At first light, Kuwajii delivered his ultimatum. “Show me something real or I am leaving,” he said.
“If you don’t believe in monsters,” I told him plainly, “I will prove to you what is real.”
We hiked into the forest in silence.
Upon arriving at Shumbuto’s hunting shack, Kuwajii remained unimpressed. I don’t think he believed one man could have built such a thing. I don’t think he believed anything I said anymore. I figured he would come around eventually. It was imperative. Kuwajii was the chosen one. He was the last of the Shakasantie. The only true one who could carry his family’s history into the world.
We spent the better part of three weeks improving our game. The more time passed since the sloth encounter, the more Kuwajii was willing to accept the possibility that the monster existed. You see, that’s the thing about gargantuan tree-toed sloths — they are masters of deception. To a novice, they can appear unseen (which is to say invisible). It was foolish of me to overlook this simple fact. My anxiousness to train the boy had put him in supreme danger. I vowed to not let it happen again, and he slowly came around to believing such incredible things as behemoth bradypodidae and lions that hunt you for your Shakasantie blood.
“I just don’t understand, Marcus,” he said on a tiresome afternoon. “If my blood is tainted, then why have the lions never come for me?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe they don’t smell you until you’ve reached a certain maturity. Or maybe the lions have, in fact, been wiped out.”
I was thinking of the Shakasantie slaughter. I never did have the courage to look into the pit. Maybe I could have saved them? One of them? Shandra-Namba? No, not with the beasts down there, feasting. Not with the scores of poachers with their guns and their wild ambitions. If I’d attempted a half-baked rescue, I’d be just as extinct as the rest of them, and little baby Kuwajii would have lived the rest of his short, short life suffering and starved.
Kuwajii arranged his blowdarts on the killing stone. One by one, he held them to the sunlight, squinting and searching for imperfections imperceptible to the untrained eye. If he found any alignment flaws or detected the slightest hint of the onset of rust, he would discard the subpar dart without hesitation. Only the finest would do.
His skill with the blowdart was entirely self-taught, and, as his teacher, I found his mastery of the weapon inspiring.
To determine their worth, he would press the tips of his fingers to the dart tips. He pushed, punctured, and bled. I’d impressed upon him the notion that one could never trust a weapon lest it had first been christened with its owner’s life force. He liked that.
Kuwajii licked his fingers. The boy had the hunt in him, yes, but there were times when his compulsive countenance fed my concern for his supple mind.
Once his flawless darts were chosen and the runts of the litter discarded, Kuwajii assembled two dozen deadly (but dead) Yuchan toads before him. Their lifeless bodies lay on the stone slab as he set forth extracting their poisons like a pro. Lately, he’d done little but track the vile creatures down and kill them for their tainted juices.
When each arrowhead had been dipped in Yuchan blood, his weapons were as ready as he.
I wish I could claim responsibility for the boy’s steady hands, his keen eye, his nimble movements (the way he edged so subtly through the forest), his polished killing style. I wish I could proclaim, “I taught him everything he knows!” But I merely laid the groundwork. Since arriving at our father’s long-abandoned weapons shack, Kuwajii had become a product of something divine. A higher power was tapping into and magnifying his skillset.
“I can’t sit idly in limbo any longer,” he said, tossing a used-up toad carcass to the trees. “If lions exist, I want to find them. Now. Today.”
“You aren’t ready, son,” I let slip.
“Don’t you call me that, Marcus. Don’t you ever.” His usual detached visage was spite incarnate. He turned from me to hide his heat.
When he finished loading his darts, Kuwajii looked up from his work. He was going to go, with or without me.
“I am ready,” he said. And so was I.
In the heart of the Zambian jungle, you can be killed by pretty much anything that runs, jumps, slithers, flies, crawls, climbs, stings, or stalks. It is a perilous place. If you aren’t 100 percent aware of your surroundings at all times, you could fall victim to any number of deadly creatures — from a hunger-crazed, double-faced boa constrictor to a mega-venomous vulture mongoose. But this was my backyard. This was where I grew up. In danger country. There wasn’t anything here I wasn’t hip to.
