Chapter 11: Hinkuva

I woke up once during the night, a bit surprised to find my arms empty of the warm body that had been in them when I had fallen asleep. At first I began to panic slightly, thinking our captors had already taken Tekia away while I was sleeping. But as my senses slowly awoke, I noticed the sound of stubborn scraping, and as my eyes gradually adjusted to the dim light of the stars and the moons, I was able to make out Tekia’s shape at the door of the cage, and came to realize she was fidgeting with the tightly bound lock on it, trying to pry it off.

I pushed myself off the ground and crawled over to her, seeing her fingernails desperately picking at that stubborn twine. It looked to me like she was going to pry her nails off before she unbound that door, but I couldn’t fault her for trying.

When she noticed me next to her, she paused to look at me. “They all sleeping,” she whispered. “Now is best time! Help me!”

I wanted to think she was right; if anytime was a good time to get away from our captors, this was probably it. But something in my gut told me it wasn’t going to be that easy.

Still, I reached my hand in and started trying to help her undo the bindings on the door. It didn’t seem like we were accomplishing much besides rubbing our fingers raw, but after what felt like hours, some little bits of twine did seem like they were moving a millimeter or two.

Unfortunately, that was as far as we got them, before we heard a throaty, rumbling growl. We immediately froze, pulling our hands back inside the cage as one of the huge reptile things went lumbering past, turning its hungry eyes on us as it did, warning us against trying anything stupid. Even if we did somehow manage to get that cage open, we were not likely to get far before that thing or one of its buddies made a late night snack out of us.

So we sat back again, and Tekia had another long cry in my arms. She’d allowed herself to hope again for just a moment, only to have that hope promptly dashed.

But maybe she wasn’t wrong. We should still be looking for opportunities to escape. Just because this wasn’t it didn’t mean there wouldn’t be another one. So I determined to keep an eye out for it. As Tekia and I relaxed on the ground again, I planned to remain watchful through the night for opportunities.

But that apparently didn’t last long. The next thing I remember, it was daylight, and Tekia and I were being jerked awake for by rough hands grabbing us and pulling us up and out of the cage. We struggled and fidgeted as much as we could, but we knew we weren’t going to get anywhere; not now.

We were taken into the center of their little village, near the smoldering bonfire pile, where they forced us down onto our knees as a small crowd of armed hunters gathered around us. Most of the hunters were already painted up like the ones who had taken us the day before, but a few were still in the process of blackening themselves up over by their thatched huts.

I saw a handful of women gathered in a few small circles a short distance away. The women were not painted or shaved like the men were; in fact, none of the women were standing either. All of them were either sitting or kneeling. At least one was visibly pregnant, and I saw two with babies cradled to their breasts. None of them had the bloodthirsty fire in their eyes of the male warriors surrounding us; rather, they looked more timid and ... I almost want to say subjugated.

It was becoming clear to me that this was not a tribe in the habit of practicing gender equality.

Two little boys poked their heads out of one of the huts to see what was going on, but they were immediately ordered back inside by one of the men, and pretty angrily I might add. As the boys retreated back inside, I could only feel a surge of pity for any child forced to grow up in a community like this. I likened it to the children of gangs and drug runners back in my own world; growing up surrounded by violence and abuse that they would most likely carry on throughout their lives.

As the hunters continued to surround us, with some of their reptilian beasts lurking about, one of them stepped forward, all blackened and covered with more white streaks than any of them. From the way he was decorated, and the way the others parted to let him pass, this guy must have been the chief of these hunters. He looked down at Tekia and me, sizing us up like we were meat. And I had a terrible feeling that was exactly what we were to them.

Then he grinned, and lifted his hand, from which dangled the medallion they had taken off me the night before. He stood there admiring it like a trophy. “Uesee prige ,” he leered, drawing some menacing laughter from the surrounding hunters. “Jakasa krom hee giben, jon? <It’s all right if we take it, right?>”

As the hunters snickered and jeered some more, I turned to look at Tekia. As angry as I felt at that moment, and no matter how much I wanted to spring up and take my medallion back from him, the spears threatening us be damned, I could see that Tekia was fighting that urge even more. I think my medallion actually meant more to her than it even did to me.

“Ramanas! ” the chief shouted, to the response of a chorus of bloodthirsty cheers surrounding us. Grabbing hands descended on us from all sides once again, pulling us up to our feet and guiding us along, keeping spears leveled at us at all times to dispel any notion of resistance, as the hunters hooted and hollered for whatever was to come.

