Once Stolen

by D. N. Bryn

  “A ruse, to distract us from the invading force!” another hoatzi puts in, red eyes bright.

  “They may be cruel enough for that, but we’ve seen no other scouts, witnessed no reason the boat humans would have grown needy for the Murk.”

  “Please—” Thais tries to interrupt again.

  “Those savages need no reason! They took from the native river peoples and the overly friendly botos until both were forced inland to the wilds, and they will take from us as soon as they find a way.”

  Xera creeps up the walkway, their head bent and a lock of their straight black hair falling across the center of their face. Barely noticed by the council, they huddle beside the entry arch, picking at a flower like it’s their entire reason for being here. But their gaze flickers through the branches of the roof and locks on me. Their body tenses, and they step into the council chamber.

  I feel made of sludge. But I have to grab Thais, before Xera exposes me. I have one chance at this.

  I prepare to spring on Thais. The cool scales of another boiuna slide around me, Fern’s smell hitting me too late. She pins me to the branch with her large body, her teeth bared.

  “Wait!” We both sign it at once.

  I stare at her, and she motions to Xera.

  The flighty human raises their hands over their head, clanking their bracelet shells once. The room turns. Xera shifts between their feet, edging backward. Their eyes dart to Thais, and they swallow.

  “There is a, a, a penajuar, in the swamp north, the north swamp. A dead one, I mean, just the, uh, the body. For up-pick, or, um, pickup.” Their hands keep moving, but the chatter in the room returns to its original topic, and Xera’s trembling takes over their fingers in little bursts and flinches. They repeat a muddled sign for boat three times and finally give up.

  I smell Fern’s agitation.

  “I have to help them,” she signs. Unlooping her tail from around me, she slides along the branches, vanishing into the shadows. Her soft vibrations fade, and then the sound of her body plunking onto the pathway floor tingles my head ridges. She bursts into the council chamber.

  “Would you drop your damn hands? You’re drowning Xera out! This isn’t just a penajuar retrieval, they saw boat humans.” Her tail swims around Xera as she speaks, coiling protectively. The flighty human seems to melt into Fern, giving a small nod and a signal for Fern to continue. “We were out in the south swamps, and three vessels came up, brimming with boaties, weapons, and ignits. The whole lot of them will be here soon if we don’t act first!”

  My suspicion of Fern vanishes as she continues to paint a picture of a dangerous invading force, only half a lie. I can’t quite make out the signs the eldest councilor shoots to Acai, nor the reply they receive before the great boiuna plunges back into the river, the council floor shaking as their weight leaves it. The warriors rush down the pathway toward the southern swamps. Half the hoatzis follow. Both servers usher the two oldest councilors toward the nearest house, Fern guiding them along.

  Only three people remain to guard Thais: two humans and a hoatzi. She tries to stand again, but her knees give out, and she slumps over her seat. She heaves. Nothing comes up. The hoatzi presses scaly knuckles to their lipless mouth, looking away, but the humans watch her. One tugs at their hair.

  I finger through my necklace stones and finally yank off the uncut ruby I collected at Rubem’s house. The rock has bad memories anyway. Weighing it twice in my palm, I chuck it in a perfect arc over the three onlookers’ heads. It clatters along the far path.

  As one, they all swirl around to look. In a place that puts such value on stillness, clatter always gets a reaction. Before they turn back, I drop from the branches like a spring, scooping Thais up and carrying her back into the trees with me. Anger and fear clog my nose as she wiggles in my arms, but I clamp my hand over her mouth, and my arm around her back, her motions far too weak right now to do anything to me.

  “Calm down!” I manage to sign after a moment, “You stink so much every boiuna beneath the village must smell you.”

  Thais’s breathing steadies, and her scent fades back to the barely decipherable smell of soft rain-cleaned air. “Thanks.” She forms the word so small that I almost miss it. “Not that I needed—”

  “It’s fine,” I cut her off, signing into her space.

  “Yeah.”

  I don’t know what that means.

