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:

54 – Where Did It Go?

“What a total disaster.” Mandy yanks on the rope, now tangled in the branches of a nearby madrone. Her weather balloon hangs from a high limb, deflated, its instrument suite swinging like a pendulum beneath, perhaps twenty meters or more above.

“Don’t pull.” Katrina grabs Mandy’s arm. “You’ll just make it worse. Uh. Maybe we can cut it out of there?”

“How?” Mandy drops the rope and tries to find a calm place in her center. But she can’t even feel her center. She only feels an electric irritation racing over her skin. Oh my fucking god. How many times does she have to look like an idiot in front of Katrina?

“Yeh, that’s the question, innit?” Katrina tries snapping the end of the rope to flip it over the branch above. But there is no chance. It is too little snap for so long on such a heavy rope. If someone could climb… even part way… “Jidadaa,” she calls out, catching sight of the girl before she departs camp upslope among the pines. “We need you.”

Jidadaa turns back. Her face is set, a decision having been made. But she returns to Katrina anyway, wordless but with an expectant look on her face. It is Mandy who points glumly upward.

After a moment’s consideration, Jidadaa grasps the trunk of the mature madrone, a meter wide, its rough russet bark only giving way in patches to orange hardwood beneath. With her bare feet and strong hands she scales the trunk, rising five meters before she grasps the first limb. Now she moves even more quickly, weaving through the tapering branches until she reaches the limb that bears the weather balloon and rope.

“Oh! Careful, sweetie!” Mandy cries out, appalled at the precarious position the Lisican girl has so quickly put herself in. The branch is no wider than Jidadaa’s leg and bounces every time she steps out onto it. They wait in dread to hear a crack.

But Jidadaa is too light. She hovers above in the canopy, one leg stretched out to a nearby fork for stability, while she picks at the twists and knots in the climbing rope. But she makes little progress.

“What’s wrong?” Katrina calls out after an impatient minute.

Jidadaa tilts her head down and makes helpless gestures with her hands. “I do not know this.”

“The knots? Just unravel them. You know, like with…” Mandy falls silent, realizing the examples of shoelaces and power cords she was about to use are probably outside Jidadaa’s knowledge. “Uhh… Do you like know about knots and rope at all?”

“Necklaces and nets. This one too hard.”

“Oh! That is Jidadaa up there!” Flavia appears, drawn by the shouting. She has finished packing and is eager to get back down underground where it’s safe. “What is she…?” Then Flavia sees the weather balloon. “No. That is too high. She cannot stay up there.”

“The knots are beyond her.” Katrina’s shoulders sag in despair. “She can’t get the balloon down.”

“Knots? Oh, I love knots!” Flavia perks up. “They are one of my favorite hobbies. No, I am not making a joke. It is true. The topology of knot theory is some of the most advanced maths there is. This is the practical type but still, I wonder what kind they are?”

“Wait!” Mandy brightens, reaching into her pocket for her phone. “I know! If you had pics of them could you figure it out?”

“Maybe…” Flavia shrugs. Whatever gets these ladies moving so they can retreat before the Ussiaxan arrive. “But we should hurry.”

“Mandy, you’re a genius.” Katrina kneels beside her. The smile Mandy responds with is far beyond the worth of the compliment. She primes her phone as a camera then wraps it in the end of the rope. They stand.

“Jidadaa! Pull it up!” Mandy tugs on the rope. “My phone’s in the end! We need pictures!”

By fits and starts the rope is drawn upward. Figuring out how to pull a rope by instinct is something not easily done twenty meters in the air. Then Jidadaa finally grabs the end and pushes the phone out between the gaps in the ball of the knot they tied.

“Take lots! From every angle!” Katrina drops her gaze to ask Flavia, “Or would video be better?”

“Like you could get her to figure out how to switch camera modes. No.” Flavia waves the question away. “Pictures are fine.”

After another excruciating moment of bouncing limbs but no sight of her, Jidadaa finally leans down and waves the phone at them. “Many pictures! Like Jay’s phone!”

“Yes! Exactly! Brilliant!” Katrina claps. “Now just stick it back in that rope end and lower it down to us!”

Jidadaa does so, shoving the phone edge-wise back into the balled knot.

“Slowly!” Mandy begs her.

But this is another thing that is difficult to reason through. Jidadaa drops the ball and the rope plummets to the ground, bouncing off a rhododendron and thudding into the dirt.

