The Broken Crown

Chapter 19

Anaïs

The lands of the Yaguar were not at all as bad as Anaïs had expected. Stories said that the Yaguars slayed each other on a daily basis, that blood ran thick in the forests and that some of the clans ate humans as well as animals. She had been there for a fortnight, and she had yet to see such savagery with her own eyes.

No, it was not what these bloody stories had told her that proved to be the true problem; it was the things that she had never heard of – the heat, the insects, the dirt. But even that was not an issue once you grew used to it.

One of the things she realized only days after arriving was how hard they worked. Young children haunted monkeys and wild boar from the age of seven or eight, and at the age of twelve, they could be taken out to do the sweathunt. Girls and boys alike filled the hunting groups as well as the kitchens or the practice to fight on the field of battle.

“What is the sweathunt?” she had asked the Kahari one of her first nights, as he lay naked and sated beside her.

“Sweathunt is a particular type of hunting,” he explained to her, half in her native tongue, half in his, “where a small group of hunters go to the savannah in search for prey. If they find a group of animals, they will try to lead one of them away from the rest. For hours, they will pursue it until they catch it.

“I believe you remember the antelopes – the animals that look like your deer. It runs much faster than us, but it cannot continue for as long. By running behind it for hours, leaving it only a few minutes of rest every once in a while, it will grow tired. Usually, they cannot even move in the end, and it is merely a question of walking up to it and slitting its throat.”

It was far too easy to picture. But for the next many days, she was not invited to hunt – for which she was grateful. Instead, she assisted in collecting fruits and firewood in the close perimeter around the village. Soon enough, she settled into a daily rhythm. She even met another one of the women, a girl around her age named Jhakari, who reminded her a little of Karen. She undeniably spoke as much.

One of these days, just as she and Jhakari had returned with a pile of wood, she decided to take some time for herself. She excused herself to her friend before walking into the forest.

Until that day, she hadn’t walked much out of the circle that she worked in. Now she knew that part of the forest so well that she was sure she could recognize it in case she got lose. This gave her the courage to continue further than she had gone before.

Around her, birds chirped songs that she had still not gotten used to. The sounds of insects filled her ears, something, which had been annoying to begin with but she had now gotten used to. Her hands became wet every time she pushed aside a leaf or a branch. Rain season was coming, the Kahari had told her, and sure enough, rain was becoming more and more frequent.

She knew that she was moving north by east, close to the path, which she and the tribe had walked on when she arrived for the first time. It was here, somewhere right between the boundaries of the jungle and her village, with the path somewhere to her left, that she found her new haven.

It was a simple clearing. All that grew was grass and a few small flowers. There was all in all no reason why no trees would grow there, but that made the place even more magical than the surrounding forest.

On this day, it was merely a resting place. She sat down, unaware that she would visit that place again and again in the future. For some reason, almost without noticing, tears began trickling down her cheeks. It wasn’t until she ran her fingers beneath her eyes and felt the dampness of her skin that she felt the pain.