Shan Sa - Alexander and Alestria

Bear me a child, Alestria! This child will be proof of our union and will have the purity I have lost. This child from your belly will wipe clean the horrors sown by Alexander. I am not worthy to be king. He shall be, though. He will be transparent as the glacier and ardent as a mountain on fire. He will have my dignity and your magic, the innocence of a girl married to the power of a warrior king.

I did not wait for daybreak before setting off on my return journey. I left behind the tears of my queen. I left behind her hair, which smelled of roses and mint. I left behind her wooden comb, her golden hair grips, her body curled up in despair. I galloped to flee my own pain while a voice inside my head screamed that I would never see her again, that that was our last embrace. Tears flowed over my cheeks but were dried by the wind. I urged my horse on to drive away my thoughts: I must carry on with my war.

I rejoined my Macedonian troops, who complained that their legs were lacerated by the undergrowth. They showed me where their arms had been devoured by leeches, hornets, and mosquitoes, and dragged me to where the injured lay dying with gangrenous wounds. Hepahestion, Crateros, and Cassander took turns trying to convince me we must turn back. I clenched my fists and reasoned with them: beyond the forest there were cities more wonderful than Babylon, civilizations more evolved and religions more sublime than any westerner could have imagined. All these wonders had to be ours. The last of my friends withdrew, and Bagoas appeared to talk to me of conspiracies: I listened to him and then sent him away.

Parrots chattered in the trees, and tigers roared in the distance. Then there was silence around the encampment. A rustling sound from deep within the woods wound between the tents, making the campfires flicker before disappearing into the trees.

Having recovered from the initial shock, the barbarian soldiers threw down their weapons and prostrated themselves, crying: "Spirits! spirits!"

Standing outside my tent, I turned away from my soldiers' misery, and stared up at the tops of those dark, shady trees. Alexander would find a way to overcome the conspiracy of men and spirits. The suffering was only short-lived. I must keep on advancing and would never retreat.

hordes of savages plagued us again. Having not mastered the art of molding metal, they used stone daggers and bludgeons made of rocks bound to sticks. They launched wooden arrows dipped in lethal poison. The Persians explained that these hairy-bodied people, the Gonya, were descended from apes. A million years earlier an epidemic had struck the men living in the depths of the forest, and they could no longer couple with their women. To ensure the continuity of the race, the tribes had captured great apes to inseminate their women. The Gonya believed in gods, I learned, but the apes had no religion-that was their difference.

The rainy season was upon us, and storms broke out several times a day. In the rare bright periods the Gonya appeared, wearing coats and hats of sewn banana leaves, to continue with their offensives. They fell into the traps we had dug in the ground and got caught in nets I had strung up between the trees. A succession of strange creatures paraded before me: some extended their own teeth with boar tusks; others had a short bony tail between their buttocks; some were tattooed; others were painted, pierced, or adorned with feathers, amulets, and tiger's tails.

They were interrogated by my Persian interpreters, who spoke so many languages that they understood the Gonyas' speech in a matter of days. After days of marching through the mud they took us to the village of the Boonboongonya tribe, which supplied poison to the entire region.

The village was huddled against a steep rock face and sheltered from the outside world by gigantic trees that acted as pillars for a thick wall of ivy covered in thorny creepers. My soldiers tried to breach this wall, but immediately developed a rash on their hands and arms; they rolled on the ground screaming in pain. Communicating in gestures, one of our guides explained that a labyrinth of seven walls of vegetation protected this ancient tribe, and only its own members and their monkeys knew how to get through it. On my orders, my soldiers camouflaged themselves and watched the comings and goings. In three days they captured dozens of monkeys carrying bamboo tubes full of deadly venom; these were intended for neighboring tribes who gave them hashna-the grass of happiness-in exchange. One of the Gonya prisoners told us it was rare to meet a Boonboongonya because they were famed for their laziness.

The monsoon was over, and I forced my way into the village with fire. My troops took cover beneath their shields and finally broke into the kingdom of poisoners, but they encountered no hail of pebbles or lethal arrows. A strange sense of calm reigned over the village, where the only sounds were birdsong and the whisper of a waterfall. Dense shrubs and flowers shaped like water lilies with pistils like red snake's heads wound into an intoxicating labyrinth. I followed the monkeys in secret passageways to reach their masters: a group of Boonboongonya were sunbathing outside their huts, men with matted hair, a tiny tail at the end of their backs, and wearing a seashell to hide their genitals. Some were asleep on the bare earth; others rubbed yellow and black powder into their skin. Seeing us approaching, they smiled to reveal green teeth: they chewed hashna, I was told, which made them dream with their eyes open in broad daylight.

All at once we heard piercing cries, and a group of Boon-boongonya females appeared, naked save for the red paint that covered them. They threw down handfuls of snakes, millipedes, and pestle-shaped stones. My guards were quick to grab them, but they in turn screamed, watching their hands go purple as they came in contact with the creatures.

The males of this tribe did not work: the women could cast a spell over the monkeys to enlist their help in their work and to climb trees to pick fruit, which was their main source of food. They drugged crocodiles and taught them to chase snakes. They covered their children in a paste made of poisons from plants, centipedes, and spiders; this made their thick hair fall out, leaving smooth skin and unwrinkled faces. When a crocodile brought them a snake, they attached it to an instrument and tortured it until it spat out its most deadly venom. Mixed with black powder and toxic roots and leaves, and pounded by the monkeys, it became the lethal concoction known as boonboon.

Like all Gonya peoples, the Boonboongonya lived as a community and had no concept of family. The males did not have a role as fathers, and the females bore children that belonged to the whole tribe. Unlike other Gonya, though, the Boonboongonya had lived a long time in isolation, and their blood had degenerated. The males had grown so lazy they no longer even bothered to mount their females; that was why there were so few young. Those who looked young were in fact old but still had beautiful skin thanks to the poison wraps; those who looked old were over a hundred.

My soldiers were disappointed not to have found an antidote to the deadly poison, as the Boonboongonya did not make one. And they were horrified when, on the night of a full moon, they heard wails so harrowing their skin crawled. The Boonboongo-nya had congregated near the waterfall and chosen one male and one female from among them. Without any ceremony they tore them limb from limb while they were still alive, grilling hunks of their flesh on the fire, tossing their organs to the crocodiles, and giving the bones to the monkeys to gnaw.

My soldiers slaughtered the cannibals with their lances. Their blood spilled, and when it came in contact with my men's skin, it left red patches that itched terribly. Any unfortunate whose eyes were splattered with this blood lost his sight for several days. I asked for the black and orange millipedes to be released from their containers of woven leaves and ordered that the huts be set alight. The flowers caught fire, and with them instruments of torture, wooden mortars impregnated with poison, and vessels made of bamboo. The bitter smell released by them gave my men migraines.