Once Stolen

by D. N. Bryn

  “Doesn’t matter. You won’t meet them.”

  Thais stupidly takes my reply as a cue to keep talking. “They’re like the boiuna elders, aren’t they? But they work with your elders, right? You were worried they’d find out about you? Because one of them is—” she repeats my signs for first forebearer, though hers are sloppy and they look more like first anger brain. Not a totally inaccurate statement. “What’s that mean?”

  I pretend I can’t see her hands in the darkness.

  She elbows me.

  “Hey, fine!” I elbow her back, skipping right over her last question to explain, “Each of the four Murkling species chooses a group of leaders for their skill and wisdom. For humans and hoatzis—”

  “Wait, what? I don’t know that sign.”

  “That’s because most of you ignorant boat humans think there’s just boiuna in the Murk, and maybe some remaining native humans, but there’s actually four primary intelligent species here. The hoatzis are two-legged people with feathers on their arms for gliding and bird feet that make prints like backward human footsteps, like the legendary curupira.” For their name, I make a motion like a footprint with the back of my hands. “They and the humans have councils: small groups of adults nominated by the village’s young people. For the boiuna, our leaders are the oldest and largest among us, called elders. The dolphin-tailed botos are so few they have a single leader known as the intermediary. The leaders guide their own kind and convene regularly to share news and plans. In matters where a decision would affect the other species, they make a cooperative choice.”

  Thais stares at her hands for a moment, rapping her fingers against my arm. “That sounds a lot better than what the cartels do.”

  “We’re a civilized people.” The we drops like a rock in my stomach, and I nearly slide off the edge of the root. No we anymore. Just me and them.

  The thickening mist creeps in, stealing our conversation away. In the darkness, Thais’s presence at my side becomes acute. Her grip on my arm sparks a flame beneath my scales, and I pull her up at the slightest stumble. The feel of her compared to Xera strikes me. Somehow, they are both water, but Thais is the pouring of it, both the blinding moment of the first downpour and the still sigh after it ends, while Xera is the fog that swirls around us, their grace the kind that makes them fade, untouchable, barely even there.

  We nearly lose Xera in the deep mist and shadows, but they return to guide us every time I wonder at our course. Soon, the roots grow large enough that Thais no longer slips. A distant light emerges, so dim I think I might be imagining it until Xera reappears, their hands visible once more.

  “I have to check something.” They turn, then turn back. “Wait here.” They scamper into the fog, leaving Thais to stare at me.

  “They say they’re coming back.” But as I sign it, my scales tingle unnervingly, a chill riding down them. With the light ahead, we can’t be far from the village. “But it might be better to scout than wait here, where we’re easily ambushed.”

  “Let’s go.” Thais steps forward.

  I pull her against my side to keep her from moving too far ahead. “Follow my lead, boat shit.”

  “You palm-headed—”

  I ignore the rest of her insult, letting my ridges lead us through the trees, sweeping toward the light in a roundabout way. It spreads into two, then five, and finally ten small flames piercing the fog. More dim glows appear farther on and up, their colors a chaotic rainbow of different hues spread among the trees. I slip with Thais behind a trunk and focus on the vibrations around us. Nothing moves.

  Slowly, I peek out. The original lights come from a dozen candles in holders made of glistening bone, hanging from branches and embedded into the sides of roots which sweep themselves in an unnatural circle around a large pool of river water. Scattered throughout the trees in neat arrays sit larger bone bowls and troughs and a few skulls. Colorful flowering plants grow out of them, vines weeding through a rib cage, and an orchid blooming out the eye socket of a complete caiman skeleton.

  Thais vanishes from my grip. Before I can scold her, she slips around the side of the tree and reaches the edge of the pool. My head ridges spike with the sense of motion from the water. A green boiuna larger and thicker than me shoots out like a bullet, wrapping around Thais’s legs, and yanks her under.

  NINE

  Tremors, Tears, and Other Confusing Reactions

  Imagine there’s a language everyone else knows,

  but to you it sounds like gibberish.

  We wear that language on our faces.

  And I see only nonsense.

