The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons)

by Brennan, Marie

  That struck me as very convenient. Blame misfortune on someone not even present: it was the same as saying the Lord did it, with an extra helping of blame. “No one in my land practices witchcraft,” I said. “If anyone does such things, it’s your own people.”

  “Everyone practices witchcraft,” Akinimanbi said forcefully, stepping closer. With my advantage of height, she should not have been able to glare down at me, but somehow she gave the impression of doing so. “They practice it in their hearts, when they become angry or upset. Maybe your brother here in camp lusts after you, but you won’t marry him, so his heart works witchcraft against you. Maybe you have a child who wasn’t mourned properly, and so its spirit has cursed you. Who have you wronged?”

  I thought of the tension between myself and Mr. Wilker, my mother’s disapproval, Lord Denbow’s fury at Natalie’s disappearance. But if he were working witchcraft, would it not target his daughter instead?

  It was all nonsense, just like the legend of Zhagrit Mat. I even wondered for a moment if one of the Moulish might be responsible for my misfortunes. But no; it was simply bad luck, and I said so.

  “Bad luck has a cause, Reguamin,” Akinimanbi told me darkly. “If you spent your time staring at the right things, you would understand. Until you take care of it, the bad luck will not go away.”

  And she would not tell me what I wanted to know. Controlling my impatience and frustration as best I could, I said, “Assuming for a moment I believe a word of this … how would I take care of it?”

  Even the hypothetical possibility of my cooperation made her look relieved. “Find the cause. Think who you’ve wronged, and make peace with them. Undo the witchcraft.”

  I could hardly go back to Scirland for a tearful reconciliation with my mother. “I will think about what you’ve said,” I told Akinimanbi, and hoped that would be the end of it.

  But the worst, of course, was yet to come.

  SIXTEEN

  Yellow jack—The dragon roars—Akinimanbi’s argument—The ritual—Natalie and Mr. Wilker—My confession

  You may recall that I praised Natalie Oscott in an earlier segment of this narrative, for not being so foolish as to attempt to press on with her work when she suspected that she might have contracted malaria.

  I was less sensible than she.

  My excuse—and it is a poor one—is that I already felt a keen sense of my insufficiency, owing to the string of misfortunes I had suffered. My broken fingers had healed enough for me to be of use once again; I did not want to delay us more, or put my share of the burden on Mr. Wilker and Natalie. (No, that phrasing is too noble, though I shall leave it for posterity. I did not want to surrender to others’ hands what contributions I might now make.)

  When I felt the first stirrings of a headache, therefore, I shrugged them off. The ache in my body I attributed to the ongoing lack of a proper bed; stiff muscles were a familiar problem, and if they pained me more now than before, surely that did not mean anything. Nor did my lack of appetite, which could be attributed to weariness with a diet of hippo meat, honey, and termites, and a craving for the familiar comforts of home—never mind that I felt no such craving, not even for foods that were ordinarily a pleasure. Part of me recognized the peril in these signs, but I was not yet ready to admit their significance, not even to myself.

  That stage of my denial may, perhaps, be excused. But as the day wore on, I began to shiver, and then I acted like a proper fool: I strove to conceal my shudders from the others, knowing they would insist we return to camp at once. The three of us had found a swamp-wyrm wrapped around a tree, lying in wait for unwary prey, and I had at last a good opportunity to draw it; I told myself that the opportunity should not be wasted, and that evening would be soon enough for me to lie down and rest.

  But soon my hand began to shake badly enough that it affected my work. And Natalie, who had been crouched where she could study the jointing of the dragon’s wing, noticed.

  “Isabella,” she whispered, in a tone of concern.

  Before she could say anything further, my lack of appetite abruptly asserted itself in the other direction. I dropped my sketchbook and vomited into the underbrush, and from there matters only got worse.

