The Last Panther

by Todd Mitchell

  “It’s no catch,” she said in a driftwood voice. “It’s no salvage, either.”

  “Then what is it?” asked Charro, glaring down at the Witch Woman from atop the creature’s back.

  “A portent,” she said.

  “A what?”

  The Witch Woman ignored Charro, focusing instead on the netters, elders, and children gathered around her.

  “It’s a messenger,” she said. “A devi sent by the Wise One.”

  Hushed murmurs spread through the crowd. Fugees rarely spoke of devi out loud. Some considered them gods, or fragments of gods that walked the earth. Others considered them demons. Or angels. Or both.

  Once, after seeing Nessa make an offering to a devi before rowing out on a gray day, Kiri asked Paulo what devi were. “Devi are devi,” he told her. “There’s no other word for them.” So all Kiri knew about devi was that some could be good, and some could be bad, but all were best respected.

  “If it’s a devi sent to bring us a message, then what’s it saying?” asked Senek, a pale, sandy-haired netter whose face always looked red and sunburned. He often drank palm wine with Charro under his stilt house at the end of the day.

  “Shhh…,” said Charro. He lowered himself to his hands and knees, still balancing on the creature’s back. Then he leaned toward the creature’s head and cupped his hand by his ear, making a big show of listening. “I hear it! It’s saying…It’s saying, Charro, go to the boat people and trade me for new nets and a motor for your skiff.”

  This time the Witch Woman did look at Charro. She narrowed her eyes as if he were a rabid dog in the distance. “You’d do well to listen truly, child.”

  Kiri’s jaw dropped. She’d never heard anyone speak to Paulo’s da that way. Charro sat on the council and was the best netter in the village. He brought in more of the catch share than anyone, and to hear him tell it, he’d kept half the village fed. He was loud and arrogant, but most of the things he said were true. Plus he had a temper worse than a hurricane, so no one ever crossed him.

  Charro got down off the creature’s back and surveyed the crowd. “I am listening,” he said. “All I hear is a bunch of stories from an old woman who doesn’t bring in a catch while the village goes hungry.”

  “Not everything speaks with words,” replied the Witch Woman. “Open your eyes and tell me what you see.”

  Charro scowled and walked around the creature. “I see a new set of nets. A motor for my skiff. Maybe even a way to tug a couple of skiffs out to the deep currents where the fish must be so we can finally fill our nets and increase the catch share for all of us. So unless you like starving, old woman, you better shut your trap.”

  A few netters nodded in agreement, but others seemed doubtful. Kiri noticed many villagers in the crowd staring at the creature with wide-eyed amazement. No one knew what to do with it.

  “I see a way to increase the catch share right now and fill our bellies,” claimed Nessa. “You can’t bring this whole thing to the boat people, Charro. And it would be wrong to let any of it go to waste. When there’s a catch you have to share it. That’s our way.”

  Charro stepped over the creature’s massive front flippers to confront Nessa. He stood toe to toe with her, so close that his bronze belly nearly shoved her backward. “It’s not a catch,” he said. “It’s salvage.”

  “It can’t be salvage if it’s alive.”

  “This isn’t a fish, Nessa,” said Charro. “Then again, I’m not surprised you don’t know what fish look like, seeing as you haven’t brought in a single catch worth sharing in over a month.”

  Nessa bristled and Kiri saw her hand drop to the knife at her belt. People around them stepped back, clearing a space. A few adults pulled Paulo and Tae back as well. A storm was brewing, and when it broke it might harm whatever stood in its way.

  “I go out every day, same as you,” said Nessa.

  “You go out, but you don’t bring much back.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Just that if you’re catching something, we haven’t seen it. So either you don’t know how to net, or you’re not sharing what you get.”

  Kiri felt bad for Paulo. Nessa was his mother’s sister and one of the few adults who looked after him. If his da and Nessa got in a fight, no matter what happened, it wouldn’t end well for Paulo.

  “You’re the one who doesn’t want to share his catch,” accused Nessa.

  Charro’s eyes darkened. “For the last time, it’s not a catch.”

