OVER THE COURSE of the following days, Isaiah started to feel increasingly more comfortable with his Zura escort. Though quite private about her intentions he’d set aside his suspicions of her being a guardian, a sorceress or simply a Zura wanting to eat him. It was no longer in his interest to pretend to be any more skilled than he was, which decreased his overall tension. That was not to say he was anywhere near comfortable. The days were long, and even if Cyra was more considerate regarding meals and breaks than Tzelem had ever been, he still felt himself longing for a roof over his head, a warm meal that wasn’t bear meat, and a morning that didn’t start with his back hurting. Most of all, he longed for safety.
The bear was dead. He knew that with certainty, as they’d already eaten half of it. It was a rare animal too, and as Cyra had repeated many times – it wasn’t supposed to be awake this time of year. According to her, what had happened to them had been such an oddity, there were next to no chances of it reoccurring. Yet, the forest hosted other threats and the fact that he’d survived seemed more and more like a miracle to him. It seemed he’d been given a new chance, which he guessed was a nice thing, but it also made surviving a second time seem more unlikely. He was still far from indulging in the world of superstitions, gods and protecting spirits that Cyra rambled on about. He didn’t believe anything other than a fierce Zura girl (with a sharp sword and quick reflexes) had been the reason he’d gotten away. Yet, he wanted to at least believe in luck, and if he’d ever had any of it, it would seem he’d spent it all at once. Being on the road these days was a dangerous enough thing in itself, and being there, as an unlucky man living on borrowed time, seemed to be nothing less than a death wish. After the relief of his survival had worn off then, it was thoughts of this kind – as well as the ever unfamiliar sounds of the forest – that kept him up at night. It kept him looking at the stars, being the only known things he seemed to encounter while listening to the fire’s threatening flickers.
“You say Zura always work together.” Cyra said on their third night.
“I also said I was sorry…” He answered, surprised she was still awake. The girl usually slept like a rock from the very moment she laid down – another quality he couldn’t help but to envy.
“No,” she said, “it is no wrong. I want to know – what else do they say of Zura in your tribe?”
“I…I don’t really have a tribe.”
“Everyone has tribe, no?” He thought about the captives in the fortress. If anything, it might be the closest representation he had.
“Well, my tribe is very different from yours. I never really trusted their opinions on… most things...”
“You don’t trust your tribe? Not even your grandfather?”
“I do trust my grandfather – that’s different. And he never told me about Zuras.”
“What has others of your tribe said of Zura then?”
“Maybe it’s best if you didn’t know...”
“Why not?” She asked, sitting up abruptly. Isaiah sighed. She was, of course, asking to get offended, but he was afraid she’d get angry again. Though an angry Zura would have seemed terrifying a few days before, it had instead become more of an annoyance – her moods were impossible to keep track of.
“You might not like it.” He warned her.
“I will know it – and I decide if I like... it.” She spit the last words out, and having nudged her fires already, he thought telling her wouldn’t make much of a difference.
“I’ve heard many stories…”
“Tell me the worst.” She looked at him with hungry excitement, and he rolled his eyes as he sat up.
“They told me you wear the knuckles of the villagers you kill as symbols of pride.” He said, nodding towards the bony looking rings decorating her left hand.
“No. Villager bones are weak and wearing them would be opposite of pride. We wear bones of our dead elders for protection. Their remains – our reminders. Also, we no kill villager unless they come looking for death.”
“And that thing on your right hand?” her knuckles were covered with some dark, gray metal covering four of her fingers. She raised her eyebrows, and then plainly said.
“For hitting things hard. Now, tell me worst story.“ Isaiah scratched his chin. It was perhaps sinister to wear someone’s bones, but this was far from the most unpleasant story he’d heard of Zura. “I hope this won’t make her hit me hard.” He thought, knowing she wouldn’t stop asking till she got a satisfying answer.
“Someone once told me Zuras treat children very cruelly, and… and that they eat children from the villages.” He was certain she would either make a furious protest or laugh in his face, but she did neither. Instead, she went silent for a moment before saying: “This is true.”
“Your… your tribe eats children?”
“After revolt against capital, King punish Zura. He force us stay small area, tell us if we hunt outside it, they slaughter everyone. We only tribe left in Nahbí this time, and after revolt very small tribe – only seventeen Zura left in Araktéa, and my mother only Zura child. Not even great hunters could survive. All the land dry and empty – nothing growing there, after short time nothing left to hunt. They almost starve…” Cyra took a breath, as if moved by a past she couldn’t possibly have lived through herself. Isaiah had never heard of any Zura revolt before. He nearly asked her about it, but held his tongue, seeing her face with a vulnerability he hadn’t thought someone like her capable of.
