Lisica Chapters

Thanks for joining us on 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:

17 – It Means Betrayal

Triquet wants a second mug of tea but they’re damned if they’ll let Amy get it for them. So it takes a bit of effort to escape her eagle eye. With a nod to be excused from the meeting, Triquet backs themself away from the long tables before heading to the trenches, the mug carefully hidden in a crook of their arm. Last night’s brief storm littered the sand with branches and clusters of moss, stippling the sand with the imprint of rain. After returning from the trenches they circle around camp into the bunker and to the kettle with hot water. On their return, Amy watches with narrowed eyes.

“Oh.” Triquet plays dumb. “Anyone else need anything? Tea?”

“I’ll take some.” Mandy holds up her mug. With a wink to Amy, Triquet turns right back around and fetches it. “Coming right up! Don’t forget to tip your servers!”

Once they all settle, there is a lull in the discussion that can be neatly filled with Triquet’s concerns. “I’d like to talk more about the Lisicans.” Alonso gives an encouraging nod. “As the only one here with any anthropological training at all, I guess it’s my role to remind people that we should be in as little contact with the native population as possible.”

“Yes,” Miriam leans forward in her camp chair, her half-eaten dinner of lentils and rice perched precariously on her knee, “let’s design an actual policy here, people. If we don’t, these poor blighters won’t know what hit them when the modern world beats down their door. They have no idea what meeting us means. And this whole island will be open for business come summer? Shit idea, that. We know what it always means, don’t we? Disease, loss of culture, loss of traditions…”

Mandy nods, “Loss of language, loss of identity…”

Esquibel adds, “Alcohol and drug dependency will skyrocket, as will suicides. All kinds of mental issues with displaced populations. We have it very bad in Kenya. I have seen so many cases.”

Triquet settles back. “Well good. I was afraid I was going to have to dissuade some pollyanna here who thinks it’s their mission all of a sudden to muck up the Lisicans’ lives and save them.”

“No, not save them…” Amy shrugs, thinking on how charming and suddenly intimate her interactions with the little people have been. “But I don’t see any harm in safe interactions for the purpose of further study. These have to be important moments, right? First contact before we pollute their minds? So I’ve been recording as much of it as I can. I started transcribing the words I can recognize into a spreadsheet. Very few meanings attached to any of them yet. Except for good morning or hello, which is—!”

They all repeat after her in lifeless rote, “Bontiik!” and chuck each other gently under the chin. She’s already taught them all.

“Oh.” Amy’s enthusiasm drops. “Yeah. Well, that’s all I got so far. I’m actually a terrible linguist. Can anyone else…?”

“That sounds like something Katrina might do.” Alonso nods to her at the end of the table, playing a game on her phone. “Eh?”

Feeling their eyes on her, Katrina looks up. “Oh no! What did I miss? Did someone say something sexy? Uh… That’s not the only thing I’d like to lick, mate.”

They all laugh. Mandy says, “No, you silly. Do you have any background in languages or linguistics?”

“Well…” Katrina sits up. “I’m not supposed to talk about it but I did contract with the Singaporean Air Defense when I was really young. And they thought they could use some of the algorithms I’d written to find like who might be a possible threat in the Malay border population using keywords and statistical modeling.”

“Wait. When you were really young?” This is too much for Jay.

“Yeh. Fifteen.” The table erupts in disbelief but Katrina holds up a hand. “They didn’t know I was fifteen. Come on. I forged the security documents. To them I was just another online contractor. But it was too icky. I didn’t like the way they were using my tools to suppress minorities so I started feeding them false data to make them think there were spies in their own ministries. It was a blast.”

“I’m not sure that was an answer,” Alonso rumbles, “but it was a hell of a story. So do you think you might be the best of us to study Lisican speech?”

Katrina shrugs. “I do speak five languages.”

She looks around the table. Alonso says four. Amy and Miriam say two. Esquibel and Maahjabeen say three. Pradeep says three. Triquet adds, “Just Russian and Spanish really. But I don’t know if Klingon counts.” Jay offers, “Donde esta el taco?”

Katrina rolls her eyes. “Fucking Americans, although Aussies are just as bad. Right. So if that’s the metric then I guess it’s me. Okay. When it’s time to rock a funky joint, I’m on point.”

Alonso looks at Jay for help. “Is that a yes?”

“Come on, dude. House of Pain was from the nineties. That was your music. Definitely a reference you should get.”

“My music? The nineties for me was Andrea Bocelli.”

