Jin Bu climbed down from the tree and wiped her scratched and bloody palms against her dress. There was a crossing point nearby. South led back to Blackstone village while North and across the stream went to the Buttersweet Camp. She had never been there before even though it was close to the village. “Not a place for young women” her mother had said when she had once asked to go see the elephants. “Don’t you dare go anywhere near there,” her father had growled, fortifying her mother’s warning with an even stricter order.

She heard his voice in her head, telling her to go straight home now. But he was muted by an image of Zaw, running into the trees. He had saved her life. She had to know if he was ok. What was she supposed to do, go home and make soup?

She took the northern path and dipped her hands into the stream as she crossed it, letting the cool water give comfort to her scraped hands. She had never been this deep into the forest. There was a path ahead, more defined and seemingly well-trodden, then the ones she was used to. She stepped gingerly onto it and then immediately threw herself into the bracken by the side of the path as she heard a wail coming from behind.

“HROOONN!”

The elephant was back! She crouched under an arch of thick bramble by the side of the road and curled herself in a ball trying to keep silent, but hearing her heart pounding in her chest.

“WATCH OUT!” said the elephant as it came past her. Jin Bu looked up and saw that the voice had actually come from a man who was sat on a different elephant’s back. His face was smooth like polished copper, but his hair was dashed with streaks of grey. Jin Bu quickly realised that it wasn’t the same elephant. This one was much larger, but even if she hadn’t seen the difference in size, it was clear that this one had a much calmer attitude than the mad beast who had chased her up a tree. It was ambling down the path at a leisurely pace, and it had a calm, almost sleepy expression.

“Watch out little mouse!” the man said as the elephant paused beside the bramble. “I won’t try to step on you myself but Chyarmanine here just wants to get home and rest and she won’t stop now for anyone but me,” he said, gently patting Chyarmanine’s head. The elephant was inspecting the roadside bush with her trunk and with a practised dexterity snatched a raspberry bunch for herself. "Well, for me or for roadside snacks" the man chuckled.

Jin Bu saw that he was sitting on a small leather saddle strapped to the elephant’s back and there were metal chains running to the back where they looped around a huge log of teak wood. With a quiet grunt, the elephant started to move again and as she dragged the log, even at a slow pace, dust clouds were sent up from the path. Jin Bu decided that she did not want to go back through the dust cloud, so she walked alongside, doing her best to keep up.

“What’s a girl like you doing out here then? Are you off to the camp? ” he asked but his smile dropped as he saw her more clearly. More than the rips in her clothing or the cuts on her arms it was the stumbling, lost expression on her face which told him something was not right.

“Looks like you need to rest your feet. Come on, I’ll take you to the camp.” He unrolled a bundle of sticks by his stirrups which sent a thin wooden ladder down the elephant’s side. As she climbed up, he offered his hand and felt the cuts in her palms.

“What happened girl?”

Jin Bu hid her eyes. “I was in the forest collecting leaves”

“Collecting leaves? Whatever for?”

“The wild ones taste better.”

“Well that’s true enough, but it looks like you got into a fight with more than a prickly vine.”

“An elephant chased me...I climbed a tree to escape and...” she held her tongue for a moment “...Zaw chased it away. I came here to see if he’s all right.”

“You’re a friend of Zaw’s are you? I’ve been out in the forest this morning so I don’t know what’s been going on, but I suppose they were going to kheddar young Pinkwetha this morning, maybe that was the young bull that chased you. He could have broke loose. It doesn’t happen often, but I’d climb a tree too if I was anywhere near an embarrassed and angry elephant. I told them they were taking too long. You see Pinkwetha was a wild elephant first, he wasn’t raised in the camp. You always take a risk trying to train wild elephants.”

But Zaw is a good young man and strong too. He isn’t the fastest, for sure, but he has a good mind on him. He will have taken that elephant on a little game of chase around the trees I’m sure.”

Jin Bu felt herself nodding although she wasn’t sure if she believed it, or it was just an involuntary response to the swaying and bumping of Chyarmanine’s walk. Maybe she was worrying too much about Zaw. They might turn into the camp and find him back at work already. Then she would look like a fool.

Everytime the elephant had dragged the log its own distance, she would pause for a quick break, sometimes unrolling her long trunk to inspect leaves and branches by the side of the road, occasionally pulling one off to chew as she started off again.