  The dragon fled, which brought Mr. Wilker back to us, and he wasted no time in lecturing me as I deserved (though at the time I was bitterly angry with him for it). He insisted we return to camp on the spot, and I was no longer in any condition to argue; indeed, I was in no condition to walk. Before long he resorted to carrying me, and by such ignominious means did I find myself back in my tent.

  Once laid on my pallet, I moaned and curled into a ball. Mr. Wilker, about to depart, stopped and turned back. “What is it?” he asked.

  “My back,” I said. “It aches.”

  He dropped to his knees and rolled me over against my protests, peeling back my eyelids with careful fingers. Whatever he saw there made him recoil. “God almighty. This isn’t malaria.”

  “What?”

  I will never forget the look of abject fear in his eyes. “I think you have yellow fever.”

  And so I did. The early stage is much like malaria; the back pain and sometimes a yellowing of the sclera in the eyes are what distinguish the two. For the next three days I shuddered and sweated on my pallet, alternately attempting to take sustenance and refunding it a short while later. It was like a dreadful case of the ’flu—dreadful first because it was so physically unpleasant, and second because I knew the peril I was in. Yellow jack rarely kills Erigans; they most often contract it in childhood, and afterward are immune, as we Scirlings are with measles or the pox. But for those of us not exposed to it from an early age, it can be very hazardous indeed.

  I knew all this, and yet when my fever abated, I still fell prey to the unfounded optimism that accompanies the course of the disease. “I feel quite better,” I insisted, and ate a hearty meal to prove it. “We shall be back at work tomorrow.”

  But Mr. Wilker would not let me take refuge in hope. “If you remain healthy for a week,” he said, “then we may consider it. Until then, you rest.”

  He was, of course, correct. Some people escape yellow fever that easily, but I was not among them. Shortly after my apparent recovery, I entered the second, and far worse, stage of the disease.

  I can tell you very little of what happened during those days, at least from my own perspective. I was delirious with fever and pain, which rendered my memories little more than a hallucinatory smear of impressions. Natalie told me afterward that Akinimanbi’s grandmother Apuesiso stripped me bare and coated me in cool mud, changing it as necessary to bring my fever down; this explains why, when I came to my senses, I was filthy and naked even by the minimalist standards of the Moulish. She also told me I vomited black bile, which is a terrible sign and heralds death more often than not. I dreamt of the talking drums, pounding out my doom. I shook and I raved; I sweated blood out my pores, and where the mud did not cover me my skin was gold with jaundice. In short, I nearly died—a phrase I can write with equanimity only because it was so long ago, and because I have the reassurance of knowing I survived. (As you can plainly tell, for I am not writing this memoir from beyond the grave.)

  But at the time, it was nothing short of terrifying, even once the worst was past. Knowing that, having recovered, I was thereafter proof against further infections comforted me little; I had thought myself recovered before, only to be dragged under once more by the second stage of the fever. I lived in fear that this new reprieve was likewise temporary, and I would soon succumb entirely.

  My will to live was sufficient to make me bathe, so that I could dress once more in something other than mud. But my enthusiasm for our research was shattered by the conviction that the Green Hell was going to kill me.

  In this fragile state did the dragon find me.

  * * *

  If you have never been seriously ill, you cannot understand how sensitive your mind is afterward, how easily jarred by the world around
you. But remember that state, if you have experienced it, and imagine it if you have not.

  Now imagine that a sound begins in the forest, beyond range of your sight. It is a snarling, roaring sound, which your tired, sensitive mind immediately tries to identify, fitting it to one beast or another you have seen. You fail, because this is nothing like any animal call you have heard before, and this failure makes you afraid. Is the creature something new, or is your mind going to pieces?

  Before you can answer that question, the sound changes. It draws closer, in a trampling rush that paralyzes you where you sit. And then something comes bursting between the trees, a beast like none in all the world, with a terrible maw and a seething, many-legged body behind it, which snarls and rages in a swift circle around you, then turns its fury upon your camp. It knocks down tents, flings your belongings into the dirt, scatters the fire and stomps your clothing into the ashes. It is chaos and noise incarnate, and if you were healthy and well rested you would recognize it as nothing more than someone wearing a wooden dragon mask, with others trailing behind it under cover like a Yelangese festival puppet.

