Lisica Chapters

Thanks for joining us for the fourth and final volume of our Scientist Soap Opera escapist journey to the mysterious island of Lisica! You can find previous episodes in the link above or column on the right. Please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment if you enjoy what you find!

Audio for this episode:

47 – Their Own Game

Jay’s hammock swings gently in the breeze. He is half-awake in the night’s darkness, comforted by its rocking. He’d dispensed with putting the rain fly over the hammock last night, taking a chance that the storm is fully over. He’d been so damn tired. Like a zombie, he’d just strung the basic bits up, slipped the underquilt over, and passed out in his bag.

Now he’s awake and the wind pushes on the hammock, swinging him like a baby in a bassinet. Wait. Why is he awake? He should be able to sleep for another like twelve hours no problem after the shit he’s just gone through.

His hammock abruptly stops. So does his breath. Someone has stepped close and the swing ends in a bump.

“Jay…” The voice is a hiss. “Jay lidass…”

Jay groans. “Oh, no. What do you want now, Jidadaa?”

She glances significantly beside her. Jay lifts his head and looks. One of the golden childs stands behind. “Oh yeah? You want me to see that you two made up and you’re all besties now? Cool. So happy for you.” He waits but she doesn’t respond. He groans. “And now you’re gonna make me figure it all out myself? What that means. Can’t you just like spell it out for me? Jesus. Can’t handle all the hidden shit. Just talk yo talk, sister.”

“Thunderbird house. They find Kula. Make deal. Good deal.”

“Right. The golden masks are the Thunderbirds. The secret village nobody knows. Kay. So they talked to your mom and she talked to you and you’re on team gold now. Cool. Super stoked for you both. But I figured that out when the golden dude handed me my phone back, didn’t I? Now good night.” Jay lies back down and closes his eyes.

Jidadaa bumps him again with her hip. “Yes, they are Shidl Dít. They live in trees.”

“Groovy.”

A long suspended silence finally snaps. Jay can’t take it any more. He sighs in irritation and his eyes open. They are both still looking at him like a pair of cats who need to be let outside.

“Fine. What? What? Just stop staring at me like that.” Jay sits up, realizing he’s not getting any more rest any time soon. He scrubs his greasy hair. “Don’t you people ever sleep?”

“Jay, it is time.”

The golden childs turns away slightly, like a door swinging open. He is inviting Jay to come with them.

“You do realize I’m exhausted, and injured, and I’ve only had one hot meal now in the last like eighty hours, right?”

“It is time. You are lidass.”

“Nope. Not going nowhere. Well at least I ain’t going nowhere without telling everyone. And then we all get to make ‘the decide.’” Jay points at the golden childs. “He tell you what his boss wants me to do? Kill Wetchie-ghuy? Can you believe that shit?”

Jidadaa only regards him.

“Oh, Jesus, not you too. Look, I’ll come with you no problem if you’re like taking me to Amy. Is that what we’re doing? Going to where my missing boss is? Rescue her from wherever she is?”

Jidadaa confers briefly with the golden childs in Lisican. His voice is soft and muffled behind the mask.

Jay points at the youth in accusation. “I knew you all could talk, bro. I knew it!”

“We do not know where your Amy is.”

This sobers Jay. “You don’t? That’s fucked up.”

“Yes. Jay is lidass. I am Jidadaa. Must begin.” She clasps her hands together. “Long to make. Hard to do. Much work. You and me. Start now.”

“What was that? With your hands. You and me together? What, are we going to like get married now?”

“What is with all that chatter over there?” Flavia’s annoyance cuts through the darkness. “Who is talking so much at… after three o’clock in the morning?”

“I know, right?” Triquet responds from the platform beside hers. “And they don’t sound very happy with each other.”

“It’s Jidadaa,” Jay calls out. “She’s here to take me away. And you can all imagine how thrilled I am at that prospect.”

“What? No.” Esquibel’s muffled voice comes from within the clean room. “No no no. You are going nowhere. Tell her to come back in the morning and maybe we will discuss it.”

“That’s what I said and she says it’s got to be now.”

“Somebody wake up Alonso.” Triquet calls out. “Miriam?”

“Poor thing,” Miriam yawns. “Finally sleeping so soundly. Zo. Darling. We need you.”

“Uh?” Alonso snorts and blinks himself awake.

Jay speaks loudly now for the whole camp. “Jidadaa is telling me that some part of her prophecy or something is getting started now. That I’m leed-ass, some kind of destined figure to them. And they want me to kill Wetchie-ghuy.”

