As the branches of neighboring trees shatter under the tree’s falling weight, Mapinguari leaps free, rolling to his feet.
Behind him, the tree slaps the ground, coughing a cloud of detritus all around him. A gust of wind, flowing freely over the cleared land, sweeps the dust and smog from the air, revealing Mapinguari to the Guagin. They stare with fearless fascination, whispering to each other. Several of the men hold up black rectangles.
Are they weapons?
One of the men, dressed in striped yellow clothing, points at Mapinguari’s nakedness and laughs. The other Guagin join in, but their attempt to humiliate the great jungle god sends him into a rage that explodes from his lungs as a roar that dwarfs the giant yellow creatures and the buzzing blades.
The Guagin fall silent, and when Mapinguari draws his mythic blade, they run.
And are chased.
45
While most of the men flee down the large dirt path carved through the forest’s skeletal remains, the closest of the Guagin—the man foolish enough to cut down the tree in which Mapinguari stood—follows a different route. Gripped in panic, he flees into the jungle, sealing his fate.
After shedding his tree-slaying blade, the man bolts headlong into the shadows. His red head-covering falls away and bounces to the ground. Mapinguari watches the man, curious about his clothing and his strange behavior. Despite being deep inside the Amazon basin, the man seems out of place.
A roar pulls Mapinguari’s attention back to the wide path. A monstrous creature billows smoke as it carries the other men away. Cowards, all of them. He’d expected more from men who could cleave their way through the jungle, who wield the power of buzzing blades and enormous creature-slaves.
But even these men see and respect the power of Mapinguari. Basking in the glory of himself, the beast smiles, and then remembers his quarry. The man has a significant lead, but he tramples through the forest like a falling stone. With only one enemy to track down, Mapinguari decides to take his time, to draw out his vengeance. The man will wear himself down and then beg for mercy, of which he will find little.
Footprints, broken branches, and the smell of something foul make the man’s path easier to follow than a well-worn game trail.
Mapinguari follows in the man’s wake, watching the monkeys overhead. They linger in uncommon silence. He imagines they understand what’s happening, that the great beast of the Amazon is defending the homes of all its creatures, man and animal alike.
Heavy breathing from the far side of a tree reveals the man’s presence long before Mapinguari sees him. He’s hunched over a tall, twisting root, fear-clutched eyes dripping tears into the earth he sought to destroy.
He looks like a man, Mapinguari thinks, but has the strength of a child.
Mapinguari sniffs, alerting the lone Guagin to his presence.
The man stumbles back with a squeal. Holding up a hand, he begs in a language Mapinguari can’t understand, but recognizes.
Have I encountered the Guagin before? He imagines it was possible. His life has been a long one.
I’ll ask the six upon my return, he determines, and then he steps closer to the man, casually swinging the machete back and forth. Like a serpent hanging lazily in a tree, the blade’s relaxed posture does nothing to diminish its deadly potential. Even the stranger recognizes its threat.
The Guagin backs away, speaking fast-lipped nonsense. Despite not being able to comprehend the words, Mapinguari understands.
Don’t kill me.
Let me live.
Have mercy.
These are the final words of all men and women who face the animal.
Then the man says, “Please.”
The lone word locks Mapinguari in place. He doesn’t recognize the word, but he understood it.
The Guagin’s eyes widen. “English? You understand?”
Mapinguari does, but he refuses to answer.
What language is he speaking?
Why do I understand him?
It is at that moment that Mapinguari realizes the Guagin speaks the language of thought, the language that no one outside the confines of his inner self can speak or understand.
Mapinguari’s eyes narrow. “Demon.”
The man shakes his head. “No, no, no. I am man. Like you. Like you!”
Muscles tense. Fury builds. Mapinguari lowers himself to his hands and feet, a growl building in his chest. “I…am not a man.”
The Guagin backs away, fear returning. With one hand raised and the other reaching into his garments, he says, “I no want to hurt you.”
