The Reckoning

jutted out from the furred hoods between their legs. The rain must have washed much of it away, but there had been a lot of blood and it stained them in patches.

They had something up there on the ledge with them, and it occurred to her that they had taken a piece of an animal. These adorable vegetarians were feeding on some kind of meat. She started to back away. Let them feed.

One stood on the shelf and she couldn’t help but look when it lifted the thing. It was a pink human leg, smeared with blood. Her mind shunted the possibility away. Then she recognized the blue high-top sneaker wired at the ankle. It was Samnang’s prosthesis.

She froze. What have you done to him?

The monkey pounded the leg on the ledge, foot down. The sneaker didn’t make a sound. But the message was clear. She was trespassing.

Stand or run, she couldn’t decide. In the Rockies, you made yourself larger. You put your hands over your head to appear taller and lowered your eyes. If a bear attacked, you played dead. If it was a mountain lion, you fought. This wasn’t the Rockies.

Before she had time to decide, the canopy stirred. It was the softest of breezes, just a whisper. The monkeys shifted. They looked around them, at the trees, down the corridor of ruins. The whisper was approaching. Molly remembered the gust of wind that had crashed on her and Duncan their first day up here, and this had the same rising force to it. Molly glanced up to see where it was coming from and how it would strike her.

The monkeys fled.

It was that simple. They bolted into the branches and were gone. The gust of wind rushed overhead. It missed her, and plunged on with a howl.

She was left alone. White and orange flower petals drifted down onto her head and shoulders. It was so quiet she could almost hear them land.

“Kleat,” she shouted. “Kleat. Duncan.” She waited. No one answered.

After a minute, bracing herself for the carnage, she climbed up onto the ledge. It was both worse and better than she was ready for. Samnang’s leg lay where the monkey had dropped it, and clearly it had been clawed and wrenched from his body in a great struggle. But the object of their feast was not his body. One of the monkeys had been killed, perhaps in the fight with Samnang. They had been eating one of their own.

30.

“Samnang?” she called out.

From the ledge, she could see a thicket of towering bamboo. It swayed gently. The canopy stirred again. The breeze was starting up. Somewhere the forest was letting it in. This time she could smell the coming rain on it.

The bamboo shivered. The feathery tops soared to various heights. The stalks clattered, lines and shadows luring her. Samnang might have escaped into there, she decided.

It was like entering a giant wind chime as she sidled among the green and yellow rods. They were a grass, not a tree, she knew that much, but some of the stems were as thick around as small kegs.

“Samnang,” she called again.

The stand was many generations old. On the outskirts, youngsters stood no taller than her thigh, their stems as thin as pencils. Deeper in, the stand was older and taller and denser. Dried, gray, dead monsters—thirty, fifty, a hundred years old—had pierced the canopy.

The breeze stirred their long wings of leaves, sending tremors down the stems. The shafts quivered under her open palms. They pressed against her, then pulled away. They jostled her with long, arcing nudges. Samnang slipped from her mind. She was barely aware that her attention was shifting from him to the forest.

How did you capture this in a photo? It rose in her like a desire, the urge to hold the green light and the moment. There was no controlling the sensation with her lens. Surrender, she thought. It came to her in a whisper.

Yesterday they had been in a race against the rain. Today she felt in synch with it. In a strange way, the rain gave them an advantage over their captors, if that’s what Vin and his brothers truly were. Unless the Khmers made a quick exit, the river would trap them and the forest would devour their vehicles. By contrast, the only thing the Americans stood to lose was a season stranded, and probably some weight.

Surrender. The idea grew. She and Duncan could melt off into the forest and outwait the others and inherit the ruins. If it was in the stars—in this starless place—they might become lovers. They would survive. The city—the forest—would provide.

The quaking leaves reminded her of aspen. Their shape was different, like minnows, not coins, but they shuddered and flipped with the same playful motion, and their colors ranged from blood red to green to yellow veined with gold.

The stand tightened around her. Her senses took on new intensity. Every stem had its own pulse. She could practically taste the light.

Molly went slowly, trying to balance her progress with the bamboo’s rhythm. At first she looked for a simple left-to-right or back-and-forth pattern, but it was more complicated than that. You had to feel for it, yielding and then invading, stealing through its openings. Resist, push back, and it only wore you out.

It became—absurdly—erotic. The forest was dancing with her, bending her, carrying her. Like yesterday while climbing the tree, she felt pieced away from the greed and confusion and dangers of the expedition. But it was more powerful than that. She felt embraced. She felt desired.

The stand grew thicker. She found herself snaking between the stems in brief surges. The way a boatman rests among the waves, gauging the sea and hoarding his strength, Molly paused. She stopped. It took a minute to register that she was, in a way, trapped.

One green rod pressed between her thighs, another lined up against her spine, more a saddle than a scissors. There was nothing awkward or alarming about it. She would simply have to wait for the bamboo to shift and release her.

The bamboo chattered all around her. The fat stem running between her legs vibrated. Absurd, she thought again. But nice.

The stalks had tangled their leaves high above. Patience, a moment more, she thought to herself. A wicked moment more.

It happened again. The stem pulsed from the top down, a velvet jolt traveling from the sky into the forest floor. She struggled, though not for long. Surrender. Another tremor, and she felt lifted off the earth.

It was unspeakable, literally…getting humped by a tree. Not another person in the world could ever know. She couldn’t even speak it to herself. But really, what was her alternative? To fight? To cry out for help? In a moment, the leaves would untangle. The bamboo would part. She would get back control of herself.

The wood throbbed again. It was like the devil down there between her legs. It took her breath.

She pushed with her back. The bamboo bowed with her. She bent sideways, but her camera strap tangled. Surrender. How was this different from a sunset or a flower’s perfume or the meat of a fruit? It pleased her. And where was the decency in nature anyway? The soft earth gave her feet stirrups. Bamboo appeared between her fists. She hung on.

The high leaves shivered. She let her hips tilt and would have gone through with it, would have let the bamboo finish her. But as her head settled back along the one stem, she saw the soldier.

The skeleton wore a uniform of rags. The pieces of him lay in a patch so dense it formed a forest within the forest. The bamboo shafts opened and closed like seaweed in a crosscurrent.

Molly straightened. She pushed against the bamboo, really pushed, and this time the forest released her. She freed her legs and stumbled upright.

The thicket had her penned in now, unable to move forward, unable to retreat. The breeze was blowing stronger. The bamboo quickened its jangle, changing from wind music to the clatter of teeth. There was a skull in there, its eyes covered by the helmet.