Alter

by Jeremy Robinson

  But those long-dead colonizers, explorers, and rebels were just doing what people are hardwired to do. They can’t be held accountable for what they’ve done any more than the lion who kills a competitor’s spawn. It’s instinctual. Modern man might pretend that life has evolved beyond such things, but it’s all a ruse. I know that now.

  People haven’t become civilized, they’ve become controlled by the illusion of morality, imposed by governments and religions.

  But out here, in the jungle, with Ashan, I’ve had the veil lifted. I now see myself for who I am.

  For who I’ve always been.

  An animal.

  Just like everyone else.

  A hiss warns of danger, but it comes too late and too fast to do anything about.

  Thankfully for me, the hunter’s aim is shit. As I turn toward the arrow’s origin, ready to charge into the jungle, I hear a gasp from behind. Is Ashan surprised I still have some fight in me?

  “I can do this,” I say when she grasps my arm. I whip around, angry. “I said, I can—”

  Ashan’s eyes are nearly as wide as her mouth. She’s trying to breathe, but her chest is frozen. That’s when I see the arrow jutting out from her side. Without the power of a compound bow behind it, or a razor sharp modern tip, the arrow has only penetrated an inch. I pull it out and do nothing to stem the flow of blood. It’s not what will kill her, and it could help remove some of the poison from her body.

  Locked up, Ashan begins to topple. I catch her and lower her to the ground while scanning the area for danger. Seeing no lingering hunters looking to score a potshot, I turn all my attention to Ashan.

  Without knowing what kind of poison was used, I’m not sure how to help her. I monitor her vitals, keeping two fingers on her carotid artery. Her pulse is racing, not slowing. Her heart is working overtime to pull oxygen from her non-functioning lungs.

  She’s not dead yet, but she will be soon.

  I take a deep breath, tilt her head back, open her mouth and breathe into her lungs. Her chest rises and falls as I take another breath and repeat. Her pulse slows under my fingers—not because she’s dying, but because it’s working.

  I flinch and miss a breath when the man lying on the fire finally catches, his body fat crackling as the flames rise toward the night sky. I deliver another breath and scan the area. The fire illuminates the village’s remains, twelve lifeless bodies strewn about, and a face, watching me from the jungle.

  It’s the father.

  He’s still alive, vengeance stolen from him again.

  But he doesn’t attack. Knows he can’t win.

  Instead, he watches, waiting for the poison to do its job, and no doubt wondering what I’m attempting to do. Perhaps he thinks Ashan is already dead. That I’m violating a corpse. He’s brave for lingering. No one else has.

  I struggle to ignore the man as I deliver breath after breath. I force myself to slow down when I become lightheaded. The last thing I need is to pass out and offer myself to the man.

  After twenty minutes of the same, my patience wanes. How long will Ashan remain like this? Are the poison’s effects permanent? Does surviving its effects require life support?

  “Will the asshole watching me ever fucking leave?” The man ducks when I shout, but he doesn’t retreat.

  Five minutes later, Ashan’s fingers start moving. Her pulse steadies. And her lungs begin to rise and fall on their own. I lean back and turn to the jungle, intent on facing the father and finishing this mess. He stares at me from the jungle’s fringe. How far can he go before I catch him?

  While I’ve embraced my primitive self, I’m not a skilled tracker. Even Ashan would have trouble following a trail in the dead of night.

  Ashan’s hand reaches up and clasps onto my arm.

  The man’s eyes flare, and I hear him suck in a deep, terrified breath. He’s seen the dead rise.

  “Ashan…Dead?”

  I shake my head. “No dead.”

  “You save?” There is doubt in her voice. She knows what struck her. Knows that it kills, without exception—in her experience.

  “Yes.”

  It’s not the most eloquent dialogue. It never is with Ashan and me. But it is efficient, and not without its nuances and unspoken intentions.

  When I glance back to the jungle, expecting to see the father returning my gaze with his dark eyes, I find nothing but leaves and tree trunks lit in flickering orange light.

