Last Life

AN HOUR LATER, when Sal and I had stripped our chosen trees bare, the leather bag we were using to keep our harvest already contained fifty bruts. And the more trees we went to, the more we gathered.

That was how we worked. Using true vision, I chose the trees with the biggest crop, then climbed to the top of them marking the mushrooms that contained emerald crystals.

While Sal cut down the fungo, which was what the Lao called the mushrooms, I moved on to the next trees and made more markings. And only after that did I start harvesting.

I was slightly anxious to be placing our harvest into the common pot. But I was perfectly aware that I was on Lao lands, and they had left this glade alone intentionally for an entire year to ensure this rich harvest.

Something was telling me I had to start small to make truly big gains. Still, to be frank, it was hard to call the over thirty emerald bruts I had personally gathered something “small.” I was really hoping my sixth sense was not going to let me down this time.

At first, while we gathered fungo, Sal was expecting me to slip up any second. She thought I was just very lucky. But every brut she extracted changed her opinion about my “good luck.” I constantly caught her looking admiringly at me.

All the while, she was loudly delighting in every find and regularly sticking her tongue out at the hunters who, for obvious reasons, started to fall far behind our team. Unlike us, they had to cut down every last mushroom on their trees.

Mak, following tradition, instructed his team to start with the oldest trees. But I could see clearly that this time Lao tradition was pretty far off base...

* * *

To my surprise, I saw nothing on any of the hunters’ faces but astonishment and smiles of delight. I had to admit, their reaction had me slightly puzzled. I was expecting envy, anger, and annoyance at the fact some outsider and little girl had stuck it to the tribe’s six most experienced hunters, but nothing of the sort happened.

The hunters were genuinely admiring of our harvest and laughed at the bag they themselves had only managed to fill halfway.

Nothing remained of Sal’s terrible mood from the walk, when she was mad at Mak and keeping away from the other Lao. She spoke openly, laughing and joking with the hunters as if nothing had happened. And that was when I realized that all the Lao accepted one another as one big family. And like a family, they did not harbor resentments or hostilities. On a certain level, I was genuinely envious of them. They were somehow able to hold onto the light which had long been lost by people both in my world and this one...

“You won!” Mak announced with a big smile.

His words were met with a loud ululating and happy cries from the others. Sal seemed to be the happiest. Happiness and delight splashed around in her wide-open eyes.

That look reminded me of my Thais. Whenever she won at something, she did a victory dance, jumping and twisting around in a silly way.

While the younger Lao with Sal at their head continued their stormy discussion, Mak and another hunter called Hass with a streak of gray in his black hair sat next to me.

For a little while, we sat in silence, eating the food we’d been given in the village. But finally, clearing his throat, Mak started in broken witching:

“How did you do that?”

I was not surprised by his knowledge of the ancient tongue. I had noticed a while ago that he understood what Sal and I were saying.

I laughed and tossed a small, long nut into my mouth.

“Why are you laughing?” Mak asked.

“I’m imagining the look on Sal’s face when she realizes you heard her call you a blue worm.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?” he laughed back.

“I want to see the look on her face,” I shrugged and smiled.

Based on the way Hass perked his ears up, he also understood witching.

The men all smiled and mechanically turned their heads to see the shaman’s granddaughter celebrating. I saw no anger in their eyes. They looked at her like parents look at children who think they got away with doing something bad.

We spent a little while eating in silence and watching the young people, but then I decided to answer Mak’s question.

I had decided to tell the Lao about my seer gift a few days before when I realized they were no threat to me. It was more the opposite. I was confident they would like me for my abilities. Particularly the old mage. I was waiting for a good opportunity to reveal my secret, and now I had found one.

“I see more than you,” I came. Mak and Hass turned their heads toward me.

“Are you saying fungo with stones of power inside look different somehow?” Mak asked in surprise. “Even our ancestors were unable to tell a difference.”

“That’s not it,” I shook my head, surprising them even more.

“Then what is it?” Hass piped up. His voice was raspy and full of tension. He clearly almost never spoke witching.

“It is nothing external on the fungo. Why would I need that when I can see the stones of power themselves?”

The men spent a little while digesting what I said, clearly trying to translate. But a minute later, it finally hit them, and their faces started stretching out in surprise. A look of disbelief was etched on their faces.

“That is not possible!” Hass shouted fitfully, attracting the attention of the young Lao. They immediately stopped talking and came over to us. Sal frowned and stopped smiling.

With her standing a few steps away from us and the four guys in a semicircle around us, she asked Mak a question in Lao. The old hunter put a hand on Hass’s shoulder as he stared at me, said something short to her while nodding at me, then at the baskets of mushrooms.

“Is it true?” Sal asked me. “You can see stones of power?”

Her eyes were open wide, and her hands were slightly trembling.

“You already know the answer,” I shrugged and laughed.

“Prove it!” Hass rasped out excitedly in witching. That made Sal shudder and stare stunned at the hunter. She must have thought that only members of her family knew true speech.

