Seng Nu could have taken any fruit from this tree, but the most difficult one to reach would taste the sweetest. She outstretched her arms to keep balance as she walked along the branch, rocking and bouncing her body to match the wind that was flying and knotting itself around the trunks and branches of the upper canopy. Down on the ground, a squirrel imagined he saw the upper levels of the apple tree on fire. It was just Seng Nu’s hair, long and unnaturally red, billowing out behind her.

Last summer she had swum against the river from the curve to the old bridge and in the cold season just passed she had scrambled to the summit of the eastern mountain in two days. She liked to set herself these tasks. All by herself and always by herself.

“I found you on a peapod, sitting on a vine”. That was what Naw Naw had always told her.

Today, the challenge she had set herself was to pluck this apple. This particular one was on a branch so high that it poked above the forest canopy, as if it was craning to see further than all its brother and sister apples. Seng Nu looked down as she creeped along the branch. The ground looked to be as far away as the horizon, but she had no fear of heights. She stretched an arm up but she could only graze the apple with her fingers.

HRRROOOOOOONNNN!!!!

The distraction snatched her body’s concentration away from the tree and she lost her balance, wobbling hopelessly. Then she was off, falling from the very top of the forest to the earth below.

A bed of leaves and branches rose up from the ground to catch her and she bounced a little as she fell into them. It sailed back down to the forest floor and she sprung out onto her feet as it reached the ground. The bed collapsed into sticks and leaves that lay still on the floor, indistinguishable from any other. Seng Nu brushed herself off and looked up. The apple was smirking at her.

She heard the roar again. Clearer this time.

HROOOON!

It was coming from far away in the forest, but it still seemed nearer than the first time. Of course all roars were signs of danger, but there was something in this sound that made it more dangerous than most. It was a sound like a knife with serrated edges.

Seng Nu began running to meet the sound.

Elsewhere in the forest

Jin Bu’s forefinger stroked Zaw’s palm, feeling her way along the dry riverbeds of his skin. “Your hands have become rough.”

“That is what happens when you work around elephants,” said Zaw “when you pull ropes and chains all day, your hide becomes as tough and cracked as theirs.”

“And what will happen to your nose?”

A tease flashed in Zaw’s eyes and he reached round with his free hand to gently tweak Jin Bu’s nose between his thumb and forefinger. “It will grow long, almost as big as yours.”

Jin Bu slapped him playfully on the chest, frowning in mock indignation. Then she stopped, letting go of Zaw’s hand and with a concerned look reached up to touch her face. “Is my nose really that big?”

Zaw laughed. “I’m just joking with you Jin Bu! Your nose is perfectly normal sized. It’s smaller than an elephant’s and larger than a dormouse’s.”

Jin Bu wrinkled her nose and took Zaw’s hand and they continued their walk down the forest path. “You should dip your hands in honey, that’s a good way to stop them from being so cracked.”

“And what would the men in the camp say if they saw me walking around with honey on my hands like a bear raiding a beehive?”

“They’d say ‘what soft hands that young man has’ and give you a promotion!” Jin Bu laughed and skipped ahead letting her hands skim through the lowest hanging branches. With her slender frame and light brown complexion she looked like a sapling among these sturdy old trees. Her dark hung long and loose so when she jumped it bounced and dropped like rocks going over a waterfall.

“That doesn’t make any sense, Jin, It’ll be a year at least before I get to try out as a full oozie, and my hands will need to get more chaffed if I’m to stand any chance.” Unlike Jin Bu, Zaw was no willow. Since he had begun working as a trainee at Buttersweet, a year ago, he had grown wider and bulkier, his arms in particular taking on muscle from the heavy labour that came with the

He was still too young and inexperienced to be a rider, but he did everything else, from cleaning and feeding to attaching the ropes to both the elephants and the timber logs. The work had defined his body and like a mature teak tree, he was sturdy enough to lean against, which Jin Bu often did as they walked, her head resting on his shoulder as they strolled in perfect time with each other. His hair was almost as long as hers, but as someone who lived and worked in the forest he had learned quickly to tie it up into a knot after a few unhappy encounters with the sticky and thorny things that loved to betangle it.

Jin Bu stopped jumping and looked back at him “And then what will you do?” her voice dipped and rose in a singsong voice as she asked the question. She had asked it many times before, and never grew tired of the answer she knew was coming.

