Alter

by Jeremy Robinson

  Not a god.

  The woman whistles into the trees. One of the monkeys leaps ahead of the others, descending with fearless grace. It pauses five feet above him, until the woman pats his chest. Then it leaps down onto him, and allows the woman to stroke its head.

  “This,” the old woman says, “is Kaxuyana.”

  A hiccup of sadness embarrasses him, as a fresh wave of memories returns. This is Ashan’s monkey, another survivor of Juma’s assault.

  “She is the matriarch of these monkeys,” the woman explains. “Like her mother, she was too strong-willed to resist.”

  Another name bubbles to the surface. “Yabuti?”

  A hand moves from his back, to his arm, squeezing. “Here.”

  He can’t see the young man, but he doesn’t need to. Ashan’s brother lives. Her family lives, and family is everything. A deep pain that has nothing to do with the holes in his body or the blood flowing from them, is birthed in his chest. It moves through his body and out through his limbs.

  There’s something else, he realizes. Something contained by Mapinguari, by Ashan, by the jungle.

  I was Guagin, he realizes. A shameful thing. I don’t want to remember.

  The pain thunders, lighting his muscles on fire.

  “He is nearly lost,” Yabuti says.

  “We are nearly there,” Grandmother says to him. “You must remain strong.”

  “You’re unmaking me,” he complains, angered by the weakness she has revealed.

  “Mapinguari has failed. He is not strong enough for this. We need you to be something else. Something more.”

  He’s offended, but curious. “What is that?”

  They lower him to the ground beside a blazing fire. Grandmother leans over him, whiskers twitching. She smiles, touches his hairy cheek, and says, “A man.”

  47

  A drug-induced stupor keeps Mapinguari docile and dreaming while awake. Chanting and thumping drums enhance the effect, transporting him to another plane of reality, while his wounds are tended to. He’s aware of the pain, but experiences it from a distance, hovering outside himself.

  But he is not alone. Another presence lurks in the painless void, hiding in the shadows.

  “Who are you?” he asks, unafraid.

  When the shadows stay quiet, he turns away from his supine body, surrounded by Dalandala healers. He hears himself scream, as the glowing hot tip of his own machete is placed against his skin, but he does not feel or smell the searing agony.

  “Show yourself,” he growls.

  A shadow at the jungle’s fringe shifts, but its source eludes him.

  “You cannot hide from me.” He creeps closer. “Step into the light.”

  “I remain hidden, not for me,” an indistinct voice says, “but for you.”

  “I fear no man.”

  “I am not a man.”

  “A god, then?”

  “Neither.”

  Mapinguari shakes his non-head. “Then what—”

  “It is not important. I am not important. Leave me be.”

  “I am Mapinguari.” His whispered rage rises into a shout. “I cannot be dismissed! I will not be told what to do!”

  Leaves part, giving way to an indistinct figure of a man. He steps into the clearing, immaterial, like smoke slipping through the people in his path. While in the shape of a man, the air around him vibrates, blurring all his features save for his pale skin. “You are in my home. You have no power here. And you have something that belongs to me.”

  Mapinguari flinches when Ashan is suddenly beside him. She steps through the fire, heading for the pale man, her belly swollen, Oro by her side. They’re silent. Placid. Drifting memories.

  His memories.

  “No!” the beast rages, reaching for a machete that is not there. He looks to his body for weapons, but he is naked, washed clean of his scales, his third eye, and his second mouth. He carries no blade. No satchel.

  But he is far from defenseless.

  Ashan reaches for the pale man, her fingers inches from his ghostly digits.

  “Gwaaarr!” Mapinguari lunges, raking his long nails through the man’s throat. Though his enemy is not flesh and blood, the strike peels him apart. The cloud disperses, but reassembles just a few feet away, hand still extended toward Ashan.

  Realizing the fog-man isn’t alive to kill, Mapinguari turns his attention to Ashan. His memories of her are clouded, nearly as indistinct as the man beckoning to her, but his feelings for her remain powerful, including how he felt in her absence.

