Zahrah the Windseeker

  All you can really do is pat some soil on the wound-greeny Jungle soil is very good for wounds—and get some rest. Everything else is up to fate. You will either live or die. Over 50 percent of those poisoned will die. It depends on how tough you are. As the poison circulates in your bloodstream, you will get more and more sluggish and less alert. When you're near the end, you may see lines and blotches. You will Know your fate within a day or so.

  Still, beware of that sweet sleep you crave, tine more you sleep, the stronger that venom inside you becomes. Too much sleep could bring on death even if you're strong. Try setting your alarm clock. Have it wake you up every four hours and then walk around if you can.

  If you live, it's not over yet. For the next six to seven months, until the poison has fully left your system, you'll be susceptible to spontaneous spells of deep sleep whenever your blood pressure rises high, such as times of extreme fear or anxiefy. Good luck!

  "Spontaneous spells of deep sleep? Just from being scared?" I said out loud in disbelief. I felt so tired that I slurred my words. "It's just a matter of dying now or later!"

  I smacked my forehead and closed my eyes, almost falling asleep right then and there. I shook my head, picked up a stone, and threw it hard at the corpse of the scorpion. The stone landed in the exposed meat of the gaping hole that the tortoise had bitten into. I grimaced with disgust. Still, the cursed thing had done this to me. Evil, vile thing. My arm was already itching, several bright blue spots popping up on it.

  A sudden wave of drowsiness hit me, and I sat down heavily in front of a tree before the whip scorpion.

  "Oh, no, no!" I whispered in my slurred voice. "Not now, can't sleep."

  I had to fight it. To fall asleep on the ground in the jungle was practically suicide, poison or no poison!

  My eyelids felt as if someone were gently pulling them down, and I even thought I heard my mother's voice softly singing in my ear a melody she always sang to me when I was young.

  Close the door

  Light the light.

  We're staying home tonight.

  Far away from the hustle

  And the bright city lights.

  I mumbled the song along with the voice I thought I heard. Even as sleep took me, I felt my stomach grumble. I didn't have any nourishment in my body to fight the poison, either. Oh, my chances of living were so so slim. If I fall asleep, I thought, not only will I not wake up, but neither will Dari. My mind was going fuzzy. I've failed him, I thought, and I've failed myself

  Then I slept.

  Chapter 16

  The Wood Wit

  I was lucky a second time.

  It was afternoon when I woke. The afternoon of the next day! I'm alive, I thought. But blue splotches and purple lines clouded my vision, so that I had to squint to make things out. Several vines from the tree above me had crept down and begun to grow across my shoulders. Already the jungle was trying to swallow me up, and I wasn't even dead yet!

  Some sort of furry, orange, round rodent was licking the sweat off my left arm. When I moved, it rounded its lips and made an odd oooooo sound and scurried away. I blinked and tried to move my arms up to push the vines away and rub off the animal's saliva onto my clothes. I was able to do so, but my muscles ached horribly. My entire body was wet with perspiration, but I felt cold as ice. The vines had suction-cup-like buds that fastened them to my arm. Pulling them off wasn't painful, but it took me a minute to flake them from my skin.

  I sat for a moment thinking. Why nothing had come along and eaten me in the night (unless I counted the attempts by the vine and the licking rodent) was beyond me. Maybe the jungle's creatures and beasts felt soriy for me, or maybe I just didn't fit into the current menu; maybe I was poisoned meat. I didn't know. I didn't care. I was alive and that was all that mattered.

  "Oh," I groaned.

  I may not have died yet from the scorpion's poison, but I was certainly on my way out. The minute my mind remembered what had happened to me, I knew that what I was experiencing was my body dying. It was an eerie sensation. Like everything was shutting down and packing up. A part of me even wanted to lie down and go back to sleep. I knew if I did, I wouldn't wake up. But still, the urge was strong.

