Muzi startles, shakes his head at her words, then his eyelids draw shut, eyes darting back and forth beneath them like a dream. He shudders, his face tense and painful to watch. Elkin wraps his arm around Muzi and squeezes him tight until the shaking stops.
Muzi’s eyes flick open. He turns to Elkin. “She’s right. I’m not there in the visions.”
“It won’t matter if you are,” Elkin says. “Sydney’s too strong.”
“But if I don’t even try—”
“Do you know how many eternities I’ve been here alone? Waiting for you?” Elkin’s voice stings something wicked. His eyes flash at Nomvula, almost begging. They then settle back on Muzi. “Please.”
“I can’t stay here with you, Elkin. I want to, so bladdy badly, but I can’t.”
“I can’t have you, then, not even in death.” Elkin slumps forward, looking pitiful, like he’d spent a decade perfecting his sulk, the quaver in his voice, the hint of wetness at the corners of his eyes.
Muzi opens his mouth, and it hangs there. He’s going to stay here, Nomvula knows it, and then all will be lost.
Chapter 49
Muzi
“Nomvula, I’m sorry,” Muzi says, rubbing Elkin’s back. “But me and Elkin are a team. I can’t leave him behind.”
“We’re a team, too, and I think you’re a lousy teammate!” Nomvula flaps her wings and somersaults midair with a fancy twist so she ends up facing away from Muzi and staring at a path of flowers among the trees and shrubs. “We have to find Mr. Tau so he can get us back before it’s too late!”
Muzi drapes his arm over Elkin, blinking away the sting in his eyes. He’s damned if he stays, damned if he leaves. It’s not fair that he’s trapped in this hell, while he’s surrounded by paradise. But Muzi’s a man now, and this is no time for him to make selfish decisions.
“Elkin, I can’t—”
“Don’t say it,” Elkin pleads. “Stay with me, just a little longer. I’m not asking for forever. Just a few more hours.”
“You know I can’t,” Muzi says as he bobbles a godfruit in his palm. “We both know it.” A few hours, he knows they can’t spare, but a few minutes . . . “Nomvula, I’ll be right behind you, okay?”
“You promise?” she asks.
Muzi nods, and she fixes him with a stare that says that he’d better mean it, then she flies off down the flower-lined path. When she’s out of sight, Muzi leans in for a good-bye kiss, but Elkin turns his head away.
“You’re mad, I get it,” Muzi says.
“I’m not mad. I’m proud of you. Not that it matters now.”
“What?”
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” Elkin says with a sigh. “Just look at that view.”
Frustration creeps up Muzi’s nerves, but he pushes it away. He can’t end this on a sour note. “I know this is hard, but please, can’t we at least have a proper good-bye?” Muzi tries to stand, but the soles of his feet stick to the ground. He tugs, but feels deep roots anchoring him down. And when he looks harder, he sees the skin on his legs growing scaly, rough bark making its way up his shins and calves, and Elkin’s, too, fusing them together where their skin touches.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Muzi screams, tugging and bucking and trying to break free from the earth’s grip. He glances over at Elkin, who doesn’t look concerned in the slightest. Muzi’s brow goes heavy. “You knew this was happening, didn’t you?”
Elkin doesn’t deny it, just rubs his fingers along the bark where their legs become one. “It’s so beautiful here . . .”
“You tricked me, you chop!”
“I didn’t mean to. That’s not why I brought you here, anyway. Being with you made me forget, and then when I remembered, I . . . I figured there were worse fates.”
Muzi shakes his head. This isn’t happening. He peels at the bark, thin and supple and ash gray, tearing off leg hair as well as skin. He screams the first few times, but his pain is slowing him down. So Muzi grits his teeth and works faster, yanking away strips of bark. It’s growing back nearly as fast.
Elkin’s hands come to the rescue, working his way down Muzi’s left thigh, knee, calves, ankles, while his own bark moves up his torso.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I guess the world needs you more than I do.”
The whole forest shudders as Muzi rips himself from the grip of the earth, the skin of his feet coming off like worn house slippers. The scream echoes through his skull, rattling his bones. His legs are a red pulp from the knees down, his mangled feet barely recognizable, but the terror that strikes the most fear in Muzi’s heart is seeing bark seal up Elkin’s lips. Twigs sprout from Elkin’s shoulders, elbows, and hands, green foliage unfurling, thick and succulent. Muzi goes to snap one off, but Elkin shakes his head with what little movement he has left.
Ooh, Elkin pisses Muzi off sometimes. A lot of the time, actually. But there’s no way in hell he’s letting Elkin off this easily. And there’s no way in hell Muzi’s going to put up with having a tree for a boyfriend. He’ll threaten Mr. Tau if he has to. Whatever it takes. He’s not leaving Elkin behind.
The black earth gives up easily beneath him as Muzi burrows around Elkin’s former legs. Muzi’s careful not to dig too long in one place so he won’t get rooted again himself. At three feet down, he’s able to tug Elkin’s roots free from the dirt. Though at this point, there’s not much of Elkin left, just a tree with a knot in the trunk where his face had been, and a couple of branches that look vaguely like arms and hands.
Muzi demands vines from the forest, and they drop down into neat piles of rope at his feet. He ties them around Elkin’s trunk, then around his own waist, and step by slow, agonizing step, he makes his way across a carpet of white flowers, with Elkin the tree dragging behind him. The path butts up against the banks of a river, and Muzi follows it upstream until finally, he catches a glimpse of Nomvula’s golden wings flapping ahead, hovering over something caught in the middle of the river.
Exhausted and in pain, Muzi lets the vines go, and collapses to the earth. If the forest tries to swallow him up again, this time he might let it happen.
“Nomvula,” he calls out.
She turns and flies his way. “Muzi!” she says, eyes tracing over the red where his skin once had been. It burns all over, infected by who knows what kinds of organisms that lurk in this forest. Nomvula raises her hand to the canopy above, and a leaf drops into her palm, folded into a neat, green envelope. She squeezes cool gel out and rubs it on his legs, soothing, then numbing. Muzi sighs with relief.
“Did you find Mr. Tau?” Muzi manages.
Nomvula nods solemnly, then looks back over her shoulder at the lump of something half buried in the river’s current. Could be a man, could be a big rock.
“He mourns for his wife. He won’t answer me. Just cries and cries and cries. This place can be as wicked as it is beautiful,” Nomvula says flatly, not childlike at all.
“There’s got to be a way to get through to him,” Muzi says. He stands, feet still unsteady beneath him, but he’s so close now. “He’s got to get us back home. And Elkin, too.”