Zaw lay in bed listening to the monsoon rains drumming on the roof above him. It was the only sound on earth that was both deafening and calming. Yet before he could be lulled to sleep, the downpour ended and the only sound left behind was the irregular drip and splish of water dripping from the trees and awnings. Zaw’s mind wandered inside itself, to the place where he remembered Jin Bu, a once happy place now tainted with bitterness and rage.

The future was no longer with him.

She had left. Not just him, but the valley too. He had heard news from Blackstone that she was no longer in her father’s house. Whether she had left herself or been sent away was unclear, but he was told that she was never coming back. Something about a merchant’s son. He had made himself numb to the details, knowing she had left was punishment enough, to think of her with another man would be something worse than unbearable.

Memories are the past and dreams are the future and Zaw had a memory of a dream. Their dream. He would have worked at the camp for a few more years to save for the bridewealth. The clan basket wouldn’t matter, he would change his name if he had to or they would run away together if needed. They would build a house together by the edge of the forest and grow lemons and bananas and keep chickens too for breakfast eggs. He would bring Jin Bu wild jasmine flowers from the forest each morning and she would lace them into her hair. They would take walks by the river meeting the elephants on the way and he would impress her by riding them without a saddle.

These past futures were now like the bitterest of enemies as they taunted him with their own impossibility.

Seng Nu had told him something. Said she could make him forget. Forget the house with the lemons and the bananas, forget the chickens. Forget all the things that made his heart ache uncontrollably. She said she could make him forget Jin Bu.

She had helped him remember what had happened that day in the forest. The tree had not fallen, she had kicked it over. Just her. She had said she could change minds as well as move things. It was possible, she said.

Was that what he really wanted? The future had gone but there was still a sweet past in his memories. Zaw and Jin Bu had already walked together down those paths and had made sweet memories, short though they were.

But like the future destroyed, the memories too could not be separated from the pain of unlived dreams. It was a pain that has crossed over to the body, one that made his skin tighten so hard he suffocated, one that made him tremble and shake so that his eyes could not focus.

And the more those memories and dreams attacked his own body, the more they made it weak enough to fail, the more desperate he was to remove them.

Zaw rose from his bed and stepped out of the cabin and took a deep breath of cool air. The sky in the east was pierced with dark greys and blues like an iris. He had not slept this whole night, but he was wide awake and untired.

A candle was burning in the cook station across the camp. He walked across the open clearing, taking his time to step around the puddles. Seng Nu was sitting there, peeling river roots and humming to herself.

She saw him by the reflection of candle light in his wet eyes.

“We must go to my house,” she said. She stood up and the candle next to her went out, though she had not touched it and the air was still. She walked ahead, leading him out of the camp and into the forest as the rains started again, washing away the sweat of the night.

They came to a place where the sinews of the river had split from the main artery and webbed out to encircle a small parcel of land, slightly raised above the marsh. The water was not deep and you could step over the channels, but even in the hot season, when the waters dried up, the land was still fairly muddy. Seng Nu had already laid stepping stones and she strode from one to the next with an unthinking confidence. Zaw took each one with more caution. He walked with a cane these days and he needed it for both support and balance as he threaded his way slowly to the cottage in the firm centre.

Seng Nu admired the way he had adapted to the cane. He had found dignity in it. She admired his eyes too. Soaked with sorrow, she still found them beautiful still, the hint of the old vitality still there. He just needed someone to cleanse him. To was the dirt away from the jewel.

You can't wait, can you? She said to herself. With Jin Bu forgotten, your path towards Zaw is easier. Seng Nu blushed at the thought of what the path towards Zaw implied. She had never been with a man in…that way.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She was angry at herself for thinking this way. She was helping Zaw, not hindering anyone else. And anyway, everyone at camp sais it would be for the best if Zaw forgot about Jin Bu. He was barely eating.

Yes but would the camp agree with what you are about to do?

What do I care what they think? They would not understand.

Maybe they would realise you are stealing him for yourself

It was his decision.

You baited the hook.