  It was the thought of my parents and how they would feel if I died that got me going. I could scarcely fathom the grief they were feeling in that very moment and how their grief would deepen if I never went back. The stories they might imagine of how I died would cause them even more sadness. Then there would be worse stories other people would make up. I would become like the man in the folktale the farmers had told us.

  My mother would stop combing her hair, and my father would forget to put on his favorite cologne. They would look at my bedroom with all the things I'd have left behind. They would watch the plants on my dresser grow out of control, the dresses in my closet get moldy, and my personal computer stop evolving. I'd always be a ghost that haunted them, as Dari would haunt his parents.

  All these thoughts moved through my mind like a fly moves through sugar palm sap. Slowly but determinedly. And before I knew it, I was crying and pushing myself up. My muscles screamed and my vision clouded with more spots and lines, but I forced myself to move. I stood up and almost fell forward. I steadied myself and then began to walk, leaving my things behind. I had to get some nourishment in my system if I was to have a chance.

  I looked at the gash on my arm. Despite the mud I had smeared on it, the blue spots had spread all the way up to my shoulder, and the entire arm felt tingly and itchy.

  "No scratching," I said to myself. It wasn't easy.

  I slowly bent down, scooped up some more moist soil, and applied it to my arm. It was cool and soothed the itchiness some. I closed my eyes and mustered all the strength that I had left. When I opened them, a few of the spots and lines had disappeared.

  Stumbling, I looked around for any type of tree that might have edible fruits. One tree was heavy with several of those blue mystic mangoes. I stopped and looked at it for a moment. I was desperate and willing to endure the nasty taste and horrible hallucinations if only to keep me alive, but who knew what those mystic mangoes would do to me in my weakened condition? I moved on.

  Tall palm trees, mahogany trees, ekki trees, bushes, ferns. A tree that I couldn't name with flat disklike red seeds. Another tree with black berries that I wasn't familiar with. Other than the mystic mango tree, there were no trees bearing any familiar fruits. I wandered around for a few more minutes until I heard buzzing. Loud buzzing.

  "Is that in my head?" I grumbled.

  The spots and lines had returned, and I was starting to feel even more worn out. My stomach growled, but I ignored it to listen harder to the buzzing as I rubbed my forehead. I almost dismissed the noise as part of the poison's effect, but a large, fuzzy, yellow and black bee zoomed past me. I followed it with my eyes, and that was when I saw it.

  The tree was wide like a baobab, but it had spikes like a pine tree. The spikes covered every inch of the tree, making the branches look like far-reaching hairy arms, except for its trunk, which was a light brown and very smooth. Halfway up, the tree split into a giant unnatural fork, as if at some time it had been struck by lightning and simply grown in two directions. Between the jagged edges of exposed wood was a golden mass that, even in the shade of the forest, seemed to glow. It was a beehive swarming with thousands and thousands of fuzzy, noisy bees. But my attention wasn't on the noise or the possibility of getting stung. It was solely on the honey that must have been inside.

  My mouth began to water. Slowly, I walked up to the tree. I had no idea what I was going to do. My mouth grew moister as I thought about the sweet honey oozing into my mouth with each bite. Maybe I can tear offa tiny bit of the comb without the bees noticing, I thought. A ridiculous idea, but I was in a ridiculously desperate situation.

  I was only a few feet away from the tree's smooth trunk when something strange happened. The bees suddenly grew very quiet, landing on the honeycomb and on t
he tree's spike-covered branches. Then the tree trunk began undulating, and something large was moving underneath the bark. Then a face appeared in it! It had large lips like my uncle Ogu and eyes the size of small pumpkins.

  I yelped and stumbled back. A wood wit! I'd heard of them but never seen one in real life. No one really knows exactly what wood wits are. Most say that they're "things that live in trees," personalities, characters. But you usually have to hike deep into a forest or jungle to meet one. They don't hurt the tree; they help it. So trees with wood wits are usually a lot larger and healthier than others. This tree, which had probably been struck by lightning, might have died if it weren't for this wood wit. Some wood wits are nice, some are mean, some refuse to even acknowledge you, and the only way you know of their presence is because you see a face in the tree once in a while.