“You broke the screen!” Mandy wails after she extracts the phone. “Why did you do it like that? We told you to take it slow!”

Jidadaa watches from above, impassive. In response, she retreats from the crash site to more firm footing in the center of the canopy.

Flavia pulls the phone from Mandy’s hands. “Yes, yes. Let’s see. Ehh. Horrible photos. Ah. Here is one. Here is the problem. The big knot here and the satellite hitch beside it. See,” Flavia adopts a lecturer’s tone. “The linking integral is an invariant that describes how two closed curves link. That is the important part here. But usually maths theoreticians just think of abstract knots in a three-dimensional Euclidean space, but here the linking integrals are still key. See, I like to spend my time solving these riddles in actuality. Other people play sudoku. I untie knots. So there have recently been a number of papers published that blend abstract topology theories with actual mechanical forces and friction. Fascinating work, good for surgeons and industrial… Ah. Yes, first she must free the hitch here and then she will have slack to attack… ehh. No. Look. If she comes at it from the opposite way instead, this part here is a looped mass that only connects to the rest of the tangle at two points. And… Yes! Here. And here. How do I make marks on your phone?” Mandy helps her draw red circles around the two important points. Then they force her phone back into the rope’s ball knot. “Jidadaa. Attack it where I made the red circles!”

The rope ascends more smoothly this time. Within moments, the weather balloon crashes to earth. Mandy squeals in delight and races to it, gathering up the torn fabric and tangled rope to locate the instruments beneath.

Jidadaa descends as quickly as she climbed, dropping lightly back to the ground. Katrina claps for her.

“Yay! Jidadaa in the house! Thank you so much, love!”

Jidadaa, sheepish, accepts the compliment. But she is far more excited about something else. “Now lunch!” She holds out a bird nest she has stored in the folds of her ragged hoodie. It contains four dead spotted chicks, their necks snapped.

The others pull back from the macabre sight. “Oh! Uh… That’s fine. All yours, girlfriend!” Mandy squeaks, patting Jidadaa on the shoulder, then withdrawing when the girl goes still. “Oops. Right. No touching. Sorry.” Mandy sadly lifts the wreckage. “Well, another anemometer in the trash can. Great. That was my last one. I sure hope it got some data at least.”

Katrina gives Mandy a sideways hug. “Aw, poor Mandy dandy. I’m sure it did. Flavia. Let’s download it and perk her spirits up.”

“Now? But my machines are all packed.” Flavia waves at the camp, where her bags wait in a neat row. “We are in the middle of a retreat, remember? The bad guys, they are coming? To kill us?”

“You’re right.” Katrina helps Mandy gather the remains of the weather balloon. They all start walking back to camp. “But I still need a few minutes to get my things together. And so does Mandy. So if you don’t have anything else to do…”

“Ehh! Fine!” Flavia throws her hands into the air. “Anything to make Mandy happy, even if it means we get turned into slaves!”

“You don’t have to…” Mandy begins but Katrina shushes her.

“Thanks, Flavia,” Katrina answers instead. “You’re the best.”

Jidadaa strides away from them with purpose. Katrina calls out after her. “And where are you going so suddenly, little miss?”

Jidadaa turns back, her face troubled. “Today. It is a very important day. No time. No more time!”

“No time for who?” Katrina hates these cryptic warnings. How have they ever helped?

“For our prophet poem. Me and Kula.”

“Oh. You and your mom have your own? I guess everyone does. But… I mean, what’s today that’s so important?”

“For lidass to bow down and give blood to summer wind.”

“And if he doesn’t, your poem like, what, fades away?”

Jidadaa stares at the ground. “It go down one trail. We go down another. We see it through the trees, then no more. We forget. Right now the poem make promise to us. If it is broken, it pass like the wind.”

“I mean, maybe you can ask Jay for a bit of blood, I guess, but he hasn’t been very happy about…” Katrina trails off as Jidadaa stalks away through the camp and into the trees, ignoring her. “Aw crap is she going to be gone for like another three days again?”

Mandy gets serious about removing her belongings from her tent so she can break it down. As she shovels her clothing into a duffel bag, Flavia hurries up to her holding her laptop.

“Mandy, wait. Look. Look.” Flavia thrusts her laptop in front of Mandy, pointing at columns of data. “You did get something. See?You got what you were seeking, eh?”

Mandy’s shoulders slump. “Sorry. I don’t speak math. I only speak English, and not even that good. When will you people realize I’m like way less smart than—?”

