The Broken Crown

Chapter 55

Asha

With the rain season, the grounds surrounding the village were flooded by rivers that broke out of their course. There had not been this much rain for generations and the villagers were forced into their cabins, moving from one to the other by crossing the suspension bridges between them while the jaguars had followed their instincts into the damp woods.

“Don’t you fear for their safety?” Hiram asked one day as they worked together cleaning out the fish that had been caught. Nets were hung out for a few hours every once in a while, to catch fish enough for the entire village. Sometimes, birds would land a little too close and they would get some variation.

“No,” Asha answered, although she sometimes thought of them and wondered. “They’re the kings of the forest. They will survive.”

Hiram and Asha worked together often, and when they had no work, they would sit together. He would tell stories of faraway countries, explaining their strange cultures until she could almost picture them, while she would speak of all that Thomas had learned her. Whenever they ran out of stories, they would talk about the village and how they could better it using their knowledge – and sometimes, they would speak about each other’s families.

“How did your father die?” Hiram asked then. She had not told him yet, though she was certain he had heard somehow.

“Murdered,” she said quickly. She did not like talking about it. In fact, she did not like to talk too much in general. The only ones she had found she could talk freely to were Thomas, the Kahari, Equem and now Hiram.

“Did you find the killer?” He seemed oblivious to her discomfort, or he just ignored it.

“No.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

For a moment, she focused on cleaning out the fish. “A little,” she finally said. It did bother her, a lot actually, but she had not had the time to think of it, nor had she wanted to. It only troubled her. “Sometimes, when I think about it.”

“Would you have liked revenge?”

She looked up. His brown eyes sparkled slightly and he wore a small smirk. “I would’ve liked justice.”

Hiram shrugged. “I have travelled places where they see those two as the same thing, and some places where justice is ruled not by laws but for the victim’s thirst for vengeance. Justice is a vague thing.”

“Here, the old way goes ‘blood for blood, hand for hand’,” she reminded him.

“So you want him dead.” Hiram smiled a little, cutting his fish, and added, “Or her.”

She did not want to admit to it. Thomas had taught her a different kind of justice, a justice including a court and unbiased opinions, but this was the justice her heart longed for whenever she pictured her father’s dead body. “Maybe.”

He reached for her then and their hands touched. His was so warm, and so easily enveloped hers. Her heart jumped. “It’s okay,” he said. “I would’ve wanted the same. Besides, I’ve seen more bloodthirsty people than you,” he added with a grin.

“You never told me of those,” she said, somehow shyly. Her voice was lighter than usual.

“Well, there was this people in the east,” he told her.

“All your stories take place in the east,” she pointed out, and he laughed.

“Far east, then,” he corrected. “Well, there, they hang murderers on crosses under the baking sun for crows to feast on. They call it to ‘crucify’. And in the north, I heard said, there are barbarians, where blood feuds are normal. There is no justice or court, only vengeance. If a man kills another, his family is entitled to kill the murderer, and the murderer’s family is entitled to kill his killer, and so on.”