by Cassie Wolf
“I’m already used to that,” Atsu replied as he gazed at trees he had never seen before bearing fruits different than he had even seen while on his trial.
Pazade smirked behind his helm at his curiosity. “We won’t hide it but we won’t make it well known. We are not liars but will not cause a rift when it is not needed.”
“I understand.”
“You will stay in our hut until my daughter decides if she finds you suitable. If so then your training as a male heir shall begin, if not we shall give you a home and a role as worker with us.”
Atsu nodded. Either of the options sounded good to him, though obviously one was a lot better in terms of prestige. To think he could actually be equal to Jasari and then one day Dia was too good to be true.
The sun was setting behind the thick mass of trees and the night time predators were beginning to awaken. Pazade ordered them to stop beside a pond overnight. Some of the warriors worked on pitching a couple of the tents while others set out to hunt. When the hunters returned, the pot over the fire was filled to the brim with vegetable soup mixed with soft meat chunks from the night’s catch. Although some complained about it being bland, Atsu found himself craving more of the meal and was disappointed when nothing was left.
With his legs aching from the walk, he asked where he was to sleep and was pointed in the direction of an undersized tent. Yawning, he nodded to his new tribe members and set up his bed and lay, looking at the ceiling of patchy leather. From what he had heard, it was going to be another two days’ walk at least, as long as there was no trouble on the way. As for his future mate, she had barely even spoken to him which led him to accept the alternative life was going to be his path. Starting as a new worker with a home of his own with no one knowing anything about his past, the only thing missing was Masika to share it with. He had hoped Inari, despite being hostile to him, had passed on the message.
“I didn’t thank you,” a smoky voice said from the tent entrance just as he was drifting off to sleep.
Atsu sat up straight and widened his eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to fucking terrify me?!”
The daughter swayed her layers of cloth skirt across the floor and reached her hand out to him. “Stand.”
“What?”
“Just stand.”
Atsu let out a yawn as he rose and slipped his palm between her delicate fingers. He stared at the ground sleepily until her other hand swept across his chest and up to his chin, nudging him to gaze into her eyes. He went to open his mouth but she gently pressed her finger to his lips. The woman directed his hand to the strap at the back of the mask and in that instant, he felt his heart pound. He was actually going to see her face. But what if she was ugly? He wouldn’t be able to hide his reaction, not the way she was going to do it. The knots in his stomach tightened in anticipation as he felt the layers of fake hair against her real smooth locks, the strap just beneath.
Atsu felt strangely dizzy as both of their hands dragged the mask over her scalp. Her hair brushed his wrist and instinctively he closed his eyes tight. He heard the light giggle from her as he did, and then with one last, quick motion, he knew the mask was off. Oh Gods, she was going to be ugly, he was certain of it.
“Open your eyes,” her voice whispered.
Taking a breath, Atsu cracked one eye open. “What the fuck?” he exclaimed and placed his hands either side of her round face, inspecting every detail as if he couldn’t believe the sight before him.
The woman smiled slightly, nervous at his reaction. They probably weren’t the words she most desired to hear but she kept her gaze on his while he looked at her in the utmost confusion.
She was unlike any woman he had ever laid eyes upon before. Her arched eyebrows were flawlessly shaped over her sparkling leaf-green eyes. Her rounded face seemed all-too perfect, her nose was a button and nothing more and her lips were full and appealing. The slight light of the moon shining through showed him every detail, even the strands of caramel-coloured hair brushing past her shoulders and the silkiness of her honey skin.
The woman stood uncomfortably while he brushed his fingertips over her facial details. “Is something wrong?”
“Did you put something in my water?”
“No! Why would I do that?”
“You aren’t real… you can’t be. No way.”
The young woman raised an eyebrow and pouted. “I can assure you, I am real. Why would you think I am not?”
“Because look at you! Are you actually taking me back to be a slave?” Atsu demanded, folding his arms. This was far too good to be true. He had, after all, seen her trying to cast spells over the lake and working other chants behind the mask.
“No! Am I grotesque?”
“Have I died? You look like what I was told the Divines look like,” Atsu mumbled and brought his hands back up to her face once more. “There’s no way you don’t have a mate.”
The woman let out a nervous chuckle of relief and shook her head. “I don’t have a mate, Atsu, and I am definitely real.” She sighed as he brushed his fingertips over her cheeks.
Atsu pressed against her skin and could feel the knots in his stomach tightening once more and his legs weakening, like they had at the fishing shacks. She didn’t take her gaze away from his eyes while he could not draw his own away from her mouth. “You’re perfect though,” he said, his thumb brushing past those tempting lips. He felt his mind wander, as if it was testing him with the most inappropriate of thoughts while she stood with a perfect smile, letting him caress her.
“No one is perfect.” She moved her palm to his chest and lightly brushed a trail across it with her nails. “I wanted to thank you for what you did back at your tribe. Giving up your life couldn’t have been easy.”
Atsu felt his leg twinge and he thought he was going to collapse as her nails scratched the surface of his skin, not tickling but relaxing. “It’s alright,” was all he could respond, moving his fingers to her chin to tilt her head slightly up.
