Wild Hope

by C. M. Estopare

  C.M. Estopare

  Wild Hope

  With purpose, comes sacrifice.

  First published by C.M. Estopare in 2017

  Copyright © C.M. Estopare, 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Wild Magic Sneak Peak

  Other Books by C.M. Estopare

  Connect with me!

  1

  Red eyes blazed through the overgrown brush. Weaving in and out of the shadows of the jungle, they blinked. Disappeared. Kato cursed as he leaned back, gripping his spear as if it planned to slide out of his hands. A choked cry wove between the towering bamboo shoots behind him as he froze. Listening. The entire jungle seemed to breathe and move around him, the humidity stifling as it hugged him in a thick blanket of wet heat.

  “Get up, Akinyi. Get up!”

  A young woman stood, teetering, before she collapsed back onto the ground. “Moira save me—I think I can’t—” with every word she uttered, a whistle exploded from the bloodied hole in her chest.

  “Go before it spears the both of you!” Kato hissed as the ferns before him rustled, the boar hissing and sputtering as it pounded the ground with its hooves, sprinting away. The beast moving into position to charge. “Go!”

  Akinyi screamed, clutching her chest as the other girl attempted to wrestle her up. Yanking her up by the threads of her shell necklace, it snapped as Akinyi went limp. White and pink shells scattered in a pearly rain.

  “Do as the outcast says.” The uninjured girl hissed.

  Biting the inside of his cheek, Kato cursed again as he dug the butt of his spear into the dirt. I could help—but what use would I be if the boar speared me too? His thoughts swam and with a deep breath, he fought to calm himself. He dug his toes into the dirt as he listened for the boar. Parrots squawked and cicadas sang, but the boar remained silent. Watchful. Kato could feel its eyes burrowing into his skin as he tightened his grip on the spear and felt the bamboo bite into his hands. Behind him, the uninjured girl cursed and bickered with Akinyi as she lay wheezing on the jungle floor. The girls were herbalists fresh from their coming-of-age ceremonies. Thirty days ago they had lived in this jungle with nothing but spears and bows and survived. Proving to the tribe that they deserved a place within the community. And yet…

  “Run.” Kato hissed again, his jaw aching. “If it smells her blood—”

  “Careful, outcast. Keep your eyes forward.” The other girl said, “Or the boar will spear you next.”

  As if he didn’t already know that. Closing his eyes for a second, he hissed out an exasperated breath and replied: “Yes, ma’am.”

  Silence fell like snow. But if he let his guard down, Kato knew the boar would sense it. Taste the sickly-sweet scent of it and come rushing at him with its bloodied tusks aimed for his heart. Kato watched for the blazing eyes, listened for the explosive breath of the beast, and let everything else fall away. The squawking, the singing, the girls behind him fighting to lift themselves up and run. You shouldn’t be doing this, Kato, please! Stop putting yourself in jeopardy for a cause that is already lost! He blinked the thoughts away.

  And that was all it took for the boar to come charging.

  It sprinted. Galloping through the brush like a maelstrom, ripping apart bamboo stalks and fern heads. Grinding his teeth, Kato stood still. His feet planted, his hands choking the slick spear. Kato’s heart climbed into his throat as the boar galloped on, roaring like a lion, as it ran headlong at his sharpened spearhead. He knew things could immediately go sour if the boar thought better of its path and looped around to stab him in the side or the back. Akinyi had already taken a blow for assuming the boar would simply impale itself. The animal proved smarter than the girls believed. Yet, here was Kato digging his heels into the dirt and the butt of his spear, hoping the boar would charge headlong into his spearhead. Just keep going straight…just keep going straight…

  The impact of the boar’s skull into his spear sent him reeling. Digging his heels in further, he was pushed. Shoved through the dirt and foliage as the boar kept going. Kept charging. A sickening crack reverberated through the brush as the boar screeched and panicked. Unable to stop itself, it forced Kato through the dirt further. His toes snagged on sharp rocks and broken branches. The spear burned his hands, but he kept his grip. Tightened it even as tears welled up in his eyes. Behind him, the uninjured girl slid Akinyi to the right, moving out of his way instead of pressing her body weight to his in the hopes of stopping the dying boar’s charge. Kato threw her a look as she dropped Akinyi into the dirt. Crossing her arms, she made it clear that she would do nothing. He was on his own.

  Kato met the boar’s frenzied eyes and caught a hint of fear as the animal screeched. Blood coated its tusks like oil and it bucked, tossing Kato to the left. The sudden head thrust jerked the spear in farther, the spearhead clawing through its throat and tongue. The thunder-shock of pain sent the boar into a frantic dance of rage as it kicked its back hooves and pressed Kato farther and farther. Slamming his back into a thick bamboo trunk, Kato winced as thousands of little pinpricks of pain shot up and down his back. His grip went lax and the spear moved, the butt barreling through the dirt. Passing the bamboo trunk. Passing him. The boar charged, wrenching the spear out of his aching hands. Sprinting forward, it nicked him in the side with the tip of its bloodied tusk. But, still enraged, it ignored him. It only had eyes for the spear.

