Chapter 49 – We’re Good
December 2, 2024
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:
49 – We’re Good
It was a couple hours later that the roof blew off the hut. Near evening, with no light in the sky, the heavens detonated. It began with a great rushing through the far trees. Then a moment of dreadful silence, followed by a great screaming roar like a steam locomotive falling off a cliff. Trees cracked and splintered and fell. Then the wind hit the hut with concussive force and half the roof peeled away and vanished.
Now screams and whipping water fill the hut. Chaos. Figures dive across Pradeep, shielding him from falling pieces of wood. Jay and Maahjabeen lash him to the travois they’d kept him in. Then they grab the few things they can and, nearly blind and deaf, follow the others out into the battering cyclone before the entire hut collapses around them.
They all know to make their way to the cave. But the wind blasts over the northern ridges behind them and slaps them down into the mud, again and again. Trees groan and fall in every direction. A redwood lands on a hut on the far side of the village with an unbearable crash, shaking the ground.
Jay is nearly horizontal to the ground, clawing through the mud as the wind hits him with unbearable force. He drags the travois, Maahjabeen somewhere back behind controlling its tail.
He comes upon Alonso, crawling across the mud, eyes squeezed shut. Jay grabs at his coat and pulls him in the right direction.
Finally they find themselves in the cave mouth. It is already filling with floodwaters. But there is a high slope and shelf where the wooden and textile belongings of the villagers have been stowed. It should remain above nearly any amount of water. If that isn’t safe then nowhere is.
They pull themselves out of the water and up the slope. Their refuge is more of a side grotto, a low gallery of deep depressions worn away in the limestone band here.
Shuddering groans and vocalized shock are all they can utter as they each take up residency among the baskets and bundles of firewood and cooking pots. Here they huddle, watching the water below them rise and fill the tunnel leading into the cave and the shaft with the tilted tree. Now they’re trapped here. This flood effectively blocks them from descending any deeper.
The temperature tilts to near freezing. A shattering blast of hail hits the cliff wall outside and chunks of ice the size of blueberries skitter in. Then, as suddenly, the hailstorm stops.
“Dead,” Jay pronounces. “We’d be dead for sure if we were still out there.”
The winds swirl now, buffeting across the mouth of the cave with harmonic concussions. Between that and the water swirling down the interior, closing the tunnel like a valve, the air pressure beats at them and they all squeeze their eyes shut and cover their ears.
Then the rain returns, a downpour as dense as a waterfall. The water in the cave rises even higher, only four meters or so from where they perch. The storm comes from the northwest, which is right along the line of the village into the cave mouth. The ragged hole screams, as if the god of thunder plays it like a flute, and gouts of water slap against the floor. This lasts for heart-stopping minutes and the water rises even higher. Then it abates and the storm’s fury lessens.
They grasp each other tight, shivering, terrified by what they have just witnessed. Finally Esquibel does a head count with her phone’s light and a shaking hand. Yes. All ten of them. And five golden childs, hunkered in a corner closer to the cave mouth. But wait. Their masks have been removed.
“Iwikanu!” Katrina croaks, stumbling forward. One of the youths rises and holds his hand out to her. “The wind…” she explains to the others. “I guess this is finally when it blew the pollen away.”
“Oh, good,” Esquibel tries to muster sarcasm, but it only comes out as sincere. “I am glad they are human again.”
Flavia stands and holds out the pigskin bag to the former golden childs. She shines her own light into it, displaying the three uneaten but cooked steaks. She motions to them, offering the food.
One of the other youths smiles, teeth bright in the darkness, and lifts his own sack. They are evidently still provisioned.
“The villagers knew this would happen, didn’t they?” Katrina asks Iwikanu. “The… oh, what are they called? The Keleptel? Buggered straight off, didn’t they, gé? The Keleptel.” She has one hand dive through the other, of Morska Vidra and his people retreating through the tunnels. She tells her colleagues, “You use the interrogative suffix ‘gé?’ to ask a yes or no question.”
“Da,” Iwikanu answers. “Oni poshli na plyazh.”
“The beach?” Katrina exclaims. “All the way down there? In this weather? Or is that the only place where they know for a fact it won’t flood?” She translates the question into Russian.
“Da, da…” Iwikanu agrees. “Tam net vody.”
“No water, he says. I bet the cliffs protect it. So they’re all in the bunker, just chilling. Bloody brilliant. We just left the one place on the island where it’s actually safe to be in this storm.”
“Not just a storm,” Mandy corrects her. “Bomb cyclone. Some of the most violent events on the planet. But it might be over soon.”
“That was like a whole war’s full of bomb cyclones, honey.” Triquet has never seen anything like it.
“They have the best names.” Mandy’s voice quivers in the dark but her enthusiasm for the subject warms her. “Officially, explosive cyclogenesis. Bombogenesis. They almost always form over the sea and aren’t usually experienced on land. The baroclinic instability of the Northwest Pacific is pretty well known. Just, like, rarely actually lived through. This was only one of the many bomb events they must get out here, leaking east this time I guess away from the instability and hitting the island. The cliffs and the local humidity might have actually triggered the whole thing. And it got so cold for May. There must be some deep upwelling off Kamchatka right now. But it can’t last much longer this late in the season. Yeah. Listen. It’s already easing.”
They hear the wind and rain relent to gusting showers. But the water is no less, coursing across the entrance at their feet. Jay tries to peer through the cave mouth at the village outside but he doesn’t have the angle. He considers if the current is too strong to actually wade through. He extends a sandal into the brown water…
An iron grip seizes his arm. “Don’t.” It’s Miriam. “Flood like this will get worse before it gets better.”
“Yeah, but the last of the light in the sky is dying and I wanted to see if there’s any… Oh, well.” Jay gives up on the plan. Miriam’s right. That water is running too fast.
Maahjabeen leans back in the shadows so none may see the look on her face. She is cold and frightened, yes, but also prepared. Coiled for a counter-attack, she listens to the rain ease, knowing this might be her opportunity here.
She has known for days and now, even more so, these last few hours. It was after Katrina had told them all of what the golden man had shared with her that Maahjabeen had asked if they had talked about Pradeep at all and what could be done to save him. Katrina had leaned back against the blackened timbers of the hut beside her and said they had spoken about such matters only in regards to the shamans, and how they store the spirits they steal in clay jars on shelves in their homes.
Most of the unbelievers in the hut had laughed at the words but to Maahjabeen it sounded credible, like something an ancient Bedouin mystic would do, the kind of satanic witchcraft the Prophet first encountered in the desert and fought against. Yes, it is like a djinn in its lamp. Her Pradeep is bottled up, kept from her where one of the shamans hide him.
Katrina hadn’t asked the old man where they might find them. Not for lack of trying. Any attempts to draw a map or even discuss the island by landmarks had become hopelessly confused, she’d said. He couldn’t grasp any graphical or visual representations of the island at all. According to the Dandawu, the island is a poem.
Again, this makes sense to Maahjabeen in a way that it can’t to the others. Her entire life is shaped by verse. Of course the island is a poem. And once the Lisicans someday learn of the even greater poems of the Quran their lives will truly be saved.
So none of the researchers know where to find the shamans and their hidden shelves. But these Thunderbird youths probably do. Maahjabeen is counting on it. She’ll enlist one or more of them to lead her there so she can steal her lover’s soul right back.
But she can’t let the others know what she plans. They’d never let her go, especially Esquibel. So she must wait until she can slip away, probably right as this storm ends. Perhaps she can get Katrina’s friend to come with her. She said he’s good with a spear.
Ξ
Flavia and Mandy climb the cliff trail at dawn, still shivering and wet but determined not to spend another instant in that wretched cave after their long sleepless night. The strenuous activity warms them in the chill air. The dark cliffside is wreathed in fog and dashed intermittently with rain.
The trail is nearly gone, churned unrecognizable by the cyclone. Small trees and saplings lie across it, hampering their ascent. But soon they arrive at the first shelf above. It’s been a week or more since they were here and the lush meadow has erupted with thick bunches of grass that tower over their heads.
Mandy leads, parting the blades and stepping through to the cliff behind and the scramble to the top. Flavia is close behind. This is where they lost her to Wetchie-ghuy before and this time she is determined to stick right beside Mandy. It is why she came, to erase that bad memory and replace it with a better one.
They climb the fissure and arrive at the top. Where Wetchie-ghuy had crouched last time is nothing now but open sky. They are alone here, at the top of the island, clinging to the edge, the ocean everywhere, swallowing them in its embrace. Vertiginous, Flavia gasps. Sometimes she can forget just how isolated Lisica is. And then she has brain-breaking moments like these…
Mandy slips through the chute and scampers down the sloping face of the cliff leading to the edge, over which is nearly a kilometer drop down to rocks and surf. Mandy is moving much too fast for Flavia. But she forces herself to overcome her fear of heights and move faster. If she trips, there is still enough shallow slope here for her to tumble to a shrieking stop. She is still a good twenty meters from the edge.
Mandy cries out in dismay and hurries to the edge of the cliff on the far side of the concrete shaft. “Oh, drat! All gone…!” Not only her weather station but the platform of old wooden planks she’d affixed it to. Oh no. That thing had survived all the storms that came before. Was it worsening storms? Climate change? Probably. But also clamping a bulky weather station to it couldn’t have helped. Eek. She’ll have to tell Triquet she was responsible for the destruction of a historical site structure. They’ll be so mad at her.
Flavia follows Mandy slowly, stopping at the concrete lip of the shaft and peering down into darkness. “Can’t even see the bottom. But what was this whole thing for?”
“Oh, it was military so they probably had like guns up here. So they built a whole elevator or a lift or something. To like deliver all the ammo I guess.” She lifts her hands and drops them. “Flavia, I got none of that data! The whole station’s just gone! Every bit of it! Like all these broken components will wash up on the coast of Baja California in like two months. You know what? I should have put my address on them! Shit, I’m so stupid! Stupid stupid!”
It’s been a brutal week and Mandy can’t take any more right now. She crumples, hiding her face in her hands, hardly feeling Flavia’s sympathetic embrace. Mandy had gotten into meteorology to understand frightening and world-altering things like hurricanes and floods, so that she might better prepare for them and never be hurt by them. But actually living through one had shaken her to her control-freak core. The sheer power of that cyclone had turned her into a meaningless speck of life. A flea. She and all her friends could have been crushed and drowned and swept out to sea in an instant and the world would have carried on this morning just like nothing had happened. But that is unacceptable. Entirely. She can’t live in such a… crude thoughtless biological place. She has to somehow be more special than that, doesn’t she?
“There, there. We can figure out the data. I hate losing data.” Flavia soothes her, knowing that Mandy’s reaction is out of all proportion to a lost instrument or two. Yet after what they’ve been through, Flavia is surprised that Mandy hasn’t fallen apart entirely. “Poor little bambina. What is it, eh?”
Mandy allows her face to be drawn upward. She blinks her tears away and smiles gratefully at Flavia. “Oh, just a little thing I think they call ego death. That’s all. How about you?”
“I am fine. Counting down the days now. Yes. We are at eleven. Which is a prime number, indivisible. An important day to maths nerds like me. See, every day that comes until seven will be able to be further broken down. Ten days left? Why, we just have to live through five days twice. That’s two work weeks. No trouble. Nine days? That’s three days, three times. Easy. Eight? A month of weekends. Then seven. And seven feels like a lot again because you can’t divide it. A whole week. You see?”
Mandy nods. She likes systems like this. “Okay, but that isn’t the problem. The problem is… I mean, I shouldn’t want to leave this island at all.”
“What are you talking about? That is crazy. Of course everyone wants to leave. This place is trying to kill us.”
“I study weather. That’s my entire career. This is, like… I mean this spot is the nursery for some of the biggest storms on the planet. Shouldn’t I want to be here, experiencing all this weather? It’s like if you woke up one day and realized all those numbers you’ve been studying were an earth-shattering force that could easily kill you. Would you still study them?”
“But mathematics are an earth-shattering force that can easily kill me. What do you think like the entire Industrial Age was?”
“You know what I mean. I’m—I’m just frightened and I want to go home. I don’t want to live through any more catastrophes.”
“You and me both, Mandy. You and me both.”
Ξ
Miriam directs Jay and Katrina and Alonso to bring the pieces of the destroyed village to the central square. They were going to just pass through on their way back to pine camp but the devastation here can’t be ignored.
“I don’t know, Doctor Truitt…” Jay hangs back, fishing in his shirt pocket for his rolling papers and lighter. “I bet we mess it up even more somehow. Like there’s probably a whole system. They probably know which piece of wood belongs where in the whole village. We’ll just make it worse.” He deftly rolls a little morning joint and sparks up.