The woman pushed herself closer and brought both of her hands to his chest. He easily towered over her petite frame. “I thought…” She trailed off, looking at his mouth before drawing back to his eyes. “I thought you should…”
Atsu interrupted her before she could finish her sentence, brushing his lips past hers. He took in her every scent and still couldn’t believe she was real. The moment his mouth connected with hers, he couldn’t help but let himself kiss her. The woman slowly trailed her hands around his neck and pressed herself against his chest while they settled into the connection, softly kissing.
He couldn’t believe what he was doing, but it felt right in a way he didn’t understand. His heart was racing and his legs were about to topple but he didn’t care. She sighed with approval before she slipped her tongue to cross with his and in that moment, his hand slid down along her spine and settled above her behind. With his blood pumping and all-new arousal hitting him, he slowly pushed her back towards the post of the tent.
The woman followed his steps back and rested against the wood as the kiss quickly became more heated. Atsu dared to break away from her lips, hearing her heavy breathing spurring him on as he grazed over her neck with uncontrollable desire.
“Jocelin! Time for sleep!” Pazade called from outside.
Atsu opened an eye but found he couldn’t tear himself away from her. It was only when she pushed him that he stopped. They both gazed at each other for a moment with a slight smile on both of their faces as they caught their breath.
“Your name is Jocelin?” Atsu asked, cheeks flushed.
She nodded and walked over to the mask. “Yes, it is.” She smiled for a final time and straightened her clothes before quickly heading out of the tent towards her father.
- CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX -
Since the incident, Jasari had been thinking about what to do or whether he should do anything at all. His sister-mate had been at his ear from the moment Dia lay on the ground for him to kill Pazade, his dau
ghters and the newly-named Atsu.
He sat in his chair, his fingers scratching the bone arm while he thought about everything. Pazade had left and he was unable to get the bind but they had also taken Masika’s brother.
It had been three days since they had left, and to his surprise he saw Masika every morning going in to visit his son with gifts of food. When he first saw her, he was curious as to what she was up to and followed her inside. A part of him believed she was as dark as her sibling and was maybe trying to finish the job, but no. In fact, what he saw surprised him. She was bathing his cuts and feeding him, something mates rarely did within the tribe but he had seen it in others.
With his sister-mate at his side, he drummed his fingers on the arm in thought until she clicked her lips and snarled, “I can’t believe you just let him leave.”
Jasari smirked in her direction and sighed. “I can’t kill him as a guest. He is still a guest until he returns home.”
“Fuck the Gods. You should have just killed him. Our son is scarred, Jasari. Our family is humiliated and why you are still keeping that wide-hipped bitch under our roof is beyond me.” She spat and turned her nose up in the other direction.
Jasari shook his head. He stood up and walked out of the hut, not listening to a single word from his mate.
Outside, the warriors bowed low as he passed. The commoners did the same but out of fear rather than anything else. He walked up the hill towards where the bonfire had stood, all the grass still blackened from the flames. All of it felt too familiar to him. With a shudder down his spine, he strode past the workers still cleaning up stray scraps of food and smashed cups.
Just ahead of the clearing stood the graveyard. It was nothing special by any means, not compared to the crypts of the Chieftains and their families, but it was a spot he regularly visited when his mind was troubled. Each grave was marked with sticks, some of which had been woven into a unique symbol for the person who had died by a crafter if the family had the money to pay, while most just bore a mere scrawl of letters to represent the name of the one buried beneath.
He walked along the silent paths of the dead, seeing the odd regular visitor replacing offerings with fresh ones or wilted flowers with those more vibrant. Jasari eventually reached his destination.
“Zura,” he whispered and sat down. “I imagine if you were alive you would be proud of what your son did. I can hear you just like it was yesterday, mocking me with the pride and love you had for your children.”
He smiled weakly and picked at the dead flowers, moving them out of the way. Zura was a beautiful woman, one who he was never ashamed to admit it to. With wide eyes and glossy curls, every male in the tribe wanted her. Even as a child, she was the girl who was the most pushed into mud by other kids. As she grew into her teenage years, bidding wars even started over her, although her mother wouldn’t accept any of it. Her brother was better than all the males, even though Jasari would never admit it. Yera, the eldest son and a gifted warrior, he loved his sister more than anything in the world. When Jasari tried to fight him for his sister’s affections, he was all too quickly thrown to the ground and unable to move for broken bones. His father and the tribe looked down at him in disgust for his weakness and if it wasn’t for his older brother dying a few weeks later, he would have been exiled from the tribe.
Jasari glanced over to Yera’s grave. “Still winning now, aren’t you? Your son is named Atsu and will become a Chief in the future, no doubt alongside my own failure of a spawn.” A weak laugh escaped from him. “Whenever I looked at your son, all I saw was you. I knew Dia would lose; of course he would against your family. Fucking warriors for generations, front-liners with courage.”
Jasari turned his head back to Zura and stood up. “You weren’t meant to be in there. This wasn’t how it was meant to happen. I beg of you, my family has been humiliated enough and I will look after your daughter, just please let your spirits rest.” He kissed his fingertips and rested them on the stick sculpture carved in the shape of a heart for a moment before walking away, hoping the torment would end.
