I couldn't get that girl out of my head.
Miyani.
God, how I loved the way her name rolled off my lips.
mɪ-ya-ŋi, emphasis on the first syllable.
Her face was like the hearth, that perfect moment when it's a blizzard outside. The storm is so hard you can't go out for firewood, and it hasn't been so bloody cold in living memory. But there's a soft, plush leather chair beside the hearth, and you've just started a book that grabs you, right from the get-go, but you had to do chores, and this is the first time you've been able to get back to it. You've got a pint of that thick, brown beer, the one that tastes like maple syrup, and Sarina's cat has made her home in the nook between your leg and the chair. You prop your feet up on the hearth, with a thick, woolen blanket.
If you gave me one word to describe her, I'd tell you infinite words wouldn't suffice. Just the smell of her, like jasmine and coconut wrapped tendrils around me and pulled me in. Seeing her with that lizard, she was so tender, they had such an easy rhythm, I envied his place in her life.
I'd met this girl twelve hours ago.
We exchanged… five? Six words?
This was silly.
Dinner that evening started off with a mixed fruit thingy, with orange and yellow chunks and dark berries mixed in, swimming in some fruity kind of alcohol. The locals—natives and some Herali soldiers who'd been there a while—all gathered around to watch as a humongous platter was carried out by two people. On it were packages the size of my fist wrapped in snake skin.
We didn't have forks. We had spoons, some thing like a long spike but with two prongs, and a sharp knife. Make that very sharp; Rock cut his fingers on it, and they had to wrap it up. He would eat left-handed for the foreseeable future.
The crowd was thick. Those two sekiwa girls I'd seen earlier were there. One of them was particularly fond of watching as Davod cut open his dinner. He slid the knife across the pouch, and a thick, red sauce oozed out like a gravy with heavy chunks in it. Her smile grew as she watched him take a bite. He opened his eyes wide, he reeled back in shock, and he devoured it.
There was another native girl who helped her mother with the goats. She sat talking with Geraln for a long time. And I mean long. They got into some serious stuff, too. I overheard them speculating on how the Imperial Zeppelins worked. He told her about how the shape of the balloon affects wind shear, and she told him about how the gas inside is lighter than air.
We met some new guys, too. Rock, the Saeni man I'd met at laundry, had arrived with a tall, lanky Saeni man named Northstar who didn't talk much, mostly he just smiled and nodded, and a Herali on the short side of average with baby fat still on his face. His name was Kelint, and there were words spoken about who was a better shot. Apparently he'd won some kind of competition somewhere like that mattered. He'd never had any real competition, surely, and so Davod, Geraln, and I agreed to give him a demonstration at some point.
Like that mattered. Really.
Father Yewan always forbade me to compete.
Two fingers tapped between a pair of people. They split, and Miyani walked in. My chest tightened. My whole body froze, I couldn't believe it. Just the sight of her face set me on fire.
Faren was looking at her, too. He sat up straight and traversed her body with his eyes. Then he glanced at me for a brief moment.
She was dressed as the others, naked head to toe but for a white silk flap with gold embroidery that hung front and back from a silk belt down to her knees. Dark-green skin like a shade of black. Her eyes were a lighter yellow than the others. Some of the natives had amber eyes, others like a deep yellow, but hers were the rising sun. She wore her white hair in a pixie cut, while the others mostly wore it long.
Carrying a plate, she elbowed her way through the crowd and came to the table, standing directly between me and Faren, and grabbed two snake bags. She saw what was going on and stood back to watch, glancing between me and Faren.
Each of us had a snake bag on our plate.
Her eyes were so beautiful. Her lips so soft, and when she smiled it was enchanting. She had a wide, round face with soft cheeks that scrunched in the most adorable of ways. I could look at her endlessly.
Faren met me with his droopy eyes, took up his knife, and sliced his dinner open.
Miyani, along with the rest of the natives, all watched his reaction with big smiles on their faces.
Inside was a mass of something layered with a rainbow of reds, greens, yellows, purples, and a thick layer that looked like cheese, and a pool of oil oozed out to cover his plate.
Faren smiled and nodded. "This looks delicious!"
Then he took a bite.
He chewed it for a moment.
