by Sam Puma
He saw one of his monkey friends in a nearby tree. It was the one he knew best, whom he called Chesta, after Jankaro’s gibbon friend. He looked like a gibbon, but was bigger and had white stripes all over his body. He could fly from tree to tree with the best of them. He looked into Jorobai’s eyes with a worried expression, and pointed up to where the palika had flown.
“It’s Juitao. Keep your eyes open for me.”
Jorobai wasn’t sure how much good his request would do. The monkeys were like people and liked to sleep at night. He decided it would be best to stay awake through the night and stay prepared. He could catch some sleep in the morning after the monkeys woke up.
So he kept his eyes open and sat up on the platform with his spears and blowgun at the ready. The night was dark. Rain and winds came and went, but there was not much to see. As the hours dragged on, he grew tired and his eyes sagged shut. He wiggled his face side to side and snapped back to attention. Eventually he couldn’t stay awake any longer. He knew dawn was coming, so he lay down. His sleep was fitful because he fought it. Waking moments were interspersed with nightmares of all he had faced on the island: creeping vines, men with spears, Juitao laughing in his face while he was tied up, Jugon Drogon carrying him in his jaws up to the cave.
He awoke when the light began to break. He looked around and all was calm. He lay back down and allowed himself to drift into a deeper sleep.
After a few hours of rest he was energized again. He scrambled down from his perch, ate some fruit, and got back to work on his raft. Soon he had all the logs bound together. The raft was heavy but if he put his back into it he could drag it to the water. It was just the right size. He started thinking about making a sail from the jixnu hides.
He was alarmed at the sound that suddenly went up from his monkey friends as they screeched and hollered and came crashing through the trees in his direction.
Jorobai raced up the tree to his perch, loaded his blowgun and looked for Juitao’s hunters. The monkeys were all pointing away from the beach toward the center of the island. While they were distracted, a palika descended and caught one of the smaller ones and ascended up to the sky. Jorobai was enraged, shot it with his blowgun. It went crashing down to the jungle floor. When he refocused his attention below, he saw someone advancing on his territory.
When he looked closer, he couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Kiki, the most beautiful of all the virgin women, the one who had so teasingly embraced him and kissed him on the night before his encounter with Jugon Drogon. She seemed to be alone, and she was headed for one of Jorobai’s deadly traps.
“Kiki, stop! Don’t come any closer!” He yelled down to her.
His sense of urgency was lost on her, and she continued forward, looking up at the trees to locate him with her eyes.
“Is that you, Jorobai? Where are you?” She dragged her fingers across flowers and let her hips glide from side to side as she continued forward. “I am looking for you,” she said with a smile and a melody in her voice.
“Mudfish!” Jorobai cursed, dropped his blowgun and recklessly slid down the vine and to the ground. His hands burned as he dashed toward Kiki. “Stop right there!”
Kiki was oblivious. She was flattered to see Jorobai come running toward her. “Looks like you are happy to see me,” she spread her arms wide. Her foot caught on a thread of woven fibers, and three sharpened sticks came lurching up out of the ground. One of them nearly drove straight through her chest, but Jorobai dove through the air and his arm crashed into her stomach, knocking her to the ground.
The wooden spikes wobbled back and forth a few times and stopped. Kiki gasped and cried.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, I thought the hunters were coming to kill me…”
Jorobai lurched to his feet, pulled his knife and looked around, expecting to see spears or nets come flying at him, but there was no one else around. All he could hear was Kiki whimpering and the sorrowful cries of his monkey friends who had lost one of their own. He felt an impulse to collect, cook and eat the palika, but he quickly forced it from his mind. He stooped down and helped Kiki to her feet.
“You come alone?”
“Yes.” She looked at him with a hurt expression on her face.
“Where are the hunters?” Jorobai continued to scan the forest for signs of them.
“The hunters are hunting.” She reached up and wiped the tears from her face.