About ten yards ahead, Kuwajii scuttled like a ravenous black widow panther through the trees. He’d developed a penchant for a minimalist hunting style — he was naked save for his groin pouch, and his dart bag was slung over his shoulder for easy access. With the murderous Yuchan blood congealed on the tips of his weapons, the young buck was confident he could take down a ferocious mountain lion with just one dart. But we weren’t hunting mountain lions. We were hunting lion lions. So the boy would probably need at least two.
I ogled at Kuwajii’s laser focus. He was a killer. Though all he’d ever taken were toad lives, the hunt was in him. Pit him against a 600-pound gorilla and the boy would wring its neck before the big ape could say “Uncle.” Well, maybe that was pushing it. 600-pound gorillas are pretty strong. But oh, did the boy have rolling thunder in his belly!
Together we journeyed to the deepest part of the forest. I was as invisible as a thing that is not there, was never there, will never be. We’d been marching for less than an hour when Kuwajii, without warning, stopped cold in his tracks. The air chilled by three-and-a-quarter degrees. Over our heads, low branches bent lower; slowly, they succumbed to the camouflaged weight. Enemies by the dozens perched on their haunches there, a general’s croak away from attack. I found good footing. Kuwajii did the same. It was obvious now. We’d stumbled into a quintessential, covert trap. The attack of the Yuchan toads had begun.
They were an impressive and organized faction, for amphibians. Driven by rarified vengeance, they sprang forth from their hidden-in-plain-sight positions. I ducked, jumped, and raced through the spaces between their airborne bodies, reaching Kuwajii’s side before they could sink their grossly serrated fungal lips into him. I chopped through the Yuchan, left and right, delivering the goods they’d asked for. Only when the boy was safe did I turn, in near-impossible, rapid-fire motion, and relieve the remaining toads of their puny lives. They went to meet their maker with not one sweet taste of our precious, glistening skin. The battle was finished before it ever began. That’s just how these war games sometimes go.
Their warty limbs and pieces befouled the ground and decorated the bush a toad hellscape. I wiped Shumbuto’s long blade clean, careful not to touch the deadly blood. I counted the many darts sticking from green and brown body parts here and there. Kuwajii managed to hit ten of the diseased fuckers; this act, of course, had been fruitless.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m fine,” I said. “Though I can’t say the same for your friend the Yuchan here.” Kuwajii frowned. “You do realize that you cannot kill a Yuchan toad with poisoned Yuchan darts, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “of course.” But his disappointment read otherwise. He began the quick work of retrieving his many weapons from the dead toads. “But now these dart tips are doubly poisoned!”
I let the asinine comment go and observed the corpses at our feet. The mess was already beginning to resemble the natural decay of time, like rouged, rotten leaves along a path.
“We should keep moving while there’s still some dayli —”
“Look out!” Kuwajii shouted as he, all in one motion, reloaded his blowpipe, brought it to his lips, and puffed. His aim was true. A rhinoceros bumblebee exploded in mid-air, just behind my left ear. The thing had been hovering so dangerously close to my head that I had felt his prehistoric bee breath buzz my ear hair. I’d wrongly assumed it to be a tender breeze. Chalk it up to being dizzied on endorphins from the kill of the toads, I suppose. No excuse. I was off my guard and would be as lifeless as the fated Yuchan insurgence if it hadn’t been for Kuwajii’s agile ability. It was then that I saw clearly: We were an unstoppable team — the boy and I. Unfuckingstoppable.
“That thing had my death written all over it,” I said, thanking him without thanking him. Kuwajii nodded and stepped cautiously into further unknown danger.
Morning soon gave way to mid-morning and mid-morning soon folded into to pre-afternoon. Then actual afternoon came, my impeccable internal clock’s measure marking the arrival of 12:01. We sat down and ate what the earth provided. Slugs, bugs, and tree bark. To be part of a true hunt, you have to ingest a sampling of the life around you. We drank water from a nearby mud puddle and were thankful for it.
As night drew on, we decided to head back to the hunting shack. There would be no lions today. Not this day. Maybe the next.
That’s another thing about being a hunter worth your salt. You absolutely need an unlimited supply of patience. Without it, you’re just another sorry sack of shit with a short temper and no skills. And then what?
Then what.
The next day it rained.
“No hunt today,” Kuwajii observed.
“No. No hunt today,” I answered.
