CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #2
“Because! I did not know what to do with you! I thought maybe you came here for a reason, something that could help our conflict with Makia. But the more time I spent with you, the more I thought perhaps you were brought here for me. Because from the moment I laid my eyes on you, I wanted you. When you stormed into my hut and demanded I tell you where Mimbeck found you, the hole in my heart began to fill. When you were near, I felt like the pieces of my heart might be put back together, like I could finally breathe past the heaviness that weighted my chest,” he pounded against his bare chest with his fist.
“When I could not be around you, I felt those pieces break all over again. I tried to put it out of my mind because I knew you could not stay. You were an impossibility…but hope began to awaken in me. I hoped against hope, but it remained. I kept you here because…because I fell in love with you…”
“I fell in love with you, too.”
“And, now you will leave. My love really is a curse,” he mumbled, walking past me. But I heard him.
We walked back to the village in a charged silence, and I realized he’d left me before I even had the chance to go.
An ear-splitting scream cut through the clamor of the jungle before we made it to the village. A woman’s scream. In shock, we rerouted in the direction of the sound.
The huts and treehouses came into view, but the village was empty. The commotion came from the bottom of the hill where a mob of Hundi surrounded three men, caked in clay and blood. We ran the rest of the way before we were swallowed up in the commotion ourselves.
The din of voices and the acrid smell of blood hit my senses. The women cried, the men, the men…Bosai and Gasowe carried one, injured and unconscious, by his legs and shoulders. Stahgan, Talula’s young husband.
These were the messengers sent to Makia. I looked for his bride—disheveled and weeping in M’Lea’s strong arms. Some of the other women, including Sali, helped the wounded men walk, with arms around their middles.
I couldn’t see where the blood was coming from, but it dripped from Stahgan onto the path, leaving a trail behind them. Children crossed frantically back and forth, with worried expressions, in desperate attempts to help.
We reached the communal hut, and tables appeared for the wounded. I fell into action, gathering what rags and leaves I could find in the kitchen and ran back to the canopy. I threw them at Jahnu who was helping the less-wounded men. He spoke with them rapidly in their native tongue.
“Try to find where the bleeding is coming from and apply pressure!” I shouted into the chaos.
I turned to Stahgan, laying unconscious on the table, a momentary feeling of overwhelm at my lack of supplies and sanitation, and plunged in.
He was bleeding profusely from three different places around the same area in his abdomen. I pressed the cloth and leaves but they soaked through in seconds.
“Sali! Get me some water and more cloth!” I beat back the sinking feeling rising in my gullet, like forcing an enemy to withdraw.
Dammit, Sidney, keep it together.
“They are my messengers I sent to Makia,” Jahnu said angrily.
The other men were still speaking frantically. “They didn’t make it past the southern border of Makia until something like biting bees attacked without warning.”
Biting bees, my ass. These men were shot with bullets.
I threw the blood-soaked cloth on the floor, applying fresh ones that appeared at my side.
Talula, M’Lea, Sacari, and a few other women stood nearby, crying and holding onto one another.
Sali appeared with jugs of water, but her somber demeanor told me she knew what I wasn’t ready to admit.
Stahgan was dead.
I pressed two fingers to his neck and leaned my face to his mouth.
No pulse.
No breath.
I reached for Sali’s bony hands, pressed them to the cloth on his stomach.
“Keep the pressure.” I climbed on the table for leverage, knelt beside the young man, and began chest compressions. I counted rhythmically in my head while trying to ignore the voice that screamed it was too late.
Jahnu still prattled on in the Hundi language.
“The biting bees—”
“They’re not biting bees! Dammit, Jahnu, don’t you see? They’ve been shot!” I continued the compressions, sweat streaming into my eyes. I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead, but only succeeded in smearing my face with his blood.
So much blood.
“Shot?” he questioned.
“With a gun!” Angry tears trailed down my mud and blood covered face.
I remembered the young Makian warrior speaking of his dream. “Mi no got dog, mi carry gun.” Apparently, they had found firearms and were using them against the Hundi.
A gun against a bow and arrow.
Did Greg know they were doing this? I pushed down the fact that these men were the messengers Jahnu had sent to Makia with news of my whereabouts. They hadn’t even made it to the village. My heart sank, but there were more pressing matters to concentrate on now.
I slid off the table making eye contact with Sali and gently shook my head. I pulled the old woman’s hands away from the rags.
“I’m sorry.”
Talula’s scream sent shivers down my spine. She collapsed on the floor, the other women holding her crying.
A somber presence filled the canopy. Only Talula’s sobs filled the silence.
I checked Bosai. His wound didn’t look life-threatening, I noted with relief.
A shot to the shoulder and the blood had already began to congeal.
But how would I extract the bullet? I dabbed at the dried blood with a wet rag.
Gasowe wasn’t wounded. Just shook up and covered in Stahgan’s blood, as was I.
Jahnu spoke again to his men and then toppled a stool in anger. He stalked over to Stahgan who was lying dead on the table. His clenched fists pounded the surface as his gut-wrenching howl haunted the space and mingled with the cries of the others.
Jahnu’s next words surprised me, “This is the tribe you help? This savage violence?” he accused.
“They are just scared,” but even my excuse felt weak in this havoc.
“Scared? No, they are greedy!” Jahnu stomped toward me, raising his voice. “How many more Hundi must die before they are satisfied?” He gestured to Stahgan.
“They say the same about you!” I flew at him in a rage, our faces inches apart, our anger fueled by more than just this situation.
“Three men died before I came here, because of your attacks…God knows how many more since I’ve been gone! Men who were husbands, fathers, and sons! I had to pull a Hundi arrow from a man’s abdomen.They called you Shadow Warriors and are terrified of Hundi and just want to protect their people!”
“And we do not want the same thing?” he seethed. “Their actions have cost us everything! Everything! Their greed is burning our forest from under us! Killing our people! And they are not playing by the rules of the jungle.”
“And you would have more war?” I asked.
“Do these actions not justify it?” he gestured wildly.
“Don’t you see that your actions have caused all of this? If you wouldn’t have started the attacks, I would have never come here!” I was crying now. “None of this would’ve ever happened! If you would just resume the peace talks…sit down and listen, I know—”
“My own son!” he shot the words in my face like his own bullets.
I stood stunned. “What?”
“My own son was not enough for them. Now we fight until every last Hundi is in the ground. There is no more talking.”
I watched him in dismay, and staggered to find a stool to sit, as he stomped across the yard and disappeared into the forest.