by Jeffrey Hall
Wings looked to Wish for interpretation, which he did begrudgingly. His head hurt, his vision swam. His conversation with Marli still tasted sour on his tongue— worse than any mushroom he could eat. He just wanted to leave the city and return to the jungle. All these conversations were making him feel dizzier by the second.
“When it comes to the streaked ones, that is one thing he is serious about.”
“Then let’s make it quick,” said Wish.
Moso and Wings glanced at him.
“If I’m not crazy and if it wasn’t the mushrooms playing with me, then someone really does have the other box and must be following its clue same as us.” It was a feeling that had been gnawing at him since he had left the Nest. If there was someone on the same trail as them, their paths would no doubt cross again.
Unless of course they reached the box before he and Moso did, then the trail would be cold and the job would be over. Whatever they were hoping to gain from this man who knew the streaked ones, they had to gain it quickly and be on their way,and not just so Wish could return to the safety of the jungle.
Wings didn’t dally any longer. He knocked on the moss-ridden door, the thumps of his feathered fists dulled by the plants that covered the wood.
There was no one response.
“Agra.” The Eclectun knocked again. “It’s Wings.”
Still, there was no response.
Maybe he’s not home. Moso licked his hand and ran it through the green fur atop his head.
Wish translated.
“He’s home. He’s just selective about answering the door.” Wings knocked again.“Agra, this is about your brethren in the forest.”
There was a shuffle behind the door, followed by a grunt, followed by the click of a lock. The door swung open and behind it stood a Chassa just a bit smaller than Moso. His fur had been dyed a dark orange, a color that rivaled a fire, but his face was white, untouched by the dye as if to showcase his age. One of his legs was missing from the knee down.A wooden stick had been fashioned as a replacement. Totems had been carved into it, spiders upon webs, beetles scurrying out from holes, ants along tree limbs... it looked like a tribute to a bug-monger’s work. In his right hand he held a cane whose top had been made to resemble the tail of a scorpion. His eyes were like flies, never settling, stopping for a moment to rest on one thing before buzzing about to the next. It was as if they were always looking for something, but could never find it.
“Sorry to disturb you, Agra, but I—”
“You need me to lick the king’s own teeka? To burrow between his cheeks and kiss the cold, black ore that is his heart? Or perhaps you are asking me to do the same to you? My leg has been known to fit into hard to reach places,” said Agra, tapping his wooden leg with his leg.
Moso was laughing as he spoke. I love this man.
“And who are these two?” He looked Moso and Wish up and down. “Which garden did you pluck such horrid looking things from? I don’t like the way the tall one is looking at me. Perhaps he’d like to see where I can put my leg...”
Wish chewed his lip, clenching his fist in case the old monkey should try anything.
Wings shook his head. “Your leg can stay where it is at the moment. We’ve come to talk to you about your brethren.”
Agra’s wild eyes settled on Wings before falling to his feet and then moving somewhere high above them all. “What about them?” The tone in his voice had changed. It sounded more serious.
“We need something from them.”
Agra smiled. “And what is that? A reminder of how weak you are? An example of how laughable our attempt at all this is?” He knocked his cane against the side of his house. “Or perhaps you just need them to strip a few strands of flesh from that feather-covered hide of yours? They’ve been known to be very helpful with that.”
Wings clucked his tongue. “We’ve found that a certain tribe is hiding a very important artifact, something that my master has spent his life trying to discover.”
“A box?”
Wings nodded.
Agra laughed, a wild haw that echoed off the side of the mountain, a sound that matched his eyes. “Still? After all these years Dargu is sniffing after them like a lost dog. He’s a fool for chasing myths.”
“They’re not a myth. One, possibly two”—Wings glanced at Wish—“of the boxes have already been found, Agra.”
The Chassa’s smile left. “By whom?”
Wings made a gesture to indicate Wish and Moso.
