The Serpent and the Crown Page 10

  He closed his eyes and saw the jungle all around him. He was young and holding her hand, floating through the jungle on a cloud of mango juice. It was right after their wedding ceremony and he was taking her back to his village. He felt the tingling of excitement that came with this new, yet deeply resounding love he had found.

  Her smooth skin was bronze and glowed with a radiance from within her soul. Her eyes were a deep dark brown and he went on a mythical journey when he gazed into them. He sensed an ancient being residing within her, a presence passed down through centuries, pulsating anew with the vibrance of her youth.

  When he took her into his hut she was the essence of love. He was overwhelmed with passion. His attraction to her was far beyond what he had ever felt for any woman, and for a long time it was difficult for him to maintain his duties around the village when he would so often whisk her away to his hut or take her down stream in a canoe at the slightest provocation or suggestive glance. Their bodies came to know each other intimately over time and they drove each other to the heights of pleasure as their bond deepened.

  She was a woman who had always been rooted in the traditions of her people. She had been taught all about fishing, planting, building shelters, weaving and mending, making clothing and jewelry. Everything came easily to her and it was a joy to be in her presence.

  For every moment there was a song. She sang when she pulled the yucca from the earth. She sang when she pulled a fish from the river and cooked it over the fire. She sang while she bathed Jankaro or sat with him picking the little insects out of his hair. She sang for the ill and brokenhearted. She sang songs of sweet love into Jorobai’s eyes while she smiled at him and caressed his face. Those were the songs that he remembered the best.

  While he lay in the canoe, dreaming of those few years he spent with her, he couldn’t remember the conflicts or the pain, the hard times or the scarcity. Over the years spent without her she became an angel who lived inside of his memory, in his heart. He opened his eyes and looked up at the moon again and heard Shalea singing a new song to him. She sang a song of eternal love and beckoned him to be courageous on his long and perilous quest. He fell asleep to the sound of her voice.

  When the sun came up, Jorobai was awake. When he saw the sun, he reached for Jankaro’s knife and held it. He examined it, turning it side to side and flipping it in the air. He used it to trim his nails and hair. He jabbed at any passing fish or creatures from the sea. He pulled in all nature of debris, hacked it into little pieces and tossed it over the side. After eating a fish he would chop up its bones, grind them into little bits and throw them over the side. Anything to pass the time.

  As the days passed his body weakened. His activities with the knife slowed down and he would just hold it and stare off at the horizon. Finally he grew so weak that he would just lay there and stare at it, his jaw agape. He gave a little wobble to it here and there, but he realized that he was sick and dying from the dehydration.

  Eventually he turned away from the knife. He summoned what little strength he had, pushed himself up, and rolled over to gaze out towards the horizon in the opposite direction. He was dying a slow death and his path was leading nowhere. He had to reckon with himself that there was nothing left, and he had failed to find his son. “Sagaya help me,” he croaked through his parched lips. Take me now. I give up. Let me join my beloved in the afterlife. I will greet my son there when his time comes. I surrender. I am ready to die. I release this life!”

  The air dragged in his throat. He could barely move, but he managed to turn over and take hold of the knife. He gave it one last mournful stare. He imagined his son’s face. “Bless you, Jankaro. May Sagaya bless and watch over you. I will be watching you from the other side, my son.” With that he cast the knife into the sea. His body heaved and convulsed as he wept a tearless lament, but he could endure the suffering no more.

  So he leaned over the edge of the canoe and looked into the water. He held his arms over the edge and the water was cold. He placed his hands on the edge of the canoe and pushed. His body slid into the water. There was a light below him and he felt he was not alone. Something swam up from below and embraced him. He couldn’t see what it was, but it felt like a human. He thought it must be a spirit from the afterlife coming to take him home.