  MY HEART SLAMS AGAINST my rib cage. I burst after Thais as though the force in my chest propels me forward. The candlelight reflects off the surface of the pool like a glimmering array of scattered stars, leaving the water dense and dark beneath. Thais squirms at its center. Her hips and shoulders twist furiously as the green boiuna coils around her. Panic floods my senses—Thais’s or my own or both—but not quite enough of it to mask my opponent’s scent name, musty as the ferns growing from one of her bone bowls. Fern’s thick muscles ripple beneath the bone jewelry adorning her arms and tail as she tightens her hold on Thais, her body longer and heftier than mine. Maybe long and hefty enough to eat me.

  Here goes something.

  I dive at them, winding myself around Fern’s back and catching her neck in the crook of my arm. I yank her toward the surface, squeezing. She loosens her hold of Thais and turns on me with full force. We spin once, tails thrashing. Suddenly, she jerks back. I grab Thais and drag her to the nearest root, heaving her over the side between two bone planters. Her shoulders shake as she coughs.

  Fern coils into a crook across from us. “I’m so sorry, I thought this was a… no, no I was right.” She props herself up until she stares down at us, her irises narrowing to thin slits as she scrutinizes the fabric clinging to Thais’s body and the light dusty brown skin it covers. “Why did you save a boat human? What’s going on here?”

  Thais tries to sign some kind of defense, but she shakes too much.

  I coil in front of her. “What’s it to you?”

  Fern’s pinched expression is as unreadable as any Thais has ever given me, but her anger smells sharp and bright despite the dampening mist. “You’re that asshole thief the elders banished last year!”

  Motherfucking— “No? No. That’s not me. I just smell like him.”

  “Like greed and mud.”

  At this rate, she’ll be best friends with Thais in no time. “There can be two greedy brown boiuna born in the same swamp.”

  “So, you aren’t the one who stole the heartstone from the Leaf Song village?” She plucks a small yellow ignit from a bird skull with a vine curling out its nose socket.

  I twitch toward the gently glowing rock and wrap my fingers around my own ignit. Fern’s lips pull back, revealing a mouth that could swallow my entire head once dislocated, probably my shoulders too. My mind flashes to the sizes of the elders’ jaws. I wonder if they’ll let me hold my ignit while they strangle me.

  Thais moves behind me, one hand pressing against the curve of my waist. Her skin trembles, wet and cold. She needs food and rest and probably other things I can’t give. I signed up to get more ignits, not to take care of a dying human.

  “Yeah, fine. It was me! But I had no idea that ignit was supporting the power system for the whole damn village. It wasn’t my fault that family died.”

  Fern shrugs. “Sure, thief.” She tosses the ignit once.

  My eyes follow it like an invisible cord ties them to the stone. “I’m just helping this useless human to the coast. Once she’s there, I’ll be gone for good.” With a hoard of ignits. An entire trove of them. So many I don’t need that single tiny beautiful stone Fern tosses around carelessly, like she doesn’t even want it. So many she would be the one jealous of me. “I have better places to get ignits now.”

  “The boat human, you mean?” Somehow, Fern put the pieces together, or mayb
e her shot in the dark got lucky. Her scent turns smug. “Where will your ignits come from if I eat her?”

  I bare my teeth. “Silt-breather.”

  Thais presses her fingers to my back. I twist to see her blue eyes, ghostly and dark in the candlelit mist. She tries to scoot around me, but I block her ever so slightly. I catch a whiff of her annoyance before her scent fades.

  Fern’s gaze wanders over me. “You might not fit in my stomach, but I could use a skeleton like yours in my collection.”

  I unhook and rehook my jaw. “I would have every rock you own before you could even—”

  Thais slips her hands around my side. “Cacao, you fool,” she signs, small and pointed. I miss her touch in a stupidly delirious way, like it’s some fucking ignit. “Let me—”

  “Shut up, boat shit.” I lean in front of her, as if that will somehow make her soothing caress return. “Haven’t you done enough already?”

