Beasts of Prey

by Ayana Gray

  The more strategic thing for Ekon to do now was leave Koffi to die, he knew that, but . . . no, he couldn’t do it. Koffi had had the same chance to abandon him in Anatsou’s meadow; he wouldn’t abandon her. He looked down at the journal’s map again before coming to a decision.

  He might not be able to save Koffi like she’d saved him, but he had to try.

  * * *

  The rest of the afternoon passed like a year, growing more and more humid even as the sun set. Ekon’s feet had begun aching hours ago, but he didn’t stop, and now he felt that pain throbbing through his body with every step. He thought he could see opaque tendrils of steam rolling off the very trees in wispy sighs, slicking their arms, legs, and foreheads in a sheen of sticky sweat. He licked his cracked lips involuntarily at the same time Koffi’s stomach audibly rumbled. Since leaving the grove, her condition hadn’t worsened, but it hadn’t improved either. Sometimes, she’d have fits of consciousness and try to walk beside him at a slow limp, but it never lasted long. More times than not, he carried her on his back. He tried to quell a rising dread. If they didn’t find help soon . . . He didn’t want to think about what would happen.

  Night fell faster than he expected, sudden and consuming. After propping Koffi against a tree, Ekon made something of a camp, then evaluated their food options. Her rations were—as he’d expected—not much better than his, but he pooled them together to make a sort of meal. After this there’d be no more left, but he couldn’t think of that now. He filled their gourds with water from inside a tree Nkrumah’s journal said was potable, and tipped Koffi’s to her lips to encourage her to drink. She cracked open an eye, the smallest of smiles light on her lips.

  “Guess we’re not even anymore,” she murmured. “But I don’t think I’ll be able to repay you for this.”

  Ekon shook his head, refusing to let himself think about how very small Koffi suddenly looked. “You don’t have to repay me, Koffi.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “You have to stay awake.” He hated how harsh the words sounded, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d trained with Kamau and Brother Ugo on how to be a proper warrior, how to clean wounds earned from combat, but he had no other medical experience. He didn’t know how to treat this kind of ailment. “Do you understand me? I’m not letting someone else die in this gods-forsaken jungle. It can’t happen again.” The words slipped from him before he could stop them, then hung heavy in the air.

  “Again?” Koffi repeated the word, her voice faint.

  “Never mind,” said Ekon brusquely. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Fine . . .” Koffi closed her eyes, letting her head tilt back against the tree trunk.

  “Hey, keep your eyes open!”

  “How about a barter?” Koffi said, smiling even as her eyes stayed closed. “You tell me what you were talking about, and I’ll stay awake.”

  Ekon hesitated. He’d never talked about this before, not even with Kamau or Brother Ugo. But Koffi’s eyes were still closed, and he didn’t like it. Even with her dark skin, he could see the blood was draining from her face, and she looked weaker and weaker by the second. If this was the only way to keep her awake . . .

  “Fine. You asked me what I saw back when we were in Anatsou’s meadow,” he said quietly. At once, Koffi’s eyes opened. “I didn’t want to tell you because . . . I’ve never told anyone before. I—” He hesitated. Once again, he felt like he was on the precipice of something, about to leap into an unknown. His fingers drummed against his knee, moving faster and faster.

  One-two-three. One-two-three. One-two-three. One-two—

  “Ekon.”

  He started. Koffi had sat up and taken his free hand, the one that wasn’t counting. She met his gaze and held it. “I was just joking about the barter. You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, but if you do . . . I’ll listen.”

  Ekon let a shudder pass through him. He felt the secret building up inside him, a living thing rattling around his rib cage. He sensed that, once he let it out, he’d never be able to keep it locked up again, and that frightened him to his core. He stared at his fingers, still drumming a rhythm against his leg.

  One-two-three. One-two-three. One-two-three.