Mapinguari’s laugh raises goosebumps on the man’s arms. “You could no more harm me than a baby could a jaguar.”
A weapon appears in the man’s hand. Its presence confuses Mapinguari because, like the language they are speaking, it is both unknown and known. He has seen it before. Used it. He understands its power—and its limitations: the man wielding it.
Mapinguari lunges to the right, slipping through some brush before springing off a tree trunk and lunging toward the man.
The animal surges.
Darkness takes over.
For a moment, he feels the bliss of violence and vengeance, but it is cut short by a series of loud booms, and a deep pain.
Darkness gives way to light. The morning sun cuts through the canopy where monkeys scream in dismay. The slap of feet announces the flight of his prey, but pain keeps Mapinguari rooted to the earth, unable to pursue.
What happened?
The weapon. The…gun.
I’ve been shot.
When he pushes himself up, pain erupts from his shoulder. Blood pulses from a hole in the front, and in the back. He lifts his left arm, growling against the agony it produces. The limb can move, but not without cost.
As anger builds, the caution and pain fade. The Guagin wounded him. His death will be slow and agonizing.
Back on his feet, Mapinguari searches for his machete and finds it several feet away. The Guagin was not smart enough to take it when he fled. The man’s trail remains easy to follow. It’s a twisting path that covers miles of terrain without putting too much distance between them and the clearing.
Is that on purpose? Mapinguari wonders. Does he believe his chaotic wanderings will confuse me? Is he trying to stay close to the large path, hoping to be rescued?
Mapinguari slows his approach when he hears the man speaking in his foreign tongue.
Is he with someone? Have more Guagin entered the jungle?
The beast slides along the forest floor, slipping between plants to find a small clearing in which a strange large body lies on the ground. The dirty, white surface is strangely smooth and covered with minimal growth, all of it new. He follows the red stripe along its side, where he finds strange text. While he recognizes the individual characters—BE-TTY-074—they are meaningless. The man’s voice comes from inside the strange structure, which is canted up at an angle, the top of it torn open.
Mapinguari crawls into the clearing. His stomach churns with discomfort as another wave of familiarity washes over him.
Did I kill this beast?
His eyes linger on its familiar surface before taking in the surroundings. Images of a jaguar flood his mind.
I fought the beast here, he thinks, imagining a great battle between two warriors. His memory disagrees, offering up flashes of a terrorized man flinging meat to the cat.
He winces in disgust. That man had been a coward, like the Guagin, taking refuge in the remains of some ancient thing. Men such as these have no place in the jungle.
In my jungle.
He prowls closer, low to the ground, hidden from view. He can feel the man’s fear emanating from inside the white walls, can sense the quivering of his body. If not for the gun, Mapinguari would dive inside and let the animal consume them both.
Instead, he proceeds delicately, climbing atop the fallen tree supporting the vessel.
A trail of ants marches across the logs, carrying
leaves, oblivious to the nearby destruction, the man’s fleeting life, and the presence of their protector. The hardworking insects trigger more memories, fluttering images, and ancient feelings of poignant moments, somehow forgotten. He does not miss the memories. Desiring to live and fully experience the present, he chases the images from his mind and focuses on his prey.
What comes next will require fearless timing and surprise. The man fired his weapon three times. He can fire it three more times. Mapinguari isn’t sure how he knows, but he does. The round cylinder containing the weapon’s projectiles holds just six. Once they’ve been fired, the man’s only defense will be screaming in horror.
Without making a sound, Mapinguari rises toward the opening, pausing at the edge. The man inside is still, clutching himself, trying to control the trembling wracking his body. In one hand he holds the gun. In the other, a black rectangle.
He looks at the strange device. Like the gun, it is familiar.
Where have I seen it before?
His hand reaches back, touching the satchel bag that has not left his side. He doesn’t register its presence. To him, it no longer exists. It’s a part of him. Just another appendage.
