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:

52 – A Human Body

Esquibel releases the climbing rope and lands on the far side of the creek. They’ve suspended it between two trees and she’s the first one across. Now she scans the treeline around her, looking for threats, as Mandy grabs the rope behind her.

“Wait, Skeebee! My hands aren’t as strong as yours!” She hangs straight-armed from the rope over the opposite bank, her toes dragging in the current.

“Hook your legs over too! Like a spider!” Esquibel mimics the technique. “Your heels!”

With a heave, Mandy swings her body up onto the line and gets a leg over. Then the other. She inches across, followed by Katrina. Esquibel helps them both to the ground.

“Jidadaa!” Esquibel’s voice rings out, filling the meadow. “Last chance! We can’t wait any longer!”

But the island girl remains missing. They haven’t seen her since they started packing. And she was supposed to guide them.

“Anyway, I know where we’re headed.” Katrina strikes out across the meadow, pushing against the green grasses that are just now starting to turn gold and brown. They reach her elbows, their flowers and stalks and fronds surrounding her in a vibrant rainbow. To the treeline she goes, where the Ussiaxan had marched away to, and where she had seen their trail from the drone.

It is less of a clear path on the ground when they reach it, more an absence of obstacles. Yet it is the only passable tunnel through the thickets and dense copses of young saplings. Every shade and hue of green is here, from the darkest fir to the most fluorescent leaf, and everything in between.

Following Katrina’s footsteps, Esquibel considers whether she should get her sidearm out yet. Worried about ambushes ever since they came up with this scheme, she had resolved to be always on guard from such a thing. But now that they face the immensity of the vegetation before them, she realizes how impossible it would be to anticipate any kind of ambush. She can hardly see a meter in front of her face.

Katrina halts, peering into the tangle. “Feels like the very heart of the island, eh? Like we just been nibbling round the fringes this whole time but these Ussiaxans live in an absolute ocean of greenery. Kind of claustrophobic, to be honest. And dark.”

“What did Jidadaa mean,” Esquibel asks, trying fruitlessly to see past Katrina, “when she knew the villagers would return by night? She confirmed it by saying they only move in shadow. Are they… nocturnal? I thought you said your encounters with them with all their spears and speeches in the meadow were during the day.”

“Yes, but in the instance that I saw,” Katrina says, picking her way forward through hanging vines and heavy fir limbs, “they were responding to an immediate security threat. So maybe they rousted themselves out of bed or something. Hard to say. But she was pretty sure they wouldn’t be back til sunset and we’ve definitely learned to trust her. Oh, here’s an open bit. Look at all the clover.”

They spill out into a long narrow defile filled with the clover’s pink blooms. A tiny rill splashes with water below hanging lilies. “It’s all so… charming.” Mandy trails her hands through the soft petals of the lilies. “Like this is what I imagine when people talk about magical forests. With elves and fairies and all that. There could be like a unicorn stepping out from behind that tree and I wouldnt even be surprised, you know?”

“Yes, I know all about your overactive imagination.” Esquibel peers past Katrina to the end of her view. “It looks like we must make a decision soon.”

“Ah. Right.” Katrina approaches the T instersection ahead. The trail is forced either left or right by the sudden rise of the forested slope before them. “This is that ridge that hides the Ussiaxan from the big meadow behind us. If I had to guess, going to the left is probably a bit shorter.”

“Then maybe it is the path they are watching.” Esquibel looks to the right. That way vanishes in a curving tunnel through the dense vegetation. It looks hardly better to the left, with the exception of a patch of light in the distance that implies an opening in the forest.

“Yeah, let’s swing around the long way and sneak up on anyone if they’re there.” Mandy takes a step to the right.

“I don’t know…” Katrina grimaces. “I think we have to trust Jidadaa here. She said it’s empty, but she also said there’s a time limit, eh? I’m worried we go off to the right and get lost just trying to get around this hill. Let’s go left and make it as quick as can be. I don’t want to even be on this side of the creek in like three hours.”

They both turn to Esquibel. Her thoughts are taken up on the delicate negotiations she plans to have with the Japanese operative. Who knows how long that might take. She will have to defer their time concerns to the objectives of her mission, at least within reason. In the end, it is the patch of light to the left that decides her. She needs to get out of these thickets before she loses her mind. “Left. And quickly.”

