Lives of Kings

by Lucy Leiderman

  “I had another memory,” I told my friends.

  As expected, a wave of inquiries ensued. No one had remembered anything concrete from the past since we regained the moments that led up to our deaths and saw that seven of us were sent forward. At least when they realized I couldn’t answer everything at once, they quieted down.

  “I think it was when the king decided what we would do,” I said, my eyes sliding to Seth. It was his father, and Kian’s, who had opted to kill his first-born son in order to effectively destroy one of his enemies.

  I told them about the others around me, confirming there were seven of us. I described the two crying women, so similar they could have been sisters. One was the queen, I was sure. Seth and Kian’s mother. The other I didn’t know.

  I tried to remember the king’s words exactly. The only part I left out was about Kian. I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t ready to talk about his place in my memories yet. He seemed too young and lost; I just didn’t want to imagine him in the same circumstances now or think about where he was and what he was doing. Or worse, wonder if the magicians had found him.

  As I found out in England after he poisoned me and brought me bound to the magicians, Kian had been kidnapped from the past by one of them. Only two had been reborn; one had found another way. Kian had always told me he didn’t arrive here like we had, but I never questioned it until it was too late.

  Countless times I replayed every conversation between us. I thought over his every word until I was basically torturing myself. I’d never thought to question him, letting him lie through silence. I just figured there was so much I didn’t know that he couldn’t explain all of it.

  His vagueness, his mysterious actions, all of it had seemed normal because it was who he had always been to me. He had found me, he had rescued me countless times from both them and myself, and I hadn’t seen past that.

  I hadn’t known he was just as scared as me, doing what they wanted him to so that he and his brother, Seth, could have a chance to go home. But he had been lied to. It was impossible to go back in time. Too much had happened. And I questioned every time I thought about him if his decision to help me escape came before or after he realized the magicians had lied to him and he could never go home. It made me angry, but I also missed him terribly.

  When I finished telling the others what I had seen, the response wasn’t what I was expecting. Garrison went to the desk in our small room and took out the travel magazine included with everyone’s welcome package.

  “Do you feel like you have your magic back?” he asked, leafing through it. I closed my eyes and looked inward. There was something — but it was still faint.

  “A little bit,” I admitted.

  “I think it’s a mental block,” Garrison said. “The magicians, they just … well they almost killed us. They almost got us. They made us so scared that we just pushed everything down until the memories and magic only trickle in.”

  “That sounds about right,” Seth agreed.

  “And look at Moira,” Garrison said, still without looking up from the magazine. “She looks like a zombie!”

  “Hey!” Moira protested.

  “Sorry,” Garrison said, “but it’s true. This whole thing has taken a toll on us. And Gwen, you’ve pretty much proved that there’s nothing wrong with us. We’ve got the same magic we always had. It’s us that are in the way. Kind of like how all that fire had to leave you just to unlock those memories.”

  I followed his train of thought. At this point I wanted to know more. I wanted to see more. And if there was a way to get back on track and not feel like we were just hiding out somewhere in the Pacific, I was willing to try it.

  “So what do you suggest we do?” I asked.

  “Well,” Garrison said, holding up the magazine to his chest and away from us, “before you judge this idea, keep in mind that the only way we can hope to be stronger than they are is to regain all of our magic. And that means overcoming whatever is holding us back. Can we all agree on that?”

  Everybody nodded. I knew Garrison well enough to know that he only ever prefaced his ideas or added disclaimers when they were particularly outrageous. It made me nervous.

  “So,” he said, laying the magazine on the bed.

  “You’re kidding,” Seth said.

  “No way.” Moira backed away from it as if it would bite her.

  I leaned in to see what the fuss was about.

  In the travel magazine about the French Polynesian islands, there was an article about cultural heritage being preserved in the jungles in the form of witch doctors. A man or woman wearing so much straw and paint that it was impossible to tell what he or she really looked like was the main image in the article. I sighed.

  “Think of it this way. They’re kind of like the island psychologists,” Garrison explained.

  “Are they the ones that drilled holes in people’s heads to get the demons out?” Seth asked.

  “Probably not,” Garrison said dismissively. “And if they did, I’m sure they don’t do it anymore.”

  Silence.

  I was skeptical. While Seth and Moira seemed to think a witch doctor would cause more harm than he or she was worth, I doubted any such person existed. It seemed to be a tourist attraction, if anything. But I was tired of feeling helpless, and the incident on the beach, as well as every other fire-related thing, was nerve-wracking. I had to make sure I wouldn’t hurt anyone. My desperation not to be a danger probably led me to my next comment.

  “Okay, let’s do it.”

  As Seth and Moira began to protest, I hurried to explain.

  “We can’t sit here forever, waiting for the next thing to either put us in danger or ruin some other part of the world. And we don’t even know what they’re up to! Maybe they’re close to succeeding,” I said. “And we have to face the fact that Kian isn’t coming back.”

  That shut everyone up. They had all been thinking it, but it was no secret who his departure had affected most. When I said it out loud, it somehow became truth.

