BOUND WITH BRONZE

Chris Kouju

 

 

 

 

Rain, warm and silky, was misting through the canopies of my jungle the first time I saw her. She was desecrating the sacred tree.

My claws dug into the soft earth as I watched her in my clearing. Power radiated down her sleek, human body in tremors subtle as sin. Her hair obscured part of the darkening sarong wrapped around her, but I caught glimpses of the garment’s colors, patterned like wet leaves molding on the ground of the rain forest.

Thick flecks of wood flew as she sent her right hand, shaped into a claw much like mine, scouring across the bark. A bronze bangle, as aged as an ancient promise, enclosed her other hand.

She and I were the same, after a fashion. Mortal men named her hantu raya, as if by proclaiming her greatness they reminded all other spirits and jin in Malaya how they must be subservient. What surprised me was her kind were usually male. She obviously was not.

I padded forth from the shadows. “Stand away,” I challenged, baring my fangs. Men have scurried over themselves from me, for the tiger was the undisputed ruler of the jungle, and thus what better shape for a guardian?

She turned. Dying sunlight reflected eyes an unnatural green, eyes as evasive as the heart of a rain forest.

Her brows furrowed. She, too, recognized what I was. Her kind might be royalty, but I dared her to ignore the threat of a feline poised to lunge, hot glowing eyes and heavy paws capable of rending heads from necks. “I have cause to be here,” she said.

“As do I. You are on sacred land.”

“I was not told a hantu keramat guarded this place. Will you not let me fulfill my task?”

“Do you not care what you desecrate?” I growled, scattering birds from their branches.

She glanced towards the scratched bark. “I know that beneath the roots of this angsana, a great scholar of Islam lies buried. I know this man was a descendant of Iskandar Zulkarnain, he who has conquered the world. I know despite his lineage, the scholar remained humble, gaining favor in the sight of Allah, the All Compassionate. Small of stature, weak of body, he is said to have spent tireless days spreading the faith, using the rivers to brave the jungle, to reach the most forsaken of villages.” She smiled at the startled look on my face, and then the smile became cutting. “I care nothing for these things. I do as my master bids.”

I narrowed my eyes. I recalled the irony of her kind: that although they stood superior over all spirits, the hantu raya served mortal masters. No, she and I were different after all. My kind lived free. “And what bidding is that?”

She let her arm fall, her paw blurring into the smooth fingers and thumb of a human. Her feminine beauty was distracting, and I wondered at the reason for her shape.

Careful.

“A more recent descendant of this scholar offended my master,” she said. “And thus I am bid to destroy this tree, to dig up the bones and scatter them.”

I sneered. “Then I cannot allow you to do that.”

“As a lesser spirit, you are obligated to yield to me.”

“I yield nothing. I wield power of my own. The boundaries I protect are not yours to violate.”

She frowned, an imperfection that deepened the fullness of her lips. Then she smiled and tilted her head. Hair damp from the rain slid to one bare shoulder. “Brave words. But like you, honored one, I have obligations.” She peered straight into my eyes.

In that instant, I sensed her mind penetrating mine. Her touch was halting at first, like the caress of a new lover. Then I felt her stroke fingers down my spine, heard the whisper of her voice warm against my ear. I jerked when her lips brushed the side of my neck. She’d not taken a single step towards me.

“Leave!” I snarled.

She wrenched her mind from mine, looking startled that I had broken her hold. She laughed, shakily. “Will you not listen to reason?”

“Be gone,” I said with a fearsome growl, the sound thrumming with disgust and threat and contempt. “Or neither of us will leave unscathed.”

Something shifted in her face. For a moment I imagined her eyes betraying a human sadness.

She nodded. “As you wish.”

The “great spirit” faded from sight, into the shadows.

The jungle felt strangely empty. I sank to my haunches to steady the pounding of my heart.

I knew she had to return. Her master sounded like a petty creature, arrogant in his desires.

I stretched my body at the base of my tree and waited. We of the hantu keramat could be infinite in our patience. It helped that we spirits were beyond mortal needs to eat or mate or love.

Once I was such a wretched soul.

I did not miss that time.

I did not move from my place.

On the sixth day, she appeared just as the evening, cool and heavy, had stolen the last rays of the sun. A half-moon, outshining the fireflies, hovered above her against that patch of sky visible from my clearing.