  As we move slowly away from the council room, I can almost feel the poisonous waves of energy coursing through Thais, twinging a little in my stomach and weakening my grip. I catch her from falling into the mist-cloaked river when she heaves up a glob of burning saliva. It hits something scaly below, and a small boiuna flinches off a root, splashing into the water. I grin, but Thais stumbles, and my smile falls too. Her face glistens with sweat.

  Fucking hero. I want to snap her out of this, to knock her over the head or hug her, but she yanks away from my touch, pulling her feet under her once more. This time she only wavers, managing to stay upright.

  Xera lands in front of us, and our branch sways. “Come,” they sign. “We’ll go to my, um, my house. They won’t check for her there.”

  “You don’t mind?” Thais manages.

  “It’s just me there, otherwise,” they explain. “It’s what a, um, a good Murkling would do, isn’t it? A good person.”

  “A hero,” I grumble.

  They dart back toward Fern’s pool and vanish into the mist, only reappearing to check on us.

  Thais ignores me, her eyes glued to the branches as she fights to stay upright. I twist myself in awkward ways trying to be on all sides of her at once. We near Fern’s pool, but instead of dropping toward it, Xera continues up the largest trunk on its edge. A dark circular treehouse of open spaces, palm roofs, and wrapping vines shadows the fog.

  Xera slips in through one of the many massive glassless windows and stands on a bench to flick on a chandelier lamp. The light sparks through the lower hanging lanterns, one for each color of the rainbow. Their dazzling glow illuminates a comfortable half-circle living area. A dining table curves along the side of the bench Xera stands on, while a pile of cushions creates a cozy sitting place across from a desk with miscellaneous paint supplies cluttered around a metal-and-wood record player. A hall along the tree trunk leads to another large room, maybe the kitchen or the main entrance, and a ladder beside it extends to a curtained area.

  Xera sits down on the windowsill and leans out over Fern’s pool. Thais shuffles into the room. Her shoulders shake, and she drags her scarf over her head. With a tremble that rattles my chest, she collapses into the pillows.

  TEN

  Everything and Nothing

  Seeing something and not having it

  is like losing it with every breath.

  But having something and being sure you’ve lost it?

  That’s somehow worse.

  THAIS QUAVERS. SOMETHING LURCHES inside me, ten different thoughts all compiling into one: stupid me, I’d assumed her spasms were over. But this shaking comes in quiet shudders and hitches, more controlled than when she heaves. She wipes water from her face. It dawns on me: she is crying.

  My impulses tell me to run, but Fern’s accusation bites me like a crocodilian, refusing to let go. I have to make this right, even just to relieve the ache in my chest.

  Carefully, I curl my tail around her pillows, sliding closer bit by bit. “I fucked up,” I sign. The colorful light casts rainbows across my scales.

  “Yeah.” She leans against me, slowly at first, then like she wants to bury herself into my scales. “Yeah, you did.” Her hands linger in the air before she wraps them around her stomach, grumbling something in her human vocals.

  “What?” I poke her shoulder.

  “I just—I don’t know. I thought I was some hero. I thought I could do this.” Fresh tears slip down her cheeks, and she pauses to brush them off. “I’m strong—was strong. I’ve never failed before and, I just, I don’t know. I’ll shut up n
ow.”

  “Don’t shut up.” I need her to say something, her and her ignit eyes. “Don’t ever shut up.”

  She looks at me. I hold her gaze for one perfect heartbeat, and when I glance away, I feel warmer and lighter, as though one perfect heartbeat from her lasts a lifetime.

  Thais’s fingers shake. She continues, slowly, “Now, a little stupid poison and a new place and suddenly I’m the one who needs saving. I couldn’t even get that council to listen to me. I was useless and pathetic, and you and Xera and Fern had to come to my rescue. A thief, a coward, and a liar. What does that make me? A hypocrite?”

  “A person.”

  “Yeah, a person you can barely put up with.”

  “What?” I loosen my tail in confusion and trail my fingers over my ignit.

  Thais’s shoulders bounce. “You don’t have to be like that, I get it. Ignits are your thing. My life isn’t really important compared to that.”