“Wait wait…” Miriam rubs her forehead. She needs Jay to slow down. “Is this the same prophecy as before?”

“Nobody is killing anyone here.” Esquibel steps out of the clean room, her hand held up. “Do you understand that, Jidadaa? Wait. Where are you? I can’t see you in the dark. Ah, there you are. No, we are not on this island to get involved in any of the local politics and we absolutely will not kill anyone for you.”

“Not for me. For Lisica. For you.” Jidadaa’s voice is sibilant and chilling, rising from the blackness. “Wetchie-ghuy say no. He say his way. He argue he have different destiny. His prophet poem fight our prophet poem. And other. The big argument.”

“Just how many of these prophet poems are there on this island?” Triquet unzips their tent and emerges, shivering.

“Nine and three and five.”

“Okay. Uh. I don’t really know what to do with that information. Where’s Katrina? We need someone to turn on the lights.”

“What, she never came back?” Now Miriam is fully alert.

“Katrina is with the Shidl Dít,” Jidadaa informs them. “People of Thunderbird. Live in the trees. She has long speech with their Dandawu all night.”

Miriam groans. “Bloody Katrina. Why would she just disappear like that when she knows we have to stay together?”

Mandy squeaks from her own tent, “Oh my god. Is she safe?”

Esquibel slips back into the clean room to dress herself.

Jidadaa nods. “Safe, yes. Bound.”

“Bound?” Miriam doesn’t like the sound of that. “Bound with what? Ropes?”

“Words.”

“Jidadaa,” Alonso begins, his voice rough but kind, “I appreciate that this, eh, moment is very important to you and you obviously worked very hard to make this prophecy happen, but you must see this from our point of view. We are just trying to get some sleep after a very long day. Jay isn’t a figure in your prophet poem. He is just a normal man. I do not know what to tell you except that I am sorry. We cannot help you. Please. Grant him some peace. He has had a very rough few days.”

“It is time. We must begin.” But Jidadaa’s pleas fall on deaf ears.

“Wait. Stop. Esquibel exits the clean room dressed in her warm layers and holding her phone, its light beating back the darkness. “No more of this dancing around and around it. Tell us the whole thing.” She crosses to the hammock where Jidadaa stands with the golden childs. “All of it. What the bloody conflict is here. Why we’re under attack. Whose soldiers were on the beach. We need actual data. No more of your mysterious secrets and orders from on high. You answer all our questions to our satisfaction and then we might decide that we can help you. Okay?”

“Ha. Good luck.” Jay groans and settles back into his bag.

“First.” Esquibel faces Jidadaa, hand on hip. “What exactly are you asking Jay to do?”

“Today, make first sacrifice. Make promise. Join my hand.”

“Make Jay your… ? Your husband?”

“No. My koox̱.”

“Oh, fuck that.” Jay sits up again with a scowl. “Koox̱ is slave. I’ll have to follow her around and do whatever she says. So you’ll like order me to kill Wetchie-ghuy and I can’t say no?”

“Yes.” Then a wild laugh escapes Jidadaa. She grabs, breathless, at Jay’s arm. “This is the prophet poem. Very big chance, live or die. Wetchie ghuy has old poem. Strong story. Story everybody know. Make himself power. But Daadaxáats say no. Lisica say no. They tell other prophet poem. Then Shidl Dít. They have other prophet poem. The people talk. Outsiders come from all direction. Shidl Dít talk to Russian. Keleptel talk to American. Ussiaxan talk to Japanese then Chinese man. All get different story. But now, all people of Lisica talk. Cross river. Learn other poem.”

“Wait. The Chinese are here…?” Esquibel exclaims. “That’s an important bit. Since when? How many? What is their mission?”

“No. Nobody know. Nobody talk to Ussiaxan.”

“You just said all the people of Lisica are talking!” Jay is irate. “So which is it? Cross the river. So the Ussiaxan are the ones who attacked me, yeah? At Kula’s that one night, with the spear in my side? With the Lady Boss and all them? They’re the ones, yeah?”

Jidadaa goes back to her appeal. “Tonight, make first sacrifice. Tomorrow, next sacrifice. Every night.”

“What is this sacrifice?” Triquet asks. “Wetchie-ghuy?”

“No. He very last sacrifice.”

“Ah. Building up to it, are we?”

“First sacrifice is blood and feather.”

“Sacrifice to…?” Now Triquet has an anthropological curiosity about the belief systems in play.