“Where is Juitao?”
“He is in his hut. He has not come out since he got hurt in the fight.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I am okay now.”
“Why are you here?” Jorobai continued to scan his surroundings.
“I am here…” Kiki took a deep breath. “Jorobai... you must come back to Fayaya.”
Jorobai turned his head and spat on the ground. “Nothing could convince me to go back there. Not you or anyone.”
“Please come back,” she pleaded. “Everyone is afraid that Gondaro will come down and kill us all. Did you hear him roar? He is coming. Jorobai, please.” She touched his arm and he brushed her hand away.
“He is too fat from sitting there and eating Jugon Drogon’s rotting flesh.” Jorobai felt resentment toward Gondaro as he spoke. “He is not going anywhere. He is going to sit there and eat until he is finished and then he will starve and die.”
“Liana says he could use the vines to kill us. He can control the vines from inside the cave. We need you to protect us. You are the only one who can speak to him.”
As she spoke, Jorobai remembered something he had seen in the cave. There were four large tree trunks that arose from the bottom of the chamber and extended out through the walls of the cave. They must have been the roots of the vines, planted there by Jugon Drogon and controlled by his shamanic powers.
“He won’t know how to control the vines,” said Jorobai, but immediately began to doubt it. He had already witnessed how Gondaro had become less like himself and more like Jugon Drogon.
“Jorobai, please.” Another tear ran down her face as she got down on her knees, clasped her hands together and stared up at him.
“No. Go back to your village and leave me alone.” His tone was detached as he looked over her head, still scanning for an attack.
Kiki stood up and was about to leave, but her eyes caught sight of the raft sitting on the beach.
“You are leaving!” Her eyes lit up with the realization. “Take me with you!” She threw her arms around him, kissed his neck and held him. “Oh please, take me with you.”
Her breath filled his ear as she nuzzled her nose into his hairline. His body filled with warmth. Despite the alarm that he felt in his mind, his body delighted in the contact when her body pressed up against his.
His resolve weakened. He knew he couldn’t trust her. His memory of the night that she came to bathe him was foggy, but he knew that she had teased him and insulted him. He knew that Juitao was very powerful, and she would likely do anything he asked of her. He might have sent her to lull him into a state of complacency while he orchestrated his next move. He wasn’t going to forgive Jorobai for the two large gashes that had ripped open his chest. Jorobai knew the safest choice would be to send her away.
In spite of his mind, he felt an ecstatic surge of lust flood his entire body. He wanted her desperately. He hadn’t craved a woman like this in over fifteen years since his wife died.
“I need to sleep on it,” he said as he put his hands to her waist and slowly, gently pushed her back. He couldn’t believe he was letting her stay. His mind kept screaming at him to send her away, but his body kept demanding that she stay. “Come. Help me make a sail.”
They went to the beach and Jorobai showed her the raft and the jixnu hides he had collected.
“You see those pants that you wear to cover yourself?” Kiki pointed at his legs. Jorobai looked down at
his pants. “I made them for you. The ones you had before were falling apart.”
Jorobai remembered a time when Gondaro was small and Juitao seemed like a friend. He remembered when Juitao gave him the pants. “They do have a good fit.”
“We need to gather jaguar whiskers. They grow up there by the waterfall.” She pointed towards a nearby hillside.
Jorobai knew of the waterfall, and the plants that she spoke of that grew there. “How do you know about jaguars? There are no jaguars here.”
“Liana gave the plant its name. I was born here, but the elders came from a place where the jungle stretched out further than anyone knew. They told me stories about the jaguars. My mother said that her grandfather was killed by a jaguar. He was fishing by the river with his spear, and the jaguar came up behind him and killed him. His sons, my grandfather and his brother, killed the jaguar. It’s skin is hanging in my mother’s hut. Did you see her wearing it at the festival of Jugon Drogon?”