  I rub the stone a little longer, trying to sort through the chaotic mess in my head. Thais wipes her nose and tries to stand. I wrap myself around her, pulling her back down. She tenses, but she doesn’t squirm or tell me off, simply runs her tear-dampened fingers along my tail, tracing the patterns.

  And it hits me, like a torrential downpour, like the crash of a waterfall, like an ancient mangrove toppling in the dead of night: this is trust. It’s my body wrapped around hers, and her confidence that I have a reason for pulling her back, and I think, her knowledge that if she asked, I would let her go.

  I’ve had first dates, even seconds and thirds. I’ve grown close to my first forebearer and then been sheared off. I’ve had friends. At least one or two, I’m pretty sure. But I’ve never felt this before—this need to wrap around Thais, to protect her even when my anger could almost, almost strangle her instead. But I couldn’t ever strangle her. I couldn’t hurt her, not just because she hasn’t harmed me, but because the pain of it would tear open my chest and spew my bloody heart onto the ground.

  “You’re half-right,” I sign. “I want your ignits, and I’ll have them. I wouldn’t have come here without knowing I’ll get them. But I also came because you saved me, when you didn’t have to, when I meant nothing to you. And because even when I can barely put up with you, I kind of like you.” What else do I call the warmth in my chest? Or the way her eyes soothe me, even though I never know how to react to them. Or the fact that her being near is easy, even when it’s a challenge. “You’re almost cool, boat shit.”

  Thais runs her palm along my tail, her touch strumming a perfect beat as though each draw of her hand plucks at my heart. As her fingers close, she leans against my chest, melting there with a heavy breath. “Well, you’re still a greedy scaly bottom dweller. But an almost cool one.” She flicks my shoulder hard enough to make me swat at her, wrapping her tighter by accident.

  “What was that for?”

  “Calling me boat shit! If you do really like me, you shouldn’t name me after something disgusting.”

  I don’t point out that she just called me three less-than-nice things, because I can’t say they aren’t all true, and I think maybe she was right in her original lineup. A thief, a coward, a liar, and a hypocrite. “Yeah, yeah, fine boat—ignit eyes.” I switch at the last moment, choosing the new nickname on instinct. “That’s a compliment, you know.”

  Thais blinks, watching my thumb swirl around the little blue ignit. Its gentle glow competes with the gleam of the chandelier for the honor of turning my scales a new color. “Do they really look like ignits?”

  “Yeah, super eerie and as confusing as all other eyes, but they’re really pretty.” Looking over her nose like this, I catch every line of her face, every curl her wavy frizzing hair makes against it, the hints of the curves beneath her now-dry clothing. “You’re really pretty.” The words spill from my hands before I can stop them.

  But Thais studies Xera too carefully to notice, watching as they lean over the railing to sign to Fern in her pool below. “That council had an elder in it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They weren’t there for my sake—they were already meeting when I arrived. I understand that the Murklings work together because the Murk is dangerous and you need cooperation to survive, but—” She waves her hands, stinking of frustration. “The human and hoatzi warriors wear your scales. Fern has their bones made into flower pots! And you’re just all okay with this?”

  “You boat people really are idiots, aren’t you?”

  When she lifts her hands to protest, I plop my ignit into them.

  “The boiuna whose scales Xera wears was a few decades larger than me, so they probably died in a hunt with Xera’s first forebearer—Xera’s mother or father,” I explain with an odd mixture of annoyance and affection, one squarely taking over the other as I continue talking, warming me from the inside out. “In their death, that boiuna would have wanted their hunting companions to live on. Xera wears the scales for protection so they might in turn protect the ones they hunt with, and to carry on that boiuna’s legacy, to honor their life and their sacrifice by making the most of what remains.”

  “And the bones? The feathers?”

  “Life isn’t just about surviving.” I snatch the ignit back from Thais, pressing it into the empty space in my necklace so it sits against my collarbone. “It’s also about enjoying that survival. I like stones, Fern likes skulls and plants, some humans like beads, and others like feathers. The Murk shares what it doesn’t need any longer.” Except for with me. The greedy bottom-dwelling ignit thief.