The lions, if there were any, would be taking refuge in their caves. Only the most foolish of hunters dare attempt to take down a lion hollowed out in a mountain grotto. If you were to come upon just one lion in a cave, then sure, no problem. But that would never happen. For lions rarely sleep alone. They are territorial creatures and won’t stand for intruders in their deep, dark homes. A smart hunter knows this and stays away.
For argument’s sake, can you fathom how it would be in such a place? I am not so self-indulgent to believe that I would have much chance of surviving such an encounter. I’m certain I would be torn to shreds like any other. But I know I could at least hold my own for longer than the average jerk neophyte on a daredevil safari.
Picture this:
Lightning crashes as I make my way through the forest. The tree cover is plentiful, but no match against the sheets of rain. The leaves leak and the branches drop a downpour in thin, long drips. When the wind blows, the water comes from every direction, even up and out of the ground to slop and attack my feet. I trudge on through the weather until I see the cave entrance ahead. It is concealed naturally with hanging moss, but is still recognizable to my clever eye. I approach it. I enter. It is blacker than black death inside. I come down to the ground and crawl like the animal I am. I unsheathe my blade and clasp it between my teeth. I’m a croc. I’m a leopard. I am every predator’s inherent desire. I am Marcus Fox. Hunting.
I enter deeper into the cave. It’s so dark that a lesser man could lose his mind. But that’s not me. All my faculties are sound.
In a flash of impossibility, I see the lion. He leaps from the depths of the shadows’ shadows. His massive paws THA-CLAP my chest and knock the wind out of me. I fall and roll with my knife still clenched fast in my teeth. I taste my own blood as I spit out the blade. My sure hand catches it and SWISH SWISH the lion goes down, half decapitated.
Immediately, I feel an unbelievable pain in my leg. Another lion has his jaws on me and is just about to whip his head back and forth to rip off my limb when I stop him cold by driving my short but reliable, razor-jagged blade deep into his skull. It is dead. And the howling, crunching noises stop. It is only then that I realize the first lion must have ripped open my chest before I turned him into the world’s most gruesome Pez dispenser. I try to fix my guts back in, but it is a worthless effort. I submit to my fate and die happy in the dead, dead dark.
My morbid fantasy runs out of steam and I am back, crouching in Shumbuto’s shack, gazing at the rain.
It has always been my contention that when outside forces beyond your control (such as this particular day’s storm) limit your abilities to live up to your full potential, playing pretend with your mind helps to pass the time.
I’ll be honest here, because you want to know. Could I survive a multi-lion hunt in a cave? Probably not. But the adrenaline rush just before the end would make it all worth it.
When I finally put my head down to rest, I listened to the ceaseless pattering of the rain outside. Eventually, it dissipated into a soothing drizzle sonata and I allowed the weaker half of my consciousness to sleep. I awoke, mid-night, to the sound of the wailing Banshee. Her cry was …
I’ll tell you what. I’ll regale you with this story another time. Remind me when we get to the swamp.
In the morning, the sky was clear.
“Rise,” I told Kuwajii. “Day three.”
On the hunt, you learn to become a dense forest shadow. You are but a rustle of wind. Each step you take should equal the sound of your breath, like slim whispers. You hold everything in — your fear, your hate, and your desire to kill especially. No trigger-happy hunter ever comes home with the prize. Most come home dead — which is to say that they don’t come home at all because they remain inanimate corpses wherever they drop.
Your excitement needs to be checked. Your impulses are what will save you.
There is no fatigue. Fatigue is the curse of the damned. You train yourself, as young as you can, to be awake, even in sleep, to continue firing neurons, even after days of restlessness. Mind over body, mind over mind.
Slipping through the forest, Kuwajii made not a sound. However, his piping hot pheromones cascaded off his body. At sixteen, this was, for the most part, uncontrollable. Nature has a way of screwing young bucks in this regard. The intensity of the hunt coupled with the heat of the sun brought stink beads to Kuwajii’s surface. I could smell him from my slight distance. And if my human nose could pick up on his adrenaline, what other creatures smelled my brother? What else was out there? On this day, whether he knew it or not, Kuwajii was live bait. In the end, I imagine we all are.
