Ivy's Tower

Chapter Sixteen: Florian

My palm stayed raw and tender fort he next three days. Tiny pinpoints of blood broke through wherever the skin was thinnest. Some blessing, I thought.

After the fourth day we'd spent fully in the jungle, I started to wonder if it would ever end. It seemed that all the world was jungle, that we'd always been in the jungle, and always would be in the jungle.

I imagined where Ivy might be, how far along the peninsula those ships had sailed. Sometimes my brain wandered to the duke. I'd never seen his face, but in my mind he was a hideous monstrosity of a man, with beady eyes and yellow teeth and a voice like metal scraping on ice. I'd picture him clearly in my mind until I could see every unruly hair on his face, and then I'd run him through with my sword until blood dribbled down his chin.

Of course, I kept these feelings to myself. When I felt rage and frustration boil up inside with every mosquito that bit me, I ran my sword through this imagined duke once more. It worked wonders to keep me calm.

We slept in clearings or in the wagons and soon the idea of sleeping a big group felt normal to me. It reminded me of Petra and the other girls all sharing one room at the brothel. It makes one feel closer to people very quickly.

Since I was useless at cooking, my main task was tending to the donkeys. Most of my experience with animals was in eating them, but the donkeys grew on me. I liked their stubbornness. They didn't do anything they didn't want to do. They pulled us along because we paid them in food and care. My favorite was a female called Sunny, who was anything but-- she snapped at everyone who tried to pet her.

My favorite companion came to be a boy named Florian, the other person charged with caring for the donkeys with me. He had zig-zags carved into his hair and a red gem in his nose ("it's only glass," he told me) and his left arm was covered in tattoos that he poked himself. I liked him because he was the only young man who would play with the children, lifting them up on his shoulders to pick fruit and flowers. I watched him soothe the donkeys with soft whispers. Even Sunny refused to nip at him.

He taught me a few words of Old Aphran so I could sing along with the songs as we walked. Elders exchanged knowing looks as they watched us. I tried to pay them no mind, focused on fitting these strange, foreign words into my mouth.

On the fifth day in the jungle, I finally let him tattoo me. He'd asked me several times, saying my skin was lighter than his and that the ink would show up better. He held my forearm across his knees as we sat on the edge of the wagon.

"You'll have something to remember us by," he said, jabbing along. "Wherever you go, you'll remember this jungle."

I tried not to wince as he pricked me. "It's more the people I want to remember, not the jungle."

He snorted. "Not made for the rain forest, are you?"

"I'm covered in insect bites. And not a day's gone by it hasn't rained."

"I know. It's paradise," he laughed, dipping his needle back in the ink. "But... I guess you're worried about your lover." His smile darkened just a tad.

"Aye," I said, flinching.

Florian wiped away a bit of blood with a rag. "Shame," he said. "We never get enough new girls in this group."

I cast my eyes to my feet. We sat in silence until he finished poking in my tattoo. The skin was sore, and it didn't get better when he swiftly drizzled some rum across it without warning. It felt as if my arm had burst into flames.

I gasped. "What was that for!?"

"It keeps it from getting swollen," he explained, replacing the bottle behind him. My arm was throbbing. He carefully patted it down with a clean rag. I looked at my forearm and a tiny crab looked up at me, roughly the size of a coin. "Now you're doubly protected," he said. "You've got the tiger blessing, and now you've got this."