  With reservations, Seth and Moira agreed to Garrison’s witch doctor plan.

  The next day, Garrison used his charm and friendly demeanour to somehow find a hotel employee who could point him to a tour guide who knew of a witch doctor nearby. I still felt ridiculous saying — or thinking, for that matter — the words “witch doctor,” so I began to look forward to seeing the island psychologist.

  Garrison was especially good at procurement. If something seemed hard to get or find, he was usually the best person to do it. He managed to convince a tour guide, who usually took tourists into the heart of the jungle, to take us to a man or woman — no one knew which — famous with the locals for offering what was called “alternative health care.”

  As Seth, Moira, and I sat sipping our hundredth fruity drink by the ocean, shaded by an oversized thatched umbrella, Garrison approached with a young local man in tow.

  The man introduced himself as Ari and told us usually only the locals went to visit the priest, as he called him.

  “We understand,” I told him. “And we appreciate you helping us. We want to …” I didn’t know how to finish my sentence, not knowing what Garrison had told him. “Experience as much of the culture as we can.”

  Ari seemed to notice our ages for the first time. “Are you here with your parents?”

  “Yes,” Seth said.

  Ari waited for more, but Seth had nothing.

  “Okay,” the man continued, still looking us over dubiously. “Just remember, no cameras. You must show respect. We leave at dawn tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” Garrison assured him. “Like I said, we’re curious about your culture. We want to know what … the priest … may say.”

  Ari left, still casting curious glances at us, no doubt trying to figure out what was so wrong with us that we would ask to see a witch doctor. Garrison, totally oblivious and always one for adventure, just gave us the thumbs-up with a wide grin.

  He
sat down next to me on my lounger, taking my drink from my hand.

  “You guys could look a little bit more excited,” he said. “Who gets the opportunity to do this kind of stuff?”

  He was right, but it all came with a price. I had no idea what waited for me in my memories, and at the same time I was trying to keep my expectations in check since there could simply be nothing to find in the jungle.

  “What if there are just more terrible things?” I asked him. “It seems like painful memories are all there was.”

  Well, almost. My memories of Seth before losing him had initially given me hope and pushed me to look for him with Kian. The complications around whom I was meant to be with had turned those memories sour.

  “Well, I for one feel like I’ve seen all the terrible things there could be,” Garrison said, looking out to the ocean.

  I suddenly felt like an idiot. I knew his past was by far the most painful, and I had been insensitive. Having only remembered his life as a soldier in a tribal garrison, he had asked his parents to call him that at a young age.

  Garrison remembered his past life’s family being killed by rival tribes and hadn’t known anything else until we remembered our own battles as adults.

  “I have to believe there must be something good back there,” he said. “Don’t you want to know what you made the sacrifice for? If there’s anything on this planet that will help me remember and then make me strong enough to get those bastards once and for all, I’m up for it.”

  We were all sweating more than I had ever believed anyone could sweat within only minutes of entering the jungle. The humidity was suffocating. Though I was still questioning Garrison’s judgment in bringing us here, at least my belief that this was all a tourist attraction was fading with each step. Tourists would have to be crazy to do this.

  The jungle rose and fell every few metres and made the hike exhausting. I watched my feet obsessively as vines, roots, and loose stones threatened to knock me off balance. There was more pure green here than I had ever seen in my life. The sounds of wildlife filled the air, and for the first little while, I was so focused on memorizing this crazy experience that I didn’t notice all the bites I was getting from various sub-tropical insects.

  There was a shuffle behind me and I turned to find Moira had slipped. A burly guide who didn’t look happy at all to be trekking with us caught her with lightning-quick reflexes, grabbing her elbow in what seemed a painful grip.

  “You okay?” Garrison called from ahead.

  “Yes,” Moira said, biting her lip. A thin line of blood trickled down her leg where her foot had slid in between two unstable rocks. “I’m okay,” she emphasized, seeing me look. She waved me forward in a shooing motion.

  I carefully avoided disaster myself when I nearly slipped on wet and mossy rocks and then almost rolled my ankle stepping on a vine. Seth did one faceplant during our journey, cutting his forearms, while Garrison happily kept up with the experienced guide, using his long legs to take bigger and more carefully thought-out steps.

  After about two hours of hiking, we stopped for a break. We had been consistently making our way uphill, and everyone was panting. Ari took our water bottles and began to fill them with water that ran off some stones.

  “This water pools at the top of the mountain and flows down to the villages,” he explained. “The higher a village is, the more pure it is.”

  I didn’t have time to worry about all the living things in my water. When he handed me my bottle, I drank.

  Ari spoke in a different language to two other men. They motioned toward the clouds, looking as if they’d rather be anywhere else. The weather looked fine to me, but I understood now why we needed to leave in the early morning. It was important to get back before dark — making our way home after nightfall would be impossible. And in a place where even the fish and insects were carnivorous, I didn’t want to find out what was lurking.

  “They don’t look too happy, do they?” Garrison said quietly. He had tied a sock around his forehead like a sweatband, and it looked ridiculous but effective. “You like the look?” he asked when he saw me looking.