“God of midnight wind. God of big wave that take you from shore.” Jidadaa points with her thumb at precise spots on the horizon where each of these gods apparently reside. “Lisica must be give charm. Make her happy. Cover in flowers.”

“How many gods do you have?”

“No, not my gods.” Jidadaa snorts and pokes her thumb at the golden childs. “His gods. His prophet poem. Strong poem. Kula make Shidl Dít happy. Is good. Very strong tribe.”

“So who are your gods?”

“No gods.” Now Jidadaa’s eyes dart across the ground. “Live in cave with Kula. Men come and go. No gods.”

“Let us change the subject, if you please.” Esquibel suppresses the sharp pang of guilt she feels for this poor creature. No time for it here in the middle of the night. They all need Jidadaa to tell them clearly what is happening here and why. But so far she still hasn’t. “So what you’re telling us, if I understand correctly, is that different nations have shown up over the last, what, hundred years? And influenced different factions of the Lisicans so that their prophet poems reflect the agendas and priorities of the nations guiding them?”

But Jidadaa is busy counting it all up on her fingers. “Seventeen. Seventeen prophet poem.”

“And they’ve all been weaponized? Eh? The prophet poem? One is what the Americans want. One is what the Russians want, yes?”

Jidadaa disagrees. “Prophet poems are secret.”

“So nobody knows about these poems except us?”

“Most. Most…” Jidadaa searches for a way to explain what she means with her limited vocabulary. Finally she gives up and shrugs, repeating, “Most.”

Jay’s head pops up again. “She doesn’t know where Amy is, I already asked her.”

“So one of the shamans has Amy?” Esquibel wishes more than anything that this could be a more linear exchange of information. Any structure at all would be useful. But instead of bullet points or powerpoint slides she’s just chasing phantoms in the dark. “Okay. Missing one of our own, captured by an unknown enemy. Kind of a counter-insurgency scenario. Come on, everyone. Think. What does that do for our position? What exactly is our position?”

“We’re being asked to jump on board with Team Thunderbird,” Jay explains. “I think they’re like the keepers of the old knowledge, for the most part. Closest to the Lisica spirit, yeah, Jidadaa?”

“Yes. Close to Lisica.”

“So if they’re so close why can’t one of your old-soul golden childs do the deed on Wetchie-ghuy? Answer me that. Why do I got to be the one who caps him?”

“Cannot fight and win. Wetchie-ghuy too strong.”

“Well maybe if he takes off his fucking mask he’d have a chance,” Jay seethes. “You think I have a chance? No way. I’ve seen how fast that old man can move. He’d cut me in pieces before I even took a step. This is just not happening. I don’t have it in me, chica. Find another killer.”

“Jidadaa start tonight, if you come or not. Jidadaa start anyway.” Her voice is quiet, eerie in the lightshot dark.

“Well that’s just too fucking bad. Cause I ain’t coming. Go ahead and get your Jidadaa started without me.”

But Esquibel still needs actionable intelligence here. Not this background gibberish. She can make no sense of this latest appeal. “What is it? What exactly will you start, Jidadaa?”

“No. Jidadaa not my name. Jidadaa is doom. Doom start tonight even if Jay lidass sleep in his bed. Doom start now.”

Ξ

“Knock knock.” Esquibel stands at the edge of Mandy’s platform, holding a bouquet of wildflowers.

Silence from within Mandy’s tent. Esquibel knows she is in there. She’s been watching since she got up at dawn. Mandy hasn’t once left her shelter.

“Mandy G.?” This is an old nickname, one that should indicate how much Esquibel wants to kiss and make up. But still there is no answer. Jealousy flares in Esquibel’s viscera. So she isn’t in there? She didn’t sleep here last night? Mandy couldn’t take more than a single night alone before running into the arms of… Who? Katrina is gone. Maybe Flavia?

Finally Mandy unzips her tent and stares out at Esquibel. She says nothing, her fine black hair a frizzy veil obscuring her eyes. She doesn’t even look at the flowers.

Esquibel’s smile falters. “Can we talk?”

Mandy withdraws her head. But the tent flap remains open. With a sigh, Esquibel realizes this is going to be more difficult than she hoped. She places the wildflowers on a corner of the platform and folds herself nearly in half to get through the tent door.

It smells like Mandy in here, sweet and salty. Oh, how Esquibel loves that smell. She loves everything about Mandy and wishes she could just fall into her arms and dream the entire day away.

Yet first… “I am… very sorry.”

