House of Trembling Leaves, The Read Online Free Page A

exposing the nostrils and shimmering, wet marble eyes of a partially submerged beast.
    â€˜â€˜An onion?’’ Lu See repeated belligerently.
    â€˜â€˜ Ayo Sami , don’t argue, lah, I’m older than you.’’
    â€˜â€˜By eleven bloody days!’’
    Sum Sum held the onion at arm’s length. ‘‘Well? You going to eat or not? Come, before I get damn powerful angry.’’
    Lu See made a face, as if something sharp and vinegary had crawled into her mouth. She took a bite and almost at once her eyes began to tear. She felt the spasm of a sneeze building, jellyfish tentacles tickling her sinuses, and held her breath for several moments to allow the sensation to pass.
    â€˜â€˜See?’’ said Sum Sum, stifling a laugh. ‘‘Just like biting into a sour guava, no? Now, when you’re ready, rub some of this lemongrass oil on your skin, lah, before the mosquitoes find you.’’
    When Lu See’s vision cleared, she stared into the hushed gloom within the rainforest. Bats pinged in and out of the darkness. Downriver she could make out a cloistered village perched on the banks of the Juru – row after row of cane longhouses held up by stilts on the water’s edge, rising eight to ten feet above the jungle floor. Their broad-leaved thatch roofs looked frayed from the recent great storms. Each home had a raised verandah in front where children sat on mats eating rice from banana leafs. Feet dangling, they all waved at the approaching vessel. Lu See and Sum Sum waved back.
    A little while later, with nearly all of the sun seeping out from the sky and the fireflies beginning to show, there came a squawking high-pitched cry from one of the crew. The thick rope was straining at the capstan. And that’s when she saw it, both hook and mutton in its maw. The long snout slicing through the water, the pale cresting underbelly, the sinuous tail; interlocking teeth snatched and twisted, churning the spinach-green water into a milky froth. The crocodile’s thick globular eyes seemed to stare at her for an instant, following her, and then, with the boat listing precariously, it was lifted off the surface of the water and hauled aboard.
    She watched the men, all dark faces and hard seafaring hands, gather quickly around in a huddle, each carrying a club or a sharpened parang . The seven-foot crocodile hissed. Someone lit a lantern and held it up on the end of a pole as the men swung their weapons. The huge muscular tail thrashed and thumped the deck and soon the blood sludge was being smeared across the deck by bare human feet. With a fierce thrust one of the machetes pierced the crinkled flesh between the animal’s eyes. Black blood spewed. Then, like a piece of heavy driftwood, the crocodile went still.
    The crewmen hacked away, whooping and shouting, separating reptilian head from body. Their sarongs became streaked with red. Lu See, white-faced, felt compelled to watch. The commotion shook the bulbuls from the trees and set off a cacophony of squabbling, until all of a sudden there was another shout, more panicked than the ones before. And the men stopped. One or two of them dropped their tools.
    â€˜â€˜What’s happening?’’ said Lu See. ‘‘What have they seen?’’
    Sum Sum crept along the starboard railing and listened to the salvo of chatter and stop-start quarrelling. She saw the front feet of the reptile, black and murky and pointed with no webbing between the toes. She snatched a look at its hind leg – webbed and amphibious like the horror hands in the wax museums. ‘‘They’re saying that the thing was missing a limb. They are saying that to catch a river dragon with only three legs is a curse. The fourth leg will appear in your dreams and snatch away your firstborn child.’’
    â€˜â€˜Do you think it’s true?’’
    â€˜â€˜How in Dharmakaya heaven would I know? I