“No.” For a moment Jorobai felt fat and heavy, back in that same stupor he had been in that day. He shuddered. “Come. Let us go and collect jaguar’s whiskers.”
He gathered his blowgun, plenty of darts, and a spear. “Follow my footsteps. There are many traps here.” He led her out of his territory and beckoned her to lead from there. He looked to the sky but there were no palika flying.
He looked to the trees and saw his monkey friends. They were calling and waving at him to get his attention. Jorobai stopped and looked up at them. Chesta and his mate were both holding palika feathers. They lifted them simultaneously to reveal the little one that had fallen. It smiled and threw a rotten piece of fruit at Kiki, hitting her on the arm. All the monkeys laughed. Jorobai thought the little one had died from the palika’s attack. He smiled, clapped and hooted to show them how glad he was to see that the little one was alive and well.
Kiki wiped away the rotten fruit from her arm with a frown and waited. Jorobai signaled the monkeys to keep watch for him, and they continued on their way.
When they arrived at the waterfall, Kiki removed her garments and beads and plunged into the pool of still water at the base of the waterfall. “Come swim with me Jorobai! You need to bathe!”
He felt his blood rushing, but clenched his teeth, reminding himself that she could be manipulating him. She swam around, flaunting herself and humming sweet melodies while he collected plenty of jaguar’s whiskers, a long reed that stretched up past his waist.
“Come on out, Kiki. Help me carry these back to the beach.”
“There are no hunters around, Jorobai. Your monkeys would tell you if there were. Look, no palika up there!” She pointed to the clear blue sky. “Only you and me. Come and bathe, I will wash your back for you.” She floated on her back and gently kicked her feet in the water.
Jorobai swallowed hard, clenched his jaw, and waited with a stoic expression. He averted his eyes while she emerged from the water, shook her self off and donned her garments. He loaded her up with an armful of jaguar’s whiskers while she continued to beckon him with her eyes. He knew she was dangerous. There was too much temptation. He needed to send her away. But first he would use her to help him make the sail. After all, she had proven her skills with the pants he wore. The sooner he finished the sail, the sooner he could leave the island. Part of him was arguing that the safest path would have been to simply allow the trap to take her life. But he wasn’t that kind of man.
Back on the beach, Jorobai cut thin strands from the jaguar’s whispers and Kiki proved useful by deftly threading them through the jixnu hides with a large needle that Jorobai carved out of a stick. He built a frame on the raft from which he could hang the sail. Kiki was finishing the sail as the sun was setting. Jorobai decided to catch fish and offer her something to eat. He gestured to the remnants of his fire and asked her to get it going while he went fishing.
When he walked back up the beach, the sun had set. He approached the fire, where Kiki eagerly awaited him. Jorobai felt his heart jump and begin to beat rapidly when he realized that he had left his blowgun and darts behind, sitting within her reach.
He watched her intently as he slowly approached, holding the fish in front of his body. If she was sent to kill him, this was her chance. He was ready to throw his spear if she tried. He figured she was not practiced with that kind of weapon, and calmed down as he approached and sat between her and the blowgun.
“It is all finished!” She reached over and caressed Jorobai’s back. He lurched away, still holding the tension. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t feel safe with you. Why did Juitao send you here?”
“I told you Jorobai!” Her voice rose with indignation. “He did not send me here! This is my choice! I choose you! I know you want me! Why won’t you take me?!”
A tear rolled down her face as she stared at him.
Jorobai knew he wanted her but he was not about to relax. He averted his eyes, ran a sharp stick through the fish and started cooking them on the fire.
“It will take some time if you want to earn my trust. I remember how you treated me in the village. Juitao tied me up and poisoned me and you rejected me in a mocking way.”
“Can you forgive me? I was just like you. I didn’t want to go to the cave with Jugon Drogon. I was frightened and I would have done anything Juitao said to avoid that fate for another year. I didn’t want you to suffer like that either. Jugon Drogon is gone now, and I left the village to be with you. There is no other man for me there. I want to have children. I can help you find your son and we can go back to your village and make a life together.”
