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The Serpent and the Crown

Page 13

by Sam Puma


  Jankaro followed as his mother and father and baby self walked to the center of the village where the people had gathered. The chief rolled a smoke for all the tribe to see. While he rolled it he said, “It is time for the men to go on a hunt. Today we have one boy who will become a man and go on his first hunt.” He blew some smoke over the young man and passed it around for all of the hunters to smoke.

  Jorobai took a few puffs and fanned himself with the smoke. Then he kissed his wife goodbye. “See you in a few days, my love.”

  “Don’t go,” said Jankaro, but no one heard him. His father had never revealed the fate of his mother, and a feeling of dread came over him as he realized he was about to witness that event for himself.

  “Your father is a man of many talents,” his mother said to his baby self as they walked back to the hut. “He can spear the wild boars and shoot the monkeys and birds out of trees. He catches fish and tends the fields, he built this hut and he knows this forest like the back of his hand. He will come back with many gifts. We will pray to Sagaya to keep him safe.”

  Jankaro had a bad feeling in his stomach but he tried to pay close attention to his mother so that he could always remember her.

  That night, the women and children and some of the older men gathered around a fire to sing songs to bless the hunters on their quest. They made offerings to the fire and meditated and chanted together for a few hours.

  Jankaro followed as his mother carried his baby self back to the hut. She laid him down and they both started to go to sleep. Jankaro fought off his fatigue and was able to stay awake. He listened to the sounds of the night, to the insects and the birds. He thought of his father out on a ceremonial hunt with the other men. It was never spoken of around the village while Jankaro was growing up. This must have been the last.

  A group of monkeys howled in the distance and clamored through the trees. He wanted to get up and go outside to investigate, but he chose to stay with his mother, and know her experience. A woman screamed. Shalea jumped out of bed and raced outside to see what was going on. Jankaro ran after her.

  Horrible sounds disrupted the peaceful village: terrified screams, grunts, the crash of weapons into flesh, the sound of running feet and struggle. Shalea ran back into the hut to protect her baby.

  She pulled a bottle down from her medicine shelf, took a swig and sprayed it out all over his little face as he winced. She carried him outside and behind the hut, hoisting him into the nook of a tree.

  “Wait here for me son, I am coming back; stay quiet.” Her herbal spray had tranquilized the baby. She ran back into the hut and grabbed her spear.

  Jankaro watched, horrified and helpless, as Shalea ran toward the sounds of violence. The Cruxai were in his tiny village, killing his people. They advanced on his mother and he ran up to engage them, but passed right through them. She plunged her spear in and out of the guts of one after another, but there were too many of them. They knocked away her spear and struck at her from all sides. He couldn’t bear to watch anymore as he buried his face in his hands, trembled and wept. After a few minutes, the last screams were heard, and there were footsteps all around him, as the host of Cruxai continued its rampage deeper into the jungle night. For a moment, all was quiet, but for the sound of Jankaro’s sobs. Then, one by the one, the insects started their chorus again.

  The dawn came and Jankaro refused to look around. He didn’t want to see, he didn’t need to see. It was all imprinted deep inside him. Now he knew why he hated the Cruxai. He vowed that he would make them pay for their crimes, and defeat them all one by one.

  He was overcome with grief and he dared not look around at what happened. He ran off into the forest to track his father. The Cruxai had come from the north, and exited to the south. Jorobai and the other hunters headed east. He followed their trail as fast as he could. By midday he caught up with them. They were on the move, still on their way to base camp.

  Jorobai’s brow furrowed. “I feel like we need to go back to Olaya. Something is calling me back there.”

  “I feel it, too,” said Rongo.

  The men looked at each other and talked it out for a while, deciding to send back only Jorobai and Rongo, while the rest of them continued the hunt. Jankaro followed them as they headed back toward the village.

  “There is a smell in the air, a foul smell of black poison,” said Jorobai, his face full of worry.