  The being dragged him down further into the depths and he couldn’t hold his breath. He inhaled the water into his lungs, but instead of a lungful of water, he somehow got a breath of air. When the being released the embrace and led him by his arm, he could see her. He heard stories in his youth about the people of the water, the fish people, but never knew what to make of them. He thought they were just legends. But there she was before him, a fish woman with a benevolent glimmer in her eyes. Her human torso was a shimmering blend of blue, silver and green that led down to the scaly fish tail that comprised the lower half of her body. She had webbed hands, small fins protruding from her forearms and a big fin on her back. She breathed through gills on the side of her neck, like the ones he had seen on the carving on Madrigo’s boat. She looked at him and spoke Come with me with her eyes and he simply surrendered to the grace she radiated. It reminded him of Shalea, the woman he loved.

  The fish woman led him all the way down to the bottom of the sea and lay him down on his back on a stone slab. He heard her singing a sweet lilting song that sounded like a lullaby as she bade him to rest. She stretched out his legs and laid his arms at his sides with his palms up. Five more fish people came to join her, two women and three men.

  They surrounded him in a circle and hovered above him. All of them joined in singing the soft melody, adding harmonies. It was not the afterlife Jorobai had expected, but it sounded like it. The beauty lifted his soul and he felt a tender blossom of simple and pure joy in his heart.

  They waved their hands in patterns around his body. He felt beams of energy coming from their hands and flowing into him. In every muscle he felt his strength return. He realized they were healing him. He felt his blood pulsing and the pure air flowed deeply into his lungs.

  When they finished chanting they sat him up. They gave him seaweed to eat while they massaged his back, neck, arms, legs, hands and feet. When he was full, they stopped massaging him and most of them swam away. One stayed, the eldest of the men. He brought his face up to Jorobai and gazed deep into his eyes. Ancient wisdom flowed from the fish man’s eyes and lodged deep in Jorobai’s soul as his body began to float upwards. The fish man put his hand on Jorobai’s heart and he felt his courage renewed. He and the fish man never spoke in words, but Jorobai received the message: there was more to his quest than reuniting with his son. With their eyes still locked, the fish man gave a gentle squeeze to the sides of Jorobai’s skull and released him to float upward on his own.

  Jorobai saw the surface above him, and realized he was holding his breath again. As pressure built in his lungs, he swam for the surface. He breached and gasped a lungful of air. He swam to his canoe and climbed aboard. He couldn’t believe how strong and alive he felt. He looked around the canoe to see that the bottle of Amoza was still there. Beside it, gleaming in the twilight, was Jankaro’s knife.

  Three days after his encounter with the fish people, Jorobai again felt the open sea sucking his life away. He forced himself to stand up and stretch. He balanced on the bobbing canoe, stood tall, and reached his arms up to the sky. He stared at the sun, closed his eyes and let its pure light wash his face and mind as he remembered the dream from the night before where he was hanging upside down from a tree branch waiting for a lizard to pass over his hand. He waited but the lizard crawled so slowly that it never arrived.

  He sat back down, picked up Jankaro’s knife and started carving messages into the fish bones. He wrote search calls to Jankaro, love letters to his wife, an homage to Rongo, and goodbye letters to his tribe back at Olaya, all carved not with words but intricate geometric patterns shaped by his emotions. He
made a prayer, a call to Sagaya, the god of the forest, the deity he knew best, to come and help him.

  As he finished carving, he took the bones in his hand, reared back and prepared to cast them into the sea. But in the distance something caught his eye, an object floating far away, and he mused to himself over what it could be. He watched for hours as the object grew bigger and bigger and eventually it was unmistakable that there was land ahead. He felt hope and joy and wanted to jump off the boat and swim, but he had to wait three more days while his boat drifted toward the shore. As he drew closer, he saw that it was a small tropical island with rolling hills covered with dense foliage. It was like a tiny piece of his jungle home had sprung up from the middle of the sea. He wondered if he would find Jankaro waiting for him there, and how would they make it back home.