“Am I the only one,” Mandy suddenly stands, frowning, “who thinks we shouldn’t be talking to the Lisicans at all? Like maybe even boarding up the tunnels and waiting for real professionals? Like, aren’t there some primitive tribes who refuse contact with the modern world? And I think they’re better off.”

“Well, we could,” Amy agrees, “if they didn’t have Flavia. That cow is very much already out of the barn. They’re getting all kinds of contact now whether we like it or not and whatever policy or plans we may have had are just…” She shrugs. “Look. I think we should engage as much as needed to gain trust so that we can get Flavia back. Then we can re-visit this subject afterwards. But she needs to be rescued. We can’t forget what’s important here.”

“We absolutely need her return.” Miriam shakes her head in frustration. “But we just can’t ever seem to get past the point in the conversation where they acknowledge they’ve seen her, inform us that she’s gone further inland, but then that’s it! They have nothing more to say. Nobody can lead us there. They can’t even tell us where she is exactly. It’s as if they literally stop understanding what we ask, no matter how we act it out.”

“And we have to remember too,” Triquet is relieved that nobody expects them to take on this anthropological burden. They’re already busy enough with their artifacts. “This isn’t first contact. They showed you an old photo of Maureen Dowerd. Remember Lieutenant DeVry and his fraternizing? I mean it’s been sixty years but I wonder where they got all those blond curls?”

Maahjabeen lifts her hands in helpless curiosity. “And where did they even come from in the first place? Hawai’i? On open boats? Impossible. The currents all lead away from this place. That’s what they told Alonso. So how did anyone ever find this place by boat?”

“You know what I find even more interesting?” Pradeep looks around the table. “Where did the fox come from? And when? Silver foxes are pretty rare on the West Coast.”

“Lisica.” Katrina stands. “Fox Island. I guess we can’t just say the foxes were always here. But nothing was always here. Not even the trees. So, we need answers, do we? Righty-ho. Let’s see if the natives recognize any combination of French, Russian, and Malay. But first… has anyone found a way to get through the tunnels to them without crawling through mud?”

Jay shakes his head no. “Not yet. But it’s a nice mud. Like good for your pores.”

“Yeh, I’ll just pop out on the other side with a mud facial and cucumber slices on my eyes. They’ll think I’m some kind of salad monster.” Katrina giggles. “Well, no time like the present. Come on, Amy. You can introduce me to all your new friends.”

Ξ

“Devonian, I’m pretty sure.” Miriam stares at the cliff face. “But there’s only one way to prove it, ladies.” She hands one canvas bag to Esquibel and another to Maahjabeen. “Stromatoporoid fossils. Let’s see if we can find any. Tiny sea creatures that went extinct after the Hangenberg Event.”

Esquibel only stares at her. “I know nothing about whatever it is you’re talking about. I’m very sorry.”

“Geology, right?” Maahjabeen guesses. “I think I’ve heard of the Devonian. But what is a Hangenberg Event?”

“The Hangenberg Event.” Miriam pushes through the ferns and brush to find that low tunnel she and Amy and Triquet had exited. Esquibel and Maahjabeen haven’t crawled through the brush yet and they hang back.

Esquibel peers suspiciously into the tunnel mouth. “Ehh. Can you guarantee there are no venomous snakes or spiders in there, Doctor Truitt?”

Miriam laughs. “I can guarantee nothing. I only know rocks. But so far you haven’t had to treat any bites, have you?”

“True. But you did not grow up nor practice medicine in East Africa, where there are a million things trying to kill you. It is still very difficult for me to accept that I can safely be outside here, just crashing about in the bushes.”

“Well, I appreciate that you were both able to come. We should all see the tunnels and so far this is the easiest way to get to them. Now, since you asked, the Hangenberg Event was the second largest mass extinction event of the age, second only to the Late Devonian Mass Extinction, which occurred only thirteen million years before. Watch this branch here. It has thorns.”

“How long ago was this?” Maahjabeen follows Esquibel, her shoulders and back still aching but doing much better. Coming along seemed like a good idea and nothing has changed that so far. She needs to do the physical work and she admires Miriam.

“Oh, this was all Panthalassa back then, a gigantic sea that covered nearly the entire Northern hemisphere. But that doesn’t help answer our geologic mysteries, does it? Almost all of the sea floor that existed back then has subducted under newer, more modern tectonic plates. Ah, right. When? Well, the Devonian spanned about 419 to 359 million years ago.”

“Aha.” The numbers mean nothing to Esquibel. She wears two layers of nitrile gloves and the first have already been torn on a hidden leaf. “When my grandma was young.”