  When the two men got back to Olaya, they were mortified by the sight of the dead bodies of all of the villagers and foreign creatures lying on the ground. Jorobai ran towards his hut and before he got there, he came upon Shalea’s lifeless body, pierced by many wounds. Carrion fowl circled above. Two of the Cruxai she had slain lay next to her.

  “Curse these vile creatures! My wife is gone!” Jorobai bowed his head and wept and his tears dripped down on her chest.

  Rongo knelt over the bodies of the other villagers, looking for survivors.

  “My son! Not my son!” Jorobai cried out.

  He ran to the hut but there was no sign of Jankaro. He saw Shalea’s tiny jar of pirina open on the table and ran back outside.

  “Jankaro!” he shouted out, then stopped to listen.

  He heard a small cry from behind him, then went around to the back of the hut and heard a baby crying. He followed the sound and found baby Jankaro up in the tree where his mother had left him. He choked back the emotion in his throat as he rushed to the tree to recover his child. “My son, you made it. Thank Sagaya you’re alive.”

  He took him inside, laid him down and gave him some water from his gourd. He fed him bits of cooked plantain and stayed with baby Jankaro for a little while until he calmed down. He knew that soon the child would be looking for his mother. “Did you find him?” asked Rongo, putting his head inside the hut.

  “Yes, he is alive. Shalea put pirina on his face, hid him in a tree, then went out to fight.” He looked up at his brother with pain in his eyes. “Your family?”

  “They’re all dead. I am going to bury them now. Can you put Kiara in your hut with Jankaro?” Rongo stepped inside the hut and pointed to the little girl beside him. She was about two years old.

  Jankaro recognized his little friend Kiara, standing there silently with a look of sheer terror in her eyes. He now understood why she had never spoken. He was up there in a tree, and never saw any of it. He was too young to remember. But she was out there running for her life and she saw what happened to her family. She was silent through all those years that they were growing up side by side, including the day he last saw her. He always tried to be kind to her, and she was always afraid to go into the forest. She stayed close to the village, close to her father and her adopted mother.

  Jorobai led Kiara into the hut and sat her down on the bed. “Stay here with Jankaro and watch out for him.” Kiara reached out and held baby Jankaro’s hand.

  Jorobai returned to his wife’s body and tears streamed down his face. “Why? Why?” He cried to the sky. He picked her up, carried her past his hut, over to the far edge of his farm and beyond, a few paces into the trees. He dug into the earth with his hands. He was there all day long, digging and digging. Every hour he would run back to his hut to check on the children. In the distance, Rongo had lit a signal fire beckoning the hunters to return.

  Jankaro sat there with Jorobai, watching him dig. He wept with him. He saw the grief his father had been carrying through the years. He saw the darkness that he had always felt but could never name. It had haunted him throughout his childhood. He roamed the jungle for the brightness and the joy that he felt there and it relieved him from the grief that hung over his village and his father’s hut. Jankaro could see that it was fitting for him to come in this way. He could see that in his heart, he had not wanted to return to Olaya; the jungle was where he wanted to be. And now he was in Galdea, a place far away, facing new dangers and new curiosities, fighting wars and takin
g on the responsibilities of being a man. But he longed to return to Jorobai, to be there with him; not as a disembodied spirit fated only to watch, but to be there in the flesh and embrace him.

  Jorobai hoisted Shalea’s body into her grave and laid her to rest on her back. He told her he would always love her and spoke some words of blessing for the gods to watch over her on her journey to the other side. He picked some flowers from the nearby trees and placed them in her hands. Then he set to work covering her up.

  “Mother,” Jankaro spoke through his sobs. “Thank you for protecting me. I owe you my life. Someday when this is all over, I will come back here and see you.”

  “I would like that very much,” his mother’s voice replied.

  “Mother, are you here?” He looked up and saw her standing over Jorobai, a figure surrounded with gleaming white light. “And if I die before then, I will come and find you in the spirit world.”

