Five large beasts bound around a crisscrossing maze of wooden beams. They swing and bounce, hooting like monkeys, but they’re immense and tailless. At the center of the chaos is a massive beast clutching a small girl in his hand. Her face is obscured by thick fingers, but I sense her fear. Her desperation. Her sadness.
I want to make her feel better.
I want to save her.
When the beast begins squeezing, the girl screams again, launching me into action.
Armed with the radio antenna, I charge and stumble through the wooden beams, whipping the creatures in a futile attempt to save her.
“No!” I scream. “Noooo!”
The word erupts as a roar of my own. And then I see myself from the outside once more, hacking and slashing, clawing.
Blood sprays, warm and delicious.
He’s lost in it, and quickly forgets why he’s there. What he’s fighting for.
Darkness consumes him.
Fills him.
And then, he wakes.
I stand, heaving for air, exhausted and confused. Hands on knees, I scan the jungle surrounding me. To my left is a mutilated tree dripping sap. Ants are mixed in with the ruined bark, bodies on a battlefield. Some of them struggle to drag themselves free. Others are dismembered or squashed to paste. Ants above and below the wound are frantic, looking for any enemy.
I follow the irate mass of small bodies to the ground. A slow-moving river of twitching limbs and strong pincers courses toward my feet.
A few steps back frees me from danger for a moment, just long enough to turn toward the growl behind me.
Ashan and Oro stand together, both of them afraid and ready to defend themselves.
That’s when I notice the machete in my hand.
“What happened?”
“You started shouting,” Ashan says. “In your sleep. I think it was a name. Then you were fighting something. A spirit maybe. It was like with Tikuna. I could see you, but you weren’t there. Oro came to help you when you attacked the tree. She was struck by your hand.”
I drop the machete and approach the pair, head lowered. I drop to one knee and reach out my arms. “It was a dream. I would never hurt you. Either of you.”
There is a moment of wariness, and then both of my girls approach and allow me to wrap my arms around them.
“You are all that matters to me,” I say to Ashan, but it feels like a lie.
“That is good,” she says. “But when the time comes, I want you to step out of yourself again. Can you do that?”
I’m not sure. I have no control over it. But I say, “Yes.”
“Good,” she says. “We are nearly there.”
35
“You look tired,” I tell Ashan, and I get a glower for my concern. While her inner strength is unaffected, her pace has slowed, and she’s sweating more than usual. I’ve slowed my pace to match hers, trying not to push her, but her pride is doing that for me. “If you’re feeling ill, we should rest.”
“I’m not ill,” she says, growing angry.
She’s probably right. Sickness in the jungle is usually a result of toxic exposure to something derived by nature. Poison, mold, infection. But she hasn’t been exposed to anything, and has no open wounds.
“Is it…” A glance at her crotch finishes the question. Ashan keeps a collection of cloth strips wrapped inside the sash around her waist. During menstruation, she uses them the way a modern woman might a pad. She washes them out in a stream or river, and lets them dangle from the sash before reusing them. She’s not wearing one now, but that doesn’t mean she’s not cramping in preparation.
She pauses, hands on knees, murdering me with her eyes. “I’m not accustomed to the rise.”
That makes some degree of sense. We’ve been traveling uphill all day, our first hint that we have reached the basin’s fringe. The incline isn’t steep, but it is persistent and working out muscles I haven’t used in a long time. I’m feeling the burn, but it hasn’t slowed me down. Ashan has led a physical life far longer than me. This shouldn’t be hard for her.
When my look of concern grates on her further, she waves me onward. “Just…go!”
To argue would be folly, so I continue onward. The incline grows steeper over the next hour. Ashan doesn’t slow, but I can tell she’s pushing herself harder. She’s not going to take care of herself. I have no choice.
With a grunt, I lower myself to the trunk of a fallen tree. I open my satchel, unwrap some meat, and begin eating.
“What are you doing?” Ashan asks, disappointment and relief at war in her voice.
“I’m hungry,” I say. “And thirsty. Find us something to drink.”
Telling her to find water helps diffuse her irritation. If I’m putting her to work, I can’t be showing her pity, right? Pity isn’t the word I would use, but it’s how Ashan thinks. And though I might be more animal than man, I haven’t forgotten how to love.
But I have forgotten a lot.
I close my eyes and shake my head. Memories scratch at the inside of my skull, seeking fissures. I seal them up with an irritated growl and accept a four-foot segment of vine from Ashan.
“What is on your mind?” she asks, tipping her own vine upward and drinking from it.
I drink from the vine. Once the water hits my tongue, I realize how thirsty I actually was. Memories of dehydration percolate, but are more of a feeling than an image. I never want to feel that desperate and helpless again. I am ashamed that I ever did.
“I am eager to complete our journey,” I tell her. “To finish becoming.”
“That is good,” she says, genuinely pleased. On one hand, she is acting like herself. Sitting here, sharing a small meal, it is impossible to see that anything is wrong with her. But there is no denying her weariness. Perhaps she simply didn’t sleep well. Whatever the case, I’m smart enough to know not to ask again.