  After what these men have experienced tonight, I don’t think any of them will be returning. I lie down beside Ashan, naked and filthy, and I place my palm on her sternum. I feel her chest rise and fall, each breath steadier than the last.

  “Thank you…” Ashan says, her voice sleepy, “Mapinguari. My Mapinguari.”

  I accept the nickname, even if it is longwinded. Tonight, I found the animal in me, so it seems only appropriate that I accept the mantel of the mythic Mapinguari, the one-eyed, hairy beast with two mouths.

  We fall asleep like that and rise in the morning to blue skies, dead bodies, and a months-long sojourn to nowhere in particular.

  21

  It’s strange, being an outlaw in a land without law, but it’s also enjoyable. There are four tribes in the region, all of them uncontacted. There had been a delicate balance of power between them for generations. Disagreements happened on occasion and were sometimes settled by combat, but often through peaceful means. But when Ashan’s father, Hupda, chief of the Dalandala tribe, had refused to marry her off to the Guaruamo chief’s now dead son, the insult was personal.

  Father and son had gone to collect Ashan by force—a socially acceptable act—but Ashan was beloved by her people. Rather than let Ashan and Hupda fend off the men alone, the tribe stood beside them, and sent father and son away in shame.

  The father, a man named Juma, is known for his ruthlessness. But no one could have predicted all-out war. The Guaruamo warriors struck at night, slaughtering the men first and then women and children.

  Ashan believed it was possible that some of her people escaped into the night, or that other young women had been taken, but she had found no evidence for either. As far as she knew, she was the last of the Dalandala, meaning the territory we’ve been traveling through belongs to her…though none of the other tribes would agree to that claim.

  Not only is she a woman, but her tribe no longer exists and the three remaining people-groups most likely already divvied up the territory.

  The Jebubo people would certainly refute her claim. The men painted in black mazes had been Jebubo. They were closely aligned with the Guaruamo, and prone to violence. Hunters through and through.

  The last of the tribes, the Arawanti, are agricultural and non-violent, but their chief tends to side with the majority when it comes to tribal disputes. We haven’t seen any Arawanti hunters searching for us, but that doesn’t mean we’d be welcome. The death toll from that night reached fifteen. Men from both violence-prone tribes lost their lives.

  If we are found, we will be slain on sight.

  I learned all of this today. I had figured out bits and pieces on my own, but the history of what I stumbled into was a mystery until I thought to ask Ashan about it. She wasn’t keen on relaying the painful history—had she gone with the dead son, her people would still be alive—but she laid it out in sequential order, giving me cold facts without the emotion of a storyteller.

  I had asked about it during the day following that nighttime slaughter, but we lacked a communal language to convey such things then.

  In the months since, alone in the forest, with no one else to talk to, we’ve developed a unique comingling of English and her language, which I call Dalandan. I supposed you could call what we speak Dalanglish, but it’s really a combination of Dalandan and English slang, which she enjoys learning.

  We spend hours just talking as the sun sets, getting to know each other, learning what the other knows. When it comes to life in the jungle, I’m a perfect student. I don’t like that As
han often feels like a babysitter, keeping me alive because I’m incapable. At the same time, I revealed how to cheat death itself. I started by teaching her CPR, revealing how I prevented the poison from taking her life. I also explained that we’d been lucky. A poison that worked differently would have been impossible to stop without medicine, a concept that took time to explain. Once she understood, she was able to reveal a cadre of plants, herbs, and animals used to treat various ailments. Overall, I’ve learned far more from her than she has from me.

  But I never feel less because of her. In her eyes I am…special. That’s putting it lightly. For her, Mapinguari is more than a nickname. While I don’t resemble the beast, I am different enough from any man she’s ever seen that I’m…I don’t know. A demi-god maybe. She knows I’m human. Knows I can die. But she still chooses to believe I’m also something more. Or could become something more.