  "I see you're looking at my lovely friends," the wood wit said.

  I blinked, surprised that it would speak in a language I could understand. Its voice was deep like a man's and sounded like three voices put together. "Lovely, lovely, lovely. You can't find better friends, o! You know they travel over thirty miles a day for pollen? When they return, they always have so, so, so much to tell me, and there's nothing they like more than an ear that is always open. Since I live in this tree, I see the world through their stories.

  "And I don't mind telling you, a complete stranger, just how wonderful my bees are because they will never leave me, because they love me and I love them and love is what makes this tree grow! L-O-V-E!"

  The bees' buzzing grew slightly louder as if to happily affirm the wood wit's words. Or was it more a sound of annoyance? I grunted, not knowing what to say. All I could do was look at the honeycomb, imagining how delicious the honey would taste and how it would make me stronger and possibly help me survive. I painfully cleared my throat.

  "Please," I whispered. "Will you ask your bees to give me some honey? I'm very—"

  "Of course not!" the wood wit said with a chuckle. "These are my bees, my honey, mine, mine, mine! We have been friends for five hundred years and will continue so. I'll not share their friendship with the likes of you."

  The bees buzzed loudly again. The wood wit frowned, its face melting from one place on the tree's trunk and appearing on another. Then in its strange triple voice, it said with a smirk, "I don't share with anyone. And if you try to steal even a drop of my sweet, sweet treasure, I will send my bees to sting every part of your grubby body. "

  I scowled, miffed at being called grubby. But I had to focus. I needed the nourishment. I didn't have the strength to look any farther. I reminded myself that being grubby no longer mattered.

  "Please," I whined, surprised at his cruelty. "I'm ... I think I'm dying. If I could just have a little honey, I might—"

  "That's not my concern. Death is a part of life, life is a part of death. I will not douse my happiness with your tragic mess," the wood wit said, looking at the bees with admiration and infatuation. The bees buzzed very loudly three times, and the wood wit actually paused and frowned, looking at them. It pursed its lips, looking at me and then the bees, and then at me again. Then he said, "No. No. Leave us be, human being. I shut down to your words."

  I bit my lip. For the first time, I began to wonder whether the wood wit wasn't more than a little insane.

  "I'm not asking for much," I said. My voice cracked because my throat was so dry.

  "Words, words, words," the wit said, its face playfully rotating in a circle on the tree. "Leave my happy existence alone. You're agitating my bees. Look at the shadow you bring to our happy world. Oh the darkness! I can't see! Leave us be!"

  I looked around confused. There were no shadows. Above, the sun was out. Suddenly several of the bees flew over to me. The wood wit didn't seem to like this.

  "No, wait. Just leave her alone. She'll go away on her own," it said.

  I shut my eyes tightly, sure that they would apply their stingers to make me go away. If they were friends of the wood wit, they, too, were probably crazy.

  The first one landed on my shoulder and prick I yelped, but I was so weak that that was all I could do. My eyes watered. Things seemed to be only getting worse. I hunched my shoulders bracing for more stings. I had read somewhere that the human body could sustain only a certain number of bee stings before dying. I thought about trying to levitate above the trees, but the bees would follow me. They were obviously much better at moving about in the air than I was, especially with my energy ebbing.

  My shoulder burned from the sting as the other bees landed on my clothes. I waited, my eyes shut tightly, but no more stings came. Slowly I opened them. At least a hundred of the fuzzy bees were sitting on me, so many that they weighed down my clothes! I could hear their wings flitting, especially the ones closest to my ears. I heard the wood wit grumble in annoyance.

  Then they all abruptly rose up as if someone had spoken. But the wood wit hadn't said a thing. It had actually been quiet as it watched its friends with what I could only call a jealous eye. Then the bees flew back to the hive, and the buzzing of the hive got very loud again as they flapped their wings more vigorously and moved about as if dancing. They were talking to each other, I realized. The wood wit also seemed to be listening, its face turned toward the hive with a look of aggravation.