They hurry ahead, single-file, Esquibel now in the lead. Her hand remains inside her black satchel, around her pistol grip. The decision to keep it hidden is less about the natives and more about the way Mandy will look at her.

“How…?” Katrina asks idly behind her. “How did we get to a point where we’re willing to risk our lives for this shit?”

But Esquibel has no answer for this. Instead of such philosophical questions, her mind has cramped down into the necessities this mission dictates. In fact, such existential matters aren’t suitable here. “Let’s focus. We are here now. And the path is getting wider. I am on point, so I will be looking ahead. Katrina, I want your field of view here,” Esquibel extends her left arm, “to the left. And if you see anyone you tap me. Mandy. You look to the right. And every third step I want you looking behind. We will do this properly.”

The opening they enter is from an old rock slide that fell off the bluff above and collapsed a whole grove of trees. To judge by the height of the saplings coming up through the deadfall, it can’t have been much more than a dozen years or so. But the gray sky is visible here, and the bare bluff that emerges from the ridge above is crowned with dark red faces of stone.

“Wait.” Before Esquibel enters the clearing, she stops them in the last of the treeline. Pointing at the crown of the bluff, she whispers, “If I was to set a watch, it would be up there. Let’s wait and see if anyone gives their position away.”

They wait there for several silent minutes, peering at the dark edge of the crown’s silhouette. But nothing moves. Finally, with a decisive nod, Esquibel hurries them along the dusty path that can be found between the fallen logs. They clamber over firs as tall as themselves, trying to hurry. But it is a good ten minutes before they win free to the far side.

Gasping, Mandy hisses, “Well if there was someone up there we are definitely dead now. Dead dead dead.”

“Mandy, stop.” Esquibel considers leaving the other two here, where they can hide among the trees, and going on alone. But no. If they have learned anything at all about Lisica it is to never split up. “Stay close. We’re heading in toward city limits now I think.”

“Yeh.” Katrina nods, trying to square the view she had in the air with what she now sees on the ground. They’ve definitely skirted the ridge and are about to head in, aren’t they? “I just hope we can find their trail up that bluff. If we’re going to get the drone back we got to get up there somewhere on the return trip.”

“Close. And quiet now. This will be the most dangerous part.” Esquibel’s warning silences them. They hunch forward, Mandy hooking her fingers into Katrina’s waistband. “Remember to watch. And tap me. Don’t walk on leaves or branches unless you must. Step softly. Now let’s go.”

The three women hurry silently through this last stand of trees. Soon they can spy the first of the log houses through the trunks. They stop and listen but there is no sound. So far, it does seem that the settlement is abandoned. Then the complacent grunt of a pig breaks the silence. That’s right. They have livestock.

Esquibel reconsiders her plan to enter the village proper. These animals will make too much noise when they see the strangers. She pulls the other two down into a crouch and speaks as softly as she can. “Look. We do not need the town. We only need the treasure house. Look there first, at least. We can skirt all the rest to the left here, in a wide arc. Where would you say the treasure house is?”

For an answer, Katrina turns instead to the ridge, now behind them to the south. She tries to orient herself based on where the drone had been in relation to that landmark. She turns to the northeast and points. “There, I reckon. About half a klick out.”

Esquibel nods, heartened to hear this kind of precise data. It’s exactly what she needs. “Okay. Same as before. Quietly in this line here. You said there’s a stream?”

“Yeh. We’ll have to cross it somewhere.”

They follow a broad but shallow diagonal slope through brown pine needles. Their footfalls here are noiseless and they pass like ghosts. Mandy holds her breath, clutching her hands together. So many parts of her want to freak out or collapse or complain but she knows this is all too important. Adrenaline so far keeps her alert. She has always prided herself on being good in a crisis. It’s just that this crisis is eight weeks long…

Mandy releases her breath and looks at Esquibel’s long lean back, her slender arm that still reaches into that satchel. Yes, she knows what’s in there. She just hopes it doesn’t come to violence. Mandy hates violence. But she came because she has made her choice. She is with Esquibel, come what may. And if Skeebee is in danger, then Mandy will be too.

But they make it to the bank of the stream without seeing anyone or raising any alarm. Now how will they get across? Its width is only a third of the creek they belayed across, but it looks like they will certainly have to get wet for at least a few steps.