“What is this instrument? The CSN-11957?” Flavia indicates the source of the data at the top of the column.

Mandy just shrugs. “I have no clue. What is that, like a serial number? I don’t…” But she moves over to Flavia’s platform, where the remains of the weather balloon’s instrument suite are plugged into another laptop with black USB cords. Lifting each of the units, Mandy finds identifying numbers on each of them. “Yeah. Here. The differential-absorption optical hygrometer.”

Now it is Flavia’s turn to be mystified. “And what is that?”

“Measures humidity by shining two lasers, one that refracts H₂O and a control that doesn’t. So it got these like amazing readings? Great. What’s so amazing about them?”

Flavia shrugs. “It is three things. First, the volume of data is far more than from your other instruments. And second, the quality of that data is very good. Its sampling rate seems to mainly be limited by storage, not any performance constraints. So your laser is very busy, giving us these values five times every second. And, three, what the values show is a tremendous dynamic shift in the weather here. That must be of some importance, no?”

“Yeah, it’s a change in humidity. Happens several times a day. Thanks, Flavia. That’s super cool. I’m glad it wasn’t like a total waste of your time…”

“Not at all, not at all,” Flavia answers absently, back at work on the data. “Glad to help. Now I just want to plug this new source into our database quickly here. And look. Remember your heat map? Now it has this extra refined layer of humidity, yes?”

“Yes…” Mandy breathes, leaning in. The island is nearly black with the density of its humidity. Air currents deform around it in every direction. She scrolls outward, seeing the humidity as a spike pinning the wheeling currents and storms of the entire Northeast Pacific. “Look at that, Flavia. It’s all the surface biomass on Lisica. Respiring like a champ. Just enough to make things stick. Oh my god. We really are in the center of the world. The saline shift. The water column. I can’t believe we didn’t know about this place! This will change every model NOAA uses for… everything! Knowing there’s this like pin in the pinwheel is…” Mandy shakes her head, helpless. “It’s all these trees. These giant trees. See, they attract the water in the air locally, but that starts a cascade effect that draws more and more water to them from further and further away until a forest of sufficient size can condense a rainstorm out of clear skies. Add some mountains to break the surface-level wind and this becomes like a major feature on the open ocean. This tiny dot of green. Oh my god.”

They look first at each other, then at the emerald treetops waving above. “It is like,” Flavia points at the sky, “a column of water rising like a volcano. It is invisible, but it never stops erupting. Not for a million years.”

“And it’s all feedback loopy. The more moisture the island calls the more rain falls and the more plants grow and it just goes and goes until, I don’t know, maybe there’s like a maximum, uh…”

“Carrying capacity for every square meter of the island? Yes, there must be. Finite resources, constrained on multiple levels. We could work on that next if you like. See what the upper limit of the island’s humidity generation is. It is too bad we lost the drone, because we do not have any close scans of the north half. But maybe we could extrapolate, based on what data we do have. Well. Enough. It is time we must go. Again. We will do this work when we are safely back in the sub. Now if you need any more help here, I will be happy to do whatever. Packing, cleaning up. But we need to go.”

Ξ

“Ugh. Where is Katrina? I can make no sense of this woman.” Esquibel stands at the edge of the village square in a mask and gloves haggling with the Mayor. “Look. We won’t even stay for lunch or put our things down. We will just pass right through. Down into the ground, yes? And you may want to join us. The Ussiaxan, yes? Very angry. Bloody furious. On their way.” She mimes holding an imagined spear above her head but the Mayor responds with equal fervor, indicating the village and the people, her hand on Esquibel’s arm, pulling her close.

“I tell you they are coming. We had a drone. Remember?” She points at the sky and makes a bzzzzhhhh sound, tracking it across the treetops. “Then the Ussiaxan shot it down. They scattered into the hills in fright. But Jidadaa tells us they will regroup and attack in the dark.”

The Mayor calls out to one of the youths. It is the non-binary villager, their hands busy packing a wet paste into woven baskets. But without a word of complaint they set their work aside and fetch something from the Mayor’s hut. It is a spear. The Mayor takes it from them, still lecturing Esquibel, and holds it above her own head. Her meaning is clear: We will stay and fight.

Esquibel blinks rapidly, shaking her head. “No, no, bad idea. Look. There is no defense here. Once the enemy got across the creek they’d just overwhelm you, wouldn’t they? Think this through. You can’t have more than, what, sixty people here? Fifty who can fight? They have four times that number if they come at you with everyone they’ve got. And they can just come at you across this entire line here. This broad slope. You can’t hold it. They would have every advantage. Triquet. Come here. Help me reason with her.”