“Finally, our leader go to villages, begging for food. The King had not said anything about punishment for this. It was big disaster – Zura never beg. Many say this bring big humiliation and dishonor to us and ancestors. Our leader thought nothing else to do. Some agreed – letting tribe starve to death would be bigger sin. Leaving the bloodline die in pain and weakness, when we are a people of strength. Other say he should have taken the sixteen and attack capital again – burn it to the ground.” Her eyes turned almost black from the other side of the fire. She’d made it with two rocks and it had taken her no more than three seconds. three, tiny seconds to light up a fire without a single match.
“All of them would have died…” Isaiah uttered.
“Yes, but Zura would have died in honor – we would have died fighters. But – that is not what happened. Story say he was refused by three first villages. The third one not even let him enter. When he come to village four, his starved demon finally take over his body. He look weak, no meal for weeks, but on his way out, he fight five grown men alone. Then, he stole one fat child that the last seventeen feast on that night. It was after this, rumor of wild, evil and hungry Zura spread in Araktéa. Almost nobody tell true story, but we survive better with their false fear than our truth.” She stopped talking, looked at him as to see his reaction, while he allowed what she’d just told him to sink in. He was almost tempted to take out his book and write it down, for though it was a similar tale to one he’d heard in Captive’s Cave, it told quite a different story.
“What did the villagers do then? They attacked the Zuras?” Cyra shook her head, a sly smile forming on her lips.
“Each of four villages offered their fattest, spoilest child so we would leave them alone forever. This is reason we never enter now. We did make pact, and we keep our word. As I tell you before, me meeting Tara in Duroya – exception.”
“But you never ate anyone. You wouldn’t do that?” Isaiah swallowed hard and she smiled stiffly.
“I did not eat but my mother did. The other sixteen did too and tribe leader was my mother’s father. In Zura we are one, connected in strength, pain and victory – past and future. I look like I am alone now, but we are always together. So, what you said is right – but what you thought was wrong. Understand?” Isaiah didn’t think he quite did. Still, he felt he could understand her – or rather them – better. She was a them, much like he and his grandfather were a we. She was a part of a whole he couldn’t see and they were all around her, around… him. The notion gave him chills.
“Just like you want to save your blood, we will always do what we must to save Zura. No matter what, we follow Zura law. It is all we are.”
“But your grandfather broke the law, did he not?” She shook her head.
“He did not break the law. He chose life, so he broke rule nobody agree on. It is only the true laws, we cannot break. Old laws…” She thought for a moment but seemed to conclude this was too complicated for his shelako mind to comprehend.
“That is why all of them did eat. Even they who say it shameful begging for food or eat children, they ate and he allowed it. Some still say he is coward. Others say he is great savior of Zura.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think I can not say before I starve myself.” Isaiah thought he’d never eat human flesh, but again, maybe that just meant he’d never really felt true starvation. Considering just how awful he’d felt after a whole day without a meal, going for several weeks was nearly unthinkable to him. And so, he realized he was perhaps in no position to make his own judgement on the matter either.
“What happened after they’d eaten all of them?”
“After, more animal found in area. Then many new children born. They say, it was same children that had been eaten. That they came to live better, and that they choose Zura so tribe could live and so that they could learn our way.” The theory sounded absurd, but Isaiah didn’t say anything. If she wanted to believe herself to be the wandering soul of some fat, village child, that was her business entirely.
“If it hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be here now.” He said instead, and she laughed.
“Yes. Here we both are, living life on top of other’s deaths.” The comment turned his chills into shivers. She said it with an ease that almost seemed joyous, and though it was somewhat true, it seemed too brutal to be said out loud. Too vicious to be said underneath a bright, starry sky like the one above their heads.
“Now you tell me about your tribe. Fa.. family, that is what you call it, no?”
“It is.” He said hesitantly. “I only have my grandfather. My mother died right after I was born, and it seems you already know who my father is.”
“You must be told about them.”
“Very little...” he said, remembering the unfinished letter. Wondering if his grandfather would tell him more once he found him. “My grandfather told me my father left home just before he turned fourteen. He wanted to go out on adventures, slay beasts, and find faraway castles that didn’t exist.” Cyra laughed, and perhaps for the first time, it was not out of mockery. But he was not kidding. As far as he knew, this had always been the truth.
