the forest countless times when your back was hurting, and nothing happened."

  "We had no other choice. Maybe you got lucky. At any rate, this is a risk we can't take. We'll coordinate everything so we waste as little time as possible. When you search for fruit, I can look for poisonous plants or eggs."

  "All right," I say, still unsatisfied. Tristan puts his hand under my chin, raising it. His touch sends an electric jolt through me, making my entire body heat up. Whether it's the heated discussion or another kind of heat, I don't want to know, but I take a step back just the same.

  "The only way I'm going to allow you to go off on your own is if you learn to shoot straight," he says, and the determination in his eyes is almost unsettling. Nodding toward the tree with the target he says, "The bow and arrows are there. Practice until our meal is ready."

  I groan, but do as he says. He's right. I need to be able to defend myself. I need to get better at this. My resolution starts to dissolve twelve arrows into my practice. No more than one has hit the target. I can hardly concentrate on shooting, and every time I stare at the target for longer than a few seconds, I get dizzy. So maybe going into the forest today to climb trees in search for eggs and fruit wouldn't have been such a good idea, jaguars aside. The fact that I slept even less than usual is blurring my vision and diminishing my focus. That can mean the difference between stepping on the right branch or the wrong one and falling from the tree, since the nests are on the higher branches.

  "Your stance is wrong again," Tristan says from behind me.

  "Argh," I exclaim. "Damn it, Tristan. Announce yourself, will you? I don't need a heart attack."

  "Sorry, didn't want to scare you." Putting his hand on my belly, he says, "You don't have any pressure here."

  "I… I know, it's just…" I take a deep breath, trying hard not to acknowledge how his touch affects me. What the hell is it with me today? He's touched me like this dozens of times before, and he was the one who seemed affected by it. Not me.

  "I can't concentrate."

  "You didn't rest last night; I knew it."

  Time to lie again. "No, it's not that. I just… I'm not good at it."

  Tristan looks unconvinced, but doesn't insist. "Let's eat. You can practice afterward."

  But I manage to skip another training session after the meal, because we decide to go together searching for eggs and fruit and wood. I let Tristan do the climbing, and I stick to collecting wood, since it requires least attention. By the time we are back it's too dark to do anything except take a shower—after Tristan checks the water basket for any unwanted guests. While he showers I go to inspect the paw print. I hold a torch close to the ground until I find it. And then I wish I hadn't. It's enormous. How big is this beast? The hair at the back of my neck stands on end as I try to imagine it. Tristan joins me when he gets out of the shower.

  "Scary, isn't it?"

  "By all means. Why did it come here?"

  "Hard to say." He shrugs. "Maybe it's just lost or…"

  "Or what?"

  "Maybe it's a jaguar inspecting this place to see if it’s suitable to become its territory."

  "Could there be more of them?"

  "Nah… jaguars are solitary creatures. They don't run in packs. Of course, if it's a female with cubs, and the cubs are bigger than cute kittens, we'd have a small pack on our hands."

  "What would happen then?"

  His expression darkens. "We'd have to leave immediately."

  "But you said that was something you'd consider only as a last resort." My knees turn weak. "The forest is still underwater."

  "That is a last resort. No amount of arrows, even poisoned ones, will help if more jaguars come. We'd starve hiding inside the plane, and we wouldn't be able to come out."

  "I'd rather die from lack of food than become food."

  "I'll take care of you, Aimee. I promise. Let's go inside now; it's too dark." Without warning, he puts his arms around me in a tender embrace. From the plethora of feelings striking me in this moment—heat, guilt, confusion—most powerful is the feeling that I belong here in his arms.

  I feel at home in them.

  We stay like this for a long time, and then we head toward the plane.

  As I climb the airstairs I ask him, "The odds of a female with cubs isn’t that great, is it?"

  "Not sure," Tristan says from behind me. "I think this is one of the few areas of the Amazon that doesn't get flooded in the rainy season. This place must look pretty attractive. But we were lucky until now; maybe we'll stay lucky."

  His answer doesn't calm me in the slightest. I stop before entering the plane, straining my ears to discern anything that sounds more ominous than usual in the permanent buzz of the rainforest.

  Nothing.

  Maybe Tr
istan's right. But what if our luck has come to an end?

  "Your turn to tell a story," I say as I yawn in my seat, preparing to go to sleep. I am so exhausted, I won't have any trouble falling asleep tonight.

