Chương 8: B1 Chapter 7

Eyowon's hand appeared through the doorway and lifted the flap of her hut. For a moment, she remained in the darkness beyond it, a pale shape framed by woven reeds and hanging charms. The charms clicked softly against one another as the evening wind moved through them: shells, carved bones, dried seedpods, and small pieces of polished stone that caught the strange light spilling across the village. Then she stepped outside. I could see the weight of her years upon her more clearly than I ever had before.

Her shoulders had narrowed, and the skin around her mouth and eyes had drawn tight with age. Her grey hair hung loose to her lower back, almost silver beneath the purple and blue light that washed over the village. It stirred around her like smoke, lifting and settling against her spine. One hand gripped a cane carved in the shape of a serpent. Its head formed the handle, the wooden mouth stretched open, and its fangs rested over her knuckles.

The body twisted down the length of the staff in overlapping coils, each scale worn smooth by years of use. The irony of it bit at me every time I saw it. Eyowon had been blind since before I was born, yet she carried a serpent in her hand, the creature that saw everything hidden in the grass, the creature whose eyes never seemed to close. She couldn't see the path beneath her feet, but she knew when someone approached from behind.

She couldn't watch the sky change, but she'd described its colors before any of us understood that the heavens had become something new. Even at her advanced age, Eyowon moved more swiftly than I did. She crossed the threshold with a confidence that made my own uneven steps feel clumsy. The cane touched the ground only once before she turned her blind eyes toward us, as though she knew exactly where we waited.

Her face tilted slightly, listening to the scrape of Makua's feet, the shifting of the elders, and the uneven rhythm of my breathing. Makua held me upright by the shoulder as we approached her. His arm tightened around me while I reached for his shoulder. My legs trembled beneath me, and the muscles in my back pulled painfully as I struggled to keep my balance. For one humiliating moment, I feared I'd collapse before I could take another step. Before they did, Joa shouted from across the village.

"Everyone, you need to come see this!" His voice carried over the low murmur of the people gathered near the fire pits. Every head snapped toward him. The village seemed to hold its breath. Children stopped playing beside the shelters. Women turned from the cooking fires, their hands still wet with water or stained with ash. Hunters rose from where they'd been cleaning weapons, and the elders leaned forward, trying to see through the bodies between them and Joa. Joa ran toward us with his hands held before him.

Blood covered them to the wrists, still fresh and bright. It ran between his fingers and dripped onto the packed earth in heavy drops. His chest heaved as he crossed the open space, and his bare feet kicked up small clouds of dust. Something dark and heavy rested between his palms.

"I don't know what this is," he said as he reached us, breathing hard.

"But this isn't right." The smell reached me before I could see what he carried. It was the hot, coppery scent of blood mixed with the sour musk of the caiman. Beneath it lingered something sharper, like wet stone struck by lightning. The odor made my stomach tighten. Makua kept one arm around me while I found my balance. My knees shook, but I forced them straight. Timoteo and Hokan moved closer, their expressions hardening as they studied Joa's hands. Several elders gathered behind us, whispering to one another.

More villagers began to approach, drawn by the urgency in Joa's voice. Joa held the object out. It had the shape of a heart. A murmur passed through the crowd. The size was right for the caiman, and thick vessels still hung from it where Joa had cut it free. Blood clung to the vessels in dark ropes, sliding slowly toward the ground. Its surface was dark red and ridged with muscle, but the ridges didn't move as a living heart should.

Parts of it gleamed beneath the blood as though something metallic had grown through the flesh. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. The strange material formed narrow plates along one side, overlapping like scales. Other sections looked as if iron threads had been woven through the muscle. They caught the purple light and reflected it in dull flashes.

"I was going to cut out its heart for your fire, E'ru," Joa said.

"But when I reached inside, I found this." He turned it over in his hands. The heart made a faint clicking sound as it shifted.

"It's hard as stone. I don't even know if it's stone. It looks like a heart, but it's almost solid, as though the muscles were made of iron." Timoteo leaned closer but didn't touch it.

"Did the beast have this inside it when you killed it E'ru?" he asked. Joa nodded.

"I felt something strike my knife while I was butchering it. I thought I'd hit bone."

"Caimans don't have iron hearts," Hokan muttered.

"No," one of the elders said.

"They don't." The words settled over us with the weight of a warning. Eyowon stopped walking. Her serpent-headed cane struck the earth once. The sound was small, but everyone heard it. Conversation died immediately. Even the children fell silent.

