Interlude 3.5: Escape

In the middle of the night, eleven-year-old Jemi Garen had set her plan in motion. Commanding a pair of sparrows, she bade them to fly over and sneak through a gap in the clinic’s window at night and drag out the bag of antivenom, bringing it to her family homestead in their beaks. With their help, Jemi also stole as much as she could of Dr Ada’s stock of her medication.

Cupping her hand to her lips, she swallowed one set of pills, then stuffed the rest into her school haversack, along with the other things she’d packed. Food, water, clothes, matches, a multi-tool, and other survival supplies. She was wearing a hunting cloak—one of Erjie’s, with large pockets and designed for blending in—having knotted up the excess length at her waist with a belt. Across her back slung the wall crossbow and a quiver of arrows.

Jemi came around to the road in front of the clinic where she’d parked Da-ge’s bicycle. She pushed off, pedalling down into the night. As it always was, the countryside was pitch-dark, the black sky above pulsating with brilliant starlight. The meandering dirt road beneath her wheels kicked up dust the whole way. She cycled down to the fringe of Linqin, where the stable master lived. There, she rattled to a stop, letting the bicycle clatter to the grass.

Jemi’s plan was to escape into the city. As much as her mother meant well, there was no life left for Jemi in Linqin. She couldn’t hide in the house forever. And she certainly couldn’t subject her family to the same fate because of her.

There, Jemi had always been an outsider, anyway.

Thus her daring plan. She’d get to the city, find some of her friends or teachers, and work out the rest from there. But first, she needed a horse to make the trip.

The stables were shrouded in darkness. Grabbing the lantern hanging on their porch, she struck one of her matches and lit it to be able to see. Scanning the stables in the flickering light, she found them much too secure for her to break in. She didn’t know how to pick locks, and doubted they would be easy picks, either. In the end she settled for the old horse in the corner, kept in a raggedy latched paddock.

“Come on, come on,” she nickered at him. Curious, the horse approached the young girl beckoning outside the pen. When he was close enough she unlatched the gate. Speaking to him in soft tones, Jemi pulled on his saddle and attempted to climb on top of him. However, in the process of awkwardly hauling herself up, the heaviness of her haversack and the weakness of her muscles both caused her to lose her balance.

“Whoaaaa-”

She crashed to the ground in a heap, unable to help her squawk of pain. Her crossbow also clanged loudly, a bone-rattling echo into the silent night.

Instantly, the sounds of barking ripped through the air. Jemi’s mind flamed with panic. Earlier, she had pacified the dogs guarding the stables with petting and pieces of dried jerky. However, clearly a fragile pact.

With no time left to waste, she relaunched herself off the ground, grasping on the old horse’s reins and snapping them against him. Whinnying, the horse started to gallop. Jemi steered him onto the main road just as she heard the rattle of the stable master, awake and stumbling through his house as his dogs barked up a storm.

“Come on!” she urged him. The horse galloped as fast as he could. Glancing backwards, she saw the silhouette of the stable master waving and shouting, but he couldn’t catch up by running. The girl exhaled a sigh of relief, and returned her gaze forward.

Until, just as the dawn’s light was bleeding into the sky, she heard another set of clopping hooves resounding behind them.

“Get back here, thief!” the stable master’s voice shouted.

“Nox!” Jemi swore. The stable master had gotten on one of his horses and begun to chase her. On a backward glance, he was carrying some kind of gun, probably a tranquiliser. They were still a distance away, but the stable master’s horse was younger and faster. It might’ve even been bred specifically for racing. It would only be a matter of time until they caught up.

Jemi deliberated her options. Guns were slow to load, so Jemi could directly instruct her horse where to swerve before the tranquiliser dart hit him. They took advantage of the width of the road and the fact that no one else was on it. Meanwhile, Jemi unslung her crossbow from her back.

Before, her father had taken her hunting in the woods occasionally. On her good days, Jemi was excellent at running after game, and was also keenly attuned to their sounds, honing in on where they concealed themselves among the trees. Those were good days, when her father had been in better moods. Among other things, he had taught her to shoot.