“Here.” Katrina lifts a couple fallen logs, about as thick as her leg and twice as long. She puts one down across the front of a shoal of stones in the stream, giving them an easier start. Then she edges to the end of that log, skips onto a close-by stone, and places the second log she cradles onto the next patch of open water. This time, the log rolls and floats back against a few rocks, but never stabilizes. “Aw, well. Wet feet it is.” Katrina shrugs and splashes the rest of the way across, the water cresting just above her knees.

The two others join her on the far bank, where they all remove their shoes and squeeze the water from their socks. Katrina nods along the bank. “We’re upstream of it here, fairly sure. There’s hills up that way.” She points to the north. “When Jidadaa said the Ussiaxan had taken to the hills I was pretty sure that’s where she meant, so we are not going that direction at all.”

“Agreed.” Esquibel puts her shoes back on and stands. “Come. We are making good time. But if you see the operative, I need you to stand back at a distance and allow me to have private words with him. He will not speak to me otherwise.”

“Sure.” Mandy squeezes Esquibel’s hand in encouragement.

But Katrina looks at her sideways. “Private words? What kind of game are you playing now, Doctor Daine?”

Esquibel grimaces. “No game. If you were contacting an agent in the field, what would you do if they showed up unannounced with two civilians? This will be very tricky. Please.”

Katrina only shakes her head in distaste. “Bloody spooks.”

From a distance, the cottage almost looks like a mirage. It is so out of place, after their weeks of bark huts and concrete bunkers, that Katrina feels like she must be tripping. It’s quite beautiful, with planed planks of the darkest wood and a steep pitched roof. A carved cross is in the lintel above the narrow doors. Is it a church?

Its clearing is a well-maintained lawn of clover and meadow grasses. They wait at the edge of the woods to check for signs of life but apart from the trilling of songbirds and the buzzing of insects they don’t hear a sound.

With a shrug, Katrina stands. “Get on with it, I reckon.”

Esquibel nods. “Do not put yourself in the doorway. Stay behind me. Let’s go.”

She approaches the dark entrance, the ancient panels of the two doors tilted ajar. Straps of hide act as hinges and the top ones have rotted through. Esquibel clears her throat. No sound within. “Hello?” Her voice is flat and low and vanishes without a trace.

Mouthing the word ‘wait’ to the others, she takes out her phone and turns on its light. She peers into the shadowed building.

It is dark, with a dirt floor and stripes of gray light across the floor and the assorted treasures collected here. And there are so many, piles upon piles of clothing and papers and stacks of furs. But not a single person within. Oh, heaven help her. Where is he?

Katrina slips past Esquibel through the door after she sees her sag in disappointment. Disappointment can’t be dangerous, can it? She enters and beholds the staggering array of treasures here. “Oh my word. Good thing we didn’t bring Triquet. We’d never get them to leave. Here. Uh. Video everything. Photos of all the documents we can…” Katrina turns, and then sees against the left-hand wall the written word she saw in that old photograph. Here, written in the Cyrillic: “Jidadaa.” And below it, positioned as a shrine just as in the old photo, reside a clutch of postwar American memorabilia. The tapestry Katrina had studied still hangs here, tattered and rotten. The ancient fishing spear and the battered reliquary box haven’t been moved in decades.

Katrina falls to her knees before the reliquary. It is a little dark wood box with bits of off-color enamel decorating it in an abstract pattern. Triquet could give her its entire provenance, she’s sure, but to her untrained eye it looks like maybe 18th century, central European. The Orthodox cross on a staff leaning beside the fishing spear moves her estimate east, though, as do the Slavic linguistic clues she’s been collecting.

With her fingertips she eases the lid open. It cracks and the wood slides sideways, stuck on a frozen hinge of wooden dowels. Katrina quivers in place, worried about damaging it further. But there’s nothing to be done about it now. She pushes the protesting lid up a centimeter or so before the wood cracks again.

Using a finger to fish within, her first touch crumbles a rolled paper. She pulls her finger out. It’s just too old. And she doesn’t know what she’s doing. “I can’t…”

“Someone’s coming.” Mandy covers her mouth with her hands and retreats to Esquibel.

All three of them scan the interior. There is nowhere to hide. The piles are too low, the architecture too simple. It’s nothing but corners and shadows.