But still Mandy says nothing. She looks bruised, like she’s spent a long sleepless night alone in here.

“Oh, Mands. You have no idea how sorry I am. I was wicked to you, absolutely horrid. You didn’t deserve a word of my…”

But Mandy is shrinking away from her. Esquibel wisely stops.

They sit in breathless silence. Now Esquibel is scared. Mandy has never pulled away from her before. Perhaps she should leave.

A sudden tear spills from Esquibel’s eye and she stifles a sob. Oh, what a mess. Why did one of the only women she’s ever loved have to be here on this mission? Now she’s miserable, knowing that she caused her beloved such pain. “I’m just so sorry!”

Mandy watches her, dull. She has no reaction to Esquibel’s tears.

“I will give you all the space you need. I apologize for all the pain I caused. I’ll go.” In meek surrender Esquibel ducks her head and starts backing out of the tent. She is nearly gone when Mandy finally whispers:

“Why are you hiding things from me?”

Esquibel stops, mid-crawl. She is facing down, her tears dropping on Mandy’s foam sleeping pad. Oh, no. This might be even worse.

“I can tell you’re hiding… something. And you want me to just carry on like nothing’s happening. And I can’t. I just can’t any more. I can’t be with someone who doesn’t trust—”

“I absolutely trust you. I love you, Mandy.”

“But you’re hiding something. Someone. Yesterday morning you smelled like Katrina and now she’s gone. Is there something you want to tell me about what you might know about that?”

This hits far too close to home for Esquibel. She gasps and sits back on her heels, reaching out for Mandy. “Is that what you think? That I’ve been sneaking off to sleep with Katrina and hiding it from you? Oh, Mandy, no. Never. I…”

“Then what are you doing? What are you keeping from me?”

“Ehh…” Esquibel’s eyes go wide and roll back and forth. She is trapped. “Would you be satisfied knowing there is a military matter I must keep to myself and can you leave it at that?”

“A military matter? Like… what? Like is there a radio? Are you two sneaking off to give reports in the dark or something?”

Esquibel finally eases a bit, relieved to have Mandy chasing a false trail. Now her training kicks in. “I can’t tell you, darling. It’s classified. If I told you I could be court martialed, kicked out of the Navy, sent to prison. All kinds of horrors.”

“Does Katrina know?”

Oh, this inexorable bloody girl. Why won’t she just drop it already? Mandy can tell whenever Esquibel is hiding something from her? Fantastic. This is an absolutely untenable strategic posture for an undercover remote operative. It’s like being followed around by a mind reader. “I have… I made a solemn promise to myself long ago to never tell you a lie, Mandy. And I have held myself to it. But I do have another side to my life. I wish I could share all of it with you. Really, I do. It would be wonderful if I could share all of myself. But it is best for all of us that I can’t. Legally, morally, tactically…”

Mandy still watches her. Esquibel tentatively reaches out and wipes the fine hairs from across her face. Distrust is in Mandy’s eyes. Esquibel leans back again.

Mandy struggles to speak. “So Katrina does know. What is she doing? Is she some kind of spy or something?”

“No. No no. Nothing like that. She is just… Well. You know how Katrina is. Her crazy mind just never stops…” Esquibel wiggles her fingers and turns invisible dials in imitation of DJ Bubblegum.

“I can’t have you and her sharing a secret.” Mandy’s voice is tiny as she hugs herself. “Not her.”

“I understand how hard that is for you and you must believe me it is just an unfortunate, ehh…” Esquibel rolls away in a ball, knowing she can’t say another word. Mandy is too insightful.

“Secrets. Lies.” Mandy lifts a numb hand and drops it on her lover’s hunched back. Not to comfort her, just to read her even better. Shit, what was Mandy thinking, falling for a Navy officer? She’d known enough of them on Hawai’i. Her family had sworn them off as schemers and coldhearted foreigners for generations, even though they drove like half the islands’ economy. Now here she is, mixed right up in the middle of some goddamn military spy novel, facing the prospect of losing both Katrina and Esquibel to a bunch of geopolitical nonsense she can’t ever even know. “You know, as a certified control freak, I just can’t do this. I can’t… I mean, I’m ready to give you my whole life. When this is over, I was thinking I’d follow you…” Mandy shakes her head, heartbroken. “But how can I actually do that? I don’t even know who you are.”

Esquibel has no answer to that.