  Jorobai felt the sand squish between his toes as the tide crashed against his ankles and pushed him up onto the beach. He dragged his canoe up the beach, picked up the knife and the bottle and strode forward toward the trees. But the world spun around him as the bobbing motion of the canoe and the sea were still lodged within. He became dizzy and collapsed. He took a moment to catch his breath as he lifted his arm up to cover his eyes from the brilliance of the sun. The sand was warm on his skin. He got onto his hands and knees and knelt there for a while, kneading the sand between his fingers.

  He rose to his feet and wobbled as he tried to dispel the dizziness. He looked down the beach both ways as it rounded a corner on both sides. He had a wary feeling about the dangers that could be lurking. His path had been wrought with many ever since he lost his son, and he had adopted a vigilant stance as he knew that the dangers were likely to grow before they lessened.

  He staggered up the beach as his body stabilized to being on solid ground. As he breached the tree line, he saw some orange fruit in a tree so he reached up, plucked it, peeled it, and ate. The sweetness rushed into his mouth and pleased him. He picked three more, ate them, and took one to carry with him as he set off walking through the unknown jungle.

  Insects chanted rhythmically and birds interspersed sporadic melodies as Jorobai marched through the foliage that grew more dense as he went further inland. Leaves and branches reached out and scratched his face and tiny insects bit at his legs. They were more aggressive than the ones back home. Their venoms burned and made his skin itch as he saw the pink bumps accumulate all over his body. He had built a tolerance to the mosquitoes in Olaya but these were merciless as they dined on his fresh blood.

  About every 100 steps he stopped to look around. Not much other than dense foliage all around him: trees, bushes, vines, and many plants that pricked and grabbed at him. He stood still but his arms continued to move around, chasing and swatting at the little biting menaces before they could sit down for their meal. He looked around and listened for a sign of human activity but all he could hear were the insects and the birds.

  There was a crashing sound in the trees ahead. Jorobai lurched forward to investigate but something caught his ankle and he fell. He could still hear the crashing sounds as he scrambled to his feet. He looked down and saw a vine wrapped around his ankle three times. It pulled him. He took Jankaro’s knife and sliced it off. He sensed the pain of the plant as it recoiled away from him. He immediately looked up into the trees where he heard the crashing sound and saw a group of small monkeys swinging around and playing together. They looked down at him and pointed as they chattered to each other.

  Jorobai trekked on, cautious to watch his step, and whenever he stopped he watched his feet for any creeping vines, for he did not want to end the day as plant food.

  He continued straight ahead, over hills, across a stream, and through many patches of thick bramble. He saw snakes, lizards, birds, monkeys, and a few small fuzzy creatures racing through the underbrush, but no sign of any humans. He kept walking until night was soon to fall, then set to work making himself a shelter.

  He worried about the vines or some other danger coming to grab him in the night so he built himself a small platform up in a tree with fallen branches and vines cut with Jankaro’s knife. He thought he might make the vines angry by cutting them so he chose a different species of vine to cut, and picked a tree for his platform that didn’t have vines growing over it already.

  After night fell, Jorobai laid down on his platform and struggled to keep his eyes closed. He heard branches crashing in the distance and chants from strange insects. He tried to ignore the biting insects and shut his eyes, but it was hard for him to sleep and he clutched the knife tightly in his hand. He thought of his son and wondered if he could be somewhere on the island. Through the night he would drift off to sleep and then wake up to a foreign sound or another insect bite. It was so uncomfortable that he had to continually shift to try to find a better position to rest. Finally as the long hours of the night wore on, he drifted off to sleep.

  He woke up in a panic. Something had a hold on him. He tried to break free but was caught. In the light of the breaking dawn he saw a horrific sight: a vine had climbed up the tree and wrapped itself around his body. It had his legs bound together, and his torso with his arms pinned against his sides. He felt himself being dragged off of the platform and he knew he was in trouble. He saw the knife in front of his face and he knew he only had time for one move.

