By Kaycee Browning
An island filled with caves, carved by fervent monks. This was the refuge to which her brother had fled.
Island of Caves, his message had said. Worshippers pass through the halls and chant. Echoes everywhere. The stonework is hard, but good. It makes my heart feel whole. At night, I crawl into my very own cave-cell at the highest point of the island. Soon, the others will embark for a festival and I will have all the peace to myself.
I can rest here.
Ruhi sighed. Even delivered through the monotone of the messenger, his words whispered of happiness. She wondered what his voice, so pining and choked all her life, sounded like now. A confident voice, a safe voice, a complete voice.
She couldn’t imagine it.
She tightened her belt and secured her three daggers in their sheaths.
Looking up, she breathed deeply in the slashing reds and jewel blues of the oncoming evening. The breeze and the vastness were comforting in their lightness, their ephemerality.
See! It doesn’t matter. It all disappears with the clouds. Impermanent. Pain is only a fog, and so is peace. Rest in being the only one to survive the mists.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t taken her advice to heart.
Ruhi shifted her weight, and the rickety pier creaked high and beseeching before the ocean drowned it out, like marketplace chatter overwhelming an imploring beggar. She adjusted her braid, smiled to herself, and touched each dagger, one, two, three.
She dove into the murky depths.
She pierced through the water—an arrow through wind. No sunlight to waste. She struck out, expert breaststrokes, farther into the ocean.
The Island of Caves was a three-hour swim. She needed the light to navigate her way there, but she wanted the cover of darkness upon her arrival.
Killing a monk would be a simple thing in the middle of the day. And in the darkness?
Infantile.
She wouldn’t even remember it.
Nakin fidgeted, sitting atop the jagged stairs. He tossed the small statuette in his hands, back and forth. He was trying to carve an elephant.
The problem was the trunk. He was afraid to start. The trunk would be the thinnest part; knowing him, he’d probably ruin it, make it too delicate, too destructible. He didn’t want it to break. He needed it to exist. To be real, and hard, and stone…
He shook his head. He placed the half-carved elephant next to his tools. It would be dark soon, anyway.
The evening was garishly stricken with color. As sudden as lightning, it reminded him of the saris of the poor girls working the corners of the alleys, all brightness and twirls, but none of it happy. A facade thinly hiding their despair, his despair, as he crouched helpless in the garbage, waiting for Ruhi to return smiling—a disgustingly genuine grin—with blood-spattered coins clutched in her hand.
He closed his eyes. He wasn’t there anymore, but he hadn’t been able to stop seeing her, always, in his mind.
“See! It doesn’t matter.” She laughed, flipping her long hair over her shoulder. She kicked the body with her foot. Blood, staining the snow, melting it, sinking.
Nakin wanted to cry. He wanted to yell. All he could muster was a garbled choke. “Ruhi…”
Ruhi noticed his distress. She softened. She sheathed her daggers, grabbed the poor dead man, took his purse, and, before Nakin could move, she tossed him over the side of the mountain.
Shhhhhhshhh.
The wind protested more than Nakin.
“It all disappears with the clouds.”
“Impermanent,” Nakin muttered. He glared over the treetops of the jungle, beyond the ocean, into the endless horizon. Without removing his gaze, he grabbed the elephant, spun his chisel into his hand, holding it like a dagger, and set to work on the trunk.
Ruhi would be here soon. She undoubtedly thought he’d sent her that message out of a naive hope of peace for them. Little brother and big sister, monks in the caves, forever…
Nakin had never killed before. But, gods above, the memories needed to die. She was in his thoughts, in his nightmares, in the colors and in the darkness. He would never know peace until they, like her smiles, like his hope, like the clouds, were impermanent.
Ruhi rarely felt uncomfortable, but the Island of Caves was an unnerving place.
First, climbing ashore, she’d been greeted by massive statues of creator gods, staring coldly at her. For a moment, Ruhi’s heart leapt—they see me, they know me, they’ll kill me—before she stopped.
Stone. All stone.
Then, stairs wove through the claustrophobic jungle. Emboldened by familiarity with humans, sharp-toothed monkeys hissed amidst the low-hanging branches. One had even snatched for her pack.
She’d slit its throat.
Finally, the labyrinthine temple. It was intricately carved into the side of the mountain, pillars and statues and enclosures, too deep into the caves to see all of it in the feeble moonlight.
She shuddered. Unbidden, a memory of Nakin whispered in her mind.
“What does your heart feel like, Ruhi?”
“It thumps.”
“No. What does it feel like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mine feels like it has holes in it. Caves. And it feels alone, like an island in blood.”
She gripped her dagger. His echoes and memories—wavering smile, soft voice, kind entreaties—would cease soon. She could forget. She could rest.
An island in blood.
Ruhi climbed the stairs to the highest point on the island, to the lone cave he had mentioned in his message.
She peered inside the cave. His bundled form slept in the back. A small object lay next to him.
She crept inside. Raising her dagger, she glanced at the object. It was a carved elephant, with its trunk broken off.
A footstep behind her. She spun.
Nakin, holding a rope.
Debris falling into the cave entrance.
She threw the dagger.
It flew, it’s aim true.
A boulder crashed in front of the cave.
Darkness.
Permanent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pardon the pun, but a gripping, dark story.
Whoa. That was fun. Well done. :)
Outstanding, especially the setting and use of language!
Thank you so much Arlan, Hannah, and Pamela! Glad you enjoyed it!
This was gripping. Great job!