“And yeah it’s unfortunate. You just like full-on interrogated Jidadaa in the middle of the night. But god forbid anyone ever does that to you. I don’t know what to do with you, Esquibel. Doctor Daine. Lieutenant Commander Esquibel Daine. I mean, that’s who you really are, isn’t it? Those aren’t just titles. They’re part of your name now.”

“I swore oaths. I take them very seriously.”

“Okay. Let’s say you were me. Let’s say our positions were—”

“Oh, Mandy, you know I could never abide it. I’d go insane and drive you crazy. It isn’t fair. I know that. I’m so sorry. None of this was my intention. Nobody told me you’d be here. But when I saw you, nothing could keep me from falling back in love with you.”

“Stop it, Skeebee.”

“You have to know. I do what I do for you. For all of you. Some day you may learn that I made… a terrible sacrifice. And I just need you to know I did it because I love you. I love all of you here. You are not just my charges any more. Alonso was right. You are my big Cuban family. And I swear I will protect you.”

Mandy stares at Esquibel, her lower lip trembling. “Now you’re scaring me. Just what have you got yourself mixed up in? God. Why couldn’t you just be a normal doctor?”

Esquibel expels a fatalistic sigh. “Honestly? Student loans.”

Ξ

“Come here… Come here…” Amy’s voice echoes in Alonso’s ears like a mermaid calling to him from the deep. “Look at this. I have something to show you.”

Alonso opens his sticky eyelids and rises effortlessly in the dewy morning air. He passes through the fabric walls of the tent and glides across the dry brown needle carpet of pine camp. Miriam is at the kitchen tables, stirring a pot, chatting with Flavia. Esquibel is working in her clean room, the blurred outline of her silhouette visible through the sheeting.

Alonso follows Amy through sun-shot wilderness, quite certain this is a dream. She is a small dark figure leading him through patches of steaming fog, isolated birdsong in the canopy making his heart ache. He had forgotten how beautiful Lisica is, with all the recent drama and terror and labor. Now he is reminded that this entire island is a spellbinding fantasy landscape with the greens of Avalon and the shadows of El Greco.

She kneels, beckoning to him, gray-streaked hair hanging down and obscuring all of her face except a laughing eye. Dear god when did Amy get so old? Alonso lifts his own hand to find it veiny and splotched with purple. He drops it in dismay.

“Look at this.”

Alonso kneels beside her and peers at the beautiful purple flower she holds delicately between her fingertips. “Amazing.” It opens like a trumpet, the flaring petals stitched with dark lines and stippled with pale green and yellow dots. All of it dives into the center of a luminous golden well, its pistil rising as a delicate limb, the golden dollop at the end waving at him for attention.

There is a kernel of revelation in there. Alonso is sure of it. If only he could get a sample for Plexity, then he would understand.

Breaking the reverie, Alonso pulls back, shaking his head in wonder. Now it is no longer Amy beside him. It is her dead self, the compact male body and slicked-back hair of the boy he had loved. Those white-framed Ray Bans he had sported for several summers in the late eighties are perched on his forehead. So young again! And now Alonso’s hands are young again too, slim and long and brown. He cries out in joy and kisses his own palms, thrilled beyond measure to have them back. They no longer hurt. He looks at his feet. They are also magically healed. All pain has left him.

He catches up Amy’s hand and kisses it. She is Amy once again but an Amy he never saw. She is young and female. So beautiful.

“Did you see?” She directs his attention back to the purple flower. “It’s the mouth.”

“The mouth? No. What do you mean?” Alonso studies the flower, hoping for a clue. He stretches his body out, facing down, his nose almost touching the flower. At this range he has nearly microscopic powers of observation. He counts shining beads of nectar hanging from the stalk’s glistening whiskers. And he follows a busy crew of fluorescent green aphids across the petals as they vanish into the flower’s brilliant white heart.

“The mouth of the island. Everything she consumes must pass through the flower.”

“Its eye? Is that what you call it?” Alonso’s voice is doubtful, pretty sure Amy has just bastardized a biblical proverb about camels and needles instead of sharing a real insight. And how does that even work, a single blossom serving as the intake point for something as huge and complex as an island? Very improbable, that. Alonso is unconvinced.

But Amy senses his cynicism—she must have. Because when Alonso looks up she is no longer there. And the purple flower has vanished. The forest is dark and cold. There are no flowers, only shriveled nubs hiding below storm wrack. This is winter. And he doesn’t know where camp is. He should have been paying better attention when Amy led him here. Now he is lost in the dark.