  I was not healthy, nor well rested, and I had never seen such a puppet. I shrieked and cowered, the noise and destruction too much for me to encompass. The dragon saw my fear and fed it, rushing at me again and again—and then, with one final snarl, vanished back into the forest.

  Silence fell, more complete than any I had heard since coming to the Green Hell. The display had shocked even the natural beasts of the swamp into quiet.

  Just as I began to regain my breath, Mr. Wilker broke the silence. Red with rage, he stormed forward, to where Apuesiso was picking herself up from the dirt. He swore the air blue in Scirling, then mastered his tongue enough to speak in a language she would understand. “What is the meaning of this? Your people have just destroyed half our things! They’ve terrorized Isabella—is this how you treat a woman only barely recovered?”

  “It is how we warn those who do not listen.”

  The voice was not Apuesiso’s. I turned, still trembling, and saw Akinimanbi standing a little way behind us. She and Mekeesawa had not been with our camp in some time—not since before I fell ill. When had she returned?

  Only just now, by the surprise with which Mr. Wilker and Natalie faced her. Akinimanbi nodded to her grandmother. “She sent word of what happened, through the drums. We brought the legambwa bomu. It is a thing we do, when people ignore the advice of those around them.”

  That gave me the strength to rise to my feet. “You are saying I brought this upon myself? How? And what is this—this destruction supposed to teach me?”

  “It teaches us all,” Akinimanbi said, gesturing around the camp. Following her hand, I saw that Apuesiso and her husband Daboumen had not been spared the pseudo-dragon’s wrath: it had torn leaves from the roof of their hut, smashed their meat-drying rack, broken the new spear Daboumen had been working on. “We have made noise in the world, and so it comes back to us. We are all to blame for letting it reach this point.” Her gaze came back to me, its weight almost palpable. “You know what the noise is, Reguamin. You must root it out, before it kills you.”

  Noise, to the Moulish, was not simply unpleasant sound. It was a disruption to social harmony. And Akinimanbi directed her words to me, as the pseudo-dragon, the legambwa bomu, had directed its roars.

  Even with my body and spirit exhausted by fever, I did not believe in witchcraft. But I had submitted before to foreign rites, in order to reassure those around me—could I not do the same here?

  It depended on the rites in question. The Vystrani might have been Temple-worshippers, but at least they were Segulist. I did not know what might be required of me here.

  There was a simple way to find out. I drew in a deep breath, stiffening my weak knees, then went forward so I could talk to Akinimanbi without others listening in. “What would I have to do, to rid myself of this ill?”

  She said, “Witchcraft is caused by the evil in people’s hearts. It unbalances the world and makes problems for everyone. Whatever evil is in your heart, you have to let it go.”

  I could not contain a weary snort. “It’s that simple? I decide to let go of whatever troubles me, and all will be well?”

  Akinimanbi shook her head. “Maybe others resent you. Maybe your brother and sister”—by which she meant Mr. Wilker and Natalie—“or people who aren’t here. Have you done something to offend them?”

  “I can hardly mend bridges with people all the way back in my homeland.”

  “Apologize to them anyway,” she said. “Here, in camp. We will hear you, and so will the spirits.”

  Her advice struck me as oddly Segulist. The New Year lay several months off as yet, but she was urging me to repent of and atone for my errors. Had I not known better, I would have wondered whether sheluhim had come to the Green Hell after all, or some shred of our religion filtered through into the Moulish world. I think, however, that such practices are simply a basic human impulse. If we cannot ask for and receive forgiveness, how can any society survive?

  I have never been a very good Segulist, though, and I still did not accept the notion that following Akinimanbi’s counsel would end my misfortune. With all the dreary pessimism of my half-dead state, I told her as much.

  Her reply was pragmatic and eye-opening. “Is that a reason to stay silent?”

