by Raye Wagner
“Please,” she sobbed, her panic tearing through me.
Svîk leapt past me, pausing only to shove me back toward more stable ground. He reached out to help Dostane. Her arms were now above her head, her hands flapping frantically. The bûyî quivered as he yanked, and the force of the bog almost made it seem like he was pushing her in. She opened her mouth to scream, but the bûyî oozed and contracted, rising to cover her mouth and nose. The filthy muck rippled. In one second, Dostane was gone, and Svîk was waist deep in the rot of death.
Panic tore me from my stupor. My heart pounded, demanding action. I needed to save him. I stepped forward, and he waved me away.
“Get back, Taja!” he shouted. “Keep her safe and find a vine to pull me out.”
Commotion swelled around me, people yelling orders, and I heard the grating of metal biting through wood. From the corner of my eye, I saw several magî fleeing the area, but I took another step toward my friend. Suddenly a thick vine flew by me. Someone pushed me again, and I stumbled to the side before catching my footing and moving forward, still intent on helping Svîk. Before I could get to the edge of the bûyî, strong arms encircled my waist, and one of the male magî dragged me back.
“No,” I screamed, scratching and clawing as I tried to pry myself free from my captor, but my gaze never left Svîk’s blue eyes. Emotion clogged my throat as the bûyî sucked him in deeper, all the way up to his chest. My eyes welled with tears, and they spilled down my cheeks as I screamed for the magî to pull him out. “Let me help him!”
The bûyî swallowed again, and Svîk was all the way up to his neck in the dark muck. He caught the thick vine just as the black mud covered his closed mouth. He wrapped the plant around his extended arm, over and over, and then he pulled his arm down—into the bog. The bûyî seeped past his nose, and some small part of me marveled at his calm even as I continued to panic.
“Get him out,” I shrieked, still thrashing against whoever held me.
The men fought the bûyî, but the bog greedily slurped Svîk into its maw until only the crown of his head remained.
Something deep inside burst, and determination filled me. My frustration boiled into white-hot fury. I would not let the bûyî take one more person from me. The decision exploded in my mind, and I screamed, “Give him back to me!”
The men heaved, grunting and cursing as they pulled, and viscous residue of the dark mire clung to Svîk as they pulled him out of the bûyî. He’d brought his arm all the way down to his side, securing the vine to him, but he flopped, inert, facedown as they pulled him across the muddy ground.
When Svîk was several feet away from the bûyî, my captor released me, and I ran to my friend, falling to my knees beside him. I wiped the sticky mud off his face, my tears falling on his body. His still, lifeless body.
I closed my eyes, my heart tearing in two with an ache for something I didn’t even understand.
“Come now, lass. At least the bûyî didn’t get to keep him,” a male whispered. As if there was comfort in the words.
I glanced up to tell him to leave me alone and gasped.
There, right in front of me, next to his own body, was Svîk. He smiled and raised his brows and then quickly held his finger to his lips while he pointed at my open mouth with his other hand.
I blinked and snapped my mouth shut. Whatever I’d planned to say evaporated from my mind, and my thoughts skittered and reeled. Even the stupidest of stupid knew seeing spirits of the dead wasn’t normal.
He pointed at his chest, his spirit chest, and then at his body. “You need to help me get back in.”
“Wh-what?” I stammered.
“You all right, Taja?” a female asked, shaking my shoulder.
“Just… a second,” I said, waving her away without even bothering to see who was asking.
“I need you to put me in,” he repeated. “You can do it.”
Could I? Was it even possible? I’d never heard of that type of magîk, although my memory was obviously limited. So I took a deep breath and stopped thinking.
I looked up at Svîk, his transparent soul, and jerked my head toward his body. I turned my attention to his frame, wiped the muck away from his eyes, and then dug chunks of the bûyî out from between his teeth. I grabbed my waterskin and poured the remnants of the coconut water over his face, cleaning out his mouth and nose.
“He can’t feel it anymore, hon.”
“He’s not dead,” I said. I put my hand to his chest and lied, “I can still feel his heartbeat. I just need to clear his mouth so he can breathe.”