No… There is a light, a halo of golden illumination in the night. Flickering. A small campfire, with a figure seated across it. This isn’t Amy. Alonso studies the seated figure cautiously, as if they’re a dangerous adversary. “Aha. You’re one of these shamans. The ones everyone says are arguing, yes?” Alonso indicates the dreamscape surrounding them. “This is all your idea, is it?”

It is a small goblin of a figure, of indeterminate age and gender. Their dark face is seamed and pitted, the eyes little more than slits but bursting with malicious glee. Tangled collections of bone and feather fetishes hang from cords woven into their hair and around their thick neck.

Alonso reaches for the barely-remembered details of previous conversations. “Let’s see. You aren’t the one that everyone keeps seeing, that Wetchie shaman. No, you’re the other one, aren’t you? They said your name was secret so we gave you a name. What was it? Sherman. Ha. We call you Sherman, did you know that?”

The shaman tracks Alonso as he approaches. In reply to all these questions, the shaman opens their mouth and a dense white fog spills out, running down their chin and dropping into their lap.

“Dios mío.” Alonso stops. “No, you can’t scare me. You think you are the keeper of the secret knowledge but you are not. I am. I am the one peeling back the mysteries of the ages. I am the one neatly dividing the world into its constituent components!” Alonso ends in a roar, a surprising amount of fury fueling his declaration. But it is justified. This pendejo has caused them so much grief, trying to poison people he loves. “No. Wickedness blinds you. You think you have some monopoly on knowledge hidden from the eyes of the common man? Ha. Try being a statistician!” Alonso has no idea if any of his words are being understood but the point is certainly clear. “You know nothing. Sherman. You just sit here in your little world casting your little spells. You don’t even know what flower the mouth of Lisica is.”

This makes Sherman snap their mouth shut. Their eyes bulge at the mention of the island’s mouth. It is clear Alonso guessed right. Sherman dearly wants to know this arcane fact but has no clue. If only Alonso knew what any of that meant…

“And you think I will tell you? No. Never. I only know because someone who loves me told me. And no one will ever love you.”

Now Sherman’s sharp eyes are piercing Alonso, right through his skull. But he laughs. “Is that the best death stare you got? Nice try. I survived five years of torture. And those fucking sadists made me look in their eyes the whole time they yanked on my fingernails…” Alonso bears down on Sherman, opening the doors in his mind that nearly always remain shut. “You want horrors? I got plenty.”

Sherman trembles, then finally drops their own eyes. It is clear they are shocked by what they see scored upon Alonso’s soul.

Alonso drops this terrible aspect and frowns, considering. “Do I even have a soul? Eh. It doesn’t matter. Normally I would say not a chance, but also normally I am not having magical battles with shamans in my dreams. So here, in this place, yes, sure, you saw my soul and what those monsters did to it. And you did not like what you saw, eh? The horrors of the modern world. You have no shaman second-sight for this one, do you?”

Sherman squints at Alonso as if they are staring into the sun. “You… are… shaman too.”

Alonso grunts in surprise to hear the shaman speak words he can understand. But he insantly disputes them. “No. I am far more powerful than a shaman, you asshole. I am a scientist.”

Ξ

Maahjabeen waits for a brief morning shower to end outside before she ventures from Pradeep’s side in the clean room. He doesn’t appear to sleep. He only stares into the middle distance. He is like a doll the shamans have tired of fighting over and now they have just cast him into a corner. It is nearly breaking her, holding this empty vessel so tightly.

She kisses the corner of his eye and he doesn’t even twitch. With a sigh she stands and slips outside, the brown needle carpet wet against the soles of her bare feet. Maahjabeen needs to discuss her plan with someone. Not Alonso. They always fight. Not Triquet, busy at the kitchen. Perhaps Miriam and Flavia will be the support she needs. They are in the meadow, halfway to the creek, working on something with tools. Maahjabeen locates her slip-ons and a windshirt. It is cool in the aftermath of the shower.

From a distance, the meadow looks like a solid monoculture of some long green grass rippling in the wind. But as you get near, the number of species explode. Some are more like dense ground cover beneath the grasses. Others are beds of tiny yellow and white flowers that she tries to not trample. Tall stands of waving stalks have the leaves of tomato plants. Then there are the thistles, tiny and angry with bright orange flowers. They are easy to spot after she gets lanced by sharp thorns the first time. And all the waving grasses are a riot of species, some tall and thin with rounded stalks, some with long bladed leaves like bamboo. Fluted lilies are being visited by pale bees. Best to avoid them too, Maahjabeen doesn’t know if they sting. She knows very little about wild meadows like this in general. If she was anywhere else she’d be afraid of snakes.