Zaw knew his part and he too spoke with a slightly exaggerated lilt in his voice, as if he was a player on a stage. “And then I’ll save up jade for a few years, ride into town on a bull elephant and carry you off to the mountains where we’ll live like bandits!” With a last flourish, he ran towards her and lifted her up by the waist, spinning her around as she giggled.

They were old children. Close to their eighteenth year, but they still spoke lightly of the future. To talk about it seriously would mean confronting the law of the Valley, which said that there was no alignment for marriage between a woman from Jin Bu’s clan and a man from Zaw’s. So they had become a secret growing into each other, meeting deep in the forest between Buttersweet and Blackstone village. The future they spoke of, in practised voices, was not a lie, but a story they had wrapped in a thin thread of hope.

“Do you think the birds care for who they marry?” They had reached the curved section of the forest stream where the water was shallow. There was a hint of urgency in Zaw’s voice, as though they might both grow too old the second he crossed the water and headed back to camp. He wanted to confront the injustice of the clan system. Wanted to talk about it at least.

“Oh so I am a bird am I?” Jin Bu replied playfully, trying to steer the conversation away from the edge, “A little sparrow who fell into your hands? Perhaps you should have let me go and waited for a sunbird or a peacock instead.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Yes a little sparrow...with not much meat on the bones.” Zaw found it too easy to tease her.

Jin Bu punched him lightly on the shoulder. “I thought the Tairu were good hunters.”

“We are!” said Zaw, puffing his chest out. “But the best hunters are not only concerned with the amount of meat, but the taste too.”

Jin Bu spun around to face Zaw and stood on her tiptoes, her hands resting on his forearms and brought her face up to his. “And how do I taste?”

Zaw looked at her for a while, trying his best to make a memory of the outline of her face, curving like an upright mango or a falling raindrop. Then he leaned in for a kiss and she closed her eyes in assent. Yet, he tilted his head at the last moment to lightly take the lobe of her left ear between his teeth.

“Hey!” shouted Jin Bu, her face flushed, a little louder than she wanted to.

“You don’t like that?” Said Zaw, a note of concern in his voice.

“I didn’t say that” said Jin Bu, looking back at him, trying to hold back her smile for as long as possible.

Her body went rigid. Dampened voices were coming from further down the stream. Neither of them wanted to explain to anyone what they were doing in the forest together.

“I better go for now.”

They kissed briefly and then their hands ran down each other’s arms as they walked away from each other, until only the fingertips touched and finally they were separated.

Zaw waded across the water and looked back at her as he reached the far bank. He pinched the lobe of his ear. “Bananas!” he shouted.

“What?”

“You taste of bananas!” He then turned and disappeared into the trees, and his beaming smile seemed to hang in the air after him.

Jin Bu walked back along the path, her heart lightly bouncing in her chest in satisfaction at a risk well taken. Already she missed Zaw and was looking forward to the next time he left jasmine flowers by her window, the signal for her to sneak out to the forest to meet him.

She walked down the path until she came to an apple tree, in fact it was the only apple tree in the entire forest. Although the central bough was lower than most of the other mature trees, the branches still stretched up, all twisted and knotted as they fought valiantly for sunlight. Behind the tree was a small open grove and Jin Bu knew that beyond that grove was a patch of gourds whose leaves would be coming into plucking season just about now.

“Wild leaves taste better”. That was what she had said when her family had asked why she was going to the forest this morning, and as she pulled her foot free of another vine that had wrapped itself around her foot she began to understand why some of them had tried to dissuade her. Some parts of the forest were so thick and so rarely used it was hard to see any recognisable path on the ground. You simply walked wherever the trees let you.

She ran a hand through her hair and it came out with a seed pod stuck to it which wouldn’t let go no matter how hard she shook it. She brought her free hand to brush it off, which only succeeded in getting the burr stuck to that hand. Then as she walked forward her foot became caught in yet another vine and it pulled her whole body back as she tried to walk on. A crow sitting in a nearby tree chuckled and then flew back to its family to tell them a new story about the human with the strange new hand and leg shaking dance.

She finally managed to flick the sticky pod from her hand and set her basket down near a patch of gourd leaves. While the gourds themselves were too small or too bitter at this time of year, the leaves were just right and whether it was the soil, the water or the vast canopy that gave a protective shade dappled with shafts of sunshine, the wild ones really did taste better. Some called them butter of the earth and boiled in a soup or curry made it a meal you would remember for the whole month that followed. She knelt down and began to strim the leaves for her basket.

HROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNN!

She froze at the sound. She heard an immense, chaotic, anger running through the forest and it was coming straight for her.

Earlier that Morning.

Pinkwetha was sure it wasn’t his birthday. But he did not think too long about pesky things such as reasons why when Jakan and Sotha came to him that morning with an entire branch of bananas, flower and all, and a stack of juicy yellow persimmons. Danh arrived too and began to massage his shoulders as Pinkwetha ate out of the other’s hands. He could tell from the slightly musty smell that the bananas had been cut the night before but he didn’t mind as they were still deliciously squidgy. The persimmons were an exotic type he had never tasted before, a treat in itself. They were so sweet he took a leisurely time with each one, sucking them clean to the skin and then performatively spitting out the seed along his rolled tongue. He was so caught up in his own gluttony he didn’t notice that with each mouthful, Jakan and Sutring were taking a step back and his greed was following. Danh walked alongside, patting and rubbing him in encouragement as his hands kneaded the thick ropes of sinewy muscle in Pinkwetha’s back.

He was still a teenager and not yet a full worker. Occasionally he might help with portering pots and pans back and forth from the camp to the inner forest, but he could not really complain of sore muscles at his age like his uncles did. But he was enjoying the massage and the breakfast feast so much he did not stop to wonder why he was being treated so kindly. Perhaps it was his birthday after all, though he remembered his seventeenth had been a rainy one and today the sky was cloudless and blue.

The two men who had been carrying fruit suddenly climbed over a short bamboo fence. It was then that Pinkwetha realised there were fences at his sides too. He turned his head to ask Danh for help but Danh had gone and when he tried to walk back he found that a gate had been shut against his rear. He was pinned in tight like a stone in a mango. They had led him into a pen. Betrayal clouded the air like thick pollen as more familiar faces appeared through the gaps in the bamboo, apologies falling from their mouths but an unmistakable mirth in their eyes.

And then came the ultimate indignation.

He had grown up in a camp where all his aunties and uncles had carried the men to and from the forest to collect fallen trees, but he had still not been prepared for the sheer humiliation of a man sitting on his back for the first time. To make things worse it had been young Jakan, who he had known since they were children, who made the first attempt to ride him. Pinkwetha bucked and writhed in a fury trying to shake the boy off. It worked and Jakan went flying. But he never came down. Pinkwetha was so tightly caught in the pen he could not look up but in front of him he saw a group of men tugging a rope that went up into the trees and realised that Jakan was on the other end of the rope and they were lifting him up to safety each time he bucked.

At full charge he could have broken this pen in one hit, but he could not run, only bend his neck and butt the sides of the pen. Over and over again he butted the fence, no longer caring about the men who were taking turns to sit on his back in their attempt to break him in. He was too angry to care about anything other than damage. Most elephants would have given up sooner or later, but perhaps there was something special about those bananas from earlier because Pinkwetha would not give up. Steam and dust were rising in a fury inside the pen as the young elephant wailed and bashed the sides in a rage. He must have hit them well over a hundred times and soon enough, there was a cracking sound. One stick of bamboo, just a little thinner than the rest, snapped. He carried on, butting the fence, breaking more sticks. He was the river and the pen was a failing dam.

The smirks on the mens’ faces were beginning to sink into frowns of concern. They were off and running away to their huts as he dug his small tusks into the final gaps and then with a sudden jerk, twisted his head, crushing the sticks against each other and shattering the pen wall. Pinkwetha ran out in a rage and kicked out his back legs as he broke free from the pen. The men had all disappeared, except Jakan who had been left dangling in the air high above the pen, a pathetic pleading expression on his face as he caught the elephant’s angry eyes. He was too high to reach so Pinkwetha ignored him and ran towards the forest in a rage.

As he charged out of the camp he passed a grove of bananas and recalled the now tainted memory of this morning's breakfast. The tricks of men! He was hungry for nothing but destruction and even the trees seemed to tilt out of his way to clear a path for him as he charged through the forest in a rage that blanketed his senses. He let out a warning roar that sounded like strangled thunder.

HROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!

All he saw, heard and felt in his bones was anger.