  “You are here with me in the spirit world now, my son. Fight them with all your strength, and you will make it home.” With that, her spirit rose up into the sky. He heard her singing the song that she had sung to him the day before, and he held her spirit in his heart as he watched her float up and away.

  Jankaro felt a sense of peace; his relationship with his mother had been reborn. He could not remember feeling her presence before, but now he knew that she had always been with him and always would be.

  He watched dark circles form around Jorobai’s eyes as he heaved the rest of the dirt into the grave to complete his wife’s burial. Jorobai was sick with rage and grief and his heart was in pieces. He sobbed and made all sorts of terrible sounds as he finished burying her. Then he composed himself and slowly trudged back to his hut. He collapsed next to a sobbing baby Jankaro who was not at all comforted by Kiara’s trembling hand.

  It was heartbreaking to watch as the rest of the men came back to the village to pick up the pieces. They attended to their dead and buried them in the outskirts of the village. They piled the bodies of the Cruxai on a pyre and burned them. Jorobai tried to soothe his son, but failed. He fed him and cared for him the best he could. Jankaro watched as the hours and days passed and he ached with grief in every moment, knowing what had befallen his mother in the time before his memory had begun.

  But he had always known all of this somewhere deep down inside. Somewhere inside his body, his heart and soul, somewhere beyond words and visual images and beyond the mind, he felt the wound echoing through his life. He had always known what her absence felt like, but he was always confused about what happened to her. All he knew was that she died tragically. But now he had seen it all played out before his eyes. In every moment he felt cold and hollow and sick. He felt too weak even to sob as he watched Jorobai slump around in the same state.

  When it was too much to bear, he looked around at the plants around his father’s hut. He saw a small tree and the leaves were the same ones imprinted on the multicolored snakes he saw when his mother was singing to him and her breath smelled like the plants he had eaten in the chamber. He looked at the tree and sat down in front of it. He watched it gleam with life. He gazed into it, studying it and marveling at its power to bring him this dark revelation of the truth of his early life. Then he heard his mother’s voice, singing to him through the plant. It was the same song she sang to him in the hut the night before she died. He was mystified as he felt himself linked to the plant energetically. He closed his eyes and listened to the song. He was clear of thoughts and the melody wove through his mind. He was exhausted but he rested in the song as he lay down on his back and allowed the leaves to dangle over his body. He closed his eyes and smelled the herbal scent and its crisp, refreshing energy, and he felt restored.

  When he opened his eyes, he was back in the stone chamber, blackness was all around him. But his mother’s song continued in his mind and sent lightning bolts through his body. He stood up and felt electrified. He felt like he could blast a Cruxai across the chamber just by lifting up his hand.

  He calmed down and sat back against the wall. He heard the food door open and felt reluctant to check what was on the plate. But he felt a strong thirst, and had to follow it. He reached down and there was a large pitcher of water. He drank it down with zest, noting at the finish that it tasted reminiscent of the plant.

  The song sounded out louder, and there were many voices singing it. He heard the voice of a very old woman singing. He listened to her as she chanted the song. As he listened on and on, the song lodged itself into his mind. After hearing many repetitions in the passing hours, he began to sing along, and the song comforted his aching heart as the notes bobbed along the river and swung through the trees of his jungle soul. He thought about his life back home in Olaya as he chanted along. He thought of his father and Rongo teaching him the skills of life and the secrets of the forest and the river. He remembered the men bringing new wives into the village one by one as the years went by. He remembered all of the children were younger than him, except Kiara, and how she never spoke, and now he knew why. Now he knew why he always loved her like a sister and why he always wanted her to speak. Sometimes he could make her smile, like the last time he had seen her when he brought her the purple flowers. He remembered the way the tribe had grown. But there was never any talk of an initiatory hunt for him. The one he had seen was the last, and it was never mentioned again.

  He kept singing as he remembered running through the forest with his father calling after him. He would tease his father and hide from him, but this made Jorobai very upset and afraid. He would scold Jankaro when he found him.