His face started to turn red. Lines of snot dribbled down from his nose. The man breathed in hard, waving his hand before his mouth, and he looked desperately around for something to drink. While the others laughed at him, Miyani found a cup and gave it to him. He slammed that drink and begged for another, and Ales passed him the whole pitcher.
Miyani glanced at me ever so briefly.
I couldn't pull away. I needed to; I was acting like a weirdo, but I couldn't.
She looked back at me, but her eyes lingered that time.
I still didn't look away.
She looked at my plate and urged me with a big smile. Oh, her smile melted me. She ripped away every defense I could build with the way she looked at me.
This was the moment.
What if I gave the wrong reaction?
I opened mine up, and everyone leaned in.
It was cockroaches.
Big, fat, juicy cockroaches, double the girth of any I'd ever seen, and they were saturated in black gravy.
I had exactly one option, and I took it. I carved a chuck off one of the cockroaches, and ate it. It was… different.
The crunchy shell didn't help. It was like biting into a stick. Beyond that there was heft to the meat. I think it was meat. Whatever it was, it wasn't bad. Like fruit syrup in thick, brown gravy with chunks and bits of stuff in it.
And that shell.
I didn't like that shell.
It caught in my teeth, and I winced, trying to pull scraps of it from my mouth.
Cheers of elation erupted around me.
Miyani put her plate down and stepped towards me, and I couldn't move. Goosebumps rippled like waves over my skin, and I couldn't hear the laughter in the crowd over my thundering heartbeat. I should have said something. I should have done something. I should have at least leaned back to get out of her way.
"You take," she said. Then, she picked up the knife and spear thingy, skewered one end of the cockroach, sliced it lengthwise, and scooped the goop. Then she sucked the gravy off the shell and discarded it to a separate plate.
"Thank you," I said. "Uh… nuvi… nu…"
Faren answered for me. "ŋʌvɪdesa. xewekʊde sʊka."
"xewekʊde sʊka!" Miyani gave that smile to him for the moment. "ŋayi tixese 'uxuwi?"
Faren reclined in his chair. His smooth face wore inner peace and contentment, and he gazed at her with those easy eyes. "Uh… vʌ fɪðade 'uxuwida."
Her eyes popped, and they laughed together. Then she picked up her plate and gave him a warm smile with a nod. "You yoos! Yes!"
As she was leaving, I finally mustered up the nerve to say something to her. "vuhko… dos—"
"vʌ koðosa!" Faren corrected me.
His eyes traversed her body as she left, and his eyebrows popped. Then he nodded to me, and we finished our dinner.
He won that round.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
They had us in a sauna of a wooden barracks that stank of rot with cobwebs in all the windows and a patch of mold that over took one bed already, but they were going to fix it. At some point I sat up, and there was a pool of sweat in the bedding. Worse, I couldn't stop thinking about her.
I needed to see her again.
I knew it was a bad idea.
I got up and took one of the lanterns beside the doorway, the ones with the candle inside a paper frame, and left the barracks.
I crept barefoot over grass runners like ropes, like stepping across rough-woven mat, and I found my way to the stalls.
And this was the first bad idea. They said those vita'o lizards could see in the dark and hunted humans for meat at night. So, um… there was that.
I also had no idea where she slept, and there was no reason to believe she would remain in the same place we first spoke.
But she was there.
She lay on her back in the same bedding as Blue, reclining her head against his haunch. He cradled her in his long neck and rested his head on her belly, rising up and down with each of her breaths.
She was asleep.
I should have left, but my eyes discovered the front flap of her loincloth had fallen to the side, exposing thin white silk pulled taut over her sex and shimmering in the candlelight. My breath hitched, and my heart thundered. I had to get out of there. I'd stared far too long and ended up making my way back while trying to adjust a throbbing erection.
Ogling a girl as she slept—that was beyond redemption.
It was morning at the Lake of Doom, and the air was thick and muggy. There was no sunshine, only thick clouds that slowly brightened from darkness.
I'd barely slept. If it wasn't for the miserable heat that soaked through to my soul, I tossed and turned in sweaty sheets grappling with lust. No. I'd lusted after girls before, this was different. This was another level of obsession, and I needed to stop. I needed to get my feelings under control.