  "I told you I don't have any good ones. The Army isn't full of cheerful stories.”

  "Is this why all your poems are so dark? Because of the Army?"

  "Yes. I wasn't much into reading before I enrolled. During a short break at home, before I left for Afghanistan, I bought a magazine, and it included a small book of poems as a freebie. Anniversary something. It was a collection from various poets—they were all, dark, as you call them. That got me started. It sounds weird, but they were comforting."

  "Why?"

  "I was surrounded by so much pain and misery that my own thoughts became very dark. So dark that I started to worry. It was comforting to realize that darkness can lead to beauty. Like poems. Why are the ones you quote so cheerful?"

  "Those are the only ones I remember." I shrug, feeling ashamed. "No deeper meaning."

  "Well, the fact that you only remember those means something."

  Maybe he's expecting me to understand what he means, but I don't. And I don't ask.

  Instead I say, "You still owe me a story. Tell me a pre-Army story. What made you choose Army? I mean, there must have been a reason. You didn't just wake up on the morning of your seventeenth birthday and decided to do it, did you?"

  "I pretty much did. When I was a kid my favorite hero was a character in a comic book who was a commander in the Army, so I wanted to be one too. I guess the idea just stuck as I grew up. I never wanted to be anything else."

  "That's sweet; you got to follow your dream."

  He hesitates. "Some dreams are better left unfollowed. They can turn into nightmares."

  I don't have an answer for that. What can I tell a man who followed his childhood dreams only to have reality beat them out of him?

  "I bet you were a little hero even when you were young. Come on… I'm sure you'll come up with something."

  "I don't know about being a hero, but I was very daft. I almost drowned once. This girl was crying because her dog fell into a lake, so I jumped in after it."

  "Why do you think that was daft?"

  "Because dogs can swim better than people. The dog ended up saving me."

  "How old were you?"

  "Eleven."

  I try to wrap my mind around someone doing that at the age of eleven. The most I can remember about that age was throwing a fit if the present my parents sent me every two weeks from wherever they were didn't arrive on time. Yeah, I was spoiled.

  Some people are born to see what matters in life. They can sense it. Like my parents. I always admired their ability to put everything aside, including me, in order to concentrate on their work.

  "It was foolish," Tristan says, laughing through the darkness.

  "Not at all. It was very admirable of you." I bury my head in my pillow. I'm grateful there are people like him whose natural instinct is to do good for others. It's almost a sin that he hasn't received the kindness he deserves in return. My last thought before I fall asleep is that maybe I'll manage to accomplish that, in some limited way, in this wilderness.

  I wake up to screams. Cold panic grips me, convinced that the jaguars are upon us. Then I come to my senses. It's just Tristan's nightmares. I approach him cautiously, shaking him awake. He smiles when he sees me, though his eyes still have a haunted look to them.

  "Can you sit next to me for a while?" he murmurs.

  "Sure," I say, though I’m more uneasy than I was last night when I gave the same answer. After the incident today and my body's decision to act so outrageously, I'm not sure I should be so close to him. But what can I tell him? Sorry, Tristan, I have to back off helping you through your nightmares because my nipples decided to turn to pebbles today and my skin turns to burning coal when I am too close to you. Asides from it being ridiculous, it would be selfish of me to back off and unfair to him.

  As I sit next to him and he gazes at me intensely with his endlessly dark eyes, his chest rising and falling in the same lightning-quick succession as mine, I remember the other times when my proximity seemed to have the same effect on him that his proximity now has on me. I try to stay just far enough from him that our bodies don’t touch. Feeling his hot breath on my skin is unavoidable though.

  "You want to talk about the nightmare?" I ask.

  "No, not tonight."

  "Okay."

  "When I was in the Army, I dreamed about being home, eating my omelette in the morning without worrying I might not make it to the next day." So that's why something as simple as an omelette is his favorite meal. That's why he notices details others don't. Like how I drink my coffee, or that I change my hair color often.

  "When I got home I didn't dream anymore. I just got nightmares. I wish I could have a dream instead of a nightmare just once. I haven't dreamed about something peaceful in a long time."

  "What would you like to dream about?"

  "No idea. Never thought about it. I just don't want to be back in Afghanistan every time I close my eyes."

  "Hmm, you should try visualizing what you want to dream instead of what you don't want to dream."

  "That sounds like something a therapist would say."