“It’s ridiculous, I know. Other people claim he was a great hero – the one man that truly dared to challenge the realm after the revolution. I guess, what you just told me contradicts that…”
“Villagers…” Cyra spat “Always praising idea of being ‘only one’.” There was a pause between them as they both looked towards the night sky.
“Some people claim he went to the Parda, afterwards. And that he then didn’t come back to fulfill the promises he’d made to the Nagárians – or anyone else for that matter. If this is true, I don’t understand why so many people call him a hero. I don’t really know what, if any of it, is true anymore.”
“You think you nothing like him?” She shot in, and he felt glad it’d been made apparent.
“If any of it is true, I know I’m not.” Cyra did not look as disappointed as he’d thought she would by this. Rather, she looked like she understood him more than it would make sense for her to do.
“Many Zura admire Ares. We say he not normal villager. Moving faster and with more fire.” She tapped her belly with her fist, before continuing. “In some ways, he share his strength so we could raise up against King again… some also believe gods sent him to free us.”
“Free you?” he asked. To him the Zuras, as well as other tribes, had become the very symbol of freedom – moving around and never settling anywhere, like leaves in the wind. Nature as a whole was their home, and nature was a large place. Then again, he’d also thought them to be lawless, when it in fact seemed their laws were just different ones from theirs – strange ones at that.
“After revolution, Zura grow strong again. But new King even worse than old King. His men come to slaughter us. Most escape alive but my grandfather die and my mother new tribe leader.“
“That’s terrible.” Isaiah had never thought the realm could act so violently.
“Yes. And now, there is less good land to share – even if we free to wander again. Even if Nagariáns don’t dare to hurt us anymore.” He remembered what Archilai had said, about the soil not being what it once had been. It almost sounded as if nature was getting smaller – as if it was gradually killing itself and bringing everyone inside it along. “Is this too due to this corruption?” He wondered, again worrying about his and his grandfather’s mind. Taking in a long breath, he looked at the stars. Whatever might happen, they would stay the same at least.
“You should go to Delta. There is a lot of land there – good and fertile land.” He said, noticing a bright star that he’d used to see through his window before going to bed. Looking down again, he regretted the suggestion.
“It not so easy. Nothing is so easy.” More than anything else she’d said thus far, he agreed with this, and so he didn’t make any further suggestions to what might move her tribe closer to his home. Cyra seemed to be somewhat sensible – even civilized. Her tribe as a whole, (with all their bony rings, sharp teeth and terrifying fire dances), was something quite different. Though not murderous perhaps, they were too wild to ever live in harmony with Deltans. As an afterthought, he realized he didn’t really know the villagers any more than he knew the Zuras. He knew both believed in gods and blessed their food before eating. In some world that might have been enough – but not in theirs. He’d seen too many captives criticize each other’s prayers – even fighting over them and spilling blood over something as innocent as pretty words said out into the air.
“Look!” Cyra pointed upwards, and his eyes followed.
“What is that?”
“A falling star. A sign of fate.” Her tone was uncharacteristically clear, and then she laughed delightfully, as if she’d been wishing for the sky to fall down all her life. Isaiah crawled his body back together to sleep – seeing it as a sign he’d been looking upwards for a little too long.
*
As the following days would reveal, Cyra had not exaggerated when she’d said that Zuras didn’t waste anything. After they’d chewed their way through the meatier parts of the bear, she’d started preparing its intestines. They had no spices of course, adding no other taste to their meals than its raw, natural flavor. The oddly shaped organs were not disguised inside some stew, like they often did in the fortress, it was put on a stick, and though well-cooked to avoid potential poisoning, there was no tricking yourself while you ate it. “We must eat with open eyes.” Cyra had explained, noticing the repulsiveness as Isaiah tried forcing down a piece of tongue. It wasn’t pleasing, but he did his best to eat as she did. This animal’s life was on him after all, of which she kept on reminding him. Still, she let him sleep on its skin at night – claiming she had hot blood that kept her warm.
Only on their sixth day of riding they’d finally eaten every last edible bit of bear. By then, Isaiah had gotten somewhat used to the strange taste. He’d even learned to enjoy it, though mostly due to the fact it had spared them the time and hassle of hunting. Now, as nothing edible seemed to be growing in the area, they were left with no choice. Fishing would have been an option a few days prior, but according to Cyra, there were no clean lakes or rivers for miles.
“Our best chance here is shooting something that flies.”
“You mean a bird?” Isaiah suggested.