In American cartoons, animated characters will emit smoke plumes from their drenched, sun-sweated heads to express the presence of extreme temperatures. In real life, it’s nothing like that. At 115 degrees Fahrenheit (or 46 Celsius, if you prefer), your lips begin to bake. A long-brimmed hat can shade most of your head, but your lips have the disadvantage of being lower on your face. To shade them, you have to lean into the sun when heading into it. Duck down so your hat’s shadow covers your mouth as much as possible. You’ll save yourself (temporarily) from skin cancer, but you’ll also open yourself to an attack. Bowing to sun rays allows only one view: a close inspection of the ground at your feet. This limited perspective leaves you vulnerable from every other angle. The best protection for your lips during a sweltering Zambian forest hunt is a liberal application of aloe made from guano. Let it sit on your pucker for at least half an hour before exposure. Trust me, you’ll go batshit crazy without it.
Back in the game, it’s 118 degrees and I know it because regardless of the heat, my neurons are still firing. Uncensored devotion to the hunt is a solid infestation within. Plus, it’s not even that hot. Not really. Could be worse. Could be hell.
“Kuwajii.” My voice traveled as a strong utterance on a low frequency. It was a pitch indiscernible to most big game. My only concern was the monsters.
Kuwajii turned.
“They are coming,” he announced. He’d yet to master the proper frequency; his volume was an iota too harsh. However, if he was right, it wouldn’t matter. When a pack of lions zeroes in on your scent, the volume of your voice is irrelevant. Even less so if you are speaking while Shakasantie.
I hopped a small cluster of forest fern and came up behind him. We created a two-man perimeter. This involved a continuous circular path in motion — an orbit of ourselves. In our village, this technique was called “Gopahielow scalamanpit.” Roughly translated, that’s “Scaling the goatfish solemnly.” The motion itself looked nothing like the name it was given. The moniker was but a mystical tease.
My focus was unyielding. I was picking up on what Kuwajii had previously reported: the sound of a dozen or more giant paws slapping the ground. They were close. I held the boy’s eye contact as we solemnly scaled the goatfish.
Kuwajii was the first to break.
“We must go, quickly,” he said. “There is only death here.” In a heartbeat, he’d turned from a ferocious, fearless hunter to a scared little boy.
“Kuwajii!” I called, but he heeded me not. His swift feet carried him east. Having assessed the situation, he’d decided it was hopeless: Two men against six (possibly more) big cats was a sucker’s bet.
He was fast and he was determined, but I had no difficulty keeping up with him.
He bolted because he knew the odds and calculated they were against us. If I hadn’t been responsible for the boy, I would have taken those odds and fought those beasts to the death — theirs or mine. Yes, the smart hunter lives to see another day. He abandons hope in the face of hopelessness. But for glory, the time-honored hero of epic poems stays and fights by tooth and nail. He’s the one they sing about in watering holes across the world. Hell, he’s the protagonist of every adventure story ever written.
I chased after the speedy Kuwajii. We reached the forest’s edge and he burst forth onto an open plain. I was right by his side as the lions closed in behind us. I could sense they were gaining distance and I wondered at our chances. Zero, if they attacked our fleeing backs. For any hope of victory, we would have to make a stand. But not here. Not out in the open like this. If only there were higher ground, we could gain an advantage.
The pursuit continued and the lions got closer and closer. Whereas my race was being run with a clear sense of survival, Kuwajii seemed driven by shame or fear, perhaps both.
The ground shook. I dared another look back and saw the first cat burst through a thicket like a fucking bullet from a fucking gun. The savage beast flicked thick saliva from his fangs. Close behind the alpha were four of his equally vicious companions.
“Kuwajii!” I screamed, running for my life. “On my mark, stop, drop, turn, and fire!”
Ahead of me, the boy slowed. I felt my whole body convulse as I hastily retrieved my five trustiest blades from my satchel. I gained ground and was once again on the boy’s heels.
“NOW!”
Kuwajii’s skills were true. He dug in his heels and I dove into a graceful roll. The two of us spun and lay face out in the dirt. Expertly, side by side, we took quick aim and fired. Kuwajii’s first dart hit the alpha male square in the neck. He crash-landed just fifteen feet away and labored his dying breaths as my own blade drew past him and entered his companion’s jaw. That lion too went down as the blade sliced through his face, tearing off the lower half of his mouth. With a speed I had not known for some time, my second blade was at once in my hand and out of it. Three were now dead and three more fast approaching. Kuwajii jumped up and ran straight at them, bellowing a war cry as he went. “YAHHHH!”