Esquibel’s sidearm finally comes out. It is a standard-issue M18 pistol, battleship gray, steady in her grasp. She points it at the door.

Mandy turns away in dismay.

A shadow fills the light of the cracked door. An older, thickset man steps through. Upon seeing them, he freezes. All that move are his eyes, taking in the women, the weapon, the damaged reliquary at their feet.

Finally, he speaks. “Ni hao ma.”

He gestures with an open hand and Katrina recognizes him. “Fuck me. This is the bloke I saw from the air. You were in here, weren’t you, with that other lady? Having an argument. And now you’re speaking Chinese? Wild. Uh, ni hao.”

He nods imperceptibly, his eyes locked now on Esquibel’s pistol. With careful deliberation, he begins a speech. His Chinese vocabulary is very limited and his accent is poor. But it doesn’t matter since none of the three women speak the language.

With his hands up, the man slides sideways into the room, edging toward the shrine they stand before. He points at something on the wall behind them, and mimes draping a necklace around his neck. Now some of his words lapse into Lisican, as he tries to explain what he wants. He’s striking a deal. With his hands, he mimes pushing the reliquary toward them.

“We take this and you get whatever’s on the wall back there you want?” Katrina asks. “And none’s the wiser? In fact, they’ll think we’re the ones took whatever you got, so it’s yours forever, eh? Well I wasn’t going to actually nab this thing. It was more going to be a photo kind of shoot but… I mean, if we’re actually taking things, it sounds like a fair deal to me.” Katrina lifts the reliquary. Mandy enthusiastically nods. Esquibel doesn’t take her eyes off the man, the barrel of her pistol tracking him.

They withdraw to the far wall, giving him access to the shrine. With a hiss of pleasure he leans in and finds a nondescript necklace that had been looped over the staff of the cross, hanging there for ages. Its brittle thong holds a blackened oblong of a locket. With a huge smile he drapes it over his head and bows formally.

The three women bow in return. Careless of them now, he turns his back to them and walks happily out to the entrance. He slips out the doors and departs without any look back.

After a long moment, Katrina follows him to the doors. She peers out. There on the flower-speckled sward she spies four men. The man who just left approaches the other three. It is Sherman the shaman and two men holding them with halters around their neck.

Lifting the necklace he just stole, the man drapes it over Sherman’s head instead. Then he instructs the shaman severely, perhaps threatening their life, before leading the others away.

Ξ

“I feel like Agatha fucking Christie.” Triquet stands back and clasps their hands. They have organized stacks of documents and photos along a pair of tables into an interconnected network of the thirty-seven men and one woman who ever left any record of being on the island. There are a few main characters, like Colonel Ingles and Maureen Dowerd, the fraternizing Lieutenant DeVry, and a colorless figure only known as Corporal, then Staff Sergeant Boren, who signed all the requisition sheets for a decade.

Here they all are, the characters in the murder mystery. All the men who came through this isolated outpost for one reason or another. Of the portraits they’ve found, none of the soldiers look particularly sharp or ambitious. This must have been one of those punishment postings for soldiers they didn’t like, like when they send officers to command posts in the Aleutians. That must have caused resentment here, dark thoughts and actions. Add in a few Soviet encounters over the years and they had themselves a real spicy stew here. Suicide must have been a major factor. “And I don’t even want to think about the sexual assaults.”

But Maureen deserved better than that, didn’t she? She came here for love, if the words in her letters are to be believed. And then she found even greater love once she got here and her former lover the Colonel had them killed. Or he killed her himself. But for some reason he didn’t get her lover, nor the child…

A creak on the deck above interrupts their train of thought. They have been alone down here for a day and a half and both their ears and mind have been playing tricks. Nope. There’s another creak, further along. Someone is in here with Triquet, approaching the hatch leading belowdecks.

It turns out to be Pradeep and Maahjabeen. Triquet can hear their low musical voices and giggles as they approach. Good. They didn’t need any more heart-pumping moments of terror than they’ve already had.

Maahjabeen steps through the hatch, her smile radiant upon her weathered face. “Ah! Doctor Triquet! Still hard at work! Have you been here this whole time?”

“Yes, that’s me. Homebody extraordinaire. And how about you two? How is the sea cave?”

With a laugh they explain to Triquet how they spent the last thirty-six hours circumnavigating the entire island instead. The tale leaves Triquet with their mouth hanging open by the end.