He looked into her eyes again and thought she was sincere, but misgivings dwelled within him. “I want to know that I can trust you. I want you to prove that you are not here to do Juitao’s bidding.”
“How can I prove myself to you?”
“I will sleep up there on my platform tonight. You can sleep down here by the fire, and use the sail as a blanket if you want. If anyone comes, call out to warn me. Tomorrow morning we will sail away and leave this island together.” Jorobai knew that he was not going to bring her but he would let her think differently for one night.
“What about Gondaro?! He will come and eat me!”
“Gondaro is so big he cannot get out of the cave. And if he wanted to eat someone, he would go to the village and eat Juitao.” He wasn’t sure how he would get rid of her the next day, but he figured he would come up with something.
Kiki steadied herself and spoke resolutely. “Go sleep in your tree. I will sleep here and warn you if they come. Tomorrow night we will sleep on the boat together and you will hold me.”
“Tomorrow night, on the boat, I will hold you,” Jorobai lied and pulled the fish off the fire. They ate together and watched the stars trace across the sky. After their meal, Jorobai handed her the spear, collected his blowgun and darts, and retired to his platform.
He watched her for a while as she sat up and stared at the fire. Eventually she lay down to rest. He watched her sleep for a while, and when all was calm, he silently crept down from the platform and moved over to one of his other platforms, which she had not seen yet. If she tried to sneak up and murder him in the middle of the night, he would be gone. And if she tried to find him again, he would not be there to save her from the fate she would suffer by setting off another of his traps.
Return to Dorfin
With Jankaro on his back, Ixtlayo strode forward across the wooden bridge to meet the darkness before dawn outside the city walls. Jankaro felt him smiling from within as he reared up on his hind legs and roared. After seven days of eating fish and feebly trying to escape the eventual fitting of yanigo armor, Ixtlayo’s strength returned.
Jankaro reached down and patted him on the neck. “We need to make it to the cave today.” He held on to the wooden handles that were strapped to Ixtlayo’s armor as the Ashtari lurched into a tro
t. Janesa galloped along with them, off to their right. Other scouts buzzed around the hillsides ahead, behind and to the left. Ixtlayo’s back was piled with food, water, arrows, knives, poison darts, a medicine bag and distress balls. The armor creaked as he strode forward but Jankaro could feel that he was focused and they moved forward with a shared intent. Something within Ixtlayo had changed while he was back in captivity. He seemed to recognize that the Galdeans were helping him recover, that there was a shared purpose among them, and he was a big part of it. When the iron bars of his chamber lifted, he didn’t run out wildly. He slowly emerged into the light, swelling with pride. Even Titus was there to witness and grudgingly recognize the power of his ally. He and Rafael poured sage and cedar water over Ixtlayo as he made his exit from the city. Soldiers lined the walls of Caladon to watch Ixtlayo and Jankaro depart on their mission.
“We expect you back with Agustin’s head on a spike!” One of them called out.
“There is no Agustin,” Jankaro heard another soldier’s voice carried on the wind. “Only Cruxai.”
Shortly after the dawn broke Ixtlayo maintained his stride but the scouts were no longer able to keep up. Jankaro waved to Janesa as she reined in her horse to rest. She dismounted and watched as they disappeared over the far hill. When they made it to the top and started down, Jankaro felt his senses open up and reach out to all the life forms in the sparse forest that stretched out around him. He felt the birds whizzing by and watched the squirrels scatter from their treetop perches as Ixtlayo disturbed every creature with the pounding of his footsteps and the occasional broken tree limb. Jankaro inhaled deeply and noticed how good it felt to be away from Caladon. The air was stale inside the fortress. He always felt tension around Titus, and he could feel the strain the other soldiers were under, especially since their families had left to take shelter in Calixo.