  “Don’t let it get to Nyx!” the uninjured woman screamed, ignoring Akinyi as she snatched a longbow from her back. “Go—run after it, outcast!” scooping dirt from the ground, the bow hummed as it molded the dirt into a long and slender arrow. Murmuring to herself, the woman loaded the bow before shooting Kato a wide-eyed glance. “Do I have to repeat myself?!”

  Rolling off the bamboo trunk, Kato dropped to the dirt. Pressing his hand to his right side, it came away sticky. Blood red. The ground shifted as he pressed himself up at the woman’s insistence. He had no choice but to listen to her, even if it meant doing something drastic and deadly. “Yes, ma’am.” He croaked, wincing as he took off into a lopsided run.

  The boar roared, violently shaking its head as it attempted to slide the spear from its skull. Blood trailed behind it, the boar making a break for the jungle outskirts. As if the group would ever let the enraged thing leave the Wilds.

  “Hey!” Kato shouted, holding himself. Wincing. “Hey—you stupid thing!”

  Pain overcame it. Rage and anger and hurt allowed it one explosive snort before it careened around, turning to face Kato. Shaking his head, Kato waved one hand at it as he listened for the telltale twang of the girl’s bow. For a long time, he heard nothing.

  The boar teetered, weaving from the left to the right. A pool of blood bloated beneath its black hooves. Be
fore long, it would simply keel over and die. Hopefully, before it charges at me. Kato smiled, then brought his hand up to wave at it again—but a jolt of pain stopped him. The whoosh of an arrow leaving the girl’s bow speared through the air, but the boar still stood. Still glared at him with those blood red eyes as angry as a crimson moon before everything went black.

  2

  All he heard was her voice. Dancing in the dark. Shrieking. Piercing through the black murkiness.

  “You are stupid! Do you hear me, Kato? Stupid!” his mother whimpered, shaking her head as she poured him another cup of sage tea. “No—shush. Don’t cut me off. Don’t say anything!”

  “I only went to help.” He finally said, wincing as he reached for the cup with his good hand. His memory was patchy, but his throbbing right arm told him that though he had blacked out; the girls had left him on the outskirts of the village. Him and the bleeding boar. The strength to trudge back to the village through the brush had been fed by his feverish panic. By the fear that he and the boar had somehow switched places and that the uninjured girl—Zuri, one of the Mesh’s new herbalists—had shoved a spear through his throat. Then finished him off with a poorly shot arrow. When he woke, lying beneath the anxious glare of his mother, he knew he hadn’t switched places with the boar. But Zori had still shot him. Still left him for dead. Why?

  He knew the answer. The entire tribe did.

  His mother sat on a stool, emerald eyes gleaming as she stared down. Holding the cup high above her head, she shook her head again. “I could have lost you today, Kato. You had no reason to be outside the village—in the Wilds, of all places! Go on,” she chirped, still holding the cup high. “Give me a good reason, Kato. The tribe is tired of your heroics. I am tired of your heroics!”

  The thatch mat bit into his skin as he laid back down, gluing his eyes to the wooden rafters high above his head, his eyes traced the grooves in the wood. “Alemayu told me that a boar had been terrorizing—”

  “Oh!” her eyes widened and she forced a smile, “Alemayu, hm? Of course, he’s putting ideas in your head—didn’t I tell you not to speak with him?”

  Kato shot her a glare. “He’s my father.”

  “And I’m your mother!” she screeched, reminding him somewhat of the boar. “How dare you disobey me!”

  The arrow wound’s stitching popped as Kato forced himself up. He locked eyes with his mother and regret filled his belly like sour wine. “I didn’t mean to worry you—”

  “You didn’t mean to worry me!” she repeated, shoving the cup of tea into his face. “You need to lay down. You need to rest! You need to stop having these flights of fancy and accept your place in the tribe!”

  Kato gritted his teeth at those words—accept your place. For him, that was akin to giving up. “I have no place.” At least, not until his coming-of-age ceremony, which was slated to happen this month. If it even happened for him at all.

  “Yes you do—you have a place here. With us.” His mother said, opening her arms wide. “Without you we’d—” and she blinked. Bringing her arms down, she set her fists on her lap. “Without you, we’d…”

  “Be down one lantern boy?” he snapped, setting the cup down. “Have one less manservant?” he shook his head. “You have your purpose here, you’re a cultivator. A herbalist like Akinyi. But I have nothing.”

  “You have us. You have your family.”

  “And so, I go out into the Wilds to practice—for my ceremony, Mother. My coming-of-age?” he sat the cup down with a slam that rattled the hut. His mother turned her toes inward, her feet fiddling. “I’m ready.” He told her, trying not to plead. “I’m ready this time.” Kato looked at her expectantly, hoping she’d understand exactly why he left the village today. But the eyes that looked back at him were milky, her tense expression one of uncertainty. The Calling, he almost wanted to scream, did you attend it?

  Her emerald eyes darkened. Of course, she had. She always does. Every year.

  A caramel curtain of hair covered his mother’s face as she slowly shook her head from side to side. “The Mesh don’t hold the same feelings, Kato.” She mumbled, her words as sharp as the tip of the boar’s tusk. “And I’m afraid that they never will. You are not ready.”