“And…” Pradeep finishes, opening up his daypack and removing the cell phone he retrieved from the corpse of the Chinese soldier, “we brought you something back. A present.”

“Oooo, I love it! Where’d you find it?” Triquet gingerly lifts the outdated HTC smartphone, its screen cracked. “Fell off a fishing boat, did it?”

“No, Pradeep did not tell you about the corpse. It was with the old man. Right in his little hut with him.” Maahjabeen describes what it was like to encounter the rotting flesh of the Asian soldier and their decision to take his phone.

“All good, yes, very good.” Triquet inspects the phone’s ports. Micro-USB. “Look. We can charge this right back up. I’ve already got the cord and a spare battery with me.” It is only a matter of moments before a charging symbol is displayed on the phone’s screen. “So what do you think he was doing here?”

“Well, crashing his plane into the ocean for one.” Maahjabeen has maintained this since finding him. “He must be the pilot, yes?”

“But why here? And why now…? Ah!” Triquet coos happily as the screen fills with text. “Lucky us. No password. But unlucky us. It’s all in Mandarin. So you’re right. He was Chinese.”

Pradeep pulls on the phone. “What about the texts? That’s what I thought might help us first. What were his last texts?”

A long list of Chinese characters is all he can deduce. He opens one text thread, then another. But he has no ability to read any of it. Then in the next text thread he spies a word written in English: B-A-I-T-G-I-E. “Look. They wrote something here in our script. But it appears to be, just, random letters. Bait-something.”

“What are those characters around it?” Triquet uses their phone’s camera to take a picture of the Chinese phone screen. They zoom in on the character. “Got this universal OCR reader here… See if it can make sense of this letter… Or word… Says it means colonel. Colonel Baitgie.”

They all look at each other in shock. This is the name of the Air Force officer running their mission. They’re sure of it.

All three of them bend to the urgent task of translating the rest of that entire text thread.

Ξ

The twin spires of the redwood trunk extend upward like a gigantic wooden version of those old rabbit ears tv antennas. Amy takes a moment to gaze upward, rare these last few days, and admire the gargantuan redwood in which they shelter.

It has a single massive trunk, perhaps five meters in diameter, that only rises perhaps twelve meters from the ground before its bark swells and folds back on itself and gives rise to two trunks of equal size, each big enough to be a mature redwood giant in its own right. It is almost like a defiant fist raised against the sky, with a pair of oversized chopsticks stuck in the fingers.

Its canopy far above is a mass of dark green. She’d love to find a way to explore it some day. It might even be possible to build a platform way up high in a tree like this…

What she loves about this tree more than anything is that it is a testament to resilience. Even though it was hit by lightning or some long-past disease that nearly killed it, this redwood has come back stronger than ever, with nearly a hydra’s heads multiplicative response. “Just try killing a redwood. I dare you.”

Amy’s voice is a raspy whisper, her throat sore and tired from speaking to the vixen all day and night. She has never met a more needy animal. The pregnant fox makes more demands than a blind Chihuahua. And each one leads into the next, drawing Amy again and again into a deep web of obligations and tasks that can be as simple as stripping fern stalks into fibers for a new bed to puzzling out vulpine blood kinetics of some of the herbal remedies the vixen has instructed her to make and administer. She did what research she could on her phone, but only a handful of clues are stored in there in saved notes and digital field guides. It turns out foxes are hardy and brave. Immensely self-aware. At least this one is, to a point where animal intelligence is blurring lines with her own.

They are collaborators here, in this hollow beneath the tree. By all rights this vixen should already be dead. When Amy met her she was septicemic and miscarried one of her litter that first night. But with Amy’s help she was able to stabilize the struggling little mama and then, incredibly, she learned that the vixen knew where the medicines were that she needed herself.

It reminds Amy of her visit with the Karen tribes of Thailand. She got to live in one of their mountain villages for ten days once. Their elephants are sacred and instrumental members of the community, working not only as draft animals and guardians but also the doctors and nurses of the village. Mature elephants would diagnose ailing humans and animals, then go off into the jungle to find the necessary herbs. The elephant would eat the herb, and upon their return encourage the sick villagers to eat, or in some instances smoke, their droppings.