She said nothing, at first, just watched me as if she expected me to follow at her heels. I lay there, lazily defiant. I almost pitied her.

“Will you step aside?” she murmured.

“Only if you destroy me.”

I sensed her frustration, although not a ripple flickered across her face.

And then she said, “Let me sit with you, then.”

I tilted my feline head. “If this is some trick...”

“No trick. You will obviously not abandon your duty, and I shall not dissuade you.” Her eyes sank closed. “I am weary and would rest a few moments before my master sends me on another thankless errand.”

I should have known better, but found myself saying, “Very well.” I watched her approach me, both of us cautious and spare in our movements.

She sat on her legs, adjusted the folds of her sarong. We said nothing more, our eyes on the jungle, on everything but each other.

I was keenly aware of her nearness, her scent sandalwood, a touch of cassia and pelaga spice. And then I felt her stir. My senses snapped awake. This could be it, her moment to strike.

“Show me your true form,” she said.

I blinked my eyes open.

She was leaning far too close to me.

It took me a moment to remember her words. “Why would I do that?”

“I am curious.”

“I am no weaker in my other shape,” I warned.

“Then there is nothing wrong with revealing it.” She smiled, and my throat tightened. “Or are you afraid?” she teased.

I leaped to my paws with a snarl. Her eyes flickered wide, alert, as I swung to face her. I gloried in what I imagined was her fear as my tail lashed back and forth, as I let her see the sharpness of my fangs.

And then I began to change. My forelimbs first; I had to take care everything matched. Fingers and thumbs on the grass, then toes. One forgets, after a while. My fur retreated, I ended up on my knees, back arched, my hair long enough to drift to my breasts. I regarded her with head held high, reckless.

Her eyes began tracing a line ever so slowly from my face to my collarbone, from my chest to my belly, to the juncture where my thighs met. Her gaze crawled back up. Her lips curved.

My face turned hot. I readied myself for an attack.

I was right. She pressed her face to me. Her lips brushed against mine, her mouth soft as the feathers of a nestling bird. It was...pleasant.

I tugged my head away from her, narrowed my eyes. “If you are trying to—”

“Be silent,” she said, clasping the sides of my face, to resume this touch, this kiss, the word for it flitting across my mind.

She smelled like warm rain. Mossy stones from a stream, patterns of afternoon sunlight wandering within the shade. I shivered as her hands carefully combed into my hair, gathered the strands together, stroked up and down the back of my neck as if she were soothing a skittish animal.

I caught her shoulders and pushed her back. She met my gaze, calm and sure and brazen. She did not look sorry, the impudent spirit.

I kissed her harder, teeth sinking against her mouth. She didn’t question, giving off a moan as I pressed her against the bark of the tree. At first, it had been play. I’d been determined to prove she would not rule me, no matter her heritage. And now all I could think about was feeling her touch and shoving into the source of my ache. My fingers dragged on the folds of the sarong barely clinging to her skin. She caught my wrists, bit hot into my lips.

We stopped. Pulled away. For a moment we just breathed, staring at each other.

And then I released her. “You should go,” I whispered.

She was still hunched against the tree. Her hands gathered the sarong to her body, and she nodded. She rose and disappeared, leaving me. My uncovered body shook.

It was only later I realized I did not know her name.

 

My name is Zaleha. I knew this once.

I had stopped questioning how I came to my duty. I simply did. I had murky memories of running alongside paddy fields, of my home amidst shapeless huts beneath the shade of a hundred coconut trees. What was clearer was the scent of the sea, sharp in the air. My feet had been bare, caked with mud, as hard as my hands were now.

Standing in my sacred clearing, I looked down at those hands. They belonged more to an old woman. With a snarl, I sank back to my paws in the shape of a tiger, mighty and callous once more.

For the first time in a decade I ranged far from my trees. They were bound to me, as I was bound to them. I would know if something threatened. For now, I felt the need to hunt.

I sought out Sang Gajah. For some time now his herd of elephants had been ravaging a village’s plantations. I could still feel the echoes of despair rippling throughout the jungle, of the farmers crying out at harvests lost. There was no reasoning with Sang Gajah. There was a bitterness in him. That bitterness was infecting the jungle. Soon it might threaten my clearing.