Jemi shouldered her crossbow, squeezing one violet eye shut. The rocking of the horse below her made aiming harder than while crouched in grass. But a certain calm had overtaken her. As her horse zigzagged around the dart that came flying at them, she let loose her arrow.

It whistled as it arced through the air. THUNK!—the arrow nailed the young horse in the shoulder. Jemi didn’t want to disable or kill it. She just needed it to stop running.

However, as the horse slowed down, the stable master whipped it with his reins. With a loud bray, the horse was forced to continue galloping, wheezing in pain. Jemi hurt at the sound. She couldn’t hurt the horse again.

Steeling herself, Jemi stuck her tongue between her teeth and chewed. She renocked her bow and aimed again; higher this time. The stable master’s eyes widened as he realised what the young girl was trying to do.

PFEWWWW! The next arrow sailed over the man’s shoulder. If he hadn’t averted his head, it would have been in his skull.

“Are you insane?” the stable master hollered after her. “You trying to kill me?”

“Leave me alone!” Jemi’s raspy voice cried out over the winds.

“You’re a thief and murderer, that’s what you are,” the stable master yelled. “You’re going to burn in the eight hot hells for your sins, little demon!”

“I’ll worry about that when I’m dead!” Coffin-body or not, she wasn’t dead yet. She wanted to live, and if that was a sin, then so be it. Jemi shot two, three more arrows. Grunting, the man pressed himself flat against his horse’s nape, strafing them left and right to dodge. For a moment, with all this trouble, it looked as though he might really give up the chase.

But then, below her, Jemi’s horse stumbled.

It sent Jemi careening sideways. Only her foot hooked into the footstraps barely kept her from being flung off. Her old horse simply did not have the stamina for running long distances anymore. He was supposed to be living out his retirement, pacing around his paddock, nibbling hay as he pleased. Now, for her, he’d pushed himself to his very limit.

Seizing his chance, the stable master fired. The dart flew forth, hitting the old horse in the side, causing him to finally keel over.

With him Jemi fell, a loud crash as the strap of her haversack came undone, spilling belongings. Jemi rolled with the impact, but the breath was still knocked from her lungs. Her body howled, but Jemi could not afford to stay lying down right now. Jumping to her feet, she stowed her crossbow and smacked the flap of her bag down. Tears in her eyes, she leapt over the old horse’s crumpled body on the road and did what she did best. She ran.

Right up ahead, there was the edge of a forest. Putting on a burst of speed, she veered into the shelter of the trees. She didn’t dare look back, only knowing that the stable master’s steed would soon close the gap between them. Years of bushwalking allowed her to cross the rocky terrain quickly, but the horse would not be deterred, either. At least, it was slowed by its shoulder injury. Sheer adrenaline propelled the girl onward, her straining breaths and the clop of her pursuer’s hooves echoing through the quiet forest. Soft morning light was broken up by the canopy, falling on the leafy undergrowth, making every twist and turn seem something out of a dream. She had no clue where she was going.

Her breaths grew heavier. Her stomach retched. Her vision blurred.

She tripped.

A tree root, or something equally inconsequential. She went sprawling to the ground, the spiny rocks and prickly bramble burrowing into her through her overlarge hunting cloak. She lay there gasping, sweating and dizzy from exertion, her body finally run itself ragged, muscles exploding with agony. Shortly after, the stable master and his horse burst out from the trees. Looking down at the gold-haired girl curled up on the ground, the man’s gaze was hard.

He aimed his tranquiliser at her—WHIIIIIIR…—and fired.

POW! Jemi scarcely rolled to avoid it. The patch of leaves beside her smouldered. Grunting, he reloaded. WHIIIIIR…

Desperately, Jemi screamed out.

From above them, the trees shook.

In a great, buzzing fury, a cloud of hornets descended. They swarmed over the stable master and his horse. The stable master shrieked, swatting and trying to get them off him. The horse frenzied as it shook its mane about. The hornets left Jemi alone. Some actually formed a wall between her and the stable master, as if guarding her.