So Amy learned to patiently follow the waddling little fox from bush to tree, collecting samples. She first tried giving the herbs to the fox raw but she turned her head in rejection every time. So Amy tried poultices, which seemed ineffective through her thick silver fur. Finally she had started a fire and brewed the herbs, steeping them for nearly half an hour before cooling them and pouring them down the vixen’s throat.

She responded by the next morning. Her coat was more lustrous and her body seemed more at ease. But she still carried a litter far too large for her little body. Amy fears that what happened is that with too many kits in her womb, it ruptured when they grew too big. Now they are in a race to get the babies out before she has more internal bleeding and systemic infection.

The vixen waddled out of her nest for the first time in two days this morning, leading Amy to a low thicket of Juniperus communis and then to a flowering lily she doesn’t recognize at all. Amy took pieces of both plants, the stem and the petal and the needles of the juniper and bark. Then she returned to brew them, worried the entire time that the vixen had just chosen an abortifacient—which juniper is—to save her own life and terminate this pregnancy.

But that isn’t what the demanding creature needed. After a long mind-melting series of trials and errors Amy finally learned that she did want these new ingredients, but not until they were added to three of the others. Only when Amy had finally put it together in the proper order did her patient acquiesce and sip from the hollow trencher of bark until the broth was gone.

Now Amy is catching her breath, trying to recall what being a human is like after these deep days here with the little fox. Over the course of their non-verbal dialogue, Amy was somehow able to glean from context that the fox has no intention of losing her babies. This medicine will save them all. And she is so close now, the litter coming perhaps tomorrow or the next day. But there is an equal chance they all die first.

If Amy only had a real veterinary station here. She isn’t an actual fully practicing medical professional or anything but she did spend a long summer once sterilizing sea lions. That made her handy with a scalpel for sure. Here she doesn’t even have a sharp rock. Nor anything resembling clamps. With the amount of blood that might be lost here, clamps and sutures are probably the tools she misses the most. But there’s a sphagnum moss the vixen has shown her that not only absorbs an astounding amount of blood but seems to coagulate or perhaps even heal her internal wounds. It had been a delicate operation inserting bits of it up her birth canal, during the first of Amy’s sleepless nights.

Now the vixen bleats a demand at her again. It’s been an hour or more since her last dose and perhaps she needs another. Amy ducks back into the cozy little shelter she’s built against the hollow in the trunk. She lifts the bark trencher to offer another dose but the vixen isn’t asking for it. Her eyes are glassy again, always a bad sign, and her belly is once again distended, as if the kits aren’t lying right. The expectant mother rolls onto her side with a groan and reaches out a beseeching paw.

“Oh no! What is it, mama? I thought you were on the mend. What’s wrong?”

The little fox pants, her forepaws twitching. She is clearly in distress. Is this it? Is this the moment Amy has come to fear more than all others? She has poured her heart and soul into saving this beautiful little animal, and she isn’t ready to lose her and all her babies too. “No. No you don’t. No no…”

She strokes the vixen’s ear and in her agony the fox snares Amy’s ring finger in her molars and grinds down on it.

Amy hisses in pain, sharing it now with the vixen. The creature somehow retains the presence of mind not to break her skin, but it is still tooth against knuckle-bone in sharp agony.

The vixen finally releases Amy’s finger and rolls away. Amy clutches her poor injured hand and scrambles after. No. This splendid creature can’t die. There must be something she can do…

With a stuttering grunt the vixen bears down. Blood trickles from between her rear legs. Amy exclaims and uses the remainder of their moss to stanch the flow. She holds it in place as long as she can and after a nearly unendurable episode the vixen’s breath finally regularizes and she seems to pass into a calm sleep.

Amy removes the moss. A dozen milliliters or more of blood is in her hand. And also, to her complete shock, a pale wriggling fetus no larger than her pinky finger.

Amy exclaims. “Oh! Oh…! Come on now, sweet thing! Tiny one! You got this! Uh… Uh…” The fetal kit is blind, its eyes pink-lidded orbs, and it hardly moves. She folds it gently into her hands, hoping against hope that her own warmth is enough to… to what? She can’t keep this premature newborn alive. Her mother isn’t even lactating yet. There’s no nourishment or therapy Amy can provide the poor thing. If she was merciful she’d just suffocate it right now and end its short tragic life. But she can’t do that. Not when there’s a chance, however remote, that it can hang on.