  “I miss you,” he says. “Where have you been?”

  She doesn’t acknowledge him. Doesn’t even glance in his direction. Hands on belly, she continues toward the stranger.

  “Why are you leaving me?” he asks. “Again?”

  She stops walking, locked in place, but somehow still moving forward, hovering over the ground.

  When it is clear Mapinguari is powerless, that he will lose her again, he falls to his knees.

  “Wait.” The new voice belongs to Grandmother. She’s both seated by the fire, eyes closed, enveloped in smoke, and standing beside Oro, a hand on the cat’s head. Like the pale man and Ashan, she appears as smoke, her body transparent and drifting with the breeze.

  Ashan’s hand hovers just above the figure’s, her betrayal nearly complete.

  “You cannot have her,” Grandmother tells the pale man. “Not all of her.”

  “It is too much,” he says. “The monster cannot—”

  She silences him with a raised hand. “Just a touch. Enough to center him. Enough to tame him. To unlock his potential.”

  “And that is all?” the figure asks. “More than that would—”

  “A touch,” she says. “Nothing more.”

  The figure withdraws his hand from Ashan’s and she comes to life once more. When she turns to Mapinguari, her face is alive with all of the emotion and beauty he now remembers. She is young and vibrant with the body of a warrior and the eyes of a hunter. Her image is exactly how she would want to be remembered. She squats down in front of him, hands on his cheeks.

  Her touch makes him weep.

  He feels his life with her as though for the first time.

  When she leans in to kiss him, he closes his eyes and accepts the gift. Emotions surge when their lips connect. Memories surface. Of their time together. Of the things she taught him. Of how he felt.

  And then, it all disappears.

  Her lips have retreated.

  When Mapinguari opens his eyes, Ashan is already approaching the jungle with the pale man. As darkness envelops them both, the man looks back, and Mapingauri sees his own face, but cleaner and at peace. Then he is alone once more. As most of his memories fade, so does his anguish. He remembers her, and what he learned from her, but the power of their connection is dulled, leaving him with a sense of duty more than anything else.

  A soft nuzzle pries his head up.

  “Oro,” he says, smiling. “You’re still here.”

  Memories of the cat surface. Their first encounters. Their slow-formed trust. Their friendship and finally kinship. He learned as much from her as he did from Ashan. He welcomes her back by massaging the short fur between her shoulder blades, watching the black spots stretch and bend. The content cat sits beside him, and they linger in that place together, separate from the world, but not alone.

  By the time Mapinguari thinks to look for Grandmother, she has gone, from the dull place and from the fire’s edge.

  The others have gone, too. Like the pale man, the Dalandala have faded back into the jungle, leaving him with Oro for company, and a fire to keep the night at bay. As the night wears on, Mapinguari settles down, Oro snuggled up close, and falls asleep.

  He wakes to sunlight and pain.

  Every movement is stiff, but he has endured worse. He reaches for Oro, and when he does not find her, he searches the area. The cat is gone. Probably fetching breakfast, he thinks, and then, with a punch of sadness, he r
emembers that she is dead.

  Like Ashan.

  The pair of them linger in his thoughts, indistinct memories not powerful enough to unmake him, but potent enough to fuel his sense of duty—not just to the jungle, but to the Dalandala.

  Mapinguari has no tribe. No people. But he knows now that he isn’t just a beast. He is also a man, with a people to call his own, if he can turn the Guagin back.

  Sitting up, he takes stock of his body. His wounds have been seared shut and slathered in ointment that will aid healing and prevent infection. He will not die from his injuries, but he is too weak to even stand, let alone fight.

  He discovers the solution to this problem wrapped in leaves. The package lies on the ground beside his still-closed satchel bag, machete, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. He peels open the leaves to discover a variety of fresh fruit, recently cooked meat, and a metal container full of water.

  He picks up the bottle and looks it over. The metal is scratched and old, but no one in all the tribes knows how to create such a thing. It is an object from the world beyond. From the Guagin.

  How far south did the Dalandala venture?