Zaw finally caught up with her and they walked together towards the house that stood in the middle of the swampland. It was built in the style of the Valley with a raised, pointed roof that crested from the front to the back like a chicken comb, and curved down on each side over the edges of the building. In the rainy season it would send dripping water out and away while in the hot season it acted as a shaded canopy. Despite its recognisable design, there was a wildness to it that seemed to give the impression that this structure had not been built by human hands but was the forest’s own attempt at emulating the village. The wood on the outside walls had been set up roughly trimmed with bark still attached in most places. The dirt that clung to the skirts gave the impression that the house had not been built on top of the ground but had been birthed below it and was still growing out of the earth.

Seng Nu put her hand on the door and then turned back to Zaw. 'Are you sure you want to do this?'

'I can't go on like this.'

'It could pass in time.'

'No. It won't. I can't live like this anymore.' Zaw's cane gave way and he almost slipped.

Seng Nu rushed a hand under his arm to steady him.

Inside, there was only one room and it was full of plants from the jungle. Nor Nor had said that the scents and the pollen would help disguise the hut and protect them from the predators of the forest, though Seng Nu suspected it was simply because Nor Nor wanted to be close to the forest at all times, even when she slept. To walk inside was not to escape the forest, but simply to move to a slightly less chaotic part of it. Flowers of northspice and sourslip faced the southern windows while pommeflower and marrowlai creepers sneaked up and out of their pots to make strange maps of green vine against the white painted walls. By the window she kept a bush of wild jasmine which she plucked each morning to make tea. Outside under the windows were rows of flowers planted from seeds Seng Nu had collected from the deeper forest, so rare the only names they had were in the language of flowers. They bloomed at unexpected times like strange feelings, their scent wandering into the house in the dead of night, to wake Seng Nu up with thousand year memories of the old Earth.

“Do you live here alone?” asked Zaw. He sat on an old tree trunk that poked through the floor. The top had been sanded flat, but the base was still a gnarled, twisting trunk which made it look like it was growing out of the floor. “I thought there was another lady here?”

“Yes, Nor Nor, she raised me, but she died.”

⁸“Your mother?”

“No”.

Zaw wondered how it was possible for someone so young to have lived here alone for so long. He watched her as she strimmed tiny pink berries from a potted plant into a small stone bowl. “I’ve never seen that fruit before.”

“Something to help you forget” said Seng Nu. As she looked under the wiry branches for berries just the right shade of pink, she thought about Nor Nor. She would take the berries when she had pains. Not for pains of the body, like headaches or fevers, for there were many other remedies the forest offered for those afflictions. She had told Seng Nu that these pink berries were for “inside pain”. Every now and then.

She would take one off the little plant and then cut it in half and half again. But the pain inside was like the dead leaves that blew into the house each year as the weather cooled. You could sweep them up and away, but you could not stop them coming back the next year. Making herself forget was her way of keeping her mind clean, if only for a short while.

Seng Nu had almost stripped the plant clean and was mashing the berries up into the mixing bowl. She walked over to Zaw and held out her hand. “Give me the flowers.”

Zaw passed her a tiny bouquet of jasmine flowers. They were already yellowed and were half stained with the red from where Jin Bu had torn her hand climbing the tree. He had given them to her and they had ended the day crumpled by his bedside as Jin Bu was led back to the village. When he had woken up he made them a keepsake, flattened them between two planks of wood bound with hemp rope to stop them disintegrating. What was essential to this procedure was that Zaw knew the flowers were in the mixture. It was a praxis that was part chemical, part mental, a transformation that used the supreme power of the mind to enact its ends.

Seng Nu added the flowers to the bowl and mashed them into a paste. She took a strand of her own hair and cut it into tiny pieces that she added to the bowl too. She had to make sure that it wasn’t just the memory of Jin Bu she would dissolve, but the memory of her doing so. There would be no loose threads that could unravel everything if he pulled on them.

Outside, the rain was punching through the treetops. It became faster and heavier as the moon dipped, until the sounds of each drop merged into one loud roar that blanketed the night.