Every evening she climbed down the riverbank in search of Mama Cascade, and every evening she was disappointed. The water responded to her basic requests, and she used her new knowledge to set obstacles and traps, but the goddess would not appear, and the other world would not open.
Arwa stamped her feet in the reeds and slapped the river surface. She dived to the bottom and waited there for half the night. She threw gifts of food and necklaces and belts. All of them vanished immediately, but Mama Cascade did not appear to extend her thanks.
Her first mother, Nambi, pulled her aside so the other elders would not overhear. “Something has gone wrong,” she guessed.
Arwa tried to deny it. “I’m practicing at night,” she said.
“Do not lie to me,” Nambi snapped. She softened the rebuke with a hand on Arwa’s shoulder. “You forget I have met her myself. Like all creatures of the water, she is prideful. Determine what you have done to offend her, and then determine what she requires to make amends.”
Arwa redoubled her efforts at gift-giving instead. She wove headpieces and armbands. She brewed milks and mixed paints. She threw these into the water day after day, and she pretended she did not know exactly what she had done wrong.
She was standing on the bank with a freshly carved fishing spear in one hand, squinting through the morning rain for some sign of Mama Cascade, when she spotted the young hunter Muranya running up the opposite bank.
Muranya cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “The grassland creatures are coming! They are carrying canoes past the Mhaiko!”
There were only six other hunters close to the village. They came to Muranya’s call armed with wenwood bows, and they looked to her in accusation.
“How did they pass the waterfall?” the hunter Kindo demanded.
“We’ll know when we find them,” Arwa said. She struggled to suppress her own doubts.
She dived into the river, focusing on the threat at hand. The hunters vanished into the forest, but she had no doubt they were keeping pace with her as she swam. Their enemies would not hear a single step.
The invaders had advanced too far already. Arwa sensed one of their canoes in the water, two bodies within. A dense hooked object was caught in the rocks below, holding them in place.
Arwa slashed the rope hanging taut over the side of the canoe. The creatures on board shouted and lowered their oars, but Arwa ripped each one loose the moment it touched the water. A face appeared, wobbly through the flowing water, gawking at her with bulging eyes.
Another cry, a splash, and a new body entered the water. It was quickly swept away toward the waterfall. Arwa surfaced at the foot of the canoe. Five more of them stood on the bank, jabbering in a strange language, brandishing long silver objects at the trees. The hunters, unseen, shot a volley of arrows. Two of the invaders fell; the remaining three staggered but stood their ground. The silver objects they held roared, and one of the hunters cried out, struck by an invisible force.
Arwa didn’t have time to gape. She lunged against the canoe, hurrying its progress downriver. The creatures inside tried to push her away, and she clawed at their cheeks. The roar of the waterfall grew steadily louder, and then the current swept them over the edge and down the stone steps.
Their craft fractured first, their bodies second.
And Mama Cascade finally accepted an offering. The goddess appeared in the pool below, floating upward on her back, growing larger as she neared the surface. Her mouth opened wider and wider, stretching like a snake’s. She stuffed the invaders into her maw, tools and coverings and all, chewing with gluttonous delight.
Mama Cascade finished her meal and slithered up the steps. By the time she reached Arwa she was of ordinary size, still dribbling blood from the corner of her mouth. “Thank you for the meat,” she said, smiling with lazy satisfaction. Her stomach bulged over her fish tail.
“I thought you had abandoned me,” Arwa accused.
Mama Cascade’s eyes narrowed. “You insulted me. You shared knowledge that was not yours to share.”
Arwa’s face flared hot. “I didn’t—” She took a breath, remembering Nambi’s advice. “Mama Cascade, I beg your forgiveness. It was an error I won’t repeat. How can I make amends?”
Mama Cascade cocked her head, listening to the current. She sniffed the air delicately. “Your hunters are stripping fresh meat on my bank. Give it to me, and I will forget this insult.”
They swam upriver to the site of the confrontation. Arwa climbed out and explained the situation to the hunters. They weren’t thrilled to hand over their catch, but the goddess had only requested the meat. Arwa helped them finish stripping the bodies. Naked, the truth was disturbingly clear: though their bodies were pale, and their faces were blotched red and fringed with hair, their overall shapes were unmistakable.
The invaders were people, strangely colored and somewhat large, but definitely people.
She watched them vanish into Mama Cascade’s gullet, and she was nauseous with dread.
Upon her return to the village, Arwa was immediately accosted by Shanto, who asked breathlessly, “Is it true what Muranya is saying? Did Mama Cascade lure them into her maw? Did she transform into an enormous beast?”
The goddess’s reprimand rang in her ears. Arwa responded in the only way she could: “The workings of Mama Cascade are not for you to know.” Her tone was too harsh; she knew it by the look on Shanto’s face. But Arwa wouldn’t betray her second mother again.
It was only after Shanto left that Arwa registered the pain in her hands. She unclenched her fists and stared. At some point during the fight, her nails had turned into claws, thick and black.
It was the first of many skirmishes. As the rain increased from intermittent to daily, the swelling river brought increasingly aggressive incursions from beyond the grassland. Their boats were sturdier, their parties larger, their weapons more numerous.
The first Bitumb was killed, with only a small, hard ball found in his chest, and his fellow hunters revenged him seven times. They heard of another massacre downriver, the Mienyo village reduced from thirty to six. Much like the Timbo, those survivors would have to plead their way into other villages or risk starvation.
The Bitumb moved two more times. Their hunters set traps on the land, and Arwa set traps in the water. Under Mama Cascade’s tutelage, she arranged tangled branches across smooth stretches of the Bombio, and hid tall, jagged rocks around sharp bends. She increased the populations of fever-bringing mikato insects and flesh-burrowing ants. In order to reach the Bitumb, their enemies would have to brave carnivorous fishes, deadly parasites, and toxic vegetation.
But the invaders had a seemingly endless supply of bodies to pour into their endeavor, and the hupa vine had them intoxicated. They spread through the strip of jungle that united dark forest with grassland, building homes from the densest tree trunks and surrounding them with vicious dogs. These people looked more natural, with darker faces and bare arms, and they only attacked villages dense with hupa.
The red-and-white invaders were Arwa’s responsibility. She stabbed holes in their boats, and they came back with shiny, impenetrable hulls. She covered the river in debris, and they brought enormous curved knives to cut through it. She fed them to Mama Cascade, and they multiplied like a swarm of ants.
Arwa spent so much time in the water, she hardly spoke aloud except to ask for a warm meal. Shanto often cooked for her if Nambi was unavailable, and she took Arwa’s rough thanks with an air of silent suffering. They used to spend their mornings gathering together. They used to prepare their meals side by side. Arwa saw all of this in Shanto’s face and pretended she didn’t. She was visiting daily. It would have to be enough.