  I think it gives her hope. Our kinship does the same for me. I might be lost in the jungle, far from the reach of civilization and people who have no doubt given up on me by now, but my life is not over.

  What was my funeral like? I wonder. Was it a somber affair? Did people from the soup kitchen attend? Patients? How many of them forgot about me a day later?

  How long will it be before Gwen no longer thinks of me?

  I look at the satchel bouncing on my hip as we trek through the forest. I’m tempted to power on the phone and look at her photo, to remember what I’ve lost, but I don’t know how Ashan would handle it. I’ve explained technology, but it just sounds like magic to her. Showing her something like the phone would only solidify her belief that I’m a supernatural being. So, I don’t look at my wife’s photo, and part of me is glad that I don’t.

  With every passing day, my memory of the past clouds. I have a hard time picturing her face. And with this haze, the pain of what I’ve lost is numbed a little more.

  I no longer think of Juni. I can’t. I need to be fierce to survive. The Amazon basin is no place for a broken heart.

  “Hey,” Ashan says. “Where are you?”

  She’s stopped on the game trail, her body twisted around, her curves hard to ignore.

  There has been an…attraction between us since the night I became an animal. I felt primal for several days, connected to the jungle and the creatures in it. That faded some as our dialogue became conversations, and I started to feel more human than beast.

  But not everything awakened in me that night has gone dormant. I tell myself that desire and action are different things, and I attempt to maintain a physical distance. But that is not always possible. And the bond we’ve formed, running, hiding, hunting, and talking, is permanent. It’s resolute.

  I’d describe my bond with Gwen in the same terms, but under different, far less intense circumstances. I depended on her for affection, love, support, and companionship. All noble things. But I find myself comparing modern world notions of soulmates and romance against Stone Age dependency that isn’t necessarily deeper, but far more intense and necessary. At least in my case. Had we been living comfortably in a village, my experience would be different. But there isn’t a tribe that would accept us without first running us through.

  Gwen is my wife. She always will be, even if I grow old and die in this place. But Ashan…she is something, too. I’m just not sure what, yet.

  “Right here.” I motion to the leaf litter beneath my bare feet. “Duh.”

  She smiles at my use of ‘Duh.’ Of all the slang I’ve taught her, it is her favorite. Because it somehow sounds stupid. She’s made creative use of the word, too, calling me a, ‘duh-boy’ and ‘duh-face’ on occasion, much to her own delight.

  “Where are you, here?” She pats her head. “What are you thinking about?”

  “You,” I say, and I regret my honesty when she smiles and blushes. I have yet to decide how to handle our relationship. I don’t want to hurt her. Don’t want to make an enemy of her either. I have no idea how she’d react to being scorned. But to do so would be to lie as well. In my mind, she is without fault.

  While my mind and body have acclimated to my new life, my heart is torn. How long have I been here? Six months? Longer? I’ve given up on tracking time. With no calendar, or appointments, or holidays to worry about, what’s the point?

  My wife is blameless and wonderful. Betraying her with Ashan reflects solely on my own weakness as a man.

  My marriage is the only lingering trace of my modern sensibilities left. In all other ways, I am transformed. I’ve become the stereotype savage of the Amazon. I am a hunter. A killer. A warrior.

  “Thoughts of me displease you?” Ashan is intuitive, reading my body language as easily as she does the monkeys’ overhead.

  I should just let Gwen go. Be done with my old self. I will not be happy until I do.

  Can I be happy while being hunted?

  Ashan raises an eyebrow, stepping closer. The look in her dark eyes is all mischief. My stomach clenches.

  Yes. I can be happy here.

  But I won’t allow it.

  We’ve been here before, on the cusp, her closing the distance, me unsure. And as always, I raise my hands. That’s all it takes. She knows what it means, knows what’s stopping me. Her respect for it makes resisting her more difficult. Her permanent state of nakedness doesn’t help, either. Not that I’m any different now. I wear the remains of my shorts, which is basically a loin cloth with cargo short pockets. The belt holds the machete and several pouches formed from my former clothing. The only things of mine still intact are the satchel and its contents.