  “Love it,” I replied. “Still think this is a good idea?” Garrison looked exhausted.

  “Given that we’re here already, that doesn’t really matter,” he said. Which meant no. Great.

  When Ari returned, he also wore a worried look.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Seth.

  The man, only slightly older than us, was wringing his hands. “The guides,” he explained, gesturing, “They don’t want to go forward from here. They say the priest curses the healthy and heals the sick.”

  Garrison’s eyebrows shot up. “As wonderful as that makes me feel about paying him a visit,” he said, “we have an agreement.”

  Ari shifted from foot to foot.

  “Haven’t you ever brought anyone here?” I asked him. “I thought you were a tour guide, like from the hotel pamphlet.”

  I turned accusingly to Garrison. Where had he found this guy? Ari looked guilty while Garrison began to whistle in mock innocence. Guilt wasn’t in his nature.

  “I asked around,” he told me. “There were only a few real witch doctors on the island, and this guy volunteered.”

  “We will wait for you here,” Ari told us quickly. “The doctor is only another forty minutes hike directly north on this path.”

  There was no other way around it. If we wanted to do this today, we’d have to go on our own. Leaving the only three people who knew how to travel through the jungle behind us, we took our packs and headed up the mountain.

  “This screams bad idea,” Moira muttered.

  For once we agreed on something. But at least we weren’t wondering for long if we were going the right way. In half an hour, Seth screamed when he pulled back some branches and came face to face with a skull.

  More skulls and skeletons beyond that first one didn’t help to put us at ease. Moira was nearly in tears as all of the skulls and chalky symbols culminated in one sign at the end. It was in French. As the only one who could understand even a little French, she read it in a shaky voice.

  “What does it mean?” Seth asked.

  “I think it says something along the lines of, ‘Leave your brothers behind,’” she said.

  “Wonderful.”

  Despite everything telling us not to, and only Garrison urging us forward, we continued. After another few minutes, a rattling alerted us to someone else’s presence. Humming followed the noise. We stopped and waited.

  The man or woman under the costume seemed underwhelming. When he or she appeared, they were wearing a wig of straw and thick paint around his or her eyes. The small man or woman looked like leather — his or her skin was taut and darkened by the sun. I couldn’t even begin to guess the age of the small person approaching me. It could have been anywhere from fifty to a hundred and twenty. The man or woman was compulsively shaking a rattle by their side.

  The doctor carefully approached us. I noticed that the sounds of the jungle had died down. The trees were quiet. The birds had gone somewhere else. It was an eerie environment and we all stood rooted to the spot as the man or woman neared. He or she peered into each of our faces, pausing for an uncomfortably long time at Seth.

  I felt myself buzzing with anticipation. I was ready to move if anything happened. As we stood together — four supposedly powerful people — I couldn’t help but feel very vulnerable. After what seemed like ages we were invited through a series of gestures into a small grass hut we hadn’t even noticed. At least I think we were invited. The witch doctor, priest, or whatever it was, waved for us to follow, and we did.

  Inside, a strong smell of mint and vanilla hit me. It made its way into my head as if cutting straight through my skull. I suddenly felt more alive. I saw my friends’ eyes widen as they followed me in.

  “That’ll wake you up,” Garrison remarked.

  When I inhaled, it was cold on my throat.

 
The hut wasn’t tall enough for any of us to stand straight, and even the small man or woman, who was only about five feet tall, had to crouch. We awkwardly bumped along until we sat on a natural ridge — probably a fallen trunk or something.

  The loose items lying around looked old and worn. Utensils, hats, and buckets littered the floor. Smoke rose from a small fire and escaped out through a hole in the ceiling. The hut was woven together with leaves from the trees around. It was intricate and skilful work.

  The witch doctor took a seat across from us and stared into our faces. I sat between Seth and Garrison and took the opportunity to squeeze Garrison’s knee quite hard, reminding him this was his idea.

  When the small person opened its mouth, a more familiar language came out than I was expecting. He or she spoke French, and we all turned to Moira, but within seconds she was shaking her head, completely lost.

  “Lentement,” she asked pleadingly. I knew the word for slowly. It was the same in Spanish. I had tried to learn in school, but if Moira’s French was on par with my Spanish, we were in trouble.

  The witch doctor went on, breaking words with what seemed like clucking. The voice was too high to be a man, so I decided it was a woman.

  “Something about … butter,” Moira said after a few moments.

  “Butter?” Seth asked skeptically.

  “No, wait.” Moira squinted at the woman as if that would help her language skills. “Fear.”

  I couldn’t imagine how the two would go together. Suddenly the very small and leathery woman stood and stuck out a pointed finger at Moira. We all sat back in surprise.

  “Ow,” Moira complained as the woman stabbed a finger into her chest. “Stop that!”

  She swatted lightly so as not to break the frail witch doctor’s arm. Still, the woman vigorously stabbed on as if accusing her of something. Then she turned and said something to the rest of us, which we of course didn’t understand. I was starting to think this whole trip was a little useless.