by Jeffrey Hall
“Watch out!” yelled Risa.
Wish swelled with anger, an emotion that mutated from the sadness the creature put inside of him and that feeling of helplessness. He stood his ground and thrust. He felt the machete plunge into something soft and gritty, as if he had just stuck a bag of sand. He felt two sets of claws limply fall on his arms and then heard a gurgle.
He dared to open his eyes again.
The creature stood impaled on the other end of his machete. Its eyes and colorful cracks dissipated into a woeful black, as if the great fire had set and only midnight prevailed within its spirit. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth and it hissed its final hiss.
Wish kicked it off his weapon, unsheathing it from the thing’s gut. Its body crumpled to the ground in a thud, and then came only silence, a brief reprieve from the chaos. But voices from the eastern hallway broke the peace.
He turned to Risa, whose large Fossala eyes were still wide with horror. “There... there are others still here. Marli—”
Wish didn’t wait to hear anymore. He pushed past her and into the hallway, his mind and body preparing to meet a dozen Green Men attempting to pillage the rest of the Nest and do the gods only knew what else to those who hid there.
His father’s voice echoed down the hallway. “Let them go.”
He heard the smack of a fist and his father cough.
“Fuck you!” cried Marli, but her voice was stifled too.
Wish rounded the corner to Marli’s room, the pit in his stomach he’d felt the times he’d been there before replaced by an all-consuming fear. And there, inside the room, were his father and Marli, bound next to one another. Between them stood Rive.
The Fangkind smiled as he entered the room. “Amazing. Truly impressive. I must admit that I was surprised when my associates said they saw you leaving the temple. The will of the jungle must be strong to have you escape the dungeons of the king and have us meet here.”
Wish looked from his father and back to Marli. His daughter cried hysterically in the crib, an ear-shattering noise that added to the calamity.
His father’s eyes softened. “Ati! Look at you. Are you—”
“Quiet,” said Rive, and he put the blade of his axe to his father’s neck. To the other side, he had put his totemic claw to Marli’s chin.
“Let them go,” said Wish.
Rive laughed. “So soon? After we just became so acquainted? I was looking forward to having weeks with them tied up and waiting for you like bait until you arrived to give me what I wanted. And yet here you are. Well ahead of time. A wish granted.”
Wish took a step forward, and Rive’s claw went to Marli’s neck. “All it takes is one flick of my wrists and they’re both gone.”
“What do you want?”
“You know what I want. The box.”
Wish eyed him, trying to find a way to the wolf before he could make a move, but there was nothing he could do. The box on his back felt heavy. A weight grounding him to his problems, a thing he could not shake even if he wanted to.
“I give you the box, and I’ll come after you,” said Wish.
“You’re right, this is never going to end until one of us is no longer able to serve the jungle.”
“Give him the box,” said his father suddenly.
“No.”
“It’s just lunars,” snapped his father.
Rive laughed. “Your father is much smarter than you. Listen to him.”
“It’s not just lunars. It’s our life,” said Wish, his hand tightening around his machete. He surprised himself when he said it, but his father’s eyes had made him understand everything he needed to. Despite a blade to his neck, despite a war surrounding him, they still looked at him unlike any other eyes. There was no disdain in them. There was no disgust or laughter. There was no hunger. There was only concern. Only love. They were the same eyes that always looked at him from atop the bluis trees to make sure he still sat safely below, looking up, watching his every move. The only other eyes that had ever looked at him like that were his mother’s and Marli’s, for a brief moment in time. There was nothing in the jungle that did. Nothing in the city. Nothing else in all the world. And if he were to lose him, if he were to turn his back on him and leave for the jungle like he always wanted, then he’d lose that look for good.
“Fight me,” whispered Wish.
“What did you say?” said Rive.
“Fight me!” he screamed again so that the entire city might hear. “They’ve nothing to do with this. Fight me.”
Rive’s smile widened, and his tongue unfurled out of his mouth as he yipped like a hyena with delight. “A fine idea. One we should have concluded on a long time ago. One that the jungle has been aching for. Don’t you hear it even now? The birds? The monkeys? The cries of the city? It’s the jungle’s applause.” Rive switched his axe to his other hand and showed his totemic claw. “Perhaps I’ll graze you with this just to see how strong you are, Djinn. Just to see how long it takes for your life to slip away.”
“Stop, Ati!” cried his father above his daughter’s crying. “Look at you, you can barely stand.”
Wish gritted his teeth, ignoring his father’s yells, and put both hands on the handle of his machete. There was no pain. There was no fear. Only a stillness as he and the other jungle-diver’s eyes met. “Come on then—”
“No, Ati!” shouted his father suddenly. “No more!”
Ati’s father grabbed the Fangkind’s claw and plunged it into his neck, grabbing hold of the jungle-diver and not letting go.
Wish shouted, but it was too late. The Fangkind’s claw entered deeper into his father’s skin, and he was so stunned that he couldn’t move. Only when his father pulled Rive downwards and Marli plunged her own fingernails into the Fangkind’s neck did Wish snap into action.