  Thais drags in her breath too fast, almost chaotic, but she quiets when Xera whisks through the fog, landing agilely in front of a massive tree, one hand on their crossbow. Their gaze darts around, and they slowly let the weapon go. Nothing moves but the very distant vibrations of planks far above and the occasional dart of a small animal through the mangroves, the stillness so complete that I swear I can almost feel Fern’s plants growing.

  Xera leans against a trunk. They sign, soft and small, “Are they bothering you, Fern?”

  Fern replies with a question of her own. “They’re friends of yours?”

  Xera looks at us and nods once.

  “Then they’re not a bother. Not yet, anyway.” Fern wiggles her little glowing stone along her knuckles, bouncing it from groove to groove. “But don’t let the bittersweet one near your hunting ignits.”

  Show-off. I rub my thumb along my own ignit, clutching it too tightly in its necklace to attempt any cool tricks.

  Fern flicks hers into the air and catches it. “So, why’d Xera pick up an odd pair like you?”

  “This helpless lug had to be saved from a penajuar,” I sign. Thais shoves against my shoulder. I lean over, blocking her again. “Clearly, she can’t manage the Murk on her own.”

  Thais clambers to her feet. “I’m not helpless!”

  “Yeah right, boat shit.” I don’t know why I say it, the words just come out, because it’s the sort of thing I do often say.

  “I’m not. And I could get to the coast just fine on my own, thank you very much.” Thais’s eyes moisten. She juts her chin up and whips around, storming along the roots to sulk. I feel her slip, then right herself before moving deeper into the mist. She can go throw her temper tantrum on the other side of the tree for all I care.

  Fern’s ignit hits me in the back of the head, shooting pain through my skull.

  I flinch. “Hey!”

  The stone plops into the pool, and I move to grab it. The tip of Fern’s tail twists into a circle, catching it and yanking it away before I can.

  “You’re going to let that boat human run off to cry? You really are just in this for a payout?” A heavy scent of annoyance backs her signs, paired with hints of confusion.

  But my chest catches on one motion in particular. I repeat it with jerky movements. “Cry?”

  “Yes, cry. Did you not see their face? It looked like they took your disregard pretty hard. They’re crushed. Shattered. Decimated.” She pauses, shaking her head and spinning her ignit on the tip of one finger. “Didn’t you notice?”

  Oh, muck. I don’t know if I sign it or not, my numb hands shifting senselessly. Clunking over the first few roots, I dart in the direction of Thais’s distant falling, leaving Fern and Xera to stare numbly after.

  She doesn’t like me—she shouldn’t care what I think of her. I hadn’t meant to block her out. But maybe I had, in a way, taken over for her because these are—were—my people, my place. I just hadn’t realized it would hurt her like that.

  But I don’t care. I don’t like her. I shouldn’t have to fix my mistakes.

  The word mistakes catches me, regret clinging to my chest like a leech. Mist hangs heavy between the roots, cascaded upon by the lights shimmering in the canopy above and the fading pinpricks of candles behind me. As I move, Thais’s vibrations vanish, or maybe the humans and hoatzis and the few visiting boiuna in the village far over my head block them out with the thump of feet, the occasional rhythm of music, and the gentle thrum of ignit-powered machines.

  The ability to speak and hear with words rarely interests me, but in this moment, I wish I could call Thais’s name so loud the entire swamp would quake. The waters below a Murk village should be safe, but the sort of safe that almost got Thais strangled a few minutes ago. The safety that comes from putting the most intelligent predators of the Murk in one place, predators with an ingrained dislike for the boat humans.

  “Thais!” I sign her name as wide and sweeping as I can, but the mist barely budges around my shadowy hands. When my root plunges downward, I wrap my tail around it to keep from dropping into the dark water, and rub my ignit. Its gentle heartbeat fills me.

  Rhythm.

  Thais can’t smell me and I can’t call to her, but she can still distinguish a beat. I flail around for a fallen branch, finding a long piece of wood wedged between two roots. Breaking it in half, I thud one of the same tunes I’ve felt from Thais over and over again the last few days. Buh-bum, buh-bum, buh-bum.