  He looked at his other hand, the one Koffi still held in her own. The pad of her thumb was moving back and forth against his skin in circles, slow, deliberate. It wasn’t like counting, but something about watching those circles calmed him down; they made him feel better. He took another breath, then stared at his feet.

  “When I was in the meadow, I heard the voice of my father.”

  Koffi’s brows rose, but she said nothing, and Ekon went on.

  “When we were little, my brother and I liked to give each other dares,” he said. “Most of them were jokes, harmless stuff, but one day, my brother gave me a very specific dare. He bet me five shabas that I wouldn’t go into the Greater Jungle. At first, I told him I wouldn’t do it, but I changed my mind. I didn’t tell him, but the next morning, while he was still asleep, I got up and went in by myself. My plan was to find a rock or flower to prove myself, but I got lost.”

  He’d known the images would return, braced himself for them, but that didn’t make it any easier when they did. Physically, he was still sitting with Koffi, but in his mind, he was small again, one tiny body set against a massive jungle. He still remembered the unnatural chill he’d felt taking his first steps into it, the strange hush that’d filled the air as he trekked into its depths, then the gradual helplessness he’d felt as he realized he didn’t know the way back.

  “I thought I was going to die here,” he said. “And then . . .”

  “And then?” Koffi prodded.

  “And then my father came,” Ekon whispered. “I don’t know how he figured out where I’d gone, how he found me in the middle of the jungle. I just remember his voice, the way he said my name.”

  Ekon, please.

  Ekon shook his head. “He told me we needed to leave the Greater Jungle, that it wasn’t safe for us to be there, and then . . . then, we saw it.”

  “It?”

  “The Shetani.” Ekon nearly spat the word. He wanted to be angry at the memory of the creature, enraged, but the truth was that even now, thinking of that moment drove a spike of raw fear into his bones. He remembered two black eyes, a low growl interrupting the stillness of the jungle. He recalled the way his father had tensed, hand flying to the hilt of his hanjari. The beast had fixed its eyes on him.

  “What happened?” Koffi asked.

  “I . . .” A wave of nausea rose from the pit of Ekon’s stomach. The next words he had to say were the hardest, the ones he didn’t want to say. His skin grew clammy as his lips tried to form them, and yet again he watched Koffi’s circling thumb. He made himself focus on that motion instead of on the way he felt. “I . . . ran.”

  It physically hurt him to say it, the pain worse than he’d imagined. Tears of shame pricked behind his eyes, and his throat tightened until he could barely breathe. He tried to speak again but found he couldn’t. His skin felt as though it’d been set on fire; everything inside him burned. And he deserved it. He deserved to suffer for what he’d done. He screwed his eyes shut as Baba’s voice filled his mind, no longer slurred and pained, but cold and razor-thin.

  You left me, the new voice said. You left me to die.

  Ekon winced. He had. He’d been a coward. Baba had come to save him, and in return he’d abandoned his father. He’d let that creature—that monster—tear his father to shreds. He’d let him die alone in this jungle.

  Coward, his father said, his voice full of derision. You are a coward. Kamau would never have left me, my better son would have stayed . . .

  It was true. Kamau was better—stronger, smarter, braver. His brother had always been the better son, and he’d always been the lesser son.

  �
�Ekon.”

  Something cool tapped his chin, lifting his gaze from the jungle floor. Koffi was staring at him, eyes intent. “Tell me the rest,” she said quietly. “Please.”

  “There’s isn’t much else.” Ekon kicked at the dirt. “I made it back, and my father didn’t. The next morning, they found his body at the jungle’s edge. Apparently, he’d tried to get home, but . . . he didn’t make it. He was later honored as a hero for trying to single-handedly kill the Shetani. No one ever found out the real reason he died—because of me.”

  “Ekon . . . ,” said Koffi softly. “You were just a kid.”

  He shook his head. “My father was killed trying to save me,” he said harshly. “The Shetani destroyed his body, but I’m the one that took his life.” He gestured up at the trees. “Even this jungle knows it.”