  “It’s me, isn’t it,” she says with a grin. “I’m too much for you.”

  “You are covered in mud,” I say, relieved that she’s returning to our normal playful banter instead of challenging my resistance.

  She looks down at her body, coated in a thin film of dirt that’s caked a bit since we applied it in the morning. The wet earth provides natural camouflage, especially for me, and protects us from the barrage of insects looking to make a meal of our blood. “Maybe it will rain later.”

  When she smiles at me and struts away, I think, God, I hope not.

  Then I look up to the sky glimmering through the leaves and am a little disappointed to not see clouds.

  When I look back down, Ashan is crouched low to the ground, waving a hand back at me to do the same. She’s seen something, or smelled something. I wasn’t paying attention, which is another reason to put thoughts of infidelity out of my mind. The rainforest is a dangerous place for everyone, including people who grew up here.

  I crouch low and crawl on all fours, sliding up beside Ashan.

  With a hand gesture, I ask, ‘What is it?’

  She points to her eyes, and then straight ahead. I stare into the distance. The jungle is flat here, but thick with trees. The farthest I can see is a hundred feet. And that’s where I find an aberration.

  At first, I see what looks like an oversized porcupine. But the quills aren’t rigid. They flow with the wind. Like hair. And the way it moves is all wrong. Unnatural, like a human being on all fours, just like I’d been doing a moment ago.

  The creature lowers itself and all but disappears, blending in with the foliage just to the side of the game trail on which we’re traveling.

  I lean in close to Ashan and whisper. “What is it?”

  “Mapinguari,” she says, a quiver in her quiet voice. She looks me in the eyes, dead serious and afraid. “The real Mapinguari.”

  22

  “I thought I was Mapinguari,” I whisper through a half smile. I’m having trouble taking the legendary beast seriously. As steeped in jungle lore as I’ve become, I can still spot the difference between fact and fiction. The Mapinguari is a legend. A story meant to make people afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone. A parenting trick used to keep children from wandering off alone.

  “Mapinguari is vengeance,” she whispers. “But her wrath can be directed with the right tribute. The right sacrifice. The hun
ters might have given up, but they have paid Mapinguari’s price. The beast will hunt us to the ends of the jungle. We cannot stay. Cannot fight.”

  It is surprising that Ashan, an adult, still believes the legend is true. But in a world without science, the great dispeller of myth and magic, monsters are real.

  The thing on the trail ahead of us is probably a tapir tangled in brush. “I’ll go. See what it is.”

  Ashan’s hand latches on to my forearm, her grip like the jaws of a lion. If not for the dread in her eyes, I might have shouted in pain.

  She motions for a silent retreat and grips a little harder, telling me debate is likely to get me killed, if not by Mapinguari, then by her.

  A subtle nod frees me from her python grip.

  Our flight is slow and quiet, low to the ground, like a pair of sloths.

  This feels wrong. Running away from a fight. I’ve proved myself, haven’t I? Ashan and I could stand against anything the jungle has to offer, man or beast. But I also respect Ashan’s opinions, feelings, and beliefs. If turning tail puts her at ease, I’ll do it. But I don’t like it.

  Ten minutes later, after covering just a few hundred feet, the creature waiting by the trail’s edge loses its patience, and with a single roar of frustration, it tells me a few things, the first of which is that Ashan was right.

  At least partially.

  The animal is a predator—not a tapir.

  It had set an ambush.

  And now…now it’s hunting us.

  Ashan rises into a squat, searching the jungle behind us. I do the same and find nothing but the same monotonous view of tree trunks, green foliage, and a brown forest floor. But I can hear it now, running without regard for the noise it’s making.

  The ambush suggests intelligence, or at least a keen hunting instinct, but the mad rush through the jungle is mindless. Crazed.

  Its effect on us is immediate and simultaneous.