“NOOOO!” I roared, and refocused my efforts on the monsters.
I let loose one final blade and downed another. But there were still two advancing faster than fury, and Kuwajii was lined up and set on a collision course with certain death.
I watched in slow-motion disbelief as Kuwajii maneuvered a graceful, fully accelerated slide between the two remaining hellcats. They were just far enough apart in their raging charge to give the boy the perfect amount of space he needed to squeeze through. The one on the left saw what Kuwajii was doing and threw his massive head at him. With the incredible speed at which they were traveling, the lion could not deliver the death bite he intended. Instead, he misjudged the distance and his teeth hunkered down on Kuwajii’s leg. The boy yelped in pain as the she-bitch howled and shook its razor teeth back and forth.
The lion on his right was sprawled on the ground in front of them. The kill had been so quick, I’d missed it. Nor could I see where Kuwajii’s Yuchan-poisoned dart had entered her.
One final tiny, shiny, deadly weapon now appeared in Kuwajii’s steady hand; in zerotime it was jammed in the last lion’s esophagus. The thing died with the taste of my brother’s meat in his mouth.
I was on my feet and moving before my brain thought better of it. Shumbuto’s blade rang jealous and unused in my hand. Though it hadn’t been invited to the party, it still wanted a piece of any of the spiritless corpses.
I knelt before my brother. With the dead lion’s jaw attached to his leg, Kuwajii was a terrible sight to see.
“Kuwajii.”
“Get this thing off me.”
The Yuchan poison had worked so quick that the beast probably never felt a thing, other than the last pump of its giant, loathsome heart.
I took the top of its head with one hand and the underside of its jaw with the other. I pulled.
“Nnnnnggggggg!” Nothing. It was a death grip — impossible to release by human hands. I looked at Kuwajii and he knew.
“You must cut off the head,” he said.
It was true. Kuwajii had, at most, ten minutes before the poison in the lion’s body worked its way into his terrible fangs and, consequently, into the boy’s blood. And then … well, I had seen plenty of times the instant effects that Yuchan poison had on big game.
“All right,” I said. “Hold still.”
He nodded. And there, I saw that look again. That look of shame and fear I could not place, but this time, it was mixed with … abhorrence?
I raised Shumbuto’s weapon high, ready to strike the foul monster’s neck. But then the world ended with two deafening gunshots. I slammed backward onto the ground. Looking up at the clear blue sky, it was impossible to understand what had just happened.
Kuwajii was screaming in agony. There was a pain in my shoulder that was unbearable. I’d been shot. Only of this was I certain.
I crawled to the boy through all the mess and confusion. A pistol lay just out of his reach. It had flung-hurled away from him when his second shot misfired and exploded.
A never-ending cascade of red horror spewed from what used to be Kuwajii’s hand. Now it was just a bloody nightmare thing.
It must be the poison of the Yuchan, I thought. It worked fast in the lion, seeped from its mouth juices into the boy and drove him mad. It wasn’t a plausible rationale, and it didn’t explain where the firearm had come from.
“I have dishonored you, my unknown father!” Kuwajii declared to the heavens. “Your murderer walks free!”
My shoulder, too, was screaming, but for now, I ignored it.
“Kuwajii, Kuwajii, what have you done?”
“You ask me what I have done, Marcus?” he grunted. His arm was now a mangled flesh volcano ejecting impossible amounts of blood lava. “It is what you have done that should plague you!”
I took hold of his face. The lion’s cold, coal eyes fixed on mine from their place near the boy’s leg. Even in death, the colossal cat was menacing.
“What are you saying, Kuwajii?”
“I know you slaughtered our people, Marcus! I know it all! You’re a murderer, a traitor, a man without a country, a snake without a nest, a devil without a cause.”
Poison and treachery!
“Who has deceived you, Kuwajii? What deplorable villain has filled your head with these falsehoods?”
I shook him. More blood poured out of him, and he was drifting. I couldn’t help myself. I snatched his firearm up and brandished it before his face.