It didn’t take long to track the herd to a river. I waited for the bull to dip his trunk into the water before I lunged. The other elephants stampeded away. Sang Gajah trumpeted and tossed me off his head. I rolled across the ground, roared as he charged me. I leaped towards him.

Afterwards, my entire body bruised and shivering with a human exhaustion, I sank my jaws into his neck. I dragged the carcass, slowly but surely, towards the river. There the grateful pack of crocodiles waited, jaws already agape.

“You’ve been restless lately,” called a voice above me.

I didn’t have to look to know who it was. Pak Tua preferred wings to carry out his duty—his sacred place was over the river.

“Have I?” I sank to my haunches, watching the crocodiles tear at their meal. Blood was still on my tongue. I told myself I was witnessing balance being restored.

Pak Tua glided down to melt into the shape known to mortals, that of a kindly old man. Instead of weighing down his back with a tottering basket of durians, he let me see the large brown wings of the coucal.

“A mortal insists on sending his hantu raya slave to destroy my sacred tree,” I said.

Pak Tua cocked his head. “Ahhh. The chieftain of the coast.”

“You know him?”

“He has inherited great magic. His family has several hantu raya at their command. You should be careful.”

I scoffed. “He cannot harm us.”

“Can he not?” the old man mildly said. “He has many warriors. Some say his followers swarm like ants. Perhaps someday he might sweep across your jungle.”

“That changes nothing.”

He smiled, and I remembered his sacred place—a crumbling temple—was much closer to this chieftain than my jungle home. The threat to him was greater.

“Pak Tua—”

He unfurled his wings. “There is something different about you. I like it. It has been ages since I saw you hunt.” His eyes twinkled. “You should see her again.”

The elder laughed when I snarled at him. I watched him leap into the air with an explosion of feathers, flying around me once before sweeping back toward his territory.

 

She told me her name was Aryani.

She began visiting more. She called them “visits” even though we both knew she had been summoned here. It had become our tradition for her to formally ask that I give way, and for me to just as formally decline. We would smile. Then we would find somewhere to sit—a moss-covered log, or the branch of a giant tualang tree—and spend the remaining hour holding hands. We’d say little, just bask in the murmurs of the jungle, the way the trees and the hidden animals shared a single heartbeat. Sometimes, we’d speak about nonsense things, human things, as I learned the rhythm of her voice.

One time, she gathered both my hands in hers to look at them, and I tried to curl the fingers closed.

“My hands are broken,” I said, wary.

She gazed at the cracked nails, the lines that reminded me of the years I’d spent as a girl, smashing the endless sheaves of paddy to loosen the husks. Bapa had a voice that spoke softly only during the holy month of Ramadan, and his children could not stop working.

“Aryani,” I protested.

“I think they’re beautiful,” she said at last. She lifted my hands to press her lips against the roughness of my palms, one after another.

I closed my eyes, accepting this gift. And when I thought her guard was lowered, I touched the bronze bangle snaring her wrist. “What does he do to you, when you return with nothing?”

She did not answer.

 

“His warriors have begun moving into the jungle,” Pak Tua said. “I see them carry parangs, and soon they will begin cutting into my trees.”

I marveled at his calm. We had taken to meeting by the river lately, both of us too tense to leave our animal shapes. “What do they want?”

“Who can say? They talk of land for their families. The chieftain has promised them such.”

“What will you do?”

“If they enter my sacred place, I will challenge them, of course.”

“But you said he has many warriors. Many hantu raya at his command.”

“Did you not say no harm could befall us?” He smiled. “It is the will of Allah, young one. You accept what you are given.”

I rose to my paws. “Don’t go.”

“All things end,” he said, unfurling his wings. “And some things begin.”

As the coucal soared towards the north, I wondered if the heavens looked with kindness upon the spirits.

 

It had been a month since I saw Pak Tua. A year since I first met Aryani that rainy afternoon, watching her scar one side of my tree.

I fretted in my clearing but did not dare leave. Once, twice, I might have heard distant shouts across the river, but I was now no longer sure. I had a duty. It was important that I be here, important that I preserve the bones of the past.

But when Aryani appeared before me again, the first words that sprang from my throat were, “Do you love him?”