  “Then what is it? You can’t claim it’s salvage if you don’t know what it is.”

  The storm between them kept building. Someone had to do something before it was too late. Kiri looked for Elder Tomas, the council leader. Maybe he could keep Charro and Nessa from fighting, but Kiri didn’t see his bald head and bushy gray beard in the crowd.

  For Paulo’s sake, Kiri tried to think of a way to stop the fight, only what could she do? None of the netters would listen to her. The strap of her bag hung heavy on her shoulder. Even though collecting seawater samples gave her a reason to come to the beach every day, it marked her as different. Fugees sometimes teased her when they saw her filling vials or taking the temperature of the waves and recording the numbers in a book for her da. “Is the ocean still blue? Is the water still salty?” they’d say, frowning at her actions. They tolerated her, but most thought of her as an outsider—a waller doing waller things—and if she spoke out now, she might not be welcome in the village anymore.

  “Perhaps the Witch Woman is right and it is a devi,” said Tarun.

  “It’s not a devi,” said Charro.

  “How do you know?” countered Nessa. “You don’t know what it is any more than we do.”

  “Perhaps we should let it go,” said Tarun.

  “What good would that do?” Charro scowled. “Look at it. It’s old and injured. It’s not going anywhere. To waste it would be wrong—that’s one thing Nessa and I agree on.”

  “Then share the catch,” said Nessa.

  Charro spat and glared at her.

  Kiri’s gaze slid from Charro’s angry face to the enormous creature beyond him. Most of the water on its ridged shell-like back had dried and its sand-encrusted eyes had closed. Without the sheen of wetness, its midnight-with-stars skin looked cracked and dull. A line of blood trickled from where the net had bit into its flipper.

  Paulo squirmed free of the adult who’d grabbed him and edged between people to reach Kiri. “Your da!” he said. “Go get your da!”

  “Why?” Kiri didn’t see how her da could help. He barely ever came to the fugee village.

  “If anyone knows what this creature is, it’s him,” said Paulo. “He can tell them if it’s a fish or a devi or something else. He can settle this!”

  The storm between Charro and Nessa had spread to the crowd. Those who sided with Charro stood apart from those who sided with Nessa. More were on Charro’s side, but Nessa was too stubborn, or too hungry, to give in.

  “Please,” said Paulo. “I’ll tell them he’s coming.”

  Kiri left the crowd and hurried toward the ghost forest. She paused at the base of one of the dunes, unslung her heavy bag, and tossed it onto the sand.

  “Kiri’s da, the waller man,” shouted Paulo to the crowd, “he’ll know what the creature is! He can tell you if it’s salvage or a catch, or what to do with it. He’ll know!”

  A hush descended as Paulo’s words sank in.

  “She’s going to get him right now,” said Paulo. He looked over to where Kiri stood by the dunes and nodded to her. She nodded back, then set off at a run. Without the bag full of water samples, she felt light and swift as the wind. Her da would know. He could stop the fight and maybe even save the magnificent blue-eyed creature.

  For once, Kiri thought, the people in the village needed her da.

  Kiri sprinted across the wind-rippled sand and into the sea-grape tunnels. The branches arched over the path, and the leaf-covered ground made it easier
to run. She picked up speed, leaving the sounds of the gathering on the beach behind.

  Snowflake perched between her shoulder blades, his whiskers brushing the nape of her neck. She’d cut the sleeves off most of her hoodies to keep them from being too warm, but when she ran through brush like this, the sharp saw-palm leaves and sea-grape twigs scratched her bare arms. Still, she didn’t slow. Paulo wouldn’t be able to keep Nessa and his da from fighting for long. He was counting on Kiri to bring her da back.

  The air took on a foul smell from the pits where the villagers buried their waste. Kiri tried holding her breath until her chest nearly burst. Then she was past the pits and into the sand oaks, cabbage palms, and sweet-smelling pines of the ghost forest.