The murmur of hushed arguing emitted from the crowd behind me, but before I finished exhaling, someone placed another bladder of water by my side. I tilted Svîk’s head and scooted my knees under him. My pace quickened, instinct telling me there was a time limit to what I wanted to do, so I rinsed him again and then looked at his soul. He’d been kneeling across from me the entire time.
“He should be coughing,” a male muttered.
“Come on,” I said and widened my eyes at Svîk, telling him now was a good time to get back in. I smacked my hands against his chest. “Don’t you dare leave me.”
He smirked, then put one hand on the chest of his body and held out his other hand to me. “Do it like this.”
I copied him, reaching out with one hand and willing him to return to his body. The moment my skin touched his soul, it disappeared. I felt his presence slide through me, and then it was gone.
Under my hand, Svîk shuddered and coughed. I yelped and scooted away from him so he could lie flat.
Instead, Svîk rolled to the side and threw up. After wiping his mouth, he flopped to his back and offered me a weak smile.
“Am I a hero now?” he rasped.
I blinked, and my eyes spilled with relief, tracking through the mud and sweat on my cheeks. I sniffed, trying to fight through my thundering emotions, and then nodded. “Yes.”
26
The initial triumph over Svîk’s death twisted from elation to trepidation. Some parts were nice: he brought me green mango in the mornings after going to the kitchen in time for goat cheese and getting me breakfast. And while he didn’t bring up us, he scooted closer when we stood in line for meals, his body near enough to feel possessive. After two days of waiting for him to explain, I’d stayed up most of last night with the frogs and crickets for company, thinking. How did Svîk know I could put his soul back in? And if he knew that, what else did he know?
A couple hours ago, in the time between night and day, things connected with a sudden epiphany. And now I wanted answers.
“Taja,” Svîk called, his squishing steps announcing his arrival at my hut long before he said my name. “It’s our day off from group work. Come on. Let’s get started on your path. I brought you pîderîne…”
He must’ve only now noticed that the path was clear.
“What time did you get up?” he asked, his low voice sounding troubled. He knocked on my door. “Are you in there?”
My stomach churned with a mixture of frustration and dread. My only excuse for being blinded for so long was that Svîk was all I had left, his attention comforting and familiar. Familiar… of course he was. “Yeah. Give me a minute, and I’ll be out.”
I pulled my hair up and splashed warm water on my face, the liquid in the dish turning brown as I transferred the location of the dirt. I shoved open the door and stepped outside, forcing my lips into a smile. “Good morning, Svîk.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Who died?” He laughed at his own joke. “Not me.” More laughter. He sobered when I didn’t join in, and his smile flipped. “Hey,” he said, stepping toward me. “What’s wrong?”
I pursed my lips, and my gaze went to the ground. Why did I feel so guilty? I wasn’t hiding anything. “We need to talk.”
“Okaaay,” he said, drawing the word out in a very Svîk way. “What happened?”
The tension between us stretched, and I kicked the ground as I searched for
the words to ask him. Birds chirped, and a monkey hollered in the distance, mocking my coiling anxiety. If I had done this before, it wasn’t second nature like walking or talking.
Svîk put his hand on my cheek and said softly, “Hey—”
As soon as his touch registered, I forced my gaze up to meet his. Fear was etched around his narrowed blue eyes and in the creases of his frown.
I blurted, “I need you to stop hiding things from me.” I blushed and lamely added, “I like you, but I can’t trust you if you’re lying.”
Svîk stared at me like what I’d said was a foreign language and he had to translate it in his head. I could tell the exact minute the meaning registered because his eyes hardened. He curled his lip, and the sneer on his face felt harsh and cruel, a terrifying likeness of the young magî I thought I knew.
“Of course you think I’m lying,” he snapped, his hands clenching at his sides.
I shook my head. “I don’t want that to be it, but I don’t know what else to think. I like you—the parts I know—but there’s too much I don’t know about you and me, and… us.” I shifted my weight from foot to foot. “And you know a lot about me, even before—”
“Before I almost died?” he snapped, narrowing his eyes.
