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home and my warm bed, I race over dusty trails, vault thatched rooftops, and weave between large palms trees and vines, aware of the clicking and clacking of all my cables and gears now transformed to a steady hum, the same unearthly noise I first heard emanating from Dzurina’s courtyard as she constructed my legs. The air whistles past, in my ears, through my clothes. A dangerous predator I am, stalking imaginary prey.
    A child’s cry behind me, and I stop. A small home in the jungle, and I do not recognize her, but she shouts again, “Puaka! Puaka menggelinjang! Puaka! ”
    I flee, an impulse that shames me, racing for home and comfort and safety, leaves and branches whipping at my face and my arms, escaping from a little girl, and suddenly aware of the revelation that the evil spirit I have been chasing, the puaka , has actually been myself. All those nights running down a fearsome spirit, investigating the unknown, leaping through brush and high over simple dwellings, and all that time the villagers were in fact frightened of me. I see myself through the child’s eyes: malformed, grotesque, unearthly, predatory, a monster.
    A bogeyman.
    ~
    Alarm. Shouts from outside. I claw through layers of sleep, drifting upward through consciousness until one word snaps me fully awake: “Bugiiiiiiiiis!” Dzurina and I jump from out of bed; in an odd bit of prescience, I neglected to remove my clockwork legs before sleep overcame me. After almost getting caught by the young girl several nights previous, I have scaled back my nocturnal ventures, causing increasing forgetfulness, fitful sleep and nightmarish dreams. However, it appears now that the nightmare has arrived in the flesh.
    The Bugis are here.
    Dzurina and I have an unspoken agreement in the case of this eventuality: kill all we can. I grip the blacksmithing hammer leaning against the wall, and my love unsheathes a nasty Malay kris , its wavy blade hungering for the bite of flesh after so long as an object of ornamentation. We race out of the house, and the night is on fire.
    Huts and houses ablaze further toward the shore, but growing ever near. Screams, the piercing screams of those cut down with blade or spear or pistol shot. We reach Tun Perak’s home on the beach as he is felled by a volley of spears, dagger still in his hand, swinging all the way to the ground. Our friend and co-conspirator, a man of kindness and bravery and strength, and he is no more. A howl erupts from my throat as Dzurina and I burst into full view of the dozen Bugis warriors that have killed our friend.
    Thaumaturgy crackles in the air as I leap into the fray, my hammer connecting with skulls and arm bones, as Dzurina stabs with her kris and hurls electric curses at her victims. I am consumed by my fury, at all the lives and livelihoods these pirates have destroyed, at the brutal loss of the innocence of my beloved, at the theft of my flesh-and-blood legs. I rage, blood full of vengeance and magics, not feeling the small slashes on my arms and chest. The simple name of the Bugis strikes terror into the hearts of thousands, so let them fear me!
    After the battle is over, and I am streaked with the blood of half a dozen men, for all appearances a demon incarnate, Dzurina rushes to the fallen body of Tun Perak. She wails for this man, this adopted brother, this boon companion. She touches each of the stab wounds, whispers something inaudible into his now unhearing ear, closes his eyes with fingers incarnadine, steps back and recites a spell in song, her voice watery and disconsolate. Tun Perak’s body darkens, blackens, and then collapses to ash. The ash drifts out to sea, borne on the gentle winds. I hold my sobbing wife, her body feeling as frail as all her forty-some years.
    A war cry from behind, and I am unable to turn round before a blade slices through my prosthetic right leg, severing cables and belts, once more stumping me, pitching me into the sand and away from Dzurina’s arms.
    I