She halted in surprise. She gazed down upon me with those eyes, as much a mystery as during our first meeting, while I crouched as if prepared for a blow. A year ago I had not been so humbled.

In the end, she whispered, “I thought so once.”

“And now?” I could not help the hope surging in me. If I could sway her from her master—

She sank down to her knees and wrapped her arms around me. “Fly with me,” she murmured, burying her face against the fur of my neck. “There is a lake where the sun shines on one end and the light of the moon on the other. Have you been there?”

“I have heard of it.” It is a pool no mortal has swam in, for the roots of the trees surround the borders of the lake, drinking deeply of its waters. Spirits resided in every branch.

“I wish to swim with you there,” she said into my ear, her fingers smoothing down my fur. “They say that any soul who bathes in the waters realizes their life’s purpose.”

“A double-edge blade,” I said. But I agreed.

I took to the air as a hornbill with wings as black as pearl, my beak the bright amber of the tiger. She shivered free of her human form and became a kingfisher, her wings flitting like leaves whipping in the wind. We soared between trees that touched the sky, the earth surging away beneath us.

She brushed against me first, feathers teasing my chest mid-flight before her smaller body dipped away. When she did it a third time, I shifted into a serpent eagle and playfully snapped my beak at her. Aryani gave off a sound like a laugh, blurred into the form of a swiftlet, and ducked beneath me. From there we circled each other, shifting, grazing each other even as we descended.

The game didn’t stop once we touched ground just short of the lake. She dropped to the grass as a clouded leopard, spotted tail lashing, head bent as if ready to pounce. I became a sun bear, my mark a blazing orange beneath the neck. With my curved claws, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close. She shrank into a mouse deer and slipped free on tiny hooves. Over and over we changed shapes, reacting to each other, until we confronted each other as snake and mongoose.

We fell silent. I sank my serpentine head low, aware our choice of shapes could not be coincidence. And then the mongoose leaned forward to blatantly rub its face against mine. In shock, I shifted back to human, and so did Aryani.

She ended up straddling me, her legs around my waist, her hair brushing my lips. She smiled as she stroked my face, seeming to enjoy pinning me on the grass.

“Move,” I said.

“Uncomfortable?” She grinned when I sent her a mock growl. “Come,” she said, taking my hand, helping me up.

I found myself laughing as we ran towards the lake. The trees parted for us, and then we were plunging into the waters. There, I grabbed her sarong and dragged it down. While she gasped, it was my turn to wrap my arms and legs around her from behind and kiss her over her shoulder. My hands explored while she nuzzled breathlessly against my mouth. My fingers played across the curve of her breasts so modestly hidden, stroked down to her quivering belly, until I found the softness between her thighs. I slid a finger in, stroking inner flesh where I would sometimes touch myself—when I’d weakened and changed to human, gasping and thrusting fingers in while curled up on the forest floor, waiting those endless hours for her.

Aryani whimpered in my arms, our two bodies as one in the water, heat sliding against skin. I kept her like this, held her prisoner while my fingers caressed and teased deep and made love to her, while I kissed her neck and listened to the sharp, breathless sounds. Her own hand tangled and tightened in my hair as I finally slid my finger out to seek a particular sensitive bead of her flesh. I knew I’d found it when she jerked in the water, protesting and calling my name in the same breath. I yearned to kiss her there but instead rubbed, gentle at first and then faster and faster until she quivered violently, thrashed once, and slumped in my arms. I smiled, satisfied I had won this game of ours, and nipped my teeth against her shoulder.

That was when I noticed something else her sarong hid. I froze when I spotted the marks across her back, so similar to the lines scarred across wood.

“Zaleha?” she whispered.

She stiffened, understanding what I had seen.

“I will kill him,” I hissed.

She turned around in the water, throwing her arms around my neck. “They fade with time.”

“I will tear his heart out, the miserable dog. How could you let him—”

“It doesn’t matter. Stay with me.” Her voice was edged with despair.

“Stay with you? Why—” Realization dawned. I should have known. No, a part of me must have known, but did not want to believe.

I looked back. Even with the towering trees, I could see the tendrils of smoke. I caught the scent of burning wood.

I pushed her away.

Her eyes were wide and tearful. “Zaleha,” she began.

“You betrayed me.”

“I gave you warning,” she said.

