THE MANGROVE is full of monsters. I have seen them. Once, Honor’s cousin Teale dared us to climb to the top of the nursery tree. Three-quarters of the way up, he slipped and fell into the green water. Teale swam willy-nilly toward a branch and almost made it, except this enormous mouth with ragged teeth got him and pulled him under. Honor screamed, and would not stop until her mother came and took her away. Around us, people whispered the death blessing: “Welcome this soul. May his body nourish you and his mind add to your wisdom. Amen.”
That scared me. His mind added to their wisdom? Did that mean the monsters — we called them three-eyes on account of the lump on their foreheads that looks like a third eye — now knew everything Teale knew? That evening I had a nightmare about a Three-Eye that looked like Teale and called out my name.
“Little twerp,” Honor said the next day. “Teale was stupid, Eezel. He was going too fast, and he went out onto that thin branch.”
“But it wasn’t his fault. It was an accident.”
“No. Teale was killed because he was stupid. And I’m not stupid — that won’t happen to me.”
I wasn’t convinced Teale was any more stupid than the rest of us, but I didn’t argue with her. I had a bigger worry. “Do you think that three-eye now knows all about us? You know, because it knows what Teale knew? Do you think it knows how to climb trees like Teale did?”
“No, I don’t!”
“But the blessing says…”
“Or for—” Honor didn’t finish her thought but swung out of the branch and left me there without a word.
After that, I took to watching the water for any sign of a three-eye Teale. One day, I was sitting on a low branch, watching for signs of life below the green sludge, when two trees south, I saw Old Lady Kelty — she must have been over thirty. Her fur had started to come out in patches, and her bare skin looked scaly and red. There were these cuts on the side of her neck. She was climbing straight down to the water. What the heck was she doing? I knew the eyes go a bit in old people, mama told me that, so maybe she was lost, confused. I called out to her to stop, to turn around, to be careful. I don’t know whether she heard me. She just kept going. She was humming to herself, and in slow motion, sank into the water. She dipped her head under, surfaced and swam in graceful circles.
I held my breath, scanning for three-eyes. I ran to Papa. He was collecting paw-paws for Mama, who was stuck at the nest, nursing my younger twin sisters. “Papa, Papa, come quick — Old Lady Kelty is in the water!”
“Ah, is she now? I suppose it was inevitable. Had to happen sooner or later.”
“But you don’t understand, Papa, she didn’t fall in, she just went in on purpose. I think she’s gone weird in the head. We’ve got to get her out before the three-eyes come.”
“No need, Eezel, it was her time.”
“Her time for what?”
He stopped collecting fruit then and looked at me. “Well, you’re a little young to be knowing this. But when we turn old, and our fur starts to come off, we go into the water.”
“What? What do you mean go into the water?”
“We stop living in the trees and go into the water. We give ourselves to the Water God and are reborn.”
I was gobsmacked. “You mean when I’m so old that my fur comes off, I have to kill myself?”
“You wouldn’t really be killing yourself.”
“So, Teale isn’t dead? I saw a three-eye eat him.”
“Well, yes, Teale is dead. Some become an offering — some become reborn.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but both options seemed horrifying.
He patted my head and offered me a paw-paw. “It’s complicated, Eezel. You’ll understand someday.”
But I didn’t want to understand, and I tried not to think about it. Instead, I adopted Honor’s way of thinking. I had to be smart because only stupid people get themselves killed — only the really retarded walk calmly into the water.
“I don’t care how old I am, I don’t care if all my fur comes out and I’m completely naked, I am not walking into that water,” I said to Honor, who agreed totally and said so often.
Three years later, at the height of the winter floods, when mama got swept into the surge and her limbs were ripped apart by a tangle of three-eyes, I yelled at Papa: “She was so dumb! Why didn’t she cling on to the branches better, why didn’t she at least try to swim? She didn’t even try!”
“You don’t really mean that, Eezel.” He wrapped me and my whimpering sisters in his long arms. “Come, let’s all recite the death blessing. ‘Welcome this soul. May her body nourish you and her mind —’”
My sisters’ thin voices joined him, but I couldn’t. I shrugged out of his arms. “No! That’s just stupid!”
He tried to reach for me again, but I wouldn’t let him. “I know you don’t believe it right now, Eezil, but it’s a blessing,” he told me. “She will nourish the ancestors.”
“No! I don’t believe it. She’s just food for the Three-eyes. She’s just dead. She’s just dead because she was stupid. I hate her! I hate her!”
Papa’s face flushed with anger; his whiskers bristled. “Do not talk about your mother like that!” He lunged at me, but I swung away from him and did not stop swinging until I was out of sight. I left the nest that day and have never been back since. At first, my sisters came to visit me daily, pleading with me to return, to apologize to Papa. But their visits dwindled to nothing when they realized I wouldn’t. I was alone and determined to survive.
That’s when I stopped foraging for the choicest paws-paws on the thin, top branches — too risky. I stayed away from the other boys — who were always playing tag, daring each other to jump from tree to tree, from branch to branch. In all the years I lived alone, before Honor and I nested, I saw a lot of youngsters fall into the gaping black gobs of the monsters — and I thanked the Tree God that I was too smart to end up there. And when I saw the old men and women calmly, deliberately ease themselves into the water — as if they did not care for life, I shrugged and looked away and would not think of it.
When Honor and I had children, we taught them well. We taught them how to be smart, how to be careful, we did not allow them to associate with any idiots or the offspring of idiots. We kept them safe.
The hardest day was when I saw Papa limping down to the water’s edge. I could not believe how old he looked. His fur had gone grey and white, but there was little of it left, and above his eyes, he had an open sore that wept with puss. I stared at him, warring with myself. I knew what he was about to do. Should I try to save him, stop him somehow, at least try to talk him out of it, say something, say goodbye? But I had not talked to him for so long.
I hesitated and, at that moment, he plunged into the water with an audible sigh — as if it were a relief. He ducked his head under and never resurfaced.
When the first patch of fur fell off my back, I made Honor promise that she would stop me from going into the water, regardless of how much I pleaded with her to let me go.
But as it turned out, she left first. She had been hot and thirsty for days — her itchy, naked skin tormented by the sun. I could see the monstrous thing she was becoming — what we were both becoming — and I recoiled at the thought. “You can’t give in, Honor. Please, fight this. Stay with me.” But she was tired and said she didn’t want to argue anymore. And she nuzzled me, and we held each other as if we would break at any moment, and I fell asleep. When I woke, she was gone — already gone to the water. I could not stop her, just as we could not stop the children from growing up, from drifting away, from doing all the dangerous things we forbade them to do.
And so I am alone again. I spend most of the time sleeping in the shade. I wrap myself in wet leaves, trying to cool my burnt, brittle skin, to quench the constant itch, to soothe the open sores where the sharp scales have broken through. I feel my mouth grow wider, my teeth more ragged, the ridges on my neck more pronounced. The sore on my forehead is like a third eye. It shifts and moves and shows me visions of my ancestors — of my Papa — calling me home. I am so very thirsty. And when I sleep, I dream of cool, blessedly cool, green water.
THREE-EYES: Copyright is held by the author.
Toronto-based writer, editor, and publisher Nancy Kay Clark likes to keep busy. You will find her most days crafting fiction for both kids and adults, working on a memoir of her late mother, dabbling in drabbles, co-hosting Mom and Son Book Reviews, a spec-fic podcast with her adult son Nathan, and reading short-story and poetry submissions at CommuterLit, the literary ezine she’s edited and published for over a decade. Check out her middle-grade novel The Prince of Sudland: Escape from the Palace here.
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