  Who did they encounter?

  He ponders these questions without answer as he devours his meal.

  Hours later, still feeling weak, he is prodded to his feet by the distant buzz of Guagin weapons and the crack of falling trees. His enemy is both powerful and relentless.

  Mapinguari retrieves his gear, carefully plucking the items from the ground and stowing them on his naked body. He pauses to look at his skin. The scales have fallen away. When a breeze sifts through the trees and cools the skin of his face, he probes his cheeks with his hands. The long beard is missing. He checks his head, feeling the prickle of shaved hair on the sides and slightly longer hair on top—the cut of a Dalandala.

  A quick dab of his finger on his forehead reveals red pigment. They’ve made me one of the tribe, he realizes, searching his nose for whiskers, but finding none.

  Buoyed by their acceptance of him, not as a fearsome monster, but as a member of their tribe, Mapinguari sets a careful pace through the forest. While he wants nothing more than to charge into the Guagin midst, lost in a haze of claws, and screams, and blood, he resists the urge.

  Grandmother said a man would save them, not a beast, so that is what he will be…until there are no other options. He is still Mapinguari, after all.

  As the buzzing grows louder, he takes to the trees, moving through the branches with careful grace, both to remain hidden, and to show his body mercy.

  The Guagin have returned in larger numbers. While many of them still wield the tree-slaying weapons, others carry guns, patrolling the jungle’s shrinking fringe, providing protection to the workers.

  How many? he wonders, counting. He stops at forty-three, but suspects there are more beyond his sight. Instead of fleeing from Mapinguari’s appearance, they have doubled their efforts.

  This is because I failed, he thinks, because I let the Guagin wound me. They have no respect for the jungle, and now, none for Mapinguari.

  Resisting his growing wrath, he plots out a plan of attack. Rather than raging into their midst and assaulting them head on, he needs to remain concealed. In their eyes, he won’t be a man or a beast, he will be an army.

  Those with guns will die first. Fifteen of them. He takes stock of his arrows. Twenty. Enough, he thinks. And when the gunmen have fallen, the workers will fall, first the tree-killers, and then the rest. And when they have all died, the rest will come. But he will not kill them. He will let them collect the bodies, returning home to lick their wounds, mourn the dead, and spread word that the jungle’s protectors are stronger than they had imagined.

  Content with his plan, Mapinguari climbs to the forest’s new edge, finds his first target—a man holding a long gun—nocks an arrow, takes aim, and lets it fly.

  48

  The arrow slides between branches and leaves, carving a straight and silent path through a complex maze of soon-to-be-cut-down life. Gravity tugs it downward in an accounted-for arch. A saw buzzes, filling the jungle with its wood-eating grind. Somewhere in the distance, a tree cracks and roars to the ground.

  The arrow strikes flesh without a sound.

  The man’s scream is drowned out. He looks down at the projectile protruding from his chest, eyes wide, mouth agape. His expression of shock and pain locks in place. Strength fails the man and he topples back, sprawling to the ground. His chest continues to rise and fall, but the interval between breaths is slowing.

  He’s not dead yet, but he will be soon.

  Mapinguari smiles. This will be easy. He picks his targets, starting with a man walking toward the dying worker. When he sees him, the alarm will be sounded, and secrecy lost.

  Part of Mapinguari longs for that outcome. To attack from the shadows, in secrecy, is cowardice. It does nothing to satiate the animal. But it is effective, and the man who loves Ashan, who has been accepted by her family, is driven by responsibility. He is both man and animal. And yet, he does not feel whole.

  Something is missing.

  Ashan.

  Oro.

  His unborn son.

  And something else…

  Mapinguari nocks another arrow, draws the string back, and leads his target. The man is moving, but his gait is steady and the range unchanging. An easy target.

  The distant buzzing stops. Mapinguari waits for the pop and rush of leaves, but no trees fall. For a moment, the jungle falls silent.

  Then men begin to shout.

  His target stops walking, listening to the shouts.