But the Mayor doesn’t wait for Triquet’s arrival before spreading her legs into a stance that grips the earth, taking a deep breath, and intoning a long and formal chant. Her thumbtip points at spots across the island, near and far.

Esquibel drops her hands. “Oh, great. Now what is she doing?”

Triquet listens closely, finally starting to hear the individual words in the cascade of sound. “My guess is this is her prophet poem. You know, that thing everyone’s banging on about right now? And she believes it holds all the answers to our questions. She is giving you your answer, right here. Shame we can’t understand it. But I don’t like this. Seems they’re all headed for a big conflict, where all the prophet poems say opposite things about these days. They’re all getting really heated about it too.”

“So she is just…” Esquibel reaches for the words. “This is her briefing. Situational overview. Mission objectives. Available resources. But what happens when we get to the review? We need to be able to understand each other to work together, and I’m trying to tell her we can do that much better together in the caves. Bottleneck their assault. Small numbers can hold up far better against larger forces in… Wait. Now where is she going? Is she upset because I am ignoring her?”

“What do you think?”

“Well she is ignoring me too, so…”

Alonso catches up to Esquibel and Triquet, limping along behind them carrying a small backpack. “What is it? Something wrong?”

“It is that Mayor woman,” Esquibel says. “She won’t let us go into the caves. And I have told her that she is about to be invaded but she thinks…” Esquibel gives a helpless shrug, unable to describe what the Mayor thinks.

“There’s a ritual thing going on here,” Triquet interjects, their voice quiet. “Pretty sure. We’re getting deep in their cosmology now. We are like so so in the wrong place at the wrong time with these people. Who knows how peaceful their little transition would have gone if we’d never shown up and wrecked it all.”

“What did we wreck?” Alonso asks. “We have been very good. After we leave, there will be no trace of us.”

“Except for a burned out elevator shaft. That was us.” Flavia is compelled to keep the record straight, even though calling it out makes Mandy—who approaches arm in arm with Katrina—turn away in sudden grief.

“Well, yes, but that could have been anything.” Alonso gives them an eloquent shrug. “Lightning could have done that.”

“Katrina.” Esquibel raps out an order. “Go make sense to that Mayor person. We don’t need anything from them except passage through their village. See if you can make her see—”

“Make her? Ah, Christ,” Katrina groans, “What have you done this time, Lieutenant Commander?” She pushes past Esquibel with a smile on her face and a Bontiik for everyone she sees. Slowly Katrina makes her way across the village to the Mayor’s hut, where the older woman is in and out, packing a small pouch with stones and cords. A sling? Is she going bird-hunting? Now? “Bontiik?” Katrina offers, stepping close and chucking the chin of the Mayor. The woman looks tired today, her eyes even more deep-set and worried than usual. Katrina studies her, marveling at her features. She has a strong aquiline nose with a blunted tip that hangs above her pointed chin. Wide sad eyes. A broad forehead that somehow promises strength and wisdom. An expressive, downturned mouth. She likes her. Katrina smiles at the Mayor in admiration, like some daffy undergrad meeting her favorite folk singer at the coffee shop, and tries to communicate. “The Ussiaxan…”

The Mayor grunts and steps past her out into the village square, headed for the slope behind the huts and the line of trees to the west. Unspooling the cords as she goes, a leather patch is revealed that can hold the surprisingly small stones. She is going bird hunting. This isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing. Not at all. There’s a fucking war about to start, mate. We have to defend ourselves. Yet Katrina can’t say these things. She follows at a discreet distance instead.

The Mayor steps softly through the undergrowth, head cocked, sling hanging from her wrist. Her feet are noiseless on the dry pine needles. Her eyes flick from tree to tree above.

The canopies are alive with birds. If she’s hunting for food there’s plenty of fat targets flying all around her. But she must be after one particular kind of bird. Or maybe one bird. Maybe there’s like one bird out here who’s been keeping her up all night and she’s just had it. And his name is like Justin. Justin, you’ve had your day, boy. Now she’s coming to get you.

When it happens, it’s so fast Katrina doesn’t really grasp what she saw. Reconstructing it later, she figures the Mayor dropped a stone from her palm into the leather patch, swung it like not even more than a half-arc with a snap of her wrist, and was stepping to where the dark songbird lay twitching on the ground before its suddenly stilled song had left the air.