The Guagin’s eyes flick to the opening, wide with fear.
Knowing he’s been spotted, Mapinguari springs up, hooked fingers raised to strike, teeth bared, a roar exploding.
The man raises his weapon and fires. The first shot buzzes past, an angry insect, its passage warm on his cheek. The next two hurt Mapinguari’s ears, but that is all. Safe outside the metal nook, he assesses the pain in his cheek. Warm blood trickles down the side of his face. A near miss of little consequence.
When he climbs back up, the man has discarded the useless weapon and taken refuge in the back. Mapinguari pauses to regard a skeleton seated to his left. The headless body wears the tattered remains of clothing similar to the Guagin’s.
They’ve been here before, he thinks. This isn’t a chance encounter. The Guagin are invading.
Seething, drool dangling from his clenched teeth, Mapinguari climbs into the small space.
A memory flickers to life. Similar circumstances, but seen from below.
The cat.
A name.
Oro.
The dead. Two men.
A crash. The mighty bird that had carried him to the jungle. He doesn’t remember it, but recalls telling someone about it.
Someone important.
Another detail returns. An image of an unclaimed weapon. A knife.
Mapinguari’s gaze shifts to the dead man’s belt. It holds an empty sheath. He reaches for his machete, but is too late.
The Guagin lunges up, striking hard with the knife, plunging it into Mapinguari’s flesh.
46
Darkness comes in pulses as he flails, claws, and scratches. When it fades, the animal is gone, but the pain remains. Mapinguari thrashes about, searching for his adversary, or what’s left of him, but the man is gone. Head throbbing, he wonders if the man was ever really there. Perhaps it was the spirit of the headless dead man resting above him.
Looking up through the moss-covered insides, he’s struck by a new sense of familiarity. He’s seen this before. In a dream? In his imagined wanderings?
A deep churning pain keeps him from lingering on the subject. Fighting waves of nausea, Mapinguari twists around to find the knife impaled in the satchel bag. He eyes the pack, unsure about how it got there or what it contains. All he really knows about it is that it saved his life, or at least delayed his death.
At least an inch of the knife passed through the leather pack, stabbing into his side. The initial pain of that wound was enough to release the animal, which carried out a mindless assault on nothing. In his blind rage, the knife came loose and punctured his flesh three more times.
The collection of wounds oozing blood down his side need to be treated.
He wrestles with the idea of seeking aid. Humility, the most powerful foe he’s ever faced, keeps him rooted inside the strange cavern, bleeding his life force into the cracked fabric beneath him.
I can’t die, he thinks. I am Mapinguari.
But he remembers being injured before. Being sick. Being tended to. Someone helped him then.
“Where are you?” he whispers, and he is caught off guard by warm liquid running down his face. Am I bleeding? He dabs his face and is confused by the clear liquid.
Tears?
Mapinguari doesn’t die, and certainly doesn’t weep.
The Guagin will escape if I fall, he thinks. They’ll return in greater numbers, with weapons the three tribes can’t stand against.
I am the only one who can defeat them.
He pushes himself up, grunting with pain. Back on his feet, he takes a deep breath and waits for the spinning to stop. Centered, still living, and with a newfound resolve, Mapinguari climbs. A new kind of darkness threatens to overtake him as he scales the slippery interior.
A growl and a burst of adrenaline chases the black nothingness away. He pursues it, tears it to shreds, and then tumbles out into the daylit jungle. The fall knocks the air from his lungs, leaving him breathless on his back. How easy it would be to lie there.
“And just forget the world,” he mumbles.
Get up.
He looks for the voice’s source and finds the monkeys high above, watching their last hope languish in a near-death stupor. He can sense their disappointment.
Get up!
Mapinguari obeys the voice, pushing himself to his knees. Every motion brings about waves of agony from his wounded side and shoulder. The animal rages. It wants to take over, to gnaw at the pain until it stops.
Quiet, Mapinguari urges. Let me think.