“Poor mama.” Amy curls around the sleeping vixen. “Poor poor mama. Oh my god. Your uterus must be in such miserable shape. Just hold on, mama. Just hold on one more day…”

And for the first time in days, Amy sleeps.

Ξ

“Jay.”

“Miriam.”

“I was looking for you.”

“I was looking for you.”

“Oh? And what do you need, love?”

“Uh, we got a kind of situation. Underground. So you’re the first one we thought of. What do you need?”

“A spliff. Cracking headache here.”

“Got you, mamacita.” His fingers are so practiced that the joint appears from his pocket as if by magic.

“Bless.” Miriam takes his lighter and sparks up, inhaling deeply before passing the joint and rubbing the center of her forehead with her fingertips.

“Oh, here you go.” Jay hauls on her shoulder, turning her roughly around, and puts his big warm hands on the base of her neck. Then he starts kneading the muscles, parting them to get to the tendons beneath…

Miriam groans and her knees nearly buckle. She falls back against him instead.

Jay laughs. “Yeah, I know a thing or two about headaches. Let me just give you a quick little adjustment here. I can do more later. We’re on sort of a kind of time crunch here.”

“Who’s we?” Miriam’s eyes are closed, already spinning in the THC euphoria and tension release.

Instead of answering, Jay folds her arms up against her chest and lifts her off her feet, bouncing her up and down until she finally releases her spine and the vertebrae pop, five time up a musical scale. She sighs and three more release between her shoulder blades. Then he drops, stretching her out on the dry pine needles, and kneels at her head. He rolls her skull from side to side until she starts to breathe more deeply, releasing those fibers. Then he rolls his knuckles along the straps of tendon.

Beneath her closed lids she sees fireworks. Miriam groans again. Her next breath is deep and shuddering. She drops within herself like a free diver going down, down, deeper than she has in years. For an instant she touches a remembered dimension of herself that she hasn’t seen in years. Oh, what a trickster she had always been. When did that core identity disappear?

Too quickly it’s over and Jay is pulling her back to her feet. There is something thrilling in being manhandled so. Alonso never did. His strength is different. But this lad is like an amusement park ride. What fun.

She opens her eyes with something of the old mischief in them. Now that she recalls how feisty she used to be, she won’t forget it again for love nor money. Oh, this is what she had lost with her five years of grief. Her fey spirit, true to no reality but her own.

Jay sees the feline light in Miriam’s eye and it wipes the smile from his face. Uh oh. What has he done now? “Uh. Cash or credit. Tips accepted.”

Miriam cups Jay’s chin and gives him a deep liquid kiss. She steps back, appraising him. “Thanks, doll. You’ve got the strongest hands. Now, what was your underground mishap?”

“Ah. Right.” Jay’s head is spinning. That was a hell of a kiss. “Yeah. It’s this way. You need anything? We might be a minute. But we really should, uh, get going…”

Miriam rolls her head around. “Right. That really did help. Ah, I can think again. Let me just snare my kit then and we’re off. You keep saying we…”

“Yeah. Jidadaa. If it ain’t one thing with that chick it’s another.”

They pass through pine camp so she can retrieve her canvas sack filled with tools. Then they walk deeper into the grove upslope of the meadow.

Jay hands Miriam the joint. She’d forgotten completely about it. Once again, she’s gotten way more high than intended. But at least she hasn’t thought about her headache now for nearly five minutes. Strong medicine, this. She takes another tiny puff and passes it right back.

“So there are more of these goddamn military tunnels under this island than anyone knew. I mean, seriously. Here. Up on this outcrop. Check it out.”

“Limestone.” Miriam approaches it, the rough crags of the pale reddish stone indicating the inclusion of something ferrous. “Siderite. Interesting feature. Thank you for showing it to me.”

“No. In here.” Jay weaves around the highest of the stone tops, chest high, and leads her to a crack in the ground that disappears into darkness.

“Oooo, you sure have the most surprises, Jay my boy. What a lovely spot.” Miriam kneels at the fissure’s edge, peering down into the inky void. Then an oval face looms up out of it like a swimmer breaching and Miriam falls back with a gasp.

Jidadaa blinks at her. “Good. Coming?”