“You lured me away!”

Her voice became dull. “Of course I did. I was ordered to. I am not like you, free to do as you please. Do you think it so easy, to live the way you do?”

“What happened to Pak Tua? The spirit guarding the temple across the river?”

“I had to spare you his fate. Don’t you see? I had to make you safe.”

I clenched my hands. “Come with me. You don’t have to exist like this.”

“You know very well that if I break my oath, I am condemned to the fires of Hell.”

“There has to be a way.”

“There is no other way!” Aryani snapped. “I am bound to his blood for eternity. I thought you less a fool than this.”

“Whom do you love more? Him or me?”

She stared at me as if struck. “I thought you would understand.”

“What is there to understand? He will never care for you as much as I.”

She pressed hands to her face with a sob. “This is torment. Stay in your jungle, Zaleha. Stay there and live forever.”

She began to fade. I shouted, but she was gone.

For a while I floated in those waters, feeling as if she’d sunk talons into my chest and clawed my heart out. And then I tore out of the water in the shape of a serpent eagle.

 

Heat and smoke blasted my eyes as I swept over the heads of the men setting fire to the trees. For a moment, gliding on heated air, I remembered the flames that surged and danced as they devoured the paddy fields of my childhood, unleashed to make the soil richer for the planting.

The men were moving fast, as if rushing to inflict as much damage as possible. When they approached my sacred tree, I plunged among them as a tiger. Fear seized their faces, but there were so many of them. Were these the ones who had murdered Pak Tua? The ones who desecrated his temple? Would they end me as they had my friend?

I took little joy as I ended lives with a slash of my paws, a snap of jaws onto throats and heads. Again and again they came, but not once did I feel the usual satisfaction as bones cracked under the weight of my teeth. It didn’t matter anymore.

Nothing mattered anymore.

I sank to the ground, bathed in blood and gasping for breath. Around me the trees blazed, the wood groaning before branches snapped off to plunge to the ground.

I curled up there. The flames crept closer. I watched them with a kind of wistfulness.

Live, she’d said. Live forever.

She would want me to fly, to soar free, unfettered.

Bleeding from a dozen wounds, feeling my most mortal in centuries, I felt the revelation stir within me. Not from a magical lake, but within an inferno.

I want to tell her—

The smoke thickened, became choking. Noxious.

I shoved my body up. I bent forward, forced paws to sprout feathers. Made flesh condense inwards, caused bone to crack and shrink and become hollow. The last thing I saw before taking to the sky were the flames engulfing my sacred, scarred tree.

 

The chieftain did not look that surprised when I landed in his court and shed the shape of a coucal—my tribute to a lost friend. Followers and warriors gasped as I stood there, human, naked. Hands reached for their weapons, but Aryani’s master raised a hand.

He’d noticed I made no move to attack. “Why are you here?” he asked.

I studied the layers of a hundred charms and magics protecting him, and found them cast with undertones of fear and desperation. When I peered into his face, I saw ambition. Greed. I relaxed. His charms were powerful, true. But given some effort, a decade or two perhaps, and I could crack through them. I had time. I had all the time in the world.

My gaze flitted to Aryani, who stood beside her master’s chair. Her face was pale with shock. She shook her head sharply, urging me to flee while I could. Behind me, I felt the brimming hostility of the mortal’s other guardian spirits, all of them fierce and strong. They wanted to shred me to pieces for daring to breach their master’s house.

But I smiled, for her alone.

“I have come to serve you,” I answered. And I raised a hand, for the chieftain to fasten the bronze bangle he uses to enslave his spirits.

He hesitated. I had the feeling no hantu or jin had ever chosen to enter his servitude. He licked his lips. “Are you certain?”

I nearly laughed, and thrust my hand forward again while his warriors muttered around us.

Soon the chieftain was whispering the ancient words of binding as he secured the thing around my wrist.

My eyes were only on Aryani.

 

“Do you miss the jungle?” she whispered, many nights later.

“Not really,” I said, sedately.

She laid her head on my shoulder as we sat on the window of our master’s house. The moon was a pale maiden drifting across gardens rich with spices and promise. On nights like these, I did not mind the weight on my hand.

“You are a terrible liar,” she decided.

I laughed, nestling her close. She sighed and leaned into my arms.