Asham was close. Lila knew this as surely as she knew the man would suffer for taking her child. It was almost as if she could sense his presence in the forest, drawing her to him like iron filings to a magnet. She called out his name again and again but whether or not he replied was of no consequence. All that mattered was that he knew she was out there, that he wasn’t alone and she was coming for him.
She should’ve killed that son of a goat when she had the chance. If she would’ve run him through when she first spotted him, none of this would have happened. Her child would be safe and happy, not being spirited away by a man whose heart was as small, cold, and unfeeling as a nugget of ice. But she had to think of The Way, didn’t she? She had to let tradition dissuade her from what she knew in her soul to be right.
“Maybe The Way no longer applies.” She thought. “Maybe the time has come for action. To stop being hunted and pick up our spears. To fight!”
This time the voice the voice of her late husband, offered no arguments.
From somewhere nearby, Lila heard the sound of the river. She imagined herself out there in the darkness: the hunter now the prey, surrounded and scared and knowing that death was on its way. She’d search out something familiar, something that would give the illusion of hope. She’d know there was no way those who pursued her could be on the far bank. The waters were too high and the rapids too turbulent. So they would close in on her from a single direction, a known direction… .
The murderous swine was heading for the water. He had to be. After all, it was what she would have done had their roles been reversed; and, while it was true that he was the very embodiment of evil, he was far from stupid. Which made him all that more dangerous.
For that reason, if nothing else, she would kill him this time. She would rend the flesh from his bones and show him his own intestines before allowing him to die. Even that would be too good for him.
When Lila broke through the tree line, she ignored the torrents of water rushing by. Instead, her eyes scanned the bank, looking for the slightest sign of movement or perhaps a flash of white from the man’s suit. But as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but the silhouettes of rocks and mounds of debris that had washed ashore from past recent flooding..
He had to be here somewhere. Her instincts told her to look more closely, to take in every detail as if it were the last time she’d gaze upon the earth. Sweeping the landscape again, she allowed her Cougar Eyes to crawl over moss covered stones and rusted hunks of metal that had washed ashore; like an invisible serpent, her eyes slithered along the contours of the river bank until they came to rest on what she’d originally mistaken for a large piece of driftwood.
For a moment, Lila’s heart forgot to beat. The moisture in her mouth evaporated as quickly as a drop of water on a glowing coal and the night air suddenly felt colder. In some ways, she was planted firmly in the here and now: she was acutely aware of how restrictive her necklace felt, almost as if it were cinching around her throat like a noose; she also heard the waters of the river gurgling and rushing with such clarity that it almost seemed they surrounded her on all sides. But at the same time, it also felt as if her consciousness had fled into the back of her mind, as if she were trying to distance herself from this dark riverbank. Her body was a shell and her spirit nothing more than a speck of dust within it.
“Asham!”
Breaking through her paralysis, Lila ran over the jagged stones of the riverbank. Her usual grace had abandoned her, causing her to stumble and fall as her feet entangled themselves in another. Sharp rocks peeled back the skin on her knees but before blood had even begun flowing she scrambled to her feet again.
As she grew closer to the object lying on the shore, details began to reveal themselves. The mop of red hair, pale skin, and brown loincloth. His tiny, rounded nose and lips that seemed to perpetually pout.
Please no, please no, please Great Spirit, please please please….
Asham lay on his back with his hands folded across his chest, thumbs interlocked as if making the shape of a bird with his palms and fingers. His eyes were closed and he appeared to have fallen into a deep, sound sleep.
Falling to her knees, Lila flung her spear to the side and scooped her son into her arms. He hung limply in the cradle formed by her elbows as she pressed him to her chest and rocked back and forth. He was just napping that was all. He’d wake up with that special smile of his, would beg for a breakfast of venison when he knew perfectly well there was none. He would laugh and skip and play until it was time to sleep again, time to rest. She hadn’t really seen a smooth slit arching across his throat that looked like a flap of skin that had simply come loose. And the sticky blood covering the rocks was nothing more than a trick of the light, just a cruel trick, that was all. It had to be trick.
Lila felt, more than heard, the low moan building in the hollow void of her chest. She felt it resonate in the abyss, growing in strength as it spiraled through the barren cavity. Asham wavered in and out of focus as hot tears streamed from her eyes and she clutched him more tightly, intent on not allowing him to fluctuate out of existence.
She had no idea how long she’d sat there, rocking the lifeless body of her son while her voice broke and cracked through the words of his favorite songs. Time meant nothing. There was only the chill of Asham’s body seeping into her own warm flesh and the sound of the river, continuing on as it had for millennia.
Eventually, a callused hand touched her so lightly that it could have been a butterfly alighting on her shoulder. She jerked away and pressed her face into Asham’s red hair, allowing it to muffle her sobs.
“Lila… he’s gone.”
Her head snapped up and whipped around so quickly that tears flung from her glistening cheeks. Her eyes were red and puffy, but they flared with pinpoint glimmers of anger.
“No!”
“He’s lost…”
“He’s not gone! He’s not. He was taken. Like Myra. Like Jarnell. Like Tolek!” As quickly as her voice had risen in anger, it dropped to a hoarse whisper that was almost drowned by the roar of the river. “They will die for this. All of them. They will know what it means to lose a child. To lose a husband. Their pain will balance the scales. Do you see? Do you see, Tanta? We must have vengeance.”
A small group of people had clustered around Lila and the light of their torches made it look as if Asham’s eyelids were about to flutter open. Most of the tribe could not look directly at her, fearing the madness and sorrow that seethed within her gaze. They studied the rocks of the shore, watched the waters flowing by, or simply closed their eyes. No one spoke, so Lila repeated in a louder voice, “We must have vengeance.”
Tanta, a short man whose beard looked like a overgrown scrub brush, shook his head slowly. He tried to speak in calm, measured tones but the words faltered. “It is not The Way , Lila. The Council would not approve.”
“Damn the Elders!” Spittle flew from Lila’s mouth as the words burst forth. “They would have us sit and wait to be slaughtered like game. They would stand idly by while our children are left to die.”
“You are grieving, woman. You don’t know what you say…”
Lila scrambled to her feet and thrust her arms toward Tanta as if offering him the corpse draped across them. “This was my child, Tanta. My child. Where is the honor in this? Is this a noble death? An honorable death?”
“You must listen to… .”
“No!” Lila screeched. “You must listen. You all must listen.” She turned slowly and watched as the eyes of her brothers and sisters flickered between the ground and Asham’s body. “They will continue to hunt us. They will continue to strike us down. Passivity teaches them how to treat us. We are telling them this is okay. That our lives are theirs for the taking. But I swear before my ancestors… this is not okay!”
“Listen to yourself… you’re talking about suicide.”
“I am talking about war! With or without the Council of Elders’ blessing, I will wage this battle. Whether or not any of you stand with me, I will fight until the last of the clear skins’ blood has been drank by the hungry earth.”
Lila took a deep breath and looked down upon Asham’s face. She studied every feature as she would the forest floor, intent on locking it into her memory for all eternity. She would never forget what he looked like, would never struggle to recall a particular characteristic. He would be with her always.
“They will die for their sins, my sweet boy.” She whispered. “They will die.”