It has a black coat and blue edge feathers. That’s all Katrina can see of it before the Mayor stoops over her victim and disembowels it with a flake of obsidian hafted to a wooden handle like a pencil. She pours its innards and blood onto her hand and pokes through them with her miniature spear.

The Mayor turns to Katrina and glares at her, as if displeased to have been followed. But then she says something… something about the Ussiaxan…

“The Ussiaxan, they are not coming.” Katrina turns to find Jidadaa standing behind her, along with an old villager. Ah. That’s Morska Vidra and his fox. Katrina takes a long moment to ingest the meaning of these translated words.

“They aren’t…? You mean like according to the poor little bird entrails?” Katrina doesn’t think she can get her rational-minded colleagues to go along with that.

Jidadaa nods slowly, a gesture she’s seen the researchers make. “And me. I go there. I listen. They talk about fox. Not Keleptel village. Ussiaxan not come here. Fox has babies tomorrow. They listen to new poem. Now Daadaxáats is koox̱.”

It takes a moment for Katrina to translate this. “Daadaxáats is the sky shaman. Sherman. And koox̱ is slave. Yes, they have them as a slave. I saw. So the shaman is getting the villagers all riled up about the fox with their own prophet poem?”

“Shaman lead them. They all go back into the hills. To find her. Fox babies are all thing to a village. Ussiaxan live with none. Many years now. Why them so danger. No soul. No heart. No love.”

“Okay. So what you’re saying…” But now Jidadaa is telling the Mayor the same news in her own language, that they are safe, that the Keleptel village will not be invaded. “Yeh, your Honor,” Katrina agrees. “Turns out the entrails spoke the truth.”

The Mayor leads them back to the village, to find that Esquibel has moved into position at the cave mouth, while Alonso stands with the others where they were left, now engaged in animated arguments about what to do next. He sees those who approach and breaks off his dispute with Miriam, squeezing her arm. “Eh. It is the Mayor! Uh, Bontiik! Ma’am! I very much want to thank you for those leaf wraps and your herbal treatment! It has done wonders! And I was hoping I could perhaps get another, when you had a chance… Oh! Pardon.” Alonso steps back, realizing that the Mayor is trying to get around him and has something to announce. She calls out in a voice loud enough to carry to every corner of the village. Heads lift then drop, the villagers going back to their daily chores. They all seem content to let her news pass with silence. Then the Mayor returns to her hut and goes inside.

“What did she say?” Alonso asks Katrina.

“That there will be no attack. The Ussiaxan are hunting foxes.”

“Oh, praise be.” Miriam sighs and puts down the huge pack she carries, like ninety percent of their belongings. She hadn’t looked forward to wrestling it through the tunnel and now she won’t need to. “So can we stay here?”

“Did you hear that, Esquibel?” Alonso calls out across the village. “Peace has been restored. There will be no attack.”

“What?” Esquibel squawks, too far away. She steps from the cave mouth, unwilling to come out much farther. “Why?”

But instead of answering her, Jidadaa turns to Alonso. “And Morska Vidra. He saw your friend Amy.”

“He did?” Alonso and Miriam both turn, to the girl and the old man and then back to each other, overcome by the sudden relief of hearing word of Amy. “She is fine?” Alonso asks.

“She is with the fox. For birth.”

“Oh my days she’s a midwife,” Miriam laughs, releasing even more tension. Then she sighs. “This must be some kind of absolute dream come true for Amy. And she’s well? She’s safe?”

Jidadaa smiles. “The fox is still alive.”

Ξ

Pradeep walks under the eaves of the trees the Mayor just visited. The bird life here is so rich. They flit and soar and flutter, the air alive with their wings. In just a single glance he finds a Steller’s Jay, two nuthatches, and a family of robins, with two red-tail hawks soaring above and a clutch of quails rustling below. A riot of passerine life, loud and boisterous and mostly fearless. The jay lands close and brays at him, cocking an irate eye.

Pradeep bows. “Pardon my trespass. I am only here to look.”

He steps deeper into the trees, thinking of Amy. She is out here somewhere living like an animal, in the world of animals. If it had been anyone else, Pradeep would have been concerned. But back at Cal State Monterey her exploits were legendary. Who knows? This is maybe just another Tuesday to her.

