In another world, in another age…
Rhomu poked his head out from under his lean-to shelter’s roof of leaves and branches. The rest of the camp remained asleep as far as he could see, the campfire having shrunk into a pile of dim embers. It was the pale glow of Grandfather Moon beaming through the treetop canopy, gleaming on the mist and the damp undergrowth, that helped Rhomu see through the darkness. For that, he was thankful.
He crawled out of the shelter with a hunter’s practiced silence, carrying his bone-pointed spear for protection. After a second scan of the camp around him, he glided on his toes out into the jungle beyond. A gentle warmth embraced Rhomu as he followed a familiar game trail. It was not the humid heat of the night, but something far stronger.
A loud crunch split through the nocturnal singing of crickets and frogs. Rhomu tensed to a halt with cold sweat on his brow. Branches cracked beneath heavy pounding on the moist earth. It was coming his way.
Rhomu hurried to hide between the high buttress roots of a kapok tree, hugging his spear while his heart drummed. Across the trail ahead lumbered a massive bull hornface on its four stout legs. The creature’s scaled hide shone like wet pebbles from the moonlight, and a glinting pair of horns longer than Rhomu’s spear curved out of its brow over two stubbier horns on its snout. A missing chunk of the rigid frill that shielded its neck attested to a survived confrontation with a mighty deathjaw, and the broken shaft of a hunter’s spear jutted out of its hip.
The hornface stopped to snip at some fan palm saplings with its hooked beak. While it browsed, Rhomu crept past it on all fours, careful not to snap a single twig on the jungle floor. Hornfaces may have eaten plants rather than flesh, but they could be as aggressive and dangerous as any deathjaw, not to mention vindictive.
Once he had sneaked out of the beast’s earshot, Rhomu rose back to his feet and jogged down the trail. The flutter in his stomach returned to lift him up with every step. All remaining thought of danger subsided under his eager anticipation. When the trickling of a low waterfall reached Rhomu’s ears, he accelerated into a joyful skip.
It was to his pleasant surprise to find Djula already there on the stream’s bank. The curves of her dark-skinned figure glistened like fine obsidian beneath Grandfather Moon’s gaze, and the coils of her black hair sparkled. Between cheeks dotted with traditional scarification, her full lips spread into a smile of white teeth brighter than either Grandfather Moon or Grandmother Sun. Rhomu’s heart erupted into a ceremony of jubilant percussion.
“You’ve come early tonight, Djula,” Rhomu said.
Djula’s chuckle was a sweet melody to his ears. “I was going to call out for you, Rhomu. It’s not like you to arrive late.”
“I would’ve come sooner, but I had to sneak past a hornface. It is better that you didn’t call out my name. That would have alerted him.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t want to put you in danger.”
“At least he should be far behind by now. Hopefully he won’t hear us while we…”
Rhomu and Djula dove into each other’s arms and pressed their lips together. Their tongues danced in their mouths while they ran their hands over each other’s skin. The warmth was pulsing all around Rhomu, and his loins stirred with desire.
“There is one thing I must tell you, Rhomu,” Djula said. “I believe we should leave both our families. Neither will accept us together.”
Rhomu growled. “It isn’t right!”
“I know, but their hate is stronger than our love. I say we leave them both and found a family of our own.”
Rhomu turned to face the direction where his family had camped. He had spent his whole life with his family, but Djula was right. Ever since his ancestor Munta had slain her ancestor Capu—or it might have been the other way around—so many seasons ago, their descendants had clashed spears with one another, with each shedding of blood avenging the last. Neither would make peace so long as they grieved for those they had lost to the other. Rhomu might have slain Djula herself on first sight had she not rescued him from a hookfoot pack once near this stream.
The more he thought about it, the more Rhomu could not believe Djula could put aside her family’s hatred of Munta’s descendants on his behalf. Her people did not deserve her. Neither did his own if they would not let her be his lover. The custom was for one partner to bring the other into their own family, but if neither family would let them in, it might have been best for them to leave both behind.
“Where could we go?” Rhomu asked.
“Let us follow the stream,” Djula said. “If it has kept our families’ hunting grounds apart all this time, it can lead us to our own.”