“I’m Zami Kon of Blackstone” said the man, introducing himself during one of these stops.

“I’m Hkanna Jin Bu of Blackstone too” said Jin Bu, who was gripping the saddle of the elephant almost as tight as she had grabbed the tree earlier.

“I thought I recognised you” said Kon. “You’re Gunthaw’s child.” His voice cooled ever so slightly.

Hkanna Gunthaw was not just the patriarch of the Hkanna clan, but headman of the village and a renowned warrior in the valley. He had made his name leading the Army of the Valley on three successful wars against the Mountain Clans and while he was too old now to command men into battle, as head man of Blackstone village he still carried the responsibility for mustering should the Army of the Valley call. After the wars, he had claimed dominion over the forest, at least the parts that encompassed the elephant camp. He collected a yearly sum from the sale of the timber, though he rarely visited, delegating the management to his brother-in-law.

His four children would have denied that having a headman for a father had made them spoiled; they had grown up working in the family farm just as other children in the village did. Yet while the family farm was no bigger than others in the village, the income from the elephant camp meant the Hkannas could put more food into the family pot. Low harvest years in the valley bred lean people, but the Hkanna children had never wanted and had grown tall and firm like flowers in well-tended pots of rich earth. On feast days, when the whole village would congregate in open space and the Hkanna clan sat at the centre table to be served first, with Gunthaw taking the first cuts of thigh meat as was the headman’s right. Sometimes he would peel strips off the meat and give it to his children, who sometimes couldn’t help but feel that they were also receiving portions of the reverence the rest of the village gave him. Nevertheless, the youngest of them, Jin Bu was invariably the last to get any cut-offs if she got any at all, which was probably why she had grown up more careless of the clan traditions and ceremony which said that her and Zaw could not be together.

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Jin Bu wondered if Kon would tell her father about her and Zaw. She tried to change the subject.

“Where are you taking this timber Brother? I thought that the camp sent the trees down the river but we seem to be going away from it”

“There must be something in the forest water” Kon laughed.

Jin Bu looked confused “Why do you say that?”

“Well it is what I drink of course, and it must have been a rare tonic to make a young girl like yourself call me ‘brother’” He reached up and touched his face and chuckled. “I suppose the shade in the forest has stopped my skin from cracking too early, but I must be twenty years older than you at the least.”

“I’m sorry Uncle.” she said, feeling her face tighten. Young and unmarried girls like her were unused to talking to older men. The only ones she knew were her father and the market stall holders at the Moon Market, with whom she asked little more of than the price of grain. She had not truly believed Kon to be close to her age. It had been his friendliness of nature that had made her slip into the familiar ‘brother’.

“Don’t worry, Daughter, it was an extra clove of garlic in the soup of today! Now as for your question, you are quite right that we normally take the logs to the river, but we’ve got a special order from the camp master, he wants to make his own lodgings bigger you see.”

The road opened up and the line of endless trees suddenly gave way to a huge oval-shaped clearing, almost the size of a small village. “Welcome to Buttersweet” said Kon. As they went through the entrance way, Jin Bu saw rows of wooden huts built with thin frames of birch and elm wood looping out around both sides of the perimeter, a dozen or so on each edge. Each one had a front porch, and under the awnings some men could be seen sleeping in hammocks strung up between the pillars. Others were huddled in groups around short tables, cheering or groaning at the position of the bones or discs they were rolling and shuffling across tables. They stared at Jin Bu gaping at her silently or nudging their companions. There was no hostility in their faces, just curiosity, but Jin Bu looked away anyway. At the apex of the clearing, furthest from the entrance, she saw a hut larger than all the others, one that had two floors on top of each other and even steps leading up to the door. She guessed this was the house of her uncle, the Master’s house.

Just to the right of the entrance was a pocket of land divided into long wooden stables. They needed no roof as they were built under a huge oak tree, whose hundred year old branches formed a canopy so large it would allow for ten adult elephants to nap in the shade or rain. Kon called out “Halt!” and Chyarmanine stopped. Kon stepped down and lifted Jin Bu after him. Chyarmanine tooted a greeting to Jhabow who was munching on a stalk of banana plant and then ambled over and offered her a bite. Kon gave friendly pats and strokes to both elephants.