“Do you really need more proof?” I nodded at the two fat bags hanging off Sal’s belt and filled to the brim with bruts.

“Want more?” I asked after a brief pause and, not waiting for an answer, continued by nodding at the main hunter’s wide leather belt: “Okay. Blindfold me, Mak.”

As if expecting something like this the whole time, he quickly took off his belt and put it over my eyes. Switching to true vision, I got up off the log we were sitting on and took a step forward. A number of hands reached out for me straight away.

I smiled and backed off.

“Seers do not need guides.”

After that, I walked forward calmly, deftly hopping between mounds of soil and stepping over roots sticking up out of the ground. I turned and kept walking only backwards, then asked with a smile:

“What are you standing around for? This way!”

The Lao, as if hypnotized, followed me in silence.

Coming over to one of the trees, I stopped. A few moments later, the dead silent Lao were around me.

I looked up and quickly scanned the mushrooms stuck to the wide trunk. Finding what I was after, I said:

“Sal, translate this...”

“Okay, Renard,” she answered and said something to the others.

“Right now, I see one stone of power in a fungo hanging down over my head.”

I reached up and pointed at the big parasitic mushroom.

“Is that all?” Hass immediately asked after the mushroom I pointed at had been cut down, opened up and, to amazed outbursts, shown to contain a small emerald pea.

“Up on that bent branch, the farthest to the right,” I pointed up. “I see a small stone of power in that fungo.”

One of the young hunters deftly scurried up the trunk and gutted the slightly flat mushroom.

The kid shouted out something in delight and raised his right hand, clenching a brut.

“And now, to conclude my presentation and leave no one with any doubts...” I chuckled and commanded: “Walk around the trunk of that tree. There, at the level of my head hangs a very old fungo. In it, you will find a large stone of power which is slightly ovular in shape.”

While Sal translated, Hass ran around the tree and quickly started cutting the mushroom.

“Hass, stop,” I said with a smirk, still standing in the same place. “Wrong one. That one is empty. I was talking about the fungo growing a bit higher up.”

I heard Mak give a restrained snicker. He apparently understood my joke. Hass was about a head shorter than me.

When the old mushroom had been cut down and the large brut extracted from it, all the hunters who were already very excited by my presentation started chattering loudly.

When I removed the leather belt from my head and extended it to Mak, I saw seven pairs of eyes staring back at me in admiration.

* * *

The whole way back, Sal peppered me with questions. And there were no limits to her curiosity. For instance, she wanted an explanation for why there were more stones of power on the young trees than the old ones this time.

“It’s all down to the root system, not their age,” I replied.

“And what’s wrong with this one?” she asked, turning her attention to the giants growing along the path with their widely splaying branches.

“Nothing,” I replied. “It’s simply too far from the main power flows, which run deep underground to the main reservoir.”

“The Heart of the Forest...” Sal whispered in admiration.

“Apparently, yes,” I nodded. “That was why the fungo on the old trees had little stones of power. They simply had no way to get more energy. The trees barely had enough power from the Heart of the Forest to sustain themselves. But the younger ones where you and I started our hunt are a different story. Their root systems are intertwined with the largest channels of emerald power from the Heart of the Forest. There is more than enough energy for the trees, which is why the fungo grew on their trunks. And it was that overabundance that spawned the stones of power in some of the largest fungo. Now do you get it?”

“Yes,” she nodded and started hurriedly asking more questions I had to give patient in-depth responses to.

We made it to the village before sunset even though they thought it would take two days to harvest the fungo crop. Thanks to my gift, we were able to harvest all the stones of power in a matter of hours.

After Mak and the other hunters admitted that they lost the bet, we joined forces and assigned roles. While I climbed around on the trees marking mushrooms with bruts inside, the others gathered. In total, when the last fungo with an emerald crystal inside had been cut open, we collected two hundred twenty-three bruts. An absolute record for the last few years. It was a good harvest.

While the Lao collected the marked mushrooms, I went out on a little hunt once my part of the work was completed. I made away with two more bruts — a crimson and an amber, which I extracted from the bodies of a huge bright orange wasp I killed. The crystals in its reservoir were the size of hazelnuts.

Beyond bruts, I extracted the wasp’s four-inch stinger together with the poison gland. When I showed it off to Mak, he nodded with respect, but told me to be careful. The poison of the yellow fly, as they called the insect I slew, could kill instantly. Much like all the poisons in this gods-forsaken place.

After our triumphant return, a commotion broke out in the village. Everyone was delighted to see all the hunters alive and well. The shaman of the tribe again performed the ritual greeting of the providers, just like I saw on day one.

The amount of bruts shocked both Mongwo and the other people. On the spot, to mark the occasion, they threw a spontaneous party with Sal, Mak, and the other hunters tripping over each other to talk about our bet and my gift.