“Where did you get this pistol?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, fading. “Nothing matters.”
“You have been betrayed, my brother.” I spoke softly now, as if a raised voice would bring the grim reaper near.
“You killed us, Marcus. You killed all of us.” He was slipping away, and I had no choice but to come to terms with the scene for what it was.
“No,” I whispered. “No!” I screamed.
This whole time I’d been holding the boy’s twisted, hooked arm deformity tight against my own body, trying to will his soul to stay put. I knew nothing of medicine then. I know little more now. But all the drugs in the world could not have saved him.
“Don’t let this happen,” I said. “Please, Shumbuto!”
I looked deep into Kuwajii’s eyes. They were wet, but it was the dry season. The heavy downpour of days gone by had gone by. Yesterday would never be today again.
Kuwajii was passing into the next world. He was looking beyond me into some other place or plain or existence. This young, perfect boy that I’d raised was on his way out.
I couldn’t do it. Despite all my incredible gifts, in the end, I couldn’t protect him. I held him and froze that moment in my mind. I became every piece of it. Though my tears were fogging up the whole fuckery, I caught a glimpse of our father in Kuwajii’s dying stare.
“Shumbuto,” I said. “I’ve failed.”
With Kuwajii’s last breath, he spoke two words that were, at first, unintelligible. But after a never-ending moment of heartache, I understood.
“Doom Squaaaad.”
And with that, his life was over. Kuwajii joined our people in the great beyond.
I buried him. Right there on the plain. Side by side with his last, best kill. It was appropriate. It was fitting. Every hunter should be so lucky to spend eternity with his final foe. Having ended each other’s lives, this lion and Kuwajii had become one. And I placed the star-crossed brothers in the earth.
When it was over, my hands were cut in a thousand places, my heart torn all the more. My wounded arm was numb and useless. I took one last look at the terrible splatter.
“Kuwajii,” I said. His name was the only eulogy I could muster.
Call me callous if you will, but I recognized the necessity to be hard, move on, seek vengeance with a clear mind.
Hiking back was not easy with a damned bullet lodged in my shoulder. That said, it wasn’t challenging either, not at first. I’d been wounded before. Pain sucks, but I can handle it. Just like I handle everything. Just like I always have.
I trudged through the forest, cradling the wound. Putting pressure on it. Squeezing. Causing more pain. Why I sometimes enjoy the fresh sensation of daggers is a mystery I’d rather not unravel.
There was real blood, though, running and sticking all the way down my arm. It was dark, jungle dark.
Kuwajii’s mysterious pistol was in my hand. Unbelievably, the boy had managed to conceal it from me. For fuck’s sake, had he been hiding it in his jockstrap?! And how long had he been planning to use it on me? Where had I gone wrong?
I tried lifting the thing. Just an inch. Just a dumb fucking inch. It was pointless. The dual burial scene had used up the last of my appendage’s worth. I shifted the gun to my good hand and kept walking.
As night wore on, my stride slowed. My brain swam laps around the inside of my skull. Everything was heavy and unstable. I had to stop.
I leaned against a tree and panted. I breathed rapid and shallow, rapid and shallow. I sat. I did not close my eyes. I just sat. And I thought. I knew I couldn’t sit for long. But I had to. It was the first time since I was a child that I’d felt vulnerable. Just a minute. Just one minute more. Just a minute. Just one goddamned minute more.
Kuwajii had died.
Kuwajii is dead.
Those two truths, present and future, were (and are) too much to bear. I would deal with them later.
Focus.
Did Kuwajii try to kill me? Had that really happened? Maybe I had it wrong. I went over it again.
My back was turned to him, after all. I didn’t see the shot. Maybe he was aiming at some airborne predator as I was about to sever the lion’s head? Maybe Kuwajii tried to kill a vulture-mongoose that was diving from the sky? Maybe that was it. Maybe he missed and the shot scared the thing away? Maybe he hit me accidentally. Yeah. That could be it. If Kuwajii had wanted to kill me, he could have done so easily. Anytime. Anywhere. Well, maybe not so easily. After all, this is me we’re talking about. I don’t die for anyone.
But these thoughts were not correct, and I knew it. I heard the boy’s damnation with my own ears. He was, at the end, all tied up in knots and misled and used — an agent of evil. I made up my mind then and there to never fault him for what he had done. There, I sainted him, justly.