After Miriam’s heart stops racing, she smiles devilishly and hauls herself into the cave entrance, lowering and extending her leg until she can find a solid footing. “Cheers.” She smiles up at Jay, then descends into the ground like a babe crawling back into the womb.

The tang of iron in the air is noticeable. Geology come to life. This is a ragged tunnel, carved at a deep angle into the heart of the outcrop. Miriam picks her way downward, putting on work gloves and turning on her headlamp. She realizes that until she did, Jidadaa was climbing around down here without any light at all. Barefoot. Sensing the path with her feet, most likely. Now this is a real trickster here come to life. The girl named Doom can never be depended upon to be anything other than herself.

They move quickly, squeezing through narrow passages, and drop perhaps twenty meters in a few minutes. Then they suddenly spill out onto a larger tunnel, squared-off and shored up with dark timbers like an old-time mine. “Oh!” Miriam is startled by the change. She’d thought this adventure would be more challenging. But she can stand up nearly straight in here. It is a straight passage that extends before her but ends in a collapsed cascade of rock behind. She illuminates the nearest wall. They’ve gotten beneath the limestone layer. “Phosphorite, with kernels of silicates. Must have been a bloody beast to dig through. Poor bastards.”

Jidadaa only regards Miriam with a blank stare. “Come.”

Miriam nods and gives Jidadaa a brave chuckle. But it is spooky down here. Now now, old girl. Her old self used to run to embrace the darkness. When she walked in the Irish woods at night as a teen, she’d get worried about someone following her, a pervert from town or a mythical monster who only came out at night. And sometimes she would shock herself into stillness. The only way she could get moving again, alone in the cold foggy night, had been to tell herself that she wasn’t someone’s prey out here. She was the predator, hunting them.

That internal pivot meant everything. Instead of waiting in dread for something to befall her, she would lean forward, knees bent, and divide the darkness with her focused intent.

Miriam does the same here. This is an uncanny place, yes, but she’s an uncanny woman. This is her home, these dark secret caverns that have been forgotten by anyone yet living.

“Look.” Jay, bringing up the rear, directs Miriam’s gaze away from the stone and toward one of the timbers. It has writing on it. Ideograms. “Chinese? Japanese? I don’t know enough to tell.”

Miriam studies the crude symbols carved into the wood. She takes out her phone and takes a picture. “We’ll figure it out. Where does this tunnel lead anyway?”

“The Ussiaxan village. Jidadaa wants me and her to run support for the ladies while they’re in there. But we can’t get past this blockage. Kind of a new development, if I’m reading Jidadaa right. She thought it would be clear sailing.”

They pass under a dark band of moisture that bisects the tunnel. Drips form puddles at their feet. “Creek.” Jidadaa points above.

“Ah, yes. The creek in the meadow.” Miriam orients herself. “We’re passing right under. What a massive engineering project this must have been.” They continue on, another thousand steps or so, the tunnel as straight and regular as a hospital corridor. Miriam begins to see why Jidadaa felt no need for light.

They pass a junction, then another, passages on the left and right disappearing into the dark. “Where do those lead?” Miriam asks.

“No way out.” Jidadaa urges her on. “Now here. Katrina looks for Jidadaa. Too long.”

“Yes. Mustn’t keep Katrina waiting. Aha. Is this your rockfall?”

“This year I did not come. Not last year but year before, the way is clear.” Jidadaa shrugs, helpless, standing before the slide. “Now, too much rock.”

“Well, let’s see…” Miriam appraises the slide. It is mostly a cone of gravel that must have been folded long ago into a metamorphic seam that has broken open. The ancient riverbed was released but instead of flooding the tunnel with water it spilled a surfeit of pale gray riverstones and yellow sand. Miriam removes a collapsible spade and sets its handle. Then she climbs the slope and digs at it, trying to clear the rupture so she can attempt to fix it.

Beneath the layers of sand and gravel is a wetter clay. Well this should be suitable for her purposes. She clears the top of the cone and digs the clay back into the fissure, sealing it as best she can.

Then it’s just a matter of clearing out the gravel so they can win through to the far side. The work goes smoothly. Until it doesn’t.

Her spade hits something woody. She stops and clears the falling sand from what she hit. She can only slow the cascade, though, and not make it stop. The streams of sand fall like ribbons of blond hair over a skull darkened by time.

Miriam beholds the desiccated remains of a human body.