"Bring it to me," she said. Joa approached Eyowon with his head bowed, carrying the heart as reverently as he might've carried the words of the gods themselves. He'd always respected her. Joa had been among the first of my brothers who didn't pity me when I began hobbling through the village after my back healed. Most people had looked away when I struggled, or they'd watched me with the careful sadness they reserved for the dying. Joa had never done that.

He'd treated my weakness as an inconvenience to overcome rather than a shame to hide. He'd spoken with Eyowon while I lay trapped upon my mat, too weak to stand without help. I never learned exactly what she told him, though whatever words she used changed the way he saw me. When Joa looked at me, he saw someone who'd done something worth doing. He was also the one who convinced Makua, my childhood rival, to visit me without bringing his pity.

Makua had come to my shelter with his jaw clenched and his eyes fixed on the floor, as though he'd been ordered to sit beside a corpse. Joa had dragged him outside afterward and spoken to him for a long time. When Makua returned, he didn't apologize. He simply sat beside me and asked whether I wanted water. That had been enough. Joa had been a good friend to me and an even better brother. Now he carried something that would change our world, or at least change everything we believed about how our world worked.

He stopped before Eyowon and carefully lowered the caiman's heart into her waiting hands. Her fingers closed around it. Something shifted within her the moment she touched it. Her blind eyes remained still while her fingers travelled across the hardened muscle, tracing the vessels and the strange metallic ridges beneath the blood. She pressed the pad of one finger into a groove, then moved it along the edge of one of the plates. Her expression tightened. She weighed the heart in both hands, testing its balance.

Then she brought it close to her face and breathed over it, as though scent might reveal what touch couldn't. The wind moved through her hair, but she didn't seem to notice. At last, she turned her face toward something only she could sense.

"I'll need to keep this with me," Eyowon decided.

"The gods have spoken." Makua shifted beside me.

"That isn't right," he said.

"The heart belongs to the hunter who made the kill. That's always been our law." A few people behind us drew in sharp breaths. Eyowon's head snapped toward him.

"Boy, don't think to question me. Who speaks for the gods? Who reads their words and knows their voices? Who tells you where to go and what to do when you can't find the path?" Her serpent-headed cane struck the earth. The carved serpent's wooden fangs clicked against the ground.

"It's never the place of a man to question the word of the gods. Tell me, Makua, are you a god? Can you tell me what the laws of this new world are, or am I the prophet who's served them since long before you stopped shitting into your nappies?" Several of the elders lowered their faces to hide their amusement. One of them coughed into his hand. Another turned away entirely, though his shoulders shook. Makua's face darkened, but he didn't answer.

His arm remained around me, steady and protective, though I could feel the tension in his muscles. Eyowon waited. The silence stretched until the distant river became audible again, rushing beyond the trees. Somewhere near the edge of the village, a night bird called once and then fell quiet.

"Makua, it's all right," I said.

"If Eyowon says she needs it, then she needs it. I won't fight her for it. It's only a thing."

"No, E'ru," Eyowon said, turning toward me.

"It's far more than a thing." Her grip tightened around the hardened heart. The metallic plates pressed against her palm, and a thin line of blood slipped from the heart onto her wrist. She didn't flinch. Instead, she held it closer, as though listening for a pulse hidden beneath the solid shell.

"I appreciate your willingness to let me hold it, but it remains yours. I'll never take it from you. I only need time to learn what it's become and why the gods placed it in your hands." She lifted the heart toward the broken sky. The purple and blue light gathered along its ridges. For an instant, the metal seemed to glow from within, not brightly, but with a dull red shimmer like embers buried beneath ash. A murmur moved through the crowd. Eyowon's face remained turned upward.

"The gods have spoken to me," she said.

"They said I must learn a new way for our people to live. Everything's changing. They've given me something new, and this heart will help us understand the path we must follow." No one laughed at her now. The villagers stared at the heart, at the strange metal threaded through flesh, and then at the sky above us. The clouds had split apart in jagged layers, revealing colors no one had ever seen before. Purple light spilled across the huts and painted the trees blue.

The stars were hidden, but something moved behind the clouds, a slow radiance that pulsed like a heartbeat. I looked at the object in Eyowon's hands. For the first time, I wondered whether the caiman had truly been an animal at all. And if it hadn't been, I wondered what else the gods had placed into our world with it.