A crunch of leaves tickles his ears and sets the animal into a frenzy, scratching at the remains of its feeble cage.
The Guagin is coming back.
GET UP!
Mapinguari’s legs shake as he stands.
His right side, coated with tacky blood, is warm. The rest of him feels cold. A shiver convulses his torso.
When the jungle separates, he reaches for the machete. His fingers wrap around the handle, but he lacks the strength to draw the blade.
The animal digs into him. It’s all he has left. He’s about to let it loose when a timid voice says, “Mapinguari?”
The animal calms.
It is not the Guagin.
“Show yourself,” he says.
An aged woman with a red half circle on her head and whiskers protruding from her nose steps into the clearing. He can’t take his eyes off of her. He’s never met her. He’s sure of it. But there is something familiar about her.
“I know you…” he says.
She smiles. “In a way. Is it safe?”
She’s not asking about the Guagin, he realizes. She’s asking about me.
He nods.
The woman whistles and several more people emerge from the forest. They’re a ragtag group of women, children, and a single old man, all of them with red foreheads and whisker piercings.
A name slips into his thoughts.
“Dalandala.”
The fourth tribe.
“You’re spirits,” he says. “I’m dying.”
The woman smiles again and something about it puts him at ease. “When death came for us, we eluded it. Far to the south. Hidden by friends in the Arawanti. When we learned of your ascension and Juma’s demise, we returned to claim what was ours, including this land.”
“Why didn’t I know?” he asks.
“It is not your place to know, only to feel, and act, when you please, or when we summon you.” She squints at him. “The way you look at me… Do you remember her?”
The animal mewls, a pitiful thing. “Remember who?”
“My granddaughter,” she says, “The woman who kept you alive, who took a Guagin and made him Mapinguari. She was the rarest of creatures, blessed with intelligence, ferocity, and a heart for wounded animals.”
“Guag
in?” He grits his teeth and attempts to stalk toward the woman. Dropping to one knee, he is brought low before her, incapable of defending himself even against the frailest.
She puts her hand on the back of his head, her touch calming him. “You really don’t remember her, do you? How would she feel about that, I wonder? You are everything she hoped for, and yet nothing like the man she loved. So I am told.”
The shaking in his body doubles as emotion forms an alliance with weakness. “Her name. What was it?”
The woman leans in close, her breath tickling his ear. “Ashan.”
Images flood his mind. A woman with whiskers, body bathed in sun, a smile on her face. Smoking a joint, sharing a meal, laughing at a joke. Then a cat, the woman’s kindred spirit, his daughter, prowling, hunting, but not for him. With him. A belly, swollen with the subtlest bump. A child. A son.
‘Live as the man you have become…
Not the monster she would make you…’
Ashan’s last words put a spear through his heart.
Mapinguari is brought low by returning memories held at bay by the animal, but he is not unmade. The jungle-beast is stronger than that, but still lacks the resolve to stand.
As despair drags him toward the ground, he’s caught by a pair of hands that becomes a dozen. He’s lifted up, carried by the extended family he never met and believed dead.
Lifted over their heads, he watches the jungle’s underside pass by above. Held by a raft of hands, he flows down a river, drifting toward unconsciousness, until a finger shoves something bitter in his mouth and the old woman says, “Stay awake, or you will not return.”
High above, the sentinel monkeys follow, watching their fallen champion. When he reaches for them, the old woman says, “They favor you.”
“I am Mapinguari,” he says.
The woman has a hearty laugh, the kind that mocks, but it is not loveless. He knows that laugh. It might be diluted through generations, but it is still familiar. “If they follow you, it is because of their respect for her.”
He doesn’t need to ask who ‘her’ is. They’re still speaking about Ashan, though he wishes they weren’t. The old woman has brought discord to the bliss of rage and fury. She’s inserted doubt in the form of memories and emotions of the past, along with the memory that he was not always Mapinguari.
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