Zahrah the Windseeker (13 page)

Nevertheless, it wasn't until that moment that I became curious about the book. I guess I had been more absorbed with my ability, which I think was understandable. I clicked on the arrow, and the digi-book displayed the first page. I began to read.

Good morning, afternoon, or evening.

I'm glad you have chosen to enlighten yourself about the world around you.
Down with ignorance!
If there is one thing we, the Great Explorers of Knowledge and Adventure Organization, cannot stand, it is the fact that the people of Ooni choose to remain ignorant of the world around them! The Forbidden Greeny Jungle is the world. How can a whole sophisticated, matured civilization choose to live in a span of a few hundred miles? It is primitive! It is preposterous!

I had heard my father use this word,
preposterous,
when he was angry or thought something was ridiculous. I smiled and continued reading.

Now, we assume that you, reader, are sitting in your home, in front of your comfy computer, a cup of black tea or Ginen root soda in your hand, reading this for a good laugh. We, the Great Explorers of Knowledge and Adventure Organization, are not here for your amusement! This is real! Our travels are real and they were very difficult. Thus, we feel better pretending you are one of us, an explorer interested in venturing outside your little bubble, your silly comfort zone, and seeing the real world!

 

The first thing you need to travel there is a good, old-fashioned compass. We hear that there are digital talking compasses out there on the market, but we have yet to really see these pieces of science fiction. "So get a compass, any compass, as long as it works.

I closed the book, feeling better ... a little. I felt a twittery fear. But I had a compass. At least I'd done something right. Dari might have been reading this for fun, I thought, but this book might save my life. Save his life. I shivered, the weight of my task pressing down on my shoulders. What I had to do was big. I was venturing miles and miles into the forbidden jungle to get the egg of a vicious mythical beast. If I didn't get it and get it within a month, my best friend might die. I could feel my hair heavy against my back.

I wished I'd found Nsibidi. She might have been able to give me a little advice. I sighed.
Am I not a wise woman ?
I thought.
Or at Least a wise girl? Whatever. It's supposed to be in my blood ... well, that's what I've been told, anyway. I do have a lot of hair on my head. And birds would love to nest in it, I'll bet. I
didn't check, but I hoped there were precautions listed to keep birds away from my hair.

"Thank goodness for Dari's strange interests," I said, putting the book in my satchel. A movement in the tree in front of me caught my eye. I smiled. It was the dormouse.

"Sorry," I said sadly. "No fruit for you today."

The dormouse just stared at me, unsure of what to do when it wasn't offered any food. I hiked my bundle higher onto my back and wrapped a thin cloth around my glow lily so I had just enough light to see where I was going. I didn't want to attract too much attention.

I wasn't carrying a lot, just a small blanket, some food and water, a lighter, my bottle of rose oil for my hair, my daily vitamins, soap, two toothbrushes, and a few other things. I wore green pants with a large mirror on the hip and a caftan with mirrors around the collar that I'd taken from the suitcase of clothes in Dari's hospital room. I wanted something of his to bring along.

Sneaking out of the house that morning felt awful. It wasn't that I risked getting caught. I was very quiet. It was just that I was very afraid. It's a really strange feeling to be starting a journey so dangerous that you could get killed, to willingly leave the comfort of your home knowing this, while your mother and father slept.

I had thought about it all night, too. And the more I thought about it, the more afraid I became. When I got outside, my legs were shaking and I couldn't help crying a little. My parents wouldn't have suspected my plan. To do such a thing was so unlike me. But there I was, an hour and a half later, in the dark. In the jungle. Terrified but moving.

As I moved, I was sure something was watching me. It wasn't the dormouse. The dormouse moved much more quietly. I also knew that the dormouse didn't venture far from its nest, which was around the spot Dari and I had been spending our time in. I was well past that point. Whatever it was was probably more than one thing, too. The rustling leaves and snapping branches were coming from both my right and my left. I paused. Whatever they were, they grunted to each other and began moving away.