“Do not let anything distract you,” she says. “A lapse in focus will result in both of our deaths.”
And there it is. The real reason she’s not revealing the cause of her ailment. If I’m distracted by concern for her wellbeing—a very human emotion—how can the animal emerge? If Mapinguari defeats me, Ashan will be the next to die at her hands.
That is something I cannot allow, so I push all concern for Ashan from my mind. When my belly is full, and my thirst quenched, I waste no time striking out again. Ashan follows, but lags behind. An hour later, I can no longer see her, but I can hear her. Her feet have lost their feathery touch. She pushes through brush, rather than moving around it. Her breath heaves with each step.
While I am becoming more, she is becoming less.
A scent tickles my nose. The downhill slope carries the scent of something animal from above. I duck down, drawing my machete. While I still carry bow and arrows, I prefer the more visceral experience of a blade. I take a deep breath through my nose, and relax.
“Oro,” I call. The cat doesn’t reply. She never does. But I know she’s there, waiting for me.
The hill grows steep, requiring me to proceed with my hands lowered to the ground. Despite the incline, I have no trouble climbing thanks to the tangles of tree roots and…rocks. I pause when I grasp the first rough-surfaced stone. It’s dark gray and serrated by the elements. Something about the solidness of the stone underfoot feels familiar. Makes me smile.
I heave myself up over a tall root and roll into a clearing where Oro lounges. The cat gives me a glance, tongue hanging out as she pants. The climb has been hard for her, too.
Then I see the view.
I cling to the ground, head spinning from the vast openness ahead. Without realizing it, we’ve been climbing a mountain. We’re nowhere near the summit, but the view is still staggering. The blue sky is pushed back by green peaks rising thousands of feet in the air. Further west, the jungle would give way to stone and snowcapped mountains.
But I don’t think we’ll need to go that far. We’re already at the fringe of the Arawanti’
s territory, and far further than the lowland Amazonian tribes are comfortable traveling. The air is cooler here, and thinner.
Maybe that’s why Ashan is struggling? Deep in the Amazon, she’s accustomed to heavily oxygenated air. When I hear her grunting behind me, I lean out over the edge and peer down.
She looks exhausted, struggling to climb the steep rise.
“Hey,” I say, ignoring her weariness. “You have to see this!”
After a pause to look me in the eyes, she gets back to work and starts climbing again.
She doesn’t want an audience, so I don’t give her one. I sit beside Oro and pet the cat’s head. Seeing the open sky is a rare treat in the jungle. It’s more common now, since Ashan and I never venture too far from water sources and the game they provide. But this…it is raw beauty. The world stretches out before me, and for a moment, I remember that the Earth is vast and its people diverse. Beyond our small Amazonian world, nations are at war, genocide is being carried out, and people with selfish intentions are making decisions for everyone else.
But not here.
Here we are free to live like we want, die on our own terms, and kill if we must.
“What do you think?” I ask Oro.
The cat’s yawn infects me, and when Ashan drags herself atop the ridge, she’s greeted by my open mouth.
“We can camp here,” I say. There are still several hours in the day, but all of us are tired. Some more than others, but there’s no need to point that out.
Ashan says nothing as she crawls up beside me and sits down to admire the view. “This is how birds see the world,” she says with a smile, then wobbles and grips my arm for balance. “It feels strange.”
I know what she means. I’ve seen things like this before. I can’t say when. The memories are obscured. But I remember feeling dizzy and experiencing nausea upon seeing a great canyon. I had trouble comprehending its depth and breadth. Ashan has never seen anything like this before. Her mind struggles to cope with its vastness.
She turns to the side, heaves without any drama, wipes her mouth, and returns to admiring the view. “This will be our home.” She looks at me. “After you take it from Mapinguari.”
“It could take some time to find her,” I say. “The jungle here is vast and steep. We need to settle in for a long hunt.”
Ashan’s brow furrows like she’s concerned for my health. “We have arrived.”
“In Mapinguari’s territory, but it will take time to—”
Her lips spread in a knowing smile I haven’t seen in a long time. When I was fresh to the jungle and naïve about most things, she would smile like this before explaining the situation. I’ve missed something.
I turn back to the view, looking at the mountains, and the trees, and the stones. But I see nothing else. I search the area around us, scanning for tracks or a path that I might have missed while distracted by the view. Still nothing.
The helpless feeling reminds me of the man I used to be, fueling a flash of anger. “Tell me,” I grumble.
Her smile fades a bit and she pinches my cheek. “You were more fun when you were stupid.”
I wait in silence.
She rolls her eyes and points to a distant peak. Then she lowers her finger slowly. “Follow the path down.”
The mountainous slopes descend like giant steps intercut by massive rocks, on which nothing grows. Her finger comes to a stop in a deep valley. The far side of the valley rises up what could be a small mountain or a large hill. All of it, aside from the exposed rocks, is covered in green.
Ashan takes hold of my chin and redirects my gaze back to the valley’s bottom. Other than a collection of small hills, there is nothing remarkable about the valley.
“There,” Ashan says. “Queshupa.”
“Ashan…I don’t see any—”
But then I do.
