Vicious Memories

Chapter 16

Our walk took us along a twisting path widened and cleared of obstacles. We shadowed the creek the entire way, glimpsing fragments of its bubbling passage through the trees at regular intervals. It serenaded us on our way to the farm ten minutes north of the village, the furthest inland I had been yet.

"Do you have a name for it?" I asked.

"The creek?"

"Yeah."

"We do," Neema said. "We call it 'The Creek.'"

"Very creative."

"Hey. You asked."

About halfway between the village and the farm we encountered a small clearing, about thirty feet across, strewn with dead leaves and branches. A single tree stump sat in the empty space like a sad old man, beaten down and forgotten. I regarded the stump for a moment, feeling sad for a reason I couldn't quite identify.

"Who cut it down?" I asked.

"No clue," Neema answered. "But don't tell me the stump is the most interesting thing about this clearing."

I glanced over at her, nonplussed, and that was when I got my first glimpse of the mountain in the far distance. It peeked above the trees around the clearing, dark and forbidding against a nearly cloudless blue sky, cleft in several places by giant fissures. The surrounding jungle had managed to climb about three-quarters of the way up its slopes; the top was a dark grey that seemed to absorb all light, reflecting nothing back.

I looked back down quickly, not sure I liked the feeling the mountain gave me.

"Why couldn't I see it before?"

"It's blocked," she said. "There's a rise between it and the village. It's about two miles away."

"And I'm assuming this one is called 'The Mountain.'"

She laughed at that, eyebrows moving up and down with each discreet sound that came out of her mouth. "No, no. This one has a name. Mount Home. It's a story for another time," she added, correctly anticipating my next question.

Neema was black, with skin the color of deepest night, and very skinny. Her eyebrows were incredibly expressive, and I almost laughed at the way they wiggled at me while she talked. I noticed a bad burn on her left leg that ran from her knee all the way down to her ankle; she didn't try to hide it - she had actually slit that pant leg down the side so that her scar flashed through it with every step she took.

"I like it," she'd said, catching me looking. She arched an eyebrow at my scarred forearm. "It makes me unique, right?"

Five minutes north of the clearing the jungle opened up onto a dreamlike meadow. Sunlight streamed unimpeded onto it, mingling its golden glow into the greenery growing all around. The farm could have fit three football fields inside of it. Rows and rows of plants took up the bulk of the space, set neatly into tilled dirt and surrounded by swaying grass that reached all the way up to my waist; off to the right sat a small grove where trees and large bushes were arrayed like the ranks of a peaceful army. According to Neema the creek here was wide with high banks, which reduced the likelihood of flooding during heavy rains. This, apparently, was a fact they had learned the hard way after having their first farm destroyed a month after creating it.

Something in the periphery of my vision caught my attention.

"Those," I said, pointing at a patch of neon yellow flowers out beyond the western edge of the farm. They waved innocently in the wind, nestled between tall stalks of grass. I could make out several more patches further into the undulating grass. "What are they doing there?"