  "What is wrong with you all?" the wood wit said. "You're mine, not hers! Don't you love me?"

  Some time passed before the wit turned its attention to me. In a pouty voice, as if I'd done it the worst of wrongs, it said, "They want to know who you are."

  The beehive went very still, and for the first time in minutes, I could hear the other creatures of the forest chirping, squawking, screeching, and hooting.

  "M-m-my name is Zahrah," I said.

  The wood wit said nothing and the bees didn't move. So I went on. "I'm from a place called the Ooni Kingdom. "

  I told the wood wit and its bees all about my ability to levitate, Dari, and my journey. By the time I finished talking, I was so dizzy that I wasn't even sure if I had told a coherent story. But I must have made some sense because after a long pause and then another noisy dancing, buzzing session, the wood wit said, "OK, OK! Fine. I can't believe this." It pursed its lips. "Since my bees ... like you, I will help you as best I can. Be thankful that I love my bees with all my heart and would do anything for them. They, of course, love me, too, you know. You can never replace me in their eyes." Another pause as the bees buzzed with annoyance. "I'll give you two choices," it said.

  The wood wit smirked mischievously, its woody lips puckering with delight. It was relishing my situation. I frowned but said nothing. My mother always tells me that one who gets enjoyment from other people's misery will eventually get the greatest discomfort from his or her own miseries.

  "The first choice is that I cure you and send you home," the wood wit said.

  "Huh?" I said. "You can do that?"

  "Of course I can. I'm a wood wit," it said. "I can do a lot of things if I choose, if need be, if it is proper, if my bees ask it."

  Before I could speak, the wood wit continued.

  "If I send you home, you could be cured ... and far, far away from my bees and me, thankfully."

  The wood wit stopped talking for a moment to let me digest its words. My head was whirling. I can be sent home? I thought. I would not die or contract another illness. I could take a long bath. I could cry on my father's shoulder and listen to my mother's soothing words and advice. I could tell them I was sorry. I could tell them all about how the jungle was crazy but still just a jungle, how there was so much to discover.

  "Or," the wood wit said loudly. I shook my head so that I could pay close attention. "I could give you some." The bees buzzed very loudly at this. "OK, OK, my bees could give you some of this honey. You could use one of the leaves from that tree behind you to store and take it with you."

  I turned around. The tree's purple leaves were wider than my head. I'd be able to store a large honeycomb on the leaf an
d wrap it up.

  "But I can't guarantee that the honey will help you live," the wood wit continued. "Who knows, it might even kill you, not that you would be much of a loss. My bees love me, but I don't need to eat as you do. You're a different creature. And they certainly don't love you. Still, if you do live, you will be able to continue on your way. You are running out of time, no doubt about that." It paused for a moment and narrowed its eyes. Then it said, "So what will it be? Survival and safety? Or a chance to save your friend, which is more like a chance to die trying to save him?"

  The wood wit laughed with glee, its face smoothly migrating about the tree trunk in a spiral. Then it stopped, facing me, and said, "Well?"

  The bees were completely quiet, waiting for my answer.

  My brain felt like mush and I was very tired. Details of my two choices traveled through my head. I'll get to see Dari again soon. Is he all right? My parents will know I'm alive. Maybe I can gather better traveling gear and try again. But I'd have to run away again. Everyone will expect that I'll try and they'll keep a closer eye on me and make running away impossible. Then Dari won't be cured. All my fault. How long have I been out here? Fewer days to find the egg. If the egg can even cure him. What will eating honey do? If I die out here, what will happen to my body? Something will eat it. Oh it's all so sad.

  But my thoughts settled on one thing: Would I take the chance for my friend? Yes. Yes I would. I don't know if it was the delirium from the poison or a clarity of mind brought on by the delirium, but I knew what I had to do. Or at least I thought I did. This could be the death of me, I thought to myself. I laughed a little when I realized that I no longer cared much.