But he misses Amy, so he consoles himself with the birds she loves. She taught him nearly everything he knows about West Coast populations and distributions. They only had a handful of mornings together in the hills above Prunedale, cataloguing the chickadees in the grasses. But she expanded his view out to the horizon and the sea birds that dwell there. The dunes and coastline are themselves an entire ecosystem, with pipers and pelicans and egrets seen nowhere else.

On Lisica, he’d just like to find an inland pond of some size. That’s the goal he’s set himself these last few days here. Alonso wants new data, from under-represented sites? Good. A nice pond or lake would be brilliant. So he’ll just stretch his legs to the top of this ridgeline and see if the neighboring valley has any bodies of water he can see from above.

As he ascends to a saddle between two impassable outcrops, a head disappears from view. It is one of the Thunderbird clan. So Jidadaa was right. They are still watching from a distance. What an odd name for them. How are they in any way the Thunderbird? They are the most secretive and mystical of all the tribes here. Why would they have such a bellicose name? Maybe Katrina knows…

No, he can see nothing of the next valley on the far side. The view is too obscured with thick forest. And there’s no clear way down from here that wouldn’t involve some bouldering and perhaps a bit of rappelling. So. Time to turn around.

He is surprised to find Xaanach trailing him, chewing on a stick. “Oh. Hello. Pleased to meet you.” Pradeep doesn’t recognize her. He’d been insensate when she led the others back to him before.

“Wetchie-ghuy.” She crosses her eyes and sticks her tongue out, then smiles wolfishly at him.

“Ah. Yes. Indeed.” There is something uncanny about this child. She is tiny, and waif-thin. Also quite ratty in appearance, with her hair a tangle of detritus and her shift torn to rags. “Wetchie-ghuy is a bad man. Common enemy. Friends, yes?” Pradeep can’t seem to shake his stiff formality. He had never been good with kids. Even when he was a kid. Perhaps this little urchin has the same problem. “Pradeep.” He places a hand on his chest and bows.

“Xaanach.”

“Ah! Xaanach! I remember you now! Our little rescuer. Flavia loves you, you know. And you don’t live… with the others or… anywhere…?” He looks around, questioning each compass point. But she doesn’t seem to respond to any one direction.

So Pradeep points to the birds instead, naming them. “Let’s see. Black-capped chickadee. Goldfinch. Goldfinch. Steller’s Jay. You know what?” he asks her, heartened to see Xaanach pays close attention. “I haven’t seen any of the larger Corvidae since we got here. No crows or ravens or… Huh. These jays are the largest we’ve seen. No magpies. Do you have magpies here?”

The girl responds in a torrent of mish-mash. It sounds like child talk, not even Lisican. She presses her filthy palms together and twists them, then reaches out to grasp him by the wrist.

“Oh. Uh… Okay.” Pradeep allows himself to be led back down the slope, but at a northeastern angle away from the village below. Yet she almost immediately thinks better of it. She halts and says something abrupt, then pulls Pradeep around and releases his hand. She yanks at the tail of his shirt, trying to get under it. “Wow! Uh, what are you, uh…?”

She repeats one word until he understands it. Lisica. She wants to see if he still has a fox on his tailbone. “How do you know about that? Just who is this kid?” He looks around, as if he might see her parents waiting patiently at a distance. But of course Pradeep and Xaanach are alone. And evidently his Thunderbird bodyguard doesn’t consider her a threat. So…

Pradeep untucks his shirt and displays his lower back to her. She gets uncomfortably close and he smells her rankness. The poor thing has maybe never had a bath in her life. She prods his skin and picks at something like a scab. Then she steps away and grabs his wrist again. But he pulls away. “Let me—Hold on! Let me get my shirt back in first then I’ll go wherever you want. I promise.”

The instant his hand is free again she snares it and pulls him forward once more. She drops down the steepest pitch of the slope, heedless to the dirt sliding around their feet, then picks her way patiently along a spine of descending rock to the crown of a massive red granite outcrop overlooking the valley below.

“Whoa…!” They stop at the very edge, the void appearing suddenly beneath their feet and falling away a hundred meters to a jumble of fallen stone. Maybe more. Pradeep scrambles back and Xaanach giggles, joining him, still holding his wrist. “Could use a warning, if you’re going to take me over a cliff. Next time.”