I didn’t know where they were taking us. But at that moment, I was convinced that wherever it was, it would be the last thing I would ever see. I kept glancing over at Tekia, who looked just as terrified as I felt, and tried to tell myself that at least we were going to die together.

But Heleen ... the idea that I might never see her again ... I suddenly found it hard to breathe with that thought in mind.

The trek seemed to take forever as they guided us through the forest. Every time we came to what looked like a clearing or a large stone, I thought, this was it. This was where they were going to kill us. But we kept on moving, on and on, drawing out the agony of anticipating whatever was coming endlessly. I started to wish they would just impale us now and be done with it.

But finally they brought us to a sudden halt, right at the edge of a long, steep embankment overlooking a valley. And I mean right up to the edge, where they practically had us leaning over it, ready to go tumbling down at the slightest shove.

After letting us dangle for a minute or two, they roughly turned us around as their chief stepped up to join them. He leered at us, and said, “Kuras, bakem. Virin ni kuras! ”

And with that, to the sound of jeering laughter on all sides, they pushed us.

Down we rolled, tumbling down the muddy slope, rolling and bouncing all the way. I heard Tekia grunting in pain with each rock and bramble she bumped onto, despite the fact that I was doing similarly.

It was starting to seem like the hill would never end when it finally started to smooth out onto level ground, and we slowed to a stop. I lay there groaning in pain for a long while, before I slowly made my sore and bruised muscles force me up, putting my hands in the mud beneath me and pushing up.

Tekia looked in more or less the same state I was a few feet away, scraped and bruised and covered in dirt and mud, but ultimately more-or-less okay as she sat up in the ground from where she’d landed. “Tekia?” I grunted to her. “Akeven? ”

She paused to check herself out, feeling up her arms and legs and trying to move everything. She made no sudden shrieks of pain or seemed to find anything amiss, so she finally looked at me and shook her head. I pulled my knees up under me, and with some slow, painful effort managed to get myself up onto my feet, before reaching my hand out to help Tekia do the same.

I looked back up the slope we had just fallen down, not seeing the hunters that had shoved us down here. So they hadn’t killed us ... yet. They’d taken us to this valley and thrown us down into it ... but why? Their chief had told us to run for our lives ... from what?

“What is going on here?” I wondered aloud. “What are they doing?”

“I think I know,” Tekia said, her voice quavering. When I turned to look at her, apart from the dirt that was caked on her face, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her looking so pale. Then she looked at me, and in a hushed voice, whispered one word:

“Hinkuva.”

I had never heard that particular word before, but I knew the pieces of it, and was able to discern her meaning. Hin, meaning human, and kuva, meaning hunter...

I looked around at the valley around us. In every direction I looked as far as the eye could see, we seemed to be surrounded by the high mountain walls of the valley. There were plenty of plants and trees in the valley to be found, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a way back up; at least not without some grappling hooks, ropes and utility belts. It was like a natural enclosure, a walled off preserve.

The chief had called us prey, and told us to run. As I thought about it, it all started to make sense. And I was really wishing it wasn’t.

They didn’t want to just kill us.

They wanted to make sport of it.

They were setting us loose in a preserve, so they could hunt us.

And from the bloodthirsty howls I could hear in the distance, it sounded like they were on their way.

Tekia grabbed my hand and we started running for the trees. We had no idea where we were running; we just ran. We ran, and we ran, jumping logs and roots and rocks and embankments, and just kept running, until our muscles ached and breath felt like heavy labor.

When we caught our breath, we looked around to take our bearings. For now, we saw nothing but more forest, with no sign of any hunters or giant lizard things. But that proved nothing. There was no letting our guard down, not even for a second.

So when we heard something stirring in the brush, our first reaction was to tense up, ducking back behind the nearest tree, looking frantically around for the source of the sound. But all that happened was a big gray skira emerged from the trees, flapping its wings and flying away. We relaxed a bit, letting out a breath, and I looked down to where Tekia’s hand was still gripping my bicep like a vice.

That was when I realized the hunters weren’t the only things we would have to worry about. Who knew what else was living down in this valley? We were completely unarmed, and if we happened to run into a krevasha, or a zalaku, or a pack of churudi, or even something worse, we’d be fucked.

And when I turned to look at the pale look on Tekia’s face, I could tell she knew it too. “Clay ... what we do?” she quivered.

I swallowed hard, and tried to think. “There has to be a way out of this valley,” I thought aloud. “Those hunters come and go somewhere. We just have to find it.”

I was about to start moving to look for that way out, when Tekia gripped my arm tighter and pulled me back. I turned to look at her, about to tell her this wasn’t the time to panic, when I noticed her finger at her lips, telling me to be silent. And when I turned to look the other way again, I saw why.