“We can’t leave it like this. Maybe we just straighten things…” Miriam pulls a collapsed heap of redwood bark panels, soaked through, from where they lay. As she places the pieces in rows on the ground before her, a fresh shower sweeps across the village and up the cliffs. But such modest amounts of weather hardly register any more. They all bow to their task, untangling the wood and laying it out in clean patterns. The four of them work together in silence. The marine layer above nearly breaks apart, but doesn’t. It only shows silver lines of sunlight in the cracks.
“God, I’ve changed,” Miriam mutters, attacking a pile beside Alonso. “Isn’t that the strange thing, Zo? Seeing you and being with you again, I’m not like picking up where I left off as a forty-seven year old field researcher five years ago. No, I feel most like I’m a twenty-three year old rock star again and we’re back in Nevada and San Diego and Reno. And… I’m just such a different person from how I used to be. I was terrible.”
Alonso laughs. “You were the vixen.”
“Which, strangely, also means fox,” Katrina interjects. “Mate, we’re surrounded by them.”
Miriam orders the closest pile. “I was just very much in love with myself. I didn’t have this kind of care of others, you know?”
Alonso nods. “Oh, I know.”
“You were the only one who could actually touch my heart under all those layers and masks and everything.”
“It was my abuela’s cooking.”
Miriam giggles and falls against him. He grunts, pleased, and goes back to sorting large pieces of wood. This redwood bark is amazing. Some of it is as thick as his arm, huge curving sheets taller and wider than himself. Beautiful, black with age.
Esquibel and Triquet exit the cave with the last pair of youths, stepping out into the clear morning air. “What are you doing?” she calls out to the others. “Did you lose something?”
“No. We just… feel bad for them.” Jay heaves on a plank, forcing a nearly-collapsed wall back into position.
“Ha. Feel bad for yourselves. Imagine what pine camp must look like.” And Esquibel stalks through the village alone.
Triquet bends to help. “Oh my god. Some of these places are like entirely gone. These poor people.”
“I wonder…” Alonso grunts, forcing his creaky body to work. “Do they have to rebuild like this a lot? Maybe more than once a year? Because that would get very old very fast.”
“Why ever clean when you can just disassemble and reassemble? Good lord these big ones are heavy. Just like sponges. So much water in them.”
Another figure steps out from the cave mouth. The first of the villagers. It is one of the shy preteen girls of the Mayor’s household. She has the darkest and curliest hair, nearly an afro. No one has ever heard her name. Slowly she emerges from the cave and stares dispassionately at the wreckage of her village.
“Eh, sorry.” Miriam has no words for this. “I know it must look bad but maybe we can help rebuild…” She shrugs at the girl.
“Mirrie…” Alonso’s face grows worried. “Don’t make promises we can’t keep. We still have so much work of our own and we have fallen so far behind…”
Miriam’s face flickers, her composure nearly cracking. It is hard to take Alonso’s continuing dreams of Plexity seriously here in day forty-bloody-seven in the aftermath of a major cyclone. But god forbid ever saying such a thing aloud. “Alonso, I love you,” she says instead, meaning it, and goes back to work.
The girl watches them for a few minutes before turning around and going back into the cave. A few minutes later, Mandy and Flavia re-enter the village by descending from the southern cliff in a small rock slide.
“Aw, what a good idea.” Mandy hurries to help the others. “We can put their houses back together for them. Show some gratitude for once. Or… at least just make it neat?”
“We’re afraid to do any more,” Triquet says.
Flavia only watches. She is fatigued, sore and battered from her night and then this epic climb and descent with Mandy. Now she is supposed to do manual labor? For how long? It would take days to fix this village. There are piles of wood everywhere.
A fox scampers from the cave mouth into the village, sniffing at the arranged pieces of wood. It sniffs the air too, its gleaming eyes taking in the scene. Then it scampers away.
“Wish I had a fox,” Jay grumbles. “Be so cool. Just this rad pet who feeds himself and lives like this parallel life, still a wild creature, you know what I’m saying? Just like, friends.”
Morska Vidra emerges from the cave, followed by the Mayor and Yesiniy and all the others. They gather at the near end of the village, watching the outsiders awkwardly labor with the remains of their houses. But Miriam and the others have the sense to stop, and gently lay down the pieces they hold. They withdraw to the far end of the village, at the trailhead leading down to the creek and meadow and pine camp. Morska Vidra crosses the village to them, his fox scampering ahead. “Bontiik.” He greets each of them, his face deadpan but his eyes smiling. Perhaps he appreciates their gesture after all. They murmur the greeting in turn, chucking him under the chin. The fox on his shoulder chitters at Alonso and they all laugh, releasing tension.
“Ask him if that’s a girl or boy fox.” Jay tugs at Katrina’s sleeve. “Tired of calling a living creature ‘it.’ Feel me?”
“Totally, dude.” Katrina turns to Morska Vidra, composing the question in her head. Then she thinks of a better approach. Yes or no questions only. “Lisica… kʼisáani, gé?”
“Da.” Morska Vidra turns to his fox, pulling it from his shoulder and holding it like a cat, stroking its fur.
“They always answer yes or no like a Slav. So weird.” Katrina turns back to Jay. “His fox is a boy.”
“Does he have a name?”
She shrugs, miming “Katrina,” then, “Morska Vidra,” then, pointing at the fox, she asks, “Saa? Name?”
“Nyet.” Then Morska Vidra laughs, as if the idea is comical. Behind him, the villagers have spread out into the remains of their homes. They pore over the organized rows of wood like shoppers at the market, lifting a certain piece and exclaiming its story. But they all seem to be seeking specific pieces, and some of them begin to find them. They lift the pieces of bark, large or small, and shout out their relief and gratitude, which is echoed by the others.
Morska Vidra returns to his own hut, which remains partially standing. The roof is gone and most of the wall around the door, but the remainder of it still stands.
He doesn’t look very happy about it, though. He searches for his own special piece of wood and when he finds it, it has been split lengthwise by the storm. It is an old, elongated plank of bark worn to roundness at the edges, but something cleaved it perfectly in two. Morska Vidra lifts up both riven pieces, his voice shaking and dolorous. His neighbors all call out to him and many flock to his side, putting a hand on him in sympathy.
“Like the keystone? But it’s wood. The heartwood.” Jay tries to find the meaning in this scene. “The one piece. Maybe like the OG piece, the last one left or something. Put there by his dad. Aw, Morska Vidra! Mad respect, dude! So sorry for your loss!”
His neighbors go back to their own disasters, leaving Morska Vidra alone in the remains of his house. He sits there, heartbroken, for a long time. Even his fox has left him.
“Should we go? We should go.” Triquet thinks a quiet exit is probably for the best.
Then Morska Vidra rises, chanting something roughly. He pushes on the remaining walls of his house, but they stubbornly resist him. His chant grows louder, a list of imprecations and curses from the sound of them, and he uses all his strength. The wall totters and falls, twisting in a heap to the ground.
Morska Vidra pulls the panels of his house apart, scattering them. His neighbors immediately start scavenging the biggest and most useful pieces. He stalks away, under the trees, his head held high and his eyes faraway.
Then another figure exits the cave. It is Pradeep.
He blinks in the bright morning light. “Where…? Where is—?” His voice is so unused, as if it’s coming from somewhere under the ocean. For a moment he can’t remember her name. Then he does. “Maahjabeen. Where…?”
“Prad!” Jay finally sees the tottering figure. He rushes to him, slamming into him with a bear hug. “You’re back!” But he goes gentle almost immediately. Pradeep is so fragile.
“Never left. Where is she?”
“Eh, Mandy? Flavia?” Alonso asks as he hurries with the others to congregate around Pradeep. “Did you leave Maahjabeen up on the cliff this morning?”
“Maahjabeen didn’t come with us,” Flavia answers. “We haven’t seen her.”
Miriam frowns. “Oh, we were sure the three of you were off together. Well then where is she? Was she still in the cave when you left?”
Mandy shrugs. “I have no idea. We didn’t check.”
“Then how long…?” Pradeep forces the words out. “How long has she been gone?”
Alonso shrugs. “I don’t think we can say. Maybe all night.”
Then Miriam remembers that talk of souls and the underworld in the meadow. Oh, no. Maahjabeen has resolved to be a holy warrior, she’s pretty sure. “I just hope she didn’t hurt anyone.”
“Maahjabeen? Why what did she do?” Pradeep shakes his head. With each word, each step forward, each embrace from a friend he is restored to himself. Soon his thoughts might even flow freely again, as they used to. “Never. She couldn’t hurt a fly.”
“To rescue you, though?” Miriam holds Pradeep steady, rubbing his back. He looks anemic. “I think she’d be capable of quite a lot. She’s a tiger, that one. Saving her beloved from the evil wizard. Wait. I know just the thing to fix you up.”
Miriam hurries back into the cave.
“Wait, what is the implication here? How could Maahjabeen have possibly rescued Pradeep?” Flavia’s voice immediately rises in ire. “She disappeared. She wasn’t even here.”
Katrina’s laugh is low and spooky. “That’s what we’re saying, I reckon. She was out stealing his spirit back for him.”
“See, that is what I knew you were saying and I could tell you were all being foolish. Because that is impossible, what you are saying. Maahjabeen did no such thing. The drugs they gave him just finally wore off. Right, Pradeep? Isn’t that what happened?”
“I—I have no idea.”
“Well, what was it like?” Triquet asks. “You said the last one was like drowning in cold mud. Was this the same?”
“No. It was like…” Pradeep tries to grasp the memory of it, the fleeting impressions that single clear present sensation left in him. But he had no ability to reflect on himself during the whole ordeal. He was only a passive witness to all their words and actions. He saw it all, but he couldn’t keep it. “Inside I was hollow. No pain. No… emotion. But then like an hour ago I came back.”
“Smashed your jar, I bet.” Katrina gives Pradeep a long hug, trying to fill him with her warmth and life. “Big strong lad like you, deserves to get his jar smashed every night.” She kisses Pradeep on the jawline, but nothing stirs in him, not even from the teasing.
“I feel… newborn.”
“Whoa. Trippy. What do you mean? Like you have amnesia?” Mandy asks. “You can’t remember anything?”
“No… More like…”
She interrogates him with a laugh. “Quick. What’s your name? Where were you born?”
“Uh… Pradeep Chakrabarti. Hyderabad. No, I still have all the information. I just couldn’t… Just…”
“Had no soul?” Mandy ventures.
Flavia throws her hands into the air. “Now you are putting words into his mouth. Preposterous. Has nobody here done ketamine?”
“Sure,” Katrina responds. “Loads.”
“Well, that will make you feel as if you have no soul. Like that.” Flavia snaps her fingers. “This, ehh, it just lasted longer.”
Miriam returns from the cave with the pigskin bag holding three uneaten pork steaks. She pulls one out of the bag and holds it out to Pradeep. “Here, love. This will cure what ails you.”
“I do try to be a vegetarian.” Pradeep looks at the cube of meat with worry. “But I haven’t eaten in days, have I?”
“Just take what you can stomach,” Miriam counsels him. “You need something, that’s for sure. You’re like a ghost.”
Pradeep nibbles at the flesh of the boar. It is carbon bitter, the rind coated with ash. Then he tastes the gamey, cold steak, greasy and rich. There is something unpalatable and savage in the meat, as if the rage of the boar still sizzles in its blood. It only takes a few bites for him to be overwhelmed by the sensation. Pradeep makes a face and hands the remainder back to Miriam.
His heart suddenly hammers. Testosterone and adrenaline surge through Pradeep’s limbs. As his digestive tract voraciously tears the fibers of the meat apart, he is reset on some primal level. The violence at the heart of this animal’s death terrifies and saddens him. But now he is part of it. Now Pradeep is made of that violence. His eyes snap. He has trouble keeping himself from snarling aloud. Finally he finds his voice again.
“Okay. I’m back now.”
Ξ
Flavia approaches pine camp, fighting her way through the long wet grasses of the meadow to the tree line. It has taken all morning to get back here. First there was the climb with Mandy and then the whole scene at the destroyed village with Pradeep and all the Lisicans and finally a long frustrating interlude with the recently unhoused Morska Vidra.
She’d come upon the old man in the woods beside the trail. He was wandering aimlessly, nearly sightlessly, through a shadowy stand of pines. His fox pounced gaily ahead, chittering and digging for grubs, almost like the little fellow was trying to cheer him up. Boris does that for Flavia when she is sad.
She would have left him alone if he hadn’t stumbled and fallen as she’d passed. It was the first time she had seen that of any Lisican. They were always so sure-footed. Flavia hurried to Morska Vidra’s side and helped him stand. When he faced her he seemed to have visibly aged. In sympathy, she hugged his frail shoulders. He didn’t know what to do with the embrace, though, and only stood before her in silent grief.
Flavia searched for the right words. “My mother’s side of the family. We have an old house in Verona that my second cousins live in. Right downtown. It is over six hundred years old. The walls are so thick you can sit in the windows. It has been in our family for… what, thirty generations? I can’t imagine how I would feel if a storm destroyed it. All my ancestors. All those memories.”