He examines the view more closely. This is one of the most narrow valleys he has seen. Beyond the rockfall is a pretty glade of ancient bay trees and the glitter of water through the trees. Is that the lake he seeks? “So pretty. Such a nice little sightseeing tour…”

But now the girl only grows more serious. She begins chanting, in ragged imitation of the other prophet poems they have heard. Pradeep turns away from the view of the canyon to study her instead. This is hers? This little wilderness orphan even has a poem? Who taught her? What is her story? Oh, how he wishes he could understand her. Pradeep fumbles with his phone, to record her, but of course only gets the last few fragments before she stops. Then she grasps his hand again, this time in a ritual manner.

Pradeep puts his phone away and stands straight, attempting to give this girl the gravity she demands. Then she takes out a small flake of flint and slices open the tip of his ring finger. “Ow! Hey! I didn’t say you could…!”

But she waves his protests away and snares his hand again, chuckling to herself in a way no child does. She pulls on his finger, pressing it against the stone of the cliff top, as near to the edge as he will let her take him. “Stop! You’ll get it infected!” But she isn’t satisfied until a good fat smear of purple blood is pressed into the granite. Then she releases him.

“Absolutely mad, you are.” Pradeep backs away from the girl and her precipice, holding his finger up. Wilderness medical training says to bleed a small wound like this, use the blood to wash the dirt out. Flush it back up to the surface of the skin. So he is satisfied to see another bright bead roll down his finger. Good. The cut is clean. That rock had been sharp. It should heal fine.

Xaanach appears to be done with him. In fact, the smile she grants him is one of great relief, as if she just accomplished something she has long been attempting. Then she turns away, looking out over the valley, and emits a piercing scream in perfect imitation of the red-tail hawks soaring over the treetops.

Ξ

Several of the villagers are still awake in the dark, tending small fires before their huts. Their murmurs are punctuated by laughter. Where Morska Vidra’s house had been is now a makeshift camp for a handful of the crew. Alonso stretches out on a pile of mats and bags under the cloudy sky while Mandy and Katrina try to resume their treatment of his legs. Jidadaa sits nearby, watching.

Mandy marvels at the progress he has made. “Oh my god. The tissues are actually moving again. Feel that?” She moves her hands at contrasting angles across his left calf. Before, it had been a shockingly undifferentiated mass of scar tissue and swollen flesh, but now the individual muscles and tendons can be identified. “Even your scars look better. Like the ones on your feet. We got to get some of that magic herbal treatment for Esquibel’s hip. And for everything Jay’s gone through. How does it feel?”

“Still very painful to the touch like that,” Alonso answers tightly, his breath caught in his diaphragm. “Yes, it is much better, more than I could dare dream, but I’d also say that your adjustments were a critical part of that, Mandy, even though they hurt like the fucking devil. So you have my deepest gratitude. Are you going to now do more of the same?”

“Oh yeah, frankly we’re just getting started. You need months of these treatments. But better the pain now…”

Alonso lifts an interrupting hand. “Platitudes are unnecessary.” He lies back, frowning at the dark gray sky. “Do what you must.”

“Ooo look at the tough chap.” Katrina pokes him in the shoulder and Jidadaa laughs. “Trying desperately to remember the Stoic philosophers he read in college right now. Or is it the Buddhists?”

“What are you adding here, Katrina, exactly?” Alonso pushes her irritating pokes away. “Did you expect me to take your drugs? Here? With all that is happening?”

Katrina shrugs. “I mean, I did bring them…” She takes out a folded and sealed ziploc. “But I understand your concerns.”

Alonso waves the baggie away. “I cannot, as the head of this mission, with all these active security concerns. I must be better. No more nights of drunken stupor. No more drugs until I am relieved of command. Please do not try to convince me otherwise.”

Katrina shakes her head and sets the MDMA and LSD aside. “I will not. I never would. I mean, these tiny paper squares only make the pretty pictures if you’re open and ready and your surroundings are safe. And our surroundings…” She looks around herself, shaking her head in despair. “Nice to hear news of Amy, yeh?”

“My god, yes.” Alonso appreciates how carefully Katrina is handling him as he deals with the apprehension of yet more pain. Mandy’s hands have already started to pull apart things that do not want to be separated. He wants to focus instead on Katrina. “You know, I do find that our two sessions have had a very deep, very profound effect on me. I would not want you to think I do not appreciate them, even if I do not quite recall most of them, and what I do is very… Ah! Yes, that long one, Mandy, is the center of the whole left ankle problem. No, Katrina, what I do recall is very embarrassing. But the thing is, it actually isn’t. I mean, I remember weeping like a baby and saying all kinds of humiliating things. All my weakness on display. And yet, even with these memories, I am not embarrassed. I know I should be, or rather that I would have been in the past, but none of the crazy things I did before you mattered because I know I was surrounded by love. We all love each other. I hope Pavel your brother, when you see him, appreciates all the love you bring to his healing.”

