by Jess Corban
I observe the clearing again: the progress on a roof, a growing pile of brush and sticks beside the fire ring; dozens of Brutes—none seeming older than eighteen—armed and busily making this place their new home.
As we say our final goodbyes and shoulder our packs, I certainly hope Jase is right.
For two days we trek through the unforgiving Jungle, south and slightly east, stopping only to eat provisions, sleep in our tree hammocks, clean still-healing wounds from the battle, and reapply the insect salve Rohan wisely portioned for each of us. I don’t care that, in this stifling heat, the oil feels like tar against my already-tacky skin. Without some kind of shield, I suspect we’d all fall down dead—completely siphoned of blood by the swarming, whining mosquitoes barely held at bay by his magic ointment.
Hour upon hour we tromp through the undisturbed forest, at a pace only the Brutes could set: somewhere between a trot and a canter of death. Torvus nearly always leads, using a machete to hack a path through lianas and dense networks of fronds and vines. Sometimes Rohan, Jase, or Théo take turns at the lead, but Torvus seems to prefer the role. I think he likes thwacking things—brings him inner peace or something.
Neechi does his best to keep up, but more than once I wonder whether he’ll survive the journey. Jase promises it will be easier for him once we get to the river, so I urge him on, reminding him he’s stronger than he thinks. Galion, who avoids Neechi whenever possible—doesn’t even glance at him unless he has to—surprises us all the second morning. Without a word, he fits the Gentle’s pack across his chest, counterbalancing the supplies already on his back.
Bri holds her own, silently weathering the heat and pace like an Alexia. I often forget she was a Politikós before the Succession—that the Bri I know isn’t the woman she trained to be. At the Exhibition of the Arts she conversed with Amal Senators like a respectable Dom, revealing she could tame her harsh bravado if she thought it was in her best interest. And here she is, keeping pace with Brutes she didn’t even know existed much more than a week ago. Full of surprises, she is.
Rohan rarely ventures far from me, but neither does he linger within arm’s reach. If we’re climbing a bank, he sends me ahead of him, makes sure I can reach the rock ledge. If we’re crossing a river, packs held high above our heads, I notice he positions himself downstream. Without the luxury of time, I make little progress toward sorting my feelings about him. I just know I like when he’s around.
We consume water as though our bodies are sieves, every drop we drink sweated back out in seconds. Though we follow streams when we can, eventually our flasks run dry. About the time my mouth puckers like I’ve been chewing on banana skin, Jem silently fells a nondescript woody vine as thick as Torvus’s forearm and taller than Théo. Laying it flat along the ground, he chops it into meter-long sections with his machete. Galion is the first to lift a piece overhead, angling it until water trickles from the bottom of the vine into his mouth.
“Water vine,” Jase explains, noticing my slack jaw. He hands a section to Bri, then Neechi.
Wondering if there will be enough to go around, I scan the area and notice an identical branch nearby. I go to work hacking off a section for myself, feeling pretty smart. Rohan ambles casually beside me, then puts a hand on my arm.
“Not that one,” he says, his mouth warring between concern and amusement. “That one’ll kill you.”
I stare at the rough wood in my hand, then back at Jem’s vine. They look indistinguishable to me, except for a coating of black sap on one side of mine. Some of it has rubbed off on my hand, and a strange burning sensation spreads quickly across my palm.
“Ow!” I squirm, watching my skin redden. “Am I seriously going to die?”
“Not yet,” Rohan says absently, scanning the surrounding area.
“Not yet?” I cry after him, but he either doesn’t hear me or thinks my panic’s funny.
He makes for a tree with flaky red bark and gathers a handful of its oval leaves. With no mortar or pestle, he twists the leaves with his bare hands, massages them with a bit of vine water, then presses the moist wad into my palm, curling my fingers around it.
“Hold this for a few hours,” he instructs. Noticing my wide eyes and shaking hands, he concedes, “It won’t really kill you—not unless you eat it.”
I want to kick him in the shin for scaring me like that, but I’m too grateful for his remedy to strike. I guess we’ll call it even.