Her voice soothed him and his shoulders dropped. He leaned into her embrace and the fox sniffed gently about her ankles.
Then the practical side of her kicked in. “But where will you live now? Build on the same spot? I didn’t see too many other options right there in the village. Or do you want to come live with us for a while? Eh? We have room, I am sure.”
Morska Vidra sat back on his heels and regarded Flavia gravely. She felt the weight of his judgment and fell silent. This wasn’t just him looking at her, this was… this was a man who was beginning to understand that his entire way of life was about to vanish. And it was all coming at the hands of Flavia and people like her. There was a deep melancholy in his eyes as well as a bitter outrage. It burst against her like a camera’s flash and she turned away, unable to bear what she saw.
When Flavia finally did look back, Morska Vidra had shrunken in on himself again, his fox curled in his lap. As far as she could tell, they were staying there forever. She moved on.
Now, she finds pine camp mostly empty and still in quite a state. The clean room has collapsed and its translucent plastic sheets lie twisted in the mud. The only person Flavia can see is Jay, standing against the only wall of the clean room that has been rebuilt. He is entirely naked, brushing his thick reddish-blond hair back from his brown forehead.
“Oh. Hey.” Jay makes no move to cover himself.
Flavia takes this as a welcome signal that she can, well, not ogle him exactly, but maybe appreciate a male body for what feels like the first time in ages. And he has such a nice one, with wide shoulders and long lean arms, a flat belly and long shapely legs. He is like a coursing hound, built to run.
“Welcome to my sponge bath, Flavia. Feels great, yo.”
“It really does.” Esquibel calls out from the other side of the sheet. Her long dark body can be seen in hazy silhouette through the plastic, her hands running all over her curves. “I may never put clothes on again.”
Flavia plucks at her own shirt and trousers. They are soaked and filthy and they make her skin crawl. Without a thought she peels them off and steps clear of what had always been her favorite clothes. Maybe after a thorough washing they can be again. Her skin prickles in the mild morning air. “Eh, where is the sponge?”
Esquibel steps around the edge of the sheet with a small bucket. She hands it to Flavia and examines her body with professional detachment. “And how are you? You look thin. Like you aren’t eating enough.”
“Are any of us?” Flavia pokes Esquibel’s own ribs, visible beneath her breasts.
Esquibel twitches back and swats Flavia’s hand. “Do not do that. I am ticklish. Otherwise you are fine? Turn around.”
Flavia lets Esquibel spin her slowly, lifting her arms and inspecting her minutely. The care and attention actually feels somewhat nice. She casts a sidelong look at Jay but he is still brushing out his hair, staring at nothing. Flavia is affronted.
She elbows him. “Hey. I am glad you are not like staring at me like a jackal but we are still two naked women standing here in front of you. I mean, you can at least say something nice.”
“Uh. Yeah, for sure.” Jay breaks his reverie, the violent rush of jagged images and sounds from the night before finally receding. “You guys look great. Molto bene. Is that how you say it?”
Esquibel frowns. “I do not need a man’s approval to feel good about my body. So how are you, Jay? All your contusions and incisions. Show me your ribs.”
“It is all about the ribs today.” Flavia runs her hands up and down her own. Yes, there is very little cushion beneath this skin. She can’t recall ever being so thin. And yet, she doesn’t want to feast and regain her lost padding. She likes how she feels. Food is something she only needs in spare mouthfuls throughout the day.
Esquibel traces the red line of Jay’s spear wound. It is healing well. “No infection. At least we can be thankful for that. How are the deeper layers…” She palpates the scar and he winces.
“Yeah, still pretty sore, Doc. Am I gonna get full range back? Got some big surfing plans coming up.”
“I think so. But you will feel it, certainly, the rest of your life.”
“Damn. Already damaged goods. And only twenty-two.”
“Here. Look at this one.” Esquibel raises her arms and turns her backside to them. She has a neat puncture wound above her right hip, an indentation that appears quite old. “Leaned against a broken fence post when I was eight. Almost died of tetanus. The time I spent in the hospital is what made me want to be a doctor. I still feel it, twenty years later.”
“Oh, I got no shortage of scars.” Jay proceeds to proudly point out the biggest ones, on his chest, on his shoulder, on his hip, on his shin. “Fell off a cliff, motorcycle, motorcycle, and sharp rock in the shallows at the end of a wave. Broke my fucking leg.”
Esquibel appraises him coolly. “And I am quite certain you are nowhere near done.” She shakes her head. “Human bodies. They are all so different. Look at us. All the colors and shapes. But we all still run the same.”
Alonso and Miriam arrive, stepping under the trees. They stop and regard the ruins of their camp. Not a platform still remains standing. Their own tent is a twisted heap covered in mud. The clean room is just a single wall of plastic, in front of which stand three naked members of their crew.
Without a word, Alonso and Miriam take off their clothes and join them. Flavia scrubs Alonso’s back with the soapy sponge she finds in the bucket and then Miriam does hers.
Nobody speaks. Alonso’s body is totally littered with scars, some broad and angry welts, some puncture wounds like Esquibel’s. All down his legs to his crooked feet. The words they just shared about their own scars ring shamefully in their ears.
Beside Alonso, Miriam is a pale and slender nymph. She piles her auburn hair on her head and lets her husband scrub her shoulders and the back of her neck. She purrs, closing her eyes.
“The family that bathes together,” Alonso laughs, “stays together. What is wrong, Doctor Daine? Have you never seen a torture victim before?”
“I am very surprised, Doctor Alonso,” she answers in a quiet voice, affronted by what was done to his body, “that you are as healthy as you are and not heavily addicted to opiates.”
“Yes, in large part that is what this trip is about. Learning to live with the pain. Otherwise I will be a junkie like that.” He snaps his fingers. “And the Fentanyl on the street kills people these days. So I would not last very long. No. My drug is Plexity. And all you beautiful children. You are what keep me here.”
Flavia turns outward peering through the trees at the far ridge. She imagines her vision telescoping even further, across the water back to the mainland, then spanning the whole continent. There is madness and torture everywhere. “This crazy world. Why does it have so many monsters in it?”
Alonso shakes his head. “They are everywhere. Sadists and evil bullies. Even here, in utopia…”
“Ha!” Flavia turns back, scorn in her face. “This can’t be utopia. It doesn’t have enough sunshine. Or hot water.”
“Yes, I would not call it utopia,” Esquibel agrees. “That implies perfection. And does anything about this camp look perfect to you? It is more a nice vacation.”
“Well…” Alonso shrugs. The sponge bath is over, but like the others he has no desire to get back into his clothes. “Here are my thoughts about utopia. First, it is impossible. Think of how different everyone is. What would be utopia for me, with lots of naked men and fully-funded science missions, would not be utopia for others.”
“I’m with you on the naked men!” Flavia grabs the muscles of Jay’s arm and he smiles indulgently at her. “But not here. Maybe Monaco. Or one of the Greek islands.”
“Plenty of naked men there,” Alonso agrees. “But I doubt they would all like my idea of utopia. And I wouldn’t care much for theirs. But utopias still do exist. It is only that they are fleeting. They last only a single moment and everyone thinks, whoa, that was a perfect little jewel of an experience, like this wonderful bath we all shared. But by the time you think it, it is already over. When you are outside the moment, appreciating it, you are no longer living in it and the spell is broken. Have you ever had that, yes?”
Jay nods slowly. “Dude. That’s so deep. Yeah, like every time I catch a wave. Those are my own little utopias for sure.”
“Uhhh, hi?” Mandy steps under the pine trees and approaches the knot of naked people. “Like what’s even going on here, guys?”
“Sponge bath,” Esquibel answers. “Then we just kind of… forgot it was over. Forgot we were naked, I guess. It feels so good to be out of those hideous clothes. Come on, you should try.”
“Well… isn’t it a party.” Katrina approaches with Pradeep, her arm around his shoulder. They took it nice and easy down the trail and across the meadow. He may be returned to them but he is still at the tail-end of an ordeal that lasted days. Now Katrina can’t stop goggling at all the skin, while Pradeep keeps his own eyes averted. “Don’t mind if I do.” Katrina shucks off her clothes.
The others welcome her into their circle, pouring soapy water on her blonde hair and scrubbing her skin with the sponge. Katrina moans in pleasure. “Ohh… I had no idea how much I needed group bathing in my life. Fantastic.”
“Mandy. Pradeep.” Esquibel orders them. “Come on. You need to get cleaned up.”
Mandy and Pradeep share a bashful gaze. They both step back in reflexive refusal. Mandy holds up a hand. “Uhh… No, thanks… We’re good.”
Chapter 48 – God, We Suck
November 22, 2024
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:
48 – God, We Suck
Triquet is monumentally annoyed. And the infuriating part about it is that they aren’t quite certain what it is annoying them. All they know is that things that normally don’t provoke any reaction in them are now enraging. The fiddly bits of the espresso maker. The disorganization of last week’s laptop files. These brown stains on their flower-fringed ankle socks that never seem to get truly clean. That’s what it is. Things have gotten so dingy here. The lovers are all quarreling. The villagers are stubbornly distant. Everything is covered in a layer of dirt. It’s enough to drive anyone batty.
With an immense effort, Triquet tries to shake off this ennui with a return to their tent. But none of their clothes hang on display any more. There’s no room in here. They sorely miss the bunker and its storage. And the sub. It’s basically lost as well. Getting to the sub now is a thirty minute crawl through mud. And Triquet can’t do it alone. So their investigations have slowed to a halt.
No. No more of this gloom and doom. It’s actually a pleasant morning after the gentle showers. The bees are buzzing. The sun even makes brief appearances and the dewy meadow glitters with refracted light. Come on, Triq. This is still paradise. Of course it’s dangerous. Everywhere is dangerous. Now put on some chiffon and find your courage, soldier. Even if the whole Lisica expedition ends tomorrow, it has still been one of the highlights of your life.
There. Triquet always looks better in green. Now, how to finish this look? Hmm. They left their really big pieces of costume jewelry at home. Otherwise it’d be that chunky fake jade necklace and bracelet set that’s half Cloris Leachman, half Flintstones. Here they’ll just make do with the wooden prayer beads and a fake garnet ring. They pull on a pair of booty shorts underneath for modesty, locate the pink slip-ons, and step back out into the fresh air feeling somewhat restored.
Makeup? No, not with the amount of sweating they’ll most likely do. Today is hopefully the last day of really putting this camp together. But it’s going to take all day. Triquet can see Flavia has already wired things to the solar panels. When Katrina gets back they can fly the parachute overhead again and get a little more protection from the rain. Then her lights can get strung and the little village will feel complete. But before then, Triquet has ideas.
First, a riverstone path to the trenches. Those have been dug a hundred meters upslope and away from the creek, over a rise and hidden in a cleft. It’s a better spot than they had on the beach but this isn’t sand beneath their feet. They’ll all quickly churn an ugly line of mud into the ground unless Triquet is able to prevent it.
Crossing the meadow to the creekside, Triquet is disappointed to find that the bank has no easily-removed rocks. They’d imagined this would be like most of the creeks they’re familiar with, mostly like the slate and flint banks of the Delaware Gap. But here it’s all loam and moss and ferns overhanging the banks and the water is running fast and black. No loose stones anywhere.
Following the creek upstream, Triquet unwittingly follows Amy’s footsteps up the canyon toward the tributary where she would have done their laundry. But they stop at the base of the cliff she ascended. Here is a pile of rounded rocks deposited during some long ago flood. Now it’s just a matter of transporting them. Triquet waves at the golden childs dogging them. “Care to lend a hand?”
But of course the youth makes no move to help.
Triquet unfolds a small tarp and loads as many of the big rocks onto it as they can safely manage. Then they drag it back to camp. Hm. These slip-ons are not the right shoes for the job after all. And maybe a flowing gown of tissue-thin fabric isn’t the best either. But it did unlock something about their mood. Now Triquet can see that it’s the unyielding pressure coming from the natives that’s making so many of them crack. It’s Jidadaa with her cryptic demands in the middle of the night, the shamans stalking them, the golden childs hovering. They are in an inexorable hydraulic press and its plates just keep squeezing closer and closer together.
Returning from their third trip with the stones, Triquet passes Mandy emerging from her tent, who looks completely out of sorts. “Good morning, sunshine.”
But Mandy doesn’t respond, peering at the sky instead. She steps further out from camp and crosses to the meadow.
Intrigued, Triquet drops their load on the pile and follows her.
Mandy holds a barometer. “Crap. Look at that.” She absently hands it to Triquet and scans the gray-mantled sky. This marine layer can often hide what’s happening above.
Triquet reads the barometer. “920 millibars. Very low. That’s what it says. Is very low bad?”
“920 now? OMG. Uh, that’s a lot more than very low. That’s like… one of the lowest recordings I’ve ever heard anywhere in the world. The world record is in the 890’s and that was a tropical cyclone in the West Pacific. My god. What’s coming our way?”