Didn’t he remember? “That’s not what”—I was about to say happened, but his strange behavior made me change my mind—“I was going to say.”
“No? So what do you want to know? You want to know more about before—what? Before you came here? Why?” His voice rose as he continued. “Do you actually believe if you know more that you’d be happy in this disgusting, doomed hole of rot and ruin?”
I stepped back from his vehemence. “I already told you I don’t want to stay here.”
“Oh, that’s right,” he said, throwing the bowl of pîderîne into the surrounding foliage. “You want answers. All I’ve done has been to spare you, but you’d rather have answers. You can’t remember, and it makes no sense. You want me to tell you something so you feel better. You want to know about your past, about my past, about magîk.” He gritted his teeth, and his chest heaved with emotion. “All you think about is what you want. But none of it will help.”
I stared at him, shocked dumb. I’d never seen Svîk so out of control. Then his actual words registered, and my jaw dropped. A deep feeling of betrayal swelled, and I shook my head. “Wait… You do know about before I came here?”
His gaze became a glower, and Svîk raised his hands in frustration. “This is so impossibly awful, and you”—he pointed at me—“veiled with blissful ignorance, have no idea how disgusting it is, or how good you have it.”
I watched him rave, slack-jawed as he hollowed out my chest with each of his explosive declarations.
“Fine, Taja. You want to know more? I’ll tell you more. I gave up everything—everything—because I thought I was saving you. But really? I don’t know what the fetid rot is going on. And now… I’m not sure I want to know.”
His words punched into me, forcing the air from my lungs. I blinked, reeling, and whispered, “Why don’t you want to know?”
All the fury disappeared as he exhaled, and his shoulders sagged. When he met my gaze, his features were ravaged with emotion. “I only wanted to be happy, and I thought we would be happy. I thought you were her.”
“Her? Her who?” I asked, begging for any scrap he would give. He knew! “Please—”
He leaned over me, studying my face, and asked, “Are you making the plants grow?”
I drew back, frowning with confusion. “What?”
“Is that your magîk?” he whispered. “To make plants grow?”
How could he not remember? Didn’t he know I’d put his soul back? He’d even told me how. Something deep inside held my tongue. “Why would you ask that?”
“Never mind. I’m done hoping you’ll remember. I don’t even know…” He held up his hand and shook his head. “I’m done.” With that, he marched away, throwing the two mangoes in his hand out into the jungle with a curse.
I spent the rest of the day near my hut, stunned by Svîk’s temper tantrum. And while I wanted to rip his soul back out of his body, I wanted answers. He had the ones I wanted most, and I wasn’t about to give up. But I could give him time to cool off. One day wouldn’t matter.
Tomorrow, we’d talk.
I awoke to the low purr of an animal outside. I rolled off my pallet to my knees and then crawled to the door. The stench of goat and sour milk was mostly gone, but the odor of sweat clung to the air in the hovel. I peeked through the crack at the shadowy world beyond and raised my gaze to scan the clearing.
The filtered glow of moonlight broke through the gaps in the curtain above and painted the undercanopy in silvery shadows. The leaves rustled with the breeze and the normal nocturnal activity of the rainforest. In the distance, frogs still croaked and the crickets chirped, but the silence just outside my door confirmed the presence of an apex.
My heart flipped, and I squinted to find him, staring out into the shadows. Nothing to the right. I glanced to the other side of the clearing, and my gaze snagged on the sleek melanistic panthera crouching in the middle of the only pathway out from my home, his tail twitching. He stalked forward, his inky black fur the same color as the pitch of night. His pupils were wide open to absorb the limited light, and I couldn’t tell if there was a sliver of green or if I just wanted it. The great cat stalked toward me, a low rumble emitting from his chest.
My mouth dried, and my hands dampened. I wanted so much for this to be Ruin, but his eyes—I couldn’t see any green. Everyone understood the odds against an apex predator, which meant anything that could possibly attract one of the deadly creatures was disposed of meticulously, as in under at least two feet of dirt. There was easier prey than magî, and everything around my hut was cleared. So then why was he here?