“You name it as you wish.” She sighed nonchalantly, slipping off her horse’s back and pulling a long arrow from her leather quiver. She hadn’t hunted yet, but it had been on her back since they left, accompanied by her elegantly shaped bow. Though Isaiah still wasn’t sure about her skills in combating bears, he knew what a wonder she was at archery – and despite his personal dislike of it, he felt a certain expectation about seeing her in action. They left their horses close to the path, and as they wandered into the forest, its shades fell cooling upon them. It was now both dryer and warmer in Nahbí than it had been a few weeks earlier, and they had finally been given a rainless day. Had it not been for the fact they were about to assassinate something; Isaiah perhaps would have appreciated the forest’s beauty more. It was no Deltan forest. The grass and leaves slightly dry, yet, with the sunlight falling in between the trees, leaving skylights shining over moss clothed rocks, it had a pleasant ambience.
They watched the treetops, and their every movement, carefully – listening for anything that wasn’t their own steps or breaths. Only after what seemed like a small eternity of intense focus, Isaiah spotted something at the edge of his left eye. It was not a bird or any other flying thing – but a large, brown rabbit, eating grass peacefully by a thin water stream. He held out his arm, signaling his finding to Cyra – who of course, had already seen it.
“You want to try?” She whispered, then handed him the arrow, before giving him a chance to respond. Isaiah looked at her, disbelief washing over his face.
“Always kill with prayer.” She whispered, and he took her bow like he’d seen her people do it from afar. It was heavier than he’d expected. His hands were not shaking like they had been the first time he’d held a knife (or the second or the third time for that matter). They were steady, and he felt a rare sort of presence, seeing the rabbit from behind the arrowhead. As he let go, with a small prayer for it not to suffer, it swooped steadily through the air and penetrated its soft flesh. Cyra made a loud scream that would’ve made any flying thing fly, if there’d been any, but the forest bore no other movement just then. Just the sound of a satisfied crow closeby - and nobody ate crows as far as he knew.
“You did it, shelako!” She exclaimed, her smile wider than he’d ever seen it.
“I did!”
“You say you never use arrow.”
“I haven’t. I have watched others do it a few times….” He admitted. He wanted to tell her he’d seen her do it before, but in the danger of seeming like he’d spied on her, he stopped himself.
“Maybe you are more like father than you think. Or maybe I am great teacher.” She concluded.
“Yes – one that suddenly decided to test my hunting skills, right when we’re out of food in the middle of the woods.”
“Sometimes no preparing is better. Makes necessities more necessary, and so nature gives whatever you need. Also, you…” she said, raising her sharp eyebrows as she pointed her finger to his forehead, “spend too much time there.”
“You were the one looking upwards for birds, when there were perfectly, fat rabbits down here on the ground.” She rolled her eyes and snarfed.
“You got lucky, shelako.” He shrugged.
“Maybe next, you could teach me how you made fire without matches?”
“What is matches?” She asked, and he contained a smile.
“Nothing you will ever need, your Majesty.”
“Stop calling me that.” He had started saying it as a joke. He never really made jokes, but he’d thought it rather funny, since Cyra sometimes reminded him of the fierce queens from hero tales.
“But it is true in a way...” he said. Now that he knew she in a way was the upcoming Zura leader, he thought it suited her even better.
“No. I warn you, shelako – stop calling me that.” Her eyes had gone dark and serious in the scary way – as opposed to the more commonly, annoyed kind.
“Okay.” He said, raising his hands apologetically, as he walked over to claim his trophy. He suspected he in reality had the aiming skills of a seven-year-old Zura child, but this would still make him a better huntsman than most people. Regardless of this, Cyra seemed content with his progress, despite his numerous misses as they resumed the hunt. Though both knew she could have done it herself quite effortlessly, he finally felt he was making a sort of contribution to their temporal, little unit.
“Since there are more rabbits than bears, are their lives worth less?” he asked, as they sat down to prepare their mid day meal.
“No.”
“But you never kill bears? Yet, Zuras eat things like deers and rabbits all the time.”
“You saw me kill bear.”
“Only because you had to.”
“I did not have to, and were you normal villager, I wouldn’t do it.” Usually it was her archery or her two daggers that called for her hand, both in hunts and combats. With the bear incident, It’d been the first time she’d pulled her father’s sword out of her own initiative. Mostly, the heavy weapon rested on her back like some sort of symbolic reminder.
“Thank you.” Isaiah said and she shrugged. They looked at each other for a moment, and though he had questions, he decided to leave them unsaid as she seemed oddly pensive. They ate their lunch in a silence of a pleasant sort, and then Cyra gave him some advice regarding his shooting technique – confirming that he indeed, had the aiming skills of a child, but that it was better than most shelakos. Better than she’d expected.