From the look of my friends, they hadn't slept much, either. Davod's shirt was soaked, Geraln couldn't get up, Ales's face was swollen, and Faren's dark circles had their own dark circles. Breakfast was some kind of mashed brown rice that desperately needed salt with a bowl of strange fruit-looking things at the center of the table. Some of them were red with spikes, others yellow with spikes, and some big, green ones with smaller spikes. That one tasted like a chunk of juicy honey.
We were joined by Rock, the Saeni man I'd met on laundry duty. His yellow-green hair was in a sweaty, frazzled mess. "This place is being hated by me! I cannot sleeping in this way with the hot!"
This was a man who grew up in the desert.
Kelint and Northstar were with him. Northstar doubled over and clutched his knees, dropping his head towards the ground, and Kelint lay down on the log bench covering his face with his hands.
The eight of us were told to pack up and wait in the sitting area until told to leave for Carthia.
And so we waited.
And waited.
Half-naked women who seemed fine with the sticky heat went about hitching six large bison to the carts they'd loaded the night before while others were already out in the grassy plain outside the castle. One man was Herali, with streaks of gray in his long hair. He was dressed as the natives, with only a strap of silk cloth down from his belt front and back, and he was barefoot. He held rolls of parchment, and he looked in and out of the carts with all their loaded goods. He would glance down at the paper every so often, count something in the cart, and look at the papers again
Several chickens clucked about in a fury, flapping their wings and running around. One of them rushed beneath the log I sat upon. A tap-tapping sound echoed around us, and a few seconds later, a torrential downpour consumed everything. Rain fell so thick I could hardly see the walls that surrounded us. It clattered into the flooded courtyard, and enough droplets splashed into where we were that my trousers clung to my legs. Then, not a minute later, it stopped, leaving mud covered in a lattice of grass runners that gobbled up the sea.
Rock sneered at this alien world, the air once more thick with hot, lingering moisture and muttered, "fucking this place!"
I hunched low, trying to wipe the puffiness from my eyes when something thudded on the wood bridge beyond the gate.
It was her.
My body jolted awake. What if she wasn't sleeping? What if she—or someone else, saw me last night? I forced myself to look away.
Blue carried her into the courtyard and stopped. She looked around and strode over to the girl who'd been berated the night before. In one motion, Miyani swung herself from her lizard's back and embraced her. They spoke low, not that I'd have understood anything anyway, and the girl pointed across the yard towards the man looking over the carts.
God, the way she moved. Her tiny self bounced across the ground, barefoot as with all the other natives—her feet were so adorable—with her chest high.
When Miyani reached him, he bowed low, and they spoke for a while. Then they both came towards us. Side by side, they stood in the center of our gathering.
"zawa!" I said to her.
She nodded to me without a word.
Faren sat up straight and his eyes perked. "dowisatesa, ʃo'ibidesa ʃɪ'uti."
She smiled and bowed her chin to him. "ɣʊ ŋʌvɪdesa ʃa dowisatesa!"
He was winning. I stole a glance at him, and he gave me a light smirk.
Then the older Herali man stepped up to speak. "Alright, everyone, Miyani is taking you boys to Carthia. Listen to what she tells you, and you might survive the journey. Let's go."
Some of my friends huffed and stood, but I was watching her delicious legs as she jumped onto the lizard's back, turned, and then raced back out through the archway.
Fingers snapped. The man was looking directly at me, shaking his head with a scowl.
Before he could walk off, Rock raised his hand to speak. "When we can riding the lizard people?"
"You don't. Only women ride them. Let's go."
And we all filed out.
Beyond the gate, the 'lawnmowers' were at work. The same women we'd seen coming in were out tending the goats. They glanced our way but mostly kept watch over the trees. Beyond rolling hills carpeted in the jungle, the wall of the Terbulin mountains rose up and disappeared into the clouds above. We'd only set out, and I already sweat beneath my backpack.
Standing in the grass beside the black slate of the main road was the same girl we'd seen the day before, the Goloagi runaway slave who'd helped us buy the most blessed mosquito ward, Ranía.
She wore a dark-blue cotton dress with lace trim that accentuated her figure, and a necklace of opaque red stones threaded together by a delicate gold chain, yet she was still barefoot. She and Miyani each made a fist and tapped them together before Miyani rode off into the forest ahead of us.