On our way to rejoin the others, I ask, “How do you know so much about the Jungle?”
He shrugs. “We’ve all had to survive out here.”
“I know, but how did you learn about it, without getting killed by water vine look-alikes?”
He grins. “I guess you start to see patterns, plant families. It’s like a game—a puzzle—to figure out what each has to offer. I’ve been playing since I was a cub. The dangerous ones usually let you know in some way.”
“And if they don’t?”
“If they don’t, there’s usually an antidote growing nearby.”
“Lucky for me.”
“For us both.” He grins again. “I knocked myself out half a dozen times trying to get the right concentration of sordy root for the darts.”
“That explains a lot,” I tease. Still, I’m a bit relieved to hear I wasn’t the first test subject for that tranquilizer my first night in the Jungle.
Torvus is already twenty meters ahead, vigorously hacking a path as though he hasn’t been swinging his arm for two days. Bri and I reluctantly pick up our packs to follow.
“The moral of this story,” she says, after draining the last of her real water vine, “is to stay out of the Jungle.” She tosses the empty wood into a pile of leaves.
“Awww—is the little Alexia tired?” Dáin taunts as he saunters past, making sure Jase isn’t around, I notice.
Her eyes narrow. “Does the little Brute want to taste my fist again?”
Dáin barks out a laugh, seeming to enjoy their exchanges more and more.
Jase waits a dozen paces ahead for the rest of us to catch up.
I squeeze the ball of leaves tighter against the sharp pain prickling my skin. Small blisters already form along my thumb and forefinger. But Rohan was right: a few hours later, nearing dusk, my legs threaten to seize up and fall off from exhaustion, but my hand is nearly pain-free.
We reach a broad river just before nightfall, twice as wide as the Jabiru. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the roily, gray-green water of Rio del Sur—the river that marks the southernmost boundary of Nedé, though we must be kilometers yet from reaching Nedé’s western border.
Exhausted, Neechi slumps against the trunk of a gumbo-limbo tree. “Are we camping here?” he asks, taking his sack from Galion in anticipation of dinner and sleep.
“Not tonight,” Jase apologizes.
Met with blank stares, he explains the plan: we’ll run the river at night, divided between three canoes that lie hidden in brush along the riverbank. Nedé’s southern border is sparsely inhabited, but we can’t take the chance of being seen. If we paddle swiftly, we should reach the Halcyon in two nights, resting during the day on the south side of the river.
Dantès interrupts to brag that he and Jem have single-handedly dug out ten of these canoes from Santa Maria logs—felled themselves—with plans for ten more, in the event they needed to relocate camp quickly. Brutes certainly spend a great deal of time imagining eventualities.
So instead of sleeping in gently swinging hammocks, cocooned in breezy trees, we spend the night earnestly paddling down the swaying currents of Rio del Sur.
I understand now why Torvus was so determined to reach the river by dusk. Even a bright gibbous moon—like the one illuminating our watery highway tonight—hides us better than the sun would have. Despite the cover of night, we keep to the southern bank as much as possible, to blend in with the thick Jungle backdrop of the wilds.
The canoes are sturdy, if not as wide or sleek as the Nedéan rivercraft
the Gentles use to transport produce and goods up and down the Jabiru, trading from each of the four provinces with Phoenix City. These keep out the water, though, which is all that matters tonight.
Torvus strategically arranged us to spread the weaker paddlers across the vessels, putting Neechi in the boat with him, Galion, and Dáin. Ten meters behind them, Jase, Bri, Dantès, and Jem paddle in impressive sync. And in our boat, Théo and Rohan’s combined muscle makes up for the empty seat between me and Théo, who takes the front. Rohan claimed the bench behind me, and I can’t say I mind, even with the strange tension between us. I like having him close, even though I know better than to speak above the slightest whisper. Even his silent presence makes me feel somehow safer.