“Oh, I dream of popping into a time machine!” Miriam hurries forward, lost in her vision. “To see the planet when it was all lava or all water! To see its bones first developing! It would be like witnessing its birth. All of our births. And the Devonian has nothing on the Ordovician. Absolutely my favorite. Aha. There’s the exit up ahead. I can see the light through the branches. Uh, where is everyone?” Miriam realizes she hurried ahead. She turns back. “Come on, you slugs! I’m twice your age, you know!”

Esquibel appears, replying with a brave smile and nod. She holds up one hand, now that its glove is shredded and useless. But her slow pace is holding up both her and Maahjabeen behind her. She finds a short fat stick she can use as a staff to ward away the twigs. Soon, they’ve re-joined Miriam. She leads them into the light.

“Here. If I remember correctly, we’ll have access to an actual living weathered stone cliff face.”

“But you didn’t finish your story.” Maahjabeen is frustrated to have fallen behind. She pulls herself up beside Miriam. “How did the Hangenberg Event kill everything?”

“Honestly, we don’t know. There’s several theories. Glacial melt could have led to climate change and eutrophic dead zones. Algae blooms. One of the more interesting theories is that fossils dated to the event show chromosomal and genetic damage, meaning there may have been a massive radiation spike. Gamma rays from a nearby supernova or something. Just wiped out nearly all of the life on Earth in a flash. But those studies remain inconclusive.”

She stands, where the tunnel opens up to a tiny trail around the outcrop, to disappear in the folds of vegetation on the far side. “Yes, here!” Miriam croons, reaching up, to brush the dirt clinging to the cliff face. “Here we can dig to it!”

But the bedrock is less accessible than she hoped. Damn organics covering everything on this bloody island! She needs to work in a desert again after this and Japan. She was fighting with plants and soils and clays everywhere she turned there too. Maddening. With a sigh she drops to the ground to see if any loose stones have fallen. Yes. Here’s a shoebox-sized oblong covered in moss. She scrapes the green rind off it. Then she splashes the bare stone with water and rubs it clean. “Yes, a dolomite or I’m a baboon. Look at this.”

Maahjabeen kneels beside Miriam. Esquibel is still too happy to be standing to get right back down on her knees. “What is it?”

“A type of limestone. It’s utterly preposterous to find it out here in the middle of the North Pacific like this but nothing about this island makes sense from a geologic standpoint so who’s to say? I only know dolomite when I see it and, once I give it a proper microcrystal assay under some better lights I can tell you even more than that. You see the green flecks? Feldspar. So this is a metamorphic suspension, igneous-based. But if we can find any of those micro-fossils…” Miriam finds a rock that fits in the palm of her hand. She turns it over and scrapes away the clay with a pick. “And this one is pure sandstone. Well here’s some fossils. But they aren’t ancient enough to tell the secret of the island.” Miriam holds out the rock to Esquibel, who looks at both sides.

“I can confirm it is a rock.”

“Please put it in your sack for me. I’m hoping we can fill up all three before we get back.”

“Just any rock?” Maahjabeen takes it from Esquibel to study the fossils. She frowns and puts the rock in her sack.

“Any rock. I’ve really only found other sandstone examples near, you guessed it, the sand. And I’ve been dying to get some actual samples from the cliff. Here. I think if I brace myself on the far wall I can chimney up into position.”

“Don’t!” Esquibel snares the older woman’s sleeve. “That is not a solid surface, Miriam.”

“You’re right. Fine. I’ll scrape the face clean first.”

Maahjabeen stares at Esquibel, trying to silently communicate how quickly she wants this project to end. But Esquibel doesn’t get the message. “It is true. I am no fun at parties.”

Maahjabeen shakes her head in bemused frustration at Esquibel. “You are so serious all the time. Except when you are with Mandy. If I ever invite you to a party I must make sure she comes too.”

Esquibel can’t tell if that’s an insult. She’s pretty sure it isn’t a compliment. It seems like a bit of a betrayal, having Maahjabeen of all people questioning her reserve. “It’s not like I don’t know how to have fun. It’s just this is a professional environment and I am an active-duty Lieutenant Commander, you know.”

“Well, I was a crossing guard for my primary school but I can still laugh every once in a while.” Maahjabeen says it in a teasing voice but she feels sorry for Esquibel, trapped all day every day in her clean room with no reason to leave. It must be hard to be a doctor. All you see are the results of worst-case scenarios. You never see the million successes, only the few bloody failures. It must frighten you and tilt your perception of every reality.