Ranía settled her eyes on Davod, and Davod alone. She gazed up at him with wide eyes and a wider smile.
"You look beautiful," he said. He ran his fingers through his hair, then watched in bewilderment as drops of sweat fell from them.
"ŋʌvɪdesa," she looked close into his eyes. "I made this for you."
His eyes popped, and he looked down into her hand. It was a ball thing the size of a marble made of tight burlap with feathers, small bones, twigs, and a small strip of gold thread sticking out, and it hung on a pendant. She lifted it over his neck. "Wear this."
He looked down at the thing, then looked at me, and around the rest of our group before returning his gaze to her. "What is it?"
She grinned. "Think of it as a good luck charm. I hope to see you later."
And she walked off towards the trees. Davod stood and stared at her hard. She turned around and smiled at him, and kept walking.
I slapped his arm. "vʌ koðosa."
Davod looked at me. "Huh?"
"Say it. vʌ koðosa."
Faren took his other side. "It means goodbye."
Davod nodded and called after her. "Vuh kodosa!"
She turned around and giggled. "I won't!"
Davod looked between us and shook his head. I stared at Faren, and he shrugged.
Ranía then called after Northstar. "Shadhu pa-ai ga'oso-ene na!"
He laughed and nodded, then waved back at her.
We walked slowly, most of us pretending we weren't stealing glances at her arse while Davod studied the weird thing she gave him.
Up ahead, the thick bush of the forest opened a narrow slit for us to enter but was otherwise so dense with trees that we could see nothing at all. Overhead, the clouds gave me no hint as to the time.
We heard the forest well before we entered. Once through the trees, chirps, clicks, and whistles filled our ears to the accompaniment of insects that blended together. The road was wet, and pieces of slate slipped in the mud when we stepped on them. Strange leaves from plants of all kinds grasped for us, and once again Miyani appeared in front of us, scarcely a few feet from where we were.
"Gods!" Ales exclaimed, holding a hand to his chest.
"Lissen," she said, "no tahk rode. Undastan?"
Blue lowered his nose to the ground and traced an invisible line leading off in one direction. Davod furrowed his brow, but I spoke slowly, pausing between words to give her time to process each one. "No… talking… between… here… and… Carthia. Yes?"
She nodded her head on each word, then nodded fully. "ti. Yes."
We all nodded. We could do that. Blue moved his head about, lifting his nose to sniff at the air only to move his head to a different spot and sniff the air again.
She added, "bo."
We stood, confused.
Then she pointed at myself, Geraln, Davod, and Kelint, and showed us the bow in her hand. "Bo."
Davod reached behind his back to grab his and turned to the other three of us. "String your bows, nock arrows." He then turned to Rock and Northstar, each of whom had large, full-body shields slung over their backs. "Get those shields out."
They looked at one another until Kelint translated for them. Their eyes went wide, and they each donned a wide, iron shield that ran from their necks down below their knees. Ales unsheathed his sword, a light, curved cutlass, but Faren had no weapons.
Davod furrowed his brow at the man. "You don't have a weapon, man?"
Faren shrugged and dropped his pack. He leaned down and dug through it, only to find a work knife barely a hand-span long.
Miyani gazed at him with her brow furrowed, only to shake it off and look over the rest of us.
My bow was Herali eupin, the finest bow wood in the Empire. In the world. I grew up shooting it. I unsheathed the sword Father Yewan gave me and handed it to Faren. He took it, and the tip fell down right into the mud.
Point for me.
With that, she disappeared back into the trees.
The road climbed up a steep hill. All around us, the sounds of the jungle filled the air with a chorus of chirps, clicks, whistles, and that ever-present grinding screech of insects. Birds a multitude of colors hopped from tree branch to tree branch, calling out to one another with the most peculiar arrangements of strange, guttural yawning noises. The hot, sticky air lingered on my skin and my shirt was drenched from sweat; all of us were. Rock shifted his shield to his other hand and whirled his now-free arm in a circle; Northstar did the same.
None of us spoke a word.