  A sharp intake of breath forced him to wince. He smacked his hand to his side and propped himself up with the other. “I am sixteen.” And yet, he could not call himself a man until he underwent the Dreaming. “I am sixteen, Ma. I need to do the Dreaming. I need to become a man.” He couldn’t find her eyes as she kept her gaze on the floor. For a moment, his world paused as if it were between breaths. Breathing smoothly, his breath hitched again as realization racked his brain and forced his fresh wounds to throb. Blood trickled from the wound on his back as it gaped open at his jerky movement. With a grunt of pain, he stood.

  “No, please.” His mother said, reaching for him. Her arms like ivy vines. “Stay. Lay down. You need to heal. Look…” and her gaze fell to the mat, “you’re bleeding…you’re bleeding…”

  “You were there weren’t you?” he whispered. “When the Shamaness said the names?”

  “Please, lay down, son. Lay down.” She looked defeated. Empty. “Your name wasn’t mentioned…” She could say nothing more as she stared at the little puddle of blood that stained the mat.

  He wouldn’t be undergoing his ceremony. He wouldn’t be becoming a man. He wouldn’t even be given the chance to prove his worth to the tribe—to the Mesh. He would be forced to leech and grab and beg all because of his lineage. All because of his blood.

  Outcast. The word made his jaw jut.

  Stomping around his mother’s stool, he made his way to the front door.

  “Kato—where are you going? You know you cannot approach Her. You know you cannot question Her rule, Her decisions! Kato!”

  He stepped out onto the boardwalk.

  3

  Whispers about Outsiders, demons and devils, wove from doorway to doorway as Kato made his way up the boardwalk toward the hut of the Shamaness. Accusatory glares flickered to his wounds and the blood smearing his back as he strode along the planks. A lazy river gurgled beneath the boardwalk as he entered the heart of the compound and was abruptly stopped.

  “Have you seen the hermit?” the woman blocking his path asked, the hefty spear in her right hand impatiently tapping the boardwalk.

  Kato bit his cheek and lowered his gaze. “No, ma’am.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her slate gray eyes looked toward the sky. “It’s going to storm soon, you know. If it rains I might not be able to fulfill my duty and kill him. Like the Shamaness has asked.”

  Kato sucked in a breath and stole a wide-eyed glance at her.

  “Don’t look at me.” She snapped, tapping the butt end of her spear into the planks with a quick thrust. “Why are you here? State your business, outcast.”

  Should I tell her? He shuffled from foot to foot. The woman was a guard, the first guardian he would have to get past if he wanted an audience with the Shamaness. If he hoped to prove his worth and plead for a spot in the upcoming ceremony, he would need to get past her. “I was struck in the back by Zuri’s stray arrow…” he began, building up a plan. “…I’ve come to ask the Shamaness for reparations…for my family.”

  The guardswoman barked a laugh. “And how? You’re an outcast! You have no standing!”

  His jaw clenched at the word.

  “Besides, what do you even do for your family that Zuri could somehow pay back, hm? Light lanterns? Fix mats?” a crowd was gathering. Chuckles rumbled around him like a grumble of thunder. The air snapped with static as humidity pressed beads of sweat onto his forehead.

  “Zuri, are you here?” the guardswoman called, pushing past Kato to face the crowd of tribes-people. “Look, outcast, I can settle this for you. You don’t even need the Shamaness!”

  “I’m here!” came Zuri’s shout. “I’m here!”

  Kato’s f
ace burned as he turned to face the guardswoman. “I want blood reparations.” It tumbled off the tip of his tongue and he swallowed. Cursed himself for even saying it. “And only the Shamaness can grant that.”

  The guardswoman faced him. “Oh?” the crowd chuckled. “You are already wounded, Outcast. I would advise against hurting yourself further.”

  Peeling herself away from the crowd, Zuri stepped forward. Standing chin to nose, Zuri looked down on him with the confidence of a newly initiated adult. A woman who had undergone the Dreaming ceremony and emerged unscathed. “Do you see his wounds?” she shouted to the crowd, still looking down her nose at him. “He was in the way of my arrow! And besides,” she spat, spittle smacking his face like rain. “He tried to save us—he tried to play the hero, Shield Souda! And I think we all know what happens when a child plays at being a warrior!”

  “They don’t.” A serrated voice cut through the crowd. Kato’s heart constricted as he dropped his forehead to the planks below him.

  Gasping, the gathered crowd muttered and bowed low as the Shamaness exited her hut. A midnight aura swam through the gathered people, the tendrils of her being licking at their skin like the jungle’s stifling heat. She seemed to push away the gasps and mutters of apologizes without lifting a finger. With her arms crossed, she tapped the sharp golden tip of her nail-guard against her forearm.

  “Why are we gathered?” she asked, her voice a deep baritone. “Have we come to ask about the Outsiders on the beach?”

  The crowd pulled away from Kato like storm clouds lifting. Even the guardswoman, Souda, bowed and stalked away backward. “The outcast has come seeking an audience.” Souda murmured.