  “Your species are really close, then.” Thais’s scent floods my senses, not wracked with any emotion, but simply cleansing. She runs her hands along my tail again, quiet and dragging, as though she lives in her head and her arms only mimic her thoughts. “Do you ever intermingle?”

  “Inter-what-le?” I ask. Fern must smell my confusion all the way down in her pool.

  Thais tips her chin up, pointedly reiterating. “Is it possible that Xera and Fern are dating?”

  My tail unfurls partially as I jerk up straighter, bewilderment turning to shock and then back. “Dating?” I pause. “It’s possible, yeah. Less common than same-species relationships, but I went out with a really gorgeous hoatzi until he insulted my rocks—the silt-breather. No one cares as long as everyone involved in it is a Murkling.” And not a banished thief.

  Thais’s lifted brow drops, her lips bunching.

  “Why the fuck do you think Fern and Xera might be dating?” I ask. “Do they even like each other?”

  “You can’t tell?” Thais’s ignit eyes pierce through me.

  I trace my thumb over my stones, looking away.

  “Well, then I’ll teach you. The first time we saw them together, Fern’s expression changed. She accepted us based on whether Xera liked us, she started showing off with her ignit tricks, and she glanced at Xera even when you were talking. Xera blushed, tried to watch Fern without looking, wanted to speak but didn’t. And then at the council meeting, Fern stood up for Xera, fiercely. She wrapped around them even though they were safe.” She pauses there, like it should mean something to me.

  “Uh-huh.”

  She gives me a meaningless look. “And here, watch Xera talk, the way they tuck back their hair and their ears turn a little redder when they smile, and the fact that they’re having this long laughing conversation with Fern even though Fern is so far below that Xera has to make their signs huge just to be seen through the mist—Xera, who barely signs anything bigger than the length of their own fingers!” She grasps my chin gently as though my face will tell her something important.

  The touch feels nice, but I look down, lingering on her lips instead of her eyes. She’s an enigma, and the things she sees in Xera and Fern are equally odd and foreign. Yet, I still feel utterly content in her presence.

  “You really don’t see it?” she asks.

  I grin at her. “I think they’re both just doing normal people things.” I touch the tip of my fin
ger to her nose. “You’re silly, ignit eyes.”

  “I’m right,” she grumbles, but she relaxes against me, setting her head on my shoulder. She feels like an ignit, warm, alive, soothing. Her body moves all too quickly though, popping up to a sitting position once Xera finishes their conversation and meanders our way. “You should invite Fern to join us!”

  Xera takes three steps back, looking over their shoulder as though Fern might suddenly be there just because Thais signed her name. “Oh, no, no, uh, she doesn’t—she might not—”

  “I’ll do it for you. I want to talk to her again before we leave tomorrow, anyway.” Thais stands. I tighten around her, grabbing her legs in a vain attempt to make her stay, but she just pats me away, her fingers lingering along my shoulder. “As long as that’s okay with you, Xera?”

  Xera gives a nod so tiny I wonder if I imagined it, and zips down the hallway.

  Twenty minutes later, we all curl up around the table. The humans sit on the bench, bowls of soup steaming in front of them. Across from them, Fern and I knot our tails beneath us, making our own makeshift seats. I rest my elbows against the wood, flicking out my tongue. A mild and meaty smell floods my senses, maybe snake flesh and fungi, though the mixture in Thais’s bowl seems mostly broth.

  She sticks her tongue out at me in return, not touching the food. “If you want it, it’s yours.”

  I roll my eyes. “When I’m hungry next, I’ll eat a proper meal, like a caiman or a catfish or an annoying cartel leader.”

  “Just make sure you take his gloves off first,” Thais points out. She watches Fern and Xera’s conversation about mushrooms for a moment, before I nudge the soup closer to her.

  “I might not need food, but you do.”

  Her motions come small, weak. “But when the poison hits me again . . .”

  The weight of her worry builds in my own chest, a phantom pain mirroring hers, but it can’t equal the horror she must feel, to hate the spasms so much that she would rather starve herself than risk more burning food launching back up her throat. “If you don’t, and you pass out, will that be better?”