But Miriam and Esquibel share a surprised glance. Maahjabeen is lecturing anyone on social graces? Hilarious. Miriam can only hope it means the rigid Tunisian woman is finally starting to relax and let them in.

Esquibel puts a hand on Maahjabeen’s shoulder and gives her a mocking acknowledgement. “Thank you for your service.”

“Oh, look!” Miriam gasps, tearing aside a stand of ferns. “Glories and treasures! A whole pile of aggregates and silicates! Dear lord, will wonders never cease?”

Ξ

Under Miriam’s direction, Maahjabeen deposits her full canvas sack beneath the long tables at camp and finally retreats to her tiny cell in the bunker for some privacy. The ladies treated her well and she feels they are all proper friends now, but still. Maahjabeen is just not a people person. She is an ocean person.

So then what is she doing sitting in this concrete box, listening to Mandy tap tap tap on her keyboard? Maahjabeen stands. This isn’t where she belongs. She pulls on her sandals that she has just taken off and grabs her hat and sunglasses. It is now 1300 hours. She has not yet studied Amy’s wave phenomenon at this hour. So far it has only formed long enough for her to transit at low tides below 1.2. And it should be low tide again in another ninety minutes.

She strides through camp with purpose, sparing only a thought of pity for Alonso trapped in his camp chair and a kind of general contempt for everyone else who could be out on the water with her, but instead choose to waste their lives on the small and mean demands of land. The continents are nothing, just slivers of bare rock, basically glorified reefs with bits of life crawling atop. The rest is endless ocean. Panthalassa. Maahjabeen loves that new word. Imagine how it used to be! Sea monsters and volcanoes bubbling up from below. And just endless quiet, endless open skies and rocking liquid silence. She could spend a hundred million years in her boat and never see another soul. Oh, Lord. Why did you put me in this place and time? Chasing vanishing corners of isolation in a crowded world. I am tired of all the people.

With restless exuberance she climbs over the fallen redwood for the first time. Only when she stands atop it can she see the lagoon, and from a higher vantage than she’s used to having. The wave sets really are much clearer from up here. There’s an underwater snag or prominence that tugs on the break to the left. That’s where Amy’s barrier seastack is and its secret path out.

But Maahjabeen remains unconvinced. It cannot be so easy to escape this lagoon. If it had been so easy then why did it take so long to find? She knows that is logically not how such things work but her fatalist view of the world inspires a relentless cynical internal monologue.

At least that’s what I tell myself. La. There is smoke coming from the lean-to Pradeep made for her. Ah! That drug addict! She marches down the length of the trunk to the lean-to and climbs down beside it. “Yala!” She leans in. “This is not your place, Jay. Why do you always think you can just—?” But Jay is not alone.

Pradeep currently has a joint to his lips. He squawks in surprise and pulls it away, shoving it into the sand.

Jay calls out in dismay, “Aw, man… Don’t waste it.”

Maahjabeen is so surprised to see Pradeep in this context that she can only shake her head and drop her gaze. “I mean… Of course you are welcome to… I mean, you built the structure, Pradeep.”

“No. You’re right. I am sorry. I did not think how this would look to you. I only thought of relaxing and watching the waves.”

Until he says it aloud he doesn’t realize how much he desires Maahjabeen’s approval. The anxiety that grips him now is of the claustrophobic social variety, where his thoughtless mistake will humiliate him in front of everyone. “I’ll go.”

But she pushes him back in, growing more irritated. “No no. What kind of hostess would I be if I let you leave like that? Sit down. And smoke your drugs if you must. It is not like the smoke will stay. Not with this crosswind.” The social obligations allow her an easy way out. She’ll just get them situated and then watch the waves from the trunk above. Somewhere upwind.

“Not really sure I can any more.” Pradeep sits again, sheepish and awkward. “I was just trying to relax and now I’m not—”

Maahjabeen throws her hands up. “Oh, please. I do not really care. It’s not like the smoke makes you murderous or lecherous or anything. It just makes you stupid. And I don’t understand why anyone would want to be stupid. So here.” She kneels in the cold sand and excavates the joint, handing it to Jay.

He makes anxious maternal noises as he tries to dry the joint out with the lighter, held at a distance. Finally satisfied, he lights it and puffs it back to life. “Ahh. That’s my baby. Close call.”

Maahjabeen sits back on her heels. “Maybe you can explain it to me. Because I do not understand. Islam requires us to keep our bodies and minds clean. I cannot comprehend why you would ever want to make it dirty.”