  Mapinguari adjusts his aim. He’ll put the arrow in the man’s neck. The poison will subdue him before he can shout in pain.

  The bow string rolls over his fingertips. It will be another smooth and calm release, every gust of wind, swaying branch and external factor accounted for—except one.

  A gunshot rips through the forest.

  The bullet tears through air, and leaves, and finally flesh.

  An unbidden shout of pain bursts from Mapinguari’s mouth, just as the bullet passes through his thigh. The arrow fires, sailing harmlessly into the side of a metal beast. The bow falls away as he twists, left leg numb and useless. Hands reach, but find nothing upon which to grasp.

  Mapinguari falls.

  Five feet closer to the ground, a branch collides with his shoulder blades. Momentum catapults him forward and down again, where a second branch careens into his gut. Though now breathless and wracked by pain, Mapinguari knows the tree is no longer a refuge.

  Head spinning, gasping for air, he lunges down, weaving through the branches. Shouting grows louder as men approach, hunting him. They grow louder still, pitched with worry, when they reach their fallen comrade.

  When Mapinguari hits the ground, the man reborn as a Dalandala is jolted back into the recesses of his mind, leaving only the animal—only the legendary beast. Rather than flee from the overwhelming numbers with powerful weaponry, he rushes toward them.

  Shame fuels Mapinguari’s raw frenzy. He runs on all fours, heading toward the Guagin. A group of them rush toward the tree from which he fell, while several more panic and shout over the poisoned man, whose lungs have, by now, stopped working.

  When several of the men hunting him begin firing at shifting shadows high in the tree, Mapinguari realizes that his fall was unseen. The element of surprise is his again, and he doesn’t waste it.

  Bursting from the underbrush with a thunderous bellow, most of the men flinch. The two who don’t get Mapinguari’s full attention. The first is driven to his knees by a solid blow to his groin. He catches the second man by his ankle and yanks. The man flails backward, his head striking the ground hard enough to stun him.

  As the rest of the group starts to react, he leaves the stunned pair behind and dives into the Guagin ranks. He punches, kicks, and claws, keeping himself close to his adversaries. Too afraid to use their weapons so near to each other, he whittles the armed
men down. He doesn’t kill any of them. First, he must disarm and subdue them. Then the slaughter can begin.

  And when it does, the animal will have blood enough to bathe in.

  Mapinguari senses the men’s strikes on his body, but he is numb to their punches and kicks. Each impact fuels his rage, increases his thirst for violence, and pushes him closer to the darkness that will consume them all.

  The last man standing raises his gun in a shaky hand. With no one left between them, Mapinguari is exposed. But the man is a coward. He stood clear of the fight, hoping the others would do the job for him.

  The Guagin’s finger twitches. Mapinguari lunges to the right, the bullet humming past him. Three more shots ring out, all of them missing. When Mapinguari adjusts his course, running low to the ground over the fallen men, the coward stops firing to avoid striking his comrades. Then he does the only thing he can—he runs.

  But not fast enough.

  Mapinguari tackles the man from behind, hooking his fingers into the man’s shoulders. Knees crack ribs when they strike the ground, drawing a high-pitched scream from the coward.

  Machete slides from sheath, rising into the air.

  One strike will silence the man.

  Will stoke the burning in his heart.

  Set the beast loose.

  Unleash the flow of blood.

  Mapinguari’s vision narrows toward darkness. His muscles tense. The blade cries for flesh and bone. He can hear its song. A manic grin spreads on his lips and a laugh gurgles from his chest. He is Mapinguari, not a man. Forgetting that nearly got him killed.

  Eyes locked onto the back of the man’s neck, the beast roars and strikes.

  “Stop!”

  The machete’s course ceases just inches from the man’s spine.

  That language again. The one he does not know, but understands. He turns to see who spoke the word, who will die first in the coward’s place. He finds a tall man with light skin and hair on his face. Like Mapinguari, the man is an aberration in the jungle. He’s dressed in strange clothing, mostly because it’s so clean. The man stares at Mapinguari, the blueness of his eyes disconcerting and foreign.