  Koffi’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “I . . .” He paused. This was another thing he’d never told anyone before. He thought of the old woman he’d seen not so long ago, the way she’d seemed to know the jungle called to him. He swallowed. “Sometimes, when I’m near the jungle, I can hear my father’s voice. It’s like a ghost calling to me, blaming me . . . I’ve heard it for the last ten years.”

  “Ekon.” Koffi seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “What I’m going to say might sound a little strange, but hear me out, okay?”

  Ekon nodded.

  “I haven’t read many books in my life,” she said tentatively. “I’m not like that Nkrumah guy, or any of those other old men with lots of important things to say. But in the time since we came into this jungle, I’ve noticed something.” She lifted her gaze to stare at the trees around them. “This place, the Greater Jungle, is alive. Maybe not in a way we can really understand, but I think . . . I think it has a personality, even a mind of its own when it wants to.”

  Ekon frowned. “So?”

  “So,” she pressed, “I think that, in a way, it gives back what you give to it. Think about it.” She kept on before Ekon could interrupt. “When we ran into Anatsou, we were scared, and what happened?”

  “The spiders,” said Ekon.

  Koffi nodded. “And remember the grootslang? It only showed up after we started arguing about which way to go.”

  Ekon said nothing.

  “It makes me wonder,” she pondered aloud. “If something bad happened here when you were a little kid, if the emotions you have when you think about the jungle are always bad, maybe that’s what the jungle will always give back to you. And the only way to make that stop is to face that bad thing head-on.”

  Ekon considered the words. They reminded him of something Brother Ugo had once said to him:

  Nightmares hunt like beasts of prey, vanquished in the light of day.

  The light of day. Brother Ugo had told him that the only way to make problems go away was to face them, but . . .

  “How?” His throat was dry, his voice hoarse. He barely heard it himself.

  “Face it,” Koffi said firmly. “Don’t run from it anymore.” She squeezed his hand. “And you don’t have to do it alone. I’m here with you.”

  “I don’t know how to face it.”

  “Acknowledge what happened,” she murmured. “What really happened. And then forgive yourself for it.”

  Ekon closed his eyes and clasped his hands together. The images came unbidden; he expected them to, but he tried not to look away from them. He saw the jungle, the blood on the leaves, the eyes of a monster coming toward him. He remembered the fear, a preternatural chill, the way his heart had pounded in his chest.

  Ekon.

  Baba had been beside him, not lying in a pool of blood, just standing next to him. He remembered meeting his father’s gaze.

  Ekon, Baba had said. Go home.

  No. Ekon hadn’t wanted to leave his father. But, Baba—

  Ekon, please. There’d been an edge in Baba’s voice, but not from fear. The Shetani was still a few feet away, watching them, no doubt choosing which one of them to go after first. His father had looked from it to Ekon slowly. It’s all right. I’ll distract it, he’d said. Count your footsteps until you get home. Moss always grows on the north side of the tree, so move in the opposite direction of the moss. Head south until you’re home. I’ll catch up. I’ll be all right.

  Baba. Ekon had felt hot tears on his face. I don’t want to leave you.

  I’m right behind you. Baba’s voice was warm. He was lying, but Ekon hadn’t known that. Please, son, go.

  And so Ekon had run. The trees had risen to meet him as he darted back the way his father had directed. He remembered trying to find the moss, trying to count his footsteps, but he’d kept losing track of his numbers in his head.

  One . . . two . . . five . . . seven . . .

  He couldn’t count that high without getting disoriented. He’d tried again. One . . . two . . . three. Three. He could count to three without getting overwhelmed. He focused on those numbers, making his steps match their cadence.

  One-two-three. One-two-three. One-two-three.

  His fingers had begun to tap at the air, helping him along. He’d found a rhythm, and then the running had gotten easier.

  One-two-three. One-two-three. One-two-three.

  Three: He’d decided then that three was a good number. Three would always be a good number.

