CHAPTER TEN
Jahnu slowly made a fist against the tremble in his hand as he watched Sidney retreat with the old woman. The tremble crawled up his arm and tightened his heart in a way he had not felt for many years.
Impossible.
He turned against the feelings, making his way back toward the path where he’d left his defeated opponent sleeping.
He retraced his steps through the underbrush and cursed himself for letting Mimbeck stay on as leader of the warriors when he knew of the darkness inside him.
His uncle had always been fierce, but ever since the fire took his wife he’d turned that fierceness into a deadly hatred.
The hatred was a familiar bedmate. Mimbeck was not the only one suffering loss. My son! Oh, Talmu, my son!
The anguish washed over him again. Would he go a day without it?
It had been six moons already, but still felt as if it were yesterday when he’d run to the southern village where he shared a tree hut with his six-year-old son, Talmu.
He’d found it burning—along with many others—smoke rising from the crumpled debris littering the ground—his son inside.
Why? Why had Makia not waited to drain the peatlands?
—the question he’d asked everyday since.
They knew Hundi villages were too close to the land they wanted to sell.
He’d been in talks for months trying to negotiate an alternative, but they had moved forward without agreement.
Now…now Jahnu and his people were the ones paying for their rashness.
All for what? Greed? Money? There was no end to the continual fall of man.
Finding a fallen log, he sat near Mimbeck who still lay in the fronds of the bracken. Soft morning light glinted off the dew, clinging to the leaves of the jungle.
The familiar anger rose in his throat, his jaw grinding his teeth against it—the woman was a new problem to face. Now, Mimbeck. Such was his complicated life over the past five years—one new problem after another.
‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.’ He silently recited from Ecclesiastes, his favorite book of the scriptures.
The words brought an understanding to life like nothing else did, and he leaned on them even more since they’d left him.
Talmu was not the only loss Jahnu had suffered.
Everything is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
The book of Job was another favorite. He found his life much more bearable knowing he wasn’t the only one who’d lived a life of loss.
It had been five years since he’d been named chief.
The death of his father had pushed him into the role before he’d been ready.
When his wife, Alupa, also died of the same sickness, Talmu had been the only thing that kept him from suffocating in the fog of grief.
Now his son—his only child—had died, too.
Everyone he loved had been taken from him. His love was a curse.
Jahnu also identified with the God-Man, Jesus, that Isaiah talked about in his book. A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Yes, this was like him. He let the words settle over him, taking the edge off the anger, though only moderately.
She had caused more problems than he’d anticipated—the white woman, the medicine woman, the beautiful woman—who spit words like fire and met his gaze like a python ready to strike.
Why had she come to them and what would he do with her?
The conflict with Makia had only escalated and he was at an impasse of divergent opinions on how to move forward.
If things were difficult before she’d shown up, they were ten times more problematic now.
The quiver in his heart returned as did the flash of her sapphire eyes, so like the color of the ocean. Those eyes had been wild with fear after Mimbeck attacked her. Now he felt the anger return as Mimbeck stirred and he sighed against the cycle of emotions.
Mimbeck sat up and looked over at him, “Bested me again,” he said in their native tongue.
“The days of you beating me are long over, uncle,” Jahnu replied, speaking in the same language.
Mimbeck made no haste to get up, but rubbed his forehead against the pain and pulled a betel nut from his pocket to chew.
Too many times had Jahnu been in Mimbeck’s position, humbled by a submission that left him tapping out or passing out, only to wake with a raging headache.
But over the years the roles had reversed.
The student outgrew the teacher. The student outranked him too, a fact that never sat well with Mimbeck.
He had especially grown sour toward his nephew since the death of Jahnu’s father, Hamish, five years ago.
Hamish’s death passed the chiefdom to Jahnu.
“You tread on dangerous ground, boy,” Mimbeck growled, “She is the enemy!”
“She is not Makian!”
“She aids our enemy, therefore she is against us!”
“She aids those in need. I do not believe she is a threat to us.”
“No? Then what is she?”
“You are the one who brought her here! You tell me! What did you think? Why did you bring her? It has only been six moons since Simui died. Do you really need a whore to warm your bed now that it is empty? What were you thinking?”
“And why is it empty, Jahnu, huh?” Mimbeck stood, his broad shoulders and paunchy stomach giving girth to his argument. There was no remorse in his voice. “Have you forgotten what they have done? What they took from us?”
“I have not forgotten!” Jahnu stood too, jabbing his finger in Mimbeck’s face. “But you would create new enemies by your rashness! You have brought a new problem for me to deal with and now I cannot trust you.”
“I have brought you something you can use against Makia. Use it wisely, or I will,” Mimbeck threatened.
“It is time for you to go, uncle,” Jahnu said, ignoring the threat. “There is nothing left for you here.”
“Go?” The older man questioned. “And where would I go?” Mimbeck eyed Jahnu with a fiery anger Jahnu could feel on his face. The man was proud, dangerous, unpredictable, even more so since the fighting started, and Jahnu feared he’d released an evil he wasn’t sure he could reign in again.