“You’re saying that means another storm’s coming? This is what they mean by a drop in barometric pressure? But like when? And how much? Can you retrieve your weather station first?”
“God! I haven’t been able to fetch it! I was going to, but then we found Jay and Pradeep instead. I mean, I’m super glad we found them, but… I need data!”
“Well, what’s your guess?”
Mandy accesses her newfound powers of observation. She smells the air deeply, noticing that it’s wet and perhaps a bit fruity, like it swept across continents of thawing tundra. Well, that will be its engine no doubt. Cold differentials. And the trees on the far ridge are riffling in a stiff breeze that has the character of a compressing wave, as if the air itself is being pushed hard from behind by an accelerating force. They don’t have long. An hour at the most. But this half-assed camp won’t be able to survive a real onslaught, not if it hits as hard as it promises. “So sorry. But my guess is that we will all have to go back into the sub for a few days.”
Triquet’s pile of rocks is still pathetically small. “No! I just got all this work done! And—and… Ah, hell.” They drop their head in defeat, a black mood descending again just like that.
“Ah! That’s why I’ve been so grumpy!” Mandy realizes in relief. “We’ve all been on edge! It’s because there’s a huge storm coming! This like looming threat feeling has totally been weighing on me. Oh, what a relief. I thought I was losing my mind.”
Triquet studies Mandy, uncertain about her conclusion. It’s eerie how much her analysis matches Triquet’s own, but it’s led them each in opposite directions. An oncoming storm somehow gives Mandy peace? Ye gods. No it doesn’t. Isn’t this just another compounding amount of pressure, to crush them all into bits?
Mandy waves at Miriam, still at work in her trench. “Hey, lady! Storm coming! The biggest!”
Miriam sighs in defeat. “Oh my days. Seriously? Turns out this place is as bad as Ireland. Great… When?”
Mandy squints at the sky. “Don’t know. Soon. We need a real roof over our heads for this one.”
Miriam uses the spade to clamber out of her trench, covered in dirt. “God forbid we ever get any actual work done.”
Ξ
Katrina unweaves the plaited cord that secures her to the trunk. Iwikanu smiles, encouraging her, tapping at her wrist with gentle fingertips. It is a long cord, stiff and thick as her finger. But she has depended this whole time upon its strength. Now it is time to go.
Finally it falls free and she is untethered, crouching on the fragile skein of this platform they’ve built high in the redwood canopy. Iwikanu smiles at the gap in the floor, the ground nearly a hundred meters below. She is expected to climb down through it and begin her long descent down the trunks and branches that form a woven series of living ladders all the way to the ground.
This fairy ring of redwoods is perched on the western slope of the interior bowl of the island. The land rises nearly vertically beside the trunks, with madrone trees pressing beneath, granting the irregular rungs for the ladders she climbs down.
Finally Katrina finds her way to the lowest trunk. This last ladder hangs down the trunk’s length in a long line of looped cords like the one that kept her safe above. But these are for her hands and feet, tied off at regular intervals. She supposes this ladder can be raised to prevent any attacks. She thinks once more of Singlung He and his aphorisms about attack and defense. “I don’t know. I’d be more worried about people shooting us from the hillside.”
The matted platform Katrina had spent the last day and night on was a marvel of construction, something she’d never conceived. It rocks quite strongly in the wind. Tall trees sway far more than she ever knew. When a gust pushes through this circle of columns, it hits one first and then the others at greater and greater delays, making the platform rock and oscillate with increasing force.
Those who live up here ride the rhythm with sea legs, never losing their footing, never tethered to the limbs. But Katrina could barely stay on her feet up there. She spent most of her time on her hands and knees, laughing and gasping in terror, trying to stay on the good side of her hosts as they finally gave up on her balance and tied her off with an umbilical cord to mother tree.
They did make it easy. The Shidl Dít were kind and patient with her, understanding her lack of experience being a bloody bird. It wasn’t that she was unwilling either. Or that she had a particular fear of heights. It was just… absolutely debilitating. Survival instincts kept shorting out her abilities. And gravity felt different up there, like it was on some sort of counterbalance or pendulum and if she didn’t watch herself her feet would kick out and she’d pivot from the waist and tip over some edge to her terrifying death.
Okay. Maybe she did have a fear of heights. But Katrina was fairly certain it was less the heights and more a fear of death. Or, as in the old joke, it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing.
Only as she nears the ground does she notice that Iwikanu has descended with her, waiting patiently in the loops above for Katrina to drop to the earth. She does so and soon the two of them are standing face to face, sharing one last smile. Iwikanu unslings a boarskin bag and presents it to Katrina. “Ohh, that’s so sweet. God, I don’t even know if I have anything for you. Um. Here.” She pulls off a hair tie and makes a short ponytail of his hair. She wraps it tight and steps back. “You look proper handsome now.”
They say farewell in Russian and Katrina tells him that she will never forget him and that he must visit her in Australia some day. But this is more of the language than he knows so his smile just freezes and his eyes dart. She breaks off, the strong impulse to give him a hug bringing her up short. It’s probably a bad idea. She does it anyway. He laughs.
Then Iwikanu puts his golden mask back in place and steps away from her. She understands now, that this is a ritual distance that she cannot break, even if she needed him. Iwikanu is no longer her sweet new friend with a little sister and two gentle parents who gave up their own bed to her last night. Now he is what they call kadánda dayadi, child of pollen, child of the spring. And to them, he is no longer human. He is transformed.
She would have understood none of this if his chief the Dandawu hadn’t spoken a fair amount of pidgin Russian. But through broken phrases and mime and a lot of patience on both ends, they talked long into the night and again in the morning. He is an old man with extensive knowledge of the island, but little of the outside world. She did what she could to avoid too many unfamiliar ideas, and he showed no appetite for exploring them.
Katrina wonders what her insatiable curiosity must have seemed like to him. Is it just the unfathomable luxury of a modern life, to pursue knowledge for its own sake, even on topics that will never be useful? Is it just her overactive first-world brain that would be happier harvesting nuts and making boarskin leggings? She recalls telling one of her university professors about a hike she had taken and how she felt like a Stone Age nomad but he had corrected her. She was, in fact, nothing like a paleolithic human. Their conscious minds were fixed in the present, watching the branches of each tree for a bird that might make a meal, scanning shadows for predators waiting to make a meal of them. They did not have any fancy ideas about social media or petrol prices running through their heads. They couldn’t afford to. She is not any kind of ancient ancestor. Katrina is instead very much a product of her generation.
The day is gray and gusty. She knows the plan must be to retrace her steps back to pine camp and she only hopes she can remember how to do it. For being a hidden village, getting here was pretty straightforward. Two ridgelines and then a drop to the trees. So after she climbs that drop and follows the two ridgelines back, she should be where Iwikanu slaughtered that boar who attacked them.
Mentally, she divides the hike into four sections. Actually it forms a cohesive narrative, like they are each chapters in a novella, a charming story called Katrina’s Hike. The first chapter must be the introduction to her return, reacquainting herself with the ground and climbing the steep slope up to the top of the ridge, from which she can briefly spy the ocean on the western horizon, between gaps in the farther ridge’s peaks.
The second chapter is that first ridge, which leads her up and down its broken spine and over knobs of reddish stone. Miriam would like it here with all its exposed geology. But Katrina would prefer to get back under the trees. This is too much sun and wind for her all day.
The third chapter is the second ridge, a transverse line across the south of the island that brings her back to the east and the valley at the bottom of the sloping Douglas Firs. But the weather is starting to sour here. The wind really sweeps through the trees now and each gust brings the crack of falling branches. Getting close now. This is the far end of the valley in which that boar lived. All she has to do is cross it again and she’ll be home in no time.
But… as if there’s a pressure-sensitive plate beneath this meadow, as soon as Katrina steps onto it, the skies open up and a deluge of rain drops on her head from out of nowhere. The meadow darkens and the temperature drops. She is instantly drenched.
Cursing at the icy water finding its way beneath her three light layers, her teeth start chattering. “Got to… keep moving…” If she can just get back to camp she’ll be able to dry out.
Katrina ascends the final slope as runnels of water race past her, tearing the soil out from under her soles. It is a grim half hour of struggling against the elements. The wind and rain lash at her, chilling her to the bone. The golden childs who is otherwise Iwikanu still paces behind, patiently watching but never helping.
When Katrina finally does get back to pine camp, water sheets across the ground, carrying away the pine needles, the tents are all soaked through, and no one is there.
Ξ
Alonso and Miriam limp into the village, holding a hopping and grimacing Triquet between them. They are all soaked to the skin and miserable. Just before entering the village Triquet had slipped in the mud and twisted their left ankle. Despite assuring their older colleagues that they can walk it off, they had fussed over Triquet and hauled them up by the arms, nearly carrying them the last few paces with care. Easing their patient down to the deck of Morska Vidra’s covered porch, the three refugees look around.
The village looks deserted in the purplish downpour. No smoke, no light in any door. Puddles are already forming pools in the village square. The only sound is the creak of the trees in the wind.
Alonso grabs a handful of Triquet’s clothing and wrings it out with strong hands. He shares a sidelong pleased look with Miriam. “Did you see?”
She is shivering, slicking back her hair to get the water to stop dripping into her eyes. “See what?” She scans the village again.
“No no…” Alonso stands again. “Mira.” Then he crouches. “I helped Triquet. I carried them. For the first time. I helped. I was the carrier instead of the carried.” His proud smile is so wide.
She nods, dumbly, knowing how significant this is but unable to find enthusiasm within her. She squeezes his hand instead and looks into his eyes, her breath ragged.
“Oh, Mirrie, you’re freezing.” Alonso reaches over Triquet’s legs and envelops her in a bearhug.
Triquet thinks of saying something, but then doesn’t. Instead, they fall back in regard to study the two dark figures in embrace. What must it be like to love so well, so long? It is outside Triquet’s experience. Their parents certainly never did. Growing up, they had a few friends with cool moms and dads but certainly nothing like this. There is a silence in the contact point between them, as if Miriam and Alonso have sealed themselves together. Dyadic withdrawal. Triquet remembers the term from a sociology course. They have just retreated into a world they alone populate where they are something larger than themselves alone. And now the storming world is beaten back, with Triquet sheltering beneath.
Finally they break free and Alonso blows on her fingertips. Then he places a strong hand across Triquet’s chest. “How is the pain?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. But I saw you, Alonso! I sure did! Big man on campus, carrying me away. How are you?”
“There is pain, certainly, yes.” Alonso considers what to say next about it. But nothing more is required. He holds out his hands and shrugs. “I am only glad I can help such a sweetheart.”
“Can we like… knock on his door?” Miriam stands, staring doubtfully at the hut. “What do you think, Zo?”
“I think they are not here. I mean, where even is the door?”
Miriam and Alonso step toward the black gap between the redwood bark boards that used to be covered by a door of smaller bark pieces. He leans his head in. “Hello…? Ah. Here is the door. They stowed it inside. I wonder why.”
“There’s no one in there?” Miriam steps inside, ducking low. The ceiling isn’t much more than Amy’s height. Alonso has to hunch over quite a lot.
“And nothing. There is only a door. And an old… eh, loom? Bedframe? I do not know what this is here in the corner.”
“But where did they go? I mean, the floor’s dry. Why would you leave your dry house in the middle of a huge storm? Madness.”
Another refugee arrives, stepping on the boards of the porch outside. It is Esquibel. She ducks in and looks around. “Good. This one is empty. And it has a firepit. Bring him in here.”
Alonso and Miriam go back outside to find Maahjabeen and Flavia unlashing Pradeep from the travois. Soon Esquibel helps them pull his unresisting body inside. His eyes are open and his face is slack. Mandy follows, carrying a sodden ball of sleeping bags and pillows. She disappears within as well.
“What the F?” Jay stands in the center of the the village, turning round and round. “Ghost town. Great. Where’d everybody go? And what do they know that we don’t?” The rain is cold but not frigid and he’s warmed up now. It’s just a lot. Even with his hood cinched tight, it’s hard to keep it out of his ears and eyes.
Alonso watches him from the porch. He beckons to Jay, in disbelief that the boy literally doesn’t have the sense to come in from out of the rain. “Come on. Get out of there and dry off.”
“Hold on, chief.” Jay pokes his head into each of the other huts first. They’re all empty, all the belongings gone except the doors. “So weird… Hey, Alonso. Why do they put the doors inside?”
“Maybe so they do not float away?”
“Seriously. I’m going to float away for sure.” Jay steps onto the porch, shakes like a dog, and unzips his rain parka. It kept him pretty dry except for a hefty leak at his neck. But he’s in shorts and sandals anyway. “You think we can all fit in there?”
Esquibel sticks her head out as Jay asks this. “Firewood,” she orders. “Before you get out of your wet things.”
Jay sighs. “Sure thing, Doc.” He zips his parka right back up and steps out into the downpour.