  He lay there very calm as the vine continued to drag him off the platform. He was about to drop off when he took a deep breath and expanded his rib cage and felt the vine grow tighter all around him. He let the breath out quickly and created enough slack to jerk his left arm free. He grabbed the knife and cut at the vine, careful not to cut into his own flesh. After he had severed the vine in two, it loosed its hold and retreated back down the tree. He took the other part, unraveled it from his body and tossed it aside. He grabbed the bottle of Amoza and descended from the tree to continue his search. He knew he needed to find a better place to shelter at night.

  Jorobai trekked onward through the island jungle, but by midday, he had seen no one but plants and birds and the occasional fuzzy creature. He was disheartened by the sight of the beach and the endless water of the sea when he reached the other side of the island. He sat down in the sand feeling relief for a moment that he didn’t have to watch his ankles for a vine trying to wrap around them.

  He figured Jankaro must be on the island somewhere. He would just have to keep searching back and forth until he found him. Considering it took him two days to get across, he reasoned that it would take him several days to develop a more familiar sense of the landscape of the island. To really pick through every sector could take months. But he figured with Jankaro’s inclination for exploration, they would find each other in no time.

  For the rest of the day Jorobai hiked along the beach. He figured he would get halfway back around to where he started and then journey across the island once again. He hiked along the beach in peace, and at the end of the day he built a fire and slept by the crackling flames. Out on the sand, away from the jungle, the vines haunted his dreams but could not harm him. He clutched the knife in his hand as he slept a fitful sleep.

  The island had many hills and valleys of various heights and depths. The foliage was lush and green and tropical throughout, with very few openings to the sky. Jorobai would climb up into the trees to get a view, but most were the same: rolling hills of green pressing against the ocean. It took him more than a day to get across lengthwise, so he had to spend the night in a tree again.

  He hovered in the space between sleep and waking. He watched the vine wrap around his ankle and around his leg. He could hear it speaking to him, “Come with me.” He reached down and chopped it off and scowled to himself.

  Again he lay there awake, and just on the edge of sleep, there it was, wrapping around his ankle. He chopped it away but the same scene played out all night long. He would start to dream that he was back in the village in his hut, and there it was again, wrapped around his ankle. He
couldn’t remember when it was a dream and when it was real. All he knew was that it went on all night until the break of dawn when he descended from the tree and continued through the jungle.

  The next night he made camp on the beach and built a fire. He thought about the size of the island and the treachery he had been dealing with and reasoned he would have to be careful about how much time he spent there. He would need to spend most nights on the beach so he could get some rest. He thought he could slowly work his way around the island day by day for a few months and maybe he would see a sign of his son. But he despaired because in the three days he had been there, he had seen no sign of anyone and he felt like he was completely alone. He looked at the bottle of Amoza sitting near the fire and decided it was time to ask the spirits for help.

  He chanted the song that Kayo taught him and poured a swig of the bitter medicine down his throat. It reminded him of the night that he sat with Ishikaya. He thought of Kayo in the boat and how he used the medicine to find the poison to kill the sharks. He called upon the medicine to guide him once again to find his son.

  For a little while he stared into the fire and breathed. He remembered the face of Jankaro, and he felt his desire to find him and bring him home. He imagined the two of them back home at the village, tending to the farm and the plants, just as he had planned. He imagined them riding in a canoe down the river together, catching fish and laughing about the adventures they had shared. He imagined Jankaro meeting a young woman from another tribe and bringing his grandchildren into the world. And he imagined them running through the village and the jungle together and discovering its wonders anew through the eyes of a curious young child.

  As he drifted away in his mind, he was brought back into his body by a stabbing sensation in his stomach. He looked back into the fire and gasped as the sensation became very intense. It burned hot and pierced his gut. He could hardly breathe through the pain. He felt like someone had shoved the point of a spear into him and was twisting it back and forth. He fell to his side on the sand and clutched his stomach in agonizing pain.