After the fire, he remembered the tears forming in his eyes like never before when the charred corpses of the children came out. Covered in blankets, some of them still had the remains of tiny socks on their feet while the younger ones clung onto dolls. The one thing which made him contemplate ending his own life though, was watching the surviving siblings at the burial. Atsu was only young and still the screams came in the night but he wanted to be there. Too young to carry his mother, he insisted on bearing his infant sibling, wrapped in bindings, while Masika cried for her mother and wouldn’t let the workers lower her body into the ground. In the end, it was Atsu who had to pull her away from the graveside and hold her while she clung onto him, hysterical.
Before the warriors opened the main doors to let him inside, Inari came out of his hut and ushered him over. With a simple hand gesture, Jasari signalled to his guards that he was not yet returning to the Chief’s hut and walked over instead to the masked doctor.
“What is it?”
“Turputsi asked me to speak with you.” Inari stood holding the door wide open.
Jasari sighed at the mention of his sister-mate and walked in. He had always hated the atmosphere in Inari’s hut. The organs in jars made him feel queasy and he always felt as though the eyes, freshly pulled out of their sockets, were judging him. The only reason he didn’t mind talking was because he could delay going back into his own hut.
He sat down on the pile of nearby cushions and stared at the jar containing his daughter’s ear. With a shudder down his spine, he turned back to the witch doctor. “Inari, there is nothing I can do until they return home. The Sun Tribe would raze my village to the ground if I did and even when they are on their own turf, I don’t have any true reason to declare a war.”
“I did try to explain this to her, Chief, but she wanted me to try to talk to you anyway. She wants you to do something against them.” Inari sipped on his freshly-boiled sweet tea.
“Like what? There is nothing I can do. I can’t kill Pazade, his daughters or even Atsu, as he is known now. They did everything right and Dia is still alive. Even if he had had been killed, they still did everything right.” Jasari shrugged and slumped back against the wall. “If I did anything like that, they would know that it was me and would have rights to war on us. We cannot fight right now, Inari. Our morale is down, we don’t have the numbers and they have a person with them who lived here. It all points to a loss.”
Inari nodded a couple of times. “Well, I can tell her I tried, at the very least. Dia will recover from his injuries, although his nose may stay crooked and his teeth of course will forever be lost.”
Jasari frowned, not concentrating on what Inari was saying. Instead, his mind was still on Zura and the guilt he felt inside. It had taken him to dark places over the years and he could barely even contemplate what Atsu had faced daily, or even Masika. Whenever he looked at either of them, all he saw were the dead spirits of Zura and Yera within their children, mocking him and trying to destroy everything he had.
“Turpu suggested we called the Silent-step to end Pazade. She believes that with only Atsu as an heir, a newcomer and from this tribe, hardly popular with the Whites, their society would crumble,” Inari said, placed down his cup and licking his lips.
“That wouldn’t work. Pazade is loved by his people. It would only make them stronger and give them nothing to lose in fighting us. I will tell Turpu not to bother you with such matters again.” Rubbing his forehead, Jasari sat forward. “As soon as Dia is ready, I want him to bind to Masika.”
“I believed we were waiting for time to pass out of respect for your daughter.”
“No. I will write to the Sun Tribe for permission. I believe if there is anything we can do, having that done will play a vital part. If it were ever to come to war, at least we would have something to bargain with and maybe some children too if it’s in the distant future.”
Inari raised his eyebrow at the comment but hesitated before offering a grin. He sipped on his tea once more, thinking.
- CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN -
After Atsu and Jocelin embraced, he was unable to shake it out of his mind, no matter what he tried. The soft feel of her lips and the warmth of her skin ran through his thoughts every day they travelled. She had ignored him entirely since that night; it was as if he was a complete stranger once more. She barely even looked him in the eye from behind the mask, which he begged in his subconscious for her to take off again.
It got to the point he was questioning if he had dreamt the entire thing. Her face had seemed to glow unnaturally and made his heart hammer like he had never felt in his life. By the fourth day of travelling, he had pushed it to the back of his mind as best as he could and focused on hunting meat for the evening meals. It was clear to him now where she stood.
The trees finally thinned around them and it was clear this part of the jungle had active logging. A smell lingered in the air, a putrid stench of death along the trail they followed. Atsu peered around for the cause when in the distance he saw a totem of old skulls piled on top of one another. Some still had stray pieces of rotting flesh and even shreds of cloth lingering on the top, as if the helms or hats they wore had been left amongst the pile to rot.
“It’s a warning to intruders,” Pazade said, following Atsu’s gaze.
“It’s a rather small warning, isn’t it?”
Pazade gave an evil smirk behind his own mask as they strode on. The pyramids of skeletons soon started to grow. The first few were about the size of the shrubs around them and had red and white paints smeared on what was left of their faces. Atsu felt uneasy; as much as he had seen death so many times before, this seemed unnecessary in its excess.
“Every one of these has been an intruder?” Atsu asked, eyeing a palm-size skull, certain it was from a child.