Once Esquibel withdraws from the small door, Alonso peeks in. Yes, they are all settled and now there is room for the rest of them. “Come on, Triquet. Let’s drag you in here too.”
“Oh, fine. I’m fine. I’m coming.” Triquet hauls themself to their feet and tries putting weight on the ankle. “Yes. Perfectly fine.” But then they try tilting their foot outward and pain runs up the outside of their lower leg. “Or, well, not entirely. But walking I can do. Careful walking. Or even crawling.” It does seem like the better option. They make a grand entrance, on hands and knees, but no one even looks up. The others are engaged in their own struggles. Triquet finds a spot in the far corner and eases their back against the blackened timbers.
Miriam also drops against the wall with a groan, still shivering. Triquet drapes an arm across her shoulders and she leans into it. “How about a fire? Anyone? That pipe’s a smoke hole, right?” An intact tube of bark is stuck in the roof at a shallow angle. Whenever the wind swirls a few raindrops spatter in.
Esquibel nods. “Jay is getting us some wood.”
“And here he is.” Alonso steps away from the door to give him room to enter.
Jay ducks in with an apologetic half-smile. He is empty-handed. “Nada. They took it all. Wherever they went, I guess they knew they’d need their firewood.”
“Well we need a fire too.” Esquibel is worried about Pradeep. She doesn’t know how he will deal with all these extreme changes in his environment, just on a metabolic level. She doesn’t know if he can generate enough heat. What are these bizarre narcotics the shamans keep using against them? They present in ways she’s never seen with any compound or heard about in any literature. Oh, yes. This is a new drug we discovered on an island called Lisica. It removes your soul.
Jay shrugs. “We can burn the door.”
Miriam barks a sarcastic laugh, appreciating the dark humor. But then she stops herself. “Oh, you’re serious. And how do you think our hosts will like us after we’ve done that?”
Jay shrugs again. “It’s the only dry wood around. I can build them another door when the storm dies down no problem.”
“Yes, do it.” Esquibel doesn’t have time for the niceties of outreach and community engagement right now. “We need the fire. And we need that door to last all night. So keep it modest.”
“Will do.”
Jay pulls the door away from the wall and makes a face. “Okay. Problem one. This is redwood bark, which is super flame-resistant. Good against rot too. But it’s going to be a bitch to burn. Problem two. No dry kindling. So that’s going to be fun. Not exactly sure how we’ll get this done yet… Aha! But the frame is another wood, like laurel. Now that’s some good firewood there. Okay. I got a plan.” He pulls a buck knife and collapsible saw from his pack.
They all work in silence at their various tasks. Mandy helps Maahjabeen out of her sodden jacket and squeezes out her thick hair for her. But Maahjabeen only has thoughts for Pradeep. He doesn’t shiver but there is a bluish cast to his skin that worries her. “Mandy, please cover the door with a blanket. Where is that fire?”
As if she invoked it, a flame blooms under Jay’s hand in a pile of sawdust and strips of kindling. They all turn to watch as he coaxes it to life, putting wafer-thin sheets of redwood bark atop it. These only blacken and smoke but refuse to catch fire. “Need to make it hotter…” Jay pushes more kindling into the blaze and soon it reaches a critical heat, igniting all the other fuel he carefully places on the growing pyramid.
The heat spreads into the wide room, smoke spiraling up into the canted smokehole. Firelight flickers against the dark walls. They all ease back, letting the fire give them its primeval comfort.
“I love a good plasma.” They are Flavia’s first words. She has been engaged in a long silent struggle against the deteriorating conditions of the day. But the sight of those bluish-orange twisting sheets of ionized heat soothe her. “Remember the bunker? How nice it used to be in there?”
“I loved the bunker!” Mandy clasps her hands under her chin. “It was like one big dorm room. And the sub?”
“We should go back to the sub.” Yet as Triquet says it they realize how impossible that would be right now. Descending the tree trunk down that shaft in the tunnels would be agony on their ankle. What a dope, stumbling in the mud like that.
“We are not going anywhere.” Esquibel says it firmly, cutting the foolish notion off before they can seriously consider it. “This fire is the most important thing right now. Keeping Pradeep warm.”
“Did anybody bring food?” Flavia presses a hand against her growling belly. “I didn’t realize how hungry I am until now.”
“Shh.” Alonso holds up a hand. “There is somebody outside.”
They can all hear tentative footsteps on the planks of the porch. A tension winds in the air. Jay stands, gripping his knife. Is this it? Is this his moment? Is Wetchie-ghuy about to come barrelling in here with his potions and his spells? Where will Jay even stab him? He should probably decide before the whole thing goes down so he knows how to hold his knife. In the neck, like a stab down from above? Or a slash across his belly, which means he should reverse his grip and…
A figure leans in, dark and hidden, and a breathless voice hisses the Lisican greeting, the final syllable rising in hope. “Bontiik…?”
It is Katrina.
Mandy squeals and throws herself at her, pulling Katrina into the hut and squeezing her tight. The space is suddenly charged with everyone’s heat and movement, their exclamations and questions. They all have to hug Katrina, or at least touch her or pet her hair. For a long sweet interlude, it’s nothing but chatter and laughter and most of the sounds they make aren’t even words.
Finally they settle again. Katrina scans their faces. “Still no Amy? Blimey. Out somewhere in this storm? Poor dear. I hope the shamans are keeping her dry.”
“Jidadaa told us,” Alonso informs her, “that the shamans do not have her and neither she nor the golden childs know where Amy is. We are very worried. Very worried.”
“I mean… She’s an outdoors person, right? Probably living better than we are right now.”
“Where are the golden childs anyway? Have we seen them?”
“Oh, yeh.” Katrina points back out the door. “They’re out there a few houses down. Just watching. They’re kadánda dayadi, like the children of pollen. Don’t worry about them.”
“Why?” Triquet asks. “What does that mean?”
“So… From the beginning… They brought me to their village in the trees. Crazy place. Way up high in the redwoods. And they had this long ceremony to remove their masks up there. Lots of colored powders smeared on their skins then washed off. And when it was all over the bloke next to me took off his golden mask and he was just this guy. He introduced himself as Iwikanu. We were totally best buds. He took me to his parents’ house and they fed me some nice eggs and mash and his little sister couldn’t get over my pale white weirdness. Just like prodded me all night. She was so cute. But yeh. When he put his mask back on he wasn’t Iwikanu any more. They told me he transformed into an agent of the gods. The springtime god, to be exact. They’ve only got a couple more weeks of this before summer comes and the kadánda dayadi vanish like pollen on the wind.”
“So poetic.” Miriam unlaces Katrina’s shoes and peels off her socks for her. “And how did you learn all this?”
“Their chief speaks a bit of Russian. I learned so much. But here. Look. Check this out first.” Katrina holds up her prize, the sack that Iwikanu gifted her at the base of the tree. It is large and heavy and she is tired of carrying it.
Jay goggles. “What the hell? What is that made of?” He grabs the sack. “This is like pigskin. Feels like some giant hairy NFL football. Ew. Where’d you get that?”
“There’s boars, Jay. On the island. One attacked me. That’s why he took me back to their village. I needed to help him carry—”
“I knew it!” Jay crows. “Remember when the bad village showed up and they had those cross-braces on their spears? I just knew there had to be big-game hunting! And what’s in here?”
“Go ahead and open it.”
Jay unfolds the irregular flaps of the sack to find ingots of raw flesh, gleaming and purple, inside. Dozens. “What the…? Oh, baby! We’re eating like kings tonight!”
The hut fills with their joyful clamor once again. Nobody is happier than Flavia. She grabs Katrina and kisses her face over and over. Jay hops up and down like a child at Christmas. Only Alonso sighs, doleful, and Triquet sees it. “Ah, what’s wrong, boss man? Not a pork guy?”
“I love it. But I miss my wine. It would pair so well.”
Triquet giggles. “And bring me some truffle oil while we’re at it.”
Alonso laughs, appreciating the teasing. “Yes, I’m a wretched alcoholic, it’s true. Very spoiled. Eh. Mira. This bag is made from a single pig, just stitched up the sides. Kind of gross.”
“I don’t think that meat is very hygienic,” Esquibel cautions. “How long has it been out? Over 24 hours, yes?”
“Well they didn’t carve it up until this morning if that makes you feel any better. Then they rubbed this oil all over it and packed it away. I didn’t think I was going to get to taste it. Was kind of broken up about it, to be honest. But they were just waiting to give me my share! Oh, he was such a brute. His tusks were so scary, just like these pointed broken giant teeth coming at you.”
“Ehh…” Esquibel is unconvinced. “What kind of oil?” But then Jay gently drops the first steaks directly on the burning coals and the sizzle fills the night air with heady scents. “Just make sure you sear all the edges at least.” Then Esquibel has to stop talking because there is suddenly too much saliva in her mouth.
They all watch in silence as Jay cooks. He is a timeless figure, stooped over the flames, tending to the first feast of the hunt. From time to time he pokes at the sizzling meat with his fingers, testing its consistency. Within a few minutes he’s pulling the first ones free, knocking the ash from the charred crust.
Flavia has found a small flat tray in her belongings that can serve as a plate. “Here, Jay. Right here. Come to mama.”
With a grimace he drops it onto her plate and waves his fingers to cool them. Jay grins at Flavia, wolfish. “Let me know how it is.”
Flavia kisses him. “I have never been so attracted to you as I am right now.” They all laugh at her but now there is a sharp edge of anticipation in it as they crowd round. Flavia doesn’t even offer to share. She picks at it, blowing on the steak to cool it, and tears a bit off the corner. “Oh. Che meraviglia. So good. A little chewy. Gamey. Is that the word? But who cares.”
She hands the plate to Esquibel, who wrinkles her nose, inspects it minutely, then takes a bite. “Ah. Very hot. That is good.” She waves her hand in front of her face. “To kill the bacteria so… Oh.” Then she starts chewing in earnest. “Oh. This is amazing.”
“Yeah, I bet that oil is really helping lock in the juices.” Jay giggles, dropping the next finished steak on top of the first. Mandy finds another lid as a plate and soon they’re all eating and groaning in pleasure, falling back against the walls of the hut with dirt and ash and grease smeared on their chins.
“But what did you learn from this chief of theirs?” Alonso finally asks Katrina, licking his fingers. “You say he speaks Russian. That is another thing Jidadaa told us, that Russians visit them regularly. The tree village. What did you learn about that?”
“Oh, you saw Jidadaa? How is she?”
“Same as ever. She rescued Prad from Wetchie-ghuy at least.” Jay allows some grudging admiration to color his words.
Esquibel repeats, “Katrina. Tell us of the Russians.”
“It’s not a very good relationship.” Katrina is still eating. She can’t stop and there’s still three steaks they haven’t finished. “Lots of distrust. Strictly transactional I think, although I can’t figure out what the Russians give the Thunderbirds in return. The Shidl Dít. Like I didn’t see any modern stuff anywhere up on their platform. Maybe like some winter coats from Siberia or something.”
“And what do the Russians want from the Thunderbirds?” Esquibel locates a notepad and pen. She wants to make sure she gets what Katrina tells her recorded word-for-word. This is the most valuable intelligence she can bring back.
“And why are they even called the Thunderbirds?” Jay wonders. “I mean, like there are only a few birds in the whole world that can strictly be called thunderbirds and we haven’t—”
“Jay.”
“Sup, Doc?”
“Let her answer my question first please. National security and all that.”
“Oh. For sure.”
Katrina shrugs. “Well, like I said, there’s a lot of distrust. And like layers, you know? So I didn’t get what you’d call a straight answer. But they really opened up after I sang them some Marvin Gaye. They think I’m some kind of wizard.”
“That is so wild that they don’t have music.” Jay shakes his head. “I mean, can you imagine what your daily life would—?”
“Jay! Please!” Esquibel glares at him.
Katrina shakes her head in memory of the painstaking dialogue. “We went back and forth. Lots of miming. After a couple hours of that, what I was finally able to figure out is that what the Russians want here more than anything is the foxes.”
Esquibel’s pen is poised above the blank sheet of note paper. She blinks. “Eh? The foxes? What do you mean?”
“You mean like for their fur?” Jay frowns. “That’s so, like, 19th century. Nobody wears fur any more.”
“Okay… Eh…” Miriam can make no more sense of it than any of the others. “So did the Thunderbirds give them the foxes?”
“On that point,” Katrina manages through a full mouth, “they were quite clear. Absolutely not.”
They all consider this in a perplexed silence.
“But what did the Russians have to say about the Americans or the Chinese? Anything on that?” Esquibel can’t tell her superiors that the Russians were here like English bloody lords hunting foxes for sport. They’d tell her this whole mission was a waste.
“They don’t know. I tried to get kind of geopolitical for a bit but the Thunderbirds are like wildly incurious about the world outside. They know Lisica and its three tribes and that’s about it. But they know Lisica better than anyone else, I’m pretty sure. Even better than the shamans. The Dandawu has the deep cuts, that’s for sure. Like, they recognized the name Maureen Dowerd, Triquet. They like fully remember her.”
