THE BIRDS IN MY BLOOD STOP MID-FLIGHT. WHEN I THINK OF YOU, A WAR ENDS.
The darkness became her; caressed her; transformed her into a thing belonging, a thing unnamed and treacherous. Embraced by the shadows of the trees with a canopy so dense the stars could not strain through, the black was almost absolute. It was broken only by the bioluminescent glow of some strange fungus or plant, and those Boudika did not trust. The forest could not be trusted; especially at night. And she moved with all the self-awareness and external preoccupation of the hunter, and hunted. She was both; listening for the strange calls of the island's birds and great cats, remembering all too well the ocelot-like feline she had seen when first arriving.
The unpredictable nature of the island, by now, was expected. Boudika had been searching for days, for the god’s gift; for a relic that may or may not have existed; for a favour that may or may not be bestowed. Boudika was compelled with an obsessive, furious energy—an energy that was as dark as the island’s own heart, throbbing perpetually beneath her feet. A bridge of pearls and nacre, blood-red berries and ivy and beasts twisting in the sea. Everything about the island was at once familiar and unknown; beautiful and horrific; and it made her heart ache exquisitely, nostalgically. For what?
Time, she thought. Tonight was a night during which she could not face the sea; she could not face the gentle rush of waves, the glint of starlight at the raucous surface. The tropical climate of the island was too foreign for her to find nostalgia in it; but the nature of the island, capricious and wily, was familiar. It made her think of her old home which, now, would be far more alien to her than Novus, than even the accursed island on which she roamed. Boudika sought time; she sought the ability to turn it back; to ask a favour.
Boudika could hear the running water of a stream. Compelled, she followed. A feeling had possessed her, for all the days she had been on the island; the feeling that the thing she sought so desperately would be found just around the corner. The faith Boudika kept was a fragile one, but one nonetheless. The water screamed at her, but the forest gave way to the rushing presence of the stream. Boudika would have called it a siren’s call, if not for the piercing wail that possessed it, as sharp and beautiful as shattered glass. But hideous, too. Boudika continued to weave in and out of the trees at the stream’s bank, moving quietly, very quietly. In her mind, she revisited a memory:
“What kills them?” the professor had asked.
The children responded with a chorus of answers. “Iron! Steel! Copper! Gold!” Anything heavy, Boudika wanted to say, but did not. And then Vercingtorix answered for her. “Anything heavy,” he said calmly, cooly. In that moment, she knew he would be a general. The professor went on. Anything natural that is then made, not-natural. Ores manipulated into weapons. The earth transformed into a killing-thing.
Boudika took notes as the professor explained, more elaborately, “Anything that was once natural but has been manipulated or forged. That might sound common-sense, but wood won’t kill them, and neither will stones. Only the purest metals can Bind them. That is why in our culture, we paint ourselves with the colour gold when going to war with the water-horses.”
And she remembered:
The iron chain-links were thrown over his back with enough force to break the skin. The metal sizzled his blood and he bowed beneath the weight, held between two of the Dreadnaught soldiers. The Prince of a Thousand Tides fell to his knees before her, broken, and the golden collars were fixed about his neck. And then his eyes bore into her own, his eyes like the tumultuous sea, as she streaked his face with golden dust and spoke the words of the Old Language, Binding him. “Avur’ut masa’raila.” He would never be the sea again. Only a horse.
Only a man.
And those tumultuous eyes broke before her, like water on rocks.
Something cracked in the forest. A perceptible noise. A noise that meant she was no longer alone. Boudika froze, one hoof still lifted.
The huntress saw him, and her blood cooled to something reptilian, draconic. Demonic. She saw him, and his words returned with a sharp clarity. I can Make you, he had said, and Boudika only now realised how badly she wanted to be unmade, transformed into a creature she could not recognise, a creature she could forgive. Perhaps the cooling of her blood was not her old hunter’s instinct; perhaps, instead, it was fear.
But fear was something Boudika could not bare to face, not there, not in that moment. As the kelpie lowered his head to drink, she stepped forward, revealing herself. His horn glinted in the dark not-light, the strange bioluminescence, the shockingly unnatural forest in which neither of them belonged. She was a tigress amid the foliage; her dark shape provided an almost disembodied entity of a chestnut head that bled into a bald face, skull-like face. Her striped haunches disappeared and her white socks were nothing for the knee-high jungle brush to conceal.
It was not where she had expected to find him again. No, this temptation she had expected from the fresh and haughty sea. Not the confines of the forest, with its choking thickness and its wailing stream.
Her horns dipped. A question. And an answer.
“The jungle is choking this stream.” Her tone was clipped and the darkness concealed her passion. At once, she loved and hated him for being there. At once, she loved and hated all he represented. “Why else would it wail to you so?” Then, as she stepped forward: “This island is no place for a water horse.”
But then, did that not mean there was no place for their huntress? If they did not belong, was it not true that she, herself, did not? The forest, at their meeting, seemed strangely silent. The island's heart-beat was no longer the only one she felt; no, her blood pounded in her ears, her mortality, and her mind was full of golden paint.