If I weren’t so tired, I might actually enjoy the unique enchantment of the river at night—the swish of our paddles through the black water, the wide swath of stars mirroring the break in the canopy, the occasional owl swooping from one bank to the other. As the hours pass, the moon arcs slowly overhead, in and out of wispy clouds, casting a soft light across the sleeping world, illuminating flittering bats and the glowing orbs of crocodile eyes. The nocturnal river reveals yet another side of the wild Jungle I didn’t know existed.
Neechi paddled slowly but consistently through the night. Now his oar lies across his lap, his torso folded over on itself. By the time the moon disappears behind the foothills and the black of night morphs from coal to darkest gray, blisters bleed where the wooden paddle rubs against my still-tender palm and fingers. My eyes beg to close, my body sways like the water beneath, longing to slosh against the bottom of the boat to quench the agony of exhaustion.
Still the Brutes paddle. The consistent slip-slosh-slip of Rohan’s sure strokes hasn’t hitched all night, and neither of the other canoes have trailed more than fifteen meters apart.
When the predawn glow brightens enough to differentiate colors, we follow the lead boat into a brushy alcove in the bank. We hide our canoes, climb into the trees, and sleep the day away like moss-streaked sloths.
But as soon as darkness lends cover, we climb back into our respective canoes, recharged by rest and food, ready to paddle to the world’s end if necessary.
The burst of energy lasts an hour or so before the monotony of paddling returns, the eerie shapes and sounds of the surrounding Jungle banks calling attention to how very little stands between my rear end and whatever hides in the pitch-black water beneath our boat.
On the upside, Dantès suggested wrapping the handle of my oar with a smooth banana leaf, and that—combined with another batch of Rohan’s pulpy green mush—makes for slightly more comfortable paddling.
Our second night on the river seems to pass much slower than we paddle, even though Torvus paces us even faster than the night before. More than once I wonder why I decided to join this mission. In fact, I’m pondering what was so important that we needed to paddle to our deaths when Torvus suddenly veers toward a cut in the southern bank. We follow into a near-tunnel of black mangrove, rising like a wall on either side, strangling the moonlight and shrouding us in near-complete darkness. My eyes strain to see even my own paddle, and twice Théo alerts us to low branches by getting smacked with them himself.
Thirty minutes later, the mangrove walls open up into a bankless expanse beneath a dome of stars. We’ve entered a lagoon of sorts, I think. I strain to glimpse a tree line, but see only stars above, blackness beneath, and . . . I must be more exhausted than I realize. I blink hard, rub my eyes. When I open them again, Jase’s boat, just ahead of us, appears to be floating on blue starlight, its wake stringing behind like a phosphorescent motmot tail. I glance down at my paddle. Each time it dips into the water, a glowing blue shadow swirls around it.
I draw back with a gasp.
“What is this place?” I whisper, my pulse beginning to race.
Rohan chuckles softly at my fear. “Watch this,” he says, then slices his oar backward into the water, spraying glowing blue droplets across the side of our boat, soaking us in warm lagoon water.
“Hey!” Théo barks, a little too loudly, then sends water ricocheting back toward Rohan.
I receive a face full of cross fire. It drips down my cheeks and nose, tastes salty on my lips. A shiver races up my spine, from chill and awe.
A school of fish swim alongside, like an underwater meteor shower—their every movement igniting ethereal squiggles. Pulsating circles—jellies, maybe—bob and weave alongside our canoe, then disappear underneath.
“Unbelievable,” I whisper. I don’t think we’re in danger of being overheard here, but this place demands a reverence incompatible with noise. I try to concentrate on keeping pace with the others’ strokes, but I’m completely captivated by the dreamworld around us.
Rohan leans closer with hushed words. “Dantès and Jem discovered it, when they were building the two-hull.”
“Why does it do that?” I ask, trailing a finger through the water as we glide.
“Don’t know. Something in the water gets agitated when it’s disturbed—but you can only see it at night, only at certain times of the year, and it doesn’t happen during a full moon.”
“How strange.”
“Kinda makes you wonder what else is out there, you know? What other strange, beautiful places exist beyond what we’ve seen.”