“Of course. Hire a pair of jungle-divers to dig in the dirt. Keeps anymore mud from falling on Dargu. He’s a hoatzin’s teeka, but hehas a way of getting things done. I’ll give him that.”
Is he going to help or not? signed Moso, clearly as frustrated with the exchange as Wish.
Agra’s eyes fell on Moso’s tail briefly. “What’s a matter my fellow monkey, lose your tongue to a trogi?”
Moso opened his mouth to show the severed nub of his tongue that still existed.
Agra laughed again. “You’d fit in well with my brothers, so willing to give up something so dear.”
“Agra...” said Wings.
“Come in, find a seat, just mind my pets.” He returned back into his cramped house, waving for them to follow.
Wish sighed.Of course this wouldn’t be quick.
The inside of the house was just as unkempt as the outside. The same moss that covered the exterior had crept its way between the boards, creating small gaps in the roof that must have caused countless leaks during storms. Vines crawled in from the lone window, tangling about one of the bedposts that held a thin mattress. But perhaps most intrusive of all was the elaborate nest of billow spiders that hung in the corners of the room closest to the mountain.The yellow spiders’ webs fluttered even in the still air of the house, twitching with sticky life in order to catch whatever unfortunate insect happened to fly into their trap.
This is a first, signed Moso.
Agra followed their eyes. “They keep the bad bugs out.” He sat in a rocking chair of bone and ordered the others to sit on a small, rickety-looking bench tucked in the opposite corner, but Wish could not, afraid that if they did they would wind up staying there for hours. Agra’s eyes briefly fell upon him. “I feel like I am looking at one of my brethren right now, too full of fury to even be still.”
“We are in a hurry,” said Wish. It was already pushing into the second day of the week the Green Men had given him. Only the gods knew what had happened to his father during his absence. Perhaps the Green Men had decided to do their purge early, perhaps they had come knocking again and his father couldn’t resist igniting their anger.He tried to push those thoughts aside in favor of the job, knowing that distractions would only be another barrier between them and the boxes.
“A hurry to get yourself killed? My brethren would skin you if they found you walking about their village.”
Why does he keep calling them his brethren? Moso sat on the bench, digging his dagger underneath his claws.
“Why do you call them your brethren?” repeated Wish.
“Because they are. The only family I’ve ever known. Never had a father. Only knew my mother for a fucking blink. Raised me just long enough so I was big enough to make a thud when she threw me onto the street. The alleys raised me from there. Stole, stabbed, and skullduggeried until even they didn’t want me anymore. Then what was left besides the jungle? So there I turned and there I made a living. Alone. Doing work all around the city, even for the king from time to time. Filling my pockets so I could drain them at whatever tavern or brothel could still stand me, trying to kill myself in the slowest way possible.”
“You were a jungle-diver?” said Wish.
“Still am. You boys must know that the jungle never truly lets go of you.”
Wish nodded, feeling as though he were listening to his own story voiced back to him.
“I was well on my way to getting to where I wanted to be, just another piece of meat rotting on the
jungle floor.But then I met them.” His eyes fell to the tip of his cane and he smiled. “On some job, trying to hunt a thorkin for some rich merchant who wanted its meat on his table to make some woman he wanted to impress quiver.”
A thorkin? He’s crazier than he looks, signed Moso, and Wish smiled with the same thought. A thorkin was an angry creature, a giant of the jungle, a cross between a gorilla and a piranha. They were known to snap trees that stood between them and their prey.
Agra continued. “Wouldn’t you know I found one. Drew it out with a bit of trechi wood.”
“Trechi wood? Where’d you get that?” said Wish. Trechi wood was a slab of prickly bark that smelled strongly of bile and had been outlawed in the city because of the thorkins’attraction to it. The beasts sought it out to aid their digestion of the creatures they often swallowed whole like a snake.
Agra smiled. “What? You boys never had a reason to go looking for the trees?”