Fifteen minutes later, I was jumping at every little sound around me. I was farther in than Dari and I had ever gone. This fact looped around and around in my mind, and my face grew wet with helpless tears. Helpless because I knew I couldn't, wouldn't, turn back, and I knew that what lay ahead was so dreadful that I couldn't imagine it. Even with my bug repellant, tiny flies kept trying to land on my face to suck up the salt from my tears. I knew I had to stop crying but couldn't.

I felt faint whenever a bird flew from a tree, an insect buzzed by, a lizard crossed my path, or something snorted in the bushes. I walked slowly due to my shaky legs. And I kept my eyes cast to the ground for fear of seeing something in the trees or bushes that might hurt me.

Then came the group of spiders, each the size of a small child! There were about five of them, and they moved almost faster than my eye could follow. Their feet kicked up soil as they came at me. I'm humiliated to say that I was so scared that I froze and practically wet my pants! Not only were they huge, they were quite heavy. And when they got to me, they knocked me down and scuttled up and down my body and my satchel. Their many legs felt like stiff brushes scraping the exposed parts of my skin!

I screamed, instinctively curling myself up into a ball and bracing for the first sting. I was afraid they'd wrap me up in webbing and pull me up a tree to enjoy my blood and guts at their leisure. But after running up and down my body, they scrambled off and regrouped in front of me. They each made a huffing sound, blowing air at me from their mandibular mouths. It smelled like crushed bitter leaves and made me feel woozy. Then they ran off as fast as they had come! I remember reading somewhere that some insects and a few spiders taste with their feet. Maybe these thought I didn't taste very good.

I lay there sweating and shocked and relieved, blubbering like a baby, afraid to move for fear that they would come back. Eventually my heartbeat slowed down and I felt very tired, even drowsy. Whatever they blew at me must have been meant to keep me from going after them, as if I ever would.

I began to feel angry with myself.
How am I going to save Dari if I behave Like a coward anytime something comes around? I
thought. I closed my eyes and asked myself a surprisingly difficult question. "Zahrah, do you really think you
can
save him? Can you
do
this?" I'm not one to lie to myself. The answer didn't come right away, and I lay in the soil turning it around in my head for several minutes.

Then I got up and brushed myself off. I stepped close to a tree, for as much privacy as I could find, and urinated. Better not to take chances. I threw sod over the spot, stood up straight, and took a deep breath. Then I started back on the path. The next time something came after me, I would run.

Thirty minutes later, I was running from a large, squawking, brown, long-legged bird. I had accidentally crushed her nest of eggs when I stepped around a tree that had grown in the middle of the path. The bird was extremely distraught. I ran for about five minutes before she gave up the chase. When I was sure she was gone, I said a few words to Joukoujou about how sorry I was and to bless that bird with more eggs.

Two hours later, I was moving along the path, pushing branches and leaves out of the way. The path was getting narrower and narrower. Soon it would cease being a path at all and I would be moving around trees and bushes, checking my compass to make sure I was heading in the right direction.

Well, I knew the path would eventually end,
I thought, wiping the tears from my face. I was surprised and thankful that it went this far.

"No more tears," I grumbled to myself. The flies were driving me crazy.

The more I walked the more I became aware of the noises around me and the more I couldn't believe I was doing what I was doing.

"I am in the Forbidden Greeny Jungle," I said out loud as I slapped at a mosquito. The repellant I had on was working (except for the flies that bothered my eyes), but no repellant was perfect. "Over two miles in. Alone." I laughed to myself. "And goodness knows what is watching me right now."

I kept my eyes trained in front of me. I knew that if I looked to either side into the dense foliage, I'd lose my cool. Since the encounter with the spiders, I had been doing better. But I could feel panic rising with each step I took. Anything could burst through the trees and attack me at any moment. I heard the sound of thrashing leaves from far away and then several loud screeches and surprised clucks. My legs started shaking again, but I kept moving.

"As long as I don't bother things, then things won't bother me," I said quietly.