  He remembered the day that his life changed, when he encountered the Ashtari in the clearing and escaped only to fall into the lair of a giant serpent waiting to eat him. He shivered at the thought and couldn’t bear to replay that scene in his mind. He felt lightheaded for a moment, but he was able to focus his concentration on singing. Before he knew it there was no one singing but himself, and he could feel the leaves of the plant piled up inside his body. He felt his roots extending through the bottom of the chamber, and drinking from the earth’s life energy.

  The Spirit World

  “I had a general idea of how those first two plants would affect you,” Anhael said as he sat down in front of Jankaro and poured cool, sweet-smelling cupfuls of flower water over his head, shoulders, back, chest and arms. “The experiences down here will never be matched by the world above.”

  Jankaro thought about speaking, to share his experience with Anhael. But he was in a state of equilibrium and emptiness after all the grief he had been through. He laid down to rest and breathed deep and received whatever Anhael had to offer him.

  Anhael began to massage his feet with scented oil. “I’m going to give you a seed we call the elder seed. This seed was given to me a short while ago by king Oranos himself, and I have brought it directly to you, the initiate. This seed has been handed down by the kings of Caladon, going back for generations. The reason we got in a war with Agustin is because we share a bloodline with the shamans of the forests and we would not abide by his plot to eradicate them. Now we have adopted their knowledge of the powers of plants so that we can fight the ones who would destroy that knowledge. We are shamanic warriors, all of us. Each of us has powerful gifts that we carry into the theatre of war. Take this seed and you will find the gifts within, and learn how to use them. Its power will grow within you and help you to find your way. Rise.” Anhael clasped Jankaro’s hands and lifted him to his feet.

  Jankaro was dizzy for a moment but regained his balance with the help of Anhael’s hands on his shoulders. He looked into the glow of his face. “Are you ready?” He took Jankaro’s hand and placed the seed into it.

  “If this is what I have to do to get back to the war.” Jankaro held it up and examined the bright pink glowing pellet in his hand.

  “Your path ahead will be wrought with peril for a long time to come, but I can
see Sagaya’s blessing emanating from you. The jungle is inside you always. From the moment I saw you I knew that you were meant to pass through this initiation. May you be blessed.” Anhael turned and exited, closing and locking the chamber door behind him.

  Jankaro pinched the elder seed between his forefinger and thumb and held it up to his eyes. Inside the pink seed he saw glowing ribbons of blue and white dancing together with the pink and making many shapes, shapes of vines and serpents wound around jaguar’s teeth, shapes of leaves and flowers, and Galdean symbols. He was consumed by an uncontrollable urge to put the seed in his mouth and swallow it, and thus he did. It slid down his throat and glowed in his stomach, warming his body from within.

  He heard a noise from behind him, opposite the entrance through which Anhael had just exited. He turned around. The entire rock slab of the back wall of the chamber slowly raised itself with a rumbling sound. The darkness beyond contained a hint of light. He reached out to the space where there used to be a wall and felt the air. He took two steps forward, past the wall, and felt that he had crossed over the threshold and the chamber was behind him.

  He walked down and listened to the silence. The path wound downward, sloping gently. It always curved to the left as it spiraled deeper down beneath his chamber. He had a feeling there was a dark force below him that he needed to confront. He held his head steady and kept an even pace as he walked downward for a long while. As he walked the light grew, until finally he rounded a bend and there was a torch hanging on the wall. It blinded him and he dropped to his knees, holding his eyes in his hands. He slowly opened his eyes, then covered them again as they adjusted to the torchlight. He rose to his feet and continued. As he walked farther, there were more torches. At the bottom, he entered a large, circular chamber lit by twelve torches. There were three tunnels leading away from the chamber. One tunnel went forward, one to the right, and the other to the left. He was so accustomed to curving to the left that he had to twist his body and stretch to the right a few times to regain his equilibrium while he contemplated which path to choose.

 

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