“Are you happy to see her, Jhabow?” said Kon to the male elephant. “Chyarmanine’s been working hard for me today, but I’ll let you two have some alone time for now. We’ll pick up the log later.” He unhooked the chains and the saddle from Chyarmanine’s back and stowed them up on a hook by the stables. He hadn’t forgotten Jin Bu, or the lost look in her eyes. “Come on” he said to her. “let’s go to the rest station and see if your Zaw is there.”

A man outside the station smirked as Kon and Jin Bu approached and grinned at Jin Bu with eyes like carving knives. “What’s this Kon? You’ve been hunting something tasty for dinner have you?”

“This is Hkanna Jin Bu of the Blackstone Hkanna” said Kon. “Gunthaw’s daughter” he added, making his point even clearer. The man quickly set his eyes on the distance.

“She is looking for Zaw, he saved her from a bull on a rampage, have you news of this Lam?”

Lam pointed through the door “He’s...” but Jin Bu had already dashed past him.

Zaw was laid out on a bed, his eyes closed. Jin Bu cried his name as she ran to kneel beside him, entwining her hands in his. But he made no motion.

“What happened, is he..?” Jin Bu cried.

“He’s not dead” said a girl who had been standing next to the bed. “He has been badly injured, but he may live yet.” The girl then shuffled away to a corner of the room leaving Jin Bu and Zaw together. Jin Bu broke her gaze on Zaw for a moment to look at her with just the smallest of suspicions. Zaw had never told her there was a girl who lived in the camp, especially not one with clay red hair and a battered, tattered tunic that looked like it was more patchwork than whatever the original material was. But she did not think on it for long. It was Zaw she was here for. She clutched his hand tight and then ran her palm over the callouses on his fingers.

Zaw and Jin Bu had known each other since they were children, which wasn’t unusual in a town of less than a hundred hearths. As they were both the youngest in their family, they had found each other worthy playmates when they wanted to escape the seniority of their siblings. On market days, while their mother’s haggled with the travelling merchants and farmers, they could be seen but mostly heard running hand in hand through the market, dodging piles of fruit and vegetables while they sang songs with familiar melodies and loud nonsensical words that collapsed in on themselves as they burst into laughter.

They would tie strings around the necks of the semi-wild village cats and walk them down the main road as if they were tame tigers. They ran into rice fields and climbed on the backs of unimpressed oxen, unsuccessfully trying to will them forward.

As they became older, they curved away from each other only to curve back a few years later, this time in secret. In the market where Zaw’s family had a stall, Jin Bu would plunge a hand into a sack of grain, as though to feel it for quality, and invite Zaw to do the same. Then they would look out on the market, their eyes focused on nothing in particular, perhaps talking about the weather, while hidden from view, their hands touched and made love. They would meet at half moonlights under the awnings of the grain store or in the forest where none but the birds could see them, and the only sound was the muffled giggling of mischievous wood spirits.

Jin Bu said nothing as she sat by Zaw’s bed. A garland of tattered jasmine was wrapped around his wrist and Jin Bu lifted his hand up to take in its scent, which was still sweet. She let the flowers fall between their hands and squeezed them tight until sundown.

Across the room, Seng Nu washed the bandages. Every now and again she would remind herself that this was real. She was in a room that wasn’t her own, that she was around other people. She had spent years avoiding contact, running from voices in the distance, staying away from the men and their camp. Perhaps once a year, she might creep in under the cloak of a dead moon to steal scraps of cloth and metal, but for the most part she kept far away. So why was she here now?

The men were well-meaning, but she had to snatch a dirty rag away from one who was applying it to the wound in Zaw’s leg. She had tended the boy’s wounds with lemon leaf and had asked for honey to prevent blackgrowth.

Despite their poor therapeutic skills, the men of the camp were mostly like her. They lived in the forest for months, some even years at a time, and muttered their feelings as if they were ashamed of them. For her to be this bold of all a sudden was not a choice, nor was it from some long hidden well of courage. It was simply action that came from knowledge. The knowledge that only she could save Zaw at this moment.

Outside of Nor Nor’s motherly affection, she had never known love, not even at a distance. But she instinctively knew that the other girl loved Zaw from the way she was looking at him and holding his hand. She wondered what it would be like to hold those hands too.