I imagined myself as just another creature whose home was the Greeny Jungle. I was just going about my business.
I belong here just like any dormouse or elgort,
I thought. And this was how I thought for the next several hours when the path deteriorated into nothing and the sun began to set. I'd stepped around some of the widest trees I'd ever seen and even come across a small pond of brackish water. It was teeming with wriggling mosquito larvae, and I quickly moved on.

By the time I slowed down, I was exhausted. But I was proud of myself. Since the spiders, I had not completely panicked; nor had I run screaming into the trees, not even when I'd seen the large black horse staring at me through the trees several yards away. The horse was trotting by and it froze, flaring its nostrils when it saw me. I froze too. It was probably deciding whether I was a threat or not.

Its coat was shiny, and it had a long mane that reached the ground and covered its eyes. When it decided I wasn't a problem, it trotted on its way. I let out a breath of relief and continued on my way, too.

It was time to find a place to sleep. A safe place. But in the Forbidden Greeny Jungle, there was no such thing. At least none that I knew of. As the sun set, the noise of the jungle grew louder. It was as if more things were waking up than going to sleep. My ears pricked at every sound. There were screeches, clicks, chirps, grunts, cheeps, growls, shrieks, hoots, and caws; twigs snapped, leaves rustled, branches bent, and somewhere a tree fell. It was terribly noisy. I walked tentatively, my shoulders hunched as I tried to make myself as small as possible.

"For you, Dari," I kept whispering to myself. "For you."

I scratched at a mosquito bite on my arm and looked at my dirty clothes. The cuffs of Dari's pants were caked with the soil, and they smelled strongly of dirty sweat. I reached into my satchel and brought out a small mirror. Small leaves and flower petals were stuck in my hair, and my face was greasy with sweat.

"Ugh, I'm repulsive," I said, quickly putting my mirror away.

Like any other northerner, I felt it was disgusting to wear dirty clothes and look so messy. But I had no choice. Itchy, dirty, and smelling of sweat and the outdoors, I needed to get over something more ingrained in my mind than my fear of heights.

"Where am I going to wash?" I whispered. "
How
am I going to wash?"

I hadn't thought of that when I left. But I knew the answer, and it made me shiver. I wasn't going to get to wash that night. I looked up at the patch of evening sky between the trees. I couldn't even wear perfume. Not that I'd brought any. Even I knew that wearing perfume attracted more mosquitoes.
At least there's no one here to see me looking like this,
I thought.

I stopped in front of a tall tree and then glanced around. I was alone. At least as alone as I could be in the jungle. I wiped a little sweat from my brow as I wondered what to do.
I must already be farther than anyone has been in years,
I thought.

Feeling very lonely, I sighed, set my bundle down, and stretched my back. I leaned against the tree and took out the digi-book. I pressed the "on" button and clicked to the table of contents. I clicked on the chapter called "The Fringes."

The Fringes of the Greeny Jungle are tine least dangerous. Rarely do you get any of the really good stuff there. If you've heard grumbling and shifting leaves, most likely you're being tracked by whistling bush cows, close relatives of the southern capybara.

Then the digi-book went into a long entry about these small but crafty furry mammals that liked to steal food from one's pack while one slept. They whistled when alarmed.

Make sure you've zipped your bags securely when you go to sleep. And when we say securely we mean securely. Zip it up, tie a rope around it, lock it if you can. Bush cows have been known to pick locks and even use sharp stones to cut through material if they smell something they particularly like.

I relaxed a bit.
Bush cows may be thieves, but at least they don't want to make a meal of me,
I thought. I skipped to the part of the chapter that talked about setting up camp. It was dark and I needed to find a place to sleep soon.

The Forbidden Greeny Jungle is full of wonderful and often frightening beasts, as we all know. Once you enter the jungle, be ready to not see open land for a while. Most of us traveled alone or in groups of two. But all of us did the same thing: We learned to climb trees. Most of us started doing this weeks after we ventured into the jungle, but our advice to you: Learn to climb and sleep in trees
now.