“Well, the thing is…” Jay takes another puff and cocks his head at a philosophical angle.

Maahjabeen plucks the joint from his fingers and hands it to Pradeep. “No. I want to hear from Pradeep. I respect his opinion.”

“Well, Jesus. Okay, then.” Jay falls back with an explosive laugh. “Guess I know where I stand.”

Pradeep gingerly takes a hit. He needed this. But he doesn’t think it will help his case with Maahjabeen if she hears that. He knows how she feels. He spent the first year working with Jay in solid disapproval of his stoner ways. But certain cannabis strains relieve Pradeep’s anxiety as well as any pharmaceutical. He shrugs. “I just see it as part of the continuum of life. We are merely animals who have evolved over millions of years, and we have always interacted with our environment, other animals and…” he holds up the burning joint, “…plants. We eat them, we smoke them, we rub them on our bodies and shove them up our bums. And it’s all for the effects. It’s the same as eating a papaya for the digestive enzymes. There’s nothing inherently wrong in the practice.”

“The Prophet said every intoxicant is unlawful.”

“But is that like how all your people feel?” Jay just can’t keep his mouth shut. “Because I once knew this Iranian dude in San Jose. Super chill. He said weed was basically fine in his culture because they didn’t think of it as a drug, just as like a relaxant and appetite stimulant. He said the Middle East basically invented herb.”

“It is true.” Pradeep takes another puff. “Sri Lanka can claim to have cultivated the first cannabis, as the Afghans also do with their Kush. It may have arisen in multiple places. Why did the Prophet hate intoxicants?”

“The people of the city had fallen into vice and could no longer hear the words of Allah. You do not need this. That is what he was trying to tell us. You do not need to burn a plant to find peace. Just listen to the word of God and you will…” Maahjabeen stops, interrupted by an unsettling silence.

Pradeep leans in. “What is it?”

“Hush.” Maahjabeen ducks under the door and steps outside. Why is it so quiet? The wind has died and the gray clouds are suspended above like curtains. The waves. The waves stopped. For one moment she watches in excited discovery as the water pulls back from the mouth of the lagoon, briefly revealing a shallow shelf of stone.

Then she realizes what that means.

“Up. Go. Run.” Her voice is hoarse. The words can’t come out of her mouth fast enough. “Yala. Up! Tsunami!”

That magic word gets the boys tumbling out the door and onto the sand. Maahjabeen is already scrambling up the side of the trunk as the water rushes in, overtopping the barrier rocks on the far side of the lagoon and filling it in an instant. It floods the beach. The water rises and rises…

From atop the trunk, the three of them cling to each other. With a fatalist dread they watch the sea green water rush toward them. It moves faster than they can run. But it is already slowing. By the time the swirling water reaches the trunk it is hardly a meter high. It foams at their feet for a long angry moment before pulling away, taking one of the planks of Maahjabeen’s shelter with it.

Then it is gone.

Maahjabeen shakes herself like a cat. That was close. The utterly terrifying power of the ocean and her own insignificance chop at her roots with stunning force. She’s as weak as this fallen tree.

Jay hops back down, laughing at their brush with death. “That was boss. Look, Prad. It took all the sand from under the trunk.”

“Ah! The poor shelter.” Pradeep scrambles back down to see if he can save it. Now that the sand floor has been pulled away, the twine-secured planks sag sadly against the trunk.

“But check out beneath. So much more is exposed. And see. There’s a big burl down here. This old boy may have been dealing with more infections than we knew.”

The thought that a viral infection might have felled this giant instead of a lightning bolt pleases Pradeep. He leaves the shelter aside. Not much he can do here without more twine. The tsunami, if that’s what it was, still rattles him. He doesn’t know how Jay can be so nonchalant. They were nearly swept away. He looks up at Maahjabeen with a frown. “Was that a true tsunami?”

“I am not sure yet. But sometimes there can be more than one. You should both stay up here with me until the sea settles.”

The wave sets have been obliterated by the tsunami and the green sea is a roiling, rocking mess webbed with foam. Why, she could paddle through that cauldron no problem to reach the open sea. Everything cancels everything else out. But for how long? She laughs like a madwoman, thinking how dangerous it would be.

Pradeep and Jay clamber back up onto the log beside her. They all watch the sea in silence as it slowly reorders itself.

From out of seemingly nowhere, Jay pulls out the still-lit joint and sucks on it, then passes it to Pradeep.