Kelint glanced wearily from right to left all the while keeping an arrow nocked and ready to draw. The road wasn't so muddy through this section, but tufts of grass filled the gaps in the slate while vines crept across the way as tendrils of jungle reaching out to reclaim what was hers. Northstar shifted his shield back to his original hand. Different kinds of trees lined the sides, blocking everything else from view, and all along the sides of the road, ferns and other shrubs fought one another for what scraps of daylight had fallen from the canopy of trees above.
The hill climbed with no hint of visibility or change that we could discern until the road began to descend. Rock and Northstar switched shield-hands again. We were all sweating profusely. Before us, small gaps in the trees that promised a glimpse of a world beyond the thick we traveled through revealed only more trees off in the distance and dark clouds above.
Something whizzed past my face.
Before my mind could register what happened, an animal screeched on my left, and Blue crashed through the trees from my right bearing Miyani with her bow drawn and a second arrow nocked shouting, "XEWEKƱDESA BAYI!"
Silence.
Davod shouted. "You! Over here!"
He was pointing at Rock and Northstar. They brought their shields together with the bottoms in the ground in front of Blue to make a miniature wall. The lizard bobbed his head around them for a moment before crouching low and snaking his long neck up so as to peek one eye over the top edge.
As for the rest of us, Davod and Kelint had drawn their bows and stood half-concealed at the edges of the shield wall, while Ales ducked behind the lizard and scanned the forest behind us. Faren stood beside him with that sword raised, but the trembling in his hands was pronounced, and after a few seconds the tip fell in the dirt again.
Geraln hid behind Davod. His fingers trembled so bad when he tried to pull his arrow that it fell to the ground.
I froze.
I stood like a statue, a wide open target for whatever was in the trees, and couldn't will my body to move for anything. I wanted to. I tried to, but I was petrified. Stuck.
The world grew quiet. Birds in the trees stopped chirping. Random groans, croaks, clicks, chirps, and whistles seemed to die down. Rock and Northstar knelt, their eyes wide and breath heavy, and their hands shook, but they held those shields, one edge overlapping the other.
Miyani's focus was ahead of her. I couldn't tell how she saw whatever it was she was looking at. She lowered her body along with Blue behind the shield wall, but kept her bow fully drawn and ready to fire a second shot.
I heard a muffled grunt followed by a labored exhale.
Again, Miyani yelled at the trees. "zevoŋi! pʊ bayise! dima xewekʊde!"
An eternity passed. I thought about moving my right arm across my body to reach for my bow string, but I couldn't remember how to do that.
Someone in the trees grunted in pain amid a low grumble, followed by a girl's voice. "ɣozʌ'ʌ!"
Then came a low, agonized croak followed by rustling leaves, followed by a snapped twig, and an uneven thumping trailed off into the distance.
Miyani relaxed, released her draw, and let out a deep breath.
She was unlike anything I'd ever seen. At full draw, her arms and shoulders, all up and down her back rippled of sinew and powerful muscle. She had a bite scar where her shoulder met her neck in the shape of one of those lizards' mouths.
I couldn't breathe.
She then reached out to touch Rock and Northstar as if to usher them apart. As they stood, Ales blurted out, "so that's comforting; our enemy has girls just like her."
Miyani snapped towards him, "No I gul. I woman."
With that, Blue lurched forward, and they disappeared into the trees.
Ales pursed his lips at the correction. He was right, though; whoever it was had stalked us and, judging from her voice, couldn't have been more than ten feet from the side of the road yet none of us had the slightest clue she was there.
I was beyond broken. There I was fixated on her, and one of us could have easily gotten killed. And I just… stood there. My mind went blank, and all I could think about from then on was the road.
The hill descended sharply through more undistilled wildness, and the tension claimed its toll. No less, we continued with arrows nocked and swords drawn. Kelint walked between Rock and Northstar, with each of them keeping their shields out.
I kept my eyes on the trees. A shadow moved. Leaves rustled. My nerves couldn't take much more.
The forest changed. Along both sides of the road, troughs had been cut through the mud and filled with standing water, with other troughs leading off in parallel lines broken up by rows and rows of brown-green grass growing in stalks three yards high like thick reeds, several of which had nodes cut low with some cuts fresher than others.