  All around her, dead trees littered the ground and scraped the sky. Most were newly dead pines, shrouded in kudzu vines. Hidden among the trees lurked a maze of concrete ruins from when this had been a city, back before the storms. The ruins made running through the ghost forest harder. Kiri jumped over the dark spaces in the rubble where pythons liked to coil, and leapt the fire ant mounds in the sandy earth. Snowflake thumped against her back, but he didn’t squeak or fidget in her hood. He knew how to hunker down and hold on when she ran like this.

  Gradually, the pine-needle ground softened, and mud filled the spaces between Kiri’s toes. Strangler figs, banyan trees, and cypress grew here. The air became heavy and stagnant with humidity, until running felt like wading through soup—a peaty, dark soup that smelled of rotten grass and the too-sweet blooms of orchid trees.

  The ghost forest was hard enough to run through, but the swamp was downright treacherous. Some patches of ground that looked solid were really soft mud pits covered by mats of algae. If she stepped on them she’d sink and drown. And there were puddles of black water where cottonmouths and gators hid. Kiri wasn’t scared of the swamp, though. Every ridge, root, and rock was familiar to her, and she knew the mounds and banks to avoid, the ones where gators built their nests. She could have crossed the swamp backward with her eyes closed if she needed to.

  She darted along fallen logs, jumping from one to another, then hopped onto a patchwork of saw grass that cut a zigzag path through the swamp. At last she saw her house in the distance. The plastic waller cube stood above a grassy island connected to other islands by thin spits of land and fallen logs. Because of the frequent storms and floods, the house was raised a good ten feet above the ground on stilts made to sway in the wind. Some nights, when the wind kicked up, it felt like they were on a boat. Blue spark panels glinted on the rooftop in the last rays of sunlight, and torn strips of mosquito netting billowed above the windows like Spanish moss in a breeze.

  Kiri and her da were the only ones crazy enough, or “waller enough,” as fugees put it, to live in the humid, mosquito-infested swamp. But none of the fugees in the stilt village had spark panels, cooling fans, or window netting like she and her da did, so none had what was needed to survive away from the wind that swept the shore and blew the mosquitoes away. And why would fugees want to live in the swamp anyway, when all the fish and salvage were offshore?

  At least, that’s the way everyone in the village saw it. Kiri’s da thought differently about the swamp, though. Most of the things he collected for his waller customers grew here, so he’d had the wallers put their house here as well.

  “Da! Da!” called Kiri as she crossed the final spit of land to the island their house stood on.

  There was no response from inside. No sign of movement.

  “Da!” she called again, scanning the area for the green shade hat or tan shirt her da usually wore. Martin’s skin was lighter than Kiri’s, and if he didn’t wear long sleeves and pants during the day, he’d turn red and sore.

  Kiri couldn’t catch her breath to give a loud enough call. She had to stop and take several gulps of air. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and filled her lungs.

  “DAAA!”

  “Kiribati?” came a faint reply.

  Kiri looked around, but she didn’t see Martin anywhere.

  “Kiri, Kiri-bati!” sang her da, as if he could see her searching for him and he found it amusing.

  No one, other than her da, ever called her Kiribati. Most of the fugees in the village called her Kiri or Waller Girl. She didn’t mind being Kiri, but she hated being called Waller Girl. Even if her da was a waller, which was what the fugees called anyone from the walled-off city-states, she’d been born here, in the swamp. She’d never even been to a waller city.

  According to her da, Kiribati was the name of a whole island nation that had existed once before the oceans rose and the storms increased and, like the ruins in the shallow waters off the village beach, the nation of Kiribati sank beneath the waves. Except, unlike the ruins and the other far-off ruined places where some of the fugees had come from, all of Kiribati’s people, buildings, trees, animals, and every last step of land had disappeared. Most people didn’t even know that such a place had ever existed. Which meant her name was like the names of the once-were creatures—a word for a lost, forgotten, perhaps imaginary thing.

  Kiri raced past the house and jumped to one of the adjoining islands, following the sound of her da’s singing. Every time she thought she was close, his voice seemed to come from a different direction.

  “Kiri-bati!”

  It frustrated her that her da was playing games at a time like this. “Da, I need you! The whole stilt village needs you!”