“Speaking of starting a family of our own…shall we start tonight?”
Djula laughed again. “You’re even more eager than I am!”
They locked their lips again. As their tongues resumed their dance together, Rhomu slid his hand down to the thong of Djula’s loincloth much as her hands advanced toward his.
After a familiar pounding of the earth sounded, Djula withdrew with terror-widened eyes. A snort of hot breath fell on Rhomu’s back. He spun around to find the bull hornface on the bank behind them. It pawed the mud with its foreleg with a threatening rumble and a shake of its horned and frilled head.
The two lovers retrieved their spears and jabbed them at the beast to keep it back. The undaunted hornface gaped its beak open with a deep bellow that smelled of musty old vegetation. Lowering its head so that its horns pointed forward, it burst into a charge.
Rhomu and Djula fled. They sprinted parallel to the stream, with wet fronds of foliage smacking their faces and limbs. As fast as they ran, the hornface hurtled even faster at them. It swung its head at Djula, who fell to the bank screaming with her blood smeared on the animal’s front nose horn. Rhomu rushed back with a cry of his lover’s name while the hornface raised its foreleg over her. He yanked her by the wrist out of the way before its leg crashed down.
Placing himself between the monster and his injured lover, Rhomu stabbed his spear into its snout. The hornface retaliated with a sweep of its horns that cut across his breast. Overcome by sharp pain, Rhomu toppled onto a nearby tree’s buttress root with the spear falling out of his hand. He stretched his arm to retrieve his weapon, gritting his teeth in a wince, as the hornface stomped toward him.
Djula plunged her spear deep into the hornface’s flank with a fierce battle cry. Bellowing in anguished rage, the creature veered aside and threw its horns upward. Both of its nose horns pierced through Djula. Another toss of the hornface’s head flung her limp body into the stream. What was left of her blood darkened the gurgling water.
The love of Rhomu’s life had died before him. It did not take long for his shock to blur into a vengeful fury.
Rhomu ran roaring up to the hornface with both hands clenched on his spear. He had the point aimed at the space behind its eyes, where its little brain would be. To build momentum for the killing blow, Rhomu drew his spear back as far as he could.
He thrust. The spear tasted neither flesh nor bone, but empty air. With a nod of its big head, the beast had dodged his attack. Another nod, and the horns came slashing down on him.
Rhomu collapsed into the stream beside where Djula lay. In a hasty reflex, he rolled over to shield her body as the hornface lifted its foreleg over them both. If he could not avenge his love, he would die with her.
Again, the crashing descent of death did not come. Shouting rang out on both sides of the stream, and the hornface hesitated with a confused grunt. Erupting from the undergrowth to the left and right, brandishing their spears, were both Rhomu and Djula’s families. They descended upon the hornface to prick it while it thrashed its head about bellowing. With wounds bleeding all over it, the animal lurched and galloped away into the jungle, disappearing from sight.
Banuvi, a young man whom Rhomu knew as his uncle’s son, hurried over to where he lay. His eyes gleamed wet with tears as he knelt over his cousin, and both their family and that of Djula gathered around them in a ring split in half.
“Rhomu, are you hurt?” Banuvi asked. “Your screams woke us up. And isn’t that woman…”
Rhomu’s strength was bleeding out of him. He was too weak to even lift himself off the stream bed. All he could do was smile at his cousin.
“Yes, it is as you thought…” Rhomu said. “Our families may have fought, but our love…was stronger than their hate. Promise me one thing…before I go…end the fighting…promise me…”
The two families stared at one another with no words passing between them. People on both sides pulled their spears back. Confused as everyone must have been, they would have been too mournful, and too exhausted by their fight with the hornface, to attack one another now.
Rhomu’s father and mother came in to stand above their son, with Djula’s mother and father close by their side. Everyone was closing in with hands held together, the circle they formed now unbroken.
“We would do anything for you, my son,” Rhomu’s mother said.
“And…we would do anything for our daughter,” Djula’s father followed.
The last thing Rhomu ever saw was his parents, and those of his love, coming together to weep on each other’s shoulders. Afterward he closed his eyes, awaiting his return to Djula’s arms.