“Oh my god. The modern mystery. Yes,” Triquet groans. “Can we please get back to that?”
“She was a friend to all the tribes. The only one who could speak to everyone, even the great shaman at the time, Aan Eyagídi. It was the first time they had met an outsider who was a woman and not a soldier. And he spoke of her great heart. She sounds like a lovely woman. Very charming.”
“And then she fell in love with a local.”
“Yes, and that is when the fractures appeared. The Shidl Dít had no problem with their affair and the child she had. But those nasty Ussiaxan condemned them both. He said they’re the ones who caused her death. And for years they hunted her lover too. Killed him when he was old. But their lineage lives on. All those blond curls. Morska Vidra’s village mostly had no problem, but some did and left them to go live across the river. Reactionairies and their racial purity. Tale as old as time.”
Jay calculates. “So it was the, like, grandparents of the Lady Boss and that whole crew who killed Maureen? Poor thing.”
“Not exactly. We went round and round about this all night. The Dandawu used different words for what the Ussiaxan did to Maureen and her lover. They killed her lover. That was clear. But for her he used a more complex phrase, like ‘they brought about the reasons for her death.’ Like they set some kind of trap.”
“That’s wicked.” Triquet shakes their head. “And this is how the past informs the present. I wasn’t sure the bad tribe would hold their grudge forever but it sounds like that’s exactly what they do.”
“And the Dandawu confirmed the Ussiaxan kept all the secrets. On Maureen Dowerd and the Russians and the Americans and the Chinese. When Wetchie-ghuy deposed Aan Eyagídi during the time of the twelfth mothers, the Ussiaxan took all the island’s maps and diaries and keepsakes to what they call the treasure house—”
Triquet claps their hands to their mouth. “Oh my god there’s actual diaries out there? Plural? Mine mine mine! Ooo baby. That’s like textual chronology primary source white gold.”
“Yeah, but all surrounded by about like sixty warlike spear-warriors,” Jay reminds them. “We’d need like Seal Team Six to drop on their heads if we want to snag their shit.”
Now Esquibel is writing. “It is in their village, you say?”
But Katrina hesitates. “Ehm, you aren’t going to like call in a missile strike or anything, are you?”
“Are you serious? No. I can’t do that. This is just information-gathering. A big part of my job here.”
“I mean he didn’t tell me exactly, but yeh. I figure it’s in there with all their holy holies.”
“Do any of the Ussiaxan speak Russian?” Alonso doesn’t like how close this aggressive tribe is. Just across the creek. How much will their taboo to cross it matter if they are impelled by a greater need to kill the foreigners? “Can we reason with them?”
“No. Chinese. They’ve been contacted regularly by the Chinese, who come in from the north and always avoid the Russians and the Americans.” Katrina looks everywhere but at Esquibel. “They also used to be the contact tribe for the Japanese, like 80 or 90 years ago during the war.”
“That was the bunker I found on the west coast during that first storm.” Maahjabeen shakes her head at the memory. It seems like it was from six years ago, not six weeks. “Definitely old. Definitely Japanese. And Soviet too. So there’s some crossover.”
“I really need to get a look at that site.” Triquet flexes their ankle. “Some day. Could you like tow me on a raft?”
“Oh, the breakers would never allow it.”
“And the other really cool thing he told me,” Katrina continues, “is about the founding of the island. He said it was one man and two sisters. They were Eyat but he was Rumelian.”
“Rumelian?” Alonso wonders. “What is Rumelian?”
“I have no idea,” Katrina answers. “I was hoping one of you would know.”
But none of them do.
“What are you doing?” Flavia asks Jay, as he shakes as much water off his coat as possible and pulls it back on.
“Just thinking. One place I haven’t looked. Maybe it would be a good idea before it gets too late.”
“Where’s that?” Miriam asks.
“In the caves. That’s got to be where they’re hiding, right?”
“The sub,” Triquet grumbles. “Scattering all my sorted piles.”
“Who knows?” Jay goes to the door and pulls Mandy’s blanket wide. The loud drumming of the rain is disheartening, convincing all the others to stay by the fire. “Back in a sec.”
“That boy is a lunatic,” Alonso announces. “But I am glad we have him back.”
Jay returns nearly instantly. “Yep. Cave mouth is just full of all their belongings. But no villagers to be seen. They got no faith in their huts during a storm like this, I guess. And look!” He pulls a bundle of sticks through the door. “Stole some of their firewood!”
All the others are pleased, but Katrina thinks back on her time with the Dandawu and all the kindnesses his people showed her. She shakes her head in despair. “God, we suck.”
Chapter 45 – The USB Stick
November 5, 2024
Thanks for joining us for the third 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:
45 – The USB Drive
Persistent birdsong penetrates the dense canopy. What bird is that? Jay doesn’t recognize its calls. It switches from buzzing to chirping to long melodic lines of warbling. Is that all one bird? Fascinating. It must be a mimic, like a mockingbird.
Jay opens his eyes. It is evening. The rain has stopped and their little hollow no longer drips maddeningly at arrhythmic intervals. Pradeep still sleeps beside him, their legs entangled for warmth.
“In my experience…” Jay mutters, his voice thick, “mockingbirds don’t sing at night. Just in the morning.”
“What’s that?” Pradeep’s voice is muffled. His face is tucked down, toward the pit of the hollow where redwood roots gather. He lifts his face. Jay is surprised to see how worn he looks, like he’s gained decades in the last couple days. Jay must look the same.
“Bird. Crazy song.” Jay pulls himself free. It’s too cold to lie here any longer. “We got to get moving, bro-him.”
“My legs. They really don’t want to.”
“Freeze our asses if we stay. Come on, Prad. Be the change you want to see…” Jay stands and grabs Pradeep’s upper arm, “…in the world!” And he hauls his groaning friend to his feet.
“Wow. I hate you for doing that.”
“Got to climb. Remember the plan? That’ll warm us up.”
“Perhaps I am not as cold as you. I could have stayed in that hole for another couple hours with no complaints.”
“Yeah, I’m freezing.” Now that he’s standing, Jay can see that it isn’t evening yet. The canopy just blocks most of the light. It is late afternoon and a golden glow suffuses the blue sky.
“Well we could just switch positions. I am still utterly exhausted.”
“We should hit this hill while we still got a little light.”
“It is true I don’t want to wait until morning. And now my phone is dead. No more flashlight.”
“Yeah mine too.”
“Fine then. Lead on. But don’t stop anywhere too long. Or I will pass out on my feet.”
“No doubt.” Jay surveys their surroundings, the pain of his many injuries making him feel like a badly-stitched-together golem. The sun is just setting over the far ridge, the meadow in shadow below with its low grassy hillocks, the very spot where they learned that they had dropped all the way into the wrong valley. Yep. There it is right there where his heart broke in fucking half. Good times. Anyway… After their tragic discovery they’d climbed up this way in a kind of daze, just to get away from it, and then they’d crapped out at the base of this tree. Said they’d just get a minute of shut-eye. That was like… six hours ago? Seven?
“The shadows…” Pradeep points at the nearby trees that are still lit by the setting sun. “From the shadows the sun is setting there,” he points at the slope across the meadow and then tracks a fair bit further south toward the equator. “We’re at like fortieth parallel so we’ve got to adjust the compass like so, and I’d say true west is about there. Hooray for one brief moment of sunshine.”
“Yeah, good call. That’s west. So north, east, south.” Jay rotates, pointing at each in turn. “Yeah. So I’m thinking that western ridge is the rim of the island. That west coast we’ve never seen.”
“Except Maahjabeen. In the first storm.”
“Right. But that’s like exactly the wrong way. We got to get back to our beach and our bunker and our… babes?”
“No. You will never call her a babe. She will tear your head right off. Yes, if the island is a clock, then the lagoon is at like 5:30 and we are currently at sort of… 7:30 or 8 on the dial?”
“Got to be. Which isn’t that far at all as crows fly. But you know it’s gonna be a fucking maze between here and there.”
“It always has been. You know, next time I take a posting on an island, I will make sure it is a flat sandbar. With one palm tree.”
“And a killer break. Come on, Prad. We’ll know more if we get up top here. We can chase the sun.”
“How… mythological.” Pradeep falls in line behind the limping, gasping Jay, who attacks the hillside with little forethought. “Wait. Wait. We can’t just charge this slope, Jay. We have to follow some contour lines. Bring us northeast for a bit first. Switchbacks.”
“Right on. Yeah. Get up top wherever. From the main ridge. We can get anywhere. On the island. In no time at all.”
“Yes. But climb. Out of the valleys. They are killing us.”
Then they speak no more, their energy turned to their poor feet and legs. Pradeep’s shins are covered in bruises. His climbing muscles scream with stiffness. But as he slowly warms up it all turns into a barely-tolerable throbbing ache and somehow he generates more mental fortitude from endocrine releases and conductive salts in cell walls and he keeps up with the mad Californian above.
Jay pivots them on the slope, making a switchback that heads more properly east-by-southeast where they need to go. Contours are only helpful if they actually take you to your destination. Sometimes you got to just take a mountain on its own terms.
For an hour they climb, passing out of the redwoods and through a stand of madrones and rhododendrons, then oak and sorrel, and finally grasslands near the spine of the ridge, which is marked by jagged lines of dark brown rock. They achieve the summit while the setting sun is just visible hanging over the western horizon, now distant and dim and pink, bisected by a pair of thin clouds. The wind whips them up here, bringing the marine chill. Vast and immaculately empty, the ocean surrounds them.
Now Jay looks down to regard the island. They are indeed on a ridgeline that connects with a larger main ridge up behind them, perhaps another eight hundred meters higher. Wow. This island’s got some walls on it for sure. But if they manage to stay on the ridges then they can skip all the ups and downs and meandering mazes. “Yes. Here’s our shortcut, yo.”
Pradeep frowns at the higher ridge. “Due north? That far? May I remind you that we’re trying to go southeast?”
“Yeah but once you get up top it runs east-west. We get on that ridge and head east, then when we get to the right valley, we follow that like sub-ridge down and boom, we’re home by supper.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
“Man, I’m glad we agree about all this. Imagine if we were like fighting all the time. I’ve been in that situation before when—”
“Or if like one of us was high on acid.”
“Yeah yeah. That wasn’t my finest hour.” Jay picks his way along the spine of rocks, the slope they just climbed falling away before them. The ridge is broader than he expected and he doesn’t even see the far slope yet or into what it must descend. “Oh, no way!”
“What is it?” Pradeep steps past the outcrop Jay just vanished around and joins him in delight at the sight of a tiny waterfall, surrounded by lilies and ferns, splashing strongly from the recent rains. “Wow. That must be one full water table to get a waterfall going this strong this far up the slope. And I bet it’s quite clean.” Pradeep leans in and cups his hand under it. He lifts the cold water to his mouth and slurps. “Delicious.”
“Fuck yeah it is.” Jay is on all fours at the edge of the little pool below, drinking directly from it like a dog. “Best water ever.”
Movement. Pradeep cringes, his primal instincts unleashing anxiety that disperses the peace of this moment like a knife through smoke. He squawks, turning back the way they came, to confront one of the golden childs sneaking around the outcrop after them. “Oh. It’s just you. One of you.”
“What the…?” Jay rolls over, blinking at the silhouette of the golden childs against the bright sky. “Hey, what’s up, dude?”
“How long have you been following us?” The masked figure stops and drops their arms. The youth was obviously surprised to find his quarry here, but he shows no reaction to being caught out.
“Oh, that’s just swell. Do you think he started with us from the beginning? Like he secretly followed us through the tunnels and everything? Dude, you could have helped out sooo much, so many times. Do you even know we’re completely fucking lost and we’re just trying to get back? I mean, just show us the way. Which way…?What are some of their names? Uh, Lisica. Morska Vidra.”
“Yes. Let’s get some directions. Jidadaa. Wetchie-ghuy.” Pradeep points where Jay is pointing. “That way?”
The youth only watches them through his golden mask, their inscrutable bodyguard.
“Right.” Now Pradeep feels the urge to lead. “Let’s head out then.” He tries one last attempt at communication, pointing out their route. “We’re climbing the north ridgeline up there then heading west, and finally southeast. Back home, eh?”
But the youth hurries past them and turns to bar their way. He holds up his hands as if to block them.
“Oh, no way. You won’t let us climb that ridge? Why not?” In frustration Jay scrubs water into his hair and steps away from the pool. “ Come on, G money. We got to go that way. Got to.”
“Closed to foreigners?” Pradeep crosses the width of the spine to study the new valley that is revealed to the east and the main ridge overlooking it all. From this angle he can see a bit more of the ridge’s profile. Is that a thin filament of smoke he sees behind its central peak? “Aha. Look, Jay.”
“What? Where. A bird?”