Maahjabeen has trouble categorizing what she just witnessed. “So there are rogue waves and there are tsunamis and they both have very different causes…”

But she isn’t teaching Pradeep and Jay anything they don’t already know. “Yeah, that was either a distant earthquake in the sea bed or, well…” Jay shrugs, “nobody’s really quite sure what causes rogue waves yet, do they?”

“The nonlinear Schrödinger equation!” Maahjabeen and Pradeep recite at the same time. Then they laugh. She continues. “Ah, you know about that? It is one of my favorite theories.”

“Fascinating bit of nonlinear modeling,” Pradeep agrees. “One wave might be able to steal the energy not only of the waves that follow, building itself up, but even from the one before it too.”

“Wait. How?” Jay can’t fathom how a wave racing forward could somehow pull energy from the wave in front of it. That’s why it was in front, wasn’t it? Because the one behind couldn’t reach it. The whole idea contradicts every surfer instinct he possesses.

“Basically little feedback loops can build solitons—” Pradeep begins before Maahjabeen excitedly takes over.

“Hyperbolic secant envelope solitons! They’re self-reinforcing wave packets that can maintain their coherence like halfway across the ocean. But the equations are so…” She throws up her hands. It is the physics of waves where she found the limits of her maths brain. “Like as long as a novel and tangled like a knot.”

“Ohh I love the classical field equations.” Pradeep takes his final hit. His thoughts are starting to collapse and settle within him. “They are so comforting.”

Maahjabeen hasn’t been able to talk about this with anyone in too long. “Alonso told me the island is a computer. Well the ocean is one too, just infinitely more complex. A squid eats a fish off the coast of Indonesia and it butterfly effects the motion into waves and currents that we still feel here. I once heard, though, that in order to model every interaction in the ocean, the computer would have to be the size of the ocean. So, to me, we should just study the ocean itself and learn what its outputs look like instead of building supercomputers to create simplistic artificial versions of it. Like, I don’t think we ever pay enough attention to laminar flow in the water surface layers myself. It is a very powerful interaction.”

“Wind knocking down my waves,” Jay agrees. “Bums me out.”

“But let’s say it was a tsunami…” Maahjabeen estimates where it likely originated, perhaps the Asian east coast. The Pacific and its ring of fire, all the hotspots that encircle the ocean, triggering volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and seaquakes that reshape the world. “Where would you say that is?”

“Uh, Taiwan?” Pradeep sights along her arm. “But I hope not. I mean I hope everyone is okay.”

“Inshallah,” Maahjabeen intones, then drops her arm. “Well. The sea is returning to normal. I will say it is most likely a rogue wave. Tsunamis are faster and more like a general flood.”

Jay is skeptical. “That didn’t feel like a flood to you? There was no crest to that wave. No impact. Rogue wave, they might have heard the crunch back in camp. But nobody heard nothing.”

“Is everybody here an oceanic researcher?” Maahjabeen doesn’t mean for it to come out as petulant as it does, but she is tired of always being corrected. “Rogue waves can also be silent. That is why they can be called sleeper waves.”

“Fair point.” For as combative as Jay is, he gives up an argument as quickly as he starts one. “And I’m not disputing your expertise. Just a lifelong beach bum here. Yeah, they say when my family first had a ranch in Carmel, my like great-great aunt was sunbathing on the beach and got pulled out and drowned by a sleeper wave. They full-on terrify me.”

“So I guess no one will ever be spending the night in the shelter.” Pradeep sighs. “Oh, well. It was a good idea while it lasted.”

“No. Please rebuild it.” Maahjabeen touches Pradeep’s elbow and doesn’t register how electric he considers the contact. “We will be grateful to have it. It is for watching the ocean, yes?”

Pradeep gives her a tight smile. He is glad she appreciates her bungalow. But he really wishes she would lay those long graceful fingers on someone or something else.

Ξ

“This is the last climb here.” Amy calls down to Katrina, waiting for her to make her way past the tree that the Lisicans have placed inside the tunnel, a pale spotlight of indirect daylight illuminating the roughly vertical shaft. These villagers are like these sturdy little industrial shrews of humanity. Amy is reminded of the ancient troglodytes of the limestone caves of France. They lived in them over thousands of years. Some people are just born to dig.

“This is wild.” Katrina finally pulls herself up to Amy, eyes wide. “You should know, for your peace of mind, I’ve long ago stopped trying to think of where the best place to have a rave down here is. I just got really into the idea at first. Rave in a cave. Rave in a cave. It was like a refrain. But there’s just no way. I had no idea how immense it is down here. Just really incredible.”