Moso’s tail flickered, Never wanted to lose our lives to a thorkin.
“Can’t say we’ve come across too many employers interested in the creature’s meat.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. No one is usually that desperate for an aphrodisiac to chomp down on something that vile. But this man was as old as the Crone and needed all the help he could get. So I got some trechi wood and lured the beast out from the forest, not to mention a few other creatures. Didn’t realize how many love the trechi.” Agra gave an untimely laugh, as if remembering something, but he didn’t share.“The thorkincharged me and I put a couple arrows into its head just as it was about to snap me up like a forest fish. Went about carving it up. No way I was going to carry that whole lug back by myself. Would have needed an army to do that. Blood leaked, created new rivers in the forest. Between that and the trechi wood, attracted plenty of predators, but I scared them all away.” He blinked, and his eyes fell to the floor as he recalled some unseen sight in his head. “But then they came.”
“Streaked ones,” said Wings, sitting with his arms crossed as if he had heard the story before.
“A whole band of them. They surrounded the thorkin and me, just staring, as silent as sleep. Everywhere I looked there were eyes. Hungry eyes. If I close my own I can still see them staring at me like fists of amber waiting to swing.” He shut his lids and smiled. When he opened them again he kept speaking. “Well, fuck them. They didn’t kill the beast. It was mine. I’d be a bongo’s teeka if I let them have it. So I stood my ground. Shot a few arrows their way.Thought it was finally my chance to speed up my death. They were closing in on me, tightening their circle.No way arrows were going to do anymore, so I brought out my machete. ‘Let’s bleed together,’ I remember shouting. ‘LET’S BLEED TOGETHER!’”
Agra slapped his cane against the ground, imitating a swing of a machete. He was breathing heavy, his eyes wild with excitement.
“But then he stepped forward.”
“Who?” Wish leaned towards the Chassa. He was interested now. Despite the delay, he had never heard of such an encounter with the creatures. Besides, Agra was a storyteller. It was clear.
Agra leaned forward in his seat. “The Red One.”
Moso and Wish exchanged a glance.He almost smiled at how overemphasized the name was, but refrained. This man was a jungle-diver. There were truths in the stories others told from the jungle and reasons why certain things were emphasized.
“Half the size of its kind. Its fur was as red as the blood that pooled around my feet. It just walked right through the others and stood before my kill, uncaring of the machete in my hand. And I was so shocked from his appearance that I just let him. I had seen a thousand things in the jungle, but never a creature as magnificent and befuddling as it. What was it? I asked in my head.And a moment later it gave me its answer. It showed me its teeth and I saw that they were fangs as black as night.”
“A meat shaman,” said Wish. The mythical leaders of the streaked ones, creatures said to be willed to life by Welkin magic. Creatures said to be able to do strange things with the flesh of another... once they had tasted it.
Agra nodded. “Picked up one of the limbs of the thorkin, bit off a nub of its finger, and the next thing you know the creature I killed was standing again, a hollowed-out version of itself.”
Smook uta, signed Moso.
“Eh?” Agra raised an eyebrow.
“He doesn’t believe you,” said Wish.
Agra laughed. “Really? After all you’ve seen in the jungle? After all the Welkin creations you’ve encountered... you still question whether a creature can bring another one back to life.”
I’ve seen plenty of strange things, but nothing so powerful to reverse death.
Wish translated for Agra and the Chassa responded. “That’s where you’re wrong. He didn’t reverse death as much as he stopped it for a while. The next thing you know the thorkin is looming over me and the streaked ones are all growling, shouting bits of thunder that sounded like they had fallen from a storm. I thought that had to be it.I thought one of them would lunge out from the forest and finish me off, or the thorkin would exact revenge and splatter me like a beetle, but instead the thorkin reached its massive paw down and scooped me up. The Red One had instructed it to. The next thing I know they are bringing me back to their village. What were they going to do? Roast me? Slowly pick me apart?” Agra scratched the fur under his chin and swallowed. “But they did neither. They spared me.”