“Smoke. I think.”
“Do not see it.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I do. Just the briefest… Well, anyway, do you think that’s what our masked protector here is doing? Keeping us from crossing paths with whoever is up there?”
“I mean, their entire job is to protect us from Wetchie-ghuy and Sherman the shaman as far as I know. So… yeah.”
“I guess we aren’t taking the north ridge.”
Jay can’t stand the sight of the winding valley at the base of their ridge to the east. Its cleft is hidden in darkness. “Bro, if we drop into whatever canyon that is down there I guarantee you we won’t get out of it before nightfall.”
“Well, contours. Maybe we don’t need to stay up on the ridge. But maybe we don’t need to drop all the way down into the creeks. Maybe this golden childs will let us advance the way we want if we just drop a hundred meters or so below the top and get back in the trees. We can still follow the ridge, just in a more hidden way.”
“I don’t know.” The complaint sounds querulous to Jay’s own ears. “That’s a shit ton more climbing. But yeah. Not like they’re giving us a choice.” So much for being home by dinner. “Well. It is what it is. Lead on.”
Ξ
“You know what I’m thinking?” Amy asks Triquet, who builds a platform beside her in their new camp. Amy has already finished her own platform and tent and worries there is still so much to be done in the waning hours of this day.
“Uhh. Tea. Got to be something about tea. Like Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong? None for me, thanks.”
“No.” Amy straightens, peering at the patchy sky. “Laundry.”
From the far side of the camp, Mandy calls out, “Oh my god, yes! I’ve got a whole load!”
“Where? Like in the river?” Triquet frowns at it, the impassable natural barrier with its fast-moving dark currents dividing this side of the island from the other. “I don’t think the Lisicans would like that. Don’t want anyone hucking a spear at my head.”
“No, I was thinking we could just climb up its bank here until we found a little tributary. So many streams are running right now. Don’t have to get anywhere near the main river. Just a tiny dab of biodegradable soap and some elbow grease and we might even get them to line dry before it gets too dark.”
“I wish,” Miriam sighs, erecting the tent on a new platform, “that we could wash our sleeping bags. They are so foul. But there’s no way they’ll ever dry out here and then what do we do at night?”
“I have thought that again and again.” Esquibel emerges from within her clean room. “I dream of turning my sleeping bag inside out and strip-cleaning its fabrics with alcohol.”
“Okay, crew.” Amy empties her big expedition backpack into her tent, returning the articles of dirty clothing and accessories she should wash back into it. “You guys keep working. I’ll be the washing machine and dryer. Put your things in there with any special instructions. I can’t promise perfection, but…”
“Oh, you’re the best. Thank you so much. I think the weather might even hold all night.” Mandy appears with a small handful of things, followed by Triquet and Miriam and Esquibel. Amy’s pack is quickly full. She’s glad the others aren’t here to take her up on the offer. Laundry by hand takes forever. With any more to wash, Amy wouldn’t get back until midnight.
“You sure… you’re okay going alone?” Triquet has returned to building their platform.
“Who says I’ll be alone?” Amy nods at the golden childs who stand deeper in the woods above. Five of them had re-appeared once the villagers had left, watching over the new camp from a distance. And as Amy hauls the pack onto her back and buckles the waistbelt, one of the crouching masked youths rises to follow her.
She aims for the north edge of the meadow, where it gives way to trees. The black rushing river to her right is even more swollen than before. There is a point on its bank where the meadow ends and the pines begin. Amy pauses here for a bit. Such a delicious spot for a wildlife biologist, the intersection of three biomes in one place—forest, meadow, and water. Insect and fungal life probably exists in this ten square meters that exists nowhere else. If she has time, she will certainly collect every sample she can. Why, it’s like Plexity in miniature. “No. Actually…” Amy stands, reasoning aloud. “It’s the opposite of Plexity, which is a closed system. This transition zone has no boundaries at all. Its openness is its main characteristic. Huh.” Keeping the river to her right, she climbs up the north slope, a suddenly difficult outcrop of soil and brown pine needles sliding under her boots. The river begins to gargle beside her, dropping from the hills she’s climbing to the flat of the meadow behind. Maybe up this way she’ll find more falls.
The golden childs hovers behind her like a concerned parent, waiting patiently for her to navigate this crumbling obstacle. Amy reaches for the base of a sapling and hauls herself upward. Finally, the top. A bank of budding Osmaronia cerasiformis greets her on this bluff, while the river is now hidden in a cut that is a good five meters below, making all kinds of noise.
Amy pushes her way through the dense woody branches and wins through to a cloistered glade of clover and vetch, coated in rain. No more than a dozen paces wide, it is like a little chapel of light and life. The scene is so idyllic and pure that she doesn’t want to disturb it. Perhaps she should be like those Shinto monks who apologize to each creature they crush before taking a step.
The little glade bespells her. Unlike the transition zone below, this remote notch is far removed from the rhythms of the world. Purple blossoms and green leaves glow in the light of the setting sun. A pair of green-tailed towhees flicker in the branches of the pines above. Quiet and peace reign here. If she wasn’t the product of a modern education she would swear the glade is sentient.
During Amy’s childhood, Shinto had been a kind of strict folklore tradition she’d learned to hate. The rites and details of the rituals had seemed to always obscure the life it was supposedly praising. In Shinto, Japan has a mythological dimension, with gods and demons and fairies hiding in glens like this one. But Shinto is immutably Japanese, so there can be no such thing as a Lisican version of Shinto. It must just be its own magic here, its own unique power connected to place with its own secret name.
Amy has been pursuing this elusive nature of nature her entire life. Back in the 80s she had really gotten into complexity theory and for an entire generation the concept of emergent behavior was her specialty. Once complex systems reach a critical mass then new harmonics emerge, new behaviors and effects that are not always predictable based on the inputs, like steam from a kettle or human consciousness itself. Has that happened here in this glade? Has it… embodied somehow the essence of its nature? Does it have a giggling sylph or dryad hiding in the pines?
This elusive emergent property is the phenomenon of life itself, a rare miracle in the universe, firmly affixed to this tiny green and blue rock hurtling through the void. The study of emergence is the end result of the connections Plexity is trying to make. This is the evanescent heart of the matter here. Each scoop of dirt and rock that took billions of years to become soil and life has made unique interactions manifest in higher orders such as birds sipping nectar from beckoning flowers. And their song is its secret name…
Dark eyes stare back at Amy from within the stand of sword ferns across the glade. Wide and staring, round and beady… The inexact descriptors echo through her mind as she goes still. Yellow. Shiny. Quite certainly inhuman, perhaps canine? Oh, it’s a fox. Is that Morska Vidra’s fox? No… This one has a reddish lip and a narrow snout. The ears are different too, now that she can see them.
The little silver fox slowly waddles out from under the fern boughs onto the clover. Its belly is swollen and at first Amy thinks it’s diseased. Then she realizes she’s looking at a vixen, a female, and that she’s very pregnant.
This is wildly unheard of behavior. Foxes expecting litters like this will generally withdraw and be impossible to find. For one to seek her out is… preposterous. But then again, why do animals hide themselves to give birth? To protect against predators. If there are no predators of foxes on Lisica, then she can build a nest wherever she pleases. Astounding. But this one needs something from her? The pregnancy isn’t going well? Some veterinary surgery will be required out here in the middle of nowhere with no proper tools?
The vixen looks gravely at Amy with her yellow eyes. Then she turns and heads to the edge of the glade away from the creek, uphill. She pauses before she disappears once again into the ferns.
“You’re asking me…? Oh. You want me to come with you. Uh. Yeah. Hold on. I’ll just leave the bag here for a sec.”
Amy unbuckles the expedition backpack, trying to think if there’s anything she can use as rags if she finds herself attending a birth here. She snags a pair of someone’s socks from the top of it before closing it back up and resting it beside the bole of an old stump. There will be some crawling ahead, of that she is sure. Good thing her phone is fully charged if she needs light.
Ducking into the bushes, Amy disappears from view. After a long moment the fronds of the ferns stop shaking and return to stillness. Lavender butterflies flit across the opening. The towhees begin to sing again.
A moment later, the golden childs appears, looking for her. They find the backpack filled with dirty clothes and nothing else.
Ξ
Miriam finds Alonso in the meadow, studying the far hills. He has just enraged Maahjabeen again, who is stomping away from him back through the grass to what they’ve started calling pine camp.
Maahjabeen’s face is dark and her eyes are full of fire. She scowls at Miriam as she passes her. “Your husband can be so mean. He doesn’t have to be so mean.”
“Mean? Alonso?” Miriam blinks at her, but Maahjabeen doesn’t stop to hear her answer. She is too angry. “My Alonso? Never.”
Miriam joins her husband in the meadow. “You’re standing.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Alonso is preoccupied, though. Fighting with Maahjabeen always leaves such a bad taste in his mouth.
“What did you do to her this time?”
“Told her to stop making preparations to live in the sea cave and help us find missing people first and make this camp here.”
“You monster.”
“And I didn’t tell her she couldn’t do it. Oh, no. She would have killed me for that. I just told her to stop making it her top priority, especially when she will need help. We have no time to spare Amy or whoever for a dangerous kayak adventure. Not now.”
“She said living inland makes her crazy. I guess this is what she meant.” Miriam studies Alonso. Despite his current displeasure he is standing straight again and his shoulders have settled. This is how she always knew him before, but these last six weeks have been life with a fat old man hunched over his pain. Now he is starting to regain himself. Miriam never thought he might recover quite so quickly. “How’s the… what is it? Peanut butter and banana leaves treatment? How’s the wrap?”
“Not banana. Amy said maybe lily. It feels very odd. Warm, like warmer than it should, all the way inside. There is definitely an active compound or two in the Mayor’s treatment. I just hope there aren’t any serious side effects.”
“How long are you meant to leave it on?”
“I have no idea.”
They both laugh, a careworn sound. With a sigh, Alonso pulls Miriam close and they lean against each other, foreheads touching. The sky is filling once again with clouds, about to obscure the evening star. When it vanishes behind the rolling bank of gray the air begins to chill and they turn back, arm-in-arm, to camp.
There they find more arguing. Mandy storms from the clean room carrying her own bag. “She’s too much! I can’t take it any more. I’ll just—”
“You don’t have to like break up with me,” Esquibel exits as well, standing in the slit door entrance holding a white hand towel, “just because I asked you to move a few things that—”
“You’re hounding me! You’re always hounding me!” Mandy finds her own platform and drops her things on it. Now she’ll need to put up her own tent. At least maybe she can do it in peace.
“Well pardon me for being a doctor in a medical clinic!” Holding her hands up, Esquibel makes a visible effort to rein in her temper. “Perhaps I could have said it more nicely, and for that I am sorry, dearest Mandy, but please don’t make me apologize out here in front of everybody. It isn’t…”
“I’m not making you do a single thing. Ever notice that?” Mandy doesn’t know where this monumental irritation has come from. But she just can’t take the constant badgering and criticism any more. She needs her own space.
“You are…” Esquibel lifts a helpless hand and lets it drop, “…a wonderful partner. It is true. I am sorry.”
“Oh, Mandy loves you. It’s just, I think what she’s trying to say is that sometimes you…” Katrina offers in a helpful voice.
But Esquibel blazes once more. “Oh, don’t you dare put yourself in the middle of this. Not you.”
Katrina retreats, stung, the light of innocence dying in her eyes.
Miriam calls out, “Ladies, ladies. Please don’t let your frustration and exhaustion turn things sour. It’s just been a long few days. We’re frightened and at the ends of our ropes. That’s all. Things will be better after a nice hot dinner and full night’s rest.”
“Right. I can’t build my tent.” Mandy drops its aluminum poles with a clatter and stands, still quivering with indignation. “I have to cook dinner. Amy can’t. Jay isn’t even fucking here. It’s all on me. God! How did I end up with so much still to do?”
“I’ll put up your tent, sweetie,” Triquet offers. “I’d help you in the kitchen too but I’m not…”
“I can help in the kitchen.” Alonso moves toward it. He is not without pain and stiffness, but it is not corroding him. There is no timer on him standing up anymore. Now he has stamina. “Where is Amy, anyway?”
“Doing laundry.”
“Ohh… I have a few things… Where is she?”
Miriam points upstream. It is getting dark now and the slope is obscured in shadow. “Somewhere up there.”
“Well. Then I will wait until morning. Coming, Mandy. I will be your prep cook and dishwasher.”
Ξ
“So, this time we are neighbors, eh?” Flavia finally finishes putting her platform together, wrapping twine around the sawn pine branches and testing it with her feet. She smiles at Triquet. “Perhaps that means I can borrow some of your fabulous clothes.”
“Whenever you want, girlfriend.”
They work side-by-side for a long while in companionable silence. Triquet reaches for something more to say. Flavia is pretty much the only one Triquet hasn’t established a deeper relationship with and all they know of her is that she’s an Italian nerd who spends the whole day on her laptop. “You know, I have a cousin who’s a research math professor. Smart as a whip.”