  My wrists hurt after the third chorus, and I slow the motion. Something moves deeper into the swamp beneath the village, the slip of fur through water. This was a stupid idea. Thais has no reason to come to me anyway. If she’s not already drowned or partially ingested.

  The creature nears, poking its large round head out of the water. Its eyes reflect red. The great otter’s scent rips open my memory hoards, churning up everything I want very badly to forget. The Elder Acai, third oldest of the Murk boiuna, brings great otters with them everywhere. This one’s terrible white teeth gleam in the dim lights above us, a slip of fabric caught between them. Thais’s scarf.

  The world seems to drop away beneath me. I twist up the side of the nearest tree, bracing my tail in the deep grooves and nubs of the bark. The branches fan, giving me more holds to wrap around as I weave onward, but I slow to hide my movement from watchful eyes or nearby boiuna. The small lanterns cut halos of every color into the mist, reds and blues, purples and greens, oranges and pinks, turning the wood of the village walkways into paths of rainbow that wind through the canopy. They flow with the natural lines of the trees, rising and falling and cutting together and coming apart. The intricate maze of streets guides from one treehouse to the next, the most massive mangrove trunks wrapped by circular homes, colors gleaming in the veil of mist.

  I wind myself above pathways and across roofs, keeping to shadowy corners and deep fog. The council room shines in the night, a solid glow of yellows, oranges, and light blues. Its floor hangs from the canopy by chains made of strong metal links, poles propping it above a stretch of clear water. No walls or roof constrict the round room, only ornate wooden rails and a ceiling of carefully manicured tree branches. I wind through those branches, hiding in the darkness and peeking out over the floor. At its center, between the four pedestals representing the union of the four species, sits a stool I’ve curled around in other council rooms time and time again.

  Thais huddles there now, her otter-bitten scarf hanging off one shoulder. She grips one of the pedestals, but every time she tries to stand, her legs tremble and give out again. I doubt she can heave up anything at this point, but she stinks of bile.

  The room’s occupants seem to notice too. The dozen council members all keep to the edge of the otherwise bare room, their hands flying. Sharp shouts of agitation accompany the humans’ signs, and the humanlike hoatzis fluff their head feathers and ruffle their deep-grey and orange arm plumes. I recognize none by name, but a couple of the older, more wrinkled councilors who hold the higher positions in the hierarchy look familiar.


  One of them—a hoatzi with deep-brown skin and feathers going white—leans toward the only boiuna in the room, their red eyes gleaming as they sign, “If your otters found this one, could there be more?”

  A muddled scent of deep thought comes from Acai. “Perhaps.”

  The elder boiuna lies with their massive torso barely peeking into the council chamber. Trees block all but flashes of their green and purple scales, but I know their tail would barely fit in this space if they coiled across the entire floor. I hold in as much of my scent as possible, though with the condensation fans along the edges of the room eliminating the fog, Acai isn’t likely to smell anything from the canopy right now.

  Other than Acai, the entire village’s bone-, feather-, and scale-crowned council seems to have gathered save for one or two members. A few young servers in beads and flowers and soft fur skirts pick up abandoned desserts from what must have been a leisurely festival planning committee prior to Thais’s arrival. Off to one side wait a handful of warriors wearing scale and leather chest bands over flaring shorts.

  I curl tighter around my branch and rub my ignit. How the fuck do I get her out of this? The council alone would stop me, but with trained warriors and an elder in their midst, I stand no chance.

  A whisper in the back of my mind taunts me: If you were selfless, if you cared about her, you would go down and plead with the council, your life for hers. But I feel some part of my subconscious already calculating the chance that this village’s primary ignit energy sources are guarded when there are so many warriors casually present with the council.

  “Where there is one boat human, there are always more!” an older human signs, each motion dramatic as the feathers of their colorful necklace.

  “Please, there’s just me.” Thais’s hands shake. The councilors ignore her.

  A middle-aged hoatzi ruffles their plumage, and the half-dozen small white strips running near the tops of their otherwise deep-grey feathers glimmer. They sign with clawed fingers, their scaly grey skin wrinkled around their knuckles. “You find threats where there are none. This one is barely more than a child, weaponless and sick.”