As Jemi picked herself off the ground, she glimpsed the stable master’s glare, venomous through the haze of insects. His mouth opened to form a single word:

“Beast.”

Jemi froze, if for just a second. Then, she turned away from the scene, stumbling off into the thick of the jungle.

No longer being chased, Jemi had the chance to recuperate. However, her woes were far from over. For one, she was helplessly lost. Asking the animals of the forest did not help; when asked where was the way ‘out’, or ‘to the city’, they could not give her good answers. They were born of, lived, and died in the forest. Such concepts were simply not a part of their lives, and were thus absent from their dialogue.

Jemi thus settled for asking them the nearest water source. Using their replies, she managed to find a babbling creek. She followed it downstream, in the hopes that it would lead her to civilisation. However, what seemed like a decent idea at first quickly turned out to take a very, very long time. Jemi walked along that river for what must’ve been hours. At one point she tried to switch strategies: climb a tree, hopefully poke her head above the thick canopy, and try to use Mount Casca, tallest mountain in the world and visible from anywhere, as a landmark. However, multiple attempts proved her too weak to make it to the top of the tree, and she was scared of falling and breaking a bone here, in the middle of nowhere with no one to help her.

Next, she asked a hornbill to fly up and have a look for her. This turned out to be a great move, for all birds possessed an internal compass. She set out in a northeast direction. However, after accompanying her for a while, the hornbill flew off. It had other bird-things to do, and couldn’t spend all its time assisting a lost girl. Jemi’s next attempts to find more birds were unsuccessful.

By this time the sun had gone down. Jemi tucked herself into an empty tree hollow and built a fire, watching as the smoke coiled into the air. She didn’t have the energy left for climbing a tree. She didn’t dare sleep; she had never tried negotiating with predators before, and didn’t want to end up eaten by a Komodo dragon or other while she was out. Certainly, throughout the day, the clouds of mosquitoes descending upon her hadn’t given a hoot about her protests.

Getting no sleep, Jemi started to ponder her options for the coming days. Her meagre supply of food and water was dwindling. That wasn’t the biggest issue, for Jemi had confidence in collecting those from the forest. What Jemi didn’t want to think about was what she would do once she ran out of medicine. Already her body was giving her hell for going so long without proper rest.

Maybe this was karma, for all that she had done.

Even if Jemi made out of the forest, where would she go? She was a kid less than twelve, with no family, from a village in the middle of nowhere. She had barely over two years of primary education, and no money. She was so frail and sickly, no one would hire her even as a child labourer. Perhaps she could convince some kind-hearted souls to take her in out of pity, but what kind of life would that be? And how long would it last, before they grew tired of her? What if they heard the news that she had poisoned her entire village? Jemi didn’t know if the hornets had only driven the stable master away or killed him. If he’d made it out, he could certainly have tattled all about Jemi. If that happened, Jemi could very well become not just a runaway, but a wanted runaway. There weren’t many angels in Linqin, but Jemi had seen them in action in the city. If angels came to hunt her, with their gold-blazing magic and swooping wings, Jemi knew she didn’t stand a chance. There wouldn’t be anywhere in all of Loukoumades she would be safe.

If only she wasn’t so helpless. If only she had… some power.

Jemi thought about what her neighbours had called her. What the stable master had said.

‘Beast’…

Jemi watched the curling smoke for a second longer. She thought about being the Nian from her dreams, bounding through the flames, roaring and fearless.

Then, resolutely, she stood up and stamped the fire out.

When the embers had died out under her boots, the forest drowned in darkness once more. But it wasn’t completely dark. Through the gaps in the leaves up above, she could see the needling pinpricks of stars peering down from the heavens. Somehow, standing there in the smoke-tinged night, she understood what to do. She did what she hadn’t managed to do on New Year’s Day: she prayed.

And from the sky, a gleaming blue light descended into the heart of her palm. It took off like a firefly, flashing into the air.

Jemi followed and didn’t look back.