I think of the ruins, and the people who once built them—about the possibility of “what else” might be discovered if we went looking. It’s a new question to me, but not to Rohan. I rest my paddle across the canoe and turn to face him.
“Do you want to find out?” I ask quietly. The moon offers just enough light to recognize his features, not enough to read his eyes.
“A few of us have been thinking about it.”
“Of leaving Nedé? I mean, the Jungle?”
He paddles three strokes before answering. “Once things are settled, yes.”
I don’t know why this makes my chest ache—why it dims the brilliance of the eerie light show around us. In the remaining hour it takes to paddle across the lagoon, the glowing blue shadows hold less appeal. Instead I fight against a sorrow directly opposed to my better sense.
I don’t want him to go.
Night still twirls her dark skirts when we reach the shore, and we take the opportunity to sleep on a very narrow stretch of sandy bank, trying to rally a few hours of sleep before we attempt what Dantès brags is the most difficult crossing yet. Just like a Brute to relish the challenge.
When the sun nudges us from sleep, warming our backs and illuminating the world where we’ve landed, I’m glad we waited to enter the swampy marsh and tangled mangroves in daylight.
“We’re going through that?” Bri gawks.
Jase seems genuinely sorry to put us through it. “It’s not fun, but it’s the fastest way to the sea. Just try to stay up on the roots. You’ll be fine.” He offers a reassuring smile as he slips his bare arms through his pack.
In response, Bri slicks her hair back with cool lagoon water, resigned determination hardening her features. Neechi looks as though he might crumple as he lifts his pack, but before he can shoulder it, Galion swipes it up again.
I give the swarthy Brute a grateful smile as he tromps into the mangroves.
Rohan says, “I’m impressed with him.”
“Me too. I got the impression he felt weird around Neechi when we first arrived.”
“I meant your Gentle.”
Ignoring the supposed compliment, I huff, “He’s not my Gentle.” What is it with this Brute and condescension? “And he has a name, you know.”
His jaw stiffens, but he offers an apologetic tip of his head. “I didn’t mean to be rude . . .”
“Well, it is rude,” I interrupt, “to assume that just because someone is weaker than you, they don’t deserve the decency of respect, the benefit of the doubt.”
My ire rises with each word, reflected in my building volume.
His steady gaze forces me to take a deep breath.
Maybe I’m taking out my collective frustration on him, though I couldn’t say why.
Maybe I care what Rohan thinks about the Gentles because I care about them.
That can’t be the whole of it, though. I don’t get this testy with fellow Nedéans when they’re harsh or patronizing to Nedé’s Gentles—not even people I know. That leaves only one other explanation, and it makes me rock back on my heels.
I care what Rohan thinks about the Gentles because I care about him. And that being the case, I want desperately for him to see them—to see the world—through my eyes.
Rohan lifts my pack to make it easier for me to slip it on. “You’re right.”
Wait—what?
In all my blustering, I wasn’t expecting him to actually see my side so quickly. I turn to face him as the others start gingerly picking their way into the swamp.
“I am?”
He pierces me with a meaningful stare. “It would be foolish to make assumptions about people based on their level of strength.” He leans in closer, and I think I stop breathing. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
He holds my gaze, long enough for me to work out his meaning. Rohan is wrong to think less of Gentles for their weaknesses—just as Nedéans are wrong to assume everyone with a Brute’s strength is dangerous. Just as I did.
“Yes,” I finally whisper. “I do.”
He smiles a little, then shoulders his own pack. “Besides, for what it’s worth, Neechi can throw a mean coconut.”
For roughly two kilometers, we slog through a tangled mangrove swamp. Jem demonstrates how to jump nimbly from root to root like a graceful monkey swinging between limbs, but more often than not, my attempts to hop from one oddly angled perch to the next land me knee-deep in thick red-brown mud. If Torvus hadn’t pointed out a poisonous coral snake slithering menacingly through the muck, I’d contemplate stripping out of my boots—for Siyah’s sake, maybe even out of my breeches—to make the going easier. But I suppose mud-filled boots are preferable to dying by snakebite in this miserable tomb.