Tekia and I ducked back behind the tree, doing the best we could to remain invisible, as the hunters emerged from the foliage, their spears glistening as they scanned about for us. The ones in front started poking their spears at a bush as a few small animals rustled about in it, and finding nothing of interest, continued to move.

We both held our shared breath, not wanting to make any sound, praying that our pounding hearts weren’t loud enough to give us away. Time slowed to a crawl as we waited for the hunters to move past us. They kept pausing, scanning the trees and brush for signs of us, drawing the wait out to agonizing lengths.

Finally they started to disappear into the brush again. Slowly, Tekia and I began to relax, preparing to dash into the foliage as soon as the hunters were out of sight.

And then, just before the last of them was about to slip out of view, something next to us moved.

Don’t ask me what it was. I couldn’t have told you then, and I couldn’t tell you now. Whatever animal it was that suddenly made a dash for it, the result was the same: that last hunter heard the noise, and stopped, turning to look back in our direction.

And then he started to advance on us.

I did my best to hold in my piss as we slunk around the trunk of the tree, and slipped down behind the nearby bush, which we prayed he wouldn’t start poking at. As I watched carefully through the cover of leaves, the hunter slowly moved toward the tree, his eyes scanning about for anything moving. My heart thudded in my chest as I saw him coming ever closer to where we were hiding, trying to run through the options for what we would do if he spotted us. Maybe Tekia and I could wrestle his spear away from him before he managed to impale us with it; we did have him outnumbered, after all. But even if we did manage that, the noise would most likely only draw the attention of his buddies, and then our options would be reduced to making a run for it, and pray we could get far enough to lose them before a thrown spear or one of their reptile things got us.

It seemed my train of thought was about to become academic as the hunter started leaning around the tree, coming just to the other side of the bush we were hiding behind. He was close enough now that he could’ve reached out to grab us if he knew we were there. Tekia’s hand squeezed mine ever tighter, as we tensed ourselves for fight or flight...

A bird fluttered away through the canopy of the next tree over, turning the hunter’s attention the other way. From what I could see, it looked like that had mostly satisfied his curiosity. And a moment later, I heard the rest of his party calling for him, and he slowly turned and walked away.

I released about a week’s worth of breath. If nothing else, the hunters had probably already succeeded in taking about ten years off my life after that. Tekia collapsed onto my chest, letting out a series of long, slow panting breaths. I held her close as her body relaxed.

And at that moment, I made a decision: we were not going to be helpless like that anymore.

For the next several hours, Tekia and I tramped aimlessly through the forest in search of an exit. Every inch of forest we walked through we tried to memorize, putting together a mental map of the valley as we went. I’m not sure how successful we were; there were a few instances when we passed by a particular tree or rock or embankment that I felt pretty sure we had seen before.

Eventually we heard a soft growling noise, and we tensed up, certain that some sort of predator was about. We searched all around us for whatever beast had made that threatening noise ... until we heard it again, and realized where it was coming from.

My stomach.

In spite of everything, Tekia started to laugh. And after a moment, I couldn’t help but join her.

“You are hungry,” she observed.

“That’s obvious,” I moaned. “Aren’t you? We haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

Tekia’s smile faded as she looked around. “There are animals to catch. Lots of animals.”

“But we don’t have any weapons to hunt with,” I said. “And even if we did, we can’t risk making a cook fire.”

Tekia paused to think. “We can make traps,” she said. “And we not need to cook. We can eat food not cooked.”

The idea of eating raw meat didn’t sound all that appealing, but maybe beggars shouldn’t be choosers, I thought. “Maybe meat is the wrong way to go,” I offered. “Maybe we can find some fruit or something...”

But when I looked at Tekia again, her mind was nowhere near what I was talking about. “Traps...” she quietly mused to herself. She looked up at me, and a little more loudly she repeated, “We can make traps.”

It took me a second to realize she wasn’t talking about food anymore.

What we proceeded to do for the hours after that would have gone much quicker if we’d had a knife or some twine or other supplies, but we made do. We gathered up whatever we could find to make a trap out of: rocks, sharp sticks, bits of vine, whatever. We used rocks to sharpen short sticks into punji stakes, dug little pits to plant them in and covered them with leaves. We tied sharp sticks to a bendy branch, and then pulled it back and tied it in place with a vine as a trip wire. We tied a big rock to a long vine and hung it from a tree, notching it up in a resting place from which it would swing free as soon as someone stepped on the vine laying across the ground.