The more the hunters said, the wider the old mage’s eyes became. I constantly caught people glancing at me, first with astonishment, but then pensively. By morning, when the whole tribe was still sleeping off the previous night’s celebration, the old man woke me up for a conversation.

“Is it true?” he asked, his voice quavering in anxiety after we got seated on a wide flat stone on the edge of the lake. “Are you a seer?”

Literally translated from witching, the word “seer” meant “one who sees the essence.”

“Yes,” I responded shortly.

I had to give the old man his due. He never asked me why I didn’t mention it before.

“Here,” he handed me one of the bags we used to store bruts. “This is yours.”

“But it’s a lot,” I tried to object.

“Thanks to you, the hunt took just a few hours and all the hunters returned to their families,” the shaman said firmly. “Night here is full of dangers. And on top of that, you are not Lao. You have no obligation to give us your harvest.”

“But these are your lands.”

“You are a guest. We allowed you to hunt here. Your harvest belongs to you.”

Without a word, I just nodded and took the bag. I estimated it to contain around sixty stones of power.

For a little while, Mongwo kept silent, staring pensively into the distance.

“I am an old man...” he said quietly, not turning his head. “My son was a great hunter, and he had the power. If he were alive now... I would not be leading the Lao. I would instead be happily playing babysitter to Togh and Sal.”

“I’m sorry, my friend,” I came quietly.

“After my son and his wife died,” the old man continued. “Their children were left to me. And on top of that, I also had to govern the Lao... I see how Togh turned out. I was not able to raise him into a future chief. After the River Terror killed his parents in front of him, he became a recluse and started hiding from his own shadow. A year ago, when I asked Mak to take Togh hunting on the riverbank where my son and his wife were slain, he wet himself when he saw the water and flew into a panic.”

He breathed a heavy sigh.

“Mak and the other hunters saw it. A coward and weakling could never lead the tribe. No one would follow him.”

“Why do you not want to transfer power to the person all the Lao respect?” I asked.

“You mean Mak?”

“Yes.”

“I would really like to, but by our laws the tribe leader must have the power. Mak is the strongest of the Lao, but he does not have the power of the Great Mother. The other children of Meemeeteh would lose their respect for our tribe. We would lose our seat on the Great Council of tribes, then any chief could rightfully lay claim to our lands.”

Aha. The Lao were really in serious trouble. After Mongwo’s impending death, this tribe would simply cease to exist.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

“You are a seer,” the old man answered with hope in his voice and looked me straight in the eyes. “You can help me.”

“In what way?” I asked in surprise.

“My grandson... Togh... His power has yet to awaken. I have faith that he will change when the Great Mother Meemeeteh touches him. He is his father’s son! He will become a great chief! We will go to the Heart of the Forest and sacrifice many stones of power. All these years, I have been collecting them for an offering. Then, when the power in my grandson’s body awakens, I will need your eyes to help Togh accept it. To direct his growth.”

I wanted to say something, but the old man hurriedly continued.

“I know you have your own path. You need to return to your lands. So I do not ask you this favor lightly. You said you need to prepare to confront your enemies. I know what you need stones of power for. I saw you absorbing one of them. I will repay you in stones of power. I even have a pearl from the Southern River.”

“Pearl?” I perked up my ears.

“Yes,” the old man nodded. “You can use it to increase the size of your reservoir and thus accelerate your progress. What do you say? Will you help me?”

The old man’s request sent shivers through my body. I had a hard time getting myself together. With a heavy sigh, I rubbed the overgrown hair on the back of my head and replied:

“Alas, I cannot help your grandson...”

The old man shuddered. His shoulders slumped; his hands hung limp down to his knees. It was as if the old mage had lost his backbone.

“But why do you refuse?” he asked in a lifeless voice. “Is the payment not enough?”

“Actually, that is just fine,” I snorted.

“Then what’s the matter?” he asked in surprise.

“The problem is that we are friends, and I cannot defraud you,” I replied, watching the old man start to frown. “I cannot help your grandson because he lacks even a drop of power, and never will have any. Sure, maybe someone else in my place would take advantage of your grief and pretend to help you, draining all your wealth in the process. But not me. Let me repeat: no matter how many sacrifices you make, your grandson will never have the power of the Great Mother. That’s what I see. And you’ll have to forgive me.”

While I spoke, Mongwo’s shoulders shuddered, and tears ran down his wrinkled cheeks. A moment later, he buried his face in his hands and started sobbing. Acting on impulse, I set a hand on his shoulder and said quietly:

“I cannot help your grandson, but I will try to help Sal.”

The old man sat unmoving for a while, then shuddered and lowered his hands. In his tear-reddened eyes, I saw incomprehension, astonishment and... seemingly, a flash of realization.

“Have you seen something?” he asked with timid hope.

“She has the power,” I smiled. “But it is still dormant. She needs a push to awaken it.”

After that, I gave him a pat on the back and said with confidence:

“You’ll see. Your granddaughter will make a great ruler one day!”