  “Look up,” called her da.

  Kiri scanned the treetops. Three sprawling banyans stretched over the island, but most of the trees around them were cypresses. She finally spotted her da near the top of the biggest cypress. He had his tree belt on, which secured him to the trunk so he could use both hands to work.

  “Come down quick!” she said.

  “I’m a little busy right now,” replied her da. His magnifying glasses had slid to the end of his nose and he didn’t have a free hand to push them back. “This ghost orchid is extremely rare. I’ve been watching it grow for months, waiting for it to be ready to harvest.” He held tweezers in one hand and a knife in the other as he worked to pry a silver-spotted bromeliad root from the bark of the tree.

  “You have to come to the village,” said Kiri. “Paulo told them you would. There’s a once-were creature! It’s huge!”

  “Uh-huh,” replied her da, clearly not listening.

  “Da! It’s on the beach. You need to tell the fugees what it is. Charro claimed salvage rights to it, but Nessa thinks it’s a catch, and others say it’s a devi!”

  “A devi, huh?” said her da, still focused on the orchid roots. “Aren’t those spirits?”

  “Yes, but it’s not a spirit. At least, I don’t think it is. It’s…it’s bigger than a skiff, with black wrinkled skin and white spots like the stars at midnight. And its eyes—they’re so blue, but they’ve gotten all sandy. You have to come right now.”

  “Patience, Kiribati. This is delicate work,” said her da, not taking his eyes off the orchid roots. “It’s already been purchased by a patron. If I let it go, the roots will break.”

  Kiri knew she wasn’t explaining things right. If she were, he’d drop down quicker than a rotten coconut.

  “I’ll be there in a little bit,” he added. “There’s squash for dinner.”

  “I don’t want dinner!” yelled Kiri. She looked around for some other way to get his attention. All her da thought about were the specimens his waller patrons wanted. So be it, then. She knew there was one thing he’d pay attention to.

  She ran back to the stilt house, climbed the ladder to the deck, and shoved open the sliding door. The fans whirred, clearing away the day’s heat, but Kiri didn’t have time to enjoy the crisp coolness inside. She dug her da’s spare key out of the flowerpot by the sink and raced to the sleeping loft to open the locked cabinets.

  One cabinet was full of waller books sealed in plastic bags. She found a thick square book with a plain black cover and yanked it from it
s bag. It smelled the way rotting logs did when she rolled them over to catch millipedes.

  The book was filled with pictures of hundreds of colorful fish—more fish than anyone in the village had ever seen. A few of the fragile pages tore when Kiri touched them. That’s why she wasn’t supposed to hold the books anymore. When she was younger her da had tried to have her read them, but the words were so long and jumbly she couldn’t make much sense of them. And anyway, what was the point of knowing the names of fish that no one ever saw?

  Toward the end, the book showed pictures of things other than fish—drawings of waterlords and once-were creatures. At last, Kiri found the picture she recalled seeing years ago. The creature in the drawing didn’t look as big as the one on the beach, but it had a similar teardrop shape, midnight-with-stars skin, and ridged shell-like back.

  Snowflake jumped from her shoulder to her bed. He sniffed the pages of the book.

  “This is it,” said Kiri. “This has to be it.”

  She sounded out each letter of the words beneath the drawing and blended them together like her da had taught her to do. Most of the kids in the fugee village couldn’t read. Once, years ago, when some plastic bottles had washed ashore, Kiri tried to sound out the words on them, but when kids from the village saw her mouthing the letters they called her Waller Girl and kicked her. After that, she didn’t practice reading much. Her da tried to make her do it, but when she set her mind on something, nothing could change it.

  Now, though, she wished she had practiced, if only in secret. It took an agonizingly long time to blend the sounds into words. And even then it didn’t sound right.

  Snowflake nibbled on a page that had fallen out of the book. After a few test bites, he bounded across the blankets, carrying the page back to his nest.

  Kiri didn’t bother taking the page from him. She had more pressing things to worry about. With the book tucked under her arm, she hurried down the ladder and back to the tree her da was working in.