He sprinted forward and brought the machete down on the jungle-diver’s arm, severing it at the elbow. The Fangkind snarled as blood smattered the ground as he fell back, rearing from the new wound. Rive yipped and growled, hurrying away from Wish as he kept after him. But the man escaped out the door and only Marli’s calls kept him from following.
“Help me!” she shouted over the yells of their daughter. She was at his father’s side, applying her hands to his neck, trying to prevent his blood from spilling any further. “Get me my needle.”
She pointed to a small box on the window sill. Wish fumbled to open it, his hands shaking and wet from sweat and blood. He pried it apart and found small needles and long strands of hair. He brought over the box to Marli, whose own hands were covered in gloves of spattered blood, barely able to grab hold of the needle. Wish helped her pinch a piece of thread and fumble to pull it free. Together they brought it up and snuck the strand of hair through the needle’s head. Marli pinched the wound shut, and Wish’s father gurgled.
“Why?” said Wish, unable to comprehend what his father had just done.
And as Wish struggled to talk, his father’s hand found his own. “Ati. It’ll be okay, Ati. Now, it’ll be okay.”
Marli pressed the needle into the skin at his neck and pushed it through to the other side, pulling the skin tight together, but blood still flowed from it.
Wish watched on in horror. It was like watching his father suffer his broken leg again, except this time Wish knew what the future held even though he didn’t want to believe it. The Fangkind did not lie. A wound from his claw could not be fixed. His father was going to die.
“Why?” Wish questioned, horror flooding his body.
“Ati, look at me.”
It took all of his willpower to do it. He looked and saw the water welling in his father’s eyes, drowning the last bit of safety that existed for him there.
“Promise me you’ll take care of your mother’s bones. Promise me you’ll make sure mine are there with hers.”
“You still have time to take care of them yourself,” he said. A foolish thing to say. A lie he was telling himself in hopes of making it come true.
But despite what everyone called him, he was no maker of wishes.
Marli sewed the final bit of wound, but blood didn’t stop flowing. It was as if the thread that now closed it wasn’t even there. “I don’t understand, it’s closed tight.”
Wish’s father shook his head. “You’ve done marvelous.” He coughed and blood sputtered out of his mouth. “Take care of my shasala. Take care of him.”
Marli looked on, stunned. She nodded.
His father pulled Wish in closer. His face was ashen. His body felt cold, and all Wish could do was stare at him helplessly. There was nothing else he could do, except ask him, “Why?”
A bloody smile came to his father’s face. “You’re free now.”
And those words broke him. Snapped him in two. The thing he had fought for so long to obtain was staring back at him in the form of his dying father. A freedom he always thought he wanted, but now realized he never did. This wasn’t a dream come true, it was a nightmare finally emerging from his fears and into his life.
“Promise me one more thing,” his father struggled to say.
“Anything,” answered Wish, feebly.
“You once feared the jungle like you do others now.” He swallowed, then sputtered. “Don’t... don’t be afraid.”
And with his lips still on Wish’s ear, a final pass of breath gusted out of his father’s mouth. His hand went limp. Wish stood up in disbelief and looked on as his eyes stared back, lifeless and empty.
His father was dead.
They stood at the edge of the forest, just outside what remained of the southern city wall. The great fire was just rising over the Runt, the smallest of the Knotted Mountains, chasing out the last sliver of the jackal on a field of deep blue that was the sky. A family of trill-tails played in the canopy, monkeys who sang beautiful songs like birds. The two gasha trees growing before them stood in a knotted embrace, their limbs twisting over each other like lovers who never wanted to be separated. It was the place they had laid his mother’s body to give her back to the jungle. It was the same place he would lay his father’s.
Wish stood beside Marli. Their daughter was in her hands, happily cooing a noise more beautiful than anything the jungle could conjure. Together they looked down at his father’s body.
He was a shriveled thing, tapped of life. He looked like a date left out in the sun too long, nothing like his former fiery self. The only thing that reminded Wish that it was really him was his smile, a smirk that fell naturally as they laid his body to rest upon the ground. It seemed even in the darkness there was still a place for humor. If it weren’t for his eyes he might have found comfort in that smile.
But they were closed for good. Walls sealed tight to never again allow him that feeling of safety, a feeling he never knew he depended on until it was too late.
“I am sorry, Ati,” Marli whispered and grabbed his hand. They hadn’t separated since yesterday. After his father had passed they had stayed huddled in that room with Risa and a few of the other surviving priestesses like rodents in a burrow, hoping to stay out of sight as the predators lurked about. It took the entire night for the soldiers to restore order, but eventually they did, driving back the Green Men into whatever holes and hideouts they’demanated from and slaying the creatures the Green Men had lured out of the jungle to help with their attempt at taking the city. Afterwards the other priestesses had emerged from the rubble to pick over what was left of their home, leaving Marli and Wish and the child Wish thought was his daughter to themselves.
And through that night, with their daughter sound asleep, Marli had tended to his wounds, stripping away his bloody clothes and armor like they were patches of debris, and finding the soil of his body beneath. She put her needle to the wounds that would not close on their own, and ointments and extracts to the ones that would. They spoke barely a word to each other, perhaps too exhausted to fight for the right ones to say. Perhaps knowing there was nothing to be said then. And when morning came and the cries from the city died, their daughter rose and cried and signaled that it was time to start living again.