Flavia isn’t too excited by this awkward small talk but she does appreciate the effort. “Oh? What does she study?”
“Uh. Mainly insurance? She wrote a book called ‘The Hidden History of Deductibles.’ Fascinating stuff, I’m sure.”
“Well, it can be. There is good work being done characterizing human behavior using maths. When done properly, it is actually kind of scary. We really aren’t that much more complex than a paramecium, if you get right down to it. People can be reduced to a few simple equations and interactions no problem. ”
But for a humanist such as Triquet this is a bit much. “We can? Just a few? I always thought I was a bit more… I don’t know, mystifying than that. I mean, in my case, I got a little coy with my internal motivations years ago when everyone tried to convince me that my choices don’t make sense.”
“Oh, they do. You are just… Triquet my friend you are outside the frame of reference. I would say most researchers are running maths simulations that you do not properly fit into. But the problem is not with the maths, it’s with their definitions.”
Triquet makes a face. This reductionism doesn’t sit right with them. As an archaeologist, the historical record of humanity is a rich and bewildering tapestry of unique characters and actions that can never be so neatly encapsulated. “So you’re telling me that all my behavior is… computable? That the reason I built a platform here as opposed to against another tree—say, that one—is just a basic function of mathematics?”
Flavia shrugs and pushes her hair from her face, taking a break from erecting her tent. “I mean, sure. Don’t you see? There are a finite number of factors that caused you to choose that tree. Each factor has values that can be assigned and those values…”
“But what if some of those factors remain hidden? Maybe I don’t quite know why I chose this tree. Maybe my father was killed by an oak tree and I’ve like subconsciously avoided them for years.”
“Your knowledge of the factors that shape your decision are not necessary for computation to occur. The calculations still happen independently of your self-regard.” She suppresses a sigh. To Flavia, this ontological perspective is painfully self-evident and at this point in her life, automatic. But she has also had enough of these conversations to know how unpopular they are. “Look. A lot of people thinks this means we must live in a horrible clockwork universe without free will, but I am not saying that. I am just saying these maths are the tools we use to make our way in the world. But there is no destined solution these tools are leading you toward. They are just another way we make decisions and express them.”
Triquet shrugs agreeably. “Okay. Then let’s say we’re able to identify all these factors that make me choose this particular pine tree to build my platform around. It makes sense, your numbers all add up, and the results are clear. But what if, at the last moment, I decide to randomly choose another tree. What if I stop what I’m doing for no reason at all, and just build a platform around this little sapling instead? Then what?”
Flavia narrows her eyes and expels her breath through her nose, trying not to groan aloud in exasperation. Why must maths be so hard for people to understand? “It is still a rational expression. Even if it is randomly generated. Especially if it is. If you roll the dice for your decision, that is very simple arithmetic. We generate random values all the time in my field.”
“But it isn’t rolling dice, it’s…” Triquet puts their hand to their heart, trying to find words for the chaotic welter of emotions and desires that flow through them. “My heart isn’t made of numbers. It’s made of feelings, many of them contradictory, yeah? I’m afraid that all you…” Ah, but how to mention ‘computer nerds’ without hurting her feelings? “It’s just that life isn’t as neat as you want it to be. Look at the golden childs. Why are they protecting us? Some kind of prophecy? Why do they believe in the prophecy? Faith, I guess. But how do you measure faith? How do you turn it into a quadratic equation or whatever? Don’t you feel like you’d miss out on essential elements of the whole thing?”
Flavia shakes her head no. “Quadratic equations are not the best tool for these jobs because they are univariate. No. Listen. This is a linguistic thing I know. The ‘es’ in ‘essential’ is one of the oldest roots in Indo-European languages, from thousands of years before the Latin ‘essentialis.’ It means ‘to be.’ So our essence is that which makes us be. Not how we imagine ourselves in a different universe based on magical thinking, not how we wish to be, but how we are in this physical world. The physical world can only be described by physics, which means maths, so…” she shrugs, “I do not know what to tell you except this is starting to sound like the arguments I have with Maahjabeen about god.”
“No, I’m not like a religious…” Triquet objects, then falls silent, realizing that the subjectivity they are championing will eventually lead to that spiritual conclusion. Religion. Myth. Magic. Triquet’s always given a kind of formal academic honor to those concepts, making sure that they are properly respectful of the cultures they study without needing to make a final decision about whether those myths and religions are actually provably true. But if it came down to it, does Triquet actually believe in any of the the ritual traditions their subjects practice? When the Yanomami of Brazil eat their hallucinogenic Yopo plants do they really gain access to hekura spirits that rule the physical world? When orphans in Crimea have nightmares about Baba Yaga does the old crone actually manifest or is it just their imagination? And what about those beliefs that conflict, such as when sects of Christianity turn on each other like in, oh, The Hundred Years War? Are both of their interpretations of the Bible true? Neither? Can two contradictory things be true at the same time? Can things be true only on the local or individual level? Perhaps acts of faith are the opposite of universal, especially in this age of tribalism. “I have always…” Triquet gathers their thoughts, sitting on the end of their platform struggling to put their unstated policy into words. “I guess the way I try to think about it is that we are each of us different kinds of magicians.”
“What? No.”
“Yes! Haven’t you ever thought of things this way? I had Dia, an old great-aunt who swore she had dreams that could tell the future. Did you have anybody in your family like that growing up?”
“Of course. In Italy, anyone over the age of sixty has some kind of supernatural power.”
“Right. And our first reaction to Dia’s dreams would always be disbelief. Cynicism. My parents would argue with her about her crackpot soothsaying dreams and astrology readings long after dinner was over. And at first I was on my parents’ side.”
“Only at first? Then what?”
“Then it occurred to me one day that maybe universal laws just aren’t so universal. I know that my dreams can’t tell the future. But can I really authoritatively assert that nobody’s dreams can tell the future? Maybe that’s just the kind of magic that Dia can practice. My magic is, like, in my costumes. I can turn an entire party on its head by showing up dressed as Cher. And I don’t mean that it’s the sequins and lipstick. It’s that I cast a spell, honey, and people fall under that spell and it really works. What’s your magic?”
“My magic? Eh.” Flavia tries to forcibly shift her perspective for the sake of this conversation. “Alonso with his big Cuban family magic. Katrina with her DJ magic. I mean, aren’t those just other words for wine and drugs?”
“You know there’s more to it than that.”
“Is there? I am Flavia. I have no magic. Full stop. I am entirely a creature made of numbers. Is that magical to you? Because to me it is not. It is just like graduate-level seminar statistics. These things you are talking about are mathematical probabilities, not voodoo.”
“The point I’m trying to make is that, in my humble estimation, I can’t be certain of the empirical universality of anything. Sure, every star we’ve discovered so far fuses hydrogen into heavier elements. But does that mean all stars will, everywhere, forever? I can’t know that, so I have to stay humble and not get tempted by calling things absolutes. Ultimately my subjectivity trumps all. I mean, I can’t be a religious worshipper because I have no faith. But for those who do, maybe their universe is truly so different that I honestly can’t speak to whether they are actually talking to their god or not. I just don’t have that talent. But I do have other talents. You have your numbers, but that doesn’t preclude Maahjabeen’s access to Allah or whatever. That’s just her own inimitable talent. The Lisicans. They live in such a different reality we can’t just slap our Western number system, our analytics, on them and say we get it. We’ve been trying to understand their life and culture for six fucking weeks and gotten no closer.”
“Maybe they have their own maths.”
This stops both of them, the notion that all Lisican behavior might be described by an indigenous mathematical structure that is separate and unique from the numerical traditions they know.
Triquet rubs their chin, mind sparking with half-formed insights. “Well there’s another career’s worth of study right there. No, it’s just that I’ve always given space to people and their traditions. Respecting them allows us to see more of the humanity in our subjects. In other words, post-colonial guilt, and lots of it. See, to me, the very definition of humanity is something that transcends math and science. This is why in every one of our cultures we talk of spirit and soul. There is something else to it, in ways that we all interpret in our own unique subjective ways. I mean, we had some pretty wise ancestors and they tried to teach us things, yeah? So like celebrate diversity, sister. We are all of us, all eight billion humans, individuals with unique patterns and points of view.”
Flavia laughs. “Or, as your aunt the insurance researcher has proven, we are no more than five major personality types with billions of us fundamentally identical. Not that there is anything wrong with that… That is how biological agents interact with environments to create what look like unique phenomena, but are really just the same base integers in different combinations, and our own ability to remember these patterns or even correctly identify them is very bad because really we are still just a bunch of apes.”
“Finally, something we can agree on.” Triquet scratches their ribs in caricature of a primate. “Oo oo. Aah aah.”
Ξ
In the middle of the night her eyes open, belatedly realizing Amy never came back from doing laundry. Is that true? She’s pretty sure it is. Casting off her sleeping bag with a silent curse, she slips from her tent with her phone in hand. She pads over to Amy’s tent and shines its light within. Yep, still empty.
But someone is awake. Through the trees she can see their dim silhouette out on the meadow, standing tall and silent in the gloom. Stepping closer, she turns the light off and peers through the obscuring branches to see if it is who she fears it might be.
Clouds stripe the sky, their edges lit by an intermittent moon. Shadows roll across the meadow. When they retreat the figure is gone. No… Just crouching, closer to the trees now. And someone else is with them, a small dark figure dressed all in black.
She eases forward to see what they’re doing. Their heads lean together for a long moment and then the second figure rises to a crouch and scurries away. But this is no native, and definitely no one in her crew. They move like some lethal video game character, like an assassin or a spy. After a moment they are swallowed by the shadows. The second figure stands, tall and dark.
Esquibel.
Wrapping her black coat around herself, Esquibel steps quietly back into camp. She wishes for nothing more than a long hot shower to wash all this grime away. But she will not have one of those for two more weeks. She must stay filthy until then.
Stepping from the quiet grasses of the meadow to the dry twigs and needles of the pine forest requires all her care. She takes it extremely slowly, lifting and dropping each foot in slow motion. The camp is ahead, cloaked in darkness. If she can just get back to her cot in the clean room she will know she is home free.
It had taken so much nattering of Mandy to get her to leave her side tonight the pangs of guilt poke at her, again and again. Well. She is doing all this for Mandy and the others. Someday they will hear of her sacrifices and maybe understand. And now that it is over she can go back to treating Mandy like the princess she is.
Resisting an impulse to cross the camp and join Mandy’s lovely sleeping form right now, Esquibel takes another careful step.
Wait. Someone is there, in the darkness, watching her. Esquibel is sure of it. She can’t see a figure but she knows deep in her bones they are there. She stops, like a fool, her hand straying to the back of her waistband, and stares at where their eyes must be.
“Identify yourself.” Esquibel’s whisper tries to sound forceful without waking anyone else up.
But whoever it is doesn’t speak or move. They only dwell in the center of the darkness. She can’t even see their eyes.
Esquibel hesitates. Is it one of the golden childs crouching in the bushes? Almost certainly. Or maybe one of those odious shamans who are causing so much trouble. “Go ahead. Just try to kidnap me,” she mutters. “Just try it.”
Still no movement. She can see nothing but the dark. It’s just a presence she can sense, an unbearable prickling a millimeter under her skin. Someone is there. Isn’t there?
Or is it just her imagination? Another dimension of her rampant guilt? No, there is no one there, surely. She took every precaution. These people are all dead tired. None of them are awake. And none of them crouch in the dark like this, like a panther… No. This is just her fear of being found out.
“It isn’t what you think,” she mutters, surprised at how much she needs to confess to this knot of darkness. “I am not doing this for myself, but for those I love. I am not a traitor.”
This is the one thing Esquibel told herself she could never do. Say the words aloud. As long as she keeps them within the confines of her own skull she is safe, never to be discovered. But she didn’t know how difficult that would be, how it would contort every one of her thoughts and actions to hide the little secret inside, like that one unknown dark sliver Pradeep found in the knot of seaweed. She is bloated by her secret and just needs the relief of the pressure. Just a bit, just by whispering her secret to a spot of darkness.
“The money is good but it’s not about that. We’re playing a very deep game here. A very necessary game with geopolitical interests. And besides, it’s just the Japanese. They’re harmless.”
The darkness absorbs the sentences. But a bitter judgment still somehow emanates from it. Esquibel can tell her words are insufficient. Espionage is espionage, no matter how you cut it. Ah, well. She feels no better for confessing. “What a bloody mess.”
Esquibel shakes her head and finally drops her hand from her waistband. She steps past the knot of darkness feeling wretched and misunderstood. Thoughts of her cold hard cot fill her head. Yes, oblivion is all she can hope for now.
And then, to her utter dreadful surprise, a whisper emerges from the darkness, a voice she knows. “Fucking hell. I knew you were up to something. Well, guess what. I switched the USB drive.”
DW Draffin -- Lisica 