“I’ve never heard of a streaked one sparing someone,” said Wish.
“The Red One later told me it was because of the way I fought, of the way I had defeated the thorkin and defended its meat so crazily. Whatever the reason, they kept me there as their guest. Showed me their ways. Learned from me as much as I learned from them. I hunted with them. Ate with them. Found something I had always been searching for.”
Then why leave? asked Moso. Wish translated again.
“The streaked ones have no use for those that can’t hunt, and I’m afraid the passing years will take away anyone’s skill no matter how good they are.” He pointed to the white fur between his eyes.
“You said the Red One talked to you? How?” The creatures did not use words.They communicated in growls and barks, a harsh, terrible language that no one he knew could replicate.
“He did, and I could talk to him.”
“Can you teach them this language?” said Wings. “We need to get the streaked ones to give up the box, and it would probably go much better without having to fight.”
Agra’s smile widened. “I can’t teach you that language, I’m afraid it’s much too difficult to understand.” Agra stood to his feet with the help of his cane. “But I can show you.”
Chapter 6
The limbs of the jungle’s trees came together like interlocking fingers, blocking the morning light of the great fire, keeping the mist that traveled down from the mountains low to the ground with its grasp, at least until midday came and burned it away. Its shade darkened all things, making Wish feel less exposed. Safe. Even though he knew countless creatures watched them, he could sense what they were doing, where they would come from. He had spent too many years within the jungle not to know its plans for him as he walked through it. In the air, in the shuffle of the underbrush, in the creak of a tree branch, he could tell if there was danger nearby, just so long as he could listen, which was difficult to do with Agra constantly speaking.
“How I’ve missed this place. Look at the colors. Smell it. It smells like a lover.”He hadn’t stopped smiling since they left Fangmora. Every step they took his eyes scanned the canopy, the bush, the ground before him as if he were reacquainting himself with every last detail of the jungle. Wish felt an affinity for the man, and couldn’t imagine being away from the jungle for as long as he had. Moso felt otherwise.
Is this a glimpse at our futures? he signed as they walked. An old, jungle-drunk lunatic screaming at the top of his lungs that the jungle smells like something he’s fucked before?
Wish shrugged. “Better than being stuck in that house of his.”
Moso laughed. That’s where we differ, my friend. As soon as we find these boxes and get those lunars I am buying as many walls as I can between me and this place.
“You wouldn’t miss it?”
We risk our teekas every time we step in this place—why would I miss it?
“Is it really safer in the city? Every week you’ve almost been strung up by Lavender and his men. The jungle didn’t take your tongue.”
It didn’t, but stay in it long enough and it will take much more.
Wish shook his head. “I’d rather take my chances here.”
At least here you don’t need to think about the priestess.
Wish glared at him.
You can say thank you, you know. You fall and trip on some rocks, and I go out of my way not only to save your teeka but also make sure you wake up in the arms of your lady.
“My lady? If you heard what she said before I left you wouldn’t be calling her that.”
Didn’t need to. I saw everything I needed to see in the way she took care of you. By the Flaw, I’d pay half my take from this job for a night with a whore who’d give me such attention. She barely looked away from you while you were out.
“It’s required of her.”
Her bird god wants her to nurse the injured back to health, it didn’t mention anything about losing sleep over whether or not they’ll live. Moso ducked beneath a low-hanging branch. You weren’t her care in there, you were hers.
Was he telling the truth? Was Wish really that obtuse to miss the signs she was showing him? But what she had said...
I’ll tell you again, all she needs is a little assurance that you’ll be able to provide for her and your daughter and you can take her away from that religious smook.
“I wish I had the faith that you do, old friend.”
Trust. You should give it a try, maybe you’d have more reasons to stay in the city other than your father if you gave it away to others.
“I do,” said Wish. “I trust you.”