  "Umm… I read it in a bridal magazine. It was advice to avoid bad dreams about all the preparations."

  A guffaw reverberates from his chest, like I suspected it would.

  "Sounds shallow, doesn't it?"

  "Nah, it's just funny how much women can stress themselves over weddings. Some of the native tribes in the Amazon used to have very simple ceremonies to celebrate weddings. They would just tattoo each other's name or symbols on their bodies."

  "That can't be true," I say, shuddering. The thought of getting a tattoo always baffled me. It hurts and it's permanent. Why do it?

  "Yeah it is. When we get back to a place with Internet, you can check it."

  "You can bet; that'll be my first concern if we ever get back to civilization," I mock him.

  "Did that magazine advice work?"

  "No idea. I didn't have nightmares, I just read it. But a friend of mine who got married last year swore it helped her, though it took a bit of time until that happened."

  "All right, I'll try it," he says, though by the tone of his voice I can tell he doesn't trust a technique for bridezillas to help him drive away nightmares of war bombs. I don't blame him.

  "I suppose it takes training, just like me with the arrows. I hope you'll get better at it quicker than I am with the arrows."

  "You will get better at that," he says with conviction. "Even if I have to stand behind you and correct you every day for hours. It's even more important now than it was before."

  "Thanks. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you with… umm."

  "You already are." He turns to me, coming closer. He takes so much time to form the next words that I almost think he will change his mind and say nothing at all. But when he speaks, I realize why it took him so long. "It's so much better when you're next to me. I first noticed it that night I had a fever." It's an admission that costs him. A lot. Because he can't take it back. During the day, it’s easy for him to say he can go back to sleeping alone in the cockpit. But at night, when the horrors he's trying so hard to forget torture him, he can't pretend.

  "I noticed that you were still that night when I was close to you, but I wasn't sure if the fever had just knocked you out or not. Why didn't you say anything?"

  "I was ashamed. Still am."

  "Don't be."

  "I'd hate to make you feel uncomfortable just so I can—”

  "Why, because that would be selfish? Tristan, you've earned the right to be selfish for two lifetimes. And for the record, I don't think you're being selfish at all."

  He watches me for a long time before he asks, "Then will you stay here next to me? Even after I fall asleep?"

  A shive
r runs up my spine as I answer, because I've never felt this needed in my life. "I will. I promise."

  "Good."

  "Now, come up with something nice to dream about," I urge.

  To my astonishment, he chuckles. "Oh, I know what I can use to start my dream training."

  "I'm all ears."

  "I'm hoping for a mental replay of your naked dance today," he says, grinning.

  "Tristan! And I had deemed you a gentleman because you didn't mention it."

  "It was fantastic."

  I pinch his chest playfully with my fingers. And regret it. Touching him this little is enough to give me goose bumps on my arms. Goose bumps he can't miss, even though there's scarce light, because his other hand shoots to my arm, pinching me back. He sucks in his breath when he feels my skin under his fingers. I wish now there was not even the glow of moonlight in the plane, so I couldn't see the glint of desire in his eyes.

  "Promise me you won't think about that," I say, praying that he'll take my reaction as a manifestation of my embarrassment.

  Pulling back his hand he says, "Hey, that's not fair. You said I could be selfish."

  "But that's my body you are talking about. I forbid you to dream about it."

  "You'll never know," he says.

  But I do know. Because when he falls asleep, he starts mumbling again about bombs and everything being his fault, and it's not until he rests his head on my chest, slinging his arms around me, that he calms down. I don't sleep for one minute the rest of the night, guilt chocking me. I stare at my diamond ring until I get teary.

  "Can we slow down a bit, please?" I pant a week later, during our daily raid in the forest for food. "I need to rest a bit."

  "I'd rather we got to the plane, Aimee."

  "Just one minute, please."

  "Fine," he scrutinizes me, as if expecting me to collapse at his feet any minute now, which is possible. "Rest here a few minutes until I collect some more fruit. I saw some ripe ones up there." He points to a tree to our right. "I'll keep an eye on you."

  "I have no doubt," I say in a whisper that's covered by the squawk of some kind of animal hiding in the tree. The sounds of life scurrying in every direction, on every inch of the forest don't frighten me as much as they used to. Not the croaks, or shrills, or the chorus of other indistinguishable buzzing noises. I can't quite say the same about the howls of predators, but I'm trying to channel that fear into learning how to defend myself.