We continued on like that for a long while, continuing to explore the valley while setting up defenses wherever we could find the materials to make them. But eventually we started to feel faint from hunger, especially after all that walking and work.

So it was quite a relief when, at one point while Tekia was scouting a few feet ahead of me, she suddenly brightened, and excitedly ushered me forward to see what she had found: a small grove that was positively overgrown with ripe, juicy fruits. I joined Tekia in her merry laughter; this was the kind of good luck we could use right about now.

I hopped into the grove and reached up to pluck a plump, bright yellow skoja fruit, and handed it to Tekia before grabbing another one for myself. And in the second or two it took me to grab mine and turn to look at her again, Tekia had buried her nose halfway into the fruit in her hands and was hungrily scarfing away. She turned her eyes up to look at me, and then lifted her head, revealing her mouth and nose covered in pulp and sticky juices.

I tried to hold in my laughter, and was mostly successful. For about three seconds. Then I snorted, and started laughing heartily. Tekia smiled bashfully before she started to laugh with me.

“Here, let me get that,” I said—and then leaned in to suck the pulp off her nose with my mouth. She squeaked and pulled back, but continued laughing.

As soon as I tasted the pulp, though, I sputtered and spit it out, having gotten all the dirt that was on her face with it. “You’re all dirty!”

Tekia made a mock-scandalized face, before she jumped on me and started trying to shove her fruit into my mouth. We rolled and laughed as I munched on the fruit she force-fed me, and then I shoved mine into her face too.

As we untangled ourselves, we sat on the ground and ate calmly, looking at each other and smiling the whole time, occasionally stopping to steal little kisses, and once or twice to just straight up make out. For a brief time, we were able to forget about the dire situation we were in, and just enjoy life like a regular pair of happy lovers.

But of course, all good things must come to an end.

Right while we were in the middle of munching on fruit between little kisses, Tekia suddenly lifted her head, scanning about the forest. “Mon etek? ” she said.

I lifted myself from the dirt and strained to listen, and I did indeed hear a sound coming through the brush. It was the sound of multiple footsteps, and hushed voices whispering to each other. And peering through the foliage, I could just make out the shapes of bodies painted black moving through the forest.

I gave Tekia the hand signal that Shimara had taught me, communicating the need to stay low and move silently, and we slowly slunk on all fours away from the grove, keeping our heads below the bushes and ferns around us. We found the densest thicket of leaves we could locate around us, and then watched silently from our hiding places as the partially obscured shapes of our would-be killers skulked through the brush.

After hiding and waiting for what seemed an eternity, we were ultimately rewarded with the satisfying sound of a scream of pain, followed by the hubbub of the other hunters around the one who had just fallen into one of our traps. That was our cue to move. I grabbed Tekia’s hand and away we ran.

We dashed through the brush hand-in-hand as fast as we could, trying to put as much distance between us and the hunters as possible. The forest became a green blur around us; nothing had solid form except for the feel of Tekia’s hand against my own and the ground beneath our feet.

And then, all at once, I felt myself being yanked away from that ground, and Tekia’s hand was ripped from mine. The world was still too much of a moving blur to discern what was happening; I felt myself being pulled somewhere, but there was nothing beneath my feet.

It was only when I came to a sudden, jerking stop that I was slowly able to make heads or tails of what had just happened. Apparently Tekia and I weren’t the only ones who had thought to set traps in this valley. I had stepped in a snare, and was now dangling upside down by my ankle from a rope about six feet above the ground.

Looking ahead of me, I saw the upside down image of Tekia running up to me. “Clay!”

“I’m okay,” I said, though I don’t know how true that was. The rope that had snagged me was digging hard into my ankle, and my efforts to bend and lift myself up to undo it weren’t going so well.

Tekia ran up to the tree I was dangling from, and followed the rope to find the counterweight log, which she crouched and dug her fingernails into in her efforts to untie it. My attention turned to the ground several feet below me, as I tried to look for soft spots, and failing that, how I could best tuck and roll when she got me down that would save me from cracking my skull on the ground.

But then I noticed the sound of Tekia wrestling with the knot had stopped, while I was still hanging upside down. When I turned to look at her, she was still kneeling over the log, but was now frozen in place, staring straight in one direction.

So I looked in that direction.

And I found a hunter’s face leering back at me.

If I hadn’t been immobile already, I certainly would have been then, as that hunter gripped his spear and chuckled at me, and then proceeded to taunt me, calling me a helpless little animal in a trap. And then his sights narrowed on Tekia, who carefully started to rise, still bent at the knees, poised to move at any moment but remaining as still as possible.

And then he taunted me further—by mocking how helpless I was to stop what he was about to do to her.