Stand.
I did.
Now walk.
I did. I had to.
All the way back to Shumbuto’s weapon shack, I heard low growls about me. They were watching. The lions. Behind every bush and in every tree. Hiding. Ready to pounce. I was so weak.
The goddamned lions.
Yellow eyes blinked in the shadows. I didn’t care. Let them come and take me. Those fucking lions and their servile minions — the kimono dragons and prattlesnakes, the fanglizards and pip eagles — every Zambian animal, from every corner, their slanted sinister eyes were hellish nightlights lining my path.
“Come and take me,” I taunted, and then louder. “Come and deliver me to my family!”
But they stayed their attack. I could hear them drooling.
“Do you think this is the end?” I shouted, and then softer, “I have no end.”
A few more blinks from either side. Then nothing. They were gone as if they’d never been there at all. They simply drifted into the ether.
Kuwajii.
By the time I arrived back at the shack, I was dizzy from exhaustion. I climbed up onto the concrete slab — the same slab that, just days ago, Kuwajii had laid his darts upon.
My mind was an uncontrollable wreck. It went back and replayed every moment of Kuwajii’s pointless life: how he learned to cook, to sew, to hold a knife, to cut his food, to gut a Cimmerian squirrel. Every memory of the boy fought to get to the front of my mind. And it stymied me.
I fell forward. My head conked the edge of the slab, hard, and I tumbled off. Now the world was one bright light, now stars.
I shook with helpless vigor. I slapped my face. I slapped it again.
“Kuwajii!”
I slapped myself a third time. I was lying on the forest floor. Had I been unconscious? Perhaps. I can’t be sure. Time wasn’t real. The world wasn’t turning. My head was a throbbing nightmare. I sat up and examined my shoulder. The gaping entry wound looked like a dying heart when you cut it from a Finistrain leopard.
Using my left arm, I pulled myself up. I took one of my thirty-three blades from my satchel. I was delirious and knew not which one I chose. In the end, it was the right one. The one that would do the job.
“No,” I said. There was no way.
“Yes.” I tried it. I screamed.
I dug into my shoulder, seeking out the bullet. I stopped on a tendon.
“Do it!”
I dug again. Deeper. Through muscle I rooted. My arm sang sweet songs for Satan. I stopped. My balls crawled up into my belly.
“Again!”
I buried the blade in my flesh. My arm wailed. And then, I hit upon the culprit. I popped it, flicked it up, caught the bullet in my teeth, spit it out, and laughed like a maniac mouth-fucking a ball python.
I stared hard into the eye of my storm. It was covered in so much blood that I had to spit on my arm to see. I wiped the area. Razor-sharp icicles stabbed me from the inside out.
“Granta Digbloc!” I cursed in my native tongue.
Kuwajii.
No time for that now.
Kuwajii.
I bent over and washed my arm with water from a bucket. Kuwajii had filled that bucket just this morning. Kuwajii was dead.
Kuwajii.
As I sewed the bullet hole shut, a glimmer of Kuwajii’s ghost floated among the trees. In a blink, he was gone, along with any senses I had left.
Somewhere, a Jupiter Prick gator emitted a war cry. I shuddered. Actually shuddered. I was falling apart.
I somehow managed to build a fire, and stared blankly into the flames.
Kuwajii.
I know I’ve skipped over Kuwajii’s entire life in this telling. There were many good years there, I assure you. We were happy. But that is all I can say of the precious time we spent together. If I were to speak of it, as if it meant anything, I would crumble and die.
Instead of reflecting on his life, cut short before he could fulfill his birthright’s destiny, I looked back on the past few weeks. Had he been distant? Had he been angry? When had he escaped from my watchful sight? When had he returned to Popaltree? What had become of him?
Baby Kuwajii always asked questions. He asked about the sky. He asked about the stars. He held my hand with his perfect baby hand and wondered at why the plants grew and the fish swam.
I couldn’t be part of the emptiness anymore. I lay my head down and closed my eyes. I needed sleep. I needed to sleep and then I needed to eat. I needed to regain my strength. And then … then I would hunt down the bastards who poisoned my darling boy. I would send them all to hell, or die trying.
For Kuwajii.