A simple peasant prior to her transformation in the early nineteenth century, Ranomi had stayed true to her simple roots, even though she had been forced to leave her home village and family behind, after being condemned to death for being a supposed witch. Despite having travelled the world, she had chosen to spend the majority of her life in her native Java, living as bucolic an existence as she could, but having to move on to a new area every decade or two, both to avoid Huntsmen and to escape the ever-present threat of being persecuted for witchcraft in communities that were steeped in old superstitions and throttled by religious fervour.
Despite the enormous gulf in their life experiences, Ranomi and Chloe had been able to find a surprising amount of common ground, upon which the foundations of a friendship were solidifying. Momentarily caught up in a recollection of one of their recent conversations, Chloe stared up at the green mesh of tree boughs and vines and palm fronds, detached from the present. William’s voice, however, sliced through the haze and snapped her back to reality.
‘Here’s your coffee, Chloe,’ he said, offering her a steaming mug.
‘Thanks.’
‘You looked like you were having a bit of daydream there, lass. Ah, well it’s to be expected, yeah? The jungle is so full of wondrous life. All these scents and sounds and sights around us, all these creatures and plants and insects competing and cooperating at once in this beautiful symbiosis. Poetry in motion, if I’ve ever seen it.’
Chloe took a sip of coffee and stared at the foliage.
‘It’s an amazing place, even if I can’t stop sweating.’
‘You’ve done a decent enough job of acclimatising so far.’
William stopped and craned his neck to look past Chloe’s shoulder. She understood that this meant that he had sensed another beastwalker nearby, so she turned around and saw Ranomi heading down the trail towards them, her characteristic smile a bright sickle of ivory on her tea-skinned face.
She was a notch or two under five foot in height, and slender of frame and limb. Her petite size was deceptive, however. Even aside from the fact that her diminutive body could transform into that of a hulking rhinoceros, in her limbs there was a wiry strength and dangerous speed. There was not an ounce of excess fat to be found on her androgynous frame; her tawny skin was stretched tight over hard muscle, thin and taut like clingwrap over carved stone. In her almond eyes was there simmered an electric spark of wit, while behind that shiv of mischievous light a signal flare of defiant, fiercely independent zest burned in her dark irises. Chloe beamed out a broad grin, snatched the extra coffee cup from William’s hands and hurried up the trail to greet Ranomi with a hug.
Chuckling softly, William turned and headed back to the flat rock at the centre of their camp. Zakaria was already there, conversing with another beastwalker who had come to meet them in the Cambodian jungle, a three-hundred-year-old Dayak shaman from Borneo named Awang Anak Langkau. Unlike most beastwalkers, Awang bore a strong physical resemblance to the animal into whose form he could shift: an orang-utan. Like his ape form, Awang’s body was lanky, with his limbs having an almost rubbery quality to them, with their knotty muscles and protruding, lumpy joints. He was bow-legged, and carried himself with a hunched-over, round-shouldered posture. His arms were almost disproportionately long, and a broad, jutting lower jaw, a sloped forehead and heavy crimson lips added a somewhat simian air to his face.
He was not a physically attractive man by any means, but he was kind, quiet and gentle in nature, and, moreover, he was extremely wise. He had grown up in the heart of the Bornean rainforest, and there he had spent most of his life, yet even now every leaf, every insect, every bird and every creature that crawled, walked, swam, flew or slithered still held a fascination for him that verged on the childlike in its intensity. He and Zakaria were engaged in a philosophical discussion on the nature of spirituality and religion.
‘In this region,’ Awang said in his slow, measured tone of voice. ‘I’ve seen the brutality of almost all of the major religions as each came here in turn, fighting each other and slaughtering countless innocents – human and non-human – in the name of some vengeful, petty God or gods who seem to demand absolute obedience, and a complete surrender of the higher faculties of the mind to instead embrace ignorance, blind tradition and dogma. It makes no sense.’ Awang paused to shake his head sadly. ‘My friend, I cannot for the life of me understand it. The human animal has no true need to convene in vainglorious structures of stone, dead wood and metals torn with violence from the bosom of the Great Mother. Look around you! Feel the life pulsing through every square centimetre of this place! It is hundreds, if not thousands of times older than both the human species and our own kind, and surely if some higher creator exists, that being could never be some humanlike deity, nor indeed would it be like any individual living organism upon this planet. No, it would be a collection of all of
