Had it been ten days? Or five? Neeko should have been keeping track. He and Pais agreed on eight, and made some notches in the mud. But then, on the ninth day, Neeko awoke to the patter of rain, before sunrise. By the time the tribe stirred in their tents, the precipitation had turned to a thunderous downpour. The storm charged north of the rainforest, soaking the savanna and the prisoners as well.
The dirt beneath their cage began to turn to mud, and the mud thickened as the morning hours dragged by. The moss covering on top of the cage, intended to block the sun, drowned in the rainwater and dripped black watery streaks onto the prisoners.
Some of the hunters still went out for the day and those that did not were soon called to repair a tent that capsized under the weight of its drenching. Neeko rose from the sticky muck to peer at the inside of the tent when it was exposed, but all he saw was packs, a cot, bedding, and some rounded sacks of textiles and other supplies. He sank back down onto his soaked backside.
Pais’ca was a quiet lump of misery in one corner of the cage. They didn’t speak—any casual socialization to distract themselves had been exhausted during their days travelling from Hawsi and living with the Cani tribe. She wiped a drip of mud off her chapped lips and looked at Neeko. He looked down again.
The hunter who often brought their lunch was helping with the tent repairs, so it was one of the senior tribesmen that came stumbling up to the cage wall. Neeko and Pais pressed against the branches and reached out their sore arms to receive whatever goods he had brought them. In this case, it was strips of dried meat and two cups of thickly-ground berry juice. He moved from Neeko’s hands to Pais’ca’s with a tilt and a groan, then hunched forward again as though that was his preferred state.
“Ask him what happened to his back?” Neeko told Pais.
His companion looked at him blankly, then slowly shifted her gaze back to the old man, his wrinkled torso unadorned by tribal paint. She mumbled in their language until he understood, then translated his reply back to Neeko. “He says he has a bad back so that young men will have a good back.”
Neeko blinked. “How is that so?” he asked, fascinated.
Pais listened to his reply after she rephrased the question. “I don’t understand.” Confused, she asked a few more questions and the man gave a few more weary replies. She finally looked back to Neeko and explained, “He said, at first, that it’s because that’s how ‘Ris’ical’ is. I thought I didn’t understand the word, but it’s a name.”
“Who is Ris’ical?” Neeko questioned.
Pais shrugged, snivelling as she wiped more rain water off her face. “I asked him, but as near as I can figure, it’s ‘everything’ or maybe their name for Gethra? Or a god of some kind?”
Neeko was confused. “So Ris’ical took the health from this man’s back and gave it to a younger man?” he asked. Were they speaking about a magician?
The old man watched Neeko speak, and then looked back at Pais’ca. His grey hair was braided behind his head, dripping with rain. He listened to Pais’ translation and then replied in a series of clicking syllables. Another question, to clarify. Pais’ca complied, and the man turned his head to laugh at the question Neeko had given. He muttered, “Tira, tira.” An affirmative.
Neeko nodded. “Who took the strength from your back?” he asked, rephrasing the question in the hopes of a more specific answer.
Though the man replied a few different ways, but Pais shrugged and looked back at her friend. “He said, ‘no one’, but that it’s just the way. I don’t understand.” The man interjected something else, and Pais added it. “He wants to know if your back is sore too.”
Neeko nodded, frustrated. “Yes. Tira.”
Pais spoke his reply: “Then a young man somewhere gets to have a strong back.”
Fate, Neeko realized. There was no magician here. These tribespeople were just insects finding a way to contextualize their fates. He sank further down from the bars where he had held himself to converse and claim his scraps of food. “I’ll steal my strong back from whoever stole it, then,” he muttered.
Pais’ca cluelessly repeated his words in the tribal tongue and the old man started to chuckle. He leaned closer to Neeko, pointed at Pais, and taunted a reply. He continued chuckling as Pais raised her eyebrows and breathed, “He said you had better steal it from me. I might be your last opportunity.” She sucked in her breath and pressed closer to the bars, her feet twisting in the mud. They traded words again. “I asked him if that means we don’t have long to live—he said it will depend on the signs!”
“What signs?” Neeko asked. They had heard this before. “What signs?”
Pais’ca demanded answers just as frantically, pressing her face to the opening.
The old man just waved his hand at her and started to walk away. He called back something about the food—the word ‘nutiki’ was used.
“He’s telling us to accept our fate,” Neeko exclaimed, “the bastard!”
Pais’ca shook her head and sank limply into the mud. “He only said, ‘eat your meat’,” she explained. She broke her gaze with Neeko and looked down into the puddle between them. Her eyelids were closed, but a sob was dragged up from inside her.
Neeko turned back to the branches that kept them trapped here. “Hey!” he cried after the old man, knowing his words might elicit no reply at all. “I won’t live with this bad back forever! I will be that young man that gets your pathetic back!”
Then Neeko collapsed in the mud and tried to ignore the tears running down Pais’ muddy cheeks. He was afraid. They were going to die in this cage, and his years of gruelling research would amount to nothing. He looked at Pais again, but decided against consoling her—to voice his fears aloud would make them more real. It would give them some sort of physical presence beyond their tinge to the damp moss overhead and the cold inch of mud beneath his aching bones.