Marli had offered to prepare his father’s body for burning, but that was not his family’s way. They adhered to the older traditions. The ones of the tribes. The way of the jungle. So instead she helped him thread hell vine beneath his father’s flesh and into the man’s bones, so when they reached the jungle and left his body to the forest, its creatures could take every part of him back in the woods they had come from and leave the bones, things Wish would eventually come back and collect, and add to the box slung over his shoulder. The one that held his mother’s bones.
Marli hadn’t left him once. And though they rarely talked during that time, he remembered why he was so enamored with her during the weeks they spent together and forgot the disdain and frustration he had built for her in his heart. The woman he fell for was still there, all she needed to do was be found beneath the rubble of her home. It just took the death of his father for him to see that.
Looking over his father’s body, he could no longer keep his words in. He shifted uncomfortably. “He died for me.”
“Isn’t that what parents are supposed to do for their children?” said Marli.
“He died because of my stubbornness. He died because of what I do. If I just did something else besides all of this.” He pointed to the jungle. The place he had given all his life to. The place that had become his home. The place he’d used to escape everything at his back, including his father.
It put a knot in his chest that nothing could untie. All he wanted to do was run. All he wanted to do was put himself beneath enough shadow so that he would never be seen again.
But Marli squeezed his hand, and it sent a warmth up his spine that didn’t untie that knot, but loosened it.
His mind was still swimming when she leaned her head on his shoulder and spoke into the forest.
“She’s yours.”
“What?” said Wish, startled by her words.
“She’s your daughter.” Marli bobbed the child in her arms, and she let out a muffled cry.
Wish stared blankly, numb from the emotions that overtook him. “Why are you telling me this?”
Marli sniffled. “Because I can’t stand seeing you like this. Because selfishly it’s a burden I no longer want to carry. It’s hard to hold onto a lie, especially when you know it is causing someone to suffer.”
“That sounds like the words of a priestess.”
“No, that’s just me.” To his surprise she handed the child into his arms, and he took her awkwardly. He was surprised at how light she felt. At how delicate. She was a thing much easier to hold than a machete or spear, than a box. It was a welcome change. It was the only remedy that existed in the world for the way he felt then. It was funny that he should find it as easily as he did.
“Her name is Lasa,” said Marli. “Lasa Bibango.”
“Lasa.” The name came off his tongue like a serum, flooding his body, washing away the bark in his bones, the edges inside of him that he constantly cut himself upon.
“Lasa.” He said it again like it was a drug he could never have enough of, and as she looked back up and smiled he drowned, falling deeply into the sea of her, caught in the tides she cast by a simple movement of her face, things so powerful that he’d never hope to come to shore again. He was powerless. Defenseless. Defeated.
And he happily surrendered, a thing he’d never done. A thing he never thought he would do. A thing he was happy to finally do.
Their eyes met, and Wish saw hers fully for the first time. They were brown creatures scurrying within the perfect den of her face. Skittering about, running across his own face like they were in search of something that all creatures desired. Safety. Freedom. Love.
And as he looked back at her, he hoped that she found within his eyes what he’d always found in his own father’s. And if not, he would make sure that the next time she looked it would be there. A care that nothing else could rival. A protection that sh
e would find nowhere else except in her mother’s eyes. Except in Marli’s face.
He kissed her head and when he leaned back there was the smallest tinge of grime left on her skin. Dirt and blood he had not washed away, the forest’s costume. A thing he forgot he still wore. A wardrobe not easily cast aside.
He tried to wipe it away with his thumb, but only left more of the same in its wake.
“Give her here.”
Wish obliged, and Marli rubbed the filth away with the cuff of her robe. All Wish could do was keep staring, in awe of the power of a creature so small. He had faced thorkins, streaked ones, broadbacks, jagralls even, but none were as strong as her. He would have stayed there forever, lost at the sight of her, but Marli’s words saved him from his own exile.
“What now?”
Wish blinked, as if suddenly awakening from a dream. “What now?” he repeated.
“What now for you?”
“I... I don’t know,” he said, still scrambling to recover. “What will you do?”
Marli shook her head. “The Nest needs to be rebuilt.”
“How? With what?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“You still want to go back there?”
“No, but where else will we go? All that’s left is the streets, which it looks like we’ll be living in for a while until it’s reestablished. In the meantime, I’ll think of something. I’ll find work.” She looked over the wall. “This city is crumbling by the day, but we’ll find a way to stand beneath its rubble.”
And as she spoke Wish felt the weight of the other box on his back, the one not holding his mother’s bones, but the one that led to the need of getting his father’s. The answer to both of their questions still lay there. The one that would help his daughter find the safety she searched for.
“I’ll think of something.”
“I’m not asking you to,” said Marli, not harshly.
“I’m not doing this for you and me,” said Wish. “I’m doing it for her. Lasa,” he said, and her name once again gave him reprieve from the harshness. It was temporary, but it was enough.