VINES OF BALANCE

As Shona finished rinsing the last cloth in the river, she caught something in the corner of her eye. Some erratic movement, followed by a scream. She knew better than to look, but she turned anyway. Her eyes locked with Salla’s as she was dragged toward the thick jungle by her furious husband. Her best friend was about to be beaten to death, or close to it. Not an uncommon sight in the Yano tribe.

She had heard stories before, but they always felt like ancient tales, things that had happened long ago. Not that violence against women wasn’t common—it was practically law. If you didn’t have marks on your body, the other women whispered that your husband didn’t love you.

Against every instinct screaming in her head, Shona abandoned the laundry basket and followed them, keeping low behind palm trees. Joseph didn’t notice her. Maybe she could think of something to stop him, or maybe he would kill them both. Salla shook her head violently—No, no, go back!—but Shona couldn’t stop now.

Salla struggled, digging her heels into the dirt, but Joseph’s patience broke. He punched her in the face and started dragging her by the hair. Shona barely kept it together. Joseph veered off the path, pushing through thick vines with his machete until they were deep in the forest. He stopped when he was sure they were hidden. Not that anyone would condemn him for what he was about to do.

He had caught Salla kissing Marcus behind the latrines. Marcus was blameless, of course. Men were praised for their appetite. Women were punished for being wanted. And Salla had already committed a greater sin: her firstborn was a girl. For Joseph, one humiliation bled into the next.

He shoved her to the ground, landed a few punches, then kicked her hard in the belly. She screamed louder than Shona had ever heard. Joseph spat on her, gripping his machete, still deciding whether she was worth keeping alive.

In that moment, Shona, close enough now to see the veins pulsing in the back of his neck, lifted a rock and hurled it with all her strength. It struck his head. Joseph collapsed, dazed but not unconscious.

Shona rushed forward, grabbed his machete, and, before he could turn, before she could lose her nerve, she swung. His eyes widened in disbelief as he realized who had attacked him. His body dropped. Blood splashed around and pooled at her feet.

For a moment, she was frozen, staring at her hands, then she dropped the weapon. Salla’s groan snapped her out of it. Shona rushed to her friend and cradled her.

“You’re okay. You’ll heal. He’s gone,” she whispered.

Salla lifted her eyes from Shona’s embrace. Joseph’s severed head stared at her, his eyes locked in a hateful glare that death had not managed to erase. A few feet farther, his body jerked with the last involuntary twitches of life. She felt no greater fear than she had when he was alive, and no relief at all.

“Shona, what came over you?”

“Oh, Salla, forgive me! I’ve committed the worst sin, but I couldn’t let him kill you.”

“Now they’ll kill us both.”

“No, they won’t. We can run.”

“We’ll die within days.”

“I’d rather be eaten by a puma than by their hands. My first bleed came today. I can’t go in a cage.”

Salla looked at her, torn. “Oh… You can. We all did. It’s for our own good.”

“You don’t believe that. You just say it because that’s what we’ve been taught. But deep down, you know we shouldn’t be locked away without food until it stops.”

Salla said nothing. The Yano ways were all she had ever known, though doubt flickered behind her silence.

“It’s settled,” Shona said. “We clean this mess and head north. There might be an abandoned village there. The Zanay should have moved closer to the river by now.”

The girls dug with their bare hands until they made a hole barely large enough for Joseph. When they were nearly done, a wind rose—low, humming, unnatural. The leaves trembled, and the air grew heavy as smoke.

A voice, female and ancient, filled the clearing.

“Do not hide what is meant to be seen.”

Both women froze. The voice came from everywhere—from the roots, the trees, the blood-soaked earth.

Then she appeared.

A woman, or something wearing the shape of one, stood by the body. Her skin shimmered like wet leaves in the moonlight, her eyes deep pools of shadow. Vines clung to her arms, pulsing faintly, as if alive.

Salla fell to her knees, whispering, “Seyla.”

That name was forbidden. The elders had warned it would curse the tongue. Seyla had once been the goddess of balance, guiding women and men toward harmony, but when the world leaned too far into domination and hunger for power, she turned fierce. They said she hunted those who strayed from equilibrium, delivering punishment so absolute that even the guilty prayed for forgiveness.

Seyla’s gaze fell on the severed head.

“Bury him, and women stay beneath their masters,” she said. “Raise his head high, and terror will teach the tribe a new law.”

Shona’s voice cracked. “We can’t. They’ll kill us.”

Seyla stepped closer, the soil darkening beneath her feet. “They won’t, because you will be my hunters. You will have the power to defend yourselves.”

Shona grabbed Joseph’s head by the hair, her hands slick with blood. Salla stared, wide-eyed. “How can we lift it? It’s too heavy, too… wrong.”

Seyla’s vines uncoiled from her wrists and slithered across the ground like living serpents. They wrapped gently around the head’s neck, lifting it high with unnatural strength. Another vine lashed out, binding it to a swaying branch. Even deep in the forest, no one could ignore the head bound by vines.

“You are mine now,” Seyla whispered. “Follow your instincts. They will guide you to balance.”

Then Seyla was gone. The forest fell silent, except for the rustle of leaves and a faint hum beneath the ground.

Salla and Shona stood trembling. Marks appeared on their skin, faint, vine-like patterns pulsing softly with light. A strange fearlessness flooded them, like roots taking hold in their veins.

They returned to the village the next morning, heads held high. Joseph’s head had been spotted by some. No one spoke at first. The men stared, faces paling, but when Abraham, Shona’s husband, lunged forward with questions and a raised hand, Shona met his gaze with a fire she’d never felt before. She raised her hand in a simple stroke. He choked, clutching his throat as invisible vines squeezed the air from his lungs. He collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.

The tribe whispered: “Witches.” Men and women kept their distance, fear etching lines on their faces. But over days, some women bore fewer bruises, their steps lighter. Shona heard them humming softly in the huts, old songs of forgotten strength, melodies unsung for generations.

Men disappeared one by one. Some vanished at night into the jungle, leaving only a faint hum. Others fell in broad daylight, bodies twisted as if vines had claimed them. Shona and Salla were feared and respected, but the tribe’s ways remained unchanged.

Weeks later, the power thrummed in Shona’s blood, a constant whisper. She stalked a man who had slapped his wife for serving a cold dinner, his hand raised in familiar cruelty. But as she closed in, she realized he was no man, just sixteen. This was, Marcus, the boy Salla had kissed, perhaps even loved. Doubt flickered in her chest. He didn’t know better; he was only echoing what the tribe taught him.

Seyla’s voice rose in her mind, low and smooth. “All boys become men who use women. Salla could have been his next. He is no different from Joseph, just younger.”

She raised her hand, and Marcus crumpled, suffocated in seconds. But a feeling of wrongness coiled like vines in her gut, whispering that balance had tipped too far, that the hunters had become the hunted. It could just be the wind… but the hum in her veins told her otherwise. Seyla’s power was no liberation.