A Four Moon Series: Legacy of Blood

Bitumbi's Infatuation

Beside the clearing where he knows she will appear, Bitumbi whistles a tune and sings in his raspy and tenor warble;

My lovely one, gentle blossom among thorns,

Sugar kneeling behind colors of sunrise

My season of joy, my cloudless sky,

On your lips, I see youth and old are one.

A cringe worthy lyric only made worse by the tone deaf Bitumbi who suffered the burden of loving what he could not do well. But today he was alone and his song resounded for all the creatures of the lagoon to hear. The rumbling scratchy tone dispatching birds from every nested tree. Today he need not fear the judgement of his cousins or brothers, for he traveled far from his family's home in the northern lakes down to the southern harbor to wait for her. Soon she would be here and even the dark leaves of shrubs and mud would glow once more with her energy. He waited for her with gifts of smoked fish and glabra wine. It was highly unusual for a Polly to join families with someone from outside the lagoon, but in all his life he had never met anyone like Rhugha. She was strong, at times cruel with him. Never complimentary about his features like other women, she always had a clever insult ready and enjoyed his silence more than his laughter. She did not ask permission or forgiveness and she came and went as she pleased. This all he respected, for these were the characteristics that the Polly valued above all else; freedom, cleverness, and resourcefulness. Rhugha lacked only a modicum of kindness, but so he'd found it was with all interesting people. There was a warmth in her laugh and the way she let her gaze linger with his. And so he convinced himself that he alone could love her so that her heart would open. He whistled as he ran his knife across the thin sapling branches he gathered along the shore, scrapping the knots away, peeling the young green bark and piling the clean boughs into bundles tied together with sticky vines. He gathered the flowers he knew would be pleasant but not so sweet as to attract ants in the night. The fire he started between the roots of a tree smoldered and snapped as the heat consumed the dry twigs and leaves. He pulled up the fish he'd trapped among the rocks in the shallow water. Once cut and cleaned, he splayed them with bones and shiny blue and yellow scales still intact across the smoking ash and covered them with green branches to smoke.

He lay back against the roots of the tree and inhaled the sweet smells of the flowers he'd gathered. Rhugha loves this meal, he thought as he drank from the gourd of fermented glabra juice. She will be here soon.

He pulled a faceless gold coin from his pocket. He brushed the un-minted, hammer forged faceless coin against his coarse brown linen shirt, stripping away the diminished hues and released a bold glow across his face.

He smiled, the shiny stuff always brings them back. He laughed aloud to himself as he placed the coin on the rugged roots, carelessly near the water.

Rhugha spent two days on the road before she reached the southern landing at sunset on the second day. The army, with all their wagons and supplies, would need weeks to travel this far. Do I have enough time...reach Puripodlap's tavern, convince him to ferry all these soldiers across the lagoon, arrange a payment that might not exist, and return to the General before Loconi convinces him I have failed, less than two weeks...The smell of the lagoon, that marshy odor of mud and slow moving water reached her nose before she spotted the trees over the sand. As she rode nearer, she was careful to steer her beast clear of the knotted roots popping out of the sand in forked and twisted trunks. The lagoon was shrinking, and these dead roots were all that remained of what had been a forest, the architectural ruins of former life. Bitumbi once told her that all mangrove roots were the bones of dead men lost or killed in the canals.