“Why, it’s Maahjabeen. How are you, dear?” Miriam stands in a trench up to her knees, spade in hand. Her fair face is splotched red from exertion and a stray auburn curl hangs from beneath her sun hat. Flavia crouches beside her with a pile of sample jars.

Maahjabeen studies Miriam. Only now does she realize how dispirited she’s become from her vigil beside Pradeep’s body. This kind of industry is beyond her. To think, she would ply the ocean waves for hours, carving herself forward with her paddles. She has always been so proud of her strong arms and shoulders and back. It all seems so far away now, like it’s a story she heard about someone else. Someone more fortunate, younger and more full of hope. “He is not changed.” Maahjabeen reacts to the naked scar of raw earth among all this luxuriant life. “Did you have to bury the flowers?”

“Flowers everywhere, love. Couldn’t be helped. How are you?”

Maahjabeen crouches on her heels at the edge of the trench Miriam has dug. It is all undifferentiated root networks and reddish soil, as far as she can tell. “How deep will you have to dig before you find something interesting?”

“How deep? Why, we are already finding all sorts of interesting things. Aren’t we, Flavia?”

Holding up several sealed sample jars, Flavia simply says, “Bugs.”

“And for the geology?”

Miriam laughs, tossing another spadeful of dirt on her pile. “As soon as I start digging, the discoveries begin. And we never want them to stop. It’s always budget or time or personnel constraints that does us in. If I had my way I’d drill down forever, until the bit melted in the magma. We know so little about what exists under the mantle. Have you ever considered that, Maahjabeen? Flavia? Have you ever given a thought as to what the ground is actually made of, right below your feet? Why, we know more about Alpha Centauri than we do about what it’s really like a kilometer straight down. I mean, imagine.”

Flavia shakes her head no. “Don’t imagine. That’s when you get stories of things living underground. Like devils and lizard people and dwarves. People imagined. And it’s only because they couldn’t conceptualize,” Flavia waves her hands around her head, “the impossible sea of molten rock down there. They had to put people of some kind in it. But it’s just molten rock forever, isn’t it?”

“Well, there are competing models now. It is certainly quite complex, like Maahjabeen’s oceans, aye? Currents and upwellings. Most of the mantle is actually solid rock, but in geological timescales it acts as a viscous fluid. Just imagine. The hardest rock on the planet, getting turned like taffy in the depths over the ages. No, it’s only near the very center that the rock turns liquid.”

“What kinds of rock?” Maahjabeen lifts one of the bits of gravel Miriam has excavated. It is gray and smooth, like a river stone.

“Down there? Peridotites and other silicates. All kinds, a huge class of minerals and crystals differentiated by their molecular structure, how the silicon bonds are built and what they allow. But that’s just a bit of sandstone there, in your hand.”

They watch Miriam dig some more in silence. Maahjabeen turns to Flavia but she is making notes about the bugs on a tablet and taking pictures of them.

A great yawning gulf seems to open up between Maahjabeen and the other two. She is not fully here. She has moved on to another plane of existence right now, caught up in a battle of life and death. But how to make them understand? “What if you did break into the underworld, though? What if you dig too far and let all the dead souls out? I mean, there must be billions…”

“How many billions? Ai. I know this.” Flavia holds up a finger, making a declaration. “In grad school we did calculations based on the advent of modern humans. If it is truly 320,000 years ago then there have been over 122 billion persons ever. Kind of makes you feel insignificant, yes? Living people are not even seven percent of the total humans.”

“So 122 billion dead souls come howling up from the breach…” Maahjabeen traces how they would spread across the sky like diesel fumes, darkening the clouds.

“I’d think it wouldn’t happen here, it would happen to some of those deep sea oil wells first, don’t you?” Miriam’s question is gentle. She can tell Maahjabeen is raw, troubled. As she herself would be if Alonso was catatonic like Pradeep is. “Those lads dig deep, kilometers down. I have yet to break a meter here.”

“But maybe this one is a hidden doorway to the afterlife.”

“Ecch, more talk of spirits and ghosts.” Flavia rolls her eyes. “We have to get my friend Maahjabeen off this island before she forgets she is a scientist entirely and becomes a witch or something.”

“Please, Flavia. You’ve seen Pradeep. You’ve seen what he is like without his soul.”