“Aw, that’s so kind and thoughtful. Thank you so much.” Katrina smiles sincerely and cocks her head. “So can I ask you what your trips were like, I mean as much as you can tell me, and about how it changed? You know, for like my own research…”

But now Alonso is groaning as Mandy presses on his ankle’s scar tissue and flexes his foot, forcing the fibers to stretch and align. He starts panting, reaching out for Katrina’s hand to squeeze.

“Breathe.” Mandy spares a hand to press down on Alonso’s diaphragm. He is shocked to have his attention brought there and it makes him gasp, releasing so much of what he holds. He takes his first deep breath and Mandy stretches his foot even further.

“Oi.” Katrina is playfully merciless. “I’m talking here. Taking data. You know, for science? So if you could maybe stop thinking about yourself for a moment, you old queen, and answer?”

Alonso stutters a laugh through the pain. “Alright. Yes. Good idea. Get my mind off it with some pleasant—ah! recollections. Yes. Well, I will have to say that I did not enjoy either drug so much as when we finally combined them together that one night with the dancing. That was… I mean, that was space travel.”

“Yeh, that’s what we call it. Space tripping and candy flipping. The mind and the body altogether at once. The deep celebration.”

“Yes, that is very much how it feels. To allow yourself to love what you have, even the very ooooohhhhhh…” Mandy’s hands grind his words to a halt.

“Even the very…? Yes?” But Katrina will get nothing more from him for a long while. “Lots of forgiveness in these sessions. To other people and also yourself. I saw you forgive yourself for a lot of things on those nights.” Katrina takes her own deep breath and gently shifts her hand in his tightening grasp before he breaks it.

Alonso squeezes tears out from between his closed eyes. “Yes. Gracias. This is much of what I oohhhh… what I am saying. I have forgiven my legs for looking like this. The pain for making me feel so stupid and depressed. There had been… so much guilt.”

“Breathe!” Mandy presses on Alonso’s diaphragm again. “You tense up and it doesn’t work.”

But Alonso finds it nearly impossible to release and face the pain defenseless. It is just too much. And Mandy is relentless. He goes rigid, slamming the back of his head against the ground to take his attention away from Mandy, who is tearing his feet from his legs and taking whole minutes to do it.

“Hey, hey… Shh…” Katrina cradles Alonso’s head and his eyes snap open, flicking up and left, then off to the middle distance. “Okay, bit of neuro-linguistic programming here. According to my sources in the military what you’re doing is processing some of the trauma that’s connected to those exact injuries here. A little bit of flashback, maybe?”

Alonso nods, trying to let the shade of the cackling sadist pass through him and not catch on anything rough or jagged. He needs to be clear to survive this, to let the pain cleanse him instead of damage him. The acrid smell of his torturer, the chill in the air. These are the sensations he needs to forget before he can finally face the looming silhouette of the man over him. “There is still… one forgiveness…” he pants, “I am having trouble with, Katrina my dear…” Alonso gags on the memory. “I thought I was doing far better than this. But there are still demons hiding in my legs. Ah!”

The Mayor silently appears at the edge of their camp with a frown. She holds wads of black leaves and a jar of paste.

Alonso sees her. He sits up and reaches out to her as a savior. “Ah! Yes, please, Your Honor! Thank you so much for your help!”

But the Mayor doesn’t approach. She shares a disturbed look with them instead, distressed by this much pain.

“It isn’t me, mate,” Katrina mocks, “Mandy’s the one who did all the nasty stuff to him. I’m just here for the internal bits.”

“I never hurt him!” Mandy is indignant. “This is healing pain!” She reaches tentatively for the Mayor’s left arm and grasps it. Then after rotating it, Mandy says, “this one’s a bit tight here. See?” She traps the tendon and pulls gently on it. Then she massages it a bit and hands the Mayor her arm back.

The Mayor flexes her arm and studies Mandy. Then she drops to Alonso’s side and begins to cover his right leg with paste while Mandy continues her work on his left. They work in silence. Soon he is wrapped in dark leaves and dozing, his head in Katrina’s lap.

After all the others quietly depart, Katrina is alone with Alonso. “Now where…?” She pats around herself for the folded ziploc baggie, unwilling to shift and disturb him. “Uh oh. That’s bad. Where did it go?”