While everything is green, not everything is tree growth. There are several clearings where grasses grow, but the trees do not. In the Amazon, that means someone is tending to the fields. But the small hills are what hold my attention. Not only are they not covered in trees, they’re not hills at all—they’re pyramids.
Stepped pyramids.
Here on the fringes of Peru, Mapinguari resides in the remains of a lost Incan city, queen of a long dead empire that will soon be mine.
36
Lying on the precipice’s edge, watching the sun set behind the mountains to the west, I’m struck by a sense of wonder that is both relaxing and unsettling. Ashan sits beside me, bathed in orange light. She looks almost otherworldly, like the conjuring of some science fiction novel, luminous and transformative in her simple wonder. She’s been smiling for a half hour, the exhaustion that vexed her throughout the day having faded.
She’s not doing anything abnormal. Just being quiet, sharing some dried meat with Oro, whose fur is radiant in the half-sun’s glow. They’re like visions. Goddesses of the rainforest.
Are they real? I wonder. Or have I dreamt them this entire time? Am I huddled in the crook of a tree somewhere, hallucinating?
I reach out and slide my hand over Ashan’s bare back. My fingers trace a line up over the bumps of her spine, skipping over familiar scars. Goosebumps rise on the backs of her arms, and I redirect my caress to her right arm. A shiver rolls through her body.
She smiles at me, says nothing, but stretches her back forward in a way that says, ‘More, please.’ So I oblige, and for the sunset’s duration, I run my fingers up and down her back.
Will I be capable of such affection when I am Mapinguari?
I’m not sure, but I’m also not about to ask. We’ve come so far and sacrificed so much, I’m not sure Ashan would forgive me for turning back.
Oro rolls onto her back, giving Ashan access to her belly. We’ve become the most unlikely family imaginable, each of us a stranger to the other’s world, but somehow connected in ways I can’t explain.
I love Ashan and Oro. They are my family.
But will they still be when—
I close my eyes. Don’t think about it. The animal might take over again, but it can’t last forever.
In the midst of bloodlust, battle, or even pursuit, the idea of completing my transformation into a legendary beast is flawless. But here, on the cusp of our journey’s end, doubt haunts me. Would I hurt Ashan? What about Oro? Will they even know me when I become?
If I knew I would lose them, would I still make the journey and pursue my mission to its end?
The question triggers a torrent of unexpected emotions. It feels old. Like a question I’ve asked before, and never answered. How long have I been pondering it without noticing?
I know the answer. It’s why I avoid the question.
I would lay waste to the whole world before losing them again.
Again...
“Are you okay?” Ashan asks.
Her face is a silhouette, framed by the dark outlines of mountains and a muddy, purple sky.
I turn my head to the emerging stars and ask, “Do you know what they are?”
She opens her mouth to reply, pauses and then says, “Tell me.”
“When you see a campfire up close, it is large and bright. But when you see it from a distance, it’s just a point of light.”
When she gives a slow nod, I continue. “The sun is a burning sphere of unimaginable size, but it is far enough away to not burn us. Our world—it’s called a ‘planet.’ ‘Earth.’ It is like a speck of dust floating in a great body of water, spinning around the great fire. Those…” I point to a few stars. “…are the same as the sun, but farther away. Much farther. They’re called ‘stars.’ And around those stars are other worlds like ours.”
“With people?” Ashan asks, a sense of wonder in her voice.
“Maybe,” I say, “though they wouldn’t look, talk, or act like people. But they would be alive, like us. Maybe looking at our star from a distance and wondering who lives here.”
Her fingers find mine and wrap around t
hem, one at a time. “What is the lake called?”
“What lake?”
“The one we…the one Earth floats in.”
“It’s not really a lake,” I say. “It’s nothing.”
She waves her hand back and forth. “Like air.”
“Less than air.”
“Huh… How do your people know this?”
I’ve avoided talking about the outside world, but I’m not sure how I can explain these things, without sounding like I’m making things up, without telling her the truth. “My people build…” There is no word for machine in her dialect. “…canoes with wings like birds that can fly through the sky.”
Her grip tightens so hard and fast that I wince in pain.
“I have seen this!” she says. “Once, high in the sky. It buzzed like an insect. My father tried to shoot it down, but when it moved through the clouds, we knew it was out of reach.”
“And the second time?” I ask.
“On the ground,” she says. “Dead.”
“They are not living things,” I tell her.
“Its wings were broken,” she says. “And it was bleeding. I saw its insides spilled out on the ground, though they had been scavenged. I did not stay long. I was afraid, and trying to hide from Juma. But it was dead. So it had been alive.”
“It was never alive,” I say, my voice small. Her description and timeline leave no doubt about where and when she saw the airplane. “But the people inside it were. The blood and remains you saw belonged to the men who flew the canoe. The canoes are called, ‘airplanes.’ The men died in the crash. And they weren’t exactly scavenged.”
Her grip loosens. I have her full attention.
“They were fed. To Oro.”
A quick intake of air is as close to a gasp as Ashan can manage. “How do you know this?”
“Because the airplane carried three people,” I say. “Because that was the first time I fed Oro.”
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