  There was no good answer to that. All the things I feared—giving in to superstition, humiliating myself in front of others, tearing the scabs off wounds I was happier ignoring—did not outweigh Akinimanbi’s point. My spirit was not easy; it ached under the weight of all the things I had not said, even to myself. Even if that was not the cause of my woes, would it not be better to lay that burden down?

  And—lest you think my motives were purely noble—I suspected that going along with her plan would also remove the barrier that stood in the way of my research.

  (Admitting to such mercenary thinking will not reflect well on me, but I do not want anyone thinking I am one of the Righteous. The driving force in my life has always been my passion for draconic research, and although I have tried to be fair in my dealings with others as I pursue that goal, my motivations are not what you could call selfless.)

  “Very well,” I said, resigning myself to this fate. “Show me what to do.”

  * * *

  I did not speak of what followed for many years after the fact. It was too personal, not only for myself, but for Natalie and Mr. Wilker, and while I may choose to expose my every flaw here in this text, I have no right to decide the same for them. Before he passed away, however, Mr. Wilker gave me permission to tell others what he said that day, and everything Natalie said became public eventually, in its own fashion. What Faj Rawango and our Moulish hosts said was, to their way of thinking, behind them as soon as the event ended; they do not object to others mentioning it later, so long as it is not done to encourage further discord. Furthermore, it feels contrary to the spirit of the event itself to dishonestly recount what we said. I will therefore set it down with as much precision as memory permits.

  The Moulish, of course, have ceremonies for such things. The youths who had made up the legambwa bomu rejoined us, as did Mekeesawa, and we all seated ourselves around the central fire of the camp—a significant place, as it is both literally and metaphorically where they come together as kin. Certain leaves were thrown into the fire, creating fragrant smoke, and we scooped this smoke with our hands as if we were hunters departing with our nets. The leaves may have soporific qualities; I cannot say for sure. It is possible that the feeling of quiet contemplation that settled over me was simply the consequence of my choice.

  I began by making my apologies to the camp. “We came here not to aid you and act as kin, but to learn about dragons. We want this knowledge for our own people—” I caught my phrasing, stopped, and began again. “I want this knowledge for my people. They will respect me more if I learn things they do not know. But they will not respect you for kno
wing it, because you are of a different people. I was going to present the knowledge as my own, even though you helped me gain it. That is not fair to you, and I am sorry.”

  Our hosts clapped their hands, to banish the evil in my words. Then Akinimanbi said, “I have been impatient with your ignorance, Reguamin. You try, but you are like a child; I have to spend much of my time telling you what to do or what is going to hurt you. It makes for more work.” She cupped one hand over the bare skin of her belly. “But I carry a child now, and teaching you has prepared me to teach my son or daughter. I should not have resented you.”

  Dutifully I clapped my hands, but my cheeks heated with embarrassment. I was a world traveller, a natural historian, and beginning to think of myself as intrepid, even if that sense had taken a beating of late. Being called an ignorant child put me quite neatly in my place.

  Mekeesawa spoke next. “My brother left to join another camp because he did not like having you among us. I had not seen him since before the floodwaters rose. I thought about going to visit him, but I did not want to leave Akinimanbi, and she did not want to leave you. Finally I insisted we go, and she agreed—but while we were gone, your troubles grew worse. She might have stopped it, if she had been here. I took that from you; and I was angry at you for being the reason I have not seen my brother, and for claiming so much of my wife’s attention. Forgive me.”

  On it went, through Akinimanbi’s grandparents and the others in camp. It was an eye-opening experience; despite living among them all these months, we had not seen the effects of our presence very clearly. Our willingness to do our part, however ineptly, had won us a degree of tolerance; but our ineptitude, and the burden it imposed on those around us, was greater than we had realized. I saw that understanding dawn on Natalie and Mr. Wilker, even as it did on me. They were not the focus of this undertaking, being not the ones supposedly targeted by witchcraft, but the arrangement of it was such that we could not help but all be made aware of some of our errors.