“I knew it. I knew this is what was on your mind. These fantasies from your religion. They are warping your brain, your beautiful brain. Don’t let them, Maahjabeen.”

“You leave Islam out of this, you kafir.” Maahjabeen spits the insult but Flavia accepts it with surprising grace.

“What is kafir? I thought it was a yoghurt drink.”

“No, it means unbeliever. And it is not a nice word. I already know how you think. I am not asking you. I am asking Miriam…”

“Aye? You’re asking me…?”

Only now does Maahjabeen realize that she came out here to ask for Miriam’s blessing for the only plan she can conceive. “I need to… I mean… Do you believe in souls, Miriam?”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Flavia interrupts. “This isn’t like 1932.”

“Growing up in Kildare in the 70s I got my fair bit of Catholic indoctrination, and I’ll have no part of that. But I don’t think the world is as… easily explicable as Flavia says. I’m still some kind of pre-modern Celtic pagan at heart, and we have our own complex relationships with the divine. I can’t say I’m fully with you on souls, as you define them. I think more in terms of energies.”

“That is even worse!” Flavia exclaims. “At least Maahjabeen’s nonsense has thousands of years of scholarship behind it. Yours is only some vague feeling. It is like a narcotic, this need for belief, dulling the senses and breaking logic. You can’t break the logic, Miriam. It is all we have.”

But Miriam is trying to hear the siren call of her past mystical encounters. There are a clutch of them, most from her teenaged and early adult years when she fearlessly walked the forests and fens at night. She found things then, in the chill of the fog, that she was sure touched on realities ungoverned by logic. “You’re an atheist, Flavia, sure. But I guess you can call me an agnostic, Maahjabeen. I have experienced things for which I have no explanation and I am waiting upon evidence before deciding.”

“Flavia is right. That is the worst kind of way to go through life. At least Flavia has the courage to defy God and be wrong. You are just like hedging your bets, Miriam. Have the courage of your convictions. Speak your truth.”

“Attacked from both sides, am I?” Miriam squints, trying to put unformed feelings into words. “It makes me think of Alonso, how damaged he is. That’s what you’re talking about with souls, isn’t it? It’s his soul that is damaged.”

Maahjabeen only nods.

“How can we talk about his scars without mentioning his spirit, eh? He carries these scars. And yes they are mental and emotional and certainly physical, but there’s so obviously something else, isn’t there? Some deeper damage that will haunt him all his days?”

“Yes, you understand. You understand what Pradeep is suffering. And you must see that I have to do something about it.”

“Now you are both crazy.” Flavia shakes her head. “Why can’t I ever leave this kind of medieval superstitious bullshit behind? Why can’t it just be mental and emotional damage, just, like, real bad? Like, of course Alonso has this damage. Why do you need to bring in a soul? We were just talking about emergent phenomena, yes? So. The neuronal activity in his brain gives rise to thoughts and feelings. Then with higher order phenomena we get a persistent sense of self. But his hardware has been permanently damaged. It has changed the data he is expressing. So those higher orders are changed as well.”

But they are both ignoring Flavia’s plaintive lecture. Miriam doesn’t like the fatalistic look in Maahjabeen’s eye. “What, dear? What are you going to do?”

“Esquibel is fighting for him on a medical level. I need to fight for his spirit, on the spiritual plane.”

Flavia snorts, her laugh incredulous. “Oh my god listen to you. You sound like a video game my nephew plays. The spritual plane? And where is that, eh?”

“It is in my faith. Be quiet, Flavia, if you have nothing helpful to add. I need some real advice from someone who understands.”

But this is too much for Flavia. “I knew it. I knew you were falling apart but this is too much. I could see it in your face. It is why I didn’t even give you a ‘hi, good morning’ or anything because I could tell you were just looking to get this nonsense started. You were already thinking like this. So what are you going to do now? Holy water and a magic sword?”

“Flavia, please.” Miriam winces, uncomfortable with the degree to which Flavia derides Maahjabeen’s beliefs. “Let’s, uh, celebrate diversity here if we could.”

“I cannot. As a scientist and as a thinking human.” With a sniff, Flavia collects her jars and tablet and departs, across the meadow back toward camp. Pointedly, she doesn’t follow Maahjabeen’s recent path through the tall grasses but forges her own.

Miriam is worried for Maahjabeen. She drapes an arm over her shoulder and pulls her close. “What is it, love? What do you plan on doing?”

Maahjabeen stares at the horizon with smoldering eyes. “I don’t quite know yet. I just know it is time we start beating the shamans at their own game.”