We passed what looked like it used to be a small mill. Stone columns held up the remnant of a roof long caved in with vines wrapped around strangling what evidence of human presence it had left. Wooden tools half rotted out had ferns growing from them. At the corner was a tall, thin pole of a tree with huge fronds at the top fanning out in all directions. Beneath that, clusters of giant, bright-green globes dangled down. Ales stopped and stared up at it.
I stopped, along with everyone else. We all looked at Ales hoping to understand what had captivated him so. He then sheathed his sword and dropped his pack, opened it up, and dug through it.
Davod's chest heaved with heavy breaths and his voice was quick. "What's going on?"
Ales didn't answer. He found a coil of rope and let it out to detangle any kinks. I scanned the tall grasses around us; I couldn't see anything beyond ten feet, and the rustling of the leaves in the wind could have easily been another one of those lizards nearby.
Kelint whispered frantically, "you're going to get us all killed, man! What are you doing?"
Ales didn't look at him. "I want one of those coconuts."
"Let's go!" Davod urged him. "We have to keep moving!"
Ales ignored him and tied a loop around one end of the rope, then leaned back, looking up into the tree.
My heart raced. "Ales?" I pleaded. "Thisisweird?"
He ignored me and launched his rope upwards, catching the loop around one of the green globes, and worked it back and forth to tighten around the stem. Faren then walked beneath and held his hands out to catch it while Ales tugged.
Kelint looked at me with deep worry across his baby face and shook his head nervously.
"Alright," Davod said. "Make a perimeter. Geraln, over there, Caleb you on that side, Kelint, over here."
We each took a direction. I kept watch over my arc with an arrow ready to draw as Faren caught the next coconut Ales pulled from the tree.
"Gods!" Geraln cried out. Miyani was before him with Blue staring at Faren. She reached out and pushed her palm downwards as though pressing on something. Geraln lowered his bow.
Ales faced her and smiled, then nodded to Faren, who chopped at one of the coconuts, turned it, and chopped again, until drops of fluid splattered out, leaving a hole about an inch in diameter. He held it up for her.
Blue chirped and stepped towards him, bounding from one foot to the other and letting out more excited chirps.
Faren smiled at the creature. "You want one?"
Blue chirped again and reached above, clipped the thing in his teeth, and turned upwards to let the water fall into his mouth. He stretched out his tongue to lap up as much of the stray fluid as possible and held it there while the last drips fell into his mouth.
It was fine to relax at that point. Miyani knew these woods; if she felt safe enough to join us, then it probably was. Of course I'd already embarrassed myself in front of her by standing like a statue farther back, so I kept watch over the tall grass around us with an arrow nocked and ready to draw as if that made up for it.
And while I did that, Faren talked with her.
We all got a coconut to drink except Blue who drank two. Ales hacked his in half, scooped out some white sludge, and licked his fingers clean.
Then, Miyani pointed towards where the road brought the end of the forest into a clearing some fifty yards ahead and spoke to all of us. "Carthia there. Bye-bye."
Everyone else had walked off, but I lingered. She turned and was about to head back from whence we'd come when I spoke to her. "Nuvidesa."
She nodded with a smile. "OK."
"Do you know who was stalking us?" This was my last chance. I had to make it count.
She furrowed her eyebrows at me and tilted her head to the side. I tried again, pointing back at the road we'd come from. "Who… who was that? You shot… who…"
"Ahh," she nodded. Then she said, "ŋæɣʊye zevoŋi peðayaŋa sewu'oŋiŋazidɪ. I soly."
"Right…" I tried to smile that one off. Something simple. "What do you call this… coconut?"
"Ahh," she smiled. "Sem… kokaŋo."
"OK, so… I like to drink coconut."
"Hmm?"
"How do you say that? I like to drink coconut."
She nodded on each word. "tixe bobade kokaŋo."
"Tihe… is that like?"
"tixe… like… bobade duink kokaŋo."
I tried to copy her. "tihe bobaday koknao."
She laughed lightly and nodded. "ti. Yes. Eh… I bye-bye, OK?"
"You're cute."
Her eyes bulged and her whole face froze. She turned and rode Blue back towards the tall grass stalks, turned to look back at me, took a few more steps, then turned and looked at me again with her mouth agape before disappearing into the woods.
What the hell was I thinking?