We walked in silence, but our breathing was loud over our emotion, and the pain in my shoulder seemed to breathe again too as the pills wore thin.
“How is your shoulder?” Sylvie asked, from concern, as well as desire to dispel the silence.
“It is fine. It does not hurt as much,” I answered flatly, to mask my worry about the bullet still being inside of me.
“Oh, you are suffering.”
“I will be fine.”
“You don’t have to be brave for me.”
“I know. But I do if I want to keep going.”
There was nothing else to say about it, as the forest called around us, and the earth sounded beneath us, and our fear rose a little but soon so did our hope when we realized it was nearly morning. The darkness was not yet burned to the blue light, but the crepuscular window between night and morning was starting to open.
Nothing was different but a feeling in our cells, and then there was the sound of the river, not yet seen, but the clear swell of water rushing somewhere down below, which we knew would lead us to the lake.
As we pressed on we heard a single bird call and beat its wings from high in the trees, but we did not know if it was of the night or of the morning, but soon after that the buzzing of bees, as a colony of them moved somewhere in the still darkness.
“It is morning,” I said.
“It is still dark,” she answered. “There are at least another two hours before day.”
“It is morning,” I said with relief.
“How can you be sure?”
“The bees are matutinal. They are up with the day.”
“Like monks,” she said.
“Yes,” I nodded.
I felt her heart lighten a little, and she tried to buoy mine as well. “Do you think they can marry us?”
“Monks cannot administer rites.”
“Their abbot can,” she said. “Just promise you won’t make me a widow. It would not be right, after you made me love you like you did.”
I rested the gun in my waistband and took her hand for comfort. But she stopped dead all of a sudden, screaming with fright as something larger than us moved out of the jungle directly ahead.
Before I had time to get the gun it was rushing right in front of us without fear and, at the sound of her scream, only answered it with a long, low cry, and was right on top of us before we saw it was nothing but one of the cows from the village.
Our chests collapsed with relief, but we were put on guard again, seeing how easy it was for anything out there to come upon us.
“We should hurry. This is still their territory. As soon as it is light they will come for us.”
“They will not bother with us now.”
“I’m afraid they will,” I said. “We know where they are.”
37
We kept along the river’s edge through the last of the cloud forest, the trees growing shorter and shorter, turning first to shrubs, then to grass. The red earth of the plains began to show, and the sky grew slowly lighter, as the morning flowers began to open and spread their perfume, masking the rotting jungle.
We were in an area with only a sparse copse of trees here and there, and could make our way through easily. The air sweetened and I had the sensation we were nearing the lake, though in truth, I had had that sensation many times already, from wishing it so.
The sound of the sluicing river off in the distance was soothing in our ears, even as the trees thickened around it. The ground was flat, at least, and it was light enough that we could see plainly. We hugged the sound of the river, and hoped just to whistle down the darkness until daybreak.
Our phones did not have reception, making it impossible to map our location or call for help, but we felt sure the lake was getting closer, and even the throbbing pain of my shoulder had turned to a white noise against the blue darkness. It was sufferable as long as I did not think about it but stayed focused on walking and fighting off the weariness and creeping hunger, until I ceased to care anymore about what would happen.
Sylvie looked at me tenderly, and tried to mask the pain in her eyes as she took my free hand in her hand. “Just walk with me,” she said, holding my hand and leaning into me, trying to ease my weight as best she could.
“Do you want to rest?” she asked, as we came upon a place a little further on that was open and dry.
“Just a little while,” I agreed.
We sat down in the dew-jeweled grass to take water and rest. It was good to feel my muscles relax, but the pain in my shoulder had started throbbing with greater urgency.
Sylvie handed me the canteen, and the water was cool from the metal and sweet to taste, making me feel we would make it.
We sat there awhile in tranquility, collecting our strength. As we prepared to leave, though, the air became charged with the sense we were being watched. We scanned in opposite directions, and when Sylvie stopped moving I turned slowly to where she was focused, and saw in front of me a pair of deep black eyes, staring at us in pensive silence.
It was a massive blackback, with an enormous head and those preternaturally large eyes contemplating us without blinking, nailing us to where we were. We did not have the sense to be afraid at first, it was so uncanny an intelligence behind them, making us feel less threatened than that we were made of glass, and being turned around in the sun to see how we were composed. When fear finally stirred, it was bone deep, and I moved my hand slowly toward the pistol without thinking. The gorilla saw my movement and charged, shrieking as she rose up onto her two legs so that she was half a head taller than me, and roared close enough that we felt her breath. If I had moved any more she would have taken me from life, but I stayed still, resigned to the worst, as my fear settled and there was nothing to think of except how my life had been. Whatever unfolded, so it was and so be it.
She stopped when I did, and I realized her vocalization had been a warning, as she dropped back to all fours with slow composure, all the while keeping me in her gaze, with a stare of fiery intensity that seared the wall separating us. I was glass and the wall was glass, and the glass thinned and thinned until I felt seen through completely, and it was only a bent note across.
I stood held in her stare, not knowing if she would attack, but feeling at peace with whatever happened. I released the breath I had held, and she let loose a ferocious screech that wakened the birds, making them flock from the trees overhead as she soared up on her feet again, before returning back to all fours on the ground, still staring at me. But I had lost my fear of her, because there was no life beyond that point, simply what I had already had and already was or had been and the shape of her claw. I was content for it to go either way, but knew somehow, or thought I knew, we would be let to pass.
When she settled on the ground, she started moving away in a great rush, until she was twenty feet back, where she stopped at the wall of trees by the bank. We saw the rest of her family then, which we had not before, another blackback, and two infants, who rushed to her and began crawling on her, which she indulged. When she had made it to the far field we could see also another figure in the dirt, a gigantic silverback stretched out immobile, in a snare.
She sat in front of it, pulling the leaves off a branch, which she gave to the juveniles, and did not move any further. We knew what she did not, however, that the poachers would return soon, and we could not be there when they did.
The two matrons both looked at us as we began to back away, and started to rush toward us, but they stopped short and wailed to end the world, before returning again to the corpse and the cubs, who did not understand and wished still to play.