“Rave in a cave.” Amy snorts. “Not sure how the Lisicans would feel about that.”

“Well. They’re all invited. Have you heard their music yet?”

“No music.” Amy’s breath is coming in short gasps as she climbs toward the last level bit of passage that leads to the village. “But their whole language is like music. You’ll see. Very sing-song.”

They approach the tunnel’s end to see the same man waiting for them as before, the silver fox curled at his feet.

Amy affixes a mask over her mouth and approaches. “Bontiik!” She chucks him under the chin. He does the same to her. The fox sniffs at her toes. Amy spreads her arms inclusively wide and turns to Katrina, who also puts a mask in place. “My friend! Katrina!”

The little man looks at her with shining dark eyes. He has reddish curls, not blond at all, and a calm authoritative air. He gestures with an open palm and says something long and involved in a mush of vowels and soft consonants. At least that’s how it sounds to Katrina. But then a single word sticks out. Ostati. It’s a form of ‘remain’ in Slavic languages. She repeats it aloud. “Ostati? Stay? Remain? Who stays?” Then, slow and simplified, she asks, “Da li govorite russki? Do you speak Russian?”

The man holds up a finger. “Da. Da li.” And then he continues, his words once again disintegrating into mush. But Amy was right. It is a pleasing sing-song mush. She just can’t make any sense of it.

“Are those Slavic words or is it just a coincidence?”

“That a fox is named Lisica in both languages? Impossible. Has to be. I wonder how he always knows we’re coming.” Amy nods and smiles again and again, making notes on her phone.

“What’s his name? Do we know?”

“Feel free to try.” Amy makes an exasperated gesture. She’s all out of ideas how to advance their dialogue.

Katrina pats herself on the chest. “Katrina. Katrina Oksana. Drago mi je… Um… Kako… kako se zoves?” She laughs. “Listen to me. I sound like a Serb. Come on, dude. What’s your name?”

He responds pleasantly, at length, his voice rising and falling. The more she hears of Lisican the more the words start to separate into units. But there’s all kinds of sub-vocalized consonants and glottal stops and fricatives Katrina doesn’t recognize. This will take some study, for sure. She takes out her own phone and starts recording everything he says.

After his speech he slides a dry slender hand across Katrina’s palm and grips it. He leads her from the tunnel.

The fox still sniffs at Amy’s feet. Finally satisfied, it turns and scampers after its human. “Woot. Passed the test.” She steps out and away from the cliff, to find that the village is framed in vibrant color, wreathed in flowers. “Wait. This wasn’t… Wow. Where’d all these flowers come from? This must be the spring bloom. How lovely!” Amy points at the clusters of orange and violet and pink and white flowers in clusters. “Yarrow and angelica and this is chamomile. You could make tea!” She has an audience now, four children and three adults hanging on each word. She holds up a chamomile flower and one of the little girls plucks it from its stem and pops it into her mouth.

The natives look healthy. Apart from their diminutive stature, their dark skin is clear, their bellies are not swollen. The elders don’t appear to be afflicted too badly by arthritis. Their teeth are strong. Amy wonders what their life expectancy is.

The man who greeted them now leads Katrina from house to house, speaking to someone within at each stop. Katrina nods her head and waves, but she can’t see inside the gloom. It feels like a formal tradition so she keeps her mouth shut and follows his lead.

At one house, older and more dilapidated than the others, the man puts a hand across Katrina’s chest to keep her at a distance. He doesn’t seem to realize or care that his forearm is pressed against her breast. He ducks low to send his voice through the low dark doorway and calls out in an aggressive, nearly hostile voice.

An ancient crone peers out, one eye filled with white cataracts. Her hair is white and nearly gone, the curls limp against her dark skull. She lifts a bony hand and speaks. It almost sounds like a curse. This is not a happy moment. He has evidently roused her from a long isolation.

The man takes the crone’s hand and pulls her forward to where Katrina waits. Tottering forward, complaining, her one good eye stares at the ground. The man joins her hand to Katrina’s and she finally looks up, blinking at the young Australian woman’s face.

For a long, trembling moment, everyone in the village watches the crone cup Katrina’s chin. Then with a ragged cry she pushes her away. “Guh-byyye.” She flaps a hand dismissively at Katrina and everyone starts talking all at once, begging the old woman to reconsider. But she only repeats the farewell again and again. “Guh-byyye. Guh-byyye.”