  Ekon. He heard his baba’s voice, no longer angry or suffering; there was another emotion in its place.

  Ekon, please.

  His father hadn’t begged him to stay—he’d begged him to go. He hadn’t thought he was the lesser son.

  He’d loved him.

  “Ekon.”

  Ekon opened his eyes, feeling as though he’d just emerged from deep water. He could breathe again, and the voices were gone. Koffi offered him a small smile.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Better,” said Ekon quietly. “I feel . . . better.”

  * * *

  Ekon was up before the sun, cleaning their rudimentary campsite and reviewing the map. It seemed strange that this was only his third night in the jungle; so much had happened in such little time. He pulled Nkrumah’s journal from his bag again to review the map.

  They still weren’t close to any sort of civilization, let alone a physician. He glanced at Koffi. She was sleeping—he’d relented eventually—but still shivered with fever. He swallowed. According to Nkrumah’s journal, she should have died by now. The fact that she hadn’t was a small miracle, but he knew she wouldn’t make it much longer without treatment, and they were out of supplies.

  As carefully as he could, he lifted Koffi to her feet. He crouched to let her climb onto his back, then looped his arms under her knees to hold her in place. It wasn’t the most comfortable way to walk—while Koffi wasn’t particularly heavy, she was tall—but Ekon didn’t mind it. Two different emotions were warring inside him, vying for his attention. There was fear there—he was still very worried about Koffi—but there was also undeniable joy, a profound relief. What Koffi had said to him last night, what she’d helped him realize, had been life-changing; he literally felt lighter.

  Baba loved you.

  All this time, he’d thought Baba hated him. He supposed it made sense in hindsight that a nightmare had impersonated the truth, then settled in his mind. But now he had the real truth. It was still painful to realize his baba had died for him, but it made him feel better to know that it had been his father’s choice; that made all the difference.

  * * *

  Morning became midday more quickly than he would have liked. Ekon stared at the sky overhead. Evening would be upon them in a handful of hours, and they didn’t have another night’s rations. They were running out of time and running out of options. He was still considering that when he heard the snap of a twig and a sharp breath in, a gasp.

  As quickly as he could
with Koffi still on his back, Ekon swiveled, fist wrapped around the hilt of his hanjari. Koffi groaned at the sudden movement, and Ekon felt her heart pattering hard against his back. His own heartbeat quickened too. He realized they’d been lucky not to have encountered any more wildlife since the grootslang, and now he suspected that luck had run out. He had a choice to make. He’d fight better without Koffi on his back. He could defend them, but that would mean putting Koffi on the ground, leaving her vulnerable. He tensed as a second twig snapped, this time behind him, and then he heard a distinct sound, a hissing. His blood ran cold. If it was another grootslang or something like it, they had no chance at all.

  “Koffi.” Ekon kept his voice as low as he could while his eyes searched the trees. “Listen to me. I know you’re tired, but you’re going to have to run. I can’t fight and carry you, you’ll have to—”

  Ekon stopped so suddenly that Koffi nearly slid off his back. He’d been staring straight ahead and into the trees, but the jungle was playing tricks on him now. From the shadows, two women emerged, like none Ekon had ever seen before. Their skin was dark brown like his, but transparent, and their curly dreadlocks were the color of a pale silver-white moon. Like the trees they’d emerged from, they looked ageless, and Ekon didn’t know whether to find that fascinating or frightening. One of them lifted a longspear high, and he froze. She stared at him a second longer before inclining her head, gaze full of question.

  “We don’t mean harm.” He couldn’t lift his hands to show good intent without causing Koffi to slide off his back, but he let go of his hanjari slowly and deliberately. “We just need help, please.”

  “I speak not well the human languages.” The shorter of the two women looked to her companion and frowned before looking back to Ekon. “Do you?”

  Ekon’s heart sank as the second woman shook her head. The first one raised her spear higher yet, and he flinched. She was close enough to impale them both with an easy throw.