My heart thumped against my ribs, and the massive cat froze, his eyes narrowing. He turned his head and hissed, exposing his deadly fangs at the jungle.
Oh, fetid rot, he can bite right through my neck. I whimpered, a totally involuntary response, but the animal continued to stare out into the jungle while my heart raced. Several seconds—an eternity—later, he turned back to my hut. He stalked through the clearing and disappeared to the left of my hut, but before I could sigh with relief, the acrid stench of urine wafted in through the gaps.
My fear tinged with outrage, and my anger grew as the creature reappeared and then pulled my freshly washed clothes from the line, through the mud, to make a kitty bed. A really big kitty bed. He rolled in my knee-length, sleeveless tunics and underclothes, purring the entire time. And then he chewed through my only strap of leather, which I used as a belt, before falling asleep right outside my hut, keeping me trapped.
If I had anything inside besides my pallet and bins—anything I could use as a weapon—I would’ve thrown it at the animal, but after the previous awfulness with Svîk, the large feline was hardly the low of my day. My eyes burned with exhaustion and emotion, and I crawled back to bed. If the creature decided to kill me, at least I wouldn’t have to deal with Svîk or clearing the flora tomorrow. “Just wake me if the bûyî creeps in,” I murmured to the panthera, although far too quietly for him to hear. “And if Svîk comes back”—I wanted to say it was okay to kill him, but I was rational enough to admit I wanted answers, not emotional vindication—“trap him.”
As I drifted to sleep, I let the spark of hope spread in my chest and admitted the truth: Even with the mess outside, I still hoped the panthera was Ruin.
The clang of the bell startled me from slumber, and I rubbed the remnants of sleep from my eyes with a groan. I arose and shook off the residual fatigue still clinging to my body. Grumbling, I snagged my mostly clean tunic from the pallet, the same one I’d worn last night after doing laundry and my bath. I wrinkled my nose with disgust because most of my clothes were outside in the mud. I’d have to wash all of them again tonight.
I took a deep breath an
d muttered at the now-absent, frisky panthera who’d called on me. The whole thing would be funny if it didn’t mean more work, or if I had someone I could laugh with, or if it was Ruin. But my whole world felt upside down. High? No one died. Low? A great cat peed on my house and then disappeared. Biggest low? Obviously the panthera wasn’t Ruin, because he would have better manners than that.
The darkness melted into shades of morning gray, and the daylight and relative silence outside confirmed the empty clearing. I tugged open the door and collected my filthy clothes, dumping them into a bin with the ruined leather strap. Finishing as quickly as possible, I trudged to breakfast. The normal chatter at the tables seemed to decrease with my arrival, but I wasn’t sure if the change in volume was real or just in my head, so I pretended not to notice. I walked through the line, grabbing a few things at random, and then took a seat by Dawi.
“Good morning,” she said.
I glanced up at her, and she smiled. I returned her greeting and then took a large bite of fried plantain so I wouldn’t have to say anything else. I darted furtive looks around the communal area, my stomach churning when Svîk cast me a weighty glance followed by a tentative half smile. I glared at him, furious because he’d hurt my feelings and lied to me. Svîk owed me an apology.
When work groups were announced, I gritted my teeth with determination because he was, as always, in mine.
Good. I’d get my answers today. Then tomorrow, I’d leave—with or without him. The ground was dry enough; certainly the flooding of the rainy season would be over.
When it came time to disperse, my courage fled, and I skirted to the side of our unit, sidling up to Dawi, who was also in the group. The petite young female was at least a year younger than me, but her belly was swollen with child, their first. She’d been partnered a year ago to Rojek, who was also working in our party today, but he walked ahead, talking with several of the men.
We shuffled up the path toward the assigned area, my thoughts agitated and heavy. I wanted to believe Svîk had been honest, that he’d been trying to protect me, but the outburst was so out of character—and I could hardly believe someone who cared would hide so much. I didn’t understand, not at all.