“Well.” Katrina tries not to feel rejected. This has nothing to do with her. But still, somehow, it stings. “They know some English, it seems. Uhh.” She waves at the old woman, who stares at her with hot tears and clenched, shaking fists. “Good-bye?”

The woman groans and spins away. The others all talk at once, some pulling at Katrina to ask further questions and others pulling at those to dissuade them. The man with the fox holds up his hands and defends his decision to bring her here.

Amy watches from the edge of the village, hands full of flowers. “Everything okay over there, Katrina?”

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

A woman emerges from her house bearing an abalone shell filled with smaller tusk shells and feathers. She carefully picks out three shells and a glossy black feather and presses them into Katrina’s hand. By her urging, Katrina offers the gift to the crone.

But the crone will not engage with Katrina. She is back at the door of her house, squatting to go back inside. She still mutters, “Guh-byyye… Guh-byyye…” with unmistakeable grief.

“She won’t take them.” Katrina hands the treasures back to the woman. “Nice try, though. Why doesn’t she like me?”

Now all the women and children and men speak, their words falling over each other, mild arguments springing up on each side. They pull on each other sharply to interrupt, although none of the heated words sound like insults.

Katrina records it all. “Uh… What do you think, Amy? Feel like we’ve out-stayed our welcome. Don’t you?”

“Maybe so.” Amy turns to the closest adults, a woman and man wearing tight headbands of twisted leaf and not much else. “But I still want to find out more about my friend Flavia. Flavia.”

They all fall silent to see if they can divine the meaning of her words. The children try to imitate her. “Flobby-uhh.”

Amy points at the tunnel mouth. “She was the first one out. Remember? And then you said she went up this way?” Amy retraces the path through the village to a tiny overgrown footpath on the far side. She points up it. “Flavia. Remember?”

Now the village falls silent again. Katrina marvels at the change and how quickly it came. Their faces go from animated and wide open to closed and staring at the ground. But this isn’t the same reaction they had with the crone. This is something… darker.

“I don’t like the looks on their faces much, to be honest.” Katrina sidles up to Amy. She doesn’t feel threatened. It’s only that these people are so alien. And she is so far from home. “What did they do to Flavia? Don’t tell me we found cannibals.”

“Uh, that’s racist.” But Amy’s words are hollow. Her mind is calculating, trying to tell if she’d get in any trouble by taking this trail. She holds up her hands, beseeching the villagers. “We have to find her. If she went this way we have to go. She’s our friend.”

Amy parts the fern fronds and takes her first step up the trail. She looks back. A wordless seething resentment sweeps through the villagers. One young boy lifts a hand and yells at her, “jidadaa!” but his mother pulls his arm down and shields him from Amy.

“Okay. Fine. I don’t understand why but I’ll turn back if you don’t want me to go.” Amy lifts her hands in surrender to re-enter the village. But the adults of the village hurry forward, holding their hands up, muttering the words Wetchie-ghuy and koox̱. She is not welcome any more. Amy steps back, not wanting to be pushed. “Oh. Ehh. Shoot. I appear to have made some terrible mistake. Sorry. So sorry. I promise I won’t do it again.”

But still they won’t let her back into the village. The children withdraw into the houses and even the man with the fox won’t look at her. He only holds his hands up to push her out if she tries to come back in.

“Oh no! Katrina! Help! What have I done?”

“You went up the wrong path, I guess. The koox̱ path. Maybe… Maybe you need some of those gifts like the shells and the feathers. Maybe they’ll forgive you then.”

“Fine. Yeah. And how am I supposed to get them from here? I wasn’t doing anything wrong! We need to find Flavia.” Amy can’t believe she lost their love so quickly. Things had been going so well! “Come on, guys! It isn’t like I have a choice!”

“We should get you out of there.” Katrina starts scouting the heavily-wooded edges of the village. “Do you think you can like skirt around back to the tunnel mouth? Get you back to camp and try this again someday?”

“I’m trying…” But Amy can tell the thickets are impassable. The only way back is through the village. “But they won’t let me. I think I might have to go up this trail and look for Flavia myself, Katrina. I mean, it’s the only way left.”

Katrina has no words. Amy is right, but there’s too much inexplicable significance here. These decisions are clearly too weighty to be blundered into. “Okay. Gah. I hate it but you’re right, I guess. Well, good-bye.”

“Good-bye.” Amy turns to leave. But another voice from further up the koox̱ trail stops her.

“Don’t say good-bye.” It is Flavia. “To them it means betrayal.”