An illness took hold of her, like nothing she’d experienced. The skin of her arms roughened and rashed. Her eyes were bleary; her stomach was distended and sore. She felt buried by water, but when she rose to the surface she could scarcely breathe.
Arwa swam to the pool on gift-giving day, keen to see Shanto, determined to ask her forgiveness—and, if she were being honest, to take solace in her sympathy. But the morning slipped by, and Shanto didn’t come.
Arwa waited, her indignation growing by the second. She reached out for more information.
There was blood in the water, far upriver. Near the village. Arwa cried out and climbed the first step in the cascade, only to be halted by a spasm of pain. Her legs were half-fused, difficult to use in the water and useless on the land. Arwa panicked.
Mama Cascade found her like this, sitting in the spray of the waterfall, desperately rubbing at her legs as though she could rip them apart. At the sight of the goddess, she called out, “Please! I need your help, Mother.”
“What is happening?” Mama Cascade asked.
Arwa shivered and coughed. “The village is under attack. I was selfish. I neglected their defenses. I have to go to them, but my body—I can hardly move, look. What is wrong with me?”
Sternly, Mama Cascade said, “You have been fighting the lure of two different worlds, and your body cannot bear the strain.”
“But what can I do?” Arwa felt a body plunge into the river, gored and sinking fast. Who was it?
Mama Cascade considered her carefully. “I have taught you all that you asked, and more, but the teachings of your first mother have an equally strong hook in your heart. It is up to you, child of the Bitumb, to decide your own path. You can give up your people and join me in the heart of the river, or you can go back and join their fight. What do you feel is right?”
Arwa hesitated.
Shanto thought that Mama Cascade had seduced Arwa’s loyalties and led her astray, but she was wrong. Arwa had always felt the tug of the wilderness. From her very first steps she had fled past the boundaries of the village, rescued time and again by Nambi or one of the other mothers. The water was her home in a way the trees had never been.
But there was more to a home than the nature of its roof. The village had moved from jungle to dark forest, and that had not changed them at their core.
Another body plunged into the river, this one still alive, the water reverberating with its voice as it called for help. What did she feel? Angry. Defensive. Possessive.
Arwa firmed her resolve. “The Bitumb are mine,” she said fiercely. “And I am ready to forge my own path.”
Mama Cascade nodded. “Then that is what you must do.”
The decision took hold, a blessed relief. Fresh strength filled Arwa’s limbs, and she dived deep into the pool. She dug sideways, into the earth itself, tearing through mud and rocks with hands as sharp as blades. Her legs tore where they had begun to fuse together, each one sprouting its own long fin to propel her through a new domain halfway between the river and the land.
She broke through the bank of the Bombio, trailing dark earths in her wake. The young hunter Muranya floated past her, a bow still clutched in his twitching hands. Rage nearly blinded her. It was the rage of family, yes, but it was also the rage of a goddess. These were her people, her gift-givers.
Mama Cascade was correct about one thing: the wilderness didn’t care where anyone came from. Language, color, dress—anyone who could discern the interplay of plant and bug and beast were welcome to reap the rewards of their knowledge. But to those who did not understand? The land was brutally unforgiving.
The Bitumb knew how to plead their case to a river goddess. The invaders did not.
Arwa took the men in the water first. All of their focus was on the fight up the bank. It was a horrible surprise when their canoe tipped sideways, and they slid directly into a mouth full of sharpened teeth.
Delicious.
Their struggle drew the attention of everyone on land. Men with broad hats and long silver weapons had laid siege upon the riverside huts. Three huts were already smoldering with flames. The young mothers and children were out of sight, hidden in a shelter disguised beneath thick vegetation.
The invaders might not find it, but their flames would. All of the adult hunters were locked in battle with the remaining attackers. They wouldn’t reach the shelter in time.
Arwa swarmed up the bank, tall and terrible, her arms and legs lengthened by extra joints, her hair whipping a bone-bladed frenzy about her face. The Bitumb saw a savior coming.
The people from beyond the grass saw death.
When the fighting was finished, Arwa stood triumphant over the last of them: a hairy, red-cheeked man gasping his last breaths. “Please,” he cried. “Let me go. We only came . . . we only came to map the river . . .”
It was impulsive pleading. He had no expectation of being understood. And so he gaped in shock when Arwa answered in his own language: “The river does not wish to be mapped.”
The expression stayed on his face long after his eyes dimmed.
The Bitumb surrounded Arwa, silent and awed, waiting for her instruction. She looked over all their faces, the faces of her people, until she found the one that was hers most of alclass="underline" Shanto, emerging from the secret hut with the children. Shanto’s eyes widened at the sight of her, but she did not hesitate to run up and take Arwa’s hands.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I should have come sooner.” Arwa stared at the dead, not all of them enemies. Bekya, who taught her to string a bow. Bomba, named for the river itself, who brewed the milkfruit for their ceremonies. And Muranya, still in the water, guardian of the forest path.
Louder, to the entire village, Arwa said, “Strip the enemy and bury their tools. Burn their canoes. Empty your huts. We will move for the last time, deeper into the forest, away from the Bombio and all of its explorers and foragers.”
She took a breath, and spoke the truth of her heart. “I will be your river. I will bring to you fishes and waterbirds. You only have to trust in me, and remember my name.” She looked directly at Shanto then, their hands still clutched tight. “Do you understand what this means?”
Shanto nodded, eyes bright and wet. “I will miss you, Arwa.”
Arwa smiled, soft and sad. “I won’t be far.”
In spite of Arwa’s claws and fins and writhing hair, each of the Bitumb extended their arms in farewell, and Arwa clutched them each in turn, her first mother Nambi longest of all. And then she left them to uproot their lives once more, and she dived into the river for the last time.
Arwa dug long and deep. She tore a fresh passage through the earth, funneling all of her rage and determination and godly self-righteousness into the muscles of her arms and back. Slowly, a new channel drew off the water of the river Bombio, slender at first, choked by weeds and tangled branches, impassible by canoe, and then opening, welcoming, widening. Arwa twisted and turned; she made sharp bends of herself; she dredged up rocks and built long, deadly rapids. Her anger bubbled and frothed, white and warning: You are not welcome; do not follow.
She built something wild and changeable, a river as fickle and fierce as her own heart. With every fistful of earth shoved aside, with every rock drawn up from underground, Arwa felt her humanity sloughing off, all of her hesitance and nervousness and homesickness tugged away on the current, leaving behind a creature more water than flesh, confident and quick-tempered, but also protective, like her second mother, and loving, like her first.